#admittedly I never finished the whole series until a few months ago because I lost the 2nd book when I was younger

[creative-hanyou-girl]

My mood right now.

[the-homicidediaries]

Issei Sagawa

“Sometimes I wonder why I did such a horrible thing. Maybe it’s because I come from another planet, or another dimension and accidentally fell to Earth like a meteorite, disguised as a baby crying on the street. My mother walked by and took pity on me. I must have come from a place of cannibals, and I’m the only one of my kind who exists on this planet.”

Good afternoon, everyone who takes the time to read this!

Today, I have the very displeasure of telling you about one of the most.. bizarre human beings I have ever read about.

I have been interested in true crime ever since I could remember. My father is really interested in it as well, so growing up there were always books laying around about the worst of the worst kind of people. Even to this day, my dad and I share stories we heard or a new podcast we listened to or swap books; it’s real fun.  And when you are heavily interested in true crime, you hear and see so many similar stories. This person had an abusive childhood and became a serial killer, this person was not longer interested in being a family man so he killed his whole family and moved away to start a new life, this person was strung out on drugs, this person caught her husband cheating on her and stabbed him as a crime of passion, etc. And while I am not downplaying or excusing these murders AT ALL, because no one should be murdered, I do find myself skipping stories like that. They don’t check my boxes.

Cannibals check my box.  And I have, admittedly, unconsciously, been surrounding myself with cannibalistic aspects. I just finished (another) three part podcast about Jeffrey Dahmer, I’m reading My Friend Dahmer, and watching Attack on Titan like my life depends on it. (Attack on Titan is a Japanese manga series turned into a long running anime about three conjoined towns who are constantly being attacked and eaten by the HUGE human-like zombie creatures, but that is for another day.)

Have I rambled enough? Yes. Yes, I think so. Let’s get into ittttt.

Issei Sagawa, known as Pang or The Kobe Cannibal, was born on April 26th, 1949 in Kobe, Japan to a very wealthy family. Issei has said himself that his childhood was the happiest time of his life and he was a carefree child. He said his parents love him deeply. One thing to note about Issei is that he was born prematurely (and he looks.. off) and doctors did not think he would survive. Issei said because of this, he has always seen himself as an undesirable person. So, instead of friends, Issei had books! Because his family was so wealthy, Issei was afforded an incredible education and was able to travel all over the world and learn about music, art, literature, etc.  He was very interested in art. This will come back around later.

So how does a rich, seemingly normal, intelligent child become a cannibal?  Issei contributes a few things to this: *Issei said his first cannibalistic urge happened when he was in first grade and saw a fellow classmate’s thighs. *Issei said sex was a taboo subject around his household. He said when he had reached a certain age, he began having erections, like all boys do, but he thought he was sick and was too embarrassed to tell anyone. He didn’t know how to relieve himself at this time.. soooo. He, uh, got help from his dog.  Yeah. Yeeeah. (I watched an interview he did with Vice about ten years ago, which I will link below, and watching him describe this so nonchalantly made me the most uncomfortable. Actually, he is nonchalant the entire interview and it’s so disturbing and uncomfy. At one point he says, “I think my sexual desires began to distort around that time.”  Yeah, I would say so, buddy.) *Issei said he would have a reoccurring dream where he and his brother were being boiled in a large pot to be eaten. Issei said he flipped the script and began to fantasize about what it would be like to eat someone. As with most premeditated killers, his fantasies escalated from curiosity to behavior. *Issei was obsessed with western women. He said they are tall and beautiful and he has described himself as a “weak, ugly, and small man”. In an interview after what he keeps calling an “incident”, Issei claimed one of the reasons he consumed human flesh was to “absorb her energy”. 

Issei said he did practice a good amount of restraint for his cannibalistic urges until his college years. While attending Wako University in Tokyo, Issei said he saw a beautiful, blonde, German woman walking by and he was “dazzled by her white thighs”.  One day, he broke into this woman’s apartment on the ground floor. He said his plan was to hit her in the head with an umbrella so he could get a knife from her kitchen and cut into her buttocks and eat it. He was extremely hesitant and his knees accidentally brushed against her stomach, waking her up. She screamed and Issei fled. Police charged him with attempted rape.  Issei said he did explain to psychiatrists about his sexual urges but they didn’t consider it cannibalism and let him go. 

After this, Akira (his father) sent Issei to study comparative literature at Sorbonne University in France in 1981. In the interview, as Issei is recalling this, he said his mother had the an extremely sad look on her face the day he was leaving, “like she knew something horrible was going to happen”. (I could think of a reason why.)

Issei had not forgotten about how close he had gotten to fulfilling his fantasy of eating a European woman back in Tokyo. He was convinced if he was more prepared he could follow through with it flawlessly. He said when he moved to France, he would bring home a sex worker almost every night, but everytime he tried to shoot her, his fingers would freeze. While studying at Sorbonne University, Issei set his eyes on 25-year old Dutch student, Renée Hartevelt. Issei said Renée was so beautiful and he had never seen anyone like her before. (She really was stunning and looked like such a sweet person.) He also said he didn’t want to get caught staring at her, so he began making sketches of her.  From what I read, and I do not know how accurate this is, the two started as friends and eventually Issei began to pursue Renée romantically. He would take her on dates to art museums and dinner. When he confessed his feelings for her, she insisted they just remain friends because she was not sexually attracted to him.  So Issei lied to Renée and told her his professor wanted him to record some German poetry. Renée didn’t think anything about helping out a fellow classmate, so she was happy to come over and help.  Issei said he picked out the poem she read, and as she was reading the poem out loud at his desk, he pulled a rifle out of a closet and shot her in the neck. He said she kept reciting the poem after he shot her, then she just.. stopped. Issei said he fainted after he shot her and when he came to he almost called an ambulance for her, but he knew he would regret it if he lost this opportunity to act out his fantasies.

I am going to quote Issei verbatim from his interview with Vice.

TRIGGER WARNING

“I lied to her that my professor wanted some German poetry recorded. That was the pretext. She didn’t doubt a thing. I chose the poetry. I reached for the gun while she was reading. I was talking to her with a smile on my face. I was really scared. Yet I did pull the trigger. She... kept on talking... until suddenly she fell silent. First she collapsed onto the desk, then fell to the ground with the chair. I laid a towel under her head then undressed her. I had everything planned out in my head from which part i would start feasting on and such. Starting with her ass. I thought it looked the most delicious. It had to be the right cheek, not the left. The left cheek is closer to the heart and I’m scared of blood. I abruptly bit into it, but it was too hard to bite into. It hurt my jaw. I tried cutting in with a fruit knife but it didn’t go through. I gave up and went to the market. I bought a curved meat knife. Finally it went through the flesh. I thought I’d see red meat right away, but there was a yellow corn-like substance, which I later found out was fat. I had to cut deeply to reach the red meat. I don’t remember if I sliced it off, or tore it off with my fingers. I put most of my favorite parts, like the thighs, in the fridge.”

My face right now.

He’s leaving out a lot of details on this.. right after he shot Renée, he had sex with her corpse. And, like I said before, he is so nonchalant about all of this. He ate a LOT of her. I saw a picture of eleven paper plates loaded with human flesh, muscles, and fat. Both of her breasts, her nose, her tongue, her bottom lip, and most of her lower half (her hips, middle of her stomach, and thighs) was missing. He did say he tried to eat her breast, but it was mostly fat and he didn’t enjoy it. Her buttocks, however, “(It) melted in my mouth like raw tuna in a sushi restaurant.” He continued to try different parts of Renée’s body. He would fry pieces of her and eat other parts with mustard. He even decapitated her. He took pictures of Renée’s mutilated body and would have sex with it while listening to the recording of her reading the German poem.

For four days.

He mentioned how June is the hottest month in Paris and he was worried the body would start to rot. So he took Renée’s body to the bathroom and cut her up so he could get rid of it. (He also mentioned after finishing his graduate program, he wanted to go to Greece. He said he took a big luxurious boat and actually shared a table with a butcher and his wife during dinner. He said the butcher was a fat, jolly man and told him how to butcher meat. Issei wrote a letter to the butcher after “the incident” thanking him. He said the butcher never wrote back.)

One he had cut the body up into pieces, he placed the pieces into two suitcases and, made plans to dump the body in a lake in Bois de Boulogne, called in a cab.  “It wasn’t easy getting the body into [the suitcases]. The torso is extremely heavy. It’s really hard to cut to begin with. It’s nothing like a horror movie.” When the cab driver picked up Issei’s suitcases to put them in the cab, he asked Issei if he had a dead body in them. (That tidbit made me really sad.)

Once Issei reached the lake, he pushed the suitcases down the slope. He vastly underestimated how light it still was outside at 8 pm. He said several people were sunbathing still. The sun was setting across the lake, and Issei said for the first time, he saw color. He was fascinated watching a young boy and his grandfather at the top of a hill and while he was distracted, another man came up, opened one of the suitcases, and saw a bloody bedsheet with legs wrapped in it. A woman screamed and someone else yelled, “Murderer!”  Issei said he just walked away.

Issei was, of course, arrested. He was interrogated by three psychiatrists who deemed him mentally insane. Issei was sent to a criminal psych ward, but before he could even begin treatment, he was deported back to Japan because the French people were very uncomfortable with him being there at their expense.  Once Issei arrived back in Japan, he mentioned the hospital he was staying at didn’t conclude that he was mentally ill, just that he had a personality disorder. Issei was forced to leave the hospital without undergoing any treatment. He did not serve any time in prison for ungodly crimes he had committed.  Actually, in a weird turn of events, he became a local celebrity. He became an author, had several interviews, has illustrated mangas (that’s why I mentioned he loves art), made porn, and was even a food critic. He even travelled to Canada, Mexico, and Iceland with two friends of him. I don’t have time to cover all of that because that in itself could be a whole other essay, but like I said, I will link the YouTube video I watched below.

