#also u cant judge an anime by the first few episodes !!!!!

[tskumoyuuma]

my roommate and I binge watched the lost village / mayoiga and we really werent prepared for that kind of ending. it was so good we didnt kno what to say when it was over. then we found out the majority of people hated the anime n wer dumbfounded. my guess is that they didnt watch it to the end / didnt get the point of it. so, in response, I just had to write a review on crunchyroll explaining exactly why people need to give the anime a chance n watch all 12 episodes. pasted under the cut cause it's a bit long :

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let me preface this with the fact that my roommate and I started watching this as a joke. I had never heard of this anime before, but they had because of the stupid hippopotamus song in the first episode. we were bored and put this on because, like many reviewers on here, we expected a bloodbath. with so many characters thrown at you in the beginning, who wouldnt ? and yet, at the end of our bingewatch, my roommate and i, unlike the majority of reviewers, were dumbfounded by how satisfying and emotionally deep the ending was, how everything was wrapped up. I dont really write reviews, but seeing all the other ones, I am compelled to write this one.

now let me say that if you're also here for a bloodbath, turn away. this is not the anime for you. I feel that most of the negative reviews come from people angry that there was no extreme gore or violence. that is not the point of this anime. in fact, the point lies in the emphasis of those who lived

but before I get deeper into that, let's break down the different aspects of this anime :

animation

the general animation of this anime is average. the only thing worth noting is how the monsters are animated, at times even using real life footage if eyes to really bring out the horror and monstrosity of the things chasing this group of people. there are also some monsters that were so horrifying that I gagged a bit, so props to the animation team for that. everything else is all right; typical of a short unknown anime of this length

characters

a thing I noticed in the negative reviews for this anime is that there are too many characters who are too worthless to keep around. I, however, disagree. yes, you'll only really remember the main characters names and you will forget everyone elses, but you dont need to remember them. I was able to distinguish all important characters from each other even if I couldnt remember some names and that's what matters. people are also angry because we learn next to nothing about these side characters. this is a good thing in my opinion because with a cast this large, focusing on every character that is introduced in the first five minutes of the anime would only distract from the plot and main characters. they give you enough backstory on characters to understand them and their actions, and that's enough. and, to be clear, none of the backstory they give excuses the characters bad actions; they only serve to explain them. the anime even emphasizes that these kinds of actions are wrong. and, yes, you will get angry at peoples stupid decisions, but that's because theyr human and young and scared, of course they wouldnt make the right and sensible decisions. even I was yelling at the screen at times, but if you can get past that, then the characters are, unlike what most people say, watchable (unless of course your taste in characters is wildly different than mine, then I say to that fair enough. I still believe the anime ending is worth enduring annoying characters for either way).

pacing

I'll be the first one to admit that the pacing, especially in the first few episodes, is not good. the first episode feels rushed as heck and starting it off with a flash round of self introductions didnt help me get into it and only served to confuse me with so many names and faces. but as I've explained, you dont need to memorize everyone's name to kno who is who; you'll kno who's important enough to remember by the second or third episode. the pacing, however, (in my opinion) gets better as you go on. yes, it does bait you along for answers until the second to last and last episodes, but that's to be expected in an anime like this. they're not gonna reveal everything before its over ! and the actual reveals themselves are definitely worth the wait and mystery

plot

I'll be honest and say I didnt kno exactly what was happening for most of the anime. I had questions up the wazoo and no real answers for a long time. however, once they started getting those answers, everything began to piece together. yes, it is confusing at first, especially because they only give you a little bit at a time. however, by episode 11, a lot of things are either explained or just on the verge of being explained. the rest is wrapped up almost perfectly in the last episode, where it answers all the questions I had and also hits you with an ending so deep that my roommate and I didnt kno what to say once it was over. it presents trauma and how to deal with it in a new and refreshing light that I dont believe I've seen before, especially not in a 12 episode anime. I also feel satisfied in a way I've never been before with a 12 episode anime, with the way everything is wrapped up. for me, I dont need another episode showing what happens to the characters and how theyv chosen to deal with their respective traumas. I cant think of a better way to end the anime.

conclusion

i can say with confidence that this anime has thoroughly subverted my expectations, not by making fun of tropes in the horror anime genre and somehow making them worse, but by expanding on what horror means and how people deal with it. everyone is different and deals with trauma in their own way. there is no right way for everyone, only a right way for you.

