Scary Short Stories The Anime: Yami Shibai Season 1 Review

Anime is great! I love it! It has so many genres. Even when I compare them to western genres like action, sci-fi , romance and …… well…… there is one genre that I don’t think anime ever does “right”. With a few exceptions of course..but horror anime usually add additional genres like action or mystery and they tend to be heavy on that other genre and low on the horror. Which was weird to me! As anime has some amazing ghost stories! Luckily I found an anime for my Haloween month that I actually classify as Horror.. I even found it scary… I am just not sure it’s “anime”……….

The Devil is in the Details

Yami Shibai, whose official title is Yami Shibai: Japanese ghost stories is a fairly long running anime that actually still seems to be more or less ongoing. Currently having 7 seasons with  91 episodes in total. Each season being 13 episodes. It is produced by studio Ilca who almost exclusively produce horror content…. and the Love Live School Idol movie! However this year the same studio brought us Ninja Collection..which is a  summer anime but I am not sure if anyone is watching that. They also made a show about a fart solving problems like only a fart can do… but I am pretty sure I included that when I said they did horror. Each episode features a stand alone story but they are tied together by a masked Story teller voiced by Kanji Tsuda.. whom you might know from… Yami Shibai Season 1 through 7.. or as Kamen Rider Ryuki.   He did more things but none of it sounded familiar to me.. so he already is kind of like a ghost!

The concept of Yami Shibai is to mimic the Kamishibai theater storytelling. This is a traditional form of Japanese storytelling with picture boards being presented in a wooden cabinet. There is an old man telling ghost stories using a Kami-Shibai and his call for attention functions as the show’s intro with the stories being the actual episode. Each episode lasts for about 4 minutes. The show including the intro.. and a very creepy Hatsune Miku outro  lasts 5 minutes which means you can watch an entire season in about an hour if you skip out on the outro! The animation is very static, almost still as if an actual Kamishibai with only very minimal animation, think high budget Visual novels.. or the execution scenes in the Danganronpa games. But more on that later! Here we just factually describe the style!

Every episode is a classical ghost story, usually with a twist/bad or open ending.  For all intents and purposes I will exclusively be reviewing the first season giving episode summaries but not full on spoilers. Reviewing each unique episode in terms of how spooky they are.Micro-reviews! Yay!  I just might review other seasons throughout halloween month as well. So sorry for the spoiler.. but I did really enjoy this first season! The director changed and remained the same into the second season so I assume that is going to be even better.
Now join me as we enjoy some classical Japanese storytelling. Attention kids and adults alike come join us for story time this is Yami Shibai!

13 Ghosts

So before I talk about the entire show let’s talk about the episodes a bit first! And measure how spooky they are! The basic premises of an episode will be discussed here so if you think that is a spoiler …. which it is not… I would advise you to skip to the next section. 

Episode 1: The Talisman Woman

A man moves into a new apartment and finds a mysterious seal on his ceiling! When he removes it a mysterious woman stares at him from afar.  When he gets home the next day, there is yet another talisman on that same spot! Could it be there is something living in his house?

A great benchmark episode! It has some eerie vibes to it, some nice subversion and even a possible jump scare! Mind you that I do watch these after midnight with all the lights off to set a proper atmosphere when reviewing these.. but this one is a great standard. It is mid-tier for me which is a nice way to start this series off. It doesn’t peak nor does it disappoint. It makes you anxious enough to slowly raise your heartbeat!

Episode 2: Zanbai

A traveler/tourist gets himself hospitalised with a broken foot when mountain climbing. He has to stay overnight in a hospital. But some other patients in the hospital are whispering together..of making sure he does not escape?! Did he mishear, are they even talking about him? What is with that strange greeting they gave him?!

This one builds up tension but let’s it fizzle a bit..which weirdly kind of makes it work still. This one did make my blood a degree colder or so… but the ending is slightly too odd and very implied. Look up what Banzai’s true meaning is before looking at this one or things might go over your head a bit. Got uneasy but I never startled

Episode 3: The Family Rule

A man that married into an old family gets told that he has to perform  a ritual with his new family to keep an ancient demon at bay! However when his son wakes up to investigate the ritual  is put at risk!

Top 5 for certain! The build up was great, the visuals really worked wonders and  the resolution was both equally horrific as satisfying. This one cleverly uses fear to instill fear and to create an exciting incident that within four minutes worked very very well for me! You know exactly what happens, what people are thinking and what unfolds.. by minimal dialogue and simple but twisted expressions! Quite creepy!

Episode 4: Hair

A woman is working late trying to make copies for something that looks like a school newspaper or something. However when the machine is used black.. almost hair like streaks appear all over the paper.. and as the woman investigates the machine an incident of freaky events occurs. 

Great scares, great effects.. dumb woman! I mean I know work ethic is a bit stricter in Japan but if I saw something living inside the copy machine.. I sure as heck would not begin opening some drawers to reveal the creepy entity! I would dash out the room and come back  the next day. While I liked the story it is also the story that follows that western trope of stupidity the most which makes it less spooky..because well… serves them right for being this dense?!

Episode 5: The Next Floor

A man ditches his kid for his birthday!  Because he has work to do! When his wife gets angry at him for leaving his son on his birthday.. the man gets in an elevator, wanting to be left alone. Then suddenly goes below it’s lowest level.. and each floor the man encounters begins to be creepier and stranger.

This one is among my favourites as well potential top 3. It has a great sense of mystery, there is an ominous feeling from the get-go and there is a lot of cool stuff done with lighting and atmosphere in this one.  What is happening?! We are kept in the dark until the very end.
This one had a scare that actually startled me! So it is pretty spooky!

Episode 6: The Overhead Rack

On a subway ride home an overworked man hallucinates a fleshie mass staring at him from the overhead rack! He brushes this off as a figment of his imagination and long hours.. but when suddenly the subway hits a person and all electricity is cut off for the rescue workers to do their job..it is revealed he might not be hallucinating stuff after all.

A mediocre episode that uses the Kamishibai art brilliantly. But cutting a whole in a drawing they manage to project real human teeth on a drawn creature and it is unnerving as heck!  The static paper movement versus the more natural behaviour of the real teeth really convey a sense of confusion! Of being something from between two worlds. While not the most scary story due to the weird logic in some elements of the story it is definitely a noteworthy one.

Episode 7: Contradiction

A woman receives a disturbing phone call from her friend.. telling her boyfriend got possessed by something scary during a visit to a haunted hospital. She said her boyfriend changed and asked if she could sleep at her friend’s place that night. Yet she sounds strange. Then the boyfriend shows up at the woman’s house telling how his girlfriend got possessed by something scary during their visit to a haunted hospital. .both accounts are fully animated. Who can the woman trust.. only one of them is speaking the truth here clearly?! Right?!

A strong episode that had quite a bit of kick! Seeing both the male account as the female account offers a duality in choices that conveys an anxious decision at the likes of cutting the red or blue wire for defusing a bomb. We as the viewer are not cued in on the truth so we have to discover it along with the main character and it works very well. There are some uber creepy visuals here as well.. and because they only MIGHT be true.. it is even creepier for me! Where is the real monster? Definitely one of the  highlights in this season! 

Episode 8: The Umbrella Goddess

While visiting his friend during a sunny day a young boy sees a woman with an Umbrella in her mouth! This causes the friend’s boy’s father to seal the boy in a shed..giving him the key to unlock the door.. telling whatever he does he should not open the door.. and that what he has to do now has to do with the Umbrella lady! If the boy can hold out untill daylight he should be safe.

Another top 3 episode for me! While a classic story the four minutes short tosses everything in it’s arsenal at you to confuse you!  It had some amazing visuals, incredible sound design and the Umbrella Goddess is even in the siple drawstyle something that does genuinely seem creepy! The voice acting is great.. and  the cinematography is really amazing!  That final line the narrator tells at the end before saying “the end” might be my favourite line in the series.. no it’s stronger than that..it IS my favourite line in the series.

Episode 9: Cursed

A young girl is afflicted with terrible skin conditions. Someone else his hand is burned on her skin and she is filled with dark necrotic spots! So far no one has been able to help her but then her mother discovers a female priest that might be able to help! From there on out things do not go as one might have expected.

A very strong ending visual redeems this story from being “boring” but this one felt.. a bit cheap. It reminded me a bit of the movie Drag me to Hell but we never get the payoff.  It almost feels as if we have seen the wrong part of the story. I think this is because the workings of the curse are not clear enough, having a skin condition does not seem that harsh compared to what we’ve seen before. Visually strong but little spooks to be had from this episode.

Episode 10: The Moon

While at a baseball training camp some of the players reminisce about how they went to this camp when they were kids as well. Explaining how one of them fell in a pit toilet. (A hole in the ground but with a sort of bowl to pee and poop on)  all those years ago. The boy can not remember this and goes to the pit toilet to wash up and see if he can jog his memory… then he memorises.. he wasn’t the only presence in that hole all those years ago.

A strong story with some amazing scary visuals and some great atmosphere! It would be among my favourites if this basically was not a “poop-ghost” There is literally something evil living in a hole filled with crap!  It kills suspense for me.. a lot. I am  not exactly sure how pit toilets work and had I known I might have had a different visual in my head but for now.. this one is mid tier.

Episode 11: Video

While doing homework before the start of school after vacations three boys get bored and decide to watch a haunted tape completely covered in tape to seal it! It is said that a real ghost lives in that tape. The boys watch and see a fault in the movie..that might be a ghost..when one of the boys notices a statue seems to have moved. It might not be a statue at all upon closer inspection..his friends do not notice ..but no matter if he rewinds pauses or fast forwards through the video.. the boy begins to notice the ghostly presence is going closer.. and closer to the screen.

I expected the story of Ringu ..but instead I got something that had a much more immediate pay off. Seven days, my sitting-meat!  This is a potent video. Creepy visuals and vcr levels of details on the screen make you lean towards your screen to watch it more closely.. Something the episode uses to it’s advantage to make your heart skip a beat…or all of them!  A bit generic of a plot so a higher mid tier episode for my taste! Pretty sweet spooks.

Episode 12: Tomonari Kun

A girl exits school and sees a bunch of younger boys stare at a black shadow like mass, that is then named Tomanari Kun. They ask if the girl wants to play with them and she promises she will, but she has no time today! As time progresses the boys ..and according to them Tomonari Kun begin to grow more impatient and then one day they decide to play at her house instead. 

Another highlight! I had quite a few. but this episode might actually be in that top 3.. in fact it might be close to my favourite . The ending employs a technique I really love in horror , letting a part of the scary stuff happen far in the background.. it makes everything feel so much more inevitable ..  you as the viewer feel more powerless to stop it or will it away and then there is plenty of good stuff to fantasies about here in terms of what actually is happening there! We never get an answer but we do get a new mystery! How do we interpret the story ? It is left up to us to decide. The kids are pretty creepy and the voice acting is pretty nice here as well. Having some children of the corn vibes or Wicker man sensation through the story! (Not the Nick Cage one)  Great episode! 

Episode 13: Tormentor

Based on the ghost story about a dancing spirit whose moves you are doomed to repeat until you die from fatigue  this episode starts of with a Disturbia like scene of two boys playing with a pair of binoculars when they see a few blindfolded monks being up to something. A mysterious woman seems to be dancing behind them the boys try to take a peek when one of them starts dancing. The boy is retrieved by his parents but the binoculars are left with the other kid.. who goes to return them the next day… noticing everything is getting stranger by the moment.

This to me was the weakest story of the bunch! The dance used is very weird and almost just flailing your arms around. That is an effective way to kill someone.. but if you do not know the original story here.. like I did not .. you have no real idea what is going on it feels more unintendedly hilarious It tries to go for one final jumpscare in the end..but this one is blatantly obvious..It made me learn about some folklore though! Still not scary at all!

The Light in the Darkness

if you like this show will depend on three factors.  Firstly you have to like implied endings. Not a single one will tell you what really happened with maybe  Overhead Rack being the only exception and even then we aren’t exactly sure. You never find out the faith of a person and it is up to  you to assume if they got a good or a bad ending. Japanese ghost stories also have a bit of a different flow than western ones. Culturally they are a bit different and we will not know all of these things are based on actual ghost stories.  We will not know the subtlety in some shows as a western audience. The four minute format works mostly because these are urban legends people know.Not everything will resonate with us and you have to be ready for that. This show is vague and doesn’t hold your hand when it comes to narratives. I honestly hope you have enough depth to take a peek into another culture ..but if you just want a spooky Naruto clone.. this is not your show.

The second thing is the animation! It isn’t fluid! It isn’t fast and at times it looks cheap. On CrunchyRoll I saw a lot of people rip on the art style. Yes some drawings are “ugly” but that is the whole point. That water painted look is something that is reminiscent of an ancient art.. and they do great things with it. Making holes in the film to bring in certain creepy light effects or monster effects is all very unique and fitting. It disorients you as well. Because everything is basically slightly animated still shot jump scares hot so much harder. You can not see things approach.. not it is there when the creators want it it to be there! I adore this style! I love this style for this short show format. It has these extreme close ups that remind me of Ren and Stimpy suddenly showing something zoomed in to make it look extra horrible.  The music and the animation serve it’s exact purpose.. to unnerve you! Some of the creature design is really good as well but this is a show best watched in the dark after midnight!

Pinkie’s Scary Real Life Stories

Greetings Victims who dwell on my island!! This post should come to you at  the first of October. This month Pinkie’s Paradise will be transformed into Pinkie’s Spooky Scary Paradise, with lots of Halloween content to come! Such as spooky games, scary anime , horror movies and ghost stories! You will see the scariest shades of Pink and encounter creepy coconuts! To get this Halloween month started I will tell you about my close encounters with the strange of any kind.

The ghost at the Graveyard

Let’s begin with the story I told already during a few blog posts but in a bit greater detail. This happened about 8 years ago. I had moved in with a person who was very open to the supernatural. We decided to move into a bigger place in a quiet sleepy town. We found a lovely apartment that was next to a gas station and a graveyard. Besides for our 5 neighbours there wasn’t anyone around for a fair bit.  There were plenty of stairs but since the house was so old the stairs were very narrow and with a very small turn.. there was no way you could move anything up through those stairs.  So as a result we had to move stuff through the graveyard always.  Everyone on the upstairs floors did and there was this direct path to a big window that almost was like a door towards our actual floor.  From it you could overlook 80% of the graveyard with only two corners far in the back hidden behind some trees and shrubbery. I never really wandered across the Graveyard as it always made me feel a bit uneasy.  It felt like something private.

A few days after we moved in I was enjoying our super deluxe shower and arguably  I might have showered too long and too hot..but it felt super amazing! We had a radio in there and this deluxe massage nozzle and all sorts of luxuries. I got dressed and walked out of the room realising I forgot my phone.. When I switched on the light I saw a ginger haired main with a Khaki blouse and some sort of navy woolen vest around it.  His pants also had a sand like shade. He had a face that looks a bit like Escanor from the Seven Deadly Sins.. a bit of a inbetween of his smaller face and the bulkier one. If someone was more down on his luck and maybe a bit scruffier, but for an example think that guy. Just less anime. I nearly tripped over our dog, a brown labrador..so spammers good on you I had a Lab indeed. The dog stared at the spot where I just saw the man  and barked at it. I first assumed it was because I spooked him by nearly tripping over him but he held on the space for a while. When I looked he was gone again and I figured at first, I must have showered too long. That night I  told my then partner that I saw a man in the bathroom and I was told they saw something as well. The description they used was Irish looking male, about the age of my dad, maybe slightly younger. The wore some sort of military uniform but woar something like a coat over it. .. more like a “bodywarmer” And I realised that could be the same guy. 

