Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 7

It is time to discuss anime I watched again! Week 7 of bringing back Saturday morning cartoons was a bit different, I allowed myself a break to make some delicious Omelette Au Fromage, with cubed bacon and spinach filling. It was a really nice way to celebrate two new shows adding to the line up. Welcome “That Time I reincarnated as a Slime” and “Tower of God” to my lineup! I was happy with both my rule-break as well as my new additions because..those were the best part of my Saturday morning

An albatross flies over japanese skies and is threatened to be shot down for not having the right documentation.. he claims he can’t help it because of instincts.. but because of being awarded human rights  he needs passports and proper regulations. He goes to land in Anima city..but he crashes due to a storm coming up.. and what do you know.. he crashes straight onto Michiru’s bed. It’s been a dream of Michiru to fly so seeing her first flying type beast man fascinates her. Quickly bonding as he invites her for a flight… at that time we see the Mayor asking Shirou to look into some flying beast man terrorists… jeez.. I am so surprised! BNA is SO lazily written at times. The colliding plot lines thing happens in EVERY single episode. It invalidates so much of Michuru’s life for me.. I don’t believe that this would happen EVERY single time we see the tanuki discover something about herself. This really annoyed me! 

Good! This series used to be like that too my guy!

The lesson in this episode also doesn’t land for me at all. Basically it says beastman are annoyed that they now that they are seen as equals in human society have to follow their rules while it sometimes goes against their instincts. They are other life forms that should be held to other rules. I strongly disagree. I mean yes I get that birds should be allowed to be migratory..but if you have the power to look human, this is nothing but mere safety precautions. If I go to a muslim country I can’t expect them to allow atheist to break some of their religious  laws simply because I do not believe in Allah! If I go to India I do not go and eat a cow.. simply because I have a doctors note that says I should eat more red meat. No a country determines the rules. Those rules can be crooked and may require change.. but  this really pales to issues real people are having here! The Albatross can even freely fly across the country.. he just has to go to the ground and fill in some paperwork to do so.. to get a tourist visa.  So his reason to become a terrorist and threaten the Major of Anima City to bury his people who got shot while ignoring a 3 minute paperwork job really did not land.
It really made the world building seem flimsy and poorly thought off. I get someone has needs.. but because of the entire plot of the episode they proof this rule is valid!

Shirou by now also just exist to punch guys Michiru hangs out with

Of course the whole encounter is deeply tied in with the church as well.. who most likely hired a terrorist to kill the human financer of the city.. The blond bad guy who owns the chemical comany.. just so they can save him.. in order to be granted asylum. We get the obvious fake out, like really obvious, and Michiru learns how to make wings and fly.  Nazuna can turn into a better more shiny bird though and the Priestess Death Rube.. as Nazuna is also known as is now the hero of the city. Like always.. the life and development of Michiru is given some love and attention.. this feels like her and sprouting wings seems fitting and in line with her nature. It’s as if someone created a really amazing character and loved it very much..but then threw a very cheap world around her.  The episode was watchable, the new character design was pretty sleak.. but it also feels super obvious. I’d say this is about as enjoyable as riding one of those really cheap fair. .haunted house rides. It looks really cool from the outside but inside it’s filled with plastic spiders and easy to predict moments that completly kill any immersion you could have had. BAD Episode.

I suspected they might be the same person..clearly I was wrong

Score:

This one is a bit of a mixed bag for me. In general a second episode of anime I always find rather underwhelming. Episode 1 usually is an amuse bouche of what is to come and in episode 2 you often have to do so much ground work in a setting that it oftenly is not very action packed.  This episode felt like that at least for the first two thirds. The third act was very strong. The first act mostly depicts how Masayoshi struggles  being a hero and while I had a lot of fun with seeing it , not a lot happens. He scares a guy by sneaking up on him and scolding him for littering and he prevents a woman from putting her trash outside forty minutes early.  Which she did because she wanted to sleep in.  While it is fun.. we do not see a payoff to this directly, it comes back in the third act. Which in hindsight makes this a lot better.. but while viewing it I couldn’t help but frown. At this time we suddenly feel very distant from Masayoshi. Goto hears some complaints and just sighs and we see them bonding as bro’s for a bit until we move to the second act. It isn’t a bad act..but due to the way the obnoxious hook is let go.. it felt kinda unrewarding (about 8 minutes in)

You should not have such faboulous hair in the rain either!

While hanging out Masayoshi’s agent shows up. Ishihara has a new gig for Masayoshi being an extra for some idol girl group.. which based on the opening credits and what happens next will gain some importance later on.  We see the his tale that he feels uncomfortable being a model being validated here when he has a hard time to contain his nerves. Which is a nice way to establish his character.The episode really does do a great job in setting up Masayoshi as a character… it just doesn’t do a whole lot of anything else. We are introduced to the idol girl Maya who admittedly is quite cute and I can see here becoming very important to Masayoshi! To calm his nerves we see him sing/mumble a sentai song which she does seem to recognise. Singing about an axe, I am not  sure if it’s an actual sentai show .. but the axe comes back in all three the acts. Unfortunately  Maya’s fascination with our protagonist is kinda brushed off and glossed over. I am sure it will come back but now about 15 minutes in I have yet to see anything happen yet. 

An accurate depiction of how wild this epssode is so far!

The third act makes up for this with a very cute resolution of the first act. Goto invites his new friend for sushi to talk about the complaints concerning Samurai Flamenco asking him to shelve the idea for a bit. Which obviously Masayoshi doesn’t want to do. Goto asks him about why he wants to stop these petty crimes and again I see a call back to Tarantino like dialogue when they begin to talk about Umbrella theft.. which is very common in Japan. You just take an umbrella for the rain. Masayoshi never uses one.. because he once stole an Umbrella of a young boy who got the flu from walking through the cold. This made him vilianise himself so hard he can not let go of any petty crime. Rules exist for a reason and he wants to keep them all. There is a beautiful pureness to this. Goto got drunk from their outing and on their way out.. he notices his umbrella is gone.

Awww shucks I bet this would make great Yaoi

However there is a cute strap of his girlfriend on that Umbrella which makes it worth more to him. We see our boy play the noble hero getting Goto his umbrella back. It brings the two closer together. It’s beautiful and funny to see how the hero will not even run a single red light and his justice is done within the complete confines of the rules. ..except for vigilantism I guess..but he doesn’t really move on the turf of law enforcers either.. he just gives offenders a stern talking too.  It was a beautiful way to wrap up this episode and gave it the kick of action that it needed. I kinda wish the first act and the second act were swapped as I think that would have been even more beautiful and a bit less fragmented. All in all a quite enjoyable episode.. that suffers from having to much to set up. 

I got nothing.. can you think of a funny for this one?!
Too invested in the last part to screen cap!

Score:

Foovay recommended this one to me and I must say , this was my favorite watch of the day. It was also the weirdest. There were so many tones and voices in this episode. We begin with the death of the main character. I mean .. that is not a spoiler .. you need to die to be reincarnated. This actually happens rather vicious and bloody.  Thirty Seven Year old virgin Satoru is having an outing with a coworker and his new girlfriend when a random assailant charges at them with a knife. Satoru jumps in front of his colleague and saves his life.. at the cost of his own. As he lays there dying he wishes he would not feel pain.. complains about heat and cold and worries about the safety off his hard drive and electronic devices. This all registers with a voice in his head who grants him these wishes for the next time he is reborn.
He shall have a body that feels no pain, heat or cold and one that will be a predator! This all leads him into being born as a slime! I really felt for the guy that stab looked so painful and not comedic at all! I was really surprised. 

You are on Pinkie’s Paradise! Rejoice..also do my dishes!

Through a lot of surreal visuals we see him move into another world and discover some of his skills , talking more to the voice in his head which sounds an awful lot like a computer  voice.  I love these types of visuals, it really made me question what was going on.. and that is a sentiment that I really like to feel. The revelation that he is a slime is always not very dragged out.  Which is nice, the title spoils that to us already so it’s kinda good that it doesn’t linger. This moves into some Bofuri-like cute moments of the slime dissolving a flower just because it’s the only fun there is to be had and slowly discovering it’s abilities. This would be my favorite moment of the episode. There is just something about characters experimenting with their new bodies or powers that really charm me. The slime also emotes wonderfully well a lot better than i expected though it is nowhere nearly as cute as the Dragon Quest slimes. Based on the opening  which we find at the ending of the episode this time, he will later transform into a boyish girl person thing akin to Kirito in Gun gale. I might be wrong though. I am pretty sure a slime would be genderfluid.

I know right.. that last joke was funny!

The final part of the episode we have the little blob learn how to see using magical perception.. having eating some magical rocks he can learn that ability I would assume. The Dragon Veldora gives him this skill if he promises not to be scared of him… which is a very nice moment and my second favorite moment. The dragon has been so lonely and is very happy to have someone for company for a bit. It seems that the slime will be on the “bad guy” side.. but  it doesn’t (yet at least) depict the dragon as evil. He might lie.. but he could just have been put here for being a monster. He destroyed a town sure.. but he had been sealed away with a lot of force.  I see a lot of promise in this format. I do like the visuals and the designs so far as well. Our main character being of a somewhat older age makes him credible to some life experiences and gives him much more proper motivation to try a different lifestyle than say.. a 14 year old who got hit by a truck. The way skills are used might be very fun.. it looks to be and I can not wait to see more! This could be a very interesting show to me with the right amount of cute, intrigue and magic and trippy visuals! Next week I will find out more.

That’s a dragon who breathes air! Beware!

Score:

I thought this would be a Isekai.. but it seems it is closer to a magical fantasy action show.  Bam and his dear friend Rachel are from ..the other side of some gate.. but the semantics aren’t fully clear to me yet. They do seem to live in a world without a sky. Rachel who dreams to see the stars one day therefor wishes to climb the legendary tower of god.. on top there is basically god  but also  whatever you seek.  However to climb this tower you must face some tough challenges in many life or death situations. Bam gets a magic sword that is into him.. or something and so he must explore and prove his worth! His friend went ahead and now he works hard to catch up.

For lots and lots of love! Or money..whatever I find first..

This at least seems to me to be the plot of the show and it feels very different from what I have seen so far. Both designwise as storywise the story seems to follow a few different beats as your run of the mill anime! Probably due to it’s Korean influences.  We see a skeletal bunny be some sort of trial master. In honesty he could be a character from Hollow Knight.. he looks exactly like that.. just larger or with more human dimensions. Ban is given a trial that people even on the 20th level have issues against so it seems he is being treated unfair. This draws the attention of some princess.  This whole scene fascinated me.. I think her name was Jahad but that might be a title .. I am not sure yet. She objects to him doing the trial but to Ban, Rachel is his entire world.. so she decides to give him a royal blade. Without thinking a moment longer he walks into the trial! He will see Rachel again. So far I like Ban, he is more silent than your usual main character nowadays.. we really get a great sense of his determination in this first episode.

I am pretty sure that is NOT an Eel

My favorite moment is when Ban is trying to break some orb in the area a giant steel eel lives.. or at leats thats what it’s called. We do not see his strikes persé.. we see why he strikes. We see the reason of his strength, which I found a lovely poetic scene. We also see his cries call out the eel thing again.. signifying we see a man with a deep passion here a deep care for the woman he is after and he will not easily be stopped! Yet his cause will also put him into danger. Jahad and her navigator.. see things going awry so in a burst of desperation to ask the sword for help.. he does so and she answers. Hugging him unleashing her powers.

Where is that shadow coming from, she is litteraly bathing in light!

For now it seems like she accepted him simply for being pretty! I do hope this remains true! I would love for an all powerful sword to be so petty! With the sword unlocked he clears the trial and is immediatly booted in the next trial! A surival game where half of the trialist have to be eliminated. This begins to introduce us to some characters I saw in other peoples screenshots and the opening credits so I bet episode 2 will be important! I am at least hungry for more even though I am not the biggest fan of the character designs yet. Except for the sword lady!

Well at least it will be easier to walk on then!

Score:


This episode was never going to be as great as episode 6, that episode was so amazing so this one was bound to let me down a bit but boy…. this was a rough one to finish. While it does a great job a setting up Hikaru’s desire to stand on his own two feet and not be depended on Sai as much I feel like that was already established in the previous episode. So this episode just really focuses on validating that. In a way where nothing happens. They start to found a Go club in their own school and somehow Akiri is in it but the club is not official yet and they need new members so they make a poster.. which people remove which angers Hikaru. While it seems in line with his character to get into these tantrums.. he himself did not care about Go before at all  so I’d imagine he could at least relate to others a bit more. Hikaru was the worst thing in this episode if I am honest.

Okay , the poster wasn’t very good either!

We see him lash out at Akiri for no reasons as all and it comes at the cost of his drive to learn the game. He is improving but he overshouts that emotion  all the time. When Akiri asks to be thought to play the game he goes ape-shit at her when she makes an illegal move.  I felt so bad for the girl, his unwillingness to teach her seems to clash with what this episode is about .. making new people enthused about Go. I know this is a bit the way their established relation goes but if that is true why would Tsutsui teach Akiri instead. See her get into this.We cut away to a while later and you’d expect her to be upset.  Instead she just takes Hikaru’s verbal rage  and makes a nice colourful poster which is cute and I am happy to see more Akiri but it all felt so inconsequential. 

I have known these rules for a week! You are Trash Akiri! Ignorant Trash! A WEEK!

Akira meanwhile notices that Hikaru doesn’t come to the Go “café”  anymore  so he decides to join his school club in order to face Hikaru in tournaments. Reason is that Hikaru blows him off for a duel as he wants to meet him on his own strength. Which is the best thing this episode does.. but doesn’t Sai have a problem with this?  He wants to perfect the divine move and the strongest opponent he can currently face says he has gotten a lot stronger. Last episode we see Sai beg to play and now without him mentioning a single thing we see him stick by Hikaru’s  call to do everything himself . I really would have liked a more 50/50 divide here.

That outfit doesn’t look very becoming on Akrii

Hikaru was told to learn from how Sai plays to better and that synergy made the last episode so beautiful he could begin to see the flow of the stones..so why is that suddenly turned to 0 so hard. The whole Akira’s Go club not accepting him because he is to good and taking their spot makes sense and I think the whole difference between those who play with passion and those who play for credit can offer interesting plotlines in the future.. but that thing relegated to be a voice over while he walks through a hall and we see trophies. It just didn’t land.. nothing really did in this episode for me. I am glad Hikaru is coming into his own but for me he took a step back from where he was last week. This week some of Hikaru definitely lost some Moku. At least I think that is the term!  Not awful just very meh!

His best weapon is his Blue Eyes…wait wrong anime?! Huh!?

Score:

A bit of a disappointing week. Now before people go all defensive, the episode of Hikaru and Samurai Flamenco can still end up being amazing in the bigger picture, they just did not offer me much as stand alone episodes. I still really like their respective series and their potential.
BNA.. however is really showing it’s cracks. I just can’t get over the same trope being used each week. It’s weird how these last two episodes took such a nose dive for me. Michiru is still an amazing character and I would love to see more about her life, I just don’t think this world is clever enough let alone the main story thread. Maybe next week I will be proven wrong though.

Such a nice Screenshot from Slime to cap things off with!


