Tag: Card Game

Pinkie Creates an Anime : Kuro-Queen The Poker-Horror Anime

Hear Ye Hear Ye, Princess Pinkie has returned with another anime post!

Salutations my loyal subjects and sweet island guests!  I have come to the conclusion that I like dabbling in stories and creative writing a lot more than flat out reviewing anime or games for that matter. I like creating new ideas! So I will start doing that more from now on! Unless you totally shoot it down! I challenge myself to create an anime, or a game concept or whatever by choosing a genre and a topic at random (Because randomness is also still a thing here) . Today I decided to put the topic of Poker together with the genre of Horror. As I wrote the concept for an anime called “Kuro-Queen”

Card in this art by Camila Torrano

The Disclaimers

LET'S INTERACT

So let’s talk about how I will do this anime creation series. I do hope for some audience interaction when it comes to challenging me with new ideas, however the past has shown me that people are a bit reluctant to offer new ideas in the comments and these posts usually have little interaction. So if I do not receive any ideas from the audience I will create a few wheels with genres and topics and roll a combination at random. So your support is welcome .. but if you rather just read through the post that is fine as well! People who offer an idea will be shouted out in the respective post though!

Sorry Not Sorry poster | JUNIQE

Characters that I will use will often be obviously inspired by people around the blogosphere or generally known characters. This does not mean I want to force them to associate their blog with mine in any way. They are part of my life though and thus I take inspiration from them. For the sake of comedy these references will be fairly on the nose as it will be fun for readers to find the counterparts of all the characters. So if I use you and you take offence please let me know.. I probably will think that is rather petty.. but I will stop using you, I like the community and everyone in it and I assure you everything I do is all in good fun and never meant to hurt anyone. I will also not shout out the inspirations as I do not know if the wish to associate with me, nor does this work have anything to do with their blog.

I can not do art but  since I use some weird concepts I will use reference art with wil often be a bunch of art slapped together to give you an impression of what kind of look I am going for. This means I can not really credit everyone who provided fuel for these images but I will do my best. It is never my intention to claim these works of art as my own simply to show them to you and give you an impression. Now onto our story!

The Set-Up

Crunchyroll Logo | Symbol, History, PNG (3840*2160)

Horror and Poker seem like two words that are hard to combine. Thriller and Poker is easily done but how do we bring something like Poker together with Horror?! That will be trough the titular character. The Kuro-Queen.   The anime is basically a deconstruction of the sport/card battle anime genre where our protagonist has a special power that makes him or her especially good at a game. However unlike Yu-Gi-Oh , Keijo or even Saki for that matter we will not simply approach the hero’s ability as a strength! It will also be something that haunts them.  The series would be aimed as a single season anime with a potential second second story  if successful but not much more after that. Pacing Wise a season would need to have about 16 episodes of 21 minutes.  Given that horror and Poker are more popular concepts in the west, a Netflix or Crunchyroll exclusive seems like the best media to launch from.

Macau - 12 Sept: Timelapse : vidéo de stock (100 % libre de droit) 4880894 | Shutterstock

The setting is where I had the most trouble deciding which route to go. Horror suffers deeply from the plethora of technology to get yourself out of hairy situations. Research is super easy and finding yourself all alone is never as big of a problem due to us always being able to call someone or reach out to someone on Discord or whatever.  A great flavourful  choice for Poker games to prevent that would be America during the prohibition area. The Mafia  and war on crime days.  Like Baccano.  The problem with this though is that horror in the past is much less relatable. A lot of problems our heroes could easily solve these days!  It would also be a very obvious choice. Since magical powers and mysticism is involved in the story I decided to set the story in Macau instead.  It is often depicted as a seedy grim place full of crime, but also a lot of tourism and gambling and the tropical heat could provide some interesting challenges.  The main character would be in foreign territory which solves some of the problems of modern day horror. 

The first Episode

The story would follow the adventures of Jonathan , a young man from a moderately wealthy game development company.The Landstar Corporation.  His father George Landstar  has forbidden Jonathan to use the company’s funds to finance his latest game, about his favourite animals. Ducks!  Jonathan really believes in his own resource management game and wishes to prove his father wrong. In a lapse of Judgement Jonathan decides to go to a retirement home and play against some old timers in his favourite card game “Hearts”. He plays for money as these old people usually have plenty with little time left… it’s resource management at it’s finest.  He is a gifted card man so he can cheat fairly easily! Only this time.. the game shown in the first episode goes horribly wrong. An old chinese lady catches him cheating and puts a curse on him. At first Jonathan laughs this off , as the  old lady curses him to forever be followed by the Queen of Spades.. but soon Jonathan realises the card that holds the most points in Hearts is glued to his hands.. his swindeling career is over…or so it seems!

We jump ahead in time, we see Jonathan at some local casino play a new game. Five Card Monte. We see him draw three queens. Hearts, Clubs and Diamonds and without blinking an eye he only trades in one card as he goes all in.  People show their hands as everyone is all in and people tell Jonathan is a fool, he should have trades an extra card for an extra chance to make something good. One guy a full house, Aces over Kings, as he tells Johnathan only has one chance left.  They make an illegal bet for our hero’s shiny watch, while the scoundrel on the table bets his.  Jonathan coldly accepts and to no surprise at all to him.. he gets the queen of spades dealt to him. Mister Landstar exits the table taking the watch and the pot.  He almost has enough money to finance his game now!  As he walks home he can not help but feel like he is followed.  In the street shadows he sees the shadow of a woman wearing a crown. Yet there is no light to cast a shadow!

Our Protagonist arrives at home, he has a friend sleeping over on the couch!  He barely gets up to acknowledge Johnathan. The man is a total leech!  John asks his friend when he is going to find a job, he tells him it is time to find a new job. His friend makes up an excuse and John accepts it for now as the friend showers him with compliments for all the great concepts of games John makes and the great quizzes he hosts for his friends.  John is tired after a long night of hitting poker tables all across town and goes to bed. Late at night his friend wakes up from hearing the sound.  He asks if Jonathan can toss him a can of cold one. A beer can flies his way and hits his head hard. The man curses a bit and asks why John did that.  Then he sees it is not John standing in front of him but before he can scream his head is bashed in with what seems to be a golden crown with scorch marks. 

The Second Episode

Our main character wakes up , smelling a burning scent coming from down stairs.  Did his friend try to make omelettes again?!   As he moves downstairs he finds the corpse of his friend.. his head misshapen and bloody and in his hands is a a queen of spades card that burns up as soon as our hero sees it.  Panicked John calls the police, whom to his surprise do not suspect him at all. He was fully expecting to be the prime suspect here. Yet a police officer tells him that this low life card shark a few blocks further suffered a similar fate. There were some witnesses that all saw the same suspect. A woman’s face shrouded behind a black vale and wearing a crown. Those two are not even the only victims. As John hears that nearly all the card games he had been to have had a fatality he knows his curse is way worse than he had thought. 

After he has been released by the police he moves to the geriatric home to find the old lady to undo his curse, but he is told the lady has moved back to Macau to live with her son. Yet she left him a letter, as if she expected him to come back. The attendant of the hospital gives John his note and in it is a plane ticket to Macau and an invitation to a high stakes Poker Tournament. So high stakes that John will have to sell everything he owns, just to pay the ante to participate. The woman Nushi Zuzhou says she will undo his curse of he can beat her son in the tournament.  The main character originally refuses this, thinking if he doesn’t play cards that the queen will not show up again. He goes to his father and asks to be funded for the tournament just in case. His father refuses saying poker still is gambling no matter good how John will be. That this curse John talks about is just in his head.. caused by stress and an unhealthy lifestyle. John shows him his ability trying to covince it isn’t gambling when you have this. His father scoffs and tells John it is just one of his old party tricks! He isn’t funding a trip to China.. and he suspects it is just a ruse to fund that game, John can’t play him! The son goes home cursing his bad relationship with his father.

He wakes up the next day by a distressed phone call. His father has been murdered. They found a single playing card in his hand. The queen of spades. As an eulogy is read, John looks at the concept for the card game he wanted to make.. and all the money he had saved up to make it a reality.  He then tosses his concept in the garbage bin.. and the money he hides in his suitcase. We see flashes of the funeral of George as well as Johathan checking into an airport.  As the flight attendant welcomes everyone on board , she welcomes a latecomer, a woman dressed in all black, who smells a bit like charcoal.  As her other attendant asks who she was talking to, the woman tries to point out the shrouded dame, but she doesn’t see her on the plane at all. The pair chuckle a bit saying the woman probably needs a vacation. 

