Revenge of the Ghost Pokémon Trainers Part 2

Sometimes you start a post and you can just ramble on because you really like the subject matter! That is what happened to me in my previous post! So here I will continue it. For Halloween I have been doing the ghost Pokémon trainer of canon a solid and I have been readjusting their team to fit their style! Yesterday we looked at Agatha, Morty and Phoebe and we established some rules. Today for all your basic info I refer you to the first post and we dive straight in as we re-evaluate Fantina, Shauntal, Accerolla and Allister.

Fantina

Fantina is all about style! She is one of the most classic Oujasamas/Himedere in Pokémon. A Hime-dere is a bratty spoiled princess archetype. In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl she is a very scary gym trainer because with an ace at level 36, she has a fully evolved team of ghosts pokémon! That is pretty scary. However, while her hair is someone who looks like a Drifblim, I just don’t see a fashion queen using this pokémon. She has a gengar.. which is all about shadows and darkness so is about as far away from what she is about as you can think and she has a Mismagius..which is the evolution of a very femine pokemon but turns into a witch.. which again would not be the image Fantina wants! Luckily I am here to rescue her!

Low Tier 1: Misdreavus

Let’s take her Ace away and turn it into its pre-evolved. This Pokémon is like it’s evolution based on a Banshee but is much more in the style of a pretty woman that wears some elegant jewelry. This jewelry that Misdreavus wears is super important in her lore as it is what keeps her alive. It stores the energy that Misdreavus uses as sustenance. A Pokémon that withers without looking it’s prettiest seems to go very well with the whole Diva vibe Fantina has going. It would also balance her out a bit, Mismagius and Gengar are very good sweepers and have a better special attack than most pokémon you can encounter before facing her. So stick with this one Fantina it suits you a lot better than it’s evolved form! Which we will pass on to another trainer on this list.

Low Tier 2: Sableye

Sableye is called the darkness pokémon and belongs to the Dark Ghost type. An Incredibly strong defensive typing with only one weakness. This weakness however only was given to it in the sixth generation. While of course for the nature of this list that weakness is still in effect, the Sinnoh region doesn’t have a lot of Fairy Types available.. not even of the ones that were given the typing later. Since we are taking Drifblim away Fantina needs a new defensive Pokémon and a ghost that is all about sparkling gems seems like a perfect fit for a Himedere. Gems Jewelry and elegance is the theme that goes with Fantina and this pokémon seems perfect for that. It will offer the trainer a nice obstacle to overcome in the form of a hard to counter typing. In the rematches this could even have it’s mega form so it is actually decent. Still since I semi-started my first Randomiser Nuzlocke and I got Scott the Sableye, I began to appreciate this pokemon a lot more and it is great for a mid game gym leader.

Mid Tier 1: Cursola

Pokémon fans like me really like to come up with the strangest theories. Are Agatha and Oak a couple, could everyone’s  dad have died in a big pokémon war?! Is Cubone a slide evolution of a Kangaskhan cub?! So how about this one! Did Fantina kill a Corsola to get some jewelry and end up with a Galarian (Ghost Type) Corosola? Did she just hoard for Coral and cause it to die out cause Galarian Corsola to appear in the Sinnoh region as well?! However you look at it coral makes for some great jewelry at a pretty big price.  Galarian Corsola is all about that and while we could give her another defensive type.. that strategy only really works if it holds an eviolite. Since gym trainers usually don’t use held items except for maybe a berry or so.. evolving it seems the most logical route for her team. Cursola isn’t as exceptional of an attacker as Fantina’s normal team either and while it is good still I think this is a much more balanced pick for a mid tier then Gengar.

Mid Tier 2: Oricorio Sensu

Fantina has style and flare, so having a ghostly dancer on her team makes more than enough sense to put this fan dancing bird on her team. With a lilac colouring scheme it isn’t even that far off from Fantina itself.. but that being said a lot of ghosts are purple and we actually took all of the most purple ones away! With Fantina’s team so far there is a lack of speed and  Sensu Style Oricorio would fix that a bit. It would also give Fantina a wider moveset to use since the Oricorio’s can learn a bit of a wider moveset. Since the others really struggle against normal types. Fantina seems like the person who comes prepared for that. She does not want to lose face and stand no chance… she would stack the deck in her favor.  The look of disdain on the Sensu Style Oricorio also fits Fantina quite nicely.

Ace : Froslass

Froslass is based on the Yuki-Onna Yokai and is a female only pokémon that is all about an elegant appearance but a cold personality. It is perfect for someone like Fantina. It works as a speedy revenge killer so if you are on your last Pokémon when Fantina sends out her Froslass you are going to have a bad time. The fact that this pokémon freezes it’s victims to death and then uses them as decoration might be a bit too evil for Fantina but the whole idea of using people as tools for yourself does fit in with the whole Himedere esthetic that woman has going. A hard hitting but fragile pokémon seems more fitting then her more defensive ghosts and with those witteling you down a bit it seems like this stone cold Killer ghost would truly be something that Fantina could use as a main.

Shauntal

By design Shauntal is probably my favourite Ghost Pokémon trainer, she reminds me a lot of Willow from Pokémon. An adorable slightly awkward geek that spends too much time in her books and as  result comes across rather strange. Her sprite animations have a level of clunk to them as if she is really klutzy.. which endears her to much even more! Yet her team has always been odd. Golurk looks adorable on her in the comic but there is a lot you can do with her here. However they did not treat her as wrong as most other ghost trainers. For one I think we can keep her ace on the team. 

Low Tier 1: Haunter

Now this one seems a bit of a weird one for Shauntal because in no way it fits her personality. Haunter is a bit of Poltergeist which has nothing to do with Shauntal’s intellectual plight and her studious nature. However Shauntal seems to be a Pokémon Trainer that isn’t always in control of her Pokémon. There is this sense that she is a bit of a submissive character and having a Pokémon by her side that constantly pranks her and tosses her books on the floor seems like something very “anime” to do with the character. She actually is a very good trainer, she is elite four after all.. but she can not seem to get rid of this thing. She probably has some sort of attachment to it, maybe even claiming it was the spirit of a lost relative or a friend who always bullied her. That is also why she can not evolve it since she doesn’t want to trade it away.

Low Tier 2: Lampent

Shauntal once again seems the least dominant personality of all the ghost trainers so it makes sense for her to have multiple guiding lights.  Her poor eyesight and love for dark poorly lit places does help. Lampent would be that  light that helps her down and up some ladders and function as her mobile light. While I would love for her to have a Litwick I can’t justify that on an Elite Four Member. She probably would have one as a pet.. that constantly drains her life force without knowing it but yes.. Shauntal would crawl up in dark corners and get her Lampent out so she can read more! 

Mid Tier 1: Runerigus

In the official game Shauntal has a Cofagrigus and while that still makes a bit of sense the evolution of its Galarian form makes a lot more sense. This pokémon is based around ancient and mysterious symbols and an ancient wall of text. It also offers Shauntal the amazing ground type to add to her lineup to replace her less fitting Golurk. It is much easier to see Shauntal discover an ancient wall of text and wanting to bring that home and being super stoked when she discovers a cursed pokémon lives inside the text so she actually CAN bring it home, rather than see her catch an ancient stories high Golem and it using it Jet powered lags to fly her back  home.. That latter looks super cute.. but she is a nerd! She probably would get sick or something! No stick to runes because knowledge is power.

Mid Tier 2: Mismagius

Mismagius is all about casting and chanting ancient spells and has that book knowledge vibe that Shauntal has as well. Mismagius also has a bit of a good nature but not always.. which seems to fit the Elite Four member quite well. She would usually be engaged with her own little activities like reading and not really caring about the world around her. However if she would stumble upon someone in need she seems like the type that tries to help but might make it worse. Mismagius can bless people but also can make them go insane or at least super fearful with their chanting.  Just like how a socially awkward person can unnerve an extraverted person as well. Jeesz she is weird.  Shauntal and Mismagius would make great friends.

Ace: Chandelure

I am at a toss up if Chandelure or Mismagius should have been her ace, but I feel Shauntal would spend more time with a Pokémon reading than she would do the whole chanting mystic stuff. Like I said I can easily imagine the girl with a litwick so perhaps when she was young she had one and kept staring at it feeding it her life energy until it evolved. Somehow this never killed her as she always kept struggling on wanting to finish her book and as it got more strength and evolved her Ace Chandelure would start to enjoy this odd woman’s company and her fascination with books.  Since Chandelure has a dual typing and a wider moveset then Mismagius it also seems the better choice for an ace then  the previous one on this list.  It gives Shauntal a bit more chance to show off her intelligence by choosing some advanced strategies and calculations so yes this seems a great pick.. at least until we get an E-Book Rotom!

Acerola

By far the easiest trainer to create a theme for would be Acerola. This Trial Captain and Elite Four Member however is a bit hard to scale her in how she relates to everyone. Alola never had a league before so her skill isn’t that established plus she is a kid. That kid route is however the main hook we will take for her team! She is an orphan girl as well so she would probably desperately be looking for friends! Well look no further.

Low Tier Number 1: Sandygast

Alola is a beach region so playing in the sand is something a kid would very likely do! Especially such a wandering person like Acerola. It is not hard to see her making a sandcastle and talking to it, with people thinking it is an imaginary friend of a lonely kid but then one day she takes a pokéball and catches it with everyone being surprised. Acerola has that weird “would talk to inanimate objects” trait. She is odd and mysterious and very much a loner despite seeming to enjoy the company of others. One can easily imagine her going to the beach and be among other people , pretending they care for her.

Low Tier Number 2: Drifloon

With the risk of underpowering Acerola here.. (of course it would be a Drifblim in her Elite Four team) I can easily see her wandering about being held in the arms with a balloon. Now this Balloon is infamous for trying to drag children away into the afterlife. It would be a great allegory for the struggles Acerola has been through as an orphan and wandering child. It would also very much fit in the plaything estetic for her team. It could even enforce the story of loneliness upon her.. how she is playing with some kids and her drifloon and some worried mothers take their children away from the killer balloon. 

Mid Tier 1:  Polteageist

Yes she has some overlap with Agatha but a girl holding a tea party is a perfect way of playing. However Agatha would own an Antique Polteageist while Acerola would have a Counterfeit one.. and yes those are two separate forms.  Acerola’s one also does not use stored power or such clever tactics it is there to giga drain and shadow ball. Even though it might not learn it officially I am deciding her one would have the move “Trick or Treat”.. which turns others into ghosts.. It seems like a tactic that Acerola would use in “join the fun”  Of course she would need a couple of dolls to host her haunted tea parties.. luckily for us I got that covered.

Mid Tier 2: Banette

Banette is the spirit of a discarded toy that came to live to get revenge on the kid who discarded it. Acerola  of  course would not be the victim of that power but it does make sense for her to pick up a toy like this when wandering about.  She is an orphan and from the looks of it she isn’t really in a home either.. at least not all the time so she would be short for money and short for childhood items. So it would make sense that she finds a discarded toy and claims it as her own.  Now Banette might be whispering to her to be a trial captain to deal with ten years old who are possibly one that can help Banette put a needle through the head of that kid that discarded it.. it could also be more innocent. Acerola found Banette still full of spite but she gave it a loving new home as her doll!   Having tea parties with new friends the Banette slowly found it’s way to it’s heart again! Either way this clearly is a great addition to Acerola’s team.  That later might even be able to go mega.

Ace: Mimikyu

Of course Mimikyu needs to be on here as well, it is from her region, it is her totem pokémon and it is a Pokémon Acerola uses as well.. it makes perfect sense for this to be her ace. Like her it doesn’t have anybody like a family to love her.. and much like the other Pokémon in her team it has this “toy” like quality. While it is in fact a costume it has enough plushie estetic to join her tea parties. Mimikyu is also a lot more affectionate and could keep her safe from the “less kind” spirits on her team if there are any. A personal bodyguard of sorts she can carry around like a ragdoll. The ragdoll look works great with a poor little strange orphan girl that talks to her dolls and Mimikyu is a physical attacker unlike the rest of her team offering her some new diversity. She can use it in so many different ways and really can work as the best friend that she very much needs! A great Ace or Acerola.

Allister

Allister is a bit of an odd one here. Why .. because he is a version exclusive gym leader. His design is a lot cooler but he does not get the same popularity as Bea due to her charming episode of Pokémon Twilight wings. Allister hasn’t been really given that much flavor other than him being mostly “that creepy guy” Luckily that does make it very easy to build a team for him.

Low Tier 1: Yamask

This is a dead give away.. Alilisters trade mark is that he wears a mask. So Yamask would be a great pick for him to have as his first team member. Now Alilisters mask makes him look ghostly while the ghost carries a mask of their former human form. So there immediately is a great duality in this. I am not talking about the Galarian variant of course as only the Unovan variant carries a mask but it would make a great lead for Alistair. While not great in battle I imagine it functioning in a way similar to Morty’s original team that relied heavily on curse. Yamask looks at their mask and cries knowing they have died so them spreading a curse on the living seems quite in line with the behaviour of the boy and the very nature of this pokémon.

Low Tier 2: Gourgeist

Allister’s theme seems to resolve most about fear, above all the other ghost type gym leaders. So him slotting into the Halloween Pumpkin pokémon would make perfect sense.  We do link that pumpkin lantern to fear so often and over time it has become an icon for scary stuff. Like Acerola this would give him access to  moves that allow him to turn your entire team into ghosts which then can hit super effectively and that is a frightening scenario.It’s lore also says it loves to trick people and creep them out with scary songs. Allister while not a singer surely puts on a creepy act as well. A nice pair.

Mid Tier 1: Drakloak

Drakloak’s Final evolution Dragpult is scary as hell! Yet with it only being available after level 60 this Semi-legendary might be a bit out of the league of young Alistair. He is still a kid entering those awkward teen years. Drakloak is in a similar phase in it’s ghostly life span and besides that it also has a bit similar body language than Allistair does. It is a pokémon indigenous to his region too and given his young age , he should not have been able to travel that much! Perhaps this was the pokémon that got him started with his collection. Not really his starter.. but the second one.. after which he decided he would be a ghost Pokémon trainer and all! Plus lizards are always scary right?!  His legendary of choice would without a doubt be Giratina so this is a mini version of it as well!

Mid tier 2: Gengar

One of the few doubles on this list but for good reason. Gengar is very much connected to the concept of fear, plus he is a prankster and shown to often be rather infantile. All these elements connect rather well with Alistair. I feel where Agatha would use the pokémon mostly for Shadowball and powerful special moves like Focus Blast, Allister would go a “creepier” route. He would focus on the poison element, teaching it toxic alongside Venoshock. That sense of an impending combo and a unescape poison seem in line with who he is.  He isn’t a hard hitter.. more the guy that unnerves you and borrowing from Gengar’s poison element really works for that.

Ace: Spiritomb

This Pokémon is something I find one of the most fearful looking ghost in the entire game and thus I think it is a great choice for the masked boy. Formed out of 108 souls bound to an odd Keystone it has something ominous.. this isn’t just one ghost.. This is over 100 ghosts! It was also mischievous! Most Gym Leaders in the region also seem to have a weakness against one another, with a few options that protect against their greatest weakness.  However until now we had not given Allister anything that can resist the dark type at all! This Pokémon is only weak to fairy and eats psychic Pokémon for breakfast.It displays the same otherworldly quality that Allister has to himself and I think it would be truly amazing to see Gigantamax or Mega Spirtomb!  I have no doubts these two can work well of each other.. or drive each other to utter madness. Whichever it is this is one scary pair!

And with that we conclude this series of giving famous type trainers a themed team! What team do you support?! What would you like to see in a team?! Would you like to see this for trainers of others types? Let me know and I hope I showed plenty of ghosts! Boo!

Revenge of the Ghost Pokémon Trainers Part 1

Hello again Mortals! I already have run dry of creepy Pokémon Rom hacks.. I planned a review of Pokémon Dark.. for you all but this ended up being edgy dialogue in the first two towns and then reverting to a normal Pokémon Ruby run. Since I already did a ghost pokémon top 5 .. twice.. and talked about their pokédex entries a lot I needed a new angle! During the Pokémon Games we have encountered a lot of Ghost Pokémon Trainers.. but most of them have been odd! Either by the lack of ghosts in their respective generation. Everyone of these trainers has a clear theme going on in their appearance.. yet non have a theme matching that! Today we will fix that.. at least for the first three! With Part 2 coming the day after.

Rules

For this post I will give every trainer a team of five Pokémon.  Most Elite 4 members run around with themes of that approximate size. Teams will never have doubles but previous forms of Pokémon are allowed. Each member will get two lower tier Pokémon, two mid tier pokémon and an ace. This doesn’t mean the High  tier pokémon actually have to be Amazing or the low tier entries having to be bad monsters.. it all has to do with their respective level.  I will not go in depth on movesets but will discuss their fighting style..which names some moves. For description of those moves, feel free to use google or ask me in the comments.