And that is the gruesome, awful, gut wrenching story of Issei Sagawa.

Below are pictures of Issei Sagawa and his victim, Renée Hartevelt. I am also linking the Vice interview on YouTube as well as the crime scene photos. Please view at your own risk.

Thank you for reading. <3

Crime scene photos: https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/sagawa-issei-photos-2.htm Vice Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BosZxa1bYcE&t=336s

[toomuchtimenerd]

Review for ‘The Queen’s Rising’ series by Rebecca Ross

I stayed up until 3am last night to finish this 2-part series and wow oh wow do I not regret it at all. Both the first book, The Queen’s Rising, and its sequel The Queen’s Resistance had pretty slow starts... but jeez once the plots got going they really got going. This duology was one of the many books that I had put on hold awhile ago. I think I originally wanted to read this during my sadgirl post-breakup phase exactly two years ago, a 3-month long period of time where I got broken up with, had an identity crisis, and proceeded to drop out of my sorority while fully embracing my inner nerd. Disclaimer: I loved being in a sorority, I really did. It just took up way too much of my time and I had realized juggling sorority duties and school left me with no time to pursue my own personal hobbies. 

BUT ANYWAY, I’m really glad I finished this series and really glad I took my time with it. The Queen’s Rising has a pretty slow start and by start I mean probably the first half of the entire book. But it became super complex with all the court politics going on and honestly it went from slow to holy shit whaT’S HAPPENING AHH over the course of like a chapter halfway through the book. The Queen’s Resistance was more or less the same, except with way more political twists (in my opinion, of course) and a touch more romance. Emphasis on touch, because neither of these books were romance-focused or even had that much romance at all, which was kind of a bummer because hello it’s me the lover of all things sappy romance. But I’ll get to that in a second.

The Queen’s Rising follows a young girl named Brienna who essentially gets dumped by her grandfather at a prestigious academy that trains young girls to become ‘passions’. This refers to someone who is master at one of the five subjects: art, music, drama, wit, and knowledge. Brienna’s mother dies before the start of the story, and Brienna’s father is purposefully kept a secret from her. Brienna herself dabbles in each of the five passions before settling on knowledge, which is taught by Master Cartier. Her biggest fears at the beginning of the book is not being picked up by a patron who will endorse the utilization of her passion, and unfortunately this comes true. But she’s offered by the academy headmistress to stay the summer and continue studying her passion, and the headmistress will try her best to pair her with a suitable patron in a few months. Brienna agrees to this and stays in contact with Master Cartier through letters for much of the summer when suddenly everything changed when the fire nation attacked. Just kidding. Brienna shares her strange visions of a Maevana lord from over a century ago with the headmistress, who gives her the choice to choose a strange man who goes by the name of Jourdain as her patron father. Brienna complies, and basically her entire fate is changed at this point.

So my first thoughts were that I really liked the sisterhood that went on throughout the six girls at the academy. Even though the book opens with the conclusion of their schooling we, as the reader, can still get a glimpse of how deep their relationships go. Ciri was a little bit of a brat, but I personally don’t blame her due to her unusual circumstance of sharing an instructor with someone else and Merei was LITERALLY Brienna’s ride-or-die. Obviously spoilers (because my reviews are always ridden with spoilers), but Merei’s role later on in the plot while they’re all in Maevana had me mentally screaming “YESSS SIS”. Cause honestly if I was Brienna, that’s what I would’ve done, especially when Merei shot Allenach on the battlefield. Well, maybe not if I was bleeding out on the ground but still. 

And how could I forget, Brienna the main character. I liked her quite a bit, truly, but if I’m being nit-picky then I definitely do have an issue with how her character progresses in The Queen’s Rising. Brienna starts off as someone who is clearly headstrong and determined, so I guess that’s ultimately the drive that keeps her going through the revolution and such. But I kind of felt like she went from “sheltered girl who’s only ever had time for books” trope to “Maevana warrior who is willing to fight and die for her rightful queen” a little too quickly. I get that she is half Maevan on her dad’s side (who is holy shit such a dick) but it just seems kind of abrupt for her to go from “I grew up as a dainty fair maiden in Valenia my whole entire life and don’t know anything about Maevana outside of what I learned from books” to “I’m going to beg the cruel king of Maevana for my adopted father’s safe passage back into the country and then when no one’s paying attention to me I’m going to scout this land I’ve never been on to look for a stone that has been lost for over a century and everything will be fine” all in the span of... maybe two or three chapters? We are shown that she receives sword/combat lessons from Isolde, the rightful queen of Maevana, but if my mental timeline for this story is correct then those lessons should have only been over the course of maybe two weeks. How much sword technique can a sheltered eighteen-year-old girl actually learn in two weeks? Enough to walk around enemy territory with a concealed weapon and be confident enough to use said weapon when needed? Errr... I don’t know fam that just doesn’t seem realistic. 

Another related issue I have with Brienna is that I feel like she embraces Maevana as her home incredibly quickly. In The Queen’s Rising we found out that Master Cartier is actually Lord Aodhan Morgane, the son of Kane Morgane who had survived the failed first uprising as an infant. He, like Brienna, spent virtually his entire life growing up in Valenia and was schooled in the passion of knowledge. In The Queen’s Resistance every other chapter was in Cartier’s POV, so we got a lot of glimpses into his personal thoughts and his own struggles with returning to Maevana. Unlike Brienna, Cartier/Aodhan really struggled with settling into Maevana, being a Lord, finding his place in a land that he didn’t grow up in, and trying to be a leader to people he had never met before. A lot of the first half of The Queen’s Resistance was centered around Cartier/Aodhan’s inner turmoil in these regards, whereas Brienna (in BOTH books) never seemed to have this struggle despite having a very similar upbringing. Brienna just seems to fit right into Maevana in a way that doesn’t seem particularly realistic or natural given the circumstances that surround her upbringing. 

Now onto the romance! The romance is all centered between Brienna and Cartier, and there are some subtle hints at the beginning of The Queen’s Rising that indicates this is the main relationship throughout the story. However, like the plot this relationship does not really exist or evolve in any way until after the halfway point of the book, when Brienna finds out that Cartier and Lord Morgane are one and the same. Which, by the way, came as a HUGE shocker to me. I DEFINITELY did not see that coming. I assumed Cartier would show up in Maevana in some way or another, but definitely not like that. It was a great twist though, and having both Brienna and Cartier in Allenach’s castle made for a great yet somewhat slow-burn romance. Admittedly, the romance aspect was pretty negligible in The Queen’s Rising. There’s a little bit more emphasis on their relationship in the sequel, but even then it’s not all that much... unfortunately. I really liked these two, and I thought the matching constellations on their passion cloaks were JUST SO DAMN TOUCHING. And the ending of The Queen’s Resistance with the whole golden thread tradition low key had me clutching my chest for a solid two seconds. So the final verdict here is that for the little bits of romance that this series featured, it was beautiful. But ultimately romance wasn’t the focus, nor was it even an emphasis, and if I could have things my way I would’ve definitely liked there to be a little more romance building and one-on-one moments between the pair.

Let’s see... I’m racking my memory for any notable thoughts on some of the side characters. Not gonna lie, Isolde fell pretty flat to me and despite her being the queen I personally could not bring myself to care all that much for her. Luc was a jolly guy, but again not very notable or stand-out-ish in a good way. While it doesn’t bother me, I do have to ask what was the point of Neeve’s character? She shows up in The Queen’s Resistance, and we learn pretty early on that she’s actually another one of Brienna’s half siblings through her father. I don’t understand why Neeve was cast aside by Allenach, after all wasn’t she a daughter that he so desperately wanted? Illegitimacy didn’t matter to him anyway, he could’ve just legitimized her and the fact that Neeve’s mother was dead meant that Allenach didn’t need to worry about anyone influencing Neeve aside from himself. Was Allenach banking THAT much on Brienna? I dunno, none of Neeve’s backstory really makes sense to me or brings much value to the plot either. I like the character just fine, I just don’t understand her purpose... aside from being a long-lost half-sister to the main character. 

I also kept thinking Sean Allenach would eventually betray the queen’s side but he never did, which also makes little sense to me. I mean I guess deep down he really is just a good kid, but it just seems so unlikely for that to be the case when both his older brother and his father are incredibly cruel people. I understood why Ewan and Keela didn’t take after their father, Declan Lannon, because after all they always had each other and they had Tomas who was always a good guy trying to set them on a better path. So for Sean, who seemingly did not have any kind of positive influence to counter the shitty influence that is his brother and father, to be such a kind person willing to undermine his own father’s power just seems statistically unlikely I guess?

And finally, the ending of The Queen’s Resistance with the whole thing about Cartier/Aodhan’s mother still being alive was... good GOD. She was the bone sweeper??? SERIOUSLY? Now that’s a fucking plot twist that I would’ve never saw coming. My heart definitely hurt for Lile, and her written account of what had happened to her over the last 25 years nearly brought tears to my eyes. I do wonder though, when Declan said he loved Lile was he referring to romantic love or the love shared between a mother and son? I was assuming the second type of love, since Declan kept referring to Cartier/Aodhan as ‘brother’. But in Lile’s written account of what happened in her life she writes that she took the Lannon name after ten years in the dungeons. I feel like there’s a lot of ambiguity as to what that actually means. Did she essentially become Declan’s consort? Or did she remain a motherly figure to him and her sharing Declan’s family name made it more real for him? I hope it’s the second one, because I would feel VERY uncomfortable if it were the first case.

