Tag: Random

Pinkie does Random Things: Playing Never Have I Ever – The Varied Edition

Just after I transformed into a Moth I created a post about me playing Never Have I Ever. I found a website that spouts random prompts at you and for the first part I took on “the Embarrassing Edition”  but I never was really embarrassed. Now that I have transformed again, I decided to visit the site again and play another round of Never Have I Ever. This time though I will answer one prompt for each of the categories available on this website!

The Rules

Never Have I Ever

The categories for this particular site are, Adult, Everyday, Embarrassing, Illegal, Travel and Work. For each category I will generate five questions before picking one that seems the most interesting to blog about! I can not generate more than five prompts and I am not allowed to skip one for being too embarrassing or too illegal. I MUST choose the one I feel will make the most interesting story!  We will deal with the most boring ones first. So the order will be. Work, Travel, Everyday, Illegal  Adult and Embarrassing. I am sure many would find adults more interesting why it is up so high..but there is a big chance this will be a dead prompt and I just have to make a story out of it!  

I also wish to make a part 3 of this post, but this time with reader questions! So if you like these types of posts, please ask me a Never Have I Ever question in the comments! That way I know people enjoy these random life snippet things and I can do more OR less of them!   The Third edition will go up in a few weeks.   Maybe around the blog anniversary!
Who knows! I am a Princess and I will do it when I feel like it! *Princess Noises*  With that out of the way let’s get into the post.

Work: Never Have I Ever Gone to Work in a Mind Altered State from Drugs or Alcohol

The Walking Drunk: Zombies invade Bay View bars – Marquette Wire
No one will notice the Uniduck is drunk.. when other guys look like this!

False(ish). I worked in a hardware retail franchise and every last Friday of the month we would go to a Club with the young members of the team to a Dutch 90’s party. With very tacky music and just lots of fun. Lots of drinks as well. Unfortunately lots of drinks as well. So the Saturdays after the team was usually pretty hungover.  I never did though.. but one night was different. I was hurt emotionally, stuff happened and I needed an escape so I drank a bit more than I normally would if I have to work the next day. I can be a bit overly cautious if I have to work the next day, being too careful. That night I did not care as much .. and the next day I felt… weird.. not hungover … but still kind of drunk!  I went to work anyway and since a few guys were so hungover they actually were sent home .. looking like a corpse no one really noticed my state.

These exact red bull shoes/heels #heels #redbull #shoes #bull
Guess it felt like working on these!

I made it to break time and hobbled to the grocery store. Perhaps some energy drinks would help me! However.. high sugar on Alcohol.. isn’t a good idea. I felt so weird.. I had to stack paint cans using a ladder and I felt the ladder sway extremely much! So much  I felt it was falling over. I could think.. clearly.. more or less but my sense of balance was intensely disrupted.   I was so scared of being fired for being drunk.. but no one thought I was drunk, I had a normal colour (for me)  I talked cohesively and reacted quickly, just  my senses were so elevated I could not function properly. I am not even sure if I was not slipped something in the club back then… but I felt like that person in Limitless.. I suddenly spoke better Spanish then before helping a spanish customer, by describing colours in other words.  Yet I could not hang up an item because very milimeter it shifted I felt like it would come crumbling down.   The clacking of a keyboard at the main desk was soooo loud. It was super weird yet I was only in the mid range of useless of all the staff! So yay me!

Travel: Never Ever Have I been Seasick

On boats I stop being pink and end up being green!

FALSE!  SO false.. I am extremely.. and I mean EXTREMELY prone to seasickness. As a kid I still could be on the water.. but now. No! I know I have talked about this before.. but among my five travel prompts this one came up in two different forms and it is by far the most interesting tale to tell so what can you do! I get so sick.. on the waves that I get sick on an air matrass on the water. I get so sick.. that I even can feel queasy on a waterbed. I can even get seasick in the pool by being on a random floatation device.   I have two tales I want to tell you about my seasickness.. one happened on an actual boat at sea. 

My friends and me signed up for a party with free drinks and free food and all we had to do is take a small boat ride to get to a private beach…back then I could be on a boat for a bit  So a 20 minute boat trip or something “short” wasn’t that bad.. but SHORT in this case meant 90 minutes! THAT’S NOT short!  At the 30 minute mark I felt sick… at the 40 minute mark I wished I was dead and at the hour mark I really lost the will to live. We had a small swimming break because we were in some super clear water bit. I jumped in and refused to get back into the boat.. so sick I felt.. meanwhile the water was super cold So I was in to long already.  I got back in the boat.. and  waited out the last 40 minutes in despair.. I did not throw up..but  when I got at the beach and threw myself on a towel.. people asked if they needed to call an Ambulance boat thing.. I was that pale and unresponsive.  I began crying when they mentioned boat.. so they figured I was alive and left me alone… I did not  enjoy a single bit of food.. and only drank water. Luckily the boating rew decided to take the non scenic route back and that only took 20 minutes.. I only needed to recover an hour on the beach after that to be able to walk home.

Drowning Psyduck | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs | Tumgir
This .. and like Psyduck.. I could not swim… I can.. but I was to sick for it

The second incident happened on a vacation in Lloret De Mar, a party holiday.. fairly trashy place, but parties.. me and my friend bought something cute and white to wear while going out but that would look much better if I had a tan.. so I knew that on the water I tan a lot faster and I bought one of those silver air mattresses.. for maximum light reflection!  I was talking to this friend when I had a short nap .. my leg was wrapped around some rope so I could not float away.. when I woke up however… I knew something was wrong. I was not sunburned at all.. but I felt terrible!  I felt so weak and sick  that I had no more strength in my body! None! I felt so sick I litteraly was a towel.  And even though we were in only belly button deep water , the life guard had to come and drag me out of the water. He asked my friend if I had been using drugs.. and I just said.. no I am seasick… and all he asked me was really?!   I was dragged on land…and I could just see him talking to his colleagues pointing at me.. they never saw someone so seasick before.. let alone on an air matrass in belly button deep water.

Everyday: Never Ever Have I been Stalked

False!  It’s partially the reason why I never would use actual photos unless I specifically take them off the blog, and never of me in person!  It happened when I was very young and just got into MMO’s.  I did not know I was into girls yet, and mostly connected romantically with very feminine minded boys.. in fact to this day I might be more Sapio Sexual but I love.. feminine energies and thought patterns….but the male body kind of repulse me so .. complicated.. anyway back then I was too young to fully grasp my sexual identity and on occasion would flirt with a boy a bit… or try. 

The Face of my Stalker

So I also flirted a bit with the guys I played my MMO Tales of Pirates with.  To me it was mostly an in character thing. I played a little magician girl that used magical seashells to cast magic and he played a big beefy pirate guy. So whenever the guy saved me I would say “My Hero”  as a casual joke. We were  like a mini guild of four people and we would talk to each other a lot. We had a brit..who played a swashbuckling scoundrel.. the brute from was a really nerdy guy from the Philippines and we had another girl, who was our healer. She was Australian and I knew her from an older game.  But she did not love the game that much so she was rarely on.

The Swashbuckler had classes and was on and off again.. but the Philippines guy was on all the time. This was the first time I began struggling with my health  So I was playing a lot and staying home a lot. So we talked a lot.. he told me he was in love with me and I rejected him. Telling him I would not commit to long distance but he seemed like a swell guy! To let him off easy… of course this was a mistake! Even though I told him I was not looking for a relationship anyway he found a solution. 

Without notice he was offline for three or four days.. and then he popped back online.  First he mailed me he was in Amsterdam and asked me if we could meet. I told him no, game and real life are seperate for me. The next day he was a lot closer. Booking an hotel near my town. He knew how the front of my house looked like due to a photo I shared.  I told him I was sorry but I really did not want to meet.. but he was crazed.. he told me I would change my mind if I saw him in real life.  He never found me.. but I had to call the cops.. who as far as I am aware made sure to put him back on a plane. I don’t know however, I quit the game, I changed all my emails and destroyed all my social media back then. Mom and Dad handled  the rest. I never really meant to flirt..and I always told him I was not looking for romance.. yet he only heard half. I was really scared as I never shared specifics but he figured so much stuff out!  Image searching and other stuff! You live and learn.

Cop Lights Stock Footage ~ Royalty Free Stock Videos | Pond5

Illegal: Never Ever Have I Smoke Marijuana

Living In The Netherlands, Where we all smoke weed - ArnhemLife Blog
Happy Birthday to me!

True, I know this makes me like the most boring Dutchie ever, but hey I tried to smoke it! Marijuana is not as illegal here as it is elsewhere, so using it is rather common and it was something I would really like to try!  My Parents tried it on my 6th or 7th birthday and told them they had a bad experience, I did not notice they did this. I think I was off to bed already or playing video games but I heard the story later. Maybe I was just busy playing with my gifts. So when I got older.. I figured on my birthday, I want to try some Marijuana as well. A friend gave me some, and he advised me to  make a fake bong out of a water bottle, he even showed me how! On my actual Birthday I invited some other friends ( I saw him before)  and we were about to do it.. we were finally smoking the Dutch green stuff!  But two people chickened out already!

This Is Fine | Know Your Meme
Face Reveal photo!

I did everything as was instructed..but and rolled a sigarette, but for some reason even though I used tabaco along with it.. it caught fire.. rather then slowly burning.. the entire filter, paper thing caught fire first and then all the smoke got sucked into the little bottle. But istead of white smoke .. it was a fair amount of black smoke as well trapped in the bottle. I tried to take a drag but as soon as I wanted to take a drag I noticed the bottle was now on fire as well and the plastic was melting. .. In my enthusiasm I forgot to take off the label of the water bottle and the hole I made in it for the cigarette went straight trough the label.. so when my sigarette caught fire.. it also set the label on fire…slowly!  We were pretty drunk so we stumbled a lot..  I ended up pouring a bottle of soda out on top of it to put out the fire.. and instead of getting high.. I ended up getting low..mopping all the soda from the floors. 