A Million Anime to pick next: How to Choose What to Watch (Part I)

Dear Island Guests, I have seen sooooo much less anime than the majority of you. Sometimes if I hear you talking you are so intimidating to me! Typing out japanese names of niche anime and everyone jumping the bandwagon. When I ask what anime I should watch next , I get lists that are longer than MY posts, and my posts are rather lengthy. So how do I decide what anime I watch next?! In today’s post I will “review” some ways I use to pick an anime. Plus why I think it’s a good method…but also their downside.

<Disclaimer>
This is strictly my opinion and does not contain facts , I think by now now I finished about 40ish anime series and dropped/tried  about as much as well. So that isn’t a whole lot. I am not inexperienced but I am also not nearly as dedicated as many here. My wish for community does play a large role in these reasonings, this shall not apply to everyone . Any form facts only refer to my opinion.. It is a fact I feel this way.. no one has to share any of these opinions or feel compelled to do so.
<End of Disclaimer>

Let’s start out with one of the more common ways to pick an anime! Watching whatever is in season! Plenty of you out there follow anime seasons and most of you seem to have fun doing it. I have followed MHA season 1 and 2 on season, I picked Didn’t I say to make my abilities average and even Isekai Cheat Magician. It might be one of the easiest ways to pick anime.. in fact those who watch a lot of anime barely have to pick anime at all then. They just watch it all! Everyday you get spoon fed a number of episodes which to be honest seems like a pretty solid way to pick anime to me! Yet now it’s time to pick up my comically sized magnifying glass and analyse this method.

Postives

This method works great if you have watched a fair amount of anime. It’s  new so you are very certain you will not watch anything double. In the past I accidently rewatched like 25% of a series before realising I had already seen it before.. (It wasn’t very good)  I just used an english name before and now a Japanese name. When you watch seasonals, you always watch something new. Now for  people who aren’t bumbling fools like me this one still is a great method to watch as it without a shadow of a doubt is the most engaging method. 

While you watch the community watches with you, this means you can talk, discuss and rave about it all you like.. and you are very likely to find someone to join you, doing things together is oftenly more fun. It also streamlines the choices you can make to a handful of choices. Instead of searching for that golden pearl inside of the world’s oceans you instead search for the pearl in on a single ship, even if your gold one isn’t there some clams will still have something shiny.Less daunting and you make some friends with people who sail along then.

Negatives

This method however might be one of the least consistently rewarding ones, when it comes to your enjoyment. We don’t know how good an anime is going to be until it airs.. now that is not fully true .. there is manga to go off on.. but still you might be digging for gold and all you get is coal.  There have been great anime seasons, there were also those who really can let you down.. and there is no refunding for viewing time. So seasonal anime is more risky.. yet it is also more tiring at least to me. You have to keep up with anime, especially if you pick a lot.

Lag behind a week and there are chances you get spoiled, depending on how many seasonals you watch.. a  friend coming over spontaneously or inviting you for drinks can mess up your schedule and if a episode is REALLY hype and memeable , spoilers arrive within mere minutes. Depending on how active you are in the community and if you blog yes or no.. this method of watching anime can add a lot of pressure and really kill some joy. You do not have to do so immediately, but if you are part of groups and are active in the community..you can’t wait to long either. It’s self imposed pressure depending on why you watch.. but at least I found that seasonals added of self imposed.. forcefulness upon myself.

The final negative point is not for everyone it’s just for those who haven’t seen a lot of anime. Who miss a few classics. The way the community talks often references other series,references the manga or their ideas where the series is headed based on earlier narratives. Spoiler by Proxy I call this. If I haven’t seen a trope before one can simply spoil me from having experience and analyzing. I do not mind as much but I really feel like an outsider when talks get like this.

Advise

Pick at least one anime per season to more or less keep up with but don’t go overboard with it unless you are a bit “experienced” . Of course you do not know what this experience will entail until you try. The more experienced you are in the medium the more advise this method. If you are less advanced like me.. this is a method I’d  use in moderation. If you have a lot of spare time this method becomes increasingly attractive though. This can be rather hit or miss so if you only have so much time to burn this can end up as one of your less desirable options.

Naruto, Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, Madoka, Elfen Lied, Code Geass!  We all know a lot of the big hit names. Me myself I am currently watching A Certain Magical Index as a name most people really seem to know so it should be good! This is the tried and true method for any anime fan that has no idea on what to pick. If you ever want to be an anime expert you’ll need to watch those anime everyone loves to mention! If the entire world likes something it must be good right?! Let’s take out the magnifying glass again.

Postives

You can’t go wrong with these picks is a phrase often used to refer to the classics. Re: Zero  is a very good show, Attack on Titan entertained and entertains so many so surely there is a “fact” based sense of goodness to it.. you know kinda like those toothpastes or shampoos from commercials 80% of the test panel said they would buy again. So unlike with seasonal gambles these anime are very likely to be entertaining.  As a result these are great choices for anime fans who want  to watch a good show but do not have a lot of time to  burn.  If you have an hour a week you want to spend on anime just, why not spend it on Death Note or Code Geass.

Wasting free time when you barely have any can be very sad.  For the ones with more times on their hands this one can be very satisfying as well! People are always willing to talk about classics so it’s still a rather engaging way to watch anime. When talking about Elfen Lied.. people tend to NOT compare as much. People don’t say Madoka is like Card Selector WiXoss nor do they say Elfen Lied was kinda similar to Brynhildr in the Darkness. No they just talk about Madoka and Lucy..so all discussions are rather accessible regardless your “skill level”. It’s always fun to talk about the classics!

Negatives

I have two main gripes with basing your viewing experience around the classics, actually three .. and I am probably going to get a lot of flack for one of these statements.  So lets save that one for last! The first main negative of watching the Classics is spoilers! The iconic anime shows that everyone loves and that are of a certain age can and will be spoiled if you don’t pay attention. Have you ever watched a Watchmojo top 10?  Of course you have! That spoiled a classic somewhere for you didn’t it?  I know exactly how Cowboy Bebop ends and I have never seen even a single episode. That doesn’t exactly make it less of an adventure but if you like to be surprised.. the classics are slippery slope to avoid spoilers on! Especially if you write about them in the meantime and look for images.

Speaking of no surprises a second gripe I kind of have with “the icons” is that they indeed will never give you that feeling of developing your own sense of taste.  The iconic anime, while still different are mostly in the same kind of story. Person gets powers and has to fight evil some way or another.. It doesn’t go for everything.. but most of the classics tend to be a bit “vanilla” High paced, action with some comedy. There isn’t anything wrong persé but it is just less adventurous. Like playing one of those always win Crane Games.. The prize is neat but you the experience seems less exciting. This of course is up for debate, but if you look at the really BIG names in Anime.. it’s all in the shounen ..or closely related pipeline. You don’t experience the full package.

The final negative I have with this is the one the one that will give me flack.  To me many of the classics like , Naruto, Geass, One Piece, Dragon Ball , Sailor Moon are in the 8/10 range. Because so many people think it is great, I lack that sensation of it ever being amazing. It’s like going to a 3 star restaurant.. you know the food is gonna be amazing.. but because you go in expecting that.. it has a hard time to fully live up to it.. Sure it’s still good but you expected more. The community can be a tad testy if you tell them it’s not as amazing as you expected too. While I do not question the quality of One Piece or Geass, neither resonate with me on a deeper level. Elfen Lied same story. I can see why it’s loved, I can have a great time watching it, yet at the same time I never know I will never be mind-blown so in a way these kind of feel like settling for something (really) good while you could be searching for amazing.

Advise

Watching the classics is a great way to watch anime if you have little time and can subvert your expectations. They are usually easily available and referenced so often that it’s hard to deal without them. However they do not offer a lot of insight into how deep the anime world can really go. There are some many beautiful things out there for you to discover and the really big names.. all  are a bit “safe”. Get a few notches on your belt and then talk to a massive Otaku for some recommendations like your favorites and experiment a bit more. If you are a veteran..some of these can really become a bit mundane so do not always expect the masterpiece people say.

Now don’t get me wrong .. I don’t mean this in the way that you need a shovel or anything.  No I am simply meaning doing all the work yourself. Pick your own genre , look for cover art that fascinates you, pick something you heard some rumors about or whose plot synopsis really appeals to you. With blood sweat, tears and mostly google you are sure to find an anime that is very much made FOR you. For the final time today (but I will follow this up with a second part) I will take out my looking glass.

Positives

No one knows you better than yourself. Only you know what Dere type you prefer in what type of series. You know best what genre you like an art-style you like. There are so many things to consider when selecting an anime and with google you can really get far into finding your own anime. You’d need some familiarity with terminology to really specify what you are into but by simply googling “good anime” you can already pull up a list of suggestions.

By simply glancing at some titles then doing some research on them you can already create a hit for yourself. When you delve deeper though and really find  a hidden gem, that’s when you can really feel accomplished. Recommending that hidden gem you discovered and see it spread across your community like wildfire can be very rewarding on it’s own. This will also help you develop your taste very well.

9 Tailed Kitsune the amazing blogger does some great  “Anime like (Anime Title) “ style posts which can really offer a framework for you to develop your own taste in anime. Others do offer you similar tools The more work you put into this .. the bigger the chance is that you will reel in hit after hit. Enjoyment guaranteed.

Negatives

That being said though the pool of anime to draw from is near endless. Defining your own tastes can last a long time as each major genre has plenty of subgenres. You can favor studios, art styles, voice actors, genres, subgenres and  character archetypes. Anime to me more than western media has more moving parts. If finding your favorite cartoon is a rubik’s cube than anime can be a rubik’s polygon. Mostly because of excess. Western cartoons are very heavily biased to contemporary , westernly cultured series. In anime we have more customisation options to our preference. As a result it can be rather daunting  to tweak our profiles.

I for example hate, political and military themes, elements that are oftenly tied in with the Mecha Genre.. but my favorite series of all time is a Mecha show (except for the few parts it gets kinda political). I hate people fighting for honour and glory, yet tournament story arcs are amongst my most consumed and beloved products.

There is just so much modifiers to account for. There are still genres I haven’t even addressed. So to be really good at this takes a lot of work and it will result in a lot of drop shows , and thus “wasted” time. It might also leave some very good shows of your radar because you simply did not know “that” was a genre or possibility. It also offers the least option of dialogue, your taste is yours and the more you distill that the more difficult finding people to talk about those specifically. There is always the risk of being misunderstood. While plenty of people are amazing enough to talk to you about just about everything and if you search you can find the proper people, there are also a lot of the “Your Anime Sucks” or “Your Waifu is Shit” types out there that can make your experience less fun! I am not saying you should mind them.. I am just stating they are out there.

Advice

Develop this skill as you go on.. use the other methods of this post.. and the next one as well to really discover what you like.. use this one as a mirror of your growth.. like a oenologist.. (that’s someone who knows wine)  at first you get some book smarts but then you develop your own profile.. while you will always require those book smarts. This one I’d say is the best reflection how how much of an “anime expert” you have become

An expert of anime in my opinion is not about what shoe size Asuna has or how many Muda’s are in the seven page Muda when it translated to anime. A true anime expert to me.. will always have a good time when they watch anime because they know exactly what will give them joy and when! This probably is the most labour intensive way to choose and community feedback isn’t always AS stimulating for these efforts as you might hope. This can be solved however.. but putting in yet more effort.

Next time I will look at some other ways to select what anime to watch! How do you usually decide what anime you watch? Like I said this is from my perspective aver having seen a couple dozen of series. Most of you have seen more than me so perhaps views shift over experience and of course personal preference! I am curious to find out though. How do you pick your next anime to watch?

The Story of the Pink Sith: Sy’ra Delinda

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
A young girl was born a daughter of a Sith an Alderaanian Noble and my Imagination.  While Roleplaying as this character, the writer of this post strengtheneth herself, rediscovered herself and would gain insights that would forever change her world. This is the story of that character.

Sy’ra was the first born daughter of the marriage between Maximilian Delinda and his wife, back then Lord Ragnya Zilas. Where Maxmilian intended his daughter to be the 9th succesor of the small Noble House Delinda on Alderaan, Ragyna had other plants. Murdering her husband while making it seem as an accident.. so she could use the spawn she just bred.. as a vessel for her to live on in.. forever beautiful. When she was  the age of 6 , Maxmilian passed away and the house Delinda was left to her mother  name until Sy’ra could take over.  The Lord of the Sith moved her daughter to the Planet of Tatooine.. where she would try to strengthen the body and break her mind. Each day Sy’ra would receive force training, tasks way to complicated for a young girl like her to complete, if she would fail.. and she would always be set up TO fail she would be taken out to the caves  nearby their residence in the dune sea, where she would be hit with a salt encrusted dulled blade To make sure she suffered a lot of pain.. but her body would harden.

Sy’ra got inspired by the colour pink!

Just before sunset Sy’ra would be forced to walk home on her own force, not getting supper if she would be late. As she dragged herself out of the cave each day.. drops of blood would fall into the almost perfect white sand. She would use these pink crystals to steel her resolve! The pain was over now for the next couple of hours, she got out of the cave stronger. Pink became a symbol of her determination.. her passion! These crystals reflected who she would become so one day she might escape and live the life she wanted. One day Sy’ra managed to escape, sneaking herself into some of her mother’s supplies she was smuggling to the planet of Taris. A planet she would spend almost three years on in the wilderness. She would become somewhat bewildered. Claiming she’s able to talk to animals, and even the local pest. The Rakghouls. A gambler found her on the planet while scavenging for gambling money and he took her to Nar Shaddaa  where he planned to ante this new slave for some extra pocket money.

He quite soon lost her to Guilded Girada hotel and casino, where Sy’ra spend her life happily as part of the staff, slowly getting back again. Enjoying the company of people who do not want to harm, posses or kill her very much. At the age of sixteen she even began singing in the casino, now making quite a name for herself.. it did not take long for her mother to find her. Seeing how Sy’ra had grown she was ready for the ritual! Ragnya slew all of her daughters  friends in front of her trying to break her spirit before she would take that over. Powerless to stop it, Ragnya started the Ritual that would end Sy’ra.. who in a last act of defiance shattered her own mind.. to break her mother.. As a result her mother was contained to a single shard in her mind.. but she  lost all sense of her former self.

Sy’ra and the Crystal Stars preforming on Nar Shadaa
The Type of songs Sy’ra would sing
And a weeby singing voice reference

Years passed and the woman who forgot her own name was now wandering across the galaxy. A voice in her head guided her to Dromund Kaas, homeworld of the Sith. A female voice.. which to her knowledge was her god! She kind of hated the voice too though although she did not know why.  On the Sith Homeworld she was picked up by a man named Lord Kangan, a Dark Side force healer who was intrigued by the strange way she talked. Sy’ra could not remember meaningless world.. only stuff that  had imagery either visual or vocal. He worked under Darth Kraujas and Darth Gaur, who she referred to as Cloudmass and Growl , the closest association her mind could make with the words. These pureblood sith tortured her relentlessly for simply mispronouncing their names and will the girl could still not store anything in her broken mind.. the lesson of that words sometimes mean nothing was deeply imprinted upon her. Her mind trapped in perpetual confusion trapped in between extreme cruelty and extreme kid-likeness as well her amazing aptitude with mind affecting techniques made her a source attention for many in the order.

