Author: Tiberius

Here, you will find a variety of opinions in anything and everything concerning entertainment. Movies, games, animation, music, TV; if it's a form of entertainment consumed by many, I may have written about it or I plan to do so in the future. Unless otherwise specified, expect weekly updates each Friday.

Fat Otaku Today, 10/10 Girl Tomorrow

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Who’s this chick in the mirror? Is that… me?!

You may remember in January when I wrote about my Korean manhwa arc of which a high number of the series put out was pornographic in art. Several series I remember fondly not just for the tits and ass on the page (read: my phone/computer screen), but because of some of the unique premises they played around with. Even some of the very Korean drama-esque stories had something interesting to keep me coming back. Observe:

This one, for instance, called Lady Long Legs, is about a man who pays a debt owed to a businesswoman by becoming her man-servant. There is porn in this one, but slight spoilers, it comes later than you’d think.

Circling back to my post on manhwa, the topic of this post is about a manhwa adaptation I watched in Spring of 2021, a few months out from my first excursion in the Army.

The series is called When I Woke Up, I Became a Bagel Girl and with a title like that, we already have to do a little bit of homework on Korean culture. The term “bagel girl” has nothing to do with bagels, so those of you who were looking out for that, I’m sorry. The best I can do is direct you to the closest bakery or Wawa if you live near one. The term is a play on words of sorts, where bagel girl is a Korean portmanteau of “baby face, glamorous body;” think of it like old cartoons where a smokin’ hot babe is referred to as “babe” or just “dollface.”

The protagonist is a 26-year-old virgin otaku named Bong-gi. No ladies that aren’t plastic or standing in dynamic poses on his shelf, no looks aside from those that cause onions to cry, no hope for the future seeing as he’s in a dead end job, and no confidence unless it’s on a screen in the dead of night. Alright, enough about myself, let’s talk about Bong-gi. Well, a lot of that is true of Bong-gi, so I’m definitely not one to judge. After a s[PS2 bootup]ty day at work, Bong-gi makes a beeline for his PC and games all night, snacking in the process. I mean no hyperbole when I say that’s extremely relatable, at least for me recently.

The next morning, he awakens in his waifu-splashed one-bedroom apartment, clutching his body pillow to answer the door only to discover that there are two large protrusions coming from his chest. He swears on best girl Hestia that he was a man the day before. What happened? Thankfully, he’s also curious or there wouldn’t be a series. An immediate comparison to make for “guy becomes girl” is either Gonna Be the Twintail or Ranma 1/2, but unlike those two series, Bong-gi can’t change gender at will, nor does he have any memory of it happening seeing as it happened in the dead of night while he was fast asleep. It’s also not an action series, but it’s not a pornhwa either, though it does have fun with the genderbend concept.

Just like its concept, the central plot of the series can be considered a bait and switch of sorts. If you went in thinking it was going to be a slice of life, think again. It’s more of a detective series with more beneath the surface than meets the eye. Without spoiling too much of the plot, the entirety of the series is based on this mystery plot with different twists and turns that give it a distinct thriller feel. I’m compelled to compare it to a telenovela or a soap opera.

Now to judge it on non-spoiler-y elements. I read many manga series and watch many anime series, as evidenced by this very blog. Manhwa is still a bit of a blind spot of sorts. As I mentioned above, I had a whole arc dedicated to this medium all through community college, however, but with the animanga scene exploding on its own home turf and abroad, whatever I wanted to watch or read from the Korean side of things has been a struggle. Either there’s not enough of it or it gets buried under a wave of other series from Japan. Tying back to my post on the history of manhwa, local Korean politics may or may not be responsible for this.

The youngest Koreans born under Japanese rule may at best be in their mid-to-late 80s, but the generations following still grew up under a military dictatorship hellbent on warning its citizens of what would happen if they bent the knee to the North in particular and the communists on the whole. As a result, in Korea (and by extension Taiwan), creative minds in both countries have been apprehensive about including anything remotely satirical. Some of the manhwa I’ve read (to include Lady Long Legs) have some reference to a real life Korean concept or even law. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that this was how I learned that the country still has conscription; just goes to show that the true opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference. There wouldn’t be conscription there if they didn’t care about their wacky neighbor (but to be fair, neighboring the hermit kingdom isn’t easy).

I bring that up once again to highlight why manhwa seems to be getting the spotlight only recently. It could simply be Korean politics overpolicing media as a consequence of Cold War politicking; it could be viewers running out of material during the pandemic and reading whatever’s available; it could be a more subtle form of Korean pop culture spreading, sitting side-by-side with K-dramas, movies, and music; it might be all of these or none of these.

For me, it’s along the lines of adding to my fortress of consumable content. I have so many shows and movies in my watchlist that I barely get through all of them. I can watch a few episodes no problem, but I’m not 19 and my days of watching content ’til 2:30 AM are long behind me. Even if I didn’t have the responsibilities demanded of me by the military, I wouldn’t be able to sit there and browse anime to watch anymore. I’ve done it before, and while I haven’t exactly seen it all, the 24-hour binge is far from ideal or even recommended. I don’t even like 24-hour news cycles; you think I wanna watch the same specific series uninterrupted? For this reason, I adopted a method employed by Adult Swim ten years ago: the Double Shot method. It’s a reference to an old Adult Swim promo from the time.

I can’t find any evidence of it online, but as I recall, the programming block aired two consecutive episodes of a certain show for the hour and continue to the next show in it’s line up. For example, King of the Hill would air Episode 15 at 9 and then Episode 16 later at 9:30. The same for American Dad at 10 and 10:30, then Family Guy or Rick and Morty or China, IL at 11 and 11:30, and so on. So far, it’s a sound method that only fails when I feel lazy. Otherwise, it works. This being the second time, I’ve mentioned manhwa, my crystal ball doesn’t say with certainty whether it’ll come up again this year — I only have the first half of this year filled with blog topics — but it does highly recommend the series. As of writing, it’s available for free on Tubi and there’s generally no pressure to sign up if you haven’t already. As for the manhwa, most manhwa hosting sites are gonna be flooded with pop-up ads on the side for a crappy mobile game or porn site, even if you’re not reading a pornhwa. There’s no shortage of them, but I highly advise you be careful where you choose to read this if that’s more your angle.

Also, this series clues you in to how strict Korean beauty standards can be. Most places tend to be like this, but the cultural shock will give you a headache.

What is Life Without My MMOs? (T^T)

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Life is not Daijoubu

On a day ending in Y, I decided to get through another anime in my never-ending fortress: Recovery of an MMO Junkie

Although a manga, it began serialization as a webtoon before getting physical. The story is described as budding romcom between two successful adults, one who abandons the route of salarywoman to become Queen NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and one who is still a gainfully employed salaryman. NEET extraordinaire is female MC, Moriko Morioka, who spends at least 48 hours a day on an MMO called Fruits de Mer. Next to her is the male deuteragonist, Yuta Sakurai, a man in the same position that Moriko left in favor of the NEET life, and more seasoned in FdM than Mori-mori. So much so that he offers to help her learn the game.

The twist here is that both are playing the opposite gender in the game with Mori-mori creating a male character named Hayashi and Yuta creating a female character named Lily. Accurate depiction of gamers thus far, creating eye candy for personal ogling for every 12 hour session.

I couldn’t find any other examples for this. Just know that it’s common, even I do it.

Unbeknownst to the players, however, is their knowledge of each other outside the game. They meet first in passing and then are set to connect over the course of the anime, but in a case of dramatic irony, the viewer is privy to their connection in the game. So while the relationship is developing virtually, reality playing catch-ups to what’s going on elsewhere.

The crux of the series is largely about shutting in from the outside world due to overwhelming circumstances. Life throws so much at people that sometimes disconnecting is a way to recover from the barrage of hits. However, this can easily turn into a double-edged sword if the shut-in/NEET is not careful.

It’s pretty much this meme except the top and bottom images would be separated by a text that reads “[Length of Time] Later” in this specific context. Moriko started off rather well as a salarywoman, but the workload got its own growth spurt and she was unable to keep up the pace. Shackled only to her desires now, she games and goes about her days as she sees fit. As a consequence, her diet is negatively impacted, her sleep “schedule” is interrupted, and I’m pretty sure she touches grass only slightly.

This does touch on a concept that is all too common across East Asia. Most of these nations are culturally collective and most of the societies therein tacitly demand that everyone pulls their weight no matter what. You’re still free to choose the path you walk, but the culture means that whatever path you choose must be committed to absolutely. No slacking, no sticking out; individuality stays home where it belongs. This concept has supporters and critics and writing critically about this, the detriment can at times be twofold. The pace can be too much for some to bear but for those who can stomach it can only take so much, such is the case with Moriko and her choice to become a shut-in.

It’s not unique to East Asia, but it tends to be quite pronounced, especially if the culture reveres the words of its elders extremely highly. Having said that, Moriko’s life as a NEET isn’t the end of the world for her, which sounds like a variation of “I can quit whenever,” but the circumstances that led to her meeting Yuta/Lily do help.

