Tag: Yu-gi-oh

It’s time! To C-C-Catch them All! Pinkie Plays: PokéDuel

Hello Little Lights!  For those who have been keeping track of my Twitter Account this might not come as a surprise!  Yet I have recently played a RomHack of my favourite franchise that I really want to talk to you about today!  What if we combine Pokémon with YuGiOh?!  I got my game on and tried this rom!  A journey began …but I felt like this game was missing something, perhaps some spirit… or maybe even the heart of the cards?!

Creature Swap

In the past I have already played Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Team Training.  Which was a Dragon Ball Rom hack of the same base game. Fire-Red.  However where in that game we do see some locations reskinned and renamed here we travel through good old Kanto. No Domino city here.. though that makes sense. YuGiOh is fairly barren of locations. As it is very much set in one city and one island and maybe the Egypt of the past.

 Yet even then in that ancient egypt there wasn’t much dueling going on. PokéDuel also only really has references up to to 5d’s and those are very minimal. Rather than being Pokémon YuGiOh this kind of feels more like Pokémon YuGiOh Abridged. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are 163 new creatures to collect, so for those well versed in YuGiOh lore and even those who just saw an arc or two of the first season.. there are still plenty of monsters to add to your team that you will know.

Gym Leaders have also been replaced  including their respective typing. A lot of monsters even have custom typings and every monster has somewhat altered movesets so they seem more interesting. For example Dark Magician Girl will learn psybeam, but also a lot of moves like attract, sweet kiss and barrier to mirror the role of a card she had in the series. It goes so far that this actually has a fairly large impact on the game as YuGiOh monsters tend to not have a lot of moves in the anime,, the card monsters in this game reflect that and get a lot more stat boosting, or status inducing moves.

 This game is not something you should play without a healthy dose of full heals! So gameplay wise, I actually found this rom to be a fairly interesting departure from the Pokémon formula ,and instead we go for a slower type of gameplay, with more tactical plays to be made. Neat!  So just by swapping creatures around and typing availability the game changes a lot!

Examples of gameplay changing is very noticable in Dragon Type cards. If you know a bit about YuGiOh, you’ll know Dragon cards are very common in the game, so Dragon Types.. are not always that tactical to have. Dark type is SUPER common as well , so is the normal type. So fighting types are very strong to have in this game, many of the 5d’s cards are steel type after all. Water types are really uncommon only existing in the form of Humanoid Slime and Archery Girl as well as the Legendary Fisherman and a handful of other cards.. but going from one of the most common typings to one of the least common means you will have to adjust your strategies! And that is the saving grace of this game! It offers a very interesting take on Pokémon battling and will make you a better fighter.. Unfortunately the rest of the game isn’t very good.

Dark Mirror Force

First of all this game is UGLY! I don’t want to rip on peoples pixel-art and people are still working on this game but it is made public , so I think I am allowed to have my opinion here.. and this game isn’t pretty! Overworld sprites are okay.. because famous duelists have been ripped out of those GBA store games like Resheff of Destruction or that narrative god cards game. You will recognise them  Tea, Tristan and the others quite easily! ..It does result in some problems though!  

For example Pegasus is an Elite 4 member.. but instead of his iconic look we get the Reshef of Destruction restyle.. where he called himself Sol!  Odd choice!  Dartz is a Gymleader and obviously he has no sprite so that one looks very odd!   And then there is the fact that a YuGiOh sprite is twice as tall as the trainer sprite.. so we get some odd ratios in the overworld.. as well as regular pokémon still appearing in that world.. it looks odd to find a Kabuto Fossil while the item uses the dome fossil to revive Exodia Necross. It just screams fan remake.. something that was less apparent in a few other hacks.

In battle though is where the game really looks like a digested Kuriboh. The Dark Magician sprite is FANTASTIC, so is her back sprite… but some of the duelist and some monsters look like …..crabcakes..that have been eaten by a dog.. and passed out.  Some art is really good! The starters look pretty amazing! Other art however looks like it has been drawn in paint.  Some of the monsters are absolutely non recognisable.  Like Change of Heart of Buster Blader. What am I looking at?! However I could find myself liking this if it had been done ironically!  

The problem is that there is no style which makes that paint work look uglier than an Orange shouty man.. if you had soaked him in a tub of red beets.. all pruned up and all!   Some trainer sprites are just heads. Their portraits from Starway of the Destined Duel.. while some have been made in pair style. Other times they are simplified version of the overworld sprite.  There is no style though!  Odion’s head is completely  blown up large and in your face, while the Elite 4 is custom sprite work.. The same goes for the monsters. I should be scared when I see a five headed dragon for the first time! Not laughing my ass off.  Cyber End Dragon is supposed to feel menacing. .. not like a nest full of baby birds crying for momma to feed them.

Release Restraint

Besides the ugly sprite work is how limited the game feels!  Dialogue has been replaced with YuGiOh dialogue.. but it has been done randomly! Up to a point where one guy in a Pokémon Center can mention his Pokémon while the other makes a comment about dueling on MotorCycles. There is no immersion in this world as the game is very much unfinished at least in terms of feeling. There is no cohesion, and what is said feels a bit like a retread of YuGiOh Abridged.

Take Lavender town for example, the entire ghost tower is one giant Pot of Greed joke!  Which is fun, I laughed but if  every character in the tower there makes the same joke, I would have rather seen a funny reference elsewhere. It feels as if the creators of this Romhack were to afraid we would not like their jokes so they mostly used the ones of little Kuriboh.. and that is a shame!

Because WHEN the game does it’s own thing with the franchise it does it nicely. Before entering Rock Tunnel for example you encounter a duplicate of the old man laying on the ground sprite.. with a little  girl sitting besides him.  She makes a joke that her Grandpa had a near heart attack at the announcements of Pendulum Summons!  I hate that mechanic myself so I laughed really hard.. it also combines this iconic Pokémon thing with a relevant joke in the YuGiOh  and that is where this game can shine! In lavender town you can find a man who makes a very good yugioh/ this is a rom hack joke. Where they used to burry pokemon and people… now they bury cards. \

 There is soul in that! Yet then  they add in green hair Kaiba.. as a reference to season 0 of YuGiOh, but when defeated he says, screw the rules I have green hair. I like the joke.. but  not as a line for when defeated. It would be funny if they had replaced the Saffron City guard with it. and when letting  you through he could say the line. Weevil is in Erica’s joke and he makes a joke about all women that surround him.. yet the old man outside has not been given new text.. missed opportunities. Team Rocket is just a team rocket. That would make for a great henchman joke.. with finger guns! It just lacks that sense of cohesion.

Mai replaces Surge and could have been made more interesting  by replacing “there is a switch there”  by .. what’s this you picked up a strange scent.. and the second line with, you found a scented card.  Just something, Blaine’s Quiz was still a pokemon quiz, I would have loved Yu Gi Oh questions!  It just feels like random people did random parts of the game and it has been stitched together like a patchwork quilt..  where the creators tend to thread on the safe side just a bit too much, despite their amazingly interesting battle system.

Kaiba versus Marik

In the end we end up with a game that feels a bit like a match between Kaiba and Marik. It definitely has some interesting back and forth in terms of gameplay.. but something is not feeling right!  The two personalities are too similar and the same kind of lines are repeated back and fourth without much to keep you engaged. You’d miss that sense of Grandeur that Joey or Yugi can bring to a match!  Kaiba versus Marik also seems like a match that is not meant to be.. if it was in the anime, we would probably see Joey and Yugi doing some other stuff at the same time.. time skipping trough the match with the field constantly growing bigger and crazier but we would lack the rhyme or reason!  And it’s a shame!  Because the ingredients for a great game are here!

I had some of the best pokémon battles in this game from a tactical sense and it was fun to play the game at a different pace! Yet at the same time I kept asking myself questions, why does Kuriboh evolve into Kuribabylon with a Moonstone? Why does Relinquished transform into restrict with that same item?!  I get why Neos turns into Neos Aqua Dolphin with a water stone, but why is Celtic Guardian a Grass type.. and at that why is he pretty much the only grass type in the game?!  It is a game that gets really close to getting it right.. but leaves too much work undone to feel as a proper attempt at a crossover ..for now!

Give it a try if you are a big fan of both franchises AND Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, otherwise I’d say it’s a good idea to let this one sit in it’s cocoon of evolution for a little while longer. I really enjoyed the more status and effect heavy way of battling , yet at the same time it slows the game pace down a lot, and Pokémon already has a fairly slow pace of it’s own! So it is something you would need to keep in consideration. More times than you’d want you’ll find your monsters Paralyzed , Confused and Attracted, which does fix some gameplay issues..but creates others of it’s own. In the end I think that is really what this game is. Rather than an evolution of Pokémon Games, this aims more to feel like a Spin Off…. as if we would get Yu-Gi-Oh.. but on Motorcycles..or something!

The Night of the Undead Bubble! The Bubble Tag – Halloween Edition

Hello again my dear mortals! This week will be crazy for me so content is going to be a bit strange here. I am settling into my new place and while I am writing this I am working a lot on getting the final things packed! EggSandwich being a pal provided me some relief! How? He nominated me for The Bubble Tag! Of course for Halloween Month I am doing it a bit different!  My Bubble.. is a strictly spooky one!

The Rules

Lyn the Otaku Author created this tag! It is a great idea and such an orginal tag that provides some good spirits in these strange times! Which people would we lock ourselves in with!.. Well I am fairly late to the bubble party and so.. I am not sure if the people what would be in my bubble can be trusted! So I made a new one! A bubble of people with whom I .. assuming we would befriend each other.. would stand a good change to stay safe! You  can’t become sick if you become undead!

Other than giving him credit which I’ll happily do I shall also provide you with another shout out to EggSandwhich who tagged me for this! I will do a monster special version of this tag for Halloween but the actual one I will be tackling as soon as I return from my moving week. Here are the rules for those wanting a copy pasteble thingy

Put ‘The Bubble Tag’ somewhere in the post title and as a tag on the post.

  • Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their post.
  • Link back to the original post – The Bubble Tag.
  • Select up to nine people, real or fictional to join you in your bubble.
  • Nominate five bloggers.
  • Stay safe.

The Bubble

Thus it is time to craft my bubble. For this specific version of the tag I will only use monsters! Though the word is the biggest sense of the word. Vampires, ghosts, or anything occult goes. If there is some way you can call it a monster, other than in the personality sense.. it is allowed! So here we go! What bubble will we create?! Here are my 9 picks!

Vampire  Willow (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)

Let’s start with my most dangerous choice here.. but Hubba Hubba! Vampire Willow is something I am extremely into! In the episode where she gets “isekaid”  we see her having some semblance of a redeemable persona.. before she gets killed.  Still.. she is undead.. she is a lesbian.. and she does have a facination.. of sorts with pink girls.  While I would have to give up on the sun to be with her. it would mean I am in no danger anymore!  Can’t get sick if I am undead!  She would probably not be the one I’d let me turn.. because.. I do not fully trust her and ..well her vampirism form is akin to dying and a demon living in your body! She is one of the few people in the world I would wrinkle the sheets with and let’s be honest, besides the internet and games there isn’t that much else to do right now! At least not in the Netherlands. While I love gaming.. she is here for variety!

Jeanette Voerman (Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines)

Jeannette would be my ideal sire! She is a Malkavian Vampire which provides a healthy dose of insanity on top of your personality! The Vampire the Masquerade vampires keep their old personality but I’d see the things in a whole new way.  I would get incredible insights in how the world truly works. Jeanette is incredibly fun and volatile as well, you never know what you will get around her .. which makes things rather exciting and a whole lot less stale ..also stable which Google Docs suggest to me is the word I was looking for! She would be a great insane big sister type!

 Eucliwood Hellscythe (Is This a Zombie)

Having two rather insane vampire chicks that I adore live in my house means I have a high risk of death..with the way the world is right now.. and not just the pandemic.. I also risk death. So it is always good to have a necromancer at your side.  Given how Jeanette probabaly never will shut up it is also nice to have a quiet person in the house! I could just draw with her or sip tea in silence! She can bring me back as a zombie.. which is better than nothing! At least I know it would not ruin my magical girl chances! 

4. Wisemon (Digimon)

Wisemon is a powerful digimon that can mess with time! So he is a great backup if Eucliwood fails me.. and my plan backfires. However Wisemon also has the power to be anywhere in time.. so he can get me the good take-away before it’s gone, he can get my Cyberpunk 2077 before anybody else does and he can get me all my shows that will get delayed! It will be a hassle but.. it is something! I am pretty sure he can also reset my internet bundle on my phone so I can use it as a hotspot where-ever my bubble might be!  That way I could have a bubble in the woods or on a tropical island! 

Mii-kun (How to Keep A Mummy)

Mii-kun is mostly here because it is so cute!  Still undead though so it is also perfectly safe to keep it around as well. With 9 people things tend to get crowded so it is best to take this into account. Mii-kun takes no space, isn’t too noisy and is mostly just fun to be around! He will also be a very good distraction for Jeanette who is sure to love the heck out of Mii-kun. I also want to see if I can teach it to hum the Mii-Channel theme! So It gives me a mission.

