#like watching all these mid to late 90s animes has me just

[vveakfish]

oughhhhh the urges™, they are back gaaaahh

[kafus]

i’ve been showing my mom pokemon horizons (we just finished episode 8, will be watching 9 whenever we do another session) and like for context my mom is over 60 years old and not a pokemon fan (though she does have scattered pokemon knowledge because of osmosis from me and living thru pokemania in the 90s with my older brother before i was born)

it’s been interesting seeing how she reacts as someone at that age. like uh

- this is further proving to me how important the adult characters are in horizons. my mom isn’t super articulate with her feelings on media but she had a lot of visible/audible reactions to moments between friede and roy the past few episodes - like personally as a 24 year old i get a lot out of the adult characters but i think my mom does too because she relates to/enjoys the parenting dynamic, which is helping her enjoy it more overall

- in speaking of friede, them putting in a gen 1 charizard pikachu man was actually a very good decision because my mom has remarked on how cool charizard is and gets a kick out of cap’s smug energy. they’re very recognizable to her and she likes them LOL

- it’s really funny how much the anime art style can still confuse her though, despite being exposed to it heavily since i got into anime in the 4th grade in the mid/late 2000s. sometimes she mistakes a certain expression/emotion for another, like asking why liko was mad in one scene when she was actually Determined. she has asked me why anne only has one fang and why it keeps switching sides, and she asked if landau was even a human being and not a pokemon because she was so confused by his facial hair’s stylization and his wacky clothes (he actually freaks her out a bit. the only character she doesn’t like LOL it’s hitting some sort of uncanny valley for her)

- this is more applicable to my mom because of her exposure to pokemon and not the average older person, but it’s funny seeing her deal with the new anime structure with what little she previously knows. she’s asked things like “doesn’t he have more pokemon?” @ amethio continuously sending out ceruledge and “don’t they have other moves?” @ liko and roy spamming leafage and ember at each other. horizons tends to give everyone just one or two partner pokemon and catching and training up pokemon has been comparatively slow, which is actually something i enjoy, but my mom is a bit confused by it LOL

- on the note of my mom’s pokemon knowledge, i just found this really endearing: in HZ006 when rayquaza is first released, for one she excitedly asked if the pokemon was coming out of the ball, and then when she saw it she asked if it was gyarados. i said no that’s rayquaza. and she was like huh why did i think of gyarados. and i said well they’re both flying noodles. later she said she was surprised she knew that association/was proud of herself for it and i thought that was cool too LMAO

- she has no strong opinions on dot yet, we aren’t far enough, but i made sure to point at the screen really emphatically when she showed up and say THAT’S MY FAVORITE CHARACTER!! so she knows. she Knows i’ve been showing her all my likodot art anyway SORRY MOM

anyway those were just some of my thoughts watching it with her has been really enjoyable :)

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so like we're all aware of the uh absolute disaster of arrests related to the coronation, right? with the police arresting people for seemingly no reason at best?

anyone want to hear a first hand account of one of them? yeah?

well, let me introduce you to the group who were arrested in the middle of a seminar that was entirely unrelated to the coronation who were arrested by the metropolitan police with a rather surreal tangent about vegan breakfasts.

[Alt Text:]

‘It was utterly surreal’: police accused of farcical error after 14 arrested at seminar on day of coronation

Primary teacher and ex-civil servant were among those attending class. Here they recount what happened

Daniel Boffey Chief reporter, Sun 21 May 2023

“I felt that they knew by the time they had taken us to the station in the van that they had the wrong people,” said Lauren, 26, a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry.

The post-coronation wash-up over the last fortnight has been marked by an array of surreal stories of bungled arrests, from the republican activists swept up by police for possession of luggage straps to the pro-monarchy Australian architect who had been simply seeking to enjoy a pleasant day out at Westminster Abbey.

It has been notable that in each of those cases, after intense media attention, the Metropolitan police has since admitted some regret and announced that no further action would be taken.

The group, almost entirely female or non-binary, aged between their mid-20s and late 60s and largely new to activism, let alone its more extreme manifestations, were arrested on suspicion of being a Just Stop Oil cell intent on disrupting the crowning of Charles III.

In reality, they had gathered in a small nondescript room in a rented work space in east London for a seven-hour seminar about the theory, history and practice of non-violent protest after expressing an interest in the social activist group Animal Rising, largely via its website.