When I started this series, I thought I had it all figured out. I guessed that Brienna was the rightful Kavanagh queen within the first chapter, but little did I know the author wanted to tell the story about the queen’s right hand woman, not the queen herself. Which is a very unique approach to a story and I think Ross did quite well (despite the queen herself falling flat as a character. Perhaps some sacrifices need to be made if the story is to emphasize someone other than the queen). Again, I do wish there was a bigger emphasis on Brienna and Cartier’s relationship. I enjoyed Brienna enough, but I simply adored Cartier/Aodhan and I admit I really wanted to see more interactions between the two through Cartier’s POV. I almost wish the last chapter of The Queen’s Resistance was written in Cartier’s POV because I wanted to know what thoughts swirled through his head while he was looking for the golden thread in the tapestry. Petitioning for a prequel novella, completely through Cartier’s POV, during the seven years he spent watching Brienna grow up dabbling in other passions before choosing to become a passion of knowledge. I would pay dumb money to read this. And I would go broke, because I would pay a lot of money to read a lot of things. 

[makeste]

I was glad to see you enjoyed my Top 10 ask. You did mention you had a ranking for the arcs - would you do a ranking for them? Like, worst to best? (My guess (of the arcs you've finished): Internship arc, Hero Killer Arc, License Exam, USJ, Intro Arc, Culture Fest, Battle Trial, Pro-Hero arc, Final Exams, Sports Fest, Camino Ward, DvKp2; since you haven't liveblogged Joint Training Arc yet, no clue.) Just curious.

good morning evening everyone, and welcome to another Wednesday episode of “makeste tries to answer asks from two months ago while on the bus.” this one is a bit of an interesting challenge since it involves ranking and that always takes me a long time, but as you said, I did have an ongoing ranking of the arcs in my head, so we’ll see. at the very least the ones at the beginning and end shouldn’t be too hard, and you can probably guess them already. (in fact, you actually did.)

(ETA: yeah this took me two sittings to do, so I ended up posting it on the ride home lol. I just like BnHA you guys. almost as much as I like talking about how much I like it!)

okay so here goes.

14. Basement arc - yeah so let’s just go ahead and get this over with. this is the one and only BnHA arc that I actually dislike. fortunately it’s an outlier and suffered from a bunch of one-time issues, most of which stem from the fact that Horikoshi was apparently trying to write a longer and darker arc than usual. well he succeeded! and thankfully learned his lesson. and at least this arc gave us Eri and Mirio and some good Kirishima flashbacks and Chekov’s Quirk-Be-Gone bullets and the Highway to Hell. hopefully the anime can improve on the rest.

13. Provisional License arc - okay, so it might surprise a few people that this arc is all the way down here. let me explain. this is a perfectly fine arc, and I like it well enough, but it’s a bit longer than it needs to be, and not that much happens in it aside from our introduction to best boy Yoarashi Inasa, and the Great Toga Conspiracy (which is admittedly excellent). there are some great moments (Aoyama doing his best impression of “THE BEACONS ARE LIT” from RotK comes to mind), but overall it’s fairly forgettable, and it suffers from being placed directly in between my two absolute favorite arcs, which means I have a tendency to overlook it, which isn’t really the arc’s fault.

12. Hero Killer arc - this one is interesting because I really lost patience with it during my first read-through, but strangely enough when I watched it in the anime I actually really enjoyed it. it was also much shorter than I remembered. I’ve belatedly realized that reading it while doing commentary really slowed me down, because for the parts that I wasn’t feeling, doing the commentary took a long time and also left me dwelling on a lot of the things I didn’t like. but in actuality, Stain’s Annoying Rants aside, this is a pretty enjoyable arc full of Big Hero 6 flashbacks, hot revenge-driven Iida, Gran Torino’s introduction, Deku learning full cowl, Bakugou’s Best Jeanist internship, and Todoroki saving Deku and Iida’s lives by being glued to his phone when he really should have been paying attention to his own internship. get off that social media already Shouto.

11. USJ arc - this is a great arc, but it just feels small compared to everything that happens afterward. but it’s fun to look back on because there are lots of little hints for future developments to come. the traitor theory, for instance. and this is also our introduction to the League and to Tomura and the Noumu. and that final fight between All Might and the Noumu is still one of my favorite scenes in the whole series, especially in the anime. it’s so fucking good you guys. shit.

10. Intro arc - just FYI, I lump everything from the first chapter up until USJ into one arc since it’s easier. anyways, so this is roughly on the same level as USJ, but gets a slight edge because there are some iconic moments here. namely, the first chapter (which is still one of the best shounen intro chapters I’ve ever read, if not the best); Kacchan VS Deku 1; the entrance exam; and our introduction to the rest of class 1-A, particularly Ochako and Iida. oh, and Aizawa! gotta love how he starts out all ready to expel some bitches only to wind up falling in love with the whole class. fatherhood agrees with him.

9. Band AU arc - I actually love this arc. I just love all of the ones above it on the list a bit more, and I can’t really justify it being any higher than this. but it has The Band and the Babysitting Squad and Mirio being the best big brother in the world and Eri being just ridiculously, astonishingly cute. Gentle and La Brava are also great villains, if not quite my favorites. there are a few questionable plot holes in the arc, and it lacks any sort of big impact on the rest of the series, but it’s basically a canon filler arc and it’s so much fun and I can’t wait to see it animated.

8. Fanfic Lodge arc - you guys this arc started out so fucking cute and ended up so fucking tense. and this was our intro to the League of Villains proper, including Spinner, Twice, Tuxedo Mask, the prodigal Todoroki son, and my best girl Toga. Deku VS Muscular is still hard for me to read (his liiiiiiiimbs) but it’s one of Deku’s best moments regardless. and the angst at the end of the arc is almost unparalleled. god I love it.

7. Final Exam arc - a.k.a. the one where all the kids team up with each other to shoot their teachers in the fucking face. this arc has it all: Momo character development, Bakugou character development, TodoMomo, BakuDeku, and Aizawa being a total badass. (and All Might too, but he’s kind of overkill tbh. which is its own kind of awesome though.) there’s so much good stuff in this arc that this description is a bit vague because if I got any more specific we’d be here all day. it’s just a lot of good stuff that I like.

6. Joint Training arc - dudes I love this arc so much. class B and their array of ridiculously awesome quirks! class A and their impeccable teamwork! Bakugou joining the OFA Scooby Squad and showing off his new WIN AND RESCUE COMBO! Monoma! Shinsou!! SIXQUIRKS!!! god there’s so much great content.

5. Endeavorhawks arc - this arc would be even higher except that it’s a bit short (though it’s perfectly paced, so that might actually be a plus) and it doesn’t feature as many of my faves. but Hawks’s intro + our intro to The Great Noumu Conspiracy + Todoroki Family Drama + some of the best character development I’ve seen in a shounen manga (god I still can’t get over what a ballsy move it is to try and redeem Endeavor) = solid gold. and it’s so well done. and caps off with one of the best plot twists in the series to date, which sets up what promises to be one hell of an interesting arc later down the line. just. it’s so good. possibly the best-written arc to date, even if it doesn’t quite top my list.

4. My Villain Academia arc - and this isn’t even done yet!! and it’s still already this high!! Tomura flashbacks! Toga flashbacks! TOUYA FLASHBACKS???! (we’ll see??) creepy cults! my new favorite character One-Handed Giran, the biggest badass in the whole fucking series! worldbuilding for days! Dr. Robotnik! more Noumu shit! etc. etc. this arc has been non-stop goodness and I almost feel spoiled at this point.

3. Sports Festival arc - the most fun of all the arcs. I have rewatched the cavalry battle in the anime like a bazillion times. there used to be this show on Nickelodeon called Wild & Crazy Kids where kids teamed up for all these zany competitions (water balloons were usually involved), and I fucking loved that show, and parts of this arc kinda have that same kind of spirit. it’s just fun. and then to top it all off we have our Shouto character development, as well as Bakugou’s little character arc that he also has which is excellent. not to mention what is probably Ochako’s most badass moment to date. love it.

2. Kamino arc - guyyyys where do I even start? this arc is perfection. good VS evil. All Might taking a stand even when he’s got nothing left in the tank, because the world needs him and he won’t let them down. the sheer visceral terror of AFO’s introduction. my favorite character getting fucking kidnapped and being brave AF and his friends rallying to save him yesssss. and the reveal of All Might’s secret, which is arguably the most powerful scene in the series. I get chills every time. “my heart is still the heart of the symbol of peace.” if All Might had announced at that moment that he was starting a new religion I would have been like “yeah okay.” I would follow him to the ends of the earth. how can one man be that selfless and brave. anyways this arc is absolutely incredible and objectively one of the best in all of shounen.

1. Deku VS Kacchan Part 2 - nothing to see here, just two boys who’ve known each other since they were in diapers, who’ve done everything together and have always been together but have never actually understood each other until now. just the two of them finally opening up to each other, because the one who always tried to act so tough actually isn’t that tough, in truth, and in spite of everything, he trusts the other enough to let his guard down around him this one time. just two rivals, sorting out their shit and figuring out what it all really means. and their dad, helping to facilitate the whole thing because he knows that one day, somewhere down the road, this bond between them will mean absolutely everything. is this really even an arc?? it’s only like six chapters, and only one event actually takes place. but do I care?? yeah, no. Deku and Kacchan’s relationship is the series to me, so yeah. to me it counts as an arc. and not just any arc, but the best arc.

so there you have it! I hope I haven’t accidentally left something out lol. but this should hopefully be a pretty definitive list, at least for now. looking back at all of this really makes it sink in just how good of a story this is, though. damn.

