Category: japanese pop culture

Unpopular Nerds become Preppy Rebels or Anime Rebel Without a Cause

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A misnomer since it’s a manga as of writing this

Let me know if this sounds familiar, a shy, nerdy girl with a nonexistent social life in middle school redoes herself come high school into a gyaru and becomes the cock of the walk at school with an expanding circle of friends. Quick! What am I describing? A new and circulating manga or an R-rated doujin by Shindo L?

Dark jokes aside, I couldn’t help but draw the comparisons in the first chapter, but delightfully and thankfully, the subject of this manga isn’t about an adolescent girl being coerced into becoming the town bicycle by cliques of parasites. Instead, the manga on the table is a wholesome slice of life appreciation for the gyaru subculture, something I’m intimately familiar with as regular readers may know.

The manga is known as No Gyaru in This Class by Shigure Tokita. I’ve recently wrapped up the eighth chapter and there are currently 20 with many more to follow going forward. Halfway through this brand new manga, there are three central characters: Mirei Nanase, Yushin Mamiya, and Subaru Raisaka. All three were completely different people before the transition to high school — Nanase was a straight A student who put all of her experience points into being the best student in the class at the expense of a social life; Mamiya was in a similar boat; and Raisaka had put all her experience points into sports and fitness.

All three coincidentally chose to remake themselves and get more friends in high school, which puts this manga in the same boat as Komi Can’t Communicate based largely on the main characters’ goals. So far, I haven’t seen either character mention their previous lives in middle school prior to their transformations, though Tokita likes to have fun with the characters in the chapter covers.

I’ve already explained the gyaru subculture, so those who are paying attention may have already spotted the misnomer in the title. The nuances of Japanese popular culture require a reframing of the word “rebel” in this context. It’s not unheard of for Japanese schools to police students’ appearance, even in regard to hair (even though some Japanese have naturally light brown hair), so going purely by this definition, Nanase, Mamiya, and Raisaka are all rebels. In Mamiya’s case in particular, he tried to reimagine himself as a tough guy, but from what I’ve seen and how he’s portrayed in the manga, the tough exterior does nothing to hide his true nature. Nerdy and intellectually gifted he may be, he’s always been a softie, thus inducting him into the Soft-Hearted Brawler trope, though only on a technicality. It’s still early and we’ve yet to see Mamiya throw hands, unlike others who fit this trope.

As for a character who could potentially fit the trope better, Raisaka was previously manufactured like the average anime tomboy complete with the short hair, energy, and fitness levels to match. Comedically, she’s surpassed Usain Bolt when it comes to speed and may just be strong enough to bench press Manhattan Island. If Mugi from K-On! was a different person, she’d probably react like this:

As a gyaru in high school Raisaka is extra taciturn, or she may have already been that way. Either way, the turn around for all three to becoming these flashy new kids on the block is a day-night difference. I’d give to be the one person who recognized either one of them and said, “They’re the last I would ever expect to turn out like that.” High school slice of life may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m enjoying this one quite well. It does well to turn several tropes on their head and the ones that remain in place are executed decently enough to keep scrolling on the screen.

Will this get an adaptation? An OVA? Will it continue on for years? I’ve since retired my Nostradamus powers so I won’t comment on any of that. As far as first impressions of Tokita’s works go, Reddit holds this mangaka in high regard based on other series they’ve done. The fact that one of their manga is being mentioned on this blog at all pretty much guarantees a recommendation, not to fans of their work who would have already started reading once word got around that a new manga was in the works, but to newcomers like myself who want a break from all the heart-pumping, mouth-watering Shonen action. It’s a fun manga about reinventing oneself for their own benefit and getting rewarded with friends and good times. One could argue that the characters are merely lying to themselves and each other for this radical change, but to be fair, no one is really lying about anything and they wouldn’t really need to. Honest characters never have anything to hide or if they do, they do it very poorly. I haven’t gotten to that point in the manga, and while I did say I’m not going to be making bold predictions, I see one of two outcomes: they each reveal what they were in middle school, or they don’t say anything because it doesn’t matter in the long run. There’s really only one way to find out and to that end, Manga Plus, Shonen Jump, and other unconventional manga hosting websites have the series in stock, so you have your pick of the litter, though as with many things, exercise caution.

Sega’s Goofy Take on the Yakuza

Tiberius1 Comment

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.

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.

      Farewell, Akira Toriyama

      Tiberius1 Comment

      A tribute to a legendary mangaka

      I had been in Army basic training from January ’til the ides of March, so I didn’t learn of Akira Toriyama’s passing until a couple weeks after it had happened. Of course, everybody would’ve gotten their honors and tributes out to the late author by then so my words are coming later than normal, but I’d still like to remember and recount some of his work.

      My introduction to his magnum opus was similar to a lot of kids in the early 2000s. There wasn’t a distinction between anime and regular cartoons back then, so anime fans young and old accepted them with open arms as more cartoons to watch every Saturday morning, further bolstered by programming blocks like 4KidsTV. Seeing a golden legacy ahead of them, many notable programming blocks acquired the rights to air anime in the west. No doubt you or someone you know remembers the ham-fisted attempts at censorship or cultural adjustments because “no westerner has ever heard of rice balls,” or “think of the kids when depicting cigarettes.”

      Obviously, Dragon Ball was no different when it came to censorship. Swearing (however slight) was edited out, scenes were edited or cut, and numerous references from the original Japanese were lost in translation due to how tough it was back then to research a lot of the cultural and historical references considering Dragon Ball’s source material is the Chinese classic Journey to the West. This video can better explain the history of censorship in the Dragon Ball franchise.

      Credit: Nerdstalgic

      Nevertheless, Dragon Ball or more popularly it’s better known successor Dragon Ball Z gained the lion’s share of the fame in the west, albeit with a much wider reception in Latin America. Once Toriyama’s crazy diamond got an English dub, there was nowhere else to go but up.

      My DBZ collection of media was a bit more miniscule compared to my Naruto diet, but it was still fairly noticeable. A few puzzle and DS games, the console fighting games, memes and image macros, fan-made projects featuring some of the characters or the whole cast; an entire production company based in Texas has Toriyama to thank for their success, and they started as a series of parodies.

      In 2008, Team Four Star blessed us with an abridged parodical take on Dragon Ball Z, movies included. Covering the original major sagas, they rewrote and jokingly recontextualized all of DBZ over the course of a decade on YouTube and on their own website.

      Other programming blocks like Toonami, have also owed their success to Toriyama’s star franchise. They began with re-runs back in the summer of 1998, but even so, the English cast never left the project. For decades now, VAs like Sean Schemmel, Christopher Sabat, and Kyle Hebert have gotten their recognition from the English dub and have since lent their talents to other anime ever since. I think it’s safe to say that Dragon Ball has been the connecting element to a lot of media worldwide. You could trip on a Dragon Ball reference and it doesn’t even need to be animated.

      Credit: iiAFX

      But Toriyama was more than just the creator of a manga inspired by Chinese literature. Away from his studio, he worked on other series like Dr. Slump and video games like Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. His distinctive art style has even been emulated by his fans over the years. Sites that are hubs for artists, classical and digital alike, are guaranteed to have some attempt at drawing at least one character. Even professional artists and other mangaka have redrawn entire scenes or individual characters, either while working with Toriyama or to honor him in his lifetime. Some of these other mangaka grew up watching or reading his work too.

      What makes Toriyama’s passing especially sad is that, like Kentaro Miura before him, he also left behind unfinished work. Miura never finished Berserk after two decades plus and it felt as if even though Goku’s original story had concluded so long ago, there was a lot of fun to have with the Z fighters, especially with all the video games, references, and spin-offs that have come out ever since. The direction of the Dragon Ball Super manga and the newest installment in the franchise, DAIMA, are likely going to be put on hold for a while until an announcement is made.

      Whatever the case, Dragon Ball fans, numerous anime fans, artists and many more have paid their tributes to a prolific and influential artist since his passing. This post is one of them having found out so late and being away from technology during training. And on that note, the block that was made famous for airing and helping perpetuate the Dragon Ball series also made a tribute complete with a marathon in his honor.

      Credit: Toonami

      Farewell, Akira Toriyama [1955-2024]

      How I Found VTubers

      Tiberius1 Comment

      Like most things, it was slow and steady

      The topic of VTubers is somewhat old hat as of writing this so nothing I write will be new, but my posts since the beginning have mostly always been like that so structurally, nothing’s changing. As for the topic itself, others have mentioned VTubers in the past before and more succinctly so I won’t go into the history as much here. But in case you’re curious on what VTubers are, Gigguk is down below to catch you up to speed. Granted, the video is from October 2020, but all things considered the landscape hasn’t changed all that much.

      Channel: Gigguk

      All in all, there’s some debate over the beginning of VTubing, but it’s widely accepted that the VTuber Kizuna Ai is the one to spread the idea and popularize it worldwide. Kizuna Ai debuted in November 2016, and many more have followed, mostly of Japanese origin though several from outside Japan, notably the U.S. and U.K. have had their own similar debuts. It wasn’t until 2020, that I was exposed to many of the VTubers mentioned in the video above and the talent agencies (known as tarentos in Japan) that host them and these days many of the notable and newer ones have in some manner populated my feed.

      Call me paranoid and nonsensical, but I’d never had that much trust in a machine or any such program. The irony to this was that when I was in Army boot camp initially, I was set for a military occupational specialty (MOS) that would’ve had me working with telecoms networking at the time and here I am with a man vs. technology complex. It’s not all that special, humans have always looked at the strange and foreign with suspicion, but for me it’s just irrational. When I was 16, I binged all the Terminator movies in the lead up to the great disappointment known as Terminator: Genisys and I’ve always chalked that up to the reason I look at new tech with the stink eye.

      Nowadays, I don’t really mind the direction AI tech is going since most of the time we’re merely putting in silly prompts and in my case, general history questions. Could we one day mess around and find out Skynet style? Who knows? We’ve got to wait and see. For my exposure to VTubers, it wasn’t around 2019 going into ’20 that I’d gotten more exposure, mostly by proxy through the Trash Taste Podcast when the boys invited VTuber Mori Calliope to the show.

      Channel: Trash Taste

      And it wouldn’t be the only time a VTuber appeared on the podcast or even individually with the boys on their own channels. Speaking of Kizuna Ai, Joey had her on his channel a few years ago. Gigguk did a few rare collabs with the likes of Hime Hajime, and followers of CDawgVA, the thickest Welsh boy, are very familiar with his dear friend Ironmouse and the pathetic VTuber Rainhoe. These are all jokes, of course. Check them all out when you have the time.

      I’d say that VTubers like these helped introduce me to others in my feed as well as the talent agencies that host them. As explained by Gigguk in the first video here, some of the appeal of VTubers comes from the personality themselves and/or the associated lore, other times there’s something unique that comes with VTubers especially in the realm of video gaming where you’ll find a lot of them, and the rest of the time they’re recounting humorous or embarrassing stories or otherwise screwing around. No matter how many clips I find in my feed, this one of VTuber Amano Pikamee making a JoJo reference is always a personal favorite of mine.

      Channel: Giobun

      But even outside the realm of traditional entertainment, sometimes YouTubers outside Japan have jumped aboard the trend themselves for a variety of reasons and purposes. Back in April, I recommended the YouTube channel Rev Says Desu for his commentary on controversies in and around the anime community, notably in online forums like Twitter. Rev himself uses a VTuber model in his videos and often due to the nature of the content within his videos, he’s normally subject to demonetization at the least and harassment at the most, largely because many of the people he puts on blast from Twitter are a minority of firebrands. Most of Twitter isn’t like that I’m aware, but this is more of a problem of popular and social media giving a lot of power to people who demonstrate that they shouldn’t have it. An age-old bugbear that should’ve been exterminated years ago.

      On a more lighthearted note, the messing around, joke around, fun type of VTuber is the kind that has its appeal the world over and has inspired individuals outside Japan as well as English language options being made available for Japan-based VTubers, including but not limited to those associated with the Nijisanji and/or Hololive agencies, sometimes spawning collabs and memes especially in forums like r/Animemes or its sister forum r/goodanimemes. For a while, Gawr Gura and Watson Amelia were featured quite a bit in these subs as one example.

      Creator: phdpigeon

      And there’s lots more fanart and such to go around.

      For my mileage, I’ve come to accept that VTubers are another arm of Japanese pop culture jumping ship and spreading to the rest of the world and rapidly. As Gigguk had mentioned in the above video, some would argue that it’s a fad, a passing fancy, but 2024 is down the street and we still have VTubers debuting these days long after Kizuna Ai helped break the mold, most likely with aid from pioneers from years before. Whatever comes after VTubers I think it’ll be a while before we see it.

      This week’s recommendation is a channel known as The4thSnake.

      https://www.youtube.com/@The4thSnake/about

      I’ve mentioned this channel on other posts before. This channel is dedicated mainly to fighting games, their lore, and individual plot points, but takes it a step further by mentioning the plots of specific characters over the course of a series’ timeline, clarifying messy plot points, among other stuff. The4thSnake specializes in Mortal Kombat lore and collabs loads of times with another channel I’ve mentioned before: TrueUnderDawgGaming. And since Mortal Kombat 1 has been out for about a month at this point, both of them are set to capitalize on the new lore brought about by this latest installment of Mortal Kombat.