The series picks up

The third episode sees John settling in Macau, but he can not stay in one place for to long! Each game of cards he plays makes the queen of spades stronger. With every time she shows up in his hand, she can move faster, she begins to gai n the strength to rip of limbs and even cast some magic. Even if kids play cards near him, his eye will fall on the queen of spades strengthen the black suited lady. She gets an ability to burn people on touch, as happens to a poor street swindler who had an encounter with John, who would not let the man pass unless he could guess the card in his hands…. We are also introduced to the gambling king Kay. Who at his Mu-Vhy’s Kasino will hold the tournament that will decide John’s fate. He himself also seems fearful of something. Stating no one will know this tournament.. asking himself loudly what his mother has done.  Wishing there was another way!… We then see him play a game with a terrified looking maid and butler, whom he forces to flip the next card.. as the queen of spades shows up! The lights in the room flicker, screams can be heard and Kay leaves the room, looking displeased.

The show would follow the tournament taking place as a one week survivors match. Each day a variant of Poker will be played.  Five Card Monte, Jacks are Wilds, Texas Hold Em, Omaha. If you lose all your money, you are out! No buys in, no second chances. It will be a journey where John encounters several types of poker players. Such as a father trying to gain enough money and pass the first round so he can buy health care for his daughter but also a crime lord, who wants to use the tournament to get powerful enough weapons to take over a neighbourhood. On the last day of the tournament people can face this man named Kay and if they manage to bust him, rumor has it his mother can bestow you with magical powers. Let alone the wealth you’d win! Some people are here for the money, some are here for the magic, others never even show their true face.

Because of the risk of making an enemy of local crime lords, the Landstar heir decides to wear a mask during his games. As his Poker Mask John uses a white face mask with a red question mark on it! This not only helps him hide having 0 reaction the that one card flipping up.. and make him harder to track for mob bosses.. but maybe! Just maybe it can fool the queen herself. It gets him the poker handle of Mister Mystery! It is an alias that helps John move around in the city as well! Allowing him to exploit shadier places.. for example when he tries to get a weapon to defend himself! Or when he is doing some research into the identity of this mysteriously wealthy Kay fellow, who appeared out of no where! And no one knows where he came from! He seems to have some connection to the Kuro-Queen!


Each tournament day would be roughly two episodes. With one focusing on the poker match and the other on trying to escape the Kuro-Queen. She will go away for a day once she has been killed, but she will also not rest until she does, relentlessly chasing until she gets a kill. .  So fairly soon in the series John realises he has to recognise who is a bad guy at this table. Only by doing this might he be able to save innocents.  This journey will take John to dark places, not only does he consider harming himself to save others from the queen, but when he finds out that will only set her free, he now has to decide who lives and who dies. He is forced to be close with criminals, which might mean he has bankrupted a young man trying to make the money to give his terminally ill wife her dream wedding before she goes.  If he bankrupts the criminals, they will disappear and innocents will fall victim to the monster hunting him.  So he has to make some insane choices.

Sometimes John will give the money to the deserving and try everything in his power to save them from death, sometimes he can not put them or himself at risk because if the Kuro Queen is freed things would be much worse. It will all be a tricky balancing act, where Poker skills will directly apply to survival as well. Reading people, calling their bluffs , seeing trough smokescreens! Many other people will wear masks or sunglasses as well, so sometimes he has to get people to talk, other times he has to look at their hand motions.. or consider how much delays are between the start of their turn and their plays. With some episodes allowinging him to do some research, while others force him to end a game quickly..because he can find the queen drawing closer. When John finds out that Kay has been stricken with the same curse as him, and his mother was manipulating them all along the final game ends up being more high stakes than ever, involving strategies and risks no one in their right mind would ever take. The season would end with the old lady meeting her demise and either Kay , John or both being freed of their curse.

The second season could revolve around the actual ghost of the Queen not being stopped yet. While the woman who summoned her might be gone, whomever survived the final duel would have to find a way to destroy the original body of the Kuro-Queen, hints on her identity and lore would have leaked in season 1 but season 2 would dive deeper into her mythos and story as she is trying to manipulate other gamblers of willingly taking on her power this time round to give them an edge.If she can kill her host, she will be set free at last and our hero whomever it may be  can not allow this to occur. If the season would end in a good or a bad way would be unclear! It is horror after all! So both options are viable!  The second season will delve deeper in moral choices!  What do we have to sacrifice, but also how much must the individual sacrifice versus what would set more people slightly back! The price of gambling and guesses would extend way beyond a game of cards.

Art by unknown Russian Artist

That is the anime I would make based on “Horror” and “Poker” ! Would you have an idea on how to make such an anime?! Do you have an idea (topic and genre) for my “create an anime” series? I have so much fun doing things like these! So I would really appreciate some suggestions! Either way! There is this shrouded black woman standing in front of my door and she keeps ringing the doorbell! I’ll go see what she wants! Stay random loyal subjects!

I tribute summon this Retro Review: Yu-Gi-Oh Stairway to the Destined Duel

I like older games! So I write a lot about older games! The game I am replaying today is one of those games, you just sink so many hours into.  I truly adored this game when I was a little Pinkie, nothing made me happier than just wailing endlessly on Mokuba with my Slate Warrior and Harpie’s Brother! Which now is named Sky Scout! Yu-gi-oh changed..so has my perception of this game? Let’s find out!

Back to Battle City

Stairway to the destined duel is a Gameboy Advanced only game that came it mid April 2003 around the world. In this game you play a nameless protagonist without any sprite of their own.. as you see through their eyes in a visual novel esque way. You  travel across Battle City to defeat duellists and compete in tournaments hidden all over the map. Each day of the week you can travel a bit, and interact with one location. Each duellist you have beaten gives you a choice of a card pack to improve your deck with.These opponents usually are the series staples such as Yugi, Joey and Kaiba. Of course there is also a number  the famous opponents such as Rex Raptor, Weevil Underwood and Mako Tsunami. In total the roster contains 23 opponents you can face and everyone of them uses their themed decks.. which gradually improve like yours as time goes on. Your goal is to find and duel all five Ghouls before having a showdown with Marik for the faith of the world.. but there is so much more to do.

Unlike the story driven GBA games  “The Sacred Cards”  and “Reshef of Destruction” there isn’t much plot to follow. By winning duels and by being  at certain spots on the map in particular days you unlock stuff. New duelists become available if you win or lose against opponents or get specific cards, Rare Hunters, show up at certain days in certain areas. It is all very random and casual. You pick this game up , not because you want to complete it or rush to the ending you pick it up because you want to play a few duels. It should be noted that this is in the classic Yu-Gi-Oh erra. When I say classic I do mean classic. This game doesn’t go much further than the Labyrinth of Nightmare Booster packs which was only the fifth ever series of booster packs ever to be released. It was really the age of the anime and as such I think it works better if you see this as an anime game than a yu-gi-oh tcg game. At least nowadays there are plenty of “more expansive” games to collect cards in. While the options feel quite limited today I must say some elements really pleased me. More so than some later instalments of the series. 

It’s time to D-D-D-Duel

What makes this game stand out is how fast it actually plays. With only 1000 trading cards and effect monsters , and your extra deck being limited to fusions thi game has to make very little checks! It shows.. these duels are paced so nicely! Coming of Reverse of Arcadia, on of the alleged best Yu-Gi-Oh games I must say that dueling in this classic game feels so much snappier. The quick play spells or constant monster effects are sparing so we do not get that “AI”  lag later games have to reveal that they have something activatable on their field or in their hand. Later games have this prompt you press to skip activation points for a certain card. For example the spell card Rush Recklessly can be activated anywhere in a battle. Mystical Space Typhoon is a quick play spell and Solemn Judgment can negate any cardplay. When you know a bit about the card game you can tell when a trap card is not going to be something scary like “Mirror Force”  if your opponent stalls.  While the player can skip triggers.. the AI can not and you see it think to activate a card.  It can result in matches feeling very stally!  So pacing wise..with maybe an exception for Legacy of the Duelist, this is the game to play.