Adult: Never Ever Have I been approached with a Hooker

False, so as some of you may know, the Netherlands besides weed is kind of know for it’s Red Light District in Amsterdam. Lots of hookers out there!  Lots and lots of them!  What a lot of people don’t know is that there is a Japanese temple and a Manga shop in Amsterdam… and to get to that you need to pass the red light district. The Red  Light district isn’t something you can easily avoid. To get to many locations in Amsterdam you need to pass through it.. but mostly for me to get to the weeby stuff. 

Amsterdam's red-light district: What it's like to live there | CNN Travel
I kinda like the ambience! Almost pink!

Now most times as a woman your pretty much left alone but I got into a verbal fight with a hooker fairly recently for reading a map in front of her window!  And using my phone to get me there because the map sucked!  She snarled at me and I snarled back… however one time I was skipping school and just wanted to walk around Amsterdam, maybe get some Manga or a cool figurine and visit that temple.  When a hooker approached me!   She told me I could get a discount cause I seemed like fun… I refused politely and she told me to come back if I change my mind.. or if I had some money left after buying manga! She read me good!

There was also the time I had relations with one… kind off. It was on a vacation with friends in a british party location called Magaluf. My friends were in a discotheque enjoying the music of a man called Scepta or Skeputah or something which wasn’t my cup of tea.. it was this british “hood”  rap stuff that was very unfriendly to women.. and not very musical I did not enjoy it so I went back to the hotel and back at the bar there, which was still open, cause it was fairly early  when a woman called me over. She asked me to have a drink with her and I decided I could still use a quiet drink and decided to go with it. She was slightly older than me, a bit heavy on the make up and she smelled like she worked in a perfume plant. But a nice one..apples or some kind of fresh fruit..but like how it smells when you turn it into a candle… then rather than letting it burn slow you spread the scent with a flamethrower.

Magaluf Looks flashy..but mostly is just fleshly!

 We talked a bit and she was this very clever and pretty girl. She was still studying and had a lot of stress, but  studying was expensive so she went on this long vacation which she paid for by…well sleeping with people.  The hotel apparently was semi in on it..and kept her safe. Magaluf is a “classy” place. Trashy street hookers everywhere, and fairly regular while at the pool, people would hang a banner from their hotel room saying Orgy in Room (Number)  Tonight… So the hotel would let a few girls work, that  weren’t street hookers that would stab you,  She was really open about it and noticed I barely reacted to it. She asked why and I told her sex doesn’t really mean much for me.  It’s just like eating when your hungry, you do something against that urge when horney or bored. 

She then said she was bored a bit..I pretended to be offended she laughed, we talked a bit more, we talked about boys and girls, about life a bit. When she asked me why I wasn’t partying with my friends I told about not liking the artist and that I got bored. She said she knew something we could do to fix that boredom. It was nice, and no I did not use her services.. this was a mutual thing. Just fun nothing more. I was a bit drunk, so she dropped me off at my room! My friends aren’t home yet so we played a board game I carried with. I had more fun with the board game!

Embarrassing: Never Ever Had I Been Thrown Up On

Sheldon Cooper | The Big Bang Theory
He even looks a lot like my friend

False, same vacation as my apple-candle friend but a few days later. We were with four friends, me, a girl and two guys!  The girl went to us with the clubs.. but most times we would not see her again till breakfast. She.. was one of these people that spiced up a night, but when you think about it now that she is out of your life..she never really did anything for you.  She  never bought drinks, she never bought gifts for your birthday. Then there was my gay best friend, and this guy who is pratically Sheldon Cooper. Only.. he tries to be a chad. He tries to pick up girls by saying “Wow I heard a lot of rumors about you,  but the rumors don’t do you justice.. you look waaaay more like a slut then people make you out to be”   or he picks them up by asking what they think about “the economic state or Euro coin, now that Russia has done .. something”.  

Most nights when we would go clubbing we could find him by finding the sea of emptiness he creates around him by weirding people out!  But because of the fact he is so bad at picking up people, gay best friend likes to taunt him and get him in situations that are funny!  Because Gay best Friend.. is kind of like the flaming movie gay.. without the sexuality! He just likes to see chaos and is a smart manipulator into getting there… So he heard rumors of this sure fire bar.. If you can’t get laid there you can’t get laid anywhere and he decided to take Sheldon there. 

I am talking about a place that is so trashy thatI saw a drugged up girl being groped on the dancefloor and I reported it to the bouncers and they just shrugged before only reluctantly saving her.  I saw a guy talk to the girl that was standing next to me and he said “It’s 1 already and I see you haven’t found anyone to fuck yet, wanna go to my room and fuck” and she looked at her phone to check the time.. checked out the guy, checked out her friends and she agreed. I got a similar clown after me told me if I wanted another Cocktail minus the tail he had a really good one for me. Another guy I could not understand properly but I am pretty sure he asked me if I wanted to be unable to walk the next day.  Gross!  

Geordie Shore - Wikipedia
I felt like I was in an episode of this show..

It was an annoying club  and I wanted to leave.. maybe see if my new friend was at the hotel (whom I spoke with every now and again, but she also had to scout for customors of course)   .. when I was approached by a girl. It was drugged up girl from before that I got free from before. She was quite grateful…apparently the bouncers told her I’d given them the tip… and the boys who were groping her woozy mind payed her friends to let this happen. Happy their friend was saved by someone else.. but having money to burn they refused to leave with her.. So she was wandering about  intoxicated by everything possible! She smiled at me hugged me and told me I had nice shoes! 

 She looked at them again…..and then my shoes were not as nice!  Luckily the club was at the sea so I was able to rinse off.. but my shoes were ruined.  I left those at that beach and walked home barefoot! Sheldon refused to come home as he was sure to pick someone up here.. and me being vomited on was not worth it.  He did not pick anyone up! I took a a few more showers at the hotel! I do not know what happened to intoxicated girl..I told her to take a cab to her hotel but I was also quite angry with her so I snapped it at her. That was one horrible vacation over all.. and I haven’t even told you the story about the Magaluf Barcrawl yet.

My theme song for that night

And that is another post revealing my normie past done! Do you have any fun : Never Have I Ever questions for me?! Did you do any of the things on my list? Tell me! Drop a Question in the comments and I will honestly answer it in my next edition! Don’t be afraid to ask weird stuff! I will still think you are awesome…though I might have to sleep on my answers..because remember guys: Friendship is Magic, but Dreams are even more Wonderful! Oyasumi!

Sleeping duck. : duck

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This or That: Which Pokémon is Tastier

Where did I put my new headgear… frick! Oh well , hi Island guests!   I decided to have a bit more fun with my blogs and well that means I am doing a lot of silier topics rather than reviews!   It has made blogging a lot more fun! Yet also a whole lot less  useful!  So let’s hope you read these things because you like me or my content rather than that you read my stuff to see if an anime or game is for you! I came up with a new little concept where under certain conditions I pit two options against each other.. and then I  pick! Today we will answer the important question! Which Pokémon will taste better?! I only want the finest cuisine now that I am going to ascend manager status!

Beef:  Tauros or Miltank

There aren’t all that many Bovine options in Pokémon, Bouffalant escaped the Abattoir because of the relation Miltank and Tauros  seem to have.. almost as if a male and female side of the same coin. We all know which one  of the two is scarier, but which one of the two would be tastier?  For those of you who don’t know, yes it is established that people eat Pokémon and these two are the most commonly mentioned being turned into burgers. Fan theories basically say they are the same pokémon in a way but gender variations..like Gardevoir and Gallade as it were. Or Glalie and  Froslass. So we already start with a pickle.. they will probably taste fairly similar. Tauros meat will be a bit more muscular and chewie while Miltank is a bit more plumb and has more fat.

So  I do believe that Miltank would be the more commonly used protein. It has the less pronounced taste. However I do believe that Tauros would be the more flavourful one. Miltank lives off its own milk a bit..which I can only imagine reducing it’s taste.  Tauros seem a bit more wild.. and might have a bit of a gamey aftertaste which I really could fancy..but best of all, Tauros has multiple tails.. Oxtails are great in taste and for soup  and sauces. Good for graveys as well.  So I am convinced that Tauros is the more flavourful one. Yet is it always  tastier?! The common population says  no. Chicken Fillet is still a lot more popular than chicken thigh and people really prefer the more neutral tasting meats. I however am not the safe cut kinda girl! I prefer the pieces of cow others pass up on , so I’ll go bull as well!!

Pork:  Grumpig or Pignite

I’d make chicken a category but there is only one chicken pokémon, so I think white meat is scarce in the world of Pokémon. So let’s pick our source of Pokémon Bacon. PIloswine is another option but I’d say that that again is more gamey and it would be the Miltank and  Tauros story all over again. Besides Ground, Ice type sounds like the meat would be really tough and would need to marinate a lot.. we don’t always have time for that so for today we will  compare two pigs with similar body types. Pignite is a fire fighting starter from the fith generation, while Grumpig is a psychic type from the Hoenn region. At first glance the latter has a lot of things going for it. It’s a psychic type that is known for using its psychic powers to eat berries. Which means it will have a lot of sweet, subtle meat that could be delicious! I am also very interested in eating something purple!

On the other hand Pignite is a fire , fighting type. The meat would be more firm and probably not as flavorful as it would eat whatever 10 years old starting their journey would feed it… so it will probably be fed a lot of pot noodles and redbull. Yet it has a very plumb body and some fats that can be beautifully rendered. I bet it could taste nice with some apple and thyme, maybe some sauteed onions. The most important clue to which one is the tastiest we find in their pre-evolutions. You see Spoink the prevolution of Grumpig dies if it ever stops bouncing on it’s own tail.It has an insanely stressful life. 

Stress can be tasted in an animal. Alternatively , Tepig is a starter which means it is bred to be friendly towards 10 year olds. Which means it probably has a plushie little life as soon as it is born where it is groomed to be friendly to be people.  Which I assume would be done by getting food, pets and other forms of love.. so it hungers for that same type of affection in a 10 year old.. those who evolve to early or who aren’t picked live with the professor for a while .. but some will eventually just be sold off for meat, but before that a Pignite will have had a good life.. and you can taste that. Besides it’s a fire type!  Which means it practically is self crisping bacon! That alone would make it the winner.