I will not take their original aces into account as that would give Agatha, Morty AND Allistair a Gengar as an ace. Usually aces have some overlap with their generation while in hindsight other pokémon are clearly better fits.  This one is all about the air a trainer has. All will be placed around an Elite 4 ish level or “rematch” team level to have access to the widest amount of Pokémon.  None of them have legendaries but since they have a sixth slot still available you can tell me what Legendaries they should have in their final party slot or something. I do not look at generations and more or less assume a timeline as if made as a present day remake. The type of ghost is more so determine in what kind of environment they would be in rather then their actual region.

Agatha

Agatha is the O.G. Ghost Pokémon trainer appearing in the first game and the many many remakes  and rom hacks of Kanto. She is the one who least follows a theme and is just “the old ghost lady”. She is famous for her quote to tell people not to use the strongest pokémon but their favourites. Which might be an element we can use.  So if we consider Agatha as a grumpy old lady.. who showcases  using favourite pokemon and not just the strong I think this is the team we would get.

Low Tier 1: Sinistea

Obviously an old woman would drink a lot of tea in the world of stereotypical anime characters. So it would make sense for her to have the tea pokémon.. and yes the fact that she has the cup does indeed mean that the pot is higher on her team list but no one has just a teapot or just a teacup it’s kind of a set. I imagine Agatha’s elite four room having one of these cast iron bistro tables where she is sipping her tea and when a trainer steps in she taps her cane on the floor and the teacup comes flying to her aid. This is where she proclaims she is a ghost pokémon trainer and about the power of using your favourites. The teacup would then fly into battle as the match begins.

Low Tier 2: Shedinja

This Pokémon is famous for only having 1 hp , but the ability wonderguard, which only makes it take damage from super effective moves, hazards and status effects.. and weather.  If you do not come prepared for a Shedinja though you will have a very bad time. I think Agatha would want that to be a lesson we learn! Always be prepared. Since Shedinja is a Bug and Ghost it would hard counter the Psychic type that Gengar is so known to be weak too, it is likely that a trainer would have such a pokémon because Bruno is the trainer they fight before. While Shedinja can be deemed a terrible Pokémon Agatha is all about making it work. It can fall very easily but if ill prepared you will suffer inevitable defeat. Almost like a lecture!  I think that fits Agatha quite well.

Mid Tier 1:  Gengar

The third Pokémon Agatha is likely to send out, unless the AI smartly swaps would be Gengar. It is the defining pokémon from her generation and the way she summons a Gengar from the shadow of her staff is too cool not to use. It might no longer be her ace because I think that is a bit too cliché it still fits her pretty well as a monster. Something that is almost as old as she is. She would not run it in any Mega form or Gigantamax form  because she feels those new methods are poppycock.. revealing a bit of a Genwunner style of thinking would really fit with Agatha’s older mind thus justifying this Pokémon.

Mid Tier 2: Decidueye

I remember my dad’s aunt collecting owls, and it seems like a pretty grandma thing to do. I know a few old ladies that collect owl statues or even owl macrame and stuff like that, plus  the whole theme of Wisdom applying to Agatha makes a lot of sense as well. We can even go further and explain that this archery owl pokemon has been based on an extinct and ancient owl that used to live on hawaii in some of it’s glory days before it was tainted by tourists etc. The old versus the new world is once again a theme that really can work with our old little lady trainer.

Ace:  Polteageist

Obviously this Pokémon would be Agatha’s ace. Not only is it a perfect pokémon for an old lady, it also is VERY VERY powerful if used properly with stored power. So it fits for what is most likely the most powerful ghost trainer out there. It’s ability that will boost it’s stats when taking physical damage/decay is a perfect allegory for Agatha’s age as well. While her body withers her experience only makes her stronger and stronger.You can easily imagine the anime  Brock going “That’s Polteageist ability Weak Armor, as it’s body crumples the spirit goes so much faster”  and then Agatha saying “That is right.. just like me.. while my body crumbles my mind has already figured out what you will do next.. I will always be one step ahead of you”. Black tea is also her favourite flavour of tea.. so it really works out very well!

Morty

Morty is the “cool” guy of Pokémon trainers. He is fairly noble and caring for pokémon. He is engaged with the whole death at the burned tower and feels more like a guy who watches over the dead. So his team would have a few members that follow that theme a bit. He still is a bit bland and is by far my least favourite ghost trainer. He feels like he might have some things in common with Spark from the Pokémon Go memes, but instead of talking to an egg he still talks to the dead. Other than that.. he just is some blonde dude!

Low Tier 1: Phantump

Morty is the gym leader of Ecruteak city, which is near a fairly forested area. While it isn’t officially a forest he still lives fairly close to Ilex forest as well and seems like the type that would go pray at a shrine. So either if it is the woods in front of his town or the forest of Ilex he seems the wandering type. Phantump is the spirit of a boy or girl who got lost in the woods and starved to death.  Being a sort of guardian figure of the dead it makes perfect sense if Morty picks one of these up and soft core uses it as his “Pikachu” but a bit weaker. 
He seems like the type that would have a pokémon sitting on his shoulders to me at least and this would be the one!  Of course it would not be a great member of his team but he can still annoy you with leech seed.

Low Tier 2: Doublade

While he doesn’t have that much flavour Morty does have a bit of that J-RPG protagonist look. Wandering into dangerous places  to help the dead it seems like he should use a physical tool that allows him to fight with his pokémon. As to me he seems like the type that would do that.  He misses the mystical qualities most of these ghost trainers have so his ghost team would most likely be focussed on a more physical approach. Not completely but still! We don’t have a lot to work with here! He does seem like the type he would be very friendly to his pokémon so I see him being very touchy and affectionate to his pokémon so it makes sense if he would litteraly carry as many of them with him as he possibly can. 

Mid Tier 1: Golurk

While this pokémon officially belongs to Shauntall I never really saw the connection! It looked cute to see her fly one in the Manga but it is more of an opposites thing. With Morty however Golurk works like an ancient protector.  Once again a physical attacker that is more straightforward than most ghost pokémon. Golurk is also one of the most good natured ghost pokémon out there being truly created as a protector and laborer and I think those are values that belong to Morty WAAAAAY more than they would ever do to Shauntal!

Mid Tier 2:  Dusknoir

This one is mostly on the list because everyone seems to think this ghost pokémon is really cool looking and i have to agree! It is however a pretty worthless battler that has a horrible moveset… Which makes it perfect for Morty as he probably canonically is the weakest trainer of the lot. He is the fourth gym trainer which is only matched by Fantina.. but she as a trainer in the games has actually been hard!  She is trying hard while Morty is more laid back. Dusknoir embodies this feeling quite a bit as it is not so much about attacking but more about out-stalling it’s opponent. Even better for Morty this Pokémon is said to take lost spirits in his body and guide them home! That does seem to fit Morty!

Ace: Rotom

This cheerful little pokémon seems like a perfect ace for Morty! It might be a bit mischievous but it is also quite the workhorse. It seems to have the right vibe for Morty trough and trough! Once again it seems like a spirit he can take care off. It could even be his gym puzzle. Where Rotom possesses all sorts of electrical appliances or electric doors and you have to make him jump to a new object to pass. Befriend a spirit and make it move on. It could be a fun way to tie in puzzles with the gym leader and the team.

Phoebe

Phoebe is the least spooky ghost trainer ever. When you see her you think you are facing a water pokémon trainer.. but no you already faced that in Ruby and Sapphire, even in Emerald. Maybe fire then as she is one of those Hawaiian Hula girls and Volcano’s and all? No Flannery took care of that. So how do we fix Phoebe?! Well it’s quite simple! Hawaiian Beach theme …for GHOSTS! Phoebe feels bright and bubbly! With a charismatic personality, a healthy skin colour and what must be a purple deficiency among ghost trainers it is time to do her right and give her a great team.

Low Tier 1: Pink/Female Frillish

There is a surprising amount of Pokémon that fit Phoebe like a glove! However not a single one stems from her generation!  It would take two generations before there even came along a pokemon that even remotely fitted her. While  once again the fact that I used a non fully evolved pokémon indicates that I indeed have taken its evolution as one of her squad as well and arguably the Blue Frillish would be better given her dress.. I chose the pink one because I do not like the evolution of the female version, while I do like the look of the male evolution. To give her a bit of diversity! Ghost Water isn’t an amazing typing  so Phoebe probably is worse with this team than she was before it really does fit her like a glove. Aqua Jelly ghost! Just look at her! She even has a little pink element! And Frillish looks tropical enough to boot!

Low Tier 2: Dhelmise 

While Dhelmise is not a low tier Pokémon but since it will get Gyro Ball we put this on the lower level themed slot so the speed difference is larger.  Dhelmise being a ghost Anchor once again ties in with Phoebe’s all tropical theme..Perhaps she dives for shipwrecks and fights of pirate ghosts.. it seems like something she might do! Heck even if she just hunts for pearls at the bottom of the ocean her ghost pokémon can help her here. With Dhelmise helping her sink faster. It is a Ghost Grass type which means Phoebe will end up with a Fire, Water, Grass core making her seem like a somewhat justified Elite four member!  

Mid Tier 1: Blue/Male Jellicent

Frillish evolution looks kinda strange in it’s male form but at least it does not have that weird lipstick mouth it’s evolution has. I do not mind Wobbuffet having that or even Jynx ..despite the questionable design ethics on her in general.. but a water pokémon having a puckered up lips sticky mouth seems wrong. It lives underwater.. and it’s a ghost!  Why! I do not get it.. but hey Phoebe’s Dress is blue and that staple that female trainers can only use female pokémon in the game is outdated and should be taken out of the game anyway so now we have some incentives for that as well. I can imagine really cool visuals that part of her dress is the Jellisent slowly manifesting from it’s ectoplasmic shapes! We should make this happen! Now I need an animator who loves pokémon and works for free!

Mid Tier 2: Palossand

With a Ghost, Ground type that mimics a sandcastle I do not think I have to try hard to convince you it belongs to this girl, although it’s pre-evolution will be given to a trainer on the second half of this article. The ground typing gives Phoebe gives an answer to electric types and as a good Elite 4 member you should have a varied mix of secondary typings to make your opponent sweat! Where  Agatha focusses a bit on mixed strategy with a bias on good special attack, Morty focusses on Bulk and Physical attack, Phoebe even more so seems like the defensive ghost type specialist. This makes her a great early elite four member because her role is not persé to win but to burn you out of resources, something that seems like a nice little challenge for a second elite four member. Palossand is an embodiment of that role as well as it fits her quite well.

Ace: Alolan Marowak

Phoebe at least to me has a dancer estetic, it seems like she might have been born in the Alola region given her dress style and more pigmented skin fit the location quite well. So it seems to me that giving her the fire dancer pokémon that also happens to be a ghost type is the perfect fit for her ace. I could easily see them dancing together. Like  Morty, Phoebe seems one of the better and more socially natured ghost type users so it also makes sense that she would get a good guy or girl ghost as her ace.  While most Gym Leaders are good natured with phoebe it seems a bit more a dominant trait. At least when we compare her to Allister, Shauntal and Fantina even compared to Accerolla. Fantina is flashy and cocky, while Shauntal is more an egghead and a slight clutz. Accerolla is more of a child and Allister is just creepy. Phoebe seems much more the type that rescues lost animals on her island or fights pokémon poachers or something. You know.. the main character’s  female friend from one of those ecological awareness cartoons of the early 90’s.  Alolan Marowak is easy to unify with that.

Tomorrow we will finish up this list with Fantina, Shauntal, Acerola and Allistair!  What is your favourite team so far? The day this post goes up live I am still in the mid of a move so I might be slow in replying to your comments! do not let that stop you though! Speaking of not stopping I could always use more money to help me move! If you have some money you do not seem to be using, consider supporting my Kofi! I thank you all and have a good fright night!

A BIT of Nostalgia: Castlevania IV Review

Hello once again Mortals, we are drawing closer to Halloween and I am nowhere even near done with spooky games…at least for myself. However one big title should not  be missed out on during this month! A classic that I hold close to my heart!  That classic of course is Castlevania..and since most of my old consoles are already packed up.. I started with Castlevania IV on the Mini SNES!  Luckily this is my FAVOURITE Castlevania game! Hooray! Instead of being scared of the monsters this time they can be scared of me!

Belle Monde 

Castlevania IV released on Halloween 1991.. well at least in Japan! A few months later in December in America and the likes and almost a whole year later we got it in Europe!  On the 23rd of November just 6 days after my 6th birthday. It was the 6th game that bore the castlevania title! So 6-6-6!  An unholy trinity of events! Little did I know than how devilishly good this game would be. It scores about an 8.2 out of 10 on average but the only grade I can give it is 1! A number 1!  Soon after this the game would take on a more adventure style approach with Symphony of the Night and while that is oftenly the fan favourite I really prefer that genre with Metroid while I prefer the old style Castlevania. I see them as almost different series in fact so I shall not be comparing them to any of the Alucard or Soma Cruz sames.  They are great as well but this was a whole different kind of beast. 

Belle Monde means pretty world and that certainly can be said about this game. Producer Konami really went all out in giving us neat little details in the background, amazing Mode7 graphics and very recognisable monsters. Translucent ghosts, fragmenting skeletons, a hulking frankenstein.. and a 9 foot tall dracula are all in this game and they are all impressive fights of their own accord. Classics such as the Medusa heads come back to frustrate you now more than ever before.. or is it?! With the new control screen players can whip in any direction and even  wiggle their whip about all limply giving it some stringlike control which can be used to slowly tickle an enemy to death! As a result of this simple change Simon Belmonts techniques have drastically improved. On our 11 stage journey we travel through castles, swamps, caves, spinning stuff and of course clock towers. Every stage has two or three very different looking segments.

 A lot is done with motion in this game’s graphic design. We see Skeleton ornaments following the hero in the background. We see books trying to leap out of their bookcase, and  so much more allowing the background to truly come to live!  This also results in more tension! Will that thing come leap at me or is it just a simple background element? The certainty has been taken away and that is a good thing! Not only do you have to pay attention to your opponents.. you want to keep an eye on the background as well.. the game forces you to appreciate it’s beautiful world! My favourite stages for the background are stage 8 and stage 9.. while i hate stage 8 in every other sense.. the creepy paintings that might grab you, the carpet that can push you into the ceiling that is great! Stage 9 is my favourite! It’s a treasure room where colourful ghosties constantly rise up! What a great night to have a SNES mini!

Belmont

Part IV of the series does not follow up on any of the games. Part 1 was followed by it’s sequel and both dealt with the story of Simon Belmont, while Part 3 was actually a prequel and it told the story of Trevor Belmont and his companions.  Rather than follow up on the story of Trevor and Alucard among others Part IV focuses on Simon again.. but rather retells the story of the original game.. in a new way! This means we will both visit familiar and unfamiliar locations and face a slew of enemies that the oldest castlevania player will immediately recognise.. and so does everyone else for that matter because these monsters are really iconic.  We will once again face off against mummies, frankenstein, death and even the giant bat makes it return albeit in a different spot in the game and it is not really a bat.. yet it is still the good old familiar boss from the first game. The game does a good job off playing into nostalgia with the iconic themes such as vampire hunter and bloody tears being hidden deep inside the game. You will have to work for your shot of nostalgia! The game has some nice tunes but nothing near as iconic as aforementioned themes but hey it’s a konami game you know at worst you will be pretty well off in the sound department. 

Control Wise alternate timeline Simon has no equal. Even Richter from Dracula X  and later Rondo of Blood could not be a master whipper like this Simon! As a result of the tight controls I find this Castlevania relatively easy….among the linear games. The exploratory stuff is way easier.  Still I deem this game fairly “doable” in terms of difficulty. Mind you that this is my favourite Castlevania, I know some patterns by hand and some timing by muscle memory but easily up until the 8th stage I breezed through this game like it was nothing. The eight stage however has one excruciating bit of trap dodging!  I can never really get that pattern down and always end up using luck to make my way through.  Since I so often get stopped there it by far is my least favourite stage in the game. If you are new to the series and want to try a game out I do suggest you start out with this one for it’s supreme control scheme and playing the best Belmont but like Castlevania III there will be a few cheap moments. 

These moments in comparison to the third and most diverse game in the franchise however are few and far between.  You have unlimited continues at your disposal and a password system to clear the hurdles ahead. A game over will send you back to the beginning of a stage however and this includes sub areas. So if you are on stage 9-2 and game over on the boss you get 5 new lives to try again from 9-1. This is how it has always been with Castlevania and with the exception of the last stage that is rather fair you really do become a better player for it. No risking the biscuit you really need to learn and master clearing it all in one big swoop. It felt really rewarding to finally clear a stage after mastering the bosses and minibosses. Given how varied the stages are it doesn’t feel like too much of a punishment either.. except for the aforementioned stage 8 that is littered with Instakill boobytraps in it’s second coeur and with how a bat randomly flying through that trap can ruin a run and send you back over and over again… that stinks! The final stage.. Stage B,  has a four man boss rush that is quite hard and a game over.. sets you all the way back! So be prepared to get good. You really must become a true Belmont but are also very much given the proper tools to do so. 