The story based games often also have save points while in this game you can just pick up your GBA,  play two matches while you wait for your pizza to come out the oven and put it away. This is what I loved so much about the game and this is why to this day I love it so much still. There is a simplicity to it that Duel Links used to emulate, but in a much more greedy money hungry way. If you want a good and nice old classic deck..You just have to pick it up and play! Within a minute after booting  the game up you are already in the first turn of your duel and can play some nostalgic matches and little by little improve your deck! All duellist differ enough from each other to also play for a bit longer if you say prefer but the monotone basic graphics might make that a bit of an underwhelming experience in the long run. Dealers choice though! With just 1000 cards to collect this is also THE Yu-gi-oh game to start with when your new to the game. Yes you mis Xyz summons, yes they haven’t heard of synchro’s and hell no there aren’t any pendulum or link summons.. so there is still more to learn.. but this game off all the Yu-gi-oh games I think is best equipped to teach you the core mechanics in a very easy way. I had no rulebook but I learned to play Yu-Gi-Oh just from this game alone bu looking at all the visual clues and text you can get far. 

Obviously knowing how to play will let you get further. For example the character Mokuba is unlocked by losing five duels. Tiny Pinkie unlocked him right away , as she stumbled to learn the rules she took quite a few losses. Nowadays Pinkie however has much more insight in how to play cleverly. Sending Dark Magician to the graveyard seemed bad when I was young.. but now with Premature Burial in my deck and Monster Reborn, I rather have it in the grave than in my hand. Now I know with Change of Heart I can steal a monster.. but I should not just swing in with it because after one turn I lose control! I better use that stolen monster to tribute summon. I am only one Hunter or maybe two away from facing the “final boss”  and I have yet to unlock Mokuba in my current run. Which does bring me to the downsides of the game.

Trap Hole

This game was made in a time that people didn’t completely understand the whole mechanics behind Yu-Gi-oh yet! It was fairly new and there wasn’t t THAT much of a Meta. You played a deck because you thought it was cool and you made it work. Now people realise to keep their deck very small and utilize your graveyard. It isn’t bad to have monsters be in your graveyard. Combos like stealing a Maha Vailo (who has an effect to gain 500 attack when he is equipped with something)  with Snatch and Steal.. weren’t familiar yet.. but they are now!  As a result I find this run to be somewhat too easy. I only lost to Kaiba, Joey and Ishizu so far and have almost five victories on everyone so far. And that was upon my first writing this post Since my margins have increased a lot further. The Duelists do get stronger as time passes.. but I can’t help but feel they are meant to grow alongside you.. if you are already grown they do seem a bit amateurish. To be fair Joey, Yugi, Ishizu, Kaiba Odion, Pegasus  Bandit Keith and Meric.. heck even Tea for some reason can give a run for your money but if you understand how their deck works , which isn’t that hard..it is pretty easy to build in counters.

Tiny Pinkie for example used to love to play “The Bistro Butcher” which is a 1800 attack four star beater card, which meant you can summon it directly and in 2003 there weren’t a lot of higher beaters out there. It had an effect as well which was super cool! Butchers forces your opponent to draw two cards, which could lead to decking out! Deck destruction in the anime was always depicted as something really brutal and all, but giving them +2  is actually great for them. It’s like paying 1800 life points for Pot of Greed…which is still legal in this game as well., But while it dealt massive damage it also boosted my opponents hand. Now that I know to avoid it and play seven coloured fish instead I take almost to little of a beating. It doesn’t mean I flawlessly win all the time (though my deck is approaching that point)  but yeah.. I know how to play Yu-gi-oh and getting a pack with a chance of good cards after every match is quite a lot like the easy mode. Later games like Reverse of Arcadia. give you money from which you can buy packs! I have a lot of trouble beating that game! Mostly because of the plethora of useless cards to pull with a more finite resource!

I am not sure if I want to call the card reward a negative though.. it does mean I can really see my deck get better after a particularly lucky duel and that made me a lot happier than the lucky draws in later games ever did. It makes the game easier.. but now each duel feels so much more rewarding..So I will keep this as a pick your poison. If you want a challenge you are better of elsewhere! If you want to have fun with deck building and feel like a bad-ass for whooping Kaiba’s butt! This is your game! It is really rewarding for playing and I do really love that about this game! It lacks a bit of love in the translations though! There are a few weird dialogue lines, there are typo’s and Tea gives her sub Japanese name as they forgot to change it. I kinda chuckle at the these.. old retro games did this all the time and I am happy to see it on occasion! But if you want a sleek experience..Legacy of the Duelist once more is the better option. I find these flaws.. to give it some soul!

What IS a negative though is the huge amount of RNG. For example there is a contest called the target competition in which you are given two duelist you need to face and defeat.  All duelist randomly walk across the map like you and I am not  fully sure if everyone is there every day, but whether or not you find that specific guy  or not really depends on where you decide to stroll too. The same goes for the elimination tournament.. it will be held on Fridays on a “secret” location If you aren’t on a space adjacent to a tournament on Thursday.. you can not compete. Not that winning tournaments does much anyway you just get a more “weighted” back with some chance to find rare cards. Yet again this reward is RNG. I was lucky to get a Jinzo very early on which really made dueling easier and I really want to use it against Odion just for a laugh! Yet the rare hunters that show up..start on random days and the one you do encounter is… you guessed it RANDOM! This is forgivable since the game is basically made to just pick up and play but if you want to beat Meric and get it over with.. you really should know.. in this game you are playing with more RNG than anime version Joey Wheeler.

Like i said earlier the textures can be a bit boring as well. The overworld map is  fine but its just a map with some icons on it and your duel background is just a pyramid wall. Monster art is only visual on a basic attack animation and cards are just represent as rectangles in their colour with a black square. This can make it easy to not notice a monster has been tributed and you attack into a to powerful monster or you  swap your monsters and thought Battle Ox was left and Giant Rat was on the right.. while in truth it was the opposite and you see your Rat kamikaze against Alligator Sword by accident. Again though I am not really sure if I mind I like having  to check the field and be on my guard.. it keeps my head in the duel. In Legacy of the duelist where you can see every monster crystal clear it is easy to check your messages in between an opponent thinking if it should activate Rush Recklessly on your draw phase but here.. if I look away and miss Mako tributing his 700 attack point fish for a 2300 attack ocean monster and attack into it.. it could lose me a duel. The lack of animations can get kinda boring but it also keeps the pace of the game up. This game is my favourite paced yu-gi-oh of the all.. so I am not sure if I would trade that away. As long as I keep playing this game in short bursts this is fine!

King of Games

All in all I do not think Stairway to the destined duel has aged all that poorly!  It is not a game you’ll want to play to play some modern yu-gi-oh.. but I am going to be honest here.. modern day Yu-Gi-oh is not fun to play anymore anyway. One Turn Kill Decks,  Turns that last half an hour due to all sorts of activations and combos, flooding the field in a single turn.. it has turned Yu-Gi-Oh away from a battle field where people deal blows each turn.. to people tossing stuff on the board and them making it go boom in a single turn maybe two. This to me is the Yu-Gi-Oh i like to play.. a style that would linger up until the early synchro days.
This is nothing to the actual trading card game.. but this plays pretty darn close to how the anime feels. If you want to feel like an anime character without having t o deal with stupid changing banlists, (I do not know why some games did that)  and take on the King of Games of old.. if you want to learn how Yugioh works.. this is still my highest recommendation! Jus run Seven Coloured fish over The Bistro Butcher!

It is intuitive, you keep oversight , characters look and act like themselves and there are a few hilarious glitches and exploits to take advantage of! Tea introducing herself with her japanese name but after that going back to Tea.. using cards to break the return to owner effect of Change of heart .. and other fun stuff is there for you to try.This is one of those games that might be to easy but you can just play with a more gimmicky deck! There is a lot of fun to be had with this old cartridge and I will be playing it on and off for a while I think!
I will go play a few matches and play my own Blue Eyes White Dragon! Let’s go WHITE LIGTHNING ATTACK!

Do note that this review is from a very specific standpoint! There are plenty of reasons why this game could score much much lower. For what this is however, being a callback to the purest and classic Yu-gi-oh , with a retro feel to match I do very much stand by my view! What is your favourite Yu-Gi-Oh game?! Have you even played any?! I am considering buying Legacy of the Duelist for Switc and reviewing that for you was well. Want to see that happen than please consider supporting my Kofi page!


It’s time to D-D-D-Duel already? OWLS Tour: Visions

Welcome my sweet island guests. It’s time for me to spread my wings again and take you on a little flight tour. It’s gonna be a hoot! That’s right it’s another OWLS Tour. By now you have read the prompt plenty of times in other OWLS post plus it feels really wrong to wish you a happy new year this late in the year. I always wish you a happy life and happy days. Prompt or no prompt though in the month January we talk about visions. How is the future depicted in our favorite anime, manga, movie? How do we see ourselves in the future?

