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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Annoying Alice: Office romance between a pair of pure coworkers who like to mess with each other which gradually evolves into tender, loving romance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Once again, I open the door to personal opinions, not about a particular series, but on a series of characters who’ve won me over. Observe!
From left to right going down, we have Kagura, Konata, Izumi, Miyuki Kobayakawa, Asa Mitaka, Lady Rias Gremory, Minami Fuyuki, Tohka Yatogami, Anna Nishikinomiya, and Asuka Langley Soryu. There’s a runner-up who doesn’t fit into a 3×3 and would thus make this into a Top 10 List. I’ll introduce her at the end, so while you’re reading this, have fun guessing who the tenth inductee is. Here’s a hint: she’s covered head-to-toe in scars.
Now the breakdown:
Kagura (Azumanga Daioh) 2002
Physically, Kagura has what I like most: tan, tomboy, athletic. Personality-wise, she proves that she deserves to be a knucklehead alongside Tomo and Osaka, as their combined IQs makes up a toddler’s smallest shoe size. But with the three of them getting one-shotted by Stephen Hawking before he has time to think, what does Kagura bring out that I like so much? She’s not a bad sport and a good friend. Not the most effective at times, but she’s got the spirit to help out. Definitely the energy to; on a scale of Osaka to Tomo with Osaka being low-speed and Tomo being Speed Racer, Kagura is a NASCAR driver: she can get her engines primed and ready, but knows better than to overload them.
She’s also more introspective and self-aware than that other scoundrel she spends time with.
Credit: u/crawllinback2you1, r/azudaioh
Kagura’s moments of brilliance and reliability come from helping her friends for the most part. My favorite has to come from when Sakaki was in danger once again from the alley fiend Kamineko until Kagura applied a tender touch. Yay! Only to go overboard and antagonize the rest of the harmless kittens. Damn… Well, her heart was in the right place. Also, r/azudaioh, and r/AzumangaPosting are the two golden sources of Azumanga memes. Only the fanbase could carry a 20-year-old 4-panel series to newer heights, further bolstered by Kiyohiko Azuma’s impeccable comedic style.
Kagura > Tomo. Signed, a Kagura enjoyer.
Now, onto Dollar Store Haruhi Suzumiya:
Konata Izumi (Lucky Star) 2007
The Suzumiya thing ain’t a joke, it’s the focal point of one of the OVAs. She’s the otaku that would take over any other series where being an otaku is what it’s all about, like, say, Genshiken. Lucky Star is a show that is about three things: jack f[door slams]king shit. The characters talk about nothing important, they’re not fantastical; they’re you and me. They do regular things that we all do, and ask all the important questions our society dares not answer: How do you eat a chocolate cornet?
Channel: Crunchyroll Dubs
It’s a good time all around.
I would never say that Konata is the main element in Lucky Star because that’s not true. The entire cast shines mainly by bouncing off of each other quite well, but what makes Konata my favorite is that she’s so chill. She has few worries, doesn’t do well academically, but could give you all the anime recs you could ever ask for, some of which may come from her own dad’s collection, and that last part I personally find relatable. My mom was a young adult when Dragon Ball came to the west and my late uncle grew up with Speed Racer. Like Konata, I’m a born weeb. It was the only path I could walk on. And the one thing the series shares with Azumanga Daioh is that the fanbase is also carrying it to new heights.
Credit: baalbuddy
Merciful heavens! What a crossover!
Number 3:
Miyuki Kobayakawa (You’re Under Arrest) 1994-97; 2007-08
Before we dissect Officer Kobayakawa as a character, I want to spend a few moments analyzing the character design. She doesn’t stand out as much visually compared to Tsujimoto or Nikaido or even Nakajima when they’re all in uniform, but the few scenes where she’s off-duty, she’s a very stylish woman. Her outfits are simple, practical, and efficient. They match her kind and book-smart personality. Kobayakawa doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve like her wingwoman Tsujimoto; if Tsujimoto is the brawn, Kobayakawa is absolutely the brains.
An intellectual with impeccable observational skills, she’s a great policewoman and a great friend to all her co-workers. Now if she could just tell Nakajima how she feels already.
The entire precinct wants to greenlight their wedding ceremony already, they’re just maddeningly patient for their own good.
Numbuh 4:
Asa Mitaka (Chainsaw Man) 2018*
*The manga debuted in 2018, and MAPPA is supposed to be animating the second season… Gotta wait and see what the cooks are cooking.