They were put in minivans outside the building, with eight of the group taken to Brixton police station in south London and six to Stoke Newington in north London. Hillwood was sat in the vehicle for hour and a half before disembarking in Brixton. There was a further 90-minute wait outside the station before being checked in at the custody desk.

It was 4pm by the time Hillwood was led to her cell. She asked for her solicitor and was served a vegan “all day breakfast”. “It was literally beans,” Hillwood said. A solicitor advised her to offer no comment to the officers’ questions.

But when it came to his turn, Jenkins felt no such compunction. “I said my intention was to sit in an all day training course learn about non-violent protests, meet some new people and avoid the coronation.”

The group were let out late in the evening on bail pending further investigation. Those arrested have since tried to piece together what may have happened. They learned that Just Stop Oil had previously used the building for meetings, along with many other organisations.

The police had mentioned some placards lying around in part of the building, and some paint unconnected to the training. The truth, said Caitlin, was that it was a horrible bungle. Animal Rising is planning a civil case for wrongful arrest and imprisonment. “I want the police to drop it,” said Caitlin. “I want my phone and my watch back and I want this wiped from the police database.”

The Metropolitan police has declined to comment.

full article here

so little tl/dr: the metropolitan police essentially raided a 7 hour seminar that was unrelated to the coronation, and arrested 14 people on suspicion of being part of just stop oil and held them for over six hours because uh, well theyd rented the same room as just stop oil did one time and there was some signs i guess.

(side note on just stop oil; ive read a lot of conflicting information about them as activists and i honestly dont know if they are a real activist group or if its astroturfing. if anyone more educated on them wants to elaborate, please do.)

they were arrested “on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” because the police believed they intended to disrupt the coronation.

im not sure how they planned to do that since they were five miles away from it and in a seven-hour seminar, but who needs logistics or facts when you have a law that violates human rights.

theyre still being investigated now; the police still have caitlins phone; theyre out on fucking bail.

again, the police believe their part of just stop oil because they rented a room that anyone can rent and apparently they saw some signs and placards.

if you wrote "25 police officers mistakenly raid a seminar on non-violent protest as they believed them to be part of a conspiracy for renting a room" as satire, youd probably get the feedback or it being a little on the nose. but nope, this actually happened.

[ligbi]

Yet Another Comparison Of  ‘90-’99 And ‘14-’23 Anime Girls

Used in-episode screenshots and semi-neutral expressions to keep some semblance of consistency for accurate comparisons, and only used tv anime so no golden boys or makoto shinkais

Feel free to comment on this post or add to it- I know I had a lot more children's anime in the 90s than in the 10ishs but there were also a lot less shows back then

List of series and thoughts under the cut

90-99

knights of ramune \ nadia

goldfish warning\ future gpx

dog of flanders\yyh

akazukin chacha\slam dunk

tenchi universe/ eva

escaflone/ those who hunt elves

kero kero chime/utena

akihabara/ devilman lady

tenshi ni narumon/gto

14-23

yuki yuna/garo

rakudai kini no cavalry/ nisekoi

kuma miko/ maisou gakuen

urara meirochou/tsugumomo

a place further than our universe/ happy sugar life

endro/carole and tuesday

bna/ interspecies reviewers

drugstore in another world/blue period

lyrocois recoil/birdy wing

revolution magical world yuri/ ice guy and cool colleague

I tried to keep it younger characters/older characters for the 90s and that was not an option for the recent anime series because

There are way too many damn anime nowadays. 

I tried to just get a general assortment of different character designers for both but feel free to tell me what a bad job I did for the modern stuff. Pretty sure I don’t have any dupes for the 90s ladies

personally the issue with modern anime is less ‘uwu moe moe kyun isekai harem bullshit’ and more ‘heres a single cour cheaply made no ending adaptaion of a manga or light novel why don’t you go check those out’ big budget ads of which there are too many

i’d like to run the numbers to see if the percentage of original anime has gone down or if the original works are just being flooded out by the sea of overworked nothings that are being constantly rushed out the door

yes obviously not all original works are good (or finish well rip wep) and there are good adaptations but when people think anime once they're past shounen jump series 1-500 the biggest names are original works and sure you might end up with an fma or ouran but your bebops your evas your utenas are originals. or media mixes which are weird collabs we could get into but let’s not today 

i won’t disagree that there’s too many anime nowadays targeting lolicons (yeah yeah any anime for them is too much but we’re talking about comparing eras not judging content here) but I /think/ 80s and 90s relegated that type of stuff to OVAs generally. Don’t have the data to back that up but between ovas nowadays being only just for porn and the lemony history of ovas since the 80s.... there were just More ovas back when as well

doing a loose count on mal of all ovas from 90-99  1050 to about 750 total for 14-23. given the tv ratio for 95-19 being  around 1:6

yes yes these numbers are fast and loose and theres chinese animation in there and we can get finicky about What Is Anime but this was a conversation about what era of anime stylization is better

it’s the late 90s btw

but that’s a personal preference of course because art is subjective blah blah blah 90s character driven comedy fantasy/scifi ova are peak