Ryuugajou Nanana (Nanana’s Burried Treasure)

A “ghost”  girl  that is into gaming and in return only wants pudding seems easy to please. Sure she has expensive tastes.. but we got Wisemon who can reset my bank account to a moment prior to a transaction. Just by ordering to the front door she would probably rush over to receive those puddings ..and my other groceries! Besides that she is a gamer and I do love to play video games so we could play Mario Party together or bond over some Smash Bros Ultimate. She would be the ultimate partner to finally play Overcooked with!  And if I can ever venture into the world she may tell me about some super valuable relics to boot! So heck yeah she is in my bubble!

Brook (One Piece) 

I assume at one point humanity will even grow more stir crazy at it is.. so eventually the internet will be done.. luckily Wisemon can connect to the wifi of yesterday and such .. but the monster has to sleep at some point!  So we need entertainment for that time and Brook is perfect! his music is catchy and he is Skeleton! So we can use his ribcage as a jewelry cabinet and such!  He is no slouch in fending off the looters either.  He sings some jaunty tunes and I can see him develop a beautiful friendship with Mii Kun.. and  who knows alongside him maybe one day my dreams to become an idol girl can come true!

Dark Magician Girl (Yu-Gi-Oh)

So is this one a monster? Well yes of course she is a monster in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh, she even has her own squad of magical girls as an archetype these days! Perfect opportunity for me to get recruited into the squad. Magician Girl Pinkie! If not DMG seems to love to play analogue games. She might make good Waifu Material as well, in case Willow doesn’t work out! She is like the ultimate 2d! Even in her own universe she is most of the time 2d!  Which means she is easy to store in my house! She doesn’t take up space unless I want her to! She has played with capsules/figures/cards and dice so she truly is a pretty good game master, so with her in my deck I never get bored!

Rimuru Tempest

Two Vampires, A skeleton, A ghost a mummy, A witch, A necromancer and an overgrown Jawa! That is some pretty solid squad..I figured I would add a cute little dragon Maid .. to cook and clean for us.. but this would leave me with a few problems.  First of all.. it would be to Harem like and I don’t want that. Secondly.. with Tohru present everything would devolve into utter and complete chaos! I am not a great bubble leader! I am a great lieutenant, a second in command but I am the weakest off all of these by far. My leadership would not be accepted and some are to chaotic for me to control! So I need a strong person, that is also a classical monster. Since the Blob is a thing Rimuru would absolutely work as a monster. His special skill besides being super overpowered is making a community out of monsters so tadaa it’s perfect! Our leader will be Rimuru.

To Be Continued

Tohru would be the 10th Nakama we sneak in because DMG is a card and we can hide her and Mii-Kun easily enough!  That being said this would not be my actual “real” Bubble.. that one I shall return to when I get back from moving.. that is the one that I will use to nominate 5 people to do this tag. Until then you can self nominate by being a Coconut or by commenting that you want to take on this tag! I hope my Bubble will not burst! Arceus knows that a guy called Murphy is going crazy at the idea of this being my actual bubbl.

Who do you think will be in my real one? Who would be in your monster bubble? What are you doing for Halloween this year?! Let me know in the comments and I will see you all in my next post! This is Pinkie and her Dragon Maid she hid illegally in her bubble signing off!

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

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

Back to Battle City

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

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

It’s time to D-D-D-Duel

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

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

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

Trap Hole

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

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

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

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

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

King of Games

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

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

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


A Talk About Anime Filler

Few words are hated so much by anime fans as the word filler. Empty episodes to slow down a plot so the manga can move ahead.. or a story has more time to be developed. These are often treated as a crime against anime but are they really?! Today I give my opinion.

<Disclaimer> This blog shall only deal with the filler I have seen or know and any statement I make will always be a opinion be it my own or public opinion. I do not disapprove of anyone who does not share my views or  claim there is anything wrong with your opinion please do not take offence <End of Disclaimer>

One of the first words I learned in terms of anime was the word filler. While I got into anime Naruto was busy with their Taka arc in the manga. My classmates were sick of the Naruto filler and wanted Shippuden to happen. They read the manga! I did not, so I never really knew what was filler.  So …. I might look at this at a slightly different angle then most. Unable to confirm what is and what isn’t in the original story. While sometimes I noticed, like the Fake Namek Arc and The Garlick Junior Arc being not to me liking, sometimes I was rather oblivious, like for example the Bounto Arc in Bleach. While I did not enjoy that last one nearly as much as the arc that came before I thought it was okayish (mind you I was only watching 3 anime at the time, being Naruto, Fate Stay Night and Bleach). So I figured maybe there is just something about knowing when something is filler that makes it worse.. simply because we define it as filler?! I looked into this idea a bit further. 

Which brings us back to Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. I never read the manga of Z and the manga of Super is vastly different from the show.. so what exactly do we qualify as filler here? The manga is behind the series for Super and follows its own course. Still episodes like the copy Vegeta Arc feel “fillerly” I am pretty sure that it is.  Yet there are also episodes like Goku and Piccolo learning to drive in Z or the Baseball Game in Super that were really good stand alone episodes that do enjoy a fare share of fans. So if we consider that everything that is not part of the manga and does not factor into the main story in any significant way.. both Copy Vegeta as well as those somewhat beloved episodes can be quantified as Filler.  The  same goes for the Fake Namek Arc and The Garlick Junior Arc , while the first one is objectively very bad I’d say Garlic Junior would be rather painfully mediocre than bad. Still I do see more active hate against the arc of the immortal little man than that cluster fuck that happend before.  Why? I theorise it is because Garlick featured in a movie… so people KNOW this arc is filler as it considers a well known non canonical character

.  This theory isn’t fool proof, back when I saw both arcs I did not know either of them was filler, and disliked them both to an extend as they aren’t particularly well written from the get go.. but since the Garlick Junior Arc now can easily be identified as filler, due to the Dead Zone movie being out there, I do actively remember it more as filler while Fake Namek faded away in my head much more. Identifying something as filler has plenty of implications from the get go that are detrimental to your experience ..like actually harming tension arcs and expectations. So by being aware of the label it can actually decrease your enjoyment, I did not mind the Bounto Arc when I watched it because I did not know what filler was, I wondered what would happen and while the answer turned out to be ..not much I did not mind being taken for that right. Filler has a stigma on it simply as a word that can doom excitement from the get go. It isn’t contained to just “fillers be bad” it works much deeper than that, on our expectations and on possibilities…so something labeled filler in a way is already on the back foot.

A reason for this is probably because filler arcs suffer from the same detriment as the “it was all just a dream”  trope. Nothing significant will be gained or lost. After the arc the status quo will be the same as before. It’s just more content. However you know Ichigo will survive a filler arc, you even know that not a single character you knew before this arc will suffer to much. Not even mentally.. after all , once the arc is done it’s gone and forgotten. So knowing something is filler can obviously hurt your viewing experience . As soon as you know it’s filler, you know the ending. At least to the extend that the protagonist will not have learned any new techniques, none of the main crew will be to damaged and no friendship they made will last to long. Thus a filler arc is “boring”  to some extend.  Stakes are very low and the only things that might get lost, broken or hurt are the new elements.. based on how they interact with the main character you can completely predict this as well. 

A great example is the “The New Captain Shusuke Amagai Arc” Due to the awkward timing I knew this was a filler arc, which by the way Bleach is a star at ..but we all know that. As a result I knew that Amagai could never stay. The manga can not skip introducing such an important character, so clearly by the end he has to go. The more the story progresses.. the more that path becomes defined the more boring the outcome becomes. This is where I feel filler arcs will always fall through. Since 99% of all arc based filler move like this I think fillers are damn near factually more inclined to be boring than canon content.

Yu-Gi-OH on the other hand included filler character Duke Devlin in so much thing, though mostly filler arcs that felt of consequence still. He was there in the Battle City Tournament to support his friend, which also led into him partaking in the Noah Arc. I do not think that hurt the main story at all and the way they chose to include this side track felt much more natural.. I didn’t know it was filler and even if I did.. Duke is included so they still have a character I have come to care for and they can kill off. Tension remains and there is always some guess work involved. However this way you almost force people to watch filler content and risk polarising people. Which can enforce making filler arcs feel like an additional slog. But not only we as vieweres are limited.. so are the creators.

The No Consequence arc doesn’t only make the story less boring because you know where it has to end , it also limits what you can do. In the Garlic Jr arc you can not have Vegeta show up and take a beating.. this would result in him getting a Zenkai ..which might proof significant later on, you can not  have going turn Super Saiyan because that would impact the main story.. and you are not allowed to. So you already have to tell a story from point A to B .. but everything that was pre-established.. can not move from A to B.. they have to stay at A. Ichigo can not learn a new technique.. unless you make him realise the method is to dangerous in the end and still then your pushing your luck. Naruto can not move past an obstacle that still might an issue in the main story. So not only do you have to write flat character arcs for everybody relevant to the main story you also have to make sure nothing is gained by them that might alter the outcome of later events. Luffy can not make a super powerful friend that could have helped in Marine Ford prior to the Arc, (unless you pit them against other filler characters for show) Kirito can not gain a life lesson where he learns how to trust people more. So writing good filler is damn near impossible! So maybe we should go a bit easier on the people making them. No consequences for the characters, no consequences for the writers!

Does that mean that there are no good filler arcs? I think there are. One of the filler arcs I really liked was the Twelve Guardian Ninja bit in Naruto Shippuden. Not for it’s story exactly  but for what it set up for me.  While in terms of narrative it did not bring anything significant to the table .. it perfectly set up Asuma to…. die.  While the enemies encountered clearly looked off designwise to the series, (I did not know it was filler but realised it due to character design being in a different spirit than other Naruto characters)  and the main plot felt a bit meh.. it made me really bond with Asuma, I felt he was a great character, such a good spirited and respectable man. So when he lost in his fight against Akatsuki I cried… I would not have without this filler.  That to me is what smart and good filler should be like. Look past your limits. With Asuma they could do whatever they wanted because he would die soon after anyway. They could make him into whatever they wanted deepen him and that worked out wonderfully for me! While I did not enjoy the episodes that much.. they sure as hell made me appreciate what happened next more and I think that’s where anime filler could shine. 

Dragon Ball did this as well , in Super even more so than in Z.  During the Baseball Episode we got some amazing Yamcha moments, simply because Toriyama and Toyotaro didn’t really do anything with the character anyway! They had fun with it and even made his memed pose into something quite cool! A fun callback that felt like a bit of a redemption for the character  since he would not prove significant for a long time.. only know the Manga has given him some glory! Two years after super ended. The driving episode in Dragon Ball Z was done in a similar fashion. We do know that Goku has a fairly flat character arc and that the show intentionally stays away from seeing their family life. Having your filler set within that realm gives us something we all want to see but that does not influence anything else. It’s not what the show is about nor will it ever focus on that. So instead of a railroaded story we deepen our understanding of Goku and Piccolo without their characters changing at all. 

Bleach however did this completely wrong.. by announcing this new arc is set in an alternate universe you CAN have options opened up sure.. but you know nothing major is going to come out of this anyway. It would still create discourse , while Renji might be killed in the alternate world people already do now even care less because it’s not THEIR Renji. (Not saying Renji was killed but to make a point imagine if they did)  Like how blowing up Evil Android 18 felt justified even if we have come to care for the main timeline one. Different character, we don’t care about her. Filler should me made to hold fans over until the time is come to move along. By creating a new Ichigo .. you do not add anything you just make events even more trivial.  While ironically the Alternate Story Arc wasn’t that bad in terms of narative, I felt ZERO investment in it. Of course the way they introduced this story did not help either. I did care about Asuma though and I did care for seeing Goku’s escapades..I wanted to see those.. not from Alternate Universe Goku..but from the one we grew up with. Perhaps that is also why I care so little for Dragon Ball Super Heroes the Anime.

So with that I think we have created a recipe on how filler could be good! Fix the flaws of anime, listen to the fans and choose your time pieces carefully. For example had the Alternate Story Arc instead have taken place in the past, focussing around Ichigo’s father losing control of his Zanpakuto with a hint of how Ichigo was born.. that arc could have been fantastic. He could have encountered characters like someone named Yuzu and Karen and even an Ichigo which inspired him to name their kids this way..characters that got killed in a big .. all you had to do was ask the Mangaka.. do you ever plan to do anything with those names or are they randomly chosen.  Super simple.. the status quo can still not be altered but we get something else! A form of fanservice… and I don’t mean the jiggly kind. We could get name drops, technique origins, we could see unimportant side characters being deepend out.. or in Asuma’s case.. those who’d pass away.  Deepen your story on a horizontal level, not vertically, and what I mean with that is add lore to support current one rather than flat out create new lore that in the end doesn’t even matter.

Filler could be used to emphasis or foreshadow what happens next. I do not feel like filler has the power to stand on its own if you use the same characters, but it has the power to amplify. This goes for both the creator as the viewer though. While it is easy to focus on how Sora is a bit of a lackluster character in the Naruto lore and how the idea of a cloned/fake Jinchuriki feels a bit shoehorned in we can also focus on what did work. Sometimes something can be really good for you but it doesn’t taste great right away. Filler can do that still, it does still offer us more content of something we love. Just because it has that stigma doesn’t mean it has nothing to add. That only happens if you set it in an alternate universe.. in that case it only adds more content for content sake .. which will still please some fans. We still see anime movies for the same reason. The Story of Bardock was a pretty good special.. yet if it had been slotted IN the middle of the Namek Saga as a filler Arc I am pretty sure people would have hated it. Even in the same form as is right now! Look past the story filler tells (by nature it barely can be good)  and look at the added content it brings by it’s nature and maybe it is not so bad. 