Duck: Kantonian Farfetch’D or Galarian Farfetch’D

So since I wanted to do at least some form of edible bird comparison I settled on a bird that I love to bits… but also love to eat!  Ducks!   In this case.. we even compare the same Pokémon.. but  from different parts in the world. You know much like how Irish Mutton is kind of tastier than Dutch Mutton. And yes while I would love to have a pet Duck, I still would eat them. Same would go for other pets.. on the premise they were bred for meat.. not as a pet that got  not picked and turned into meat instead.   So which one of these ducks… would be the tastiest. They both have a leak, in varying sizes. Galarian Farfetch’D has the bigger leak so I think it is safe to say that would be the tastier leak! It has also much more rich and vibrant colours.  Ratio wise I also think Galarian Farfetch’d would be the more balanced meal!   

Yet when I look at the duck itself I can not help but feel that the Kantonian Farfetch’D would be tastier. I do not know why… but sometimes you see a pig or a cow and think.. that seems like a tasty animal.. while other times you think, eeeew, I don’t want that in my Big Mac.  It’s that whole Bancho-Vibe Galarian Farfetch’D has. I’d think kissing a princess would be nicer than Kissing Jolene Kujo or  Poison from Final Fight.. would be not as  nice of a kiss then  Sailor Moon.  Sometimes you just know these things right?!  I feel Galarian Farfetch’D would be the junkfood duck! The one that ends up in the peking duck at that budget chinese restaurant while Kantonian Farfetch’D would be found at Bistro La Duchesse du Carnard Douce, or something!  Now it would be awesome if we could mix and match! Kantonian Bird.. with Galarian Leek.. but that sounds like that might be a delicacy I can’t afford.

Fruit: Cherubi or Applin

I failed to come up with a good vegetable this or that. My initial idea would be Oddish vs Bouncesweet.. but Oddish is Poisonous.  So out go the turnips. Then Amoonguss versus Shinotic for Mushrooms.. but Amoonguss is poisonous.  Shroomish and Shinotic are too different. In the world of Pokémon.. if it’s green it is most likely bad for you!  The kelp of Dhelmise drains life and don’t even get me started on how many leafs might actually be Razor leafs?!   No it’s best not to eat your veggies in the world of Pokémon!  Fruit however offers a few options. Cherubi and Applin are both tiny pokémon with relatively low stats and a mostly harmless move pool.  I think Applin might learn apple acid….but apple vinegar is a kitchen staple so that is safe. Apples and Cherries are both fairly popular fruits but both have a bit of a problem. The cherry has mutated into having a second head which might be a bit of an unsettling sight.. after all cherries might be to tiny to cut off the face.. so for those not wishing to eat something with a face.. this could be trouble.

Applin however is an apple that has a worm in it.. only in this case the worm is a tiny dragon.. somehow this causes it to merge with the apple and the idea of a worm in an apple is a pretty gross idea. Besides that there are plenty of normal apples in the pokémon world, but cherries are uncertain. Why eat the one apple that can fight back? I personally think that a worm living in an apple and having merged with said fruit is probably ceviched in the apple acid and might actually taste nice, still it is a pretty gross idea.. much more so than a two faced cherry!  My favourite cake is a Black Forest cake and my favourite fruit is a cherry!  Though peaches are close.. but since there is no peach Pokémon.. I had to pit the cherry against the apple.. and while the Apple definitely has the  tastier evolution.. I can’t escape the feeling that the little red guy looks super tasty! Both in it’s regular AND shiny form!

Dessert: Slurpuff or Alcremie

Let’s end with desert!  This one is a tough one. Alcremie is very VERY close to being my favourite Pokémon of all time, but could I imagine myself eating one?!  Yes!  Alcreamy is the whipped cream Pokémon, decorated  with fruit and other things. That is pretty tasty! I loved whipped cream, it is neutral and you can make a delicious dessert with it by combining it well.. it’s everything’s best friend!  Slurpuff on the other hand is a Meringue. which means it is egg whites whisked into stiff peaks and usually a lot of sugar! Meringue is a great desert if you combine! Like with Sea salted caramel and dark chocolate.. or with lemon!  Slurpuff also has a great nose .. amazingly so!  So he can help you find the ingredients… but that is kinda cruel! So I won’t do that! I really love Slurpuff and Alcremie so I would need to eat pieces of them in a dish I can not make a dish with them!

Alcremie has a big pro over Slurpuff though, it comes in many flavours and options!   Depending if you spin your cream right or left and how hard you can whip there are 71 Alcremies for you to whip up including it’s gigantamax cake form. However there are a few pretty gross sounding Alcreamies as well! Mint cream with Clover?!  Salted Cream with Ribbons?!  Those don’t sound very tasty… but they do look adorable. So this begs the question.. do we compare the average Alcremie flavour against Slurpuff.. or the best tasting one?!  Caramel Swirl with Strawberry sweet Alcremie sounds pretty delicious!  Or how about a Lemon cream with Blueberry one?! Pretty good if you feel like something more tart!. There is an alcreamie for every mood! And they are not that hard to make either! Meanwhile for Slurpuff you have to find some whipped dream… and I might prefer that to eat that over a Meringue. Plus spinning is good to lose all those calories Alcremie will put on!

And that’s it! A feast of Pokémon has been served! Which ones do you think I called wrong? Do you have another good idea for a This or That?!  Which Pokémon would you not mind eating? Let me know in the comments while I go rest up after such a hearty meal! May all your pokémon be tasty! Oyasumi!

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

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

About the Nuzlocke!

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

Rules!

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

This happend last time! He was so mean!

Getting Luci!

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

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

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

This lifetime, Indigo rocked the Edgy Ikea Employee Style

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

My team before reaching Violet City!

The Funeral and a Victory

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

Taking a new friend to face an old challenge!

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

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

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

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

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

In Randomised Johto everyone has an identity crisis

Chasing Tail

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

I wonder if this is why dad left us?

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

What are you buyin?

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

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

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

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

He is the hero Azalea Town needs!

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

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

Pinkie Watches a Random Anime 3: Märchen Mädchen

Hello my dear Island Guests! It is time again for me to watch a randomly generated anime! This month Märchen Mädchen came up. A show that scores a lackluster 5.4 out of 10 on MAL. In the comments it seems to be very disliked, both on CrunchyRoll where I watched the first 6 episodes as on MAL. I can see why people would grade it so low.. but for some reason I really really like this show.

Quite often upon a Time

Märchen Mädchen is a show about a young girl named Hazuki! A book nerd with anxiety attacks. Even though she sits at that very same desk in anime as all the other characters sit.. she is very different. She has no friends! None at all! When she gets too socially awkward she has to calm herself by reading novels. She lives with her stepmother who barely has time for her.. and her popular step sister who can be quite harsh to her in Japan. One day she has another of these panic attacks and goes reading in a hamburger restaurant. Already assuming her step mother does not have time for her. When suddenly she finds a mysterious new book she can not open in her purse.  At that time a mysterious girl shows up who nobody but her can see. She follows her into a library that is a gateway to another world.  There she discovers the girl is actually a “Mädchen”  a magical girl that draws her power from a classical story.. and surprise surprise. Hazuki is a magical girl too! Just in time even because a big tournament is about to start and the winning school of magic gets a wish granting magic! As the tournament draws closer we learn some of the darker secrets of these magical powers and how they can easily cause despair.

Hazuki the clumsy bookworm protagonist! Like me she lost her shoes in school!

On Paper this sounds like one of the most generic magical girl anime that has ever been published and it probably is. This anime made my Hoods Entertainment aired in the Winter Season of 2018. It seems to get a lot of hate from the community for it’s visuals and its weird writing and generic plot. I experienced something different myself.  Now I shall be the first to admit that I do not really have an eye for solid visuals.. if I am engaged with an anime my brain fills in missing frames, and if I see a face in less detail I auto completed that. I had no trouble with the visuals..except for episode 9, it  is one of those episodes like that one episode in Dragon BAll Super people still nag about!  I must admit I noticed Episode 9 being super off.. but it happens with deadlines being a thing! It’s horrible yes.. but the show is more than that episode. Overall I enjoyed the visuals.

Henshin Kinda looks like Pokémon Mega Evolution.. so I am game!

Characters do look a bit samey and sometimes I had a hard time to tell who is who.. and sure.. we don’t always get perfectly shaped things.. but I kinda found that neat! The show gets flack for using a lot of archetypes and basing everyone on a fairy tale character could be counted as.. “well there are no original characters here” yet in a way it is designed to feel that way. I can see why people dislike it.. but I can also see why this show chose to go that way. Probably if you measure with grades per category like animation, story, music etc. you end up with an anime with a low grade..but to me this anime shines in all those things we usually do not grade.

I told you a lot of the characters looked samesie!

Hazuki’s story of power is Cinderella, which is an obvious metaphor but in a way this metaphor also applies to the anime itself.It might look like a commoner that is standing in front of us.. and in a way it is! Yet with a bit of magic that commoner can still conquer our heart.There are a lot of analogies I really liked in this series. Sure the countries participating in the tournament are quite stereo typical and the Americans are not depicted favourably but it really makes sense. This series is about fairy tale or fable culture and America does not really have that. So in this show it is depicted that America usually borrows stuff and does their own thing with it. Every girl uses a fable or a story to draw power from and the Americans have the Match-Stick Girl.. but also Star Wars (though slightly renamed) and Santa Clause.. which is one of my favourites.. her magic is to “gift” her enemies.. the ammo of her weapons.. Santa Clause gets out a Tommy Gun or a Bazooka.. because.. she’s American! I laughed! So yes.. because this series is very much about established work we can see very many tropes happening.. but again.. that is part of it’s narrative. How this story SHOULD go according to all the classics is an intrinsic part of what is being told here! It might not be told all that well..but I found it told super charmingly. As if I am reading an actual Fairy Tale.