Now my ex was good at staging these things. They had this Münchausen by Proxy like tendencies which resulted in them sometimes testing medicine on me to trigger a response they could call the doctor for. (Which I did not know what the time but I had my suspicion)
I never had allergic reactions before but once we were together, I had a lot of stuff happen to me. The suspicion made me put it away as some sort of trick for a bit. But then spring came and we would get some new furniture.. I believe it was a Matras for our bed couch, but I am not sure anymore. Due to a giant rainshower there was a huge puddle of mud on  our regular path to the graveyard so me and a friend helping me drag the item in decided to walk around. Into one of the corners of the graveyard and there I saw the grave of “Escanor” clear as day the same man was depicted in the photo on the graveyard. Clear as day. 

After I began to believe and open my mind a bit more I saw more and more people in our house. Escanor was there but I also remember a woman in a very old timey dress. She would be much closer in my aura and atmosphere “Escanor was” .. usually sneaking up to me when I was looking in the mirror or around corners. Always having a nasty expression on her face.  One time I remember my ex going to their parents and me staying behind due some responsibilities. I saw her again. She spooked me..so I called the dog to the bedroom! Wanting that he slept with me that night.. but the dog for some reason did not dare to pass the hallway where I just saw her.  He did not bark.. he just refused to set foot there. A few days later I decided to do a cleaning ceremony for the house and the dog dared to walk in the hallway again.  Soon after I was kicked out by my ex for refusing to fail a test to get myself branded as an Autistic person so we could get extra benefits. I stopped seeing ghosts.. but I never stopped “sensing” shifts around me.

The Demon in my legs

That same ex was always a very religious person, usually diving in the more cultist side of christianity.. you know with those miracle healing priests  and churches that you need to pay for to be a part of. I am not religious. I do not believe in a christian god, I do believe in the supernatural.. to an extent but I do not believe in the christian definition of god. I believe in order and chaos and karma and energies and memories but no man is in control. I hated … no I despised how every religious person she got in the house tried to convert me. I made it clear to them I did not want to convert. The first guy I politely asked to stop and he gave me an “easier” to read bible to see if I would change my mind. I gave it back to him and told him I was not interested. He said keep I have plenty, if you do not want to read it that is fine to each their own. The second guy.. was a guy from the salvation army.  He pushed harder and I said I was not interested. He told me that if I wanted a serious relationship I had to accept god. I told him that was untrue , my partner had a choice on who to accept and if their god would wish me to stay alone for not following his word I would not want to follow that god either way. I told him please do not convert me, I am not open to it. He gave me a real bible and commanded me to read some passages before he returned to my partner next week. Or that I would regret my life choices soon enough.

I did not take kindly to that, I told him I would not and he told me .. if I did not they would not allow my partner to do charity work. I either had to do what he said or my partner would suffer. So… I kicked him out of our place. I told him  I would stay clear from them as long as they were around and go walk the dog.. but I would never convert.. either he could tolerate that and let my partner do what they were passionate about or I would expose him for the shallow person he is. He accepted the.. let’s not meet deal. Eventually though he turned out to also be a huge racist and my partner ended up kicking him out as well.. but the rule that whenever they had christian friends over I would vanish would remain until the end of our relationship. One day in that new house a massive thunderstorm forced me to come home earlier. This new priest saw me.. and he told me “You have a demon inside of you”.

Of course the way to get rid of this devil was to pay to join their church so he could heal me! I said no and he said that it was the demon resisting. I asked him to drop it when he asked his friends to hold me.. as he took off my shoes.  He began blessing my feet.. touching them.. while the other guys pinned me to the couch! To weaken the demon! I panicked and cried a bit.It’s rather scary to be held by religious nuts trying to exorcise your personality. They stopped and told me if I wanted to be truly free of my demon for only so many euros a month I could be clean and one of god’s children again. I was super upset! I felt attacked..so I said to them that if God does make them do this kind of thing I was more fond of the demon. I walked out the house  and walked for about an hour in the thunderstorm.  Not wanting to see them again. My ex apologised for what happend but did wonder if I had an actual demon in my legs and feet. I had always been motorically awkward and my disease made that worse.. perhaps it was not a disease it was a demon.

This might have been slightly over dramatised..but still pretty close to how I felt!

Eight years later, I am both rid of the ex as any religious zealotry when A Jehova’s Witness knocks on my door. They told me evolution was a lie, and asked me if I had embraced god. I politely told them I was not interested but he told me to read a flyer about the hoax of evolution and told me he would come back next week. I told him please don’t bother me.. and he said I had interesting religious beliefs and he thought god could help.. he would be back next week.  I asked him once more not to do so or I would truly tell him what I felt and he said he would like it if I did that.  So I did my research on their scientist and found he had been discredited on several accounts. I printed it out as evidence, and basically wrote a 20 page essay on what was wrong with that flyer. Which was everything.  He came back and I warned him and said I came prepared and he would not like it and he best just move.. but he insisted thinking he could turn me into a believer. We had our discussion and I properly silenced him.. he thanked me for looking into it so much and thanked me for not only using science but also my beliefs. He told me god was in my heart even if I could not accept him as god….. then he took a pause.. and said… but there is something evil living in your legs.

Melanie

The final story I would like to share with you is a ghost-story about my current apartment My next door neighbour had recently commited suicide when I began to notice a sensation I had not felt for a while. I felt presences in my apartment. Some good, some very disturbing. At first I thought it was just another case of sleep Paralysis. Since I had a non grounded power outlet right where my bed was at I figured that it might even leak some electromagnetic energy causing my senses to go a bit haywire. Yet as time passed on I began to detect “trends”  in the energies I felt. The evil energy always stared at me from behind my modular cube cabinet that separates my bed from. Yet there was another presence that felt more.. positive. It would be on my bed, usually very close besides me.  Unlike in the old home I could not really “see”  a presence but I knew this energy felt  “feminine and fragile’ almost as afraid as I could be towards the more “evil” feeling energy. Close to the experience of sleep paralysis but I could move and it did not feel “as inevitably evil”


At times I had a sensation of movement, like as if they took my hand to hold it. So as a form of Ouja I decided to ask them questions while holding a pencil and asking them to do that again to make me write.  I asked them a few questions and asked them for horizontal lines for yes and vertical for no.. as i felt that was very possible.. but when I was done.. there were no lines.. I had written down the word Melanie (last name) .  I looked up the name and could not discover much at first but then it seemed to link to the family of a miner who lived here.
The surname of Melanie was “de geest’ which is dutch for The Ghost. So I thought I had a brainfart at first and subconsciously just wrote that. Yet after I found out a familie “De Geest” had actually lived in the area as miners things became more intriguing. I sensed Melanie’s energy around more and more. Yet it also began to feel ..creepier.  More in a stalkerish way.

Not the actual note!

I would ask her questions and I would experience an energy of sorts that would usually cue me into what here state would be. Then one day I asked her to leave me alone.. I did not want anyone in my aura, not even Melanie.  I felt Anger and got so uncomfy I ditched my nap and went to  the grocery store. Usually if I want away for a bit and come back the energies are gone. However when I came back two paintings had fallen off the wall.  One painting’s screw seems to have snapped out of nowhere. Well out of nowhere is a big word. Above me lives a druggy gamer who if he loses loves to toss around furniture and I feel my entire apartment vibrate so one could figure my upstairs neighbour broke it with all the rage over time.. yet the second one has one of those old timey rope things.. and the rope had became completely unhooked. This one had a picture of me on it.. along with some coworkers.. and the painting fell exactly so  that where I landed  at the edge of my bed. Leaving the slightest of cracks in the glass just at my face. 

A few nights later I had a dream of Melanie, telling me it was nice to finally meet me.  She told me she had fallen in love with me and wanted us to be together. I told her in the dream I kinda preferred an alive girl or the world would think I am even crazier. She said that if we would be together I should not be alive. She asked me to take my own life so we could be together. I woke up from the dream and the idea crossed my mind for a split second to actually harm myself and I felt all warm and fuzzy.  I then shook off the thought and said in the room I could not and I never spoke to the presence again. Every so often in my house I now  feel as if someone is cursing or yelling at me.. but no more paintings became undone but the place does feel a bit more evil now with those thoughts sporadically popping up in my dreams. I will not listen and soon I won’t even be here!.. However a funny thing occurred..since I started writing about Melanie.. in this apartment it feels as if the temperature next to me has dropped a few degrees.

And those are my strangest encounters, there are a few more but these are the most powerful ones. I do not claim these stories are real, in fact all stories can be explained …probably by  rational ideas. Such as taking to long of a hot shower, just being taking advantage of by a church or coping with some feelings down and somber and it manifesting as a third party as I really refuse to have these thoughts myself?! Making myself crazy with ghost fantasies maybe?! Who knows!  Maybe some things are real. All I know  is that these are definitely the moments that I crossed into the twilight zone if there is such a thing! Do you have any ghost stories?! Let me know in the comments! For Halloween we slightly new look check it out on the main page if you are reading this in reader!

Bloodless Bollsheviks and Soulless Suckers! Boll’s Best BloodRayne! Third Reich Review!

Hello Island Guests! I have done it! I have made my way through all the BloodRayne movies! The third movie was a surprising experience! Not only are the rules of vampirism redefined in the same franchise once again …and even in the movie.. but this movie actually dare I say it offers a somewhat okay story. Could it be there is hope for Mister Boll?!

I am not even sure that’ the main actress on the cover let alone that she wore an outfit she actually wears

Third Time’s the Charm

Mister Boll, while on average a horrible movie maker and possibly a worse person, actually managed to craft something that is eligible for the title movie this time. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the writing this time mostly comes from Michael..who is mostly known for doing stuff for Uwe Boll movies! The BloodRayne movies that came before were just a few action scenes linked together, with some softcore porn, convenient exposition and  horrible camera transitions. I am glad to inform you that this time we have an actual story that moves from A to B and the scenes in between only have two of the three usual filler bits. The movie actually uses Rayne’s unique nature to give us a new type of antagonist that feels like we actually scale things up for a sequel and the plans of the bad guys as a result more or less make sense! Whoop Whoop! That is how you do it Mister Boll.

I can believe some blood fell in his mouth! Way to go Mister Boll!

Rayne works with the Bolsheviks in this movie, not that you would know as they aren’t even named that except for an insult once. Never is the location disclosed either. It’s “somewhere in europe” but given that there seem to be concentration camps in the neighbourhood so I guess it is set in Poland?! Rayne rescues some jews from the train but in doing so she accidentally infects an SS officer with her blood. She feeds on him as well. This results in him becoming a Vampire and not a Dhampir  that can walk in the sunlight. His Lieutenant and a crazy scientist investigate and decide. They discover Rayne’s blood is a source of power and want to obtain more of it so they can turn Hitler immortal! However the vampirified commandant spirals more and more out of control himself.  Wow that’s like TWO things happening at once! Good Job Mister Boll!

Vampire Hitler sounds about as entertaining as Sharknado!

The commandant has no name by the way.. if you read the box art he is named Ekart Brand but he is never named in the movie itself, nor does he have a name on the credits. Same goes for the evil doctor and the lieutenant. This movie .. got adapted into Uwe Boll’s Horror Comedy.. Blubberella.. which is basically the exact same story but Dhampir is now half vampire,  and the main character is fat. Every other person except for some actual prostitutes Boll hired for BloodRayne  are cast in the same roll! Only in Blubberalla Hitler has been recast. Uwe Boll wanted to play him himself.  So.. oddly enough if you want to see a more offensive version of this movie with characters named Slutlana.. you have an option here!  Also it’s weird that Uwe Boll Plagiarized himself… BloodRayne 3 is the better version of the two though… so hey.. when you watched the best version of this story if you watch this one as well! That is smart mister Boll.. Also that’s kind of disgusting that you rehash your own plot for a fat joke!

At least the characters in THIS movie were shot nicely!

When it’s  Rayne it’s poor!

While the movie is competently written , I did find this the most poorly acted one out of the lot.  Rayne and the Doctor who have the most screen time are HORRIBLE actors in this movie. Nathassia Malte does such a poor job in this movie, her lines are very wooden and her acting is very apathetic. There is no emotion at all. Maybe a bit  in her sex scenes but when she is supposed to be concerned… well .. let’s just say I was happy there was an actual story to follow! The acting Rayne does isn’t bad in the Tommy Wisseau way. Where Johnny feels like an Alien’s interpretation of a human Rayne here feels like an actor that isn’t really trying. The “this is for a paycheck” acting. Which extends to most of the main cast. The best acting comes from characters like “prostitute”  or Magda. The first may or may not be an actual prostitute as Uwe Boll has more than once done this, and the second is this blond decoder lady. Who allegedly decrypted the decoder. The latter has to mostly play acting upon acting and she can get away with some cheesiness. The first gets turned into a vampire (as does Magda later on)  and both go very  hammy in all their acting.. but it seems fun! Good job on casting them mister Boll! Boo for Nathassia though. I have to say .. she sucks!

Whoops! Looks like I made two enemies in the Boll Universe now!

Where Natassia Malte is the queen of coasting, Doctor played by Clint Howard is the king of “that’s not how you say that”.  His delivery seems off! Not in the funny way either. Part of it is because of how the doctor is written. He is one of those “cartoon” mad scientists. However those are on screen way less than one in a movie. That level of energy is not something you can keep up for 75 minutes (as that’s the length of this movie give or take minus credits). There is a difference between a cartoon and a real character. Clint Howard doesn’t commit to one and he switches between cartoony energy and more grounded character and that makes him stick out like a sore thumb. It’s not like he is god-awful.. or well maybe he is but I’ve seen worse. I feel more like he is a capable man but the director should have said.. “let’s try that with one more take, it’s very close but maybe a  bit less/more cartoony here”. As a result this movie at times gave me Ed Wood vibes. Where Ed did not have money for reshoots I guess Uwe did not have the talent for reshoots!  However I do really love Ed Wood movies so making me feel that way is not that bad! At least I had a pleasant experience. Much better than BloodRayne 2! Much better than BloodRayne 1 and much better than Postal. If we establish Uwe Boll movies as a genre .. it might actually be good within those confines.

You can just hear the fake German accent from the screenshot…..you’ll probably imagine it better than in actuality though.

Deja Vu

This movie unfortunately has some trouble escaping some of the mistakes the earlier BloodRayne movies made. The biggest one is the fact that Vampire lore is very weirdly established. Rayne is a Dhampir born of human and vampire, however her blood seems to turn people into vampires. However her blood allows vampires to walk in the sun. So while Rayne is a half vampire.. her blood makes full vampires, people she creates by feeding them her blood turns them into day walkers.. but if those day walkers create a vampire.. not all of them are daywalkers. Some inherit Commandant’s strengths but to varying degrees. Some go insanely evil others retain their dominant personality. Some get taken down by gunfire others need to be staked. It once again feels like vampirism is a bit of an afterthought.. which is weird because it is a big part of the story. Silver from the last movie doesn’t work anymore and thank Arceus that bullets that were next to cloves of garlic don’t work any longer.