Filler is like the lettuce leafs next to your steak and fries or one of those puffy potatoes!  Yes there is a lot less taste to it.. but what did you expect .. it is lettuce.. that’s bland by nature! It can cleanse or pallet which deepens the pallet of the steak and the fries! It’s watery crunch might really appreciate the cuisson of your steak as a nice counterpart.. something you would not realise without the lettuce. A good restaurant knows this and they know when to serve that lettuce leaf even if you see it and all you can do is “eeeew veggies”  a bad restaurant however  will slap that same leaf on everything just for a bit of colour of the plate and do not think of your dish as a whole. Even when you can not flavor something properly due to limitations you can make the dish in its entirety shine.. you can NOT make the lettuce the star of the dish it’s impossible! Do not make it into “just garnish”  Garnish you can cut into al sort of fancy shapes.. but when I see a lettuce flower or carrot carving  on my plate.. I usually just toss away. Be wise make your Filler a fitting side dish to enhance your meal.. not something fancy that makes the plate seem less empty!

With that I am done talking about Filler! Are there any filler stories your particularly like?
Any that you feel really added something to a show you loved? Any you feel very strongly against or are you one of those.. filler is never good types?! Let me know in the comments.

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure (Week 5)

It’s time to for cereal and series again.. that would have been such a good name for this section.  Five Shows five reviews ONE post! Last week we had a bit of a dip in quality how will this week fair?! Like saturday morning cartoons no pausing is allowed.. I get a five minute break at the 11 minute mark of each anime.. playing some commercials to do everything else that needed to be done! Lets enjoy our saturday morning.

BNA
Episode 5

I have but one gripe with this episode but it is one with rather big implications. In this episode Michiru wants to play Basketball but since that is not being played there she is forced to turn to baseball instead. Something that has turned into a bit of a blood sport with killing being allowed for the sake of massive bets.  Okay.. these people are animals.. a bit of a forced metaphor but sure.. then Shirou is tasked to investigate the sudden increase in baseball gambling by the major?! Seriously guys! Again! That is SUCH lazy writing to connect to stories YET AGAIN. Let Michiru do her own thing for once, heck let Shirou go see her matches and discover the gambling?!  He cares for her so obviously he’d go see her matches at least once. This worries me for the quality for the show going on in the future. These analogies of people being animals is being taken a bit far as well. This society is just a bit TOO dystopian and stupid at times.

That said this episode was incredibly cute! So heartwarming to see Michiru play for a team called the bears. It sucks that one is called Winnie the Pooh , but at the same time it is amazing. Their catcher looks like something that can live in the world of Animal Crossing which is a great boon! He is adorable.. I have no idea on what he is called but I want to collect him.  Honestly there isn’t anything all that special about episode if you ever saw a sports anime or a sports movie you have seen this episode.  

Team sucks and is down on their luck , but a new ringer appears and suddenly luck turns around.. but due to some corruption in the sport their chances of victory seem to dwindle. When things are at their darkest the ringer unites the team through sheer passion and they lose the final match but can do so proudly! It’s nothing special.. yet it worked very well.. it made Michiru a stronger character, even though she should not use her powers she does because she cares about something. She has her passions and that makes her feel like real person. A tomboy sure.. but it all seemed right. Just a fun heartfelt episode with nice fun action and a bit of that same enigma I saw in other episodes.

It’s a really great episode to me but for the wrong reasons. I notice how much I like Michiru doing mundane things like going to a party and playing sports. I also noticed how I barely could care less about Shirou’s stuff. The way the show is building up to things means I will have a point where I will start to dislike it as all the elements being set up come into play.
I love this mundane beastman stuff with a bit of action to spruce it up.  I like Michiru adapting to her new life and making new friends.  I know her human friend who turned into a beastman will come into play.. well I assume so .. she is so heavily teased she can’t NOT be into this.. but at the pace Michiru is making friends I now think she will be granted an antagonistic role. Our tanuki is starting to have a life here.. friends here.. she isn’t dependent on her friend that much more..so by all rules of writing the only way her old friend will add is in a villainous role… I am not sure if I am ready for the show to turn into that. So all in all a weirdly got episode.. that makes me realise I will probably not like the entire series?!

Let’s judge it as a single episode though!

Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens
Episode 5

Another mixed bag episode for me! Yet kinda in the other way around. While I really did not particularly care for this episode I really like the style and grander choices they make here. Giving me faith that this series COULD go into more. We return to the story arc of Rush Duels disappearing from social media and even anime google. This means they have to find publicity through other ways. I do like the whole idea of rising to fame and promoting a ruleset as a storytelling crutch. It offers so much new scenarios we haven’t explored with Yu-gi-oh before themes that are relevant. Konami wants us to buy these new types of cards and by doing a story that is all about promoting the game.. it feels less jarring as a commercial because it’s actually part of the plot. 

However the episode itself is quite bad. The school newspaper writes an article about them and it says that Rush Duels are simplistic and for kids.. which is an opinion.. so it’s fair game to write! They have misquoted people so I get why the group would want it redacted.. but that isn’t really the issue they object. It is that their game is getting a negative review. Everyone in the school papers reads it and beliefs it.. so Romin distances herself from the group.. but only for a scene. Of course the dispute over whether or not this article should get a redaction is settled with a duel. To my pleasant surprise they decided to let Rook fight this duel instead of Yuga, which was great. The duel itself however might be the worse one yet.

The editor of the newspaper has a deck that is completely centered about journalism, the card art looked incredibly tacky and if this is not made specifically for this duel I think this is a horrible set. Every single card he plays feels catered to him and feels like it has a narrative flow as well. First he plays a scoop.. than live from the scene of the accident and then he plays a printing press.  It might seem clever but in duels .. it feels quite stale. Like if someone always goes 1–>2–>3–>4–>5 .. it is a logical chain of events that tells a tale.. but it takes away the tension of a duel.. this is always the order the cards are played in so their effect.. are just what the situation needs. That really was felt throughout the duel. If the game is not really being played there is no tension.

Comedy wise this episode was decent with Yuga’s promo bot becoming increasingly broken as he modifies it.. now chasing after girls constantly and some subtle shots of them disabling it now that Rook can’t use his Pauli Effect since he is dueling, yet that can not save this show. It feels like a very solidly constructed railroad with a bullet train that moves faster than ever before. The direction and the tech is solid.. but the stops this train makes are at Snooze-Town,  Forced-Ville, Fillage and some random places that just hold nothing to do. Where BNA feels like a great show that will falter in pay off , this feels like it COULD get a nice pay off but with  bad episodes. This week I seemingly caught up with the series. If it has been delayed by Corona and I need to replace the timeslot I will not be returning to it, if it goes on I shall give it next until next week’s episode to convince me.. after next week I will have to change my line up anyway.

Bofuri
Episode 9 and 10

With the end of Bofuri in sight we get two episodes I really enjoyed, from today on I will discuss double episodes in the same column to save us some time. Which easily works this these episodes because they handle the same event. The start of the guild competition, which I am pretty sure it will end on as well with maybe some minor epilogue. Both episodes did a great job in bringing this event to life in their own way. I was so invested that I nearly forgot to take my breaks. Yet I managed to sneak them in.. although a bit late.

The first episode mostly sets up preparations for the game, it will be a capture the flag game but with orbs. Obviously Maple is charged with defending Maple Tree’s Orb giving her May and Yui as back up in their defence.  Our beloved Rubiks Cube boy stays behind as well. Or at least that is the plan. First they go prepare, which is mostly a montage. They also visit a beach with tubes that have their own paterns on.. which is super cute. When Yui and May splash water they create huge tidal waves which was funny and charming. It all has become part of Bofuri’s charm to me. But we quickly move to the highlight of that episode to me. Sally’s fight with Frederica. Scouting for their rival guild Frederica wishes to get information from Sally who then challenges her to a fight..seeming equally matched Frederica gives up after Sally reveals her best techniques.. or does she?! It turns out Sally faked skills to give out false information to hide her incredible gaming reflexes I love these kind of mind games.


Other than that the first episode is fairly uneventful with people just doing their jobs and mostly taking on some lower tier guilds.  Iz finds a new robe that allows for on the go crafting somewhere but all in all it as all low key. There is some scouting here and there and some encounters but it is all set up for the much more exciting tenth episode! Still I really like the gamer feel this game really has to it.. much better done than Sword Art Online in my opinion, these characters have much more a gaming mindset. Which is amplified by Maple lacking this. The tenth episode is about big encounters with the two biggest guilds. We see Sally be overzealous and be cornered by Frederica.. about to die.  She has claimed a lot of Orbs which her team will then lose so the chances of their tiny guild getting a top ranking seem to go out the window. Which leads to my favorite moment of the 10th episode. Maple coming in to save Sally. Risking it all saying she will never allow Sally to die in game was quite touching. In a game we all think very lightly of death.. but Maple will never abandon her friends if she can stop it. 

However.. directly after May and Yui are left alone to defend the orb and they get killed after putting up a fair fight against Dread. Just before he can steal their orb though Maple returns and finishes off the already damaged Dread. It feels a bit conflicting with the message the show was telling earlier that Maple will never allow her friends to die.. but does highlight the reality of games. I kind of hoped Maple would save them all. By now we already established that this isn’t about fair fights. This show is about Maple being the most cute badass we have ever seen. Seeing how far she can push being so broken so I really wish she could have backed up those words she just uttered, or at least felt some consequence of not being able to do it. So the resolve with Dread was my least favorite moment.  Sally is super tired and can not go out anymore so now it is time for Maple to go on the offence. The episode ends with her facing the Flame Emperors. So I am pretty sure next two episodes she will be tangling with the top 2 guilds. 

Bofuri to me has become a show that I like for its simplicity and it’s lightheartedness. It’s a show that consistently makes me smile despite it clearly having it’s flaws. With these episodes I could really ignore those flaws, this is Bofuri.. I could wish for more but this is more than enough. I would not be able to remember these episodes if I would try to think back about it a few months from now but I do not need to.. it’s not that type of show.  Bofuri exists for the casual smiles and giggles and with very few exceptions it has consistently done so for me.

Hikaru no Go
Episode 5

Each time I begin to doubt if this show is for me, it pulls me back in with a very strong episode. We see Hikaru lose TWICE in this episode which are bold choices and we see Tetsuo , the popular Shogi kid re-embrace the magic of Go. Hikaru loses the Tetsuo which means he would have to jump in an Ice-cold pool.. but given how close he got to winning still Tetsuo decides to force him into something else instead a Go Team Tournament. Because of how things are set up.. if Hikaru’s teammates win he now is able to lose..so he wants to play for himself, a nice set up for an episode about putting coloured stones on a wooden grid if I have ever seen one. 

It’s just GO! Hikaru!

For the second time in this show we are introduced to a glimpse of brilliance Hikaru might have concerning Go as soon as he is able to step by step recreate a game.. after a guy fumbled some stones of the board. This pleases Sai , who for one of the first times I found a more welcome addition than an obnoxious mentor. The fact that Hikaru can render him obsolete one day is a nice promise. With Yugi the final duel against Atem felt somewhat unearned because we never saw  tiny Yugi duel instead of the pharaoh except for some mystical reasons. Hikaru is a much more fully fledged character and this stroke of brilliance makes me belief Sai can at one point even be taken out of the equation in this show. Great long time set up and very solid character building.

Immediately after we see him proceed to play Go, trough visuals he imagines building entire galaxies and star systems.. is this another sign of how genius he can be as a go player? The way it is framed certainly builds up to Hikaru discovering some latent abilities deep within him, of him beginning to enjoy the game for himself… but he totally washes out and loses badly. Getting called out by Tetsuo for it. Speaking of the latter, he dominates his match even if now he gets being bullied for a Shogi player. What a weird world… I guess  we do the same thing though… oooh you play PUBG instead of Fortnite.. poser! Well not me persé because I  think Fortnite sucks but you know. Still I would think members of unpopular clubs would stick together a bit more. If you play Shogi you might enjoy a game of Go as well but well let’s be honest none of these people should ever get laid..at least in reality.. so perhaps there is a lot of build up tension. Just something I will keep finding weird.

Best episode of the line up. My favorite moment was the Galaxy building scene that ends in Hikaru’s defeat.. there was no derpy music playing at the end.. it was all just subtle. It was a perfect illustration of a boy trying to learn the game, having a fun time with it. .but with a realistic result. Very good. My least favorite moment happened when Akiri’s moment with Hikaru was totally skipped. She just kinda vanished. She deserves better.

Round Up

Throughout the line up we had much better episodes than last week. Even Sevens improved though that only applied to the framework of the episode rather than the meat on the bones itself. Next week I might need to replace it from my programming anyway so please leave a suggestion for me to watch in its stead! Next week I will regretfully wrap up Bofuri as well which just might also get a series review from me but I am still undecided about that!