For Yuta, nearly the opposite is true for him. Not a NEET and most likely wouldn’t be one by choice unlike our Queen Moriko. Fruits de Mer is but a hobby that costs a fraction of his earnings, though likely not as much as Mori’s. A socially awkward man using the game to help him communicate, although I call it luck that he met Mori in real life and her character Hayashi in the game, this is a mutually beneficial relationship for them both.

Based on Mori’s past life as an overworked horse, she clearly didn’t have many problems connecting to other people. Yuta, however, does have this difficulty and it shows several times across the series. In FdM, the script is flipped once again, Mori only knew how to brain herself on a bit of crumbling wall in comparison to Yuta who, through experience, learned how to break the wall down with more than just his head.

The series definitely lives up to its name, it falls under the spoiler category all things considered, but knowing the MMO junkie returns to the real world (while occasionally logging into the game) isn’t a turn-off. Matter of fact, the magic is in seeing how the characters develop. I know I mentioned that tuning the outside world can be detrimental, but with the context of this series, it’s both subjective and spontaneous. Each case is unique and whatever gets the person in question to go back to developing healthy relationships varies. There are real-life tragic cases of people dying in seclusion, but there are beautiful tales of people coming back from these dark places.

The series also serves as a connection for those who’ve personally walked down the path of the reclusive hermit. No matter who you are or where you’ve been in life, I wholeheartedly give this a recommendation, especially since it’s bound to connect to a wider audience post-COVID.

Also, Moriko is cute as heck. OBSERVE!

One more thing: this blog post from 2022 offers a more personal story.

Sega’s Goofy Take on the Yakuza

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It’s literally all fun and games.

The Sega division, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio 「龍が如く」, exclusively works on the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series and has done so for the last 20 years.

An urban modern-day RPG-lite with a gangster skin, Yakuza features characters that are a part of a connected web of Tokyo-based Yakuza groups with the main character, Kazuma Kiryu, AKA the Dragon of Dojima, so called for his dragon tattoo and association with the Dojima family Yakuza group. From what I’ve gathered, the early games have a serious tone coupled with areas of humor and, in the long run, satire. The primary inspiration comes from decades of yakuza media with each game being something of a movie with a nuanced plot populated with characters of shifting motives.

Kazuma is a primary protagonist across the first few games, but since the series follows him throughout his life from his youth to middle-age, some of the later games feature a character-switching mechanic before Kazuma himself is retired in favor of the new face of the franchise: Ichiban Kasuga.

Less complex than Kazuma-san, Ichi-kun is introduced as a sillier character but with a heart of gold, so not at all dissimilar from Kazuma. Full disclosure, I’m still in the process of exploring the series, having emulated the 2005 game on PCSX2 back in 2023. So far, I’ve explored one of its spinoffs, Ishin, a fictional retelling of the life of Sakamoto Ryoma with our beloved Kazuma filling the role of the Bakumatsu-era samurai. Seems Sega really loves to reuse its characters.

I’d explain more about the series from game to game, but the games, though long, are worth the experiences they give you. Even if I was that involved in the games, I’d know better than to spoil them. So instead, the rest of this post will be about the gameplay features between the old games and something fairly recent.

Perhaps its because I started with emulating the first game in the series, I didn’t realize how clunky the controls could get until I bought and loaded up Ishin for the first time. Comparing the two shows how far the series has come since debut gameplay-wise. The first game has a fixed camera when moving that fixes itself closer to Kazuma when in combat. The right analog stick merely moves the minimap in the corner of the screen. The face buttons are all different combat attacks and interactive buttons in exploration and work fine on their own, but the movement in combat coupled with the block/evade functions defaulted to the shoulder buttons makes combat more than a little bit stiff and awkward.

Thankfully, 2005 and the 2006 sequel, Yakuza 2, were given the reboot treatment a decade later, thus revamping, among other things, the combat system. I’d say, the beat ’em up formula was in its prime in this era of video games seeing as Yakuza debuted at the same time the west was gifted God of War and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. You can’t really go wrong with either the original or the remake, but if you value sturdier controls and a more fluid combat system, I and other Yakuza players implore you to buy the Kiwami games. They’re near-mirrors of the original games with extra bells and whistles to keep it modern along with the textures and graphics while staying true to the original.

Speaking of modern games, the latest installment in the Yakuza series was last year’s Infinite Wealth coupled with yesterday’s spin-off Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

Before you speculate, this was a coincidence. Nothing more.

The most recent modern release I played is a spin-off, the aforementioned Ishin. I can’t say whether its framework and UI are similar to the main games, but for what its worth, Ishin, being a retelling of sorts of the life of Sakamoto Ryoma, incorporates multiple combat styles from hand-to-hand to swordplay to even gunplay. In real life, Sakamoto was a samurai who adopted several western styles and customs. Western-style loafers, a revolver he used to try to escape the attempt on his life, and light dabbling with western tech like the telegram with hopes that it would change the face of Japan… and it did! Approximately 20 years after his death, so influence still counts.

In Ishin, the character of Sakamoto Ryoma doesn’t change just because he’s wearing Kazuma-san’s face like some Japanese parody of Face/Off.

Insert Spongebob licking meme.

Kazuma’s Bakumatsu fever dream plays like its modern contemporary games with all the modern settings and defaults found in the games, so it plays much better than the PS2 games, but doesn’t sacrifice the difficulty curve. In fact, since the first game’s release, the Yakuza series has always incorporated RPG mechanics, notably upgrading, collecting, potions, and skills; between this and last week’s RPG adventure with tits and ass, I really can’t get away from RPG and RPG-likes. Maybe I’ll put it in the pipeline in the future for review.

Obviously the modern games look prettier with the facelift and play better with the new tools that have defined gaming since debut–what does this mean for me and my enjoyment of the series? Well, I do plan on exploring them all further in some capacity. The pandemic may have ruined console gaming for me with all the scalpers reselling the newer consoles at f[dial-up]k you prices, but I probably might return to console. I’m already emulating my favorites on a console (RPCS3 has more kinks to iron out), which may speak volumes about what I remember as a great era in gaming.

Credit: u/TheUndeadGunslinger, r/gaming

F[button mashing]k modern gaming, these are hard to find in the US these days. As a result, that Xbox is now $800. Well, I’m exaggerating, but these things being collector’s items now, I don’t think I’m that far off from what they’d go for now. Whether you can run them on a modern monitor is another story. At least the Yakuza series is fully available on Steam as of this writing… ‘Scuse me, I have a series to blaze through.

16-Bit NSFW Roguelike Metroidvania

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Guess it was only a matter of time

By now, dear reader, you are well aware of my tastes. I played coy in the early days of this blog, but with time comes growth, exploration, and experience. Many forms of media have been covered on this blog, but even two years after starting, I’ve a few blind spots here and there.

My marriage proposal masquerading as a blog about three lewd and pivotal anime series many moons ago was arguably the loudest I’ve been of my tastes and while I admit it was a gateway to the horny, it’s mostly stopped there…

…until in late December when I added an Adults Only game to my Steam library. For the longest time, I was under the impression that these types of games couldn’t be bought or accessed normally. And in the context of brick and mortar game stores, I was kinda right. They wouldn’t be on the shelves next to Pokémon or Kirby or even Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto, but there were (and are) developers who continually release envelope-pushing games for maturer audiences beyond the M-17+ rating. Games that, if put in a RockStar game, would easily get it the legendary AO rating.

The game I’m playing that has this rating is known as Scarlet Maiden by Otterside Games, a developer whose stated purpose is to make pornographic hentai games alongside publisher Critical Bliss. Scarlet Maiden is one of several fielded by this dev and by its nature leaves nothing to the imagination. It starts out with the titular character Scarlet, the last of a group of Maidens of the Flame on a quest to defeat an enemy known as the Prime Evil, previously sealed away by the First Maiden. On the way, you meet a smorgasbord of the typical RPG characters during your runs who can equip you with all the weapons necessary to navigate the dungeon. Melee weapons, magics, enhancing trinkets et al; you discover more with each run you take along with different enemy types that also come from just about any other RPG from orcs to fairies to slimes, etc.

As for the lewd content… actually, lewd suggests that there’s teasing and nothing is teasing in this game. Every character and enemy type either has but one inch of fabric over their genitalia or nothing over their genitalia, they’re just hiding a massive dong in between their legs. Or stickers are covering their nipples. Or… they’re either designed to be comfortable enough to leave their bits out in the open for all to see (something something exhibitionism kink), or they have a d[ding]k so big that they need to wheel it around…

I told you I wasn’t making it up.