[amandajoyce118]

2020 In Review

I used to end the year with blog posts highlighting 100 things, or 50 things if I wasn’t that ambitious, that I loved about the year. Usually, those things were pop culture things. 2020, however, is a special year, no? I mean, a pandemic, quarantines, political unrest, massive bread lines, natural disasters, refugees seeking better lives, stressful elections, etc. For most people, to make a blanket statement, this year sucked.

Most of the people following me know that I’m a freelance writer, but I have a full time day job as a fresh merchandiser for a food service distributor. That means I never “shut down” or worked from home or any of the other things people have been forced to do. I work a full day pretty much every day with customers who don’t understand why distribution has slowed, why I have “long term outs” of items like cases of hard boiled eggs or fresh ginger, why there are certain days of the week when they just can’t get chicken wings. I have people who refuse to wear masks, employees who forget to disinfect work stations, and a questionnaire I have to fill out before every shift as to whether or not I think I’ve been exposed to covid. And when I’m done there, I escape by writing.

As a result, I haven’t been doing much for fun. Outside of my day job, the media I consume is generally for freelance work, which has made this year really exhausting, no matter how much writing/stories is an escape for me. That’s why, instead of just things I loved this year, I’m going to give you a list of 10 pieces of media I’ve consumed - over and over and over again - that I’ve somehow not gotten sick of when writing listicles about the subjects. I feel like we all need to feel like we’re getting lost in a good story, or with characters we genuinely enjoy, even if, like me, we’re getting lost in those worlds with those characters to be able to write about them.

The Baby-Sitters Club

I was obsessed with the books, the ‘90s show, and the eventual movie as a kid, so it’s no surprise that I was counting down the days until the Netflix adaptation premiered - and I loved it. I’m not going to lie, I’ve watched this show from beginning to end four times this year. It’s such a quick watch and there’s something really great about watching these girls grow up.

Nancy Drew

Again, obsessed with Nancy Drew as a kid. More specifically, obsessed with the ‘80s case files as a kid. I read all of them I could get my hands on. The new television show is a little more Riverdale than the novels are, but it’s an interesting spin on the characters and stories we already know - and the representation of a diverse community on the show is fantastic.

Anne With An E

I’m still holding out hope for a movie to close out this show since there are something like seven books in the original series and the show basically only covered the first one? Where is the justice? But, this is another show I think I’ve watched three times from beginning to end because Anne Shirley Cuthbert is someone you want to be friends with, no matter how old you are. You also want her to come to her senses within about 30 seconds of being introduced to Gilbert Blythe, so you know, it’s a fun and angsty time.

Agents Of SHIELD

One of my favorite Marvel properties ended this year, and… I should probably be more sad about it? Like, I absolutely would have watched more episodes of this show if it had kept going, but I’m also incredibly satisfied with how the show concluded this year, which is rare for me. I’ve gone back and rewatched a handful of episodes for articles, and Agents Of SHIELD feels like a show that I’ll end up rewatching yearly because it’s one of the few shows where I’ve actively engaged in fandom for years and still genuinely love.

Timeless

Yes, I rewatched this gem this year while writing a handful of listicles, and I’m bitter that this didn’t get more seasons. The cast chemistry, the stories of those often overlooked by history, and the twist of a shady organization being closer than you think? It’s pretty perfect. I miss it. It’s a yearly rewatch already.

Pitch Perfect Trilogy

Every so often, I find myself in the mood to hear Anna Kendrick belt out a few songs. Pitch Perfect tends to win out over Into The Woods, and I can’t ever seem to stop at just the first movie. Pitch Perfect is cheesy and not as perfect as its title implies, but it always puts me in a good mood. I want more comedies about a capella groups, please.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

If I had to say where my love of serial storytelling, or my ability to engage in fandom, started, it was with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I had friends who would create their own team of Rangers when I was little, and we’d trade kicks on the playground (which got us in trouble), and yeah, as an adult watching a show made in 1993, this show is ridiculous. Full stop. But it’s also the kind of show that makes you remember that a whole generation was raised on the idea that even if the good guys don’t always win, they keep trying. They never give up. And that’s just as important today as it was then.

Teen Wolf

I recognize that this show is sometimes a mess and that continuity is not always its strong suit. Does that mean I love it any less? Nope. And neither does the rest of the internet since some of my articles still get heavy rotation even though the show has been off the air for years. It’s the kind of show that pulls me in, even when I already know what’s about to happen.

Leverage

Oh, Leverage. How do I possibly explain how excited I am that you’re getting a revival? I don’t think I can. Also, I don’t know why I’m talking to Leverage directly when I haven’t to anything else on this list. Leverage is about a group of criminals who steal from the corrupt to give back to their victims. I mean. It’s Robin Hood for the modern age. It’s a found family. There are love stories. There are redemption arcs. It’s just chock full of greatness. And Aldis Hodge as Alec Hardison.

RWBY

I only really got into RWBY last year, and it’s fast becoming one of my favorite anime, though admittedly, I don’t watch a ton of anime. I love the references to fairy tales, mythology, and history mixed into this crazy fantasy world. I love that the villains are as compelling as the heroes. I love that in such a large cast of characters, I want to know more about everyone. It’s a fascinating show and some of the episodes are only five minutes long. 

Sailor Moon

I grew up in the ‘90s era of television, so, of course, I watched Sailor Moon after school. The English dubs because I’m a heathen, what do you want from me? I’ve really enjoyed revisiting the ‘90s series after watching Sailor Moon Crystal because, obviously, the ‘90s anime is not exactly the story that was told in the manga. It has such a rich mythology and fascinating characters not to mention beautiful designs.

Naruto

I’m going to be honest, you guys. I never thought I would be into Naruto. But something about it just hooks you. I got into it because there were always listicle topics that editors created for the show on the sites I write for, and I was curious. Unlike manga purists, I actually really like the filler episodes. I think they add a lot to understanding the characters. Also, there is no anime character I love more than Shikamaru in Naruto Shippuden.

New Girl

Okay. New Girl has really been the saving grace of 2020. I know this show ended a few years ago. I know that people should be ready for other things. But here’s the truth: I’m not really a sitcom person. I was as a teenager, but as an adult, I like my serial storytelling to be completely unrealistic and dramatic, usually. But 2020 has been so heavy that I needed the lightness New Girl provides. 

And I love each and every resident of the loft - even the ones I would never be able to stand hanging out with in real life. I love how much they all grow up over the course of the show. I love the one-liners. I love the running jokes. I love the musical numbers. I love the Nick and Jess of it all. In 2020 alone I have watched the first five episodes of this show about ten times. I’ve watched the show from beginning to end twice in just the last three months of the year. I love it so much I’ve even considered writing fanfiction for it (though I really don’t have the time and haven’t even finished old works over the last year). When this pandemic is behind us all, I’d actually consider playing the (arguably dangerous and would likely give everyone alcohol poisoning) game of True American just to see if my friends and I could get through it. 2020 has been rough, but at least New Girl is still on Netflix.

There you have it, a baker’s dozen of the things that got me through this year - mostly in television format. There’s something I just love about serial storytelling, and when it looks like the world is falling apart, it’s nice to have the comfort of happy endings and stories you can plot out yourself. Here’s hoping 2021 is kinder to all of us, and has plenty more stories for us to get lost in.

[han100894]

Some Thoughts of the Different Zeetha Series

So now that I have finished myf irst ever series of Fanfics, I figured I’d write out some thoughts about it:

I first came up with the AU/What –if idea of: what if Zeetha hadn’t managed to avoid getting enslaved by the pirates, several years ago, not to long after I started in the Girl Genius fandom. At the time I think only Leaving Skifander was on my account and I had only just gotten an Ao3 account just to put it somewhere.

I posted the idea up on Tumblr and got some interest. It was one of the earliest AU ideas that I have ever posted up there, though now I post them with some frequency, but for some reason that one in particular stuck with me. Years later I honestly don’t know what about it that got me so attached.

At the time when I first started writing In Which Zeetha Was Sicker Than She Thought, it was December, I had just missed nanowrimo again through forgetting about it up until it was already a few days in, and then failing to really keep up with it. So I was stuck wanting to be a writer but failing to find the motivation and ability to write both to completion and just to the point where a story could be called a novel.

At the time I had started a thousand and one projects and only ever finished one (fanfic at least) that was more than say a thousand word oneshot, a short story called Alone for the Mysterious Benedict Society (And yes it’s posted on the internet somewhere, if you really want to go find some High School trash—just know I really loved Kate and thought her underappreciated).

So with this AU bugging my brain (or at least I can only imagine it had been, I don’t really remember how it was like way back when) I decided that I was going to impose a challenge on myself—I was going to write this AU, and both prove to myself I could finish a multi-chapter story but also to use it as training wheels both to learn just how to write prose, and also how to write with any real length.

So I wrote and surprisingly enough over the course of winter break I started and finished In Which Zeetha Was Sicker Than She Thought. Was the prose great: not even close and the shortest chapter was 880 words but from there I got better and better, by the end I had 25,891 words total and my avg per chapter was about 2,500 words. It still had tons of grammar issues  and I’m not really sure it’s plot can really be called a plot, but It was mine, I started it and I finished it.

I posted it, got comments, got excited, and very quickly started on part 2. By this point I knew for sure that there would be at least three parts (with a possible forth for Skifander, something that one day may still happen) so I added something new to my challenge, each part would be significantly better than the last.

The second story, In Which Zeetha Takes a Stand was written almost just as fast. It was pretty much double the word count and my average words per chapter doubled as well, only the first chapter coming out under a 1000 words. I also felt my characters and prose had grew significantly, as had my handling of actual plot. I admittedly leaned heavily on the Girl Genius Novel now that I could, but I don’t mind that. The whole point of this series was to learn and grow, some training wheels only helped in that regard.