I’ll be honest, I originally wasn’t that sold on Chainsaw Man as seen by this post I made last year. I still stand by my opinions that it’s what Black Torch could’ve been if it hugged the dark atmosphere tighter than a fussy mom, but learning at the time what was the craziest moment in the manga (later surpassed because Fujimoto’s life is Anti-chill), I decided to continue the manga from where the anime left off and my original assessment might not have been as fair. It still reeks of Black Torch’s ashes, but its still in serialization.
Maybe next time, Takaki-san…
Asa stars in the second part of the manga after spoilers. Wants to be seen as regular, but her own mindset gets in the way. Things happen after an encounter with the Justice Devil. Asa is possessed by the War Devil, who talks to her through hallucinations, and grants her the ability to make a weapon out of anything she touches. So far, I interpret that as “anything” not “anyone” due in part to this moment in the manga:
Yoru is probably dumber than we think.
I’m still playing catch-ups with the manga, so I’m not sure how much more Asa has learned of her abilities. For her personality, ignoring all the autistic femcel memes (hilarious as they are), Asa’s complicated but like any naïve youngster, she can’t help but be a slave to her own assumptions, about herself, about her peers, about Denji and the rest of the cast. You could brush the rest of humanity over with this paintbrush of sorts, but personally the phrase “stranger things have happened” would be a good one for her to learn.
And she does show a willingness to learn, even if her teachers and mentors are all s[seagull calls]t. Not just that their teachings are bad, but more so that some of the best lessons she takes come from general assholes. Something something, do as I say, not as I do moments. Blah blah blah…
If it sounds like I’m being light on her compared to another character, well she really can’t help but be a dumb, inexperienced kid. The Chainsaw Man world may be Satan’s best joke, but it’s still worth exploring more than just her corner of Japan. Hell, some wacky omake or OVA could put her and Denji in Hawaii or something. For what I like most about her, her arc is an interesting one to watch. From easy-pickings to “I wasn’t asking,” coupled with Yoru the built-in double act since Denji, Nayuta, and Fami aren’t always available to annoy her.
The middle one goes last. The real 5th one:
Minami Fuyuki (Hokkaido Gals are Super Adorable) 2024
The gyaru front is bringing us several surprises, and it seems to have been doing so for quite some time. I’ve talked about gyaruanimanga before, and I’m destined to continue to do so for as long as we get more and more series. I don’t remember what attracted me to Hokkaido Gals, but I’m certain it was either 2022 or ’23 as I was halfway through the manga by the time the anime was announced.
Fuyuki may be the face of the series, and I definitely see the appeal of Sayuri and Natsukawa-senpai. But what I really like about Fuyuki is that she has such an attractive personality. She’s fun to be around, a kind, party girl who likes fashion and her native Hokkaido climate. She’s no genius, but like Kagura she has her heart in the right place. Also the dub gave her a Minnesotan accent that blew me backwards at first, but grew on me. I’m pretty sure most anime do this to emphasize different Japanese accents and dialects to unfamiliar ears (see Ayumu “Osaka” Kasuga for more details), but if you ask me, the “rural/hick” label is thrown around too broadly. I don’t know if Japan does it themselves or if the localizers do, but anyone who’s not from Tokyo or Kyoto automatically gets the equivalent of a funny cowboy accent for some reason. Guess it’ll make sense when I’m reincarnated as a Kansan, but what can you do?
The sixth:
Tohka Yatogami (Date a Live) 2013-24
Official art could’ve been used, but this Nendoroid caught my eye and was too adorable to ignore.
One of the many faces of the series itself, Tohka was the first spirit introduced from the spatial quakes and the one that holds onto Shido probably tighter and for longer than the other girls. She’s got the strength of 15 buffalo and the personality of a puppy. Happy Tohka lights the room, sad Tohka plunges it into vantablack, angry Tohka gives us the world from the mid-2000s animation Skyland; she’s also on the ditzy side admittedly, but she doesn’t carry a lot ill will in her heart. Looking back now, she makes me think of Shikimori from her series. 10/10, ready to throw down for her man, perhaps even save him from getting Isekai’d. Beware her strength though, the girl could bench press Fukuoka Tower without limits.
七番目：
Anna Nishikinomiya (Shimoneta) 2015
I held back on the crazy waifus by flooding this one with girls that you could hang out and be best buds with before getting a chance to romance them (thus it is the correct way to do things). But here, I’ll give out a yandere.
Anna Nishikinomiya is the Student Council President, so pure of heart, she can’t see anything wrong with a lewd painting of a woman with a toadstool in between her perky boobs. One day, she is accidentally kissed, and develops a MIGHTY NEED to milk Tanukichi dry and empty.