Scarlet herself is covered by an abnormally thick piece of tooth floss that’s easily removed over the course of the game. In combat, sometimes when an enemy is downed she can remove the necessary parts of her outfit to f[anh]k the enemy (which is how you add them to the game’s Castlevania-like bestiary) or whenever you come across a chest or weapon/item swap/upgrade, the guardian/being resting in the room can simply be sexually pleasured to get to the shinies through the in-game currency called Sin. More sin = more upgrades. Sounds like pornstars when I put it that way…

Credit: ⎛⎝𝖘𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖕⎠⎞ (on Steam)

There’s a subsect of anime fans (read: tourists) who’ve sworn off all lewd and pornographic or porn-lite content, a legacy of the old GamerGate controversy that espouses the consequences of a generations of objectifying women in video gaming, and truth be told the number of games that still do this would only be found in Mature and up rated games and other media. For my take, if it’s plot essential, I welcome it, hence my shrine to Lady Rias…

IF I HAD ONE!!!!

Fanservice, however, is a broader brush to stroke. I can make the argument that a series like Black Lagoon has it in spades in the English dub in the form of anything coming out of Revy’s mouth.

For those who’re apprehensive of even fanservice or scantily clad women in media, rest assured that this game takes what I call the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure approach to character design. When I say, every character has only about an inch of fabric covering their bodies, I don’t just mean the women. At the Maiden of the Flame house, there’s a thinly covered nun, a blacksmith with bulging muscles, a wizard who’s wearing nothing beneath the robe (except probably a c[rooster call]k ring), and others.

As you explore the dungeon, one of the maidens will ask you to recover ten of something which unlocks a sexy minigame, and as you may have picked up earlier in this post, there’s a wide appeal to many a kink/fetish most commonly found in hentai, though thankfully not so many that would put off a newcomer. Futanari, huge tits, giant d[bells]k, masquerade, naughty nun; from what I’ve seen, BDSM is an umbrella term that more than accurately describes the sexual content in Scarlet Maiden. And to build on that observation, using BDSM terms, I can safely deduce that Scarlet is a switch. She f[kcuf]ks and gets f[gasp!]ked by roughly all manner of creature and character that the game will allow.

As for the gameplay, there’s one attack button, there’s a double jump, you can use a magic spell, and you can dash to avoid the traps inside on your way to pleasure the traps and get some new stuff to help you conquer the dungeon. See what I did there?

The last thing to mention is the permadeath feature. The game doesn’t have lives or save points, but it does save your Sin points for upgrades and displays your progress each time you die or if you complete a successful run–the latter of which I haven’t done yet as of this writing.

Do I recommend this game? Abso-f[horse neighs]king-lutely.

This “Lewdtroidvania” (that’ll never stick) is but one of several in the Otterside/Critical Bliss library in particular and one of several I’ve seen on that side of Steam as a whole. Full disclosure, it’s more than just one of those sex games hiding behind the skin of a visual novel or even a puzzle game (the latter of which has more gameplay interaction than a bog-standard VN), the types you might see in any one of those s[horse dung]tty ads on the porn sites. On a whim, I tried one of those and I can’t deny there’s an audience for that type of porn game, but all things considered, you might as well just read hentai, or better yet, play Scarlet Maiden. You’ll get your money’s worth and you’ll get the same level of entertainment you would from booting up the old 2D Castlevania or Metroid games.

Also, don’t let the abundance of milkers distract from the fact that everything in this game is f[plastic wrap]kable. I may or may not play more of these types of games in the future.

The Gyaru Trifecta: Years Ago, Recently Finished and Going to See?

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I’ve had quite a lot of time to think about this genre.

Since this blog began, my specialty has been animanga coupled with video games, film, and television. Within animanga, there are several genres within this medium I always make a beeline for and in recent memory it’s focused on a single archetype: gyaru-centric romcoms. I know I don’t write the most about these, but they are noticeable enough that I can’t help but circle back to them. From a series I took a peak at thanks in no small part to a WatchMojo video about s[flies buzzing]ty girlfriends to one that I’m pretty sure was in the line up of Google searches whilst looking up the first one. Completing the trilogy of gyaru romance anime is one that was fawned over in online forums and by anime-themed media outlets for breaking some old tropes… apparently.

Even though I’m a writer, some things still fly over my head at times. Not gonna say outlets like Kotaku or Comic Book Reader are straight-up drowning in manure but to borrow a quote from Tactical Bacon Productions, if games journalism is the corpse that keeps in twitching, animanga journalism in the hands of guys like these are the gasses that keep causing that same corpse to burp every now and then. Be that as it may, these outlets have their moments of journalistic brilliance; and to compare the likes of My First Girlfriend is a Gal to Hokkaido Gals are Super Adorable to My Dress-up Darling would seem impractical considering what they all cover, not to mention Dress-up Darling forms the “Going to See?” part of this post’s title. Still, it got enough love and exposure (and memes) for me to get the gist of it from just the introductory blurb, so rather than treat my imminent analysis of This Gyaru Wants me to Make Her the Cosplay Queen as a holy text, take it more as a shaky summary from a dubious narrator.

Years Ago:

I’ve went over this before, but this was the first series I ever viewed with a gyaru deuteragonist and based on the writing and characterization it’s 100 percent a relic of its time. Basically, Junichi Hashiba asks a popular gyaru, Yukana Yame, out on a dare who teases him at every turn only for this mutual joke of theirs to form into something genuine. It’s a 10 episode series whose purpose was to promote the original written source material, and at the outside. Junichi’s prime motivation was to punch his V-card with an anatomically-blessed girl, personality notwithstanding, and you initially get the impression that Yame is the queen of keep away, dangling a carrot in front of a stick like Makima from Chainsaw Man but way less malicious or vile.

The initial motivation by Junichi puts him in the same shoes as Highschool DxD’s Issei Hyodo but they diverge not just in the types of characters they are or are going to be or even the types of series they represent. Issei may be a pervy degenerate, but I don’t recall him having friends that low. The most they’ve ever done as a trio was spy on the girls changing a la Porky’s, but without Issei, they’ve just been getting jealous that the school bombshell and occult club leader Rias Gremory reciprocates wife vibes. For Junichi, what he’s gone through was a series of shot-in-the-dark dares with little expectation and even build-up so his Surprise Pikachu face is apt considering his reaction in episode 1.

Channel: Ben Senpai

All things considered, for all the praise Dress-up Darling got for breaking the mold, it’s not like any of that was absent in Hajimete no Gal, though this series didn’t break the mold 100 percent. There were still a few tropes, some of which may or may not disgust you, the viewer, but the one that separates this from the other two series is the characterization of the gyaru. Yukana’s not a walking Hokkaido Tourist associate like Minami Fuyuki, nor is she a doujin otaku like Marin Kitagawa. She’s the embodiment of the stereotypical gyaru and by all accounts, your countries archetype of the standoffish, at times bitchy popular girl. When I was growing up the centerpieces for this archetype on TV wound up being the cheerleader types, the overconfident pretty girls even though this flies in the face of the reality on the ground. Not that there aren’t those types of girls, but that the description is grossly overrepresented when they really might only make up some 5 percent of the actual high school or even college cheerleaders. F[broken glass]g Hollywood and their f[meows]g tropes.

But I digress. Both Junichi and Yukana start the series as sleazy opposites, but they later grow to become two sides of the same coin, especially when they realize how much they have in common. Now I have to dig into the reserves of my memory banks to specify those commonalities, but on the surface, they both have a series of friends who root for them every step of the way. Last time, I focused on Junichi’s loli-loving, pedophilic friend, Minoru Kobayakawa, but on the other side is Ranko Honjo who holds sole self-proclaimed rights to Yukana’s virginity, downright threatening to take both hers and Junichi’s before he gets a turn. And that description alone is probably vague enough to make the more cultured among you think back to a similar sounding doujin… one that I don’t mind checking out. No, not for research purposes, I wanna add to this fortress I’ve begun building for myself. I wanna build an NSFW dungeon.

Have my opinions deviated any from my initial description of this series? Hardly. Even now that I’ve got a summary open in another tab on my browser, I’m glad to know my memory isn’t that f[plastic wrap]ked. Recommendations? Well, the anime’s only 10 episodes so finish those 10 then go to the source material if you want some more.

Recently Finished

At the risk of sounding like I’m pissed or making this post a correction of the record from s[burps]t said before by the typical media outlets, Hokkaido Gals is another one that breaks the mold especially in the Gyaru space. Actually, that aspect isn’t even worth mentioning anymore with more and more romcoms debuting with gyaru protagonists/deuteragonists who are less and less of the standoffish type and more and more of the lovey-dovey, “How to Be a Loving Wife” type, which calls back to another meme that floats around especially some of the wholesome forum posts online.

More power to you, ghost of Shinzo Abe, but your subliminal messaging seems to be working more on the mangaka’s mindscapes than it does on their audience. Not to mention the international audience being more likely to have started families than the Japanese and Korean audiences if the demographic statistics aren’t completely fudged over.