Why is it when people see a magical Portal they always try it! Bear Grylls would dissaprove! I would go through as well though

Princess Charming

What appealed to me most in this show is the main character. Hazuki Kagimura is a character I relate to a lot! I might not flee in books when I am in stress but the way her mind works throughout this show I found highly relatable.While I do have friends, in that phase of life where she was in I did not really have them either. The questions in her head about how to address a social situation are extremely relatable to me and the whole way she flaps her arms nervously and constantly apologises for being who she is reminds me a lot of myself before I found my magic! I also love the journey she is on! In this anime she discovers that girls who wield the power of the book are destined to live lives like the characters they embody. So it means she will settle down with her prince charming, have a family that doesn’t love her and that she is quite quaint looking but a little bit of magic will draw out her charm. She is Cinderella after all! However she falls in love with a girl and doesn’t want a charming prince. She doesn’t want to be that frail little girl walking around on glass slippers. She wants to be with the person she wants to be with..she wants to write her own story and in doing that.. she encapsules almost everything I stand for! I love that aspect of this show. 

How do you even walk in that outfit Shizuka?!

To complicate this, her semi-romantic partner or “special friend” as this show prefers to call it..though heavily implying the romance is Shizuka Tsuchimikado.. the wielder of the Moon Princess, or Princess Kaguya fairy tale. A story about a woman who is destined to be alone. 
A girl that unlike Hazuki is much more traditional and more inclined to accept her destiny. While it is not very original to tackle a story like this it works for a reason. In my opinion it also works here! Not every story has to be surprising! In fact I dare say that NONE of the classic Fairy Tales are surprising… well at least not the publicly accessible translations and variations. From the moment they met to the very last scene I felt invested in this relationship. Not because it is cleverly done, unique or well written.. no because it  felt like a Yuri variation of a Fairy Tale. All those classic stories are not made for the modern world and nowadays can have toxic messages, and that is what this show aims to explore and highlight. This show tells us.. let’s find a modern ending to our classic fairy tales and I support that story and a very soft core lesbian interest while not unique is a perfect method to explore this.

Why am I weirded out..but a girl still liking an hours old hamburger! I guess she warms it up with magic?!

I ADORE the voice acting in this movie. Hazuki and Shizuka both have very timid whisper-like voices, they feel frail and exaggerated. Yet without hearing the actual words you can follow the context of their emotion as everything is amplified..almost overacted. The same goes for all the other voice actors. The Brazen character does the shouting voice, the butch woman sounds like an actual man, the somewhat deranged american girl sounds like she is completely insane and the chinese girl has this melody in her voice like she is spouting wisdoms everywhere she goes, sounding like a mentor of a kung-fu movie. The principal is clearly brazen, bold and self confident and while they never really feel like “Real” characters because of it they once again feel very much like Fairy Tale characters. Think of how your mother threw her voice to make someone sound princessy when reading to you from a fairy tale book. The first time I heard Hazuki I was like.. oof this is laid on a bit obvious.. yet if I had to voice Cinderella in a japanese audio version of the classic tale.. this is probably the direction I would take. I really adore everything they do with Hazuki in this show!

Well..except for making her naked all the time?! Not sure why the principal would steal your clothes!

A Modern Fairy Tale

Like I said earlier this show goes to great lengths to establish it wants to be a modern retelling. Hazuki makes this very clear in her behaviour as well. When she gets invited to join the magic school and has to stand there in a bit of a skimpy-ish gymsuit she openly tells everyone she did not expect school to be like this and that she kind of expected it to be more like Harry Potter. It’s funny to see a Japanese girl in bliss when she references Harry Potter and seeing this world is NOT like that! It sounds so funny! She makes a lot of relevant comparisons. Oftenly a bit aimed at the weird dogmatic ways some of these old tales work kind of showing us “hey these stories have been more modernly retold.. why do we follow this old trope” I found that a great source of comedy. There is no flippy phones but actually touch screen ones , which the more classical characters have huge trouble using.. making references that they would prefer something like a flippy phone but acting as if they do not know what those are . Since the show is basically one big tournament arc with teams across the world we can see classical roles being fulfilled in several teams. So when the shy Hazuki brings snacks aboard a train.. the shy girl on the russian team would have had a similar mindset and does the same. This show uses tropes a lot. It is fun and kinda interesting to see the tropes clash with “itself” by placing characters that should not be together… well uhm.. together!

In her defence Hogwarts is a terrible place to live in! Cold damp castles, trolls, Basiliks, muderers ghosts and more!

It has issues though! I will admit that but weirdly these issues only really come out once you start comparing it to anime. One example of what this show could vastly do better is explain how the world works. There is a magical world and a non magical world, where Hazuki comes from. Apparently only Hazuki lives on the other side but Shizuka comes there because there are hamburgers and they aren’t on the other side? It never is fully made clear and at times can even feel like a plothole like.  They bounce between locations and worlds at times and it is hard to tell what is going on. Never ever does this show explain it properly. That is a problem…..when you compare it to an anime because there is plenty of anime who do it better. When you compare it to a fairy tale though, not explaining the world is kind of a thing there. Where did the fairy godmother come from? How does the Magic Mirror on the Wall work? How can Maleficent cast a death curse and how can the fairies cancel it?!  It is not that relevant to the story so it’s not explained.. and the same can be said here.

I half expected this spell to take three days!

The side characters are all paper things, they get one exaggerated personality trade and are usually very much stereotyped based on a country. For example the leader of the German team is an amazing tactician, and very military minded. She has a stuffed animal called Messerschmidt , after the world war II plane. Her power is shooting guns! She isn’t as evil as she seems though. The british main girl is called Arthur Pendragon she is very regal and classic minded. She has a very commanding presence and wields a huge sword of light. The american girl Lyn Daves doesn’t respect classic stories.. as they do not have their own so they use their own media to copy and change cross media stuff to create their own more powerful stories not caring for tradition. She is a daddy’s girl and a cheater and doesn’t care for others. That is as far as these characters go! In anime characters this shallow are kind of passé.. but can anyone tell me the personality of Flounder, or the prince from the little Mermaid?!  Side characters are treated like Fairy Tale side characters.

Wonderwoman with a light saber Mrs Clause, Cinderella and Snow White together.. kinda sounds like my D&D!

That is exactly what the problem of this anime is!  It tells us that Fairy Tales did not always age well yet they build their story on these pillars to highlight this. Thus we get flat side characters like in fairy tales, we get very stereotypical characters like in those classics and this show does everything wrong what fairy tales arguably do wrong. By being flawed by design it does end up being flawed in the eyes of its beholder as well. I would love to see a few side characters more fleshed out but some even spontaneously pop up in the story when the need for them arises, their existence comes out of nowhere.Here it doesn’t feel modern it really feels like story telling of back in the days.  So I can see why it isn’t well received, yet it’s flaws are not always by poor writing but by mimicking a flawed writing style?! So if you like this or not might really depend on your mindset. If you strictly can see this as an anime I can see how you would not be pleased. Also if you can not handle the Americans being very flawed because Murcia is perfect.. this is not the anime for you either!

Since America has no original fantastical stories.. she just mashed them all together in a mixed media book! MURICA!

And they all lived ….

How good this show is very much depends on your mindset. If you are the type that does believe you have to fit in society, get your job at any cost and conform to society and do what everyone does this show will not really do it for you. The message of this show hits hard for me.. but had it resonated less with me I would probably think less of this show. In the end I am the type that will refuse to give up my friends to take a job elsewhere I will just push to make my future possible here! I will not settle with a boy and have a kid and lose track of my friends and I will not take any job just to be productive. My life is about me, I determine my story and that is exactly the message of this show! I know some of my friends would disagree and I do not think they would like this show that much. If that message is lost.. a lot of things get lost in translation, it becomes a sub-par anime instead of a beautiful fairy tale.  Yet if you are like me and dig this message and can judge it more as a fairy tale than a anime this bowl of porridge is JUST right!

That medal is not pinned in a comfy place!

People nag about the ending how a reveal is made in the end that for them came out of nowhere, but I can safely say, no that is not true! I have seen that twist coming from about half way in the series. The plot threats are there and while that story hasn’t really been a part of anything I think it got the perfect amount of attention for a 12 episode format. To me it shows that this story is much more cleverly written than most people give it credit for.  It isn’t anything special by today’s standards but it is not aiming for today’s standards. If you watch this more as you’d watch a three hour disney movie or as story time before you go to sleep, this is just a very cute, wholesome story that has a girl in an iron maiden for some reason.

I never knew my neignouring country puts girls in Iron Maidens! Would explain my crazy german ex though!

If you watch it, watch it in batches of either 2 or 4 episodes at the same time. Not only are the even number episodes stronger.. but by using that format you will not end a day on episode 9.. because that one is so badly animated it will give you nightmares! In the end it might be a generic , unoriginal story but so are all disney movies and I love this exactly the same way as those classics… and that I think can only be a huge compliment. I choose to believe in Fairy Tales! Do you?!

Speaking of Fairy Tales?! Have you heard the Fairy Tale about the Blog Follower that got turned into a Coconut?! They supported the princess Kofi and were invited to live on a magical island with a unique coconut avatar and ALWAYS got nominated for any Blog Tags!
The princess used the Kofi money to build a better palace and to write her blog in more comfort so they could even show more positivity than she already tried! And they all lived happily ever after! At least.. if the coconuts could really miss the money! The princess would not want them to sacrifice what they could not miss! So if people would not the princess would just smile gleefully when people left something sweet in the comment section!

Pinkie Watches a Random Anime 2: Nanana’s Buried Treasure

As you may know I have a love for everything that is random! Once a month I use a website that gives you a random list of anime. I then roll a random number and flip to said item on that list. If I am not totally off-put by the title or the sheer episode number (which it usually tells you)  I try to find if it streams somewhere.  If it does I watch the first five episodes of it without reading the synopsis! Last month I failed.. I watched The Reflection.. a Stan Lee anime.. but I had nothing to say about it.. this month I got Nanana’s Buried treasure and here I am writing a blog! So guess I have more to tell about this one. 

