An infuriating mixture of nearly invincible enemies, next to nothing plot and ugly design.
POSTCARDS FROM PARADISE
Cookie and I have been renovating our hut in preparation for a lovely spring and summer – my first on the island. We decided to put the hut on stilts and move it closer to the shore for two reasons: We both enjoy the sounds of summer storms rolling over the ocean and it’s easier for him. You see, as of late Cookie has become quite the ladies man. He likes to bring his Sea Lion girlfriends over to watch movies as he has always really been quite the cinephile. I can’t tell you how many times he’s made me watch Life By A Whisker.
So, like a good roommate I retreat to my small room and put my headphones on. I don’t get very many guests, myself. Once a month the manager might kick open the door and throw my next batch of horrible, bargain bin games inside for me to suffer through. Other than that every full moon Sunny leaves me hand woven baskets with fruits and random bones on our small front porch. I think it’s a gesture of good will but it could also be a grave threat – it’s hard to tell with him.
This month I opened the front door to the see the game box of, “Trigger Man” stuck to my door with a combat knife. And I could just faintly see the Manager running back into the tree line. She’s not as innocent as she’d like you to believe. There are even rumors on the island of construction workers on her new Castle disappearing. But I keep my head down and keep quiet. I’m just here to do a job, sweet island citizens and guests and it begins now. Let us begin this mortal sin of a game!
NEW FANCY VIDEO INTRODUCTION
No.
Publisher: Point of View (They published the amazing NFL Blitz)
Developed by: Crave Entertainment (The creative genius behind, Baby Pals)
Crave Entertainment originally titled this game, “Baby Felons”
Trigger Man makes the impossible possible. It makes being a mobster incredibly lame. The story is so abhorrent that it would have literally been better with no story or context at all. That way the person playing the game could just nonchalantly make up their own plot line.
“What’s this guys deal?”
“Oh. He drank too many Mountain Dews. Now he’s taking everyone down.”
“Ah. Makes sense.”
That story? Those two sentences? More thought out then the entire game. Concept, design, story, all of it.
I read a blog post about eyeliner earlier today that is more badass than this game. The unnamed, idiot, blockhead main character you play as is so boring and uninspired I’ve come across pots of boiling water with more complexities.
The controls are so sad that just ducking is an achievement. Sneaking is impossible although an absolute requirement throughout the game. Cover is nearly impossible during shootouts although that too is paramount to even surviving the constant swarms of respawning enemies.
Speaking of enemies…The only actual badass thing in this entire game? The security guards you have to fight who are basically fucking indestructible. They should play footage of this game at every security guard convention across the country. Sure, they can’t shoot straight and they run directly into your line of fire but they sure are tough.
That is also assuming you can even hit them. If you aim the reticle at the enemies head you will shoot their body. Which takes at least ten shots to kill anyone (Oh, yeah and you can only carry like 30 bullets at a time with any gun so good luck with that). But a headshot grants an instant kill every time. So if you aim the reticle just above the enemies head – you still miss. You just shoot over their heads. It’s extremely difficult to even get a head shot. Skill has barely anything to do with it. It all boils down to luck.
Yeah, good luck idiot.
Which speaking of luck – upon playing this game you will find yourself unlucky A LOT. The missions themselves would honestly take about six minutes each to blow through if you didn’t die 150-200 times per round. It’s UNREAL.
Oh and this god forsaken blog post? Already like two thousand words longer than the game manual. Another sign of how bad the game is. They couldn’t even hire awriter to lie for a minute about how fun and cool the game is in its own instruction manual!
Here’s one last dumb analogy for you. Say video games were sea birds. Why? I don’t know. It’s the first thing that came to mind. Grand Theft Auto 3 (which came out three years before Trigger Man, mind you) was a great game. But far from perfect. Especially with its shooting and aiming controls. It was hard to handle. The lads and ladies at Rockstar had yet to perfect their combat system. So despite its insane fun it could be frustrating to play. Which would take it down from a beautiful majestic sea bird to maybe something cool but a little derpy like a Flamingo.
So if GTA 3 was a cute but derpy flamingo spending its days at an all you can eat Shrimp buffet than Trigger Man is a Sea Gull eating cigarette butts out of a trash can biting little kids that pass by.
Who hasn’t had a date end like this, amiright?
The game is turbo trash. Really can’t put it any other way. It’s literally the worst game I have ever played.
(DEFINITELY DON’T) PEE IN THE POOL
SHOP TIL YOU DROP
For the collectors out there – you can find this game on pretty much any site for next to nothing. But I must point out this idiot for trying to sell this piece of hot garbage for over $35
Just..stop.
DESERT ISLAND SONGS (Songs inspired by the games)
Periwinkle’s Lowing Hanging Fruit Punch Ingredients
Konichiwa my little lights! I have yet to be sponsored by Japan Trend Shop to promote their stuff..but until then I will continue to do it for free… in a rather silly way! Fairly random as well! I always pick a theme…. this year instead of making New Year’s Resolutions I decided to pick New Years Wishes… Not something I really will buy..but something I like to dream about! Because it’s good to have dreams…and lamps!
All I want for 2021 is…… A Thousand Dollar Plushie!
So you all know I like plushies right? Turning into a Kaijuman did not stop me from loving soft fluffy animals.. but Japan Trend Store usually doesn’t have a lot of them.. so when I was browsing and encountered this one.. I was really intrigued! I really wanted to hug this thing… and battle it to the death..but mostly hug…after I killed it?! No! Behave! You are a nice Kaijuman! Regardless.. it is a nice plushie! Why would I want a thousand dollar plushie you might ask?! Well It’s made by Steiff! Steiff is like “THE” brand for Teddy Bears and those things only go up in value. So rather than seeing it as a plushie you can see it as an investment in Mohair and stuffing! And with only 1954 made .. I could actually kill 1953 .. and hug one and make my investment worth it!
Why were they made in 1954 made? Well that is the year in which Godzilla first was seen. That’s right he is a fair bit older than most of us.. In 2014 Steiff made this toy to commemorate his 60th anniversary. Coming in at 50 centimeter it will also look like a Kaiju compared to most of my plushies and if I get some Lego’s I can build a city and let my thousand Dollar Toy destroy the city! RAWR….CRASH..STOMP! .. WIND BLAST.. wait now I am destroying my own lego city! Oh well! guess Zilly and I are nakama in being destroyers now! Smash! Just look at it’s cute face! It looks so fluffy! So if you want me to come destroy your toy.. buy this for yourself! As long as you don’t live in a tiny house you should be fine and we can hang out afterwards!
Okay so I might also want ……… a Pineapple Scented Lamp
If you are a bit like me you’ll often sniff your lamp in melancholy! “Why can’t my lamp smell like a Pineapple?!” It is such a shame because I find myself close to lamps a lot lately. Yet they all kind of smell like plastic! How am I supposed to get that tropical island feeling from that?! Well luckily the clever scientists made a thingy just for me! That is right the Pineapple Scented Lamp is here! No I am not talking about one of those lamps you add oil to! I tried those but they aren’t very lampy! Oftenly I over oil and one of those oil bubbles sucked into that little nozzle thing and the thing barely works after unless you clean it for hours! This one is different! With just glass and Paraffin fragrance there isn’t too much to hold you from admiring your lamp in full glory! It will set you back €32,- or $39,- which is a bit pricey for a Lamp that seems to be able to “run out” but these clever people of Japan have thought of a solution for that!
You see.. the light is not just a cutesy light! It also features a beautiful starry Cityscape as a pattern! All lights look purple and cute when extinguished but when activated with the power of two CR2032 Batteries your scene comes to live in beautiful colours. There are three scents we can purchase. Raspberry, which colours your night sky in a beautiful sunset purple and pink.. then there is the Citrus scent.. which colours the sky orange and yellow, like a sunset on the Spanish Orchards. And then there is the Pineapple Scented one.. which turns the sky Yellow and Green…. and now all of you naysayers will wonder.. V-Pinkie, the sky isn’t green! Well it is on Namek! Most of us Kaijumans can go into space you know.. though I really would need help from Elon… regardless green skies do exist.. like the Aurora Borealis that is green as well! I bet it would really be nice to smell pineapples in the regions where you can see it too! It doesn’t grow on trees there! All in all.. it might be worth the money and after it is done you can smash the lamp on the ground real hard! HEHEHEHE! Bye bye little city HEHEHEHE!
Might as well wish something else when that runs out … LED Pokémon Wall Light
So even the non Virtual me would have liked this.. but I love it even more! I genuinely and truly do think these would look amazing as well decorations in my bedroom. Plus I could use a bit of a night light as I am pretty blind in the dark… that MUST be why I like Lamps so much! Anyway this Pokémon LED lights look cute as a button! With five varieties to choose from you can truly catch them all… though it is a bit of a shame that two of these are Pikachu! *Sigh* Merchandise caters so much to the normies.. what great Pokémon like Lampent and Chandelure! I think they would have made great wall lights! It’s not like I am asking for hard stuff like Xuriktree! But at least we get Mimikyu and Gengar.. I can vibe with those so those would be the first two I would get as well.. and lucky me they are the cheapest as well.
Coming in at 51 dollars these are quite adorable! And you can get the set of all five for like 256 dollars.. which is like a 10 ish dollar discount. Since the Pikachu’s and Eevee’s cost extra. … Hmmm paying extra to be basic..the horror! At least when you get them all you don’t pay extra for the crowd favourites.. so I guess that is the only way I would buy those…is that smart marketing? I am not sure! I also wonder why Mimikyu is the only one that has eyes! I get why a shiny ghost night light SHOULD NOT have eyes.. so I go understand why Gengar doesn’t have eyes.. and the eyes on Mimikyu’s fake head aren’t there.. but those aren’t his real eyes! It’s the tiny ones we see down below! Well… I want the one with eyes the most so I guess I will go for the Mimku one!
Oh and I also want…. One Piece Nico Robin Sunglasses
This one is on my wishlist because I find it comically over priced.. and hey it’s nice that I desire something other than a lamp right?! Well I find myself staring at a bunch of light recently so I figured finding a good pair of sunglasses might be useful! Those are kind of hard to come by right now for me though ..because it’s Winter.. not a lot of sunglasses on sale… I know I am a Megane Moth but.. I can wear contacts for the right pair of Sunglasses.. and since these cost $365 they better darn be the best sunglasses I have ever had. Of course.. for that price it is not just sunglasses it also comes with a wiping cloth with Nico Robin printed on it.. and a case with the One Piece logo!
Okay..so the frame has to be by a designer right? I mean…. otherwise $365 for two sheets of some acrylic glass and a thin frame seems a bit overpriced… NO! It’s made by Bandai’s Toy Division… So this is a toy?!It does look stylish. I will give it that. It has UV400 Protection so that is good.. but as a cosplay article.. I have seen other yellow tinted glasses before and with such a thin frame like the one Robin uses.. no one will really fine tooth comb that stuff… you pay because this is OFFICIAL.. this is not just a cosplay prop! These ARE the exact same glasses Robin wears or something.. well.. I want them.. I just would never pay for them.. but if you are a millionaire and are looking to give me a cute gift.. I’ll happily take this as it will let me look at the world a little bit more as if it was a lamp, all yellow and all!
Honourable mention here goes to the Fun’iki Digital Eyewear.. which are glasses.. that flash in a colour every time you get an email or a phone notification! This so that you don’t ever have to check your phone to see if that email already arrived. For $450 dollars you can save all that time you spend looking on your phone falsely.. and instead you get constant flashing eyes in your face.. I am a Moth and I am afraid I might get epilepsy from this…if things seem dire.. there should really be a way that you can tell a new notification has popped up on your phone.. you know maybe a sound signal.. or a vibration?!…. Oh wait! Talk about solving a non problem!
Check out this video hyping them up though!
And Finally I’d really like a ……… Godzilla Humidifier
Now that we have to spend so much time at home here in lockdown, we might as well assure it’s the best quality time we have. With a quality time becomes a quality climate. In 1992 Momma Mothra fought Godzilla and well, I kind of want revenge! Now for $125 dollar I can make Godzilla work for me! To make sure my wings don’t go to try! He got downsized a bit to make sure he fits my home to about a 20 centimeter size. So even if I am not using the humidifier! It will look like a cool decorative piece in my plushie and figure cabinet. Unlike my figures though it has a bit of a function and generally one I kind of actually need! It looks sturdy enough so I can probably slap it around a bit and tell Mamma I beat Godzilla so all the more reason for me to like it.
What Godzilla does, he does with flair! Of course he doesn’t just breath a delightfully moist mist! A little blue Led Light will tint the mist blue in dark rooms! So when Indigo dims my lights again! …. Baka! … I will see the blue mist! Just like Godzilla’s atomic breath! It also comes equipped with sounds from Mothra vs Gozilla. Mostly it’s roars of course… which might be kind of distrubing for my neighbour, as if Godzilla cries I tend to do my cry as well. I still need to work on it because I keep ending up with Wrrrrrryyyyyy but people will always remember another guy for that. Regardless… Godzilla comes with a second “tail” that you can hook up with your power grid (provided you have the right adapter as it will have a Japanese plug). Shinji Nishikawa has designed the packaging. Well.. kind of, he helped illustrate it so the box art is nice.. and just look at the little guy! Doesn’t he look adorable?!
