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Plk_Lesiak

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Everything posted by Plk_Lesiak

  1. We had a small covid outbreak in our company, so while I likely didn't catch it, I had a little repeat of lockdown experience, with nearly everyone switching to remote work... So, obviously, I binged some anime in free time. Already mentioned King's Game, but God damn it, what a mess that was. Quite likely the worst anime I've seen narratively speaking, constantly switching storylines, spoiling itself to the viewers and just being so inept in building tension and emotional engagement that it's barely believable. Every time I thought it was going to do something interesting, like with the rare non-lethal punishments in the death game, it immediately destroyed that potential in most stupid ways. A genuine 1/10, despite production quality not being that awful. With more interesting stuff, Akebi's Sailor Uniform is quite a unique slice-of-life series. Set in an all-girls middle school, it has this vividly yuri aesthetic despite not having any romantic elements. Very detailed stylization with more feminine than moe vibes... Narratively though, it's pure saccharine with the protagonist being this unstoppable ray of sunshine pulling the best out of everyone around her. Deeply pleasant to watch, but probably not for everyone... Also, I think the mangaka has a foot fetish, which leads to some weird closeups in what is otherwise a very clean show. 8/10 Also, isekais! Caught up on the slime isekai which I stopped watching after the first season. I give both seasons and all the spinoffs and OVAs a collective 7,5/10. It's quite consistent in being this slower-paced, non-evil Overlord – a lot of interesting worldbuilding and extreme power levels, but skewing towards fantasy slice-of-life and general wholesomeness... Until you have to wipe out an army or two to protect your kingdom. For power fantasy, it's really pretty solid and nuanced, showing how protagonist's peaceful nature leads to both great results and grave mistakes, even if he can mostly repair the damage afterwards. Than I've tried to relax with some humour and checked out Asobi Asobae... What a bonkers show. The opening is a pure trolling of yuri fans, diving 100% into the aesthetic even up to the flower symbolism, and what follows is just glorious absurdist comedy that completely demolishes the moe facade. I didn't love it as much as some poeple seem to do, but the pacing and creativity of the gags was consistently good. Solid 8/10. And now a bit of a curveball... I decided to get into A Certain Scientific Railgun and I low-key adore this show. I forced myself through the first two arcs (9 episodes) of Index to get some grasp of that side of the story and setting, but I'll be definitely staying away from it. It just feels like every stale, over-dramatic shounen show out there and nothing I read about it makes me feel it would get any better after the opening I've experienced. Railgun though I really enjoyed, also for the reasons some people criticise it. The way it intertwines slice-of-life with action, slowly building towards major arcs with smaller events and clues in seemingly unrelated scenes... It's actually pretty damn good. It's not a typical or even that consistent of a structure, but so far I haven't seen any real "filler" that I'd dislike, or episodes I felt did nothing for the characters. It's even hard to fully describe the way the show mixes its themes – it's a bit of moe, a bit of slice-of-life, a bit of buddy cop story, a bit of superpowers shounen... But most of the time, it just works. Also, Mikoto is a really fun female lead – incredibly powerful, but also inexperienced and hotheaded enough to put herself in vulnerable position on a regular basis. The worldbuilding isn't amazing, and constant yuri baiting is a bit meh (although it's not just comedy, the bonds between the girls are deep and very relevant for the story), but I find the overall writing and vibes of the story deeply enjoyable. Kind of a nice flower that grew out of a pile of shit... Hopefully, there are no Index fans around. '^^
  2. Considering the "back from prison" part I imagine he's quite aware this is not optimal. The only person in history that ever though being a NEET was cool was that lady from Net-juu no Susume, and she was an anime character*. * and to be fair, it's pretty obvious she also knew how bad it was, she was just so burned out by her corporate job that she didn't care any more and made up a few arguments on why she's better than your average hikikomori.
