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What I've Seen Recently: Mid February - Late April, 2024
spring has sprung.
manga and anime
- i started reading maria no danzai on mangamogurare's twitter... post, i don't wanna say recommendation, but the summary caught my eye. i've been enjoying it! uh, with some caveats.
i guess i'll talk about the stuff i like first? the art is just lovely. charming character designs and really strong use of the color black; there's some really strong and well paced horror like when mari(a) kidnaps kowase. i like the characters too. mari(a) is hard not to love as a protagonist, she's basically distilled revenge victim. kinugawa is probably my favorite though i think he's an interesting conclusion of the "loyal thug" trope where the loyalty is what wins out and also he doesn't seem dumb as a box of rocks like so many others of that stereotype. taiichiro is bland at this moment in time but he's also just hot. love disheveled ojisans.
now for the stuff i don't really like: i don't think the oedipal stuff or the sexual context is serving any greater narrative purpose and is kinda annoying. like i know mari(a) is a hot lady and i want a figure of her but there's nothing to imply she felt that way towards kiritaka or kiritaka felt that way to her and her randomly having a shrine to her dead kid she looks at in her underwear complete with a weird doll just comes out of nowhere and isn't sold well just like the scene where shikimi pisses herself in fear in front of mari(a). C- on fetishes. the timeline is also totally fucked like there's just no way she got extensive plastic surgery and came up for elaborate murder schemes for her son's bullies in 2 years. like be serious. although she doesn't even look that different after the surgery which i can't tell is laziness on the part of the artist or an intentional plot point that's set up in the future yet...
still though i'm enjoying it and i would recommend picking it up if you like revenge thrillers just for the nice art. content warnings: severe bullying, suicide, murder, sexual situations (including rape and underage sex although the underage sex is not really shown on screen and i don't really think it happened at all...? see black box for more about this CW: shikimi, the girl of the friend group, does badger games where she leads a guy on to want to fuck her but reveals she's a teenager before any actual sex stuff happens and then blackmails him, but no on screen sex with her is shown.) so keep that in mind.
- continuing my quest to read every manga with yandere in the title i started reading my yandere neighbor and it's surprisingly cute and sweet. it pretty heavily leans comedy instead of horror or drama. i really got a kick out of how in the third chapter kishi took okada's drawing of him from the garbage and instead of just keeping it like i thought he would he made it into a t-shirt LMAO. but there's a good standard of yan here too! like him showing up at karaoke with a boom microphone to record her LMFAO...?? kinda based honestly, sometimes i feel like i've seen all the tropes possible but then they surprise me with a new one.
i don't mean to sound like a boomer, but it kinda feels like they don't make manga like this anymore... everything from the character designs to the extremely liberal and only slightly cringe typesetter notes reacting to stuff in the story feels like something i would've read circa late 00-early 10's. part of that charm might be lost on you if you didn't have a similar experience but i still think it's worth a look.
content warnings: comedic flavored stalking is still stalking king even if it is good shit.
--
video games
- i played and completed 20 small mazes (here), a free game on steam that was exactly what it says on the tin! it's very charming, the mazes are simple enough to figure out and it kept me entertained for an hour or two. i feel a bit odd posting it here but i did say... somewhere i wanted to chronicle everything i've consumed since i started this so yeah even though i can't say much else without outright spoiling it, i recommend it!
- i DID say i would eventually play more games from the yandere game jam! i played where winter crows go from the yandere game jam and i sort of liked it? i was impressed by the voice acting and original ending theme song. those touches felt very professional. but as a yandere game i just didn't buy crowe as a yandere sorry... you basically have to be such a huge jackass to him picking every negative answer to get him to snap lol so i think at that point he'd just wanna sacrifice you to his crow pals and be done with it and in the good ending he's not yandere enough for me AND in the other bad ending aspen/the player character doesn't feel like they'd be cool with luring other people to their deaths even if they were thirsty. yeah basically lot of polish but writing was really miss for me. not great would not recommend even if you are horny.
content warnings: murder in all routes, drugging and confinement in the yan ending, animal death in the yan-good ending.