This one has promotional video as well! So be sure to check that out if you are not on Reader!
As you may have noticed I have kind of expensive tastes.. I am trying to reduce those urges but hey a moth needs pretty lamps! I saw a VTuber review toilet once.. I could do that with lamps! Still tough , if you want to encourage my purchasing behaviour please consider joining my Patreon. I have recently lowered the price of my second Tier to make it a little bit more accessible. I might add another tier to play the D&D with Coconuts in the future as well (without some of the other advantages) so check it out! OR leave a nice little gadget lamp or something else in the comments! I love comments almost as much as I love lamps!
The first month of Steampunk Month has already come and went by! While the animini’s did not change, the look of our website outside the reader certainly did! Let’s look back on this week and see what sorts of stuff we did and of course what is up next! We will also discuss with you what is happening around the blogosphere! So strap in for a ride through all our posts as we bring you our fourth ever Paradise Weekly Gazette.
The Animinis
We had an okay week of Anime this week, with a really strong Digimon episode, a super charming Natsume and a new show which I .. kinda liked in the form of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Not exactly new I know.. but a lot of you seem to really enjoy me watching classics and I lack a lot of them and I am having a lot of fun with them! Two shows I really like have entered “drop” quality for me though so let’s hope they pick up again soon! Luckily both are nearly finished as well!
Digimon Episode 13: Garudamon of the Crimson Wings
Samurai Flamenco Episode 20: Boy from the Past
That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 19: Charybdis
Revolutionary Girl Utena Episode 1: The Rode Bride
Hikaru no Go Episode 24: Akira vs The Oza
Natsume Book of Friends Episode 4: Shigure and The Girl
Cowboy Bebop Episode 4: Gateway Shuffle
My favourite watch actually was Digimon, though Hikaru no Go came super close! I just liked the voice of Fanbeemon so much, and the colours and everything in Digimon that it really struck a chord that I really needed this week! My least favourite view is probably Slime.. though Samurai Flamenco really annoyed me as well.. the last one mostly hurts because they had a really good ending already and this is kind of wrecking it!
Pinkie’s Other Post
Of course we also had to create some Steampunk posts .. after all it is Steampunk month! On monday it was still november though so I had to pay my respects to my Senpai first! After that we could move ahead full steam.. that pun sounded way to corny I am so sorry! Here is the other stuff I did this week!
I made Irina into a Pokémon.. and also determined what type of trainer she would be!
I determined how my life would be had we lived in a Steampunk society!
I watched a city attack a wall and get beaten by a usb drive plus a million things!
I gushed about how amazing my favourite Final Fantasy game is in a love letter!
I wrote this post! So if you want you can click here to go to this post!
Camp Coconut Updates
No Kofi donations this week for me so no stories to tell about the Coconuts either.. they might be hibernating and saving their money for christmas.. I have been playing around with the idea of creating a Patreon.. with a few fun tiers but I need better reward for lurking people who don’t like to socialise and Pokémon Battle. So this is a work in progress. I might ask an audience with king Coconut to see what would be good tiers! Hail the Wise King Coconut!
You can sprout a Coconut based on you by supporting our Kofi once.. but supporting it regularly your Coconut will get into several adventures that will be mentioned here..and your Coconut might start to look a bit fancier.. though I still need to update the Shy Coconut’s art.. I have since chosen a design element I want to add! However we might change things up a bit when Patreon comes around.. so keep following the news or assure yourself of a coconut!
Posts that Impressed Pinkie
Now that we move from November into December, a lot of posts are summaries of the past month.. I will not share those.. I want you to explore these blogs for yourself. I just wish to wet your appetites.
I always like to include one activating shout out! Where you can participate in something.. or where a blogger is being celebrated. This week Amelia is starting her A Girl and Her Anime Awards and while I have seen virtually nothing on her list to vote for and was to lazy to figure out if Digimon was a Summer of Fall Anime.. so I backed out of voting. I am an old lady after all I watch past stuff! But for all you seasonal watchers out there! Vote on her amazing list so we can find the best anime out there! If I actually send you there .. vote for me for most influential blogger! That we all win…but mostly me! .. Uhm I mean Amelia!
Lyn really really enjoyed the Promised Neverland and he pretty much sold me on it as well! I already heard good things.. but this made me want to watch it more.. In fact I think I will replace Samurai Flamenco with it on my watch list whenever I am done with that. So I will probably pick this up soon! I do not like his post .. as in press the button. That often but that is because I usually read his reviews after he tweets them out.. on my phone .. and I am not logged in on WordPress there! I am waaaay behind stuff so I don’t read episode summaries of shows I want to see.. but seeing people enjoy shows I don’t like.. also gives me pleasure! Make sure to check out his reviews if you haven’t already!
Ospreyshire is such a good guy! He reviews movies and anime that tend to fly a bit under the radar so you might not have heard of him , I know my friends on the Scott-Jon Spencer front follow him but he always deserves more. I am a bit of a different kind of blogger but there is so much I can find in his posts I can respect.. but who better to explain what he is all about then the man himself. In this post he describes why he writes and it is amazing!
My blogging friend Joy is one of the most unique personalities you’ll ever see. She’s kind of like .. part Vulcan , part genius inventor, and a whole lot of programmer. Her ramblings on life are unique , spirited and playful! I do not consider myself a dumb person but when I read her quote Dante, when I see her tell her stories in her own way.. I feel dwarfed..and slightly attracted. I might be a Sapio-Romantic? Who knows! Joy discusses the heavy team of our own mortality and its implications.. but she does so in a very Joy way. The topic is something I am quite familiar with but her visions and her revelations at the end make for an interesting read for anyone. So do visit Joy .. and follow her blog.. she will be the president one day.. and remember a vote for Joy is a vote for love! So I assume a Like for Joy is like liking love as well!
Pinkie Away from Keyboard
I have had my ups and downs this week and the down is mostly been in my energy levels. I do have this a lot but the weather shifting to being super cold is flooring me and making my energy levels next to non existent. That also means I have done next to no exciting stuff! I am playing Dishonored for a Steampunk Review later this month.. and I am having an .. okay time with that so far. Not exactly my game .. but the setting is a lot of fun! I have also been feeling the call to return to Pokémon Shield again, do some shiny hunting and complete the dlc! But that will probably be something for a bit later. I really want to get my shiny Wooloo though! It will be fun to let Whippy the Allcreamie get a Giantamax form as well. Just so many games to play.
Other than that I have had a good talk with my psych.. he did a good job but it did not help my fatigue. I had a good but heavy talk and that took me out of wednesday and a migraine crippled me a bit on thursday which reduced my ability to work ahead. Mind you working ahead does mean writing four posts per day so that might be asking a bit much on days like those but yes unless I find lots of energy today I might not be able to make that guest post for Irina’s blog I tried to make this week! Oh well I will find a way to make everything work.
On Saturday the 5th of December the Dutch and the Belgian people celebrate a tradition called Sinterklaas. It’s about a Saint Nick that comes bearing gifts! The modern western Santa is a mix between our Sinterklaas and the British Father Christmas. Though both outdate the tradition of Santa. Saint Nicolas will stuff your shoes with a present if you have been good.. or a bunch of twigs for corporal punishment if you were bad.. though of course concerned moms abolished those twigs called “de roe” a few years ago. Nowadays more of the tradition is being scrutinized.. for just enough reasons but the country is going made and being divided. So to celebrate the tradition this year I am going to visit my mom, we exchange gifts and share a meal together. No large gifts we will do that around christmas.. but just a nice little gesture. I will go out to do so right after scheduling this post so I can’t tell you what my gift just yet .. but if I am fit enough .. I might update this..probably not though.
Next wednesday I am going to Amsterdam for two days, spend some time in a hotel and do some important stuff while I am there as well, health stuff, but also take my time and enjoy a change of setting for a night. I might not be able to travel back so just making so booked a place to stay just in case and will make the next day an enjoyable one. We are going to eat some Tapas at the hotel, with some drinks at the hotel bar.. a friend is coming along to drive me and for support. And we will go to the Vondelpark or zoo depending the next day to relax a bit! Depending on how crowded the city is!
Plans
Depending on my energy levels I might skip a daytime post or two so I can relieve my workload a bit and work ahead a bit more.. if I am good with energy however, I do plan to bring you my interpretation of a Pokémon Steampunk Game. I want to talk about a Steampunk anime movie, and watch another Steampunk movie as well! I also managed to beat the super hard game Steel Empire for Americans.. but Empire of Steel for us Europeans so you can expect a review for that to drop soon as well!
Regardless of my energy levels the animini’s will at least keep coming! So that is seven posts of anime already! … As long as I don’t get murdered in Amsterdam at least! Who knows! Regardless on what happens I plan to make the next week a great one! And I hope you will do so to! Let me know how your week has been in the comments and onto the next! 2021 is drawing closer!
Hello there Island Guests, by the time I am writing this it is a nice toasty 30 degrees Celsius out there, the water is great and I might have a slight case of heat stroke! So rather than giving you a deep and insightful dip into what anime means to me, I will just tell you the story of how I got into anime in the first place. I have mentioned this before but now I can really go into depth and it’s a story that’s fun enough so here we go!
The story begins when I went off to college, my health was still finish then and I tried to hide my geek side from the world.
Instead I joined a fraternity of sorts.. we don’t have that Gamma Gamma Pi or Beta Beta Beta Beta stuff them american folks have we have co-ed groups of people who study at the same school branch that just needed some drinking buddies. We even slept in mixed dorms during a our introduction camp. A fact that was used by several people. Talk about classy! I tried to fit in so I joined up went to the camp and made a few friends in the camp. One was a camp leader named uhm lets call her Liliana.. ..it’s not her actual name, but it works on her. She was cute and shy and my type ..before I knew she was. She was a bit of a book geek, mostly a Potterhead. Then there was ..uhm Roland.. who due to a spastic colon was sick during a lot of the camp activities when he spend time reading Artemis Fowl novels. We talked a lot about fantasy stuff. So three days into the camp and I was already befriending geeks again…whoops. I wanted to fit in and both of them took studies far away from me. (The school had several buildings and both lived fairly far from the pub the frat group would chose so we could barely hang out) I found a girl I knew from Middle School and hung out with her and together we befriended a guy named Morris. Vicky as I shall call the girl was the super shallow type.. do drugs in class etc.. she would make me fit in I thought!
When camp was over Vicky and Morris were all the friends I had left Roland dropped out of school entire because his health got worse and Liliana was older and went abroad for an internship .. and apparently fell in love and stayed there. I however was still on my mission to normalise so it might have been for the best. Morris was one of those guys that was heavily into soccer, heavier into drinking and basically one of those Jersey Shore guys without the six pack or “handsome” looks. Just an average cool guy.. that certainly DID kiss and tell. He once spiked my drink.. just to see what would happen with me.. I was fairly uptight when going out and he had fun with it..I never knew it was him way until after we stopped being friends. At one point he made it his thing to pick up the losers and made them cool and that’s how I met Lao! A geeky Dutch-Chinese with the classic tiger-mother who pushed him to be a prominent banker. Lao , not a real name again, once caught me playing an emulation of A Link to the Past , during an hour between class and he wasn’t aware of emulation so I let him play for a bit and we bonded a bit. For the first time I had made a school friend whom I was completely genuine with. He once one of Morris’s projects like me so we suffered his pranks together.. though where I am just under-social Lao was anti-social so he struggled a lot more.
After six month all classes were separated, those who took the fast track to a diploma and those who took the normal track. Morris and Vicky where fast-trackers as well as basically everyone I hung out with except for Lao.
During this time a first group project came out, writing a business plan and managing and doing fictional finances etc for your little start up as well as promote it and sell people on the concept. Lao had two friends in the class we were in I just had Lao..but we were separated in groups of three. So I was out of luck and got sorted in with two randoms. A Latino Dutch boy named Enrico and a backstabbing woman by the name of Daniella! Daniella took the lead over our group project because the leader had to present in front of the school and she looked prettier than me..which she even said when I said I wanted to present. Less work for me though… I was super excited for our business concept which was basically a mediation system to learn skills from a peer. Think having math explained to you by someone your age in your terms rather than a stuffy old teacher, or having a recipe being taught to you by another stay at home mom rather than a french schooled and technical chef. At one point I was so far ahead of my work I basically completed all my work in 25% of the allotted time! I had such great ideas.Everything came to me naturally. I had a lot of fun knocking out all the costs, I even found a way to cheap out on rent and an office. Little did I know she would ruin it all!
Then Daniella quit school without warning , while still having the flash drive that held all my work. After calling her, she blocked my number, refusing to give the work back we were about to fail the most important project of the year because she was a total bitch! Since some things were tied to her account, (we got her log in data so we all had access to the same spot as a co-op method) our project was stuck .. she had deleted her account and everything was just lost and with her not wanting to give back my flash drive irretrievable. I suggested starting again ..but Enrico got demotivated and said with two people we could never do what she could do and that he did not like the school anyway and now that they failed to help out he just quit. Since I was unable to do this myself I got bumped into Lao’s group since the teacher knew he and I were cool and no one else would want me because Daniella had been talking trash to me to the rest of the class on phones for trying hard! Lao’s project was an Anime and Manga Store set in the capital of Limburg (our province) the problem was I had no idea what Manga and Anime was. I came from a hick town and went trough tremendous bullying before, due to my clunky motor skills, the fact that I liked gaming already painted a big target on my back so I watched my Dragon Ball Z , Pokémon Sailour Moon and Maple Town, before I ever knew what it was. As much as possible I had tried to find hobbies that would not get me bullied, not a single person in my middle school watched anime or at least they hid it very well. So I was completely unfamiliar with these terms.