now, I need to emphasize that in order for everything to come together, make sense, and potentially impact you the way it did for my roommate and I, you need to watch the entire thing. you cant watch the first half and call it a bad anime for not giving answers. answers will come. I can promise that. whether you can accept those answers in the end is, of course, up to you

[feliciohno]

I need a new anime to watch come give me suggestions (preferably through asks so I can actually respond to them)

Criteria

-has to not be “ugly” I’m sorry but I’m so fuckin picky with art of course it’s a personal preference so I don’t actually like calling them ugly but shrugs basically nothing that looks like Jojo or that one Netflix show with the people in heart masks or somethn idk (ain’t throwin shade on your shows they just aren’t my style I’m so sorry u-u)

-has to have a good English dub I know I know Subs not dubs whatever bla bla bla look i can’t read my brain doesn’t work like that give me something with good English voice actors and that hopefully doesn’t stray too far away from the original context

-it cant be overwhelming slow to get into first episodes always tend to be slow but if you have to tell me to wait a few episodes before it gets good then I’m so sorry but I can’t sit through that episodes are already almost 25mins long that’s already torture enough on my adhd

-has to have something good to ship DONT JUDGE ME FUCKERS a good 85% of my fandom experience is shipping okay? I’m a man of romance and absolute stupidity and I can’t lie a good ship is normally what draws me into a show (there are exceptions to this rule of course so this one is on the fence)

-well written characters and an interesting plot this should be a no brainer but just give me something I can pick apart with a fine tooth comb (though to be fair I can do that with just about anything) even if the characters aren’t well written I at least want them to be interesting or something I can get my hands on and make them well written (if there’s a pink character that’s a HUGE plus) (characters that are heavily gender nonconforming especially guys who are feminine but not in a gross way are also a HUGE plus)

Some of my favorites (and non anime faves) for examples of what I like: Ouran, Hetalia, Beastars, SU, BNA, Sailor Moon, Darkwing Duck, Ninjago, Shezow, Ranma 1/2, & Danny Phantom

[tumblunni]

Man, god, im just suddenly thinking about "ak/ur/oku" and like.. How the fuck did that even become such a huge thing in early 2000s fandom? Dear god so much early gay shipping in fandom was super unhealthy "sinful" bullshit made by straight people for fetishy purposes rather than genuine representation. But a/kurok/u was such a weird one because it was like.. Just globally accepted and never aknowledged to be problematic?? Man i still remember how lil 13 year old me didnt know there was anything wrong with it, like seriously when stuff like this becomes popularized it ends up sending bad messages to actual queer youth. Learning about your sexuality via the internet cos there's no sex ed irl for you, abd you end up stumbling into toxic fandoms before you have the critical thinking skills necessary to know that this stuff is bad and shouldnt be imitated. Like seriously one of the things i worry about EVERY NIGHT AT 2AM THAT KEEPS ME FROM SLEEPING is that stupid lil 15 year old me made a post on deviantart going like "are pedophiles really all bad? I mean it sounds like an illness. I mean maybe theyre just scared and they want help." Like im terrified constantly that someone will find that old thing and judge me as if i still believe that apologist crap, or as if it was actually an opinion i formed from a fully developed mind, rather than from a kid who (as far as i knew) had never met a pedophile, thinking about pedophiles in the abstract, while being influenced by fuckin pedophile-dominated fandoms and having NO IDEA. and of cooooourse i wanted to believe that i was mature for my age, i thought that was a compliment.. Uuuuugh...

Sorry, going a little offtopic there.

But anyway isnt it kinda weird how akur/oku was just.. Not even regarded as pedophilia? And when i was a kid it wasnt just me not understanding the gross parts of the fandom, i legit never thought axel was that much older than roxas. And it was one of the more popular gay ships cos at that point as far as we knew it was the only person axel had any sort of backstory with, and he cared so much about this guy that he was willing to sacrifice his life to help sora even when he knew roxas would never come back. At the time without further context it seemed like a reasonable assumption to make? And it wasnt until Days that i realized axel was intended to be an adult rather than a teenager, and even worse A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO MADE THAT SHIPPING ART KNEW THAT. Uuugh it was so gross in retrospect to go back and see all the clues i missed that these people were fetishizing roxas's inexperience and veey much writing him as underage. AAAAAAA!