For tropes broken and in serious disrepair, Kitami Gals Are Like C-U-T-E, puts us in a notoriously freezing part of Japan. Gone are the days of waiting for a regular winter in Tokyo of all places; come up to Hokkaido where it feels like the northernmost part of Minnesota regularly. Speaking of which, that’s precisely the accent used in the English dub of this series. Fuyuki, Sayurin, and Natsukawa all were cute in the manga, thanks to Kai Ikada’s magic, but the gongs of kawaii sounded the loudest when they were given upper Midwest accents! Holy North Dakota, I didn’t think it would open up a blindspot in my US geography; exploring the Deep South at the expense of the Midwest and Mountain states.

It doesn’t deviate that much from the established gyaru norms though, seeing as the girls all still dress like gyaru albeit adjusted for a colder climate… somewhat. Fuyuki is definitely the equivalent of that one kid you know who’s worn shorts and sneakers in at least 20 inches of snow. I’m not sure if there’s a European or Asian variant of this, but I wouldn’t put it past a Korean or Finnish kid to try it at least once before. Maybe in the age of pen pals they might’ve heard of the phenomenon through the grapevine, who knows?

Refreshingly, Fuyuki, Sayurin, Natsukawa, and Tsubasa, the main male protagonist, aren’t fickle like the protagonists of My First Gyaru GF. Naive and wishy-washy, definitely, but not fickle. Comparatively, they may be less confident seeing as Tsubasa grew up in probably the most average, traditional Japanese household prior to moving to northern Hokkaido while Fuyuki was born to be a gyaru, fashion accessories and cell phone in hand, Sayurin adopting the look sometime in between intense sessions of Animal Crossing and Natsukawa unconsciously marrying the library. They each get along swimmingly as friends, but unlike Yukana and Junichi who have plans to f[door closes]k in the imminent future (or at least entertain the idea), none of the characters in either the anime or the manga (up to the chapters I’ve read, which isn’t that far from where the anime ended) have expressed anything beyond a close bond crossing into romantic development. Spoilers to follow: the latest of these developments involves a friend of Sayurin’s practicing for a swimming competition where after practice has concluded, Sayurin tearfully confesses to the friend (a tan gyaru, holy s[surprise music]t, there’s a lot of them) that she’s fallen in love with Tsubasa. As far as I’ve read, she’s the only girl to announce these feelings publicly to anyone and there’s tens of chapters for me to thumb through so I’m in for further developments as soon as I can find a manga hosting site that doesn’t redirect me to another series or refresh with every click. The things I face as a content pirate.

Going to See?

The darling of 2022, My Dress-up Darling did get its praise for breaking the mold in several areas, notably for giving us another shy, uncharismatic protagonist. Wakana Gojo isn’t Monkey D. Luffy; he’s more like Tanjiro Kamado in the sense that he has a big heart. From what I’ve seen at the outset, he wouldn’t take up arms or get into a street fight, not at least without a kick in the pants to get him up to speed. Gojo seemed to be more the type to let things wash over him without resistance stemming from an incident where his love of hina-doll making was grossly insulted to his face by a girl who we later learn had a crush on him.

Add the Guts theme from Berserk and you’re accurate to what little Gojo-tan felt that day. Fast-forward a decade and hiding his passion was what got him through the years until Marin Kitagawa, our lovely gyaru deuteragonist and thinly-veiled stand-in for Sydsnap, plays the part of the extrovert adopting the introvert. It was a joke at the time that this blonde girl looks and behaves like the actual aforementioned YouTuber down to a T, but the joke was scarily accurate to Kitagawa’s character wholesale. Like Sydsnap, Kitagawa does have a passion for a lot of the typical otaku interests and hobbies, especially the ones specific to female otaku (IYKYK), among them hentai and eroge and the less savory tags for each of them.

But the one that makes up the title of the series is cosplay, which she’d like to do with more polish but is unable to due to a lack of dress-making experience. Enter Wakana Gojo whose specialty is dress-making for hina-dolls. These combined forces make her an unstoppable force in the cosplay scene and the more they hang out the more Kitagawa realizes that this off-the-cuff ad hoc union has developed into a blossoming romance, though only she realizes this as it takes Gojo more time to understand what he feels when she’s around–which circles around to an age-old trope that has its roots in many series across the globe called “Everyone Knew but Them” where the couple is unaware that they’re a couple, but the hints were picked up more easily by their friends and other outside observers. Let this meme explain:

Are they dating? Worse, they’re stupid.

But whoever said love was straightforward? We weebs and otaku would fall for inanimate objects if they came to us with a bouquet of roses and dinner plans to an expensive French restaurant. I’m not making that up, by the way. One of the teachers from the Soul Eater series was about to drop everything to be happily wed… to a toilet.

I’ve talked before about thumbing through the latest chapters of the Dress-up Darling manga out of curiosity and hearing that the girl who first prompted Gojo to isolate himself and his hobbies from the rest of the world was coming back to apologize for her childish behavior back then, claiming jealousy over his hina-dolls. Unreciprocated crush plus dense boy equals “what’s that? you like something more than me?! You’re stupid!! I hope [my lawyer has advised me not to continue this example]!!!!”

While writing this post, I was curious if I was able to watch the full series without having to upgrade to premium and sure enough as of writing, Crunchyroll is feeling generous with this series in particular and it isn’t even a legacy series like One Piece or Dragon Ball. I may see it for myself and continue on in the manga where the anime finishes like normal. It’s just a matter now of putting it in the timeline somewhere.

This is gonna be the biggest animanga fortress I’ve ever built.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Adaptation Confirmed

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At last!

This week’s post was gonna be about more webcomics, but I kinda already talked about that last week. Country of origin be damned, there’s distinction between manhwa/hua and western webcomics, but there’s not a lot of difference. So instead, we’re following up on a nearly 2-year-old newspiece:

Funny enough, when the original ended a few months ago, many felt more cucked than the central character of an NTR hentai; part of this has to do with the gap in Japanese culture and western culture as well as the assumption that My Hero Academia was a western-style superhero-themed manga. To be fair, it presented itself as such playing homage to DC and Marvel, but the application of Japanese characteristics explains why most western readers were let down by the ending. What I mean is, (spoiler) Deku becoming a teacher instead of staying as a Pro-Hero feels like a slap in the face to over a decade of build-up and promise due to the punching bag most teachers in the west are compared to East Asian teachers who are held in the same regard as historical figures and heroes. Teachers in the east are seen with the same reverence as, say, George Washington or Winston Churchill.

That said, much of the MHA fandom was conflicted over how it ended. Personally, I initially gave it praise for not falling into the same traps as DC and Marvel have in the past (re- everything, f[gasp]ing hell), but over time it became a bit too much to follow. I lost track and playing catch-ups made me feel like Samurai Jack being sent to Aku’s future.

Vigilantes, on the other hand, had a tighter focus. Smaller cast, more mature atmosphere, a deceptively loose connection to the main series through characters, concepts, and/or key items, and a darker tone than the original’s high school setting. Summarizing s[neighs]t I said two years ago, college student Koichi Haimawari starts off as a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man-like archetype doing it because it’s the right thing to do; he meets wannabe pop-star and tsundere-in-training Kazuho Haneyama and before the pair are nearly violently assaulted by a trio of anti-villainous thugs, Japanese Batman-like Knuckleduster knocks their skulls out of place in search of an illegal Quirk enhancer and offers (read: practically threatens) to tutor Koichi in the art of vigilantism. Much appreciated, but a date with a neck brace initially feels better than Peter Parker becoming angsty again.

I jest, it doesn’t get to this level, but it does explore themes that the original doesn’t delve very far into. It wrapped up its story with a neat and tidy ending, and is an interesting addition to MHA on the whole, along with the light novels, and spin-off, yonkoma parody. Yeah, it’s become a franchise since debut.

It was in 2023 where the rumors of an adaptation first circulated and I did report on it at the time, letting it sleep until I got official news from the horse’s mouth. Fast-forward to mid-January 2025, and the rumors are facts: My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is set for a spring 2025 release.

As far as reputations go, the fandom coupled with the writing of the last two quarters of the manga seem to have colored many people’s outside interpretations of the series. Not that it had a good leg to stand on initially; for all the praise it gets for helping to popularize new Shonen tropes, if you just got off a binge of the big 3 anime of yesteryear and expected badassery on every corner, then I can’t blame you if you were ever disappointed. Then again, the original’s deconstruction of Shonen tropes was what made it seem so fresh at the time. Deku doesn’t start off as a badass–instead he’s proof that heroes are made, not born. He’s basically what happens if you tell someone in the past that this scrawny weakling would become the best of the best in ten years time before being laughed out the room.

And that was an easy sell at launch. It and Demon Slayer have broken the mold with more empathetic protagonists, and as such have garnered their own opinions on such a trope. Koichi, on the other hand, doesn’t exactly have the most unrealistic goals imaginable: college student by day, local helper by night. At the risk of burying Deku under the cemetery, Koichi’s no starry-eyed kid with his head in the clouds. Being an All Might otaku, he does secretly dream of being a hero, but is content with being anything but the hero.

