Dates are inexact for precisely when I finished a certain thing or choose to log it. I am not always in the mood to jot down my thoughts immediately after, so the dates are simply marking when I logged these opinions.
Here on Twitter. Below is an archived copy of it.
Jan. 4, 2022. THE BEST ONE. okay, i've only played the first three layton games, but this was all the batshit-wrapped-in-a-charming-english package that the prior two games were with an additional hit of emotion. i really, really liked it.
Jan. 6, 2022. i got it last march and got past the third gym before...i just unintentionally put it down for awhile lol. it was cute! i really like the stadium setting for gyms, and hop as a rival was legit very charming. pokemon is always very cozy for me.
Jan. 11, 2022. my best friend has had me (re)watching spiderman films with her, and this uh...was just way more boring and generic than the raimi films. love gwen stacy, though. super well cast and actually has stuff going on. otherwise, eh, it exists...?
Jan. 15, 2022. i regret to inform you that the league of legends show is painfully good. it should not be this gorgeously married in universal quality, but it is. 10/10. vicait fake. vijinx real.
Jan. 15, 2022. um. well. that was a movie. a very, very, very confused film. it was not very good. gwen stacy was still good, though.
Jan. 15, 2022. a rewatch. rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel towerofgod rachel t
Feb. 6, 2022. wow, that took me forever to complete, but yaaay, my second playthrough of extra is done! just got tamamo left, and i'll have done the full extra. i'm very fond of this strange game.
Feb. 12, 2022. what a frustrating show. it lives and dies by its incredible direction (and holy shit am i going to be keeping an eye on the director in the future). everything else is kind of...ehh. man, that direction, though...
Feb. 13, 2022. i think my brain broke watching this. a lot happened. i'm pretty sure i liked it? diversity win????
Feb. 13, 2022. a rewatch. still wonderful! such an understanding adaptation! its amaya is more subdued, but the film retains integral emotional beats. it's still wonderful to see after reading the manga. read kamisama.
Feb. 20, 2022. emiya kiritsugu sure had a wacky vacation as a masked sniper hanging out with some lesbians!
Feb. 20, 2022. i watched memory snow forever ago and yet somehow forget to get to this one!! super sweet and cute. 😭
Feb. 27, 2022. i'm going to need to process this one a bit more because what a strange, interesting, and just unique show. a lot happens! i'm surprisingly hung up on what a sad ending sochie got, even though YES DIANNA/LORAN CANON. really...just what a show tbh.
Feb. 28, 2022. only watched half or so back when it was airing, so this was half-rewatch, half-watch. extremely glad i finally got around to this! really just tragic a show this lovely and sweet got saddled with such a terrible fandom.
the pacing goes down much better when you're not thirsty for plot nuggets in-between the more slice-of-life stuff (which i like!). really, my only criticism is that i would have wanted a few more episodes of yellow and blue with steven to smooth out that turn around.
other than that? pearl is still my absolute fave, i love rose's morally ambiguous ass, and blue diamond is wonderfully unsettling. su deserves to be right up there beside atla and otgw as wonderfully enjoyable cartoons.
closing it out on this shot of all things was the absolute sweetest. i'm extremely excited to watch the movie and future!
Mar. 1, 2022. so this is the spinel that became a tumblr sexyman. holy shit was the animation smooth, though. the show itself was generally quite nice, but this was SMOOOOOTH. the diamonds as overbearing aunts is also adorable.
Mar. 2, 2022. yeah...yeah...this was kind of the absolute perfect way to close out the series. i love this half-human, half-space rock child and his three space rock moms.
Mar. 2, 2022. i...totally forgot i started this and had a few episodes left. it's fine. cute. i just watched it for subaru tbh.
Mar. 12, 2022. completely slipped my mind to post this when i watched it last week! super delightful and cute!!! i've had its music stuck in my head.
Mar. 13, 2022. a rewatch!
always good! in spite of what the anime cuts, i really love s1 as this lovely bookended personal journey for subaru. :')
Mar. 16, 2022. a very random rewatch i did. it is...a ride of a show.
Mar. 24, 2022. i forgot i watched this last weekend. it wasn't very good. it was an underbaked bleh...even more so than a lot of the mcu films are. raimi spiderman remains the best spiderman.
Mar. 27, 2022. PARK CHAN-WOOK REFUSES TO MISS. HIS DIRECTION IS AS IMPECCABLE AS ALWAYS. AH. HE HAS SUCH AN INCREDIBLE EYE AND TALENT FOR DRAWING OUT GORGEOUS PERFORMANCES.
Mar. 27, 2022. one of my absolute favorite films. no matter how many times i see it, it holds me utterly rapt. gorgeous filmmaking on every level.
Apr. 2, 2022. honestly pretty entertaining in a bonkers way until the underwhelming end! and surprisingly homoerotic.
i could not give less of a fuck about cramming in mcu connections, though. please god free me from franchise bullshit like this.
Apr. 3, 2022. actually very glad i saw this! definitely the most interesting and daring of the mcu spiderman films. still no raimi spiderman, but i largely quite enjoyed it, and it made some intriguing choices.
tobey-peter/norman otp...
Apr. 24, 2022. i was rewatching sbfp lps of other david cage games, and it made me remember the one actual good thing i like from his games, so i wasted my weekend replaying this for some reason because HANK GO UP. i murdered humans and HANK WENT UP.
i really don't recommend playing it btw. just watch a comp of connor's scenes. there's some wonderfully talented actors in the game, but only connor's stuff limped away with okay writing (and hank). the rest is a trashfire that will make you varying degrees of ripshit.
Apr. 30, 2022. i love this selina kyle. i love her. i love her a lot. i'm officially a little sad i haven't heard zip about her.
also wow the riddler is real horny for rpattz!batman. pattinson totally kills it. fantastic film. my only complaint would be that the movie didn't end with the girl being uplifted. i DO like the scene with the riddler (+ joker) and then selina and bruce, but thematically, those weren't needed, and this was SOOOOOO tight otherwise. god, i love bookends.
May 1, 2022. amuro moe. amuro's trauma moe. amuro's angst moe.
also haro is god.
May 14, 2022. oh, i loved you at first sight, memes and all. now i've finished you, and i'm full of such sorrow...
loved it to bits. incredibly fun to play, and god, when the story starts to hit at the end, it Hits. i love you, jack garland.