<Disclaimer>
This Review is mostly spoiler free, characters will be discussed and several settings and situations will be mentioned, however I will not discuss specifics or loyalties etc. The synopsis of this show will be mentioned so if you call that a spoiler you want to avoid… you are kinda a weirdo for clicking on this review in the first place
<End of Disclaimer>

Technical Treasures

So let’s talk about the technical/paperwork stuff first. This anime is a one season anime which aired in spring 2014. It is produced by A1 studios and aired on Fuji Tv. I watched it on Crunchyroll and I actually managed to watch all of it before I wrote this blog! It has 11 episodes and leaves the story rather unfinished and finding the light novel to finish the story can actually be quite a hassle. So straight up, if you can not stand open ended.. uhm… endings…(great writing Pinkie), then this show is not going to be for you. It very much feels like a promotional anime. “That’s how far our story goes, now go and buy the manga or light novel” which will put a lot of viewers off. For those who stick around though the show can offer you a few fun adventures with a passable ending.  There is a conclusion even if nothing is resolved. Depending on how you look at it.  The show targets a shonen demographic..which most likely is less equipped with the ability to deal with open endings. It feels a bit like Lupin meets Indiana Jones, meets Mission Impossible, meets detective Conan, with a fair bit of fanservice mixed in between. It blends traditional anime with a lot of that cgi quasi 3d animation and a colour and style that reminded me bit of Persona. 

The show like said earlier has 11 episodes which feeling wise takes us about one third through midway in the total story of the series. I’d call it an adventure comedy with some slice of life elements. We deal with a main character struggling to deal with rent.. and visiting an onsen.. and what girl to date but we also see him scale buildings and collapsing floors to find treasures. There even are a few actual anime fights. It’s a little bit of everything. It scores as 7.1 on MAL which I think is a surprisingly accurate grade  and nearly identical to I would give it on a scale of one to ten. The main character Yama Juugo is voiced by Yuki Ono, whom I know as Isami Aldini from Food Wars and Moral from Hamatora. He also played Seaman A in Hunter X Hunter (the 2011 version)  and Fish Dinosaur in Muromi San.  Deuteragonist Nanana is voiced by Rui Tanabe.. whom I have never heard in anything before and whom I can’t tell if she had any important roles! I like the voice though but you can tell she falls a bit flat when having to work a bit with her voice (As in when she has to make it quiver or shout) The series is directed by Kanta Kamei for those people that find such things important.

Tomb Raider the Anime

The anime opens up with Nanana and some female friends exploring an ancient ruin. We get some heavy Indiana Jones vibes as we see poison darts flying around, crashing ceilings flash floods and more. Nanana is smiling widely from happiness while doing this while her friends have mixed reactions.  Eventually we see them enter an antechamber and everyone catches their breath before we cut to the opening credits. Which brings me to my biggest problem with this anime… this show isn’t about that! I would have LOVED the show to be about that! Indiana Jones with anime girls! Sign me up! Yet instead we discover Nanana is not even the main character.

We meet a boy named Juugo who get exiled by his father and forced to live in the cheapest room he could find. An alcoholic female landlord makes some advances on him but then shows him to his room. To his surprise it is not empty. A girl is there eating pudding and playing video games every hour of every day . When he informs the landlord she tells him.. it’s not a girl.. that’s a ghost. Nanana got murdered 10 years ago and now is trapped here. She is a legendary treasure hunter and through those treasures she once found and had this island built they might find her killer so she can kill him. Since Yuugo starts feeling some affection for the poor girl he decides to help her and join up with a treasure hunting club. The anime is about the adventures of that club and Yuugo’s personal quests. Trough the many factions within this world.

When Nanana died her treasures had been spread all over the island hidden in so called “ruins” which are basically just puzzle rooms that each hold a magic item. Of course everyone Yuugo meets has their own agenda. Like the president of the Treasure hunting club, the all perceiving great detective Tensai and her male androgynous crossdressing assistant Daruku.  Which in series is given a nasty name for that particular type of character.. which is another strike against the series.. but it is actually a very enjoyable character. He is adorable and comfortable with being a male, he just really wants to be a maid as well. Then there is the mysterious thieving organisation Matsuri ..which has deep connections with the very Treasure club and then there is some evil bloke!  And a criminal gang and the little writer girl who is kinda into Yuugo. There honestly is a lot happening in this show and it’s surprising how much they are all fleshed out over the course of only 11 episodes. Of course there is still more to tell but by the end I had a pretty good idea of who everyone was and why they did the thing they did ! The show makes that very clear.. which means that despite it not telling the whole tale.. all pieces are pretty much on the table. Good thing! 

To help Nanana discover who killed her, Juugo explores these ruins all while manoeuvring across all the treacherous elements. These artefacts can possibly hold great powers . Some are rather harmless, yet others could in the wrong hands be used to rul the world. So Yuugo can not just ask for Nanana’s sake! These ruins are life or death situations that each time are very different but usually contain some very Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones like challenges.  Filled with trials of agility, wits and of course strength. These ruins are often riddled with traps or hidden mechanics keeping each episode fun and varied. The way the Treasure club moves through these can be reminiscent of Mission impossible .. with each team member fulfilling a certain roll and allocated to a certain strength. While the weight usually lies with Juugo and Tensai (the detective girl)  others get involved as well   which results in a fairly competent series with lots of plot twists and fairly fleshed out characters!  More good things. The fact that people risk their lives for a CHANCE to get what they want and they might end up with a dud makes it feel more alive and makes you feel there is a world, behind just this group as well.

Oh Valley of Plenty, Oh Valley of Plenty!

Since this is a bit of a mystery story I am not going to explain everything that happens here, it’s all about how these relationships work but overall the stuff that happens and how it happens offers a plenty entertaining show. The way it is presented though rubs me a bit in the wrong way. We get some harem tones with the main character having obviously a connection to Nanana, but also to detective Tensai.. then there is a writer girl whom he has chemistry with and a flame from his past. Four girls.. in an 11 episode anime?! That’s a bit much for me personally.  Add to this that there is a lot of fan-service comedy, like him wrestling with a girl and him allowing his arm to be dislocated just so he can cup a feel and  there are a few scenes I am not particularly interested in. Oh right the drunk landlady also solicates for some action at times so I guess it’s five girls. It just feels unneeded for me.. then again I am not a young boy and people do like that stuff so happy for them it’s there. For me it’s plentiful enough that I can get a bit annoyed at it. I must commend them though .. I could see him ending up with all four of these girls, non of these romance options feels disingenuous. All ships have a charm to them. If I had been a manga would have tracked the series down to find out how this ended. 

Then there is the cross-dressing maid… who looks like a girl sounds like a girl.. but is actually a guy. He gets upset when people mistake him for being  a girl but he acts very girly. This show names him as “trap” which I find quite nasty and does bump this show down a peg or two. They mention it a few times.. and the worst one if when Yuugo calls him a trap claiming this person has an Excalibur just like his own” The wordt Trap can easily be harmful to trans-people so it should not be just a joke. Luckily they do portray him well! He identifies as male and can get kinda upset if people call him a girl. He is a man that just happens to look like a girl and likes woman’s clothing. He just wants to be himself and is sad if people do not see the real him. Nice  However they also give him this quirk that wants to taste Tensai’s saliva but feeding her with his chopsticks and then licking them.

This is a returning gag and actually quite a good example how the humor in this show is taken. Everyone acts so awkward about their feelings here.  Then there is a character whose name I honestly have forgotten as his character trait is to be Juugo, but a bit stealthier and just missing out on being on par with him. .. He keeps telling the girlish guy everything he does is so erotic and how he could initiate him. Why is everyone so horny when their lives are in danger or heck when there is food. As longs as you might die.. or can score some food there is no reason to feel the tinglies just above your legs! At least nog as much as these guys do! I don’t get it and feel this disconnect to that kind of joke. There are also a lot of boob jokes if that is your thing.. they aren’t even cringingly bad.. I just feel nothing for them. 

The show also has a lot of jokes that actually did make me chuckle. Like the club president’s assistant constantly trying to let her beloved help her as well as Yuugo helps his girl to no avail or even the silly Nanana pudding humor. Nanana the ghost can only eat pudding.. and for the rest she just plays video games as she is bound to the room she died in.  This means those puddings are what little she can experience of the world outside.. and she prefers puddings made at locations.. like the special pudding from the mall or from the town that made the onsen. It is cute. It might seem shallow first and it can feel kinda gimmicky but there is something humble enough about it. Like when Juugo asks her about a hint on one of the ruins..she tells him she has one condition.. as he says “yes of course I will get you pudding from said location ” she thinks and says “I have two conditions” showing she forgot about that but now can not let it go.  Nanana has three things in her afterlife.. pudding, games and her rules and that’s so little she can’t give any up.. so I liked those kinds of jokes.

GIga Pudding

In the end this show is much like a pudding. It’s sweet, easily digestible and something you watch after coming out of a very serious series or after watching something long.  It’s a bit of a palette cleanser.  Unfortunately for Nanana this isn’t one of those custom made puddings she made.. this is a bit of a store brand ones.. she still loves them just they do not make her list of favourites. The vanilla flavour is fine and the treasure hunting is like that chocolate/cherry sauce that shift it towards a more unique experience. Tet if we look a bit better at the composition we can see it is made  out of some lower grade materials. Which are fine.. but also not that special. It’s a tasty mix of all elements being good enough but there is also not that much to make it stand out.

The way all these puddings are structured does leave you wanting for more though. After I finished each episode , I wanted to watch the next due to a cliffhanger .. that almost always got resolved off screen weirdly enough, to find out what actually happened I had to watch through almost nearly an entire other episode for it being mentioned. Which is a great way to make you hooked on a show that otherwise might not be strong enough! So it is at least clever!  I wanted to watch 5 episodes for this review and see if I wanted to continue it..but  episode 5,6 and 7 ended on a cliffhanger and then i was like.. I only need 4 more episodes and before I knew it I was out of pudding! I consumed it almost all as one as a sort of Giga Pudding. …I think I heard a song about it once… it was really long. I liked this anime it was a nice way to spend three hours or so. However I am pretty sure it will not take that long for this anime to be buried deep within my mind!