I had another great Saturday morning and I hope your weekends are all amazing next well!
Love you all!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventures (Week 4)

Hello everyone, it’s sunday again which means Pinkie watched anime! In my saturday morning program I have slotted 5 shows in time slots including commercial breaks! Today I review the episodes of my fourth week! Check the anime tab on my homepage to track down the originals!

BNA
Episode 4

At 9:00 I was ready for some more Brand New Animal. Studio Trigger’s show that I so far quite liked and this episode was certainly no exception. It spotlights Michiru even more than before taking Shirou out of the equation for a bit as the Tanuki girl gets a brand new phone..from her mink “friend” to get access to human internet.  This leads her to discovering a girl named Nina, living in anima city. She is streaming on Facelook as she desires to be part of the human world and.. while Michiru approaches her she gets knocked out and captured. My least favorite moment of this episode as I thought we would be in for another one of Shirou’s heroic  moments, but luckily this was quickly subverted.

Once Michiru wakes up she finds out Nina is the daughter of the gang leader of “The Family” lead by Flip.. which is a last name but he is referred to as Flip and he looks like a Flip to me. Flip in Dutch was a fairly common name for people of the Silent generation and before. Flipje is the mascot of the city Tiel and it’s jam factory and he is like a raspberry man so it sounds like a first name to me..This also results in me thinking Flip will turn into a raspberry but it looks like he is actually some kind of whale. As I get side tracked we move back to our story by saying that by being honest to Nina about her preferences  of the human world, she is able to take on her human shape. The two then decide to visit a party they saw on Facelook together. 

I am happy they are giving Michiru a friend and I do hope the character stays that as well.  It felt nice and needed for her character as well. I dislike  that the first friend she made is connected to the Family.. it feels so convenient again. The Major also has made some discoveries about Michiru’s condition which conveniently allows for some exposition on Beastman lore. While kinda cool to know the conversation is kind of nonsensical. “Michiru if A Tiger Beastman loves A Lion Beastwoman very much.. their kids take on the properties of one parent and can not become a liger. It has to do with your spirit and all. “Your cells can morph so it’s completely not like that”.  I mean I know Michiru might not be smartest .. it kinda felt off. 

Shinies?! *Readies her Pokéballs*

What I did liked about the episode is that it shows the other side of racism, people like beast people at the party so when they discover Nina is a beast person they revere her and want to play with her.. however apparently aquatic beastman can not breath under water or at least Nina can because she was tired so they put her in an aquarium and she ends up choking. The whole turn around showing that some people are supportive but not understanding made the show feel nicer. It did not hammer in “humans are racist butterscotchcandy-holes. Yet there is also danger in the unknown a lesson that prompts Michiru to go back to Animacity and learn. That was nicely set up!

I also liked the stand off with Flip and Shirou and how a random guy just got killed by Flip. Shirou did not stop it.. so clearly he knows something we do not know yet. Shirou is also said to be a beastman with an immortal body by the scientisty bad guy person.  So things are feeling like they are heating up! Still we do not get overfed exposition and each episode just offers us some puzzle pieces. All in all this was probably my most enjoyable watch of the day.

Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens
Episode 4

Ugh… Episode 1 was all about Yuga, Episode 2 introduced us more to Rook, Episode 3 was about Romin so that means Gakuto is up next right? Will they colour within the lines?  The first 10 seconds already tell you that you are going to get what you expect and nothing more. A narration of the fourth main character shows us this is his episode. Unoriginal.. but maybe needed.. yet he turns out to be not very well written as this episode crashes before it ever takes flight. 

Gakuto is the studious boy the one who plays by the rules. He arrives each day at school at 6:66:66 which make me think he might be the son of the Goha President or something later on as that is exactly the time they give you to redeem your flaws.The episode for this plot is that the student council president has trouble keeping up with his work now that he hangs out with Yuga and Rook a lot. (I know Rook might be called Luke but my translation says Rook so running with that one)  So obviously to make time for his duties again he decides to ban Rush Duels on School Grounds. Yuga challenges  him to a duel and if he wins there will be no ban on duels but if Gaktuo wins they will promise not to duel in the school.

This already creates a problem, the consequence to this duel is to limiting for the narrative to ever take fruit. In the duels with Rook and Romin , Yuga CAN lose because it would not block the plot, in this setup there is no way the main character can lose because it would not allow the story to continue .. or at least place it under severe restrictions otherwise. This is somewhat resolved by letting Gakuto place his title as council president on the line.. but why would they force their friend to lay down something he loves that much.. that is quite horrible. Of course it could be to give him some free time to join their adventure but that would be super convenient again.

The duel itself is the worst one so far. Gakuto’s ace card SUCKS! By changing mode it can prevent either side to tribute for a 7 or higher level monster on the next turn. The set up he has to do to utilize this is quite large and the pay off blows. You can still special summon a level 7 monster.  Since it’s Yu-gi-oh this is super easy and the boy gets his ass handed to him by Yuga. Sure he learned to enjoy himself a bit more during this duel instead of sticking to ceremonies and traditions, that  was a trait he did not need to have from the get go. His aides never showed up before and now they are everywhere where he goes.

This feels forced and as soon as Gakuto loses his Student President title he gives it up as he promised… then he runs for Student President again in the next election which makes no sense! Why would the school allow these shenanigans, he also gets reelected (in favor of his only competitor Rook) as well. Such a weak choice! This really was a weak episode and the only highlight is that Romin wore a cute new outfit! I really like her more and more.

Bofuri
Episode 7

Ah that is better, a nice dose of Bofuri cuteness. The seventh episode is all about preparation for the third and fourth events. Mostly the guild competition. We see Maple grind a dungeon with Yui and May, the one with the Hydra she ate to get some levels on the two. Because of one Maple’s ridiculous plans to speedrun it the group manages to complete it under two and a half minute which allows them to gain a skill that doubles their attacks. Putting them on a similar track as Maple. Iz makes new hammers for them which they now also are able to dual wield..because of another skill they unlocked. For the most part I think this part of the episode worked quite well as they are a sort of reflection of Maple.  They also finally use a montage without skipping some sweet parts this time it skips grinding! Yay!.. Also I am happy grinding is a thing it makes the game more legit.

The white hammer girl is my favorite! She has pink details!

The second part relies on the guild members doing their jobs, gathering materials helping each other train etc. Kuromu is the only one who died enough times to unlock a secret dungeon from which he gets a pretty edgy armor that seems pretty good. He kind of feels like the Yamcha of the group.  Kasumi goes hunting for wool so Iz can craft robes for the event, which gives the group some bonus event drops. She encounters Maple while doing this who was playing with some sheep and learned the Wooly ability. An ability that allows her to turn into a ball of wool, or a poisonous ball of wool. Shielding her from attacks. It does seem to trap her though which results in some cute wholesome comedy. 

The final act of the episode has Maple wandering in town figuring out how to be useful once more when she encounters a quest.  What actually should be a high level escort quest becomes easy as Maple just flies with Syrup, This entire questline was my favorite part of the episode. The NPC spouts random dialogue based on their location which confuses Maple as she is totally immersed. The npc is startled by npc’s they fly over, the program thinking she is on ground level. I like this a lot, it contributes to the MMO feeling of this game, this episode that that very nicely throughout. The fact that Maple found the item needed as a follow up already and can finish it then and there is something that happened to me in MMOs as well, so that is some relatable writing. 

This ghost encounter…obviously ends up getting skipped…………….

Of course the questline awards maple a skill that breaks her even further, into complete unfair territories. She gains a skill named Loving sacrifice. By giving up a chunk of her HP all her guild members standing in the light share her defence modifier which by now has surpassed the 1000 mark due to her finding modifiers. While it is cute to see her transform into a golden haired angel I dont think this form has much to offer in the form of great moments that I love this show so dearly for. All in all quite a good episode.

Bofuri
Episode 8

An episode that I liked significantly less, than the previous episodes.  I likes Syrup Hyper Beaming a boss into oblivion but this episode to me waaaaaay overdid it in terms of hand me outs to Maple.  Let’s begin at the start though. It’s the day of the third event and the guilds can now hunt ..cows… for medals titled cow. Since these cows are kind of fast. Maple or the guild for that matter is not very geared up for it.  So Maple tries to find spawn spots where no one else can come using Syrup’s flight. Clever enough.. but she falls off and stumbles into a dungeon and a secret boss again. Using Wooly she survives his onslaught of Attacks while Syrup uses its new beam attack. Wiping out the boss first form.. the second form absorbs Maple and would deal her poison damage.. but since she is resistant.. she eats him up from inside. Thus Maple gains a demon form.

Like always we see Maple demonstrate the abilities to her group, who all acknowledge that Maple now officially has transcended into something that is not human anymore, completely leaving her humanity behind. While it sure is another funny, her getting a new form this close after her Angelic form and having it feel almost just as broken feels a bit wrong. Rather unrewarding. I still had some laughs for Maple sounding very ridiculous as a demon so it was still great for laughs it just didn’t feel clever or compelling. Slapstick if you will. Demon voice Maple still is something worth your time so do not mind me nagging on semantics though. 

After the event the third level opens which now is a steampunk , cyberish city which delights Iz for having so many new crafting Materials. As everyone goes explores we go into another montage which includes great things such as the “Do Not Push” button. I love this trope! I am sad yet again we did not see what happend.  By now I begin to notice how far Sally is relegated away in importance in these last two episodes. She barely said a line and even when Maple become an actual demon she was just there in the background. The whole real life thing also has kind of extinguished , which by now I kind of yearn for.. to see Maple normalise just a bit.

The final act involves Maple stumbling upon a questline again, falling of Syrup landing in a dungeon with a new mysterious boss with lasers that seems to knock her back quite a bit.  Trough an item she found during the last event she now manages to unlock a mecha form, with  big lasers and all sorts of guns going off. A well animated fight.. but TWO brokenly OP new forms in ONE episode. I mean I get that is part of the joke .. but the fight is also set up in almost the exact same way?! Again.. unlike Yu-Gi-Oh it wasn’t bad but it just is not memorable at all. I had trouble memorising this 3 hours after I’ve seen it. So Bofuri for me was a bit Meh! I totally want a Syrup though! Since this episode it talks and says Kame Kame.. so I am pretty sure it’s actually a Pokémon as Kame is turtle.

Hikaru no Go
Episode 4

Unfortunately even the fourth episode of Hikaru no Go could not stop this saturday viewing experience from being mediocre. As I feared Hikaru backed out of is fight with mister Touya thinking that placing the stone as epic as he did was because Sai took over his body. Mistrusting the spirit for a bit, this is quickly resolved.  I mostly noted that Sai at one point seemed to address us as the viewers, though it was probably just him thinking to himself, which felt a bit to in your face exposure like. Hikaru is beginning to like go and that is scaring him?! Alright?! Sure. Touya Senior seems intrigued by the boy but has not played him long enough to judge his skill.

He meets up with Akari and she invites him to some sort of fair.  Hikaru refuses not liking those kind of things. This is the scene I disliked the most because Hikaru really is a rASSpberry here. Maybe he is stressed ? Maybe it’s because he is so young? I am not sure. What’s even stranger when he finally decides to do what is right Akari doesn’t show up at all. I mean I would not wait for him either if he said he would not come.. but still it felt like a very clunky setup  Sai hints at possible romance but he gets the typical girls have cooties kind of reaction and both Hikaru and Akari seem to react against the character previously established. Hikaru seems a lot more prickly and Akari  seems much more spiteful towards the boy. She still sees him talking to himself and notices his behavioural changes, if you really like someone I’d say after being hospitalised and claiming to have a voice in your head you can at least give them a few days.

She’d even buy him Takoyaki! I’d travel to Japan for that offer!

Luckily the second half of the episode picks up the slack of the first half.  First we see Hikaru take some interesting puzzles, which remind me of the duel puzzles in Yu-Gi-Oh games, before a guy solves the final problem for him.. with gum! Uh-Oh! It’s a Go bad boy!  He looks like your standard Vagrant and bully and in a way he is. I squirted milk out of my nose laughing when he told his new passion though. This bad boy.. who looks like danger.. or a villain.. now is into SHOGI. He used to be into Igo but now Shogi is the shit, even if he has beaten Akira in a game.  Why is this so funny?! Because it is basically your high school bully, or standard movie bully if you never had one, saying I used to play checkers but that wasn’t bad ass enough so now I play Chess.  The way how menacing they made him sound while saying this was just hilarious to me. 

If Chess club looked like this.. they’d have Cheerleaders!

Obviously the two eventually decide to settle their difference over a game of Go, making some wagers that involve Hikaru jumping into a pool if he lost?! Seriously how uncool is man. Why do they try to make him so cool?! In every other show he would have a bowl cut, a buck tooth and super thick glasses. If he is the cool one.. how uncool is Hikaru?!  Regardless of this brainworm I had to yank out, their showdown is pretty well set up and seems very intense. Sai enjoys playing this boy so he doesn’t give it his all.  Once Hikari gets distracted by Akiri walking by he places a wrong stone allowing mister cool guy to get 5 Moku.. Will Hikaru be able to come back from this?!  Or will he have to .. jump in a pool.. find out next saturday.. I can hardly wait. 

