In the words of Kakashi, I’ve been lost on the road of life

Newest Otaku!

Okay not lost so much, as just been incredibly busy taking care of the world’s newest otaku, see above picture!

Isabelle is now 4 and half months old. Currently is enjoying pears and takes up almost every waking second I do not spend at work. But she’s worth it 🙂

And I still get to sneak in some manga reads, check out the twitter updates as proof! 😉

Though watching new anime may be a long distant dream for me, sometimes streaming crunchyroll works on my kindle, sometimes it doesn’t. So mostly I just catch some Korean drama’s on netflix while I pump at work 🙂

Subarashiki Hibi Review

To say that university life and life in general has made vn reviews a lot priority of mine is something of an understatement, but what is also true is that it’s been a long, long time since any vn really stirred up something inside me without leaving me feeling empty at the end. Looking back on the past year, I certainly enjoyed Baldr sky and Sou Akki Muramasa, but there has just been something missing. Even stories from studios that I really liked, such as Forest and Irotoridori no Sekai, didn’t make things better (as a side note I thought both games were a little disappointing, mainly due to the very high hopes I had for them). Whatever was missing made me kind of sigh and uninstall after I reached the final ending, rather than write up ridiculously long reviews that I used to do. At one point, I came to the conclusion that for a bit over a year, I was using this blog to use up my free time to fill up some kind of hole in my heart, if you’ll pardon this horrendously clichéd expression. And so, as I grew older, there was less of an urge, less of a need to write my shallow teenaged view on life (not that growing physically older necessitated me to leave a teenaged view behind, I’m still quite attached to it).

However.

Holy flying buckets of cheese I really love Subarashiki Hibi.

When I first heard the announcement of this vn, I wasn’t particularly impressed. The biggest impression I had of Sca-ji was getting his artbook and reading H2O -footprints in the sand-, neither of which are all that good. Yuri isn’t something that’s very interesting to me. The art looked pretty good, but the coloring that comes from KeroQ and its related companies always looked kind of blank and cold in my eyes. After the game’s release, I took a look at the CG pack, and some of the h-CGs were… well… really disturbing. The one bestiality scene alone hardened my resolve to never go near this game with a 10ft pole. Then, all these positive, raving reviews came in, and my curiosity was piqued. What on earth is making all of these people say such good things?  This is a seriously long-ass intro, but please read on to find out.

Premise:

Subarashiki Hibi is a story about a small group of people, and their lives as they progress through the first 3 weeks of July, 2012. The story is told through multiple perspectives, and finishing each chunk of the perspectives unlocks the next part.

The beginning of the story is told from the perspectives of Minakami Yuki, a tomboy with a bad memory and a habit of skipping classes, much to the chagrin of her childhood friends, Kagami and Tsukasa (if this sounds somewhat familiar, just bear with it and don’t focus too much). One day, she meets a mysterious girl named Takashima Zakuro, who seems oddly familiar with her. Through some plot twist straight out of an eroge (wait what), all four girls end up living together, and so they lived on in their fun, lovely and misunderstanding filled lives. But there is something missing. There are bits and pieces of the story which seems to be hinting at something more, something ominous. And should Yuki choose to pursue the truth, she will wake up near the end of the chapter, then go to school only to hear that Zakuro has committed suicide. This event propels her to search for the truth of what happened, racing before the prophesied end of the world on July 20th, a little over a week after Zakuro’s death.

Naruto Ch 599 – The reveal of the worst secret ever!

Yeah I know, its been forever since I posted something about Naruto. Its not that I haven’t been reading it, but really what is there to post. Ninja war yada, yada, yada. Sasuke and Itachi meet up, Itachi dies again, Sasuke learns nothing from it yada, yada, yada.

But I figured I had to post something about this because, well, is there anyone who hadn’t figured this out back when we were told his name was Tobi? Madara/Tobi is Obito! Worst kept secret EVER!

New Rurouni Kenshin Subbed Trailer

New Kenshin trailer is finally up, I will definitely have to watch this 🙂

Kamisama Hajimemashita preview

Image wise, it looks pretty faithful to the manga.  YAY for an animated Tomoe 🙂  I can’t wait for October!

So… I just finished Baldr Sky

And there are SO many things I can say about this series. The music is fantastic, the plot is intricate (not to mention addictive and long as hell), the world view is vast, the characters are likeable, the older characters are VERY likeable, the art is hit or miss but somehow turned more loli-ish as it went on…….. But I can’t go into details.

Why? Because there are battles in this game, and they have tired me out so much that I can’t move my fingers long enough to write a full post anymore.

There are so many battles in the last route. And they make you go through the last route twice JUST to unlock the 2 minute epilogue. And there are SO. MANY. BATTLES. The battles, while fun at the beginning, has traumatized me. At some point when I was fighting off a 40 strong swarm of little green robot things I realized that people who play these sort of games are insane and that after I just get through the battles I am never touching this game ever again.

tl;dr: the visual novel aspects of this game are fantastic. I hate any kind of game with fighting and I still made it through. If you don’t hate fighting and have around 80 hours to spare then for Noi’s sake PLAY THIS GAME.

Seraphim call

Seraphim call isn’t what usually comes to mind when the phrase “Sunrise anime” comes up, as it’s a relatively old series that wasn’t all that popular even in its own time. Every episode focuses on a different heroine, each with her own style and story. This led to a lot of directional freedom, but also rather restricts the amount of story that can be told. In this case, I wouldn’t say that the length undermines the story, as even the silliest story (involving saving the world and giant robots) can be analysed somewhat. The meat of this series, however, are contained with the darker tales. Episodes 5 and 6 are my favourites, as they’re nearly identical, but the differences between the twins present the biggest mindscrew I’ve watched this year. Every story involves an interesting set up or a twist of some sort, and this is definitely a series to be rewatched. My main complaints are about the lackluster soundtrack and the last episode. There was such potential to tie all the stories together, or have one story unlock plot points for another, but that option wasn’t taken advantage of. Overall, it’s a nice little series, and it’s definitely worth a watch if you don’t mind the high variance in episode quality.

 

Death by moegasm

Inu x Boku SS is cute. Reeeeeeeeeeeally cute. Karuta brings moegams, Ririchiyo is just hhnnnnnnnnnnnng, and the cutesy fluffy romance sprinkled in between the comedy is just tooth-rottingly sweet. But Soushi is just delicious. From his normal look, to his casual sweater with glasses look, to his shouta look, to his smiling and sadistic 天然黑 tendencies… Ohohoho I can’t remember the last time I liked a male character this much. My only complaint is that the anime ended before the meat of the plot set in. What a waste…