Lord Kangan discovered the source of the problem and found out her mind had been shattered in five major pieces, Signifying a persona or time of her life prior to her mind shattering.. each shared represented by a item of her past. By finding these items Kangan slowly mended the mind of the young girl and as she became more and more aware of herself she become more and more Sy’ra again. A sith girl who saw the hollowness of words as a core value , who was gifted in mind techniques and who seemed to possess some wisdom beyond her years. As she grew stronger she began to remember more and more. .as if she had been staring at her own life as an outsider. She noticed how even the darkest Sith had rallied behind her to help her.. not from the good of her heart but because they wanted to stroke their own ego. She discovered that when she was so nice and childlike people talked to her because she was not a threat. This is how she discovered there was a Niche in the Sith world that was ready to exploit! When two friends of her saved her from torture she in her own eyes well deserved she smiled and at the confused lord’s gaze answered with.. “Friendship is Magic”

Sy’ra would then pursue a path of being an actual friend to people in the Sith world.. someone they could genuinely trust. She would be the confidant of many, willing to help everyone out even at her own risk. She took in the brain damaged apprentice Veytria as someone she became a guardian off. She showed the almost personality less apprentice of her orders leader what fun mean, by singing a song about it and she began wearing pink again. Much to the dismay of her leadership who told Sy’ra over and over again that Pink is not a Sith colour she needs to wear either Black, Red.. or other dark shades. Sy’ra rebelled against this concept stating that it was a symbol of passion. She was forced to face the head master’s  apprentice in a duel.. if she would lose she would die.. if she would win she would be allowed to wear Pink. The apprentice refused to fight Sy’ra , since they did not wish to kill a friend after which the odd clothed companion  was forced to fight an even more powerful foe.

While she suffered defeat at the hand of Darth Kraujas his  cyborg, she never backed down. As the Darth was about to step up and order her death, two other Darths in order stepped up and said she had proven herself enough, followed by four lords, followed by nearly all the apprentices in the order. Sy’ra gave them a resource they needed, they could not live without any longer. Sy’ra realised that despite codes and faith.. and believes every species in the galaxy has this need for at least some sort of social contact. Since the Sith are so easy to mistrust.. by simply being true in her beliefs that she would never do that she became that golden goose. Sy’ra  experimented how far she could push this. She married Veytria , taking her away from another in the order .. who still wanted to be her friend. She managed to become the godmother of one of the Darth’s children, Alexia Murr and managed to break protocol allowing them to address each other on a first name basis.  She even managed to get partial ownership of a Nar Shaddaa club simply for renting herself out to a Darth outside her order as a friend.

Sy’ra’s life was turned upside down when her wife’s brain condition got worse and she suffered complete apathy. This was the worst that what could happen to anyone in her opinion as she hated people without their own beliefs. Her order crumbled and her best friend and link to the Empire died.. or at least that’s what she thought. She consulted one of the remaining darths of the order. Asking her to make her forget Veytria and her friend.. as Sy’ra unlike other Sith did not use pain and anger as her main emotions to use the force, she used happy memories and the desire to make more of them as her inspiration. Darth Gaur Betrayed this unique sith  and made her belief she was her apprentice.. seeking a new life, the pair arrived at the Azure Academy.

Sy’ra who made it to a lord in the other order quickly grew in the order. Her unique mental techniques like the dark side variant of Malacia and her whole way of thinking outside the box.. not seeing interrogation the same as others would.. but instead showing kindness to the fragile minds to make them slip and then punish them to make them spill even more in confusing surprised everyone. Sy’ra more so than other siths new how mind works. She did not cater to fears and respect. She however  catered to desires, in a non sexual sense. While there were a few suitors, Sy’ra found the male minds to one sided and predictable to ever be interested in.. always favoring them more “unstable” persons, who did have hopes and dreams for themselves. She became one of the most desirable apprentices of her academy, which allowed Darth Jessina to uncover what Gaur had done to her. She claimed Sy’ra as her own apprentice and noticed a reluctance of the girl to cast force lighting , force choke or any other techniques that actual dealt damage.

The girl  even refused to carry a lightsaber most of the times stating she would rather focus on using the force with both hands. Forsaken the ancient practice of Niman, she dabbled more into Sith Sorcery. Darth Vess a Zabraki female that was a powerful force walker despised her pacifist ways and tried to make her flunk her lessons. She told Sy’ra a sith should never care about others that are weaker than them. The pink sith promised that she would prove the Darth wrong before long. A few months later.. Sy’ra managed to mary this Darth.. at her wedding bringing up this statement as a reminder. Now having access to A Darths power base, Sy’ra was promoted to Lord.. the same title she had in the old order as well.  This was very opposed by the Purebloods, the red skinned sith, who also joined  the school Sy’ra now was a student  of.. cursing her for her non traditional ways. However by then Sy’ra had used friendship to win the Loyalty of Darth Jessina, Darth Syrien and Darth Vess. She also had adopted two powerful sith in her family as sisters. Lord Lormia and Darth Ashe.  All loved her like family.. and would fight to protect her.

Sy’ra’s beliefs of togetherness began to grow more and more followers. Enemies she had, she either gave such horrible experiences.. that they would never challenge her again.. for example by making them vomit and impaling them with the vomit using cryokinesis or she befriended them. The best example of the last was the apprentice of her current wife.  Lelianne, a cyborg sith, who was the heir of the Black Blade Mandalorian clan. First seen as a rival Sy’ra never validated this rivalry.. she had already won the girl. This girl could fight that.. but she would lose her love then anyway..because Vess would kill Lelianne out of spite for hurting Sy’ra.  The pink sith instead offered her friendship to Lelianne, basically as a “who knows I may die someday and you can have another shot, but you can’t win by fighting me “ argument. Lelianne took the offer and the two became such close friends, with the cyborg being inspired by ways of the oddest Sith that she swore her loyalty to Sy’ra and that of her clan. Sy’ra helped the clan out and as a sign they now worked for her.

Meanwhile her enemies began to get desperate , this could not be happening, Sy’ra knew very few powerful techniques in the force, but she had so many friends she could seize control of the school without even having to show up. She  never had such intentions so no one could really be convinced that the pink friendly girl  would be bad for them. They were better for Sy’ra than the other way around, which was completely by Sy’ra’s design.. she had only so much time to befriend people….but Sy’ra still offered them something that was missing in the Empire.. someone they could trust. One of the few Sith that also would hang out with non force sensitives, it did not take long for Sy’ra eventually convinced the head of the school guard staff, who was head of his own Mandalorian clan to swear loyalty to her too. Promising he could mary her daughter.. of whom she adopted two, this made sure that the second suitor of her daughter Glissa, A Cathar lord.. would try to suck up with her as well. Like dominoes Sy’ra played everyone.. while still being legit in her friendship.. she made sure these friendships benefited her.

A final showdown threatened  between the classic Sith and Sy’ra’s side. A duel on the other side led by Ahandra Horuset. The showdown.. a debate , was she a true sith?!
Ahandra said that the pink girl  knew less powerful techniques then anyone.. but Sy’ra proved her wrong.. she was friends with so many darths and because she said she feared for her life they all taught her one of their more powerful techniques. When Ahandra said the pink  lacked the strength to be a true icon of the Sith, Sy’ra said .. by simply asking all those willing to help her she could carry a spaceship on her hands. When the pureblood  stated her rival  lacked the passion to be a sith Sy’ra told this tale to her.. proving  has never stopped doing what she beliefs in. Ahandra saw strength as simple muscle density, power as how much electricity your lightning can generate. 

Sy’ra dropped those definitions and looked more at what those feats should be able to accomplish. Pink..not belonging on a sith is simply a one way perception not based on anything as clearly she had nearly defeated every member in her order.. not trough combat.. but by making sure no one could ever strike at their beloved friend. She did not have to scheme to rise to the top.. everyone who meant anything in the order.. at least that was relevant to her told their own weaknesses.. in the hope that Sy’ra could offer advice. They showed their strengths.. wanting to prove to Sy’ra that they could keep her safe when she was scared or upset.. even if that fear might have been amplified. She did not need to plunder and kill to get her wealth because people just willingly gave stuff to their friend in need, which she then bartered until she had wealth. No one noticed what she had been doing because she did not SHOW her power. She did not dress up like a scary monster that needed to intimate because people underestimating her was much more powerful. Simply by being not normal.. and steering away from the path Sy’ra avoided all the obstacles on that path and had a journey no one saw. away from being standard and it payed off.

After that Sy’ra would be promoted yet again, being made a teacher allowed to study Sith Alchemy.  Which she used to make her wife pregnant with a natural born daughter. Darth Vess died in childbirth leaving everything to the Delinda heir. Her Powerbase had now become so great she could claim the title of Darth without contest.  Sy’ra had ample  people that would fight for her.. and much to her own desire they would not die for her.. as she reckoned those who want to live will fight harder than those willing to die! Sy’ra gathered an army of people who had their own desires still meaning they all constantly would improve but tied by bonds ever lasting she did not have to make to much efforts to stay safe.


When a follower did not have those aspirations she awoken them inside them. Like when Lelianne only saw herself as a tool. She was encouraged to find her own way.. which enabled perpetual growth in the loving army of the Pink Sith. Sy’ra took her leave from the academy having learned how to splice animals together she would combined the horses of Endor with the mighty horned Reek and the fluffy sharped fanged Nexu cat.  Once they were done they would give all her friends one of these single horned warhorses.  The school had provided her with all the study materials and students to help her work out the kinks of this secret project, so now she was done here! Risking war with the purebloods would be detrimental now.

As she took into space , Sy’ra had fun experimenting about, while friends kept sharing information with her, keeping her informed keeping her strong without lifting a finger. She became a Darth and the only force power she actively used while pursuing that goal was to give herself a true born daughter. The rest of her force powers.. just for show and misdirection. Who needs force powers when you got amazing friend’s like Syra’s .

This had been established through roleplay so every character that is not Sy’ra or Ragnya is not someone I have written. It is another player that we won for ourselves.  The moral of this story is that everyone needs a friend no matter how “evil” they might be.  Good stuff can happen if you do good. While my OC definitely wasn’t good and could be very cruel she succeeded by being different and showing a kind spirit.
You can be different too and be accepted if you find the right people! Friendships are a power that ended up being proven to be more powerful than the most powerful lords and Darths.. so I do think Sy’ra was right! Friendship IS magic

Pokémon Top 5: Favorite Electric Types

The electric type in Pokémon is a bit of a weird one. Super effective against only the water and flying type, and weak only to ground. As a result it is one of my least used typings. Since I mostly start with a grass starter I tend to start with a grass and rock/ground core rendering this typing a rather ineffective addition to my team. Yet there are so many great electric pokémon. So today let’s look at the ones that are SO special they won a spot on my team anyway in this week’s top 5.

The same rules like always would apply to Pokémon… but.. I have a problem here. Hardly any of the rules are applicable here! Normally I’d say only one entry per evolutionary line where if the evolution and its necessity is factored in should I dislike where forms go. Yet every single electric type has amazing evolutions. There isn’t a single one I’d disapprove off. The only one that kinda meets this brief is Yamper. I adore Yamper and do not feel very strongly about Boltund. It’s a good dog but I liked the clunkiness of the first form a lot more.. like the whole “loaf” feeling it has going. Boltund is only a type of dog I prefer slightly less.. but hey since I need honorable mentions it counts.

Pokémon that featured on other lists do not count either,since I love Galvantula so much and it was on my bug list, it will not feature on this one. Otherwise it would most likely be in the number two spot yet again. The honorable mention goes to it’s pre-evolution Joltik whom I love dearly as well.. technically it could make the list because it’s not Galvantula..but since I have the one entry per evo line rule as well it still felt wrong. Still it is so adorable so it deserves more shoutouts than I can give it!

In every other list I managed to mention a pokémon that did not feel like it’s typing to me.. the electric type doesn’t have that to me! All of them feel tied to their given element. The Psychic type gave me trouble with this as well but with these ones.. I am convinced I could even show the biggest pokémon non believers a picture of a pokémon and ask what type it is and you’d all guess correctly.  Luckily I also made a rule that disallows  temporary forms because of how situational it is .. which gives me my final honorable mention Pop Star Pikachu.  Just because it is because.. It’s Pikachu in pink.. This one would be disallowed either way because….

The Pikachu line in Pokémon has always been a bit lackluster except for the whole mascotte thing of course. Kantonian Raichu wasn’t all that good. While normally I say that an entry in the anime is beneficial this applies to me for everything but the Pikachu line.. and to a lesser extend Greninja and even Charizard. All the Pokemon Ash made hype.. kind of let you down in the games. The final evolutions less than Pikachu ..but if you saw Ash first.. they still feel lacking in oomph compared to how they are build up. Raichu was always one of those for me.. We see Pikachu do such epics things and ours.. fizzle.. as if we are playing with a bootleg. However this all changed when Alolan Raichu came along.

While it stats do not change , it addresses the generic looks of the original Raichu and they give it an additional typing in the form of the Psychic type. Electric Psychic is a great offensive typing!  It is super effective against flying, water, poison and fighting which actually makes it great to use next to Rowlet or Popplio, who both have a weakness to poison and Litten which has a weakness to water.  Regardless of the starter you choose this is a great accompaniment to them all. In Kanto, Normal Raichu doesn’t help you much when you pick Squirtle and if you start with Bulbasaur going with Geodude would be a better way to cover your flying weakness.  But let’s back up a bit and talk a bit more about the looks. Original Raichu was originally meant to be a midway station between Pikachu and Gorochu and in a way you feel that. Alolan Raichu has much more finality to it’s design. The surfing on it’s tail with electromagnetism, the tanned look, keeping Pikachu’s cuteness. I really adore it’s looks.

Statwise this Pokémon still feels like a relatively weak end station. It’s main offensive stat is only 95 which is okay enough but something you can easily find a better answer for. For reference the area between 70 base stat and 100 is deemed okay and above 100 a stat is great. So 95 is good enough. However here is where it’s new typing comes into play. Since Generation VII Raichu can learn Calm Mind.. the best set up move for special attackers. It raises special defence and special attack. Prior to this Raichu had no proper setup for offence, only evasion so even if it made it hard for an opponent to hit it could never really hit back hard either. It’s move pool has also vastly expanded. Same Type attack bonus boosted psychic hits harder and more reliable than most electric moves and using the ability surge surfer it’s speeds can reach insane levels so even in its core moveset it already deals a lot more with it’s own weaknesses.  It can set up defensive screen which half damage, it can set up terrain and it can set itself up to hit hard.  While it’s still frail it reviced a lot of weaknesses with the originals and when you look so adorable when dealing a fair amount of damage as well as be Hau’s best buddy! You are doing something right!

I was trying to decide whether to put the final evolution of the magnemite line in the Steel Type top five or the electric top five. In retrospect I should have put it in the other one as I like a lot less of those.. but since in Gen I the line was still pure electric I always see it as that first. Magnezone is on this list because it lets me combine two of my least used typings in a pretty amazing pokémon that is very weak to ground type moves though. Magnezone came to me via a trade in Gen V, it was a very random trade but there it was. A magnet Ufo that to me.. had some cop vibes/patroller in it as well. I did not know that Magneton could evolve. It was named Kilowatt. The original trainer was LeLouche all of people.. I never figured he would be into pokémon! Kind of makes sense though with all the tactical battling.