If it wasn’t for Tanukichi’s support system of daring and curious classmates, he would’ve been toast.
Anna would be on a sex offender registry in another world with a bevy of sex-related crimes under her belt. Maybe in jail she continually obsesses over Tanukichi, busts herself out, and goes on a manhunt for Tanukichi’s treasured meat. And if it sounds like I’m joking, consider that she’s got the added bonus of athleticism and youth. Being a high school student means her body has yet to betray her due to the passage of time.
After not thinking about the series for years, I initially would’ve tried to drive her back as though I was shielding myself with a crucifix in the face of a vampire. But looking back, for therapy’s sake, poor Anna needs to f[aanh!]k for public health and safety. Forget protecting her from danger; Tanukichi and admittedly a majority of the whole student body needs protection from her, especially the girls. She nearly surgically removed Ayame’s jugular with her eyes clothes, heaven protect the girl who accidentally bumps into him. That’s a funeral no parent wants to fund.
As for her pursuits, well, she’s so thirsty, Tanukichi’s bodily fluids are her new favorite drink. She’s so horny, Aphrodite wants her to calm down. She has a built-in Tanukichi seeker that zeroes in on him from anywhere in the world. Cursed to conflate love with lust, she could use a talk about consent, perhaps hidden behind a video about tea. She’s a highlight in the series and a great example of why policing morality is bad. I’m not sure if Ayame’s method of speaking in lewd is a better alternative, but if we’re using measuring sticks, Ayame’s much tamer and she won’t stop ’til everyone’s vocabulary is unfiltered… or at least adjusted to reflect how people would actually talk if not societally enforced to walk on eggshells. I don’t like to use this, but we’ll have to consult Saki Kasukabe.
Maybe it’s the way I was raised or what I’ve been led to believe, but even talking about intimate things in mixed company is too much for me. Maybe it’ll change?
The tsundere to the stars, the one who kicks Shinji because she believes every man should be manly (when he’s in a “born to malewife, forced to Shonen MC” situation), this hafu representation of two of the Axis powers is broken psychologically.
Credit: Khyleri
r/EvangelionMemes is too strong sometimes.
Asuka Langley Soryu started out as the newest member of the team, and she’s sassy, brash, determined to be the best like no one ever was, and probably (read: definitely) wants to be dominated. I wouldn’t harp like an angel, but the more she bullies Shinji, the more I get the feeling that she wants him to slap her. Toxic? Kinky? Attention-seeking? Well, I say it’s a mix of all three. The Evangelion-themed forums have been debating that for about 30 years (yes, the 1990s are now 30 years ago people) and I’ll leave it to you to decide what’s right because either Hideaki Anno is really tight-lipped or no one is taking him seriously despite creating the f[explosion]king franchise in the first place, goddammit.
Whatever the case, Asuka’s cuter when she’s trying to impress Shinji. There aren’t a lot of moments of that and I really wish there were. If they were better at communication, then maybe the AsuShin crowd would get their vindication. Stick it to all the other shippers in the process. Then again, the series’ setting doesn’t allow for such a thing. The situation is so dire, we need kids to pilot mechas and destroy angels like this.
Biblically accurate angels.
The saddest part about Eva is that the average person didn’t understand that it was an anti-war series. I’m not into mecha and I can see that.
Now the best for last. The darling heiress to the House of Gremory, represented by the Chess king piece, she begins with a harem and then joins one herself, sweet as candy, kindest devil in all of hell, ladies and gentlemen give it up for Rias Gremory!!!
She walked past him, enswathed by her vermilion hair. She glanced at him on the ground and returned a smile and a wink, then continued on towards the school building. The crimson-haired beauty with the teal eyes was known as Rias Gremory. The most beautiful girl in the school, with the most attractive personality. She’s kind and heartwarming, welcoming any newcomers to the Occult Research Club with open arms, even the pervert who was caught ogling her earlier: Issei Hyodo.
Not my best writing, but I think it gets my point across: Rias Gremory is a good woman and an ideal partner. Being the face of a series that uses tits the same way Mario uses mushrooms, her moments of “Issei’s so cute/undress me, you son of a-” are normally saved for downtime. But it still makes an important part of the plot at ridiculous times. I’ll never forget when in the anime, Issei was made the star of a children’s program because the entire gimmick was touching boobs gave him a power-up. Let him cop a feel and all of a sudden he’s Popeye.
Rias isn’t just a pretty face and nice body. She’s kind, she’s caring, she’s considerate, and she’s cute when she gets jealous that the other girls have an interest in Issei. She’s also mature enough to negotiate with the other girls in this matter. And the most logical conclusion is to share him with Asia. Even the queen has her moments, and that’s why Rias is my Number 1.