Over the course of the manga, this begins to morph into something more complicated tan what was originally stated. More characters, more intrigue, more mysteries unraveled; it makes the L.A. Noire plot look like a retelling of the Three Little Pigs. And out of respect for you, the reader, I refuse to spoil the main plot of the manga.

But what about the upcoming anime? Well, the manga fell into a bit of controversy over the depiction and treatment of select female characters, namely Kazuho Haneyama, alias Pop-Step. Notably her vigilante costume.

As you can see, Kazuho, who’s around 16 years old in chapter 1, wears this as her costume. The Pop-Step persona is meant to be a cutesy imp-like creature which, on reflection, makes me think of Ironmouse in a lot of ways. The original series had people crying foul over Horikoshi’s decision to have Momo show so much skin for her quirk to work, but in a weak defense, that was one of a few ways to get it down. (Some headcanons depict her as a shy exhibitionist unlike Midnight, IYKYK.)

Pop-Step has less reason to show her butt here. I had brushed it off as “animanga tropes” while I was reading it, but after some thought (and time), this doesn’t look very good. Couple that with the initial panels of her about to face a nasty assault or harassment and the criticism is as solid as Snake. Trust me, though, it does get better as the manga progresses, and to answer to an upcoming backlash, the animators have considered the following for a redesign of her costume:

Tights! Will it work for the anime? Time will tell. Does it work for me? I turned my brain off and let the story guide me each time I read another chapter so I didn’t put much thought into it until way later when the manga ended. For my recommendation, you’re better off letting the manga do the same and speak to you then go in with any expectations whatsoever. Even what you know about the original series is gonna get tossed out the window at the first panel. You know my shtick by now. Manga hosting pirate sites, physical volumes, etc., etc., though the former may help you get up to speed considering it has significantly less volumes and chapters — 126 spread across 15 volumes VS the originals 431 spread across 42. I have yet to see a box set of the whole franchise, but it’s only a matter of time before it gets a Naruto-like 3-in-1 omnibus manga treatment.

YouTube recommendations! I’ve been struggling to find some channels to have you all check out largely because what I watch these days is incredibly varied and I don’t like throwing people in at the deep end. I do still want to keep sending stuff your way and my crystal ball sees me recommending a series of sorts whether its on YouTube or not. Some candidates have had to axe their channels due to unwanted outside attention, others have simply moved on. And that makes this difficult.

This time, I thought I’d share what I’ve been watching. I’ve only got a few lined up for February now, but as time goes on I may do what I did in 2023 and do a bi-monthly recommendation system compared to what I had going on last year.

A channel that has my eyes is Stiff Lip Supplements. A series of humorous Army MOS ads masquerading as a satire, it’s a company whose videos are short form Zyn advertisements. You don’t necessarily have to be a servicemember or Zyn/snu user to get the gist of their humor. They know damn well that what they’re selling isn’t a miracle cure for the usual daily bollocks, but do offer to alleviate the headache only slightly. If you need a quick chuckle or you’re thinking about buying some of their merch (which does include apparel), the link is in the first line of this paragraph.

My Korean Manhwa Arc

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70% of it Was Porn

Of all the media I’ve covered since this blog’s creation, animanga takes center stage followed by video games, TV, and to a lesser extent, music. And with all that content there’s still a blind spot that not only affects my coverage but also coverage of several other creators. Name any anituber and they’ve covered some of the most popular animanga series to debut in recent or even living memory. Bonus points if they’ve also promoted series that few people ever paid attention to.

I was recommended this on Reddit once when I put the manga Rokudenashi Blues in a 3×3 post. Here’s a video review of it.

Obviously, Japanese manga solos the graphic novel charts overtaking western comics roughly 95% of the time, but Japan’s not the only country producing graphic novels of its own. China has manhua and Korea has manhwa; same concept, different spelling when Romanized. There was a point in my life during the second half of community college that I took in an extensive amount of manhwa along with my manga intake. I remember browsing a porn site late into the night and next to the generic “Hot MILFs in Your Area” pop up ads, there was one that stood out. An ad (or in this case: promotion) of a manhwa hosting site called Toomics.com

I joined it back in 2018, before it put up some fancy new paywalls. Not working at the time, my best way around it for the series I was reading was the age-old “find a manhwa pirate site and hope it isn’t hiding malware in its ads.” On mobile, at least. I was careful not to try anything with my laptop because my mom would occasionally borrow it to complete important work. She did respect my privacy but you can never be too careful.

Toomics was what I’d call a gateway site as far as manhwa. The ad in question was for a manhwa called My Stepmom, interestingly enough. If it wasn’t obvious yet, it was one of the several manhwa series that was porn. I did see it on a porn site, after all. With that came several more manhwa, adult content notwithstanding, and speaking of adult content, a feature of the website is the NSFW filter, so you don’t have to worry about being the subject of a popular copypasta.

I wasn’t joking when I said a majority of my readership was pornographic. For the 30% wholesome, safe for work series, they bounced around between action and dramady, but for some of these, while not explicitly pornographic in nature, they were still intended for mature audiences by covering complicated topics from war to illegal trades to gambling to alcoholism and drug abuse among numerous others.

Then there’s the purely wholesome romcom manhwa where “are they dating? worse they’re stupid” has a full dormitory. Pick your favorites: mine has to be one called Annoying Alice; about office workers starting off with playful teasing only to come together towards the end. Hopefully, that was vague enough to not warrant a spoiler alert. I briefly took a pause from manhwa around the same time as my first go at the Army in 2021. But like with manga, I did come back though I don’t read as much manhwa as I would like.

All that aside, a question I have regarding manhwa is about why I don’t hear more about it. The genre has a dedicated subreddit some 1.1 million members strong, there are numerous legitimate and underground websites hosting the chapters with an untold number of teams hard at work localizing them for the broke and hungry populace, as well as those bringing us the raw scans for those who want a better grasp of Hangul.

Further, this is an argument in favor of Korean culture’s spread throughout the world. Next to K-Pop and K-drama, I believe manhwa is another instance of the Korean Wave or Hallyu spreading, but it gets less attention than the aforementioned, and circling back to Chinese culture spreading–without demeaning or scolding–can you, the reader name at least one C-drama or Chinese manhua? It’s okay if you can’t because neither can I.

This was an interesting find during the 2020 election season.

I only have hypotheses for why manhwa seems so unsung and underground compared to its Japanese counterpart. One hypothesis I have is in some manner connected to how some people find it, or how it finds audiences. I can’t speak for everyone, but with the adage of “sex sells,” a bold (or desperate depending on how you see it) move is to advertise the site and/or a series on a porn site in between the rest of the dreck on the sidebar getting in the way of some scripted T ‘n A. Another I have may be due to the proliferation of manga compared to manhwa/hua, and the history behind adaptations of famous manga. Even since before the Tezuka and Ishinomori days, manga has been a thing and so has anime; and it’s become expected of manga to eventually become anime. Sometimes there’s even a pipeline of light novel to manga to anime. Even movies.

Speaking of history, you’ll notice that Osamu Tezuka’s days were the mid-1940s up until his death in 1989, inspiring future mangaka in the years since. Araki, Toriyama, Kishimoto, Arakawa, Oda, and far too many to list.

The tragedy of his magnum opus was that it took so long to properly adapt it, leaving behind years of lost media in its trail.

Even if a manga is adapted after years in slumber, it’s still more likely to get a wide reach through a faster-paced medium like animation, but most Korean manhwa aren’t as lucky, from what I’ve seen. There’s a few coming out in recent memory like Solo Leveling, Tower of God, and God of Highschool in the last few years, but manhwa is far older than that. I think it may have something to do with the history of Korean politics and its government. Post-war Japan is extremely sedated, and the dismantling of the Japanese Empire meant the ad hoc independence of its former territories, repatriation of its non-Japanese subject, and/or the transfer of its territories to the Allies, the most famous of the lot being Korea split in twain by the Soviets and Americans.

Both were led by unassuming statesmen who had notorious reputations for being ruthless dictators. The South had long been an anticommunist state to the point of carrying a dictatorial slant until true democratization in the late 1980s. I’m prepared to be corrected for this, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that this roughly 40-year post-independence timeline of strongmen had an influence on a lot of Korean culture and popular media. There’s a Last Week Tonight segment on Taiwan and in the latter half of the segment, the dictatorship on the island stamped hard on anything that even slightly criticized or satirized the government. I think Korea had the same issue at the time, overzealously stating its independence and opposition to communism in the face of its neighbors, but at the cost of its inhabitants. In a dictatorship, the freedom to read, write, and speak freely is severely under threat. With that knowledge, aspiring comic artists would’ve had three options: Comply with Seoul’s wishes; emigrate to a freer nation; or self-publish your works and await the consequences. South Korea and Taiwan don’t have flawless human rights records, but compared to Kim Il-Sung’s or Mao Zedong’s regimes, they were on the opposite ends of the spectrum.