I really wish this concept would have been used for a slightly better show, it’s not that this show is bad.. I just think the concept is amazing but the show never aimed for that standard. Instead of ending up with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow we end up with a pudding cup at one of the shelves in your fridge..it will still make you happy for a little while but that happiness will not linger. Hmmm now I feel like getting a pineapple pudding! Why Pineapple?!
Because this anime is

Now that is done it’s time for me to go on a treasure hunt myself! By that I mean raid my fridge for some lunch, have you seen this anime?! Do you know of any more Indiana Jones like, treasure hunting anime? I don’t mean One Piece.. I mean .. traps, puzzles and stuff!
Let me know and have a nice weekend! All the love! Stay Happy!

XO

Pinkie

P.S. I remember that song now!

If you want to make the song stop but are powerless to click away I suggest you get redirected by supporting my Kofi! Now this is the best Kofi add I ever did!

Random Talks Again! The Random Topic Generator Part 2

On Wednesdays we always talk a little about me, blogging or things related to online mental health! Since I am super happy right now, I feel like an airy look in my life and mind! What better way to do that.. than random! So I found a new random topic generator on the internet and asked myself some questions! For those willing to partake I used , this random topic generator.. now let’s get started.

Most of my real life friends live here! There is Bean who is my bestie and Bear who is her boyfriend! Those are the people I hang out with the most and go out for spontaneous drinks and nights out! Then there is also my Dragon Ball Pal and the guy living in the same building as me! He plays D&D with us so that is always fun! Having a group to play D&D with would actually thus be my favorite thing… but Bean and Bear do other fun things with me as well. Bean and I go out for lunches and sometimes meet our loud friends as well! Who do not D&D unless it stands for Drink & Drink some more!  This Thursdays my D&D friend and me will finally see each other in person again, at least some of us well! So I am happy about that! I missed them so much!

Disclaimer: Not my Actual Table! I wish I had awesome stuff like that!

Having said that though my city is a pretty terrible place, there is a lot of crime , including murder, drug trade and of course violence and whole lot of intolerance which does not really match with a Kawaii Pink Girl like me! So I am looking to move away to greener pastures. Not that the pastures aren’t green here, the chemical plant I look at when I watch out my windows leaks chemicals so often  that not only the pastures are green.. they are fluorescent too! Cows don’t just say moo they say Kaijmoo. Cowzilla! Of course I am kidding here…..about the cows and the grass only is slightly glow in the dark. The chemical plant does have a lot of leaks of fires though so .. to better places in the future!

My backyard


That really depends! Would I know my life span?! Say if I know I have at least 10 to 20 years left I’d say yes! If it’s a gamble and I can drop dead right here and right now then my answer would be no. I do not believe that the key to happiness is longevity I believe the key to happiness is doing what you want to do. Being rich or famous would open a lot of doors and allow me to do a lot of stuff I can not do otherwise! If I was rich  I would probably eat so much great food, drink amazing wines, travel to the weirdest places that my lifespan would be reduced by ten years already. So it does sound like a sweet deal, I just don’t want to be rich and not be able to use it. That is a sin in my opinion. Sure people can donate to a cause they’d think I like but I could have a lot of fun with a lot of money! One of my dreams is to visit the pokémon café in Tokyo and to visit Japan in general. With my current income that is never going to happen at least not if my health doesn’t improve, I do not see a short term way of getting out of that.  So if I was guaranteed some years of life left to spend the money and have fun.. I’d do it.

The mileage on this image is insane!

We always say that life is the greatest good, but life just like money isn’t all that amazing if nothing happens with it. I have seen my grandfather waste away in an old folks home his dementia claiming the last memories of us. Covid set him free, but if I can prevent even one year of that I’ll happily die a little bit earlier.  Health care staff is constantly given less time with you and less and less people are wanting to train for it as the management keeps cutting away at the budgets to make everything work by the time I get old enough to be taken care for, there will just be a pit of sand with some cloth to keep the worst of the sun away and we will tended by a hunchback named Igor.. whom they have cloned from Florence Nightingale’s DNA. Just making it human enough not to give it human rights and wages. So yeah I will trade Igor in!  I think I can live more in a year without limitations than in 50 with normal limits. I can experience joy until the day I die and even if it’s sooner I’ll die with a big wide smile on my face. Still I would not waste it! So if I can drop dead right here right now I’d not choose the option because I do not want to hurt people! However if people know I died with a huge smirk on my face I think that is solace enough to risk that!

Now this is a weird question… I like it!  Saying I take you Rachel while you are  taking Emily as your lawfully wedded wife is probably a stupid thing to do on your wedding. F.R.I.E.N.D.S was such a wise show like that! Yet I do not think  that is what this question is about. I think it means more like stuff like “we should see other people” or “You are not of my preferred sex when it comes to engaging in the physical act of love’.   Maybe something like “Sweety did you make sure to turn the oven off when we left”  when your partner has trouble with that sort of thing.  There is plenty of jokes to make here with obvious ones like “sweety that dress makes you look fat’  or “Well guys she is wearing white but I can assure you…she’s now pure..whassssuuup!’ I mean lets be honest here there is a lot you should not say at the wedding. “That gift your parents gave us is horrible” ,  “Did you see Stephanie caught be bouquet? Like that’s ever going to happen.. unless she marries Ronald Mc-D am I right?’ Honey “I slept with a bridesmaid”.. ..”Oh Me Too”. You are getting comedy gold here everyone!


But let’s assume real people are not cartoon characters  or roles of Sean William Scott or Katherine Heigl. Let’s assume we are all well spoken people with at least a semi functional brain. That would change everything. If there are things you can not say at your wedding then, you are marrying the wrong person. If your spouse to be or their family would ruin your day based on something you say, things are not  well in your family. If I am ever gonna get married I sure as heck do not want to say I do!  I also do not really want a wedding dress… well maybe a fake on that I can rip off for shock value to reveal a magical girl outfit underneath! I would stare at my partner and go take a pose! While I speech! “I am the pretty guardian of Love and Friendship in a Sailor Suit! Sailor Pinkie! In the name of Love I will marry you! I would like my partner to look shocked and then she’d take out a makeup mirror and yell Pretty Cure, Smile Charge! Ripping of her dress to reveal a magical girl outfit. Then we’d hold hands slide the ring on each others finger and yell ! Pink Thunder! Yellow Thunder! (or whatever her colour would be) Pretty Moon! Married To! And then each others name! Then a fake as a sort of fake beam effect it rains tiny plushies and ribbons, tossed by the bridesmaids onto the isle!  If someone expects me to be normal at my own wedding.. clearly they would not know me!

Oof thats a heavy one. Do I believe in God? The short answer is no, I do not believe in God, Allah, Yahweh , Lord Xenu, Eywa or the Flying Spaghetti monster. Even Todd Howard might be fake. On paper I am an atheist as I do not believe in a divine being. I think subconsciously a lot of people feel that way. If we look at sci-fi for example we often see that sci-fi writes dabbling in the concept of theology project other divine beings upon the galaxy. As if they should have another god. Yet god as a creator should be shared amongst the galaxy. As in.. in Star Trek they encounter “god” several times depending on times. A sentient being judging if I lived my life right is also a super depressing thought. I can only go to heaven or paradise if I put myself last? That’s not how things work! Who is a force to judge over my life while not having lived it? The fact that my live can be invalidated by a single opinion makes no sense to me.  Sure it’s an all knowing opinion yada yada yada except it’s not! I should live the way I want.. not an incorporeal flying buffalo head with a ginger wig and gag goggles or not a guy floating on a cloud going hmmm Soka!  If my friends have some awesome memories of me and will remember me with a smile.. I lived a good life! Because that is what I want to achieve!

The DnD eye guy and pink ninja woman are still there.. they would just cry which moots my point!

I however would not say I believe in nothing… no I believe in order and chaos. Balance, I’d almost call myself a Jedaii (a Force user before the Dark and Light side split). Things happen for a reason and that is not always quantifiable there is a bigger order, a bigger rulebook out there, it’s not a sentient rulebook and most certainly not a DM but it influences us all. Miracles like mothers finding strength beyond their limits to save their children the way everyone’s, the fact that all our upper and under arms have a 1.61803398875 difference ratio , the fact that bees are segregated in that exact same ratio, these are the proof to me that there is an order out there a force keeping everything together. Sometimes it gets a bit lost.. so it’s almost algorithmic like YouTube, a force that can adjust and a force that we can influence. Our thoughts , our postivity…our Karma as it were shape it bring some order in the chaos.. but it is mostly just a set of rules still. Beyond us to understand…again like the YouTube algorithm.

I believe that for me there is no god, but that balance can be controlled to an end. If you are happy and you exert it it’s more likely positive things happen to you. If you are in a negative mindset, bad things are more likely to happen to you. By believing you can do something without a doubt in your mind you can break your limits.. point and case the mother lifting a heavy object to save her baby again. Your belief must be absolute but this works for a god as well. If you believe in god..like believe without a shadow of a doubt god is real to you. If you believe god whispered you the right answer to the test.. then maybe you did. We can explain it with a chemical process in the brain trigger something or whatever ..but who cares. I hear my plushies talk to me.. it’s not something that can be measured but if they go Ganbatte, to cheer my on I still feel inspired.. that inspiration IS real. No matter if I deluded myself into doing it or I actually pick up sound waves from another realm, it doesn’t change the fact that I got inspired..by my plushies. Their motivating me is real. Much more than a concept of god for me ever could!

 Yet God is stronger because he is shared among so many people that it is even easier to pick something up! If your fate wavers others can help you steel your mind..strengthen those thoughts.. No one will tell me.. yes Pinkie your plushies really talk back. Our brains are super powerful, something can be so vividly imagined if we belief in it hard enough. Research shows that if we play a video game and get invested enough our brain treats it virtually the same as going on an actual adventure.. that makes that adventure real right? I think god would be the same .This to me also explains the existence of ghosts. A ghost is not a manifestation of a dead person but the memory of said person by a living person. They belief they remember and they think of them so much that it’s almost tangible to see.. like reading a really good book or an amazing description of food where you can basically taste it. So do I also believe people can see god! So I do believe in him? No .. but he is real… just not to me personally.

To me god is just.. that thing!