Cool Whip

What makes this stand out most to me is the gameplay itself though!  While Castlevania III had more diverse characters and ways to traverse through a stage this one is more focussed on giving Simon a new challenge each and every stage. The first stage has you jumping between a foreground and a background stage. The second stage places you inside streams of water that hinder your control, the third stage has vertical/ceiling hazards. The third game may offer you a different set of characters, I really prefer it if you have to overcome new obstacles every time. Except for the instakills in stage 8 this game really does a much better job at that. It really feels you have to master becoming Simon! One can argue for the choose your combat style approach of the later parts but to me it feels much more satisfying to use the tools you have! You HAVE to master Simon’s whip, you HAVE to clear that one boss you can’t seem to hit with it. The game hands you just enough tools to get the job done, but doesn’t make you overly cool and competent and thing that moderen games for me oftenly have. We are handed tools for flavour rather then challenge.

There is the old Castlevania clunk, the annoying knockback, the non momentum based jumping and the occasional unfair enemies, but that in a way is part of the experience. It gives this Castlevania something “scary” Leaping to a platform you can barely see, fearing there might be a bat to knock you off towards your demise has something we don’t really see these days. There are still indie games to that, but it is weird that this lack of polish causes.. a “personality” in the game. Back in the days we would look at our cartridges or at our screens and say “Castlevania IV I am going to beat you today” .. now we usually talk about events within the confines of the game. “Come on Geralt  you got this” “Handsome Jack you are going down” which is fine as well but in the end it is also your character that conquers a game. These old games might not offer the same immersion but they offer this amazing reward of conquering and you actually feel skilled for doing it! Those weird Castlevania quirks that are present help that experience SO much.Climbing a stairs and the floor goes out of sight? Well that means if you get hit on the stair you now plummet into the abyss!  You inch forward.. not in game..but you’re busy with your controller, hitboxes, invincibility frames etcetera. You are fighting a game!

I can not beat Dracula in the capacity of my person and in the end who cares about Simon beating Dracula.. it happens a million times. However me beating Castevania is unique to me. That is my feat! While I also beat Breath of the Wild and fought those two Eldritch like being in Smash Ultimate..those feel more like I played through the game. I experienced the game. I beat the final boss because I had the right tools, I feel like without too much effort I would have done it the next attempt even if I had died there. This old game .. I did not beat because I had the dash move, the big sword, the upgraded bomb or whatever. No I beat it because I learned the Pattern Patterns, I was able to distinguish the spots where my character would be safe.  I discovered a strategy to deal with those pesky  energy balls Dracula shot and I found a way to deal with those fireball enemies in the sky! It is not anything in the game that made me beat this.. it was ME! It wasn’t even that cool magical whip! … No it was me positioning a character in smart spots, me using a extra weapon cleverly! ME! ME! ME!

Vampire Killer Game

I do think that Castlevania I through III have aged a bit, the challenge is rather grueling! Mostly the second game is obnoxious with it’s puzzle element and poor translations, messed up ending screens and weird gameplay choices. I and III are difficult to a point where it isn’t as much a part of the timeset anymore. Castlevania IV does the same thing.. yet it does it perfectly. While sometimes unfair, dying feels like your fault always.. even when it’s not (Except for stage 8)  having to redo a stage feels super frustrating..but the stage has enough variety that it doesn’t feel like intense punishment. It is perfectly beatable in a short time if you are good enough but can get you trapped for hours if you can’t deduce a boss pattern! It is still your fault! It emulates perfectly on the SNES mini… BUT that is because it has a great controller for that. Should you emulate this game on PC and use a PS4 or Xbox One controller, I think you fill find yourself in a lot of trouble. You need D-Pad accuracy here, no Analogue stick can do that, lot of these controllers also have issues with double direction inputs like up and right..when using the D-Pad.. I think this would be so much harder to complete on those.. so play this on an SNES mini or on a virtual console with a proper controller.

Yet once again this also proves a point, this game wants you to use that SNES controller, it wants you to go D-Pad, it wants to be played as it used to be played. Now don’t get me wrong! I think anyone playing a 2d platformer with an analogue stick when they have the option to not use an Analogue stick should have their Gamer Card marked… not totally revoked just marked! Yet this game shows it a lot more than others. I usually prefer momentum based platformer action like Mario or Donkey Kong yet strangely this game shines because of its amount of clunk!  I can drop to my death just because I was a fair amount of pixels of my jump. I can get knocked into a ravine and be forced to start way back at the beginning just because I missed the timing of a single whiplash and there is a slight delay .. plus my hitbox is slightly larger than me so I can’t cheese it in the final moment.  In Mario when I make a mistake I can correct (somewhat)  here if I make a mistake I am dead. Yet that gives this game it’s horrorish vibes. Single mistakes can lead to a painful death, not just for Simon it will be painful for the player as well.

So in a game like Castevania its flaws become its strengths for me? Does that mean its strengths become it’s flaws? No! The stage design is still briljant and plays into that level of non immersion while still being super cool. Dracula’s castle has clear game mechanics that make no sense in the context of the world, but it is not trying. Nowadays characters notice everything so when we suddenly see barriers appear it has to be given a lore explanation through a cutscene, while the makers just wanted to give you some action. Sorcery, creatures carrying sealls or whatever.. it all becomes a challenge for the main character to overcome.  Simon doesn’t say anything about water following two  ways, he doesn’t question the spinning walls in stage 4 because they are not his challenges to overcome. They are YOURS. We are the ones that have bloody tears from frustration while trying to master the game and we are the ones that hopefully will be the vampire killers. For me Castlevania IV is one of those perfect games. Not because it is perfect.. but because it is very much a game and it keeps you feeling important all the way.

This weekend there will not be any blog posts as I am getting the key of my new flat Saturday! Which means the entire weekend and most likely the entire next week I am either without internet or doing stuff! Next week I will have a few posts scheduled ahead of time to wrap up Halloween month with a two day Pokémon post and some blog tags. If I have time I will try to visit your blogs with my phone! Otherwise I will see you all when I get back! Enjoy next weeks post and see you all soon! If you want to help with creating a pc corner for my blog check out my Kofi page!

Halloween on Paradise: The Managers Nightmare!

Hello again dear Mortals, Halloween draws closer, so of course the mystical forces that might be rise! Now of course they would not stay away from the fictional island of Paradise. So today we visit a small story about what happend for Halloween on Paradise. Like always the manager is hard at work when stuff suddenly turns strange! Can she survive a night of terror find out in this little story!

The Broomcloset

Manager Pinkie was sitting in her office. Working on her Pink Little Laptop to make sure she had plenty of cocktails to distribute to her guests on the lovely island of Paradise. She didn’t like working late on Saturdays but due to her moving to another Cabana on the island she had to spend quite a few extra hours in a day! She looked at the callender.. 31st of October.. time was going so fast. She looked at her laptop and saw a half finished blog, plus some of the fictional work to be done on her island on her fictional computer… and sighed. Almost done! She would get a hot bath  and an early night sleep…well as far as you can call it early. It was already getting close to midnight. Just as she was about to wrap up her work, suddenly all the lights in  the office went out. Even her adorable Jigglypuff Light. By the glow of her laptop she looked out of the window and see that the entire resort was out of power. That was so strange.  She opened a drawer of her pink desk to look for a pink little mobile phone. She called Indigo but no one answered. Was he in the Dinosaur Suit again?!  Maybe Sunny could help her find the fuse box.  So using her little pink phone as a little pink Flashlight the manager set out in the hotel to go find her janitor person who loves to be called a cabana boy.

“Why are these hallways so empty?”  she wondered while her heels clicked  on the marble like hotel floors.Their echos bouncing around the luxurious hallway filled with Pokémon paintings. Through the window she could see the outside lights that would provide light to the front of the hotel were out to! What was going on here? Did all the fuses blow at the same time?!  Then the ground shook as the hallway was bathed in a pink silver light. Shadows of some of the Yu-Gi-Oh statues lengthens as it were lang shadowy figures trying to approach her. A loud  clap followed. A thunderstorm! That must have knocked out the power. Yet she never heard the first one. Could it be that she was so sucked up in her blog that she missed it?!  No she was loafing around right?! This was so strange!  Having encountered no one she encountered Sunny’s broom closet… she had an awkward experience there once.  Thinking Sunny wanted something from her and screaming  while he actually just wanted to show her some yellow caterpillar with a horn he found in Pokémon Go asking her to identify it! This time however she suddenly heard clear moaning noises from the closet.  Did he have another person in there?! Her guests needed her though so she would apolgise to Sunny later. She gave the door a brisk but clearly audible knock. In the tempo of Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows!

No answer.. just moaning! She would have accepted a.. “be with you in a minute” or even a “not now” but this was just plain rude. The moaning continued. She knocked again, this time knocking “Space Unicorn” ! The same thing happened though! No answer! What in Arceus’ name was going on. Annoyed Pinkie pulled open the door and there she saw Sunny! In his hand was the lantern he so often carried around.. but blood seemed to be dropping from it.. and a head shaped object seemed to be inside. Her eyes glanced over to Sunny, his hair looked even more sloppy than normal, his normally so sunkissed skin had a pale quality even blueish.. his mouth mask was not moving up and down at all.. as if he was not breathing! He moaned… and then uttered a single world. BRAINS! With a new lighting strike very close by her phone dropped to the ground as she yelled .. staring into Sunny’s much more dead eyes! Z-Z-ZOMBIE!!!! YEEEE AAARGH!… Pinkie Ran out the broom closet tripping over a Yellow bucket! With a loud smack she landed on the floor.. but the adrenaline rushing through her kept her going.. tossing her shoes at Sunnies head  she managed to dash off .. she had to get Indigo! He could help!

The Security Office

The manager had to go to Indigo but she also had to keep her guests safe from this zombie! That did not seem to be that much of an issue though!  As she approached the lobby no was there. Zombie Sunny slowly waddled after her and could not keep up..  A new flash of lightning made her scare and hide between the reception desk for a while. She was pretty sure she saw a presence.  Zombie Sunny kept chasing.. he would soon be here and her lungs already felt like they could burst. She  could not keep running forever; she wasn’t built for it. So she looked up the administration book and found a yellow marker on the desk. She quickly ripped out a page  and folded a plane out of it! She began to colour it yellow as fast as she could.. She was just about done when a cold bluish hand slammed on the reception desk.  He was there.. just before he could grab at her Pinkie tossed the yellow paper plane down the hallway to the staff rooms again. With a slow look behind his back Sunny turned around and shambled back into the hallways. That would buy her a few minutes.  How did he become a zombie?! Did he get bitten by some weird mutated fish?

As Pinkie got up right to dash to Indigo’s hut. She noticed that zombie Sunny left a blue  streak on the desk!  Weird.. it could be dangerous though She would not want people to get infected by this.  Even if it put her at risk. A bit of blue got on her hand and she felt sick to her stomach! She had to prevent herself from being infected.. so she ran into the kitchen.
The chef wasn’t there .. which was weird..there should be some chefs to prepare midnight snacks! Did they go out to fix the power as well! Without a doubt Pinkie took the sharpest knife she could find and  cut her ring finger off! She  bit on a spatula to prevent screaming and drawing attention. Using some kitchen towels she made  herself a bandage.  She had no time to waste. She had to go to the security office.  Using the emergency exit she left the building.   Knocking on  Indigo’s door.. in blind panic. As she knocked some organ music seemed to play inside.. and another thunder rumbled the area.  “Come in.. Fleshy Mammal”  she heard from inside.  “What an annoying greeting” Pinkie taught before she opened the door.  Inside was Indigo..but his leather coat ..had been replaced.. by .. a cloak! He turned around and looked all pale, his eyes red! “I smell blood,” he said. Pinkie gasped and screamed!Vampire!! Indigo is a vampire! “Pinkie look in my eyes” Indigo said.. but she was too smart she would not be hypnotised. 

Pinkie dashed away ..now chased by a Vampire and a Zombie. What happened here?! Had she crossed over into the Twilight zone?!  Did it have to do with the blue goop she found? What is with this weird thunderstorm! She saw flashes but no bolts.. and the sky seemed without a cloud!  This seemed like some occult stuff! Wait! Occult! Maybe her horror expert Kuro could tell her more!  Slightly woozy she began to ran towards the pool bar, the vampire in hot pursuit.   As she look behind her to see if he was catching up she saw Vampire Indigo reaching out his arm .. then she suddenly fell.. as if tripped by telekinetic powers.. sparks shot out around her. and a sharp burning sensation in her knees. When she got up she realised she lost her glasses! Everything was blurry.. What happened.  Did she just get hit by a spell?!  Indigo drew closer! “I am not dying today,” Pinkie said to herself as she crawled back up.  In an attempt to get away she took a dive through one of the hedges.. surprisingly it worked!  She realised her entire weight just broke the branches as she stumbled off.. it seemed to have shook off Indigo!..Which makes sense she guessed.. wooden stakes and all. She outsmarted a vampire! But she pretty much ruined her dress.

The Bar

Tears began to well up in Pinkie, was she gonna die?!  I mean she would rather be a vampire then a Zombie.. when suddenly she saw Sunny Shamble near the pool area! She had to go the long way around to reach the bar! Could you sneak past Zombies?! Her bandages smelled like a freshly  defrosted steak!  If she went through the gardens she might avoid Sunny all together and  reach the bar via the beach. So she ran into the gardens.  Huge Spiderwebs were everywhere. There in the bushes she found the cook! Motionless his white outfit stained in  red liquid.. at least she thought it was the cook! He had a chefs hat on! Having -5 in both eyes she was fairly blind without her glasses. Whoever this man was .. and she assumed it was the chef! He was dead! She wasn’t sure who killed him.  The bottle of cooking wine.. used for their famous Coq au Vin was the weapon he made his last stand with!  Suddenly she heard “Pinkie” behind her and Irina stood behind her. dressed as Ghostface from Scary movie.. but the mask was made up instead!  So she could still recognise her! In her hand bloody knife glistend.. Pinkie screamed and hit bonked Irina on the head with the Winebottle. It was empty so it did not make that much of an impact.. but enough to give her a window to  dash away.

From the gardens Pinkie ran onto the beach, her feet struggling on the star-shaped sand! And yes star shaped sand is a thing! It is difficult to run in!  Irina chased her.. and she looked angry!  No way Pinkie would let herself be taken down by a slasher villain that isn’t even an Island OC. It gave her strength to run again. Still half blind! Maybe she recognised Irina through the alcohol smell! Why was she wondering this right now?! Eventually she reached the bar.. out of breath. Kuro looked at her and said. What’s wrong Pinkie you look terrible?! Do you need a drink. Pinkie nodded..while trying to catch her breath. As Kuro poured her a Hibiki.. a purple hand put the glass in front of her. Pinkie looked up and saw two horns on Kuro’s head.. teeth very sharp and a skin totally purple. They wore a demon red and black Yukata. Before Pinkie could take a sip she stumbled back..  tripping on a barstool. She fell.. and she kept falling.  She felt almost as if she was sinking. Kuro was an Oni..she had no chance..  now she fell and was sinking.. did she knock herself out?! She was dead anyone she would just let herself sink. It was all over.  She  opened her eyes.. and saw a black shadow looming over her..as she took a breath a sharp pain filled her lungs! Then two strong hands grabbed her and she was being dragged towards a big dangerous looking presence and then it all went black.

Paradise


Pinkie woke up with a shock! “Stay off my body”  she yelled wildly swiping at her environment. Kuro the demon stood before her. “That’s it I am cutting you off for tonight” they said. Pinkie gasped in terror! “What will you cut off?! I already cut my own finger off you don’t you think that is cruel enough?”. The face on the demon changed from Malice to concern. “You did what?” Pinkie began to see everyone more clear again.. she was surrounded by monsters .. even the chef Irina murdered was back. “Didn’t you die”. The Chef looked at her and grinned “Wheeen …Didz.. Eye..Die..?!   *Hic*  Isszzz.. Spilled…..wine…all over.. me.. Rini…brough…goood… booze…*Hic* I had.. a bit much…and…all over..my stuff..*hic* fell in the roses’. Pinkie looked confused. “So Senpai is not a slasher villain?” The woman showed Pinkie she had a plastic knife and said “No.. the only thing I butcher is my spelling sometimes” Pinkie coughed up a bit of water , still skeptical. “Then why did you chase me?” Irina looked a bit shifty… “I kinda felt bad that I got your chef so drunk.. when he passed out in the bushes I wanted to tell you it was my fault not his..but you looked so upset I thought he would get fired because I forced him into a drinking game with me”. Pinkie felt like a Pokémon she was so confused it hurted.

“But if you are not evil, then why doesn’t the demon attack you”  Kuro grinned.  It’s the 31th of October! It’s Halloween… it’s a costume!  All the staff dressed up! Look Indigo dressed up as a Vampire and Sunny is a zombie. Pinkie once again asked why she was chased then Indigo replied that he saw her distressed and possibly injured so he chased her.. but when she tripped over the electrical wires that caused the lighting effects and spooky music on the island he had to fix that first..or it would be a hazard for guests. Sunny was just having a little fun and did not think Pinkie actually believed he was a zombie. He could not bite her anyway because he was smart and still wore a mask! Pinkie looked at the  wrapped up hand and was afraid to ask. “Then was that blue zombie goo?”   Sunny shrugged..”I had a lot of fun colouring myself with the body paint so I might have added a few extra layers.. I tried to make myself a Yellow zombie but that did not work too well.. so that paint was very thick”. He smiled sheepishly while Pinkie unraveled her bandage. “So I cut off my finger for nothing?”