Another hypothesis, one I’ve come across on r/manhwa posits that there’s a mix of western exoticism and self-loathing within the community due to an influx of manhwa set in medieval European-adjacent royalty, which speaks to a wider conception of the culture. It’s a stereotype that East Asia is unforgiving on its own people and if Japanese Isekai is any indicator, then the blend of escapism and exotic fantasy is more widespread than you might’ve previously believed. Don’t we all want to travel to an alien world and jive with the locals?

The premise of this series.

The last hypothesis would probably come with the reputation of some western manhwa publishers and localizers. If you follow Rev Says Desu and Hiro Hei, you may have been made aware of a select few English voice actors of anime shotgunning their kneecaps off on social media while their Japanese counterparts either keep quiet or promote what they like (see: Aoi Yuki for more details). In a similar vein, a subsect of activist-minded artists have discovered the publisher Webtoon and are said to have been aggressively pushing their works on the platform, negatively impacting the reputation of the site and driving more innocuous publishers away and onto sites with different criteria for vetting and publishing comics. I’ve heard these arguments as well as the purported reputation of another web-series and I can’t say for sure which is the true culprit, but there’s a lot of power behind a perception. I’m pretty sure Toomics and Lezhin comics don’t have that much dirt under their heals though…

Whatever the case, on a scale of All the Luck to There Ain’t S[burp]t to Gamble With, Korean manhwa is closer to the latter with even Chinese manhua getting adaptations from time to time, though not nearly as much as Japanese animanga. Normally, I champion underground series, but this is a rare moment where I’d rather see more variety in this hardly tapped market. Even if you’re not in the market for sexual content, there’s a handful of series I can recommend off the bat that hardly ever touch that or even encourage the reader for touching themselves.

My top 3 would be these:

  1. Devilish Romance: a powerful demon is reincarnated as a Korean investigator and initially attempts to reclaim his honor as the most feared demon in the underworld, but is paired with a strict, if goofy prosecutor.
  2. Annoying Alice: Office romance between a pair of pure coworkers who like to mess with each other which gradually evolves into tender, loving romance.
  3. High School Devil: local delinquent is implored to change schools and start anew but his reputation as a brawler gets him into trouble not 5 minutes into admission to the school.

As a bonus, a dystopian manhwa by the name of Shaman centering on a special forces agent tasked with safeguarding a K-pop idol duo.

Also, circling back to the porn part of my manhwa arc, it was where I first discovered that the black bars were cast out in favor of the lightsaber in pornhwa and hentai. Whichever came first (no pun intended), I’d like to believe there’s an influence, if not a cross-cultural pollination.

Games I Haven’t Played Yet

Tiberius2 Comments

A part two to anime I haven’t watched.

Last week, I talked about different anime series that have crossed my radar. Popular series that everyone but me has seen. Some of them I was avoiding due to the reputation of their fandoms or a disinterest in the content of the show.

Source*: Anigamme on Facebook

I don’t know if the person who posted this is the same person who made the meme format. Exaggerated or not, I never had an interest in idol culture. I find it too poisonous an industry to support or even look into. No industry is perfect (and anime and video games both have their controversies), but East Asian idol culture (Japan and Korea especially) is the only industry I’ve heard of where the idol has been lambasted for having a normal life or worse driven to suicide or been the victim of assault, deadly or sexually. I admit, these are cherry-picked but my point still stands.

Back to gaming, I’ve been around long enough to recall gaming’s most pivotal moments. The release of GTA: San Andreas 20 years ago (if you didn’t feel old already, here you go); Sonic steadily one-upping the Hindenburg as a 3D series; Lara Croft’s second return in a more grounded approach (as grounded as a series about a British archaeologist can get when thrown against the supernatural); and the first of two Mortal Kombat reboots where smashing together the first three arcade games worked surprisingly well.

But there’s still a few gaps in my library that I haven’t filled yet. Gaps I’ll be sharing in this post. Like last time, the list is not exhaustive; and there are more I’d like to talk about, but won’t be able to for brevity’s sake.

  1. The rest of the Castlevania series (1986-2014)
  2. Metal Gear franchise (1987-)
  3. More RPGs and JRPGs
  4. Metroid series (1986-)
  5. Metroidvanias

Castlevania series (1986-2014)

A series of reputations, one negative one that it managed to break, thanks in no small part to the Netflix series, but another one that it traded in return through no fault of its own. If Konami was in the hands of better people, the series would either have a better send-off or at least a more recent reboot that honors its legacy while roping in new players… like MK9.

My exposure to the series comes from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on the PS3 and a pirated version of Aria of Sorrow for the PAL region on a bootleg PSP. That’s it, so far. Based on my observations, there’s an old love for the 2D games compared to 3D. Yahtzee Croshaw and the Angry Video Game Nerd both tackled Castlevania games with both wondering what went wrong with the series. Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night get praise compared to something as ridiculous as Castlevania 64, and at least by that time we had over 15 years to iron out good games from bad.

To give credit to Castlevania’s 3D/HD ventures, it’s not like all of them are bad. Enough can be said about the 2D games, but from what I recall of Lords of Shadow, it’s a solid 6/10 game. To pull from Yahtzee Croshaw’s 2010 review of the game, it combines elements of God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Dante’s Inferno from weapons to enemies to character design. Hell, it starts off with the main character Gabriel Belmont, a holy knight in the 11th century, who goes on a journey to rid the world of all evil in search of a way to return his wife to the land of the living. Servant of a god fights monsters with a chained weapon as penance for the death of loved ones — God of War comparison made. Some of the bosses are huge hulking monsters you have to climb on whilst pecking away at glowing weakspots — Shadow of the Colossus. And Satan’s appearance draws comparison to his appearance in the Dante’s Inferno games.

Channel: The Escapist

But the main draw of the series back in the 1980s was Dracula as well as open-ended level designs and exploration encouraging multiple runs of the same levels and therefore birthing the concept of the Metroidvania (more on that later). As such, my desire to look into the Castlevania series will have to go to the older games. Symphony of the Night may get all the praise for being one of the best games of all time, but to this end, I’d rather judge it by itself than where it stands in the series or with its contemporaries.

Metal Gear (1987-)

Another historic series getting f[bombs]ked by its Konami Overlords because pachinko and claw machines make a lot of money, as a certain Welsh monkey can attest.

Playlist by: Kim Kalliope, Videos by: CDawgVA, ConnorDawg

Still, Metal Gear is still releasing games to this day with another entry set for release later this year, tarnished as the series may be, thanks to Konami. A strategic stealth game that lampoons the s[blyat]t out of the Cold War, long after the joke died. Though, considering Metal Gear is still doing that, is the joke really dead or is it just on life support?

The best excuse I have for why I never played Metal Gear would probably be due to lack of interest. Sort of like what kept me away from Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokémon for so many years. What ties these three together for me is that there wasn’t anything physically keeping me from collecting a few of the games. Metal Gear Solid was on the PS2, which I had; Pokémon Red or Green were on the GameBoy, of which I had several (they were fragile or we kept losing them amongst our other stuff in the house); and Yu-Gi-Oh! is a card game. Cards are inexpensive, and they have been for years. But leave it to me to stand out and not get lost in the shuffle back then. Average oddball behavior.

But of course, Metal Gear is neither Pokémon nor Yu-Gi-Oh! It didn’t begin with collectible cards (but might have them as part of a collector’s edition of sorts) and I didn’t know a lot of people playing the games growing up, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I was friends with a long time Metal Gear fan but didn’t know it at the time. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were just more visible at school by the nature of the games. With my experiences in games like Outlast, or Sekiro, or the hackneyed stealth sections in numerous action-games, I want to say that it’s in my corner, but I know different games do stealth differently. Sekiro’s stealth isn’t Outlasts and neither compare to the sometimes stealth of Max Payne 3. Metal Gear is a legacy series ripe for the emulating; PCSX2 still works for me and I’ve been getting remarkably lucky with the likes of RPCS3 on another machine that I own (though I’ve still got a bit to learn about extracting games on it).

RPGs and JRPGs

As far as genres go, I have a decent amount of exposure to some RPGs and JRPGs, more so the latter, but largely due to some western games having semi-RPG elements in them. GTA: San Andreas has more of it with the ability to let CJ’s waist expand or shrink; same thing with his muscles which was the approach I took the last time I played it two years ago. It’s more muted in GTA V, but still there even in GTA Online. JRPGs, on the other hand, are another blind spot I hope to fill. How I achieve that will need to be more finely detailed, but for the most part a look through of time-honored series as well as more recent releases can help me out. Octopath Traveler, for instance, is one that’s currently on my radar.

During Army AIT, a few of my classmates played around a bit in a Final Fantasy 14 RPG (and stopped after making a dedicated Minecraft server). I played some of the Naruto turn-based RPGs as a kid as well as a Dragon Ball-themed one. Fun fact, my exposure to Dragon Ball started with the PS2 games. The anime (specifically the Kai dub) came way later. And I feel like I’m selling myself short experience-wise without more JRPGs to call from. I’m starting to rectify this by way of some of the Souls’ games, which are developed by a Japanese studio, but Japan liking medieval Europe for a fantasy setting undercuts the experience aesthetics-wise. Dark Souls is still enjoyable, I’ll never debate that, but I don’t think it’s enough to fill the void. I’d like more to experience, Soulslike or not be damned.