PER SON A LLY

did I have more thoughts?

probably

i started this over two hours ago make less anime

Make less anime and put more effort into what you do make

less anime. more episodes. more pay. more breaks. take longer. more original stuff

stop remaking shittttttt. you already wasted time and money and effort on a mid anime adaptation of a manga. don’t do it againnnnnn

anyway watch kero kero chime 

appended thoughts the next morning less on art style and more on volume

as of mid 2023 for completed series we are at halfway of all anime having been made after ~2011 this adds up to a reddit post I found with some very nice data https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/lvvexe/chart_of_number_of_anime_per_year_over_time/  40 was a nice number of series a year about 10 a season starting and older ones continuing. 200+ is. 

yes numbers are iffy with second seasons listed as different series like sailor moon r s supers stars and mha 2 3 4 5 6 ect so for accurate numbers a human touch would be needed there is semi-finite air time to work with- obviously some companies could make new tv and satellite stations just to house their garbage but i think there is a cap somewhere in sight if anyone did crunch the numbers more accurately, total episode count is necessary. one 80s robot show of 60-80 epis is equal to 4-6 modern single cour isekais

make less anime

[katmaibearfan]

Blog FAQ

Have a question about something related to this blog and can't find an answer somewhere else? Check here before you send me an ask!

This is a constant work-in-progress, and is subject to change and grow as the scope of this blog changes and grows as well.

Who are the bears in your pfp/header image?

Questions About Me:

Whats your main blog?

@caseyscraftycorner -- i mostly reblog stuff but also post about fiber arts, board games, ttrpgs (note: not d&d 5e), and various musings.

Right now, the bear in my profile picture is 806jr and the bear in my header image is 151 Walker. The photos are screenshots from the Explore.org cams and were taken by me in fall 2023.

How do you know so much about the bears?

See the media links in my new pinned post. It's all just those and the powers of autism and adhd.

When did you start watching the bear cams?

I started watching them (or highlights re-posted to youtube) occasionally back in 2019, after 435 Holly won Fat Bear Week, but it wasn't until this past year that i really got into them.

How do you find so much time to watch the live cams and post about them?

I'm unable to work due to a combination of physical, developmental, and mental illness disabilities, and I need to fill my time somehow. Also, it's good background noise to have on when I'm crocheting/knitting/making pixel art.

How many bears can you identify?

It depends on some specific circumstances, but i'd say i can generally identify about a dozen of the bears at Brook's River. This might sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that nearly 80 non-cub bears have been seen on the cams so far this season.

Can you identify this bear for me?

Nope! Your best bet is to check the comments on the live cams for an ID. That's where I get about 90% of the IDs in my posts from.

You blocked me/my friend, what gives?

if I have blocked someone it's probably because I saw something transphobic on their blog. I'm a nonbinary man, so transphobes will be blocked on sight. I also block blogs that are blank, to reduce bots. The only other situation in which I block people is when they post about hunting bears specifically, but this is really uncommon for me to run in to and as such is not likely to be the answer.

Questions About Blog Language & Topics

Why do you list most bears' ages as X.5 years?

Brown Bears are born in mid-winter, and we see them between late June and late October, so it's more accurate. it's also the terminology used by Katmai, particularly for cubs.

Why do only some bears have names, and are those official or unofficial names?

All bears that frequent Brooks Falls have numbers, but only some have names. The older bears with names (Holly, Otis, Chunk, Grazer) were largely named by rangers at Katmai. However, the NPS has moved away from naming monitored animals, due to the issue of subconscious pet-ification or humanization of wild animals by humans. You can read more about their position here. Young bears with names, like 4.5 year olds 428 Studious and 429 Social, are named by the bear cam viewers and not staff at Katmai, so their names are unofficial.