Of course all vampire women become super slutty! Because It’s an Uwe Boll Movie

The weird cuts in scenes also appear again. Nothing as bad as  the second movie but a few scenes are really cut short, I could count two or three where it really feels like they cut a scene directly after a sentence which felt a bit jarring. There are also a few fade to black cuts when Uwe Boll was really clueless on where to go. Again making it feel more like a hobby flick than made by a professional. The camera quality is a lot better. Having the ability to make a lot of daytime shots really helped with the image quality.  We get no shaky camera shots and it feels fairly obvious this movie had a larger budget than the previous one. I don’t feel like a porn cue is about to chime in as soon as a female character wanders onto the screen… which is funny because this movie dials depicting women as whores up quite a bit.

I wonder how many brothels have velvet bathrobes for female guests!


Every woman in this movie is a prostitute or acts like one! This leads to the most hillarious and inappropriate sexscene ever.  Rayne earlier in the movie had sex with a female prostitute indicating she might be into women.. but she gets captured and drained of almost all her blood. When she wakes up she is on a prisoner transport .. towards the Fuhrer.. her love interest got beaten mercilessly and woke up just a little before that… as soon as they see each other.. while being captives.. they just start going at it like rabbits. It’s so Uwe Boll to do this and it’s horrible but at the same time.. it would not be Uwe Boll without it! Thank you mister Boll for staying true to yourself. 

And I thought not taking of your socks was a dealbreaker!

For a movie made by a man with no talent we get an entertaining trainwreck. The blood effects that make no sense from the first movie are back!  Most of the times people just yell ugh.. and fall down! No bullet wounds, no mar on their shirt, just a soft ugh.. as if they were a video game  character.  It’s weird but oddly it feels mostly like the video games. The cheesy deaths, the setting actually matching the game. BloodRayne the game has a level of campiness that I think this movie does manage to capture. It doesn’t work in a movie.. at all  but it feels like a good video game cutscene… well good is a big word..it’s not on the level of command and conquer not this is those in game video game cutscenes we saw in the early to mid 2000’s . Yes this movie is from the 10’s so it’s many years to late ..but it reminded me of the games. Even the soundtrack feels like a video game one. I am not sure it works for a movie.. but I am not sure we should hold Uwe Boll to that standard. He can’t make movies but with 75 minutes in length, this barely qualifies as such.Maybe I have such low standards by watching these but I actually found entertainment here.. but I never really viewed it as a component product. I wasn’t expecting it.. I did not get it .. like every other Uwe Boll product.. but unlike other Uwe Boll products.. I had fun.. great job mister Boll!

Mister Boll also shows us how German Bratwurst is made!

Uwe Boll Sucks!

This movie is better than the movie with the same characters and same characters Blobberella. That is exactly the same movie with the difference of .. what if the main character is fat and we add some stupid jokes like Slutlana into to mix.So already this movie is automatically not the worst! While I had fun with this movie is it worth a watch?! That is difficult. As a vampire movie I’d say it is a definite no! Vampirism is so inconsistent yet again. Some vampires still die by bullets, Rayne’s Damphir nature barely comes into play other than her blood creating a vampire that can daywalk. As a BloodRayne video game Adaptation I’d say it is not worth your time either.It has the time period right.. but all the other elements that were in the last movies like the hunter organisation, the story about her father which was actually concluded in this time period in the games.. it has been told before. Brimstone has no presence here..and besides Rayne using her swords like twice.. this is just a vampire movie set in World War 2 rather than a BloodRayne movie. She still complains about her mother being raped though .. it is mentioned 5 times in the movie even though it has to do nothing with the plot and happened over 100 years ago.

This movie still raised the bar for Mister Boll still!

No this movie has no viewing merit based on any of it’s tags. It’s not good at horror, even though the torture scene is kinda cool, it’s action is choppy and humorously inconsistent and to complete the series.. this does nothing.  Yet for people like me who actively watch bad movies this one has some merit! This is Uwe Boll producing a movie that is watchable. If I had to create an analogy Uwe Boll is like the LJN (a video game company notorious for only releasing bad titles) of movies… he  releases a lot of utter shit..but sometimes something is remotely playable. No we are not talking LJN’s Maximum Carnage here.. that game is too good! No this is NES Wolverine, a pretty shitty title that still is a huge step up from Spiderman or The Uncanny X-Men. So if you are the type or person that would play Uncanny X-Men on NES because it’s not the worst the studio has to offer and you want to see them sorta get it right.. this is your movie. It’s as if your kid normally gets F’s in art class and now gets a D+ so you frame it as an achievement for your kid… If you just want a decent movie stay away.. if you want to see a piece of unlikely movie history… it’s watchable. I still stand by that Uwe Boll can’t make a movie.. but now I know he can at least make something that looks like one!

With that we conclude the BloodRayne Triology! Did you see the trilogy?! What is your “favourite” Uwe Boll movie? Let me know in the comments! Now it is time to leave september behind and move into Oktober and I got something special for you guys planned…hey whats that translucent figure floating in front of me?! Oh no! It’s the spirit of Uwe Boll’s Vengeance!
You can help me rent an exorcist by supporting my Kofi! It would be much appreciated!

Pinkie Splices Series: Buffy’s Bizarre Adventures (Part 1)

A while ago Emma from  Fanfiction Anime World challenged us to create a hybrid of two shows! In her she spliced Owl House and Pokémon to form a new thing! This inspired me to create a new series on my blog! I created Breaking Bad x Shokugeki no Souma like I promised her.  While it did not get many likes I really loved doing it so it is time for a second instalment. Today I splice one of my childhood favourites Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a very well known anime. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures.  I had a lot to tell so this will actually be a two parter with this me only describing the story up until the early second act!

Bringing the Bizarre To Buffy

Where Blue Food was a sequel to Breaking Bad and functioned as an Isekai Story to keep it connected to Shokugeki, this one however will be an alternate telling of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer story. The story starts with the original episode Inca Mummy Girl taking place in 1997. Two years before the events of Part 4 of Jojo’s. It has been over 8 years since the destruction of Dio. Where a chain of events will completely alter the story. The Jojo anime decided to focus on stand user’s  rather than vampires after that. This show would focus on the Vampire elements and keeps Hamon front and center. Stands exist  but will play a much smaller role here. The show would be modelled more after Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency to keep elements of both Buffy and Jojo relevant.

The show would most likely be produced as an anime as it could be made in the current day. The orginal Buffy Cast can reprise their roles but as voice actors of course. Characters that cross over from the Jojo universe, which will be very few can have their English voice actors. So in actuality it would be more a cartoon produced in the same anime style like .. think Avatar the Last Airbender.. but with more vampires and Bizarre adventures. Because it has more mature themes it will not be released on Nickelodeon, instead since Buffy was owned by the WarnerBros company  I would assume this would launch on HBO Max. Yet I would happily accept any streaming platform producing this! 

The Cast

The main characters we will be dealing with will be as follows

Buffy Summers

Main character of the show, she is an active Vampire Slayer. After her death and subsequent revival unbeknownst to her a new slayer is about to be sent to Sunnydale, however this might not be the Slayer you expect to see in season two! Her character is more or less the same though she will be a bit more extravagant.

Willow Rosenberg

Buffy’s best friend, she is very much her geeky self and much like Willow in the second season she has began to experiment with magic here. Unlike the real like counterpart though the magic is a bit less subtle, we are dealing with an anime version here. So as time passes Willow will have a few more offensive moves and she is able to do magic a bit easier. In this universe chain of events Willow is also a bit more clearly gay, but she is trying to hide it, pretending she is very much into the lead singer of the band Dingo Ate My Baby.  Secretly she has a bit of a crush on Buffy though and she tries to “be normal”. Why this change?  Well we can always use some yuri elements and taking that element from Willow seems like a hornets nest I would not like to poke in. Season 2 actually already strongly hinted at it anyway. So we will just say it is an ongoing struggle for her here. Besides that there is an element in Jojo’s this really adheres to so it’s fine.

Xander Harris

There are no real changes to Xander here, he has a crush on Buffy which is unanswered, he desperately is looking for a girlfriend and at the beginning of our story he might get his wish..that will not end too well for him though. 

Daniel Osbourne


Leader Singer to Dingoes Ate my Baby and love interest for Willow Rosenberg. During the season he becomes a werewolf. However since we will mostly focus on what DOES change in this story rather than what stays the same you can consider this story  as if he IS a werewolf already. It would actually happen as it does in the original show. We will change his looks up quite a bit though..because anime needs their pretty boy and instead of a normal band .. Dingoes Ate my Baby is now a boys Idol group! (I found now drawn artwork of Oz)

Faith Lehane

Originally the third slayer in the line after Kendra being introduced in the third season, this time Faith is introduced a fair bit earlier. Faith is shown to really love the call to be the new Slayer and has a tendency to go hyper violent.  This time her watcher Wesley discovers she is a potential and decides to offer her some training earlier. A plan that will backfire rather fast.

Rupert Giles

Buffy’s Watcher and father figure, he does not really change that much from his series counterpart. He is a slightly more uptight as Wesley, Faith’s watcher will never arrive to take that role from him. The influence of his “Ripper” phase is also diminished due to events shifting around.

Mac Fleetwood

An Original Character , he is an employee of the Speedwagon Foundation and reaches out to the group when he notices some strange stuff happens. He is a scientist on vampire diversification and was contacted by the Initiative (Buffy Season 4)  whom he refused for a job at Speedwagons. He is insanely tall and can match Buffy in terms of physical strength

Led Zepelli 

Another Original character. She will be Buffy’s mentor in Hamon and is the descendant of Caesar Zepilli’s  surviving brother  and idolises her heroic ancestor. She is another employee of the Speedwagon Foundation and very childish… She loves pranking Giles with bubbles. She also has a flirty character.. in a very playful way. Flirting with boys the guys and the girls..more intended to tease them as to pursue actual romance.

There will be other characters but they will play a much tinier role! Spike, Drucilla and Angel all play a fairly important role in the first half.. but they are exactly their series counterparts.  Feel free to look them up but you have been introduced to the most important once if you are unfamiliar with them.

The Beginning


We begin our story at the episode Inca Mummy Girl, in the original show the group visits an Inca exhibit and hears the story of Ampata, the Inca Mummy girl that would end  up sucking the life from a student to come alive, then fall in love with Xander. but would give in her desire to live .. eventually leading to Buffy having to put her down as her original body is restored. Much of the same would still happen but this time among the Inca exhibit. This time things would change a bit. While Ampata needs life force in the Museum she chases Xander and Willow a bit! Both of them hide themselves in a storeroom where some relics are exposed. Both pick some up to chuck at the Mummy girl.. in a desperate attempt of self defence. Xander picks up an ancient stone mask. It was not displayed because it was actually  an aztec relic that got misidentified.  Buffy comes in and saves the day.  Telling Xander and Willow to flee. As they make their way home.. Xander realises he is still clutching on to the mask! He stole from the museum!

Xander with the mask he found!

He wants to bring it back the next day.. telling them they sound it and that it might have to do something with the guy that vanished earlier or something. (The Mummy girl ate a guy who broke her seal) However they tell him the mask is not Incan and it does not belong to the exposition, if he wishes to donate it he has to fill in some files and wait for them to verify it. 
It will most likely not be displayed as they do not have any other aztec relics. This is when Xander decides to keep the mask. It looks pretty cool and if they say it’s not theirs.. he has a cool memory of Ampata whom he truly did care for.. but she could not live without killing and she was too willing to kill. 

Ampata the Incan Mummy Girl.. whom Xander sometimes fondly remembers

Meanwhile somewhere else in the world Kendra Young is preparing to travel to Sunnydale! She has been summoned as the new Slayer.  Suddenly she hears a glass shatter and some flames burst across her hallway. What is happening here?! She dashes through the flames to open the door but notices it is blocked. Someone is trying to kill her!  Breaking the window would cause the fire to flare up so she has to escape through the backdoor. She picks a suitcase filled with some of her slayer stuff and makes her way to the backdoor. As soon as she exits it though she feels a sharp pain in her chest. She stares at a crossbow-bolt sticking out of her chest. Then her consciousness is claimed by the black void by death. From a nearby tree a pale looking Brunette rates her shot 5 by 5.

Kendra Dying.. only.. wrong wound this time..

Faith and the Mask

We skip ahead a bit in the timeline and Faith is sent to Sunnydale as the new Slayer. Her watcher Wesley is mentioned but never shows up. Until then most events of the original stay the same. After it we take a rapid turn for the worse. Faith is much more relentless in hunting down Spike and Drucilla, than Buffy is. This  results in Spike feeling more cornered and creating a much more deadly trap. This results in Willow and Oz nearly getting killed who went on a date together and Spike and Dru using them as bait.  Here Faith is expelled form the group for being so rash. Pretending to be hurt she does get Xander to warm up to her and invite her in. Saying that Wesley kicked her out of her place for her misbehaviour. She plans to kill Xander and pin it on Spike to create a like minded soul in Buffy, but then she sees a mask on his bedroom wall. She read what it did in Wesley’s book!  Where  normal vampirism takes your soul this mask turns you into a vampire soul and all, you stay yourself.
She sleeps with Xander and the next morning he wakes up Faith is gone and so is his mask.

It happend in the show and it will happen here!

Here we move into Jojo’s territory, Faith becomes a vampire using the mask in the same vein as Kars and Dio. Not persé for revenge on Buffy but Spike and Drucilla were strong enough to give her a hard time.. if she can become a Vampire with her soul she can kill them all! She was destined to this.. all vampires must die. This mask made her the ultimate weapon against it.  She takes a zero tolerance policy on vampirism and goes to confront Spike and Drucilla.
Buffy and the Scooby Squad Chase after Faith to prevent an all out war on the streets of Sunnydale.  This allows Spike and Drucilla to get away from the scuffle, but the group fights Mask Vampire Faith. In this fight Buffy gets badly beaten and just about Faith is about to kill her having no response. Angel saves her. Him also not being a match for Faith he is then killed in front of Buffy’s eyes.  Faith thinking she is justified because he is a vampire decides not to kill Buffy but just beats her up badly! She is the new slayer, the ultimate slayer, one who still has her soul yet can wield the power of both Slayer and Vampire.. Buffy is old news.
The beating puts Buffy in an eight week coma much like Faith was when Buffy beat her in the original.

I wished this happend in the actual series!

After Buffy wakes up she finds the world has considerably  changed. Spike and Drucilla fled the town and ever since Faith has been some sort of terror slayer. Killing every supernatural entity she could get her hands on bad OR good.  This is how Oz is introduced to the Scooby Squad.. he was one of the very few they managed to save.  There is no real romance with Willow however, who was too worried about Buffy whom she had a crush on. Tough sometimes Willow pretends to like him if she looked at a girl or spoke to “fondly of Buffy” Being introduced to Faith before she went completely bad amplified Willow’s feeling towards women a bit.

Buffy might be restored now but with Angel dead she is very broken.  Giles does research into what happened to Faith and discovers that both her Watcher Wesely as the former slayer Kendra were slain by a crossbow which here everyone knows is Faiths favourite weapon.  In an attempt to excel at his job Wesley told Faith some traumatic events in her past were related to vampires, this way he could raise a perfect Slayer and be complimented for his work. He knew Kendra was not ready so he felt like it was his time to step in.. once Faith realised he would hold her back from her mission though she killed him off. 