  3. She has a really good voice for singing city pop. Didn't even sound like a cover.
  4. Spotify is really a nice tool of finding random niche music, this band got stuck in my head for the past week or so... :3
  5. As I understand it, he was on the frontline of Fuwa's Great Loli War and when loli content got effectively banned he left pretty quickly. Understandable, considering that was his preferred stuff. Someone correct me if I missed anything. Also Fuwa was on decline ever since the torrents were removed, but the second part of equation was the leadership crisis. Tay was mostly AWOL since 2017 I think and without anyone steering the ship and being able to access the site on administrative level, it languished. At the same time fan translations started slowly losing steam, the community was shrinking... So while the site was still going by pure inertia, with some limited attempts at revitalisation, it was a downwards trend all along. Not to sound megalomaniac, but I think I had a part is keeping it alive throughout 2018 and 2019, posting tons of EVN-related content. It steered the whole Forums slightly away from JP-only elitism too. Than I got burned out, and than I got health problems (not extremely serious, but annoying and hampering my ability to read VNs and write content, as I'm still dealing with chronic back pain and have to limit my time sitting)... In the meantime Forums reached extremely low activity, and to save what's left of it admins negotiated a merger with the German site VN.Info... With one of their admins, Hata, being very serious on salvaging Fuwa, as an English-language affiliate/partner site. That's where we are now and however one might think about it, things look more lively than they did for a long while. :3
  6. Man, trying to summon Steve like that, you really just want to see the world burn. And hey! Not sure you'd recognize me, but I'm definitely familiar with many of your posts just from exploring Fuwa and talking to other old-time members. The site has really went through some turbulent times and than a massive dip in activity in past few months, but there are changes coming that might invigorate it. The past few weeks were already having a massive rise in posting. Hope you'll join that resurgence. When it goes to anime, you set up pretty strict requirements there... Asking for a series without comedy and slice of life fluff goes a bit against the core of what anime is. Maybe I'm just being weird, but if I were you I'd kind of ignore what I'm theoretically looking for and focus on finding something well-paced and well-written, that is likely to suck me in quickly. Spy x Family is being regarded as one of the highlights of recent anime seasons. Also heard great things about Summertime Render. Both should be easily-digestible and might get you into the mood to watch something more demanding. When I get back from a break with anime going for serious stuff is usually the surest way of getting immediate burnout.
  7. Watching King's Game and not only I've just experienced a long exposition dump delivered calmly by a character who's LITERALY ON FIRE, but also characters seem to freak out a lot more when the King tells them to hook up than when it forces them to kill each other... Not only is this anime unlike any other, it also gives me new insights into Japan's demographic crisis. Truly a worthwhile watch.
  8. Beautiful story is quite a bold way to put it still. xDDD But honestly, I think that even if something like MB is generally not your thing the first (neutral?) ending is possibly worth slogging through all the torture porn. It's one of the most imaginative conclusions I've seen in a VN – unique and thought-provoking enough to kind of set up the true ending for being a disappointment. You could stop reading at that point and do not miss much of value. Also, the bad route is a just massive stream of porn and I don't think it even tried being anything else. A hard-pass for anyone that approaches MB for the story as it literally adds nothing narrative-wise and goes on forever. Although I chuckled at one or two scenes there because of how over-the-top they were. If you ever change your mind, I have a legitimate copy of euphoria I'd be willing to share. Always curious to see what people that aren't into that content make out of its story, particularly Makiba's route as it's almost universally loathed and also my personal favourite for its extremely-uncomfortable Stockholm syndrome plotline.
  9. Cheesy 80s j-pop is my vibe lately for some reason...
  10. This is not a requirement by any means, but consider using the blog functionality for these kinds of posts in the future. It's pretty much the dedicated space for reviews and such, particularly those posted on external sites, while the main board is more discussion-oriented. Also it will group all your review posts in a personalized space which will be easier for interested people to browse than posts scattered on the main board.
  11. That actually looks pretty interesting! Not exactly the moe romance the OP was looking for, but pretty stylish. Also, I'm slightly scared of your willingness to necro the most cursed corners of Fuwa, not sure what would happen if all of them came back to life. xD
  12. Well, I'd be curious about your thoughts if you did, the concept itself is also something I also like quite a lot, just not in this particular version. People say the original Kino's Journey (and to a lesser degree the remake) does the "reasonably selfish protagonists" thing very well, I imagine it's overall more of a worthwhile watch.
  13. The incessant yuri baiting (with your typical "weird girl obsessively in love with the protagonist" trope) likely didn't endear me to it either... But yeah, I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone, the ratings it gets are generally high, but it falls apart if you actually pay attention to what the episodic stories show you. Plus the tone shifts in some of them are borderline-comical and the show hardly earns the really heavy drama it occasionally tries to pull off.