While I never really was appealed by balls and magnets sticking together they already looked very gleefull in Pokémon Snap when you fed them apples.. I always remembered those happy eyes. I imagined this Ufo like thing do the same thing and I was immediately sold. A magnetic Ufo who doesn’t want that?!  These pokémon are so Magnetic they attract each other and then become unable to move! That sounds clunky! I like that as well! Implications that this pokémon has alien contacts were made in Sun and Moon.. when all pokédex entries were particularly ominous and it added to it’s mystery. While made by man scientist kept trying to evolve it again.. could it be that in the future this will be the first pokémon we see get a stage 3?  <Pinkie Explains: A first form is called a basic.. the second form a stage 1 evolution.. if that evolves it’s stage 2>  Will it call something from out of space like a new legendary tied to it?! Kind of like Carbink and Diancie? Mysteries keep surrounding this pokémon, along with the unique and fun design I think Kilowatt is a keeper.. Had I not sold that game for convention money back in the day.

In combat having using steel and electric moves are basically it’s entire bread and butter. It also gets hyper beam which then can do big damage with the Analytic ability. Since Magnezone is a fairly slow Ufo with a base speed of 60 so the ability is quite usable as well.It will outspeed ground types.. but unless you equip it with a Balloon you’ll want to swap out when those come out and threaten your space ship anyway. It’s special attack being at 130 as a base value is amazing and really makes this a floating attilery thing. It’s best when paired with big damage moves such as Zap Cannon, Flash Cannon and Hyper Beam, I either run it with Magnet Rise ..which makes it immune to ground type moves with a Life Orb as held item or I put it on a Balloon and give it Signal Beam  as well for some extra type coverage and possible confusion. The first set is usually better though. It also makes sense that it floats on it’s own abilities..being a Ufo at all.. why would a Ufo be on a balloon? That is just silly.

What’s up with my favorites  and quad ground weaknesses. This is yet another that could look at a patch of soil and die in agony! Yet poison electric is such a cool typing. I really like the poison typing as well. Much like my Pokémon flying list though.. this would have been an ideal candidate for the sound type! Which funnily.. I would make weak to ground types.  This pokémon is all about playing air guitar.. or Keyboard as some version of this pokémon would.  Toxtricity has two forms, the Low Key form and the Amped form. This is on Toxel’s (its basic stage)  nature. If it has an energetic nature like Rash or Bashful  it will become Amped and if it has a more tranquil spirited nature.. for example Modest or Mild. That is SUCH a great idea. Letting a pokémon evolution look differently based on their character. Amazing!  I really love the colours of the Amped form myself.. but the Low Key version is pretty neat itself. Competitive it’s mostly Low Key though since the Modest Nature fits it the best. That’s a bit a let down in that system for me. 

Lorewise there isn’t that much known about the pokémon yet except that is quite arrogant and it plays air guitar or Electric organ to generate up to 15.000 volts on electricity. It’s poisonous nature is never really mentioned anywhere..but I think it comes from being a punker.  Or from being purple! In the world of pokémon the colour of your skin quite oftenly depicts your typing. I wonder if Lucario gets bullied for being blue but not being a water type?! The design however looks so friggin amazing, this is one of the coolest designed electric types out there. Tying it’s theme to the electric guitar was a briljant stroke that we untill now have only seen in a trainer type. I can just imagine  it singing the Sex Pistols version of I did it my way while frying it’s opponents with its electric waves or tossing some goop their way! This is a rebel and for once I like that.

In combat you mostly would like to rock out with a Low Key… Mild Toxtricity. It’s defences aren’t good at all and you really want to capitalize on it’s special attack of 117 without compromising it’s speed and preferably not it’s attack either since that being close to a 100 at 98 can allow you to run it as a mixed attacker.  It should be decked out with the ability Punk Rock which boosts sound type moves by 30% offensively while reducing damage taken by 50% defensively. This one definitely needs it’s own signature move Overdrive to be good, but if you equip it with Boomburst it might even be scarier. The last one has a base power of 140 so boosted by 30% that is one of the most powerful moves in the game. Though still not coming close to a fully boosted Fisheous Rend.  As a third move and fourth move I’d run it with Toxic and Venoshock, but that is mostly when I have other toxic users or stallers as well.  There are other options as well like some physical attacks like Gunk Shot.. or Throat Chop to give it something to defend against the psychic type. As an item you definitely want to give it some Throat Spray. As a side node why are some many electric type pokémon names so hard to spell?!

Ah the moment I begin writing this entry I realised how big of a whole I have dug myself. I normally blab on movesets and designs and Rotom.. has six forms, six typings and six designs. This is going to be a tricky one. Technically this one even has nine forms, if we count the pokédex, phone and drone form as well. It’s also the weakest pokémon on the list of today..but I can’t help but to love Rotom. It’s such an amazing concept. Basically he is the poltergeist that make your electric devices go bump in the night. It’s very mischievous as well. It loves to ruin your day. If it possesses the microwave it gleefully burns your favorite clothes, if it possess your fan it giggles why blowing away important documents and if it’s a freezer it will freeze your bath  water or give you a very cold shower. When it possesses a lawnmower it will destroy all your flowers and when it possesses the washing machine.. well you probably have a good idea what happens then! Let’s hope you don’t have any wooden floor.

The concept of a ghost pokémon animating things is great of course and since it is a ghost electric type animating devices makes so much sense! The fact that it loses its ghost typing and replaces that with the element it possesses even more so. If you have the ability to swap devices this pokémon can be incredibly versatile, although a bit of a hassle to set up. Will you run it as a lawn mower for the water type gym or will you run it as a  fridge to defeat that guy who has some strong ground types? The sky is the limit.  Having access to water-fire-grass-flying-ice OR ghost typing as a secondary STAB is an unparalleled feat for a pokémon. I know temporary forms do not make the list but these are semi permanent and I count this pokémon in its entirety so it’s all good! If your game does not have an area to swap rotom tools you’ll just have to work with the one traded to you. I like the idea of customisable pokémon and it doesn’t get much more customisable than this.

In the competitive scene Rotom Wash is the most popular form to use. Water Electric is a great typing and since Rotom has the ability levitate it doesn’t have all that many weaknesses. Rotom is mostly used as a trickster. Use Will O Wisp to burn your opponent and lower their attack stat. It’s a bit in that “float like a butterfly sting like a bee” segment of things. I like Rotom Wash the most myself as well.. the square design with that pipe as some form of weird tale is adorable. It can be a bit more offensive due to learning scald. You can get those burns while attacking, yet each Rotom is fun to use in it’s own way. I had a blast when trying Rotom Freeze uit for the first time. Rotom Mow i’d say is the most tricky form to use but if played well it can be hard for your opponent to deal with as well. Rotom Fan i’ve seen a lot in Showdown battles and now that Dynamax Air moves boost speed it has quickly become much better than it was before!  Maybe a full Rotom Playthrough would be fun.. it would be pretty balanced at least.

The first electric type I ever actively  used and my strongest pokémon in my favorite pokémon game. At least in main line Pokémon games! In Pokémon Stadium I used Pin Missile Jolteon to take down my sisters all Mewtwo team. I am not sure why that worked so well back then because I never was able to reproduce it. Ampharos though I can make good time and time again. I am using it again on my Pokémon Reborn playthrough..but that games runs so much more horrible now than it did before.. so much lag.. so now I only play it when someone is live streaming and I need some side content.  Still Ampharos is there for me. My first one did not have a name, I needed to remember the new pokemon names still. The second one was called Apple, I think, I used it during a Soul Silver playthrough I named things after fruit. I used one in my main team in Gale of Darkness XD  named Shaun and my custom shiny Ampharos in Reborn is called Choked Sheep (because it turned blue, and my nicknames are descriptions)

I also played the crap out of the pokémon in Pokémon Stadium 2. If I can get  the monster early on I will use it. Now it took me way longer than I am willing to admit to discover that this one has a pink shiny… oh no.. I admitted it!  So now that I know that it makes this pokémon even better though I only have a few pink ampharos (pokemon plural is the same as singular) on Pokémon Go due to community days. I never had a pink Amphi in a fun game though.  I am always drawn to it no matter what media it appears on almost as if it’s a beacon drawing me in.. what do you know! Pokémon Lore bride.. Ampharos only lore is that it can store electricity in it’s tale to shine very bright. So it functions as a lighthouse. This light is so bright that it can even be seen from space. It seems to hurt it’s own eyes though so it doesn’t really like using it.. the way it moves.. is also kinda clunky and it isn’t exactly elegantly shaped. I begin to see why I like this.

In Galar my troupe of sheep isn’t that special when it comes to stats.  It has a special attack stat of 110 which is great but it is on par with most the electric types here that take less work to evolve.Yet in this last generation my baby got robbed of its mega evolution. In its mega form my sweet hairless sheep had an amazing 165 base special attack and gain the dragon typing as well as a bunch of wool back as fancy luscious locks. It’s so good as a Mega, even though the hair kinda looks silly, that’s what made it so sexy to me! Not as in Bomchikawawa sexy but non sexual sexy! That is a thing! Mega Amphi is kinda like my Totoro! So I was robbed! I can’t even put it to words but this pokémon is so charming to me! If I only could make one pokémon real this would be a consideration. It would probably be Sylveon in the end.. but the whole flesh ribbon things is kind of off putting. I am not going to make a battle set because all my Amphi’s were different and I love them all and I feel one of them might cry if I favor the other and I just can’t bear to imagine that!  Given the fact that I consider the feelings of digital picture I resetted over twice, and that they are still with me in spirit tells something on how much I love this pokémon! A deserved number 1.

What is your favorite electric type?! Did you ever use one of these in your team?! Do you use the electric type a lot? Leave your thoughts in the comments and let’s start talking Pokémon! Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog if you want to make sure that you catch nexts weeks Earth Shattering top 5! That’s right! Bring your balloons cause there will be earthquakes! Now I have to go to the store because my Joltik drained all my batteries!


The Totally Awesome Tomodachi Award

My dear island guests it’s been a while since I created my first tag, The Super Happy Love Award! That tag was all about positivity a value I really hold in high esteem! Yet there is another value I pursue here on WordPress.. one that we often share but one that isn’t as much shown through posts. Normally we talk about ourselves.. so this tag will focus around talking about our Community. With a very special game!

A friendship game by yours truely!

-Put the Totally Awesome Tomodachi  Award logo somewhere in your post!
-Thank the person who nominated you or thank the person who won you a nomination!
-Nominate up to four bloggers but DO NOT mention them by name.
-Write about your four nominees, using subjective terms only.. as if you were a friend describing them to another friend (examples follow) DO NOT use factual hard descriptors. End the paragraph with They are my Tomodachi and put a link to one of their articles on that sentence.
-Make assumptions about them, talk about your interaction or memories with them. Just create a fun little text that keeps your readers guessing who this is.Also talk about what they mean to you
-Your followers can play a game if they can recognize the Blogger you are talking about, if they make a guess correctly..they can join the tag as well if they so choose. (Thank the person whose description you guessed) -Readers are encouraged to comment their scores in the comments

And that is all for the rules now let me give you a couple of examples to explain this a bit better.

Since Scott from Mechanical Anime Reviews doesn’t do tagposts I will use him as a neutral example. Most of you know him, otherwise links are still provided!

Wrong Example

This blogger goes by the name of Scott he is a 28 year old man who lives in Wisconsin on top of a decrepit casino. He is the Owner of a Blog that mostly talks about mecha shows but also does a lot of Anitwit watches stuff. He is a member of Owls and his Avatar is either a gundam or a black haired boy. Recently he did a collab with Ashley Capes on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Wrong way to do this tag!  It would take the fun out of this game! That is also not how you would talk about a friend! Or a beloved member of your community.

Right Example

I suspect this blogger really likes the colour yellow, but white, and blue would be two other really good options for this blogger to favorite. I think their favorite letter is a V.. particularly if it’s displayed on a head. I bet they would name their daughter Venus, Jupiter or Mercury as they really seem to think that Ancient Rome was the place to be during some blog tour.. wait it wasn’t ancient Rome.. where else could they have gotten the name from?! I find this blogger among the more serious  bloggers, I bet if you stare in their eyes for a while you would think they are very wise. Whispers in the community go that this person has so much charisma that they make everyone love them deeply and if I would assign this person a role in the community they would be part of it’s beating heart indeed. Clever and very active I suspect this blogger will outlast the most of us on this amazing platform.

They are My Tomodachi!

Make your readers curious about your amazing friend! Give them a chance to recognise some awewsome members in the community! I hope you understand the point of my game now and hope you and your readers will have fun with it and I shall kick off now with my four nominations! NB your CAN nominate less and if you are not nominated you can BE by making a correct guess.

I promised this blogger to create a new tag for them when things seemed a bit dark. Though I am late on fulfilling this promise by a few days due to scheduling, here I am. I highly suspect we share a love for a particular pastel colour. Though the shade they prefer is much less bubblegum like than mine. I bet their mind is wonderfully twisted as we share a love for one of the lesser favored game genres. Though I have never written about a game in the genre this blogger is very active within it. I suspect they are a dog person over a cat person and they are at least somewhat versed into Star Wars so I really can get behind them. I’d say they are the homiest blogger that I follow adhering to more classical values than most of us here. I’d almost consider the word “normal” for them would it not been for that I now know what they do when gaming after dark. 

I do not think this blogger frequents my blog all that much and in honest i must say I haven’t been to theirs in about a month now.. at the time of writing.. at the time of posting I suspect I’ve been back once or twice. If I’d give them a dream job i’d call out interior decorating.. though that is not their real job! Their real job is one of those things i never really get!  I mean I know what it is but it’s way to complicated for me. I might be wrong but I suspect they have a stepping stool! Not for a job but in real life.. they seem tiny to me.. but it might be perspective. The stepping stool has many uses like reaching higher places, but it could also just look cute.. or they could use it for a workout. I’d say they are very open about what is going on in their life and as result I feel like I know them pretty well. I hope they are doing well and that they will participate in this tag.. with how often they get tagged we might only see this next year!

This blogger taught me a lot about self-love, not in the dirty way either. They are always so kind and responsive to my answers though. One of the first people that let me feel welcome in the community. I feel like they are a person who smiles a lot to the outside world.. but deep inside there are some rough seas. They do want to be there for other people though! Their kind words have made me pull trough many blogging rough patches! One of my biggest examples.

They are my Tomodachi!

This one I had to rewrite, since my first write up was for someone who currently is not active in the blogosphere. Once you are back I will do this post with the people I had to skip! So many of you matter to me. So if you notice this one is a bit different.. that’s why!That doesn’t make this person any less of a pick! Just because they exist I already planned a second post, with them as the frontliner! So I just had to swap them around! 