This is what the Otaku Warriors of Liberty and Self Respect discussed this month. To read more about them click on the cute owls cocktail! To me the future can be uncertain and waiting for it can feel keep quite bad . Perhaps something you really want is locked behind “the future”. In the future people might be more accepting of who you are. In the future I might get healthier. When we envision the future it always seems very far away. We might not live to see those moments we envision. It might be not for us. Yet one anime we all know is kind of becoming living proof that sometimes the future isn’t as far off as it may seem and it shows us we might have a big role to play in realising it.

Pegasus Wings

When we first saw Yu-Gi-Oh  appear in the early zero’s we never would have believed that we could ever play Yu-Gi-Oh like in that show Plenty of us thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool if one day we could duel like that?’ A lot of people still think do. What plenty of people do not realise is that that future is basically already here. I shall highlight a few technologies that we deemed impossible or stuff in the far far future but that is here already.I would like to begin where it all began.  The Duelist Kingdom.

Yes I know there is a season zero but that is something I choose to omit. When Maximillion Pegasus created the Duel Monsters card game it wasn’t much more than the tradable card game we see played in our own world championships. Just some guys playing cards. To earn more money… and  to gain all the millenium items in an evil plot … he had to make it a bit more spectacular. So the big holographic machines in the first season came to be. Back in 2001 this seemed like some star wars level of sci fi. Yet in 2017 a group of geeks like us . but waaaay smarter than me personally, managed to created some very impressive hologram table that basically puts Pegasus ones to shame.In fact one bigwig of Namco was so impressed that he joined the team to ready it for gaming purposes mostly for the arcade.Dragon Ball Heroes shows us we can already make cards interact with arcade cabinets very well. So already what seemed like it would be  ages away is right around the corner.

The theme of future being closer than we might think is present throughout the series as well. Virtually every Yu-gi-oh character grows up way faster, after an unforseen event . Yu-gi learns from a maturer version of himself, only to find out he surpasses him way faster than he would have thought. Yuki/Jaden has to merge with Yubel which makes him a much more mature character. Yusei had to grow up fast to survive in Satellite and we see Yuma grow from a bumbling fool into a hero that saves the world mere days after disovering Astral.  Yusaku lives roughly 10 years into our future, showing us that the noble creators have seen how close we are of having his world in reality. Yet also he was captured and shaped into a grown up faster than would have been normal. Yuya is the one I missed out on but he lost his father and had to step up….sooner than expected. Sometimes the future is closer than you think, for good OR for bad.

When we talk about the future we tend to envision it at a fixed point in time. We imagine where we will be in 10 years, we don’t imagine where we will be when we have a lucky windfall. Yet progress is like a snowball. The further it goes the larger it gets the faster it moves. This means that the future is often not 10 years away but only a series of discoveries. A chain of events once set in motion becoming a fast moving force. Whether you are waiting for your favorite trading card game to become reality or the acceptance of your subgroup becoming widespread. we do not need years..we need events and people starting the motions. While it may seem like a waiting game, in our own way we are the architects to the future.

Kaiba is real

Why are WE the architects of the future? Who is WE anyway? Well with we in this case I mean us geeks. I think geeks have a significant impact on the future. Wether we just buy 7 versions of Skyrim and support Todd coming up with new ways to play it, or if we actively imagine the idea of a star wars droid coming to live. All of us geeks do something on a nearly daily basis that is an absolute requirement to make the future happen faster. That key elements all geeks have in common is that we prefer to enter fantasy worlds on a daily basis. As such our imagination is significant larger than that of those who, let’s saysit in the gym everyday and binge Just Tattoo of Us. While normies contribute in their own way , I think in shaping the future we take a more crucial role. They however serve as the control that keeps us in check. To realise the future I think we need 3 sorts of people. We need a Yugi Muto,  we need a Maximillion Pegasus and we need a Seto Kaiba. 

(“Where’s Yugi Boy in this picture?” “Pinkie was to lazy to edit him in he is right below”)

For this comparison let’s take Battle City Dueling  as their future becoming real. Yugi serves the role as the believer of an idea, the one who fantasises, the “nerd” if you will. Yugi is like us. This is shown throughout the show as well, Yugi is being picked on, a telltale sign of being geeky unfortunately, or at the very least how we are depicted. Yet the spiky haired protagonist is also the one who believes in his cards. He sees them as his friends.He trusts them. Talks to them. Like I talk to my pokémon! In fact basically the entire world they live in is geeky. People would rather watch these complex duels than people trying to take a ball across a field.

Every single duelist practicing their pro sport has some sort of geeky hobby or connection. Weevil  collects bugs, rex collects fossils and is into archeology and stuff. Bones is crazy about zombies. Even the Bear Grylls of their world Mako Tsunami is heavily into the children’s card game. Every single duelist who has a connection to their deck is a geek in one shape way or form. Duelist Kingdom even shows this in Yugi’s style of thinking when he destroys the moon. That’s some video game logic style thinking right there. Troughout the entire world everyone is in love with the cards in their deck and has a connection to the fantastical creatures.. Let’s compare this one with star wars fan and also the writers who come up with the story
Then there is Joey and Tristan.,, not sure where they fit. .

(
Joey is a weird duelist, his deck is basicly gambling and stuff he took from other players…..I guess he is ad D&D geek)

Next we need the realist. Someone who  sees these people’s needs and gives them what they want….sort off. The people that give us the semblance of an idea we try to achieve. Pegasus fills this role in the yu-gi-oh world. He creates a card game that pleases everyone.  From a Chad that uses his machine cards to power trip. to a woman who lives out her sexual fantasies through her harpy cards. From the boy pretending to be an Esper to a tomb keeper of ancient egypt. No matter who you are, there is always a deck for you. You will have to spend a fortune on packs though. Pegasus showed that people that play this sport, want to live their fantasy and that there in fact is profit and glory to be had in making these fantasies as real as possible.

In the real world the game companies fill this function. With current technologies they want to provide something for people either to make a point or to gain a few bucks. The toy companies selling you a fake lightsaber so you can pretend to be a Jedi would also be in here. In a way even the OWLS are part of this category of people. We see xenophobia, alienation, exclusion towards people who don’t have to be shunned or degraded in any way. We see a world where we unite trough our fandoms and with what means we have right now we try to get the message out. Our blogs are the toys we can pretend with that the world is already a great place, we can offer an escape from the harsh reality that we aren’t there yet..
Even though Pegasus could not make his world’s shared fantasy fully real, nor can we reshape the world simply trough blogs and youtube, we inspire the risk taker, the visionaries, to go above and beyond.

(Such a fitting card.. either we crash and burn .. or we jump to the future!)

Kaiba is the final person we need to bring the future alive. We need a dreamer to come up with an idea, a realist to show this idea is not just a whim and a visionary to actually bring the future alive. Usually the visionary is at least in some shape way or form part of the dreamers as well. Most visionaries are at least somewhat geeky. Like Kaiba they have a love for that idea of the future as well. Kaiba is crazy enough to build a dueling system that works everywhere just because he is in love with the game so much he wants to be able to play it anywhere. Well that and to proof that he is the true king of games.

He loves his cards so much that he builds jet’s shaped like his favorite cards. He hosts tournaments so people can see other people duel and he even pays for a school that inspires people to choose a profession in the world of duel monsters. He doesn’t even own Industrial Illusion’s which make the cards. He just sells the hardware. Yet Kaiba Corp did not start out making what is effectively that world’s most popular console. It started as a weapons company led by his adoptive father. It took courage, bravery and a belief in a different future to make Battle City happen. He also had to scheme his father out of his market shares to make it possible. 

Our world has exactly that same type of visionairs. Maybe they are not as edgy as the rival of Yugi but who knows. Elon Musk might have long white trench coats with studs all across in his wardrobe. I bet he’d love to shape his drilling machines like his favorite kaiju or pokémon..with some luck he might one day even make a Gurren. He might conference call with other car CEO’s when he works for Tesla and be like “I am gonna destroy you Audi’ and then people finally will realise I am the king of cars. I can totally see him making a jet for himself shaped like a dragon as well…or something else he really likes.  Back to my point, we have visionaries, Elon Musk is our Kaiba and we have other people like him. These people will take huge risks to bring the future of tomorrow into today but nearly all these visionaries are rather unpredictable so again.. the future may be just around the corner.