June 2, 2022. it took me nearly three years or so, but i have finally finished with extra after playing through it thrice. extra is mechanically janky and structurally repetitive, and it's so utterly cohesive in its themes in all aspects that i can't hold its flaws against it. extra is the type of flawed but compelling i adore. i love how its entire structure communicates the growth birthed by violent conflict and the growth nurtured by compassion. i love how distinct and wonderful nero, nameless, and tamamo are. i love how rani mirrors hakuno and twice and is the surest proof of how compassion and empathy stimulate growth on her route. i love how rin parallels and challenges twice's ideology and affirms hakuno's conclusion. i love how extra contextualizes everything. i love the music. i love the aesthetic of rising from the digital seafloor to breaking through to the risen sun in its dungeons. i love the cyclical rhythm of the moon cell's grail war structure and how it echoes the repetitions of history.
extra is so many things i love packaged together with things i may not love, but i do admire for their thematic inclusion. i really love extra, and i love all the time i've spent with it!
June 11, 2022. read as a translated transcript with some additional videos of the ccc/true route.
i think i've exhausted what i could find translated of ccc. i'll leave more detailed thoughts for when i get to play the eng patch!
i'm really looking forward to the patch when it releases! thank you so much to the translators and editors who have worked on it for what i have read and what i will get to read!
as is, ccc is a really lovely companion story for extra. i'm so excited to see more of it!!
June 18, 2022. so, if someone ever tells you the only good part of berserk is the golden age arc, they should be ignored as complete fools. i have some quibbles, but they're easy to ignore. berserk is really good. it's really fucking good. to sum up my feelings is sort of impossible for me right now. i'm sort of just.
June 23, 2022. read an lp of it.
i...i cannot explain why i remember that this game exists? and then sought out an lp of it? it's not even remotely a good game, but i vaguely recall playing it when i was really young and didn't realize that running causes you to lose hp is kind of a bad mechanic. i never finished it, and it made like nil impact on me considering i remember tremendously little about it, but uh...i sure read that lp.
June 23, 2022. and uhh, well, i never really established guidelines for what qualifies for me to shove on this list, but i started reading this new manga and plan to stick with it! i love it's low-key vibe and cute premise and art!
June 29, 2022. read as an lp.
silver star is such a funny little game. for 1992, i'm REALLY impressed by the clear passion both the devs and localizers had for the project. i'm really looking forward to checking out the remake and how the creators refined the story.
the story structure is bizarrely meandering at points and plain obtuse at others. it's sort of an interesting blueprint i hope to see expanded in the saturn/ps1 remake! the remake came only four-ish years after the original, so i think the creators really wanted to put to work their gained experience and the newer tech. i'm weird about remakes, but this is a pretty interesting circumstance for one that i feel positive about lol.
i looove the change in the localization to need to play the harp before advancing up to luna! such a lovely end. :')
July 6, 2022. you can absolutely tell fujimoto wrote this just by the fact the girl the guy likes bullies him.
July 6, 2022. i should be asleep rn, but i abruptly was like what if i read fujimoto's other oneshots instead.
fujimoto has such talent. big talent man.
July 7, 2022. it mostly just served as background noise for me. episode 4 was perhaps one of the best the show has ever done, though. max had a killer arc this season.
July 10, 2022. jason todd is both INCREDIBLY funny and sad. he's got such serious daddy issues, and someone needs to stop letting bruce from adopting children bc they keep getting anxiety and brain damage.
July 13, 2022. even the good route has major yandere vibes lmao. fun little vn for a quick play!!
July 23, 2022. rewatch!
always a delight. this show has such comfort food energy. i love it no matter how many times i've seen it.
July 26, 2022. finally finished a playthrough i started when i got the legendary edition last year because it kept nagging at me that i had something left undone. me2 is always fun, though. i've def come to dislike the paragon/renegade system, but me2 has a fantastic cast.
Aug. 1, 2022. and this is a story of how i stumbled across this manga and later realized it was by the creator of go for it nakamura-kun with its memetic cover! quite enjoyed this. excellent horror with such a wonderfully fucked up central pair and intense art.
Aug. 5, 2022. read as an lp.
so wonderful and so very charming. i still can't believe this came out in 94. the leap game arts made in presentation and narrative in only two years is insane. eternal blue is absolutely wonderful.
i have a few quibbles about some odd plot developments (WHERE DID LEO GET ZOPHAR'S BLOOD TO FEED MAURI???), but my only real complaint is hiro being a mostly mute protagonist. it's just...a weird choice. but eternal blue is WONDERFUL. absolutely wonderful.
Aug. 6, 2022. i heard that this was written by shigema kei and clarified some points of the game's story, so i wanted to check it out. super breezy read with some lovely shoujo art! i am kind of curious about the finer points of what created deities...
Aug. 14, 2022. SEASON 2 WHEN???? this was a rewatch. one of many. it is a modern classic. i love this show. it never fails to crack me the fuck up. a Perfect Anime.
Aug. 19, 2022. a rewatch up through s12-ish and then it was all new to me! the gang is absolutely awful, and i love them.
Sept. 3, 2022. finished this off finally with my best friend. definitely a better adaptation than zero is, but hhh, i am just not super crazy about ufotable's adaptations, i guess lmao. 🫠 their direction style isn't always my favorite.
good shirou whump, though, and that's always important.
Sept. 8, 2022. played through say 40, read lp in full.
WELL. I WAS NOT LIED TO ABOUT THE GAME BEING VERY DIFFICULT. but, man, i have a fondness for flawed but interesting things, and lobcorp is an absolute gem of one. pure earnestness wrapped up in loving jank in a wonderfully cohesive vision. i admire everything about it from a creative standpoint.
but. oh. o h. ohhhh. to see its lovely ending capped off with the best of all payoff? i had a feeling angela would be my favorite from the beginning, and she is absolutely my favorite. i think angela deserves to do whatever she wants with the world. i support her and her future crimes. i bet angela is divisive in the fanbase. i looooove her. ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Oct. 8, 2022. it was more cohesive than the zero anime, but ehh...i'm just not overall huge on ufotable's style. even past the adaptational hurdles of adapting a text-heavy visual novel, their direction doesn't land as compellingly to me.