Metroid series (1986-)

The first-half of the Metroidvania genre, the fact that major elements from both Metroid and Castlevania combined to form a new genre is remarkable. It was a groundbreaking game when it debuted in the mid-1980s, and is still going strong with its star character, the tall, beautiful, kick-ass Samus Aran.

Practically, Ellen Ripley’s disciple, both women are space adventurers blasting away at evil aliens. Couple that concept with a Mega Man-esque arm-blaster, the core of Metroid has been a blend of its contemporaries with a few things to make it stand out. Early example of female video game character (though probably not the grandmother of female protagonists in games), sci-fi setting, nonlinear game structure and retraversable levels, different weapons; it’s a great game series that I have limited exposure to.

All my knowledge comes from Wikipedia and I’d rather not have to go to a third party for my education. My s[splash]tbag college days allowed for this absolutely, but I’m not in college anymore. I may not be guaranteed more time to do it, but whatever excuse there is to keep avoiding it is no longer valid. Emulators for the older games (because no one is crazy enough to track down a still working NES/Famicom in 2025) and I can get a Nintendo Switch or wait for the Switch 2 to release and hook it up to my monitor, if that’s allowed.

Metroidvanias

Interestingly, I’m hard at work fixing this gap with a series of Adults Only roguelike Metroidvanias made possible through Steam. Especially one I’ve discovered with permadeath elements in it. But before I cross it off the list, I do still have more to say about these types of games. I really love my narrative driven Max Paynes, Mafias, Spec Ops, CoDs, etc., etc., BUT! A huge but.

Sometimes, I just want to push buttons and make the enemy collapse into a puff of smoke. You don’t need to convince me to boot up a game of Kirby; that itself is the oil. Need I any reason to play it? If it can be accessed by any means necessary, there’s no need for me to avoid it. As for Metroidvanias themselves, never mind games that make you think through their narrative; games that make you think through their gameplay are another favorite of mine. Puzzle games used to get lambasted for being “girl games,” but I still like them as well as physical jigsaw puzzles for helping to prepare me for visual puzzles. Nonlinear gameplay structures meanwhile have their place and depending on the Metroidvania in question, the puzzle elements and level design can be really innovative and creative or boring and uninspired. Or worse, convoluted. But I’ve seen a separate category of randomly generated levels with each separate run. Sometimes this leads to perpetual recycling, but it can still feel fresh if the enemies themselves are varied, especially within the level itself.

Well, now that I’m rereading this before publishing, I think this could apply to any old adventure puzzle platformer, but the distinction between those and Metroidvanias relates to going back with new abilities to get more items, powerful items especially. So while your first run will be predictably terrible (unless you’re a based Metroidvania titan), a few more runs and experience points later, you should be able to get through to the final boss largely unassisted, like a true gamer.

That’s an admittedly short list of all the games and game types I’d like to get into more in the future. Not exhaustive, certainly and not the end, as there are more games I could mention, some of which are on my Steam library for example but I haven’t touched yet (I’m a damn hoarder). The Senran Kagura games, more of the Yakuza series (GOATed series by the way), unconventional shooters (The Suffering is a start even though its a hybrid), horror games, Resident Evil, and even more to follow. F[slurp]k me, my Discord description is too profound when I said my anime and gaming list was an expanding castle…

I might make another list about those games in the future. I filled up the list in my notes for half of this year, but not the rest so I have a backlog of free space to fill. Maybe I’ll bring back the YouTube channel recs, but I’ve been watching mostly Vtubers and I don’t want to only recommend those.

It’s only January, I can make it work.

Anime I Haven’t Seen (Will I?)

Tiberius3 Comments

Onto something somewhat related

This blog is dedicated to various forms of entertainment. The default is the Japanese medium known as animanga — a portmanteau of anime and manga, or Japanese animation and comics/graphic novels — joined together with movies, video games, and more. Since I’ve begun this blog two years ago, it hasn’t deviated very much from this promise and so far I’ve given my opinions and recaps on all the series I’ve seen, games I’ve played, etc. But for something slightly different, there’s the subject of anime I have heard of through the grapevine (read: dedicated subreddits) but have yet to watch myself.

Not anime I have in the pipeline, mind you; anime I haven’t seen and don’t have concrete plans to do so. Now this isn’t an exhaustive list of animanga series. There’s always gonna be series being produced and adapted. Even as I type this, some madlad in Japan is hard at work crafting peak fiction. Whether that series becomes a hit, I cannot say. I’m not Shueisha, or Kadokawa, or Dark Horse Comics. So here, I’ll talk about series I’ve heard of and whether or not I may view them based on a variety of factors. If your favorite happens to be on here, forgive me if I’m not immediately convinced to give the viewing it deserves. Also, expect a few jabs here and there; it won’t color my opinions on the series in question. Keep in mind, the factors that play a part — fanbases included.

1. My Dress-Up Darling (2022-)

      Between The Saga of Yukana Yame and So, Like, Tokyo Ain’t the Only Place to Find a Gal, Ya Know?, I’m far from immune to the gyaru aesthetic and on my radar and my Reddit feed came The Gyaru That’s into Cosplays by none other than Shinichi Fukuda. To be fair, I checked out the more recent chapters on a whim after randomly delving into the dedicated subreddit. I was desperately curious to learn if there was more to the opening scene than just “introvert origin story” and sure enough there was. Not gonna spoil that, just read the manga or check it out on MangaDex if you’re impatient like moi.

      The basic gist is a young Wakana Gojo takes up hina doll sewing; a girl who thinks he’s cute discovers this and tells him he’s cringe and he learns to never share his passions again. A moment of silence for our star lead. Fast-forward to high school and a gyaru cosplay queen (who may or may not bare a striking resemblance to Sydney Manetapho (née Poniewaz)) named Marin Kitagawa discovers Wakana’s passion for sewing and requests his expertise to craft perfect cosplays. Over time, they fall into the “gradual lovers” trope from their own perspective, but slight spoilers from recent chapters, it evolves into the “everyone knows but them” trope. As in, they hang out so much that the surprise was that they weren’t dating prior to Kitagawa’s announcement of love, and it was inevitable that Kitagawa would let that cat out of the bag, as Gojo would be too embarrassed to tell the truth about how he feels. Not that he doesn’t want to be seen with a pretty girl like Kitagawa, more like if he’d confess, immediately slam his mouth shut, then pray to what he calls God to change the subject in .5 milliseconds.

      Channel: Crunchyroll

      It’s sweet, romantic, and one that I’m not too certain if I’ll ever get around to viewing. What kept me away was the hype. Audiences tend to be fickle and malleable and only those dedicated to a medium are gonna stick around long after the final episode of “Season 1” airs. The rest will move on because they can’t read. Now that the hype is at rest, I’m at a better position than I was to view it after clearing my current list (that perpetually expands like a f[bricks falling]king brick in the wall). Giving Light-footed Hojo a rewatch dubbed and watching Cute Girls Playing Music Cutely, whichever one I finish first (the former), I’ll have to replace it with Dress-Up My Gyaru Bestie.

      2. Fullmetal Alchemist (2003-04; 2009-10)

      The darling of anime with all the awards to prove it, like Gigguk I have yet to see this masterpiece for myself, but unlike Gigguk, I’m not waiting on an arbitrary moment in the far-flung future before I sit down and watch Halfplastic Wizardry. It lives on through the same tired-old memes about a girl and her dog, but more to the point, I would have nothing of value to contribute to the consensus. It’s like yet another European Theater WWII game. It’s not gonna stand out unless it does something extraordinarily unique and I doubt I’m the man to deliver. People love it, people hate it, people aren’t the most enthusiastic about it. That’s a lazy man’s consensus and much like my eventual venture into Pokémon decades later, I’m gonna find stuff I like and don’t like but otherwise not have strong opinions on Hiromu Arakawa’s masterpiece.

      Aside from praise for Winry, of course.

      3. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023-)

      Outside of living like an emperor on anime forums and subreddits, The Tale of the Racist Elf is known for doing a few things differently as hinted by it’s subtitle. Beyond Journey’s End as in, the story didn’t end after the DM declared the evil king dead. Acknowledging the after-story with engaging characters, Frieren runs with the concept and builds on as a sequel to a nonexistent story. Anyone can start a DnD campaign and see it through to the end, but I haven’t heard of anyone continuing long after the story has finished.

      Will I ever watch such a phenomenal show? If I was writing this before the adaptation was announced two years ago, probably yes. Now that it’s lived up to its promise, there’s no reason for me to put it off. Maybe I’ll do it by the Spring or Summer. Who knows?