Anyway im glad that shit is now recognized as shit and now we have canon evidence of this dude being old as balls. And honestly i love the relationship of him as a big brother/dad to roxas and xion a lot more, even though as a kid i was desperate for any kind of queer representation in kh. Like.. I never really actually liked the ship that much or felt any chemistry? I just latched onto a few bad writing flubs that could potentially be interpreted as Gay Evidence because i was SO damn desperate! Like i felt like i had to support all these gross abusive ships in fandom cos if i wasnt then i was being 'homophobic', i mean they were THE ONLY AVAILABLE OPTIONS, right? :( Its only now ive grown up i can see how wrong that was, and how people just used it as an excuse to make gross shit and get away with it. Like how in Black Butler all these 'yaoi fangirls' kept erasing the rarest of rare things, a canon trans woman, because 'its sexier if its gay'. Ughhhh. And seriously that discourse still exists for poor Grell, and there's still a lot of these shitty bigoted people pretending to be allies, but like seriously this was EVERYWHERE in 2005! And lgbt rights and even lgbt communities at all were way smaller and less available to the poor teenagers who really needed that positive influence while they were figuring out who they are. So man the abusive side of yaoi fandom was WAY more powerful, and wya more.mainstream, with barely any criticism. And the whole content of this fandom was creepy fuckin adults making pedo porn, and kids who just discovered they were queer and tried to headcanon their favourote characters as being like them. Fucking predator heaven! So yeh that ruined KH for me and definately made me scared of returning to Black Butler for almost a decade. And then i found out that the manga itself has none of that pedo shit and that one of the fandom's biggest abusive gay man archetypes was actually a trans woman this entire time, and just gahhhhh....

Also like seriously this is a tad offtopic but can we kill the anime trope of either everyone looking young or everyone looking old? Or creepy things where just one character looks the wrong age in order to fetishize pedophilia? I dont think kingdom hearts was one of those intentional ones, like i mean there's super bad shit where its like 'this 5 year old looking person is really 9000 years old/actually 18 and just hasnt had their growth spurt yet' (somehow its even more insulting when theres not even a magical excuse) Or the other way around and we have a character thats canonically underage but drawn looking sexually mature with big ol knockers so its somehow okay. The existence of those horrible things is why i end up feeling uncomfortable even seeing ambiguous ages as just a trope in completely innocent anime, yknow? Like in pokemon and digimon all the 10 year old protagonists are exactly the same height as all the adults, and all the female love interests for ash have to be early bloomers in terms of chest and hips, while notably Iris is the only one who actually looks her age and also the first non love interest. Its another reason why i prefer the new art style for the latest season, they make everyone look like kids and Lillie continues to look like a kid even though she's the main girl and has all the cute scenes with Ash. The girls even got very normal looking kiddy swimsuits in the beach episode! Why is that so uncommon, to find the bare minimum thing of underage kids not being sexualized at the beach??

Soooooo yeah, thats at least part of why kid me thought axel and roxas were within a similar age range. Like i thought roxas was maybe 16 and axel was 18?? Somehow?? I dont even know, kingdom hearts isnt even SUPER bad with the 'kids look like older teens,all adults look like age 20 at the most' anime syndrome. Its probably more because id been raised on games and anime that followed that trope, before i played kh. And as a kid you just dont really know the exact differences between 'old', like i mean i knew teenagers were tall and boys get a growth spurt, so somehow it made sense to me that axel could be the same age as roxas?? And man even if i knew he wasnt, i was barely educated at all about pedophilia and i didnt know the nuances of it. I just knew 'its bad for adults to marry kids' like man i was really behind the curve in general learning due to my undiagnosed autism and abusive parenting so like HERE'S 12 YEAR OLD ME NOT EVEN THINKING ABOUT THE SEX ASPECT. And i didnt know that adults in relationships with teenagers was bad too, or like 16/17 year old teens dating kids... I was so fuckin dumb... I really cant believe that not only did i believe stupid adults saying 'pedophilia isnt bad if you're non offending, its okay to make cartoon child porn as long as you dont physically abuse real kids' but also i somehow just DID NOT EVER REALIZE that axel was an adult and roxas wasnt even a goddamn older teen...