Then came the third story. By this point it was mid-spring and finals were coming up and I figured it might be a good idea to take a short break on the Different Zeetha universe as a whole for a little while. So I only really started writing it at the start on June once school was done.

The first 9 chapters came just as easy, but then I hit a snag. I went looking for help but unfortunately said help, if unintentionally, lead to a shattering of my confidence of my ability, and an honest sick feeling whenever I looked at those chapters. It took me a good 4-6 months, in which I wrote several others little one shots and stories before I came back to In Which 3.

By that point it had been about a year since I started writing In Which 1, and I was starting to feel guilty and ashamed for taking so long to finish for my readers. I started picking away at later chapters, and after a little more time decided after so long, and because the amount of chapter I already had was already had the same amount of words as in In Which 2 I would post it, if only to force myself to keep going.

So I did. It led to several hiatus and lost of stress and guilt, but it did get me to push back my nerves over the trouble chapters and keep going, and while it took another year before now, where I can finally say I have finished everything, I’m proud of what I have accomplished.

Especially as where In Which 1 was long enough to qualify as a <>, and In Which 2 was long enough to qualify as a <>, In Which 3 comes out to <> words and is long enough to qualify as a novel. Which mean my first and main goal was accomplished, and with it I learned a lot in grammar to plot to characters to style.

The Big Drag:

To focus some on just In Which Zeetha Fight for Mechanicsburg for a bit, as it’s my most current work, and also the one I had significant trouble with, to say the least it was a journey.

I went into it with just as much enthusiasm as the first two, so it makes sense that I stalled out at about the same length as the second was. But the hiatus that followed was a struggle. I never fully stopped writing on it; it was just a little here, a re-read there. But it was still enough that I honestly believe that the story suffered some. I lost track of plots and character development and style, I forgot things that I hadn’t realized I needed to write down in my notes. It wasn’t an extreme loss in any sense, but the story lost a little bit of it’s compactness with it. And I found myself realizing I wasn’t sure how a thread would work, or where it was going, or what to do with it.

For instance I had really wanted to do more with Tarvek and Zeetha’s relationship throughout—that didn’t come to pass, and while I have it set up to explore later if I want I’m still a little sad I couldn’t figure out how I meant for it to work.

Other open bits here and there I’m sure still exist, especially with my staggered updating and editing. Though some are on purpose, to be explored in possible sequels or are just questions I have, that I was sure the character in question would voice, of the Canon story that just simply hasn’t been answered yet in canon.

So while it did help in some ways, I don’t think I’ll ever start posting a story unfinished again, at least not one like this, it just lead to much stress.

Though to be fair, there was another problem I had with this part that I feel I overcame but likely played tribute to my issues in writing the story. It was simply I wasn’t really sure where I was going, what was the ending, and all that. With the other two I knew exactly what the ending would be, and while I mostly did for this one, it was also a lot more complicated and had a lot more “shrug” filling in blanks that made things more difficult that it needed to be. I likely would have benefited from planning more before starting chapter 1.

As a third thing, like the second story I stuck to canon pretty closely for lot of bits, the GMC was visited as was Lu’s lab, the stabbing still happened, ect, despite the fact I had plenty of chances to diverge and go extremely off course. And I know some would have preferred I did. And yeah I could have, but like before, this was my first big story/series, and I was mostly focused on the ides of managing on finishing one, so I wasn’t super ready to drop my training wheels so quickly. I’m sure to do it less in the future, but I’m pleased how it came out regardless of all the borrowing.

And that’s really it really. I’m not sure what comes next. I have an oneshot that’s almost done, several shorter chapter stories to maybe finish. Zeetha Wulfenbach, a second just as loved major AU idea, still burns in the background even if I still am not sure I’m a good enough writer to tackle that one the way I want to, though I do have a few snipplest almost ready to share. I could do another in the Time Skip series or another chapter of Through A Princess’ Eyes. I’m just not sure. But I hope people enjoy them regardless.

And once again, thanks to everyone who has commented and read!

[tigerlover16-uk]

Anime I need to watch (August 2017 update)

Sooo, yeah. Two days late this time. I really want to apologize for this one, it wasn’t entirely my fault this time. While I was in the middle of writing my thoughts down on the shows I’d seen, my computer suddenly decided to refresh the page so I ended up losing everything, and it took me a while to catch up to where I was and finish everything since I had a lot of stuff to talk about. And stuff kept coming up when I tried to write it all again.

So, yeah, my bad for not being more careful with this stuff and all. Either way, here it is at last, read it below.

Okay, so to start things off, the first new show i watched this month was Outlaw Star. It's a pretty popular anime from what I've heard, while it apparently bombed in Japan it's widely beloved in the West and considered a benchmark for early 2000's anime. It's to the point that it's still the most heavily requested show to be re-aired on the reinstated Toonami block by it's regular viewers. No small feat to have that much fan devotion for so long. So, what did i think of it?

... Meh. It's okay.

Really, it's just... okay. It was probably one of the most average anime I've seen in a while. The characters are okay. The overarching story is okay. The humour, well, occasionally i got a chuckle out of it, but only a few episodes really made me laugh hard. There were a lot of episodes I liked, some I really liked, and some I didn't care for. The action was alright. The soundtrack was pretty good. None of the villains weren't really that interesting.

I'd go into greater detail, but I don't really know what to say overall. The show for me was just the definition of okay. Not bad, it was certainly enjoyable and I'm glad I watched it at least once, but I really can't think of any reason why I'd want to ever watch it again. Which, yeah, a little disappointing.

But oh well, that sort of thing happens. Sometimes certain classic works of fiction just don't resonate with some people the way they do with others, and I guess Outlaw Star is one of those cases for me.

After I finished with that show, I decided to catch up on Soul Eater. I mentioned in another update a few months ago that I found Soul Eater a slightly above average show, but not all that great. Well, after re-watching some of it and then finishing the show, I'll admit it's grown on me and I'll admit it's really good for the most part.

It admittedly took me a little while to get into it, since the first few episodes... while not bad, feel like they thrust you into the middle of a story that's been going on for a bit already rather than being the start of a story. I think maybe that's the point, but that sort of thing is usually a bit jarring for me personally. And I maintain that much of the show's first half was simply okay. But once it gets going, it really gets going.

The comedy was good, the action was mostly pretty decent, and the animation was great. The story progressed at a pretty good pace once it found it's groove. While a few of the major characters, namely Soul and Tsubaki, didn't really interest me that much, the main cast were all a likeable bunch (Favourites probably being Crona and Death the Kid), and the supporting characters were all fun and quirky in their own rights.

Though honestly I felt a little disappointed that Spirit and Maka's relationship didn't play more of an important role towards the later parts of the series. I mean, with how much time the show focused in it's first half on their strained relationship and Spirit's failing's as a parent and as a husband, it feels like it was meant to be more crucial to the plot or at least Maka's character arc and that things would progress at least a bit more than they did towards the end. But then as the show went on it felt like that subplot just lost relevance, so I'm kinda left wondering what the whole point of that was.

And while the story was well told, there were some things I found underwhelming. The fight between Lord Death and Asura in the middle of the series felt anti-climactic for what was described as a battle of Gods, for one.

Medusa was a great villain, I didn't think much of her at first but she won me over with what a malicious, scarily competent and savvy scheming monster she was, and her fighting style was honestly pretty unique and something I haven't seen before with an anime villain. But I felt like Crona should have had more of a role helping Maka finish her off. With how very well done Crona's character arc was handled up to that point, it felt like they should have done more in that final confrontation than get beaten to help spur Maka forward. Her unlocking Genie Hunter to finish Medusa off in one hit felt a bit cheap, really.

And the ending was a huge cop out. While I like what they were going for, in practise it just felt lazy and kind of silly, and honestly reminded me of the ending of Digimon Adventure 02 a bit. The fact that the show then ended so suddenly didn't really help much.

That all sounds like it's leaning a bit negative right? Well, yeah, but while I had a few gripes, the overall experience was still really great. The series has a great premise and sense of style, and is really fun to watch. Most of the character development was decently handled, and I can confidently say that it was a really good show, and definitely something I'd be willing to come back to again soon. Next up is Bleach, the only one of the legendary "Big 3" of anime that i have never watched before in any form. Because I really wasn't interested, and eventually I heard it had gone really down hill, so I wasn't willing to go through a repeat of what I went through with Naruto towards the last few arcs of that series.

But, I'm a curious sort, so I decided to look into it anyway. I don't plan to watch the whole series, because that seems like a lot of investment for something I can expect to go off the rails at some point and never even got finished due to a cancellation, but I want to be able to say I'm at least partially informed on all of the Big 3. So, part of my plan right now is to just watch it up to the end of the Soul Society arc. Maybe if I enjoy that enough I'll watch a bit more to see how it is for myself, but for now that's the plan.

I watched the first 20 episodes this month, the second season DVD set wasn't available at an affordable price on Amazon though so I don't know when I'll get around to watching that and season 3. Hopefully relatively soon. But for the moment, I'll just talk about this season.

All things considered, it was... pretty good. Not great, but a bit above average, if kind of mundane in places. Definitely took a few episodes before it started getting good, and I'll admit I'm not all THAT enthusiastic about most of the characters, but they are all at least likeable and I'm curious as to where things are going by the end of the season. So, good enough job there.

The premise was pretty good, and there was some good comedy and action scenes in these episodes, though admittedly not much that's truly spectaculr yet. I imagine that comes next arc when the story really picks up. A lot of the episodes did seem just okay for a while, but when I got invested I found myself really enjoying the show. I don't know what else to say in detail, and I want to get this update out quickly already, so I'll just leave it as saying I enjoyed it, but I'm waiting until I watch the next arc to make any solid opinions on whether I really like the show all that much. Hopefully Soul Society is as good as people say it is.

