Hey, it's me again. It's been a real hot minute since the last time I even thought about this place, let alone did anything with it. But I'm back for a quick bit. I've got some words I wanted to write about some stuff, and all the end of year lists I've been reading, be they about games, anime, or ranking the horrible garbage fire of a year that was 2017, got me in a writing mood. So here's my Top 10 Anime of the Year, followed by 3 Honourable Mentions and 2 Dishonourable Mentions. And just a quick note, but at least a few of these titles likely started at the tail end of 2016, but finished in 2017. I'm counting that as a 2017 series, simply because it represents the completion of it's story, rather than it's initial introduction.
At long last, we the sports draft-like season announcements are over! Or are they?
For those who haven't heard the news, Crunchyroll and Funimation are partnering up, sharing some of their exclusive titles to each other's service. What does this mean? Well, next season, you might be able to watch Classicaloid, a zany anime centered around mecha battling space historical composers reincarnated back from the 17 and 18th centuries, on Crunchyroll (it's a Sunrise title, so I'm expecting Funimation to pick it up), or Natsume Yuujinchou season 5, a series that you most certainly should watch, on Funimation (the previous 4 seasons are all on Crunchyroll). What it probably doesn't mean is the end of service exclusives. The announcement definitely says that they'll be sharing some titles, and more titles, but higher profile current titles, like Love Live Sunshine will likely remain service locked. They're definitely going to make lots of anime cross-service, which is great because both services has impressive catalogues going way back. Card Captor Sakura (sub) is on Crunchyroll, while Funimation goes way back to titles like Excel Saga, which is a rollicking good time.
For those interested, here's a link to the announcement on Crunchyroll.
Here's a series I
picked up late into the season, hence it's omission from the
Midseason review. I watched the first episode out of interest but it
didn't stick. Little would I know that it'd be very similar to the
situation I had with Sakamoto – the first episode doesn't really do
the series justice. It's kind of fitting, really, as the series has a
recurring “don't judge a book by it's cover” theme. Keep up with
it, and it's a fun series with a very happy and pleasant tone.
Just fyi, I'll refer to this series exclusively as "Tanaka-kun". It's full title is a bit of a pain to type out multiple times.
We're donning a brand new coat of paint! The blog has really been needing a new look for quite some time now to be honest. The previous design was from at least 5-6 years ago and it's aesthetics haven't aged very well with me. This new minimalist design, coupled with that totally rad header I made really gives this place a nice, cleaner look.
We're more or less half way done with the Spring season now, so I thought I'd do another check in to write about how things are going with the half dozen show's I'm watching. So far, I'd say this was a really solid season - I definitely had some worries going into it, as nothing stood out much, but boy was I wrong. Pretty great all around with nothing being really bad. Well, maybe except for Big Order, and the animation of Phoenix Wright, but you've always got to have the bad to have the good, right?
Also, I stopped watching
July 15th. That's when Generations drops. It's a little later than I expected, as I predicted a late June release, though to be honest, the July release wasn't too far off. With Anime Revolution in the first week of August, I think I'll be able to get decent enough to show some moves in multiplayer when the con rolls around. I suspect that Gunner weapons will be a bit of an uncommon sight that early into the game's release, as most people tend to go for the more numerous Blademaster weapons.
Historically, I've played Monster Hunter from new game starting with a weapon want to learn, but end up moving to a weapon I know to make the early game grind easier. For this game, I'm planning to do something I've never done before: start with a Gunner weapon. See, for many Blademasters, we'd play through the game, and it's common to (and recommended to) pick up different weapons to keep things fresh and for tactical advantages. Most of the time, however, we'll pick up a Gunner weapon late in the game, get okay with using it, and really only use it against monsters we know are hard to deal with up close, like Najarala or Chameleos. It's a pocket weapon, one you pull out for specific situaitons.
This time, I'm starting with the Gunner weapon. I can do fine with my Blademaster weapon(s) of choice. I've put so much time into learning the ins and outs of the Charge Blade and Lance that I doubt I'll have much trouble getting back into them. Whatever weapon to choose to stick with from the start is the one you'll (hopefully) learn the best, so I'm hoping to be able to blast my way through the Village quests and be the uncommon gunner in Multiplayer, which I'm hoping to embrace more from the get-go this time around.