Everyone stared at Pinkie’s missing finger and suddenly people began to laugh. “Oh Pinkie that is so you” Indigo offered to bandage it up more properly. “Let me wrap that up for you a bit nicer and then we will go enjoy the party you silly girl” The manager blinked. “This isn’t that funny”. Kuro looked at her and said “Well at least now you can do a very cool Assassin Creed cosplay”  Pinkie grumbled “I don’t like any game but the second” Everyone laughed again. “Time for drinks” Irina yelled and as she opened the little first aid tent Pinkie saw a huge beach party going on. Everyone was in a costume. “I was so busy working I did not even notice it was Halloween”  she thought to herself.. still her friends all took this cut finger very lightly! As if they are characters in a story that was wrapping up and the writer did not care about the details.. and suddenly everything goes all happy! Kuro gave her a pad on the back “gotta get back to work…i’ll make you a pink cocktail.. and hey your final girl costume is pretty genuine now” Pinkie looked at her dress as everyone went out to party.  Pinkie looked at her destroyed dress, felt her dishevelled hair and looked at her hand one more time.. “Final Girl huh…seems there are plenty of people here still.. I guess I will party for now..but next year..I will be the true final girl! The only one left alive” Pinkie laughed like a maniac in her tent. She would know what her friends did last Halloween……next year!

I’m so Scared: Pinkie’s Everyday Fears Top 5

Greetings once more from the island that lies beyond the twilight of make-belief and nightmares!…Well this month!  Normally it’s always sunny and happy! This month it is a very scary place! For realsies! So far we covered my close encounters, we came up with a way to fight off zombies..and we have seen plenty of supernatural spooky stuff on the blog!  So for a change I would like to talk about the mundane. These are my TOP 5 fears!

Fear #5 Phone Calls

I really REALLY dislike making phone calls. Getting calls is a hassle already and I get super anxious when a number that doesn’t know me calls me. With a hidden number that fear is even worse. I try to answer to the best of my ability but people tend to ask me if I am cold as there seems to be this shiver in it. I could also really struggle to find words and I get an absolute mess on the phone. Like the day before I wrote this I had a phone-call to relocate my internet to my new home location but the cue was too long so they offered me a callback. I had all the papers I needed needly spread out in front of me, yet when they called and began to ask me questions I lost it completely. I forgot my own zip code I forgot my ATM card number and did not get through the security check!  So I had to beg them not to disconnect for making a prank call and that I was really me! I just was moving and making lists and my brain was cluttered… I know that is a lie but it is better than “I am scared , I don’t remember”  I managed to get it done but barely!  I am better at getting a phone call than making one though if I have to start a conversation panic strikes me even more. 

This goes further than just “on the phone” as well. I hate Discord calls without camera’s as well. Normally I am very good at reading people and I do that by body posture and facial expressions, it is a “talent” that compensates for my social awkwardness. I can fish and adapt and I know I usually need to “tune” my conversation in real life. So when I lack that cue I feel super weird and am super afraid people might hate me or are not entertained by our conversation and think I am a bother.  This goes as far that I get panic attacks when I am in a discord call with friends and a person I know less joins in as well. From super confident I become super flustered and confused and feel like someone is clenching my heart. I am so afraid of choosing my next words that all that remains in my head is this intricate gameplan in the hope to draw out audio cues to give me some guidance and make me understand this person.  This goes for phone calls as well.. if someone sounds stern or unhappy.. I crash and burn fast.My phone is almost always on silent so I miss your first call so I can prepare a bit more for the next one!

This fear is fed because of a few things. First of all I hate my voice, it is weak and sounds unpleasant and doesn’t fit me at all. I sound like Cher or something.. while I kind of wound to sound like Wolfeychu (yes I bet it would annoy people but it fits much more with my persona). I don’t sound like me, and while I am trying to train to shift that a bit my weak vocal cords make that very hard.  The moment a call has an echo I feel as if I hear a stranger say my words… you know as if a demon would be in me and speak my words for me.  “Zuuul .. Mother-duck.. Zuuul”. It ties in with another fear that is higher on this list.  The second reason is that I got bullied from the ages of 7 till 16  for something I chose to say. One single complaint about people mistreating me caused 8 years of torment and in a way I never got over it. I am always so afraid that I say something new that will cause the same effect. So I don’t like speaking all that much unless I know how to handle a person.. and for that I need to see you first.I knew the people who started the 8 years of bullying and had I read them a bit better then.. I could have known this would happen.. so I can’t make that same mistake again. A phone ringing even if it is somebody else’s  is enough to give me slight goosebumps! So yes I do not like phone-calls. From friends and family I am sorta okay with them..but I still prefer some prep time!  Look at me being all weird.

Fear #4 Stairs

I don’t think a fear of stairs is that uncommon. Yet it is such a mundane object. I’ve fallen of a fair few of them and due to my motor skills being odd and my foot not always landing where I want it to go I think it makes a fair bit of sense why I fear them. I am one of those people who will never walk down a stairs without support because of it. Sometimes I risk the biscuit at train stations to give the arm support to the elderly but only on the tiny flight of stairs so I fall down like .. 10 steps at worst. If I can’t guarantee that I will take the elevator or wait for the armrest to be cleared. Moving up a stairs is less scary than down but with my stiffened limbs it is a bit harder for me.  I try it from time to time and my new house will have stairs I HAVE to climb and decent but weirdly.. there are gradations in what steps I fear and don’t fear.


Carpeted stairs for example are “safe”   Open stairs are a lot scarier but are manageable if they are made for a single person and in a house. One of those artsy white shiny glass like stairs you see in office buildings is terrifying to me. My psychologist has a smaller variant of that and it gives me some serious heebie jeebies. I descend that stairs so slow! I feel like Peter Griffin in that episode of Family Guy where he keeps falling off the stairs. I even a chance to work for the Iphone call center ones.. which had the huge variant of that stairs. While the interview went well they saw me struggle with the stairs on my way down and that was me shaking on my boots. They needed more “spunk” and walking up and down those stairs would be fairly common if I got promoted so I was out.  Metal stairs are even creepier though!  I climbed the Eiffel Tower because on the one day I was there, the escalator was out.   Filled with confidence I strudded upstairs ..just to realise the metal roster indefinitely peering down was something that frightened me a lot.  Once you get to the highest level the metal stairs become spiral and Spiral stairs are the worst.

 I can’t walk spiral stairs (down). During school trip to Italy, not sure if it was in Venice or Verona..but we visited both during our trip we climbed this old belltower. Because it was cheaper than going by elevator. However on our way down their was spirally stairs and I could not I got so dizzy! I started to hear screams in my head which was my own fear manifesting I think. I tried to hide it from everyone and not be a bother but once we decended one out of 17 stairs my teacher stopped me and told me to go up again and he convinced the elevator operator to take me down for free. Apparently  I was so pale that the operator asked if they needed to call an ambulance or doctor, at least that is what the teacher told me later.  I just heard screaming and after that day I never visited another belltower again. At best there is a bell up there! If I want something to ring in my head I just think about the look of those stairs again.

Fear # 3 Sports Balls

So this might be a weird one but yes I am quite afraid of sports balls.  This can be anything. Hockyballs , Golf Balls, Tennis Balls, Basket Balls, Soccer Balls but worst of all Volley Balls.  I am not really afraid of them when they are just laying in the grass or  in the stores.. but I still don’t trust them. I like plushies shaped like a ball or beach balls, but if a recreational sports ball has over a bar of pressure or doesn’t go “squeak” when it hits me.. I rather stay away from it. This fear goes pretty far. If I see kids play soccer on the streets I go out of my way to head through another street.  I once took a 15 minute detour to avoid a five year old kicking one of those super bouncy soccer balls against a wall.  I skipped an evening of cooking and did not eat because there was a fair with a basketball game next to the entrance of my supermarket. I would just eat crips I found at home instead and the next day I set my alarm clock early so I could go before the booth opened. 

Why? Because I always get hurt by balls.. (maybe that is why I am into women as well) . On this blog I oftenly identify with the Dojiko anime type, the adorable clutz. Yet I am not that much of a clutz.. I am.. but it is more as if luck bends in my disfavor. All those balls I mentioned before caused me a pretty nasty injury. So let to explain my fears let me explain what happend. The Hockey Ball hurt me during hockey practice at school. They did not use those tennis-like balls you often see on tv but these more solid white ones which felt almost wooden in texture.  By then I already hated spherical sporting goods and due to my motor skills I was made a goalie. When trying to stop the ONE ..coming to me I braced myself when I felt my legs slip onto the wet grass.. my legs got further and further and I ended up doing a perfectly horizontal split my legs and my pelvis aligned.. which hurt like heck.. I can’t bend that way. I did manage to stop the ball though.. but it ended up with a 50km per hour crotch shot.  WHich did not feel pleasant either. So as I groaned in pain the force knocked me backwards and I hid my head on the little wooden goalboard that functioned as a goal and my head was slightly bleeding. I could not get up cause my legs don’t bend that way so the match just got cancelled and people dragged me under a tree and bent me back so I could move again.

During a single basketball game I managed to bruise all my fingers one by one  (well the first one hit 2 and the thumb was safe)  flipping them over backwards till near breakage. The teacher forced me to play on saying i was not hurt and just pretending so I ended up bruisng the pinky on my other hand as well.  At the end the gym teacher was yelling why I did not catch a ball and I showed 5 purplish black rings around where my fingers are connected to my hand and said my fingers don’t bend that well anymore. He told me I should have told him and that I should go find someone to check it up at the hospital. No one wanted to do that so I went to my other classes for the day and had a panic attack when I realised my fingers were so bruised I could not ride my bike home anymore. Luckily I did not bruise my writing hand too much so I could still go to school the next days.. but no more basketball. 

The soccer ball was fired in my face so hard that it knocked me unconscious for a bit.. though I am pretty sure I was slammed into something and that knocked me out I don’t remember that I remember falling.. and then it fell as if I fell into another room. I took a golf ball to the eye and once during adventure putt putt golf I nearly lost my ball and had to pay for it so I went out of bounds to pick it up.. just to realise I stumbled into an area there was a flamethrower effect…I dodged that but the people of the course were NOT happy.  The volleyball also knocked me out once, it also broke my glasses at that time and before I had glasses a Volleyball once bruised my wrist when I was little. When I went to run to Daddy crying I tripped  on a door stopper thing from a garage door and got a huge head wound.  Even recently this summer I was visiting a pool late august when a group was playing soccer next to us I got a shot in the ribs. At first I thought it wasn’t so bad.. but then I noticed I had a bit more trouble breathing and I noticed a very big bruise around my ribs.

Fear #2 Being Forgotten, Being seen as something not me?!

So this is a fear I hardly am able to put into words but I fear this a lot. After that bullying I was a nobody, I had no one left. My relationship with dad was strained at best, my sister hated me for not endorsing her toxic relation and mom while sweet always saw something  that wasn’t necessarily me. Wanting me to do the normal things like go out and  go shopping and stuff like that. I did those things to see her smile but it was never really for me. When I got sick and confronted with an imminent early demise I thought no one would remember who I really was. Then I got better.. but that fear never went away.  I do not know how long I lived , I might equal you I might croak early given how many things are wrong with me on a health level.  I have come to accept that.. but what I can not accept is the idea of me going and people remembering that person I am not. “You are a sweet person” .. “You are a hardworking part of society” ..  “she had it all. .husband, children and a pet”  I would hate to be described in a way that applies to millions of other women.  When someone describes me like that I imagine myself laying in a coffin with no face. I have that as nightmares.

It is also a reason why I could not visit my demented grandpa a lot in the end. He did not remember me, he did not remember my sister either and mom the same. My sister became a cake girl.. as she used to bake a cake for him, mom remembered occasionally or otherwise he would call her nurse. Grandpa would try to make him remember me over and over again when we would visit and be like “you remember Pinkie right” and I could see the pain in his eyes of not actually knowing. Searching his head and if she would ask more than three times he would just say yes.. but I saw he did not. I had no real gimmick so I was forgotten a bit more , I lived further away so I could visit less anyway but for some reason I also spurred some violent tendencies in two of the others there.. it was a very scary experience for me.  Seeing someone they really disliked.. some sort of singer I think because sometimes they would ask me to sing songs I did not know.  Yet I am mostly concerned about my future with this fear. I do not blame grandpa but I do fear the idea .. of people remembering me..like him.. an illusion ..twisted by static .. or like those other two identifying me with something negative I am not.

I share a lot with you all on my blog as do I share a lot in real life. Sometimes works out great, other times it works out less. One of my best friends moved away and plans to stay away simply because I used to go along in his alpha energy a bit, pretending to be that more “normie” person.. spend money on drinks I did not care for, but it did not make me happy. I wanted to be me, drink the drinks I would like to order.. but it made him feel less classy. He wants to look cool with a glass of expensive whiskey and if I sit next to him with a glass of cheap wine or cherry beer they see through the high class act of his.  In the end when people less and less could put up with those fake shenanigans he just left us all behind. Which is fine, we are still friends just on different terms, I need A he Needs B.. the thing is however, he keeps imposing his values on the group.

He keeps seeing me as someone who likes everything he does, like shoving Kingdom Heart stuff down my troat. I told him I did not like the series because I do not like the way the story is told and the gameplay is just not for me either. Yet he keeps forgetting.. creating a me in his mind that loves the game because it suits him better. One the one hand it is sweet but who he is friends with its not really me. Somehow the thought terrifies me that I will be misremembered and that people in the end talk about a false me..an importer instead of the actual me! It keeps me awake sometimes and I am super scared of fading away. There was one episode of Buffy where a girl was so ignored that she became invisible.. that idea terrifies me.

Fear # 1 Wasps

I fear wasps so bad that once I spotted one closeby I have zero chill until I know it is absolutely gone, can’t reach me or preferably is dead. I don’t just kill wasps! I kill them dead. I poison them, squash them, cut them in pieces and burn them.. preferably I dump the ashes of my balcony as well. There is nothing I fear more than a wasp. As soon as I see a wasp everything the buzzes send me into a state of hyper paranoia.  During a family vacation we were once trapped in the car with a wasp while on the interstate. I went into a near catatonic state of fear where I can’t account for over an hour of driving. We could not swat at it because it was busy in traffic and dad had to focus. I remember that.. and then I heard it buzzing really close and I could not move and then nothing.  The next memory is mom handing me a cappuccino and it was suddenly dawn.  In a waterpark near Barcelona I cried in fear when the line ended up with me having to stand between two garbage cans that had wasps buzzing around them. I wanted to hold up the line until I could pass it.. so just one or two sliders in between but I was forced to stand there. It never seemed to end.

The reason I fear wasps so much is my bad luck! Dad was a wasp swatter and well he would always swat them onto me. Once under me while I was sitting down.. once he set a wasp on fire with an electrical  swatter and it landed on me and stung me.. before it finally died of the fire.  I went to a fairy tale theme park near me just to be stung in both ears on the same day and the teacher yelling at me for not listening to her.. (but I could not hear her due to the swelling … well unless she screamed) I also got stung on my nose that day. I got stung under my fingernail.. in that soft flesh between my toes. Even when I am not swatting at them in an attempt to get some piece of mind and even if I zone out.. for some reason they target me still. They look so evil as well. Not a single creature in nature I think looks as creepy as a wasp (if we would give them a universal size)  sure a Hippo should be scarier.. or a tiger.. but honestly I would rather jump into a tiger den and punch my way to safety  and being shredded .. possibly than walking the same distance trough a wasp infestation. For some reason I am the perfect wasp snack. 

One time I left my balcony door open .. the summer of 2018.. when a HUGE wasp got in somehow. It was like the size of Fat Alberts thumb! It kept buzzing around so I could not go to sleep. I set a light trap for it hoping to capture it in the hallway. But I had to find some materials so briefly would have to use the kitchen light as well.. it crawled into the light fixture there and now was in the lamp.. but I know he could crawl out. ..so I could not sleep again.  For a brief moment I considered flooding my kitchen with gas and tossing in my lighter to explode it.. that is how much I was panicking but instead I deactivated the light and made another one.. as soon as it crawled out.. it looked like something out of a horror movie. I almost emptied and entire can of hairspray on it then dove into my hallway and closed the door. 

I got into the bathroom and took a shower.. also closing the door.. believing that if it crawled under the door the downpour or water would certainly kill it. I hid in that bathroom for almost an hour before I slowly walked back and I saw it on the floor.. it was still alive. Too afraid to step on it with my shoes I jumped over it, dropped my heaviest book on it and trapped it and put the remains in an empty wine bottle. I filled that wine bottle with some aggressive corrosive drain clog stuff and boiling water, closed the bottle and put it on my balcony … in a double trash bag. I could finally sleep after that.. even if it was already 6 in the morning by the time I had that all done! Even then I was still scared it would somehow return or have spawn! When a wasp is around I feel like there is a vice around my entire body!