So yeh im making a lot of excuses for why my stupid younger self was blindly parroting bullshit, but im not trying to excuse how goddamn wrong and bad it was. I still wake up ashamed in the middle of the night for crapoy decisions i made as a dumb kid, and in terrified that some shreds of it might still exist out there on the internet and maybe someone else could read it?! Gahhhh! Seriously could i have accidentally helped spread that bullshit brainwashing to other kids? And seriously when people say this shit is harmless they just need to look at this, look at how being into problematic yaoi is such a common 'phase' for ACTUAL CHILDREN. Like its not fuckin NATURAL for kids to fall into this stuff, they do it because they dont know any better but the people making the goddamn founding blocks of the fandom are fuckin grown women fetishizing gay men or grown men fetishing lesbians. There's people who do know better who actually conciously decide that a/kurok/u is a good ship while knowing all the goddamn details of what it actually is and exactly what theyre supporting by shipping it. Ughhhhh!

So yeh fuckin Please Stay Safe In Fandom, Kids

And pedophiles have absolutely none of my sympathy, please ignore that goddamn shit i wrote as a little kid being fuckin groomed by a fandom without even knowing it.

This also applies a lot to the rest of LGBT+ aside from just gay shipping, like seriously it took me til age 18 to find any positive representation of trans people or even a proper explanation of what being trans is, yet before i was even 8 years old i'd seen a million 'lol gross man in a dress who gets sexual gratification from wearing women's underwear' jokes in kids shows. And when i was 12 i'd already been exposed to the fuckin hell of m/pre/g thanks to its prevelance of untagged n/sf/w shit in the kh fandom. And by age 15 i'd been exposed to pedophile apologists arguing whether child porn was okay if they only got off to that and didnt personally abuse that kid with their own hands. All of that shit but actually learning about homosexuality and gender in sex ed would have been 'too much' for someone my age...

God what a fuckin mess. Fuck im really really fuckin worried that any of my ignorant comments at those ages could have been read by other ignorant kids and contributed to that disgusting fandom atmosphere. Fuck i think about this so damn often im so damn ashamed of how ignorant i used to be yet i know the adult fuckfaces making pedo shit never reel one lick of shame any damn day of their life. I used to excuse their shit as an actual kid cos i just ASSUMED they would be ashamed and want to seek help! Gahhhh..

[tumblunni]

Digimon World Next Order!! For once a game that ISNT a weirdly named sequel, even though it still sounds like one. 'Order Points' is the name of the revamped battle system. ^_^ Ive only been playing for about four hours but so far I'm really enjoying it! RANDOM RAMBLING ABOUT MY JOY, AHOY!