Which bears are related to who/are there any family trees/is 856 503's father/etc

Bear pregnancy is complicated. Two bears from the same litter can be from two different fathers, and both sows and boars mate with multiple partners during mating season. Therefore, any ideas about any boar being any specific bear's father is purely speculation unless we have DNA evidence.

In addition, unless we see a cub with their mother in early summer and then they separate shortly afterwards, saying that any specific subadult was any specific cub is also generally speculation (unless there is DNA evidence) due to the fact that by the time we see them, it has been 6 months, and young bears do a lot of growing and changing in that time. The guesswork we do here is more reliable than guessing fathers, but it is still fundamentally guesswork. There are DNA collection efforts every few years at Katmai, to monitor the genetic diversity of the bears in the area, but not enough bears have had their DNA collected at this point to accurately map most families at this time.

[snekverse]

Ik in mystreet a lot of the chars are anime enjoyers but im gonna be so specific with ranking them and the type of anime they watch

Travis: bro's the type to only watch it early morning, mid afternoon because the daylight makes it more enjoyable and his nd ass needs the mood to be there so he can watch his favorite shows. He had a BNHA phase but over the 3rd seasons halfway point he became a Sailor Moon watcher and is now embarrassed to admit he only watches shoujo anime, specifically ones with a good magic system because shapes and colors make him happy /lh

Katelyn: Strictly a magical girl anime enjoyer. I think this is cannon but she's the type to only watch it at night when everyone is asleep so nobody walks in and asks why she's smiling 😭 she never watched the origional Soul Eater but regularly re-watches Soul Eater Not! because that still counts /lh. She never finished Sailor Moon because she wants to watch the movies on the TV but almost never has time alone 😭

Nana: She watches a large variety but refuses to watch BNHA because Bakugou just pisses her off so much 😭 whatever it is about him she just wants to claw his eyes out. She definitely bullies the 30 year old bakugou fangirls /lh

Garroth: watched like one episode of one-piece but didn't care for the art styke and dropped it 😭

Lucinda: girl watches death note and only death note. She just likes the plot and the skrunkly ass man that doesnt wear shoes he's funky and reminds her of one of her ex's when she was still comphet /lh

Aaron: "i dont like the voice acting" he's so picky. Genres don't particularly matter but if the voice acting is a certain way he won't watch it 😭😭

Jeffory: He put on Madoka Magica with Abby thinking it was a cute show to occupy her with when he was too tired one day to play. It in fact was not just a cute magical girl show. She isn't allowed to watch anime he doesn't do research on now no matter how innocent it looks /lh

God... all of these are so true... Aaron just like me fr lol

Travis FOR SURE is a shoujo and shounen enthusiast,, heavy preference for shoujo. He def also watched, or at least tried to watch, a bunch of classic ie Naruto, DBZ, all that wackass 90s/early 2000s stuff lol. He def doesn't watch them anymore but still looks back fondly <3

Katelyn for sure is a softie for magical girl animes and probably enjoys watching shoujos with Travis from time to time, but she vehemently denies it all. I think she would really wanna cosplay some of the characters but would uncomfy with,,,, all of it lol

Nana watches anything popular until she decides that it sucks ass, which doesn't happen very frequently but she def watched episode 1 of BNHA and gave it a HARD pass bc.. yknow.. Bakugou.. anyways she is easily the most involved in Fandom culture and for sure starts shipping discourse for fun lol

I think garroth would be pretty off-put about a lot of anime tropes/genres and would generally not enjoy it but you're so right like so many people in his life watch anime he's gotta at least try right?? Don't ask me where this come from, but lowkey he seems like the kind of guy to accidentally watch a hanime and not realize until if was too late...

Lucinda def does not strike me as someone who really watches anime like at all,, unless the art style is genuinely just gorgeous beyond reason. That being said, I think she's a huge supporter of women's wrongs and would be interested in fucked up (female) charas like Makima from JJK. I don't think she'd ever get around to watching it, but she'd like all the fanart n shit and lowkey be involved in the fandom

Aaron is spot on lol no notes. He started watching it for Aphmau’s sake and while he doesn't dislike it its only very specific anime that he does like. Literally if anything is off it becomes just about unwatchable for him

Jeffory I think started watching because Katelyn used to be SUPER into anime and while he likes it a lot he rarely ever watches, partially bc he's such a busy guy. He def talks about anime the same way a parent would yknow?? Like he's trying to be interested and supportive but he's so out of touch now that he has no fuckin idea what's going on anymore lmao