She also looted his corpse and apartment for any books and weapons she might have use for

Hamon Training

Buffy stood no chance against the new Faith  and the council of watchers has basically avowed entire Sunnydale now in an attempt to keep their noses clean. They do believe Faith will clean out all supernatural entities in the region and then they will send up a clean up crew to deal with her. Until then all “good” paranormal creatures are seen as acceptable losses. Buffy and Giles sever their ties with the council and search more info of the mysterious mask when they are suddenly contacted by a group called the Speedwagon Foundation, saying they will send help and stay put until then. Feeling the scars of battle Buffy mostly abides, but killing her lover made her very determined to kill Faith.  So even though she knows she does not stand a chance now she will do everything in her power to annoy Faith and make her job harder.  Trying to save any innocent super naturals.   Willow intensifies her study in magic to help Buffy with her revenge.. feeling a bit of a call for it in her own blood..plus secretly hoping if she is more useful to Buffy she might like her more. 

Willow even mastered Kaoiken I see!

Xander and Oz are much more sidelined than in the original. Oz is often used to help as he has a van that helps them get around with more people, but they very much feel like rebels in their own town.  Faith takes over the night club The Bronze.. and even goes as far  as recruiting people for her own “Scooby Squad” which she simply calls the X-Force.  X standing for Extermination. People fighting for her die.. but she doesn’t care as long as it cleans up the vampires. Her trait of loving the hunt now has been completely exaggerated, much how Dio went from a narcissist to having a god complex.  Episodes will much more be focused on the rescue of innocent supernatural creatures for what would be the remainder of season two.

The group has to take down some X-Force members and the season finale would be a big witch burning. With characters like Amy and Willow being captured to be burned at the stakes.  Buffy and Faith face off once more and Buffy loses once again .. gets knocked out and she is sentenced to burn as well! She is a super natural being after all. They are just about to be set ablaze when suddenly  a Blonde girl attacks Faith.. very flamboyant looking she poses as Faith’s hand seems to explode in a form of light energy!  The girl shouts Hamon as she then douses the torches with some bubbles. There is a big scientist guy with her who casually lifts up and tosses up some members of the X-Force . They save Willow and Amy  as well as Buffy and alongside other survivors they take Buffy and the Scooby Squad outside of Sunnydale.  The girl introduces herself as Led Zeppili and the big guy is Mac Fleetwood. The Speedwagon foundation is here to help them train in the art of Hamon.. and fight this particular brand of Vampires. 

Willow always found Buffy hot! But this was ridiculous

With a timeskip we of training we move into season 3. Sunnydale is now ruled by the X-Force and Faith. Faith has made three guardians with her mask. Having misread the story of the Pillarman ..since Wesley’s Books are so stuffy.. she dubs them the New-Pillarman.. two of them are youth delinquents who got into the vampire hunt and the other was a serial murderer she freed from prison. She keeps him in check  by allowing him to murder any vampire he can.. but she has fitted him with a detonatable collar three college geeks made for her. 

We see Buffy has learned the basics of Hamon and Willow has furthered her knowledge of magic.  Even Amy and Oz have mastered their quirks a bit more. Amy mainly helps the Foundation with espionage and Oz becoming much more a fighter who can use some of his wolf aspects. Xander has been training with a few special weapons made by the foundation. Weapons infused with ripple energy.  Everyone did drop out of school because most of them are Super Naturals and instead have been studying with the Speedewagon foundation. Their parents were all evacuated out of Sunnydale with some excuse by other members of the Foundation. Just as Buffy and Led are about to have a spar Spike shows up.. telling that something very bad is about to happen. Very powerful demonic forces are opposing Faith.. vampires with abilities bestowed to them by demons. They are led by a mysterious man using the name “Olvikan” which is the name of an “Old One”

Season 3 Prelude!

And with that as we move into a new Buffy Season 3 We will leave off! In the next season we will see Buffy’s Hamon, see some famous Jojo characters.. and Vampires with demonic abilities! Who will survive?! Which Side will win?! Subscribe to the blog to find out.. in the second part!

Revenge and the Ball Guy: Pinkie’s First Randomiser Nuzlocke Journal Part 2

Hello again Island Guests it is time for a second instalment of my Pokémon Randomiser Nuzlocke! In the first part you could read about trainer Pinkie failing and being reborn into a slightly differently new life! Very much aware of what happend she decided to pursue her career as a Pokemon Trainer once again! Today we begin the story of her second cycle! For Part 1 click here!

About the Nuzlocke!

Having learned from my  Pokémon Typing series I have made a neat little info chart showing the rules of my Nuzlocke! If for some reason you did not read part 1 and started to read here, let me explain what a Nuzlocke is once more. A Nuzlocke is way of playing trough Pokémon with a series of self imposed rules. You can only capture the first pokémon you find per route and must always nickname them. Then once a pokémon faints in battle it is considered dead and you can no longer use it.  For more specific rules please read the picture.

Rules!

In the last part we started our journey with a Vigoroth, we caught a Gorebyss, a Quagsire a Misdreavous a Snubull and a Cleffa.. however upon challenging Falkner we sound out his ace was an slightly over leveled Registeel! My team was quickly killed after that. So by the rules of the Nuzlocke the game was re-randomised.  Numbers of deaths so far…6!  Number of badges 0! As well as my total progres! Let’s see if we can get at least a bit further this time. As we read this in character journal of my sweet trainer girl.

This happend last time! He was so mean!

Getting Luci!

Day 1 again.. maybe it’s day 2.. for me it is day 2 at least so let’s call it day 2.  Ethan was rubbing his Marill in my face again… I had lived through this already. I would not let him do more of that  gloating he did before… So I immediately walked into Professor Elm’s lab! I wanted to get my Vigoroth and get going..but after he told me about the amazing discovery  Mister Pokémon made I got to select my Pokéball. In the same slot Vigorth used to be in was now a Feebas! That is pretty worthless!  In the second slot was a Nincada.. I would not get far with that… yet in the third slot was an Espeon! I knew it would take a long while for it to get a note-worthy move but hey at least it is something right?! So I took that on an adventure with me and him Kuro…but  somehow when Professor Elm asked me if I was sure about that name I said no.. I don’t know why.. It’s like that stupid owl I once encountered when I got reincarnated as this forest boy! He kept talking and then he asked me if I got all that. I somehow ended up saying no!  In the end Espeon did not end up listening to a nickname!  Luckily  I would be able to nickname it once we reached Goldenrod City.

It ended better for Espeon than it did for the owl!

Not Kuro the Espeon had a lot more trouble facing off against opponents than Raist ever did..where Eevee starts out with tackle.. and Espeon is a very special attacker.. he could not do much for me… I would have to train a lot with him. So we worked our way up to Mister Pokémon and Professor Oak like we did last time. I had to train Espeon up to level 10 to even be functional before then.. knowing I would face Indigo on my way back!  Espeon was level 12 by the time I encountered my rival and surprisingly was able to take down my Rival fairly quickly. In this lifetime the rival was blonde though and not red! That is so funny because last life I really regretted that he was red.. it felt like he should have been blonde! Is the world becoming more adapted to my wants and needs? Regardless, we beat him and we delivered the Pokémon Egg to its original destination and I was now also free to keep Espeon! Even though I still missed Raist.  I got some pokéballs and knew that now we were playing serious! 

This lifetime, Indigo rocked the Edgy Ikea Employee Style

This time however with Espeon being so physically weak, we had it much easier to catch Pokémon. On the first route I managed to catch a Lucario! Which is pretty amazing! He knew Metal Claw and I decided to name it MK666. After a shy coconut I once met! On route 46 I subsequently managed to catch a Larvitar which I named Eggsammy.. because Eggsandwich as a name  would not fit! I then realised how much. Still Dark Rock, Fighting Steel and Psychic seemed like a good start. Then the old man incident happened of course, but this time I was prepared not to scare me!  On the next route I missed capturing a Mareep due to an unfortunate crit from MK666. Just as I was kinda upset because I love Mareep and an electric type  would be a nice addition to my team.. I pummeled Youngster Joey’s team in the ground! Lucario was so good! Eggsammy quickly learned to bite and became rather solid as well.  My grumpiness disappeared as I managed to snag a Lanturn as my next friend on Route 31! I love Lanturn. It is so cute!  My typings were amazing plus these were all pretty good Pokémon! Would this be my moment in the sun?!

My team before reaching Violet City!

The Funeral and a Victory

In a nearby cave I was even able to catch a Sableye, a ghost dark type pokémon which at this point in time had no defensive weaknesses and several immunities.  That means it could be a pretty good ally for our Nuzlocke adventure. He would be safe to swap into every time while I heal up my team.. a tank or shield of sorts. Since it has such a weird head shape that looks like a sci-fi robot or a jojo’s stand I decided to name it Scott. Now Scott made me realise I was in a bit of trouble. I had 5 really good Pokémon..and they were all under leveled. So I would already have to grind!  I hate grinding! So me and my pokémon dove into the tall grass, rolling around until we encountered a pokémon and we killed it. I was worried about how little XP I got .. until I suddenly realised that Scott leveled up without me training!  Upon closer inspection I found out he had an EXP share randomised onto him! Neat! So we went into some heavy training. This training nearly killed Scott and EggSammy once but I managed to pull through! With everyone at level 10 at least it was time to rechallenge sprout tower.

Taking a new friend to face an old challenge!

When I came around to that same guy who killed Heather last time.. things began falling apart. MK666 had no fighting move yet and our opponent send out a Snorlax.. which his high powered compared to most of my team. I should have send in Scott.. but I figured I would send Espeon in first.. use sand attack to weaken his accuracy… then Snorlax bit Espeon’s head off! Critical!   No amount of potions could save Espeon from having it’s head bit off.. so i already had my first death.  Scott had no means to hit the Snorlax and Lucario had no move to effectively counter him. So I had to develop a technique  of dealing damage, switching  Scott, healing my pokémon.. confuse it with scott and then swap into Lucario again hoping that Snorlax would hit itself in confusion! It brought us a victory.. but the nameless Espeon was dead. So I digitised it and put it in a random box in the computer.

I tried throwing a revive at it..but it did not work!

From beating Snorlax Mk666 however, he had learned Force Palm! With  Metal Claw and Force Palm Lucario was a tough cookie!  I knew we had a pretty good shot at the gym this time around. After catching a few more pokemon not viable for the team right now, such as poliwhirl, voltorb and budew my highest monster was at level 12 and I knew Falkner’s ace would be at about 14. So I took MK666 and leveled it to 14 at the gym trainers. However when the leader came up he only had a Mismagius and a Foretress, both got taken down by Eggsammy! My first badge had been won! I have gotten my revenge.

Victory over the first gym, eating a ghost a tossing rocks at a bug!

So finally we could venture on! I found one of the plates of god in some bushes nearby! One of the 17 plates representing Arceus was sitting there in the tall grass guarded by a bug keeper guy who liked to be called Dancer Cynthia. After dealing with Cynthia I collected the plate and noticed it was the Splash plate which would power up Pix , Bubble attack! So now my dolphin was equipped with a godly Relic, when we had to make a trek past some Fisherman who likes to be called Burglars! I told them ” Swiper, No Swiping ” and they told me they aren’t criminals like those Lass people robbing mansions! They are Burglars.. people who fish up pokemon on their boat and sell them for food! ‘So you are ‘Fisherman’ I asked and they said no, Fisherman guard locations after dark… this world is weird.

In Randomised Johto everyone has an identity crisis

Chasing Tail

One of the burglars was scary, normally in the game he would have five magikarp including one overpowered one..but after randomisation that turned into a level 16 gengar. Pix came in to paralyse it with a thunder wave and Eggsammy finished it off! Scott took down the weaker ones and got in some good levels! When we had finished killing every pokemon that belonged to a train I scored like three phone numbers of people wanting to see me again. Mom then kept calling as well..saying she bought me berries with my price money! Mom, what mailman will meet me at a pokemart to hand me 5 berries?

I wonder if this is why dad left us?

Near a cave I had to traverse through to get go Azalea city I was approached by a guy trying to sell me a Slowpoke tail for a million dollars. He said it was a delicacy! I told him even if that is true I could get a 50.000 pokeballs for that money and Slowpokes catch rate isn’t all THAT hard. Tails grow back and if one died in battle I could eat it whole! He got angry but told me that I would find it hard to find Slowpoke with a tail soon enough and I would regret it. I am a ten year old, I don’t want to know my burger was once a Miltank! So don’t make me recognise pink hippo tail either.

What are you buyin?

The trek to the cave was uneventful! I heard stories about caves being filled with Zubat but this cave was filled with Lapras and unfortunately with Beedrill! I caught one as my first encounter but mostly so the scary thing went away! The rest of the cave was mostly Lucario strangeling Lapras ..about 5 or 6 and Eggsammy tossing rocks at Beedrill. I get vert seasick from riding anything and I am terrifed of wasps do thid wasn’t a good place for me! Three firebreathers who like to be called birdkeepers must have heard my screams of terror as they mourned their teams. Pix and MK666 took good care of them.

Beedrill are not bees! They are wasps! I hate wasps!

When I finally reached the end of the cave I encountered a big husky bearded person with an alpine hat. Picknicker Sally was no match for my team that grew in power. Pix learned to flail..which is a good move when she is at low hp..but since this is a Nuzlocke.. all she could effectively do in terms of offence was blow bubbles empowered by god. A man with a black shirt and unfashionable cap told me I could not go into the well. I assume his name was Robby or something as his shirt featured a big red R. I walked into town and stocked up on pokeballs and some potions trying to access the second gym.. without much success.

So I figured I would visit Kurt the pokeball master! He could make me Pink Pokeballs! He told me I had to help him rescue Slowpokes from the well first! What’s up with all these people wanting to go inside a well! If there are slowpokes swimming in that well I doubt the water will taste very fresh! I imagine slowpokes taking big dumps in that water..regardless Kurt had already ran out by the time I finished that train of thought and I really wanted pink pokeballs and Scott could use a few more battles before the next gym…so I went in the well. There I found Kurt, a 60 year old man or so who fell three stories down. I assumed he was dead but he then told me, team rocket is inside, I hurt my back go in and face them.

He is the hero Azalea Town needs!

Did he just fake his injuries not to fight against criminals or is he super sturdy? I asked if I should not get help first.. maybe the well could flood and we would drown! He told me he should be up and about by the time I took down their leader! So I may just be 10 years old…but that to me sounds like he is faking..but well..pink pokeballs and all. So I thanked him for getting me this far and cracked my knuckles! Finally I was going to kill some Pokemon of people who really deserved it.

Days spend: 2
Gym Badges Obtained: 1
Deaths: 1 This run, 7 Total
Times Reset: 1

Destressing with Action: Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 20

We had Sunny’s first post this week! I signed my lease and now per November I will officially be moving and I can already tell it will cost me a few blog posts here and there! There is quite a lot to do and I am super excited for it but it is also quite stressful. So much to do so many elements I need to account for!  Just one more month!  So… it is also important to relax! Luckily I could kick up my feet and enjoy 100+ minutes of great anime! In this week’s instalment of my anime adventure!

Digimon Adventure Episode 8

I love this show, it really is great!  there is no doubt about it! Once again this episode managed to show us what a character really is about while also making great narrative progress and the choices being made here are pretty smart and exciting again. However a few odd choices make this episode a bit harder to believe than last week’s episode.