In Closing

Now that last line sounded sarcastic and in a way it was meant like that.. but in a good way.. I find it funny how enthralled I can get by the little stuff in this show.

Overall all episodes where quite okay with BNA being the only one that really sang for me. It makes sense though I have been singing praise on Bofuri for three weeks now, at some point I will not see episodes that top the best. Hikaru fizzled were I think it could have popped and Yu-Gi-Oh.. I might drop that one at the 6 episode mark and first line up change.  Now that all characters are in play it has until Bofuri finishes to impress me or it will be pulled off the pink network!

When Bofuri is done one time slot will go to Tower of the Gods and one to another episode of Hikaru. If you have any good suggestions I could replace Yu-Gi-Oh with?  Let me know in the comments!

https://ko-fi.com/pinkiesparadise

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventures Week 3

Hey Island guests, it is sunday for me again which means I spend my saturday watching some sweet sweet anime! Unfortunately I am rather sick so my rule of no pausing allowed and commercial breaks really came back to bite me in the touchee this time around! Yet Saturday Morning cartoons also comforted me in my misery. 

Pinkie’s TV Guide

I did not manage to work ahead enough to give myself an extra timeslot. I also don’t want to make these posts any longer as they already are so Hikaru no Go will be kept limited at one episode until I finish Bofuri and BNA my schedule will then change to give room for the classic show. For now the schedule is as follows. Which will also be the order of my reviews

9:00  AM : BNA
9:30  AM: Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens
10:00 AM :Bofuri
10:30 AM: Bofuri
11:00 AM: Hikaru no Go

I decided to abandon the colour review scores and the summary to  make these a bit more brief and searching for these colors can be a time consuming hassle.

BNA Episode 3

I love Studio Trigger and this episode was something I really could get into. The mystery of Michiru being human is properly set up this time around as we are introduced to an institution that may help her. But the terrorists from the first episode seem to be at it again, endangering the clinic and so a cure for Michiru. She and Shirou have to get over there to investigate.. but if there really is a sickness that can turn humans into beastman she will be a target, to Shirou’s great concern. In this episode we learn more about Michiru’s shapeshifting powers as she shifts animal parts to fit her situation a few times throughout the episode. A nice concept that really makes sense with the title.. she really is a brand new animal. 

We get some backstory about the tanuki girl which leaves rooms for new story hooks. Her friend changed into an animal as well and she was deported, when Michiru underwent the change she was forced to stay inside her room, but she felt that was no way of living so she came to animacity to be free until they found a cure. While not very original it makes sense and is an effective way to keep such a frail girl engaged with the plot, so I at least have to commend them for their writing there. Even though the mystery we are presented with feels somewhat cliché I felt very engaged, more so than the other two episodes.

I love the pastel colour scheme that is set throughout everything it softens everything , as if we are looking more from afar into a dream. I think that is a smart choice because obviously we can’t really relate to these characters and their struggles, by dabbling this form of surrealism I found myself expecting less to relate as well. The fight scenes look great and the fluidity  is something I really appreciated, there is this form of speed in there that really impressed me.  There was  a chameleon working as an antagonist and the way he moved his eyes to get visual info on an upcoming sneak attack really worked for me.

Favorite moment goes to the introduction of a possible main villain. The scientists recognized Michiru as being a former human, the implications of that are pretty amazing. Perhaps this thing was willingly developed..but why was she chosen?  The show barely gives you any answers just a strong hook with a mysterious pretty boy being set up as someone menacing. They sprinkle just enough detail for us to be interested but without having a clue what he is up to.. at least for me.  Least favorite moment would be the Deus Ex Machina that the mayor , who knows of Michiru also knows she is human , being a geneticist that can help her as well. That kinda felt forced. Still I am excited about what is to come.

Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens  Episode 3

Honestly?! This was a pretty sweet episode. While the pay off is not as rewarding as with the other shows I am watching taking a look into the mysterious Romin seemed like a sensible move that is set up quite nicely. Social Media videos of the new Rush Duel begin to vanish across the web so that means Goza the evil company is aware of it.. how does it know?
Yuga and Luke/Rook (as Tatsuhisa is called) is called begin to suspect the purple headed girl that is quick with her mouth but also quick with her smartphone might not be completely genuine in her intentions. 

I like the Romin character her design and generally aloof personality really speak to me , so given that this episode was about her really helped my enjoyment of this episode. We see Yuga invent some sort of lie detector to force her to tell the truth, which to be honest felt a bit forced. If he can make so many inventions that can really be used as a easy way to cheap out of troubles.. my least favorite moment of this episode.  Luckily they fix themselves right away and the invention breaks due to a dubious statement. Now with the invention gone obviously there is only one way to verify her intentions which obviously is a duel.

We get some nice comedy with Luke (according to the Wiki and Rook according to the sub)  getting his hair accidently washed and turned fabulous as well as him and Gakuto sneaking closer to Romin’s guitar case to find out if she is a super spy or not.  Using a duel as a distraction has been done before but this show kinda shows us how ridiculous that is, it made me chuckle at least. We also get some minor backstory for Romin.. turns a singer she idolises gave her that card during one of her concerts and even though she had no interest in dueling she kind of wanted to try the card out. Rush duels clearly more amusing to her and when making new friends.. she decided to set them up.. so she could try it out.. more or less.

The duel itself is my favorite so far. Romin has no deck of her own and has no idea on how to play the game so Yuga gives her his spare deck, which contains the same core cards without his ace.  The way he reacts to her putting a card of her own in there and how he wishes to pit ace against ace made him feel different from the more calculative Yu-gi, Yusei and Playmaker.   I am not sure I like the way they summon their aces yet. They give a speech much like with Synchro summoning which I loved..but these feel worse and the fact that their analogies are animated makes it a bit tacky. Romin’s ace card showing up and it’s effect was my favorite moment, by paying 1000 life points all 3 of her monsters gain 300 life points per monster the opponent has summoned for a turn. A card that really can be fun and actually useful in this format. I hope I’ll see her duel again..and since I want to see more..i’d say good episode.

Bofuri Episode 5

My least favorite view of the day. It still was amazing!  While Bofuri episode 5 does that same thing with so many plotlines again that I disliked in episode 3 at least this time it feels cohesive. We pick up with Maple and Sally in a mexican stand off with a woman named Kasumi. While she thinks about attacking for a moment she decides that two against one might not go in her favor but Sally wants to kill her in order not to risk any more.  Their speeds are equal and they zoom off into a desert leaving Maple behind. A short half finished battle follows. Which would have been my least favorite moment if they had not committed a crime in this episode!

When Maple shows up who was surfing on her shield they accidently get knocked into a dungeon where their life is linked. However this dungeon holds no monsters, just snails with no hp.. get hit and you die . This dungeon is a test of agility so Maple is completely bypassed as we learn some of Kasumi’s abilities.  It was funny and I like these types of dungeons so I was pleased. We show Maple’s kindness again as she makes sure Kasumi gets some medals and gear as the dungeon reward and we move to a time skip, while Sally and Maple hunt to get 20 medals.

…..  *Sob*  ….. In this time skip the horror zone gets skipped AGAIN! We see a few still images of Maple playing with a skull and I wish I could have been there! Least favorite moment by far!  After that their medal count sort of racks up. Which ends up with a shot of Sally fishing. We move back to normal time and we see Maple playing on the beach with a level 5 boy named Kanade which tells them about a puzzle dungeon. The puzzle is quickly solved and we go to my second favorite moment.. Maple completely murdering a boss spamming the hydra Skill to pollute the ocean so much it has no chance.  I laughed as I felt bad for the poor squid.

After that we see why this episode is my least favorite view off the show so far. More convenience to get the pair 20 medals. Sally goes on a murder spree to kill as many players as she can, murdering out an entire camp just to get the perfect amount of medals she needs. Maple in the main time is training up Oboro and Syrup and OMG does THAT pay off. Syrup learns the skill Megamorphosis so Maple decides to spent her 10 medals on the psychokinesis skill..Now she can enlarge her turtle and fly on it.. it doesn’t really make sense but hey flying turtle I am in!  Weakest episode in my line up, favorite moment of the day! So  if that doesn’t tell you how good my Saturday view was , probably nothing will!

Bofuri Episode 6

The episode begins with Kaede instead of alter ego Maple and how her being so invested in the game has caused her life to be a bit skewed. Sally advises Maple to take a few days break, which is a very smart way of allowing Sally to feasibly fully catch up with Maple. Of course it also tells us to have a healthy game/life ratio but we all know that if VR games like these come out we will say farewell to the real world. Just put me on some IV drips to keep me alive and you can bury me for all I care! So I am not buying that message.

The sixth episode is all about setting up a guild. New Bugs have appeared and if you are highe enough level to catch one you can purchase property in the game.  This leads to Sally and Maple house shopping just to come across a super cute fifty people house inside a tree. It’s adorable and I would so love to live there! Since the house is to big for Sally and Maple alone they decide to found a guild and they invite Kanade, the smart boy who has a rubikscube that gives him a random skill each day and Kasumi.. who is pink so I do not object. Iz the crafting and Koromu join as well and Maple is made guild leader.

Since they live in a tree, they fly on a turtle named Syrup and their leader is named Maple the guild is named Maple Tree (though in japanese). Totally expected but it does fit, given how Maple is super famous now for how broken she is it feels deserved and very much in line with Maples naming conventions. I really appreciated that very much it feels really cohesive and while not surprising you have a hard time to disagree with the writers the story has to move this way. 

The episode ends with Maple recruiting May and Yui two girls who masked out offence and like Maple are becoming a bit broken. No one wants to party with them though because they wipe so easily and they are rather shy. This makes them a rather nice addition to the team and I do look forward to seeing what they do next. If I had to describe this episode in one word it would be wholesome. It’s nice of them starting their little guild and it’s done right. Not great, not exciting… but right. You nod and smile from start to end.. it is as it should be. That really makes this anime just a perfect Saturday snack.

Hikaru no Go Episode 3

Best episode in the line-up. It starts with my least favorite moment, Akira Touya completely losing it over a game like Go. Hikaru doesn’t take it very serious and the boy loses his marbles over it. It felt completely unreltable as it is something very much that I am not.It’s about Zeal and honour of a the game.. and mostly honour is a trait I absolutely despise.  People do such stupid things for that.. honour is a mock up word for pride in my book so I could not really support the little whining boy.

He challenges Hikaru to a angry game of Go where he is trying to play relentless and without joy! He has to prove a point. Sai then proceeds to remorsely crush the young boys spirit as there is no room to play a friendly game in this one.  This upsets Hikaru which shows his kind heart but also makes him think. Why does this matter so much. Which by now as a viewer I question as well. Why would someone really care about Go so much. I have trouble buying it with Yu-gi-oh and those live in a world where it’s set up. Hikaru no Go basically takes place in the normal world where Go means as much as it actually does here. I liked that this episode completely broke Akira as a character. It made me feel pain.. even if it was just a game.. clearly there are stakes here. While I can not relate to the importance of Go… I can relate to feeling so crushed.. and in doing so this episode got through to me. 

As Hikaru pondered what about this Go thing.. so did I as a viewer, we are really taken on his journey and feel as he does. So far this has been consistent throughout all three episodes. Hikaru’s thoughts reflect mine and this episode I became very much aware of that.When he encounters Akiri and brushes her off I felt like.. Oh please.. not an Akiri scene right now. Even though I do like the character I wanted a resolution, I wanted to see Hikaru find his beliefs and discover what makes a go player tick. We get a scene which I bet you anime eyes enthusiasts would love in which Hikaru compares his own stare to that of Sai and the  Touya family. He discovered they had a passion something he has been lacking so far. He wants to find that passion. Thank you for that moment! That is character growth!

We end this episode with a match between Akira’s father and Hikaru.. testing the young boy and Sai out. Yet the focus is not on the stones or the plays , the focus in on the passion the drive. We see how stones are placed on the board. The difference between passion and being forced into this and this is where Hikaru breaks through and where I as a viewer also see the beauty of the game. With some pretty big effects in both the visual as audio department he copies his opponent in how they place the stones. His eyes have now changed! As the match heats up .. so does Hikaru’s spirit.. so did my investment in this show. I loved the mind games it played with me.. may I have some more of this please?!

Saturday morning viewings is really working for me!  Anime Saturday Banzai! I am already looking forward to next Saturday!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure (Week 2)

Hi island guests. Saturday has come and past again which means I ate some more ceareal and watched some anime. Thightly set on time I might add. No pausing allowed, commercial breaks in between.. recreating those good old Saturday morning cartoons and this week I had a blast with it yet again.

Pinkie’s TV Guide

My Schedule hasn’t changed yet since not of the series have finished yet. Until than the series remains as follows.


9:00  AM : BNA
9:30  AM: Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens
10:00 AM :Bofuri
10:30 AM: Bofuri
11:00 AM: Hikaru no Go

Like last time, I am not allowed to pause at the 11 minute mark anime will be interrupted for some Japanese Commercials on YouTube (and to take bathroom and other kinds of breaks). If I run late I have to skip to the point matching the air-date as if it was shown on tv. Unlike last week though this week I was fully prepared.