Lao Antony and Jerry (for the life of me I can’t remember Jerry’s real name) were welcoming to some fresh blood, they were stuck on some project issues, like finding out rent of a certain property, which could be answered by a phone call but they were to scared.
So instead I just went to the store in question with a folder and some questions and got the info for them. I became the sociable one because they could not do that. Like they were about as sociable as Tomoko from Watamote. Lao perhaps even worse. I was in a Law class project with Lao and that was my strength I got us a 8/10 while the entire rest of the class.. over 30 people all failed it! Lao was so excited he cheered out loud in class.. we never made any friends again …because people now hated us… and the worst part was I didn’t even try it came naturally so I could not even really help others with their homework, they resented me to much for having it come natural to me and being a bit awkward. Lao chose weird moments to be happy. He felt as human as Tommy Wiseau at times That was his charm was to me and what I valued in him. In a weird way he refused to be anything but himself and it prevented me from being fake..simply by association. When I asked my new task group who was their leader they told me they had not chosen yet because none of them had a business suit to present in and none of them wanted to do it. I did not know a lot about anime..so somehow that ended up in getting me up to speed on anime so I might take this job in the spotlight.
It was a course of watching 3 episodes of Naruto, three episodes of bleach and one or two episodes of Fate Stay Night every day, on project days they would quiz me, or talk anime with me. We gave the company a new angle and since I quickly became a fan we would use that sensation and emotion I just experienced to promote anime onto people. I really got into it quite fast. For once I could let my geek out .. I did not have to act normal anymore or socialise with people i actually did not like..since those gave up on me! I was an outcast once more, but without the bullying just blatant shunning. I could break my own self imposed , be normal conditioning because I had to study anime to sell people on this and each episode I fell a bit more in love with anime. Mostly with Bleach in the beginning. Though I loved the opening scene of Fate Stay Night! I remember those train crossing chimes going off and then the intense fight! That was sweet! This was me! Naruto was sweet as well and within no time I finished the first story arc. I loved the music, so much I started listening to it on the train as I was quickly turning into a weeb before realising it. The project lasted fairly long, and while I was doing my anime homework I overheard Jerry talking about Elfen Lied and One Piece being amazing. So I picked those up as well. Elfen Lied I first turned off after one episode … what was that.. why did I like that?! I should not watch that! One Piece however I completely adored.
The Project came and went and while the teachers still thought selling people “cartoon items” was a stupid idea , I at least managed to put on a convincing presentation showing I REALLY loved anime, they said.
I got compliments for completely winging a section where they attacked me on how viable it was by on the spot coming up with the idea of free movie viewings or manga evenings to get people hooked like how I got hooked. I did not know there were conventions in the country yet so instead I came up with this idea and even stuff like first volume discounts and the suggestion of dressing people up like characters and have them walk in the city..so people would wonder what that is about.. Our business plan sucked.. but I wanted to make it a success and I was very vocal about it.. so we got a fairly decent grade. After that I was still shunned by the rest of the class.. I was a geek now so each project I had to do was with Lao.. because no one else would want the weirdo.
This means my normal anchor began to fade fast. I had some “normal” friends who on occasion came to balance me out when the geeky thing was to bad.. but that did not stop me from catching up with Naruto, Bleach and eventually even One Piece. I also watch Death Note, though I did not care for that one to much. I started a bunch of things, dropped a few and mostly stuck to the Shonen shows. Which Lao was very much into.. then my health began to falter and bad luck struck. My grandma became terminally ill during a series of exams I once failed due to not being very skilled with taxes. Since the study I was following would seize to exist.. because of a merger.. I could only repeat this once. That re-do happend right after Grandma had her funeral. I was mentally fatigued and failed .. and had to leave Lao and the school behind. Lao having a tiger mother basically only hung out during school time.. so our friendship ended soon after that unfortunately. My health waning made me struggle to hold onto a school or a job.
This however did result in me watching wackier stuff, but also more classic stuff. Stuff like Beyblade Metal Fight, Card Fight Vanguard, Gantz, Monster, Steins Gate and eventually it would lead me to Kill la Kill and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann..though that last one not until a lot later. . I was very much into Yu-Gi-Oh and I could finally finish Metabots! I watched a Zoids show Battle Century I think was the one.. with Bit Cloud, and more. I also watched Code Geass..I hated it and gave up on it.. Yet I missed people to talk about anime with! I got my cousin hooked but he hid that he watched it! Being just a closet geek! My normy friends wanted nothing to do with it and did not give me the light of day. A friend of mine named Suzie was a fashion blogger at the time and she advised me to start writing about it and people would come! So I did …but no one ever came to my blog! When I searched I came across two bigger dutch blogs writing about anime. One of them was recruiting so I applied. As an assignment I had to write about either, Japanese Food, Japanese Gadgets or something geeky Japan related that was not directly video games or anime.. it could only refer to them on the side. So I wrote an article on how to survive the T-Virus using Japanese Gadgets. She loved the article but told me I needed to work on how neat I write. Still I got the job!.. Well I did not get payed, I just had people to hang out with and talk anime with. I found out that the blog founder lived super close to me and when she invited to join their DnD because they needed a healer.. I was hooked to that too.
This new job made me watch a lot more anime and with the founder of said blog, lets call her Fatima Minusima.
I formed quite a strong bond quite fast. She took me to events with her, she showed me her favorite anime (Tengen Toppa).. well she told me how she loved Kamina and I looked him up, found the show watched it and now it’s my favourite show too. She even let me go to my first Con for free.. in order to promote our blog! She was big enough in the country to do so and she had a sponsor and fans so quite soon I found myself giving a presentation at my first con ever! I worked my bum off during the second con as well trying to sell Japanese EShop cards. Staying in a hotel at the convention with breakfast included and two overnight stays! I had an amazing time and fell in love with the atmosphere and the fanbase even more. While I am a geek much more in the broad side, than a few people here, I game a lot more, I tabletop, I fan fiction and I am a big movie geek and all I very much love anime and even more so the saving power it had on my life. Without anime I would have never been me! I would have been that push over that got betrayed by people at a whim and who got walked all over.
Now I am a person who knows what she likes and who is passionate about that like as well. I am an Otaku and I am a geek and I am proud of it! While I wish the community mostly, in terms of gaming and other geekism was a bit more open, the warm blanket of Otakuism and how accept it is of stranger cultures was something so special I just wanted to be part of it forever. About three years ago I began more liberally introducing people to anime which involved taking a super normie friend to a convention.. he wanted to experience it’s for one. Now that friend is gay and has always had to deal with some sort of squinty eyed looks when he was acting like himself. On the convention floor sure there were some socially awkward geeks that ran at his sight but there were also a lot of people who were super curious about what he’d buy or who wanted to hug him. He was surprised when he saw a half naked boy carrying a rainbow flag and a free hugs sign get hugged by so many guys. It moved him to tears how wholesome the community could be. Before that day my interest in the community had dwindled a bit, I had great friends I had a good solid base I did not need anymore.. but on that day I knew I wanted to get back! I fired up my laptop and binged Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, I devoured One Punch man and I even started Code Geass again.. which I dropped right after Shirley’s final scene… I really did not like this show! That didn’t matter though.. I had found my way home again! Right where I am here now!
Thanks everyone you for reading this post and a big thanks for Fatima for giving me my new life! I love you dearly as a friend and without you I could not have been as happy and as strong as a person like I am now. You are a BIG influence on my life, perhaps even the biggest. Even though now we can only see each other under heavy constraints.. I hope one day you will read this..knowing you though that might be a bit late.
I originally wanted to talk about board games with you today.. but then I realised those aren’t really relevant right now.. So I was beginning to crack my poor brain to stuff in my past that I could use for a blog! Before I could even start I was like! Oh I could talk about my first steps as a geek!
My First Cosplay (sort of)
I do not remember getting my NES or Ducktales so in my memory it was always there… at least my years of sensibility. I know I was still of the tricycle age so I assume I was about 4, when I got Turtles 2 the arcade game. It was the first game I remember getting. It could not have been my birthday because I was playing outside, grandpa came over to visit and he had a gift for me. A turtle bandanna (the purple one) , with a turtle horn for on my trikey a compass and even the turtles NES game. It was nice weather outside and I was still horrible (AKA) a child. So I wanted to play outside first. Now that I had the turtle headband I was like a turtle.. but I needed a shell as well. So I made myself one. I found myself a dish tub below the sink and got my colouring pencils out and made green blocks which I pasted on the tub.. they did not stick very well but it half looked like a shell. I am pretty sure I had help from someone though because somehow the tub got four holes in it with some string or ribbon so I could now wear it as a backpack.
Now Donatello had a big Bo staff so of course I had to go out and find a stick. Luckily I lived super close to a park so off I went. Navigating with my new compass! But not Really I just knew where the park was. I think my uncle came along.. I do not remember. What I do remember is finding the perfect stick! It was just laying their in the pushes so I climbed in. Now I forgot to mention this but at first I just rode my trikey with a mask and the horn for about an hour or so , I think I got the idea of making the shell after my parents got annoyed from me honking all the time. I was kinda tired in my legs and unstable so I fell. Into a big pile of Poison ivy. Turtle Ouw’er. I managed to roll onto my shell until I was rescued. Maybe it was my aunt..because I remember a woman. I do vividly remember coming back home and grandpa trying hard not to laugh at my misery. Which made me angry! My first quest for cosplay ended in failure, and mom needed a new tub to do her hand wash in as well! Luckily when I was covered in cooling cream, I could play Turtles 2 the Arcade game ..which made up for my first cosplay attempt.
My first cosplay The Real One
My first actual cosplay would not come until way , waaaay later. My first actual cosplay was just about 6 years ago. While I planned to go maid, my awkward dutch size made that kinda hard. So I ended up with a Yukata version of Megurine Luka, while my friend cosplayed a Yukata version of Hatsune Miku. It was a cute cosplay but I was a bit flat for Luka. So I had to stuff. That didn’t go to well initially. I overstuffed which led to several wardrobe malfunctions as well as causing me to drop about a half a toilet roll worth of toilet paper in the pond like stuff in front of Europol headquarters. Whoops! Luckily I managed to clean most of it up and go into to toilets of the con to restuff and dry my wet yukata.
After that I stuffed less and I had a blast in the cosplay, it was super weather appropriate, my foot was stepped on only once that hurt, and I could walk on those Japanese slippers I bought surprisingly well. It was so good I cosplayed it again the next day. I had a weird golden sort of nail polish with it cause I thought it really matched the cosplay well.. what I did forget was that I did not plan on putting on nail polish through the weekend, I thought I would be a maid so wear gloves after all… so I ended up without nail polish remover on a Sunday! My friend also did not have any on her since she wore a normal colour. So when we sat at the restaurant on the way back, I sat there with tacky nails that matched with my outfit as well as my personality matches with a Gothic lifestyle. It shined so much I kinda liked like a Bottom Bitch or something.
My first time in a game store
I was a bit of a loner kid after the bullying started, which meant I never really had a nice shopping experience for games. I had no one to browse with and compare with. Mamma Pinkie usually went with me. Well I would go shopping with her and as a reward I would get a game or a toy. On rare occasions I got a great report card at Pappa Pinkie would go with me to look at games in another city. He was the only one he could drive so he was the one who chauffeured me if I did something deserving a reward. Pappa Pinkie was not a very patient man though, I should pick and run out.. he gave be about 4 minutes to browse because he wanted to be in and out in five minutes. Which did not really work. One time I got sold something really sucky in a toy store.. just by listening to them. We returned the game the next day and Dad suggested to me I would look at a store called Game City.
This store was run by a woman named Patricia and she is the one who gave me Pokémon Gold before it even launched here.. It was not region locked or something or she got it ahead of europe launch. I had it before everyone else. Beside for everyone who shopped at her place. However the first time I got there was in the days of the SNES. I had no idea what game to get and as usual Dad was very impatient and I was getting flustered, saying I did not need a game I could not find anything so fast. Yet I was close to crying for losing something I really wanted . Dad went more annoyed saying Mom would not allow that so I had to pick when Patricia stepped in. She asked me which games I liked to play and she recommended Mickey Mania for SNES. I followed her advice and it quickly became one of my favorite games. Patricia was a great sales person as she was the one that got my dad into racing games and flight sims. She did not really sell the hardware he needed and he ended up pirating a lot of the games instead of buying them but in her store I could finally look around a bit for games while she could talk to him about stuff he liked as well.
Such a great store far until into the Gamecube age I got nearly all my games there . Nowadays it doesn’t exist anymore. It got competed away by a big second hand game retail franchise. While in some towns the service is great.. they clearly do not always hire gamers for the job.. or at least no Patricia. She was our patron saint of gaming in our local area! Now.. there is just a random guy in a green shirt.