  14. I've been watching plain unhealthy amounts of anime lately, both by myself and with my GF... Not all of it worth talking about, but there were a few interesting ones too. First, the amusing disasters. Psychic Wars and Dark Cat are two legendarily bad old anime movies and both are hilarious in their own ways. Psychic Wars is a story of a surgeon that becomes magical shinto superman and punches demons. It's also so horribly edited it's barely comprehensible and the fight scenes are so dumb and cliched I nearly died from laughter on a few occasions. Utterly horrible and taking itself so seriously it's histerical. 1/10, highly recommended. Dark Cat is a story of two magical shapeshifting brothers fighting demons straight out of Maggot Baits. I'm not even joking, it's an unironic mix of Saturday morning cartoon (the dialogue, the villain and general story setup) and visuals straight out of guro hentai. Also, it was dubbed by a hentai company completely clueless on how to deal with proper anime and the dub is the only version I was able to find online. Quite a glorious combination. Also, I think Big Order is absolutely hilarious too. I understand that people watching it expecting anything half decent were extremely upset, but the kitsch postapocalyptic world, stupid edgy protagonist, chaotic storytelling, awful CGI and bonkers fanservice wasting tons of already too-limited runtime are an incredible mix. When it goes to full series anime, I haven't seen anything this comically inept since Hand Shakers, which means Big Order too will hold a very special place in my heart. When it goes to more ambivalent stuff, Elaina's Journey was quite a letdown for me... Really weird anime when it goes to tone and pacing. The idea of somewhat aimlessly exploring a vast fantasy world is definitely my jam, but the morals and structure of the story are arguably awful. Elaina is theoretically taught early on that despite her powers as a talented witch she's just one person and it's not her role to save the world... But there's no consistency whatsoever in what she does. She can be passive when all she needed to do is say something (the early episode about a slave is particularly jarring, with Elaina narrating the problem to the audience but not doing anything at all), or get herself in life-or-death situations without much need... It's just bad writing. It's also not the kind of travelling anime that focuses a lot on the episodic stuff and slowly develops the protagonist in subtle ways... It establishes Elaina as this rather obnoxious brat, gives her tons of screentime and doesn't make her grow in any meaningful way. On moment-to-moment basis, the anime isn't exactly awful, but as a whole, it was very meh... 6/10. Adachi and Shimamura, the adaptation of one of the most-celebrated yuri LNs... Is pretty solid but also very much hurt by being a single season affair. It establishes the characters quite well, but never gets to the point that could be described as payoff by any reasonable definition – it'd either need to be a 24 episode anime for that, or at least 13 episode one with a movie/long OVA. With the 12 we've got... I kind of understand why it's rated so low. You have Adachi, who is isolated and extremely awkward, which turns her into a walking dumpster fire when she has to confront with her feeling for Shimamura and realization of being gay. The main content of the anime is her suffering through episodes of gay panic, and Shimamura being confused with what's happening. A rather tropy affair, but not something I'd label "unrealistic" or "bad" by any measure. Shimamura is maybe the more interesting part of the story, as she is much better adapted than Adachi, but also having her own set of issues. She's a kind of person that lost her way, not being motivated to do much and just going with the flow most of the time. Her social interactions are mostly empty pleasantries, she cannot dedicate herself to her studies, doesn't have meaningful hobbies... When she meets Adachi while they're both skipping classes she doesn't give much thought to the time they spend together. She has a hard time deciphering the ever-increasing attention she's getting from Adachi and her drive to deepen the relationship. It takes a lot of time and minor subplots for her to start noticing that there's something different about their bond and what it could bloom into... But you don't get to see much of that, as the anime just ends. Some people complain that the relationship dynamic in this anime is unhealthy, but hell, it's not like people only get together in a well-adjusted and straightforward fashion. The real problem is that the series do not get to the point where they work through their issues. Also, fuck, gay dating must be scary with all the ambiguity and the low chance of your random crush being available, and in an environment like Japan it must be a nightmare. Still, the series has a lot of warmth, hopefulness and excellent attention to detail. I wish there'd be enough of it to give anime viewers closure, but still, I'll give it 8/10. Oh, and I finally restarted watching Kaguya-sama, which I paused early in the second season. I easily get burned out on romcoms because unless they are short and close-ended stories, the just never move forward and never give you a resolution. The only way that can be tolerable is if the comedy or writing in general is really that good... And while I still probably needed that break, Kaguya-sama is just excellent enough of a comedy to justify narratively standing still and just having fun. Shame that we'll probably only get a proper conclusion in the upcoming movie and not the season 3 finale (I'm in the middle of season 3 now)? Still, hard to dispute the universal acclaim it gets. It's just so full of fun and charm, it's hard not to love it.