What are some of your fears?! Do you fear something mundane?  Any fear you know is silly but you can´t help it? Let me know in the comments! If you happen to fear money.. I have the perfect solution for you! Support my Kofi and get rid of some of that nasty cash you don’t want! It would help us both out!

The Weirdest Horror Movie Ever! House (1977) Review

Hello there mortals! As per our pact, during this month where humanity is closer to the realm of the spirits and monsters than any other month this year.. I have swore to provide you with the strangest Horror movies I could find. The dictionary defines strange as Surprising, Difficult To Understand or Explain. Something not Previously visited, seen or encountered, something unfamiliar or alien. All these ring through when I watched.. what might be the weirdest movie I ever watch! Join me today as I review 1977’s: House!

Surprising


House is a 1977 movie of Japanese origins and was directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi! With the story written by Chigumi Ôbayashi and adapted into a screenplay by Chiho Katsura. It stars Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Obha and Ai Matsubara. It is labeled a horror comedy and has a runtime of 88 minutes. It’s IMDB score is a very nice 7,4 and on Rotten Tomatoes it even has a 90% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 80% audience appreciation. So it seems like we are dealing with a good movie here for once!   Do I agree?! I don’t really know to be honest! This movie is really out there! A part of that probably has to do with the fact that it is written by a 13 year old! That is right Chigumi the writer is a 13 year old girl and while she had help from a sort of professional screenwriter, the entire acting cast of the movie, which also includes Chigumi in a minor role, had no experience acting. Only the “old lady”  has some real prior acting experience. Funnily the old lady is not played by an old lady! Do I notice?! I don’t know.. characters in this movie are weird I can’t exactly tell  if acting slips up! I can tell they act abnormal but in everything this movie leaves me puzzled.

Maybelline Melon! Stuff your face with youth!

The plot revolves around a girl the sub calls Gorgeous or Oshare  in Japanese..but she and her friends don’t really have a real name; they all get nicknames.  There is Fanta, the best friend of Gorgeous, who tends to be the girl who cried wolf. She sees stuff and fantasises a lot. The subtitle names her Fantasy.  Then there is Kung-Fu.. the girl whose life attitude is.. if at first you don’t succeed.. Kick it!  Then there is Prof.. the smart one she is called Gari in Japanese. Melody is the musical one of the group and Sweet is the always helpful one. Finally there is Mac.. who is the fat one. And yes she is actively called the Fat one of the group .. her friends call her fat all the time! Different times 1977!  These friends go on a vacation together to visit Gorgeous aunt. Reason for this is a training camp. Gorgeous would have gone with her father on a vacation but he has a new gorgeous girlfriend and she found it disrespectful to her mother who has been dead for 8 years.  So instead she goes to her mother’s sister and provides her friends a training camp..after the original location became unavailable.. however it turns out that this house might hold more than the girls have bargained for.  This time we do not face a tire or a condom.. this time our villain is a house…..kind off.

Hey that’s how my flat looks at night!

Difficult to Understand or Explain

There is no way for me to describe the weirdness that is this movie without going into detail about the plot so be warned, for spoilers! That being said, this movie is so weird that I don’t  know what actually happened! I can only describe what I see and if that is real or some sort of allegory. This movie is so nonsensical and filled with weird events that I doubt my spoilers are even called spoilers. Still you have been warned!  This movie is weird in every single sense of the word.  Straight from the beginning we see weird things like a painted set.. standing in front of that actual scenery.  For example when we see the girls arrive in the country we see a painted set of a mountain in the back.. however when the shot pans out we see that set standing in front of the actual sight.. in a blink and you missed it moment! Yet straight away it is clear this movie is not your average movie.  The new step mother of Gorgeous is filmed  in an angelic light, her clothes are always billowing in the wind.. even indoors. When the name Gorgeous is said we hear some sort of echo. There are parts of the movie that are shot in limited frames per second, we drop in and out of colour filters and visuals are often extremely confusing.  In a way it at times feels like Jojo’s Bizarre adventures with it’s shifting colours text posing and with certain characters having their own musical themes. If two characters shine at the same time their musical themes ALSO both play. It oftenly reminded me of the PlayStation game LSD Dream Emulator and it has the same appeal that game has. 

Rimmel Volume Boosting Lipstick! Have the biggest lips in the Hausu!

The movie is hyper stylised but doesn’t really follow a three act structure, it kind of does.. but the whole “We are in trouble now let’s fight off evil” discovery doesn’t really come until the very last minutes of the movie. So we get a very strange flow. The movie does begin with two high school girls being  the best friends in the world. Fanta and Oshare are seen walking out of school together. When they are shot from afar and in the distance rather than zooming into them the movie instead blacks out everything else on the screen. They talk about a teacher getting married.. which shows us these girls know the gossip around town! We also discover Fanta has a crush on her coach.. I do not know what he coaches.. but we never see them train for anything either.. nor pack any form of sports outfit so it doesn’t really matter. The coach tells the girls training camp will be cancelled because his sister is rebuilding her inn so this summer it is not available. Gorgeous wouldn’t even go anyway because she has a vacation planned with her dad as mentioned before.  But the billowing stepmother shows up and it pisses off Gorgeous so she finds a location for the training camp instead so she doesn’t have to be with the new happy couple.

Channel Number 5: So vibrant you will billow!

She writes her aunt that she hasn’t seen in 8 years for this and that woman agrees and sends a postcard and her cat! That is right! The cat her auntie has is sent along with the mail for some reason and it seems to have delivered the mail as it barely got stuck in the mailbox! Now Gorgeous has to bring the cat back so she HAS to go to her auntie! Not wondering how a cat she knew as mature already is still perfectly the same cat as it was 8 years ago. Oshare is from money and their house is super shiny, she wears pretty white dresses and constantly fixes her make-up, which causes her to almost be late for the train to her aunt’s house which will function as the new location for their training camp. Well that and she lost the cat.. the cat however boarded the train by itself and found a seat it is on and everyone thinks that is super cute. Disaster strikes when their coach has an accident at the shoe store. He falls off some stairs and gets his butt stuck in a bucket! He has to get that out before he can travel! So he decides he will join them by car later. As the train sets off Oshare begins to tell the story of her aunt. This is shown as an old silent Black and White movie.. that the girls react to as if they can see it.  They are on a train.. but somehow they can see the black and white silent movie the director plays to us. Once they are done with this.. we see a cartoon train zip through the lands.. and we end up in the countryside.

Now that is a city I would want to live in!

Auntie.. who also doesn’t have another name except for that lives up a hill. She has one helper it seems as he calls her Mistress or Master and of course an old Wheelchair bound lady has no use for help in the house.. so instead this help/minion is a melon farmer and seller. Mac , the fat girl really wants to buy a big melon because she is hungry. She was also hungry on the train and she wants to head to the house quickly so she can eat! The girls travel to the house where the gates open magically and an not so old lady..with a very fake white wig is sitting in a wheelchair. The cat is returned to her and she tells the girls she is happy to see them. A sentimental music theme plays as well as the movie’s theme song…which almost always  is playing. It has a very simple quality. A bit Zelda’s Lullaby esque or something youn find in one of those “my first piano book” things.  It plays constantly! During scary moments, during heartfelt moments and during frolicking moments. And frolicking is something these girls like to do a lot.  The old lady invites them in and for some reason everyone claps for her as she flicks a light switch! 

Wow Blowfeld really overdid it with the plastic surgery this time!

Sweet is almost killed by a chandelier but Kungfu  kicks a lizard into the spikey piece of glass instead so Sweet is saved and the cat begins to eat the lizard..which the girls think is cute. Then everyone goes do their own thing and get settled in. Sweet offers Auntie that she will clean, while Mac wants to chill her mellon, for which she has to use a well. Melody goes to the piano room and Gorgeous hangs out a bit with her aunt. Prof , Kungfu and Fanta think about starting to make dinner.  Auntie seems to go sick from being in the sunlight to much so the girls have dinner on their own! Having a lot of fun and calling Mac fat again. Being called fat makes Mac hungry so she goes to find her Mellon.. but she doesn’t return. Fanta goes to find her so they can have the melon as desert and when she goes to the well she is mesmerised by the sunlight! She is so mesmerised that when she is fishing up the Melon she doesn’t notice the Melon has been replaced by Mac’s head!  The head flies and bites her in the butt then vomits a bit.. and Fanta flees.  Prof and Kungfu go check it out but they only find a Melon so they decide Fanta had another daydream and they fish out the Melon.

There has to be a comment that is more witty then.. She got eaten so now she gives head here!

Auntie joins them to come eat the Melon but Fanta feels uneasy and rightfully so it seems as auntie shows her the melon she is eating has eyeballs in them.. just to Fanta though! Who still believes she is stressed and making this up!  The group saves a big part of the melon for when Mac returns and abandons the search for her to go do other things. Gorgeous goes to take a bath, Sweet starts cleaning and Melody plays some more piano… the other three don’t have traits that allow actions so they just show up when something goes wrong.. Which quickly it does. Sweet while cleaning encounters the cat  named Shiro.. or Blanche in the subtitle and when her eyes glow green Sweet is attacked and seemingly killed by mattresses and blankets. Fanta of course notices this.. as Sweet calls for help. Melody however is also crying for help so Prof and Kungfu go to her instead.. only to find out Melody broke a nail!
When Fanta tells her she just saw Sweet get killed by feather filled objects no one believes her.  When they search they search the store room together, they do find all of Sweet her clothes laying around a naked doll that has the same ribbon in the hair as she did! So they draw the conclusion that Sweet must have gone to take a bath several doors ahead in the house.

This is like the least fashion cordinate group of people ever!

Melody cries out for help again… so Fanta goes to investigate.. it turns out Melody needed toilet paper. This quest allows no one to notice that Gorgeous has gone upstairs to do her makeup after a bath! Shiro the cat shows up and uses his magic on the mirror that Gorgeous is using.. this results in her seeing her aunt taking over her body.. but she thinks that is just a figment of her imagination. So she continues to do her makeup! Even when the cat casts a second batch of magic and the mirror begins to shatter  she doesn’t seem to react. As she stares into the shattered mirror suddenly her skin comes off in shards.. only leaving a red glowing presence… which apparently kills her.. We are reminded the coach is on his way by a very weird jumpcut that shows him stuck in traffic. Since traffic is so busy he decides to go eat noodles instead. Fanta goes to search for Gorgeous and she discovers her in full bridal makeup in her aunties room. She acts very strange and when Fanta tells her she isn’t feeling safe here, Gorgeous says she will call for help. She uses the phone and then says it is out of order. No one questions this and to calm Fanta down they decide to let Melody play the piano again to calm her down. Gorgeous goes outside and juggles with some orbs of light which apparently takes her so long that Kungfu and Prof go to find her. Prof now suspects something is wrong but doesn’t want to share it because it would scare Fanta too much! So Fanta is left with Melody alone!

Olay facial cream really took a hit after it gotten all Catwoman like..yes the Halle Barry Catwoman!

This of course leads to Melody being killed. The piano glows in all sorts of colours of the rainbow and Melody notices she can not stop playing anymore. With a wild and trippy shock effect we notice some of her fingers have gone missing. She giggles a bit when she sees this and tries to play the piano again and this causes the piano to eat her. She gets sucked in and ensnared by the wires while the little hatch in front of the keys chops bits off her. Her arm is flung inside a fishbowl and as Fanta tries to process what she sees she grabs the arm.. and faints by the sight..pulling the fishbowl with her to the floor.  Prof and Kungfu could not find Gorgeous so they try to punch a door open before returning to Fanta and Melody now missing. They worry about the fish in Fanta’s dress more than their missing friend..but now do conclude something is wrong. This time Kungfu decides to phone for help.. not trusting Gorgeous realising that she too has become a “ghost” But Kungfu is attacked by the telephone and defeats it in a fight. This however leads her to be kicked into the garden by Gorgeous where they have an anime fight!

She might be Gorgeous but she wil blue ball you!

Kungfu ends up being kicked back into the piano room, where through a journal they found earlier Prof realises the way to fight off this evil is to beat up the painting of the cat. As Kungfu wants to kick it she is eaten by a lamp!  All hope seems lost as we see trippy visuals of all the dead girls and their body parts floating around an abstract background.. we also get Visuals of Sweet’s body.. being in a clock being grinded into just blood by the gears..so she might not have been a naked doll killed by mattresses after all?  Luckily the girls once again can see these animations meant for the crowd and they react to it. This causes Kungfu to return from the afterlife…. well partially.. just her legs return.. she kicks the cat painting and with lighting the painting vanishes along with Kungu! The evil seems vanquished.

I said PiaNO! Don’t eat her. But I guess I did my cries did not strike a chord.

We cut back to the coach who has arrived at the plot of land and the Melon guy tells him the girls are dead! Showing his true colors as an evil minion of the woman! He wants to prevent the coach from going up the hill and he does this by……. trying to sell him Melons. Coach Togo says he doesn’t want to buy a melon! This upsets the farmer guy and he asks what fruit the coach likes! The coach says he only likes bananas. The farmer is so shocked by this that he is defeated and her turns into a pile of skulls and bones… however.. for defeating this evil coach Togo has to pay the ultimate price… he says bananas are everywhere.. and he turns into  a pile of bananas.

I’m a Chiquita Banana and I am here to say.. “If you don’t buy a melon, you’ll become me yay!

Back inside the cat painting is now back on the wall having recovered because something in the diary was misinterpreted and the cat painting begins to vomit. The room begins to fill with blood like cat vomit and Prof and Fanta now on a raft try to paddle away from it , trying to get to safety. Prof however falls in the cat vomit/blood because she lost her glasses and can no longer see. This makes her clothes disappear and she suddenly begins to smile widely as she happily lets herself drown in the red liquid.Fanta paddles into another room and encounters Gorgeous who helps her off her raft. Tired Fanta cuddles up to her best friend and says she wants to rest. Just giving up and allowing herself to be eaten.. or well that is the term used for those who died. They all got “eaten”. 

Acid! Using the right kind versus using the wrong kind!

The movie ends up with the billowing step mother showing up to befriend her new daughter in a tranquil environment. We get an explanation for what has been going on that I am not going to spoil .. you can discover what this was about by yourself.. but of course it does not make that much sense either. That plot has no resolution as everyone dies. Gorgeous tells her billowing stepmother that her friends will be awake soon and that they will be hungry..hinting that her friends are ghosts now as well and that the billowing stepmother will be fed to them.. but no! Gorgeous eyes glow like the cat and the head of her fathers new girlfriend catches fire and sort of melts off.  Which cuts off to a character/credit roll featuring the girls frolicking in the mountains.

The hills are alive with the sound of a confused audience!

Something not Previously visited

I haven’t even come close to capture all the weirdness. There is an odd dancing scene where Auntie zooms around like a witch on the ceiling! Auntie stops existing at one point as she becomes more interwoven with the house and so does the cat. It goes so weird that one point Gorgeous as a ghost can manifest as a mouth or eyes inside the house just showing random body parts. There is a dancing skeleton as well and so much more!  There is so much random stuff happening all the time that it feels as if we are watching a story that is free from the restraints of sanity itself. Dialogue flows odd, people can break the fourth wall but sometimes can also not.  There is a scene where Kungu is attacked by random burning objects that she just kicks away and then wonders… well that was weird.. Anyway I wonder where the rest of the group is. Nothing follows common logic, it is a combination of bizarre scenes mixed with a very thing overarching narrative.

I fell into colours once.. .it was not fun!

By going through the plot in the way I did I will admit I omitted the one link with the sane world it still has to make it even seem more odd.. but to be honest..even knowing of what this ghost actually is relates in any way to what is happening. In a way it’s a story about eternal despair and the girls are just nourishment for the suffering of the entity to go on longer. While Auntie sort of is the ghost.. the cat is also a part of the ghost..but it can travel and he is also established as a Witch’s cat implying auntie is also a witch.. but she is not.  Also what we see as auntie might not be auntie it might actually be the entire house.. but it is all very unclear. Even when all the answers are given to you! Yet strangely that is this movie’s strength. 

See this is what happens if you fall into colours!

This movie is like a fever dream, they are impossible to explain to people yet  we can not help but be entertained by our own strange dreams. Rhyme and reason are cast aside for entertainment and it does result in both hilarious as well as kind of spooky scenarios. The comedy in this movie is genuinely funny, the silliness, the bizarre choices to play several soundtracks trough each other, the pink filter that comes across the screen.  The fact that the old lady isn’t even an old lady it all is super light! The guy turning into bananas had me in stiches! He did NOTHING in that movie but it was amazing. Yet at the same time I can still see the horror part of it! We aged out of that but for the time that movie had some very spooky visuals and without knowing what is going to happen.. not even having a clue, there a lot to like. There is no real movie like this in all it’s strangeness.

One of these faces will be your expression while watching this movie!

Something Alien

So how do we rate this?! I do not know!  I really liked the movie but there is also SO much wrong with it. The characters are more 2 dimensional than most of our Waifus. There is no real plot and dialogue can seem more random than your random Lucky Star episode. The movie is written by a thirteen year old girl and by Arceus it shows! This movie in a way feels like one of those meme things where a comic book artist or a painter or whatever draws their children’s drawings as proper cartoon characters but leaves the nonsensical in it. Is it a good drawing?! Sure?! Is it a good creature?! Uhm.. tricky! I loved watching this.. but do I love it as a movie? Do I love the experience?! Once more I compare it to having a dream! There are very weird dreams and I love telling people about them and that my brain can work in that way, do I love the actual dream?! I am not sure.