Next up I decided to look into a series that, honestly I now really wish I'd gotten into a lot sooner. The 2012 anime adaption of the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure series. This is one of those popular and influential franchises where I knew OF it, in the sense that I'd heard the name, knew it was popular and knew what the protagonist of part 3 of the series looked like... but I knew literally nothing else about the series before I went into it.

With a lot of series I tend to have a good idea of what to expect before I start them, but here I was really figuring everything out as I went along, you could say. Admittedly I expected it to be a lot sillier and harder to take seriously from the title, but after watching it... well, while it's definitely pretty crazy in a lot of ways... it's pretty amazing how dramatic it can be at the same time, I'll give it credit for that.

I watched the entire first season that consists of the Phantom Blood arc and the Battle Tendency arc of the series. So I'll be discussing them seperately here now.

I'll be honest, watching the first episode of Phantom Blood, I wasn't all that into it. Not that it was bad, but the pacing was really fast. So much stuff was happening that the whole thing felt rather rushed, and knowing that the arc was apparently only 9 episodes as I was watching it, I thought the rest of the arc would feel the same way. Thankfully though episodes after that felt a lot more even, and while the arc does feel rushed in a lot of areas, it turned out to be a very enjoyable story.

Most of that probably comes down to the 2 main characters. Jonathan Joestar admittedly may not be the most dynamic protagonist ever and in some ways feels like a standard shonen hero, he was still very likeable and sympathetic, so it was very easy to root for him throughout. And Dio was such a well written malicious, self-serving complete scumbag, I thought he was a bit much at first but with just how over the top he got with his evilness that he was fun to watch, and it was always highly satisfying whenever Jonathan gave the creep his commupance. The whole arc revolves around these characters and their conflict with one another, and thankfully it works well to the story's favour because of how well established their relationship is.

All that said, the show does have a number of flaws that really highlight the age of the manga it's adapted from. A lot of stuff in the second half of the show felt rather standard, pretty generic shonen stuff, mostly in the fight scenes which... I really wasn't all that big on them, being honest. And while Zeppeli and Speedwagon were both good characters (Even if I wish we'd had more time with the former before his death, though that's a story problem more than anything else), the rest of the supporting characters introduced in the final act of the story to help out all felt underdeveloped and... kinda pointless and uninteresting. I only really remember one of them due to what happens next arc.

And while again, the pacing did get better, the story did feel too short for it's own good and I wish there had been more time taken for more character building moments with characters besides Jonathan and Dio and longer fights, among other things. There are a few other nitpicks, but honestly this is going on long enough.

In a lot of ways, Phantom Blood feels like a pretty standard shonen story. But it's a well told standard shonen story with a lot of great moments, a compelling if basic story and a really tragic conclusion, that was a ton of fun to watch. It may not have held up great, but I was still really invested in the story and to see what the show could do from there.

And on that note I'm glad to say, Battle Tendency was a huge improvement in pretty much every way. Apart from just having more room to breath thanks to having more episodes than Phantom Blood, Battle Tendency had a better story, a much more dynamic and, frankly, interesting main character (Even if the cross dressing scene was cringy and the perverted moments were annoying) in the form of Joseph Joestar, great villains (Particularly Wamuu) and better, more creative fights.

Honestly this whole arc was just a blast. It was full of great tension, brilliant action scenes and great animation, the supporting cast was better utilized for the most part and there was a good group dynamic between the major characters, the stakes kept getting higher, and yeah, it felt like a truly "Bizzare" adventure. And all the while feeling like a natural extension of the story started in Phantom Blood.

I'm really struggling to find any weak points to this arc, other than it felt awkward that one of the supporting protagonists was a nazi soldier and he was more or less one of the good guys. I mean, Von Stroheim was an entertaining character sure, but I honestly just feel uncomfortable with the idea for a number of reasons. The stupid political climate we're in right now probably isn't helping with that though.

But other than that tidbit, the show was fantastic. I don't really want to say too much and risk spoiling anything, just go watch it yourself if you haven't seen it or go watch Super Eyepatch Wolf's video about the series on YouTube, he does it much more justice than I ever could.

Needless to say though, I'm now a Jojo fan. I think I might wait until the dub for Stardust Crusaders is done or at least further ahead before starting that series, since I have some other shows to be watching right now, but it's something I really look forward to.

I also got a hold of the third DVD set for One Piece, taking me up to episode 78 of the series. This is where things got interesting for me, since the 4Kids dub I watched as a kid cut out a lot of stuff around the crew actually reaching the grandline and just after it, which I was aware of going in, and I really don't remember much of what happened after the Straw Hats reached the Grand Line and before they got to Alabasta, or at least before Trace (Aka Ace, what was up with that change?) showed up. I remember my watching the show was a bit more erratic at the time since I kept missing episodes and having to make sense of what was going on at several points while waiting for the episodes I missed to re-air.

Needless to say I'm not fully sure what to expect going forward whereas I knew almost everything that was going to happen to most of the episodes of One Piece I'd seen before. And I had no idea about what happens in most of these episodes I just watched, so this was a relatively fresh experience. And overall, while I don't think a lot of these arcs were as good as anything between the arc introducing Usopp and the Arlong arc, they were all good in their own right, and I'm sorry some of this stuff got cut by 4Kids. The Warship Island arc was a surprisngly good filler arc with a likeable new character in the form of Apis, and a really great conclusion that I didn't see coming. Pretty fun and moving, honestly above the standards of what I usually expect from a filler arc. The stuff with Laboon the giant whale was pretty good too (Though, any story that lets me look at a flashback involving an adorable baby whale is automatically going to be good in my mind). And the last several episodes involving the giants had some really great conflict and action.

So, yeah. For a set of episodes where I was really unsure what to expect going in, I had a pretty good time watching all of this, and I look forward to more One Piece episodes whenever I get my hands on the fourth DVD collection.

And rounding things up as far as anime shows go, I also watched the first 13 episodes of the series Tenchi Universe.

I have had a weird experience watching Tenchi stuff. I remember watching Tenchi related shows as a kid, but my memory is really hazy and I only remembered bits and pieces, like Ryoko arriving on earth being chased by someone in a big robot suit (Which I thought was Ayeka for a while for some reason, but when actually watching the first episode of universe it was Mihoshi... I seriously wonder what wires got crossed in my head to make me think that was the case for all these years whenever the Tenchi series crossed my mind), and a moment at the end of episode 8 with Ryo-ohki.

But, after looking into the Tenchi franchise further and plot synopsis for the series and clips, I realize that as a kid I also watched a few episodes of Tenchi in Tokyo. So, for years I guess I basically thought Tenchi Universe and Tenchi in Tokyo were the same show, and since I had so few memories of anything Tenchi related, I didn't realize until just recently.

Yeah, this has been a weird experience for me. But not one I regret. So, bits of weirdness aside, what did I think of Tenchi Universe?

Kinda meh so far to be honest. On the one hand, the plot is a lot less clunky and better handled in places that the ova series. But on the other... I think some of the charm of the ovas was lost in the transition to tv. Mainly because some of the characters, mainly Ryoko and Ayeka, don't feel as endearing or likeable as they were there. Most of the cast is fine, but a few of the changes to motivation and personality felt weaker than their original selves, Ryoko and Ayeka's bickering certainly comes off as more annoying and less creative than it could be in the ova's. Though I guess Kiyone was a good addition, though her being glad in her debut about the possibility Mihoshi was dead did bug me for a bit. Yeah I understand that Mihoshi could be a very frustrating person for anyone to have to put up with, but come on now.

The show could be hit or miss. Most of them are entertaining, a few of them were great like episode 9 though some like episode 8 felt a bit lacking. The Time and Space Adventures arc espeically felt very hit and miss and wasn't really as interesting as I thought it would have been, and I was honestly glad it didn't last too long.

Honestly as a whole, I'll say it's not bad, but I'm a bit underwhelmed by the experience so far. I hear the second half of the show is really good though, so I'll get around to finishing that as soon as I can and give my final thoughts next month. So far though, while it has some things over the OVA's which have a number of flaws, I think I still enjoy the original story more.

Now, getting around to the anime movies I watched this month, first we have the first film in the Digimon Adventure Tri series, Reunions. I really loved Digimon growing up, admittedly I always prefered Tamers as my favourite series, but the original series is what I watched first like many people and it holds a special place in my heart as one of my first anime. I actually recently re-watched the whole series since it finally came out on a full season DVD set here in the UK, and while some parts show their age I honestly think the show still holds up decently well. At the least, I still love it.

So, you'd imagine I'd have gotten around to watching these movies sooner right? Well, I thought about it, but honestly I always much prefer watching my anime dubbed whenever I can help it, so I've been waiting a while now for the UK DVD releases of the films to make a start on the series. The first film only very recently came out here.

Ah well, better late than never. So, what do I think of the movie.

Well, it's a pretty decent start to a film series all things considered. Though admittedly not great, it’s a really slow start. But I attribute that to it being the first in the series and having to re-introduce all the characters and their current situations, and set up the plot. In which case, it did a... mostly good job. Everyone was still pretty likeable and mostly how I'd expect them to act at this point (Except Izzy apparently having a crush on Mimi now. That I don't know where it came from), and while it doesn't feel like all that much really happened, it was still pretty fun seeing everyone again and I am interested to see where everything is going.

The animation was mostly pretty good, though the fights themselves all felt a little too short and generic for me. Though hey, this is Digimon, I kind of expect that. The action alone isn't what makes the show fun and worth investing in, character stuff was always more important and the film still seems to focus on that. Though admittedly even if I wish the final fight had gone on longer, Agumon and Gabumon shifting through all of their digivolutions before becoming Omnimon was pretty darn awesome.