(Elon summons Blue Eyes without tribute because.. screw the rules… he has money)

Get your game on

Yu-gi-oh to me is a great metaphor for how close the future is. Plenty of season show us how the past, present and sometimes future are interwoven. We create our own future! Like how Atem was able to stop Zork. He was able to summon the egyptian gods because he had learned their names in the the future. So by simply imagining things we take huge steps in making them become real. For many transgender, the progress of physically becoming yourself might seem painstakingly slow and far away in the future but by simply knowing you signed up you already give of a signal to the world. I am ready! I need this. Doctors and Visionaries will see this and see more and more people desire to be their true self. This will allow our world’s Kaibas to invent new techniques, better techniques and allows our Maximillions (the plural thing on a surname and Pegasus is kinda tricky) to get who process more streamlined. Dare to take that step even if it seems to take ages! People get information and inspiration from your courage.

The same can be said for tolerance towards whatever niche you may belong to. Show that desire, show the wish and even if it is not you if plenty people wish together some visionary WILL stand up and bring the future sooner than you might expect. Yet be wary, do not splinter yourself off to much. Our voices must be heard and for that we must join together. Do not demand rights for you! Inspire courage towards your niche, towards your desire and do not fight alone. Do not ask for a pink lightsaber that hums like the darksaber, while a regular lightsaber hasn’t even been invented yet.  In Yu-gi-oh you will have to optimise your hand, you can not go for an Exodia Strategy if you don’t have enough card drawing power. Win some games first to get the proper cards and THEN go for the endgame. We can skim of years but not ages. If we ask for to much our visionary will not arrived and the future will just stay the future. 

(The future is within our reach, the future of the futre is never in reach)

Let’s compare two Yu-gi-oh seasons that are very close to each other for example. Yu-gi-oh 5d’s and Yu-gi-oh Zexal. Say we wish one of them should become real, we still have to wish Zexal becomes real first, no matter how much we would like to play a children’s card game on motorcycles. Yuma’s duel disk comes with special glasses that show him the holograms.  Basically Yuma’s Yu-Gi-Oh already exists in the form of augmented reality. The graphics aren’t good enough and the computers are just not strong enough to create the full effect. However this is a matter of years. In fact if we look back at that VR-Table I posted above.. it’s possible now most likely.. just not economically viable. We just need the tiniest push and we are in the realm of Zexal (minus the magic eyes and weird energy sources). Yu-gi-oh can happen now! Yet we can’t really expect the technology to be fitted in vehicles yet, let alone to gain a city that will reroute all traffic because people are playing a card game (okay the worldbuilding of 5d’s might be somewhat bad).

The future seems far away at times but it is our imagination what draws it in closer. Our imagination drives others, or even ourselves to invent stuff like it. A lot of Star Trek things, people would never expect to be real yet most off the ‘secondary’ technology has become real. We have view screens, we have  virtual reality close to their holodeck, we can 3d print objects, we can communicate like them etc. With Yu-Gi-Oh we already can duel in virtual reality like Playmaker does in Vrains, although we REALLY need to debug it still. In fairness those who made it didn’t make it officially so there is that..It’s kind of a mod-like thing so imagine what an official product could do. We can kinda duel like Yuma in augmented reality as well. Sure there is no duel disk yet that shoots computer driven  hologram-projecting robot, so there is still some way to go but that is a rather negative angle. The vision is becoming more and more real. Things do actually change! We are improving, we are ready to duel! However ..like in any dystopian sci-fi vision of the future we also always want to much.

When envisioning the future it’s never bad to think big, to look very far ahead but is also not very satisfying. I could look at at those augmented reality games held at the world championships of yu-gi-oh and go like…. NOPE that is not the future yet. Yet when it will finally arrive I will be surprised and ill prepared.  I haven’t build a cool deck yet.. because that other stuff wasn’t worth it. I could also nod and smile as we move in the right direction. Start buying my Yu-gi-oh cards, because I know that it will come soon. I could have fun with the yanky vr simulations or the wooden augmented reality knowing I helped it grow.

I could focus on the intollerance I encounter, when flirting with other girls or when I say I do not want childeren or that I consider myself somewhat asexual and be like “jeez the future isn’t here yet I still feel unaccepted because there are still ignorant people.” Yet I could also feel happy because of the positive reactions I do get, the positive reaction Nikkietutorials  shows the world is becoming more and more tolerant. The latter is such more pleasant to do. While I DO look towards my desired future at the horizon, I also embrace everything that passes by. That way the future is not just a vision. It will be a journey!

Other OWL Posts (Click to visit to them)

Healing from the past – Megan – Nerd Rambles

Spiderverse – Matt- Matt in the Hat

Idolmaster Side M – Takuto – Takuto’s Anime Café

Visions of a Brighter Future – Aria – The Animanga Spellbook

Vision for a Better Tommorow- Naja- Blerdy Otome

The Vision of Escaflowne – Fred- Au Natural

BTS Music – Crimson – Cute Boys Central

Akira- Dale – That Baka Blog

Vision of Slice of Life Anime – Scott – Mechanical Anime Reviews
(article goes live on 29/01 Until then click here!)

Star Trek The Nex Generation – Matt – Matt Doyle Media
(article goes live on 31/01 Untill then click here)

I am a Joustus Princess: Shovel Knight- King of Cards

As a retro-gaming enthusiast it should be no surprise Shovel Knight, alongside the Messenger, was one of my favorite games of the last decade. It’s downloadable content , which came free with the treasure trove version was one of THE best bundles I have EVER played. We got not one but FOUR brand new games. (This includes the free showdown game). Both Plague Knight and Spectre Knight’s games repurposed the game into their own unique game. King Knight is the final DLC that released recently and not only does it feel even more different than before, it adds a very strong sub game in as well. So this one is not just a new game.. it’s 1.5 new game. Is that as good as it sounds or is the game being to ambitious.

Shallow Knight

Shovel Knight Plague Knight and Spectre Knight . while having vastly different mechanics ,all had more or less the same concept. We were playing a Mega Man like game where we selected bosses to fight and had to play through their respective stages. Eight stages and a multileveled boss castle. That format is gone. Instead we have several sub stages themed after the classic bosses, or even shovel knight allies. Spread over 4 worlds. At the end of each world we get a castle with a boss at the end. Plenty of stages have several Goal posts, allowing you to access “secret” areas, granting you access to relics or treasure. So the game changed conceptually from Mega Man to Mario and while that seems like a drastic departure it fits King Knight like a dueling glove. ..technically you do not wear those but carry those.. but bare with me.  Do we have to deal with the Knights of No Quarter at all then in this game? Well . yes and no, most of the knights you can still encounter, but most of them are optional and/or locked on secret routes.
You befriend them and backstab them, or just fall out over petty reasons.

NANI! How does this game work then Pinkie? Well you see King Knight is way to much of a narcissist to care about the grander adventures of the other knights. He’s an arrogant kid that just wants to be the king.  When a big tournament of a card game of called Joustus is being held, and it’s three judges are three important king, King Knight wants to be recognised as the true king and decides to learn the card game and beat them at their own game. Aided by his mother, a chicken and a bard he will travel across the lands searching far and wide, for Joustus Cards , and to understand the power that is inside. We don’t play through stages to really get stronger, to vanquish evil or for love. We want money so we can buy cheats and cards in a card game and to make our way and face the other three kings to show you are a better king.I love the plot and the motivation in this game. Plague Knight was kinda petty, but this one a boy..talk about a little guy. King Knight usually is the easiest boss  in the other games and they do him justice. The most superficial of them all.

Platform Knight

The King Knight DLC can be split into two parts. The platforming stages and the taverns where you can actually play the card game of Joustus.I think the card game part is optional, but I am not sure, because I had way to much fun playing it I always cleared a tavern as soon as I reached it. Yet let’s start with the part that is absolutely required. The platforming. Stages are divided in a Super Mario 3 like map and as mentioned earlier they are themed around the classic areas, but not always the boss stages. For example we do get a few stages shaped after Troupple Pond… and of course since we fight three kings.. the Troupple King and his dance is a boss in this game. Finally I can beat up the apple whale! That’s a bonus point already. Instead of huge stages with five or six checkpoints, each area usually has about 3 stages with just one or two checkpoints. Up and around the first checkpoint you usually find the more challenging branche of route leading to the red , instead of the golden exit. Unless you fight a boss of course. The Red Routes give you access to relics which you can pay for medals. You can earn medals by winning Joustus games or by finding the three  ones that are “hidden” in each stage. Compare these medals with the green stars/star coins/challenge stars from the recent mario games. You usually have to think innovatively or take a big risk to get them.