Aphmau only watches super cutesy things, and sometimes shounens. She seems like the kind of person though he can't for the life of her sit through an entire show, but she's always super active in the fandom and despite never finishing the anime and not reading the manga, she's always up to date on what's going on plot-wise (def not projecting nope no way). The only exception is Attack on Titan which she's seen in full several times

Zane is almost the opposite, generally preferring shows with darker themes and goreier visuals. I generally think he tries to stay away from fandom spaces until he's up to date, and while I think he'd prefer to read the manga before watching the anime that takes a LOT more time and his free time's limited enough as is

[bowelfly]

while i usually keep this blog focused on art and bugs, movies are my third big passion, and since i don't believe in streaming services i don't have a spotify wrapped for 2022 to show off but i do have a letterboxd account so i felt like going through my 2022 movie watching stats. this post is basically for me alone and will be obnoxiously long so i'll put in a read more thing here out of courtesy:

ooh so close to almost 1000 hours of movies! still 718 films is pretty good, though that does also include around 80 or so shorts, mostly animations, that i also logged.

i was averaging around 2 movies per day for the year. being 500 miles away from all your friends, family, and partner does give you a lot of free time it turns out. the most movies i watched in a single week, december 10-16, was 28. the weeks i only watched a couple things were either when i was visiting my partner or too depressed to even watch movies

one of the things i've done this year to keep myself sane in isolation was to stream movies for friends. however since i have multiple non-overlapping friend groups, there were a number of movies i watched multiple times because i have a deep psychological and emotional need to share weird shit with the people i care about. NOVA SEED, FANTASY MISSION FORCE, and BUDDHA'S PALM were the triple crown winners this year.

i only watched 7 movies that came out in 2022. my sweet spot is genre movies made from the late 70s through the mid-90s which you can see clearly if you look at my lifetime stats. predictably, i have very strong opinions about practical effects and stunts and film stock

my ratings spread for 2022 is about what it normally is for other years with a lot of things ending up in the 3.5-4 star range. maybe i'm just generous with my stars or maybe i just like what i like and try to not watch things i won't like unless they're bad in a fun way but i really feel like i've been moving away from the whole so-bad-its-good thing over the years and focusing on things that i unironically like--though these are often films that other people do categorize as bad or so-bad-its-good.

my most watched actors is a bunch of golden age hong kong dudes because i went super hard on the kung fu and wuxia films this year. like about half of these are big name stars and the other half are less well-known character actors that still are in like 200 movies playing assorted emperors and evil administrators. really glad to see my main man lo lieh running away with first place. he's most well known for playing evil white-haired kung fu masters usually named pai mei or variations of that, but he's also played the protagonist or antihero of a number of great films like FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH or THE FUGITIVE (1972, not the harrison ford one). my favorite role of his is without question Bi Gu of East Island the rascally kung fu wizard who hollers his name from offscreen before every time he enters a scene in BUDDHA'S PALM (1982).

also very pleased to see one of my favorite american character actors, brion james squeaking his way onto the list, though sad that he got separated from his best friend and frequent collaborator tim thomerson, who i think is just below the cut here.

most watched directors. i've been a huge fan of the very recently deceased albert pyun for years now, largely on the strength of his absolute god-tier masterpiece NEMESIS (1992) though he has a number of other very entertaining movies (RADIOACTIVE DREAMS, CYBORG) and also a cavalcade of very bad movies that are nonetheless all fascinating in their own ways. i could go on about him at length but this post is long enough. maybe another time.

other than that, chor yuen (THE MAGIC BLADE, DESCENDANT OF THE SUN) and chang cheh (CRIPPLED AVENGERS, FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS) are gods of early wuxia cinema and fucking rule, and keita amemiya's 90s work (ZEIRAM, MECHANICAL VIOLATOR HAKAIDER, CYBER NINJA) are pinnacles of kickass japanese practical effects work.

i also watched a lot of russ meyer and john waters films because i'm a pevert.