My first geeky romance
I did not have a lot of Geeky romance encounters, though I got a few romantic interests to play Mario or take a look into gaming which was nice but never did i really have a romance who was a geek as well. One day Pinkie was in one of her grocery stores as she saw a beautiful girl with hairs as black as ebony and eyes as blue as the tropical seas. Her name is to difficult for non dutchies so my friend the Multifaceted Ocelot dubbed her Lauren..which is the name we will use for her. I giggled and stumbled in front of her cash register and was trying to figure out where I knew her from. I could not figure it out for a while, back then I had PonPonPon said up as my ringtone which she recognised. Suddenly she recognised me from seeing me at a Con and we got talking. We started meeting after a few talks and just geeking out. I had known I might not have been into guys before but I never had a female love before either and well Lauren. . made me feel things I did not feel before. Especially when we decided we would do a pokémon act together. She said we should make it kinda Yuri.
She came up with an act with a loving Sylveon trying to win the heart of a cold Glaceon. As she explained what I should do things we get a bit flirty. Eventually we went a bit of scene and I kissed a girl. A short romance blossomed up it was fun and it felt way better than another relation in terms of.. well it was more right.. yet that did not last to long. As I become more and more infatuated with Lauren, she become more and more obsessed with the cosplay act. In the end I was more a means to an end to her to give her the act she wanted.. but she cared about me enough to realise this. Eventually Lauren recast me with a straight friend she had. She also broke up with me after about two month’s being a thing. She was more into guys and with me it was something more spontaneous for her. While I do occasionally talk to her she has since become a bit preoccupied with what other people think of her and things and can very much not be herself. I know her and this isn’t her and that hurts. We still bond over new pokémon stuff from time to time or talk about cute stuff..maybe one day I can defrost her icy heart!
My first geeky stalker
On the opposite side of the spectrum at a Con I also met my first following admirer. My first follower, even before I had a blog. Apparently I talked to him about Power Rangers on either an earlier con or an earlier day but on a con saturday I was suddenly approached by a guy in a Harry Potter Cosplay. It was one of those awkward “Hey it’s you again “ talks and me just going “Harry Potter, It has been to long, the last time I saw you you did not have that scar yet”.. which probably was true since he laughed He totally fell for my bluff! He just talked over it. He brought Power Rangers up again which is why I know I talked to him about that before.. still I could not remember it.. In fact I am not even sure he had the right person! I mean I DO like Power Rangers so its plausible.. but either I was drunk before or not very interested.. based on what happened next I would guess the latter. Though since it was at a con.. probably both!
Harry began asking me how I have been so I stuck to events of the day to keep safe and when I asked how he had been he suddenly kept complaining. I am in a hotel room with some random con people! Can you believe they want to stay up after 11 at cons?! They keep playing cards after that. Meanwhile last night I stayed up until 3 with some friends visiting various events on the con late at night and then drinking and playing cards in our airBnB. I said “Well sometimes I do that do.. you only live once right?” He suddenly completely agreed with me before he went complaining that one of them played western music in the house which annoyed him. I don’t care for music either way so I just shrugged and gave him a backpad. “There There”. I should not have done that.
After that he kept meeting up again the entire day and the day after. He wanted to buy me lunch, he wanted to talk between the two of us and while I had no issue with him following me it did not take him very long to become possessive and demanding. I was oblivious to his interest I was just thinking he was a bit socially awkward before that. I told him I was into girls.. but he did not believe me. Things grew a bit scary as I asked him to back off a little he apologised and backed off. Then suddenly I began getting texts. Apparently he followed a friend of mine and asked them what my number was since he lost his old phone.. like he completely lied. He began sending me texts that he hoped I was not to mad. Way past his self proclaimed bed time.
I wanted to resolve things because I felt like I did not want to block him. The guy was nice enough so on the con I took him apart just before I went home and told him it was never going to happen but that I liked talking geeky with him. We ended up taking about our favorite power ranger villains and we even parted with a hug! Yet after the con the texts kept coming. Growing increasingly delusional , eventually constantly mentioning.. If only would be into guys. We had a real moment there! He never met someone who understood him as much. He hoped that we could still be friends and eventually one day.. things might happen.
He found me on Badoo, which I had to delete because of that, by pretending to be a girl and some other red flags. At one point he started adding all my Facebook friends and asking them if I had a new number. He always used geeky references because I said I liked that in him…. in a friendly way but eventually he pissed Pinkie off. I told him I would block his number and never wanted to talk to him again. If he bothered any of my friends or me I would press charges. Two years later he comes up to me again and apologizes and he has a partner. Very clingy but a cute couple. I talk to them occasional if we walk past each other but only if they are together… For all you potential stalkers out there feel free to talk.. but if I say no it’s a a no! Never will be a yes either. If you can accept that we can be friends! If you can’t .. i’ll be angry!
“A tiny paradise amongst a sea of skyscrapers: Akihabara. There we find three warriors who believe pain is power and who fight battles that exist entirely in their heads. They are…Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger!” With these words we open this amazing Sentai Show that I just finished the first season off entirely and I adore it. It’s basically Power Rangers..but instead of do gooder teenagers we get low life Otaku with Deadpool powers.
Plot Power
The word Hikonin stands for unofficial. When this show came out in 2012, it originally aired at a different time slot than any other Ranger show. It was not a morning show for kids.. no this was a tribute show to all Sentai Geeks who have loved the genre for all their life. This was a show designed for Otaku.. but since it veered away to much from the base formula, it was set in another world…our world… but not really. Where Super Sentai is just a show, where the main characters in this show could recognise former power rangers as both the ranger or the actor. So the tag unofficial as added.. and it became a plot point.
This show is about as fourth wall breaking as it gets. Let me try to set up the basic plot. Three Otaku get recruited by a mysterious woman named Hiroyo Hakasa, who gives them devices called Moe Moe Z-Cune’s which allows to transform them into the Unofficial Sentai, Akibarangers. With these new powers they have to stop the Blatantly Evil Marketing Firm (rough translation) from turning Akihabara into a dull commercial wasteland. Fighting the good fight, the rangers hope the be one day be acknowledged as actual rangers and be official and marketable. There is one problem however, they aren’t actually fighting evil.. they are just Otaku imagining they are fighting through the power of delusion/imagination.
The Moe Moe Z-Cune allows people to share imaginations with each other and thus can create powerful delusions that Hakase studies. Also seemingly using the sense of the Otaku people to sense evil.. to let the police do the actual work. So while our heroes are fighting in their suits, the real world only sees them punching in the air as if they are pretending to rangers. This pain apparently has some sort of power… yet a mysterious chain of events bring these two worlds of Akihabara closer together..with serious consequences.
This is their Morphing Device
Fourth debries pile
That was the most sober description of Akibaranger I could muster because this show is completely and utterly INSANE and I love it! These rangers powered by the power of delusions for example do not fight with their strength and determination, no their main way of combating evil is to trigger “victory flags”. They are so Otaku they know how these shows go, stats do not matter. If the main bad guy teleports away and tells the other villain “take care of this” the victory flag has been raised and the rangers become unbeatable. On the other hand if such flags are not triggered or they miss to acknowledge it they can’t really win either. A fighting style that is quite different from the usual shows and that works as hilarious tool to understand what makes this genre so lovable. If you loved Power Rangers, you see these guys as your peers. These guys look at the show through the eyes of the audience which can create a surreal experience.
The early episodes are focussed on the three heroes trying to figure out “which episode/which story structure” will apply so they can trigger their story flags. For example in an episode that focus on the training of one Ranger they have to get the spotlight. In an episode where a ranger leaves the team for a bit, the victory flag can only be triggered by having them rejoin this fight. The problem of such an episode is not the monster fight but making a phone call ..with flippy phones, to call up the last ranger to come and share a delusion with her friends. There is a beauty in how low-key this all can be and how simple the solutions actually are. As they grow the rangers learn more and more to break the fourth wall until they accidently shatter it…. literally.
Oddly enough this show has an amazing progressive curve but since episode 1 starts out weird, episode 10 and mostly episode 12 are completely out there. While I will not completely spoil this show to you all because I really recommend watching this the final fight the rangers have to conquer is quite literally “the end” . The thirteenth episode is a clipshow with commentary episode.. set IN UNIVERSE. The characters realise the series creator Saburo Hatte has set them up to make a lame last season episode in the end. Other examples include that the rangers have the power to hit their opponent who is far away with melee punches as long as it on camera looks like you are punishing them or by imagining older rangers they can make them show up and take their weapons, and even combine cross series weapons into a new super weapon. Oh and don’t forget.. once they break the confines of their fictional fourth wall.. they also break that new set ups fourth wall into ours. .. so that the 5th wall or the 8th wall they break?
Red Yellow and Blue
Let’s step back a bit and let me introduce you to the three Sentai making up the team and take a bit of a closer look at their powers and their abilities. To maybe make some sense of this.
The first ranger I want to talk with you about is Nobuo Akagi, who is better known as Akiba Red.He is a 29 year old man who still lives at home and has a job as a part time delivery boy, which he uses to finance buying Sentai Toys and figurines of the popular anime Z-Cune Aoi. His trope is that of the super otaku. He knows all tropes of Sentai shows and can quote every line of it. He is desperately in love with this girl he often has to bring deliveries too, but because he usually just imagines kissing her ..nothing ever happens between them. (Pre show) His name Akagi has “Aka” in it which is Japanese for Red because he knows so much about the genre he is the leader but the other two rangers keep calling him Old Man.. because he is a 29 year old living with his parents. He also complains that his mother nearly threw away his Aoi Dakimakura.
When he transforms he becomes Akiba Red.. his suit is based on the anime protagonist haircut. A black lighting shaped visor goes across the helm that has the “anime protagonist” haircut modeled on top. As he is the most delusional of the three rangers he is also the strongest, he can summon red rangers of the past to fight with them for a while usualing heading them a weapon. These include a pair of giant handcuffs a giant shovel and a flight suit that also can be shot forward as a launcher. He is also the first ranger that is so delusional and otaku that he is able to transform in reality as well as he is first ranger that realises he is just a character in a tv show. His signature is shouting out Super Sentai trivia during their Ranger Roll Call.
The second ranger in the first season is called Mitsuki Aoyagi , with Aoi representing as a word. She is takes on the role of the Closet Otaku. She fell in love with the Z-Cune anime because of the strength she displays, Mitsuki is a martial artist and trough that passion she discovers the art of fight choreography and anime and steps into Otakuism showing a deep but hidden love for it. Because of the fact she keep her geekism hidden she has seen significantly less tropes than her peers and is the worst at things like ranger roll call until she discovers martial artistry is her thing. She also is the youngest character, stating she is underage to drink and can not drive. Her age is never fully disclosed. In the second season (which I will review later) the creator makes a retcon to get her to leave the show. Yet her development in the first season was amazing we see her embracing her hobbies more and more as she makes friends accepting of that hobby.
As Akiba Blue she starts of as the ranger with the most fighting potential, but is not very good at recognising tropes, costing them a few battles. She is the first ranger to be able to use cameras to make punches connect while not actually making an impact and she is very potent with the shovel weapon the group takes from BoukenRanger Red. She can not drive .. so she is the one ranger who is not able to control their “zord/mecha’ Machine Itasha. Her suit is based on the classic ponytail anime trope. Her rollcall is usually a kata of fighting moves and she has the most consistent and professional one.
Yumeria Moegi is the yellow ranger, which apparently has something of yellow it as well. Her real name is Yuko Yamada though, as Yumeria is just her cosplay name. As such Yumeria is the cosplay Otaku and my favorite character. Her personality changes depending on what cosplay she is wearing. Usually this means her voice changes and she has an anime sentence ending. If she cosplays a catgirl she ends sentences with Nya and if she plays a Warlord she ends sentences with De Gozaru for example. Over all she seems to be bubbly but can be Tsundere as well if it its her cosplay. She creates Yaoi Doujin and seems to be romantically interested in monsters. However she mostly is drawn by Seme characters. Having a great weakness for anime smut and Seme characters she can even faint at the sight of them.
As Akiba Yellow she has less stand out features as the other two rangers. Though her delusional powers do outclass that of the others at several times, allowing her to imagine Yaoi scenes that create a stunlock for everyone involved. She is quite versed in Sentai lore and is idolised by many in the city, when the rangers appear in reality she becomes the most popular one. Her suit is based on the anime trope of twintail characters. Her roll call just as her ramble on conventions, cosplays or discussions until she is interrupted. This character made me cry with sadness, in the fifth episode of the first season and her story .. as well as the other rangers is pretty fleshed out. She needs to be together with the other rangers to be inspired as a Yaoi creator because if she is alone she tends to fall back in the same type of delusions. This is reflected in her delusion themes coming back numerous occasions showing she has some dominance in that.
Unexpectedly Good
While this show is really low-brow comedy, it succeeds way too well in making a great show. The first season is SOOOOO well paced it is insane. The rangers actually grow at a pace that makes sense, even in this weird setting. The moment where the rangers are able to break the fourth wall and fall into reality makes so much sense! There is actual build up to it, foreshadowing as well. While the twelfth and final real episode bulrushes you with insanity and weird twists, it is actually a plot point. This show is so incredibly meta that the final villain basically is the plot itself, again that is not completely true but you can watch this for yourself to discover the full details.