Riding Ikkakumon, the group of  Taichi, Sora, Mimi and Joe make it across the water. However a Fortress is blocking their way. A military grade blokkade. A pair of Solarmon  which are a recolour of Hagurumon  will lead to an apelike digimon to fire at them with his special attack as well as summon hordes of tankmon!   When the group gets in trouble they are saved by Yamato (Matt)  and Gabumon. Lone ranger style, he plans to sneak into the fortress and take down Gorillamon. However with the hordes of Tankdramon out there he finds himself overwhelmed and has to rely on his newfound allies. Experiencing something new to him.. he thinks of them fondly as everyone helps Yamato get closer and closer to Gorillamon. Empowering Garurumon with the power of friendship he eventually manages to take down the threat Together they took down the fort and with a proud roar  of Garurumon atop of the tower.  Mimi and Joe now can take down the Tankdramon.. using their abilities to attack bigger crowds to their advantage and also giving us a cute Mimi and Joe moment that reminded me of Chopper and Usopp from One Piece! Yet there also is a fair bit of interaction with Mimi and Yamato! Could that be a thing?! Inside  however Agumon finds a secret lab that seems to contain a part of the ancient tablet with more information about the holy Digimon.

So this episode was Yamato’s episode and the way they let him use his crest .. at least the one he had in the old series of friendship was pretty sweet. The visuals used for the pacing and even that awkward focus on Taichi flickering smiling in Yamato’s eyes.. it feels much less like a rivalry and the beginning of an actual friendship here. In fact I believe we might be setting up to get “Ultimate”  evolutions already.  Everyone seems to possess the ability already this time their digivice has the symbol of their crest and the threat that is created this time seems much more real. While I like that concept it does worry me for Devimon, will he pose a challenge… will he evolve?! Was he just an easter egg?! Regardless we see the kids grow in a rapid pace and I really do like that.. given the circumstances they are in it seems like they pick up stuff at a believable pace. The fact that we also immediately establish Yamato’s roll as a sort of speedy infiltrator who breaks through the enemies lines really works wonders. However once more it is established he can not handle this alone from the get go.. everyone yet again has their role to play. This episode is action packed and the way the music is used was amazing. It felt so satisfying! Mimi got a good joke again where she got attached to the luxury of a towel.. Joe gets it destroyed by trying to use it as a white flag and while Mimi mopes, Palmon reveals it was actually Sora’s towel that Mimi just “took” for herself. Keeping that queenly quality intact.

Unlike last time however I do have a gripe with this episode. Joe and Mimi  fairly easily took down 20 Champion form Digimon. Tankmon even! These are Data Attribute Digimon who should be resistant to Vaccine Attribute digimon like Ikakumon. Togemon CAN be a virus attribute and thus be more effective but it more often than not is a Data attribute.  So it does feel weird how 2 champions and take down 20 without much effort.  They do make smart use of their Area of Effect style attacks..but it feels a bit much.  Where before all Digimon more or less can take down one digimon of their level. They do fix this somewhat by seemingly giving the “wild” digimon less special attacks to work with and we can see the chosen ones empower their digimon trough their digivice but I think 5 tankmon would have been enough.It is a bit of a shift in digimon logic towards more of a situation how Digmon works in the Digimon World or Cyber Sleuth games and while I appreciate that I felt it lacked precedence.  Had the Digidestined commented.. wow we are becoming really strong, I would have been fine with it but now a sense of the “frailty” of the classic Digimon is gone.

The frailty however is traded in for some pretty epic scenes  and much more grand scale battles.  You really sense someone wishes to see the Chosen Ones dead. It becomes bigger than your average monster of the week and I do really like that feeling. The chosen ones feel much more in the control seat this time around and this episode did make me miss the humility of the old show a bit!  Yet never was I not entertained.

Samurai Flamenco Episode 15

This episode both made so much sense to me and not much sense at all. It really does feel like something that would happen in a season change between Sentai shows again and while super clever from a Meta Stance.. in universe I could not help but to have some questions.

Masayoshi faces off against his look-alike who is revealed to only be his metaphorical brother. He has a tail!  They talk for a bit and after Masayoshi convinces From Beyond Flamenco he has a right to be there and the will to fight, From Beyond Flamenco commits suicide by letting Masayoshi shoot him. This causes all the evil to vanish but the drilll inside mount Fuji! By sacrificing Flamen Robo the group manages to stop the drill before Japan is destroyed. We see the classical ranger season close up with people giving up their power and returning to their daily life.. when suddenly the government comes hunting after the Flamengers. Pink Green and Black get arrested and Blue suffers a off camera defeat at the hands of the Prime Minister of Japan… being completely beaten.  The only one who gets away is Masayoshi who is aided by an american hero! He is declared an enemy of the state and we see people he used to be close with react to the news. Something is very wrong!   The Prime Minister wished to use the disaster to get re-elected..but now has a too low approval rating..but at 72% it seems he should be good! What is he actually planning! The show keeps us in the dark as Masayoshi tries to go into hiding. 

This episode was fascinating. It had all of the elements of how Sentai shows usually wrap up! It felt rushed, with a very odd plot-twist and with a ban on all vigilante activities in effect, Samurai Flamenco seems truly defeated.  It is a great way to go into a “third” season of sorts and it very much reminded me of the narrative structure of power rangers. The Tarantino like dialogue returns and their is plenty of enjoyable action and mystery. My favourite scene is how the flamengers say goodbye to each other in front of their decommissioned base with an epic power walk.. just for Masayoshi to return to visiting his grandpa’s grave. The new hero introduced is hilarious as well.  Trying to get Masayoshi away from the police safely he drives this super garish american truck! He sings the american anthem to calm Masayoshi down and in a way he really reminds me of All Might.. but with more Sentai camp.. there is a lot that works here.. if we view this as a Sentai show and watch it on a very meta level. It does indeed remind me of why Akiba -Rangers worked so well for me …but where that show stays very ridiculous this one sometimes  tries to eat a cake and have it to. 

There are so many logic leaps in this episode. Why did Fron Beyond Flamenco commit suicide, if the goverment wanted Japan to be in trouble why not decommision vigilantes as soon as Samurai first showed up, why give them award first and then brand them as enemies of the state.. that sounds like you weren’t clever enough to notice at first! It really does seem that the government had better options to betray the flamengers before.  If you want viewers’ approval why not evacuate innocents before VIP’s then you say it could not happen because the Flamengers asked people to fight with them.. I do not know but I felt like there were more effective plans. Overly complex plans are part of the Sentai Tropes, sure.. but the show always puts these tropes more in the context of the real world.. so this just felt weird to me! I bet all will be explained before long..but right now.. I feel things are becoming a bit messy.

While I deeply enjoyed the events that unfolded I had very big trouble with how everything unfolded. The villains were defeated very easily and Japan just turns hostile against Flamenco while he saved the town first. He goes from idolised to being completely hated again, and the evidence the provide for this is his conversation with Beyond Flamenco. Which proves he looks like a bad guy!? How?! A guy that looks like an orange disolving people with extremely acidic OJ exists as well as a monster that is the AK48 of monsters. Why would you assume that the fact that a copycat with a tail existing means the other guy is evil?! So many weird monster abilities have been shown yet no one in Japan thinks.. maybe this monster can mimic faces? Maybe they took his face to confuse us?! I had a hard time believing it all and as a result never gotten that settled into the episode! It’s a good episode..it just lacks that golden touch that makes this show into what it is.

That Time I got reincarnated as a Slime Episode 14

I thought Gabiru was going to die… but he did not! He got saved by Rimiru.Which is a shame! He gets a bit of a redemption arc this episode alongside the one he got last episode but I still really do not like him! It seems we are nearly done with him though! As the Lizardmen War arc is wrapping up.

Gelmud appears on the battlefield and explains to Gabiru he needs to die! He wants to feed the orc so many people so he can evolve once again.. into a full Demon Lord.  Transforming form an Orc Lord into an Orc Disaster. While Rimuru easily wipes the floor with Gelmud we see the Lord just stare at the one sided fight.  Geld the Orc .. likes the idea of becoming an Orc disaster and decides to eat what he thinks will get him there fastest. He decapitates and eats Gelmud! Who has been hinting at doing his masters bidding! Keeping that identity secret and taking it to his grave. Now an Orc Disaster Geld is only consumed by hunger even more!  This means Rimuru has no chance but to kill him.. and aided by the Ogre’s who now can’t damage the Orc enough because he is super regenerative …Rimuru at first struggles with this fight.  Showing us a new trick of letting the great Sage fight for him Rimuru becomes a dominating force once more but after the Great Sage makes a misplay and tries to burn the orc with the power of the Efreet.. to which he is immune, Rimuru has to take over.  His plan .. Devour the devourer!  Thus as Geld becomes more and more covered in slime and falling prey to Predator.. we see a flashback of him being a pretty good guy! But falling to sin! Rimuru reassures him he will take on that sin but that Geld needs to die!  After an argument we see Geld’s skin dissolve and with Rimuru promising to do his people right in the end..he gives up and gets consumed! People cheer as Rimuru is the victor. 

This episode delivered on a lot of good action! The Gelmud vs Rimuru fight was cathartic and the Majin got what he deserved. The Ogre’s versus the Orc disaster was futile but had amazing visuals and shows how amazing the Ogre’s are once again as they could damage him pretty bad…he could just regenerate faster.  Great Sage versus the Orc Lord was visceral and filled with all sorts of clean special effects that made it look very spectacular.  We see so many abilities being used it really feels like a battlefield, even if we are only seeing one versus one fights the scope of the battle is much bigger. While one sided like most Isekai the visuals still made it all feel exciting and I think that is important for an overpowered Isekai like this.  It’s fine to have an untouchable main character..but if we can not get the thrill of an equal fight just go ham and display some crazy abilities!  Something Isekai Cheat Magician does wrong for example. We get lightning bolts, dark fire, “Ultra Instinct Sign Rimuru” ,  We get Efreet Mode Rimuru , We get a clash of noxious Orc aura with a bright silver slime. While it might not be thrilling what we see on screen it certainly is badass.

I did enjoy the episode and the pretty visuals, I liked how Gabiru was touched by his allies giving their lives for him, the orcs doing the same for the king they believed in and Gabiru really wanting to save his allies rather than get himself to safety.. I liked the badass action.. but I missed the humor of the show. The only real joke that was made was Rimuru having his face resting underneath Shion’s boobs again.  Other than that it is mostly just a bit “witty” spiderman like banter. I missed those moments of Rimururu fawning over Souei, or people looking stupefied over how easy he actually ate a Demon Lord class foe. I also kind of disliked how both Geld and Gabiru both got completely redeemed. It’s nice that Rimuru doesn’t have a bad person in him ..but please let someone be a bit more flawed. Have Gabriu stay a selfish bastard and let him rot in jail.. let Geld actually be a war hungry ORc who did not rip off his own arm to feed children.. but lost it in a fight to eat a pair of children.  It almost felt a bit “christmassy to finish this episode and during the flashback I did find myself losing interest in this episode”

The badass action kept me glued to the screen for most of the episode so I can not say it’s bad.. it is better than fine actually, as the issue I had with this episode might have just been something I was not in the mood for! I wanted more badassness as a drug, but it ended with a moment of wholesomeness that just stopped it being perfect for me! I love Christmas, don’t get me wrong.. I just don’t want that christmas spirit all year long.

Flip Flappers Episode 10

Okay I was wrong about Mimi but the moment I saw that flashback I knew exactly how things went!  That’s amazing! And the implications! The implications! Well I am not sure about the implications actually .. but it ‘s nice to see it’s all connected.

This episode has a much simpler plot than most episodes! So here we go! Yayaka is recovering in the medbay and the evil organisation she belongs to attacks Flip Flap to get her back and also takes Cocona to get the shard that is embedded in her leg!  As the base is overrun the Amorphous twins reveal to Cocona that Yayaka became her friend for fake reasons while Papika got her memory back and remembers Mimi finally! This leads Cocona to believe she is also just a replacement for Mimi to Papika and no one really cares for her.. as she flees the base and leaves everyone who betrayed her behind.. we see a flashback of Papika and Mimi bonding and discover Mimi is not that amorphous girl.. no she looks very very much like Cocona.. hanging out with Salt the three have fun together.. with Salt romantically interested in Mimi.  Mimi and Papika partner up in the past as Papika and Cocona break up in the present.  When it turns out that Cocona’s grandma is secretly a robot belonging to the evil organisation and she orders her to be captured and anxiety attack triggers all the amorphous shards not fed to the evil machine to fly into Cocona destroying robot grandma and the other evil robots.. from a broken mirror we see Mimi talking to Cocona that Mamma will protect her now!

Wow.. Mimi is Cocona’s mother .. so I was right that Pure Illusion is very much linked to Cocona.. I was wrong about Mimi being evil though! But this probably means Salt is Cocona’s father?! He isn’t a very good dad then!  But well I bet he shares her (old)  eye colour hidden behind those sunglasses. I am almost certain of it!  I am slightly annoyed that it was yet ANOTHER break up episode.. that’s like 3 in 10 episodes or so and now Papika has to swoop in again.. but this time I completely understand! I get she felt like this. She is a test subject to both Flip Flap and the other organisation. I do not get why that other organisation exists yet though and this episode really made me intrigued. It’s like I have been tossed a very tasty worm and I am about to delve into it, hook line and sinker, I am a fish in this case by the way! It feels like we are really picking up in terms of story. Since the amorphous pieces allow you to control pure Illusion I believe these shards are part of Mimi?! She seemed to control Pure Illusion, and once they flew to Cocona she got her mother’s eye colour?! I do like this feeling of being so invested into something and I really hope she and Papika can work things out and that Yayaka is safe! I was so invested that I forgot to pay attention to what I particularly liked.

I do dislike how often Papika and Cocona split up though! I do get that Cocona feels deceived here.. but Papika has also proven to care for Cocona several times over. I get our protagonist feels betrayed. I just feel really REALLY bad for Papika. She tries so hard and gets so far.. but in the end it doesn’t even matter. I really would have preferred to see the conflict go in a way where Cocona wants nothing to do with Flip Flap but Papika can’t give it up and then Cocona taking her leave. Telling Papika she hates her feels a bit much after all the love the girl showed her.. and love I think Cocona should realise is sincere. The conflict of the last episode even dealt with that. That being said Cocona seems least aversive of Papika and I am glad at that, I just can’t escape the feeling that for a two protagonist series The orange haired girl sometimes becomes to much of a side character and her actions “stick” less.

I really adored the episode overall, there was a lot of enjoyable action and reveals and I was thoroughly entertained. My gripe seems big but I am also fine with this turn of events.. It’s more that I really would have liked Papika to be appreciated. It reminds me of a friendship I had and while I did not use my friends for a weird organization led by their dad.. I did a lot for a few friends and then none of that mattered..because I went to an event I really REALLY liked while they had to work. I was so villainized for it. Like myself I think Papika should have more leeway here.. and because it felt  the past did not matter I like this episode slightly less than I could have.

Hikaru no Go Episode 20

This was a very interesting episode to me! It clearly sets up events for an upcoming arc and it also feels like we finally have arrived at the meat of the story. Hikaru’s chase of Akira is brought to new levels.. but it comes at a price.. and I like it.