By the time I am writing this, which is about a week and a half-ish from when this is going to be posted, I learned the word portmanteau from Irina, I had no idea but it sounds pretty. I guess I have created a few in my blogging history as well. I also learned that this topic generator was less amazing as the one before! This one asked some really basic questions! The religion one I made a post off before but it is so long ago I could revisit it. I tried to find another but the next one and i am generated was “do you believe in the afterlife” and then “do you believe in ghosts”.. clearly the order ..or Karma wanted me to explain my answer on that question so I guess Karma must think I am right ..which makes little sense because then it would be sentient and my entire thing goes to waste but still.The biggest lesson I learned though  is that sometimes a small gesture is good enough to forgive a major thing. 

I saw my friend Lauren this week who has treated me a bit poorly in the past. She treated me a bit how Fumi gets treated by Yasuko in Sweet Blue Flower. She wants to be normal so bad that she kinda “prayed the gay away”  on herself. She stopped our relation because it would not be white picket fences and 1.5 children.After that she hooked up with a male friend of mine, a closet geek, better job also likes to keep up the pretense of being your average guy. I kept the friendship with her alive as I hoped she would one day realise there is more in the world than being mundane. She increasingly drifted towards adhering to the standard and constantly critisised me for finding my own way..usually behind my back though which I had to hear from others. I kept the friendship up though because I really cared for her However fairly recently we had a major fight. Another friend asked us if we could delay a meal for 15 minutes so they could join and she refused stating that “6 o clock is the normal time”  It’s the time she eats at home and if she eats 15 minutes later she’ll have to go to sleep 15 minutes late as well.. cause of her schedule.. normal people don’t eat at 6:15 they eat at 6 so, so should we. A friend who can’t even spare 15 minutes for a friend is not a good friend at all so I timed her out for a bit.. quite mad with everything festering up. 

Yet she came in here with a smile and a bar of chocolate she gifted me and she just said in the most sincere way that she really missed me.  Suddenly everything else did not matter.. and I had missed her as well. I almost hugged her! But Distancing rules so no hugging. Still I felt lighter as a cloud after that, sure we are drifting apart because I am becoming stronger in me being unique and she deeply beliefs she will be happy from being the perfectly average woman and if that makes her happy she should pursue it. I am not sure we can be friends forever, I might become something that holds her back in being as normal as she wants to be.. and I am not going to give up myself so she can be normal..because she would not do so for me either…and that is fine.  For now I know I have a friend, whom I love. The friendship isn’t as easy as others, it’s not perfect but it is something I missed and something I will enjoy sharing with her for as long as we are capable.  Grudges are stupid and as long as you gain something from a friendship and not from a grudge.. even the littlest hand reach can be enough to rekindle a bond. I’ll just hate the anime character instead!

Now that was long enough , I am hope you learned something new about me! Next time I will try to look for a bit more of a whimsical topic generator! Yet this was something on its own accord?!Anyway! I got some chocolate to eat! Sayonoodles! That is a portmanteau  of Sayonara and Toodles!

<In two weeks my Blog will turn 1 so on the Wednesday of my Blogs Birthday..and Pinkie’s Birthday in a sense..I will be holding a Q&A so feel free to leave me some Q&A Questions in the comments or poke me on twitter!> Sayonoodles once more!

Pinkie watches a Random Anime: Saki

Hello my sweet island guests! For my Saturday anime posts I have been covering ways to discover anime for the past two weeks! Ending with how excited I was to watch some random anime using the Random Anime Generator Website! Now once a month, or at least I will try to do so, I will generate one random anime and watch it’s first five episodes (about a movie length) discussing my thoughts about it and whether or not I would pick it up to finish it! My first randomised anime came up as: Saki!

I did not read any descriptions I just generated a random anime title , looked if it was available to me and watched the show. Saki should still be available for everyone using Crunchyroll but I am not sure how everything works for that. The first opening minute I saw a slightly tomboyish girl  looking at another girl thinking she is super pretty! I never heard of this anime before and I had no clue what to expect.. but already I was getting some Yuri vibes. Lucky! The tame kind too! It was also clear there would be a lot fan service.. even though it’s fairly tame.. I did find myself kind of annoyed by it, but that is mostly because I really like the character being lewded a lot. They at times make her out to be just a pair of boobs .. and they have to really go out of their way to set it up as well so yes in this case I found it unpleasant. Still I get why you do it.. gotta keep Mahjong interesting.. because yes I stumbled upon an anime about Mahjong. With a pink seemingly gay (semi) main character , some flashy weird animations and people taking part in a tournament. This SHOW random show really hit some marks for me.

I’ll be honest, I have started watching A Certain Magical Index as well, but now that I am five episodes in for both! This one has my preference to finish first. The show is about a girl named Saki .. if you would believe it… a young girl who comes from a broken family. During family game night they would always play Mahjong but if she did to well her sister would throw a tantrum and people would get mad at her and if she did to poorly she would not get any candy! So Saki learned to play perfectly average and is blessed with incredible luck playing this game. She finds out the beautiful girl is in the Mahjong club because a friend asked her to help her out for a bit.. and little by little Saki begins to enjoy the game of Mahjong again .. that she learned to hate under her broken family! Now that same game has the chance to bring the family back together as her sister represents another regions team, playing in the Tokyo nationals. Before they do that though they have to win regionals.. which according to the first five episode holds some very scary and evil girls they have to face. As well as super powers?! I am not sure yet!

I have no idea how to play competitive Mahjong , only that tower stack thing we get from internet games here.. well that is not the Mahjong this is about. This is about changing together events, like Ron and Richi and Kan or whatever they are called. I have no idea but this anime certainly makes it look impressive. Studio Gonzo produced the first 14 episodes ..which obviously includes the first five I have seen and they certainly know how to frame the game nicely.  The dramatic reveal of hands really have this larger than life vibe. Which is great because this series very much knows what it is. There is a strong cast of character that are larger than life which again compliments the series very well. Saki is the overly nice naive girl that is attracted to pink girl , with big boobs, talents in spades and a child like demeanour, Nodoka. Nodoka is a very calculative person who secretly is into Saki as well but also someone who can not comprehend her luck (yet) . They represent two aspect a skilled player needs to have , skill and luck! Nodoka has a plush penguin named Etopen which I find adorable! Could it be that she is Waifu material?!

Kyoutarou is the only boy in the Mahjong club.. he dreams of being with Nodoka he wants to play with them tiddies.. but of course he doesn’t know she looks at Saki!  His fantasies about her are often interrupted by Yuuki, a tiny energetic bubbly girl, who loves taco and tako. She likes to play house with him calling him darling or husband. She has a wild imagination and always seems to twist reality around her! She lacks the ability to do proper math which results in her being weaker in the game than she could be.   The cast is rounded off by the student council president.. though .. she calls it Student Congress President , she is a strategist and plays the group to make them better and then there is Mako.. the presidents bestie whose parents have a maid café.  She seems leaned back but also very analytical.  

Five episodes in and I really like this cast a whole lot more than I like the main cast of Magical Index. These feel like people I’d enjoy being around. . if I would be their age. I honestly did not expect that I would like this anime this much. Yuuki can be a tad annoying with how her voice sounds but I rather found that endearing. I even smiled empathically at how Kyoutarou is such a loner just for being a guy! If you can make me care for the kinda bro-ish boy .. you are doing something right!

I really like how these first episodes where paced out. Without getting into spoilers to much, episode one sets up the main character Saki and episode 2 sets up Nodoka. Episode 3 sets up the main plot.. that is participating in the tournament while episode 4 lets reality set  in and turns down Nodoka’s amazing talent and Saki’s luck by putting in into perspective by having them learn they are not ready for the tournament yet. Which perfectly sets up for episode 5, training camp! Every episode flows very nicely into the next and each episode and as a result each episode can stand on its own. It’s all well defined tiles that when put together form a nice combo. I notice how this is in contrast with Hikaru no Go for example which has stronger episodes in their lineup..but a weaker flow between them. While Hikaru tells the better tale.. it has slack water.. dead tides in between. This show (At least so far)  flows nicely. In fact there are very few anime I’ve recently been watching that match it’s amazing pacing.

Toss in a lot of cuteness and this show becomes something that does warm my heart. The Blossoming friendship between our main characters works well. Saki feeling awkward around Nodoka in  the beginning makes sense because of how toxic her family games were. When the titular character finally begins to enjoy winning this goes at the cost of Nodoka which makes her passion feel invalidated as Saki claimed not to like the game. It sucks to be beaten by someone who doesn’t take your passion seriously.  These emotions feel legit and make sense with the characters that are established.

This does come at the cost of the personality of the other team members though. While Hisa the team leader still shows some proper character.. but mostly in her understanding how others work, Yuuki,  Kyoutarou and Maki remain rather 2 dimensional. I am not sure if this is a bad thing though. I found Yuuki’s flat and shallow character quite hilarious and it breaks up awkwardness of two closet lesbians playing with some tiles. Maki is the exposition character. “Boss did you set that up to teach them a lesson” .. “Do you think she realises she has that ability” .. that’s her type of dialogue. It could be painful but since they made her a bit of an analytical slightly colder person.. it works. Kyou makes the awkward romantic stuff more comedical by putting it into perspective. So everyone adds their bit to the pot.

The only thing detrimental to this is the fan service. Our pink haired girl has a fully developed chest while the others don more humble models. Nosoka thusly often gets the butt of some jokes that kinda feel out of place. For example how hugging her plushy means hiding the thing under her boobs. I might be flat so I could not compare.. but I hold my plushies near my heart or chest at , Etopen is quite large though so it makes sense from a perspective that she also has to play Mahjong.. But still that feels like hugging a friend in my belly button area! That just feels awkward!  There are a few cheap shots like that like having her run through the rain and giving her a dramatic talk while zooming in on her chest emphasises her white shirt got wet and all. If that floats your boat good for you but I did not like it. I am not against the use of fan service as long as it is used in moments where it’s not detrimental to the main emotions and that’s where the show misses a few swings for me personally. It just feels like Nosoka’s character on occasion has to make room so she can give some fan service at times.. which is a wrong way to go about this.