This blogger has been around for a long time though I am not necessarily talking about them as a presence on WordPress here. If I ever went on an Indian vision quest, I think I’d see them as the wise man. Or woman.. .or Non Binary.. but we know the stereotype. I’d imagine I’d have to trek to the desert and the mountains to meet them..but recently I have begun to imagine them floating around in space as well. Luckily I am dutch.. so with some Space-Cake I’ll easily be able to get there! This blogger is one of the most sincere people out there. They will tell you what they feel and do not  try to make the world any prettier than it is. You can tell that they have lived when they present the naked facts of a situation to you. I really like that sense of honesty. I am not saying none of you are honest here! I am just saying this bloggers work have a rawness to them! A natural beauty that I have come to very much appreciate.

This is a blogger with many inner demons, one big one in particular that many people here face in varying degrees of power. Because of this demon this blogger can have the tendency to underestimate themselves. Plenty of you underestimate this blogger as well because their post don’t get enough likes for how insightful they are. So visit their posts and let yourselves be known! Share some love!  Let this blogger inspire you to be yourself without reservation because that is what they set out to do! Either  on WordPress, the stage and out there in real life! Everywhere we see this blogger in their purest form. Very natural! That is beautiful and something I strive for as well. Though where I try to be the purest form of myself by turning myself into an anime character and break through realities limitations to be who I want to be this blogger basicly strips down to the core of their soul . Out in the open for anyone to see. A bit of a .. two sides of a coin story, that gives me an odd sense of synergy! If you don’t believe me, you can go take a hike!

This blogger has helped my troubled mind with that attitude so much! Problems aren’t waved away but validated! Instead  of hugs and kisses we get concrete advise. “Try to look past that”,  “move away from the place you live in even if it’s hard”  “Don’t be afraid for what people say, be afraid of not being able to be yourself’ This is really the type of friend I love to have. Thanks to the wordful magic of WordPress , their blog and their comments on mine now I do! One with a big brain and an even bigger heart!

They are my Tomodachi

This one I confidently call a friend, so that alone definitely earns them a spot on this list. I always wanted to be friends with a magical girl and I guess this is the closest I am ever going to get. While I am a dog person and they definitely would be a cat person I feel like we still have a nice form of chemistry. Me being a bit more kiddy and naive as real me being extra excited about stuff and them walking behind me with a big grin! Handing me a proverbial butterscotch candy! A real one if they could!  Being one of the lesser active bloggers among those I associate with,though rather active recently, they are something I find myself quite endeared too. Least active might not be the correct term but they do write a bit less than me to say the least. Most certainly a cat person, though they like horses too.They are very active in the comments of everyone and their insight and wisdom sometimes makes me think they know what actual dinosaurs looked like… you know… because…

Of course that implication is only a joke as I already consider myself a fossil Pokemon. Of all the persons I follow I bet their house is the most likely to hold some crayons or maybe acrylic paints. Though I’d also imagine them hardly using it. I also kinda assume this person has loads of candles in their home. Multi coloured ones as well. They also seem like a bath person.. with scented oils and stuff. I bet they enjoy a good full moon too! Out of all you WordPresses following me I feel like this person is the most likely to play Board-Games with me, though I also feel they would easily lose to me because they would play to nice. One of the kindest and soft spoken WordPress peeps out there I suspect their voice would almost be enchanting. I am blessed to call them my friend.

This one really made me feel a sense of togetherness when I was at a low of it. So many of you have seen so much more anime than I, are so much more versed in gaming and I felt there were “camps”  as it were.. welcoming to those from other camps as it may be.. each group had a core group and I was painfully aware I just glomped on. This blogger made me feel special. Now I know that is a vanity thing and we all have our favorites but it just felt so great that with this one I feel like I reached their inner core! Like if they’d go camping with 10 other WordPresser’s I feel like they are the one that would mention me!

They are my Tomodachi

So for my last nomination I considered three people. One of them still has a few tags of me to do so they are out, for this round, the other might be a bit to obvious and the third option might be a bit too uncertain to bite down in this post for now. So i guess… the obvious one it is…with a twist! The shy one will be nominated too! I will talk about the two options in conjunction and tag them both!  Extra guesses for you all to play the game! More friends for me!

The obvious one.. I think is very easy.. I guess half of you all already have the named guessed correctly. Yet let me try to muddle the pond just a bit. I suspect that The Obvious choice doesn’t speak as much English as you all would suspect. I suspect their native languages or most spoken languages can really point out a flaw in one of the most famous Dexter’s Lab Episodes.. that dealt with said language. I might be wrong though! I do not know a lot aboot their country. Shy choice however now that is an born English speaker. I do not know why but I think Shy choice prefers dubs. Obvious Choice prefers subs I would think.  While Obvious to us is a very in your face personality and Shy is …well uhm… shy?! (Great writing skills Pinkie)  I think if we met them at a convention their persona’s would be flipped. I am pretty sure Shy Cosplays and Obvious would rather hide in the ceiling or toilets until it’s all over.

So I broke my own nomination rule in the very first post.. what a good example I am. They whose nomination makes the most sense would absolutely do the same. Rules are meant to forgotten or rambled over. Shy would probably break the rule as well .. but be very apologetic about it.  Decoration wise I think Shy has a much cuter bed filled with plushies.  Obvious seems more like a neat pillow person. Maybe with some inspirational texts like “You can do it” or “I sold ice to Eskimos and all I got was this adorable pillow” Shy choice I feel walks in heels more then her fellow nominee, obvious I feel wears more practical and a bit more butch shoes. What’s that.. a boot?  Might be a question they get asked frequently.. somehow maybe even without wearing boots?! What’s that about?! Obvious has seen more anime , but Shy has seen more cartoons. One of them I have seen a picture off! Both of them are super positive and happy people that I would love to be friends with in real life. I’d nickname them Kuro and Shirou.. though in one case that name has gone somewhat outdated. 

The most humble of the two gave me my first comment ever. They are the spark of hope I needed that I could indeed find a community here! They are the example of possibility. I had a few blogs before that never got any followers and if they did they were silent.. I abandoned these projects after about two to four weeks each.  Now I am almost a year in and still going strong!  All because of this brave littler blogger who let me know they loved Umbreon!

The more outgoing, well known and obvious choice has taught me not to throw my voice. I wanted to write to appeal to many people.. play the numbers game. Yet their quirky style and how they are well thought of in the community made me  realise I do not need to do that. Because of this person I have actual fun in blogging!  I can be weird and I love being weird with them!

Obviously, They are my Tomodachi!

Even though they are shy,They are my Tomodachi!

Now I hope you had fun in guessing who these bloggers are and hopefuly you guessed some correct so we can be a big happy family! Remember if you guessed one correctly.. you are a Totally Awesome Tomodachi of one of us .. so you can play as well! Holy Mailman if you guessed one correctly that means you’ll have to set up a blog 😉 Also Scott I know you don’t do tag posts but should you feel inclined.. everyone loves you so you are a Totally Awesome Tomodachi as well so consider yourself nominated as well. My muse, this tag is waiting for you in the future as well, if you do your homework 😉

To all the others! A second round is coming somewhere in the next month or so! My selections are already made! Yet it’s not written yet! Feel free to convince me you are a Totally Awesome Tomodachi as well .. and I do not mean that in a lewd or e-begging way!

The Legend of Zzzzelda: Sword of Ditto Review

Most of you know that Link in most of Zelda games is a reincarnation or an ancestor of the games we played with before. However the timeline of this universe is murky at best.  So how about we would get a Zelda game with a clear timeline?! Nintendo was not up for it so instead Onebitbeyond made a Zelda clone that lets you play as a whole slew of heroes reincarnated throughout time. One game the entire timeline.. that sounds epic right?!…..Right?!

<Disclaimer: I reviewed the STEAM version as trough the eyes of a single player experience, it is possible to play with more which may alter the experience, also other versions can have different forms of content.. this is strictly based on MY play-trough and what I experienced>


Sword of Ditto : Curse of Mormo  starts of super charmingly and funny. The graphical style reminds me a bit of the quasi modern cartoons like Super Adventure Time , Star Versus Evil and Steven Universe. A Dung Beetle named Puku shows up and drags out a destined hero to face the evil queen Mormo as her evil rules again. You get a little green outfit as you hold your sword above your head and the dung beetle drags you into the tower where your character gets promptly killed. He was underprepared. Whoops! A funny intro I will give them that. We then move to the next generation, the world seems slightly more devoid of life.. the town a lot more somber as we play a new hero. This time Puku tells you the basics.. Mormo has two Anchors that you need to destroy.. which are hidden deep in some dungeons. However to get access to these dungeons you need two toys of legends.. weapons with alternate functions if you will such as the bow or a yoyo that is kinda like a boomerang.. or a ring that kind of works like a grappling hook.

You can also gain a big foot! , though I am not sure how they got it at level 1

If you die in the field your bug friend will most likely save you but in some dungeons and the final encounter there is no resurrection possible so if you die there.. the world is ruled by Mormo once again and you have to fight her again. So Sword of Ditto is kind of like a Zelda Roguelite ..which kinda sounds like a bad idea to begin with due to the nature of all the tools you need but the game at least is very forgiving.While I deeply enjoyed the playthrough of the second lifetime.. as it really felt like a classic Zelda.. it would quickly turn to a much worse trip than I would have imagined. I beat Mormo on my first playthrough… now I would have to do it again..I spend all my resources on life potions because I expected this battle to be super rough but it was super easy… so now I had to do it all over again and start from scratch. This did not feel right to me.. something was eating at me, a feeling that  would only get worse.

I like the colours!

Let’s kick of with the positives however. It controls super nice, the fighting is fun, the mechanics are clever and the game looks super great and cute. Even though those pineapple monster things are straight up from Zelda and there is an old man.. cracked walls where you place bombs.. a c-button where you can lay out for toys to actively switch in.. sound effects when you open a door or a chest appears, silver keys for tiny doors and a gold key leading to a boss room in dungeons, even ancient tablets that tell the history of the world… Okay this game is SO much a Zelda clone that is basically a homage.  Yet that feels great to me.. it loves the Zelda games so much that it doesn’t stray from the old formula. Being one of the few persons in the world that doesn’t really like Breath of the Wild (as a Zelda game, I would be fine would this be a new IP but still find it tedious) I was happy I at least got to play something new that till feels like something classic. It does really cater to that need.

I imagine this screenshot with a certain overworld theme!

The combat is great, fun and dynamic, enemies all weaknesses, some are vulnerable to elements, some to toys others simply to your sword and some need to be attacked in the back. I really had some fun discovering the weaknesses. Toys can be leveled up and you can increase your attack power by putting stickers everywhere. Which is a fun way to mod your game. Each generation after the second comes with a Curse from Mormo.. which theoretically can really give you a cool gameplay variant. Some dungeons have their own conditions as well.. such as your sword being nerfed.. or dodge rolling taking mana/battery power. Yet it can be bonuses as well such as extra experience or even attack boosts or elemental immunities.

Why is my bathtub in this game?

There are pots you can break (who would have guessed)  that are filled with certain elements these can alter the battlefield. Such as poison which is a simple dot, fire, which is yet again a dot.. ether ..which if you or the enemy fill their either meter, you crystalise and become stunned.. and some yellow goop that makes everything it touches bleed money. There are plenty of weapons , plenty of NPC’s that upgrade stuff and you can collect celestial crystals to pass a toy or stickers to the next generation. Bombs come in several variaties like exploding ones, ether ones, fire ones and even MICE!… Thats right a bomb shaped like a mouse that crawls over the floor and bombs you. Bombs You?! Sounds familiar.

All in all it’s a very charming looking game, you can even unlock new sorts of heroes to reincarnate as in the next version, such as a luchador, a ninja, a mouse a frog or even a robot. My favorite one was the Kitsune because I love the Yoyo boost they get. Each hero type can level up and gets better stickers and weapons in the next generation which seems like a need idea. This game is like a love letter to Zelda with some clever ideas of their own, so surely this has to result in a terrific game right?  It even has the option to make your controller prompts look all Nintendo like if you hook up a controller.. or Playstation OR Xbox . So much consideration.. and museum keeper I am pretty sure was named old man! So points for that… yet somehow despite all these strengths.. this game did not work for me… at all.

Sometimes searching for pictures doesn’t go as well as you’d like!

Like I said the second generation is great fun to play through..but you go in blind so in the third generation I lacked some tools. As a Curse I gained the “Ether Storm”  which powered up all the enemies to be above my maximum level (levels are a thing here and if you reach Mormo’s one.. you HAVE to fight her in 24 hours regardless if you got all loot or weakened her enough) this created some annoyance. One area was blinking on my map but due to being undergeared and underleveled I could not make my way there. As it turned out I had to go there to sacrifice an item in my inventory.. a token of my victory over Mormo so I could ignite one of five lights! I did not think I had to destroy that item and I did not see the little stubs on the doors as lights just as decoration.. so when I got there at daytime and I can only tribute at night (which I did not know either) I just thought.. oh maybe in a next generation.
Which was wrong.. because you can not send it over to a new lifetime.. which meant.. the second generation victory was for naught. Two hours of play wasted because I failed to see through some mechanic and in turn making my journey harder because now I had to deal with these curses.

You WILL remember because you play the semi-same game about every hour or so

Now one more round would not have been terrible at all if there were more toys to explore, more clever banter to discover and more characters to unlock and level up. However in the third generation I already maxed out my fox boy.. who now had great stuff and passives.. Attack bonuses I would have to give up by playing another class. If I die with a weaker class. .I lose everything I worked so hard to pass on..  I am not against a game punishing your for dying..but  since the game also punishes you for succeeding through curses and taking your items away every two dungeons it kinda feels needlessly tedious at every step, good or bad.
Just get the stuff you need and get out. Which doesn’t mesh well with the Zelda Formula.

Like keep living in a gas station in the desert in a semi dead world.. this game can feel kinda…pointless

The WORST thing though however is the lack of variety.. in the third generation.. mind you this is the second playable one Puku already repeats all his dungeon dialogue from the second generation. In the fourth I discovered you basically alternate between any combination of only four toys to solve dungeons. With two toys per generation needed that means it does not take long to encounter repeats. So puzzles get boring quickly. All dungeons seem somewhat procedurally generated as well which usually works well enough but mostly in the non essential ones (Which you need to explore for more shards so you can pass on your rewards) this can feel a bit odd. Like two treasure rooms spawning adjacent to each other. Double damage modifiers in a dungeon that has no combat at all or puzzles in dead end rooms with no rewards.  I get the charm of Zelda randomisers to keep things fresh but with these added modifiers it just doesn’t work for me . I don’t mind the dead puzzle room so much.. nor do I mind having my sword damage halved when I just need to open a chest. However it can feel incredibly frustrating if you are grinding for levels to encounter half experience dungeons in one filled with chests and enemies..just to walk into a pot breaking one and see experience is double where there is no xp to get.

Still the game looks super adorable and charming! No matter how meh it was to me!

I gathered four out of five light orbs so far and I threw in the towel then and there as I could not stomach any minute of the game any longer. I would need to go to at least generation 7 due to me missing one tribute, but this game lacks so much. Each Toy dungeon has the same boss.. (though with a different skin.. a sword of ditto of the past.. but these are not your characters just some random things) which meant I had to fight that 12 times.. but both also show up during the Mormo fight so technically that would be 24 times .. you fight “dark Link” There are four bosses in the main dungeon.. or at least I just encountered four.. but one of them I only encountered once. and another I encountered six times.  Even dungeon puzzles begin to loop and that is IF you succeed every time.. this would be the MINIMUM level of repeats. By the fourth light I was playing the same game over and over again with my reward being the same dialogue over and over again..hinting only at a slightly different ending at the end.