After meeting with the First Board of Kaijo School Hikaru is called out for being too whimsical! He finds out that Touya Akira already has become a pro and that if things do not change soon he will completely be out of his reach. Hikaru has to get serious. To do so he has to become an Insei.. with no patience in his heart he tries to register for the “december” exam. Given that we see it being fall during a few walking sequences that is only a few months away. There are problems though!  The registration has closed, Hikaru lacks a sponsor and he needs to log three games at least, to participate. A big wig in the Go world, whose name I keep forgetting, but we’ve seen him before around Touya Senior, takes interest in the boy and decides to sponsor him.  When Hikaru goes to tell his friends they tell him he can’t be an Insei and participate in amateur tournaments. Now he has to face a dilemma to chase his “rival” or continue to stick with his friends. With Mitani seeming to push him towards the tournament but Tsutsui being a bit more silent.

The episode sets up a very interesting Dilemma and I really appreciated the weight this episode had. It feels like we are finally not just getting an arc but also as if we are finally reaching the next stage of the  “main” storyline. Where the first few episodes almost feel like a first act, the high school tournament arc functioning as the inciting incident/ second act and where the internet go arc “wrapped up”   the introduction part…. this feels like the first act of a “meatier” story. As a result this episode has so much weight. Becoming my favourite watch of the day as a result. Hikau’s character traits make him very different from the other Insei candidates which results in him finally coming more into the role of the “actual” protagonist.
While I liked the tiny arcs it feels as if I could really use a bit of a bigger story. This episode provides that for me with some interesting visuals again to convey a time pressure and we got a very solid episode.

This episode once again had very little lows for me. I like the direction  it has taken throughout. The only dislike I have is how the third Go girl is introduced. She is a bitch of a bulky chubby..masculine female and the animation lingers on displaying her “ugliness” as a form of comedy and I would think this show is above those cheapshots. Sai does his childlike thing again…but this time I do think it makes more sense. I like how he gets excited about silly technology! I do not like it when he gets childish over Go! It feels conflicting with what we have seen of him before. This episode knows when to make him serious and when to make him silly better than the previous one. Another mild issue I had is something in the writing that almost feels like a mistake to me?! It’s the fact  that everyone is so shocked that Hikaru is taking the exam because Insei can’t participate in amateur tournaments. However becoming an Insei is hard and Hikaru at this time is not at that level yet. From what I understood at least people usually fail their first Insei exams as most do not pass their first Pro exam.. it feels more like an experience they need to go through to get good enough? So why does everyone assume Hikaru will become an Insei first try?! It feels a bit foreshadowing.. as if the characters have knowledge they should not have.  As if I enlisted to get a house  somewhere and people already started giving me housewarming gifts.

Most of my issues are mostly ponderings though, the only thing I did dislike is the “ugly focus” but since we haven’t seen anything of the character yet I will let it slide for now!  Hopefully they keep focus on her and don’t repeat the joke again and she is just a token to fill in a spot so the girls can play. Who knows if Hikaru becomes an Insei this early there might not even be a school tournament. I am at least very happy that the story is getting some serious meat on it’s bones!

That was a pretty great watch still! Obviously after perfect week I would have a few minor issues here and there this week..because in the face of perfection you can not help but stand out! Still it was amazing! Next week I will meet my sister and we will trash some of my old stuff I do not need to take to my new place. With the move happening somewhere in the next month you can expect me to miss a post here and there because real life stuff will get in the way.

As for blog content, you will see a new Anime versus Western TV show Cross-over (Part 1 out of 2) we will discuss the final Blood Rayne movie and we when October starts I will start doing a lot of Halloween themed content. Most of my content wil be about Spooky Stuff! Saturday Anime Adventure will keep going .. during the month.. as long as I am not doing moving activities..and since people mostly can help in the weekend, expect to see a few skips on that in the weeks to come! I will try to have a replacement ready though but time will tell! I hope you will have an amazing next week!

A BIT of Nostalgia: Pocky and Rocky

Hello again my dear island guests!  As some of you know , I am not very much of a modern gamer, I really tend to stick close to gems of the past and in the past of this blog I have discussed a fair few of these. Recently I replayed one of these classics again. As a kid this game was bundled in a special rental promotion set with Mystical Ninja Goemon in some of my video-stores staff favourite bundles.  That game was called Pocky and Rocky.

The Priest and The Tanuki

Pocky and Rocky is an odd game, manifesting as a scrolling shooter but for once not playing space or a warzone. Instead you move to colourful landscapes and you should down a slew of varying monsters, navigate around certain traps and use tools to defend yourself.
However other than that it does still play like a typical scrolling shooter. You collect power ups to upgrade your weapon in two different ways, you fight bosses and like all space shooters this game is tricky as heck! It is commonly seen as a bit of a niche hit for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System but upon release was popular enough to spawn three sequels. One on the SNES one on the Game Boy Advance and one on the Playstation 2 and Wii.  The game was produced by Natsume and published by them as well. Upon its release it got reviewed pretty well, easily scoring an average score of about 8 out of 10. More often going higher than that then lower. This is a perfectly fine score for this game that is mostly praised for its amazing two player mode. 

I reviewed the game Single Player as I don’t have any friend who wants to come play this with me in person and the person who might play this with me lacks the patience for such a title. It should be noted that both the American version and the Japanese version are much better than the European version of the game. In Europe the Japanese version never got translated  and as a result while there are cutscenes the European version does not feature any text or story! To explain the story I will use a Let’s Play of the American version , thus characters will be titled like their American counterpart. To be fair I had a lot of fun imagining what the story would be in the European version but seeing how far I was off made me chuckle a bit. Some of the terminology used comes from the Pocky and Rocky Wiki and not from the game as even the American version never uses any terminology for weapons or anything except the enemies. 

When you are alone you can take the role of Pocky , who is a little priest girl  who fights by throwing sealing cards, called Ofuda,  at enemies and she can defend by swinging her priestess staff or Gohei. Rocky is a Raccoon Dog and instead of cards he tosses out leafs and he defends by swiping his tail. There seem to be minute differences between the characters, for example I think Pocky is faster but Rocky can dive a bit further and seems to defend more effectively. .but I honestly am not sure if I made that up in my mind or if it is actual reality. The story moves independent of what character you pick as both storywise seem to stick together. Which brings us to a bit of a problem.. this game is very VERY hard if you single player it! I really would have liked it if the lonesome player would have gotten an NPC ally to aid them.. however  because of how some challenges are designed I guess an AI could not cut it! While you can play the game  by yourself.. the easy difficulty will already provide you with a very steep challenge.

Let’s Rocky

The story of the game is wonderfully weird and very mundane at the same time!  A long time ago wicked creatures called the Nopino Goblins spread mischief across the land. Yet they were all subjected by a priest named Pocky. All seemed well until one day Pocky the Tanuki shows up telling her his fellow Nopino Goblins are out of control! The first Nopino Goblins that go out of control are these Umbrellas with a big eye and a scary mouth. As well some weird ass cyclops monks!  They are aided by guys in baskets that should at you and spooky scary skeletons!  The boss of the first level is a guy with a big brown head that shoots seeds at you!  When you defeat him.. he tells he has been mind controlled by a guy in a Black Mantle.. so that is what the villain of the game is called Black Mantle! Pocky and Rocky then venture into the water domain to fight some creatures that look like a cross between a turtle and a duck……wait a minute!  

Tanuki..Kasa Obake, Oi No Bakemono, Hitotsume-kozō and Kappa! Nopino Goblin is the English translation for the word Yokai! That is hilarious! The second stage makes you fight the cutest monkeys before eventually turning into a water stage quickly restricting your movement. Since a game over doesn’t abide by any checkpoints or subareas getting a game over means you go back to the beginning of a stage! You have unlimited continues but..Nopino Goblins can be tough sons of Yokai! The game is hilariously  translated and the dialogue feels SUPER cheesy! Especially after you finish the third stage and things seem more dire!  That stage took me SO Many attempts though! It has two pretty hard minbi bosses, and grueling gauntlets of flying enemies.  After you deal with that you dodge some  traps and shifting walls that can push you off the stage so you have to master the dodge technique here to avoid the deadly twomps like skeletons and shifting stage. It is a very good stage that has some amazing designs though and some funny Nopino Goblins!

It gets even better though , as you advance past the third stage you find out that the evil organisation is the Gorgonzola Goblins, living in the Gorgonzola Fortress and to get there you have to use a cursed airship! This is probably the hardest stage in the game, Narrow spaces, few options to dodge and lots of Yokai Pirates and turres with crazy attack patterns. It is guarded by a bird Yokai which requires you to be pretty good at your shield and dodge techniques.  Of course that pales in comparison to the skill you have to show against the second to last boss fight! Black Mantle of course works together with Dracula!  This fight. quickly turns into a bullet hell! With a twist. Entire sections of the map at time become electrified so standing still and defending will not get you anywhere.. so you will have to zoom across the arena.. while using your defensive tail swipe AND attacking the boss! All tools have to be used at the same time. The final stage is a simple climb facing some tough enemies that fire attacks that cover half the screen. Getting hit by them drains a massive amount of health as well and health power ups are very rare! With a miniboss and the big boss himself.. this one might take a few attempts. The ending is wholesome and cute and after a bit of ending dialogue Pocky and Rocky share some Dango together in the moonlight!

Sweet as a Pocky

Pocky is a sweet japanese candy..well it’s bread  with chocolate on it but the Pocky in this game is just as sweet. The presentation of this game is phenomonal! The cutscenes are super cute, the sprites are fantastic and the game has some pretty nice tunes. It really has a cute anime esthetic that also reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons for very young kids. The way the story is presented also seems very much like one of the cutests tales for kids you have ever seen. The story is very much non-violent but  there are some creepy like bosses and creepy imagery as well it is very balanced out! 

You never get bored!  Every stage feels significantly different from the others even if lots of set pieces are reused across all stages. It really works, you can see what areas lie close to one another but you also feel like you have made progress. Pocky and Rocky both look great themselves. If you play with two players you even get some team moves where one character uses the other to launch themselves forward as if they were a skateboard of sorts.. It looks buttery smooth. The frame-rate can stutter a tiny bit if there are too many enemies on screen but that is almost never an issue.

The gameplay is rather pleasant and while it is difficult as heck, it never feels really unfair.. that said it is one of those , remember the patterns ,  kinda game.. but to be fair that rings true for most of the genre and the genre itself is known for being pretty difficult.  Basically how this game works is, you make progress until you die, you find out why you die or how these enemies work and how to best get around it , you lose less health and the next time you progress further. You die again facing this new enemy  or a bit in the level and you come up with a strategy for that section again. You start the stage over again and combine your knowledge of before to get even further.. and so you get a little bit better every time you die. You really have to remember how these things work because health is fairly rare and there is no regaining life during a stage. Playing alongside a friend will make things a bit more manageable as you can remind each other how to get around an obstacle and the team moves really make you able to dash through things you can’t do alone..but that is actually a nice reward for playing with two. You really can use each other! 

The controls all work pretty nicely as well, pretty much every button is used and if you don’t like a lay out the game allows you to remap them yourself to fit your preference. For example I remapped the dodge  to something that worked a bit better for me. I gradually ended up remapping a few things, just to fit my playstyle and it worked. I really felt myself improving.. but there is a lot to improve for just one sitting.

Nope-Ino

There are a few minor gripes I have with this game and for one is there is no save feature! That is rather common and if you are familiar with the game you can beat this entire game in just under an hour.  To learn all these patterns of thought takes a lot longer. I needed several hours to gradually improve myself enough to beat this. It’s possible.. but as I grew more tired focus began to fade. At stage 4 I had to call it quits the first day. Replaying Stage 1 through 3 was a lot easier the next day but there is no real reward for playing through them well. You can’t take extra lives, at least not above your maximum and continue being unlimited even if you could.. it doesn’t really matter if you don’t start out with max lives you just learn and progress later.  Stage 4 and Stage 5 are WAAAY harder than the previous once so after progressing through stage 4 and most of 5 .. I had to call it quits on the second day! The third day playing through stage 1 till 4 felt a bit .. tedious.. It’s part of the genre but a password after stage 3 might have been nice. Even if it was just the one.

The fact that there are only two upgrades .. plus a shield is also a bit .. thin. Blue orbs improve your cards or leafs so you can throw multiple while orange orbs turn your projectiles into fireballs. While both characters have a unique main weapon the  fireball is the same, which is sad as it does more damage, but it looks way less unique! You are usually better off with the bigger range of your main weapon anyway. I just wish there were more upgrades. Upgrades decrease if you take hits so for example I can see a slower but homing attack being a nice upgrade or  perhaps a less damaging projectile but one that also blocks enemy attacks much like your swipes.  It would give us a bit more variation to play! It doesn’t really affect how fun this game is.. and it is really fun.. I just think.. it could even be more fun if you and your friend could go different weapon upgrade routes and get a bit more creative rather than just skilful!

Of course for the european version the lack of text is a BIG issue. While the dialogue is nothing to write home about, it adds a really innocent charm to the game that isn’t really there in our PAL version. While the cutscenes without dialogue are still pretty cute, the bosses in the American version usually say some fun lines as well .. a threat right before you start, which feels like some extra motivation.. since the european version apparently had to translate from the japanese version and they said nope we are not going to translate it.  Which is a shame.. it isn’t a good text.. but it is really cute!

The final gripe I have with this game is the box art! It really is quite ugly and doesn’t represent the style of the game at all. The Japanese box art looks so much cuter! The art of the game is much more reflective of that Japanese style so why make it in this weird semi-cool box art. I get it in some games where a sprite is open for interpretation but given the high quality presentation in the cutscenes, and of the sprite itself , I don’t think this is something you can pull off successfully!

The Boxart we got!
The Japanese Boxart!

Two can play THIS Game

This title is a super strong and quite overlooked one in the SNES library! Due to it’s arcade like feeling it aged very well and is very fun to play to this day. Buying a cartridge can be a costly affair with prices ranging going well above that of a full priced game, and including a case you can easily buy two full priced console games. So it does hold some collector value. I am sure however people can find a way to enjoy this game none the less. Pocky Rocky and Becky the second sequel for the Game Boy Advance has been released on several virtual consoles. If you manage to get your hands on this game however it will provide a few hours of good fun! While relatively short it takes quite a while to master and the colourful graphics and varying stages make everything a delight to replay. Even by yourself.

The real fun however starts if you play this with a buddy! More strategies unlock, extra moves are handed out and there is just that much more fun to be had with the game. Single player the game is great but you can feel it never completely reaches it’s full potential. Some enemies are extra rough to dodge because you really miss that team up move set. A choice I think is very brave and makes sense A single player has much more reason to master this while a two player game can be more casual fun. It might not be able to escape some of the classic genre tropes and the lack of a password system or a save feature prevents it from getting my highest rating but it got darn close! Pocky and Rocky is one of the better Co-op multiplayer games on the system and Nopino Goblins is an amazing english word for Yokai!

(Just) One Jump Ahead of Other Video Game Movies: Prince of Persia (2010) Review!

Hello Island Guests! Today we look at another video game movie, like has become a bit of a habit. Yet after I wanted something that I remembered kind of liking. So for once I rewatched a video game movie I had fond-ish memories of? How do these feelings hold up?! Well read all about it.