...nobody said the full and proper ubw chant either. : ( i kept waiting for my "so i pray" and i never got it.
Oct. 16, 2022. baby does first war crime. happy birthday.
Oct. 18, 2022. finally bothered to finish this. the direction alone continues to be utterly stellar and elevates a very meh story and characters. frederica was an incredibly annoying addition, and i missed lena a lot.
s1e10 is still amazing, though.
Oct. 21, 2022. holy fuck, they compressed the plot. some nice visuals mostly borrowed from the game's aesthetic. i was pretty underwhelmed with how...segmented the battles felt. i know the game is turn based, but... 🥲
Oct. 24, 2022. very cute and charming! the guy who made the hit album "you are the baby" sure also made a game that is Very Normal.
Oct. 28, 2022. i rather dug it into the last episode. episode 6 was when the very obvious marvel formula started, and i was pretty zoned out when the giant lizard and bird were wrestling.
what a cool strangers of paradise reference, though! : )
Oct. 28, 2022. yearly rewatch! it's always wonderfully charming and just such a great watch. real gem of american animation!
i rec it wholeheartedly if you haven't seen it! it's 10 eps at about 11 minutes per ep and is delightfully funny and haunting.
Nov. 1, 2022. i got a VERY gooD grade in kim. but, hm, i'm having a hard time pinning down how i feel exactly about disco elysium. it's a game about the transition period between being hurt and being healed. it can be a terribly long process, and it's a pain all on its own. it feels a bit hard to have a definitive feeling on disco elysium when that is what it is.
i really enjoyed my time with it.
Nov. 5, 2022. watched per my best friend's request.
it was okay. that's about the sum of my thoughts.
Nov. 5, 2022. rewatched with my best friend! still a fantastic film. it is still utterly surreal to me as a film made pre-columbine.
Nov. 18, 2022. holy shit was that some jank-ass pacing. fucking all over the place and never really permitting any breathing room or character development. it was pretty mid.
except for alicent. she is my babygirl. she has never done anything wrong. 🥰
Dec. 6, 2022. i watched a comp of cutscenes and all dialogue, and man, i did not expect halo to do a war film so well. it's legit like the length of one and really solid.
Dec. 6, 2022. SO MAD I ONLY GOT INTO DRAGALIA RIGHT AS IT WAS ENDING. supremely charming, and what a wonderful localization. it read beautifully and with so much personality. hats off to everyone who worked on it!
Dec. 6, 2022. up through the cathedral. because that's when i went "oh i am not having fun..." i like the super earnest, full anime bullshit vibe, but the writing wasn't enough to keep me interested. soulslike gameplay simply is not for me!
Dec. 6, 2022. xie lian is my cute grandpa, and everyone better be nice to him!!! idk if it's just the translation, though, but i personally find the prose insanely bland in a way that sort of takes me out of it. but i love my grandpa.
Dec. 6, 2022. it took me so long to finish this!! i was stalled out in the dark tournament arc for awhile despite adoring it! chapter black saga was largely great too, and i did like the three kings arc despite its issues.
the final ep was incredibly sweet. kuwabara is my ABSOLUTE favorite, and i love him so much. for all its weird pacing and whatnot, i would have been softer on the three kings arc if kuwabara showed up for more of it lmao.
Dec. 8, 2022. i'm legit bummed this version of miho is exclusive to this anime lmao. she's not a deep character or anything, but she was a delight. decent-enough adaptation of the early manga was some bonkers changes (kaiba's cyborg butler...) i had fun!
Dec. 9, 2022. grandpa still needs prayers badly.
Dec. 13, 2022. somehow managed the good ending. bawled my eyes out. omori is really good. that last third really fucking hit.
Dec. 21, 2022. pray for my grandpa. but only for things he can actually help with pls. he's a good, helpful grandpa.
Dec. 22, 2022. pray for my grandpa. do it. pray for him. he's very nice. 🗿🗿🗿
Dec. 28, 2022. smoking hoshimaru is real and is also me after that ending.
Dec. 31, 2022. not a show i've ever particularly liked, but i watched it because s3 ended with some good viren/claudia crumbs. claudia getting a boyfriend who makes frequent fart jokes was annoying, but claudia still good. 'tis a mid show for background noise.
Dec. 31, 2022. my usual yearly rewatch with amanda since we didn't get to it closer to christmas! always a fun watch.
Currently updated on Tumblr. The Twitter thread is inactive. Below is an archive of the Tumblr version.
Jan. 6, 2023. framing devices in framing devices in framing devices. i'm doing one of those "we email you a part of a thing and you read it all across the year" for sherlock holmes short stories, and this was the first one. seriously, it was framing device-ception. watson is conveying holmes' words to him and holmes is conveying various things others said to him and a letter he read to his friend and--
Jan. 7, 2023. ohhh, i love me a good bookend. few things please me more, and i'm very much delighted to see tsukihime picked to do one! (nice to see aoko again, too! mahoyo soon…) tsukihime is as wildly uneven as its structure is between the near and far sides. but goddamn, when it hits (kohaku's confession at the end of hisui's route), it fucking hits. the soundtrack is impressively good for only 10 tracks, too! i totally get why this hypercharged early 2000s otaku brains. it's got a lot going on.
i think my final ranking of the routes is: hisui > arcueid > kohaku > ciel > akiha. i really liked all of the main girls! …with a bit less fondness for akiha, but she still had some great moments on routes that weren't her own!
btw, KOHAKU DID NOTHING WRONG.
Jan. 9, 2023. since the events in the gacha i play tend to be bulky and full of words, i'm counting them in my media thread whatsit for this year. u_u
> lot of arknights' events don't conclude well for me. they leave a lot of open questions--which is completely fine! hinting at future plot threads is good writing! but the way it's often written is that the event story just…feels like it's a big preamble to something coming eventually and ends up unsatisfying for me.
lingering echoes did not have that issue. i liked it so much that i exhausted literally all of my savings for sad horse uncle trying to pull for ebenholz.
bastard showed up on my desperate final pull. : |
Jan. 19, 2023. i am quite enjoying getting little doses of some nice mysteries every week! neat little case (even if i kept cringing at the use of g*ypsy)!
Jan. 19, 2023. totally forgot to record this one properly when i finished it the other week! not much to say other than it was an enjoyable little jaunt of a mystery.