Every single character, except for the one that is made to be bland gets story, character development and interesting opportunities. This includes the main villain, but even the secondary villain , and no that is not a spoiler because everything that happens in any other sentai show will happen here it is designed like that. It is easy for fourth wall breaking shows to go stale.. but this one doesn’t .. because it knows when to change it’s pacing. I had a Megu-Nee cry moment in episode 5. I really felt inspired by episode 7. I felt nostalgia , I laughed and I felt confused. This is a show is set in reality but realises that it still would be fiction thus not would be set in reality and the characters realise this in time as well?! It almost feels like inception.. but campy and with deadpool. There should be no way this should work this well, it’s to campy for this to work so well yet it does.
The rangers gets startled by their posing explosions!
The show is meta enough to suddenly shift tones and you can be taken aback by it, things suddenly becoming really cool and epic in terms of fighting, keeping you engaged. When you are fed up with the main character, he suddenly becomes someone much more respectable.. when we grow to like him he has to leave, it plays with all these set ups and throws it in your face that it does yet it succeeds so well in them that this show to me surprised me all the way throughout In one episode for example (major spoilers for episode 8) they encounter a super weak alpaca monster named Tsukishimaalpaca (All Monsters have very long or tricky names the rangers instantly remember). Because they want to show themselves in the real word to the real Sentai producing head honcho, they need to move through the fourth wall again which they are only able to do with a strong monster.
We see them try to train up the Apaca in which they learn he just wants to sell street food, they take him to a theme park to conquer his fear, cook with him to hone his craft and also make him stronger. We see them bond and they suspect it might become the monster turns extra ranger trope or a switching side pattern! Yet in the end they decide it should be a reward him for his effort and make a tragic decision pattern as they murder their new friend by blowing him up with a new super weapon. While it flies of to explode it congratulates his friends for using him as a stepping stone… I did not expect that. The way this is paced is just so well done.. I felt really heartwarmed when the heroes hugged the Alpaca and just when I think.. well this is going to be hard to write yourself out off, they misinterpret a trope to end the deadlock.. surprising me.
In the first episode we see a monster called Shibuyaseitakaawadachisohidenagaaburamushi face of against the Akibarangers, a standard corporate monster villian that is defeated by the power of the Moe Moe Magnum, in the second they fight Shibuyakouzorinahigenagaaburamushi a monster that looks exactly the same.. but deems this racist and he tells the rangers there is a big difference between them. He has the power to induce nudeness in people.. but not like regular.. in real life he sells these sort of bubble screens that are skin coloured that you can lay over a the Aoi Tan anime character movie so it covers up her clothes so it seems nude.. he can create these screens for everyone! Trying to turn official dvd’s into bootleg versions of themselves and kill Akihabara’s degeneracy like that. However it is never revealed what the difference is. Until the Clip Show episode where the characters finally realise! The slow burn joke really made me cough up some soda. It would be kinda funny to reveal they actually have a difference but making the character realise after the season was so much better.
The mecha being a giant weeb car, the morpher being a anime figurine all seem like jokes but this all actually is somewhat believable interwoven in a story between father and child… because obviously the main villain is someone’s father..it’s a trope. Despite how weird the show is except for the twelfth episode it never really makes weird story stretches. Reveals in episode 9 make sense since there were hints since episode 1. Despite how utterly random the show feels all episodes have a part in the story and a place where the need to be and I was really amazed by it all. I felt like this was made for me and I very much look forward to delve further into season 2. I only know one spoiler for it! In this season they can harness the power of their Waifu.
It’s Blog-tag week in Paradise! This week I try to resolve all tags I had opened during my little winter depression. Two of these were Real Neat Blogger Awards. Initially I planned to make this two posts during this week but it would kinda feel fillery! So I decided to Gatai my nominations. Sorry for the long post.. I have no potatoes. The oldest nomination came from Everything is Bad for You and more recent one came from Geeknabe! I would like to thank both these blogs for these nominations and like my last few posts. You can visit their websites by clicking on the cocktails below this textblock. I shall be breaking the tag 7 rule as well in advance because literally everybody I know has done these several times or has nominations coming up the wazoo. I will get creative with it instead. Now have some cocktails and enjoy the ride.
(Geek Nabe)
(Everything is Bad for You)
The Real Neat Rules
Blog Tags have rules…most of the time, so here’s a list of them. 1. Display the logo 2. Thank the bloggers for the award. 3. Answer the questions from the one who nominated you. 4. Nominate 7 to 10 bloggers. 5. Ask them 7 questions.
I will come up with seven new questions to keep the tag alive. So let’s get down to answer questions. Tags will be completely as will the amount. We are in round 3 or 4 for most so those who don’t want this, I simply nominated pro forma. If you want to do this let me know in the comments and I will “randomly” add you to the list! Now Question Time.. there’s 14 so thats a lot! I alternate them between blogs.. because it’s fun!
Is there a game, book, or other work that you’d like to experience but that you can’t because it’s untranslated, not ported, or otherwise inaccessible? (Everything is Bad for you)
The answer to this game is a lot more complicated than it might appear. I am not a big book girl so if there is a book in a language I can’t read, I am most likely not really aware of it. As for games , the official answer would be yes , I would love to play Mother 3, Captain Rainbow , Seiken Densetsu 3 (A Secret of Mana game) but truth of the matter is I can. Plenty of fans around the world work hard to put out their fan translations of games we can’t otherwise play on the interwebs. While we can raise questions about legality and copyright with these works there’s also a case to be made for it to be fine. As long as the original creators or holder of the copyright does not take loss on this, I do not see the harm. As long as there is no way to enjoy a particular source trough official channels I will go about it another way and as soon as the game legit appears and I really like it , like Mother 3, I’ll buy it anyway. Among my geeky pals I have access to all consoles, except for Xbox one, but I don’t like anything unique on that anyway. I really believe if you REALLY want something you can get it. I even played Japanese games with a translator sitting next to me! Sometimes in life you have to cheat a bit! I always wanted a unicorn.. so I play Pokémon where I have 75, I really like riding coasters so I sometimes pretend not to have a heart issue. If you want something there more than likely is a way.
It is 2020, What is your favorite anime of the past decade? (GeekNabe)
Well, my favorite anime of all time Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is of the decade before that so now I have to look up air dates of the ones that follow. Steins Gate and Kill La Kill belong to my all time favorites of this age. While I prefer the emotional journey and they pay off of Steins Gate in the end the slow start makes it so that I would re-watch Kill la Kill sooner. Those two have a beginning and an end. School Live or Gakkougurashi might have been up there as well if I did not get one of those “and now buy the manga “ endings. Shovel-Kun was Bae. Still I haven’t decided which of the earlier two I like best. I really like closing line of Steins Gate. “Close your eyes” ..YAAAAAY! Yet Kill la Kill had so much amazing characters. It holds two of my favorite characters of all times. Yeah I can not choose! It’s a tie! *Booo Pinkie! Booooo*
What’s one work that really affected you or stuck with you in the last year, and why do you think it did? (Everything is Bad for you)
In 2019 I played the game Rakuen for the first time, even though it released in 2017, I got it gifted from someone buying a humble bundle. This game hit waaaay too close to home. I am beginning to cry about it even if just thinking about it. Unfortunately I can not explain this without spoiling it, but I guess that goes for this line of question in general, because we can’t really explain why something hit us without telling what it is about. Rakuen is a puzzle-adventure game, in which you play a boy and his mother. You start in the hospital playing a boy with a paper helmet on his head.. you already got a clue what is going on here. When you know that Rakuen means paradise in Japanese you have a pretty darn good idea what this game will be about. The boy and his mother bounce back between the real world and a colorful fantasy world full with amazing creatures that seem like they have a lot in common with the other patients in the hospital, the grumpy bear looks a lot like that grumpy grandpa in room 101 and the little bunnything like girl seems a lot like that stubborn girl in room 103 and so forth. The fantasy world also leads to the memory of the patients in the hospitals, a “dungeon” of sorts were you piece their story together. This will reward you with the characters in the fantasy world singing parts of a song that allows you to defeat the evil and grant acces to Rakuen. I nearly mummified myself after vinishing this game. I cried that hard.
The characters are done so well, the build up to their story, while not subtle (if you ever had anyone in your life deal with cancer and know anything about medication applied it’s spelled out right from the first moment with a chart that boy can read0 it just feels so real, mixed with a bit of anime drama sure but darn. My own heart condition put me in such a place a couple of years ago, doctors basically had given up hope and I was very close to my game over. The right medicine came just at the right time and maybe a miracle as well, but the point is, I have been in that ward. This game nails it’s metaphors and it’s dialogues so well that I am sure the lead designer is basing this off first hand experience. From the ways the doctors talk to the patients, to the dialogue between them and the whole atmosphere in the place. It’s a dead-on match for reality. With its 16 bit graphics it might not look like much, but I could smell the hospital, I could hear the voices, I could even imagine the fantasy world for my own. It’s something you do when your in those grey or green halls. You look for an escape so this game made way to much sense to me! Thus resulting in me crying my eyes out.
What anime character left the strongest impression on you? (Geek Nabe)
Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. He has become a sort of guru to me. Our drill is the one that shall pierce the heavens, his catchphrase is something that inspires me to do what I do. As humans we can think extremely limited and Kamina is the one to teaches us to shatter that limits of what we believe in. Kamina is the symbol of mind over matter. Whether it’s pulling an impossibly long katana from a scabbard, creating Gattai, where it should not be possible or inspiring the weak to rise above themselves allowing them to do something they should never have been able too. If you want something, just make it it happen. While Kamina’s teachings do come with the danger of being disappointed or dejected with how reality works he also shows us that at one point we kind of stopped dreaming. Before we dreamed of putting a man on the moon, exploring the seas and building walls to stop our enemies from entering (the china one.. I will not talk about the Trump one). Those feats seemed impossible but we made them possible. Nowadays we have to keep track of reality and keep things real to much. The age of the dreamer has ended but Kamina shows me that we still need dreamers. Sign me up! My pinknes is the one that shall reclour the heavens.
If you could revive one series what series would it be and why? (Everything is Bad for You)
Firefly would kind of be a cheap answer here but of course I would love to see that again. Yet in Geeknabe’s first question I already told I would have loved to see School Live come to a much more satisfying ending as well. Since I haven’t read the manga I would not know how the concept holds up over time though, so perhaps I would be better off choosing something what would have been awesome throughout. No Game No Life! was something I would have loved to see reach it’s conclusion. The world building was great, the whole concept was amazing and while the relation between our two protagonists was a bit creepy at times I would have loft to see this series continue. No prequels, no reboot , I want this story to go on! I want to see how Blanc will will it all!.I would also not mind if Katekyo Hitman Reborn continued, I really would love to see how the Vongola Family would move to their next adventures. But yeah lets keep it at no Game no Life as my official answer.
Who is your Waifu?
The pool of gay girl, non lewd, characters that I know of is kinda shallow. I would love a Tohru of my own but I would never take her from her Kobayashi. Their love is to nice with their own little Kanna. I tend to stick with Dark Magician girl, there’s multiple copies so I don’t rob her from anyone, she has cute summon animations and is a magical girl which is a plus, but she still is kinda lewd and flirty. I am not a very sexual person so I do not know how compatible we are. Ideally .. if I could have any girl in the world and make her love me, as much as she loves love interest my ideal Waifu would be Ako Tamaki from And You Thought There Never Were any girls online. She is adorable, loves to roleplay, loves games, has a lot of pink stuff and she’s totally innocent. She is also a Yandere type of character, with the right amount of craziness I look for in a girl. I bet she would love to play D&D with me as well. She looks beautiful as well, I love her eyes ,her hair and just her cute little mannerisms. Her online avatar even wears pink! She’s so perfect! Well except for her being in love with a boy…. So I guess I am waifu single?
When it comes to music, do you prefer songs with vocals and lyrics or instrumental pieces, or do you have a preference at all? If you prefer one type over the other, why do you think that is? (Everything is Bad for You)
I am not a big music person , to me music on it’s own is a bit generic, it is a modifier to other things, like how salt and pepper season your dish, music can season your movie or game, or even your blogging. I prefer instrumental songs vastly over the ones with lyrics. For how I use most music having lyrics is a bit detrimental. I cant blog while hearing people yell other texts than the one I am typing, During Tabletop roleplay it harder to talk or understand each other. Strangely enough I really like it when someone puts lyrics to to instrumental song though. The best example is the ONLY song I seem to talk about. The Duck Tales Moon theme. Disney in a master Stroke interwoven this theme in Della Duck’s history. The song has evolved over the years and has become not only a part of a game, but a part of the franchise, in seasoning that has surpassed the ages. It feels as a reward for enjoying the instrumental song we eventually we unlock the lyrics! Woop woop! Unlockables!