I'll run down my thoughts on the weapons and other things about the game closer to the release.
PS It's been a while since I last updated around here. Between preparing for an audition for school, and my laptop breaking down, I haven't had a lot of time. Writing on my iPad is fine, but getting images up is a real pain on that thing, so I just held out until my laptop came back from repairs.
We're a week or two into the new Spring season, and I'm back to do my usual first impressions of the stuff I've watched. The list has changed a bit since I first put up my anticipated list, with a couple falling off the list, and another sneaking it's way on.
So far, it's been pretty good. Sakamoto's first episode was fabulous and good fun, but how it does in the long run is still up in the air. flying witch is pretty much everything I hoped it would be while Twin Star Exorcists fills my shounen needs.
I couldn't get through the first episode of Bakuon!!. I just hate Sakura's character so much that the moment she starts talking I hit the back button. Nope! Not this! See ya! Onsa could very well be the lead, on a quest to convince others that motorbikes are really cool, but nope. We get shit-for-brains Sakura Hane, who's as if someone took a look at K-ON's Yui and somehow managed to make her even more unbearable. She's even got the reliable younger sister (and she has to be because her older sister is a mess in every possible way) who looks a whole lot like Ui. I can tolerate goofy characters - I love absurd comedy. But numbskull characters like Sakura and Yui (I actually feel kind of bad putting Yui on the same level as Sakura) make me question who exactly is vouching for these kind of characters? WHAT IS THE APPEAL OF A CHARACTER WHO'S DUMB AS A GOD DAMN DOOR KNOB?
Koutetsujou no Kabaneri looks really, really good. Like I really like the art and the character designs. The character designs are really striking, mainly reminding me of the old Macross characters. It had what can only be called a 'propulsive' first episode that played out incredibly similarly to Attack on Titan. There's something poetic about a series directed by Tetsuro Araki featuring a train and steam gauges, because the gauges are always at 100% tension and always going full speed ahead. These series could really use some downtime to just cool down, but nope. Everything has to be terrible, people have to be shouting all the time and no one can relax.
Also, for an armoured train, the Koutetsujou seems to have a whole lot of weak points. Between vulnerable windows, giblets getting caught in gears and steam valves always breaking, you'd think that they might consider refurbishing that thing to be a little more reliable?
Anyways, enough rambling and onto the actual impressions.
Dark Souls has always fascinated me with it's designs. Everything generally looks and feels coherent and well thought out. Things are grotesque, and yet have an air of majesty to them. The art book goes into more detail about the designs of enemies, armour and locations in the game.
Anywho, what better way to celebrate the beautiful designs of Dark Souls, than to faithfully recreate the intricately etched Greatsword of Artorias, one of the major figures in the lore of Dark Souls.
It's not the first "big blade" they've forged, but it might just be the most detailed with numerous embossed and engraved designs across the blade. The gorgeous contrast between the silver edges, and the dark blade makes the designs pop out more prominently. Massive props to Man At Arms Reforged (Baltimore Knife and Sword) for the amazing work on this beast of a blade.
If you want to dive more into the lore of Dark Souls, I recommend looking up Vaati and EpicNameBro (ENB) up on Youtube for their respective takes on the lore. If you're feeling particular free of things to do, MoonlightButterfly has cut together a masive feature length "movie", following the various characters of the game. It's an impressive feat that helps tie all of the game's stories together into a single (albeit very lengthy) package.
I recently wrote up a short list of series airing in the Spring, but there are a few other titles airing this year that I'm really looking forward to. A few of them are guaranteed watches, unless they end up on platforms I can't watch them on, though I'm certain that at least 1 of them is going to make it onto Crunchyroll.
P.S. I've linked trailer (if applicable) in the titles of each series.
THE LIST
- Summer 2016:
- Amanchu!