BNA Episode 2

The second episode of the studio trigger anime Brand New Animal, or BNA might have been my highlight of the morning. I really liked this second episode. We learn our Tanuki girl is actual a human woman named Michiru.. or at least she claims to be. Refusing to be registered as a beastman because she got “sick” and turned into one. With no one believing her the evidence is in her wallet and this episode focuses on her getting it back. The show this time around is less in your face about racism and much more focussed on the characters while still putting in plenty of world building. Tonally a huge improvement from the first episode.

 Instead of opting for a complex hierarchy system like in Kill la Kill, the rules in Animacity are easy. He who is the strongest wins. It makes sense in the context and it helps give our Michiru some rough edges. Her being a former human makes it hard to understand some aspects of beast society,opening us to a softer form of exposition. There is no need for “As you all know” type of dialogue because Michiru learns alongside us. Mistakes she makes are because of her human nature and as she learns how different this world is so does the viewer. Which really works out in this episode.

Following the monkey that stole her wallet in the last episode a hint given by Marie the Mink  puts her in the visors of a criminal woman named Gran Granma who commands an all woman gang in an area called Rabbit Town. The build up towards this felt nicely paced telling us what we need to know such as character names for one.The crying wolf from last episode is named Shirou and he has a pet bird named Kuro. I bet a lot of grey matter was put to work to come up with that one. Shirou gets an order from the mayor to investigate some criminal trafficing. Of course Michiru ends up in the middle of this.

Gran Granma asks Michiru to teach some young beastfolk to learn how to read and write. Leading to my favorite moment of the episode. Michiru’s class. It was cute and innocent. A facade for what Animacity is not but also a great desire to reflect what Michiru desires. The kids learning to read is so cute and you can see the tanuki liking helping others out way more than fighting. A man who likes like he is based on Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin from Marvel pressures Gran Granma into selling the kids to pay of her debts to him. Since she is there she also decides to sell Michiru. The way this all is emoted gives you some amazing character to the criminal lady.. there is more to this story.

The episode concludes in a dock. where Michiru displays some of her powers, some being different than that of a regular beast man. She manages to break free of her cage but is no match for the combat trained henchwomen. Shirou saves the day and while confroting Gran Granma about her horrible deeds the woman smiles faintly, probably actually caring about these kids handing Michiru her wallet back and it is confirmed that she was once human.

I’d rate this show a with a Taffy Pink! It’s super sweet. The weird power thing felt like Trigger to me again, the fast moving plot, the subtle character and the mystery build on several levels it all stuck with me, and I did not mind that it did at all. That Taffy stuck in my teeth can stay there so I can linger on the sweet tastes.

Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens Episode 2

Where BNA was the high of the show for me, this second episode of Sevens showed the most improvement to me.While first episode was poorly paced, kind of lazily written and flat out unfunny this episode actually had some proper pacing,an enjoyable narrative and even some good jokes. This episode basically begins  with my favorite moment.  We get some dramatic build up to the road to be Duel King now opening. Yuga says he is not that interested and says Tatsuhisa can take his place. He overly dramatically accepts and begins walking towards the gate of light that opened. Yuga recognised it as a hologram which is why he trolled the blue hair boy. I have to hand it to the makers that was a funny way to make this exposition tolerable. 

Now to become the Duel King people have to come and accept your way of dueling as the truth. Tatsuhisa beliefs this means they have to keep what they did a secret and Yuga agrees. The next day he however is telling everyone on what they did. This triggers a duel between the protagonist and the blue haired boy… but there is trouble.. recess doesn’t last that much longer, luckily a rush duel can  be held quickly. Romin the girl now works as the reason why rules are explained while Gakuto works as the one who explains, a synergy that works and doesn’t feel forced.What does feel forced though is the deuteragonist/rival using a dragon themed deck. Yeesz Yu-Gi-Oh we haven’t seen THAT before.

The Duel itself is mostly okay. Nice joke with Yuga using that yugioh protagonist power of awareness to explain some secrets of Tatsuhisa’s powers casually. It results helps keeping this series a bit grounded.  Props to the makers for having Yuga lose this fight. It gives him room for a journey as well.  He is not as overpowered as Playmaker was in the last part.  The loss felt fairly natural as well, though at the same time this rush duel felt kind of un-yu-gi-oh.  With at least 5 cards in his graveyard you would think he has an effect there to help him but no.. even the luck of the draw abandoned him. Great choice.. but with a simple combo like this it really felt off brand. The fact that Yuga used a drone to stream and promote his new game was nice and make him more unique as a protagonist. So even if it invalidated the duel..this series now begins to feel a bit “differently”

Still the lowest ranking of the shows I watched this episode was leagues better than his episode 1 counter part. I actually quite enjoyed this. Rating it Mexican Pink. The fishiness of the first episode is gone and the colour has deepend quite a bit. However it might be just a little bit foreign. I started to watch this show because I really like Yu-gi-Oh.. and I am not sure if this is that. They definatly spiced this up with some Jalepeno of cool but I have no real clue what I am going to get.. also that CEO.. looks way too weird.

Bofuri Episode 3

I really adore this little show, there is just so much cuteness in there.  This third episode however was my least liked so far.It’s adorable but has way to many little stories.  We get a brief glimpse of some characters that are in the intro arguing about if they should buy weapons with one of these twin girls going particularly murder hobo wanting to buy weapons above all. Obviously she will be Maple’s Hyper offensive counter part.  We see Maple and Sally shopping for new skills, learning about an event, taking up two dungeons/quests and going to two secret areas. It all feels a bit dense.

It does help create that cute sense of whimsy but in a way it feels like some of those five to ten minute anime where stringing two together is called an episode. I really wanted to see more of the scary area. Which was my favorite moment in the show, maybe one of my favorite moments in the series so far even. Sally quivering in fear with Maple being impressed by the colour of the ghosts. Because of Sally’s fear they have to hide in a house and a trap door is found, which leads to Sally learning a new skills and the quest resolving. This happens within a minute or four. After which a fireball teleports the pair to a beach where they find a ruby and splash water at each other.

World building falters for me a bit trough the fact that the girls can taste cake in virtualy reality.Given the concept of the show I can forgive it assuming the helmet can stimulate your brain so you can taste or feel pain…but also firing a fireball in a tree stump to get transported to a secret beach Sally nows off to get a useless item feels kinda odd. Sure that kind of stuff might be in some MMO’s but why not spend the extra time in that spooky wood! It could have been so much fun.

Maple is nerfed trough an update which makes the boss fight to reach level 2 where they can participate in the next event  a bit more interesting. The boss having special strats fits into the mmo concept and the battle does feel somewhat satisfying but the dungeon is glossed over again. In favor Sally transporting them to a restaurant in a starry sky where they can eat items that make their hair and eyes glow. It’s cute again.. but why insert 2 of these scenes in one episode it feels superfluous and give that we already had a scene with them eating cakes, and four self contained stories up to this point it kinda feels fragmented.

Time still flew by but I found this a bit lazy content wise. Instead of telling a full fledged story you tell a bunch of summaries of those seemingly not interesting enough for an entire episode. That is why I rate this episode China Pink. It works for me like many toys from china I once had. Yet there is something so streamlined to it that you can see the mass production of it all. It lacks the detail some of the finer products have.

Bofuri Episode 4

The fourth episode is MUCH MUCH better. We even get our first genuinely thrilling action scene and an amazing team fight. We also only get two main stories with a minor third one in the end which still is a logical follow up to what happened before. With some nice humor and the most adorable conclusion a girl like me could have wished for.. this is so far my second favorite episode after the first.

This episode resolvers around the first few days of the treasure hunt event , an ingame week long series where people can find medals but can also steal medals from other players.  Making Maple a target for ranking third in the first event. What begins a seeming pointles wander figureing out what to do.. I am pretty sure the writers at least have quite some MMo experience, all the things are in there and all the beats are hit.  Stumbeling upon a secret dungeon by accident the pair easily dispatches a jesterbos that was hyped up in the opening. Proving to me that the opening most likely is somewhat spoiler free and exaggerated retroactively making that same intro better.

We encounter some old familiars who interact with Maple in different ways, her broken build and her results have led her to gather some kind of fame.. which again.. makes sense since the game had to be balanced specifically for her. Most are friendly for not wanting to get into trouble but some might prey on her medal. A mysterious new dungeon pops up and Maple allows another group to go in first as a thank you for the help their leader gave at the beginning of the game. Within seconds the dungeons opens up again, saying it might be a reward collecting instance.. or a boss wiped them in mere seconds.

It turns out to be the later and we get a spectacular fight against an ice bird fight which really pushes Maple to play the best that she could. It is nice to see that there are bosses n this game that can give her a hard time. The teamwork between Sally and Maple really works well and feels very MMO like. Albeit much less balanced than the actual thing. The fight is thought and they barely make it out but they do getting rewarded with a hand full of models and two pet eggs that they subsequently try to hatch.

My favorite moment and my least favorite moment of this episode are interwoven with another in the conclusion of the episode. Maple and Sally are training their new pets. Maple gets a turtle which hilariously has a higher speed stat than hers and Sally gets a fox. When Maple names  turtle Syrup so they can be Maple Syrup together I like squeee by adorableness. The pair uses their pets like pokémon and they get an ability to be dispelled and resummoned, but there is something about the phrasing.. about them being “reborn” if it were that makes me think  next time we see them they might be bigger. I very much look forward to that. However about at the same time we see some evil bunnies talking about how they made that boss to be unbeatable.I am not sure why they talk so evilly but if they are the villians things might get a bit weird.

I’d rate this epiosde a solid pink. This episode pleased me on just about every level. I got my dose of world building, I got my dose of epicness and I sure as hell got some great action and some amazing cuteness and is just about everything one can look for in an episode of Bofuri.I

Hikaru no Go Episode 2

Hikaru doesn’t actually play go in this episode which makes this the most uneventful episode I saw this saturday.  Yet it taught me  a bit more about Go. Not a lot but something. Like how bigger “boxes” of one colour can make points of everything inside. There really is not that much to tell about this episode as basically nothing really happened. We  see him go to school and Akari is trying to get his attention. I am pretty sure Hikaru in real life would not really be chased by any girl though but I do like their thing they have going on. Akari seems like a nice character. Sai is introduced to the modern world which leads to some funny enough dialogue .. but nothing we haven’t seen before with a time displaced person.

Despite nothing actually happening I did find this episode a pleasant viewing experience. The slow pace of the episode came at a good time after that big fight in Bofuri and this felt wonderfully casual and mundane.  It doesn’t suddenly turn Go into something hype like Summer Wars did with Koi-Koi. It makes this series feel genuine and heartfelt so far. That being said the series does show a few plot coincidences  that feel rather forced. Like Akira being the son of the man who is closed to the Kami no Itte. The divine move Sai is after. Or the fact that a piece about him is on tv just at the moment Hikaru puts it on. I dislike when series do that.

I’d think there is no reason to connect them that way. Both Akira and Hikaru would want to play this champion for their own reasons so making it a family tie makes it feel.. easy.  Yet when Hikaru visits a youth tournament they actually do something a bit more creative with it. Rather than making Hikaru the instigator in their encounter they make the father Koyo someone interested in Hikaru instead. Yet there is something eating at me.. something the way the character is designed and framed that makes me thing he might not be as important as this episode leads me to believe he will. His introduction lacks gravitas, their first encounter was glanced over quickly so I feel he might just take a more mentorly role to Akira who may become a rival .. not persé in matches but in a race to master the Divine Move?

I am not sure. What I do know is that I am already analyzing this show which tells you I am at least invested. Since there basically really weren’t any moments no favorite or least favorite scene. I’d rate this episode Fandango Pink. While it seems nothing is going on I think the gears ot this series are just getting in motion. A complicated progress is starting up. Pieces are moved on a game board. It might seem boring and overly complex at first glance but if you look deeper you can see there is thought in these movements. Surely this will go somewhere and on it’s own the setup is kinda fascinating to see unfold in it’s nothingness.

Summary

Favorite Watch: BNA (Episode 2)
Favorite Moment: Syrup used bite! (Bofuri)

Least Favorite:  Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens (Episode 2)
Least Favorite Moment: Evil Programmer Bunnies (Bofuri)

Cereal: Crownfield Choco Rice
Bowls Consumed : One small one
Favorite Japanese Commercial: Totally Fabulous Sega Guy!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure (Week 1)

Hi Island guests! Earlier I talked to you about how having unlimited access to anime and media to critique it on, has opened it to nitpicking and devalued appreciation. Why would we bother with a 7/10 show when we can watch a 9/10 one.I said I would love to get a format reminiscent back of Saturday morning cartoons.

A format where I have to work myself around anime instead having access to everything at my convenience. For true love doesn’t bow to your every whim.. you have to put some effort into it. This is the story of that quest…

Setting Up

The adventure began with laying down some ground rules and a schedule. Like how I have my fictional tropical Island I would now have a fictional anime network as well. Anime of my selection would air the way I would want to, yet be sorted out in certain time slots. I opted for a five series time slot which I could expand upon later. Running from 9:00 until 11:30 (in order to fit it in with my medicine imposed insomnia or occasional night terrors, I put it a bit later in the morning). Five series would air at the full hour mark. Midway down a series (around the 11 minute mark for anime) I would pause the anime and play some Japanese commercials on youtube for about 5 minutes.