Jan. 23, 2023. honestly, any event story following on the heels of lingering echoes was going to be a bit of a letdown because lingering echoes was good, but…eh. it didn't fully connect for me despite me liking a lot of the components--which is typical for me and arknights lmao. lappland meta dominance, though.
Jan. 25, 2023. an okay event. i don't mind the more episodic comedy type events, but boy did they cram kagekiyo in at the end. kiichi felt a bit underutilized, too, despite me liking her and enjoying her dynamic with ushiwakamaru.
shout out to the comedic legend castor, though. "farewell earthlings" made me crack the hell up. i always love when he's on his siscon bullshit.
Jan. 27, 2023. one more holmes short story for the pile. not as wacky as the whole "snake fed through a vent" reveal last week, but a nice read nonetheless. i do just enjoy shoving a solid mystery into my brain.
Jan. 28, 2023. if tomino wanted me to be normal about amuro, he wouldn't have had amuro. thank god, i've been watching gundam with poppy, and she can accept me objectifying amuro on main. gundam is super fun, and amuro's trauma is moe.
Jan. 28, 2023. SO MAD TO LEARN THAT IT WAS NOMINATED FOR A GOLDEN GLOBE AND YET DIDN'T GET IT. ahhh, inu-oh was astonishing on like every possible level. the writing, the structure, the animation, the style, the sound design, the music--it was so good, holy shit.
Jan. 29, 2023. so, i knew about lalah and was very excited to see her, and she totally was as great as i hoped, but i didn't know she died so soon! : ( but ahhh, fantastic conclusion. i'm going to watch the full tv series soon hopefully because og gundam slaps.
Feb. 2, 2023. watson is so accepting, albeit confused, of holmes paying for a nice dinner for five to be set up in their home. but a fun story! man…who marries a girl then runs off to make a fortune to be worthy of her… you already got married! just stay with your wife, man!
Feb. 4, 2023. SEASON 2 WHEN.
Feb. 6, 2023. well, i meant to finish slow damage back at the beginning of january, but it took me a whole extra month. i think my overall ranking of the routes would come down to: fujieda > taku & rei >>> madarame. the more i played of fujieda's route, the more madarame's just felt like an extended bad end to me. excluding bad ends, it really is the saddest possible outcome for towa for me. i do think madarame's route presented some important insight into towa's psyche, but the stagnation that madarame endorsed was by far worse for towa than him simply not confronting his past. because even when he doesn't remember in taku and rei's routes, towa is still taking steps forward beyond the hedonistic lethargy he approached life with, just waiting to die.
madarame's a slight hypocrite, too, because he fucking knew what was up with maya to some extent. "ohhh, that doctor man is lying to you, towa. you should come with me away from anyone else that cares about you and be in a forever fight club. if it wasn't for the cat petting cgs, madarame would be in the dumpster for me. i do not like this man. his smug aura mocks me.
i can't be that mad at taku's whole…everything either. yes, yes, towa should have the freedom to pursue his past, but jesus fuck, if i knew what he had endured, i also would not want to help towa remembering it. towa being functioning in the most basic sense is a victory with the trauma he's carrying around.
rei is still my personal favorite just because he is so darling! still hate the end of his character arc at the end of his route, though. the majority of the man's friend group is queer, and his closest friends are femme presenting, and i just : (. rei transcending feeling boxed in by societal definitions of gender only to go "guess i better stop having any feminine affectations" and apologizing for "acting girly" is so sad… rei deserves better…
FUJIEDA…MOE? man, his route fucked. in general, slow damage for me has been primarily about towa. the romances can be fun, and i enjoy the whole cast largely minus madarame, but slow damage is so compelling because it is an extended character study of towa. fujieda acts as a filter that lets towa finally begin parsing himself out more coherently as he dives into his past. that fujieda is never interrogated by towa and those gameplay portions are instead held by towa trying to push himself to confront and acknowledge his past is so fucking good. utterly fantastic climax to the whole game, and i cannot believe my grumpy yakuza lawyer is this moe.
but, god…i am still astonished at how unstable this release is. it partly took me so long to finish slow damage because i would get frustrated when it kept crashing. sometimes, i would have a play session that went off without a hitch, but more often than not, it was just a matter of time until the game went kaput. please let me check the backlog without having to quicksave before i do it… i am perennial backlog abuser, so that really interrupted the flow for me. the presentation, visually and musically, is absolutely gorgeous, though. some of the effects would slow down the game, but i can live with that…unlike the crashing.
still, i'm really glad i pushed through to the end! fujieda's route was fantastic. towa is easily my favorite nitro+chiral protagonist, and slow damage was completely worth the wait!
Feb. 7, 2023. in part a rewatch, in part a new watch…for seasons after s10 iirc. bob's burgers is very warm and sweet, and i'm very content to just have it on as background noise. : )
Feb. 20, 2023. accidentally fell behind on my short story reading due to binging the fuck out of baldr sky, so my memory is less than ideal here since i'm only now reading the conclusion after like two weeks. @_@
Feb. 20, 2023. poor watson. 😔 he just wants his friend to have a restful vacation in the country, but i guess nothing reinvigorates a burnt-out sherlock holmes like a murder.
Feb. 21, 2023. oh, baldr sky. what a whirlwind two weeks we had with me being desperate to not take another month to finish a long vn. we did it, though, and the real true world we ascended to along the way was full of headaches.
what a ride. baldr sky is a visual novel huffing some jrpg-isms and can only be described as a baby concocted from the dna of evangelion, xenosaga, and fsn--and that baby is the death stranding baby who hates sex because flesh reviles it. it's bonkers at times and admirably ambitious. that it feels structurally sound and sticks the landing so well on its final route is a real testament to it. it's an eroge, and i can't be mad at it for all the eroge elements in it that weren't totally my speed; i'm not gonna complain about an eroge eroge-ing.
there's like…so much i could say about it. baldr sky has a fuckton going on. i have to give a special shout out to the aki route for going so utterly ham on being the incest route. she's the protagonist's second cousin and they treat each other as siblings, but then it turns out she's also a clone of the protagonist's mom--but no! it goes deeper than that! aki is a clone made from the dna of his mom, their aunt, and their grandfather, and their aunt thinks of aki as her child with her sister (the protagonist's mother). it's insane.
it was a fun time! long, but fun.
edit because i forgot to do a quick route ranking: sora > rain & aki > chinatsu & makoto > nanoha.