  15. Looks ok to me, I've definitely seen more jarring style differences. Edit: Maybe one thing I'd modify is the coloring. The sprite is really bright, would probably blend well with slightly deeper skin and hair colours, she's literally whiter than the clouds.
  16. Hey, don't die quite yet Fuwa. I won't allow it, because my favourite studio, Ekachi Epilka of Maou-sama Retry fame, is going to deliver us the culmination of anime history, this fall: My Life After I Became a Dummy Head Mic One Morning. ASMR themed shoujo ai original series starring a dummy head ASMR microphone as a protagonist, apparently. We can all die in piece, after we watch it.
  17. So, back to the main point! While watching the horrible OVAs, I realized that Spectral Force and Generation of Chaos games share the same, crappy setting – the world of Neverland where bad attempts at dark fantasy and random christian symbolism are joined with casts of terrible characters to create truly memorable and rich experiences. To make that look extra appealing, the OVAs make sure to utilize the ugliest CGI environments and cheapest animation possible. That's not where the most funny part comes in though, as the most incredible to me is that most of them utterly fail to set up a story. First Generation of Chaos OVA opens with a character that was a talented monster tamer (pokemon trainer), but got too old and lost his ability to control them. So he's just a dude now. Great, isn't it? Always wanted to play as a retired trainer with no interesting skills or features, basically a dream scenario. Than we get a five minute story of a half demon lady that makes carpets but than tragedy happens (humans racist against demons!) and she suddenly becomes a badass warrior and join a random demon on... Well, they don't tell you on what, but presumably some kind of adventure. Cool! The second OVA, at least, is much more focused! All about a really pathetic kid trying to be a knight and his romance with a Princess in the ugliest CGI castle in history. Thrilling stuff, I kind of hoped for everyone to die after 15 minutes and as they didn't and the game likely won't let you make that hapen, I'll skip on checking it out. It's an RPG, not a VN, so I feel it's unlikely to include appropriately gruesome bad endings for that bunch of losers. The third OVA finally gets its shit together enough to offer a proper prologue. It's still terribly made and wastes a lot of the combined 48 minute runtime (in 2 episodes), but at least you get a high-stakes conflict, main characters you don't hate and clear indication what the game's story will be about. I'm amazed that Satou only needed like 6 tries as a director to get that part right. I'm sure if you gave him 20 more animes to make and 50 more dollars in budget he'd reach 5/10 territories. And well, I kind of omitted the Spectral Force OVA, which is the oldest of them all... As I'm not sure what to say about it. It's so badly directed and animated that it's neigh-incomprehensible in the first episode, but after that it just... Is. Bland, rushed, with the main character being unlikeable, it kind of does the "setting up the story" part right, but is so ugly and unappealing it's still anti-adventisement. The one thing I'm likely to remember long-term is the anime opening with a scene of an angel(/demon?) lady being crucified by a mob and bleeding with what was, going by the color, lots of raspberry sauce. It didn't really tie into anything, it was just there. I wonder if any of these games had decent stories? I'm sure these tie-ins make them a disservice, but could they be this shitty if the source material was decent? I wonder...
  18. Oh my god, that Tsui no Sora OVA... It's possibly the ugliest and most insulting thing I've watched ever. I know the original wasn't a masterpiece, but there's no semblance of the artstyle or denpa storytelling in that hentai anime... And it's just so hideous and poorly animated... Why do these things exist? I'm sad...
  19. Oh, you can try posting the topic on the visual novels subreddit, I'm sure you'll awaken some demons that way. xD Although I can't imagine a sane argument for that thesis other the one I touched upon – that there's no point to non-anime VNs/no real audience for them.
  20. Never bought anything on the SP site directly, but Denpasoft at least is a big and relatively long-running platform, it's as safe as any other online store as far as I know.
  21. I mean... Yes? Is there any reason you wouldn't be? I never had problems with paying for online purchases in PLN. And if Sekai store gives you any problem you can try Denpasoft, but still, was there any issue I haven't heard about?
  22. I guess necroposting is pretty on-brand on a dead site...
  23. Ooooh, interesting. Although it seems to be hentai, made by some crappy hentai studio, so I can imagine it suffering from the same disease as euphoria OVAs – ignoring all the cool parts and just throwing in a bunch of porn scenes with minimum context. 2.20 score is impressive though, going to check it out if I can find it online. ;]
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