I am not allowed to pause the anime earlier, nor am I allowed to go backwards if I miss anything. If i need to get something, I need to step away and let the anime run.. except for during commercial breaks. During the commercial breaks I would make notes for the blog, refill my drink and schedule bio-breaks. Obviously I can not skip ahead either. With this set up I have about 3 minutes to make some final notes and set up the next series. If I am late for example I start at 9:05 I will have to skip my episode until the anime runs as if it was started at its original time slot. So in this case five minutes in. Each Sunday I report to you all about my little adventures.

Pinkie-TV-Guide

Originally I browsed for the first five random picks I wanted to watch. Which ended up being Hikaru no Go, BNA, Bofuri, Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens.. and the second season of Ducktales, (from where I left off). Turns out the the second season of Ducktales isn’t on Disney + yet, which I discovered in the middle of my watch, so as a sensible tv network I had to fix this by adding in a double episode of what came prior. So for the next six weeks my schedule ended up being the following.

9:00  AM : BNA (I really love studio Trigger Stuff)
9:30  AM: Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens (Because I love card game anime and YGO)
10:00 AM Bofuri (Because cute girls with shield sound adorable to me)
10:30 AM Bofuri (So the Pink Network could correct their stupid error)
11:00 AM Hikaru no Go (Because I read Iridium Eye’s compelling review about it)

Having bought some cereal the day before, I was ready. The japanese commercials were set up, my phone was on silent as Saturday morning cartoons were back! Sitting on the couch I eagerly waited for the nine minute mark and pressed play.

BNA Episode 1

The moment I pressed play I realised I made a pretty rookie mistake. I forgot the milk with my cereal, so I ran to the fridge while the opening credits played. It was weird to see how a first episode had an opening in the first place. That isn’t that common.I couldn’t tell you if I liked it because I had some cereal prep I forgot. Luckily I was back before the main action started.

A Tanuki girl that looks kinda to human compared to the other beastman out there is fleeing from some racist humans. They end up trying to kill her when she is fleeing to some sort of beast city. Mind you guys that I am telling this from my headspace while viewing this. I know the name of the character now but not at the time.. nor do I think the first episode ever told us. When things seem dire for the main character a weird scientist lady shows up.. which suddenly is a weasel like creature, which we later find out is a mink. She has some henchmen as well. A fight breaks out between humans and the animal-people and the tone for the series is set. 

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this episode, though I can not help but feel it is kinda heavy on the racist allegory. In the same way X-men can be a bit jarring in it’s world building as well. Even in the first half of he episode. After the rescue I am positively surprised that the mink isn’t like a best new friend but some sort of shady figure who extorts those she rescues for all their money. Like what we see in a few american shows when they smuggle chinese or mexican people inside the United States. We then are introduced to Animacity home of the animals as some happy place, but what seems like a terrorist attack happens just as the little Tanuki girl enter, which leads to my favorite moment in the show.

A huge tv screen drops down on the crowd in the city which were looking at the screen for the cities tenth anniversary.(Which kinda felt a bit exposinatny for my taste) and the Tanuki girl tries to save an old goat.. the face on that goat made me smile so hard. Also when she is yelling crap crap crap.. when she is about to get crushed really amused me. She is saved by a crying wolf who is blisteringly fast while the old goat still has his 10/10 face. Amazing I loved this moment. Tanuki girl is accused of the bombing by the wolf, who seems like some sort of private detective but she convinces him it was some sort of other wolf she saw earlier. Using his nose, which was a really cool visual, he pursues the actual terrorist.

The episode concludes in a big epic fight that like other Trigger feels quite over the top. Yet I feel could have been a bit bolder. It felt very visceral and violent though and the punches have this nice connecty feeling and characters can bulk up to the extreme. Visually this is why I love Trigger so much. The bad guys are hired by humans which triggers the wolf into wanting to kill them. The Tanuki girl catches up and stops him.. revealing she was once a human to setting up  a mystery for the next episode.

All in all a fine first episode. I wasn’t as amazed as I would like from Trigger but it is definitely I will enjoy seeing again next week. There is plenty of stuff. My rating of this episode is a Peach out of Pink.. it’s on the right track but it could be pinker!

YU-GI-OH SEVENS EPISODE 1

The moment this started up with a big commercial for a new form of card game named Rush duel I knew I was going to have a rough time. It did not help that my second serving of cereal had to much rice thingies with to little milk. My mouth was getting dry as in horror I saw the main character bursting through something.. with a giant mecha..while holding some Yu-gi-oh cards. In the second scene we see him trying to install some new duel rules and I began to really regret putting this on the list. I could have put the new pokémon season here.

The opening did not help either, many of these characters look super generic and referencing to old shows a bit.  I liked the girl with the purple hair in it though..so perhaps there is some hope. After the intro we get a glimmer of hope though, the world building seems quite interesting with a Kaiba Corp clone really bogging people down with super strict rules, enforced by camera robots. Breaking these rules will get you a strike and getting six strikes will get you banned from dueling.  While trying to install the new rules.. and he failed Yuga the main character failed and now has five strikes. All in all fair.

This attracts the attention of three peers. Gakuto looks like the Seto Kaiba from season 1.. but with purple hair and the demeanour of Bastion Misawa from GX.. but more snively and whiny. He is the type that is afraid of breaking the rules and he annoyingly yells it out all the time. Tatsuhisa is a blue haired kid who has the power.. to do a sparky thing to disable electronic devices. He duels an ancient tablet under the city that spawns a crowned man .. but he lost and got six strikes due to it..due to the prophecy written on this tablet he now thinks Yuga might be the one to activate it. Romin is the purple haired girl.. she plays music and doesn’t know how to duel.

That is all the characterization we get in episode 1 because we have to move into a rush duel. Yuga installs his new rules but they have to be implemented or such.. but a guard droid spots him and he has 6 minutes and 66 seconds ( which ISN’T even a legit time expresion and just is there to tell us this new Kaiba Corp is evil i’d guess) to implement the rules by a live action programming. Luckily his duels can be fought in that time he says. Which basicly involve a weird form of dueling with three zones instead of five and where you can always draw five cards, and summon and tribute as much as you want in a single turn… like Yu-Gi-Oh needed more speed?!

While the duel itself was entertaining enough, the ace monster of the main character feels insanely gimmicky (it powers up 300 points per any of the seven attributes) an ability Yuga called road over 7 or something. The duel disks also changed into a seven, It’s the seventh series and the series is called Sevens. Well Sevens is correct as there are a lot of them not subtle either. My favorite moment came just before the hero summons his ace though, when Blue Eyes white dragon makes it return. Too bad it’s massive 3000 attack gets hit by a 7000 attack ending the duel in one turn after it was summoned. This show is going to have some serious pacing issues.

Now this might sound super negative and in a way it is, but there is some merrit behind the concept of rush dueling. If they make better duels than this, the format could be interesting for the anime allowing for some more storytelling on the side. It’s like a really ugly oyster.. it still might hold a pearl. For now however this gets a Salmon out of Pink. It can be called pink.. but you could also say it’s a soft shade of orange.  There is a charm factor in there.. but something about it is really Fishy.

BOFURI EPISODE 1

No more cereal, I can pay some serious attention to this one!  Immediately I find the main character Kaede very appealing. There is something about her mindset that I really dig. Gaming with your friend but then being left alone to your own devices is something I can relate to fairly well. While I have absolutely zero interest in her school live, we jump into the virtual world of the mmo she is about to play very soon and I really enjoy the way she over simplistically builds her character. I like the concept of being so Noob in strategy  that the devs would not realise how broken this is. It’s nothing special.. but it brings me back to the age of classic Dragon Ball. Which is a good thing.

Kaede choose the handle Maple, because I assume that is what her name translates into? Unsure though.I enjoy how she is depicted as a newbie in the style that I would act as well. While I am a gamer MMO’s can at times feel overwhelming to me and instead of reading a 40 page guide on how to Cleric I prefer to pick up  skills as I go. Also I love the concept of this MMO not having a tutorial, it would bring some sense of community, which I feel a virtual MMO should be about.. so points for world building. We see how Maple is super slow.. she doesn’t want to feel pain so she goes for a full defensive build..which makes me wonder why they even feel virtual pain in the first place that seems kinda cruel.. point retracted from world building.

Soon after we get my favorite scene in the episode. Maple encounters a cute bunny enemy which she completely outstats. She is just having a lot of fun letting it attack her and playing with it, just enjoying how it relentlessly tries it best. I would play an MMO like that as well. Just having fun, enjoying the animations and the cute creatures.However in this MMO your skills are developed situationally which I think is a cool concept. When she after a long time of playing accidentally kills it she is actually upset as she bonded with it.  That did happen to me.. when I played a MMO once.  Since Maple plays at night she dozes off while playing which triggers a number of defensive boosts. I found this set up pleasing throughout the entire episode.

To gear up she is told to go to a dungeon as she lacks money to buy crafted items, under explained that you should not clear dungeons alone we see her do exactly that, locking her up into some more insane upgrades ending up with her getting some amazing gear since obviously all drops are now for her! I would love to be able to play an MMO that way! This is how I want to play I absolutely adore it.  Her eating the monster because her weapon broke was funny to me to and felt as if the cooking mechanic kinda was exploited. Fun fun fun fun fun!

I’d rank this episode a Bubblegum out of Pink. Cute adorable and exactly in line with my mindset, there is little gripes I have against this one.It might be a bit to pastelly and lack true colour depth.. but  for a Saturday morning “cartoon” this is what I want.

BOFURI EPISODE 2

Forgive me for the length of this post, this is about a whole weeks worth of blogging in one. But starting from second episodes I can be a bit quicker so next weeks installment will be a bit more brief. As now I do not need to talk about set up as much.  Episode 2 of Bofuri  started with me missing the first minute. Due to set up issues.  I dropped in to see Maple eating some bugs to raise her explosive awareness and acquire an enemy devour trait she puts in her shield.

The first half of the episode revolves around a PvP event, I love how Maple due to being such a Noob is able to  outplay many enemies, simply based on how her mindset is so much simpler. Enemies strategise wrongly against her, and she ends up easily being able to take them down due to her non gamer build. That really is something special about this show to me.  I also really love the set pieces. The locations are quite pretty, nothing to special but there is a way they work with lighting here that really makes it stand out to me.  I also really like how Maple starts drawing in the sand during the PvP event .. Jeesz I wish we could get mmos like these. That concept of “just have fun” is something I deeply DEEPLY appreciate in Maple. The drawing scene while she casually dismisses some enemies just to say “back to drawing” was my favorite moment of the episode.

Which is why I like the second half of this episode significantly less. This focusses on Risa or Sally as she is known inside NewWorld Online.  It’s about her start in the game and while obviously that was a point that needs to address this feels like a more normal brand of gamer. Sally doesn’t dump everything into a stat. she is more of a min-maxer that tries to go for an optimal build. This vexes me for two reasons.. she sees how powerful Maple is.. so if your goal truly is to never get hit by anything, why not try to experiment in the same way as Maple did?! Secondly we see her solo a boss as well which invalidates the whole concept of Maple being so strangely OP.. it kinda feels like it’s “Just an easy game” now.

That being said, I do like how they play together, like true friends should. Maple even wears her newbie gear to they kinda look like they belong together, which I appreciate. Sally helps Maple fish because her dex is to low.. and Maple needs scales to get  cute white shield she wants. It felt wholesome .. the idea of discovering something cool while doing that fishing also quite appealed to me. I hope Sally doesn’t rub of Maple to hard and she will do her own thing in building her character.. but I do not mind them having moments. I am also surprised how the anime keeps putting in a lot of content in each episode. So far both episodes feel like 2 smaller episodes strung together .. and it’s pacing that really pleased me.

Not as good as the first episode but still among the best I watched this saturday. I rate this one a Seashell Pink out of Pink. It’s like a mario game! It’s cute, it’s fun and you want more of it… but when you find out this is a water level, you can not help but to prefer to have seen something a bit different.

HIKARU NO GO EPISODE 1

A young boy with two shades of hair finds an ancient relic from their grandfather and then becomes possessed by an ancient spirit which prompts them to become the king of games, by creating traps for their opponents.  Haven’t I seen this plot somewhere before? It even ran around the same period as Yu-Gi-Oh. Starting in 2001.  Come to think of it Shaman King aired in 2001 as well. I guess ancient spirit buddy cop series were the Isekai show of 2001.

Now unlike Yu-Gi-Oh I have not a clue on how Go is played.. and after this first episode I think it’s about surrounding an enemy stone with your own and you win if you get 4 or 5? But I am not sure yet. Anyway this first episode of this anime felt like  a bit of a mixed bag for me. With some highlights and some lows.  The lows mostly taking part in the first part of the episode. We see Hikaru find a go Board in his grandpa’s attic along with a girl.. he sees blood stains on the board while she does not.. he then hears a voice and gets a vision of this spirit.