Feb. 22, 2023. i kind of can't believe i just read the final chapter. i've been into the series since i watched a few episodes of then airing anime of donten ni warau back in 2014. it was one of those cases where the anime interested me enough that i ditched it to just read the source material, and then i read the gaiden manga, and then i started rengoku (which is a prequel to donten but also a standalone story in its own right). the scanlators working on rengoku dropped it around chapter 13 iirc, and i waited years in the hopes of another group picking it up or it being licensed. if i had been able to find a decent source of raws, i was prepared to make amanda translate and to typeset myself!
so, if there is one good thing the pandemic brought me, it's that someone wonderful began scanlating rengoku again due to quarantine. i'm so thankful that it has been completely scanlated now because it's such a great series. the art is gorgeously detailed and expressive. the story is much longer and more expansive in scope than donten's. and the characters! ugh, i love sakichi, baren, and okuni so much. it's not every day you get an ot3 so real that they ceremonially swear to one another so closely that they adopt a singular name between them. i'm really so happy. i want to reread it all! i can't believe it's done!!
Feb. 22, 2023. totally forgot to note this when i finished reading the story stuff the other day lmao. caren sure was on a roll. cute and compact, per usual for a valentine's day event!
Feb. 22, 2023. it took until the end to really register for me just how much i did enjoy watching this. it felt almost like it was treading water at times until then with biwa being a more passive character, but it thematically comes together in a devastating statement about the endurance of memory. gorgeously animated and directed. really fantastic.
Feb. 23, 2023. not including maximum here since while it's a direct continuation (from what i understand), it is under a different title due to copyright, so i'm also going to categorize it separately.
i don't want to be too tough on the manga since it clearly continues on, but for what part of trigun these first twenty or so chapters represent, i…am really glad i saw the madhouse anime first! the manga zooms along the greatest hits of the anime's plot in a way that doesn't quite do it for me. there is absolutely charm present, but my attachment to the characters is largely thanks to the anime spending more time with them. the basic beats of each is here in the manga for vash, millie, and meryl, but, again, i feel like so little time is spent with them before legato pops up and it's knives time.
iirc, i believe nightow worked on the madhouse anime as a consultant, but i don't know the extent of his influence in shaping it. the pre-maximum manga reads almost like a blueprint that the anime successfully expanded on. (it could be terribly hit or miss, but i do yearn for when anime adaptations had more leeway to diverge from their source material.)
so, ahh, it's a bit hard for me to really judge what i've read when the anime is sitting there in the back of my mind. love & peace, i guess!
Feb. 26, 2023. or how sherlock holmes learned to be a little less sexist because one woman outdid him so now he's not making merry over the cleverness of women nearly as often.
Feb. 27, 2023. THE ASS…IS LIKE OUTER SPACE. this line will live forevermore in my brain. very cute dynamic with delightful character designs that look like they rolled out of a sports manga.
Mar. 6, 2023. my long awaited date arc.
the funniest part of me playing was how much i kept remarking to xofi that i liked how generally professional and competent date was. he was a bit of a nutjob in his head, and there was the porno mag running gag, but he was otherwise a fully formed character that also had horny bolted on. date was very charming as a protagonist. he's aiba's soaking wet poor little meow meow, and she loves him… if date/aiba isn't real, then why game???
aiba's actual best girl (i was ready to disown the true end if she stayed dead), and boss is my wife, and the receptionist is hysterical (let's go to atami!). overall, i quite dug the cast! except ota. i do not like ota. the simp act got tiresome, and yes! i'm still salty about how he lied to his mother (who has dementia) that an eighteen-year-old girl he has a parasocial fixation on is his girlfriend. that did not warm my heart. why did ota even have a route and ending.
i think i found mizuki's route and ending the most satisfying. it would have been nice to have seen more of how date did care for her before that final somnium and to have mizuki be more involved outside of her route, but it still worked for me.
but, oh, mizuki… love her, and while the visual of her lifting weights is hysterical, i do not care for her having the strength and acrobatic ability of a shounen protagonist. watching a sixth grader run up to armed adults actively firing at her at close range so she can club them with a metal pipe stretched my suspension of disbelief too far. the game otherwise didn't have a setting that allowed it; mizuki was an anomaly…for some reason.
my biggest gripes have to be the inconsistent tone and structure. the former would hit with jarring instances of comedy or absurd action sequences that were too predicated on the world's strongest twelve year old. the latter is probably a more personal quibble (i mean, this is all just me rambling out my thoughts), but my first run at the game ended with me on the annihilation route where i was locked out of more once i hit a cliffhanger. not even a bad end! just booted from the route until later. then it happened again when i branched into the true route before iris'. the game clearly didn't want me to access key exposition yet; i would have preferred it if branching onto both routes was barred until ota, mizuki, and iris' routes were complete.
anyway, let's all look forward to the aiba and date marriage! i can't wait to see who boss blackmails so date can legally wed his eyeball. and then we all go to atami.
(but, seriously! i liked hitomi, but her relationship with date…did nothing for me romantically. iris, sweetie, you need to accept that aiba is your uncle's waifu for laifu.)
Mar. 14, 2023. while i'd definitely say my opinion definitely tends toward the positive, i am frankly a bit mixed on kagetsu tohya. the structure for the main story is on the experimental end, and i can always respect that, but ahhhh, i wish i had just used a guide to begin with! trying to ensure i saw everything and got the plot stuff with len to trigger was a slog after a certain point! the slice of life stuff was cute, and len is a very cute design with a decent story attached.
i think i liked a few of the side stories more than the main one tbh. crimson moon, imogirisou, and the tohno family con game were my favorites of the ten. the last one in particular was tremendously charming and fun, and it will sit as a treasure in my mind despite not being written by nasu. crimson moon has such a cool cg, too, with arcueid imprisoned. in general, the cgs were a step up from tsukihime! i looove that arcueid one… (a quick shoutout to nanako-chan sos where i did not really care about the horse girl that lives in ciel's catholic gun, but i did like the history of shiki and arihiko's friendship! loved that. horse girl was sort of just there…with her hooves.)
so, uh, largely a fun fandisc! i just wish the slice of life stuff could have involved less "girls bickering over shiki" moments.