- Sweetness and Lightning
- BERSERK (2016)
- Fall 2016
- Natsume Yuujinchou Season 5
- March Comes in Like a Lion
- Classicaloid
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Anyways, I've made of a list, separated into "Will Watch / Looking forwards to", and "Check this out maybe". My choices aren't exactly inspired, but they definitely line up with my traditional picks. Who knows? It's always fun when something not on your list ends up surprising.
I'm a little worried, as my "will watch list" is probably not going to end up on Crunchyroll, the service I have a subscription to. My best bet is to hope for stuff to end up on Daisuki.
Edit: I actually planned to talk about Macross Delta, but I highly doubt that there's going to be any legal way of watching it. Harmony Gold has a strangle hold on the "Macross / Robotech" series outside of Japan, making it very difficult for any company to do anything with the series. So thanks for that, Harmony Gold. You haven't done anything with the series in a decade. Let it go already!
Planning to Watch:
- flying witch
- Kumamiko - Girl Meets Bear
- Kiznaiver
Planning to Check Out
- BAKUON!!
- Koutetsujou no Kabaneri (if possible)
- Joker Game
- Sakamoto desu ga. (Haven't you heard? I'm (i Sakamoto)
- Twin Star Exorcists
Welcome back to Salty Huntin', a series where I rant about dumb stuff that's in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. It's a great game, but riles me up so much when the game doesn't do things I want it to, or when monsters have advantages against a majority of the weapon types.
What monster
effectively shuts down 9 of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate's 14 weapons?
What monster is essentially the bane of blademasters? What monster
will make you feel like you don't know how to play the game?
That's right, it's
Najarala! This newly introduced monster struts it's stuff, showing
off how utterly rage-inducing Monster Hunter can really be. If you're
a Blademaster, it doesn't matter what skills you put on, Najarala
will find a way around them and fuck you over three ways to Sunday.
Whether it's the scales, the camera or an unlucky Bhanabra sting, you'll
find something to get salty about when fighting this shitty snake.
Welcome to what's hopefully to become somewhat long running series. Here I'm planning to write some reviews of some games I've enjoyed on the 3DS as the system turns 5 years old. A lot of these games will be pretty old, some from the system's early line up, and some released last month. It's not a comprehensive list of what's good on the 3DS, but rather a list of games I've played, liked and think that people who haven't tried them really should give these a shot. I'm aiming for a 1 game every other day schedule so hopefully I can keep that up for a good week or two.
Today it's the much loved, Fire Emblem: Awakening.
Fire Emblem is one of those series that has a special place in my heart. I was hooked on it with the first game that came stateside back on the GameBoy Advanced (Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword). For many people, however, Awakening was their first dip into the Fire Emblem series. And what a first dip Awakening was. It's more accessible than the series has ever been, adding the casual difficulty that removed perma-death, a feature that's core to both the story and the experience. Like Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem Awakening is one of those titles that everyone seems to have.
Fire Emblem is one of those series that has a special place in my heart. I was hooked on it with the first game that came stateside back on the GameBoy Advanced (Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword). For many people, however, Awakening was their first dip into the Fire Emblem series. And what a first dip Awakening was. It's more accessible than the series has ever been, adding the casual difficulty that removed perma-death, a feature that's core to both the story and the experience. Like Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem Awakening is one of those titles that everyone seems to have.
Welcome
to what's hopefully to become somewhat long running series. Here I'm
planning to write some reviews of some games I've enjoyed on the 3DS
as the system turns 5 years old. A lot of these games will be pretty
old, some from the system's early line up, and some released last
month. It's not a comprehensive list of what's good on the 3DS, but
rather a list of games I've played, liked and think that people who
haven't tried them really should give these a shot. I'm aiming for a
1 game every other day schedule so hopefully I can keep that up for a
good week or two.
Today,
we look at a game you probably won't have played or even heard of.
Here's Level-5's Fantasy Life.
Welcome to what's hopefully to become somewhat long running series. Here I'm planning to write some reviews of some games I've enjoyed on the 3DS as the system turns 5 years old. A lot of these games will be pretty old, some from the system's early line up, and some released last month. It's not a comprehensive list of what's good on the 3DS, but rather a list of games I've played, liked and think that people who haven't tried them really should give these a shot. I'm aiming for a 1 game every other day schedule so hopefully I can keep that up for a good week or two.
