I already wrote about Snack Basue once and now, when this fantastic anime is finished, I just want to say that whereas I like pretty much everything about this show — its writing, its fourth-wall breaking, the karaoke part — I was soo impressed with Rie Takahashi performance here! She voiced quite a few characters I’m really found of: Takagi-san, Emilia in Re:Zero, Megumin, but Akemi-chan may be her most impressive role so far. I didn’t recognize Takahashi-san initially because she doesn’t sound like herself here, and not only her voice fits the character perfectly but the pure range of emotions she conveys, from slight disgust when she might need to shake Kazama-san’s hand to the joy when she gets to deliver dick jokes non-stop, is very impressive. I mean, yeah, of course it’s her job and all that but this role shows perfectly why she is one of the best, if not the best, in the field nowadays.
I’m not a big manga reader but maybe that makes the fact that now I have all 28 volumes of Kaguya-sama even more impressive? =) It may’ve been the first time I was reading an ongoing story and props to Aka Akasaka who managed to decently finish it while simultaneously writing Oshi No Ko. I always like a good romcom and Kaguya-sama is one of the best around. I enjoyed the first anime a lot and just couldn’t wait until the next season would come out — and here we are a few years later.
As I said, I like this manga but to be frank it had a noticeable shift at some point and not in a good direction. Maybe it’s the fact that Akasaka had two projects to work on or something else but closer to the end for a few volumes (the arc where Shinomiya had to go home and Shirogane was trying to figure out a way how to be with her despite the difference in social status) Kaguya-sama became more serious and “dramatic”, and that just didn’t quite work out. Volume 27 finally resolved all that and we returned to a more lighthearted romantic comedy style, so I was really looking forward to reading the final volume. However it turned out to be a bit underwhelming. Yes, it gives us a conclusion to the story but overall the last few chapters, showing what changed for every one of the main characters, feel a bit dry and by-the-book. And two chapters to imply that Ishigami and Miko will sooner or later become a couple? C’mon! In any case I’m happy that Akasaka finished this manga and now can focus on something that he apparently wanted to work on, Oshi No Ko. Kaguya-sama, despite some of its weaker chapters, is still one of the best romantic comedies we’ve gotten in recent years and I’ll be more than happy to re-read it one day and definitely will watch the next seasons of the anime.
My Trails figure collection is growing! The latest addition is this Emma, which looks absolutely fantastic. Kotobukiya’s every next Kiseki product is better than the previous one and I’m soo looking forward to getting Tio and Estelle figures later this year. Before that QuesQ finally should release their Black Rabbit suit Altina figure though and hopefully they won’t delay it again =)
I bet you didn’t know that but the Canadian Prairies, the provinces famous by their abundance of seas and oceans, had some famous pirates too lol.
Alestorm recorded this song for their latest EP and initially I thought that it was their creation, but no, originally it was a song by Arrogant Worms which later was covered by Captain Tractor and then — Alestorm =)
I’ve already mentioned Frieren a few times and said how much I enjoyed this show. Now its first season is officially over and unfortunately I’m going to start with some negativity. The last arc of the season, with the first-class mage exam, is a filler and a drag. It ate almost 10 goddamn episodes, shoved in a whole bunch of useless characters and spoiled my enjoyment of this anime considerably. I do not care about all those other mages, their backstories, motivations and relationships, I do not care about the magic guild or whatever it’s called there, I don’t want any of these new characters to join Frieren later on. There are some interesting ones? Ehh maybe, after an arc that long I really, really don’t care. Yeah, during this last part of the season we got to see a bit more of Frieren’s past but that only makes me more angry because these specs of gold only showcase how much of a filler the rest is. Frieren is what I watch this anime for, not to learn about some other random guys’ quirks and motivations.
The rant is over and all that’s left is to simply re-iterate what I said before =) The first 17 episodes of Frieren may be the best fantasy anime I’ve seen in a long time. It doesn’t do anything special but it has lots of charm and soul (Sergei, you pretentious bastard) and an incredibly likeable cast of characters. Frieren herself is a top-tier heroine, she is as adorable as it gets. She’s so adorable that I find it difficult to enjoy her love story with Himmel =) Her “Kuroiyo! Kowaiyo!” is definitely another anime quote that I simply have to use in daily life (I mean… it’s kinda a copy of Mendo’s 暗いよ狭いよ怖いよーっ but Frieren is much cuter, so I’m gonna stick with her version). Fern and Stark are great too but let’s be honest, we want more of smirking Frieren, reminiscing Frieren, terrifying Frieren, embarrassed Frieren — you get the idea.
This show is definitely made to appeal to as many people as possible, it’s much easier to enjoy Sousou no Frieren than Kino No Tabi or Mushishi or whatever else anime it can be compared with, but at the same time it’s still very authentic, very Japanese and very anime if that makes sense. Hopefully it will stay the same in the second season which I’m very much looking forward to. Though no mages exams anymore please and thank you.