The Elephant in the Room

Before we start unfortunately this is something I must discuss as it has become this has become a point of debate. This movie starsJake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsly and Alfred Molina among others. This means it casts western actors in the role of what would be another ethnicity. Even though the Prince of Persia always had an ambiguous design in the matter. Because it does this I found it  named the worst video game movie of all times a lot. White-washing however I see as a problem of Hollywood, not of this movie so I will not rate the movie on that gripe. Nor will I consider ethnicity as an aspect for casting (in this movie..a modern movie that was made with the current mindset of the world I hold to other standards)

This doesn’t make me a racist because I do not care who plays the role. Just because a character is from a fictional version of Persia doesn’t mean he has to be Persian for me. Just like Tony Stark doesn’t have to be “white” or Sherlock home doesn’t have to be male. I believe everyone can add something to a part and as long as you play something entertaining and as long as you do not stereotype a race you are not.. or heck even your own race. I do not care. We are humans and I see humans trying to act here. Just like how a kid born from two systematically racist parents isn’t automatically  a waste of space neither is this movie bad for existing but having nasty minded person in casting. 

 I get that this hits closer for some others and I do support those people fighting for their cause. I am simply saying I am not a bad person for liking this movie just because I am not bothered by this as much. I would not be bothered by a person of my race being replaced by an arab/melanated/otherwise person either. I get the ratio is skewed and that should be fixed but I see everyone as a part of humanity not it’s sub groups.. if that way of thinking makes me a horrible person I will happily hold that title. I’ll cry… but I’ll stand by my own way. I will never completely get the injustice or experience what some of you might experience. I will not pretend to know and I will continue to see everyone as humans. And unlike most video game movies, competent humans were cast here!

The Pauper in the Palace

It’s a shame that we can’t see movies apart from other stuff anymore because this movie, while not amazing by any means, does show some great moments. Well great might be exaggerating but there are some very good ones. The movie is directed by Mike Newell and produced by the guys behind Pirates of the Carribean and  Disney. Mike Newell also directed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and did some work on Young Indiana Jones.  That combination is basically exactly what you are getting. Indiana Jones, mixed with Pirates a bit of Harry Potter like magic with swashbuckling like Pirates of the Caribbean. In fact it feels like the latter so much it could almost be called Pirates of Persia. I am not kidding. From the cinematography, story cues even the way lines are delivered it feels like a Pirates movie in the desert. The main character is a charming scoundrel who lost his crew after being betrayed as all he has left is some magical macguffin. Mostly causing chain reactions with stuff falling by cutting ropes, swinging to other locations and doing the “free running” thing. Dastan isn’t as annoying as Jack Sparrow either.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Dastan is indeed a Prince of Persia so if you have never seen this movie? How can you be a Scoundrel and a Prince?! Well Dastan was an orphan boy.. very much like Alladin. When a friend of his is about to lose his hands due to stealing Dastan risks his own safety to protect his friends. This is noticed by King Sharaman who picks up the young boy and decides to give him a life in the palace. After we skip ahead a few years Dastan has grown up as the youngest son of the King, his brother Tus is next in line for the throne as Garsiv is the country’s most prominent military man.  When it seems a neighbouring country smuggles weapons to their enemies, Garsiv wishes to attack the city head on.  Knowing it will be a bloodbath Dastan instead uses his band of thieves and beggars to sneak into  the city while jumping and leaping across plenty of obstacles and dangerous pits. This leads to a chain of events where he obtains a mysterious magical dagger and when he gifts his father a poisoned cloak .. because Persian warriors gift their king something when they conquer a city, he realises he has been set up! He flees with Princess Tamina, who is after his dagger. Together they uncover a plot to release the sands of time upon this world and are forced to save the world from inevitable destruction.

Dastan as a character is probably the strongest element of this movie. While he isn’t always that believable he actually LOOKS like the prince in the video game trilogy that it is based on and he quite oftenly acts like it was well. Of course less static and epic than the video game prince.. and he jumps less but Dastan deals with issues his video game counterpart would have to deal with as well.  While not feeling as a video game adventure this feels like a somewhat proper real life interpretation of that story and with that it already does something that 90% of video game movies doesn’t do .I got somewhat right vibes. The dagger is there, it does what it does, the prince does what he does, the setting is correct even the outfit Dastan wears sometimes seems like stuff the prince wore seems pretty accurate. His lines are funny in the cliché disney swashbuckling way. A bit of a love child between Alladin and Jack Sparrow.. but it works. Some of the weird gaming logic can be applied because of how cartoony it is and while it also makes it never that investing.. it at least feels like a video game movie and that is really ALL I ask. Finally!

The Princess of Hell

Princess Tamina however… oh boy.. where Dastan is everything that is right about this movie Tamina is everything that is wrong with this movie. She plays the exact same female as that ALL the females are in these Disney adventures. ALL of them. The one Keira Knightly Played, Blackbeard’s Daughter and I completely forgot about the fifth pirates movie but I am sure the figure was there as well. I hated everything about her. While Dastan was a stereo-type as well he furthers the plot. Tamina up until the last quarter exists to stall the plot. With the stupidest ways and ploys. She could have solved everything by being honest ..but no  she has to be shallow and see him as a beast even though we know they end up together… but then .. bla bla bla.. she is so bland and so annoying I was like… Dude.. she’s such a pain.. and you have a dagger! Do us a favour and plant that in her neck or heart please.  

Her super posh , I think british,  accent I did find rather distracting. Now I have no problem with establishing the British accent as the dialect for that country.. but no.. it’s just her. I think.. She and one other character are the only people in her country who speak and they get like two lines or something and those are super generic. So much of her scenes did not make sense. She is written like one of those power women but Gemma doesn’t have that vibe.. nor the delivery. She really sounds like just the most annoying Tsundere woman you can imagine. Dastan’s abilities are more or less consistent, he is very gullible and naive but a strong fighter in enclosed spaces with amazing spacial awareness and jumping abilities. 

Tamina however has abilities that phase in and out of existence. From knowledge of ancient passages lost to man, to very fluctuating degrees of swordman ship. It almost feels like she is an afterthought. Which is kind of funny because that is exactly how the female character in any prince of persia game feels like… this one is just a LOT more annoying. Think how Leia treated Han on Echo Base (Hoth)  but then CONSTANTLY that same stuff. Ugh!

While Persia has a fairly interesting story of regicide and finding the betrayer and their real intentions, her country Alamud or something..  is boring. It holds a cave that holds the sands of time..but that is really it. It is said to be a super peaceful prosperous place but it never does anything. It has an important cave and a palace with some weird trap that completely washes the foundations of a structure away without it affecting the structure. It’s a cool scene when it does and it feels pretty like Prince of Persia.. but if all you have is a cave and a palace.. and that palace makes no sense it will stand out. Again.. it’s cool but compared to what we know of Persia and it’s stories about trust and brotherhood it feels shallow. What more can you expect though with a princess that is that lame.

The Ostrich of the Camp

Dastan is the good 30% of the movie, Tamina is the bad 30% and the rest… well that is basically what you get when you copy Pirates of the Carribean and put it in a desert setting. Strangely it works better than it should. The secondary characters that get introduced.. the whimsical ones are flavourful and were characters I did care for!  There was a charisma there. Even though everyone in this movie places a piece of work that their mothers might not be very proud of,  Sheik and Seso,  who are a shady dealer/gambler and his loyal knife thrower  respectively, are solid characters.  They are fun.  They aren’t anything special as they are VERY CLICHED but they are fun!  It feels like characters that would exist in the same world as the Lone Ranger and Pirates. As if it’s the same cinematic universe. Which gives the movie a bit more “scale”. It’s a silly thing to like since they aren’t connected at all but I really like the style that comes with that in combination with a video game.  It allows for a further going suspense of disbelief.

However it also comes with a HUGE flaw…. It looks a lot like pirates. Dastan also talks a lot like Alladin .. and this movie doesn’t hold a candle to either. At least the good Pirate Movies. (again not counting the actors personal lives or goals here) .  I’d say it’s about as good as the fifth Pirates movie. It’s not atrocious and well .. that is already something when it comes to video game movies it just isn;t memorable either. I remembered very big lines of this movie but I forgot the Ostrich racing scene, I even kind of forgot the whole character of Sheik.. while he is entertaining.. he isn’t memorable as he is just another character of that universe. The scenes are entertaining but they aren’t memorable.. Did I see that in the Lone Ranger? Did I see it in Pirates? The Good ones? The Bad ones?  Or did I see it in that other movie they made.. the one with the PMS-Princess?! In fact it is so similar in style at times that one scene I actually thought was in a Pirates movie and unfortunately one of the lesser ones. 

The Aladdin comparisons don’t help either, part of it is the setting but a princess in danger at the final scene at an hourglass, a hero who can swing a sword and is a beggar that turned into a prince that gets a mystical item of world changing properties. A massive spoiler will follow so be warned for that. I mean it’s pretty much spelled out from the get-go but if you want to be surprised skip this paragraph! Really! This is your final line to change your mind.
The Brother and advisor/grand vizier of the king is the traitor who has all sorts of evil schemes.  Yet the story isn’t told as clean as in Aladdin.. you can watch this movie just fine.. but you could also watch  Curse of the Black Pearl and the animated Aladdin and have a much better viewing experience. So.. yeah.. issue here! It made me miss better stuff. It isn’t bad.. but it’s like  someone playing Sonic 1 while you could also play Super Mario World or Sonic 2. It’s fine but there is better stuff out there. Still it has their charm ..partially.. so I am really stuck on where to go with that one! You can decide if this is something you find positive.. or negative.

The Prince of Agrabah

If you want a good life action adaptation of the Aladdin animated movie watch this one, then play the soundtrack afterwards. The movie has a nice sense of adventure, fun sets and while the sets are cliché, A Bazar, A desert, a bandit camp, a palace, a trap filled ruin , an oasis city and a mystical cave they are what you would expect from a setting like this. The almost supernatural Hasansin Killer’s are all over the top but entertaining and they are most of the time taken down in satisfying ways and offer a nice challenge. It feels cliché.. even though it’s not really..but it also feels right. It’s one of those movies that gives you everything you expect and nothing more.  Maybe a good chuckle here and there.. but with the producers from Pirates and that same tone so much present that also is kind of a given.  It all depends on if you can stomach Tamina for the full length of the movie which is about two hours. The soundtrack like the movie is fitting but forgettable. I would not know if I thought the music was actually good. I know I never minded it. Then again the games also never had a memorable score.


We end up with an odd video game movie, that also feels like an Indiana Jones flick.. that also feels A LOT like Pirates of the Carribean but catered to a slightly younger audience.It’s a nice spectacle that has a few very fake shots but also a lot of clever and captivating shots that keep you entertained throughout. Imagine this was an amazing movie then I would have felt like one of those sultans that is laying on some colourful cushion while being fanned by a palm leaf and being fed grapes by a pretty woman. However instead I am lying on a beanbag chair in front of an electric fan. I have one of  those Happy Meal fruit packets instead of the woman feeding me grapes as well. The experience is kind of there.. it hits almost all the right notes but the experience is a lot less epic than the real deal. If this experience is for you really depends. For me it’s a bit of a mixed bag! In that analogy I just described there is that one she-cow in the room! “Pinkie.. .are you playing Sultan again! Stop it you Baka! It’s not like I like you or anything” .. and she repeats this as if she is the boss battle with voice lines in a platformer game!.. While I could enjoy this movie, the blatant ripoffs of other movies really can take you out of it’s flow! It’s okay! I got my vitamins and my coolness! I feel refreshed! I can take on another shitty video game movie next week! Thanks Prince of Persia that is all you need.

A little more direction of it’s own could have pushed this movie into something great. It has some cool ideas and does some fun things with the Prince of Persia IP that makes makes me want to give it the grade of Fine-Apple. Some great action scenes, a Prince that looks like the video game one.. and even kind of acts like it. An adequate story! Unfortunately the glue that holds it together is something I really hate about Disney products, that unoriginality. On my first viewing I would have given it a Fine Apple..now that I’ve rewatched it I will have to drop it one grade! It’s still perfectly watchable.. but it’s not fine.. it’s just okay. Which still is a pretty big deal for a video game movie!

The manager of Paradise is relocating her office soon! Thus it would be extra appreciated if you could help us out by supporting Pinkie’s Kofi! Like always a comment is also very much appreciated!




Granny Pinkie doesn’t understand the internet

Hello Island Guests! In just under two months I will turn 21 for the 14th time in a row! I do not feel like a person who just passed the double threes in legitimate age definition. However there is one thing that makes me old.. and that is a part of the current geek but also world culture… and that is memes. Then there is also this lingo and these  commonly accepted things and humor that go over my head. I often find myself wondering.. why is that supposed to be funny? Where is the craft in that? So today we sit in a rocking chair, wiggle our cane and wonder if my Island should not be a retirement home already! Today I look at things prominent in geek culture that I do not understand.

What the Heck is G-Fuel

Back in my day gamers would keep themselves up with a Red Bull or quite a bit more popular Monster Energy Drink. A company I worked for twice hosted gaming events in the country with Monster as one of our main Sponsors. I wasn’t a huge fan of the energy drink hype back then but I also feel it was a much more silent thing.  It was more like “Pinkie is AFK getting a drink” and people would be like.. Monster.. and then you could go “Monster!”  and they would ask what colour. Then all of the sudden there was G-Fuel and it was everywhere.  Yet nowhere?! I see people constantly talking about G-Fuel which I would assume stands for Gamer Fuel?  I am so not sure?!  Why are people going this crazy over it?  I see people shout G-Fuel .. in their name on twitter or Discord or whatever but why would you do that?! Why would you want to walk in clothes of that?! Okay I see people walk with Redbull shirts or Monster shirts as well.. but when it’s Redbull it is mostly due to the formula 1 fandom and not the energy drink itself. Monster has pretty much died out since the ban on young people came.

So G-Fuel turns out to be a powder.. I thought it was an energy drink but it isn’t? Is it like a protein drink or is it caffeinated powder so people can sell it to kids?! Do we need to be that jubilant for people finding a loophole to sell us what medical people think.. might not be very good for you?  I mean I get why it’s nice to have something you could no longer have.. but I just don’t get the fandom around a drink. I like my drinks carbonated and I like the feeling of drinking from a can . I like a glass as well but with powder mix  I usually get dust everywhere, I never get the consistency right due to how different all glasses are and why would I go for a drink I need to make instead of one that is ready to pour?!  I only liked Nestle Quick when mom made it for me!  Are they THAT delicious?! If so why isn’t it available then?! I never found it in any store?! I do not get the appeal! Then again I never liked any energy drinks except for the classic Ginseng Monster one.. and only when I was really hungover because I liked how my throat got prickly?! Please let me know the appeal! Or what it actually is.. or what the G  stands for. If it stands for G-Fuel maybe I should make A-Juice.

Okay never mind I am sold!

I Stan and Simp  makes my ears or eyes bleed

I Stan the Anime Man, I stan Laura Bailey.. it sounds so ugly! What is so bad that the word love isn’t  valid anymore?   I mean sure I get that it is a different form of love and it sure is faster to say than Idolize but it sounds so ugly.  I stan Irina .. I could barely type that without chunks of G-fuelless vomit coming up my throat. Why do we need to butcher the english language like this?!  Just because it is “hype” to get an entry on Urban Dictionary?!   I get that language evolves over time but 95% of these words die out within the year they are invented.  How do I keep track of what is active lingo and what is not?! There are a few YouTubers I actually do NOT understand without looking at Urban Dictionary regularly. It doesn’t mean I disapprove of all the words. Pog is something I still find very ugly but I get the need for that to be a word. Chats on discord go fast so POG instead of nice play my man.. is a lot faster.. but love and stan isn’t different in length nor in pronunciation. Why is it fun to use fashion words if you know they will die out soon, it will only make you look uncool after the word has died out. I could still say I love Foovay instead of saying that I stan her and no one would think I am weird.. but if I Stan Ospreyshire  in like three months people think like.. wow nobody uses that word anymore it is so uncool. So why make yourself sound like your vocally handicapped for those few months.