Most of the games are games that most 3DS owners probably have. Some of them are a little more niche. First up: Animal Crossing New Leaf.
For a good while, I've had this idea kicking around in my head. I absolutely sure that I'm not the think of this, what if it we took the creatures of Monster Hunter, and strapped them into the Pokemon molds? Since Pokemon is celebrating 20 years, I thought "why not put a Pokemon spin on Monster Hunter?". I've tried to incorporate the "signature moves" of the wyvern as best as Pokemon can within existing moves. I also tried to communicate the "essence" of the monster using it's typing and abilities. Hopefully they'll come across as pretty Pokemon-esque!
You'll notice that some of these wyvern have simiar moves as the list goes on, but in Monster Hunter, all wyvern generally share a pool of similar moves – roars, tail attacks, stomps, etc. Ideally, each of these wyvern-mon have different moves that are representative of the monster.
At the moment, the many monsters of the Monster Hunter are categorized by their general physical characteristics. Taking a quick look at any of the monsters, you'd be able to generally put them into the right "classes". However, some of those matches don't work out particularly well, while there are some classes that have seemingly been created for a single monster (here's looking at you, Zinogre).
My goal here is to reclassify the monsters, including the enigmatic Elder Dragons, into groups more indicative of the monsters' physiological characteristics.
Looking over the list in the game, there are some oddities, like Akantor and Ukanlos (both are Flying Wyverns), whose wings are, even in an vestigal sense, barely apparent. I hope that new monsters added in future games will fill out some of their more neglected classes, like the Fanged Wyverns, Snake Wyverns and the Temnocerna, as each of those classes are populated by a single large monster. Not much of a class if it's a class named for a single created for a single creature!
Hey, hi, hello and WELCOME to the Winter 2016 reviews, taking place MID-SEASON, skipping over the usual tradition of doing a "preview review" or first impressions type of piece. Outside of being too lazy for it, there's an actual reason for that. I only picked up 2 series at the beginning of the season and felt that writing about 2 series was more trouble than it was worth. As the season went on, I ended up picking up a couple more, filling out the series count to something a little more normal for me to write about.
Looking at the series list for this season, I, and probably many people on the internet, felt that this season seemed to be in dire straits. Fairly weak season, on paper, compared to more recent ones with at least a couple premises that sounded a little flat. Turns out that there are lots of series that sort of aren't worth watching, but boy are there some that really exceeded expectations.
Without further ado, here's the list, in no particular order, of what's on the table. Note that this is only what's new to this season. I'm still watching Gundam, and recently got caught back up to GATE.
Konosuba - God's Blessing on this Land
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash
ERASED: 僕だけがいない街
DAGASHIKASHI
Yes, yes it's super late. The story goes like this: I actually managed to finish it just as the season ended but when I went to maximize the window (I work with multiple windows on screen), the page crashed and I was left with literally nothing. Nada. Zip. Not even the labels or title stuck. The draft I saved? Gone. I was perplexed as much as I was horribly frustrated, and put it off until I felt like redoing all of that work. Thankfully, I made notes, so rewriting wasn't as painful as it could have been, but holy shit that was bad.
Anywho, I've summed up 7 series: 5 completed and 2 ongoing. I wrote about how I felt about them, and occasionally whether I'd recommend watching them, but I can sum it up here pretty concisely. Remember that this is purely by personal opinion and taste. Also, OPM good, but you know, not grrrreat.
Watch these, they're great:
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans
- Owarimonogatari (only if you've watched all of the previous Monogatari series)
Sure, go for it:
- One Punch Man
- Ushio to Tora (not reviewed)
- Is the Order a Rabbit? 2
- The Perfect Insider
I mean, I guess you could watch it?:
- Yuru Yuri San Hai!! (only if you've watched season 1)
- Beautiful Bones (not reviewed)
- A Failed Knights Chivalry (not reviewed)
- GARO: Crimson Moon (not reviewed)
Don't do it
- Utawarerumono: False Faces


