So from the offset throughout there already seems a heavier emphasis on platforming challenge, it’s not so much a survival platformer like megaman. We really are in mario turf here, and while his Mother can cook for King Knight to upgrade his health your worst enemy in this one is definitely the pits. Well that and those birders, which are a straight reminder of the medusa heads in castlevania..and guess what! King Knight has a knockback! That can’t be a coincidence. I died twice or so in the starter stage and then a few times in a lot of the stages. Not because I suck .. but  because of positive reasons. First of all, the gloves are off, the game realises you probably done this a lot by now so it doesn’t shy away from throwing you a challenge or two. This only increases if you actively hunt for the medals… do yourself a favor and hunt for the medals.. it makes the game so much better. Other than that the stages are soo vastly different from another. Each stage is build around one or two certain types of mechanics that you could find in the classical knight stages.. so just take the theme up and beyond. The highlight for me was a plague knight stage where the stage consisted out of several coloured corked test tubes.. Shoulder charing (King  Knight Signature move) into a random part that you can hit builds up pressure causing the corks to shoot away, creating and relocating platforms. Such a clever and delightful stage. We see the return of some fan favorites, like the fire bug and the angler fish. There was hardly a stage I did not like, so  this is already a platformer where I like nearly every stage.

Troupple Knight

The fact that I am using the word nearly does imply there are a few stages that I do dislike.The earlier mentioned fire bug is one, and the fight against the troupple king is another. The biggest issue is that King Knight is a combo character. from his shoulder jump he goes into a spin jump, that can drill through blocks, treasure spots or enemies. Each successful spin jump will lead into another and gives you a new chance to shoulder charge. This means  that if you are a true boss you can guide our good old pal king across the platform stages in one big combo, even more options open to you by the use of your relics, which this time arent nearly as overpowered as for example the phase locket was in the original shovel knights, the really powerful relics you can only use once or twice before running out of vigor.
However stages like the Apple Whale Fish King, the bouncy fire and the spikey ice stage require you NOT to combo. These are the type of stages I do not like. While I do get the idea these stages felt slippery to me, like you are not fighting against the stage but against the controls. While this is retro I never found these challenges AS fair.

The absolute worst was the boss fight against the Trouble King. You are stuck on a tiny boat/platform and landing in the water equals death. While I had some relics to aid me in this case, I am one of those purist type players that really wants to finish her game without overly relying on added mechanics. The apple fish however I found utterly impossible, without my rat-bomb relic. I got a lot of vigor so it may have been intended to be cleared that way but it feels odd that ONE stage is the only one that requires  these relics. I got an achievement for using them though this method though so clearly I did something right. Having this little sense of control through made me feel very anxious and the guy I wanted to fight most in the entire game turned out to be the part that I liked least. *Sad Panda Noises*

Joustus Knight

So while the platforming has three low points, out of like thirty or something, which relates to a score of 9/10 or something, there still is a second part of this game. The Joustus card game. Sweet pink lollipop covered in cotton candy fluff….. I LOVE Joustus. The card game is so incredibly fun. I had as much fun with this game as with the good yu-gi-oh gba and ds games. This game is more fun than Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII and FFXIV. Those who ever played Triple Triad know how good of a game that is. Joustus plays a lot like it as well. In a limited grid (which varies per duel)  there are a few tiles that have gems on it. players can place playing cards on any square that does not have a jewel. Each card has arrows on them showing what force they can exert on other cards.  This way you should push your own cards to conquer the gems, push the enemies cards into holes (which then become inaccessible) and move across the board in a tactical manner. When the board is fully occupied and or no moves are left the one with the most gems win.  The winner gets to claim a card of their opponent as long as they have used it in the duel. Should the winner get all three gems (as long as there are three) they can even take 3 cards from their opponent. Its such an easy to understand game as soon as you just see the first tutorial but there is a whole other level of depth that I haven’t even seen in dedicated card games.

(such a fun cardgame)

As you start all cards are very simple but later you unlock ones with special abilities, more powerful movement options or even double movement. We get special fields like hole that swallow up cards and require a sacrifice, walls that require you to shove a bomb character into and  then there are of course the crystal squares you can not place characters on. Special abilities allows you to flip cards your card pushes over, destroy cards, change movement arrows and more. While Triple Triad has its share of special rules, like plus or minus those rules always felt very forced to me, like some yu-gi-oh or magic cards , where you have no idea what they actually do. The card game in King of Cards however conveys all their special techniques trough simple symbols and a “play to find out” method, encouraging you to experiment. A few duel puzzles will help you understand these methods more in depth. Frizzlesticks this game is good! Each tavern has a boss which has special abilities that King Knight can counter by buying cheats.. of course he can always cheat in the other duels as well but save your money because King of Cards has some sweet but overpriced unlockables. For example the king can pimp his hud, card layout or menu with golden details. It costs you waaay to much coin and it’s barely noticeable but it’s totally King Knight. This final expansion is the best on yet! As a wise man once said….hail to the king baby!

(I’d be Pink Knight of course)

Five Game Characters I’d Invite to New Years Eve

We are rounding it out, finishing the story of the biggest cross media New Years Eve party I’ve ever hosted. We’ve got a bit of everything , Including Pokémon, Bloggers Anime Characters and now we are up to video game characters. Like every other guestlist I have made, the five guests have to contribute something to the party. Not only because I am mean and lazy, I mean I am lazy but not THAT mean. It’s because I want to set an example that if we can all work together we can throw the most epic party on the fictional  planet where my fictional tropical resort is on. So let’s not waste any time and see which video game characters I’d invite.

Game Guest  1: Donkey Kong : The Bouncer

While everyone is welcome, you still got to have a bouncer, because you still have to have good intentions. When you come to paradise to troll, laugh at the weebs.. or in case you get to drunk and cause trouble you gotta go! Since I would lose a fistfight to a juice box, I really can’t manage this myself. My Pokémon have other things to do.. and one is an evil killer creature, the bloggers I doubt will do much good and I have only two anime characters that could fight..but they have other functions.  I don’t want some gun wielding nutjob like Max Payne or Master Chief to handle my security. I hold a strict no guns policy, unless the guns shoot bubbles. I could have invited Genzo Shibata from Kemono Michi in yesterday’s post but I am afraid of what he will do to my pokémon. I don’t want him to lewd Raticate or Jigglypuff and I don’t want to get suplexed for asking him to deal with someone dressed as a cat girl or something. So I had to make a carefully selected pick. So I of course ended up picking a gorilla what hides in barrels and has a no tolerance policy on piracy. The Kong formerly known as Donkey Jr… Donkey Kong. 

(Such a good bouncer, he even has a suit)

He’s finally here, bouncing for you, if you misbehave you’ll get bounced out too! If you make me cry he will give a slap! As we take you through this Monkey RAP! Huh! DK Donkey Kong! DK Donkey Kong is here! This ape has been a beloved video game hero ever since he tried to rescue his father in Donkey Kong Jr. In Donkey Kong Country he finally took the name of his father who moved on to become Cranky Kong. Thus this Kong never kidnapped Pauline, and thusly has a clean record. Important for a bouncer to have a good record. Punch Out for Wii shown he can fist fight, we see him able to grapple things, he shoots coconuts, which I do not count as a gun but as a gag weapon. He is musical so he can help the band of Jigglypuff and he is very good and hauling barrels. Which means that besides a bouncer I also got someone who can fetch the kegs of beer and barrels of wine. He is indigenous to the tropics so PETA will not bother me either with their silly little nags when it comes down animals in geekdom. And best of all I think Donkey Kong could give some of the best hugs..or crush my spine when doing it after which he would throw fecies at my corpse… he still is a gorilla after all.

(Donkey Kong says he would never do that stuff I said last)

Game Guest 2: Tommy Vercetti : The Designated Driver

While on paradise anyone can have a beach bungalow for the night free of charge, I get that a few people will have to leave early. New years day they visit their family and all of that stuff so I will take care of transportation from and to the island for you.  While Donkey Kong has shown he is capable of driving in the mario kart games I did not think it was a great idea to let an ape pilot a plane or an aquatic vehicle. I mean his cousin Diddy can do that but I am still hoping that Diddy Kong Racing will return one day so I will not be stealing the hatted simian’s time. Big brain tactics going on over here. So rather than give this job to some cutesy little animal I gave the function to Vice City’s greatest narcissist criminal, Tommy Vercetti. I mean the guy has experience with playing taxi for people so he should be perfectly be able to do it. He comes already dressed for a tropical paradise either and he is a master of any vehicle, without gathering skill points or licenses for it. Whether you come by car, boat , plane or even tank Tommy can take care of it. He even might bring a little pick me up for those who are into such things. I am not personally, those things would kill my weak heart and such, but I also do not take a very negative stance against it. To each their own poison and all. So you do you and if Tommy can’t make a sale on the island, we can do a hidden package run all together the next day that sounds like a hoot and a half.