An ancient Go player that got cheated out of a coveted position in the king’s court, which made him drown himself.  Having last possessed an ancient Go player from the Edo period this spirit now wants to be able to do some divine move so he can rest. While a fair set up I can’t help but feel what an incredibly sad figure Sai is. Not sad as in tragic but as in pathetic. His suicide is something that really made me dislike him. I get that I might miss a cultural significance of importance and honor here but man. The way he cries when he can play a match again trough Hikaru, his goal.. it all just feels kinda.. meh.

Hikaru on the other hand I understand, playing games to get the spirit that possessed you out of your head while also letting him help you with your homework, I really like that form of synergy as  base to start a show out of. I personally do not buy that you are send to school just hours after you collapsed into a catatonic state that lasted long enough for paramedics to come pick you up and rush you to a hospital even if it  had no medical but spiritual grounds. I’d figure people would tell him.. take it safe stay home today.Even when he starts to vomit  out of nowhere and talk into nothing.. he is still forced to make a test….  So I had big credibility issues with the first episode. Which could have been simply solved by establishing Hikaru as a “Boy who Cried wolf” type of character, as is though this is one cruel school.

The second half focussing on a match against youth prodigy Akira whom he randomly encounters in a Go Café.  The way things are framed, the way the game is paced out, the back and forth from camera angles the way we take a peak in both players heads as well as Sai’s really makes for an interesting mixture for matches.  It feels like what makes Yu-Gi-Oh  great.. without the stupid shenanigans which dragged it down again. The fact that Hikaru can count so fast on a Go Board and picks nuances up quite fast gives potential for the future as well.  I love the character design so far as well. It doesn’t feel as lavish and zany as some of the other early 2000 stuff. Making it much more based in reality. In a way making the characters, except for Sai much more relatable. Not an amazing first episode but a nice solid first match.

I’d rate this a Piggy Pink out of Pink. At first glance it looks a bit dirty but than you stare in it’s eyes for a bit longer and you can not help to be endeared. If the tone moves more towards that of the second half of this first episode.. this show can bring home the bacon for me.

Week 1

Now with a Whole  weeks worth of blogging we end on a quick sumary.
Favorite Watch: Bofuri (Episode 1)
Favorite Moment: USAGI SAAAAN! (Bofuri)

Least Favorite Watch:  Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens (Episode 1)
Least Favorite Moment: Sai Crying (Hikaru no Go)

Cereal: Brandless Choco Rice things.. with a monkey on the box!
Bowls Consumed : Two
Favorite Commercial: Sweater Chicken

Pinkie Gets Anime Powers : YuGiOh

We all have done it, wonder how our life would be inside of an anime?! What powers we would get. How would we work in an anime world? The past few weeks I have been asking myself that questions a few times. With the world in its current situation I think it’s the perfect time to resort to this form of escapism once again as this time we travel to the world of Yu-Gi-Oh

Duelist:  Yuni “Pinkie”Cohn

Character Name:
Yuni Cohn
Duelist Name:
Pinkie
Age:
24, but she has silver hair though she is often seen as much older.
Role:
Main Character
Relationships:
Pegasus Niece
Quirks:
Converses with her cards, seems oblivious to what is real and what is not, keeps quoting cartoons and anime. Doesn’t like if people call her madam or “that older woman” Sweet Tooth.


Every Yugioh main character has got to have a name that begins with Yu. At least if you watch the sub…. I am looking at you Jaden!…. Since I bet I would sound much cuter in Japanese than I would sound in english.. a name starting with Yu it is. We use this series to introduce Yugioh back into the main world of the show.. and while we are at it.. let’s make this a legacy show! I believe we are very close to the 20th anniversary so let’s create a world that can highlight some of the shows greatest moments. In order to achieve this feeling we are going to combine the latest show with the first season of the classic show for maximum callback.

Set somewhere between GX and 5d’s ..but with all the newest  card rules intact. This anime fully takes place inside virtual reality. Using technology similar to  that off YuGiOh Vrains. Our story borrows a lot of concepts from Ready Player One. Pegasus is retiring having reached the age of 65 he has decided to pass his company Industrial Illusions on to he or she who can become the next king of games, Thus the story is set about 40 years after Season 1.Pegasus will entrust his company only to someone who can beat his “video game” Duelist Kingdom 2.0. A completely virtual world. In this game he created several “bosses” based on actual duelists of the old world.To challenge one you have to pay starchips which you can acquire from challenging other players.  If you defeat a boss, you gain a golden millenium item card. The first 8 who show up at the pharaoh’s tomb with all the 7 items can duel each other in the finals for a change to beat the true king of games. If you beat him…become Pegasus successor.

I based a game on my favorite book yu-gi-boy!.. Yep Defo can see Max do this sort of stuff.

Yuni lives with her adoptive family in poverty. Pegasus is her last known  surviving blood relative and all pleas for help to his address have so far been unsuccessful. Too poor to even own a deck, Yuni spends what little surplus money she has, on sweets. Her owner of her favorite sweet shop, and older lady named Ryndia one day invites her to share some tea with her. She explains that she has been invited to the tournament..but can’t. No one will look after the shop.. and her old bones would ache in the vr pod. She tells Yuni she knows she is Pegasus niece and offers her a chance to finally be acknowledged. Handing her her own personal deck as well. Yuni agrees.. thinking this could save her family and finally make her connect to blood, as she would enter the virtual world of Duelist Kingdom 2.0.

I did not feel like hours of photoshop today so instead we get a rough depiction of how she would look like more or less.

Taking the duelist handle of Pinkie in the virtual world, she is a bit of an odd girl. Unlike other YuGiOh characters she starts completely alone, so Yuni starts to talk to her cards and begins to develop a friendship with them. Giving them personality and voices in her head.
This way we can bond with the cards a lot more… which can help card sales.. it’s YuGiOh after all. Throughout the series we see Yuni develop her own “heart of the cards” ideal, where she relies on her friends to come through for her. As her bonds grow, she also begins to feel this world is more real.  Going into a bog to save a drowning animal, risking herself for holograms. However this often results in her finding new cards.. as if the world rewards her for caring. Her weird approach to this..makes her hard to befriend as people think of her as delusional.

The Deck: Madolche Archetype

The deck that Yuni would use would reflect her love for sweets and look cute. After all I have to stay on brand for my blog. Desu Nee? The archetype I have chosen to use is the one of Madolche. Which is a combination of both sweet and viable. It also works well because of Yuni’s belief that these cards are her friends and would never abandon her. Now this is not a tutorial on how to Madolche but it is an extremely powerful deck with One Turn Kill possibilities and insane combos. Madolches get send back to your deck instead of your graveyard when destroyed by your opponent and help each other be summoned or revived should you tribute them. They work together to banish the opponent’s field while striking with 5 or six of them combined (yes six is possible now if you follow master rules 4.0 … long story)


As in all my powers, there is a theme of love and friendship somewhere and I believe Madolche can produce the idea of this feeling. Of course for the anime this deck has to have a lot added to it to provide a new gimmick of the week…but hey by completing quests in the duelist kingdom or beat some holographic minibosses… like Weevil or Rex , Pinkie obtains new cards. So at least it will be way less male-cow-manure like than 5d’s or Zexal where cards magically poof into your hands. Pinkie’s signature monsters still would be the current deck aces. Madolche Queen Tiaramisu has the power to banish monsters from her opponent’s field. Pinkie would imagine her as a Tsundere or as she jokingly calls her Tsundessert. Her “bestie” would be Madolche Puddingcess Chocolat-A-La-Mode.. and if you think think that is a mouthful.. her card effect is almost longer than this post. She can use XYZ materials to summon friends though.

For those who do not know… and I assume that is just about everyone reading this XYZ cards are a special summon from your extra deck by stacking two or more of the same level monsters on top of each other. After summoning the player can than remove those stacks from the card to conjure up powerful effects.

Link summoning will also still be a thing for our heroine’s deck. Link summoning is like a complex form of tribute summoning..which do not have levels but ranks, (equal to the number of creatures used… or creatures used + any older rank card used) these blue cards have arrows and whatever the arrow is pointed at can be targeted for effects. During Master Rule 4.0 you can only have 1 special summoned monster active…BUT you can also special summon into zones your Link Monsters point at, which sounds way complexer than it is. However in the upcoming format that rule should go away. As this paragraph hopefully made clear.. it’s kinda hard to explain how such a deck would work..besides in YuGiOh we need the power of flexible rule interpretation anyway.

Screw the Rules , I have imagination!

As is custom in these YuGiOh series your main protagonist has to have some super powers. We have seen Yuma turn super saiyan to create new cards (like the character actual becomes blond and super powered) .. we see Yusei turn gold and launch his motorbike into space.. where he finds a new card and Playmaker literally can surf… (yes they surf in the newest yu-gi-oh)  into a storm to pick up a new card mid duel… like an item box in Mario Kart. I do not want something as stupid for Pinkie, it will only happen once and with reason, but more on that in the next paragraph. Pinkie just talks to her deck and she asks if a certain card can come out to play. We see a animation of her reaching for a card and then the right cute confectionary girl or critter takes her hand and the duel proceeds. It’s heart of the cards..but cast with love and friendship instead of hope or trust. 

New cards can be obtained at the end of an episode..but each yugioh series introduces a new form of Kuriboh as well. Kuriboh, Winged Kuriboh, Kuribbon, Kurainbow and others have been introduced to the show in various weird ways, or they have been used to cheat… a lot. Since Pinkie’s deck is sweets based her Kuriboh variant would be called Kuribonbon, which basically looks like a chocolat Kuriboh. By banishing it from your hand it can negate any chosen action of your opponent’s turn . (Negate an attack, negate a summon, negate a trap card activation, Negate a magic card etc, in trade your opponent can not gain any battle damage… but Kuribonbon can only be played on your opponent’s turn). She will find this card by eating some candies while dueling when suddenly one talks to her and turns into a card. She is dealing with a card cheater at the time so will use it still but later out tells it to never cheat again.

Nawww.. 5 minute photoshop well spend!

The Power of Harmony

Each new season has a new summon mechanic ..which she will all use..(except for maybe pendulums.. in which you set two level scale monsters in your spell and trap zone and than can summon EVERYTHING, that falls in between those level increments from your hand ..and even graveyard in certain conditions) as this will be a legacy show. Fusions, rituals, synchro, links, and xyz will all feature. I guess I will include pendulums as well or I would feel bad for them.. but just in an episode or two! Of course Yuni also needs a new summon mechanic of her her own. I chose for a technique I shall dub Harmony summons.

It is a technique that is quite like the classic fusions. Where you need a very specific combination of cards to tribute. Cards that harmonise with another.  For example this could be having Madolche Queen Tiramisu, Madolche Puddingcess and Madolche Puddingcess Chocolat A la Mode on the field and tribute them for Madolche Grande Dessert. (No idea how it would look yet) A bright red card (Pink is taken unfort) that functions as a sort of boss monster. All materials needed get placed under the card like overlay materials however instead of using them to trigger effects, sending one to the graveyard can prevent the monster from being destroyed or send back to the hand.. these are monsters you are going to need to hit multiple times.


Their effect at base is a useful combination or at least themed similar to the cards that are used to summon it, however their effects increase as their life cards are lessened. For example cards gain 300 attack per life card that got send to the graveyard, or per card send to the graveyard they can lock up an opponent’s spell or trap zone, maybe even a monster zone. When a Harmony monster is destroyed you take triple battle damage that turn. I think the concept of using boss monsters could really work well in YuGiOh, especially in the anime.  It’s a mechanic we do not have yet, while plenty of other card games do use this trope. Cardfight Vanguard and Pokémon amongst others.

Playing your cards well

All in all I think this could make for an interesting anime show, the risk of having a lonely protagonist could make battles stale, but of course we will occasionally see a battle of the rivals  some she will be rooting for others she won’t. Secondary characters oftenly exist to lose or function as an inferior to the protagonist. As a result a great many of these duels become throw-away and inconsequential. By focussing on Pinkie as a solidarity character we can focus on others when it’s their turn to shine.. the other characters have their own fight and should not be written in a way just to assist the main character. Sometimes path cross and we can harmonize.. cheer for each other to give each other strength to make it to the next battle..or we see how are battle styles do not match and how they would use the game for evil!

All in all I think this could be a solid concept for a very different YuGiOh show. Instead of focussing on some characters that aren’t going to make it far we focus on one girl and her cards, making those cards matter as well. In the virtual world we could bring back some homages as well, such as bringing back Deck Master duels, from that Noah Arc.. in the middle of the Battle city finals. We can young Kaiba functioning as one of the key holders.. while old Kaiba makes his return to finally own both Kaiba Corp and Industrial Illusions.We can  bring back other main characters from unconnected series simply as programmed bosses… “Master of this technique”or so and we have plenty of opportunity to make this show as long or short as we want depending on how many cards we want to introduce! So Konami if you are reading this…let’s talk! I am cheap!

If you want to talk more about anime powers, write me! Remember guys and gals I love you all! Keep smiling and stay positive!

XO
Pinkie

https://ko-fi.com/pinkiesparadise

Previously on Pinkie Gets Anime Powers:

My Stand
My Zanpakuto
My Digimon

Next time: