The Movie that made me hate Uwe Boll : Postal

My dear island guests… I will warn you. This review will contain extreme negativity as well as very controversial movie subject. Today I will talk about not the worst movie I have ever seen, but the movie I hated most . When Uwe Boll makes a horror movie it becomes so bad it “devolves”  into a comedy. It is so bad some bits are funny .When Uwe Boll makes a comedy it makes me wanna go postal on all the people involved with this film.

The movie Postal is a comedy movie based on the equally titled film series and this movie has 2,2 critic  rating on MetaCritic and a 6,3 user review rating. So I thought.. hey this film might not be so bad. This movie also has a 9% tomatometer and a 34% audience score.
I find every single of these reviews to be too good!  The movie’s box art proudly tells it is super offensive and I’ll be honest.. I don’t always dislike offensive movies. There are a few times where offensive humor can give me a chuckle… the key word.. humor being part of the equation. That is not the case here!  Uwe Boll can not make comedy! This movie proves that. He  is worse at comedy than he is at horror movies.  but before I began tearing this thing apart let me tell tell you this movies plot.

We follow a main character that never gets a name and is just referred to as that Postal Dude.  His story starts  up when he starts applying for a promotion in a corporate job where A douchebag manager lets him do all sorts of weird things while he stares at the severed heads of some other corporate drones who failed at their job. They make jokes about them being a fake and blood drips off them as soon as they say it. He goes home to find his obese wife who lives in a trailer cheating on him… or well he finds out she is cheating on him. But I am already getting ahead of myself. This movie opens up with the Hijacking of the 9-11 planes. Al Qaeda terrorists have taken control over the ship because they want to surprise  the others by actually taking them on a trip to Cabo or the Bahamas or something nice and tropical. The people who fought for their lives on those planes break in and try to  subdue Al Qaeda actually cause them to crash into the twin towers. On this briljant opening… we move to the Dude.. and the stuff I told you happened. Why do I mention that intro now? Well because it ties in with the rest of the story. Osama who is actually living in the states and is best friends with George W Bush is planning to steal a shipment of Krotchy dolls. Krotchy is a crotch plushie that is the mascotte of some sort of weird  thing. But they are not the only one who wants to steal this doll that is a penis with a set of balls.

There is also Dude’s uncle who started a bogus christian sub cult to get laid. However his organisation is not paying their taxes and now has a few million dollars debt. His attendant warns him about this and points out these Krotchy dolls sell for like 3000 dollars each or so.
It turns out that these dolls have vials with Avian Flu hidden in them which Al Qaeda wants to use to destroy the western civilised world, while the attendant who actually beliefs the new bible of the uncle character to destroy the world. Dude and his uncle just want to earn some easy money! The only way that Dude can keep the world safe is by killing everyone else.. so he has to go postal!  For this he has to kidnap Verne Troyer and let him get raped by a 1000 monkeys team up with some random gothic chick from a coffee shop and use a cat as a silencer for a gun among other things.


Now the cat silencer was in the games so I see why it was in there.. but Postal has never been this much about being offensive.. it was always more about just going on a random meaningless killing spree… that is NOT what this movie is. In Postal you can pee on the elderly before whacking their head of with a shovel but it always gave you a choice. You did not need to be offensive, you just vented a shitty day… in a very trash way..but there is a difference in choosing this or seeing it.   The humor in this movie is akin to that of your average Scary Movie film..with the offence meter dialed up to 100 and the comedic timing turned back to 0. Each joke is so cheap.. and meaningless that it isn’t a joke anymore it is just offensive. Let me take you through the movie in more detail.  We begin with that dreadful 911 joke… While I am iffy on those already I think in a movie like these you CAN actually make jokes like that. It’s for a very limited crowd but you could still do it. Take for example the Family Guy joke where the terrorist fly through that seattle arc. Sure I’ll chuckle at that. Turning heroes into villains for the sake of comedy however isn’t fun.. it’s a role reversal that thereafter gets completely negated by having Al Qaeda be their classic evil.  Had they made it so they were actually the good guys but kept being blamed.. maybe ..you had a funny joke.. but no.. it served no point! They even add in a window washer to make it more slapstick!

The song about the evil corporation and  them actually cutting of heads is not funny either, the joke has been done a million times before  and it leans heavy into such standard timing and is sooo in your face obvious that it isn’t fun at all.. also the company doesn’t come back at all so again it is completely pointless. It just shows this guys life sucks. When he moves back and finds out his wife is sleeping around while he steps in dog poop.. we get the message. His wife is just made so gross that it is almost as if Uwe Boll says.. every woman has to look super fit.. and slightly slutty.. because literally all the other women are super models or goth chicks.  That are super skinny with flawless skin and etc. Everything else is trash. Why?!  You could have made the man miserable with a normal looking woman she did not have to be Jabba the Hutt.  Religion is than mostly seen as a sham and we see cops kill minorities for not understanding the language.. that joke certainly aged well.A dark skinned cop shoots an old Chinese lady who is old and flustered and doesn’t know what to do under a traffic light anymore! I get that people too old to drive can be annoying but again these cops are mostly a side story.. they actually follow a line skewed to the plot… It’s almost as in those Ice Age Movies… where we see scenes of Scrat trying to get his nut.. these cop show up and mess with the Chinese people or with a crippled man just to be offensive.. but never is there a joke.. as if Uwe Boll things that offensiveness IS the joke. 

Again I am not that squeamish.. there is a way to make offensive jokes. They are not for everyone.. but they can when used correctly make us aware of our flaws. South Park used to be able to do this quite well. Yes it was offensive but it also held us a mirror this is us. It has been made more cartoony. South Park and Family Guy can make this (subjectively)  work for two reasons. There is more behind just an offensive punchline.. there is either a clever idea or a lesson to be learned OR  they get away with it because it’s a cartoon. Inhuman behaviour is acceptable because we do not see a human we see a cartoon character.  Postal’s character are more one dimensional than the “offensive” cartoon shows.  Take Verne Troyer playing himself for example… he has to go to speech at the Krotchy doll festival because he looks like the thing and people want to use him as the spokesperson for these dolls. He travels with a suitcase bigger than himself..because HAHA he is a tiny person, but when he gets locked inside the suitcase we find out there is nothing but Dildo’s  and crossdressing stuff inside. Where is the joke?!

It took me 3 days to finish this movie as 30 minutes a day was about as much as I could stomach! I never had to turn off a movie before for not being able to work my way through. Even Coco Avant Chanel.. which I found an atrociously boring slog I managed to sit out.  This actually hurt me to watch. Nearly all of my gripes are all directly Uwe Boll’s fault. The actors aren’t the worst out there, I just wonder what made them this desperate. I know a few of these actors , mostly from tv and these are like B/C list actors that are quite passable. Postal Dude looks really awkward in front of a camera though maybe that is his character I am not fully able to tell.. he is a kind of awkward guy. His Filmography isn’t all that great either.. but come on! JK Simmons is in there just to do his JK Simmons thing.. only to be blown up by a suicide bomber in a sort of running gag.. where nobody wants to do it so Al Qaeda keeps tricking their members into doing this task. There is talent in this movie but it just doesn’t come out.  The writing in this movie is so bad nobody gets to shine. 

There is ONE joke in the movie and it goes a little something like this.Krotchy is going to be revealed in a place called little Germany so Postal Dude and his uncle’s cult .. mostly some bikini models who walk in bikinis for the entire movie.. have to dress up as Nazi’s not to stand out. So they all get a hitler Moustache and a Swastika added to their outfit and everyone thinks they belong.. but that is not the joke ..because who else is in Little Germany but Uwe Boll.. who is being interviewed as a celebrity why all his movies suck! He makes a joke about stealing money and mysterious funds.. which was a serious case against him and Krotchy suddenly rips off it’s head.. revealing.. the lead developer of the Postal Game.. blaming Uwe Boll for ruining his game with this movie.  He begins shooting at Uwe and Boll kills the man.. but not before they killed about 20 children who were all there to get their own Krotchy doll.. as no one can see the mascotte is a crotch.. or balls and a penis. Uwe Boll gets shot in the crotch and dies as well.. also he wears a Bavarian outfit..because it’s funny cause he is German. A journalist piles up all the dead children to make it look worse and the Postal Dude is blamed for this.. causing everyone in the world to want to kill him now. 

The way the action is shot is terrible. In a movie about shooting and killing everyone, you’d think there be a few good shootouts but  this is just a series of guns being shot and random people falling down.. even if they weren’t really in the shot. It again looks like a cartoon.. but that is not being sold because it is still live action.  If special effects are used they are very underwhelming OR super exaggerated.. they never get it right and I mean never. The Cat silencer was semi.. funny but in the world established so far it made not sense physics wise.. nothing else functions fantastically.  The cat doesn’t explode right away in Postal games but after a few uses it still does.. having the cat be unharmed felt like a whimper.  A bit of a funny whimper but a whimper still.  The Uncle gets betrayed by his attendant and in an order to convince him not to kill him the guy says he has become gay and a chubby chaser.. and he agrees to have Verne Raped by the 1000 monkeys mentioned earlier but is shot anyway.  A weird twist further and we end up with everybody firing on Postal Dude in the trailer Park.. he is hiding behind a car and killing them by the bushes. Not a single person thinks about walking around again demonstrating no one is sentient here.. it’s just unfunny movie characters.

Osama asks George Bush for help and Postal Dude and his girlfriend get away. While he tricks the Attendant guy to blow himself.. plus the fat wife and the two cops.. who also did her for no specific reason up. However Bush pissed of some people and now America is being Nuked.  While Postal Dude ride off into the sunset with his new flame.. ..his fifth one in this movie Bush and Osama hold hands and skip through a field while all across them Nukes impact. Destroying America and any hope left we had off at least a single funny scene.  It is all filmed with very cheap angles, never is a a set properly used and all the locations are boring and bland as hell.  I was so glad I could turn of this movie and it made me reconsider my watching all Video game movies idea. Before I thought Uwe Boll was just a bad director..now I think he is a horrible person, who has zero understanding of film and less understanding of comedy.How bad he is was always a joke.. but seeing him attempt comedy.. made it more than a joke.. at least a joke would have been funny..

There are a few things that are okay with the movie. The filming angels are very boring but never bad. The fights are extremely boring and do not convey the game at all but I’ve seen worse, the cast is passable except for the barely understandable Boll and the very poorly acting Lead Director of  the game. It’s just that it is so painful and unfunny. Characters have been written just to offend, and woman are only good if they are bikini bimbo’s once again.  Eye candy and nothing else.  There are  no jokes because Uwe Boll thinks being offensive is funny on it’s own and this is the result.. a movie that has less flaws than many that will be on this list.. but is so empty that it easily is the one I hate the most.  And I don’t mean of my movie viewings.. this is the movie I hated seeing most…EVER.

If I were to compare it with something it’s a screaming Monkey. We all know monkey’s can be funny when they do monkey things.. but Uwe Boll things.. just having a monkey on the screen is enough..well he also makes it scream so we KNOW there is a monkey on the screen.. but never does it hop around or toss a nut or do anything it just screams and rages and smells like monkey! One of those monkey’s you are scared off or annoyed by rather than entertained.. but Uwe Boll says we are wrong because it’s a monkey.. that is what funny is.  This movie is like putting bread on your cat and seeing it distress.. but you think it’s funny because of the memes.  As such I am giving this movie one grade lower than my lowest grade!  This movie is unwatchable. And I used this pun in his last movie! Now Uwe Boll has made me so angry … he gets a grade below my lowest named after him!

Next week’s movie will undoubtedly be better and I do not know yet what that movies is going to be. This thing was awful but if you think being offensive is funny this might be a movie for you! If you are a Movie Maschoist like me.. the movie is on YouTube and no one bothered to take it down for well over 6 years! So I will share that link with you!.. Because I am nice like that!

Pinkie’s Saturday Adventure 13

Hello Island Guests! Now that my anniversary week is already a week in the past it is time for yet another Saturday Morning Adventure! I had to pick a new show for BNA and I wanted to either go for Re Zero Season 2 or the 2020 Digimon Reboot.  In the spirit of Saturday Mornings though.. I chose Digimon 2020! Re Zero might be something I can watch witch friends soon! It is also something I might not enjoy as much as most! Which scares me!

I did not know what to expect when picking this series up? Would it tell the same tale in a modern way? Would it be something all new?  Well it turns out to be the latter and it was unexpectedly awesome. 

Digimon Adventures follows the adventures of the original cast but now living as kids in 2020. Taichi seems to go on summer camp.. which is the trigger for him being booted in the original. However this time when he is home alone the doorbell rings and we see Koshiro standing in front of the door. The two seem rather unfamiliar with each other showing already how different this show will be.  Koshiro , to us westerners oftenly better know as Izzy , notices he is in the same summer camp group as Taichi and went over their to discuss some things when suddenly crisis strikes Tokyo. All sort of electronics go haywire.. including the train Taichi’s mother and sister are on. The two decide to look into this further now that Taichi’s family is in danger. When things go even more dire and their live is put on the line Taichi jumps the fences of the closed train station and his telephone shows the crest of courage. He becomes Digitised and travels to a strange world.. much more cyber like.. than the old digital world. Here he encounters a wounded Koromon, who upon partnering up evolves into Agumon. Not fighting Kuwagamon as the first enemy for once.. the pair decimates some virus digimon but they have to Evolve into Greymon to finish the fight!
A mysterious young man..we know as Matt.. or Yamamoto stares down at the pair as Koshiro tells them about A digimon attack in America!

This was a nice first episode! Much better than I expected it to be. The action really shined!
The orginal Digimon was much more static, here we get beam struggles, melee attacks, even Taichi helping in the attack and as a result the actual Digimon part feels much more dynamic. The Digivolution also does not happen in this static magical girl like fashion but it happens during combat. While this will also appear in my negatives section it just keeps the action flowing. This digital world also seems much more connected to ours than that of the original series.  Elements in the digital world correlate with  that of the real world. Such as a railway plan being a bunch of data in the sky in the digital world on top of a tower. My favourite scene is when Taichi is brought into the digital world.. Seeing that crest appear on his phone plays heavily into the nostalgia but it looks so much cooler this time. When he is floating among the digital objects he also uses these to his advantage. Again showing how much more “fluent” this show is. The approach of slowly introducing all character one by one also seems like  a great idea, we have seen hints at many of them but it is great imagining how they will fit in. I can only assume that mentioning america will help with the introduction of Mimi.. but maybe cool boy Yamamoto  will have a way to access it.  I am looking forward to more. 

My negatives are mostly nitpicks based on the first episode. I miss Butterfly as an opening theme and would have rather seen a remix of it than a completely new song… but there is still an homage made to the original opening with Taichi falling through some digital letters.
In Fairness Butterfly has really been overused lately but the new song can not hold a candle against that greatness. Having Evolutions (they are just called evolutions  in the sub) without Braveheart takes some getting use to as well. Other than that I have no negatives so far!
This is what I expected it to be plus a fair deal better. I kind of expected Marvel’s Disk Wars of kid pandering but it wasn’t that bad.

Great first episode, I felt blissfully Nostalgic and I liked the new Digivice design. It left me wanting for more. Obviously this type of show is something I as a collectible  creature aficionada can appreciate. Up until Xros Wars I have always found Digimon the superior anime of the two and this first episode makes me think I will keep thinking that. Pinkie is pleased with her pick for this so far!

So last episode this show took an unexpected twist by introducing monsters and it seems they stuck around! So it seems it is all real.. I still think Masayoshi fell into some drugs and is hallucinating all this.. because suddenly his career does super great as well and everything goes his way… but we will find out! Please do not spoil.

The episode opens up with Samurai Flamenco ,aided by the Flamenco girls and even Goto, taking out a Bird Monster named after a kite. It shouts Viva Torture and explodes. We then look back a few days in time and see the aftermath of Guillotine Gorilla. The Funeral of the cops  that got guillotined to death..Goto is worried about what is going on but when a new monster named Boiling Rhino..which is a Rhino in a soup cauldron attacks a bus that holds Masayoshi agents. Samurai and the Flamenco girls get to the bus and fight the monster and the ..gimp suit minions. In rollercoaster like speeds we see the group take down four monsters, all revealing something about the groups new abilities and their limitations.  They are held alive by their tech but they clearly do not possess the ability to have superhuman abilities. Masayoshi seems to be very happy how is life is now ..even with these risks which Worries Goto.. Masayoshi has changed ..when will he push to far. The show ends with him being on the cover of every magazine and the guest of some show… I still think this might all be a dream or something..because of how well things are going.. but I also really worry about Sapphire!  I do not want to see her get hurt this episode she almost did.

The fight against the horse monster was my favourite scene.  Not only did it make me feel worried about the Flamenco girls, it also made me laugh. Samurai Flamenco tells he has a new gadget and it turns out it is just very sticky double sided tape. I love how silly these office supplies gadgets of him are. So great. This scene seamlessly combined a threat.. towards Moe with lighthearted comedy and sentai tropes. I loved it! The opening scene was great as well..everyone working as a team really felt amazing. I even liked Mari’s pettiness again. She wants to deal the finishing blow! Now that is pettiness I can believe from her.  I can see her going rogue for a bit or someone getting hurt because she wants the spotlight and it being a big point of development. I loved this episode!  The BIC shield instead of the Big shield really hit home for me!  It’s funny how this show manages to mix high tension with comedy so well.  Normally comedical shows like One Punch Man, or heck even Slime have very low stakes because the main character is very overpowered. These are normal people and the show makes a point of out it to show it.. yet still is funny! Great!

The ending of the episode was a bit of a whimper for me.. coming of last week’s episode  with such an epic bombshell Goto texting with his girlfriend that Masayoshi changed attitude scares them felt a bit forced. It was already established that this was a thing.. why do it twice and with a lackluster medium like texting.. I still don’t get it. I bet if I could read Kanji I might ..but meh.  I think next episode someone will get hurt! Let’s hope it is not Moe.  As much as I like the gadgets their inventor Jun I can find a tad annoying at times. Not all that much but in this episode he had a few lines of dialogue that not really stick with me. Like at one point Samurai Flamenco tells Yun he is worried his gadgets might get knock offs and he says “we can’t have that’ and that is the end of it.. it doesn’t go anywhere. Huh?! Nitpicks though!

Amazing! AMAZING Episode! I have so many theories! For example I think that Akira guy Might be King Torture! Not sure why I think that but it’s just me telling! That guy is totally king Torture! He wanted to see Masayoshi unmasked.. met the agent just before she got in trouble ..or just after she escaped….not sure.. and he keeps showing up.. he might just be a cute romance for her though. I would ship them if he is not King Torture. That text only thing has to come back as well. This episode made me think, laugh, worry and wish I knew of this series earlier! Highest score one again!

My Oh my  this episode sure was different. There were some very dark moments in there! Not a lot of comedy either, still it felt like an episode of slime and like almost every episode so far I enjoyed this watch.

The episode begins with a flashback on Shizu’s or Shizue’s past.  She is summoned by a demon lord and possessed by the Ifirit , we saw that last episode but this week we saw how it took her over and she evaporated a friend and her pet against her will… the screams of that girl were quite haunting and the pet monster was really cute! It just growled at the man who clearly has a demon in himself or is a demon!  That was enough for the Ifrit to trigger and turn the very cute pet and the cute girl into a very dead pet! We then go back to the village where Shizu is leaving trying to fight the control of the Ifrit but just as she is about to head out she fails. The Ifrit comes out and destroys the goblin Village. The human adventuring Party wants to help Rimuru defeat this beast because Shizu is one of them and they want to help her in her time of need. Even if they now know that Shizu is the legendary hero of old. Rimuru finds himself overpowered. His water blade evaporating and having no effect. Yet when Elen the group’s mage girl manages to hit some summoned dragons or wyrms with ice Rimuru asks her to shoot him.. as he eats the ice he develops a new technique called Ice shotgun that is used to defeat the Dragons. Elen’s party however gets taken down and is majorly hurt by a self destructing enemy and Rimuru has to face the Ifrit by himself.. luckily he finds out he is immune to fire and after a short scuffle the Ifrit is devoured and faces Veldora.. the look on his face shows us he knows he is fricked!

This  episode brought us great payoff to everything that has been set up by the last episode. Last week I really disliked Elen and her group and this week I was worried sick about them.  Please be okay! They are such good guys I thought! That moment that the dragon self destructed in front of them might have been my favourite moment of the episode. Genuine concern and an actually fun fight despite the fact that Rimuru is so powerful.Pacing wise I needed an episode with stakes as well and  this episode sure provided. This was exactly what I needed from this show at the right time..and that seems to be one of it’s biggest strengths. It doesn’t go above and beyond, to blow you away.. it gives you what you want .. it gives you what you need. I was thoroughly entertained and I even cussed at my screen when the Ifrit faced Veldora.. I was like.. oooh boy you ..(bad word)  now! If I talk to the screen.. you made a good episode! I think I did talk to my screen twice this episode at least. And mumbled a few other times! I liked the flashback of Shizu as well though I wished the cute monster did not have to die for it! It was powerful enough for me though.

That being said.. the Puppy and the girl evaporating was my least favourite moment of the episode I watched this Saturday.. not that it’s bad and I don’t even think it is poorly paced because If I knew her any better I might have been actually upset over such a minor character, it just wasn’t  fun. Not always has to be fun though. The reason though why I put a disliked scene and not a bad scene in here is because there is very little negative about this episode. People not included were excluded for a reason and characters I disliked before totally redeemed themselves today for me. If I HAVE to give this episode a negative it would have to be that no one wondered what a Shotgun was when Rimuru first used his spell.  I know I better drop it for that right?!

No this is another highest rank episode for me this week! It is in a very different light  than good episodes of Hikaru no Go are for example…but within the confines for what this show is it’s a near perfect episode and just a tremendous amount of fun.Nothing we haven’t seen before…but that is not what this show aims for …so a perfect score for you!

I am so confused. What the heck just happened!  Gone is the cute world and the bitey bitey bunny stuff! No this week it’s Mad Max meets magical girls! I do not know what is going on and I love it that I don’t.

At first this episode barely seems to connect to episode 2. After finishing it I am still not sure that does. Papika can be seen walking through a desert and collapsing from thirst and fatigue looking for Cocona. She is rescued by some Jawa like folks that treat her as an enemy. A pink one however  gives her water  and lets her recover. Papika being her usual somewhat selfish self wants more and travels to the well to see these villagers are struggling to exist.. so she sucks a slightly poisonous cactus instead when suddenly raiders attack. These raiders smash up the village and pour the water all over their genitals and waste it. When Papika speaks up a giant raider tries to beat her up which she beats with the flick of a finger. A metal faced school girl shows up called lady Cocona.. not believing it is Cocona Papika fights here while a hooded stranger looks from afar. This fight is totally Dragon Ball Z esque including the sound effects. Finally Papika realises this is Cocona but the helmet controls her. So she knocks herself out with a headbutt breaking the helmet. Cocona is immediately regretful but can not be for long. Papika tells she loves loves loves loves LOVES Cocona.. but there is also evil afoot.

It turns out the Pink jawa like thing is actually a sort of succubus like creature with an army of female gimp like creatures that put the helmet on Cocona to make them fight..and fight them just because she is bored. By eating a giant purple potato Cocona and Papika get the power to transform into magical girls that can summon a giant gun.. that helps them defeat the witch/succubus with the last of their strength…but it turns out that the creature is still alive. Facing defeat the two girls get saved by three other girls belonging to a different organisations.. one of them is Cocona’s classmate Yayaka who seems to work for some kind of weird cult.  They take a pink orb from the creature and return to their base where they feed it to a black spiral thing as the cultist leader person says they are close to their goal.
Our two heroines return to the real world where Dr Salt is being very mysterious.

So yeah that was a WEIRD plot summary lots of stuff happening.. and without a doubt in my heart my favourite moment is their magical girl transformation. My oh my I liked that transformation sequence.. the Pure Barrier and Pure Blade alter egos seem very Pretty Cure like.. where characters are called Cure (Whatever their handle is) . I also loved the weird loading mechanic of their ultimate weapon.. a cannon that is loaded by energy that is just stuffed trough some weird holes in the back of the gun. It was so insane and out there that  I was constantly amazed.  It seems that the desert reflects Cocona’s persona this time.. her issue is that she is bland..she lacks a will of her own as told by the monster of the week. So it makes sense this world looks barren.  The fact that there is another organisation except from Flip Flap really came as a surprise. When I orginally saw the hooded girl I thought.. oh that is the real Cocona..she will show up to help her friend in a bit.. then stuff happend and I forgot and it turns out it was Yayaka.. did not expect but I love it.. this show has me so excited and gleeful when I watch it … It feels like this is my candy and i am the baby.

I will be honest this episode was so weird and that magical girl transformation came out of nowhere.. while I loved that it came out of nowhere  on three separate occasions I checked if I was watching the correct episode. First if I was on the right episode number secondly if they might not have uploaded a wrong episode as episode 3 and thirdly if there wasn’t another episode in this form of Pure Illusion.. I loved that feeling of disorientation and awe but I can easily imagine it will not be for everyone.. this is so much my jam though that only gripe this week is that I don’t think I like dr salt. He feels to obviously traitor vibes to me… but hey.. I did not get what I expected last time at all! So I might very well be wrong! No spoilers!

Best thing I watched today! And I watched an incredible amount of good stuff today!  In fact this week has 4 perfect scores for me! So this for me is my baby Jesus of anime. Before I thought this might end up in my top 10 favourite anime of all time.. the way things are going it might end up in my top 3. This is so much my thing I can’t even bring it to words!

The fourth and final perfect score of the day does so on completely different terms as the other episodes. This didn’t keep me as entertained as the others did but I am amazed with how strong of a set up this episode was.  Where it fumbled in the earlier set up episodes the last ones have been really strong and this is probably the best written one so far.

In terms of a summary I can be a lot more brief than I was with Flip Flappers. The Go Tournament is about to start and after some provocation and Disdain from Touya’s team Haze Jr High’s team is more motivated than ever to win!  Meanwhile Touya just stares at Hikaru intensively! After a player disrespects Hikaru he suddenly gets very serious and manages to secure his first official win in a tournament making Haze Jr High the flawless victors of round 1. Touya asks his teacher how Hikaru played but he doesn’t tell him he played bad .. wanting to teach him a lesson or something?! So instead Touya stares at Hikaru with great intensity. During lunch Hikaru doesn’t feel hungry and he refuses Akiri’s lunch and instead walks out a Touya that stares at him intensely.. for a breath of fresh air.  Hikaru really wants to play himself and he plans to so .. knowing he will be defeated and disappoint Touya.. but this match is important for him too. He overhears Touya’s first board team member talk with that girl who helped him out when he was bullied once and realises how much Akira gave up to face Sai in a match. So with heavy heart Hikaru wants to help the boy and grant him the match he so desires that he has endured so much for it. Akiri shows up and talks to Hikaru for a bit and later can be seen supporting TsuTsui and Mitani as well.. the girl is such a champ in her own right!  The episode ends with Touya taking place across Hikaru and staring at him intensely.

Jokes aside.. this episode was quite heavy! There is so much things that come into play! My favourite moment was Mitania watching Kaio‘s (Touya’s School) ‘First Board match. The disrespect he gets makes him want to beat this guy fair and square. He tells this to TsuTsui as the two’s bond gradually but fastly increases in this episode. It didn’t feel out of the blue either, it felt so real. Where I can’t help but think these people take Go way to seriously the motivations of.. “I am not going to be looked down upon like that”  is something I can totally understand. This isn’t about the poetics and the beauty of Go.. this week’s episode makes crystal clear that everyone is playing for themselves.. not for sport..not for beauty.. everyone has their own realistic goal. It also makes it very clear that not all of these goals can align.. something’s got to give. Sai being completely neutral in his talk against Hikaru I found amazingly strong. The guy knows he shares a body with Hikaru and knows Hikaru has to grow.. he also wants to play Akira himself very much but he perfectly understands Hikaru as well as a player.. thus he leaves the choice to Hikaru making Hikaru’s choice all the more impactful.


This act is also my main negative from the other perspective . Hikaru is shown as a very sympathetic person and his reasons to face Touya are sound.. his reasons  to let Sai play Touya are noble.. but he doesn’t consider Sai’s feelings all that much it could help him get out of his depression knowing that he can let his partner play.. I get why he doesn’t don’t get me wrong but Hikari gets sooo much support from everyone and he is depicted as a kindhearted person so I find it a tad weird he does not consider Sai at all in this. Perhaps if I ever become possessed by my checkerboard I can more clearly tell where his mind is at.. but for someone who is depicted as so selfless he is often really selfish which does make me feel like.. “wait but that isn’t what you are showing me right now”

This though is no major strike against the episode, I really get where he is coming from and why he is sad.. I am happy he is flawed like that even but I would like it if the show doesn’t depict Hikaru as two different persons.  I could easily scale this down to a Berry good.. but I’ll be honest this is one of the more powerful set up episodes in terms of development I have seen..I can really read what people are thinking here.. When I say this is one of the best set up episodes I seen I do not mean that exclusively to this series and that I think justifies my highest grade.

And with that it is time for my weekly personal update! In which I promised to reveal the winner of my giveaways!
– DuckTales has been won by Winst0lf Portal who invented me a great new Cocktail for my Birthday! The Pinkie-Co-Lada .. I think it comes served in a cheap russian car!
– The Elders Scroll Online With all the deluxe expansions has been won by The Holy Mailman who thought my new tagline should be A Daily Dose of Happiness! Which is a great tagline! I am not going to use it as it requires me to write daily even if I would not feel like it! But a great tagline nonetheless! Both of you have fun with your prizes!

There was no doubt in my mind that these two should be the winners of their respective competitions!

Besides that, I had to step down as a DM for my group, at least while we have to do this campaign online.  I noticed the shy roleplayers not getting a turn anymore because we now lack the visual aid to see when someone is about to speak, people walk off for snacks or play a game when I cant check up and as a result nobody really is following the same stories..everyone works with half hooks. Voice chat lag only made this worse and I can’t do voices or motions and I can’t read my audience and adjust to it.. as a result the players constantly were doing each others work in order to shine themselves not realising another player had an actual hook. It became an energy drain rather than an energy boost so I had to let it go for now. One player kinda hurt me in this and as a result I have had a lot of somatic stress which caused me to be physically sick again. So I have been falling behind with my writing now! Only two days ahead now! But it is not all bad! We had a nice family birthday with a sushi dinner which was fun so there was a good day as well. I am also getting closer to a few of my blog goals so I am excited for that! Let’s make next week amazing!

Pinkie is being Unpopular Across the world : The Unpopular Opinions Film and TV tag (East vs West Edition)

Hello again my dear island guests. Today I am using my first Wild Card Post on Saturday.. a post that is a bit of everything.. well mostly movies and Anime. Since on Saturdays I usually talk about anime but I really wanted to do Heather’s Tag..I went above and beyond and made two versions.. all in one. So here are my unpopular opinions on Film and TV for Both anime.. and  the Hollywood Scene

I was tagged by the amazing talented Heather from Just Geeking By for this tag! An very kind, community driven unifying game blogger you should definitely check out!

<Disclaimer>
This post is meant to display once unpopular opinions so  that is exactly what I aimed for. While all these opinions are true..these are never facts
<End of Disclaimer> 

Heather Already answered Game of Thrones here so saying that I did not like it would feel redundant. That being said I do agree with her that series wasn’t all that great. I sat through it..all the way up to season 7 or whatever the second to last is Mostly because everyone liked it so much.. I found it bland, needlessly edgy and unrewarding.

One thing I can’t stand that seems very popular is the show Parks and Recreation. I hate the Roy Swanson character everyone seems to love. I do not find the show one bit funny. Leslie or whatever the woman is called annoyed me quite a bit as well. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am Dutch and can not relate to the culture but for some reason this casts really annoys me. I struggled myself through the first episode and was thinking.. why are people making the fuzz about it. When I finished the second episode I actually looked up if there were two shows called this way and if this might have been a remake of something hype or something and in the third episode I realised this was not my show. Normally I do stuff in my home, grind in Pokémon, write a blog, do some images , cut my food etc, usually with Comedy Central as my background noise. Even shows I do not particularly care for such as Modern Family can stay on in the background.. but something about Parks and Recreation rubs me the wrong way and I have to turn it off. 

Animewise I really dislike Code Geass! I find it INCREDIBLY boring. I picked it up twice and dropped it twice. Even when I was deep into the second season I just could not care for it at all. Too much stuff happens for no reason other than to make the plot happen. One of the more famous death in the series that is accidentally triggered feels so poorly set up. The issue did not happen before and barely happened after so except for some minor set up it only happens to kill that character off. I dislike how LeLouche is so smart he knows exactly how a mudslide will happen showing knowledge of just about every single thing when it’s convenient and then suddenly makes simple oversights. The Mech’s feel shoehorned in as yet another means to an end to force the story in a certain direction. While I get it’s spectacular..  this feels super much like a story to me.. just a story and the characters are just characters. I find myself uninterested in their faith because it’s going to be what the writer decides no matter how much sense it would make. I get the writer is always in control but normally I feel like characters make the plot move.. Code Geass to me a great example of it being the other way around.

Ah this one is super easy for me. Star Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace. Now don’t get me wrong I do not love it unconditionally  but I love the experience it gave me! It was the first Star Wars movie I saw in the cinema…and the best Star Wars movie I saw in cinema. That’s right I like it better than all the sequel movies. I also liked it a lot better than attack of the clones, which I do not hate either.  I’d tie it with Revenge of the Sith probably but I did not see that one in cinema. I loved the new experiences and the expansion of the world. It might have been different but I felt George Lucas hand! The Pod Racing scene is still probably one of my favourite scenes ever, Duel of the Fates is amazing, the whole prequel set up I found rather interesting. I did like that look into the politics of that world.. it made the world seem so much more alive and connected.

In terms of Anime.. my picks are more slim, I am more off the opposite where I find Ghibli overrated. Anime Movies oftenly aren’t my thing. I liked Summer Wars fine, Spirited Away is good but for the most part they do not impress. But fine I shall try to name an anime Movie I like that is quite hated. I think my answer would have to be Dragon Ball Z Broly Second Coming. It is a unpopular Dragon Ball Z movie but to me.. this story made so much more sense then the first one. Seeing Goten being mistaken for Kakarot makes so much sense.. given how Broly is Established to be bothered by that. I would have liked THIS to be the first Broly movie. No Paragus no weird Vegeta plotline. Broly was a saiyan who hated Goku.. he and his father got away from the destruction of planet Vegeta.. but when Broly found out that Kakarot the source of his “mental trauma” was alive he went to earth.. he crashed their and spend a few years covered in the ice. Goten Trunks find him and the story more or less continues as such.. that would have been amazing. This movie appealed to me because I played Legacy of Goku 3 right before and discovering this side quest was based on a movie made me enjoy this movie so much more!  Also having Goten and Trunks ..who are less essential characters fight him just raised tensions! I do like this movie and it’s nice to see Videl in action as well. I quite liked I choose You Pikachu as well! That movie got a lot of hate as well.

Okay .. I am going break the tag a bit here since love triangles are complicated. In most of my examples they existed but faded away or the choice was made for a character rather by them but I’d say my answer to this must be : EVERYONE IN EVERY SINGLE VAMPIRE SHOW EVER!  Elena Gilbert should have chosen Stephan, Caroline should have chosen Klaus.Damon should be with Bonny, Sooki Stackhouse from should have picked Eric, Jessica should be with Bill or Jason or someone more plot relevant than Hoyt.  I mean sure they were cute together.. but I wanted Jessica to shine more Hoyt took that from her.  Buffy should have ended up with Angel, Cordelia with Wesely, Willow with someone like Faith and Xander with either Winifred, Dawn .. or that very shy slayer from the final season. Vampire shows rarely end up with good couples. However I can now finally say this. I think Rachel should have picked Joey instead of Ross!

Animewise,the obvious to point out is not unpopular enough, but someone clearly overreached. I think Goku should have ended with Bulma and interest was shown but never went anywhere.. but I mostly just hate chichi and how she ruined Gohan. The best love triangle I could name is Touko, Yuu and Sayaka from Bloom into you . I think Touko should have ended up with Sayaka, realising Yuu could never lover back the same way, Sayaka who accepted who she was all along got the price and Yuu could have been their friend maybe realising then there was more, setting up for a potential sequel or just let her regret it a bit. I really like Sayaka, such a strong character.

This is the same across both  anime and western media. Romance! I know Vampire Diaries has it as a sub genre and I do like Yuri shows but straight up romance, especially the straight type doesn’t do anything for me. I do not care who sleeps with who, have at it and have fun but I am never invested in that I do not mind it as a side story, but if it’s just a story if he and her will come together I do not find myself engaged. Both are mature people most of the time.. they know what is best for them, if that is each other that is neat and I am happy for them.. if they decide we do not work together I am happy as well .. if that’s how they feel they made a strong choice.

Western Media hasn’t done me wrong much lately. If I had to name a beloved character I don’t like it would be a tie between Forrest Gump and Ace Ventura. I don’t find Forrest that much of a sympathetic guy! His blindness to the world sometimes annoys me. I get he has his reasons but all events around him basically come down to the same.  His story feels incredibly romanticised to a point where I just find him really fake. His lines are to artificial just to capture some magic so in the end he has nothing real to say. Ace Ventura to me is everything i hate about Jim Carrey, his Jim Carrey method of acting might not be as bad as in the cable guy .. but it’s certainly more present. While he did okay as Dr Robotnik I find him incredibly vexing. Ace Ventura is loud, obnoxious and very unfunny. He is just a disruptor and an energy leech. His line delivery only works because it’s scripted or fits the story.. I can not see him function without the confines of a story and if he was I do think the amount of energy he costs to interact with would make me physically sick.

Kirito is my answer for anime. Man dislike as a weak word for what I feel about Kirito, I find him one of the , if not THE weakest anime characters I have ever seen. Outside the virtual world I find him an incredibly obnoxious and unsympathetic person who introduces Asuna as his “friend” clearly hurting her,, after spending so much time with her in the first game. He does not feel like a guy his age at all, his family dynamic is super unhealthy and it feels like he belongs nowhere.  In game I find him even worse. There are so many Deus Ex machina surrounding Kirito that he to me is the epitome of lazy writing. A duel wield skill just appearing.. Kirito in Gun Gale just concluding how the ploy worked out of absolutely nowhere. Excalibur and more.. The way he instantly adapts to Gungale and becomes a top tier player kills any form of tension because he has to be mister awesome. He is horrible to many of the women he interacts with, leading them on and on top of that he is super bland as well. I know that blandness is by design but i can still dislike that!

Strangers Things is one of these shows. While I watched and sort of liked the first season , I  really could not bring myself to watch the second season. I have been trying since it came out. It’s one of those things I watched because people played D&D in it and there were some D&D monsters but  it did not impact me at all. I watched it because a friend loved it,  but I never was into it when that friend stopped talking about it and did it more as a thing for herself any and all motivation to watch this show dropped for me. It has nice music and I am glad it’s set in the 80’s  cool that they use D&D stuff ..but It just makes me rather play D&D than watch this series.

For Anime I pretty much answered this with Code Geass and Sword Art Online.. but recently I had to add Tower of God to that list. Most people seem to really like that show but I found so many elements interchangeable, obviously telegraphed and the animation style was not appealing to me. It felt like a mishmash of better anime and much like Stranger Things it made me rather watch those instead. The intro was something I really could not get into , the names of all the characters I found super ugly. Like someone came up with these names during a coughing fit and just writing down the sounds he made.

Thirteen Reasons Why is a show that comes to mind when it comes to western media.  It’s that type of show I do not really enjoy and while my mental health is going up every day, I do not want to be confronted with the theme of suicide. I have very conflicting feelings about it. From agreeing to Nietzsche to great hate of the subject it swirls inside me in a storm of conflict. Watching a show like this would not sit well with me and I personally don’t think I could get any joy from watching this show, nor that there is a way to convince me that this a story that should be told. What drives a person to this act is always very different from the one committing the act as those who are involved with that person, and yet again different to that of an outsider. When that act becomes fictional those thoughts and impacts become less meaningful and do not stem from a person but from a writer, we feel what the writer writes us to feel and I think that takes away from the subject matter.

13 REASONS WHY

For anime it has to be Vinland Saga. Nothing of that show appeals to me. I don’t like vikings, I don’t like the whole Warrior Group people thing.  I do not like the art style or the colour pallete and the character designs all look very bland and background character or side character ish to me. They have that  filler look. When a character is designed for filler they either look to extravagant or just a bit to boring but never really nail the mark. That is Vinland for me. The whole story doesn’t appeal to me at all and no matter how many people gush about it and tell me how good it is never ever had I felt any spark of picking it up or giving an episode a try. Nor will that ever happen.

For anime I think the Jojo Anime is vastly superior over the Manga, comedy in general is usually also something i find stronger in Anime form. Konosuba has better timing in it’s animated form than in it’s written/static form. Something just require, colour sound and motion to work better and I think Jojo is the most obvious pick for me to make clear why. It offers all that stuff so much more impactful in anime form.

For books and movies.. I am going to have to say. The Lord of the Rings! I bet that will be unpopular with a lot of purists. The Movie is SOOOOO much better than the movie. The books are to long, to convoluted and to old fashioned written to be a fun read. Maybe it is because my native language isn’t English but reading the books in English makes my head hurt. It drags in so many places. The songs written in there don’t work as I can not imagine the rhythm. When I try to read it in Dutch.. it is even worse because suddenly it doesn’t flow!  Translations do modernise the language a bit which is welcome, but the books don’t always pace out that nicely. I would not call the English in the books to difficult just to archaic. It hasn’t  aged that well. The movies are  more modern and while flawed in their own way I think they have more of chance to appeal to an audience in the future. 

Now I hope I ruffled some feathers and made a few people gulp.. because I tried hard to have an unpopular opinion. Yet that is all this is. My feelings towards these products are just that.. A pink geek blogger’s opinion! She wrote bardic verse around an egg! No need to take it all that seriously!  That being said all these answers are completely sincere and not enlarged, this is how I feel. If you do not like it you will just have to deal with it. I actually think this tag is super important as we might be able to train our tolerance here a bit! I am not shallow, I do not misunderstand. These are my interpretations and I am entitled to them… just as much as you are to yours! Whatever the majority thinks has zero impact on how true these feelings are.. but speaking about your emotions…..

Time for some nominees! Do note that unlike me you do not have to do this for both movies and you can choose to go for either anime or whatever type of movies series you’d like.

I nominated Irina because I really like to see her talk about her dislikes as well! Those are a big mystery to me! Will we find out?!

I want to nominate Lyn the Otaku Author whom I haven’t visited in a while as I have been struggling to keep up on my reading due to how low my energy has been!

I would like to Nominate Iridium Eye who I know can make a very special post about this!

I also like to nominate Fred from Au Natural, he always introduces me to all sorts of new things! So maybe I can learn something from his posts again.

Finally I’d like to nominate K from K at the Movies. As I think this is the most likely one of all to create an interesting hybrid of series!

I also nominated Mari from Starting Life from Zero! She definitely got nominated first and has been here the whole time! You must have read over it if you missed it!

This nomination might have seemed camouflaged at first but it was totally there all along. Celestial Sparkles did a lot of fun things with the last tag I gave her so I totally nominated her for this!

Wooderon is also nominated because everyone using the Pokémon font on their banner must be a cool person! Much cooler than me! In order to compete I must make them speak unpopular opinions! Also if anyone asks! They were nominated all the time!

If you are not nominated but would like to be.. just tell me in the comments and trough time travel magic within a day or so you will find out you have been nominated in this post all along. People who have become Coconuts by supporting my KoFi are automatically nominated as well though I do keep the right to nominate them still! So if you like my content, would like to be nominated for all my tags by default.. please consider supporting my Kofi! Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a pleasant day.


What if Raditz Turned Good Chapter 4

Last Time On Dragon Ball Pinkie! Raditz Goku and Gohan got ready to fight the evil Saiyans but  Piccolo faced Nappa instead!  Using Tien’s Multi Form Technique to defeat the brute-ish Saiyan.Hitting him with his Special Beam cannon! However Piccolo now out for blood wants to ends the Saiyans life..while Yamcha Tien and Chiaotzu stand in his way the namekian decided to finally take his revenge upon Goku by doing away his friends!  Meanwhile Goku and Vegeta are facing off against each other but by some strange reason Goku is unable activate his Kaioken! As Vegeta’s Galick Gun moves towards the man to finish him off cries of agony emerge from Gohan as suddenly his eyes go white and his hair takes on a brownish tint.. as his Ki swirls in rapidly in a slightly golden glow!

Welcome To What if Raditz Turned Good! The story where Raditz is based on his father as establish in the Broly Movie, not psychic but very aware of how Frieza is as person.. bestowing this feeling of mistrust on his eldest son, Gohan’s potential made him think.. this might be the legendary super Saiyan of old legends! Trying to convince the evil saiyans to join them in their fight against Frieza he hatched a plan to convince these Saiyans of their worth! But will it be enough now that Goku seems in Mortal Danger.. find out more in today’s episode!  The earlier episodes you can find at the end of the post!

‘LEAVE MY DADDY ALONE!’ shouts Gohan who in an instant is next to Vegeta.. pounding his head into his back in a very similar fashion that  he had tackled Raditz with. Vegeta not expecting this and trying to finish of Kakarot gets send to the ground his attack missing Goku, but blowing up the mountain the Saiyan was sent towards. Goku just smiles and slowly floats towards Krillin asking for a Senzu Bean.  Meanwhile Vegeta regains his senses as he straightened himself out just before he can hit the ground “what the” he asks before a kick to his jaw sends him flying up again.  Gohan moves up with him, staring at him with empty white eye .. slightly more standing up hair and a golden aura.. making his hair get a brown copperish blow as it reflect the golden light. With some trouble Vegeta activates his scouter.  The power level he sees reaches over 50.000 closer to 60.0000 nearly 3 times stronger than Vegeta is in his current form! A kick in the stomach then makes him cough violently as he crashes in the earth before he can even realise what happened. 

“This is it.. the kid is a Super Saiyan” says Raditz staring at Gohan who lands on the ground not saying anything. “What was that again” Goku asks. “You really are your mother’s son Kakarot’ Raditz scoffs. Gohan still stands there menacingly but seems to be more in control of himself now that he notices his father is safe. “D-..Dad”  he utters with some slurred speech. The sound of rocks disturbs the silence Vegeta gets up. “A Super Saiyan… the son of the son of a low class warrior.. and not even a full blooded saiyan.. stronger than me?! … The prince of all Saiyans? Don’t make me laugh Raditz’. ‘Vegeta you know what my father told me.. with this kid we stand a chance against Frieza’ . The prince looks at the boy and scoffs , then he looks at Raditz. “Your father was nothing but confused trash… would he really believe in the legend’ . Raditz  looks sternly at the prince and gestures to the boy to move closer to Vegeta. Gohan instantly is in vegeta’s face, his hands stretched in the position of a double sunday. Vegeta stands up and looks at the kid but ignores him.. seeing through the idle threat.

“This kid can barely take down the weakest member of the Ginyu force.. and he has much more technique than this kid” Vegeta does a feign attack allowing him to land a kick on Gohan. He then uses his power up state to move to Raditz.. who in this underpowered form got caught by surprise as Vegeta pulls his tail and fires a Ki Blast at it. ‘Still.. the Pauper.. I see’ says Vegeta while smirking and holding his hand in a certain position. Raditz recovering from the crippling pain freezes as he realises what is about to happen. He might have just doomed them all.How could he have been such a fool! Of course the prince would be this blinded by pride! He could not accept a kid as his superior! Raditz closes his eyes as he hears Vegeta usher the words “Burst open and Mix”

Meanwhile Piccolo cruely smiles as he dashes towards the trio of Yamcha , Chiaotzu and Tien.  He knows their weaknesses.  Now that they have chosen to deny his kill, and without Gohan turning him more on the path of good, he is without mercy. Without a second of doubt in his mind he fires an Evil Blast towards the little emperor , which  as he expected gets caught by Tien. Who immediately looks worse for wear. Yamcha is storming in.. but Piccolo knows the man is very focussed on Melee attacks, he simply stretches his legs and kicks Yamcha hard to the ground. Creating a crater upon impact. He dodges Chiaotzu Dodon Ray.  Tien looks at Chiaotzu and nods at him. “Buddy tag out of this fight.. me and Yamcha got this” . The little emperor objects but as she sees Piccolo grin menacingly he agrees.  “Please Don’t die Tien”  the little guy says before flying off.  Piccolo aims an attack at the little guy but gets  Solar Flared by Tien. The man’s famous and very copied blinding technique!

The Namekian takes a defensive position expecting a follow up attack from the triclops but instead behind him he hears the words Wolf Fang Fist. As he is violently launched towards Tien who then slams him down to the  ground by two interlocking fits and slamming on the Namekian as if it was a hammer. ‘We knew we could not trust you’  Tien says. ‘We were prepared that you would betray us.. I just did not think you would stoop as low as killing a harmless target or Goku’s friends’ The Namekian grins a bit ‘I might have trained you a bit to well, but if you think  I did not plan for a scenario like this you are sorely mistaken’.  The nameking vanishes appearing behind Tien twisting his arms all across him using him as a meat shield while holding his hand towards his head charging energy into his two fingers. Yamcha readies himself as suddenly Piccolo’s eyes go wide and look up and a giant shadow is cast over Yamcha.

“Burst open and Mix” with these words Vegeta’s attack creates a moon like ball in the heavens and he begins to transform into his great ape state.  He is not the only one though, False Super Saiyan God Kid Gohan transforms into a great Ape as well.. the Ki from that thing is immense.. though not nearly as immense as Raditz had expected. His power level would actually be lower barely higher than his False Super Saiyan God level.. now 150.000. Only an about 2x modifier compared to the boost to 180.000 that Vegeta got The incomplete super saiyan transformation being dispelled due to the great ape transformation instead.
“Hubris Raditz… you see.. Kakarot’s son.. is nothing compared to me now” says the great ape saiyan prince while Gohan just pounds his chest and fires a mouth blast.  ‘Brother.. use that technique King Kai thought you.., I shall keep the prince distracted, bald man give me one of those beans’  Raditz says while activating his Kaioken x4 and power up to full.  Krillin hands him a senzu bean somewhat reluctantly and sees the uncle dash towards his now rampaging nephew.. but he is not the only rampaging Saiyan.

Nappa while unconcious was still subject to the Great Ape transformation, however in his knocked out state, there is no way the bald saiyan would stay in control. Weakened by his wound the power level of this great ape is still around 20.000 more than enough to swat the measly 3000 of Tien and 4000 of Piccolo. Beginning to charge up a mouth blast Piccolo knows he  is in trouble. With his arms all tangled across Tien he has nowhere to go.  retracting his arm would take to long. Especially since his other arm is already has so much of his energy in the special beam cannon. He bitterly smirks as he wraps his legs more around Tien to prevent him from escaping. This would have to do, he aims his special beam cannon at Yamcha.. but Piccolo and Tien are evaporated before the attack is even fired.  Yamcha can only look in horror, barely even realising what just happened. When a shadow is cast over him and a giant foot is about to crush him.. he hears “look out Yamcha” as Chiaotzu comes flying in his face covered in tears.  ‘Chiaotzu… I am not sure if we are strong enough to survive this.. this may be it buddy’  Yamcha says to the little pale faced man.  Chiaotzu shakes his head! Keep the earth safe Yamcha! Chiaotzu says as the little guy flies directly towards the sluggish great up.. almost seeing to hug the tail.  The little man tells his final goodbyes and blows up.. managing to successfully sever the feral apes tail.  As Nappa reverts to his normal form and falls unconscious again  Yamcha looks at the smoking piles of earths..where his friends just stood a minute ago. 

Raditz at Kaioken x4 has a power level of around 24.000, nowhere near enough to seriously make a stand against Vegeta who was almost 9x as strong. but if he could draw the  great ape boy close enough to him.. they might have a chance. Using his speed to dodge the attacks of  feral ape Gohan he draws berserking animal closer  and closer to the sentient one.  Just before he is close to Vegeta though the man is snatched up by the great ape princes and smashed into the floor, as Raditz coughs up blood, a stomp is send his way. A stomp that gets blocked by a great ape Gohan tackling great Ape Vegeta. The Oozaru duke it out for a while but eventually Vegeta manages to grapple Gohan’s Tail and rip it off, hurling the kid into a mountain bringing him to the brink of death. Both Raditz and Gohan are down for the count when Vegeta suddenly notices a bright blue light behind him. Goku is there holding his spirit bomb tossing it at Vegeta.. having fully recovered due toone of Krillin’s Senzu beans this spirit bomb unlike the original does not miss. Knocking out the great Ape Prince.

“Hey Buddy would you mind helping out”  he says to Krillin who actually manages to finish the weakened Vegeta  by cutting his tail of with a destructo disk.  The wounded Vegeta tries to crawl back to his pod and Krillin tries to stop him. “Let him go little buddy’ Goku says to Krillin. ‘That one is not ready to join us yet.. but I have a feeling he will come around’. Krillin looks at Goku and says ‘But Goku surely he will inform his master this Frieza guy off us’. Goku shakes his head as Vegeta enters the pod ‘I don’t think he will.. he just has to led go of that pride before her can realise that himself’.  Goku nods. In Vegeta he sees much of himself.. if Master Roshi had not taught him humility all those years ago. Since he found out he was a Saiyan..he discovered more why he was the way he was himself. Based on this fight.. they had not defeated him yet.. he would never come around! He knew that! To win his loyalty they had to prove they were truly stronger. Maybe the other Saiyan Piccolo defeated earlier could…. Goku’s heart stopped a beat. He could not sense the power level of anyone but Yamcha! What happened there! He was sure he felt the saiyan’s power level go down before! It was then that Goku realised his brothers plan had a fatal mistake.

A few days later the survivors had gathered at Capsule Corp the mood was glum. Raditz blamed himself for not phatomming the level of Vegeta’s arrogance. While the prince was not stupid and does accept a higher power level if he is confronted with it.. although begrudgingly.. the fact that a six year old kid outpowered him was to much for the prince’s ego to handle.  His brain would find any way to deny this.. and rightfully so. Gohan’s battle techniques were sloppy and his mind weak. Vegeta.. being the great tactician he is exploited that weakness and as a result Tien Chiaotzu and the Dragon Balls were gone.  Nappa had been recovering in at Capsule Corp and now showed the first signs of awakening. He was no threat to them, a recovered Goku and Raditz now had a power level of around 8000 for Raditz and 10.000 for Goku respectively. Gohan having gained the biggest boost up until 3000.  With no Dragon Balls around, Raditz failsafe plan went up into smoke. When Picollo died Kami also faded away and so did the Dragon Balls.

The group would however find Nappa to be unexpectedly co-operative. Having seen the kid double in power level over just a fews day and having been abandoned by Vegeta the Saiyan does see reason in Raditz words. As a hencheman to the King and later the prince Nappa saw the tension between King Cold his son and their former King. Somewhere Nappa knows Vegeta always treated him like a minion and to an extend that was what he was. He never minded as long as he had to wreck stuff. In a way he had become a slave.. not once but twice over. To both Frieza and Vegeta.. that was not the Saiyan way.. however these guys.. this new Raditz.. want to treat him like an important ally. They healed him up, some of them gave their lives to keep him safe.. as they felt he was needed for the battles to come! He was important for once . Nappa was sick of being treated as the footwipe of so many people. Wanting to be stronger he says he will help them fight Frieza.. if they will help him get beat up that sad sack of a Vegeta who left him here all by himself. Raditz agrees and tells that they have to find another time to beat humility in Vegeta. He still recognised they needed all the help they could get against Frieza even that blasted prince. In an attempt on how to save their friends the group reaches the same conclusion as in the original. They can use the Namekian Dragon Balls to save everyone..except for Piccolo if possible. Once back on earth they could use the Earth Dragon Balls to find out more about the Super Saiyan.. as what Gohan displayed it earlier.. was not that thing described in legends.

Goku, Raditz Gohan, Nappa, Yamcha Krillin and Bulma all want to go on this trip. All for their own reasons! Nappa while not completely trusted either.. as he blew up the city earlier and he still doesn’t care about that is apologetic for killing “the Triclops and that funny little clown guy’ Had he killed them himself he would not have apologised but doing something like this in a feral great ape state felt.. dishonourable and unsaiyan like. That was not a proper win!  Surprisingly Yamcha is the one who turns out to be the most forgiving. He too started out on a bad path.. but Goku saw more in him and brought out the best in him. In Tien heck even Raditz who had now proven himself. Yamcha saw this the most of everyone. The Namekian spaceship of Kami was suggested as their means of transportation..but Goku asks Bulma to make an addition “I want to be able to train better it.. like on King Kai’s planet you know.. with the gravity’.

How shall the trip to Namek go?! How will the story change now that Piccolo will stay in HIFL. What will Vegeta do now that he found out about this super powerful Hybrid Saiyan and can Nappa really be trusted? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Pinkie!

Pokémon Top 5: Favourite Water Pokémon

After the really off-beat fire type favourites of last time it is time for a much more conventional list of pokemon this week! The water type is without a single doubt THE type all pokémon trainers , until recently always ran on their gameplay theme. Let’s see if my list holds water and can make a splash! These are my top 5 favourite water types.

Like every list so far, I follow four main rules. Only one entry per evolution line, and if the later stages are really disliked by me, while the first form adds little on it’s own it will not make the list. Such is the case with Sobble. I really love this little crybaby up to a point where it might be my favourite designed water starter. However it’s monotype evolution line with a creepily slender final evolution didn’t do anything for me. I have a problem with human-like starters, it takes away from their pet quality a starter should have. Water evolutions don’t often work for me as Oshawott, Mudkip Piplup and Totodile all are dear to me but I do not care for their final evolutions.

The second rule is a Pokemon has to feel like a water type to me, since like 90% off all water types are either blue or a fish they most of the time have this covered but one that really doesn’t feel like a water type to me is Golisopod. While it has powerful water moves , Surf and other powerful water moves have been available to the weirdest pokemon! Like Pikachu, Rhydon and Nidoking amongst others. So Golisopod having a water move doesn’t make it a water type and a fast bug monster that can switch itself out when taking damage, that liked priority moves doesn’t feel water to me in any way! The Legendary pokemon of space, Palkia is yet another one that missed the mark.

Finally I am not allowed to use temporary forms.  Some Pokemon gain a type or switch types like Meloetta for example. Yet in the case of water types there is a Mega Evolution I adore while not caring a lot for the base Pokemon. That Pokemon is Mega Slowbro.  While this pink creature is great at defence I think its look is a bit generic nowadays. It did not age that well for me. Galarian Slowbro  fixes this for me, but Mega Slowbro did it so much better. I love the commercial design and this take on mega evolution, evolving the former shellder on its tail to make it almost consume it whole. A great wall in its mega form and adorably awkward!

The fourth rule, a Pokémon can only be entered once! Cloyster  and Walrein are examples of earlier water type entries. Ducklett is excluded from this list for a similar reason. It already was on my top 5 favourite Pink Shines list. I mentioned it in a few posts in and outside of Pokémon so I do not think I have much more interesting stuffs to add to it hence it is not on my list either. I want to show as much love to as many Pokémon as possible! So if your favourite one did not make the list check out if was on an older list!  Gyarados and Lapras just fell short. Usually when I get Lapras I already have a water pokémon and Gyarados I think is fundamentally flawed with it’s water flying typing, making it more pointless to level up a Magikarp just to see it one shotted by a simple spark.Same goes for Ducklett.. but that is a baby Duck! I can accept that! Plus it has a pink Shiny!

When we got introduced to Feebas in Hoenn I firstly thought..beh just another Magikarp! Yet  there was so much more to this Pokémon than meets the eye! Quite literally! In these games to Evolve A Feebas into A Milotic it needed to be deemed beautiful! By having it participate and win Beauty Contests!  Feebas is quite an ugly fish but by showing it’s inner beauty this pokémon could unleash that beauty and transform into one of the most beautiful water pokémon designed. One that feels like a water pokémon but also one that reads that theme and it’s story very well. Pokémon Twilight Wings released a beautiful story about a Milotic as well and you can check that out by visiting the Pokémon Official Youtube Channel right here. It is a Pokémon that is all about obtaining beauty by being yourself and that is a message I’ll always support. It may be a bit fairytale like but just as every frog might be a prince to some.. every big lipped Bass with a triangle on its head can be a magnificent sea serpent!  It was one of the most interesting evolutions, and its a shame that over time it became easier to evolve taking away that theme a bit..which is why it isn’t higher on this list.

It is known as the most beautiful pokémon in the pokedex lore! They have scales that reflect the light differently depending on what angle you look at it , giving it a rainbow like glance over it’s entire body as all it’s scales are also in different angels! This has led the pokémon to become a muse for artists all across the pokémon world. Which again is reflected in the Pokémon Twilight episode, where both a model and the photographers use it to improve their career and create shots of true beauty. Yet Milotic is more than just about beauty. It’s beauty is said to be so vast that it will mesmerise anyone who looks at it. This effect causes people to lose any negativity in their heart, with hate and their will to fight being specifically highlighted. So not only is this a radiant pokemon it is also an envoy and a symbol of peace. If there is one supermodel in the world that CAN achieve world peace and happiness for everyone it is Milotic!

In combat Milotic works best as a wall.. it can tank a lot of damage due to it’s excellent defensive stats. It’s special defences are amazing and it’s physical defences are decent enough to take a hit or two as well. Having access to the move recover, which is considered a staple for Milotic will make it even better. Scald is the move that is placed on it for chip-damage and burns to make physical attacks weaker. Usually you equip the pokémon with leftovers for even more recovery and longer tanking. The other two moves are flexible and dependent on your team. Ice Beam is a favourite as it helps deal with pesky Ground and Dragon Types and usually Toxic is slapped onto it to give dots. Depending on your opponents team though Toxic might be swapped out with Haze..with resets set up moves like Swords Dance or Calm Minds and if you run the toxic stalling set , you might want to replace ice beam with Refresh for even more recovery and longevity. Whatever you build.. you can make it work with Milotic! It has a more supportive function in your team rather than a flat out offensive so adapts it move-set to your team’s strengths! But keep Scald and Recover!

Hoenn had some really good water Pokémon, which makes sense because of how much of the Region is covered in water. One of my favourite water types is the gigantic whale Pokemon Wailord. Why.. because it is so comically big and so ridiculously light for its size.. yet still heavy enough.. to be something incredibly memorable! Of course it famously breeds with Skitty ..the little cat pokémon too so there is already a lot of fun to be had with this pokemon. Skitty is 60 centimeters tall while Wailord is 14,5 meters tall. Respectively about 2 feet compared to 48 feet. Yet they can still make eggs together!  Wailord with it’s 398 kilograms of  877 pounds of weight has a Body Mass Index of 1.9.. compared to that of a human at 18 to 25 that isn’t very high! That being said, Skitty is not the only weird paring this whale of a pokémon can get it on with! Diglett is also a great partner. Wailord is just this really unique  water type who just for its size has taken a place in people’s hearts but he is still a pretty solid Pokémon as well!  Especially during Gameplay or the friendlier competitive scene this is a beast! Also it’s a symbol of friendship between me and this girl so I have lots of positive associations with it!

Pokedex wise there is mostly more stories about how big Wailord is and how much it can eat.  It can eat entire schools of Wishiwashi (which is a very tiny fish Pokémon) and if there is a pod (a group of whales)  Wailords near fishing beaches they decimated the pokéfish population so much that fisherman have to scare them off in order to keep their livelihood. The lungs of a Wailord are so big that it can dive 10.000 feet or +/- 3 kilometers deep and still have enough breath to come up for a new gasp of air no problem! It does this by breathing through its nostrils that it sticks above the water in it’s time of need. Wailords hunt in packs and heard their prey by leaping out of the water completely, which causes such big splashes that it can drive their prey in one direction or even flat out knock them out by the massive shockwave of a wailord hitting the water again. While it is the pokémon that is known as the largest one.. some smaller Wailords do exist. If it is targeted by Pokémon like Sharpedo or Dhelmise..all the Wailord in it’s pod flock together to deal with the treat to their smaller pack member. That smaller one probably is the child of a Diglett!

In the competitive Meta Wailord mostly uses its ability pressure and it’s fabulous healing to PP stall their opponents and making them unable to use moves!  While that is a good set to build it isn’t particularly my style. I prefer the “Moby Dick” set. Which uses moves like Curse, Waterfall , Rest and Avalanche to up it’s defences and rest up while becoming near immortal. Than just chipping away damage at the enemy. This works best with a Chesto Berry to make it snap awake early so you can do it all again! This set let’s your enemy despair. Since it’s health is insanely high , 170 base total using the move Water Spout  which deals damage based on how much health you have remaining is a good shout out as well. This usually means equipping it with a Choice Scarf for speed.. but I prefer to run this set on a sticky web team so I can boost the damage through the use of Choice Specs and see it kill everything! Fun and an excellent use of Wailords flavour! Both movesets also shout “big and clunky”  so you know it has my love!

Lotad , the basic form of Ludicolo was the first pokémon I ever caught in Hoenn after starting with Torchic .. I did a Mudkip run as well but since I never knew what kind of animal Mudkip was I felt closer to the fire chicken.. which was blatantly wrong.. but hey without that mistake I would not have loved Lotad as much or Ludicolo if i had started ..properly.. with Mudkip. A Water and Grass type pokémon combined was an excellent idea, and to base it around a lillypad.. that .. kind of becomes like a dancing Pineapple with a duck bill is amazing.  Because all ducks are amazing! Ludicolo even became more special to me when I played trough Colosseum and Gale of Darkness XD.  I actually started with Gale of Darkness XD for some reason and encountered a man named Mirror B! Who used mostly Ludicolo and dancing based themes. When I faced him in Colosseum  though he had this amazing conga-line like music theme. It became Ludicolo’s theme for me as it fits it so well! A pocket monster with it’s own music theme is amazing! 

Ludicolo is just the epitome of cheerfulness which is reflected by it’s lore.. which mostly a single entry across almost all generations. It loves to dance! It loves to dance so much that whenever it hears music it’s muscles become so charged with energy that it can not help not to dance. It grows stronger through dancing as well as it actually gives it energy rather than take it away. Any little happy beat will trigger this as well.  It is said to love dancing so much that it can be summoned by children, who hum just for fun! It will join them and dance on their merry melodies! Which I take as a lesson to never completely grow up! When we are adult we don’t hum a lot anymore! At least not like we did as a kid! We might mimic what Kanye song is hip .. or do whatever song is now a meme.. but we don’t really do our own melodies anymore! Like we used to. Ludicolo is a Pokémon that is a very odd duck that dances to the beat of it’s own drum.. and whatever drum people choose to walk to. So it teaches us a lesson to just do it! Go Ludicolo!

As a moveset, Ludicolo is very versatile again.. it functions best when it is in the rain as it activates it’s abilities Swift Swim, which speeds it up in the rain. Or Rain Dish which lets it heal in the rain.  The Rain Dish set is more often used in competitive using leech seed, giga drain and moves like that to keep sapping and gaining health.. a near immortal pineapple duck lily pad that never stops dancing. The Swift Swim set is usually quite aggressive with powerful water moves such as Hydro Pump, Giga-Drain again and two other offensive moves.  I personally like the aggressive Ludicolo a lot,  and if you make it set up the rain it is a great teammate on any rain team. With Dynamax setting up the rain is easier than ever so this pokémon is great!  The healing one is definitely more versatile though and helps you much better if you  your opponent lacks a bug type or another good counter for Ludicolo. It stats are lackluster compared to most of the other pokémon here, as it only has a 480 base stat total which is in the lower end of a fully level monster but given how easy it can boost itself this pokémon is still a keeper! 

Blastoise and I have a kind of weird relation. While it is not my starter of choice and nowadays I rarely pick it up anywhere, I still love it dearly… I just love another starter more. As a kid me and my sister used to play with Legos and at one time there were these Pokémon Gashapons which you can get.. we combined with lego’s to play Pokemon. The pokemon toys were about the right size so me and my sister would spend an entire day to build our pokémon same including a battlefield and a gym puzzle. My sister got Pikachu and Charmander, I got Blastoise and Gengar.  Our Gym leaders would visit each others gym, solve the puzzle and battle the gym leader.. which my sister always won..because if not she would break my gym!  But it was fun! We played our Pokémon talking to each other after the fight was done and Blastoise was my hungry lovable oaf. Gengar was an edgelord and he never got a lot of love! One time I won a gym battle and my sister got angry and tossed Gengar away and I did not find it again for a very long time.  So Blastoise was all I had. I grew super close to that toy so it will always have a warm place in my heart.

I played plastic Blastoise as someone who was always taking of it’s next apple as we had an apple toy as well!  Which neatly blended in with lore that was added during Pokémon Gold and Silver. A Blastoise likes to eat and keep being fat. It does this so that it is not jetisonned when it fires it’s own cannons. For these water cannons are powerful enough to punch a hole into thick steel plates. It can use it’s cannon to create water bullets that are so precise it can hit a tin can 160 feet or 53 meters away. It can use the pressure of it’s cannons to launch itself into a highspeed tackle and it likes to  crush it’s opponents with it’s heavy body until they faint. So that is already a lot of fire power! However if Blastoise Mega-Evolves the additional cannon it grows is about equal in strength to that of a tank!  Still very accurate. If it Dynamaxes however it loses all sense of accuracy for some reason so instead it just fires it’s 31 cannons over and over again, with the central cannon being powerful enough to blast holes into mountains.. once more proving that Pokémon hate steel vehicles like Dump Trucks and tanks but hate mountains even more…. I think it’s all the Zubat!

Our cannon turtle is a bit difficult to build because it really depends in what generation you build your set. Blastoise is often used as a Rapid Spinner, which means he should know the move Rapid Spin, which removes hazards your opponents sets! In  Generation VIII this move has become so much better due to the increased base power and speed boosting effect of this move.  Next you’ll want Scald in the pokémon to inflict burns and render physical move users pretty worthless! Dragon Tail gives you momentum control by forcing your opponent to swap out and Ice Beam is nice weakness coverage, which you can take advantage off because of the speed boosts.  This also works nice with Dynamaxing as it gives you access to four offensive Dynamax moves, even losing the low priority of Dragon Tail once you upgrade it to Max Wyrmwind. If you play a generation where you can Mega Evolve Blastoise you want to go hyper offensive with moves like Hydro Cannon and Dark Pulse.. as well as ice beam again.

Both my number 2 and number one pick aren’t even the characters I prefer to choose but these Water Pokémon are amazing.  Initially I was on Team Popplio when Sun and Moon where announced but I fell for the charm of Rowlett. It felt more consistent. However where I really love Rowlett so much it is in my top 5 of next week.. I did not particularly care for it’s evolutions. Primarina though… is amazing.  A water Fairy Type.. based on an seel who opera sings who gets her own sound based water move?! Sign me up for this this! I love the fairy type and Primarina is no exception!  I spend 5 hours mystery trading so I could add a Popplio on my team next to my Rowlett just so I could have a Primarina.  So it came to be that I became the first champion of Alola with all three starters in my squad! Heck I even wrote a little story about Popplio which is a testament on how much I like this evolution line! It still can not hold a candle to Rowlet on it’s own but throughout the entire evolution line this one is my clear winner.  In fact I dare say this is my final fully evolved starter ever.

Having not been around for long in the pokémon world it’s pokedex lore is a bit lackluster but this Primadonna requires a lot of it’s trainer.  As allegedly Primarina uses its singing voice as it’s main weapon, it is up to the trainer to maintain his poke-partners throat at all costs. So I bet Primarina stays perfectly hydrated and gets to eat lots of yummy ice cream to cool it’s throat. With song a primarina controls water balloons filled with sonic waves which form the basis for its attacks. These songs are passed down down for generations , thus a Melody should be able to tell you if Primarina are family of another or maybe if  they have been captured to early. Primarina is the Idol Girl, the Hatsune Miku, if the pokemon world as well. They don’t really care about battle, they battle simply so they can set foot on the “stage’ to display their songs. On moonlit nights it goes out in the see and looks quite mystical as it searches for other Primarina as they burst into song together!  That seems like a very on brand water pokémon for me!

Primarina is another one of those pokémon that is is a bit version specific. The Alola starter for example works best with Sparkling Aria, it’s signature water move that does that exact water Balloon thing we mentioned earlier, Moonblast which is the most powerful Fairy Type Move, Ice Beam  for weakness coverage against grass  and Psychic for weakness coverage against Poison. Equipped with a Primarinium Z to give it access to it’s signature and very powerful and good looking Z-Move, Oceanic Operetta. In Sword and Shield Surf is the better option over Sparkling Aria because it’s equally as reliable and powerful but functions better in Double Battles as well. It has one of the highest special attacks of all the pokémon on this list so it works best as a physical sweeper. Good items to equip it if you aren’t going for the Z-moves are items like a Life Orb or Choice Specs.  The latter may prove to be tricky though as Primarina is rather slow. Choice Scarf can make it faster but not enough so stay away from that. If your opponent doesn’t have many counters for Primarina you may want to consider putting an Assault vest on the pokémon.. which increases her defensive stats in trait for her not being able to use non offensive moves. 

Water Pokémon are a bit of a weird brand for me, I always feel a bit forced to use them so they do not always impress me as much, plenty are a hassle to evolve  or require you to commit hard to a single direction. Primarina is an amazing easy to start , easy to learn Pokémon that can offer joy to everyone! Her moves all by herself is pretty amazing so no need to hunt for moves to make her decent!  The design is resonates really well with me and it’s one of the most unique fully evolved starters out there that even can get rookies pretty far in their journey! This pokémon really sings to me! The winner! Primarina.

So who is your Favourite Water Pokémon? I do expect a lot of Lapras and Gyarados answers here but I have been wrong before! What is your favourite starting type? Next week we will cover the last of the starting types with the grass type! Let me know your thoughts in the comments and see you next time!

Psy-ai-ai-ai! I have been forgotten!


Pinkie’s Day Out! Visiting Gaia Zoo

Hello Island Guests! Once every now and again , I do fairly mundane stuff. Like going on a city trip, visiting a theme park and of course visiting a zoo. With Pinkie’s Day Out , I will tell you all about these little trips! Little moments of happiness with a geeky little twist. Usually I am accompanied by my best normy friend whom I shall call Hub Hub Pilana!  This is one of those tales! There might be more in the future though!

Hub Hub Pilana is a great friend who is super active, super cheery and like me very random!  He had his birthday when my first blog anniversary post went live and as a gift he asked me on a little trip despite the weird times. He wanted to explore how a theme-park or zoo worked with covid regulations. We decided to visit a nearby zoo so  should things be terrible and regulations be poor we could always move to do another thing.  As I can’t drive that was one of the few zoos in the country that made sure he did not have to go out of his way to come pick me up.  He would make a stop in my town and we would lunch together.  I had a pineapple and mango smoothie which was delicious! I ate a avocado and salmon baguette. Hub Hub Pilana ordered a greek salad, along with a sandwich with Gyros and Feta plus a smoothie as well. We had a nice catch up talk. The stuff that we talked about is private so just assume that it was mostly nice! With some encouragement going back and forth as well. A wasp came to our table and I had to flee in terror! 

My Sunshine Smoothie! To start a sunny day!

Then it was time to get in the car and move to the zoo! Here in the Netherlands mask are currently not required and use of them outside the zones where they are required is even punishable by a law against non religious items to partially cover your face. While I really hope they instate a mask rule or at least suspend the ban on masks like these, I could not afford to risk a fine so I had to make due with the rules that are set. I thoroughly disinfected myself and we were off to the zoo. Unlike me Hub Hub Pilana is very big on popular music and the music he chose in his car was RuPaul’s new album.. or at least something new on Spotify. It was a weird sensation, I didn’t really like this music but I really supported the message. Eventually I tuned the music out though and did not hear it anymore. I do that with a lot of music as music is an amplifier of things to me.. not a thing I give merits on it’s own.  So instead I held a plushie parade inside my head. Now on the way to the Zoo there is this super weird roundabout, every time we need to go in that direction to a town called Kerkrade ..we take the wrong turn! This time was no exception! Which was fine since Hub Hub doesn’t really know how to drive within the speed limit.. so we would have arrived quite a bit early! Our zoos currently have time slots you can visit the zoo in and we were 30 minutes early! We managed to decrease that to 15 minutes by driving the wrong way and me trying to photograph a cow..  that was in front of the zoo!  It did not go well!

I would have given you the album cover, but I forgot all titles so here is a pink picture!


The Zoo itself was pleasantly quiet and pathways had been slightly altered to accommodate our safety. Everywhere where you need to touch something, for example doors to the giant bird cages or the restaurants and toilets.. even the playgrounds had plenty of disinfectant available so I felt quite safe.  Distance was very much respected by 80% of the other guests and let’s say those other guests you can recognise on their demeanour so while they do not account for you it was easy enough to account for them.  Each building had a maximum number of visitors but it was quite enough that we were able to walk in anywhere. Now Zoo’s can be a bit boring just to walk through normally!  I mean sure the animals are cute and stuff is going on but we had to make it a bit more fun! So we agreed that the disinfection stations were checkpoints! We had 3 hearts and if we touched stuff 3 times before reaching the next disinfectant station we had to walk back! This stuff did not include our own person but more like info signs, sound buttons, doors or other stuff to interact with. It was actually a blast trying to flip info signs without using my hands  trying to tackle a door open or pick what button I want to press on those “hear the animal cry panels” because I only had 1 or if I felt really bold 2.  The zoo had four areas Taiga, where you enter, Limburg where the petting Zoo is,Savannah which is like a big fly  over Safari like walk and the Rainforest which has the Monkeys. There is also the Dino-Dome which is meant for kids so we skipped that one.. thinking kids don’t keep their distance as well as adults.

Map photography is not my strength


We also both gave each other photo objectives.  Mine was to photograph as many duck-likes as possible and Hub Hub Pilana wanted to make “sexy” animal photos. With our goals we set off . Also the one who broke the Corona rules the most had to order food from the restaurant ..even if we had an all you can eat Dinner 3 hours from then. So with these games in mind we decided to stay into Taiga as long as possible. It isn’t the most effective route but we felt like once we were in an area we have to see that before we can progress to the next stage. As a “boss” we had to capture a Pokémon in Pokémon go! Staying in Taiga was great for my goal but not for my safety points! Taiga has these huge bird areas that are essentially big cages without you  realising sometimes, meaning  a lot  the birds can just fly there somewhat freely. That also meant Ducks!  I was charmed by the blue bill ducks.. one of them took a liking to me and kept close ..he wasn’t very good at staying on camera! I followed him and stepped over the walking direction line 2 times.. but finally I got my picture!

Practice for when New Pokémon Snap comes out

Not very long after that I found a nest of young ducklings which was completely heartwarming I wasted a lot of time while Hub Hub Pilana already captured a Balloon Pikachu as his Boss Encounter for the Taiga area! But at least I found a red-ish duck and managed to move ahead in my main objective.A group of nesting parrots really startled me and while trying to photograph them I walked into a fence..which send me back to the last checkpoint..we deemed it to far away though and I just would get another strike for being forced to eat something heavy in the restaurant. Like .. we reached the next checkpoint.. I just bumped into a fence before I could use it.. We felt it would be to much of a waste of time. A wolf looked at me very disapproving though. In hindsight it’s good that I did not went back because it turned out it was a one way door before that checkpoint.  That would have been a complete Pokémon Go Hatch Detour!

I decided to name this wolf Kevin Sorbo

The next area had super relax chairs.. like an huge you can sit in, floating above the ground so you can twist and turn around a bit…unfortunately I forgot I get sea sick real easily..even on a swing as my world began to spin and swerve. I was so afraid I would start to look pale.If the zookeepers saw me like this I would surely be kicked out of the zoo. So when a few park cleaners passed by I got up and leaned on a fence twice.. so I had to reset to the last checkpoint..now I could walk off my starting seasickness from relaxing in a floating relaxy chair for 10 minutes! Hub Hub Pilana never knew any better.. but he still gave me a rule strike .. I wasn’t going to win that one! I encountered a strange cow thing that’s more like a really patchy buffalo! I decided not to read it’s sign because I loved how it now was something random to me. So here is the patchy cow/buffalo thing.Do you know what it is?

This would be a great Pokémon Ground Dark Type.. I think Moorfur is it’s name!

Our journey through Taiga continued by encountering a few reindeer but I was to distracted by a nest of ducks.. who also just had ducklings!  It was very cute seeing them play at the edge of the water. One tried to climb a rock and slipped of in the most adorable way.  It fell into the water and got a speed boost running back to it’s mamma. Hub Hub Pilana found a mosaic bench.. that is a bit like those Gaudi mosaic benches in Park Guell Barcelona! We sat on it  for a while! I did not get seasick! Yet an old man was behind us.. walking in the zoo all by himself.. no matter how slow or fast we went he was always on our tail! So we made shaking him a off a bit of a miniboss. That took us through a little hedge tunnel that kind of looked like the one from my Neighbor Totoro!  Still he was on our tail! We never passed us and when we came out he was there again! So we “fled” into a little aquarium that had room for five viewers at a time. A mother and her two sons was in there so we willed up the quota.. The man walked in …. seemed to search for something.. then walked out..  a fish looked at me insulted as we had fun with our made up little game. I know it isn’t nice to pretend other people are out to get you! But it made for a fun little adventure! The fish disagreed for all of those who side with the stalky old man though!

Disapproving Fish Disapproves

After I captured a Ducklett in Pokémon Go in the hopes of finding a shiny one we moved into Limburg! The Part of the zoo that had local animals! Like when I say that I mean it and a Livar pig, two cows two donkeys and a petting zoo. The petting Zoo was closed due to the whole Corona thing so I missed a chance to get some extra ducks to my modifier. So instead I talked to the cows a bit when a German family  shoved themselves into my aura to pet a pig I was luring to my side! “Look that lady is gonna be able to push the pig.. push her away and Benny you pet the pig’  that kinda thing. It had me miffed and I vented to the cows.. in german so that they could hear I was annoyed.  They did the swagger walk away from me and I was finally able to pet the pig!  After which I double disinfected my hands.  Mostly for the germane! Hub Hub Pilana took a sexy photo of the Donkey who had shown its Dongkey. So he declared himself the absolute winner! No one could trump that photo he took!  He asked me if I ever saw such a large cock before and I told him I just saw a family of cocks!
We laughed .. disinfected yet again.. and move to the restaurant.

Luckily this cow knew what arschlöcher are and she agreed we just saw some!

The Restaurant marked the halfway point of our journey.. so clever the lay out of this place each big area also has its own small little restaurant but this one was the most tempting.. there was a better one we wish we would have gone to later.. but now it was time for my “Punishment” for stepping over lines to much! Our eye fell on a very rich and creamy looking Oreo cake. It was theme park food so probably It would be overly sweet as well so it would be the perfect punishment as it would fill me up before the evening. Or at least feel like stones in my stomach for the rest of the walk. Surprisingly the cake was actually pretty nice. It had some nice dark chocolate tones filled with some sweet but not overly sweet cream! It felt nice and cool and actually refreshed me! Bonus! During this we had a view of a Hippo in it’s pen! It wasn’t a very exciting sight.. the Hippo.. while one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet.. did that thing, why people don’t know it’s so dangerous.

Danger Incarnate

The Savanna area was one of the nicest zoo Areas to walk trough.  The Lions were up and about for once, the giraffe is always a  fascinating creature and the rhino’s were playing in the mud. They also got into a fight that was hilariously awkward. One of the Rhino’s managed to get his leg stuck behind another’s Rhino’s horn and the two were trying to break free with silly little humps jumps and half rolls and head shakes, after which they butted heads.  At the Cheetah place we did not get to see a lot though.. remember when I first told you about those people you can pick out on demeanour that are like “screw all the rules, I am here now” .. well there they were. Soccer T-shirts.. golden necklaces.. super large dark sunglasses and enough sunburn and sigarette air on them to look and smell like they have been inside a campfire. They had decided to make this sight their break spot and had fanned the family all across the wall.. sitting the children on the wall so no one but them could see. I gave the the Fortnite Award.. and me and Hub Hub Pilana moved on. Instead we encountered some meerkats!  We came up with a new challenge who would come up with the most creative way to break them out.. of course yours truly won that challenge! One of them seemed really excited about my idea!

I named one of these Freddie Mercury

I missed a Squirtle with A Party Hat so I had to settle for yet another Ducklett when it came to capturing Pokémon as we moved into the final area the rainforest. This was the area that suffered most under the Corona rule.  It is basically the area with all the monkeys… which means it is the area with all the crowds.  Since I am adamant on the distance rule this means this area we had to rush through a bit. People would just NOT move forward and since the Gorilla feeding show was not being held.. nor that of the other monkey’s  all the animals seemed a tad more cranky as well. A lot of the animals stayed in their shelter because.. they get fed inside instead of out.  So with only one Gorilla out in the wild and one sitting in the visible area of the shelter both not really doing anything we were done with the apes rather soon. The other monkey pen was being fed as we spoke so there was only a single Monkey out there.. eating an apple on a rope!  He was the first to get food and just rushed outside to eat it in quite. For come reason there was a Capybara in the pen as well.  I mention this because the monkey photos really did not turn out well! I decided to include it anyway since it’s a monkey..but Capy America deserves some love as well! That is right I named that too! There is also a bonus pig thing because how how WordPress galeries work!

What would you name the pig like beastie?

A lot of animals here were either not present or sleeping in the rainforest. At one point we found this weird area that had like compost like heaps that are supposed to be filled with huge creepy crawlies.. but nothing was there. I got dared to poke one of the holes but I wussed out..imagining that if I poked it they would crawl over me and give me all sorts of creepy stuff .. and make me swell up to the size of a ball that had to be rolled out of the park. So instead we decided to go the to terrarium .. after we failed once more to find the ant-eater.. for some weird reason I have really bad luck with seeing anteaters in zoos.  The Terrarium was empty except for Hub Hub Pilana and me and well the stuff that was there. A Tarantula hid from Hub Hub real fast  which was quite funny to see his upset face that HE scared a spider. The best thing was in the Terrarium was the Tapir which was eating some witlof and lettuce. At least I think it was a Tapir.. it was a black pig like thing with no tail. Pretty sure that is a Tapir.

Winnie was oblivious to the three second rule it seems!

A few more duck pictures and exotic birds ahead and we were getting to the end of our zoo trip but we had dinner reservations and a tapas place later that night so we decided to sit down in the better restaurant I mentioned earlier for one more drink before we went. Why is the restaurant better than the other anyway you may ask? Well it was on the water side! Overlooking one of the largest flamingo heards I have ever seen. Flamingo’s are amongst my favourite zoo animals.. why? Well isn’t the reason obvious. However there was also a playground.. kids we playing with some old mining tools turned into playthings.. like a little water pump that made the most annoying noise I ever heard. After drowning the kids in the pool, in my head a few times those kids however led to the last challenge of the day! I do not condone actual harm to kids and typically try to be nice to them but imagine sitting in piece enjoying a drink and hearing constant finger nails scratching on a Nail Board.. even when Mamma tells the kids to stop… they keep scratching the chalkboard. But where Nails on a chalkboard is a slow process.. this one is the same sound in one second intervals. Non Stop for 20 minutes! So we had another creativity contest on how to kill someone off with a Flamingo as a weapon. We could have been more creative but there was like.. this annoying sound… that kept us distracted from going further than use it as a club! Eventually we just fled from the noise!

We had little over an hour left to burn so we ended up spending a few bucks in a nearby Slotmachine hall. It can’t be officially called a Casino here but it’s still a gambling place.
I played a gamble game where I had to collect all sort of space aliens.. you know because creature collecting is sort of my hobby! I also knew it is one of those games that is designed to give you the feeling that you are winning but you basically just keep breaking even. Prompting you to play a higher risk game with bigger stakes! This should help me pass the time without losing a lot of money with a chance to win the casino based jackpot.. which was like 80 euro’s or so. I would not have played but Hub Hub Pilana is really into gambling and this was his big day and he doesn’t like to play alone as it makes him feel like he is taking my time. So I spend about 10 euro in and actually made it twenty. After I knew I wasn’t going to lose money I spend my prophet on a fishing gambly game named Fishing Frenzy. Guess I was collecting animals yet again! I once more got to about 20 so I pocketed the earliest 10 now allowing me to drink a Cocktail or 2 in the restaurant next free of charge! The rest on my money I blew on a slot machine named Kaboom! Hub Hub Pilana was out of money so I played big and gained little!

Not me playing this is the online version

Then we went out for Tapas in my local town! There are two really good places but one Business owner called me chubby enough when we wanted to order another round ..so I stopped going there. This other place has great Tapas as well and we had plenty. Some pretty creative ones too! I had like a mini bowl of spicy sweet potato soup which was truly delicious and severely types of Pinchos , with beef and Souvlaki among other things. It’s one of those places where you pay an amount and then can order two small plates as much as you can eat within 2.5 hours. The Soup was definatly a highlight but I also had a very nice Sea Bream! Hmm guess even when eating I love to collect animals! Using the gambling profit I bought us a cocktail.. but Hub Hub Pilana doesn’t like alcohol so his was virgin! I had a nice Pink Gin and Tonic.. cause even on Pinkie’s day out she has to stay on brand! Heck speaking about being on brand! I disinfected myself like 19 times or so that day! My hands were so soft they almost felt like plushies!

Now taking a trip in these times might seem somewhat controversial, but know everything I did
was well within the confines of our government’s established rules. I do not go out a lot but I am a sociable creature who needs to unwind sometimes. My friend needed me to. Will I do it again soon? Probably not! This trip happend before the thing began flaring up in the neighboring countries again. While here the numbers are currently quite minimal I always aim to be safe, my mental health is part of my own safety though.

Mutations and Surf Ninja’s : Pokémon Uranium Review

Hello Island Guests, Today we are finally back to our normal content! If you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed I completed another Pokémon Fan Game recently!
This time it’s time for for a very powerful Pokémon game that is also a bit toxic! It is time for Pokémon Uranium.

Pokemon Uranium is an RPG maker fan-game filled with Fakemon but also houses a handful of the originals, which are either given an extra evolution like Dunsparce , Corsola or Primeape or are now given a Mega Evolution, Like Arbok  and Whimsicott.  We also start in an entirely new Region called the Tandor Region which I must say is a pretty interesting region to travel through, despite  few flaws.. like it has two maps and you can’t fly from one to another.  Which is annoying since the Pokémon League and move Deleter are on different maps. The  game  shows us some interesting new features such as HM gadgets that render these pesky moves obsolete once you have overcome a few challenges that require the move, battles with special rules like being unable to use items and even has a few bad endings.

That is right you can die in this Pokémon game. In fact.. the whole region can die if you perform poorly! With an engine that is mostly based around Diamond and Pearl  or at least the tileset this is also a better looking game than 90% of the Pokémon Fan games out there. As Diamond and Pearl is the fourth generation game..with DS assets while the majority of fangames uses Ruby and Sapphire! The story is darker and a bit deeper but still feels quite pokémon esque unlike for example Pokémon Reborn which  goes much further. Still this game feels quite unique and then we haven’t even discussed the main unique feature of this game. 


Most Pokémon games try to have their one unique thing they introduce at least. Be it Double Battles, Contests, Mega-Evolution, Dynamax there is almost always something. This game follows that trope and in doing so feels more like a real pokémon game that plenty of others.
Where normal rom hacks or fan games usually mimic the style of one game or another, Pokémon Uranium introduces a new mechanic that makes it feel more like a hypothetical new generation game that stays fairly true to the core game. I could see this be a  generation between Gen IV and Gen VI. Their fakemons are mostly cleverly designed..with some stinkers but overall a strong lineup.. and their  special feature. Nuclear Pokémon.

Nuclear is a typing that can be occur on pokémon and replaces their second typing. Nuclear attacks are called stuff like Gamma Ray or Half Life among a few others and are  Super Effective on ALL Pokémon types except nuclear, but never doubly so.  Yet every other type can hit them super effectively as well. Nuclear types are super powerful.. but a pokémon that went nuclear (like pokémon that also exist in another variant)  will disobey you as if you do not have any badges.. so they are very tricky to use!  Until a later point in the game, yet the also counter any typing shortage your team might have! A double edged sword.

Overall I had a pleasant journey through the Tandor Region and a nice adventures. That is mostly due to the aesthetics this game has. It looks really beautiful for a fangame. I love 80% of the new pokémon and  some of these fakemons I might have a trouble with letting them go as Real Pokémon. They are that real to me.  Fakemon like Owten who is a pokémon you encounter very early game really feels like it could be something you find in the games.  Most of the team I ran during my Uranium Journey had those traits. The black and green design of all the Nuclear Pokémon is also very good and help this game have it’s own distinct visual style!

Instead of a female or a male trainer you can choose a masculine, feminine or androgynous looking sprite and choose the way you wish to be referred as in dialogue! A nice little touch,  that makes that can really help you relate to your trainer a bit more.  All these sprites feel unique and have a healthy dose of personality.  I choose the most bright looking sprite and while human art from the front isn’t always great, the quality of the backsprites in this game is amazing! I like them a lot better than most of the other sprite work, which weirdly encourages me to capture stuff that have lesser artwork to check out if their back sprite is any good. 

The music is also very pretty while there isn’t to much original music in the game all of these pieces have been rearranged and fit their environment beautifully! Gen IV had a bit this mechanical feel ot their sound and here it feels a bit more natural at least for the cities and exploration .. which works great because when you face Uranium Pokémon or go into battle against trainers it gets that “electric” quality this really  makes you feel the contradictions of a 11 year or 12 year old to venture into the world versus the harshness of reality when it comes to battles.

If you lose the wrong battles.. you don’t get send back to a pokémon center no you get a message that your senses faded away and you were never heard from again. You are dead! Meanwhile outside combat you collect cute creatures explore luscious jungles, white sand beaches and beautiful cities! Tandor has a very interesting geographical layout filled with all sort of unique feeling locations! It doesn’t feel like a moved around Sinnoh.. this feels like it’s own thing. That is what this game does REALLY REALLY well! It feels like Pokémon throughout..but it also feels like it’s own thing! Looks-wise, soundwise, onewise! This feels like a Pokémon game you want to play.

For the most part this is also true about the games story!  It has its own feeling to it while keeping enough of the tone of the original to not immediately feel as a fangame.  The game starts inside a nuclear power plant. Your mother Lucille is tending to a station when a Meltdown suddenly becomes imminent. While the plant is evacuated she dives into a room to do something and then the power plant explodes.. and your mother is never heard of again.. and we skip a few years into the future! Your dad once a loving family member now has become cold and distant.. consumed by his duties as a Pokémon Ranger and you are raised by your elderly aunt.

When professor Bambo’o is recruiting two new research assistants you finally get of your aunt’s back and start a journey to win all eight gym badges but also investigate what is happening at the Power Plants..as they all begin to explode and poison the region. A mysterious entity by the name of Curie..who speaks in green letters for some reason.. is gather Uranium to power up her Pokémon Urayne so it can plunge the region into years of darkness. It feels a bit if Fallout met Pokémon.. but the rules and consequences of the Pokéverse still mostly apply. The story feels dark but still makes classic choices honouring it’s roots.

While the main story seems like.. any pokémon plot really! This story is quite a bit better executed. Where in Red and Blue we only learn about Mewtwo very late in game, the sense of things going on, the ideas of where the story is going is present from the first moments. Dialogue comes back later, a character trait early game will play a role later on.. or sets a character up for growth. It feels like a much less “static” story as it is in most pokémon games. Things do do not happen because the plot demands it, things happen because of earlier things set in motion. A character makes a mistake based on events that happened before.  It all feels more logical and rewarding.

Your rival in this game Theo, might be one of the best rivals I have ever seen in a Pokémon game. He starts out from a super annoying whiny kid but due to the events of the story he is forced to grow up fast. The game also establishes a sense of time passing.Theo ages up a bit during the adventure, making it feel much more a story that spans months than it feels like a story that spans days.  His journey makes ours even more impressive! Quite well done! Other clever ideas like implementing a pokémon speech translator also gives you a chance to do things you  can not do in other pokémon games and allows for some interesting side stories. 

Unfortunately the writers are their own worst enemy. While world building is quite consistent there are a few characters that fall so aggravatingly out of tone it drags you out of the story. I do mind Garlikid, the pokémon super hero as he is actually kind of cute.. but when you finally get the HM for Surf and need to make your way to a city that is basically Venice in name and look, you suddenly encounter Surf Ninjas..out of nowhere. They do not fit the world but are still there. While I would not mind them to be played for laughs for a bit this goes on and on. Eventually you become the Hokage of the Surf Ninja Clan and they rescue you from Pirate Jack.

Then there are characters that are go like Ai I am G1RL G4M3R bo11iii!  I do not mind fourth wall breaking pokémon games.. like Pokémon Clover but not when you try to tell this story this way.  You build such an impressive world and then you put in this humor that doesn’t connect with the world but instead with the people reading the text.  Eh.. I can’t be and immersed in a world AND enjoy fourth wall breaking humor at the same time.  That would be as if Deadpool suddenly was placed in Lord of the Rings. Humor in a dark game is great, it can relieve the tension and keep the story more digestible but some of the Meta humor here doesnt work. You can turn on L33T speak as the actual in game language, which reminds me of of the unlockables of old..but never did it clash this much with the product it was in! Luckily this only effects mostly the second act of the game but still it’s a shame. Yet it is no where near as bad as it’s biggest flaw.


The game so far is amazing , except for a pesky flaw this game so far is one of the amazing ones in it’s set up.. technically it is very impressive, though the game can really experience some frame drops and tends to slow down a bit. Which would not have been that much of a problem except for one element of this game is truly off.  That unfortunately is the gameplay. This game is INSANELY grindy. In an attempt to raise the difficulty of this game I think the enemies raise in level so fast that I resorted to cheating in a xp boosting item for the sake of being able to review this game without having to grind for hours .. due to a lack of a speed up button, unlike most rom hacks and even some fan games. 

Even with a Lucky Egg for all my team members (which boosts experience to 150%)  I ended up so underleveled that I barely could take down a pokémon in the grass without losing a pokémon. The routes between cities are very long, there were routes where I really had to avoid trainer battles until later, just so I would not run out of usable moves on my team. Being underleveld really eats at your power points more .. so often even when I was at 75% of a route, I had to backtrack to the last city to heal and get PP back and defeat the remining trainers for experience. At the Pokémon League I was 8 levels behind.. on my strongest pokémon and I did not run away from wild encounters all that much either. If you do not cheat you basically can not swap Pokémon if you encounter a new more interesting one.. and in a Fakemon game where every pokémon is new. .you kinda want to do that.

A fair few evolutions require trade, a special item, a unique move or whatever so if you really want a good team you’ll find yourself being forced to use guides a lot. Because you are so underleveld you need to play flawlessly or grind for hours and hours on end.  This game cleverly chose to let most pokémon only evolve once so they can have more diverse fakemon to it rather than 3 times the same one slightly different.. now you only need 2.. yet this results into the big flaw that XP per encounter is relatively low..Fully evolved pokemon offer more xp but since there are so many evolution lines.. encountering a fully evolved pokémon is much harder.

Even at level 41 you still encounter basic pokémon that just evolve 1 level after you capture them. Because evolutions are cool to see. Yet it still means if you defeat it in combat it’s bad xp. Movesets of pokémon are usually really good and diverse, borderline competivie by default which in turn means.. if your pokémon can not one-shot everything .. they are going to take a lot of damage.. making the grinding even less fun because now you also have to constantly spam items or run back to the pokécenter. I do not mind this increased difficulty for trainer battles as those can be strategised by using typings.. however with grinding you just try to put experience on a specific monster so with movesets this good.. you’ll take a lot of damage.. since grinding is needed.. backtracking is needed and so the game spirals downwards fast.

That being said there is nothing wrong with running an underleveled team and to be fair the game gives you a lot of money , which can be used for healing items, it also gives you the best easily findable  Technical Machines I’ve ever seen in a pokemon game, so move and healing item wise you can make progress in this game under leveled… but then you reach the Pokémon League which is an actual league.. props to them for that. In which you face random opponents you faced earlier with a themed team at level 70. The problem is.. in the pokémon league you can not use items!

If you lose the league you might get other opponents. So if your team lacks 1 one counter while it is under-leveled.. you can flat up lose without any fighting chance.  Every team has weakness-coverage as well..so if you lose your steel type or poison type user against that ground type they have on their fairy team you pretty much wipe out, because you have to build a team that can literally face anything. If you do manage to reach the champion that match is interupted by a lvl 85 Legendary Nuclear Type. Here it gets worse If you do not outspeed it and you are not near level 70 at the very least.. or using a full nuclear team… you do not stand a chance. Realistically this means grinding your team to level 70 plus taking one or two nuclear types along to beat the league..since except for Eevee’s Nuclear evolution Nucleon don’t listen to you unless you beat all the gyms and then some you probably did not train those up.. and you do not encounter new ones after level 45.. so good luck!

I do not mind grinding when I can speed up, but when you grind this game slows down instead of speeding up! I do not mind training like how it is done in the new pokemon game, with these candies or shared experience. I do mind a game a 150% boost , while commiting to a single team, plus full exploration and defeating everything during that exploration is not enough to have a semblance of a chance. Mind you I could look for a guide and find out what type every pokémon is going to be so I get a balanced theme.. but this is a Fakemon game.. I really want to try a few of them out and see what they are all about! Pokémon should be a game where you use your favourites to win, not a game where I spend hours on mind numbing EV training minigames just so they can win something while underleveled.

I should not have to grind for hours when I use the best item to gain xp to train. There are a lot of repeat trainers and even a metro station to fast travel.. but there are only three metro stations and in the first and last part of the game you can’t find any that are usable. You only get fly after the eight batch! So while the game offers a solid rematch system that grands amazing experience..I can not actually use this system because it would mean grueling backtracks. I do not like grinding in the Diamond and Pearl formula because attacks and hp rolls are very slow. I can not stomach this much of a grind on unevolved Pokémon because they offer bad xp. Even if I would this game slows down a lot in a lot of the battle areas so I do not like to walk there!  This completely ruins the game for Nuzlockes to in my opinion because that means even more grinding.. Grinding levels, Grinding EV’s , Grinding Money to buy stuff, The challenge of this game is not in good enemy AI .. it’s simply requires you putting in time..and that is not a good way to increase difficulty.

I did have fun exploring the Tandor Region, but I am fully aware I  had fun because I used Cheat Engine. Now it isn’t hard to do that and if you are willing to I can really recommend this game to you! Use Cheat engine when you play this game and determine your own pace. Be your own Dm.. how much grinding is worth a level? Hack in some rare candies to level you up after so and so many fights. Pick your down difficulty and challenge than this game is great.  Some pokémon like Daikatuna are mostly there for a pun, so are most of the stories jokes.. but there is still a lot of understanding and love for the world of pokémon. The game is just poisoned by it’s own ambitions. It tried to do to many things at the same time. Every choice on it’s own I support.. larger difficulty, more seperate evolution lines, accessible EV training, better movesets. Basic Field Encounters , allowing me to evolve and get that joy. Using the Diamond and Pearl engine. All of these are GREAT choices on their own but together they create a nigh unbeatable slog.

Now I get there are a lot of purists in the Pokémon world who like this old school Tedium. For them this is your game…yet these purist are also a bit averse to new pokémon and new ideas, and this game has a lot of ideas. Regardless of that this review is based on the “casual” pokeémon playstyle. I love the games and a shiny hunt here and there, completing the dex can be fun to. Yet I don’t put hours and hours into making a Pokémon perfect! I want to love them for who they naturally are and be able to use my favourites! For people like me ,the game has a fine story that feels both like Pokémon but also a bit more mature. It also wants to get those laughs and aims them wrong. There are a lot of super cool new pokémon some even better than a few in the official games . Technically I can only conclude this is a good game. Everything there is stuff we want, it is challenging, pretty and interesting..there is only one problem.. it isn’t actually all that fun to play. It is rewarding,, it makes you think..but due to how end-game unfolds it just isn’t fun.

Pokémon Uranium is a Free fan game that is still quite find-able on the internet. I’d tell people to play the game up until they have to move trough the Jungle area and call it quits there or use Cheat Engine to help you along the way.. it’s a great game to experience..but not a very fun one to play. Check out someone’s play trough on it or something!
What Pokémon would you like to see go Nuclear let me know in the comments!

OWLS Mini CONmunity Anime Is Never Cancelled! Pinkie’s Plushies: Support Your Dealers.

Dutch anime conventions can have their quirks, the concept of a “panel” is usually reserved for Comic Con only while our conventions feature a lot of workshops and home brew cute events. While I do like a workshop in whiskey tasting,  AMV making  DDR etc. My  motor skills being poor prevent me from really shining in Amigurumi stuff etc. I tried once I impaled myself with one of those hook things.. I best stick to shops and cute stuff! So totally on brand today I bring you Pinkie’s Plushies!  I present you some potential plush pals and bring you some sweet stuffed  toys from some sweet people who normally are dealers on conventions. That is my way of the OWL.

Welcome to my adorable little store, what I sell you today isn’t just plushies! I am trying to sell you on some amazing people in the business as well! A convention isn’t just about us as visitors it’s also about these people who purchase, craft and sell their amazing goods to use trying to make a living. Without them my bed would not look nearly as cute as it did! Without my plushie dealers no one would ever sleep besides me! Without them I would have been a whole lot less me! So I really want to thank them and remind you all that we could not experience these amazing cons without amazing people and little businesses like this. So if you see anything you like please support these amazing people! If you have other stores to shout feel free to do so in the comments! For this post I have supported a dealer myself! And I am super happy with what I got in return!


Tofu Cute is an amazing store that tempts me into buying their adorable stuff every time I see it. It’s an England based company that doesn’t have to do as much with Tofu as it does have to do with cute. Because my oh my do these guys have some cute stuff.  From simple Japanese sweets to the most adorable stationary and very special keychains and charms. If you need any cuteness in your life this store is such a safe bet. They have a member plan and pretty manageable shipping prices, at least if you live in the European area like me , not sure how it goes for those living overseas but I still think these ship for pretty sweet deals! You can check them out yourselves right here!
Of course we are mostly here though to check out there plushies so here we go!

Hige Manju Maneki Neko Reiwa Giant Plush

The first thing I am offering in my in my little store are these big Maneki Neko’s  that look adorable and perfectly huggable.. which is a pretty good trait for a plushie to have.  Being 35 centimeters tall and coming in two variants the Calico and the Black cat. The description Tofu Cute gives to this one is spot on Adorably round lucky cats holding golden amulets, huge & round & huggable! These two deserve a warm home and loving new owners.  Both are originally made in Japan by the company Amuse which is quite good quality stuff there. Most of Tofu’s stuff comes from them and it feels super soft and good! So there is my seal of approval.. I once or twice held something similar. Still just look at the black one.. doesn’t he just look like the cutests grouch?! Or look at the calico do you not just want to pinch it’s cheeks!  You can click on them to  go to their respective store.

AMUSE Micro Pig Giant Plush

Speaking of  Amuse , let’s discuss my most recent Tofu Cute Purchase. The clover Giant Micro Pig. It’s pink, squishy it looks great on my bed.. which is pink and white and it’s large enough for me to hug without losing in the middle of the night! I just feel in love with how it’s eyes sparkled and how it’s mouth emotes cute oinking noises and how “anime pig” it looks! I am still on the hunt for an Anime Duck plush but Miss Luckubutt (Which is how I named my plush pig) is very welcome  addition to my family! What would make it better is if any of you could adopt her brothers or sisters so  through our bond as bloggers our plushies can be together!
Anyway Tofu Cute describes these cuties as  Adorable micro pig giant plush, super fuzzy and cuddly with unique patterns! I love my plushies fuzzy! Miss Luckybutt arived a few days ago and I adore her. Amuse miight make crane game plushies but these are leagues apart from your average crane game plush! With this pig you will also have bacon in bed each morning! Talk about lucky!  For those who want to get their own Miss Luckybutt .. click the pigs below to continue  shopping, or read on…to uhm continue shopping…

Mameshiba Brothers Doughnut v5 Giant Plush

If you are a bit like me you have found yourself staring at your dog wondering why it is not more like a donut. Tofu Cute offers a perfect alternative to flattening and poking a hole in your dog with these adorable Shiba Inu pups! Whether these dogs A Shiba Inu’s hit by a Donut ray, or Donuts hit by A Shiba-Inu-Ray is a mystery to even Tofu Cute itself, but what I can tell you is is that these Pastry Puppies are once again made by Amuse who are also the geniuses behind the famous Alpaca brand Alpacasso. These plushies look so cute when you stack them! Or you can stack other stuff on them, for example a Narwhal plushie which would otherwise roll away! So these donuts even have practical purposes. Adorable shiba inu pups and friends in doughnut shapes as giant plushies, is how Tofu Cute describes them! Coming in White, Blondie, Ginger and Brown there is a donut for everyone. Why get a dog or a donut when you can get both combined in one!

If you are a bit like me you have found yourself staring at your cat wondering why it is not more like an octopus.  For those  like me who lack the funds to start their own genetic splicing I have come up with a solution in the form of Kittypiplush! She makes these adorable cat octopus hybrid plushies  and will make them to order! All  Might?  Star Platinum,  Jotaro Kujo? No Problem for this creator!….  I think…. While they mostly work on commission base their Etsy store holds a few gems for you to pick up right now! Click here to check it out. Of course we are going to take a look at those, as well  as some of the the commissions that really stand out. It’s time to show a little love to Kittypi Plush and perhaps pick something up for you to love as well!.

Tony Tony Chopper Kittypi

If you are a bit like me you have found  yourself staring at your cat-octopus hybrid and ask. Why is it not more like a humanoid Reindeer with a pink hat!  Luckily the brilliant Hannah has come with a solution for this. A Tony Tony Chopper Kittypi that also comes as just a hat! So even if you would not want an adorable tentacle (non) tanuki  you can still get cute pink decoration of real high quality! These are really good! Chopper easily is one of the most true looking plushies in this store! In fact if you told me this was a rumble ball form from the Anime, i’d totally believe it! It’s colouring really stands out to me and if I had the money , I’d totally pick it up! Running for about $75 this one unfortunately is a bit of my plushie range, but this little guy will just be as happy if you pick it up today! I bet Hannah will love it if you do as well! 

Meowth or Alolan Meowth Kittypi

If you are even more like me you know there can never be enough Pokémon in Your Life. Kittypi Meowth is one of Hannah’s proudest works and with Galar now being a thing she can now make three!  As her store is commission based I bet you can make it as crazy as you’d like. Yet her cats all look so adorable that these cat pokémon are like a super safe way to go and add something super cute to your bed , shelves or couch. Now Meowth is a bipedal pokemon so that makes it hard to place a plushie like that. Now that it has become an octopus as well it can be put everywhere! That’s pretty amazing, think of the logistics!  I really love how kantonian meowth is totally adorable and it’s dark type counterpart has so much personality as well. I’d totally want to buy them as a set! But now I need my metal furbaby as well so this set can be complete! When I already want more, you are doing something right!

All Might Kittypi

For my last pick it is time to go beyond! Plus Ultra Adorable! This thing is amazing and I feel the show is overrated so to the true fans this guys must be a must buy right? Flying its U.A. colourv scheme and all mights in general I can assure you that this plush is high quality! It will not shrivel up into a skinny weak man! It will save you from your lonely nights and bad dreams for it is a hero. It’s special attack, United States of Hug can defrost even the coldest of hearts! Your girlfriend will steal the covers, your hubby will hug and roll you out of his space or fart under the blankets ! Even your Dakimakura is not as loyal as this All Might.. put it next to you and it will keep you safe and loved All Night! And hey if you just happen to breath in one of its hairs you might gain super powers! Talk about a super deal.

It doesn’t happen so often that I encounter a store that resonates with my sense of aesthetics and cuteness so much that I more or less believe that this shop is lead by an alternate universe version of me.. just one that is more talented, more successful and even more pretty than I am! This store manages to pull it off though! Their Linktree is done in a soft pink, their webstores artwork is done in pink’s and baby blues with white, which is a theme I really like and have used when this was still a Pokémon Blog and basically her entire visual style, the characters they create, the linework everything on this site speaks to me. They sell a lot of other things besides plushies like Tofu Cute, so take a look right here to browse their catalogue by clicking here or check out the three babies I have selected to put in the adoption spotlight.

Giant Meowchi Plush Unicorn

What if you took Nyancat and made it like a billion times cuter, a gazillion times less annoying and infinitely more huggable! Seriously toast is so fragile! Than you’d get this Giant Mewochi Plush Unicorn. Being 10.5 inch tall, which is yet another measurement standard I can do nothing with , I am sure it lives up to its expectations of Giant. This is the one that got away for me! Being on Sale for a very affordable $30 bucks .. with free US delivery during the COVID times, this is a pretty sweet deal for all of you in the states!  Lots of Meowchi to love! Just look at it doesn’t it make you happy?! This tiny , big one can’t wait for you to hug it and make your pillows softer as putting your head on a marshmallow as that is it’s magical power!  It’s a very neutral plush that can look cute in any decoration as well and bring a little rainbow in your life! Such a great plush for such a sweet deal!

Mallow, The Stegosaurus DinoS’more

One look at and it’s gleeful eyes is enough to fall in love with this little creature! It’s rosey cheeks on it’s desaturated peach skin help sell that joy de vivre this little thing has about life as it tells you exactly  how happy and cheery this little DinoS’more is! We don’t even have S’mores here but I just can imagine how soft and squishy Mallow would be to hug! It also shares a name with one of the most Amazing WordPressers I know! So supportive! If this Mallow does even half of that.. I can tell you it’s money well spend!  Just looking at the picture as I write this my brain is like.. I want to feed it cookies..brand ones as well! Like Oreo and Chips-Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies. As someone who talks to my plushies I know I might be biassed but Mallow has such a strong voice I can just imagine it already..without even owning one! Think of the conversations you can have if you are as crazy  as me and more of a United States based than me!  If I had a Mallow I might try baking just so I could make the plushie watch me! It will also hear me curse than because I am not good at baking! Luckily I would have a Mallow to cheer me up once I fail! If you want to make that story real but starring you  go buy your mallow today and support this amazing store!

Nocturii the Dragon Fruit Bat

When Pinkie was born she did not get one but two bunnies two love, and her favorite one had a face exactly like Nocturii, only Pinkie’s bunny wasn’t pink.. nor could it fly… nor would it taste so good if you eat it… in the fictional sense… This little critter is something truly unique and feels like it should be in a kids anime like Maple Town or something. I do not know why but I also imagine it as the mascotte of a bungalow park! Like on the kids network it would fly all over the map and tell the children where the playground is, where the swimming pool is and where the special magic show and kids club are! All so that mommy and daddy can have some peace and quiet! ‘Momma Momma! Nocturii is at the boulevard can I go and see her?’ I would be so excited if I was a kid seeing this as a mascotte! The Bunny like features make it lovable while the batlike features make it completely unique! That leaf on her head because it’s also a fruit just finish it and making this into one of the strongest OC plushies I have seen.  That is Tasty Peach greatest strength.. it all feels so unique yet it also manages to appeal to you on a very core level. An absolute gem of a dealer and I hope people can support them in these difficult times! 

In this post I am trying to give you a bit of everything, from people who craft their own plushies and items themselves, to people who completely create their own OC’s to importers from Japanese plushie makers. Like with Tofu Cute , Neko Stop is an importer of amazing goods! I once found them before when I was researching these pokéball  with landscapes inside them.. Pokéball Diorama of sorts!  They sell a lot. Where Tofu Cute is UK based , Neko Stop has an Adorable looking store in Burbank, so if you are looking for some official merchandise and live in the US this might be the store for you! Check it out here or check out my adoption list first!

Corocoro Coronya Plush

If  you are like me you have looked at your dog and wondered.. why aren’t it legs more like pastry. San-X made a character for you and Neko Stop made it come to the states while keeping the bun fresh and soft.. the soft part goes for the rest of the dog as well. From what I have seen you can remove the dog from the bun but no guarantees! My research took me to some auto translate Japanese pages that showed me weird dutch queries like “the fatness of Chinese dogs and crusty cats.  I am sure something went wrong in translation!  Neko Shop tries to respond to all your questions within twenty four hours though so I bet they can answer everything you need to know about this dog in a blanket.. The Edible kind. I myself would just like to have it for the randomness.. a dog in a croissant like thing… Actually it’s that thing from the first episode of Lucky Star where they discuss how to eat a pudding filled croissant like thing.. but I forgot how it’s actually called. I am pretty sure it’s not Chinese Dog’s Fatness. $25 Dollars for a on brand, on model and official plush like this isn’t that expensive! If it isn’t cute  enough for you I am sure it will be delicious!

Rilakkuma Autumn Gloves Plush!

While I had plenty of plushies in my life I don’t think I ever had an actual bear.. well excluding my panda.. but still that doesn’t really feel like a Teddy. Rilakkuma most definitely is a Teddy so I really want one! This Autumn Glove Edition is perfect for a Dutchie like me because we like to complain about the weather and I am not sure if this little bear is fit for cold weather. It clearly is wearing Winter Gear for while it is only still Autumn.. we Dutch have a word for this and it’s cold Koukleum.. a person who does not like cold!  We are still very much in the middle of summer unless you live in Australia or picked southern Hemisphere in Animal Crossing, so this bear should not be that cold! So time for you to warm it up with warm loving hugs! The tiny gloves it wars are so adorable and it means it will not scratch you even if it’s a bear so this is a total win. Costing around $28 dollars that seems like a fairly fair price for something as Kawaii as this!  I have no idea how big it is because the measurements are in inches but my guesstimate size would be .. adorable!  This is definitely a teddy I would welcome in my home and if you are into plushies so should you!

Sentimental Circus Shappo

It might not come to any surprise that among all those plushies I have selected at least one in every store had some pink elements since CoroCoro and Rilakkuma miss that I needed something to meet that quota. Presenting Shappo!  Shappo is one of the weirder San-X character and definitely takes after me! With a teacup tiny top hat, a bit of a scary face and an adorable puppet this creature blends adorableness with a bit of creepiness. It looks like it could kill you.. or at the very least curse you..so this one is very nice to add if your mom tells you to give up your plushies.. you just sit that on your bed or couch making sure if faces wherever your mom sits when she is over for visits..assuming most my of followers live by myself.. or at least are a bit secluded to their own room! When she says.. you gotta get rid of those your an adult now you just point at Shappo and say….shhh they hear you!  She will stare at it and drop it right away. There is also that appeal to bunny plushies.. Maybe it was because it was my first animal but for some reason I feel like all bunny like plushies always come out extra adorable! So do pick up a Shappo today if you want to have something else sitting on your bed for once! It is really ornate and a bit pricey coming in at about $39 dollars so it might not be for everybody.. but I at least love this style.. so I am sure there are more people like me!

The final store is something special. During the OWLS live stream event which I watched later due to not being awake at the time of streaming  Naja and Lita eluded to a mysterious OWL having their own store that sells Amigurumi dolls! Of course this person would be on my dealer to support list us OWLS should stick together and they get one of those coveted corner spots of my dealer table as well! So let’s welcome our own Naja into our store and support her own much more real store by looking at these amazing pieces she has made. You are of course free to check her store right here! Or hear me rave about three of her amazing products!

Takeru Sasazuka Amigurumi

If you are a bit like me you have looked at a guy and thought.. Shut your face!  Like Don’t say anything! Don’t even look at me! All I need now is a hug from you..but don’t be you because you make me angry! This Collar X Malice remake has got you covered. While I know nothing about the game or the character, a little image search leads me to believe that this character is really very much into sweets! That’s cute..but those are my donuts and cookies! With Naja’s Takeru though you get the best of everything you just described! He won’t talk back.. he won’t give you the look and he certainly won’t touch your food!  He is just there for you to love! I am not sure what type of ladies he likes..but little love story does not require you to act a specific way! This little love story can be unlocked by supporting Naja!  You get a lovely little doll pal, Naja gets happy and you can now  chase another guy with Takeru already being there so you no longer have to feel bad for picking him! I am not very good at romancy games because I can never replay it and go for another romance. I feel bad for not picking the first. Dragon Quest Your Story the movie explained that well! So with an option like this I would feel better! So Go play Collar X Malice, do the Takeru Route.. if that is a thing.. and buy this as your trophy! 

Sushi Bunny Tamago

No! I have never looked at my bunny and wondered if it would be nicer if it was more like sushi! I just dropped an omelette on my bunny!  Just kidding.. That did happen to my dog she did not mind as much as me! She had an omelette that day..  Nowadays I have neither Dog nor Bunny to drop an omelette on! My plushies do usually not go near the kitchen!  Now that means there is a hiatus in my house! Tiny Plushies I could decorate my kitchen with! Naja has a great answer in the form of these briljant and adorable Sushi bunnies!  All I can say is I truly love these! If I ever marry a rich american girl who’s willing to support me these will definitely decorate our house! You can really see the personalities in them as well. Did you know that a Bunny-Rice-Ball would rather be covered by Tuna than with egg for example? I did not but Naja sure did! So if you manage to have enough for a set, they will all look quite different and unique! A great thing to collect or an totally awesome gift! Egg based creatures can be totally awesome friends! You should know if you read my more experimental pieces!

Rowlet Pokemon

One of my favourite grass type Pokémon, the former mascot of Owls before Sir Hoot (at least I think that is it’s name)  took over. This is a pick for all of you Owls members who would like a physical token of their Owlness. Not only do you support a fellow Owl and one of our long time members, you’d get your own little badge of honour! Plus one of the best pokémon starters ever!  Her pokémon work on the store is adorable and throughout! I love the Pikachu as well and I rarely love Pikachu! Pokémon Go kinda  keeps ruining it more for me!  How many hats do you gotta have!  The piplup is adorable as well. Yet Rowlet I say is Naja’s greatest work. I’ve been blogging about Pokémon for a year now so you can take this as an expert opinion as well. I mean that in the positive way.. like comparing fine wines and picking a Château Léoville Barton over a Château Pichon Longueville Lalande. I know a lot of you don’t like Plushies all that much or as much as I do but Naja here shows that a Plush or a little cuddly companion can be more! A symbol of what ties us together!

Phew that was a lot of work! This brings me to my conclusion of today’s post! I know I tried to sell you these things but know I get nothing out of it! Nor is that my intention! These people at least for the most part,  normally are out there on conventions selling these things and making trying to make a living. In times like these they can be less discovered and might be struggling. For me Cons for a big part are about shopping and talking to shopkeepers, fangirling over items I might never be able to get but can dream about. These dealers are just as much a part of conventions as we are as guests.So if you have a plushie loving friend, share the links to the stores I shared with you or browse these peoples stores for something you might like as well. 

Support your own favourite dealer! If you are into gunpla.. for once buy it online as if you would spend it on a con. If you are into Japanese candy or artwork order some of that! If you can miss something of course. It is why I bought Miss Luckybutt.. she costs me about what I would normally spend on cons! I really get happy when I see a table of plushies in the dealer room of my cons and if we all support what we love just a bit.. we can help the other side of the conventions as well as ourselves! Support your dealers.. by granting your own desires! Now I am sold out for the day!
Remember to be however you want to be and don´t be afraid to give yourself a treat from your dealers…do not take that out of context!


Check out these far more amazing OWLS Mini Conmmunity: Anime is Never Cancelled: Posts (so Far) as well!

Scott’s: Hideaki Anno: The Road to Neon Genesis Evangelion
Aria’s : Anime and Manga Budget Buys
Matt’s: OWLS MiniCon – Dragon Ball: Comparing the Big Three Series

Takuto will tell you how to start Index/Railgun next in his Toaru Guide going live on the 22nd of July!

The Bigger Give-Away Contest! (Pinkie’s Anniversary Finale)

UPDATE: THE CONTEST IN THIS POST IS OVER AND THE WINNER HAS REDEEMED THEIR PRIZE! THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING TO THOSE WHO DID ON HERE AND ON TWITTER

Hello Island Guests, welcome to the already last anniversary post of my blog’s Anniversary Week. Today I have one more gift to give to you all and this one is a bit bigger than the one we had last Thursday. Today I am giving away .. a modern game! With loads of extra‘s!

I wanted to do something back for the community that has offered me such a nice platform and this great home for the past year! So last Thursday I gave away the game that is responsible for be becoming a geek! Ducktales Remastered of course because! If you think that sounds awesome and you still want to participate! Yes you can!  Click here to visit that post! But wait with that.. don’t go away yet! Because today I have a give away as well! Today I am giving away a code for the complete version of “The Elders Scroll Online including the latest DLC Greymoor” .. that’s right an MMO with all of it’s updates there for you to play!

Why ESO? Well.. that’s a secret. What is no secret is my love for fantasy and I love the Elder Scroll games.  While not a diehard fan who mods the heck out of it I truly love the games in their original forms, I have spend many hours in Tamriel in it’s purest form.. with a single Teddy Bear Mod! I see how many of you like MMOs or heck even Isekai you can Isekai yourself into a free MMO! Woot Woot! Anniversary Week! No this is not a cheap ploy to increase my viewers, although I would not mind. No this is mostly a give-away for the people who have discovered my blog. So instead of sharing, following and doing that whole raffle thing.. I am going to make you compete! The best answer wins! We are all bloggers here..mostly we can be a bit creative right?!

Today I am giving away the COMPLETE edition of Elders Scroll Online! This includes every DLC so far including the latest amazing one! Greymoor! Travel to Skyrim in a way you have never before! Travel In style…because this code I am offering does not only offer all expansion it also offers a lot of little extras!

This includes 5 pre-order rewards such as:
– 2 Crown Experience Scrolls
– Western Skyrim Treasure Maps
– A Nightfall Preview Crown Crate
– The Jarls Vanity and Crown Items
– The Pre-order exclusive Sacrificial Pocket Mammoth Pet!

But that is not all it also comes with a bunch of exclusive Rewards such as:
– The Holdbreaker Warhorse Mount
– The Exlusive Death Crypt Warden Death Hound Mount
– A Exlusive Death Hound Pet
– The Orb of Magnus
– A Skyrim Emote Pack
– The Exclusive Swordthane Outfit Style

Then of course there is the actual game which includes:
-The Elders Scroll Online Base Game
-The Morrowind Chapter Collectors Edition
-The Summerset Isle Chapter Collectors Edition
-The Elseweyr Chapter Collectors Edition
And of course the newest expansion Greymoore! Collects Edition (which includes those things I mentioned before)


I reserve the right to be wrong on the content but I think this pretty much should be everything you get! The code can be redeemed on the official ESO website so does not require Steam. It does however require 125GB of Free-Disk Space. Which prevents me for playing this myself for now! But I am working on that! Because I really want to join!

Well that is easy!
Firstly do follow this blog please! Also follow my twitter!  It will make it so much easier for me to contact you if you have won! For those who I can’t contact it will also help you keep track of when my post announcing the winners goes live! Only one person gets Elders Scroll Online and only one person gets Ducktales, though if you are the most creative.. or the only one participating you could win both! The best answers wins, regardless if they also win the other one! So everyone has a shot!

Secondly leave a like on this post! I know it doesn’t really help your chances , but I really  would appreciate it! I am really curious to how these posts will do!

Thirdly.. and this is the important part, so pay attention you have to help me!  Ever since November 3rd my tag line to this site has been “My Geeky Resort” ..but I would like something more Zippy ..something with a bit more a a kick! A bit of spunk or something totally Kawaii! Today I ask YOU .. what should Pinkie’s Paradise new Tagline be?!
Now whether we are going to use the other tagline or not we will see, I just wanted a contest question that is more interesting that.. “what character would you like to be in ESO’  this is my anniversary week so it is more flavoured towards that. The contest shall be measured on 4 criteria.
1>Is it a catchy tagline? Does it appeal to me?
2>Is It on brand for my blog
3>Will it look cute on my banner
4>Is it creative?
You can put your answer in the comments of if those are not available to you , you can react to the tweet showcasing this post! Only one entry per person! Earliest reply counts!

Think of a Batter Tagline and WIN!

Fourth: You have until  Saturday the 25th of July 2020 at 12:00 PM GMT +1 to react!  Reactions after that are always appreciated but never rewarded with a chance to win a game!   By participating you do allow me to use your submitted Tagline on my blog should I so choose!  Only IF you win I would use your tagline though and who knows I might favour a super creative tagline over a fitting one!  I am not sure! So take a gamble and come up with a tagline!

Fifth and Finally:  A winner shall be announced in my Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 13 post. Right at the end near the real life update!  If I haven’t managed to contact you before that feel free to use the website contact form, twitter or even discord to reach out to me to claim your price. By all means I SHOULD have reached out to you before that though but with my current health.. I might need a bit of a reminder.. or maybe I was unable to contact you myself!  Do not reach out to ask if you have won BEFORE Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 13 has been posted! People who ask if they have won (when I have not reached out to them) are disqualified. Just doing this to keep my mailbox clean and everyone’s chances fair!  If you do not respond within a week of me contacting you.. the price shall move on to a new home as well. So don’t dwaddle time is ticking! Help me with a Tagline and take a deep dive into Tamriel!

And with that I’d like you all to fire up your brains and come up with a creative tagline for my Paradise! Have fun in competing and be reminded of the good old days when you had some control on your chances of winning! Participating with everyone else is half of the fun!
Should no one participate, I shall re-do this give away in a share and like raffle but I will also be sad! Don’t make Pinkie sad! Participate in this game! Thank you for spending time on the blog during the Anniversary Special and thank you for the final time thank you for sticking with me this year! Onto many more years!

XO

Pinkie

The Road to Year 2! What’s next for Pinkie’s Paradise? (Anniversary Day 6)

Hey Island Guests! Over the past few days celebrating this blog’s anniversary we have delved a lot into the past year of this blog! Yet I would also like to stand still on what is next! What about the future that is what today’s blog is about!

So let us begin with what is not changing! I really like the direction I am headed in as per May of this year! I found me, more than I ever did. A me that really enjoys to write what she writes and embraces her being different as a boon rather than something I have to polish out or something that costs me viewers.  In the past I told people how I felt I did not fully belong in “Camp Lita”  “Camp Jon” or heck not even fully in “Camp Irina” I felt accepted sure.. but always as a bit of a trader in the community.. a traveler passing through while also stopping in the other camps. A bit of a rogue that is to much of a gamer to be “just” an anime-blogger or to much of a weeb to “just” blog about games. I realised I in fact might be neither. I tell you about me.  Gamers are not selected on what’s trendy or whats hot , they are selected on what I ‘d like to experience! On what I would like  to play. The same goes for anime! I watch a random anime a month not because it’s cute for the blog but because I like that random element in my life. I tell you about my experiences with said random experience.
My life experiences just happen to include a lot of games and anime. So I am a bit of an odd duck! Luckily I like ducks! So now I’ll just quack to my own beat!

I decided to lean into me more rather than steer away from it for more views sake because this is what makes me happy! I can finally give that devil on my shoulder that constantly tells me people don’t like me a rest because I shifted perspective. Me as a rookie blogger dreamed about the ‘fame’ , what if this opens up doors for me, what is this leads me to find a complete community, is was a way for me to be remembered. I’ve always been fragile health wise and I have health issues that make my future look less certain than your average human being. I have no idea how long I can last and by leaving my mark here I would at least accomplish something.. so that fame got a bit of a false value.  As my blog began to grow, and it grew rapidly, so came delusions joining that desire. I was like Charlie from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory or at least I thought I was ..hoping for that golden Ticket in my candybar. That this would be my miracle. Yet I realised I wasn’t Charlie at all! I was just one of those other kids!  Not the ones that find a ticket.. no  one of those kids who bought 295  chocolate bars but never found my golden ticket! There might not even be one! Yet fairly recently I began to realise how much I like chocolate. I might still “Just” be at home, but seeing how that other thing ended for most.. this might just be as good!

Aside from wanting to be remembered, I also have a desire to be me… like the purest form of me and I realised i had been on a journey to fit in again but that made me unhappy in the past. I was at my happiest when I was me and this blog should and will reflect that.  Yes I will write weird stories in rhyme about an egg friend even though we are all mature sensible people here who see that’s nonsense. Yes I will write about movies nobody will watch  (currently watching all video game movies)  because I thought it would be a fun process. I will keep writing about Pokémon Fan Games even though most of my followers don’t care about pokémon that much. I played it and I want to share that experience! Plenty of the posts  I personally resonate with are some of the quirkier ones. I really loved the idea of The Totally Tomodachi Award I started somewhere  in June. Yet people really did not care for it. It was to weird of a tag but rather than be upset  at the poor reception, I saw it as .. I payed tribute to a few bloggers I loved and that’s what I set out out to do.  It’s fine I am doing me and you can do you. No obligations! I got confused that to belong we all had to do the same tags, we all had to constantly interact.. but no, WordPress is a much more subtle community that is about support and sharing. It’s about interacting despite our differences , It’s about having a safe haven where you can be yourself and that means we can support content even if we don’t like it persé. The internet warped that for me for a bit.. but now we got a course and Paradise will walk to the beat of it’s own drum!

So now that we have established what will be the same, we got a good idea about the direction I want to take! Year 1 was the year about trying to be a Pokémon Blog, A Game Blog or an Anime Blog.. I am not sure I am any, yet Paradise is also all. A geek blog is perhaps the best way to describe it, where geeks, both writing and reading can be themselves. It’s about doing what you want to do and finding happiness in things like games, anime or even writing and sharing that joy with the world.

In terms of content , at least on my end there will only be minimals changes because I am happy with what I am doing. Let’s go over my categories though and start with Pinkie’s fiction My What If Raditz Turned Good story will most like be shelved after we went through the Frieza Arc. My story has a nice ending point there as my tale is already very focussed on that story line. My little Isekai story will go on for a while though. It’s certainly not the most popular thing on my blog but I just have a ton of fun writing it. It’s fun ‘hiding’ OWLS or others in the story and building my own little mirror world. In terms of Pinkie’s fiction though I do expect a decrease in stuff like Pinkie Get’s anime Powers and increases in stories like Tamago Tomodachi. Little brainfart stories! The former requires a fair amount of research to do, I wont stop doing them but I will write them a bit.. whenever! If I happy to stumble on more info on a fandom and I like it.. i might make a power post on it. Pinkie’s Who Would Win will be sparse as well.. while the concept of non volatile confrontations between characters is fun it is very much centered around playing Non-Volatile games.. like board games or party video games.  I love doing those and I will probably continue to do those in the future but the problem is…. in Corona times I don’t actually play a lot of these types of games! So I have little to work with here! I am working on a solution though!

Movies will not change for a good while. I still have about 38 video game movies to go through before we move onto the next project. However I decided to include more real life experiences so whenever I actually go see a movie, which again still is rare now those might be posted between the video game movies with a maximum of one a week! Who knows I might just make more than 1 post per day..but that might be somewhat ambitious. It will continue as is with some flexibility! My game reviews I am still figuring out. I want to at least offer one Pokémon game per month, no matter if it is an official one or a a fan one. Other than that.. mostly a mix of horror, weird and retro games! I will try to keep them balanced..but hey if I want to play two horror games in a row that is what will appear. I also want to talk about other aspects of gaming every now and again.

Geeky Life-Style and Pokémon Topics will mostly stay the same, though I will share a few of my personal experiences with you as well! Next week wednesday you will get a report of my trip to the Zoo! Of course with a bit of a geeky twist. It’s easy to let our mindset be caught in a bit of a bad place, certainly in the current times but by sharing my fun activities with you I at least make sure that I can keep sharing my hearts concerns with you if needed..but balancing it out with some fun and positivity as well! The random topic generator might become more of a staple, though I might actually use Twitter and Kofi more in creating some of these posts as well. I want to dive a tiny bit deeper inside that rabbit hole! Randomness has a big importance to me and it will become a bit of an element on this blog. My typing top 5 will last for 6 more weeks and then we will move on to our next subject. Maybe if I am ambitious I will try to explore the entire Pokédex with you.. though not in a weekly format. I’d like to add some diversity, how I do not know yet.

On saturday I usually discuss anime now, or tell an anime story, post a single series review watch a  random anime etc. While I do like these posts they give me a lot of stress as it is by far the most difficult slot to come up with a topic for. The only thing I experience writers block with.. so instead I think Saturdays will be a complete random thing.. depending on whatever experience I have ready (though I am gonna keep in the random anime generator because I love doing that) I think it will still have a bias to anime but who knows. It will always be something off series though.. so never will there be a video game movie in there nor will there be a pokémon typing list.  It’s my wildcard that I try to make anime but I am going easier on myself to diverge! Stress reduction and all! It can be anything.. it most likely will be anime!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure which releases on Sunday will continue to go on! I love doing this sooo much! With Hikaru no go going on for 65 episodes still  before I finish the first series I can tell I will still be doing it by the time of my next anniversary! For those who haven’t noticed.. for the past three installments i have been entering real life updates in there near the end as well  so you always have an idea where my head is at, since these posts are the only ones I do not write ahead of times those are up to date as well!

So do I plan to stay the same with only some content switches?! No! I am slowly beginning to look for co-writes for this blog. Like people who like to post something once a week or once every now and again but really do not want to keep up their own website!  A buddy or buddies or sorts. As long as people don’t start posting how dumb I am or opposite articles , which is my term for me writing stuff like “Oh My Arceus Tengen Toppa is so amazing”  and them writing “Oh My God Tengen Toppa is so friggin Lame” I am not a harsh blog-owner, but yeah I think that would be very neat.Work In progress though! In essence a long term project as well! I already had some people show interest so I am actually working on a recruitment message and details as you read this!

I might also do a blog tour, when I just joined Scott’s Space is the Place tour really impressed me and I thought.. that’s something I’d like to to one day. So one day I will. This again isn’t a short term project as I have no idea on it yet.. just aspirations.  I might also take up one of these random 30 days challenges somewhere along the line. It’s not like I’d need the content ideas , I might do them on top of my normal stuff! Above and beyond! Or I might do a Twitter version of these! Collabs are more in the work! One is being discussed slowly but it will get there!  Anxiety and that demon prevent me from asking people for collabs though..like I am sure that little demon would really hurt me and drive me mad if someone told me they did not have the time or did not want to do a collab at this time. I might just have to grow so big that people want to collab with me!  Wishes are there, aspirations are there.. but that little demon is also there. I plan to starve that little demon a bit more before I take on anything overly ambitious that could lead to rejection. I also need ideas!  Though I have a few ideas! They are weird though! Like watching Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam better known as Turkish Star Wars with somebody without subtitles. I would also love to watch Gakkou Gurashi!/School Live  With someone who hasn’t seen it yet nor knows what it is. I just made those up though so there is still some other ideas in my brain! Including completely in text and trust based Batsu games but I am not sure who’d I’d trust with that!

Finally I plan to do another giveaway! That will be tomorrow! It will be a game again because I haven’t found a place yet where they give plushies by code! I am really excited about tomorrow’s giveaway! It’s a bit of a bigger gift then Ducktales but a bit less of a personal gift! Pretty luxurious though! So make sure to check back! And heck you do not even need Steam to play this one! Exciting right?! Stay tuned!