Best kill of the movie!

There truly is nothing to compare this movie to, the acting is very uniquely directed, the sound design that is a mix of weird 70’s music with classic tunes and character music playing trough one another is also not something I have really experienced and as for the story… <Mind Explosion>.  Giving this movie a grade feels about as right as grading a super market customer or a shopping cart as a grocery store product after it fell into a fridge or was accidentally labeled with a price.  Sure it is there in the same realm and you MIGHT be able to enjoy the customer like you enjoy your chicken fillet..but would you?! I would be super entertained by seeing a kid fall into one of the fridges at my super market but after facebook ask me to leave a review I will never say 10/10 kid fell in the fridge!  Worth a watch.. but extreme weirdness warning!

A Pokémon Urban Legend: A Look Lavender Town Syndrome

Greetings once again mortals! Pokémon is a tricky subject to put in a Halloween context, I could talk about Creepy Pokedex entries but I have been over those several times already so it is time for something a bit different. A creepy story surrounding Pokémon. A Urban Legend if it were. A legend called “Lavender Town Syndrome”

A mysterious event

In the year 1995 Junichi Masuda was working on a track for a spooky town in the game of pokémon.  However his hearing doesn’t pick up certain frequencies that are in this mix.  Little did they know this would have serious consequences. February 1996 Pokémon Red and Green are released in Japan and everything is great, the game is a huge success. Yet in the spring of that same year the country is suddenly terrorised by a string of suicides of young children. They have no real connection or so it seems.Many of these suicides came completely out of the blue with some of the childerens having never even displayed somberness before. 

A link with these children however is made when more and more children  start showing up at the doctor’s office complaining about serious headaches. As it turns out, all these children have been playing Pokémon Red and Green! By the time a link is found over 200 Japanese children are said to have committed suicide. All of them have their game files saved in or near Lavender town. The theory was made that in a high frequency register there were a few tones that could only be heard by the untainted hearing of your youngest. On a binaural level their little brains were harmed. Nosebleeds headaches and various mood swings were detected in the children all across Japan, and Nintendo and Game Freak rushed out a fixed version where the tune had been changed into a lower register, cancelling the effects of this cursed song. 

A risky test!

A creepypasta that came out  in the year of 2010 dubbed “This the Lavender Town syndrome” While this disease was confirmed to be a hoax there might be more to this story.  The song actually does seem to wors on a binaural level. As tested by several people, standing long enough in Lavender town with the original rendition of the song leaves people with a mild sense of dread.  In some cases with more troubled listeners it is even said to have provoked anxiety attacks. This song has since leaked to YouTube so of course I decided to listen to this song for an extended period of time. I can feel rather somber, and I have over the past year on several occasions considered self harm or even beyond. So obviously I would be vulnerable if I had perfect hearing!  Would it affect me?! I could post the link here, but just in case there are very sensitive person with a compulsion to click on every YouTube Video.. I rather not!

When I started this test I did not not believe the myth. It has been more or less busted already, yet something did not sit right about me about the theorie! But more on that later. I listened to the song while I was doing other research for this post. About twenty minutes in I started to experience something!  No it was not  melancholy or headache, in fact it might not even be dread, instead I began to feel rather vulnerable. I was super grateful for my can of diet coke.. glad I still had that and that it was properly cold!  I also really loved my little snack I had with me. I did not experience a forced emotion but I felt slightly amplified in my own. That was still pretty weak though! I could just be under the influence of my own body craving something sweet.  So I took a risk and I looked up an edited version which claimed to have an amplified effect.

Once more up until the twenty minute mark nothing really changed..except for the fact that since I appreciated my snacks so much they depleted rather fast and I was upset about it. Yet 21 one minutes in I began struggling with my internet research, I did not remember what search prompts to type anymore. I forgot the existence of some of the simplest words.  I began to feel a vague feeling of dread but as it progressed it almost seemed as if I was experiencing sleep paralysis while I was awake. For some reason I felt I was going to die. The enhanced track is 11 minutes long and after the fear set in I finished the track but after that I had to turn it off.  That certainly was an odd experience.

The explanation of Lavender Town Syndrome is rather wrong but the creepy pasta is cleverly developed. The Version of the Pokémon game we got in the west, is basically a 2.0 or 1.5 version from what Japan originally got. The first version they had was quite a big mess filled with even more glitches, ugly sprite work and other flaws. This let to an update being published that did include a slightly altered version of the original lavender town syndrome. This already creates a credibility that there was something wrong with that song. It was something that had to be fixed. Yet there is no real clear explanation of what happened with the real song. It seems some complaints were shared between the real reason and the fake one.. but we do not know for sure. Yet why would you release an entire new game that just has some slightly better sprite work?!  In 1995 the Virtual Boy was a thing and those complaints about headache induction were also never fixed.

My grandpa used to be a hypnotist and while I never really had the audience or the patience to read trough the dry material that he had on how to practice that he told me that we can make people do just about everything if you can set up a suggestion well enough. For example he would do this act where he drew a circle on the floor and put people in. He would tell them they could not exit the circle. He experimented a bit with that and found out that a black or red circle.. or a white one worked more consistently than if he used other colours. Green and Blue were less efficient. Red means stop.. so it is much easier to convince the brain to stop!  This to an extend can explain “validation” of the Lavender Town Syndrome as well.  We KNOW something is wrong with the song.. so it’s not hard to be fooled into thinking it is more harmful than it actually is. Could we be hypnotising ourselves into these effects without knowing it? Or is someone else trying to hypnotise us?

The Science of Sound

The issue with the legend is that it only seems to apply to kids! This is where things go wrong. It is implied that in the high frequency range subliminal messages are hidden. Soundwaves CAN affect the body, however when it comes to sound the higher the frequency  the easier it effect is “scattered” and lost. What is inaudible to us most of the time means  you have to touch whatever is causing the sound. So already can see the chance of it having an effect being decreased. However Pokémon did appear on the Gameboy, a handheld device.  Making range.. improbable but maybe still possible. If  ever played a Gameboy in the dark you know how close you need to hold it to your face or how you have to play with it. The second problem is that in my research I never found a documented proof of high frequencies, being used as tools to induce depression. So the myth that kids here do something that tells them to kill themselves seems busted. It is most likely something to make the story a bit scarier!  As it targets something so innocent as a kid! If we assume that Lavender Town Syndrome could affect to everyone though it strangely becomes more realistic.

 There is a counterpart to Ultrasound sounds in the form Infrasounds. These are tones played at a frequency of below 20 hertz and are outside of our hearing range. However these tones have a big range and can reach you more easily. It seems that these sound waves can affect the gasses in your lungs and to a lesser extend the liquids in your body as well. Turbines or certain engine sounds are known to have these types of low tones and these can result in people getting headaches and experiencing nausea. Prolonged exposure can also produce feelings of anxiety and confusion. These symptoms are all very similar with the beginning stages of Lavender Town Syndrome. Could it be that the original Lavender Town song did not use high tones but instead got it’s effectiveness from it’s low tones? Could they have accidentally put in these sounds that make people anxious and can give headaches?!  Well a little more research shows it might not even have been accidental. While an engine/generator or a Wind Turbine creates sound as a byproduct there is one fairly well known entertainment source that in fact uses Infrared for it’s anxiety inducing effects. Infrasound is fairly commonly used in haunted houses!

Lavender Town is the haunted town so it makes sense and even seems that they probably designed their song like one in a haunted house. It hits that brief for me as well. So maybe they just overdid it and a few sensitive kids got sickish. Yet could it drive people to suicide? Unlikely.. at best it might be able to push people over the edge. Which is much more likely to happen from something constant like a Turbine than a limited area song such as lavender town.  Can sound make you depressed?  Well .. I did not find any documented causes of a song or sound causing a full on depression however.. the counterpart of Infrasound.. the earlier mentioned Ultrasonics have gained results in combating depression. People exposed to high doses of Ultrasonic sound can get cheerier. With these two sounds basically being counterparts I think it is fairly plausible that in high enough doses the opposite can occur as well.  It will probably require serious extended time that is unlikely to occur but it might be possible.

Over the Edge

Now for a possible hands on experience with what I shall refer to as “sound poisoning”. It occured about 11 years ago. Over my life I have experienced a few times where I wanted to end everything.. but never did I have difficulty to fight off that compulsion except for one time. I was on a vactation with friends! I knew I was prone to seasickness but my friends really wanted a boat trip and did not believe I would get super sick. They wanted to have a fun day with me.. so I took some travel medicine and hoped for the best.

We decided to sit in the middle of the boat as much as possible as a compromis so I would not get sick.. however since my motor skills are clunky I was slow in navigating the ship and the bow spots were taking So we had to move to the back. We were sitting close to the motor  and this boat had the engine basically right beneath us. Just 10 minutes of shore I began to feel queesy and before we even began to talk about the stop at the “secret” beach.. I was sick as heck! I was so sick and nauseous that I just wanted to stop feeling like that .. at any cost. I REALLY wanted to jump  headfirst into that screw so this horrible feeling would be over. It wasn’t THAT long of a boat ride either just about an hour…and by the time I was giving up the ghost we were already halfway there. Still even a minute seemed to long! I wanted to end it all right now just to stop feeling so increddibly sick! I have never been AS sick on a boat.

In actuality , I should be in a rather favourable spot! I had taken medicine to alleviate travel sickness and I knew I was prone to this so the night before I even went light on the drinks and the partying. Yet for some reason.. I felt so horrible to the core that I still remember that feeling as the most misserable I have ever been..and I’ve been trough a few other things.
It got to a point that I asked my friends to go deeper in the boat with me and not sit by the screws or things I could harm myself with because I needed a way to stop myself. My friends told me to fuck off because they wanted to look over the water and did not feel like moving to a spot with less view, one friend saw how bad I was and decided to come along though. We looked for some crew and in my best Spanish I tried to explain what happend..he helped me to an English sailor who took me to an off limits cabin in beneath the bow that the crew would use to get away from the annoying drunk people on their boat and have a little moment of quite. It also doubled as a lot of other things… but there was at least a table and some chairs in there.

My friend went back and I had a brief talk with the sailor who got me some water, as by then I was full on crying and so colour shifted that small kids on the boat were scared of me. I spend the most of the remainder of the trip there alone, and later on the way back I was completely alone.. but within a minute or 2 of being in the room and sipping my water I began to fell better. The secret day at the beach was wasted for me.. there was free barbecue and booze but I may have drank two small bottle of water and other than that spend the day recovering from my feeling horrible.

On the way back I thought. .. I am gonna die again.. but while in the cabin I felt was less sick. Sure I just lay on the floor of that room with my eyes closed waiting for the trip to be over.. but when I emerged as we were docking.. all my friends were sick. Except for one. They came to check up on me and after they took a stroll across the boat, spending some time in the front. My friends who sat above the engine all felt sick and one even glum. Could it be that our negative feelings were amplified by the Infrasound?! I can’t confirm it.. but while I have been forced on a boat after that.. I never felt THAT horrible! I did not even feel the same on return trip when I was “less” exposed to a source of Infrasound. So while I did not end up jumping to my death.. I am fairly certain that IF it was “Sound Poisoning” that day.. prolonged exposure can definitely push you off that edge. There are also sound devices that make you sick .. as some sort of prank device.. and my friends who never get sick plus some other people in the back got sick as well…so I always assumed it was plausible.

Theory

In an extrapolation of that let’s take a look at the Lavender Town Syndrome again and make it sound a bit more probable. From experience I have experienced anxiety and a crippling effect to my mental fortitude by a prolonged exposure to the original and enhanced Lavender Town Song. It triggered a need to escape from it and after which within minutes my fortitude returned to me. It also was nothing strong enough to compel me to any acts.. it just made me feel significantly worse. More so an amplifying effect for the negatives than creationary.
However from first hand experience I have also been pushed very close to that edge with similar complaints with or close to a possible source of Infrared sounds. So the myth is not without ANY merit. While playing through the game however the song isn’t played long enough to really receive a high enough dosage of sound to notice any effect as they only become apparent after the 20 minute mark. The way the town is structured no one will be out that long and exaggerated effects only trigger after 40 minutes.. which makes it near impossible.

However if we apply a simple modifier to this story things begin to make sense again. You see Pokémon released in February of 1996.. and in the early spring of that month the suicides have been registered. So these suicides happened somewhere in between February and the end of April.  So I wondered.. could people feel bad in that period?!  A little research does show that those months are within the Japanese flu season. It would account for the increased amounts of doctor visits as it already is flue season more people will go to the doctor. “Sound Poisoning”  enlarging your complaints seems possible so that kids felt sicker than with normal flu sort of makes sense.  My dad told me switching a device on and off uses more battery power than letting it run for a bit so if I took a five minute break I would often leave my gameboy running.  When your sick you play more sluggishly and eat soup in between and  maybe watch some tv as well… shiver in a blanket who knows.  So if we assume these are just sick children staying at home playing video games and idling about a bit .. I can see their symptoms get worse. For those very susceptible to these things I can see them get VERY sick and hopeless.

Perhaps they semi doze off with their handheld besides them and take on longer concentrations of sound. The need for peace and quite in Japan is already a bit higher so there being little to compensate might be possible and given how stressful the japanese school system can be they are already more inclined to depressive thoughts, as a known statistic. It requires some unlikely change of events to occur but the myth might not be fully impossible. If we take the super gameboy into account for example, the SNES peripheral that allowed you to play Pokémon in semi colour..with pokemon having their correct base colour all of the sudden.. it makes a lot more sense on why you would not briefly turn off the device when you eat a bowl of soup. That is also THE way to play at home without draining your batteries.  In a set up like that Lavender Town Syndrome would be more likely to occur.  One does not simply get up when feeling super sick to turn that off.. you just go limp and wait for the strength to turn that off.  as for how effective sound can be.. there are prank devices that use Infrared sound that are pretty crippeling. There are devices using it that are as effective as a bottle of Epikek and I have experienced how depressing intense nausea can be. 

So while it is unlikely that there is a Pokémon induced string of suicides.. it is  not impossible. It would be improbable enough that this could easily be covered up or discredited as a hoax. By simply helping spread the rumour that it is from high tones and making it exclusive to kids it becomes an impossible story. However!  Pokémon back in the first generation was almost exclusively played by kids, whom are both under a fair amount of pressure with the school system an are much more prone to become sick due to flue season. Back in those days, consoles had no sign of stand by mode and often a game could not even save as amazing as Pokémon could! You would lose a lot of progress so by instinct we already let our game run if we could not play for a tick. Prolonged exposure is quite possible in the mindset of the time.

How Pokémon would look on the SNES

So if we explain the myth that way, let’s look at actual change it would have caused in Japan. If we look at the suicide rates in 1996 in Japan about 3500 people in the age of 10-19 (deemed kids)  commited suicide in Japan.  That equals 291 each month. Now it is hard to exclude teens here as those take the biggest chair. .but children suicide is a HUGE problem in japan.  Let’s say teens take 75% of that figure that still would mean that somewhere between 140-and 210 kids would end their life in the period Lavender Town Syndrome was said to occur. This is within range of the myth’s 200! This doesn’t even include younger people still so even if teens take a bigger slice of the pie (and when I say teens I count 16 to 19 year olds) the number of 200 never fully seems out of reach. It’s on the high end of the estimate but if we consider that  Lavender Town Syndrome simply makes you more likely to take your life rather then forcing you to do so.. it doesn’t seem that odd that suicide rates would be at that specific number.  The numbers of the myth DO work out.

Lavender Town in the first game requires you to get a certain device to make progress, however this is the most cryptic part of your journey so far so I can see it as a bit of a bottleneck. It makes sense that children get stuck there for a bit. Especially in the first wave of players with no guides out yet. So among those unfortunate souls that were lost it would make sense in a way that they are in our around that part. Except for maybe victory road it is the most cryptic and tricky part of the game after all. So perhaps Lavender Town Syndrome could simply be a statistic that got interpreted the wrong way. Perhaps it is a mere case of unrelated events happening at the same time… yet perhaps everything did influence each other , more then we can ever know. In that case Lavender Town Syndrome would be less about killer cartridges and more about a freaky.. Final Destination like event…which would go mostly unnoticed.

So could it be that Lavender Town Syndrome is in fact real?! No.. most likely not. Yet there are situations surrounding it that make it simply less impossible than one might think! Given that a suicide in Japan is 3x more likely to be caused by a health induced concern than anything else only adds to this story for example! We might have misunderstood or told the story wrong but there might me more to this myth than we might think! Nintendo  or the Pokémon Company if I have discovered something I am fine with deleting this discovery.. in return for a trip to Tokyo and visiting the Pokémon Café and Poké Center at your costs! .. After the world has returned to normal of course! Because I also want to hug Chef Pikachu or server Pikachu!
Of course if you want me to investigate more Ghost Stories about Pokémon my dearest Nintendo I am also very willing to that.. same price!