Mar. 15, 2023. totally blanked on playing this before kagetsu tohya! now i understand the references to some murderer that looks like shiki running around in another town properly! the story with akira was short and fun, and oh god, there's another shiki i didn't know existed. the shiki population refuses to stop growing.
Apr. 13, 2023. okay, i technically finished ruina yesterday, but i had a killer headache last night that has continued into today, so i'm typing this out now. please forgive any incoherence.
project moon really looked in the mirror one day and said they were going to do angela every justice possible. the complete empathy she is treated with for her pain while not being merely reduced to it is a perfectly struck balance. she is my poor little toxic meow meow. the way she is forced to confront that she is emulating ayin and tries to justify it as being all she knows--chef's kiss.
the need for mutual forgiveness between her and roland in the end was excellent. that they both resemble the person the other loved most is deeply funny and moving as they manage to break away from the cycle of suffering and revenge. that final title change for roland to "friend" was perfection. i also lost it pretty hard at ayin apologizing and telling angela that she did a good job.
if i have any complaints, it's that apparently an annoying section of fans bullied project moon into removing images during the credits that showed the sephirot were doing just fine??? i was like "this is very nice, but where are my sephirot" during the end, so major l for the fans that made this happen. i also apparently blipped over a lot of subtext about carmen and had to reference the fanwiki. i am…not sure how i feel about her as the voice of the distortions. i guess i can accept it if she has been twisted by exposure to it all, but…mmm.
still! i have no regrets cutting out the grinding with a mod and then caving to a more broken one by the end. i cruised through the final fights and very much enjoyed the resolution. i love thematic cohesion and parallels, so i ate like the king of kings here!
ruina is great! just play lobcorp first.
Apr. 13, 2023. completely forgot to log this when i finished reading the event. it was very cute! i love phantom thief bullshit, so it was quite enjoyable. voyager best little brother… 🥺🥺🥺
Apr. 13, 2023. another event i forgot to log. it was pretty forgettable tbh.
but, man, galatea's chonky pants are hilarious and the best part of her design.
Apr. 13, 2023. another gacha thing i forgot to log because i had decided that since this was the initial chunk of main story released, i might as well record it. kromer was a fucking bitch to beat even if she was a true sinclair-simping icon (my comrade), and i think canto 3 was the strongest of the chapters. i definitely liked them all, but much as i will laud projmoon for how tight their writing generally is, i wish canto 1 and 2 had gotten the longer lengths of canto 3, too.
i'm excited for whenever canto 4 is gonna drop.
Apr. 13, 2023. SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME that my german friend alex was shrek-deprived, so i had to rectify that by showing him the first shrek and the best shrek after. this was also something i meant to record a bit ago, but i was lazy.
it isn't as good as shrek 2, but i am fond of shrek 1!
Apr. 13, 2023. THERE IS NO SHRED OF IRONY IN ME WHEN I CALL THIS A MASTERPIECE. I LOVE THIS FILM.
Apr. 22, 2023. man, i took my sweet time getting back to yttd after i first started it a few years ago! i only got partway into chapter 2 (i never hit the final attraction), and i managed to stop playing, like, right before shit really hit the fan! yttd absolutely nails a lot of the pivotal emotional moments that lets it hit home with the characters and plot beats for me. the keiji and sara relationship is also so good; the game cannot stop teasing them! i'm very excited for any other mini-episodes that drop and for whenever we get the last half of chapter 3!
Apr. 27, 2023. since i am not going to be grinding out every reward in the event (takes too long for too little and can't be automated), i'll keep idly working on it in hopes i get enough for the don ego, but eh… i started late on grinding since i was distracted by grail live in fgo. 🥲i rolled both the sinclair ego (aka the most important thing in the entire event bc he's a little soup boy!!) and ryoshu's identity, so i'm pretty content regardless.
the story itself was delightful. extremely good sinclair bulli content, and just…whatever the fuck yi sang is on. spoiled milk does a number on a guy… dondon was adorable (a potato! cut in the shape of a star!). meursault and outis are officially the only sinners i trust to cook. and special shout out to outis for actually netting a win from dante with her endless (and often a bit confused despite her spirit) simping!
absolutely precious!!🥺🥺🥺
May 1, 2023. ahhh, i keep forgetting to log things… orz but an extremely cute event! like, a lot better than i expected considered the reaction the waltz collab got when it debuted on jp, but it was very sweet. miss crane… 🥺🥺🥺
May 26, 2023. finished it last night, so brief revival to log it whilst my thoughts are still clear.
okay, i don't want to lean that hard into comparisons with three houses, but damn, engage was distinctly different from fe16 in such a good way. while there could be some insane clipping (SOMBRON, PLEASE!! THE ENDS OF YOUR HORNS ARE IN YOUR CHEST MORE OFTEN THAN NOT!!), the models were much cleaner and crisper than fe16's. the static backgrounds used in cutscenes also felt correct in regards to perspective. (i still don't understand what happened with that in fe16! the static backgrounds were consistently warped at the wrong angle and looked wrong.) the gameplay was much sharper and with better variety. and alear bepis--i actually like bepis! renaming them as "bepis" had me giggling at the Divine Dragon Bepis all the way to the end, but i grew fond of them. i really prefer when fe does a proper, albeit very typical, character for a protagonist instead of the weird hybrid character/self-insert thing byleth got. i like shipping bepis whereas i recoil from byleth ships.
the gameplay in general…chef's kiss! it had great fe game feel. units felt individual while still being heavily customizable. i really enjoyed the new mechanics like engaging and the break system. the maps were nicely varied, and nothing ever felt like a slog in the way replaying fe16 four times for every route did. i played on normal classic (per usual!), but i might do hard classic on a replay due to how fun and balanced the game felt to me.
engage is definitely more ambitious in the gameplay department than in the story department. fe16…tried to do something more political and involved, but sort of fell flat on its face due to the wonky world building for me. blue lions/azure moon was a borderline euphoric high for me when i played! but it can't carry the rest of the game when it's a more contained narrative about dimitri and isn't as reliant on the mysteries and world building hitting home. so, i'd definitely put bl/am above engage, i would also put engage above fe16 as a whole. i'm leaving engage feeling much warmer about it than i did towards fe16 by the end.
that last chapter was such a delightful cheesefest! i wish it had leaned into that more at times and developed the main royals and bepis' group dynamic more, but the cheese really worked for me. engage's story has all the subtlety of a shounen friendship speech being thrown as a brick at your face, and it goes whole fucking hog into that. bepis gives so many friendship speeches! it's great. not at all perfect, but i had way more of a blast than i expected.
sommie, my beloved. hortensia, my best girl. and goldmary…the unit i decided to feed every permanent stat-boosting item to once i realized Boob Big and who became a nigh-unkillable tank for me.
edit because oh my god, i have to mention lumera. she managed like maybe two scenes that weren't dripping in incest subtext between her and bepis. i didn't expect to ship them as much as i do lmao.