- i completed all the story stages of we ♥ katamari: royal reverie but haven't yet rolled up all the objects. i mean... it's katamari damacy, it's hard for me not to love it. i mused a little bit in my previous entry of how i was worried i wouldn't remember all the stages and as soon as i booted up the goddamn sweets stage i was like "oh! ah yeah THIS is the shit". i don't know what it is about mashing giant cookies into an inedible gross ball but i played this stage probably more than is sane and healthy so that one came back to me real quick. the flower stage had that burst of "hey i recognize this" serotonin too but i seem to remember struggling with it a lot more when i was a child... i wonder why?
one thing i have to complain about is the performance issues. i played on switch, and it was definitely worse than the first katamari damacy remake. loading screens often have a hard and dramatic pause to them (by which i mean a black screen in between the colored variations of level loading such as when you trigger a "you're 30cm now go here"). the game also lags HARD when you roll up a lot of a certain type of object, i noticed it rolling up bamboo in the big bird level. and when starting levels there's a noticeable pause... i'm not normally one to notice these things, they need to be very dramatic for me to care, and unfortunately it is. not sure if it has this issues on PC though, maybe pick it up there if you want.
--
mobile games
- i'm finally doing genshin impact's fontaine's story quests... but i don't have much to say about it. i like it! it's fun! genshin impact is fun and that makes me angry sometimes. i really liked the phoenix wright knockoff mechanics of the trials, it's an interesting way to make sure you're actually engaging with the story. which apparently genshin fans need help with, but details... i don't really get why childe was accused of murder out of nowhere yet though lmao seems kinda random and fanservice-y since childe is so popular but whatever.
not a very meaty entry this time tbh but i've been sitting on it for a while and kinda forgot about it so i'm just throwing it out into the world. love you all, be nice, see you soon.
manga and anime
- i started reading maria no danzai on mangamogurare's twitter... post, i don't wanna say recommendation, but the summary caught my eye. i've been enjoying it! uh, with some caveats.
i guess i'll talk about the stuff i like first? the art is just lovely. charming character designs and really strong use of the color black; there's some really strong and well paced horror like when mari(a) kidnaps kowase. i like the characters too. mari(a) is hard not to love as a protagonist, she's basically distilled revenge victim. kinugawa is probably my favorite though i think he's an interesting conclusion of the "loyal thug" trope where the loyalty is what wins out and also he doesn't seem dumb as a box of rocks like so many others of that stereotype. taiichiro is bland at this moment in time but he's also just hot. love disheveled ojisans.
now for the stuff i don't really like: i don't think the oedipal stuff or the sexual context is serving any greater narrative purpose and is kinda annoying. like i know mari(a) is a hot lady and i want a figure of her but there's nothing to imply she felt that way towards kiritaka or kiritaka felt that way to her and her randomly having a shrine to her dead kid she looks at in her underwear complete with a weird doll just comes out of nowhere and isn't sold well just like the scene where shikimi pisses herself in fear in front of mari(a). C- on fetishes. the timeline is also totally fucked like there's just no way she got extensive plastic surgery and came up for elaborate murder schemes for her son's bullies in 2 years. like be serious. although she doesn't even look that different after the surgery which i can't tell is laziness on the part of the artist or an intentional plot point that's set up in the future yet...
still though i'm enjoying it and i would recommend picking it up if you like revenge thrillers just for the nice art. content warnings: severe bullying, suicide, murder, sexual situations (including rape and underage sex although the underage sex is not really shown on screen and i don't really think it happened at all...? see black box for more about this CW: shikimi, the girl of the friend group, does badger games where she leads a guy on to want to fuck her but reveals she's a teenager before any actual sex stuff happens and then blackmails him, but no on screen sex with her is shown.) so keep that in mind.
