Garmore's Den

NOW PLAYING

What I'm currently watching, reading, playing, or listening to

TV

Mobile Suit gundam 00 Second Season (16/25)

I felt really good about 00 Season 1. I knew the second season was... divisive to say the least, but I didn't think it would be, "Lockon has a twin brother that assumes his identity" stupid. We'll see where this goes.
Episode 7 Update
Yeah so this show IS soap opera level stupid. It's got its moments though. I really liked the Colonel and Soma's tearful goodbye. I do worry that, at only 7 episodes in, we're overrelying on "Montage of sad moments from season 1 set to sad music to make our emotional impact land". I was a big fan of starting the ending song over the scene of the Federation committing war crimes in episode 5 though.
Episode 12 Update
The Louise and Saji situation is really getting to me. Saji is probably the strongest character of this series, a completley normal guy who OBVIOUSLY can't fight or kill anybody, but has to learn how to be a participant in making the world better. He's a treatise on how going, "Not my problem" just gets innocent people killed. In this episode, there's a moment where he almost relapses back into his old, "If I preserve MY peace, nothing else matters." attitude and he catches himself. I really appreciate when characters are actively struggling with issues like this instead of coming to a realization and then Staying Fully Realized. Change is hard work.

Mobile Suit Gundam (7/43)

Heard MANY good things about Mobile Suit Gundam and so far, it's living up to the hype. I haven't watched a lot of 70s anime but I loooove this show's animation style. Gundam is nice and chunky. Its movements have a nice weight.
Court Martial Counter:2

Mobile Fighter G Gundam (25/49)

THIS SHOW WHIPS ASS. It's uhh, a liiiiittle bit racist at times but, if you're aware of that going in you get an over the top, character-driven action cartoon that's a delight every moment of it.

Number 1 Sentai Gozyuger

A number of friends have fallen off this one, but I'm still going strong. The beginning of the show is kind of weak in terms of characterization for the team, but every week now they say something or think something or do something that just drives me crazy. Hoeru is a truly miserable person in ways that FASCINATE me. I'm so glad his doggy behavior is more than just a bit he does. The others kind of see him as this lost puppy too. They just are incapable of hating him.
We'd be sad if our dog went missing.
That line singlehandedly rewired my brain chemistry.

Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters (Rewatch, Episode 29/52)

Appmon is probably my favorite digimon season, but I haven't watched it all the way through since it first aired, so I'm hankering to come back to it and see if it still holds up.
Episode 12 Update:
Yeah, so this show is EXACTLY as good as I remember it. I can't believe it holds up just as well 9 years later. It might even be "more relevant" now as technology advances and "AI" becomes a more relevant part of daily life. Obviously, there aren't intelligent, sentient "AI" like Leviathan running around in real life, but I find it interesting how technology hasn't really "outpaced" Appmon's scifi future yet.
I found myself on the verge of tears thinking about how Rei learned to cook for his little brother and then when that brother went missing, he started subsisting off of convinience store food while he overworked himself. It's something so simple, a detail that many other shows wouldn't care to showcase. It's a tangible change for the worse in Rei's life following Hajime's kidnapping. The poor kid is taking TERRIBLE care of himself.

Kamen Rider Zeztz

It's kind of a given that I watch this year's Kamen Rider. We're really early, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Show's really stylish and the characters are lovable. Really like the detective guy. He's so smiley.
Episode 22 Update:
We fell off the Zeztz train for a little bit while we tried to process all that stuff that happened with Maya Imamori... but now that we're back, I can tell you this might be some of Yuya Takahashi's best work. It's got a nice blend of modern rider aspects (tons of transforming characters that fight each other with flashy new forms each week) and old staples (Investigation Support Team comprised of Normal Humans who are every bit as interesting as the Kamen Riders). It utilizes the classic staple of, "Heroes and Villains drawing power from the same source" as a fun twist, rather than something that's obvious from the beginning. Also, I really hope this storyline about Nem learning to Lucid Dream is leading to somehting.

Digimon Beatbreak

The new digimon season! What an interesting world they've managed to set up in a single episode. It's very kind of like if Devil Survivor took place in a techno future where everyone's phones were taking their vitals all the time and also shaped like eggs.

GAMES

Final Fantasy VII (Complete! Review Soon!)