Whatis your take on fans’ acclaimed Top 3 (Naruto/Bleach/One Piece)? (Geeknabe)
Bleach is still in there? Really? I mean if the Bounto Arc did not kill it I certainly expected the Fullbring art to kill the love. The ending of the manga felt insanely rushed and the introduction of the kids was very horrible. That being said there is nothing inherently wrong with standard shounen like this, in fact I do think it is an requirement. The Top 3 is a gateway drug that leads people into anime and manga so I am glad they do what they do. Without them I would have never met my friends. I may have outgrown them and I am not the biggest fan on how they are written in this day and age but we do need them. I’d feel these 3 are the second step of anime. The first being Pokémon/DBZ/Sailor Moon, and the competition shows like Beyblade, Yugioh and Medabots. The first step doesn’t draw you into anime but makes you appreciate it, the second step.. brings you into the fandom. I don’t even think these shows are too bad. They just feel somewhat bland to me and in case of all three their pacing is not very good.
When was the last time you bought a magazine, newspaper, or other form of print media? (Everything is Bad for You)
I bought Is This a Zombie Part 3 about nine months and honestly I paid quite a bit too much for it. I feel most printed media that is being sold is too expensive. We have too many options that are just so much cheaper Living in a 23 square meter studio, printed media oftenly becomes clutter to quickly. As a dutchie I oftenly pay to much for a manga. Dollar prices are euro prices even if there is a significant exchange rate, if the price is in pounds however we do pay the exchange rate plus we round it off to “round” numbers. Magazines are outdated, rarely am I interested in an entire magazine but instead would have bought it for one or two articles, now I can read those online. Though I do miss the physical sensation of having something to read in my hand I do not feel that is worth giving up that night in town, or skip dinner for a day for. I either have to recycle the magazine, create shelf space for a manga or save up news papers for a month until I can put them to the street. While I would love to have printed media if I had money and space right now..as is there are cheaper and more practical alternatives.
What Advice do you have to new Bloggers ? (GeekNabe)
I have to do a post on this as well in the next tag so be sure to watch that one as well. So let’s advice something here that is not in tommorows one. I guess here I would like to say to all you new bloggers out there is to find your community yourself. WordPress isn’t magic to gain followers you will need to follow others as well, be social, leave a comment. Blogging may seem like it’s a single player game but in reality it is an MMO. Blogging is a social activity. We do care about your opinion but we might not be able to find you right away. So don’t be a stranger and say hi. So many other wonderful bloggers will help you grow and expand your blog, like how these tags do so nicely.Be part of WordPress, Blogvinn or whatever type of media you prefer, don’t just be the boss of your own little domain. Don’t get obsessed with the number game to start with , but yeah as a blogger you want to be read otherwise you’d just write in your diary. To be read, be seen, do not be a lurker we mostly are positive persons with the same hobbies as you and we would love to hear your ideas but we also want to share ours with you.
Is there a holiday you don’t get to celebrate but that you wish you could? (Everything is bad for you)
I have nagged about not celebrating christmas enough so let’s take it in another direction. The Twelfth of January will be Kiss a Ginger Day a holiday that has been a tradition in like 28 households across the world since 2009. On this day you find a significant ginger in your life and give them a kiss. Unfortunately I shall not be participating because of my super powers. My super power allows me to be so panda that any act of lewdness or more than platonic affection for one reason or another doesn’t happen. Besides that I do not know any gingers I could kiss on the cheek platonically, without being whacked with an Umbrella. I’d wish I had a ginger to kiss because I do sorta like ginger girls, especially if they also wear glasses. On February the 5th we celebrate World Nutella day, which I also won’t be joining. Even though I do like Nutella I can’t really afford premium brands like that, let alone eat it for an entire day. On that day I am not particularly hungry anyway because on that same day there is “Shower with a Friend day” A day to raise awareness for chlorine contamination and water spillage. I bet a lot of people can combine those two into something lewd but I will not be covered in italian chocolat paste and then be forced to shower with a friend. I’d take just the Nutella..because I have no work.. I better pick up store brand… and there you go! Question answered!
What anime would you recommend to your friends that have never seen a single episode in their life? (Geeknabe)
That totally depends on if the friend is legitimately interested in viewing one of my past times or if they want to check it out to laugh at me or see if there is really squids that violate people. A genuinely interested friend, I would start of with something fairly normal yet special, like Erased or Your Name or School Life if they like certain shows on tv or movies in the genre. People who joke about anime and laughingly ask me to put something on for them so they can see how weird and stupid it is I show Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro Chan, Akikan, Cat Soup or FLCL. You do not mess with my passions, if you think I am weird, I shall create a drill that will shatter your mind on how weird exactly I am! Who the hell do you think I am! I am a person who watches girls whack a guy with a guitar on the head and pull robots out of it.. see soda cans wage a war of love and see a cat bring it’s brain dead relative on an adventure! So never ask me to show you anime to mock me! I will Girl und Panzer your ass and force you to watch through it all! and that is if you catch me in a good mood. Teehee! Erased really is a good show for most normies though I think. It’s a nice plot with enough anime charm put in it.
If you had to create a new holiday, when would it be and what would it involve? (Everything is bad for you)
Well first of all you get a jar of nutella, rub it on a friend than you go shower together… wait…………that already happens…frizzlesticks! Kidding aside if I had to create a holiday it would be all about you. During Christmas we spend time with our family, with thanksgiving we are grateful for all the things we have received, during valentine’s day we honour our love, we have days for our war heroes, our deities, Be it god and jesus on easter, Mohammed Allah or the Shinto Gods. Even the Flying Spaghtti Monster is celebrated, during Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day on the nineteenth of September Pastafarians honour their god. Yet not a single holiday focuses on the most important person in your life … YOU! I’d create a holiday where everyone buys a little present for themselves. Be it a spa day, be it your favorite piece of chocolate. It’s celebrate by doing you. If you want to check in a hotel and eat a toblerone from the hotelbar while wearing their bathrobe and watching sappy chick flicks away from your family or getting liquored up in a bar with all of your mates. Whatever gives you that perfect little moment of happiness. It’s a day where being selfish is allowed.. just for once! Holidays always teach us to live for others, to donate too charity to give others the largest piece of chicken. One the first of may , I may order tapas just for me, I may treat myself to a luxury bath bomb or I may stay in bed the entire day. I matter on the first of may!
What is your opinion on fanservice in anime ? ( Geeknabe)
I am gonna assume this means boobies and jiggly butts, because I have no problem whatsoever with the other kind of fan service.. like you know Goku who has Gohan’s old hat or the power pole on a shelf, or A jojo character doing the pose of an older jojo character to show their lineage.. I love that stuff. As for the jigglies I do not care much about them, if it makes people happy I do not mind giving up a second or two from my series for a jiggle animation, it means nothing to me. As long as it’s not detrimental to the show. High School of the Dead if for example annoyed me to no end. All those weird shower scenes with the teacher added nothing. I think the second episode of Fire Force also added a scene like that but that got better ever since. Keijo for example I really quite enjoyed because the fan service is in favor of plot advancement. I can even appreciate jokes where a female character is saved by her physical qualities. However scenes that are just about boobs or butts or sexual innuendo I do not care about at all. While I can get attracted to a personality, like Ako or Dark Magician girl kinda do.. I would not feel the same at all if I just saw a drawing. In real life or anime, a naked woman slipping on a soap bar with boobs flopping around doesn’t really tickle my fancy.
I could have a house filled women without clothes and I would not feel a thing. I find clothes a lot sexier than flesh as it expresses much more personality I know something of that person. Attraction to me is about forming a bond and I would need to see someone interact with me, A woman D cup, without clothes sitting on my couch, watching the tv would make me less aroused as as an A Cup girl in a winter coat winking at me and beckoning me over. So I do not get fan service or it’s appeal at all, its visual stimuli without an invitation. Like if someone shows me a picture of a Kobé Steak, with a 1000 dollar bottle red wine, foie gras and other stuff. I won’t really get hungry by that because it’s not going to happen, not in a million years. Show me an add for the pizza place next door and I just might be hungry..and still not for that picture but for the actual pizza across the street. I just do not find fanservice sexy at all, nor gross or demeaning so as long as I get my content from the episode I am fine. Otherwise it’s just as annoying as those overly long One Piece Flashbacks
Seven Questions
Now for my seven questions, these will put you in the shoes of some famous anime characters or worlds. Let’s see if you all can roleplay a little! Please do not answer any of these questions with “I would not do that..If I make you roleplay an evil character , you are still yourself…but EVIL!
1. If you could do the fusion dance with any character from anime, who would you fuse with and how would you be called when fused
2, If you gathered the seven Dragon Balls, what would be your wish?
3. What would be your Devil Fruit if you had to eat one.
4. If you were Shou(ette) Tucker and you had , a boy/girlfriend/lover , a best friend or a single parent which one would you use for a chimera and would you fuse them with a dog, a chicken or a cow? Also WHY!?
5. If you got a Geass that could save ONE but only ONE character in Code Geass from death which one would you save?
6. If you were Maximillion Pegasus, which blogger his/her parents soul would you steal to make them do a collaboration with you?.
7.If you were a homunculus in Fullmetal Alchemist, what would be your Sin and how would that relate to your abilities.
Nominations
So yeah who to nominate? Last time I could use a song but this time I can’t. So I use a random word generator to make a random word appear and tag a blogger that I think matches the word the best. Here we go
Word 1: Wagon Nominee: Hikari Reason: Wagon… Station Wagon.. Station.. Otaku Station Yep I am really amazing at this!
Word 2: Pluck Nominee: Crow Reason: A Crow is a bird and you pluck a bird I also considered Krystallina for this but I don’t think you can pluck a penguin
Word 3: Fossil Nominee: Inkisbane Reason: He said he was really old
Word 4 :Stock Nominee: Krystallina Reason: Penguins might not be pluckable but I bet you can make a very nice stock out of them.
Word Number 5: Equinox Noiminee: GeekGirlJoy Reason: Equinox sounds like a perfect name for a robot
Word Number 6: Reserve Nominee; Irina Reason: All the quality booze has Reserve in the name. I know she probably has way too much tags to deal with but who knows
Word Number 7: Conversation Nominee: Blerdy Otome Reason: In Otome games it’s all about the conversation.
Wanna join these people in the questions? Let me know in the comments! See you in more taggy stuff in the next one!
It’s a new year my dear Island guests. It’s also a year I am starting of rather busy with plenty of people wanting to meet to convey their new year’s wishes. You know the thing, lot’s of coffee and tea events, means also a lot of resupplying, lots of extra house cleaning, additional traveling and all that. So while I am being a busy bee, let’s catch up on some blogger tags I missed either during my hiatus or still have got to do. We start of with a tag I was mentioned in today! But this one seemed like a good place to start of the new year. A look at my first steps into geekdom. The Geeky Childhood Tag. I was tagged by Lyn, the Otaku Author, who has my thanks. Check out his blog and cool reviews. And of course you can watch HIS answers by clicking on the cocktail below!
The Rules of the Tag
Normally we begin these things by stating the rules, which involve tagging the one who tagged you, a set number of people to tag and displaying a logo. However this time there are no rules. I have no logo to display nor do I have to tag a certain amount of bloggers. So I would like to tackle this a bit differently. I shall tag three people down below, but also nominate every other reader. Just leave a comment below that you would like to take up my invitation and I shall add you to a list to bloggers who actually like to do these tags. Plenty of you out there do not like to participate in these and I have no oversight in who likes these things and who doesn’t. Since most of these post usually have a limited amount of people I can nominate and I hate excluding people to the core, I would at the very least like to keep a list of people who like to engage with these thing. If you have done this tag already, feel free to post a link to yours in the comments, again to show me you are into the taggy thing! Taggers for taggers and all! Please help me give these little nuggets to people who actually enjoy them!
With that being said it’s time to explore my geeky childhood.
Where did your geek come from? Parents? Siblings? Destiny?
Unfortunately the story of me being geeky isn’t a particularly happy one. You see as the tiny thing I was there was already some signs of the wall of my later condition. My motor skills where sub par. I had great difficulty walking stairs, licking my lips, doing some other stuff. While I got therapy, my fine motor skills began to improve but my crude motor skills deteriorated. I ran funny, I got dressed in the most awkward ways and I was very clumsy. Even with therapy a gap appeared that grew. I was slower, more accident prone and cramped than others so I never really fully got to appreciate playing outside. I was always the slowest to dress up with my girly friends, I was always the first to be tagged out on the schoolyard and got hurt when we would adventure. I broke toys due to sudden loss of motor control for a brief moment and stuff like that. So I never fully got to enjoy myself as much as others did.
Then mom and dad gave me an NES, a way to play where I would not get in the way of myself. For the first time I could play with my friends on the same level, I was as good as Mario 3 as they were, or better. I still liked talking to my girls of course but I didn’t really need to compete in those other things anymore. Of course by the time the SNES came out, we became old enough that you start bullying each other so in a span of three miserable years I virtually lost all my friends. Except for those who like geeky things and gaming because I actually was kind of good in that. They introduced me to more and more geeky stuff and so I became a geek. It’s the first thing I did not suck at and the first thing that did not alienate me. My first safe space.