The Magic School Bus theme goes here!

Each time I got something upgraded and I got something very cool and new.. I either lacked the celestial shards to pass it to the next generation because cool stuff costs more.. or it got overwritten because I wanted to play as another race. I even encountered the same curse three times! Once I had a timer of seven days which was kinda neat ..but most of the time it is just Ether Storm.. which basically means that aside from grinding for Celestial Shards you also need money and food as well so that is just more grinding. Which you can’t always do because you get time-gated.  The world has several themed areas and they appear randomly.. sometimes they drop resources like shiny stones.. or computer chips which you can trade in at shop-keep for new toys..but the price for the good ones is insane.You have to grind them out so hard that you basically can’t do anything else.. since you can’t pass these on to next generations. Of course you then can buy a toy or a sticker which you then can not pass onto the next generation because you have not grinded Celestial Crystals.. so it all can be for nothing.

I bet if you main the bunny hero.. you’ll visit the motel a lot

Never have I seen a game so relentlessly discouraging any form of the completion or punish you for getting good stuff. If you want a good item.. you have to work for it.. then you have to work to pass it on again.. and then subsequently to keep passing it down every generation.
If you make a game that spans six generations, at least give us enemies to carry us through those 6.. or 5 because we see non in the first generation. I would not mind looping after that.. but during the main run it just feels extremely lazy. There are a few important NPC’s such as a fat Catlike Crime Boss, a Penguin who can up your bomb count and a Walrus who can open boxes.. but even though 100 years pass each time they are all constantly the exact same. Even if you save the world.. your house might get more decrepit.. or spots on the world map randomly get switched to something dystopian like a huge junk yard. It almost doesn’t fit.
I might have just gone really unlucky.. but that is no excuse! I still had a bad experience, if that can happen because of simple RNG you still did something wrong.

Did someone make a bad Bunny Joke?! I ‘ll kill them! He is the vengfull one!


I am really angry at this game because it had so much potential, in a way this IS the game I wanted to see come to be.I’d compare it to P.T.  Releasing as a playable demo and you are all like! Oh this is going to be so awesome.. but then they did not know what to do with it further and just loop it. Like Imagine their studio going like”We build a great over world but we can’t make dungeons”  “Randomly gen it and add this reborn mechanic to it.. we can hide that we did we lost inspiration along the way”

I would not go as far to  call it a bad game..because in so many ways it is not.. but it feels unfinished.. and put together by the duct tape of reincarnation. Which is fine.. if you mask the tape afterwards but they did not do that either. It’s like watching at the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.. but instead of all different forms of art.. there is only the creation of adam up there. The rest is the same painting but the clouds have been replaced by lizards clothing colours have been swapped.. they achieve this by instead of actual artwork just putting a sheet of paper over the cloud with a lizard drawn on top and those new clothes are just some cotton balls they jammed up there while cleaning. There is still some beauty hidden in there..but you can’t help but be pissed off at how cheap they went in the end. 

Rarely felt I so conflicted about a game as in it’s purest form the gameplay is solid, the graphics are amazing and the ideas are creative ..even if it very clearly “borrows” form Zelda games. Yet never have I loathed continuing a game as much as this one in recent times. If it ever sells for like 5 dollars or is part of a humble bundle I recommend you get this, play trough the second and third generation and then leave it alone. I tried to complete it .. and the more and more I discovered how lazy it was the more I began to hate it.. which is why I have no choice but to scare it with my lowest rating.. as I really can’t stand playing it any longer anymore.. with the side note that I kinda feel bad about doing it. It doesn’t mean you’ll have to think the same, I just really dislike tedium in games. I hated keeping grinding for arrows and breaking weapons in Breath of the Wild as well.. and no one seemed to mind otherwise either. This to me just feels like playing the same game five times in a row and it punished me for about everything I did. I hate it! Yet I hate that I hate it too.

I am angry I had to grade like this! I wanted to love this!

I Totally want a Slime Pet: Dragon Quest Your Story Review

Collectable Monster Enthousiast, Movie Fan, Anime followers and gamer. These are all words I could use to describe myself with. So when a movie shows up that appeals to all of these assets I have to see it! While this movie slipped under my radar a little netflix Browse brought this movie to my attention and I am so glad it did! I loved this movie so much! 

I got into the Dragon Quest series quite late into my life and into the series. The first game I played was Journey of the Cursed King on PS II , but I was blown away by the charm of this series. The art, the music the world building and even the fact that all the spells had such unique names. I love the fantasy genre and a High Fantasy, Anime Like adventure with characters designed by Akira Toriyama quickly become something I could not resist. Now I have played plenty but V eluded me so far. I just never found it on sale or in stores. This movie is mostly inspired on the adventures of that particular Dragon Quest. A game that let you add monsters to your party and fight by your side, but also that allowed you to get married and get characters pregnant and fight along your offspring. While nowadays this is nothing special back in the days of the SNES it was something very unique.

Netflix doesn’t let me capture screengrabs and google did not find me a correct scene.. so here’s just a random game screenshot!

This movie opens with the birth of main character Luca.. depicted as if it was played on the SNES. Seeing Luca’s earliest moments in life in 16 bit graphics with all dialogue happening in text boxes. A nice way to open up for those nostalgic about the game, but in hindsight also a very smart choice given the route this movie takes. We follow Luca trough and in weird ways even beyond the adventures of this iconic Dragon Quest game. We see him grow from a young boy, up until a grown man with an 8 year old son. What immediately stands out is that these characters have lost the design of Akira Toriyama and traded it in for something more akin to the style of the latest Pokémon Movie. A stylistic choice people have kind of critiqued but which I prefer when it comes to 3d animation to be honest.At least when you also go for more real texturing.  I prefer a bit of a western look on characters Alla Disney.. as opposed to how characters look in Jump Force for example.. they feel a bit more natural. More.. flowing. 

After Pokémon this style grew on me! Best of both worlds or something

Luckily in nearly all ages of his life, Luca is assisted by his Sabertooth Purrcy and the adorable slime Gootrude.  Every monster seems straight out of these games and that to me is enough! Especially if we consider the message of this movie. Sure these characters could be more in line with how Toriyama designed them and there would be nothing wrong with that choice either.. but we can play them in in 3d or 2d like that in one of the many remakes. Gootrude especially demonstrates how great these animations are. Morphin, changing shapes and showing so much emotion without barely making a sound.  I love Gootrude! I want one of my own! The iconic slime design is something that should not be missing from a Dragon Quest movie and they know it.  Each scene the slime  wasa highlight for me . From the first introduction where it follows the “party”  escaping from their live in servitude, up to its final scene. It never not made me happy, but simply just being animated, and that is what this movie in a way does.

N’awww I want one so bad I bet it’s really nice to hug in summer

Since this movie spans about roughly 30 years as well as deals with some identity struggles of our hero you can guess the pacing of this movie is a bit of an odd one. We see about ten seperate quests resolve, as well as some side questing that is actually cut a lot in montage like how Bofuri did it. While catering  more towards the light hearted side and a bit of a younger audience.. at first it seems. Lethal spells barely leave an impact and if the main hero is near death he just is a bit charred like how Ash looks when he gets flamethrowered by his Charizard.

The romance is also rather Disney ish. Nothing complex , just winning a girl by telling you love them or wish to marry them. Luca has the choice between two girls who also in the games can both be romanced and taken on as a main companion. I felt his pain at the decision as I am always bad in these sorts of things! It was weird at first, because I did not really feel like watching through a movie..  the way things are told, the way decisions are made it still felt like a video game. 

Would you choose Nera?! Let me know in the comments!

This results in the weird pacing that honestly could make me condemn it as a movie. We get zero explanation how spells work, they just appear.. as if the characters level up, they focus on scenes a game would focus on rather than scenes a movie would focus on. As a movie the blossoming relationship between Luca and the girl he ends up choosing could be a much greater focal point, but we see him discover his feelings through quests, events and poisons. Dialogue feels wooden at times rushed.. as if it is still NPC dialogue. Which might sound like a flaw but I actually loved it. This isn’t as much a game adaptation as it is a movie cut together from cutscenes and gameplay as it were.  It results in a super fast movie which you definitely need to keep an eye on, because many scenes are in fact interconnected that really made me want to play more JRPG’s. Even in it’s plot devices it doesn’t deviate from being a game. Characters can use the Zoom spell to teleport to previously visited areas, healing items are still a thing and motivations do not really change. Spells don’t really work differently as they would in the game.

Or would you rather make babies with Bianca? Let me know in the comments because this stuff matters!

At one point when I saw Luca cast Swoosh I began to tell myself.. I kind of wish they would use these spells a bit more creatively.. you know break the boundaries from Videogame character to actual hero and just seconds later he cast Kaswoosh .. a tornado and rode it up using the storm to move his sword to the enemy. I get an urge and this movie abided.  At the moment I felt the movie might be TOO video gamey, that issue got a resolve as well. A odd plot twist polarised the audience , with people either loving or hating it.. I fell on the loving side. It comes out of nowhere yet at the same time the build up has been there , not just from the writing itself but in the concept of the very movie itself. Whatever gripes I had  were immediately expunged. It was truly amazing and the conclusion this movie ended on was a message I very strongly resonated with. At every single turn.. at every single twist and at every single decision those movie made, that made me doubt, the next scene they explained to me why.. and I was like.. oh clever! I like! I feel tired from watching this high speed train and weird experience but I feel extremely satisfied as well.

Again Netflix ruined me placing a neat tornado action shot here! So here is satisfied family instead

This movie to me was truly something special while on paper not being that great of a movie. This is much more a love letter to the series throughout the  eyes of a fan. While some people found it condescending towards fans I think the writer of the movie basically self inserted himself as the audience and more. In a way we all have been that main character. Not necessarily in this game but if you ever played a JRPG you know so well how these things go you can still recognise the trope. From simple loot quest because they are needed to progress the main story, to moral choices, characters that will never let stuff go because of the way NPC’s are written. It’s all in here! Almost as if I am the player. The combat fluidity, the sound effects used, there is so much to find and love about this that it really amazed me.

The villain of this movie looks way creepier than in the game 10/10 Nightmare Fuel

At the center of it all is the AMAZING Dragon Quest soundtrack that shines in all its glory. The main quest playing when our hero embarks on a new adventure, the fight theme playing when he is fighting for his life. The correct music playing in towns and it also feeling like a RPG town. It reminded me off when I first left Midgar in Final Fantasy and entered Nibelheim for the first time. That same quaint atmosphere, with room for some minor quests that are set in town and in the local nearby areas it just clicked to me. I might not have played this game, but I have played games like this and that is enough to recognise those tropes to love what is going on. When Luca fights a big monster named Björn and the boss theme of the series starts playing I stood up and shouted “Yes YES!” I could have clapped but that would be silly by myself! This movie is Dragon Quest done as a movie.. instead of a movie done about Dragon Quest.

So this makes the fourth smash character that has a video game movie if we omit Pac-man from Pixels

That sounds confusing huh! This is much more a movie about a video game than basicly anything else I have seen so far. Detective Pikachu follows the story of a game, Sonic is a movie about a character of a game, Mario just used the name of a game , Assassins Creed used a mythos of a game and everything Uwe Boll makes… well  I guess that is what happens if you play a video game while taking a poo, then shoving the poo in a movie projector. No this movie is really about the game, I noticed that I kept this movie as spoiler free as I possibly could because I want JRPG lovers to see this gam..uhm movie. I would not go as far as call this the best video game movie of all times.. because.. it’s not that much of a movie. Sonic is better in that perspective.  While I heard some say by changing designs and by carrying this message it is speaking very lowly of the fans I think this is utter non sense. Had they did this exact same thing to my favorite Jrpg ever, Chrono Trigger or one the “Tales of” games I would be so happy.

I feel Purrcy would have really bad breath with all those weird things to eat

This movie made me think like I always do..it made me see the other side of my moral choices in video games, the ones that are normally glossed over. A quest we refuse to take, a romance we do not pursue just because we rather chase another character. It has an impact on an NPC’s life .. can I only be ruled by what I want.. can a character ever  be more to me than it should. In a way a movie like this brings our favorite characters to live. It brings worlds we love to live, despite that there might be pacing issues, odd design choices to accommodate other things, despite not having all that much of a story. On reason I talked about the plot is because it’s a JRPG its kinda irrelevant. Hero has to stop the big evil and save his mother, for this he needs to find a magic sword and a legendary hero.  You can replace all these elements and it would still be as awesome, save a princess, find a special and a mentor to teach him said spell. It would not change a single thing about this movie because it is fully build on atmosphere.

I bet Bjorn has worse breath though


In a way it’s like the slime companion of the actual Dragon Quest V (I looked this up) It may look simple, there isn’t much depth to it and it kind of weird, yet for those who love the genre it is an excellent choice. It doesn’t have the power other movies have, but it makes up for it in spades with spirit. Endgame you can have some doubts about yet it somehow feels right.
This movie made me proud to be me, to be a gamer. It reminded me off the importance of heroes like Luca and great side characters like Bianca, Nera and in my main game characters like Marle and Frog.  It’s easy to see them as just video game characters, bits of programmed blobs of text that feel nothing no matter the choices you make.

When the main character is not in a burning town area, are the people still suffering?

Yet these characters mean so much to many people that in a way they are more real than you and me! To me their feelings always mattered. Like how I nickname Pokémon that I am never going to use regardless, because they should at least get that token of affection. In Sword and Shield I do take my unused Pokémon to camp to play with them so they never feel lonely.I’ll always take Aerith on a date instead of Tifa. The journeys we take make some characters more real to us than we care to admit. I felt more sad for Arche Klein of Tales of Phantasia than seeing a same sort of story on reality tv.

Eeeek Pinkie Watches reality tv?!

This movie is a testament to our experience as gamers, a sign,  that there are others like me out there who feel like this. It confirmed to me that we as geeks, can learn lessons from our favorite characters and that the games we play DO matter. It made me proud to be gamer, because I have fought so many adventures with many amazing friends! I experienced adventures that the general populous can only dream off and to me it’s just as real as what Chad gains in muscle at the local gym.

So now it’s time for my score?! How do you think you did Gootrude?!
Hints of Starfruit in this cocktail, if you like weird endings that are set up well! I had a blast with this movie

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 6

Saturday has come and past again so it is time for another review of my morning of cartoons. This week Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens had no new episode so that one is officially dropped from the saturday line up! I also finished up Bofuri today! So next week I will replace that slot with two seperate Isekai!  Hikaru no go stays at one episode a week because I just want to enjoy as many series as I possibly can! I haven’t seen all that much yet anyway!