(That suit isn’t that well tailoured I think, I’ll get him a pink suit)

Tommy is used to deal with difficult people, long before he kills them all he helps them with some trivial task like getting them home after a party or the likes, so as long as you are not a big criminal kingpin…or a sex worker…. you will most likely be completely safe when using Tommy as your designated drivers. Just when you review him.. don’t give him five stars.. the military will show up and the party will be a mess. Never give a GTA character 5 stars, it’s a death sentence to them.  Tommy however will take care of you in retro style. The tunes he plays on his radio on the way back keep that party Buzz Buzz going for just a bit longer. How I am sure that he won’t drink an drive? Well Tommy usually only gets wasted when the cops show up or a rival gang tries to take him out, and there are no police or evil gangs on my island. So weirdly Tommy would not get wasted. Tommy can also blend in at the resort very well. He can play a mean round of golf, though Pinkie’s Paradise only has a putt putt course.  He likes investing money into booming business so we might even get an investor of this blog, and even if he is a money hungry criminal.. he isn’t as  money hungry as our next guest.

(Tommy isn’t much of a dancer, so he will stand out from the crowd when you want to go home)

Game Guest  3: Tom Nook:  The financer

Parties like these cost money and that is a resource I do not have. Nearly every wealthy character in gaming is an insane evil soulless  bastard. Handsome Jack will not treat my guests very well nor would Albert Wesker. Ken Masters would probably steal Dark Magician girl from me so he is out as well..he’s kind of a douche anyway.  So let’s look at the more child friendly consoles and series of games. Lara Croft simply wouldn’t be into parties plus I would not know which one of the renitions I would have to invite. Mario should have a lot of coin but whenever he gets hundred bucks he just gains more life essence.. so I doubt he will have over 100 dollars on his account. Which brings me to the most greedy bastard of all. Tom Nook! While he would finance such a triviality as a party without us paying him massive interest this time we will flip the tables around. Amongst all of us we will have laboured many hours for mister Nook, it is time he did something for us in return. If he wants us to buy stuff from him in that new game coming early next year than he better show he is as committed to us as we are to him. You gotta spend a few bells to make more bells. I bet making a raccoon give me money is something PETA will disagree with me on, so I guess I will give Tom Nook a chance to earn some money while financing my party. 

(At least Tom Nook is pleased by my style if he likes Kyary he will like me as well)

So as I told you everyone has a bungalow in Paradise. I guess Tom Nook can sell you all customisations sets for your bungalow should you desire to customise it. Your bungalows will be expandable and if you want to rent a hammock to lie on the beach at New Years Day.. you better bring some cash to pay Tom Nook. He will also rent out the putt putt golf course, for of course a nominal fee, boats, fishing rods and one of those speedboat banana things… new year’s day beach events will all be hosted by Tom. I will be in bed with a hangover anyway so I am honestly not all that bothered.  My bungalow is pink already so I doubt there is aa customisation set I want from and….. OH MY GOD UNICORN WALLPAPER….
Luckily I am immune to Tom Nook’s *cough* charm,  because even after this party is over I still won’t have any money. As soon as I have some though I will spend it on the new Animal Crossing Game of course.

(Sigh.. I should have expected as much)

Game Guest 4: King Knight: The Tabletop Guy 

I love myself a good competition on New Years Eve but Smash would exclude my friend Jilly, the only person in the world who doesn’t like Super Smash Bros so I’d feel said for her to host a big competition like that.  Gaming against each other can also get very insociable , but there is one type of gaming that never does. Tabletop gaming is always neat and cosey. Whether you play a card game, a storytelling game or a co-op adventure you always talk. To save some room at the party, the big board games like Dead of Winter or Fury of Dracula will not be played. To much stuff going on and when drinks spill people will cry. So we opted for a card battling game. Squall is way to emo and a buzzkill to be fun at a party so out with him and Triple Triad. Yugi and Kaiba cheat in their own game, plus the banlist changes about every hour so duel monsters is not viable as well, besides from that I don’t want anyone summoning something that can destroy my Dark Magician girl of my anime character post. Magic doesn’t really have great video game avatars plus it can be a tad elitist and that is not allowed at my party. Gwent is only played by people who love to rip other people to shreds.. so there is only one option left. We shall play Joustus! Since I don’t want to see a big apple fish dancing all the time we also only have one option on who to invite. King Knight.

(If he spins like that on the dancefloor I bet he will make a girl very happy.. and sick)

King Knight is the protagonist in the newest Shovel Knight expansion and it is great. The man has such great flavoring in all of his powers as well as his persona and sense of humor. This make King Knight a perfect party guest. Sure he will think he is superior but the guy is hurting inside and just needs a good cry. Fred might be able to help him, if you read my Bloggers invited post you’ll get that. He is not a great fighter and not that insanely evil… he is just a boy who believes he is a king that’s kinda cute. I am really good at Joustus as well so I could make some serious money at the tables. Maybe even enough to buy that unicorn wallpaper from Tom Nook…dag nabbit!. Joustus is a grid based card games where arrows can indicate movement, you use this to slide pieces around to claim as many “winning” tiles as you possibly can before the board is filled up. However some cards can block being pushed and have special effects and more of that jazz… it actually kinda feels like jousting with all that pushing. King Knight  is forced into the tutorial so he can explain you the finer details, but be warned he cheats. Luckily I don’t have blue fish guys in chests where he buys his cheats from.

(It’s time to J-J-J-J-J-Joustus)

Game Guest  5: Ratchet and Clank :  The Tech Guys

Yes yes I know that’s two characters but they just might as well be one plus it’s my blog so I rule that it counts. With a gaming court, a movie theatre  a fully equipped cocktail bar, a karaoke stage, and a band podium among other facilities there, is a lot of technology to handle. I know nothing of stage lighting and when I blow a fuse in my house I need assistance to realise what happened. So we need tech guys and who is better than Ratchett and Clank. No one really. Though I did consider that grandma from Watch Dogs 3 as well. Ratchett and Clank I’d say would be a lot quicker to respond can have access to difficult to reach spaces and when the party is over they most likely would happily take most of the scrap metal and stuff that is in my way to build weapons from as long as they dont build weapons on the island.  Both are huggable in their own way though I do prefer clank. His solo game I found to be rather enjoyable and I do not like Rachet’s character as much as I do like Clank. Still enough for a good hug though. So yay for cuddly tech support.

(I have no funny comment for this picture so you make one)

What puts Ratchet and Clank a nodge above the other candidates for tech support is their immense creativity. You see Mario is a plumber that can probably fix some leakage or pipes going to the Koopa Kingdom but only if he has the right parts. Being from Brooklyn (yes I am using that one)  he will never have the part that I need and has to wait for the store to open again on January second.I can’t use that sort of behaviour. Ratchet and Clank get the job done .. parts or no parts. If my band’s pyrotechnics do not work THEY will make some for me, if MasterMixMovies projector goes down, they will build me a new one or fix the old one. I can not think of any character that is as flexible as them except for maybe Macgyver but he got badly remade. We can somewhat say the same about this duo, being that their last games haven’t been THAT good, but hey that just means I can employ them cheaper, so Tom Nook is also happy because he is paying their bills.

(It’s fixing time!)

And with this we are all done with the party guest , which means it’s actually time to PARTAY! So everyone who joined me in this adventure, thank you so much for sticking trough untill the end and Happy New Year. Twenty Twenty will be our double digits of hapiness and love! Stay awesome, stay pink, untill we read again, Pinkie is blasting off again! Greetings from Pinkie’s Paradise and Happy Happy New Year.. may the force be with you.

The other Chapters in the New Years Party Arc
-A Pokémon Team For New Years Eve
-Five Bloggers I’d Invite to New Years Eve
-Five Anime Guest I’d Invite to New Years Eve
-Five Movie Characters I’d invite to New Years Eve

Selector Infected/Spread WIXOSS: When cute girls, play a children’s card game.