Yeah 2024 and all bands decided to release a new album all of a sudden. Whereas I’m certainly glad to get new Judas Priest and Exhorder records it is really heartwarming to find out that such famous artists like Morbid Saint and Atrophy also decided to put out new material. Both bands were fairly active in the 80s but later broke up for one reason or another. For instance, Atrophy’s previous album, Violent By Nature (a really, really good album by the way) came out in 1990, 34 years ago! Morbid Saint is in the same boat. Turned out that the guys aged like fine wine and both of these albums are great!
Snack Basue is the hidden gem of this season, it’s basically the textbook definition of one. Oh man, it’s the second or third best anime this winter (Urusei Yatsura is just too good and Frieren still holds up) but MAL rating is abysmal 5.6, that is simply ridiculous. Snack Basue is funny, it is bizarre, it is over the top, it has a memorable cast of characters, it has Rie Takahashi as the voice of the main heroine for crying out loud! (She sounds so unusual here though, would never have guessed that Akemi-chan was voiced by her). I was a bit skeptical at the beginning, because such shows with a lot of talking require good writing, and I wasn’t sure whether the authors would be able to keep up the same pace during the whole season but it looks like they can do it!
This is a weird, in a good sense of this word, show for adults. Some guys come to a snack bar to talk to a pretty mean sometimes but cute nonetheless hostess Akemi-chan, complain about something or just to have a drink and sing some karaoke. These conversations range from fairly standard about colleagues or whether it would be embarrassing for a single guy to go to an amusement park to in-your-face parodies of Re:Zero and Dragon Quest. There are not so many regulars of the bar and they pretty quickly become yet another reason to watch it. How big of a pervert will Morita be this time? Did Azuma-san find another life-changing book written by *gasp* DOUGLAS HAMADA?! Will The Hero show up again? Will Akemi-chan be able to keep her inner unicorns under control? Snack Basue may be a niche anime but it’s written really cleverly, it’s directed perfectly and in general it’s just so, so good.
Quite a fascinating story to be honest, jelloapocalypse, a guy who created a few really nice youtube shorts “So this is basically…”, was posting somewhere how he “improved” the dub of Lovely Complex. Including calling “big swaths” of anime fans various buzzwordy-sounding names because of course he knows better and does it for the greater good. As someone who likes anime and Japanese games a lot it makes me simultaneously enraged and sad, because I can’t even imagine how many such busybodies, who are convinced that by changing the original work they somehow fix injustices or whatever, work in the localization industry. Yes, Japanese and English are different languages, yes, it’s impossible to translate them word-to-word but to somehow assume that you understand the author’s unvoiced intentions and then translate everything based on these assumptions, that’s quite a stretch.
I had never understood the appeal of Street Fighter games. Anime fighters? Sure, they are fast and fun and flashy. Mortal Kombat is high-budget and gory. Soul Calibur is fun to play when you’re drunk. Street Fighter on other hand is slow, uses 6 basic buttons and in general always felt alien to me. However, turned out that this slowness is what makes it interesting to watch, it’s rather easy to understand what’s going on at every particular moment in a round, what the intention was, why this or that didn’t work out — so I watched the latest SF6 for a bit, gave up and bought it. So far I’ve put about 70 hours in, got Juri from the starting Iron rank to Gold 3 so far (yeah, I’m still a noob) and now probably can describe better what I do and don’t like about it.
Speaking of the things I like first and foremost I should mention the fact that SF6 very heavily relies on basic hits and very simple combos. You don’t need to know how to execute a 10hit combo or even a super to win a match. I went through Iron, Bronze, Silver and now half of the Gold tier mostly using amazing Juri’s feet pokes and very simple hit-hit-fuha combos =) SF teaches you to play carefully and not just mash buttons hoping to hit the opponent. Secondly, the online in this game is very good. Not only the quality of the network code but also there are lots of people playing it, of all skill levels. A small thing but I really like that you can search for matches from a training session. The stages and roster are pretty decent. They won’t blow anyone’s mind (BB:CF is miles ahead there) but they are good. The training mode is good and gives you all the info you might need — the frame data etc.
It’s not all roses of course. The music in the game is mediocre at best. Two of the game’s 3 modes are fairly useless — Battle Hub is a good idea on paper but I really have no clue why I’d need to use it instead of, say, playing a casual match and I’m not a huge fan of story modes ala World Tour (I think Soul Calibur 6 had something similar). The game severely lacks customization and ways to obtain it, I wish I could get some as a reward for playing ranked (to clarify, I’m talking about customization options for the main roster, not for that avatar nonsense). The price tag for everything additional in the game is ehh, how do I put it… I bought a costume for Juri and had to pay $8 for it, that’s not great. Also I must admit that whereas I don’t know too much about SF roster I know of most of the guys from the previous games and I don’t really like any of the newcomers except for JP, JP is cool and I will try him one day.
Anyway, my immediate goal is to get to the platinum rank with Juri and to learn how to cancel into those goddamn supers =) Luckily we have a few guys at work who play, so I have a chance to practice against someone who’s much better and can give me some tips.
Randomly generated stuff 