The opening song and the ending song are AMAZING! Well they aren’t that memorable but the fact that they could make this work for them  as a Mahjong series was pretty good! It has action in it but also some beauty..it is almost shot as a shounen opening which I really could appreciate.  The ending is so cute that this one one of the few ED’s I ended up watching three out of five times. Well two and a half but normally I don’t watch it at all so thats HUGE!
Like I said Yuuki’s voice can be a bit annoying at times when she talks to long or has to shout for shouting sake. but this also endeared her a bit to me at the same time.. that is who she is. The final knitpick is that this does not make it very clear on how to play Majong.. which is also i’s strength.. it’s not a game you easily pick up I think there is a lot involved so since everyone in universe would more less know how to play.. there is little exposition to explain. There are a few schedules and diagrams but there might as well have been a unicorn poster there! I did not get info at all. The characters do though so that is good.. but I guess I just have to believe the words and the flow here.

I know Ron is a good thing for the one who declares it. So I will use that term for my final evaluation! Five episodes in and I am very pleasantly surprised by this series. So much so in fact that I am probably going to finish this series and bench Magical Index for a while. This series spoke a lot more to me. It’s just cute , slightly yuri , fun with characters I really enjoy and stylistic and visual choices I enjoy even more!  I very much hope it keeps this nice buttery smooth pacing throughout the show because that to me was it’s absolute strength.
I could not tell you what I think about the animation because I haven’t really paid much attention it it. I noticed it was from 2009 and I would have guessed it was slightly earlier.. but the visuals worked for me. 

The colours are nice and vibrant  but never obnoxious, there is plenty set-up going on that makes me feel this might quite the interesting show.  So yes I do want to finish this show. With only 25 episodes I should be able to do so before the next randomisation is up but this is also a great series to cheer me up so I might save some of it until I need some Etopen and Yuri Mahjong goodness in my life! We will see but I really think the first five episodes of this Mahjong show where very good! The only thing that prevents it getting my highest score is my inability to comprehend Mahjong.. and my inability to care for boobs!

Random Anime : Saki
Episodes Watched: 5
Watching On?: Yes
Favorite Character: Etopen
Score:

Pinkie Plays On the Internet: Random Topic Generator

Hello Island Guests! I felt like doing something a bit odd today. Perhaps I am running a fever, perhaps I am slipping into a insanity but I wanted to talk about stuff I would normally never talk about.. as well as find a way to keep myself entertained! So i found a random topic generator and as a blog I will adres some topics it spouts at me! Onto the first topic!

Topic: Where is the most beautiful place you have been?

Hmmm well I have been to lots of places that have been beautiful to me for lots of different reasons. If we have to do the generic general aesthetic concept of beauty I would have to say it’s a tie between the wooded areas near Alanya Turkey or the city of Porto.  The turkish forests I visited during a Jeep Safari thing while traveling there with friends. We were invited in a classic turkish home in the middle of the wilderness and it was quite a sight to behold. Yet.. I would not want to live there ..so I’d have to say the city of Porto takes the win in the end. It’s such a pretty city so few from above. It is a very layed city with all sorts of plateaus and coloured houses, almost as if a child builds with legos.. there is colour everywhere. 

There are so many beautiful spots in this city like the mozaic train station, the port and of course the famous bookstore the Livraria Lello. This bookstore is an important inspiration for Hogwarts and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the similarities. It’s the prettiest store I have ever seen and truly seems magical. If only I could read portuguese I would have bought a book.. but things there are a bit pricey. A bought a super pretty pink bottle of water though, which was the most beautiful throw away bottle of water I have ever seen. I might even still have that around somewhere. If you ever find yourself in Porto definitely visit this bookstore.. and of course visit the boulevard and the major bridge as well. Don’t go in heels though or Porto will kill you.

Topic: What is the Most Frustrating App You ever Tried

Hmmm this is a hard one, I don’t play a lot on my phone, I guess for me the most frustrating one would be Pokémon Masters. You see… I happen to like Pokémon but because of in game purchases this game was not allowed to release her in the Netherlands.. So I installed it through a work around. At first the game was a bit sparse, while I enjoyed it very much I felt so much iconic stuff was missing. Also the one weakness mechanic while understandable felt super counter intuitive for what I have known for most my life now .That’s when I learned about events.. all those super iconic trainers are available on alternating banners.. event banners. So my issue got fixed or so I thought.

It would soon turn out that  for every event I would need to update my game, and my work around for installation of Masters could not allow updates. Which basically meant each update I had to uninstall wait a few days for the updated file to be presented for me to install on a website I trusted.. grind out the event with a few days less and NOT pull any of the major event characters. I never got one of the major pulls. Since I am not allowed to play this officially I was afraid to put money in it as well so that was no option .. and the way to gather actually currency is just way to slow, given the time I have available for such a thing. It was a lot of work to get nothing over and over again.. until eventually I stopped updating, moving on.

Topic: What is the least favorite job you ever had?

There are actually two jobs that come to mind. First was pressing buttons in a bread factory. They were implementing a new production line and I had to press buttons at a certain interval to make the machine learn. Yet the machine broke that so many times I had to do something else like working the oven. Pinkie is not heatproof. Even though I said I could not take it they made me do it until I fainted.. they brought me back and I was feeling miserable and they made me work there for another two hours. People who worked three years with each other didn’t even know from each other they were married so it wasn’t very sociable either. It was horrible and I felt sick constantly due to the smells and the heat. 

Another job I had was with a company that important american goods and sold them to a us europeans.  Stuff like special cans of Monster Energie, Twinkies,  snickers. I had to put some orders in boxes, put a label on them and make sure they were safe for shipping. I got a bunch of papers i could shred to make fillings and all in all, it seemed like a fairly nice job with low pressure, I could easily keep up. However things began seeming off when the supervisor who would judge if I did a proper job or not went on vacation during almost the entirety for my evaluation period.

I discovered that the papers I shredded was our invoices.. the pieces of paper that said how much we paid for stuff.  I noticed people ordering a single can of monster energy drink shipping it to finland or sweden for over 3x times what the can itself cost. Maybe someone collected the cans? When the same address ordered a box of twinkies for 7x more delivery cost than the costs of goods however I began to have serious doubts. I would get the day off for the weirdest reason like.. “we have a party tonight and we want to sleep in, let’s just skip a day”  I presented this to my mediator who immediately pulled me out after that.

Topic: If you could learn the answer of one question about your future which would it be? 

When will I die? It would suck to know that I am about to die, but since I am sick I think that oftenly enough.  Think about all the insurance money I could save  and not having to worry about my own sickness and whether or not it will kill me. If the answer would be tomorrow or something close by I would be super upset but hey at least I can now do things I was afraid to. I can eat Fugu without worrying if I will die or not, I could even walk everywhere in the world without having to worry.. to much.  While I do not think I would be happier, I think it is a matter of problem substitution , I would at least have a bit more money!

Topic: What is the craziest, most outrageous thing you want to achieve?

I am not that outrages in my plans at least something that I am actively pursuing. Winning the lottery seems like one of those but that is such a boring answer. I do believe that I have enough bad luck to compensate though so I am an active believer that I can have that turn around magic moment, where suddenly I can break free of my monetary and entropic chains and live without a limit. I keep playing in lotteries because it is something I very much belief in. Magic is possible and due to my health issues I am a bit stuck right now so in magic I must belief.


Achieving magic might be another thing I try to achieve.. I do feel there is more to this world than we can see, I saw ghosts in the past, I felt as if I could do more with my mind. It feels as if something is locked away and discovering what lies deep inside me can be that outrageous think that Pinkie strives for. I can read people very well and I do not know why. I have these intuitions and this feeling that is more than what I currently can define and I wish to discover what else is out there. I just know there is more.

Topic: Where is the worst place you have been stuck for a long time

Okay, this is not a really fun story, but at least you all might get a laugh out of it. I told you all in some of those tag posts that I can get stupidly unlucky and that I was left in a forest once. Well that second statement was not fully correct it happened twice, though the second time was way more mean spirited. We had a school camp and we had a game where we would play drug runners. Having to run from some parents trying to  capture us we had to outsmart them and score as much as we could. If you got caught wearing drugs the parent could tie you to a tree for 5 minutes or so as a time out. … now you can already probably see where this is going. 

When my time was just about to be up a boy ran by.. drawing the parent guarding me away for a bit… a shout from that boy could be heard as the boy twisted his ankle maybe even broke it so was thought at the time. The parent went along with him.. forgetting me. The game wrapped up and a few boys were tasked to check if everyone is complete.  The boy who found me was someone who bullied me in the past and just grinned and left me. The boy who was injured was a friend of mine so for a bit it was believed that I went along with them. It wasn’t until after the parent returned with the boy from the hospital they noticed I wasn’t there.  

The girls whom I shared a room with did not really mention anything either, to this day I do not know if this was out of disliking me or because they thought I went to the hospital with my friend.. they claim the latter but timewise it doesn’t fully check out.   I got freed after being tied to that tree for about two hours maybe even more. This was before cellphones as well so I could not text.. I left camp the next day as it was ruined for me. The boy who left me got expelled from camp so that was a bit awkward. 

Final Topic: Do you have any siblings?

Yes Pinkie has a little sister, we aren’t particularly close but when we do see each other we can be really similar. While she isn’t a geek we have the same comedic timing, we laugh at the same sort of things and we just can agree on so many things. It’s really nice, she has a very calming presence on my mind as well. Normally I am trying to come off more sociable or more normal than I am but around her I really am me. In the past we could not have been more different she wanted attention, I wanted less, she would rather smack someone I would rather flee, I was not good at fleeing so I often got smacked.

Even though we have little contact , the talks we do have are always nice.. as of late. We had a bit of a troubled past which is mostly due to her former partner who wronged our family and I could forgive for what they made me go trough. That is water under the bridge now.. but now that I think about that.. the partner caused me to be stuck in a place  as well.. but I kinda  really liked it there so unlike the tree i guess it wouldn’t count. Me and my sister are doing great now and I am happy to have her in my life.

Now this concludes my first Random Topic Generator post, it was actually kind of fun! I might do it again if inspiration fails me! Want to try it out for yourself? This is the random topic generator I used this time! I only skipped two questions it gave me, one was very similar to the travel one and one topic I recently talked about. Hope to see you next time!

XO
Pinkie