I love card battle animes and when it is presented in a cutesie Moe Moe way as an all girl cast series, I simply could not resist. When I started watching this show for the first time in early 2015 (a little after the second season concluded)  I was expecting a Kawaii Yu-Gi-Oh series with a hint of maybe Digimon due to the talking cards. One episode in I felt I was right about that assumption. Back than I had never watched a certain magical girl anime yet so I could not tell the signs yet, but Selector WIXOSS would completely bamboozle me. I was actually shocked at the story this anime really tells.  This review of (mostly) spoiler free, save for the basic premiss.

A girl and her LRIG

Ruuko Kominato is the protagonist of the first two seasons of Selector Wixoss,  Season one is titled Infected and Season 2 is called Spread, a fourteen year old girl, living in the big city alongside her grandma and brother. She is a simple girl who doesn’t have any deep desires for love, acknowledgment , good grades, beauty or whatever like most of her peers. She comes of a bit as a loner, but isn’t exactly unhappy about it. Her brother however also noticed and gift her a card deck for a game called WIXOSS, the popular card game  all the girls play, at her school. Not having any idea how to play Ruuko isn’t really sure about what to do with it at first, but one night when she actually looks at her desk she finds a very special card that looks like it holds a living girl. This girl can speak to her, albeit somewhat brokenly, and tells Ruuko she has amnesia,, or at the very least her head is very foggy. She has no name so Ruuko decides to name her Tama.

Tama is an LRIG a living card that can be used in WIXOSS battles against other card users who have been granted a living card.  Ruuko has become a selector she finds out, and winning three battles will grant her her deepest wish. There is one problem however. Ruuko doesn’t have one. When the series starts we see Ruuko befriend Tama..almost like a TAMAgotchi, she shows her stuff in the real world, they talk, go to sleep as if having sleepovers and so on. Yet Ruuko notices Tama is missing something, so she dips her feet in the world of WIXOSS which leads to her making new friends and growing into a stronger person. If you have seen any card battle anime, or even anime before.. you pretty much know how it goes.. except you don’t .

Dark , Darker, WiXOSS

This series is a bit of a slow burner, while season one carefully builds a world and gives our main character plenty of growth we as the viewer could at times feel this series isn’t doing anything special and you would be very wrong. Competitive events that grant your wish are nothing new, we have seen it in Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh heck even Oban Star Racer has it.  On first glance this looks like another generic series following that trope. Yet this series takes a LOT of inspiration from Madoka and assuming you’ve all seen or at least heard about Puella Magi Madoka Magica, you all know that isn’t a very happy show. That show is pretty dark. WIXOSS even goes a step beyond in terms of narrative darkness. While not as threatening or vicious as Madoka, this anime very much knows what it is and thinks very much about the penalties and the rewards of the “wish” system and uses it to create the darkest and most claustrophobic situation players can be in I’ve ever seen in the genre. If you think a Duel Monsters shadow game , where you risk your life …or risk going to the shadow realm if you prefer the dub, is badass, Selector will show you an entire new level of badass. The penalty for losing three times in a row I’d say might be even worse than dying like legitimately , I’d see the “shadow realm” as a vacation after losing after what awaits these girls.

As the show closer towards the second season, we find out this show goes even further than that.  Winning three times in a row..arguably is EVEN worse than losing. Which already is worse than death. I am pretty sure the writers of this series will go to hell after they die, not because they were bad people in real life, because Satan wants to hire people who can think up more evil stuff than himself. Several times throughout the series I have actually felt anxious and queasy by realising what was going on. I watched Madoka shortly after this and when I found out how evil Kyuubi was I kinda asked to myself.. is this it? Not as evil as WiXOSS. So this is a legitimate warning, if you do not like dark stories..this one certainly isn’t for you.

Pretty Dark

While despair and darkness certainly are themes in this show, it is certainly brought to you in a colourful way. The character designs look good, the LRIGS are mostly cute and colourful and their worlds look super pretty. I think the show keeps a very good balance in keeping the visuals humble, as well as their designs yet still succeed into making  those elements that need to be special, actually feel special. Tama for example , who turns out to be a bit of an odd LRIG also feels that way in design and voice and those kind of things. While she wears a very simple white dress and there are no traces of over design you instinctively know she is unique. Card Battle anime tend to be overly designed, Just look at the later seasons of Yu-Gi-Oh or Cardfight Vanguard for example, Monsters appearing on stream are so extremely detailed, with almost World-of-Warcraft-Like armor on them it is almost distracting. Wixoss uses a much more minimal approach which I really liked.

While there is magic and solid combat, never does it detract from the characters. They still feel real. This low key battling style allows you to relate to Tama more, you feel her pain more easily as it’s more “real”  When Yu-gi characters take real damage, they still only take scratches from screen filling beams, cards shatter and duelists get their hair messed up by the wind that’s it. This show relies more on tiny projectiles and actual punches with a much more correlating effect. We see them scream and cry out in pain, which feeds that anxious feeling but also makes battles more investing as their is a much more direct correlation between what is actually happening and what we see. While some can perceive it as dull compared to it’s bigger brothers and sisters I’d say for what this show is, their looks and style is chosen flawlessly. It’s never really mind blowing , but the series doesn’t want you to lose your mind over their style.. it wants you to explode your brain with their story.

Active Anime

In this day and age, anime tends to be very heavy on exposure, characters will figure out stuff for you , and loudly state their thoughts even if there is no one around but the viewer to hear it. It makes it so that most anime are easy to watch lying down on the couch with a glass of wine or tea of whatever you prefer.  Wixoss is NOT that type of anime. If you take it as is, the plot can feel quite convoluted, especially in the second season. While we do get answers to what is going on, rarely ever does Ruuko do that finger snap and go like “ooh so this is why that is happening!?’ In fact stuff that is discovered by Ruuko’s friends might not be magically transferred to Ruuko. Investigation into the story happens on seperate level, for example on the LRIG level and the reality level. Characters making discoveries on the reality level might not have the answers of the LRIG level, so never does one character really have all the answers. Only the viewer does have all the information and even then at times we are asked to fill in some blanks ourselves.  This series doesn’t hold your hand, you HAVE to get invested in it to properly enjoy it.You are going to have to put your brain to work to make some links yourself or the story doesn’t make sense. When you do get it though, everything can click, you’ll be the one that goes like ‘ooooh, now I get it’. In a way the show isn’t the full story itself. The show is the crutch that allows you to see the whole story.

While I do really like this concept I would actually say this is a weakness to the show as it seriously hinders when you can watch this show. Normally watching with friends makes any anime show better. This one I recommend strongly to watch alone. With friends you pay less attention making the story harder..though figuring it out together could still be fun. Yet with friends I’d say you’d feel less of the anxiety and the despair these girls feel, because strangely enough there is to much love in the room. This show is enjoyed best if you can relate to negative emotions. Like if you could wonder how it would be to be absolutely lonely, or how it would feel to see what these characters see. Weirdly enough this is best endured alone. So in a way this show banks on you relating to negative emotions to be as powerful as it can be. You best enjoy it when watching it alone, when you are a bit vulnerable, but positive enough to bounce back and enjoy it. Great but there is a certain amount of RNG involved in how much you will enjoy it depending on your viewing situation. So how do we flavor this?

Selector Flavor

Selector Wixoss is one of the most underestimated anime I ever watched. It left a lasting impression on me which I am sure will also remain there. Some people can not see it other than a Madoka clone, while others swear by it and praise  what it does with it’s own tropes. If you look at it like a Madoka clone, that is exactly what you will get and what you will see. If you see it as a dark Yu-gi-oh and Madoka hybrid you will get way more out of it as it completely does it’s own thing with the card battle genre while still managing to hit the right tropes to feel as a part of it.

The story is compelling and invites you to play an active role in it and investigate alongside the characters. Which works wonderfully well with the flavor of a card battle show. You do try to strategise along, you do try to find out what that face down card could be.I loved how dark this show got and how it made me feel even if that was negative at times. I’d compare it to visiting a scary haunted house where we are going in to feel a negative emotion in a controlled environment where you can feel them without actually getting harmed and still get the positive side effect. This show is a bit like that, the negative being the anxiety and the despair the main characters feel, and the positive of working it out alongside with them and finding hope and strength within it. Like with the main cast, this will not end well for everyone.. so just for this time. I will make you the Selectors! and it’s up to you to select your own flavor. As this show’s rating really needs you as a part of the equasion. The show has more seasons, but to me these two stand strong enough as their own.

(You Decide)
(I Personally would give it Berry Good Flavor)