This was a rather tame episode of BNA , mostly world building but unfortunately I found it REALLY predictable. That kind of means it was well set up as well .. but it also means I feel like I kinda had this episode before I even had played it before my very eyes. Michiru talks about her human friend and what do you know she finally decides to show up! As part of some religious cult that Shirou is asked to investigate. Like Michiru this girl can change her shape but this one can go full animal as well and she uses it to mimic the deity of the beast men. Whom.. I am pretty sure is just Shirou..this one is slightly pink though so I prefer Nazuna’s version of it.  Michiru of course is rejoiced to have her friend back but things are not what they might seem. A solid enough set up and again it contributes to the grand feeling of the world and it’s mysticism by adding religion to the mix but by now things begin to feel a bit step by step.

There is a positive about this step by step thing because everything feels in exactly the right place. Satisfying that someone thinks like me in terms of writing or I think like them.. I’d compare it to those videos where people cut those foam things or playdough blobs in perfect slices. How stuff perfectly works.. you know one of those videos that is usually titled “the most satisfying video you have ever seen”. Those videos are rather uneventful and meaningless in the end but you just feel content. This episode to me was like that exactly. No surprises but everything worked like it should. The tanuki girl has her cute moments with her best friend, as expected but they also notice how they diverged. Where Michiru embraces her human life, Nazuna has much more embraced her animal side. Two sides of the same coin. Where Michiru follows her heart , Nazuna is much more ruled by faith. In a way the tanuki is street level.. and sees the world through the eyes of the normal folk while the white fox more sees it throughout a political view or from above.

This episode really felt as a halfway point, it is given a lot of gravity, things feel different from what we have seen before and it is the right time to do so. However, I do feel like to much balls are in the air to resolve in the six episodes we have left. We have Michiru’s strange powers and the search for a cure, we have Flip’s crime cartel, we have the legend of the god wolf and also have the brooding human vs beastman unrest. This all can’t be concluded in a single season.. and I recently found out.. this is meant to be just a 12 episode adventure. By introducing yet another faction and element they just  make everything to complex for a single season. That being said they do kind of try to connect some things together maybe even more. The cult leader Boris was like super blond! Kind of like that creepy scientist. I am pretty sure they are going to have some connection. An okay episode, that I think sets us up for trouble in the end.. but one I still enjoyed watching. No favorite or least favorite moment though neutral throughout.. I am kinda weirded out by how easily and readily Michiru wants to sleep in the same bed as her best friend though.

Episode Score:


Naja recommended me this series in my post about the Hikonin Sentai AkibaRanger. A show about a guy who thinks he is a sentai hero?! That seems like fun to me! Foovay also gave me some recommendations and one of those I will be starting next week but this seemed like a great replacement for the Yu-gi-oh slot. That way I can fill the slot Bofuri slots with new Isekai shows. See.. aren’t I a smart cookie?! Well I bet some of you would disagree by now but oh well.  Let’s talk about the show! I have given the premises already and this first episode mostly just establishes this as it’s main story.  Goto a cop encounters a naked man who claims to be a hero in the first opening minutes as we cut to a title of lots of sentai fighting. There comedic timing was quite good on that I must say! A good sign since this is supposed to be a comedy. My favorite moment of the episode straight out of the gates

We cut to more Goto action as he wonders how Kamen Rider mechanics and what he could do within the confines of this world and the law. When would he be a guy with a motor cycle and when would he be a vigilante. After a long day at work and texting his girlfriend he goes out to the store to buy some stuff when a drunk guy cuts in line and buys some Cigarettes which Goto finds on the floor a bit later. This leads to him discovering the naked man and soon we learn he is our protagonist name is Hazama Masayoshi.A wanna be vigilante who tried to beat up the drunk man for being disorderly and jay walking as a fight for justice. 
By accident  Goto burns down his sentai suit, which he took off because it got ripped when he lost the fight.. which is funny on it’s own! A superhero losing to a drunk businessman type that was really small and insignificant, this could become a very fun show for me . Throughout the entire episode there is this level of low key and yet clever dialogue which reminded me a bit of Tarantino like writing.  Which I could very much appreciate.

We see Goto take Masayoshi to his place where it is revealed he is a rather successful model, that just Sentai’s as a passion and they begin to befriend each other a bit. Masayoshi even just gets a slap on the wrist for his vigilante antics and public Nudity. Yet by accident Goto the good type cop inspires Masayoshi to try his hardest.. while they bond over some classic movies and the next night he is in even bigger trouble. The model/hero stands not chance against a group of school kids and the cop has to bail him out of trouble. Proudly Masayoshi announces he will not stop trying! Ending the episode.  All in all a weird first impression but a good one! It was way more dialogue heavy then I would have imagined with a lot of depth and clever timing and analogies.  There was something about the shows colour pallet that seemed a bit unappealing to me for now.. it all felt a bit brownish greyish. Other than that I had very little complaints. I am looking forward to see more.

Episode Score:


I am going to miss Bofuri, but I do feel that I have seen enough of it for now at the same time.  This is a nice place to take a break and with season 2 being announced at the end of the final episode I could barely be any happier.  I am happy that I combined these two because had I’ve seen episode 11 only I would have barely been able to contain myself to wait a week. A very weird place to cap it off, given the trend of the series so far nearly made episode 11 a bit less amazing than it actually was.  We first we Maple take on Mii and the elites of the Flame Emperors guild. I thought this would be a harder fight for Maple and while it wasn’t easy Maple did manage to overwhelm the Fire Sorcerers.

I am not sure why I like seeing Mii cry this much but I really really do. She is so cute when her pride is broken!My favorite moment is her crying.  After the number two guild had been defeated I suspected the group would get some breathing time before facing of against Holy Sword in the next episode. Yet I was wrong! The encounter is almost entirely fought in the 11th episode as well. We see Kanade and Iz die and mostly Iz’s death really upset me for some reason! I am feeling very cryish today anyway..  At the moment of writing when you read this hopefully I will be fine! Update: A chocolate treatment and a long sleep made me less extreme!

The fight kept me rather engaged and I really wished for Maple to win against this superior force.. which is kinda weird..for once I did not want to change the Status Quo.. Maple thinking about her friends even in such a serious fight, over gameplay made me cry a bit more! She is such a pure hearted goofball! I will miss watching her adventures. Payne fights Maple and he seems to be winning. As her health falls fast we end the episode and I have never been happier for a double feature. Quickly after we see the fight resolve in the twelfth and final episode. Using her Demon Form  Maple manages to kill Payne.. after a clever use of Counter earlier. She also kills all the other elites of the guild, which is a shame. I would have loved if Sally would have at least gotten the kill on Frederica.. whose voice I find really cute as well by the way. However Maple Tree realises they can not rank in the top 10 like this. So they decided to murder all the guilds that threaten the top ten. Being severely weakened the Flame Emperors and the Holy Sword decide to follow their strategy.

My favorite moment is of the episode is Maple rescuing Mii from some attackers who just want to push them out of the top ten while the guild is at their weakest. Demon maple’s voice still makes me roll on the floor laughing, perhaps I got a hormone imbalance or something because this was a bit of a roller coaster for me, perhaps it was just really really good!
Maple would be such an amazing MMO buddy! I want a Maple! .. The event goes on pro forma but Maple Tree murdered so many guilds along with Holy Sword that it was practically over by the end of the third day of the event.

 Funny, but man do these developers suck at balancing their game at every single step. Not that weird considering they are space bunnies though! Still not sure what’s up with that. They do deliver us some plot exposition though.. Maple now has become the face of the game and the MMO is gaining new subs for people wanting to fight the invisible Maple. That is a clever idea for a second season and her becoming a mascotte seems perfect for her. She throws a party and in true Maple spirit invites Holy Sword and Flame Emperors to join her. After becoming friends of course!We end with a clip show of the last two episodes..which is a bit of a weird thing to summerise instead of looking back at the series..but I guess in universe it made sense. I loved this show! I could fault these episodes but why would I? I cried.. I laughed and nearly choked on my breakfast! Saturday Morning Glory.

Episode Score:

Despite how much I loved Bofuri , I loved this episode of Hikaru more. There was so much resolution and character in this episode. It was titled the beautiful game and that title was SUPER fitting. Not only do we get the most Go we have seen so far, we also get amazing character moments for Hikaru, Akira and that book boy whose name I forgot! The Go club guy! Tetsuo suprises me once again with how badass the Shogi club is , saying that if they will not win.. the Shogi club will get revenge on the club president for stealing mister Kaga away for this event. Translated… in our world.. The Chess club will beat up the guys who play checkers in school.. for asking a chess guy to join a tournament and then losing.. They really should carry some leather jackets or something.

We see Hikaru be forced to use Sai to win a game.. after in the semi finals it becomes 1-1 and the group depends on his result to advance. He cries knowing that he is not good enough but Sai, finally steps up and in this episode became so much greater than I ever thought he could be. The way he talked Hikaru out of his sadness was amazing to me. He understood his pain so well and when it comes down to the finals, he finds a way how Hikaru can grow from seeing him play. This is such a beautiful moment and this match was truly amazing. We see Akira possibly joining the school and observing the tournament and of course he cries again, as well as almost everyone who loses at this game. I am not sure on how to play Go yet but I apparently need to have extreme emotions to my losses. Perhaps I should try it today! I probably could cry over a taken stone feeling very bad for it.. or trip out and laugh because a stone made a funny clack!

Akira comes to observe Hikaru’s match and due to it’s sheer beauty he realises he’s been handeling things the wrong way. He should not fear playing he should hone his skill playing. Now  I am not sure how stones on a board are truly beautiful but I am sure that had I known how to play this game, I would be weeping like a willow. Hikaru finally finds unbridled determination to be good at Go as well  which makes him that much more of a pleasant character, he lost some cool points though because I still feel this is a bit of a dorky hobby! Not that I mind that.. but I am kind of baffled still about how much weight this sport is given.

Is it a sport? It seems like it?! Maybe this is just a game?! No matter! There is this passion for the game both on in the anime itself as well as on the direction table AND on the writing table. The way shots a framed, sounds are used. The silence during some matches with just the ticking of the clock and the clicking of the stones. This all seems framed as if you watch actual matches at times.. with anime flair! If Eurosport 6 or Espn 12.3 would air an animated show this would be it! Amazing episode! Amazing Direction! Amazing character building!
Praise Praise Praise! 

Episode Score:

Now that is it for this week! Next week two more new series will be added to the line up!
That Time I Reincarnated as A Slime and Tower of Gods! So stay tuned for that! I might actually get to see a decent amount of anime if I keep this up! I love Saturday Mornings!


Analyzing Anime: Suspension of Disbelief

Why do we like anime so much? Why do we need it over western media? We can find a drama  about a dying daughter both in anime as well as in Hollywood, we have Superman  where they have Goku. Genre wise except for maybe the fan service we don’t differ that much, yet if I had to choose never Western movies or shows or Never anime again I’d bow out the first one. Why can’t I consume local  stuff? I try to find my answer. To find that answer I must first understand what separates anime from Western Media for me in the first place. Where are they different?

Today I will address something I noticed when I was watching a Spider-man Cartoon passing on tv. Anime and Cartoons to me have a different line on how far they can push me before they break the suspension of disbelief. For some reason I can take a lot more weird stuff from anime than I could in cartoons?! I am not sure if I am the only one but this to me is a thing.
Let’s take a look at Spider-man for example. Spider-man is written very differently compared to most anime characters. While either side is heroic in a weird way at least to me western heroes and villains are described by their flaws. Spider-man  might not be the greatest examples.. but we know him as Peter Parker the somewhat geeky school kid that loves Mary Jane Watson (or Gwen Stacy). Batman..well that is Bruce Wayne.. he has no actual super powers he is just really smart. Superman is Clark Kent, he can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes and fly but they are also weak to kryptonite.  He loves Lois Lane and when we root for Superman to be alright and be well we hope he finds his romance with his partner.

Now let’s compare our superhero shows with anime. Put them up against Luffy, Naruto and Goku.  What do all of these have in common?! They have no Alter Ego. Luffy doesn’t suddenly become Hank Mugiwara .. a dusty old liberian bloke, nor does he become “Rubberman” No the human and the super part are interconnected. Why does this matter? Well because we are less confronted with their limitations, we do not see them as human’s persé but more as the heroes. Which means I can take a lot more from those weirdo’s as those humans.  Good Example, the choice Spider-man has to make in the Sam Rami movie when facing the Goblin.. save the cable car or save Mary Jane. He saves both. That feels cheap, the villian would know how fast he is .. he faced him before. Make Spidey at least a bit flawed he is not a god.Yet would it be Naruto of Luffy or Goku to save all of them by some shenanigans I’d be fine with it. First of all there is not as much a dilemma for them because they are less human that whole appeal of torn between two worlds is not a thing, secondly breaking limits is much more a part of that media, rather then where Western Heroes are more focused of achieving within your limits. So anime would make me frown less in confusion.

Of course this does not only take place in Shonen shows this takes place in just about every genre. Let’s make a bold move and compare romantic super natural shows,  such as The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Medium and even less supernatural stuff like Grey’s Anatomy with the more outrageous Japanese romance genre of Harem shows.. just to make a point. When Elena Gilbert has to doubt between picking Stefan or Damon you could add Katherine in the mix to complicated things and Caroline to basically give Stefan his Harem but because it is western media your limitations are within being human.If you dehumanise them and make them want to partner up for very vampirish reasons or own fictional ones, the romance doesn’t work. What the hell are they doing we would ask.  Buffy’s romance are Angel Riley and Spike with Xander trying to fit in. While two are vampires, one a super soldier and one a loveable goofball in the end you can not make them to different. Everyone has to  have the same goals of planning to settle down, treat Buffy right, give her some peace. No one will join that romantic pursuit because they just think the other is cute, or heck for a misunderstanding.  If Sookie Stackhouse suddenly would be in a prearranged marriage with a demon would all think the writers have gone insane. Still.. vampire shoes are kinda like our variants of Harem aren’t they?!

Now.. let’s turn Buffy into an anime. Let’s place Angel, Riley Spike and Xander all in the same timeline. Riley instead of a plain super soldier is this ridiculous pretty boy who believes Buffy is the perfect woman and that their genetic offspring would be the most beautiful thing of all, thinking it’s his duty to create this beauty he pursues miss Summers. Spike doesn’t just fall hopelessly in love with her no instead he initially  does fall in love with her like in the orginal but this time when he asks for a soul he accidentally gets that of Buffies former boyfriend who died during the vampire attack in LA. Angel just wants to use her to lose a ancient gypsy that turns him into a woman during daytime, which he can break during a moment of pure happiness, so he just wants to bed her, but he actually begins to fall in love with her. Xander still stands no chance.. some things never change. Now as an anime I’d immediately see this working.. yet as a cartoon or life action show it would not.. why? Because they are anime characters.. they are on some other sort of level with other laws.. we can accept so much more from them.

Never felt I like this .. broke my suspense of disbelief.. somehow

Now let’s delve into the territory of drama and turn Breaking Bad in both a cartoon and into an anime. Both have a much higher suspense of disbelief and just can push the reality out of the window.. for this experiment I would like to see where the suspense breaks for me when slowly adapting this to other forms of media. For this example I will use the Fly in the Lab episode , as it is pretty self contained. Both in Cartoons and anime you can turn the fly into something more menacing. In both cases it could lead to an experiment blowing in Walter’s face chatring it black or resulting in some comical effect. In both cases we can turn the fly into something more menacing.. like a spy droid for Gus.. he controls to mess with Walter to get his batch to fail to make sure he will die or something. However where cartoons can not change Walt and Jesse while anime can.  We can see Jesse put on a jetpack in a cartoon and chase the fly away.. him spying the fly with a magic eye  seems weird.  Walt can invent a device to swat it.. yet he should not be able to change too much himself . Him creating a type of meth that gives him super powers seem out of cartoons range.