this is mostly just a reminder to check out my WUXIA WIZARD WARS tumblr post and letterboxd list if you like movies about wizards shooting lasers at each other and summoning fucked up monsters and shit like that

finally, because i have a brain disease, i made a list of the 100 best films i watched this year, mostly first-time watches but probably like 15-20 rewatches that i especially enjoyed or think more people should know about or give another shot. if i didn't already have way too many projects i'd consider setting up another sideblog just going through all these one by one with reviews and screenshots but that's a lot of work and i am a tired old man. i might give an occasional highlight post like i did for THE BARON AGAINST THE DEMONS

and i guess that's about it? this has been an especially heavy year for golden age hong kong kung fu and wuxia films but i explored a lot of other interesting places and times and genres and microgenres and have a lot more i plan on checking out next year. i've got stacks and stacks of unwatched japanese V-cinema and pinku violence and kaiju and tokusatsu films; tons of giallo and hammer horror and eurotrash lesbian vampire flicks; classic westerns, revisionist westerns, spaghetti westerns; SOV horror, eastern european stop motion, hong kong CAT III sleaze, russian postapocalyptic dirges, poliziotteschi, krimi, and noir films; AIP and PM Entertainment action schlock; italian mad max ripoffs, italian alien ripoffs, italian conan ripoffs; approximately 300 movies with NINJA, BLOOD, or SHAOLIN in their titles; and probably some other shit too.

finally, if you've made it this far and you're a nasty little film freak like me i'll let you in on a secret: i have copies of every single one of these movies on my hard drive. literally thousands of movies dug out of dozens of digital dumpsters with my own two greasy grabby raccoon paws. if any of them particularly catch your interest but you can't find a copy, well you can maybe slip old professor bfly a little private request and get yourself a copy of whatever you need. it may take some time since i only have so many google drive accounts unless someone wants to subsidize a deluxe mega.nz subscription for me to mass-upload things to. i also have a soulseek account sharing the entire hoard but it's very slow and not always online but you can DM me for that as well. again though you may have to be patient because i am old and tired and slow and have a full time job and a hundred dumb hobbies and social anxiety and generalized brain damage

happy new year everyone now go watch a movie about some dudes kicking the shit out of each other for me

[nikkiruncks]

The Next Next Generation kids (born in the 90s)

(Just to keep track. Also inspired by @einsteinsugly. Srsly, I’m obsessed with your verse)

Julian Alexander Dupree-Sanchez (born late ‘96) - He has a sharp tongue like Millie but has a big heart like Caroline. I haven’t thought deeper into it since me and @disneymbti just started talking about their octopulets but later, I’ll create distinct personalities and remake a post.

Miguel Ryan Dupree-Sanchez - He’s very kind, sometimes to the point where he’s oblivious when people are being mean. That doesn’t mean he’ll let people walk all over him though. He’s also gay and proud of it.

Beatriz “Bee Bee” Jody Dupree-Sanchez - Bee is very smart and intuitive. She’s very good at reading people and knows how to cheer people up. She loves bubblegum pop and the pop punk aesthetic. Her dream is to be a musician.

Mariana “Mary” Caroline Dupree-Sanchez - Mary comes off as a ditz but is actually super intelligent. She’s gets straight A’s and loves to exercise.

Ethan Louis Dupree-Sanchez - Ethan is very clever and sharp-witted young man with quick remarks and a protective side. He's really good at playing chess and knows how to be a good talker. He loves indie rock music and the smell of wood and leather. His dream is to be a lawyer.

Ella Alice Dupree-Sanchez - Ella is a smart and focused young woman with a heart of gold and ambitious about her future. She's really good at planning big events and listening to people talking about anything really. She loves watching musicals and reading about personality types. Her dream is to be a party planner.

Ariana Sofia Wilde (Melissa and Dave’s daughter) (born early ‘97) - Ariana is a feminist and kind-hearted young woman with a strong-minded aura about her. She's really good at making music and knows how to fix things with her bare hands. She loves reading books and listening to rock music. Her dream is to be a music producer.

Mia Anne Forman (late ‘96) - Personality wise, she’s actually nothing like Eric nor Donna. She’s a lot like Kitty. Kind, sometimes over optimistic, well meaning, along with a sharp tongue.

Kat Hyde (early ‘96) - She’s very into the pop punk aesthetic and can come off as intimidating similar to her father but has the biggest heart. She’s pretty feisty and blunt similar to her mom and was in the cheerleading squad during high school.

Reggie Hyde (early ‘96) - He tries to be tough like his dad but is really bad at it. He also pretty in touch with his feelings to the point where kids at school tease him for being gay (he's not). He's super smart but also has a bunch of conspiracy theories.

Lula "Lulu" Julia Mitchell (early '96) - She loves fiercely and is brave like her mom. Lulu loves candy to the point where she wants to make her own and sell it. Also, she's a lesbian who's into hyper feminine women.