I do have some complaints. Like, Tai apparently having some kind of PTSD, or some other trauma in regards to all the destruction caused by Digimon battles felt poorly handled. I dunno, watching him in the original series again recently and with how he was in 02, his suddenly being afraid to have agumon get involved in the final fight felt a bit contrived to me. I could have bought it if the movie actually explored Tai's mental state more and did something interesting with it, but apart from the frequent flashing back to the same rubble over and over again it only seemed to have been done as a convenient excuse to keep him and Matt from merging their Digimon into Omnimon straight away and cutting the battle with Alphamon short. Maybe the other movies explore it more and handle the idea better, but it felt half hearted here.

Also, from what I've heard the apparent decimation of the 02 cast in the opening apparently goes about as unnadressed in most of the next few movies as it does in this one. Soooo... yeah. What the heck Toei!?

If you want to know how I feel about Meiko, the new digidestined... I have no opinion. She barely appeared in the film and did nothing but have her partner be chased after by Alphamon, so I'm just going to see how she plays out in the next movie. Fanfictionny as it sounds though I am on board with another Digidestined, especially if it means one more girl on the team, just so long as she's a worthwhile addition.

So, yeah, pretty good start, fun bit of nostalgia though nothing really special yet. Though certainly better than the frankenstein's monster of a movie cobbled together from short films they tried to sell us last decade. I am interested in seeing where things go from here, though things could go either way with whether I enjoy the other films or not.

Next up we have another Naruto entry, Naruto Shippuden 3: The Will of Fire. I'm going to keep this one short because, honestly, I don't feel like I have a lot to say about it. he story was decent, I like how all of the Konoha 11 got at least one cool moment and a chance to be useful in this movie, some jokes were funny, the story was decently told and I didn't find it too preachy like so people did, probably because I do try as hard as I can to remain an optimist, the action was good, and the ending was a lazy cop-out followed by a dumb joke. Still an enjoyable movie, glad I saw it, but it could have been more and that bit of laziness really hurt the film.

And rounding it all up, I also finally got around to watching a film I ordered the DVD to a month or two ago but never got around to watching until three weeks back. The critically acclaimed 5 Centimetres per second... and it was boring. Like... really, really boring. I can't remember the last time I was so uninterested in something boring.

I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm just not the type of person this movie was made for and if people like it, okay, fair enough. But this entire thing felt like a pointless waste of 60 minutes. The whole thing was just an hour of these boring characters pining over people they like and moping about "Oh, we can't be together" because they're either too afraid to spit it out, or for other reasons I don't care about.

No, I don't care if it's "Atmospheric" or whatever. Nice animation and cinematography alone do not a good movie make. I didn't care about any of these characters, the story was boring, almost nothing here was interesting, and it all just felt pointless by the end of it like absolutely nothing was accomplished at all in the whole film.

And it's not that I don't get a lot of the things it was trying to do, I do have an idea. But the problem is, I don't care, because it wasn't entertaining and I kept thinking that my time could have been better spent watching a Miyazaki movie instead.

Maybe it is just me. If you like the film or see it's merits better than I did, good for you. But personally, I was just glad when it was over and I don't plan to go back to this movie for a long, long time.

And, well, that about covers it I think. Again, sorry this update was so late and if I didn't go into as much detail as I could have about some things, I was rushing. Either way, it was an interesting month for me, with a lot of different experiences. Hopefully I'll have another month as productive as this one soon. Anyway, if you read all this then thank you very much. As always, please leave whatever suggestions you can for the list below and i'll see you all again with another update at the end of the month this time, hopefully.

Series:

Mobile Suit Gundam

Cowboy Bebop

Digimon Frontier

Digimon Data Squad

Digimon Fusion

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s

Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal

Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V

Sailor Moon (Watched the entire first season and was about halfway through season 2. Should really get back to watching the full series)

Sailor Moon Crystal

Yu Yu Hakusho (Up to episode 94)

Ranma 1 ½

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

Jojo’s bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

Hunter x Hunter (2011)

Fullmetal Alchemist

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

One Piece (Up to episode 78)

Bleach (Up to episode 20)

Astro Boy (Any series. I just want to be able to say I’ve watched something from this franchise).

Kill La Kill

Gurren Lagann

Fairy Tail (Up to episode 203)

Little Witch Academia

Tenchi Universe (Up to episode 13)

Death Note

Yuri On Ice

Fist of the North Star

Code Geass

Food Wars: Shokugeki No Soma (I watched about 9 episode, need to catch up)

Your Lie in April

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Mob Psycho 100

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Phoenix Wright anime

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Natsume’s Book of Friends

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Eureka 7

Black Cat

Black Shooter Rock

Gunbuster

Afro Samurai

Space Dandy

Vision of Escaflowne

magical girl lyrical nanoha

Shin Sekai Yori

Baccano

Cyborg 009

Gaogaigar

Danganronpa

Yo-Kai Watch

Pretty Cure

Future Boy Conan

Yona of the Dawn

WataMote

Space Patrol Luluco

Rurouni Kenshin

Steam Detectives

Death Parade

Movies:

Your Name

Garden of Words

Paprika

Tokyo Godfathers

The Boy and the Beast

Millenium Actress

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

The Digimon Adventure Tri Movies (Watched the first one)

Yu-Gi-Oh: The Dark Side of Dimensions

Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend awakened

Pokémon: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction

Pokémon: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel

Pokémon: I Choose You

Ghost In The Shell

Memories

Perfect Blue

Naruto: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom

Naruto Shuppuden: Bonds

Naruto Shippuden: The Lost Tower

Naruto Shippuden: Blood Prison

Naruto: Road to Ninja

Boruto Movie

Fairy Tail the movie: Dragon Cry

Godzilla: Monster Planet

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Princess Arete

Tekkonkinkreet

[videoghoul]

The November Report: Games

I haven’t posted much in November because I’ve been busy trying to finish games, albums, and shows instead of doing the same old thing I always do. What did I play in November? Too much probably. These are just games I played, not games I finished. I’ll make a separate post for those since I beat more than I usually do in a month!

I played some Thief Gold early on this month, it was fun but definitely shows signs of its age. Still a very solid classic stealth game!

Admittedly I beat Vanquish last year but it drew me back to play a little more this month. It suffers a little bit depending on what difficulty you play because it wants you to be cool and do slides and bullettime headshots but the overwhelming amount of enemies and gunfire and grenades makes using the boring cover system a safer bet. Still good fun!

Speaking of cover systems I played through the opening of Mass Effect 2! The series is one of my favorite sci-fi settings ever since I beat 1-3 back around late 2015 or so. I’ve been itching to get back into my favorite of the trilogy, ME2.

I’ve been playing a lot (probably too much) Destiny 2. Ever since the Solstice event this summer its been one of my most played games for good and bad reasons. On one hand a lot of its tactics are a little underhanded and appeal to the “I have to log in and get this seasonal item or I’ll never be able to get it again”. On the other hand while I know I’m being manipulated a bit, the gameplay look is incredibly fun and chasing new armor pieces and items is satisfying. It’s only gotten better since Forsaken and I cant wait for the Black Armory mini-expansion to unlock next week!

I don’t know if I regret buying Malebolgia or not. It’s very flagrantly trying to be a soulslike but it suffers because of some aesthetic and gameplay choices. I like the cel-shaded style and the weird story its trying to tell but getting from area to area is a slog for two reasons; Everything in this game is about 33% slower than it should be, and the darkness inside the castle is so overbearing while the hallways look so similar that its easy to get lost and resort to checking your map every 20 seconds. Makes for unintuitive exploration (almost opposite of Dark Souls ironically).

This game is hilarious. Splatter is a top down zombie shooter that looks and feels like a 2010 era flash game, the main character is a “badass” in a leather jacket with a fedora whose acting is simultaneously so hammy and so cheesy that you might as well put it on a sandwich. I don’t know if I’m going to finish it because the gameplay itself is fairly boring, but its a funny ride!

Can you guess what Shrouded in Sanity is inspired by? This game is interesting but, just like Darkmaus, I don’t know how much I like the souls-style combat translated out of a 3D environment. I might just need to put more time into gameplay practice but for now I can only play Shrouded in Sanity in bursts before I get frustrated with it.

Hotline Miami is incredible! The gameplay is fast and dirty but it doesn’t punish you for death because you’re back into it so quickly, and the whole affair oozes this beautiful style. The OST is fantastic and worth a purchase on its own. My only complaint is that some of the challenges/achievements are a bit over the top and the hit detection when someone is close to your character is wonky so you end up swinging ineffectually at each other before they typically win. 

I’ve been having much more fun with Fallout 4 than I expected! I put off buying it until everything was on sale and finally picked it up a few days ago. While the story and dialogue are leaving a lot to be desired, the gameplay and settlement management are good fun and the loop of running around, killing raiders/monsters, and gathering resources to take back home makes for nice relaxation after a stressful day.

[recentanimenews]

A Beginner's Guide To Dragon Ball

What is your great shame as an anime fan? What show has absolutely everyone seen but you? What titles in your backlog do you scroll over thinking you’ll watch it someday but never do? What series has your continued hesitance to engage with developed into an elitist disdain for? What colossal, inescapable anime will you never EVER watch?

  Hello, my name is Danni, and I’ve never seen a single episode of Dragon Ball.

      Let me explain myself. Growing up, there were few shows my siblings and I were allowed to watch on TV. It’s not just Dragon Ball Z that I missed out on. Name your favorite childhood show and I’ve probably never seen it. I did end up falling deep into the anime hole in my teen years, but I developed a habit of only watching short anime. My backlog was (and still is) massive, so I stuck to shows I could knock out in under a week. If it ran more than two seasons, I just didn’t have time for it.