FFVII is a CLASSIC RPG and I've just... never gotten around to playing it. I liked FFX quite a bit when I played it a year or two ago, so we'll see how I feel about the Final Fantasy of one generation back. I know for a fact I like the games that came BEFORE this one. I'm playing the original PS1 version. Really like how all the characters look like they could be in a set of building blocks. Also, nobody talks about this, but it feels like FFVII has a minigame for fucking EVERYTHING! There's a minigame for doing squats, there's a minigame for sneaking past guards, there's a minigame for driving a cool bike, there's a minigame for doing cpr on a drowning child!
I have some beef with this game's pre-rendered backgrounds. They look great, but I frequently find myself confusing interactable details or pathways for set dressing because they're so detailed. It's not so often that I get completely lost, but it's often enough that I need to make note of it.
Not a big fan of the way this game clearly HAS a system in place to remove materia from characters not in your party, but you don't get to use it in regular gameplay. Calling characters into my party just to strip their gear and then swapping them out again is inconvinient. There's also just too many party members to use all of them. I'm using Aerith even though I know what happens because I feel like her presence is important narratively, but I really wonder what kind of characterization for everyone else I'm missing out on by benching them. There's not room for everyone, but characters I don't use feel pretty underbaked. I don't really have a REASON to put Cait Sith in over characters who I KNOW have things to say about what's going on like Tifa or Barret. It makes moments like Cait Sith's betrayal in the Gold Saucer hit weird because I'd mostly forgotten he was there. That's not even mentioning the two optional party members I missed. It's really funny that one of them is RANDOM though.
End of Disc 1 Update
I've now seen The Scene from Fiunal Fantasy VII. Everyone knows The Scene. The Scene from the end of Disc 1, that scene? It's the one thing everyone knows about Final Fantasy VII going in. Aerith leaves the party suddenly to chase after Sephiroth and when we catch up to her, she's praying in some cathedral under the sea? It's left ambiguous what exactly this was doing to stop Sephiroth. Maybe it'll get explained later. At present, it just feels kind of... strange for us to do this whole, "Holy shit, Cloud almost killed her!" thing only for Sephiroth to descend from the heavens and do the job himself anyway. The actual CG cutscenes are beautiful, but the writing for this long-heralded historic moment in gaming wasn't quite what I thought it'd be. As much as I like Cloud, I did groan seeing one of the Two Female Party Members die in his arms as he said to Sephiroth, "What about MY pain?" It just got me thinking about the unexamined misogyny of it all.
The casual ableism in this game's localization is WILD. What do you mean this boss's name is SCHIZO???
The section where they make you use Barret and Cait Sith kinda sucks, actually. You're down on action economy with your best character removed from you, some of the enemy formations can 1-round you, and if you DO manage to die, you have to watch about 2 full minutes of cutscenes again before you're allowed to try again. You can't even walk back to the save point because Cait Sith will stop you.
End of Game Update
It feels like this game backloaded so much of what Objectively Fucking Whips Ass about it into the last HOUR of gameplay. I can't even say "the last two discs" because I really did not actually care for much of the start of Disc 2. So much of the time Cloud is absent is spent having Tifa go, "But what about Cloud..." or playing as Cid, whose primary character trait is "Misogynist". Honestly, the Old, Jaded Guy would be a lot more enjoyable of a character if I didn't spend every scene he was in thinking he was about to beat women.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (Dawg, I don't know how to categorize my progress in this game.)

Truly incredible game so far. It was a really fascinating decision to basically TELL AN ENTIRE STORY before the true game begins. Very Ushikoshi in that way. Most of the things I like about Ushikoshi and Kodaka's works are present in Hundred Line. I can't wait to REALLY dig into the meat of this game's themes and what not once I've played more of it. (has already played over 100 hours of Hundred Line...)

White Album 2

Because of the lovely girls at Fate/Moon Archive, I've started reading White Album 2, a Romance Drama about musicians who have very differing ideas of what a "Friend Group" should look like. If you like NTR, or really good foley work, I can't recommend White Album 2 more.
Introductory Chapter Update
Having officially finished White Album 2: Introductory Chapter, I have to say... It's already an incredible VN. It could have ended there and I would think, "Wow, what a masterpiece." The idea that there's MORE suffering for Haruki and Setsuna in my future DELIGHTS me. Setsuna has a route in Closing Chapter, but there's just no way it's like. Good for her. Right?
Mid-Mari Route Update
Yeah so Mari Route is really bad. It sucks shit. I'm not giving up hope for the rest of the game but it is definitely standing in the way of my motivation to finish it. Godddddddd.
Still on Mari Route...
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…nothing valued is here.

Fate/Hollow Ataraxia

The sequel to Fate/Stay Night! I'm not very deep into it, but I like this Butterfly Dream aspect it's got going on where we switch back and forth between Bazett and Shirou's perspectives. Something is so clearly wrong with BOTH of their scenarios. The twin masters that look exactly like Rin and Sakura, Saber being ALIVE following the Holy Grail war, what could be the reason for this? I have to know.

BOOKS

Destroy All Humans, They Can't Be Regenerated

This one's a manga about Magic: The Gathering and LOVE. It follows two very stupid teens as they pursue their passion for the card game and for one another. I'm liking it a lot thus far. I'm about 5 volumes deep; it manages to keep me turning pages with some truly immaculate combos and a pretty cute romance plotline. Multiple times, characters have dueled with love confessions on the line. Every single time, it gets me.
I always feel bad for the secondary love interest in this kind of story, though. Yakumo just wants to be happy with Kano, but I know that can't happen. It was so rough watching her lose to Sawatari at the regional. The kind of games neither player can afford to lose are my favorite in manga like this, even if the results are emotionally devestating.
Most TCG manga and anime have a clear and obvious "villain" who cannot be allowed to win. Destroy All Humans lacks this, but it opens the door for plenty of scenarios where a game's result can be both shocking AND deserved. Major character twists ride on if a character sideboarded correctly or not.
Sideboarding doesn't even get addressed in a lot of other works like this... By default, matches in DAH are best-of-3s. Sometimes they'll skip over a particularly decisive Game 2 victory to focus on the deciding game, with Gmae 1 being an introduction to both players' strategies as they feel each other out. It grounds the gameplay in the realism of actually going to a Magic tournament with your sideboard in hand while making sure the pace isn't bogged down by making every game take three times as long as it should.

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt (19/27)

Another manga, this one takes place during Gundam's One Year War. It's about a completely different cast of characters than Gundam 79. Io Flemming is a Federation Gundam pilot who is Actually Kind Of A Fucking Jackass, If I'm Being So For Real Right Now. Daryl Lorenz is an amputee Zeon soldier with an incredible aim. The two of them develop an unhealthy rivalry over how fucking bad they want to kill each other. This series really shows off the worst and best of both Zeon and the Earth Federation.