Wholesome Horror and a dead dog! Yomawari Night Alone Review

Greetings Mortals and those who have ascendent to monsters this month! For the blog’s birthday back in July I got a lot of birthday wishes, a bit of help on Ko-Fi and one gift! That gift came from a man that is now known as Indigo! That gift was a Japanese horror game! One I knew I would review for Halloween month! See.. sometimes I do plan ahead!

The Night’s Watch

Yomawari: Night Alone was a game that was developed for PS Vita and Steam spread around the world in October 2016. Although the Japanese PS Vita game came out a year prior to the Steam version’s World Wide release. The game has since seen a release on Switch with it’s Sequel : Yomawari: Midnight Shadows as the Yomawari Long Night  Collection, launching close to Halloween 2018.  I got gifted the Steam edition and as such will be reviewing that version and that version exclusively. The game scores about a 7,5 on Metacritic. Getting mostly Positive to mixed reviews and only a handful of negative ones. It takes roughly 3 to 5 five hours to complete this game, depending on if you are prone to use a guide on what to do if you are stuck yes or no. I finished the game in about 4  and a half hours myself, which included about one hours of pointless searching, including me exploring for some hidden items.  To gain all hidden items I’d say would take.. about two more hours depending on your skill and control scheme. 

 In this game you play a nameless girl protagonist who during the tutorial is walking her dog. It is shown we can toss items as well and when we toss a stone we just picked up our dog goes to fetch it and run under a truck. Left with only a big pile of blood in the road, a torn collar and a hole in the side rails.. the girl looks flustered and makes her way home. It is there that she lives alone with her older sister. When that sister asks where Poro is the little girl is too traumatised to remember and says she doesn’t know. The older sister goes to find Poro but doesn’t seem to be returning so the traumatised little girl has to search all over town for her dog that presumably died and her sister.. whom she claims will die if she is not found. It is a journey that is filled with mysterious and dangerous spirits which want nothing more than to eat a little girl.. or to exact their terrible revenge on those who took them from this earth to early.

A not so lonely Night!

This game is brought to life in 2d topdown anime like artstyle with the main character and her sister and dog having some chibi-like qualities while the ghosts and monsters take a more “realistic” detailed appearance. The town is more in style with the Main character, being made out of soft natural tones, while monsters usually take on red and black shades or look overly large or with “wrong” details. It helps convey the issue that what you are seeing on this night does not belong to this world and it is through this style of visual trickery the game really builds it’s tension. The game is set in a sleepy small Japanese town and it’s adjacent locations such as the rice fields, the factory, the school and the woods. 

Each chapter pushes you to visit a sub-location that makes you traverse to a newly unlocked part of town. Locations feel both unique and generic at the same time which conveys a great feeling of being lost yet does clearly show you what chapter you are working on. If you are outside the school there are a bunch of straight paths,  and sideways that all look alike but you very much know you are at the school.  You constantly need to search for the most effective route for you to get a new item or clue and while the same looking path causes panic and disorientation , the unique looking location itself does limit your search area thus never making it feel too daunting.

The sense of dread is aided by the fact that this game lacks a soundtrack! Except for maybe the menu and some very sparing moments there is no music playing at all during this game. All you hear is your footsteps on the asphalt or concrete.. and some monsterlike growls and grunts.  Here and there a dog will bark and you wonder if it’s your Poro or it’s some other dog. Cat’s will cross your path to fake you out but the game doesn’t really use jumpscares to be scary. Instead it builds up to this claustrophobic anxiety. The sound design helps with this!  Most monsters don’t even make a sound but if the MC draws close to a spirit her heart starts beating loudly and the closer it is the more panicked that heart rate it becomes

The character has access to three tools to shake them off. She can outrun them by having access to a limit sprint, she can toss an item to create a distraction and she can hide behind a rose bush or certain signs. When you hide the main character closes her eyes in fear and hopes the evil goes away. Instead of monsters we see pink swirls of mist  as our heartbeat races. While you are absolutely safe in these locations and even if a monster saw you flee inside the use of the heartbeat is absolutely fear inducing. The fact that a pink/red mist is used instead of enemies always makes it a gamble if they are far enough to come out yet.. is it that creature you just saw? Or is this something else? How will it react to you coming out of hiding? Sound.. and the light of your flashlight are in most cases the only thing that makes these ghosts appear.

The strongest element of the audio-visual design of this game is most definitely the monsters/ghost. They are all so weird and extreme.  A giant spider  that has no head but instead a very humanoid face on it’s back.. check.. A zombie-like creature whose head is almost alert like a flashing light.. you know one of those alarm light or flashing lights of a cop car. A ghost dog with a disproportionate head  so it looks like one of those stone guardians? Check! And these are enemies we encounter in the first chapter! Later we encounter many many more.. and everything feels unique and special. There are even spirits of children.. who look like children except it is as if their sprite is poorly covered with a black pencil and their eyes and mouth are now light sources. 

Some of the spirits  won’t harm you but if you bump into the wrong one.. bam you are still dead, MC gets eaten in a single hit. My favourite spirit feels like Nina Tucker and Alexander.. but missing the lower half of their body!  It crawls in a straight line towards you at lighting speed and the only way to avoid is is to sprint to  the side on time. It has some qualities of Samara from the Ring as well. Spooky creatures. Each time you see something you wonder to  yourself.. Oh My Arceus.. what the heck is that! Get it away from me! You are never truly alone on this night but you REALLY want to be! 

A whole night of wholesome!

While we have control of the main character most of the time , there are some in game cutscenes that take away that control. Sometimes it seamlessly passes over into you playing again and requires split second decisions and reactions. This keeps a tension to them I don’t often see, they are needed to let the character react to things. She can for example burst into tears, fall to her feet in fear or just look extremely startled. The anime style makes it feel cute and sweet and you genuinely feel like a very young girl.  She doesn’t dare to venture off the roads too much so invisible walls in front of patches of grass are explained that way. She just wants to find her sister but tries to follow as much of the normal rules as possible.

This is reflected in the way she handles ghosts. At many moments you can encounter a “boss” ghost of the area which is usually a tormented spirit of some kind whom the main character has to bring a little offering or distract , or even perform a little chore to put them to rest.  She wants to do the right thing and will place flowers on peoples final resting places as she acknowledges them and hopes they can find peace. It is really cute! Not all spirits are just evil.. most are just lost and while we journey we see this girl come to terms with that. She isn’t happy they are so scary..but they do not deserve to suffer either. 

The age of the main character is also reflected in your menus. Your inventory feels like it is drawn with crayon, just like your map of town. It’s all drawn by the main character. Her journal entries displaying your objectives and discoveries are all written in a very childlike manner as well. It creates an endearing effect , even though we do not know anything about this main character, she doesn’t even have a name. We want to see her safe.  She is so sweet and innocent, yet she did a terrible thing.. although not intentionally! She made her sister pay for her mistake! In the end we will find out that this will not come without consequences either… yet this is one of those horror games that ends.. pretty well. At least as far as can be expected. Weirdly enough the game also doesn’t shy away from darkness. A girl being pushed from a cliff and finding her broken body happens all the same as a spirit staring at the flower at her grave and being happy.  It doesn’t go as dark as the second game which big reveal made me super upset, but it does really do well to walk a very strange but believable balance of dark and sweet.  The main character is such a good girl and I had a smile when she befriended another spirit on her journey.. but I had my heart pounding in my throat when I first encountered them.

This wholesomeness also extends to the collectibles. During your journey by visiting places you do not HAVE to visit you can encounter stuff the main character seems to call treasures. Which are non functional collectible items. These can be simply crayons, but also pieces of fashion of things that she thinks look cool or special. The final treasure she can collect are those which belong to people who met an unfortunate end or whom she at least things belong to other people. Throughout the town you find numerous billboards that sometimes have rumors or missing person reports. A description of them is given in text .. for example “wears a red cloak”   and somewhere in the map in the last seen area you find a torn piece of red fabric.  These relics connect to the bigger world for those willing to pay attention, yet you do not miss anything of the main story if you choose to ignore it. Most of these types of treasures are spirits you will never “really” encounter. You just find rumors and more often than not proof that they won’t be coming home. The main character logs all these treasures in her little notebook even making little drawings for them.  Plenty of these treasures are hidden behind small sidequests, for example you can get an egg as a treasure if you find and bring home five chickens to a coop you unlocked but forgot to close earlier. That kidlike charm is in everything you do here  and I love it.

A Long Night or a Short Night

If you rush this game and stick only to the main goal and NEVER explore you can finish this game in 2.5 hours or so?! Which caused people to complain about it, yet I feel that is a bit of a lackluster reason to shoot this game down. People also complained that if they rushed they could complain about Pokémon Sword and Shield within 8 hours which was to short. Yet these games are clearly made not just to rush. That would be the same as saying Mario sucks because if you use warp pipes it only has like 5 playable levels in my opinion.  Just because you can rush doesn’t mean you have to. Plus people who say that finished the game that fast, I assume either had a walkthrough present on how to play or watched a let’s play because there really are some parts that require you to figure out some patterns or find well hidden items. The game makes it clear enough where you should go but if you don’t constantly use the map to walk the perfect route  you get plenty of bang for your buck.  Horror should not go on too long because you can not keep that fresh for 8 to 10 hours. You might with a jump-scare style game or some deep narrative story but not in this format.  So I believe this game actually has a great length. 

However.. I am not super fond of their save system. In this you use a consumable coin to make an offer to an altar that works as a quicksave point.  From then on out using an altar  can allow you to save ..for one more coin or it can work as a quick travel point to other shrines you have uncovered. Quicksaves do record your progress but not your location upon a restart. If you want to go to bed (I play this LATE at night)  after playing this game for a bit you will respawn back at your home, then you have to find a shrine near you pray to it teleport back to the location you where at yesterday, which can be hard to read of a children’s map and thus make your way back. If you do not have coins because you tossed them as distractions or if you save too much you can not save. Getting killed usually respawns you at the last prayer too late.. with some exceptions after cutscenes or “instance” switches. For example in chapter five you will be able to transfer between the normal world and a red tinted one that houses a huge town-covering centipede… whenever you switch between worlds you gain a checkpoint there.. but not always. So it always feels a bit as a hassle to come back to the same chapter the next day which more than once forced me to finish an entire chapter before taking a break.

I do not mind the “ink ribbon” system  they go for with the coins, I think it does add some tension in Resident Evil , however in the age of streaming and let’s play respawning back at home feels really outdated.  As lazy as it may sound, I do not want to spend 10 minutes just to get back where I was before. Not only do I have to find a shrine to pray near my house I also must be sure that I have coins with me so I can pray to the altar I went to just so I get a respawn point up. So if I am out of coins I first have to venture into town to find a few, which are usually around vending machines and temples. Another issue I personally had was that I had a bad time with the controls, which more than once resulted in me tossing a stone at a shrine and  that douses the flame of the altar and negates the checkpoint. Since a few first encounters with ghosts result in certain death.. as you have no way how they work yet or how to flee from them, this means a lot of backtracking.. or at least going through hoops to end up where you were before. So sometimes chapters felt too long for the wrong reasons. Encountering new ghosts or seeing new attacks of a ghost I had no clue on how to dodge yet. It can cause a few of the trickier parts to go stale or frustrating real fast. Especially if you are out of coins!

Big Sisters Advice

The controls on PC are very clunky, walk with the arrow keys interact with z is fine but then the sprint button is mapped to E,  waving your flashlight is mapped to WSAD , tossing an item instead of cancel is mapped to X and item select is mapped to V while turning off your flashlight is mapped to B.  So the C button isn’t really used. Then through the item select menu you can switch items by pressing the sprint button instead of the arrow buttons..because you can still move when selecting items but you can not sprint?! Arrow keys Z is fairly normal for any type of game that favours a controller but the rest here makes no sense to me at all. At a certain point I just remapped almost everything! It’s fine since it’s an option to do that.. but my advice is.. play this one with a controller it plays so much nicer.  If you do not have a USB controller this game easily is worse for it.  This is also a horror game I now prefer to play earlier in the evening. Just so I can go on for stretches of an hour or so to complete a chapter. It is more enjoyable that way mostly because your journal does not update whilst in a chapter. Your goal will not update so if you forget where you were.. you are pretty lost. So play this game when you know you have a few hours available that month and you can play each chapter with the old clues still in your mind. Making notes could also be great  if you want to complete the game and get all treasures. 

This game comes with a manual and it’s not the easiest game to pick up, it is quirky and relatively slow paced. Fear doesn’t come from shouting in your microphone or a big husky man chasing you. Fear comes more in the build up of this chase, because of the unknown. It causes a sense of claustrophobia in a sense.  Will you sprint now to get to your location early.. or do you walk keeping and end out for that crawling spirit.. will you come out of hiding while the enemy is still that close? What way is his head facing?! These abnormal creatures are amazingly designed and you want to see them all, but how can you see them in all their glory without being killed.  The game wants you to have fun, explore a bit of the areas you already know.. while strictly tunnelling you in new areas to keep them feeling nice and claustrophobic and it is a formula I can deeply appreciate. 

There is however a feeling of distance you will need to be able to accept.. you aren’t seeing the adventure through the main characters eyes, you guide her, even the way you control her feels slightly less direct with a mild delay.. as if you are guiding her by her hand instead of actually controlling her. It feels unwestern.. which it is. This game really understands horror but it is very much its own brand of horror. It is a unique type of horror that I would recommend people to try out without a shadow of a doubt in my mind. The game built around it is pretty good as well, just at times it can feel a BIT too much like a Newgrounds game to completely put me under its spell.

Thank you Indigo for gifting me this wonderful game! It doesn’t rely on jump scares and more so has you actually fearing for this sweet innocent child that is one of the most adorable main characters I ever played with. For people interested in this game, you can check out the steam page here! Happy Halloween and spooky games to everyone!

Spooky Ghost Stories The Origin: Yamishibai Season 3

Hello again mortals who dwell on my island! For the spooky month I have been watching this strange.. little anime made out of short stories. Season 1 was a banger, season 2 was so… and now I watched the third season. Is it better than season 2?! According to most it is. I think it is! It does something in its final episode that makes everything better… but that also kind of messes me up in the format I do these reviews… what is going on!?

The Twisted Season

The third season of Yamishibai delivers WAAAAAY more on the horror than season 2.  While it keeps on the same directors as the second season and I expected it to be kind of bad it almost feels as if the stories chosen have since been adapted to the direction style. There is a sense of more randomness in this season. Where season 1 focussed on retelling the classic ghost stories, season 2 seemed to “set up”  for classic stories this third season seems to go bigger and bolder. It seems more focussed on original creatures slightly inspired  by folklore rather than borrowing from it heavily. In a way I’d argue these stories feel more like “Creepy Pastas” and that works out really well for me. I get everything much more! There is still the “what the heck did I just watch” vibe but never did I wonder “does this references anything.. am I missing something”. So one of my biggest issues with the second season and even the first season has been fixed. However this comes with a new problem.. but I am not sure if it is an actual problem..because.. later we see that stylistic choice connects to a certain story.

The Narrator of season 1 and 2 has been replaced by a young boy who hears voices from the other side which makes him draw. These drawings form the inspiration for the new stories. Stories have no more explanation on who the main character is and we are drawn in from the sketch. It is a stylistic choice I like a lot that can add some extra tension. We do not always know who the main character is and it offers that extra bit of insecurity in some cases. In others  it requires the story to set up the characters just a tiny bit more which already makes them slightly more endeared to us. At the same time though this does take a bit away from the Kamishibai show illusion. In this season we also see a slight artstyle change. The Kamishibai like images that the show is famous for feel more colourful and cheerful! They lack the grim eeriness of the first two seasons. Almost as if these target a younger audience.. which makes sense because this storyteller is a lot younger. And just like his mind seems to be a bit distrubed so do these stories change in a similar vein.

The stories seem more focussed on body horror and blatant monsters rather than ghosts that follow a certain set of rules. No instead we focus more on creepiness of twisting necks, changing shapes and gruesome implications. We lose a tad of subtlety and cleverness but in return we get a much more intense dramatic build up.. where the crux of the show isn’t always at the end.  Sometimes it even happens near the middle of the episode.  A few stories had me pretty scared and there certainly is a lot less “missed” opportunities. However since the narrator is a young boy..the scares seem to reflect that mindset. What would an eight year old come up with as a scary story. This results in this being the season that has some of the scariest creatures you have seen so far, who are further away from any logic.. or stories that would really resonate with children a lot…but the end scares are often a tad childish.. so in a way this is the season of untapped potential. The idea is there but the punchline often misses.

The other side!

Yamishibai season 3 ditches the classical ghost-stories more in favour of monster stories.. while there are ghosts and  spiritual forces, they are a lot less subtle about their ways. Where season 2 had people startled, cursed or possessed by the end.. in this season the forces do not inconvenience you here the forces are downright trying to get you killed or mamed. This makes season 3 a very different show as season 2. Where  moral lessons seemed to form the core to induce the haunts of the second season here it  seems more to be induced by over conconfidence seasons don’t feel as preachy and instead more like a classic horror movie! Like the past two blogs about this show I will discuss the plot synopisis after which I give each episode a micro review! Be warned if you think a synopsis is a spoiler.