      4. Redo of Healer (2021)

      Its reputation precedes it. It gained notoriety for various scenes involving emotional abuse and sexual deviancy, things I’m not opposed to in fiction, but the shark that keeps me away from the water comes from the fanbase. Outnumbered by the majority female fanbase, if what I’ve heard about the corrosiveness of the fujoshi community is to be believed, then in a nonsexual way, any man who wanders into territory where women are the majority (not necessarily target) demographic will be eaten alive.

      Contrary to the blog’s name, I avoid rocking the boat because it’s a damn good boat and as I said, there’s f[nom]king sharks in the water. Let me enjoy my limbs before I get tired of them. Now, there’s probably gonna be a few who recall the horny trio post from October and wonder why I’m drawing the line at Revenge of the Cock Slap. Well, between Rias’ boobs (where miracles happen), Anna Nishikinomiya’s legs (where Niagara Falls can be found) and Monster Musume (where slime girls exist), all of those have fun with the concept. White Mage Do-Over takes itself more seriously with the subject matter and while I’m not a kink-shamer, for once I have to put this image of Our Lord and Savior to address the fanbase.

      I’ll still keep my mind open if someone can convince me that How Dare You Boot Me from the Party is more than just a ginormous Lady Boner.

      5. Oshi no Ko (2023-)

      Another series with an interesting reputation online, I’m the furthest thing from the target audience for this. I barely keep tabs on western celebrities (except for some legacy names), I clearly have no business attempting to break into East Asian idol culture. And from what I know, I’ve seen enough of the business side. Oversimplifying the business of idols, they’re held to impossible ideals under sweatshop conditions to present a falsified image of themselves manufactured by their higher-ups for a worldwide audience. What makes this dangerous (apart from Oshi no Ko’s first episode) is that a select few deranged fans have learned the truth and, sucked in by the parasocial activity, took matters into their own hands; homicide, suicide, damn near terroristic threats when they learn that the idol in question was hiding children or a family or was probably a victim of sexual assault. I’d say, “what were they expecting,” but to add onto this, this can happen to anyone. You’ve definitely listened to a podcast and vibed so much with the hosts that you imagined they were beyond the screen or headphones. But they’re not.

      The insistence on perfection in idol culture and the “rug pull” at the lack of perfection keeps me looking in from the outside with disbelief and disappointment, and that’s just at the content. As for the fanbase, well, incest jokes are king in that corner, but unlike The Twisted Graves Siblings, there’s nothing close to dark comedy here. Again, I make known my normie status and I highly doubt I’ll check it out for myself, unless someone Saul Goodman’s an argument for this courtroom judge.

      Without malice or enthusiasm, I want to be convinced.

      Once again, there are other series that cross my path that I’m either on the fence about or fully committed to avoiding or not depending on multiple factors. I entrust fans of X to persuade me to join their creed, perhaps by presentation or whatever else works. They’re clearly convinced that their series of choice has merit, as am I so inclined to watch Lady Rias in action after so long, and I want to see what the hype is or was about. Maybe I can decide then if the series speaks to me with certainty.

      2024: Blog Review and Anime Releases for 2025

      Tiberius1 Comment

      Hopefully I come up with a better name for next year.

      2024 is behind us and we are now in the futuristic year of 2025, as predicted by Call of Duty: Black Ops II. From January to mid-March, I was in Army basic training where access to technology was reduced to 30 minutes a week for training purposes. Too little time for me to organize my thoughts into a blog entry, so to supplement that I had a notebook full of journal (read: diary) entries as training went on. It helped me trudge through training, though looking back, it wasn’t as bad as I dreaded. Keep in mind that your mileage may vary depending on where you do training if you choose to join the military. Most accounts sing the praises of Relaxin’ Fort Jackson whereas Chill Fort Sill is either ironic or on-brand due in large part to the cold winds in that part of the country.

      Using it as an energy source is the most praise I’ll give to the Central Plains.

      January to mid-March was a blank period for obvious reasons, but I got myself a new machine and made a comeback post where not much needs to be said. On an unrelated note, I learned at the tail end of training that the man, the myth, the legend Akira Toriyama passed away in early March and thus made my own separate tribute to the God of Shonen.

      So long, father of Goku and Dr. Slump. You changed and influenced millions of people the world over with the story of a monkey-tailed little boy eating bullets and growing up to be the strongest fighter in the universe. My goal will be to get around to reviewing the new Dragon Ball DAIMA arc. I’m not the biggest Dragon Ball fan, but it holds a special place in my heart.

      Once I was properly back into the fold during AIT, I started April off with a reflection of my first attempt at writing an anime-themed blog. I’ve tried to forget about it, but having this one up reminds me of what I could’ve had damn near four years ago if things went swimmingly, and if I broke it up with an extra focus on other forms of media. Thankfully, this blog has rectified that issue and has branched out many times over to other forms of media, even with animanga keeping me anchored.

      Something something lead a horse to water and all that jazz.

      Speaking of which, when it came to reviewing animanga I started off with obscure series that flew under the radar. Titles you may have heard but haven’t investigated further, or titles you’ve never heard of until recently, either through me or another medium. This continues the trend I started here from 2023 and continues to be a personal crusade of mine. Not limited to Shonen titles, less celebrated and mostly unheard of titles give room for a few surprises; like how the creator of Prison School also wrote the Robert Johnson manga.

      The man who gave us Dommy Mommy Imprisonment wrote a manga about an enigmatic black Mississippi blues artist.

      I dare you to tell me that that’s not cultured!

      Of course my regular content throughout the year kept to standards, games and animanga kept on pumping through the summer, and I got to writing about two awaited topics: the long-awaited anime adaptation of The Elusive Samurai as well as a Paradox game that couldn’t happen.

      As much as I loved Running from the Ashikaga, it really kneecaps itself with a 12-episode run. Fortunately, a second season is in the works and in the drafting of this post, I was gonna say that going without a second season would be illegal. The art direction, the soundtrack, the name behind the series, even the soundtrack and corresponding merch set for release this year would speak volumes of marketing another season. Even if Sprinting Level MAX’s claim to fame is coming from the same mangaka as How to Kill Your Tentacle Sensei, it was enough of a motivating factor for me to check out the manga when it was licensed for an English release in 2021. I admit I was stunned at Japanese Twitter’s reaction to that one scene, and I’m keeping my eyes and ears peeled for the next viral reaction.

      Elsewhere, Paradox joined the shortlist of game devs attempting to dethrone The Sims with a life sim of their own under the title “Life By You.” It was announced and showcased in the latter half of 2023 with an early March 2024 release day, later moved to June before it was unceremoniously put to bed for good. In the meantime, people continually string together campaigns connecting Crusader Kings to Europa Universalis to Victoria to Hearts of Iron for a mega campaign. One day, I’ll join those people because it sounds ambitiously fun.

      Going further down the list, my entries stepped away from animanga to address other forms of media. I don’t review movies as much as I do animanga and video games, and I really wish I did. The military-sphere said goodbye to Evan Wright who tragically took his own life over summer after years getting raw stories to put into novel form from the widely celebrated Generation Kill to dozens of other publications in magazines and websites throughout his life. I doubt everyone will appreciate his work as much as military and adjacent types usually do, but there’s no denying his work over the years.

      And the blog posts after did address more serious topics surrounding the medium interspersed with regular reviews. You know me as the chief advocate of anime piracy as an alternative when streaming decides to get funny. I continue to stand by that claim and I will do so for many years to follow. It was how I watched many of my favorite series over the years, and I continue to do so to this day. There’s no telling when a series will suddenly drop from, say, Netflix or Hulu and sites like Crunchyroll prove unreliable and at the worst of times dangerous. If more news crosses my feed, I’ll write about it as I had back in August.

      Going back to regular reviews with more and more interesting titles until it stops making sense, I hadn’t had to reorganize my notes as much for 2024 as I did for ’23, merely putting them in the list set for weeks to a couple months at most down the line. It got messy when I did it like that back in 2023, but it made things interesting personally. It also kept me in the loop before the topic died off, but the consequence of that is some topics had more information about them come out and were at risk of aging rapidly. Such was the case of a couple of YouTube recommendations. I used to do that for channels I like and enjoy from a content standpoint instead of a personality standpoint. So far, only two of those didn’t work out as well with one getting flack for abusive behavior and the other following shareholders and causing a mass exodus of the media team, the latter of which I wrote about a week after it happened.

      The last quarter of 2024 was based primarily around animanga, which was fun to write about, but I left a mildly large gap between that and other media. I definitely watched more than anime at the tail end, some of these are gonna get posts in the future. For just January, I plan on covering series I haven’t seen but would like to both in animanga and in video games with that nifty emulator on my devices, as well as another form of manga/comics that is quite celebrated but is mostly slept on. What I mean is, there’s good series from this medium, but I rarely see most anitubers address it. It might be due to its country of origin, but it that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile.

      It’s manhwa. I had a whole arc dedicated to this with an interesting start point.

      As of writing this, my notes are filled out ’til at least May, covering most of the first half of 2025. After that, I’ve gotta wait and see what I’ll fill it out with.