June 7, 2023. watched with a friend. minato's characterization in these films is like he's an aroace austistic warhammer 40k fan that has zero interest in girls and just wants to play his tabletop pls. (so we spent the entire movie just joking about this.)
June 7, 2023. i'm very bitter at the quality of the translation. the same person also did the official translation for tgcf, which most certainly doesn't read like the smoothest prose ever but is quite a bit more even than what we got for mdzs. i'm extremely particular about prose, so unless i'm deep enough in a hole that i will stomach just about anything so long as it's a semi-coherent english translation of something i want to consume, i will be a whiny, nitpicky baby as i slog my way through eh-quality prose. this barely even hits that level. i couldn't get too far into the exr translation either because of my pickiness, but at least that translation has the excuse of being done for free by a teenager. that this is a product i'm paying for and also ruined the chances of anyone doing a better translation just really sucks. (i read part of the fanyiyi translation, and it had far superior flow and diction.)
the interior illustrations were absolutely gorgeous, though. incredibly stunning. i have nothing but praise for those.
June 7, 2023. okay, it takes until the 2.5d stage arc to slap, but once you hit that arc, my god, does that arc slap. the absolute homoerotic rival intensity between arima and akane is palpable. my absolute favorite stuff in the story thus far. the initial superbaby stuff is…easily my least favorite, and while i think the story peaked with that 2.5d stage arc (IT WAS SO GOOD. ARIMA/AKANE HATEFUCK FIC WHEREEEEE), it stays firmly entertaining after it. i really don't care about the romance between aqua, arima, and akane, but akane is at least mcfucking hilarious about it because she will go full unhinged for you, aqua. just let her do it. let her be your equal murder revenge buddy. she's so there for it!!
arima's my bitchy meow meow, and i love her.
June 7, 2023. i am on my hands and knees begging the lord of bethesda todd howard to give a nice loving studio a chance at remastering morrowind!!!!!!! please!!!!!!! i have no issues with the parts of it that show its age or how it looks! (i sincerely think it looks better than oblivion! it has a really solid aesthetic and atmosphere! the faces don't unnerve me like oblivion's do.) i just want the damn thing to not be an absolute roller coaster to troubleshoot into playing on my laptop even with the patches and mods recced by the community to stabilize it.
i got up to doing main story quests in balmora and was really enjoying it. : ( but it's just decided to be crash happy currently, and i lack the brain power (and patience) to troubleshoot it, so i will come back in the future… i really like morrowind!! i just would also like it to get the love it deserves and be optimized so running it isn't a partial nightmare if it decides that nah it doesn't like something.
June 7, 2023. by far my biggest issue with trigun maximum, i think, is that the action can be so hard to decipher. nightow can compose some very compelling panels and striking imagery, but i found his action to be difficult to follow. so that kept me out of a lot of the action…of which there is quite a bit in maximum. the whole middle of the story where vash and wolfwood are hoofing it to clean up knives' cronies is kind of a haze for me because i just wasn't that immersed in it. lots of fights that i couldn't really parse against enemies that were…there. while i understand why vash was doing what he did, the necessity of getting every coin half felt…weakly conveyed to me? idk.
i'm not crazy about the ending either, but i did like a lot of maximum. vash as a character gets a lot of fondness for me, and i really enjoyed following his journey. the '98 anime remains my favorite version of trigun! i hope to get to stampede soon!
June 7, 2023. everyone, please stop bullying koyanskaya! she's my comfort war criminal, and it makes me uncomfortable to see others be mean to her! :((((((((
but in all seriousness, i'm extremely excited to play the next two parts. i knew the major spoilers, but i avoided reading everything in detail for the past two years because i like to be able to play it (and the na team generally puts out such a nice, smooth localization). lots of good set up and lots of great moments. i'm always happy to see tristan get some attention! 🥺
outside of forced deployments, i had fun knocking through battles with morgan, himiko, and merlin.
June 22, 2023. i am so fucking glad limbus had canto 4 wrapped up before lb6 went into full swing on na because, squirtle, i'm dying. even knowing the general plot outline from osmosis did not prep me for how much of a gut punch lb6 hit me with. and there's still another part to go.
every day, i curse fgo for being a gacha because it is, unfortunately, home to some of my favorite writing.
June 26, 2023. keep forgetting to log a few things. finished this a bit ago. quite liked it! gwitch is an excellent gundam, and suletta sunday is a weekly international holiday. any more detailed thoughts are best reserved for when the second cour wraps up this weekend.
June 26, 2023. i liked it…but i feel bad that i don't like it more. projmoon's writing generally lands pretty damn well with me (lobcorp and ruina have utterly stunning finales to their stories that resonated deeply with me), but limbus is structured differently than either prior game, and i find it can be…a little more uneven. cantos 1 and 2 were good, but also would have benefited from an increased length and more time to linger and contemplate gregor and rodya's characters. canto 3 is still the peak for me, and i swear it isn't just my insane sinclair bias; its execution just worked and dug into sinclair meatily. canto 4 is…odd. my biggest gripe would be that i don't think it needs to be as long as it is. a lot of nodes end up with repetitive battles with very little story between them. the actual story content was intriguing, but…maybe i just missed things because i found it to be difficult to parse at points.
i'm going to reread it at some point because not having a bunch of similar-feeling fights between short scenes might help me piece it all together more coherently lmao. 🫠
June 26, 2023. a random purchase i made when buying vns in bulk during a sale last year. pretty middle of the road, but i enjoyed my time with it. the cast was quite charming, and the mc was a character i liked following. i did lose it on one route when suddenly there was a cgi kaiju-sized flaming red skeleton towering over tokyo and animated in a looping om nom nom movement. good times.