Episode 1: Lend it to Me

A young man visits a bathhouse after work, he seems to be the only male guest when a woman asks him to lend him stuff she did not seem to get at the checkout counter. The two have a talk and she sounds cute! Then the requests the woman begins to make start to get stranger and stranger and she begins to ask more and more aggressively.

What a great way to begin this season! It is a very good episode that properly introduces the scares. At first you do not know why! Why does the girl ask for a pair of scissors or a razor!  Why is she so upset he hasn’t got one!  The way old gritty movie filter that shows gives the bathhouse a bit of a grimey derelict look and the disembodied echoed voice from over the wall makes you wonder what will happen. When it is time for the big creature reveal we get a very brief and surreal shot, that can easily leave you jump-scared. It does not come where you expect it either.  The creature design is wacky and makes you wonder what you have seen and ends in some very weird end credits.. that leave you pondering.. we do not get an “end..” we get a sketch.. that looks like a horrifying cap off. A very strong start and one of the better episodes of the series even.

Episode 2: Tunnel

Two friends are driving through the mountains when a wrong turn makes them realise they are short on gas. Encountering a tunnel that seems the quickest way back to the interstate they drive in and of course run out of gas.  Tired from pushing the car they take a break when they see two children just outside the car window…but is it really just two children?!

While the first episode crossed us over from the Old Yamishibai into this new one .. this completely embraces it’s new style. The way that it seems to reach it’s climax in the middle of the episode is quite strange.. but we see why when it is clear this show pays as much attention to scaring you with the aftermath as the actual event. Sometimes an ambiguous fate is not enough. This season is more like “Oh My God they are eating her, and then they are going to eat me Oh my goooooooddd!” .. but not in the Troll 2 sort of way.. you are told what these monsters are capable of and what you should fear… only to reveal the truth is even more hopeless. This season caters into the fear of certain death and in this episode it is down very powerful. The last show in the tunnel is amazing and the linke we can make to it is nothing short but dreadful! One of the seasons highlights for me.

Episode 3: Rat

A young couple just started to live together in a new apartment , to save some money they went for a very cheap apartment which has a rat infestation. The girl being afraid of the rats gets bitten by one. Her partner then has to leave on a business trip and leaves her alone with nothing to defend herself but a rattrap. He tells her she has to get used to the rats..and we see her being slowly pushed to the brink of insanity as she tries to follow her husband’s will.

This is one of the lesser episodes for me! The reveal in the end was quite predictable and feeling odd. This is the first story that really seems to lean into the younger and more inexperienced story teller scenario. Or I could just be justifying this while in the end the episode isn’t all that scary. The visuals are noticeably brighter here in that the two episodes that went before and while the visual style does fit some of the episodes I think for this episode it all feels too bright and too clean. Let us feel they live in a rat infested hellhole instead of a clean house with some adorable little critters.  The ending visual is super silly and it doesn’t seem to end as powerful as most of the other episodes.  No matter how I look at it this one is an odd one out! I do have to give it some credits though for the tense scene before the conclusions so it is not totally without merit.

Episode 4: The Noisy Hospital Room

A fairly young man wakes up in the hospital after a nightmare, seeming himself being operated on in a room he was told by a nurse not to visit. When his vivid nightmares have given him cold-sweats however he has to explore the hospital to find him some change of clothes or he might catch a cold. During his search for a new nightgown he learns some horrible truths of this hospital.

A mid tier episode that is a bit bogged down because of the odd sound design that is present throughout this entire season. There is a lot of laughter, whispers and other effects that are meant to sound creepy that in fact sound rather cheesy. Like A Wilhelm Scream doesn’t really invoke fear anymore even if someone meets a gruesome end. The twist is deliciously evil  in this episode but once again the entities seem slightly over designed giving it a slightly comical appearance. It feels more like something you show you kids in a picture book as a monster than something you need to be scared off. The strong dialogue that clearly captures the fear by the good voice acting can’t save the episode from mediocrity either as it is slightly drowned out by stock effects.This is the first episode that uses a number of fake outs to set us up for a proper scare but unfortunately fails to deliver a proper scare afterwards.  Too childish for adults but a great story for a scaredy cat and wouldn’t you know it I have the perfect score for that!

Episode 5:  Museum of Taxidermy

Taxidermy is that art of stuffing a dead animal and turning it into a “stuffed” statue preserved through the ages. Now that that has been explained for those who do not know .. or did not know the english word… this episode is set in a museum filled with stuffed animals. A couple staying in town runs in there to take shelter from the rain. Luckily the museum is free and they take a peek. The woman gets fascinated by how lifelike the animals look, particularly interested in a dog that almost seems to follow her with her eyes. Her boyfriend decides to prank her and shet gets mad and leaves.. trying to enter his hotel room later he finds her unresponsive and his own key missing.. So now he has to go back to the museum and search for it.

Where the sound design last episode was pretty shitty here it shines in telling a message. The fact that the hotel is called Hotel Otherside.. and the young boy  narrator keeps screaming for things to happen on the other side.. hints at a connection between the stories and the real world which this episode really makes clear. Something is odd.. as if we are in a twilight zone of sorts. It banks heavy on that feeling and ends up with a satisfying punchline and amazing end visual. It is sick, it is twisted and it looks just silly enough  to not be full of gross-out horror. It walks the fine line very well and we have a clear idea what happened on the other side..even though we never get to fully see it!  Very nice with enough classic horror vibes form both the Twilight Zone and House of Wax to be deemed one of my top 3 episodes!  Yet this time it has some competition and the third place spot!

Episode 6: “That Side” Festival

A festival is in town. Asako and Miki attend all sorts of fun activities together. They are having a great time until Asako gets mesmerised by a booth filled with mysterious masks. She loses sight of Miki and asks herself loudly where Miki went. One of the masks seems to respond with “That Side” suddenly the fair isn’t the same place it used to be anymore and everything goes extremely twisted and dark.

A mid tier episode that has some amazing visuals but at the same time it feels so over designed that it stands out a bit. The cotton candy vendor on the Other Side of things for example spins cotton candy by vomiting his own intestines  on a cotton candy stick.  While it looks gruesome it also looks like.. too much.  It gets a cartoony quality. There are a lot of creatures here that look extremely silly and rudimentary. It is a great ride and I bet it would be awesome for a horror artist to check out these designs. This episode has some heavy Spirited Away vibes through it.. but then a darker take.  It however misses the finality of the rest of the season and while I don’t need finality in all episodes I really wish here we would at least see the girl become bound to this new world or lose herself in it or something.  It needed a nail to the coffin sort of speak. Without it.. it is nice but is exactly down the middle for me  when it comes to spookiness. I can’t  mark it as that so I will label it Scares without Nightmares…but if you can get past the odd designs you can scale this up one tier!

Episode 7: Behind

During Summer camp one guy insists on bothering the girls dorm even if his friends are too pooped to pop!  When he keeps insisting his friends ask him how he has  so much energy! He tells them he doesn’t but he has been having nightmares, people laughing and a creature then coming into the classroom and turning his head around on his neck but he knows that if he sees whatever is doing that .something horrible will happen.Later that night one of his friends wakes needing to go to the bathroom when he hears cracking sounds from his friends neck.

A very scary episode that is really hindered by a single really weird visual! It feels so silly it ruins the entire episode. Luckily I came to play Yomawari and I could accept the weirdness which gave me some appreciation of it. If you want to know how silly the visuals go…look up the game Hylics or Hylics two, a surreal RPG “series” and you have an idea on how odd it will look. I would have loved to see this episode go a bit more subtle myself but the combination of “have you heard’ and then seeing another effect occur is pretty cool.  Is it linked together, are there dark forces at work here what will happen outside the dream.. what happens inside the dream. There is a light and a dark theme going on as well. That once again seems to be describing the existence of two sides. Had the ending not looked unintentionally comical this would have been my third favourite episode or maybe even my second favourite but now it has to do with fourth place.

Episode 8: The Empress Doll

Daphne, Fred, Shaggy and Velma travel to a haunted house and go to investigate it. Well it’s not really those four .. but still four meddlesome kids visiting a haunted house and encountering a presence. This one seems to be of an Empress Doll.. one of those stacks of porcelain dolls on a stair things you might have seen them before! While the house seems clear and safe at first a glance trough a mirror allows them to peer into a world yet unseen.

While the episode does start really suspenseful the end screen is yet again another very derpy looking monster. Which ruins the tension. What makes it worse is that the big “kill”  makes no sense. We see someone suffer in a certain way. Making us believe either their soul was taken or they got so scared that their mind just shut down. Yet suddenly things completely shift and it makes no sense in the timeline of this episode. When did that happen?!  Did they leave the person behind? If so that is rather poorly established. Once more the tension build up is great, reminding me a bit of the Amityville Horror series which I really like. It also is somewhat reminiscent of the Warner siblings horror series like Annabelle. It succeeds in once again establishing “another side” but fails to deliver another scare.

Episode 9: The Fourth Man

A girl in highschool overheard a rumor about an urban legend about “the handshake men”  . These are people who will ask you for a handshake. If you refuse to give them a hand they will crush you into a meatball but if you happen to encounter a fourth one you have to refuse or they will bite off your hand. Later at night the girl is asked by her sister to go to her school as she left her notebook there and cant finish her homework afterwards. On their way back the girl encounters a strange looking man asking for a handshake.

This easily is the best episode of the season. It follows that Urban Legend feeling of the first two seasons but doesn’t require any prior knowledge due to explaining the myth entirely. It feels like a genuine Japanese ghost story, similar to Red Cloak, Blue Cloak, just a bit more tame. It has several jump scares, fake outs and misdirections and the conclusion it reaches in the end is satisfying! While we do not see anything gruesome happen there are some pretty heavy implications being made here that reminds me of some Goosebumps like novels I used to read.  It has atmosphere, good visuals and nothing too silly to ruin the experience! This is definitely a story you can tell by the campfire or during a horror D&D campaign. If you watch anything be sure to check out this one!

Episode 10: Merry-Go Round

A young couple is visiting a mini theme park sitting on the roof of a Mall. They have only just arrived when they encounter a creepy clown, giving the girl a red balloon. Soon after it is announced the mall is already closing. Super disappointed the girl pouts when the clown offers her one last ride on the Merry-Go-Round for free. The girl gets on and seems to have a lot of fun but she might have misinterpreted the words “one last ride”

This one really benefits from the brighter visual style. Of course the clown giving away blood red balloons immediately evokes memories of It. Yet when the Merry-Go-Round goes round and round this episode seems to start to take more and more cues from the bad Nightmare on Elm Street movies. It delves into the absurd once again and so many elements seem to not play a role in this. There are a lot of creepy people around the Merry-Go Round but non of them really seem to have any correlation to what is going on.  Maybe they do but the connection is not made clear at all. As a result this episode feels really disjointed. It does have some creepy visuals  and I don’t even mind what happens in the end all that much but the dialogue, the set up and the result do not seem to match up. As if I am watching three different writers create a four minute story. While I do enjoy extreme random horror at times, in a four minute interval it is too much to make this enjoyable. 

Episode 11: Cuckoo Clock 

A young girl staying over at her grandma’s house with her mother for a few days discovers her Grandma’s clock and is immediately obsessed, wanting to see the Cuckoo pop up every hour she has some good and innocent fun. On her first night there the girl wakes up a few moments to midnight, very thirsty! She goes downstairs to drink when she notices the clock will nearly reveal the Cuckoo again.. when at twelve the Cuckoo doesn’t show up.. the girl goes to investigate a bit closer… she shouldn’t have!

This episode was okay! I really do like the episodes where people get obsessed with Mundane objects holding less than Mundane powers. This is another one that can feel insanely silly but this one still feels like it could be an actual ghost story of the orient. This is how you do silly episodes!  It once again uses body morphing for a shock effect but this one is done kinda cool, even if it also looks very odd. The story beats the story hits feel logical next to each other and while it is not all that scary it is just a fun four minute watch. Reminding me a bit of those Goosebumps Junior novels! Safe for your kid! Fun for the family!

Episode 12: In the Water

It’s the competitive swimming season. One particular schools ace is put under a lot of pressure from his coach so now he has to train and train and train. Luckily he can train at night since he has been given a key to the school’s pool! Just after dark at 8 in the evening, the boy decides to go for a final training session. During this session he notices something odd in the pool! He thinks he is seeing things because he is put under so much pressure and decides to train anyway! He gets into trouble for this choice…. in record time!

This is one of those episodes that is a bit bogged down by cultural differences and plot convenience. Working to hard so you hallucinate seems to occur in many Japanese man according to this series though! Still it seems like a bad idea to jump into the water when something seems off.. it damages this horror experience for me. I doubt a semi-pro swimmer would risk jumping into the water if something dangerous might be in it. It doesn’t help that later in the episode the swimmer tries to flee the pool by swimming to the stairs.. while he could easily push him up onto the dry land way before that. How could he not push himself to saftey as soon as he could?!  Fear?! In the end I doubt it would matter as the deed had more or less already been done.. but jeesz this man seems to tried really hard to win himself a Darwin Award. Also the creature/visual has no set up, no reason to be there and it is super ugly as well. As in.. it’s ugly..but it is also not very well drawn with very weird proportions that also lead to other visuals shown before not making sense.  Bad episode!

Episode 13: —Drawings—-

Yes I actually did type what this episode is about! Well done in discovering it!  This episodes ties all stories together as from the intro of the boy drawing we don’t cut.. we see the boy drawing! A teacher finds him and asks what he is doing .. he says nothing and walks off.  She later finds out he is in her new class and tries to befriend him by asking him to draw her. He refuses telling her she is boring. As she discovers more he finds out the boy has been sketching all sorts of people who have gone missing… the boy shows up and finally agrees to draw her, and it is revealed that this boy would grow up to become the storyteller of the previous season and his stories turn kids into monsters for more stories in the future!

This episode is great for the scale! It really brings all the other ghost stories together but for that reason I have hidden the plot of this episode from you! It connects everything, intro, outro and episodes. Visuals shown in the intro of season two suddenly make sense, and the odd choices this movie makes in terms of narratives all make sense now. Some of these flaws in the stories described earlier were clearly put in with intention! While I commend them for this bold choice it also comes with a problem.. Did people make it this far?  Since it is so episodic and stand-alone one could easily watch these episodes out of order yet this one SHOULD be watched last. It doesn’t follow the rules of the show but it is amazing. The ending feels disjointed but delicious. Appealing to fans of the series and making me excited for a fourth season. The story that is interwoven in this episode feels a bit short.. as a lot of time is spent on the epilogue but it still is deeply satisfying.. though I can not rank it among the other episodes.. This is it’s own thing and it is quite good! Yet not perfect.

Into the Darkness

This season to me is much better then the second one! Albeit a tad to obvious and odd at times, I think this is for me might even rival the first season. Yes there are more lows and the highs aren’t AS high but it was enough! Where season 1 over-achieved at times this one just does the job it needs to do and it does it well. I never felt that lost and the final episode was a little cherry on top of an already pretty good season. Even as a Gaijin you can understand all these episodes and never do you have to google something to appreciate the story. Watch these after midnight just when you begin to feel.. Oh I am really tired.. that is the perfect moment where the weirdness can get to you less.. but the scares can get to you hard! I will at least give the fourth season a chance now as well! So be sure to come back for more soon!

Dungeon Mayhem: A review

Sometimes we need to take a break from all the spooky stuff going on and just have fun with cardboard! The Cabana boy was like always doing his own thing. Strolling around the beaches of Paradise looking for lost treasures! He got really excited with something he discovered. So Sunny has lured you good Paradise guests to a table at poolside with good humor, drinks courtesy of Kuro, and a deck of cards. Not a regular deck, but Dungeon Mayhem.

More Street Fighter Than DnD

Although it says Dungeons and Dragons right on the box, the actual game is more like Street Fighter. As a DM I usually take great care to be sure my players don’t get into altercations with each other, but in Dungeon Mayhem there is no dungeon and one big brawl. You might even imagine it as sort of a bar fight!

The game requires 2 to 4 players over the age of 8. You have a choice of playing Sutha the Skullcrusher (Barbarian), Azzan the Mystic (wizard), Lia the Radiant (paladin), or Oriax the Clever (rogue). Each character has their own small deck of cards with spells, attacks, defenses, and special powers specific to each class. The game is quickly set up and also quick to play – well under 30 minutes and often quite a bit shorter than that. The object is to be the last player alive. 

 “He just found out he could steal cards out of my deck – typical rogue”

The art on the cards and the captions for the special powers and so on are clearly created for gamers with a bit of tongue in cheek and a sense of humor about it all. Kyle Ferrin has done a great job on the illustrations. I mean, you only have to glance at the card Vampiric Touch and you know what it does.

This game is simple, quick, easy to learn, and under $20 USD in price. It’s great if you’ve only got a few minutes to kill, or you’re taking a break to stretch and get a snack and people are up and down from the table for a few minutes. It could even be a filler if someone is late for the regular game night, or absent.  Or you know, if there’s just some guests of Pinkie’s Paradise hanging around the pool with nothing much else to do but watch anime on their phones or play mobile games.