In anime though you can push a lot further. Jesse saying ‘Yeah Byakugan Bitch’ before his eye turn all white and veiny I can actually imagine. Anime Walt throwing a  disc shaped object or attack with pinpoint accuracy at the fly could remind you off the Pizza power he displayed earlier so he just kept that in the back for his enemies. Holding back is a pacing thing that is much more common in anime as in western media. Testing out your opponent rarely happens in Western comics. In manga and anime it is a constant. Western Narrative is a lot more straightforward, what you see is what you get. Superman and Batman rarely train, nor does Spiderman.. on very rare occasions they get new tech but over all western media characters deal with what they have. In basically any anime you can add on old lady that kills a fly by throwing a chopstick. Even in the more serious ones or dramatic ones, Bloom Into You for example. If Yu was bothered by a fly while pondering what she should do I could totally see her kill it with some super human action. Like tossing a chopstick or a pocky with sniper accuracy. I’d not notice anything to off.. in a way anime caters more to how they are different.. we can relate to THEM rather than that they should relate to us.  They don’t have to be relatable we will find something relatable about them.

This section title asks a very good question?! Why would I think a show is better if it is less relatable.. or further away from us?  The answer is, it doesn’t feel wrong as often. For a Western show to be good, it has to colour strictly within the lines. We know that it is right because we can it is coloured in between the lines.. or in reality we can sense it. We can sense if Tony Stark or Bilbo Baggins are being stretched too thin. Give Bilbo a Power to turn green instead of invisible and I would ask.. what were they thinking. Let Kazuma from  Konosuba wake up green and I would go like… who cursed him now?! The difference.. with Konosuba I am still thinking within the show I am not taken out of the plot yet with LOTR I am thinking of writing. Another good example is that very first episode of Star Trek the Next Generation. Encounter at Farpoint , an interdimensional being plagues the ship. With trials, time travel shenanigans and weird space jellyfish.  I felt very conflicted about this setting.. how do they balance this out? Yet would it have been an anime i would have consumed it without a single question. Exact same scenario. Where I watched the Star Trek episode as an observer through a screen, I would have watched the anime in world.

I would not go as far to call anime the more immersive experience, but once anime has you sucked in.. it can stumble a lot more before it spits you back out. The medium has less limits and as such we believe the worlds despite some really odd choices.  It can hide mistakes. Not everything we see in anime happens as we see it. Take a magical girl transformation.. I do not know how it would like seeing it as a spectator but I know the world does not fade away. When Menacing appears in front of Jojo characters I know they are not really there but I know what they mean. Now imagine Dr Octopus talking to spider-man but to indicate he is lying we see red flags appearing all around him or danger sounds.. it would feel jarring.


Anime has more options at its disposal to convey a message be it through exaggeration, parallel imagery or even side jokes. It all keeps us in that world while with Batman we ask.. would he really be able to lift that.. in Comic 73 page 12 panel 5 he was unable to lift an item that would weigh about as much. In anime.. not so much.. we can nitpick sure.. but all in all we can accept a whole lot more which makes it much more pleasant to watch, nothing seems fake because trough 90% of the medium, anything can happen.

Apologies for the bad quality.. but this. gif served my point way to well not to use!.

Pinkie’s: What if Raditz Turned Good Chapter 2

Welcome Back everyone! A while ago I started a new fiction story! What if Raditz Turned good! Based on Masoko X ‘s amazing tale. For my take we took a look at a different take on Raditz. Newest Broly movie Bardock suspected Frieza from wanting to dispose of the saiyans and passed his tactics and mistrust onto Raditz. When seeing the amazing powerboost of the hybrid saiyan boy Gohan he believed he found the legendary power to stop Frieza. If they could train him up enough before his Saiyan superiors would arrive in one year, they might convince them to start a rebellion against Frieza. Of course you can read more about that here!

Raditz Goku and Gohan heard trough Kami about the Kaioken Technique. A mysterious technique that can boost the users powers several times over, much like the weird power Gohan had used in the fight against Raditz. If they could all use this techniques perhaps they could convince the two warriors of Frieza that were coming to rebel against him. Yet Vegeta would not easily be convinced. Raditz already permanently convinced Chichi to allow Gohan to train, by remembering how there would not be a world like this without Goku.. nor would they even have a kid if he had become a doctor. Mostly this romantic appeal had shifted her view. Gohan could follow the lifestyle of his father.

Now the three would have to find King Kai at the end of snake way. Kami brought them to King Yemma and asked for passage. The big red ogre looked upon the three and shook his head. “This I can not allow, one is just a child and the big one has done lots of evil acts” “I did those evil things in order to survive you big red Oaf” Raditz immediately shouts, clearly troubling Kami. KIng Yemma looks at Raditz and say “With my Yemma Lock I can defeat you in moments boy”. He does seem quite nervous though. In the anime it is assumed that Yemma’s level is about 1300, with Raditz level being around 1200  this would make sense.. even though most likely the long haired Saiyan would most likely appear as a cloud because he was so evil, now that he was alive.. and he got a Zenkai boost from his fight with Gohan and Goku he will most likely be around 1500 in terms of power. So the ogre king finds himself in quite a conundrum.

Kami tries to convince Yemma that if earth is destroyed by these other saiyans his lines will only grow larger. Then Yemma seems to think of something as he goes even more red than his usual self. “I guess.. .. I could.. give you.. a trial..to prove your worth”.  “Speak you red Oozaru thing”  Raditz says impatiently. King Yemma coughs “ On Snake Road there lives a woman who believes she is my wife.. this is simply not true and if you convince her of this I will allow you to travel on, but she might prove very dangerous’. “You want us to talk to a woman for you.. you truly are spineless.. but very well” Raditz asserts his dominance and proceeds to walk on tightening his gloves.  Goku carrying Gohan on his back follows.

In the original Cha La Head Cha La opening we see Goku with Gohan on his Nimbus and then Gohan running across a Dragon… in our reality he does not run on the dragon but on snake way. The nimbus scene is replaced with Goku running on snake way with Gohan on his back. Let’s go back  to the adventure the group begins to travel snake way.. and yes.. we will address the Princess Snake Filler, why?! Find out next!

Traveling Snake Way helps Gohan deal with his fears.. originally he doesn’t really dare to move on his own scared he will fall off. Traveling for days the group only feed on  Senzu beans which gives Raditz an idea. During dinner time he will do some melee training with Goku. Using the senzu beans to heal up. While this does not help Raditz all that much as he is way stronger as Goku at this time (Goku’s power level would be in the low 500’s at best) it does help Goku boost his power level quite a bit by the time they reach the palace of Princess Snake. Raditz mastered sensing power levels already is alarmed. Why would Yemma fear these weaklings? Goku understands this a bit more so he would not think much of it as he just enters.

Princess Snake shows up and greets the two Saiyan men.. offering them rest for the night. Now where she originally went for Goku.. the kid on his neck makes Raditz the more available man. He is quite charmed by the woman in fact. The dancing scene is repeated but with a willing Raditz. Goku and Gohan are mostly ignored for a while. After their flirt however Raditz says he has come in the name of King Yemma and that she should stop to pretend to be married to him.  She agrees to do so if Raditz stays but he refuses. Causing the illusion of the palace to falter and Princess Snake and their servants to go into evil form. 

A short fight ensues with Gohan and Goku fighting the henchwoman and Raditz taking on Princess Snake. While Goku had to outsmart her and trick her curl herself into a tie , since her power level was higher than Goku’s the older Saiyan outright outpowers here by about 50%. However something is different about Raditz in this fight, he is having fun. In the series was implied at least in the sub, that Raditz and princess snake had some sort of relation for a while when Raditz escapes Hell (HIFL for Dub purists). He would be about the same Raditz as the straight up evil one.. so the chemistry would still match up. As Raditz beats Princess Snake he doesn’t seem to go all out.. nor does she.

After a while he just dazes her .. holding his Saturday Crash attack in front of her.. forcing her to surrender. ‘I love strong women’. Princess Snake who sees a man stronger than King Yemma can not help to be smitten. The endless wave of henchwoman also stops attacking Goku and Gohan. Princess Snake begins to explain how she can not leave this  place so she has to force men to stay. Raditz tells her that she lets them go he will try to find a way to free her from her prison.  Snake divorces Yemma, and asks the group to at least rest for the night.

The next morning Raditz hugs his cousin and pads his brother on the back seeming more energetic and cheerful as ever. ‘I feel like I could run snake way in its entirety today’. ‘Did you eat too much Senzu Beans?’ Goku asks. Raditz just shakes his head and winks. Goku follows confused. Taking care of Gohan , Goku would not fall of Snake Way and fairly fast the group would reach the end with King Kai’s planet just out of reach. ‘Gohan I am going to throw you okay? Your uncle will go first and catch you!’. The young saiyan boy seems rather nervous about Goku chucking him at another planet but he eventually would agree as he can not jump that high. So the first thing King Kai sees of the saiyans is a long haired man  with a huge grin on his face catching a small boy. Due to his physical training with Raditz and the earlier battle, Goku now easily can make the jump as well. “What in the Bugger.. I was just about to take my car for a Ride”  King Kai says. Goku and Gohan are heavily affected by the gravity. Raditz observes the blue man.. ‘We have come to train?’  ‘Brother what is wrong?’. A brief exchange of info follows with Goku managing to stand up. Gohan is crying by the sheer force of the gravity pinning him against the floor. 

“Oh dear” King Kai says.. ‘I forgot to mention that to Kami.. but the Saiyans have this much gravity on their planet’ ‘You can do it Gohan’ get up son. Goku encourages but this gravity is to much for Gohan.. then in a sheer burst of panic pain and discomfort Gohan’s power level spikes again. ‘I do not like this place!’ Even King Kai seems surprised. Raditz immediately points at his nephew and says. ‘That we came to learn that.. the wrinkly Namekian called it Kaio-Ken’ The spectacled kai scratches his head. ‘That is not Kaio-Ken’  Raditz does the standard ‘WHAT?! We came here for nothing?’ King Kai shakes his head telling them he will teach them the technique but that this is not it.  The Kaio-Ken technique is much harsher on the body.. this seems more explosive and powerful.

‘I told you Kakarot, it is your son who will destroy Frieza and save the galaxy.. he is the one the legends talk about’. Goku sits down again ‘Oh man .. I wanted to learn that technique’ After a while Gohan would pass out from fatigue as he occasionally did. ‘I can not teach you the power of that boy.. but I can teach you Kaio-Ken, however I will not teach that boy the technique, with that power of his own Kaioken would be far to dangerous’ Raditz and Goku would agree and Goku’s training would begin. For Goku that would mean the same training he did originally under King Kai, meanwhile he and Raditz go over the fundamentals of Kaioken and compare it to Gohan’s mysterious power who goes through quite a bit of hell on this planet.. crashing to the ground ..crying in pain until he gets a rage boost then fainting again. This would last a couple of days until he can finally stand on his own.

 Raditz meanwhile notes that this power is almost an emotional counterpart  to a saiyans ability to grow stronger from near death experiences. More potent than these boosts but temporary with only minor permanent gains. The technique  for now is dubbed Gekitekina Zōka. As King Kai and Raditz note this down Gohan gets another boost and tips over the inkwell.. the word gets all covered in ink..except for the Z. During this time he also coins the term Zenkai boosts for his and Goku’s power to grow stronger after defeat. After a Saiyan makes “complete recovery” (which is a meaning of Zenkai) they are stronger than ever. Like in the official series the term would not be official.. but at least it would be mentioned this time around. After that training would resume, Raditz mostly helping Gohan until Goku is ready to begin Kaioken training with him. 

Zoka Boost Gohan! Cause we need more Z Powers!

As the days past Raditz is surprised at the increase his brother makes in days. The power level is just skyrocketing up far faster than Raditz ever could. Gohan as well. If he is not careful these two will surpass him soon. Instead of learning the Masenko from Piccolo this time Gohan’s first major Ki attack is his Uncles technique the Double Sunday. Goku gets a bit jealous and butts in a bit trying to teach Gohan the Kamehameha as well..but King Kai forces him to focus on his training again. Raditz is waiting for him to catch up because King Kai does not want to risk this technique to often he will only teach it once. Their training goes well. Yet it doesn’t take long for Goku to start to move ahead of his brother. He has much more potential towards training as shown by Raditz being so far behind to Nappa and Vegeta. While he does gain more boosts in this healthier training environment than he had ever with those two, this doesn’t come AS natural.. not being boosted by the gravity difference either.

At the end of the training in the original Goku’s power level would be about 8000, but having a brother to train with, along with an earlier Zenkai in this timeline he would be closer to 10.000. Raditz would grow to about 6000. However Raditz would be better at Kaioken allowing him to add a step to what Goku can. The reason why he is better at this technique is two fold. Goku wants to grow stronger period, Raditz approaches it more tactically, so he would focus on the multiplier as he notices his natural gains are slower. So clearly he would spent more time with this technique as it will be his bread and butter for a long time. 

Secondly, Raditz is still to “evil” to learn the Genki Dama technique, the Spirit Bomb. He would be unable to control the technique properly so all the time Goku spends working on that technique he would spend on the red aura power boost. Gohan not being allowed to train in Kaioken WOULD train along his father in the spirit bomb after he could walk. Which he turns out surprisingly adapt at. His pure heart, which is a bit more compassionate and selfless than Goku’s makes him very fit for this technique. While his faster as a grown man can hold a lot more energy, Gohan instead gets a faster more defensive variant for now where he gathers energy of other life forms and can hold it in front of him like a small shield before releasing it upon an evil foe. The more energy he manages to gather the bigger the attack he can defend with. Gohan is still a scared kid after all. His power level at the end of this would be around 1500 about the level he had at the start of the Namek Saga

Meanwhile on Earth, training with Piccolo the Z-Fighters all get some boost from having stronger opponents. Piccolo not having to take care of Gohan would be the largest of them all. Coming in at 4100 instead before the Saiyan fight instead of 3000. The rest of the Z-Fighters would be around the 1500’s with Chiaotzu being the exception being in his mid 600’s.  However under Piccolo’s training none would be allowed to take it easy.  He would be harsh towards the little emperor forcing him to do much better. Much like he was to Gohan.. minus the parental kindness.  So by the end of their training everyone would be closer to their early 2000’s, witch Chiaotzu being about as strong as Gohan. At the 2000 point though Piccolo stops training them because he still plans to kill Goku, he can’t have one of these pose an actual threat to him. In secret he has been improving his new technique to strike when he has the chance. He doesn’t want to doom the world though.. just kill Goku and have his vengeance. 

Now with the Saiyan’s approach being very close tidings seem fortuitous for our friends but can they convince Nappa and Vegeta to join the fight  against Frieza, can they trust Piccolo now that he did not spend a year with Gohan to soften his heart? Will the higher power levels be enough or will it cause more accidents? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Pinkie.