Another one of those words that I hate is Simp. While I do not mind the “intended’ meaning of the word.. because it is so popular that meaning the “threshold’ ‘ for what it takes for someone to be a simp has been lowered that now it has no meaning and is just an annoying word. A simp should be someone who follows someone in an uncomfortable way to the one being followed.   …Well at least this post is nice for training my abs. Someone who desperately follows a person in the false hope of establishing contact. Yet now you are already a “simp’  for following or commenting on a girls blog or twitter. That would make Raist and Indigo huge simp’s of mine and I do not think they are. I would simp Irina and Summer.  So even IF you even use a memy word  people use it so much it loses all its meaning.  Take “Okay Boomer”  for instance. That was trendy a few months ago.  Now you are a Boomer for being old enough to “know this was a meme”  how old do these people think they are?! Did the G-fuel disable their long term memory, so they can’t even remember what happened last month?! I really don’t get the language rules of this day and age!

Everything is a Meme

Why is James May putting cheese on a table ,and the rest of the video being cut out, a meme?! Why is it funny.. it’s just a man saying Cheese. Why is Micheal Fassbender looking for the real something funny?  Usually it is just three pictures. Ricardo was a meme as well .. this buff guy with a six pack.. why is showing his picture in certain situations funny?!  I mean I do edit some pictures and put in some other elements to make it “funny” but usually a story goes along.. without context those would not be funny.. and neither are 90% of the memes. Not to me at least. I am super happy people can enjoy it but I often wonder if there is something broken inside me that I do not find that funny.  One of the cringiest meme formats I almost never like is that anime guy with his butterfly and then the subtitle IS this?…. I sometimes see something clever in that format but usually it is just someone putting in a quote and making the guy say the opposite. There is no content and it almost always feels unearned. 

I do like meme characters in general. I enjoyed Bowsette being a thing , I enjoyed Ugandan Knuckles and I liked Ultra Instinct Shaggy but that is because they break the status quo we see a character do something they are not supposed to do. Oftenly blown out of proportion in fairly extreme ways. It is a fandom for something coming alive. That is why I also really love Devil Artemis YouTube Channel.. I like that level of randomness.. but on the other hand we have the Dio joke.. Which can be nice when well times.. but in the world of memes that joke is being made every second so in the end it is just another guy who put Dio’s head one someone else.. or blames Dio for Covid or whatever. That would be the same as me posting a picture of a ringing telephone and then placing the “run forest run” scene.  A flyer for some kind of Marathon .. and then placing run Forest run.. or whatever situation you might want to run from. The guy who did it  first is clever but those who repeat it don’t do anything special. There are so many situations that apply that it’s not clever. Most memes follow that format..  I do sometimes like simpler memes like that as well but you need to cater them to a niche because then it hits hard. When you try to gain as big of an audience as you can.. your meme will be super generic and I think it is the humor that requires the least amount of effort. 

Tommy Wiseau being Thanos Snapped saying Bye Mark I find funny for example, well at least I found it funny when it first came out. Then  there is the Drake stuff. Then there is the completely random stuff. I saw a meme recently that was “Why are there so many demigods?”  Followed by an image of Zeus be Like.. and showed him in a few poses. To show he is feeling awkward.I get what is trying to be  said but I don’t really get why it’s funny.
You could call it observational humor but a big pet peeve of mine is judging one’s actions through the changed perception of time or forcing our perspective upon everyone. Not everything needs to be judged by our current standards. These kinds of jokes have already been made by Monty Python as well as well. I just do not think we have to put EVERYTHING into that mold of memes! To me at least it goes stale real fast and you can really tell who forced something to be a meme.  The creatures that I said I liked earlier, like Bowsette, Ultra Instinct Shaggy and Ugandan Knuckles.. more or less originated naturally.Then there is the LOSS meme..  which can be funny when someone experiences actual loss.. but why is it fun  to see it in mario shells?! Forced!

Every Opinion is a Fact 

Finally, why has the internet collectively forgotten the definition of an opinion. I can say I ship Cocona and Yayaka from Flip Flappers. Or Mimi and Joe from Digimon. If I do it on WordPress I might even get an interesting article on it but if I do it anywhere else I probably will get some toxicity from it. I would get explained in facts why it is not the writer’s intention to set them up, there is only so many minutes of interaction during the show, the colour palette shows the political nature of the author and from that I could have realised it would never happen if I wasn’t a total idiot who gave the fan base a bad name. When I was a kid in the schoolyard and I said I liked the Pink Power Ranger other Power Ranger fans would tell me their pick is the best ranger and would listen to why I like Kimberly. Nowadays when I say stuff like that people say I should pick Billy as my favourite ranger because David Yost was gay and he was bullied on the set but stayed so long, or Tommy because he can face Goldar on an equal level and thus is the stronger ranger. 

I never said I thought the Pink Ranger was the strongest, nor that I respected her most.. I just said I liked her. Favouritism and love are an irrational thing as they stem from an opinion. Just because I love you all doesn’t mean there is not a blogger out there that thinks that the people at IGN or Kotaku are the real bloggers! I am sure the bloggers at IGN get paid more and that Kotaku bloggers have a wider reach,  but that doesn’t mean they have found factual proof I should love you less?! So why do they do it?! What is the fun of talking trash about others’ opinions?! Why does one need to validate oneself by trashing another. If I think Goku can beat Superman in my headcanon that is what happens. I could release math on it, but a battle is not just numbers.  Fictional characters have this flexibility to give us a story we want. If we apply logic the villains would always win as they always start off stronger than a hero. Frodo would not win in a fight against Sauron.. yet  he did end up winning. Fantasies are our own and like movies they do not always need a rigid logic. There have been times where I wanted to make a top 5.. but I looked at other peoples opinion as well to be more correct! That’s pretty insane! Yet I am pretty sure others have done this as well. Which is kind of insane! Even if I like the things people hate, that doesn’t make me wrong! I can’t be wrong because I can’t be right either! And yes that does mean you can’t be right either!  No one can! It’s amazing! But when I am online that doesn’t appear to be the case.

It seems the younger people are the more factual their opinions are. The more inclined you are to play Fortnite with peers or your age, the more inclined you are to be one of those people. Yet being part of a fandom also helps. The console wars going on are quite annoying to me. “The xbox series S is so inferior to PlayStation’s budget model..for 100 bucks more you get a more powerful device” FACT!.. Well yes… but that’s the whole point. Microsoft was like, well some console gamers do not care about the amazing graphics, if that was the main selling point they would most likely be pc gamers. So why not save you a ton of cash instead of just 100 bucks.. by building a lite version.I think that is smarter than the no disk version that only allows you to buy games at PlayStation store prices.  I am not wrong..but the guy saying I do not buy physical anyway..probably is right as well. I honestly prefer my switch above both those next gen consoles. I can safely say that to my friends.. but when I say it on twitter I am dumb for preferring a device that has less power than a PS4… Well I do not care, I acknowledge you care and good on you.. but we all have different definitions. In fact when I say something is good, not only are the points I base that on NON factual.. even the terminology is subjective. For someone good might mean enjoyable for others, it has not a lot of faults and for others it would have at least an average of 7/10  when  tested on 5 different testing points. Yet on the internet.. The only opinion that is right is that of the biggest influencers that talk about that topic. I do not get that.

The One That Got Away

Hello everybody! The Manager here! Today we welcome Sunny our “Cabana” Boy to the STAFF that have published a post on Paradise! He had written a very cute and charming intro.. but then he spilled his little yellow bucket and all the words washed away! As Sunny got distracted by the flowing ink and followed as it flowed around the manager wrote a new intro! Today Sunny writes about…. Sunny! His tales as a fisherman! Check it out and don’t forget to leave a like! Likes are great bait you know?!

Sunny lay stretched out on his belly in the pale pink sand. The waves lapped gently at the beach to his right, and a rod with a gigantic reel was propped in the sand. A line stretched from the long, whippy willow pole far out into the sea where a bright yellow bobber floated, unwatched. 

A tiny yellow crab held Sunny’s attention as it scuttled hither and yon on the pink sand, making a lovely picture as it sifted through the grains seeking the small bits of food. The sun beat warmly down on Sunny’s back, making him a bit drowsy. His eyelids fluttered down and soon no one was awake on the beach but the crabs.

Further out in the calm sea, a seagull hovered over the bright yellow bobber, wondering if it was worth hanging around to see what Sunny caught. He often shared his catch with the gulls, or sometimes he had delicious human snacks he would tear into small pieces and toss into the air for the delight of watching the acrobatic gulls swoop and catch them on the wing. 

Suddenly the bobber wobbled. Then again. It shook and bounced up and down in the water a few times, and then vanished beneath the turquoise sea.

Sunny was alerted by the whining buzz of his reel as the line went screaming off of it at great speed. He jumped up out of the sand, startling the little crabs who ran in every direction. Grabbing his rod and reel he gave it a jerk, although it was clear the hook was firmly seated in something. Whatever it was, it gave an almighty jerk back that nearly yanked Sunny right off his bare feet into the ocean. 

With all his strength, Sunny caught his balance and tucked the rod into the wide thick belt he wore for this very purpose. He began to play the sea creature, reeling back line as it went slack and bracing himself when it ran again. It quickly became clear that this was no cute little baby perch he had on the line, but something enormous. 

Beautiful green and grey and brown lemon sharks often cruised in the shallows around the dock and the edges of the island, but this was much too large to be one of those fairly harmless and quite pretty fish. Sunny realized now that he must have had a little nap in the sand, and the line had drifted out far out into the sea, beyond the shallows and past the shelf that dropped down and down and down to unfathomable depths away from the feet of Pinkie’s Paradise Island. 

Deep, deep in the turquoise sea, what could it be? There were some giant groupers, and even some huge old moray eels that lived far below the island in caves and grottos among the coral. Fat and old from eating well on the bright fish who lived on the reef. That must be it, Sunny thought as he worked and worked and wrestled and strove with the great heavy and strong sea creature. Yes, it was probably one of those groupers. And what good eating it would make! Why, some of them got up to 600 pounds. He could make a lot of fish fillets out of that and have a big fish fry for all the island resort guests tonight! 

The sun sank towards the sea and still the battle raged on. Sunny ached in every inch of his body and more than once had thought of cutting the line and letting the vast creature go, but now his curiosity had gotten the better of him. The big fish was not jumping out of the water at all, but now and then he caught a swirl of a mighty tall sail like fin that was bigger than anything he had seen on the biggest grouper he had ever brought in. 

If he ever got this creature landed, how on earth would he bring it up the beach? 

Just as the sun touched the sea and sent one last golden beam streaking across the wet horizon, the water began to boil and roll and in every way signal that something big was coming up. Sunny was busy reeling in the slack, feeling this would be his one and only chance to conquer the sea creature that he was now dying of curiosity to see. What could it possibly be that was so big and so strong and so determined to fight for half a day or more!

With a final roar the water broke and the sea sephents head rose, and rose, and rose into the darkening sky! Sunny had hooked a true monster from the depths. Easily thirty feet of the beast was out of the water, and far more clearly trailed behind. Fins shaped almost like legs, like those of a coelacanth dangled and flailed wildly, throwing fish scented waters through the air that hit Sunny like the rain of a hurricane. The creature let out a bellow similar to the bark of a catfish but with the volume of a foghorn. The water foamed with his thrashing tail, as long again as his entire body.

Glowing golden eyes the size of semi-truck hubcaps swiveled and fixed on Sunny. The great fish drew back on himself in an S like a striking snake and for one stunned, horrified moment all Sunny could see was a great cave-like mouth lined with dagger teeth. A pointed tongue curled and Sunny glimpsed the twinkle of his tiny little hook embedded in it’s center.

He threw the rod and reel down, turned, and ran. 

Knowing, like I’m sure you do, that Sunny has beautiful dragonfly wings, you are wondering why he didn’t fly. Well, the truth is, he runs much faster than he can fly. 

Sunny ran as far and as fast as his feet would carry him. All thoughts of how tired and how sore and how terribly lazy he normally is completely left his body on a wave of adrenaline and pure terror. He blazed up the beach, into the jungle, past the resort where he could see the guests lined up agog at the beast in the water. The people on the third floor balcony could look eye to eye with the thing! 

Maybe Sunny was running so fast you couldn’t see him. Maybe everyone was a bit more busy wondering if the creature could make landfall. Whatever, no one seemed to be aware as he flashed past tables and through the doors and then up and up and up the mountains behind the resort until he reached a secret little trail he thought only he knew that led to a cave in a clearing. 

When he reached the cave he finally managed to stop his flying feet. He fell bonelessly to the earth and concentrated on getting oxygen into his struggling lungs. And then the beast roared again. 

Quickly, he jumped to his feet and staggered a moment before he made it to a tall tree. Now he flew. He flew and flew up to the very top of the tallest tree and then he could look down and see the creature, still in the shallows, weaving side to side like a cobra and clearly using those glowing eyes to look for his tormentor. That wide mouth opened again and suddenly a rainbow of round rubber balls shot out and across the waters and the beach.

There were yellow balls. And red balls. And blue balls. And green balls. And purple balls. And of course, pink balls. Some balls were even clear, like bubbles, and they floated up into the air as if they were weightless. Balls from the size of softballs to soccer balls to beach balls bounced and rolled across the beach and floated on the surface of the sea, carooming off the top of the waves caused by the monsters flipping tail. 

The monster reared back as if to spit more bouncy balls but instead he shook his head, and opened and closed that great maw of a mouth over and over, making quite horrible sounds until with a very distinct “PTOOEY” Sunny saw the twinkle of his fish hook as it caught the light of the moon and flew out of the monster’s tongue and down to the pink sands. 

Grumbling in its throat, the monster took one last gasp, one last long evil eye cast towards the beach, before it turned and swam away.

Sunny heard the laughter of relief and chatter coming from the guests still standing on the balconies and around the pool in the resort. There was a bit of a rush towards the bar, so Kuro had to stop standing stock still in shock and get busy mixing cocktails in pitchers. Then guests began to tiptoe down to the beach, first in ones and twos, and then in small groups and picking up those bright rubber balls that were shining in the moonlight. 

As if by magic and mutual agreement, suddenly everyone was playing on the beach with the sea monster’s balls. There were people playing catch, or dodgeball or something like volleyball without a net. 

The manager of the resort, Pinkie, walked down the beach to where Sunny’s  rod and reel lay abandoned in the sand. She picked them up and looked around. Sunny gulped. He had a feeling she was not going to be very happy with him. 

He pulled some young limber tree branches towards himself and wove a little sleeping platform high in the top of the tree. Relaxing, he watched the guests playing in the moonlight with all the pretty balls. Maybe in the morning he would fly back down to the resort and set about his chores as if nothing had ever happened. Everyone seemed to be having fun. Pinkie couldn’t really stay mad at him, right?