- continuing my quest to read every manga with yandere in the title i started reading my yandere neighbor and it's surprisingly cute and sweet. it pretty heavily leans comedy instead of horror or drama. i really got a kick out of how in the third chapter kishi took okada's drawing of him from the garbage and instead of just keeping it like i thought he would he made it into a t-shirt LMAO. but there's a good standard of yan here too! like him showing up at karaoke with a boom microphone to record her LMFAO...?? kinda based honestly, sometimes i feel like i've seen all the tropes possible but then they surprise me with a new one.
i don't mean to sound like a boomer, but it kinda feels like they don't make manga like this anymore... everything from the character designs to the extremely liberal and only slightly cringe typesetter notes reacting to stuff in the story feels like something i would've read circa late 00-early 10's. part of that charm might be lost on you if you didn't have a similar experience but i still think it's worth a look.
content warnings: comedic flavored stalking is still stalking king even if it is good shit.
--
video games
- i played and completed 20 small mazes (here), a free game on steam that was exactly what it says on the tin! it's very charming, the mazes are simple enough to figure out and it kept me entertained for an hour or two. i feel a bit odd posting it here but i did say... somewhere i wanted to chronicle everything i've consumed since i started this so yeah even though i can't say much else without outright spoiling it, i recommend it!
- i DID say i would eventually play more games from the yandere game jam! i played where winter crows go from the yandere game jam and i sort of liked it? i was impressed by the voice acting and original ending theme song. those touches felt very professional. but as a yandere game i just didn't buy crowe as a yandere sorry... you basically have to be such a huge jackass to him picking every negative answer to get him to snap lol so i think at that point he'd just wanna sacrifice you to his crow pals and be done with it and in the good ending he's not yandere enough for me AND in the other bad ending aspen/the player character doesn't feel like they'd be cool with luring other people to their deaths even if they were thirsty. yeah basically lot of polish but writing was really miss for me. not great would not recommend even if you are horny.
content warnings: murder in all routes, drugging and confinement in the yan ending, animal death in the yan-good ending.
- i completed all the story stages of we ♥ katamari: royal reverie but haven't yet rolled up all the objects. i mean... it's katamari damacy, it's hard for me not to love it. i mused a little bit in my previous entry of how i was worried i wouldn't remember all the stages and as soon as i booted up the goddamn sweets stage i was like "oh! ah yeah THIS is the shit". i don't know what it is about mashing giant cookies into an inedible gross ball but i played this stage probably more than is sane and healthy so that one came back to me real quick. the flower stage had that burst of "hey i recognize this" serotonin too but i seem to remember struggling with it a lot more when i was a child... i wonder why?
one thing i have to complain about is the performance issues. i played on switch, and it was definitely worse than the first katamari damacy remake. loading screens often have a hard and dramatic pause to them (by which i mean a black screen in between the colored variations of level loading such as when you trigger a "you're 30cm now go here"). the game also lags HARD when you roll up a lot of a certain type of object, i noticed it rolling up bamboo in the big bird level. and when starting levels there's a noticeable pause... i'm not normally one to notice these things, they need to be very dramatic for me to care, and unfortunately it is. not sure if it has this issues on PC though, maybe pick it up there if you want.
--
mobile games
- i'm finally doing genshin impact's fontaine's story quests... but i don't have much to say about it. i like it! it's fun! genshin impact is fun and that makes me angry sometimes. i really liked the phoenix wright knockoff mechanics of the trials, it's an interesting way to make sure you're actually engaging with the story. which apparently genshin fans need help with, but details... i don't really get why childe was accused of murder out of nowhere yet though lmao seems kinda random and fanservice-y since childe is so popular but whatever.
not a very meaty entry this time tbh but i've been sitting on it for a while and kinda forgot about it so i'm just throwing it out into the world. love you all, be nice, see you soon.