As for the tenth who couldn’t fit into this 3×3, if you’ve exhausted your time trying to narrow it down, you may now rest. It’s Balalaika from Black Lagoon.
I’m gonna say it. Balalaika is much better than Revy.
So that’s my 3×3 as of the end of 2024, maybe I’ll update it for 2025, there’s more anime coming out next year, so the well’s never dry.
What I’m about to bring you is a video game series that is completely out of season and extraordinary mainly because of the team that developed it: The Suffering and its sequel Ties That Bind.
Yeah, I wasn’t kidding about it being a Midway game.
Released in 2004, The Suffering is set on a former POW island, now a regular civilian-operated prison under the control of the Maryland state prison system, and one with a nasty history. Think of the reputation of Andersonville prison camp or a few historical British or continental European prisons; the age-old “scrubbing a turd doesn’t make it not a turd” approach to refurbishing a place as accursed as this.
The protagonist is Torque and he’s on death row for brutally murdering his wife and two sons. Just one problem, he can’t recall ever doing such a thing, but not much can be done as he’s set to walk the green mile… or he would be if s[metal clanging]t didn’t turn sideways. Not ten minutes into his cell with fellow death row inmates–an Aryan Nations member, a pedophile, and a man convicted of an unspecified heinous crime (for giggles, let’s say he’s perma-banned from 15 states)–the prison island releases the Devil’s cologne and a legion of monsters, possibly created from the mummified remains of those who were executed return to exact their revenge on everything and everyone on the island, because no one can have s[gunshots]t in Baltimore. Not even The Wire.
These supernatural hybrid undead creatures hastily held together by nails, duct tape, and rusty scalpels prances about killing anything that breathes, doesn’t even have to move. The first victims are the prison guards, whom we see in the game don’t have the prisoners’ best interests at heart. Even those with a slated release date get stepped on. Next are the prisoners, and all of Torque’s cellies get sashimied. The rest of the prisoners aren’t as lucky but with law and order sliced and stabbed and even shot at, there’s a chance for the inmates to make their escape and Torque is of the same mindset, though he also spends his escape piecing together the course of events that put him on death row.
The horror elements of the game do wonders for the action and action is how the game was advertised. Critics at the time tried to compare it to Silent Hill or Resident Evil and the Wikipedia page states that that doesn’t work because the game is more “action-horror” than “survival-horror.” I’m not above making the comparison considering the game sets itself up for it, releasing at or around the same time as some of these; then again, the game’s reputation and comparison to other games weren’t why I chose to emulate it.
Its sequel, Ties That Bind, has a demo in the game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, following on from Deception’s Area 51 demo.
Maybe I’ll emulate this one. Maybe not. Who knows?
The game’s designer, Richard Rouse III, made it clear as crystal in interviews that survival isn’t the focus of the game. Action is, since Torque, despite being a silent protagonist, feels like a twisted version of Ashley J. Williams from the Evil Dead movies. I haven’t finished the first game and I’ve only played the demo for the sequel (many years ago, I might add so what I’m about to say next may be inaccurate), but I believe both games give you a variety of weapons to use. So far, I’ve got a shiv and a revolver in my current run through of the first game. Different weapons will work on different enemies and truth be told, looking at the enemy variety necessitates a semi-strategic approach.
The lore plays a huge part in the enemies that pop up. Contributing to this carnval of carnage and misery, the fictional history of the prison reveals a diverse range of creative execution methods from hanging to firing squad to even lethal injection. The enemies’ appearance is a reflection of many of these and I’ve found that fighting them with the most applicable weapons in accordance to how they died. The ones who died by firing squad are weakest against a gun. What kind? The revolver you pick up off a prison guard is sufficient enough. Sorta like how in Max Payne 1 every cutscene shows Max with his work weapon, even if you shot everyone with the Dual Ingrams.
Interestingly enough, Torque shares the same healing method as Max Payne, the painkiller.
The game also features a moral choice system that gives way to three openings, each influenced by player actions and a trio of spirits who haunt the prison. The three Ghosts of Prison’s Past are a doctor named Killjoy, a former executioner named Hermes Haight, and an executed prisoner named Horace Gauge. Killjoy ran the insane asylum in the 1920s and naturally his ghost wants to comb through Torque’s quirks, discover why he does what he does. Hermes the executioner has killed a handful of inmates in his nearly 30 years at the prison before taking his last victim: himself. To him, Torque is gonna free the beast and he is gonna like it! Lastly, Horace, is himself a prisoner who was also put to death for killing his lover during a conjugal visit, something he blamed on the evil atmosphere of the island. He maintained the regret and professed his innocence up until boarding the Ol’ Sparky Express, and from beyond the grave he believes he has a kinship with Torque, spending his afterlife convincing Torque that he’s not a bad guy. All three work together to influence Torque from within his mind and even drive him to transform into a grotesque Lovecraftian creature, though this transformation is wholly psychological.