  Lately, though, I’ve started to change my tune. I’ve been watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure since season one and got pretty deep into My Hero Academia last year. I’ve had a pretty snobbish attitude towards shonen anime for awhile now, but I think I’m starting to see the appeal. I could start watching Naruto...nah, maybe another time.

    Come to think of it, Dragon Ball Super ended pretty recently, didn’t it? I feel like everyone I know was freaking out about that final battle. I’ve also had this Dragon Ball FighterZ game for a month now, and it’s actually really cool. I know I’ve always thought that Dragon Ball Z can’t possibly be as good as it is long, but maybe it’s time I gave it a fair shot.

  It’s settled then. I’ll try watching Dragon Ball Z. My favorite characters in FighterZ are from Super, so I guess I should watch that, too. Isn’t there also an anime that comes before Z? I hate starting a series from the middle, so I’ll watch that, too. How many episodes is that in total? 575? Great, this is gonna take me like six years or something. Ah well. I can always slip into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to watch them. I don’t know what that is yet, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon. See you all in a year!

    Wow, what a year! It’s been so long since I wrote all that other stuff before. That definitely wasn’t all a bit I just wrote because I hadn’t started writing for Crunchyroll a year ago. It’s been a whole eleven months since I started watching Dragon Ball, and it’s been about three weeks since I finished Super just in time to catch the new movie. I’m living in a post-Dragon Ball world now, and there’s a Goku-shaped hole in my heart that I don’t know how to fill. I have a deeper appreciation for this series now than I ever expected to have, and I’ve been itching to tell you all about it.

  What can I say about Dragon Ball that hasn’t already been said, though? Surely its legions of fans don’t need me to tell them what they already know. Then I realized something. I can’t be the only one who hadn’t seen it. Somewhere, somehow, someone out there right now has yet to experience for themselves the joys of Toei’s crowning achievement.  They’re probably sitting there right now asking themselves why they should watch it now after so long. Their thoughts might be clogged with preconceived notions about the series that couldn’t be further from the truth. Mine were. I’d like to right that wrong, so I’ve compiled a list of seven things I didn’t know until I saw for myself. This is the beginner’s guide to watching Dragon Ball.

It’s perfect for binge-watching

    The biggest lie you’ll ever hear about Dragon Ball from both fans and critics alike is that there are long stretches of episodes full of attacks charging and nothing else. It was something I had always heard about the show and was warned about when I decided to check it out. I waited and waited for these fabled episodes and by the end of DBZ, I realized they don’t exist (Before you ask, no, I wasn’t watching Kai). To be fair, there are times in the show when a character needs to spend most or all of an episode charging an attack. This isn’t near as boring as it sounds, though, as there is always a battle taking place to defend that character and usually a B plot to cut away to.

  Climactic battles do tend to drag on a lot in Dragon Ball, I’ll admit. So if you were a kid only able to watch at the pace of one episode a week, it would sure feel like nothing was happening. I watched the entire series at an average pace of almost two episodes a day, and that made all the difference. I was able to see battles play out over a few hours rather than a few months. If it ever got dull (which it did sometimes), I could just leave it on in the background and listen to some legendary voices shout at each other while browsing Twitter or playing on my Switch. Most of the time, though, my eyes were glued to the screen, anxious to see what would happen next.

  It’s actually about martial arts

I’m honestly a little embarrassed that I didn’t already know this. My second-hand exposure to Dragon Ball had only ever shown me clips and images of people flying around shooting energy beams and fireballs at each other. It wasn’t until I saw FighterZ gameplay in action that I realized there’s hand-to-hand combat in the show, and it took watching the original series for me to learn it’s the whole dang focus. In fact, a large chunk of the series’ sagas take place in or under the guise of a worldwide martial arts tournament, most of which can be found in the original series. Speaking of which…

  You can skip the original series, but you should still give it a shot

  Everyone I know thought I was crazy for not simply starting with Z. I thought I was crazy for not starting with Z. I had been told over and over again that everything that needed to be explained from it eventually gets explained in its sequel. I had been warned countless times that it’s so far apart from what it eventually becomes. I knew all this, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d be missing part of the story if I skipped it. So, I took the plunge. Now, eleven months later, I’m here to tell you that, yeah, you don’t need it to watch Z and Super, but you should still watch it anyway.

  The thing that will surprise you most about Dragon Ball is that it isn’t an action series yet -- it’s an adventure series. Loosely inspired by the classic adventure novel Journey to the West, the original series largely revolves around a young Goku’s quests to retrieve the seven Dragon Balls that can (presumably) grant any wish when brought together. Along the way, he encounters a series of villains who all seek the Dragon Balls for some nefarious reason, and Goku takes it on himself to stop them.

  Admittedly, the original series takes awhile to get going. It’s incredibly dated in some of the worst ways, making the first half of the series a bit of a slog to get through. Still, though, it features the first World Martial Arts Tournament saga, which offered me my first glimpses at Dragon Ball’s potential. The latter half of the series kicks off with its second tournament arc, aka the Tien Shinhan saga, aka the moment I finally fell in love with Dragon Ball. It’s here that Dragon Ball offered it’s best action and most compelling characters to date in the show. It still sits as my personal favorite tournament arc in the series. Dragon Ball manages to keep the momentum rolling with great arc after great arc as it launches itself straight into Z. It has its fair share of flaws and isn’t altogether necessary, but it’s absolutely still worth your time.

  The titular Dragon Balls aren’t lost for long

    So when Dragon Ball’s first episode ended with Goku and Bulma beginning their quest to find all seven Dragon Balls, I got a little antsy. I asked, “Is this gonna be like One Piece where they’re gonna need over a thousand episodes just to find the Dragon Balls?” Turns out I was about 987+ episodes short on my guess there. It really doesn’t take them long at all to find Dragon Balls and make their wish, even if it doesn’t exactly go as planned.

Every time the Dragon Balls are used, they disappear for a full year. This means that most of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z’s first sagas bounce back and forth between quests to find them and killing time until they can be used again. At some point in Z, though, the goal posts shift to a point where obtaining the Dragon Balls becomes completely trivial and they merely act as macguffins for resurrecting dead cast members.

  Power levels don’t actually matter

    If you’ve existed on the internet at all within the last decade and a half, you’ve likely seen the most popular Dragon Ball meme over nine-thousand times already. Between all the memes and chatter from fans, I learned about Dragon Ball’s power levels long before I ever saw them in action. Everyone has a power level and if your power level is lower than someone else’s, you’re guaranteed to lose. At least, that’s what I thought. As it turns out, power levels don’t actually mean that much in the grand scope of Dragon Ball.

  They’re first introduced in the very first episode of DBZ supposedly with the rules I listed until Goku surprises everyone by actually raising his power level. The first few sagas in DBZ are filled with villains boasting about their power levels only to somehow be defeated by someone whose power level had been lower just moments ago. It doesn’t even take Goku half the series to defeat the highest power level in the universe, at which point the term has already become meaningless.

  Super nullifies the concept even further by bringing back characters whose powers had long since been eclipsed and making them legitimate contenders. I wish someone had cleared this up for me much sooner. I had always figured that Dragon Ball fights were done deals where the highest power level always won. Who wants to watch a battle anime where the underdog never wins? Thankfully, Dragon Ball is all about the underdogs.

  Goku is pretty cool

    The hero of the story is cool. Big shocker, I know, but bear with me. If you only know Goku through clips of him fighting, of course it makes sense that he’s cool. However, once you actually start watching Dragon Ball, you kind of forget all about it, because he’s a massive goofball 99% of the time. He’s a dork from the countryside who only ever thinks about eating and fighting and doesn’t know what a kiss is despite having two sons and a granddaughter. He’s childish and naive, but when the chips are down and he gets serious, he gets serious. It rules every single time.

  Get this, Dragon Ball is really good

    Like, really really good. Don’t get me wrong, I had hoped to appreciate Dragon Ball when I first began watching it, but I never expected to fall this deeply in love with it. I spent nearly a full year watching every single episode of this series -- a series I had never intended to watch before. I spent literal hundreds of hours of my year bonding with Goku and his pals, and it hasn’t even been a month and I already wanna do it all over again.

Dragon Ball is a monolithic, world-renowned series for a reason, and that reason is because it’s freaking GOOD. Its cast is iconic, its art style is timeless, its action is to die for, and it only gets better and better as it goes on. Seriously, it’s been more than three decades since the show began and it’s still blowing minds at the box office. It isn’t a series that rests on its laurels and name recognition alone, it constantly one-ups itself with every iteration.

  I know, there probably aren’t many of you out there who haven’t seen Dragon Ball and thus most of you won’t find this article very useful. That doesn’t matter to me right now. Because I know I’m not alone. I know there are people out there just like I used to be who at best think they don’t have time for Dragon Ball and at worst think it’s somehow beneath them. Even if there are only twelve people like that out there, I want all twelve of them to read this piece and rethink their prior misconceptions.

If that doesn’t apply to you, yet you’re still with me anyway, first of all, thank you. Second of all, I want you to think of the Dragon Ball in your life. What show do you think you don’t have the time for? What show do you think isn’t worth your time? If you’ve learned anything from me today, I want it to be this: that show might be your next favorite. You’ll never know until you sit down and watch it.

    Are you a lifelong fan of Dragon Ball? A relative newcomer like Danni? Did you not even know it existed before? Let us know in the comments below!

  -----

Danni Wilmoth is a Features and Social Videos writer for Crunchyroll and also co-hosts the video game podcast Indiecent. You can find more words from her on Twitter @NanamisEgg.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com