June 26, 2023. another vn i picked up while on sale last year.
holy fuck, though. no one told me taisho x alice is so horny. borderline unhinged horny!! like:
i'm absolutely going to pick up the rest of series at some point. cinderella's route was my favorite of the two in ep 1, but i found everyone to be very charming. the mc is also fantastic. i love an otoge heroine who is so forward and direct!! you get that fairy tale d, girl!!!
June 26, 2023. sorry, jjk, but i'm dropping you. the culling game arc has been full of Choices, and i'm at a point where even maki can't keep me trucking. catching up is just a burden, so it's clear that we must part ways. may you strangely pace yourself to the end, jjk. 🫡
June 26, 2023. ah, the conclusion of my trade with amanda where i made her watch 11 hours of ffx cutscenes with me in exchange for severance and ted lasso s1-2. i love, love, love this game so dearly, and it is a favorite. the emotional throughline and just…palpable pathos to x is ridiculous. it's really just so exquisitely structured on every level. yuna is my darling girl, and now i kind of want to replay x-2 of all things.
June 27, 2023. my god. that eternal end is uh…okay, i'll come back to that and just speak about the rest of the game first.
i feel a bit complicatedly about hanachirasu. i understand that akane as a character is ruthlessly focused on a single pursuit (igarasu) so his lack of shits given to any woman is expected…but itsurin is maybe the one woman who isn't portrayed as pitiful? yumi left me the most disgruntled in large part due to the end where akane can return to save her and…he calls her fat and then she refuses to leave because she can't die knowing akane thought she was fat, and ugh. i genuinely found the h-scenes to be almost jarring and a bit contractual feeling. akane is…going to rape this woman now! itsurin is…going to come onto akane now! maybe it was just that they didn't do much for me, but they just felt oddly placed to me.
the actual meat of hanachirasu is clearly in the central rivalry and the immense detail of the fights. those excel. the final duel between akane and igarasu had me rapt and was deeply satisfying to see play out after all the build up. the eternal end is fucking batshit tbh, but i'm extremely into the mutual love confession between akane and igarasu. it feels oddly natural in a way that "oh, now akane is having sex with itsurin" doesn't. i'm pretty curious to check out kaigen's ambition. making a whole spinoff game from a borderline joke ending is the type of commitment i admire.
definitely an interesting vn, though. very glad i picked it up. i'm looking forward to whenever i get to full metal daemon muramasa now.
June 29, 2023. an experimental reuse of assets from hanachirasu. not really fun to play, but interesting, and honestly…it gave me the best ending aka the one that properly canonizes akane/igarasu. i can admire its existence.
July 5, 2023. okay, i think i've sort of got a sense on my feelings on gwitch post-finale. because, uh…man. i really don't want to call the ending a disappointment, but i think it was a disappointment. i'm quite content on the arcs for the major cast; where suletta and miorine and guel and (mostly) shaddiq went, i'm pretty happy. i'm also content that (minus shaddiq) it was a happy ending! i would have loved a sulemio kiss or to see even a snippet of the wedding, but i'm still very happy that suletta and miorine got married.
i think what loses me with gwitch, though, is…i can't really find the thematic throughline. the world building got hazier and hazier as the show went on, and it wasn't until the end that i realized how many plot threads weren't going to be followed through on. the original elan, especially. he just resigns while the peil grannies are livid and then…starts working under guel? what was even the point of all the other elans? and speaking of the other elans, i can accept that permet is able to dissolve into space dust or whatever, but did i seriously miss something about there being an afterlife for gundam pilots (or anyone that worked on gundam) in the data storm? eri being part of the data storm i follow without issue; she linked up to it and then had her consciousness uploaded into a mobile suit. i don't understand why prospera's dead husband and coworkers and el4n and norea are in the data storm. norea at least died piloting a gundam, i guess. el4n was just fried with a laser.
i think my opinion on gwitch is still largely positive because it didn't start to lose it until the last fourth of the show or so, and s1 was super tightly composed. i liked the cast enough that the show can have a fair few bumps and i'll forgive it.
and, okay…like…i'm really just disappointed on the outcome for earth and the general similarities drawn between miorine and shaddiq. i'm pretty disappointed shaddiq's fate seemed to be volunteering to be tried for prospera's crimes. (his girl gang being miorine's bodyguards was very cute, though!) i do like that things weren't just resolved on earth, but gwitch…didn't seem to come to any sort of conclusion? shaddiq and miorine were both naive idealists to an extent. shaddiq went more extreme in his methods because he understood you couldn't gently unfuck a system as corrupt as this all, but he was still a young man thinking he had a plan that could change things on a massive scale. miorine tried a much gentler hand in empathizing and negotiating with protestors on earth. shit goes sideway for them both, and each ends up sitting across from the other like "our hands are stained with blood despite our good intentions."
so, miorine dismantles the group at the end. the show bluntly states that its unlikely spacians won't simply snap up all the freed assets again, and miorine is continuing along with her more empathetic methodology. okay. cool. i just don't know what conclusion this is reaching. there is no answer i can find beyond a shrug that maybe one day we can break the cycle of abusive bullshit, i guess? a lack of an answer can definitely be an answer, but that's not a reading i'm getting from gwitch.
gwitch just…kind of doesn't have a conclusion. smile because your faves are happy (minus shaddiq), and uh…yay! : )
July 24, 2023. just two bros, one undead and the other a scientist who is maybe a bit mad, and their thus far strangely functional relationship (of some sort). looking forward to reading the rest when they're translated.
August 20, 2023. 100+ hours later, and i survived baldur's gate 3. it partly took me so goddamn long to finish because i got to the end of act 2 on my first character…only to find out it wasn't just me and that minthara is likely bugged (or has an insane amount of cut content, but i'm on hopium here). so i decided to restart on a second character as the dark urge to complete the story on whilst i await a minthara fix.
so, yeah. that was a choice i made! 🫠
to preface, however, while bg3 isn't a game i'm keeling over in sheer love for or a new favorite for me, i had a fucking blast playing it. any flaws or personal issues with the game aside, it is genuinely a ton of fun and full of shit to do.
long, scattered thoughts below the cut.