The themes exhibited by these three ghosts harkens to a brief health lesson I got from my high school English class on personality traits as explained by famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud: the id, the ego, and the superego. The shortest explanation of that is the id is the force behind your desires, no matter how wicked; the superego is the force that houses your principles, even the naïve thoughts you had as a child; and the ego where reality keeps these ambitions and ideals in your head where they belong. Gauge is the closest to the superego, Hermes is the literal id, and Dr. Killjoy is the ego.
Not a bad video game overall, it did a lot of neat things, some new things and even makes good use of its moral choice system. It screws with canon a little though I’ve yet to discover by how much come the second game. Now that all the good is out the way, let’s discuss the bad.
The 2000s weren’t a good era for Midway. The YouTube channel Matt McMuscles explains in his Wha Happun? series that the good idea fairy invaded the Midway offices and greenlit yearly releases, ramping up in 2004 with this game and Mortal Kombat: Deception and ending around 2008 when the bankruptcy rumors were turning into reality. Here’s a video he did on The Suffering:
Channel: Matt McMuscles
Focusing on Midway’s darling franchise of Mortal Kombat, the magnum opus became a cultural phenomenon in the early 1990s when those arcade cabinets were first hooked up and internal troubles had been slowly boiling since at least 1997 when MK4 didn’t live up to it’s proposed potential. Coupled with that specific game’s subpar induction of 3D technology and it would take a while for Midway to recover from such an embarrassment. Failed spinoffs from Ed Boon and John Tobias’ side, the company drowning in debt to pay off pre-existing debt, and a few small gems buried under layers of s[cow moos]t, it was reported that Midway’s prestige as one of the Top 5 video game developers in 2000 dropped to Top 20 in just a few years. But as we know, it came back like a phoenix with help from Warner Bros. and is f[pimp slap]king with timelines once again.
The anonymous editors of the Wikipedia page for the 1992 game must not have been happy to specify which game having been rebooted a second time.
For what it’s worth, The Suffering is a victim of time, in that better timing could’ve helped it escape cult status, same for the second game. Executive shenanigans also hurt it severely as a yearly release was Midway’s answer to its financial woes. The “Band-Aid on a gunshot wound” approach to solving the issue, and one that if rumors are true, are looking to roost in Ubisoft’s nest. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you–I haven’t played a Ubisoft game in years and I know I’m sleeping on a library of peak.
Let’s rewrite history a bit: The Suffering releases to such fanfare in 2004 and gets a sequel in 2005. Does it escape cult status? From within Midway, sure. From within the horror genre, not really. It would still have to fight against Konami, Capcom, and Tecmo’s Fatal Frame for attention, and what Raccoon City, New England and Project Zero do that The Suffering didn’t (or probably couldn’t) was have a voiced protagonist. This is what tears me up a bit; on the one hand, a silent protagonist can have character without a tongue, if analyses of Claude from GTA III can attest, but on the other hand, the era the game released in would’ve had more reverence for a protagonist who can voice their opinions. Midway may not have been as ambitious with casting at the time like RockStar was, but even an up and coming voice actor with an impressive range or future could’ve done wonders to guide us further into Torque’s mind.
Don’t get me wrong, I like that the lore of the island speaks for the game itself, but a silent protagonist with a backstory this heavy sells itself so depressingly short that it would need to wait some time before it can ride anything worth its salt at Disney World or Six Flags.
You could argue that it would rob the game of the mystery of the fate of Torque’s family, but it’s not like we’ve never had amnesiac protagonists before and a lot of them are pretty bad ass. Lest we forget:
And his animated forms have always had a beautifully raspy voice to carry those raw, unfiltered emotions. Sure, the cartoons have to be censored because the real Wolverine reeks of other people’s blood, but I’ll take the sacrifice for peak storytelling.
We don’t necessarily need a remake of The Suffering, but a game that does something similar or perfects what it did could be bless us in the future.
If I have time to do so, before the New Year, I’ll do something I’ve never done before and breakdown a 3×3 of my favorite anime characters. I’m still on leave as of writing so I’ll have time to push that out and even a New Year’s Day review of this blog. Anime was king for me this year.
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