The First Geeky Thing You Got Into
So while gaming was the geeky thing that turned me into a geek, the first thing I officially got into was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the eighties cartoon. Though in europe or at least in the Netherlands we used to call it Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles back than. Twix was still called Raider back in those days as well so you know it’s some early life stuff for me. The neighbour boy across the streets who came over to play a lot was really into turtles so we watched it together and I really got invested in it. The neighbour girl was his niece so she also watched it with us at times but we just connected less, I always felt like I was inferior to her so I sorta rebelled and took more from the neighbour boy than the girl. So rather than dress up like a princess I dressed up like a turtle…and crashed my tricycle when my bandana got caught up in the wheels. I really could have used a half shell right then and there. Turtle-ouwww-er!
Favourite Movie as a Kid
I was a huge disney kid when I was young and later really into power rangers. Now you might think I will say I liked the Power Rangers movie best when I was a kid but no!! That movie sucks.. Even as a kid I saw how much that CGI sucked. I stuck mostly to the disney classics. One of my favorite disney movies however was not even a disney classic. It was Ducktales the movie! It was something we recorded on tv on a video tape (jeez this post makes me feel old) I watched it so much I knew exactly how long to fast forward through the commercials. It was aired on a belgium network and at the end of the movie, when G became a real boy and the subtitles were over, a clip of a belgium singer would play. It was this belgian comedian pretending to be a typical gay guy singing about how manly he is. Times sure have changed. Check this stuff out!
Now while Ducktales the movie is a contender for favorite movie, I gotta say there was one movie that was above it. A movie that I probably should not have been watching at that age yet, but it was Gremlins and even more so Gremlins 2. I loved the mogwai Gizmo when I was a kid. I loved it sooo much. I even had a gizmo plush that at some point just disappeared from my memory. I knew I had one and I was super excited when I got it.. but I think someone might have broken it and mom just gifted me stuff to make me forget..because .. suddenly it’s not there anymore.I did not win the lottery this year so I can’t afford one of those real mogwai toys you got now. Those look so friggin good. The gremlin movies had it all for me, they were scary, they had people die, it was super colourful, very random , adorable beyond my wildest imagination and the second one featured all sorts of superpowered monsters. Heh I really haven’t grown up a lot have I , thats still the kind of stuff I love.
(Okay so the last one is not from the movies but I dig it)
Favourite Video Game as a Kid
Once upon a time there was a licensed property title that was actually good. A game that allowed you to treasure hunt in transylvanian castles, the amazon rainforest, the himalayas, the deepest mine of africa and even the moon.That game was Ducktales for NES , the first game I ever finished and too this day one of the best video games I have ever played and something that shaped me as a gamer and completely defined my tastes. To this day I still prefer retro style platformers, like Shovel Knight, The Messenger, Cave Story and of course the ducktales remake. The NES ducktales was what made me cry when I had to sell my old NES. I was into the SNES now and I wanted money for new toys and more games so mom and dad helped me sell it. While I had not issue letting go of Mega Man 2, Mario 3, Turtles 2, Gremlins and Adventure in the Magical Kingdom (those were all the games I own I think) I cried to see Ducktales go.. not the NES itself, not other games.. just Ducktales. If have exclaimed my love for the moon theme before, but this game has amazing music, great flow and it’s challenging enough for a kid yet finishable It’s one of those.. game-overing resets all you progress games but I didn’t care as kid. I completed it , several times. The moment your race up to reach that number one dime before magica DeSpell and Flintwood Glomgold get there is the perfect closing of a perfect little adventure.One day I hope to get a NES with a copy of the game again…or even just a copy of the cartridge to display as a trophy. When that day happens I’ll definitely Woohoo!
Favourite Book as a Kid
This one will be somewhat lost in translation.as this is a dutch book, that only got translated in danish, lithuanian. japanese, korean and german. It’s called “De Griezelbus” which roughly translates to “The bus of Horrors, or the bus of scares. This is a serie of six five books that tell the tale of the victims of P.Onnoval , an anagram for the writer of this series Paul van Loon. In the books a horror book author, invites a school class to join him in his Bus of Horrors , where he will tell them stories out of his new book. Yet the class doesn’t know Onnoval is in fact really a werewolf that is just stalling them with his stories until the moon comes out so he can eat and kill them. In the second part he rises from his death as a vampire and tries again, in the third he exists as a virtual presence trying to possess someone. Each time the formula is the same, kids get trapped in a bus and here horror stories as they have to find a way to escape from the clutches of this evil man. It’s a mix of an overarching narrative and horror short stories in alternating order. Since the short stories mostly end badly you really to worry about these kids in the main story.Like the bad endings of the shorts sort of reprogram your brain let go of that feeling that everything will work out in the end.
My favorites in the series are the second one and even more so the third one. In the second one I really cared for the students trapped in the bus for some reason and in the third one the plot really had me invested. In the third one the childeren get told the stories trough virtual reality, but each round one character gets to see the story trough the eyes of the main person. By having them experience their own deaths or something extremely traumatic in first person.. Onnoval breaks their spirits one by one with no escape. Those who experienced the trauma usually go catatonic or extremely meek, as a kid this felt as such a good evil ploy! Credits to the fourth book for having my favorite short story. In this one two girls get to camp out in a museum that has a new egypt exhibition what is build up as a night full of horrors ends up a ploy for the museum ward to poison and mummify them so that two of the mummy girls of the exhibition can go free in their stead.The short ends with the reveal that one of the girls was poisoned from the very start and as she force feeds her friend the poison both go along with the ward willingly (trough the poison) in order to be mummified and placed in the display…. darn, I was a messed up kid.
Favourite Memory as a Kid
I didn’t have to much of a happy childhood, the bullying was relentless, no one wanted to trade pokémon with me..because I was me. People threw worms at me or forced me into barbed wire.. or chased me so I would fall in a pit of trash they made. While by now I have to admire the dedication that was put into making my life miserable it did mean that I might not have AS amazing memories as little miss populair or something., There are two contenders for my favorite memory one is a bit more grand than the other. The less grand memory is simply the memory of me beating Donkey Kong Country. By far my favorite SNES game This game was one of the hardest to beat and I worked hard to get good at it, dedicated myself and the first time I took down King K Rool i felt an emotion I rarely felt in my childhood. Pride. It might have been a silly thing to be proud about but this game mattered to me. I had no trouble in school to get good grades whatsoever so when I was best of the class with grades, I never really felt proud, I was always one of the top contenders and I never really had to work for it. Unfortunately me getting sicker later ruined that as I could not coast trough things anymore due to being absent a lot and it tripped me up.. but anyway.. Donkey Kong was one of the first times I experienced genuine pride… directed at myself, it’s nice to experience it , especially if you never had it before.
The second memory is a bit more grand, it’s a chain of events that is a mix of bad luck that lead into something positive. It all started with a competition held by a local bakery that got his supply from a local windmill. They held a colouring competition and me being creative, created blossom out of my moms nail polish on the trees, made the sky a sunset orange rather than a normal blue and really made it feel like a warm spring late afternoon. My creativity led me to win the first price, I remember the second price was a set of lego’s shaped like a windmill which I really wanted to have…but I won the first price. So I had to go up the windmill to fetch my price. This scared the bejeezus out of me as the stairs there.. along with my motor skills and on and off fear of heights, this already was a terrible experience. I managed to get up there.. all cried up and flustered, just to find out they wanted to take pictures of me and ask me questions for a local newspaper. My first anxiety attack was the result… yaaay fun! Turns out I won a brand new bike… which I was way to tiny for..but of course for the picture I had to get on the bike regardless…. I fell off…. So now I had a bump on my head, a red up cry face, an anxiety attack and a bike that was to big for me. Things weren’t looking good. I was very upset. Than my parents took me the city treated me to a “frietje met kroket” some dutch junk food that is basically french fries with a stick of breaded beef stew, deep fried. Than dad told me he would sell the bike and I could get a gameboy for the money of that bike. So I got my gameboy and got a game and finally that day turned around. The day I got my gameboy is still etched into my memories and I was one happy camper. I never got that lego windmill though.
A Character You Looked Up To as a Kid
Since being the cool kid was out of the question from a very early age, I guess I determined I would be the good thing. So as a kid I took on a sensible role model. Captain Planet. Saving nature and saving animals was something I deeply respected, as well as his other wisdoms such as to stay in school and all that standard be a kid crap. I loved shows that focussed on saving nature. Right now I have really moved away from that, it’s not like I don’t care anymore but we can take things a bit far, I matter as well, at least for me. While I listened to captain planet… and dutch santa for that matter, I risked falling into that. “All work and no play make Pinkie a.. giant douche ‘ kinda trope. While most of our cartoons were subbed they also got pulled from tv very fast. Which meant we had to watch the rest on the german station RTL. Captain Planet in german is much harder to follow for a non native german speaker. I mean I can still talk with germans, like casually but when we talk about poison gasses, types of poulton, deforestation and such.. yeah I am gonna lose track.
So soon I replaced Captain Planet as my hero with Dotty, the mouse inventor of the rescue rangers. I pretended to be her a lot, I would love to invent stuff like her so I spend all day in my room playing to be dotty inventing stuff. Among my greatest inventions for example were.. putting water in your piggy bank so if someone stole your money you could follow the water on the floor and find out who stole it, Attaching a Lego shark to a pencil.. because the lego shark made everything look cooler.. and the msot famous one.. my glow in the dark lamp. It’s a desk lamp on which I melted all sorts of glow in the dark stuff. It would charge the glow in the dark stuff when you used it as a desk light.. and if you entered your room in the dark .. it would glow and you would always be able to find the light. Of course it looked like ..basically a lamp dipped in candle wax, it would stink of molten plastic every time you turn it on, drip hot plastic on your skin if you weren’t careful and mom threw it away after a few days, ..but Dotty at least inspired me to invent something! It was awesome… then again those might be the plastic fumes talking.
A Character That Scared You as a Kid
I never really had big troubles with monsters in series or anything. Shredder from the Turles never scared me, nor did Stripe in Gremlins. While I found some characters exciting I never really feared”the monster under my bed”. So my parents thought I was immune for it. It was an evening like any other, I just played with a punch of cardboard turtle toys, I got from my aunt and uncle, they were amazing when a new episode of Ducktales was on tv. It was the episode that in english is called Duckworth’s Revolt. In this episode the butler of Scrooge Mcduck gets abducted by aliens and Huey Duey and Louie follow to rescue him from the evil Vegedonians. Evil vegetables that force you to labour in their gardens for life.. or throw you in the vacuum of space. Brigadier Broccoli, Lieutenant Garlic and Sergeant Squash, there was also a whipping plant that never got a name but that one looked darn evil as well. Sergeant Squash for some reason scared the soul out of me.
That night I had nightmare after nightmare about Sergeant Squash about being forced into slavery or crushed into death. That’s right when the little ducks ask what happen if they don’t work for him he tells them he will squish and squash them. The dutch voice actor does it with so much intensity that too this day I still can hear those words that haunted me that night. Even adding it to scenes where the orginal did not use it.. as a catchphrase. You see them nearly throw the butler into space and yeah these aliens were cruel. I could hear them patrolling the hallway in our house. I screamed in terror so much that night my mom took my out of bed and forced me to rip apart all those new turtle toys as punishment. It did not help. now I felt sad and scared.. and anger to my mom. When I woke the next time I guess my mom saw the terror in my eyes for real and I saw she regretted making me tear up those toys… “Oh shit Pinkie is really scared I messed up” It was as if I could read my mothers thoughts in that moment. I told mom I deserved my punishment to try and make her feel better as I knew I forced her hand. I did not get any sleep that night, I stayed up..pretending to be a sleep , but I was staring at the empty book that once held those cardboard toys, while behind me in the hallway I still heard them…Squish Squash..Squish Squash… Never did I get so spooked by anything ever again… and why it was this particular thing I don’t even know.
And of course everyone reading this will be able to participate! Let me know if you are interested in doing Tag Posts or not in the comments! I’ll make a list!
My dear island-guests, for most of you it has become clear that I really like Pokémon, pink and unicorns. There are however a lot of geeky things I haven’t show you yet, so with these post that you’ll find once in a blue moon , here on this tropical island, that you might not have known yet.
I am a HuGe Dragon Ball Fan
Okay this one is no secret, I used Dragon Ball stuff a lot in my posts. When I was just a little girl, we had a tv channel named Yorin, from four until six pm that network would air double episodes of Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z and Gundam Wing (I think it was wing.. might have been another series). Having always been a geek, I did enjoy Sailor Moon but I could never really see why they were into guys so much… signs on the wall and all. I did not care about their real lives as much as they were a bit to girly. You know when your like ten years old and you don’t like the other girls because they don’t like you because you move weird and video game you rebel against everything they stand for. I was a bit of a tomboy, being very ungirly at that age… I compensate to this day. The show that followed Sailor Moon though , I absolutely loved.
Guys fighting each other with big sparkly beams! Transformations that did not involve clothes. I devoured the entire series and it stayed with me. I would go out of my way to watch more of it, when GT started airing here that was a big thing. Z already had been repeated about twice or so, meaning I saw everything about two and a half times, though the buu saga only once as the show never ran it’s full length here before. I didn’t like it as much, but hey Super Saiyan 4 looked pretty good. When I discovered these shows were called anime, and there was a whole wide web to find it , I got seriously into it. Having watched every movie, most of them multiple times, the original series, following Super like a fan, many Dragon Ball games later, I still keep up with the lore and trivia. I am very well read in Super Saiyan Grades (No that’s not SS1, SS2 SS3, but SS1-G1, SS1-G2, SS1-Super-Vegeta and son on) the workings of Ki and so on. It’s a fandom I rarely openly show, but as soon as someone talks Dragonball.. much like Shallot from Legends….. I’m Game.