* First off, its a sequel to the original Digimon World rather than to Cyber Sleuth, so do a bit of research before you buy it, I'd say. Its more of a tamagotchi hybrid rpg than a regular turn-based one. Lots of hugging virtual pets and feeding em snacks! But this has always been my fave genre so I'm happyyyyyy~ * I named my two digimon Hershey and Zephyr cos they started off as terriermon and lopmon. But they immediately diverged off into wildly different digivolution paths instead, so now the names dont make sense XD By some grand coincidence they ended up becoming snowogremon and icedevimon at the same time, so that's what they are now! :3 my popsicle buddies! * Hershey's favourite food is mushrooms/vegetables, and Zephyr is a bit of a diva who hates everything except mineral water. Its funny since Hershey is the fragile magic user of the duo, and then we have this hulking ice shoulderblades yeti being all 'no my carbs'. DUDE WHY U GO AGAINST UR EVOLUTION REQUIREMENTS aaa but i luv u anywayyyyy * Hershey lucked out and got a super powerful technique early on by random chance, this thing that costs 700 mp to deal 700 damage, when everything else is like 50 power. And then they lucked right out of it again, cos Icedevimon cant use that move XD fifteen seconds of power as a rookie... * why do the levels mean basically nothing, yo? the game says this redvegiemon is level 3 but its stronger than the level 6 everything else in the area. Maybe the game is just dumb and levels dont take into account digivolution level? Like.. this is stronger cos its not a rookie, and they didnt even bother to make the level counter say 13 or something so the player could actually tell  Well, now i know to ignore that thing entirely and just judge on their digivolutions! * The difficulty is far lower in the actual raising aspect yet higher in battles... its weird... * Its also a shame that training no longer has unique animations! It doesnt have any animations at all, its just push button dispense stats. They did at least clear up the problem of having to walk manually between each training area and waste valuable time, now there's just one training area that contains all the different trainings in a neat quick navigation menu. But its also a bit less charming and less gamelike when its JUST menus. BUT on the other hand they did mitigate it a bit by throwing in new features like a roulette roll to get bonus stats, and a whole system of complex ways you can win an extra turn on it. (Training next to each other, training opposite skills, having max happiness, someone having just digivolved, one stat gets a bonus turn each day at random...) * Its really nice that the intro of the game has you meet your digimon partners in fully evolved mega form and have a few scenes of dialogue with them before they get poofed down to digieggs by the villain. It helps mitigate the weirdness of your partner digimon being the only digimon that cant talk! * BUT ALSO. NOW THEY TALK. !!!!!! * You get some cute random dialogue popups on the bottom of the screen as you adventure around, and each digivolution has a different set of stuff to say. Its still very minimal and can get repetitive, but its adorable and helps you get more attatched to these lil doofs! * Also its hella nice that you can now pick to play as a girl, for the first time in the tamagotchi-style digimon games! I actually think her design looks cooler than the dude, he just has a streak of blue hair while she has this awesome poisonous-looking striped ponytail that bleeds pixels as you run! Badass! * ALSO thank you for english dubbed dialogue yo. Its not perfect but then again namco bandai games rarely are XD And they included an option to have the original japanese voices if you prefer! * I missed Jijimon so much. Why he never get to appear in anything aside from this spinoff series? He was in one episode of Tamers but that was an awful cameo He has THE MOST STEREOTYPICAL grandpa voice in the english dub and i luv im * The environment design so far is a lot more basic and boring than the old ps1 game for some reason? It seems to fall prey to the usual ps4 designer logic that making stuff BIG makes it automatically good, even if its just annoyingly huge spaces to traverse with barely anything in them. And so far its just been Generic Field A, B and C, with only occasional stuff like a giant battery to let you know its the digital world. And the main town is super small now that everything training has been smooshed into one building... * Its also a lot less sandboxy and interesting to explore, and the digimon recruitment quests kinda suck. I've already found three guys and all of them were fetch quests to gather a certain amount of an item. And now you also have to gather certain amounts of an item from special gathering spots in order to actually build the new shops, which is annoying because its in these huge boring maps that you have to backtrack thru again and again * The battle system is VASTLY IMPROVED, holy SHIT! Its like they somehow read my brain?? Back when i played the first digimon world, i would always get so frustrated at the auto battle and its bad AI that i'd just mash the X button even when i had nothing to do. Somehow I thought it would make my digimon stronger. AND NOW IT ACTUALLY DOES!!! The X button has been remapped to the new cheer function, and if you cheer at the right moment you get more or less Order Points. if you use them you can manually select to use a move at the right timing, use a move without consuming MP, or use a special super move! (waaaay easier than the shoulder buttons thing in the old game) It spices up a very inactive battle system! * Oh and HELL YEAH FOR QUIDE PUZZLE SYSTEM THINGIE! In the first game you had NO WAY OF KNOWING what requirements you needed to meet for each digivolution, or what digimon could turn into what, until after you'd already unlocked it. You had to consult fanmade guides if you wanted to try 100% completion. Now the guide is an actual ingame menu where you unlock tips as rewards for various good actions as a virtual pet owner. You'll likely never unlock all the guide points for a particular digimon stage before you're already past it, unless you raise the same one a bazillion times. But the lil tips every now and then can be useful enough to help you choose which direction to take your training! Just a lil 'oh, ive already hit the HP requirement for this one? i guess I'll try and go for it!' or 'oh darn this one requires maximum deliquency, i guess i wont get it so I should try for something else'. Its useful. My only complaint is that maybe the way to unlock them could have been less random and less easy? Its just a random chance whenever they eat food/get praised after a good thing. * Ultimately so far the few bad points arent bad enough to ruin the enjoyment for me. It just seems a little soulless and rushed, maybe? But I'd enjoy literally anything in this genre, I've been waiting so long for a sequel that even if this was terrible I'd still adore it! And its far from terrible, its just a lil bland. It probably wont have as much replayability as the first game, but it still feels like it'd be fun for one playthrough! * Also, Hershey and Zephyr are my new lil best friends. SUCH A CUTE GIANT MONSTERS YES YOU IS