I crossplayed as Tommy Wiseau (Johny from the Room)
I’ve been going to conventions for about five or six years now, sometimes for work , sometimes as a guest, dabbling into cosplay here and there. Pokémon, the Witcher, Zelda, Hatsune Miku, Maids and the likes. Yet one year the biggest cosplayer of my posse and myself both wanted something new to cosplay..but we were both broke. So we came up with a plan, where we could not spend more than 30 euro on a cosplay. The rest would could borrow or take from our closets. He became a Lewdchador.. buying a mexican wrestling mask and making his costume of Dakimakura. I saw a really bad soft curled black wig for three euro’s and I decided to crossplay. I borrowed a black shirt and a jacket from a friend and used some of my own white pants. A water bottle and I was done.
For those who don’t know, Tommy Wiseau is the (allegedly) Polish director of the dramatic love story movie, The Room. A self financed movie that is so bad, it is the best movie ever. There are so many mysteries around Tommy and the Room, like how he got the money and why there are so many pictures of spoons in this movie .. it had become a cult phenomenon The acting and writing, and directing (all done by Wiseau) is so bad all the scenes have this meme status. “I did not hit her .. I did naaaaaawwwt… oh Hi Mark’ is probably the best known quote from this movie.Having spend only 3 euro so far though I still had budget left. So I asked my friends to all pack a suit and I bought an american football (which is not easy to get here by the way) We played football in our suits, which at one point I still hope to bring as an event to a convention.It was difficult because every time I saw an Eeveelution cosplay.. I had to run up to them and say ‘Hi Doggie’ … Oh the memes!
I’ve been a Star Wars : The Old Republic Roleplayer for many years.
My online persona as it is to day , was mostly shaped trough roleplay in MMO’s. Not the dirty kind and not the dicey kind either, I started that a few years later. It was the kind where you emote your actions and have your characters interact. Kind of like Habbo Hotel Plus. In Star Wars I was Sy’ra Delinda, a twisted Sith girl, who was good at making her opponents sick, confused and playing with their emotions. She was a master manipulator, that had a significant amount of followers, during her run as a character. Sy’ra however was unlike most Sith. She dressed up in all pink, as the colour made her feel safe due to a result of torture she endured in her past, Sy’ra used postive emotions to full her powers, and her catch phrase was Friendship is Magic. While in reality friends were a means to and end for her.. as someone who genuinely loved her friends she gained power from fighting for and with them.. and she felt that if someone protected her with passion because they care for her, it would make them stronger and more loyal followers.
Her beliefs at one point gained so many followers and the character became so powerful, (trough allies) as many roleplayers loved to have a non backstabber person to talk with that the Guild Master , OOC told people to unfriend her. Sy’ra saw a niche in the sith world, in character and like a true Sith exploited that weakness to gain power. The Guild Master could however could not stand that my character could rebel and easily take over the guild due to her sheer support, from inside and outside the guild that we decided that Sy’ra would just go her own way. She outgrew the school and I retired the character, due to people not accepting that playing it smart sometimes works better than emoting godlike powers. Even if they could destroy Sy’ra with the snap of a finger, the fallout would cause them to lose their power in the end. After that no one would accept Sy’ra into their ranks, fearing her because people testified that they would fight for the character without ever betraying her and no one could deal with such a force. So eventually I just let her settle down, no one could touch her in her lifetime so she just grew old with the woman she loved.
I am (usually) surprisingly good at crane games
I grew up in a small town, with very little exciting things to do. My motorical disfunction barred me from joining any sports , as I would never be able to play with my peers and made me a victim to bullying a lot, so I never really could join a club without suffering. So there was only one time a year where our village would get exciting. When the fair was in town. I loved the fair and the rides, but as time passed and my condition progressed I seemed to go increasingly sick in spinny rides.. being a small town.. that and the bumper carts was wall we had. The last one wasn’t an option because as the bullied kid I would be targeted remorselessly. So I got into crane games, the other thing to do. Being big on plushies.. as they kinda were my only friends, anyway it felt good and fun.
Over the years I honed my craft and really learned how cranes reacted and how the weight of a plushie can be used for easier wins. I understand the rules and I can tell you which games are more likely to pay then others. Now that I live in a bigger town I calculate my chance of winning by, looking where the plushies are geographically located in the stands, what are current trends and what is not. Then there is proximity to factor in, never go for one that is not ‘the closest’ to the prize hole. Then there is the weight ratio head to body , sometimes you want things to topple a certain way so they can bounce into a win.. knowing what part is heavier allows you to do that. Then there is the ultimate technique, where I account for events and the number of players a day. On the first day or the first weekend day these machines oftenly have cranes set to lower success chances, while for when example the day when people with Down Syndrome come out to play oftenly have their win ratio kept high, even after they have gone. (It’s a thing in my neighbouring town where they all have a field trip together). Physics, Chance and Empathy…. that’s how I expand my plushie collection.
I have Co-Interviewed Toshio Maeda
Toshio Maeda might not be a name that rings any bells. If it doesn’t good for you , keeping your nose clean. If you do know who he is, well you do you I guess. Before I got dragged into this interview I never heard of the man before. Now who is Toshio Maeda… well he is basically the guy that is responsible for that weird thing people think when you tell them you like anime. I like anime… ‘So you like tentacles groping schoolgirls?’ … that one. Toshio Maeda is the man who popularised the tentacle hentai genre arguably even the founder of it.
So how does a spinster like me get dragged into this. I mean I have sex on the brain about as often as you encounter a person that can pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch , the place in Wales, correctly. (Assuming you don’t come from Wales) Well I used to work for a blog that was an brancheoff of a dutch gaming magazine. We talked about Japan and Anime in an extremely dutch way taking on fake identities of super dutch names as well. One of our bloggers had mister Meada as a penpal , for his studies in Japanese. So one day he asked if he could place an interview with him .. which seemed like a really cool idea and funny. However as we needed screenshots of their correspondence, our leader deemed that the mail traffic would have to happen through our official mail address. So we could place screenshots that mister Maeda actually was mailing with us. I was the one who managed that email so I became a proxy where both our guy and Toshio would mail to. Then we found out the interview wasn’t very funny and ‘on brand’. It was a bunch of to safe and obvious questions while we were kinda the looney ones that asked weird questions. So I got tasked with ..asking the guy some secret questions, unbeknownst to our writer by our leader. Stuff like.. ‘Did you ever fantasize about being a schoolgirl as well’ but also stuff like .. ‘what is your favorite cereal’ (as cornflakes humor was apparently an onbrand thing because our leader talked about cereal a lot)
He was a really nice guy but his answers were kind of bland. Which in the end made it even funnier to see what he drew compared to what he says. Painting a picture of a very special man, who in his own way created a lasting impression on the world. He is incredibly down to earth and passionate about the general art of drawing yet with a description as ‘he’s the tentacle porn guy’.. you kind of expect a Master Roshi or Kakashi like figure but he really is just a very normal friendly guy. Very polite to me , being a woman as well as too my fellow interviewer. He highlights that we are not our reputation or our looks, we are our very own thing and if we just make assumptions about others we often assume wrong.
Originally I planned this post to have ten things about me.. but I had too much fun rambling on to keep them that brief. So instead I have some more fuel for a post in the future. There I will be talking about geeky cooking, an anime crush, a mean thing I did, one of my most scary dojikko moments and of course end up in a lewd situation again! See you next time sweeties enjoy paradise!
I felt like watching TV today, then I realised my tv-box broke. Since my youtubers haven’t uploaded my favorite content yet , yes like 90% most of it is pokémon related, so I decided to do a little personal story. Inspired by the 30 day geek out challenge, post by A Geeky Gal I decided to talk about one of my first fandom moments. My first Pokemon tournament.
A foul boy There I was, fourteen years old, I did not really know where there was, dad drove me much to his dismay. I was somewhere quite a long drive from home judging by dad’s chagrin. I was to excited and nervous to notice any of it though! I would be on tv and win my first Pokemon tournament! i did not know I was not signed up and was there just battling in a no rules anything goes, friendly compo. No real winner, but you get points for winning, or something. I was too stupid to notice, so let’s be honest I was not going to win ever. Dressed in blue, with some pink boots (as I had a copy of Pokémon Blue to play on). Pokémon Stadium was about to come out and today viewers of Fox Kids, could already come and play the game and compete. Tightly clutching to my purple gameboy colour. It had a sticker of Parasect stuck to its battery tray and upper spine, It had a bit of a fold around the eyes, but I loved Parasect..it was on my team as well. The sticker also kept me from losing my battery hatch thing. I looked around, seeing the podium where I would soon be crowned the best *cough*. A boy about my age asked if he could see my team, I thought he looked mean and I refused. He shrugged bumped into me and he moved on. I sniffled, see I knew that he was mean! He then approached a young very blond boy, about half my age, he asked to see his team, the boy proudly showed him. The meany started a new game on the boy’s cartridge and saved the game. The young blond boy was just eliminated from the competition, while smiling the older boy would walk off. The blonde boy cried…but unlike me he would make the tv. The other boy was not just mean anymore he was foul! I was scared! I did not want my dear friends to die.
Wasn’t actually THAT guy… but my douche was in the dishwasher… so had to use a picture of another one!
Beating my peers I traded the blond boy my Hitmonlee, a backup Pokémon I had that wasn’t really on my planned line-up. In fact he was even detrimental to my strategy. Someone else traded him a vileplume and another gave him a vaporeon. Eventually the boy had enough Pokémon to play a few matches.He didn’t win a lot..but he didn’t seem to care. I DID win a lot. My team was made to beat my sister, she had a team of 6 mewtwo, she would catch it, transfer it to me start a new game and repeat the process until she had 6. We would then battle… after a thousand or so losses,I got pretty good at countering mewtwo. I figured a lot of people would enter with teams like this….and I was right. Of course this wasn’t allowed in the actual competition but little did I know I was not a part of that, I never went to things like these before. My team involved me using Parasect to spore a mewtwo to sleep, then use dream eater on gengar or pin missile on jolteon to finish it off quickly. I also had a dig+surf rhydon and a fly moltres, to avoid attacks. Protect wasn’t a thing back then so those were nice to stall out Fire Blasts. Besides Mewtwo Charizard was used a lot. My bird Hades and rhino Sjaak dealt with that. My last Pokémon was a psybeam, because confusion was neat, Kadabra, my sister refused to give me the trade evolution, which was evolved after the tournament. All in all I managed to create a team what was good against the younger inexperienced kids meta. My sister had little imagination, mine got me a lot of wins that day. I apparently even attracted the attention of some fans who liked seeing a non competitive battler take down teams of mewtwo’s. Even the blonde boy came to cheer me in, and give me my pokemon back, because he was going home. He thanked me , though I think that was his mother speaking, when I think about it now! Tv folk weren’t interested though!
Sheev and me are pals! Right Palps?
The real deal At 14 year old I really fell into a bit of a gap. With the internet not being what it is today, I did not know all the details about Pokémon yet, like EV’s and things like STAB bonuses. I just was really good at reading my sister who picked up what the playground said was the best to use. When the real compo was over and the pro-battlers ended the scene my luck soon dried up. I was trashed by people who actually leveled their mons to 100 rather than using Missingno. Yet those same people were very entertained that I managed to do so well against teams I should not win against. As a result I got this weird form of non-spoken respect and understanding that I would not see again until my first convention many many years later. I wasn’t a real battler, nor will I ever be , because I HATE breeding and EV training. I wasn’t really part of the “Mewtwo is so cool’ group either. The latter didn’t dislike me for completely trashing them, I won..but it usually was close matches , and the first saw some potential in me. I was this oddball thing walking there that spoke about her Parasect I named Ed like it was my actual pet. Ed was such a swell pal and I genuinely cared for him. In fact I might even still have Ed on my old cartridge.Baron the Alakazam and Mo the Jolteon would transfer to Johto, only to get deleted after realising Chikorita wasn’t all that amazing. Rest in peace guys!. All in all I had a swell day, I think I even surprised dad at how good at passionate I was in this game, because after that day, he never nagged about me playing Pokémon ever again. On the ride back he even wasn’t grumpy at all. I’d like to think in a weird way without understanding it to much, he was kinda proud of me that day. I had a great day, meeting peers, not being bullied for a a day and being well liked for a while. It would take me awhile to find that feeling again. I got sick a few years later, just after I moved past the bullying, which prevented me from exploring it early. But that day I will remember, how nice it felt to trade Vuistje the Hitmonchan, the shoulderpats from total strangers and my dad remembering Ed for a good while after. It was nice to play with fans and be a fan!
Ed, Dad and me driving home after a good day! Seatbelts drawn for saftey!
This short little tale was inspired by the Geek-Out Challenge of “A Geeky Gal’ click on her name to check it out! It was sponsored by the poor services of my telecom provider who donated a significant amount of free time.Special thanks to Ed, Baron, Vuistje, Mo, Sjaak Hades and KISS. Hope to see you in the next blog little monsters! Stay pink!
Pinkie's Paradise 