Kira Amaya Kwan (late '98) - Kira is a calm and easygoing young woman with patience on her fingertips and a old soul spirit. She's really good at helping animals and making people feel comfortable around her. She loves rose scents perfumes and the smell of lavender and ocean. Her dream is to be a author.

Cleo Joy-Martelli (mid '99) - Cleo is a bold and confident young woman with a dreamy outlook of the world and has a charm with her in her bones. She's really good at giving hugs to people she loves the most and singing songs with her band. She loves the smell of smoke and lavender and playing her music out loud to people. Her dream is to be a world famous Broadway singer.

Anne-Marie Lauren Kelso (early '99) - She's a huge bookworm and loves to read, to the point her friends and siblings tease her (basically a Rory Gilmore). Every day, she comes to the library after school (present day, she works there). Oh yeah, Jonah is her Logan :)

Margot "Margie" Anne Kelso (early '99) - She's very quick witted and uses a lot of dry humor, similar to Red. But does have a good heart. Her dream is to be an artist and is currently taking art course as of present.

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Kristina Kelso (early ‘99) - She loves acting and majored in drama.

Arnold James Barnes (early ‘95) (based off of Jesse Kelso, @tht70sblog’s oc) in a way, except way less redeemable)- The school delinquent who got held back more than one can count. He was Anne-Marie’s boyfriend. He’s known to cause trouble and hurt people with no remorse. He was mostly raised by Ryland Barnes. His mom, Sophie, isn’t really in his life that much. Margie and Lizzie were against Anne-Marie dating him, mostly because he was 18 and she was still 15 at that point. After being sent to juvenile detention for theft, he dumped Anne-Marie via letter.

Julia Johnson (early-ish ‘99) - She’s very smart and suspicious. Kinda like the moral compass in a way. Julia is a creative and passionate young woman with a fierce heart and a bold fashion sense in her outfits. She's really good at designing outfits and not listening to people's mean words about her. She loves watching Aubrey Hepburn movies and the smell of perfume and vanilla in the air. Her dream is to be a fashion designer.

[raeseddon]

Had one of those "well *that* makes sense" moments the other day when I realized that the specific American cartoons I watched as a kid all but assured I'd adore Shounen and (some) Shoujo manga later in life-- I'm talking your YST/Ronin Warriors and your Pretear's and the like-- the ones that take time to really push and examine the psychological impact of being told "you are the world's only chance at survival, and for as competent as they seem, everyone else around you is winging it as much as you are."

(I tried, but couldn't get into Madoka Magica, it struck me as one of those shows that people were reading way too much into to justify liking something that was that dark and unabashedly misogynistic. There's deconstructing a genre, and then there's punishing your main characters because you think they deserve it for having certain feelings/beliefs that are stereo-typically associated with their gender.)

The American cartoons I've been jumping between watching are the D&D cartoon and Mighty Max, and man, the mid-80's to early 90's really had a thing for not just cryptic but borderline cruel "mentor" characters who's primary flaw was having planned things out sometimes thousands of years in advance in their heads only to become very flustered and upset by the main characters deviating from "the plan" -- a plan that more often than not said mentors never reveal in full because they know their protege' will disagree with it vehemently. (See: Dungeon Master in D&DC and Virgil in Mighty Max.)

I'm almost willing to give Virgil more of a pass than DM because there's genuine PTSD and survivor's guilt going on in Virgil's case, whereas DM has compartmentalized things so much the only time he shows any regret for how he treats the main characters is when they quite literally snap and tell him that's it, they're done, fuck it, someone needs to die. (It shows how frustrated with modern social media I am when it's actually refreshing to hear a cartoon say the words kill and die. God that's depressing....)

Virgil has watched his previous protege' sacrifice his life for The Cause and it's one of the biggest reasons he gets upset whenever Max "goes off-script" because literally everything he's planned up to that point has been about keeping Max, the literal child savior, alive...while at the same time forgetting he's a child and that kids can be really good at improvising on the fly. And where Virgil learns to trust Max's instincts in the end, there's nothing of the sort between Dungeon Master and the kids in the D&D cartoon-- he leads them around from one traumatizing situation to the next, relying on Hank's innate willingness to trust people who help him and play on his good samaritan streak--which is so strained by the end the only reason he continues to trust DM is because it's the only thing he knows how to do, and he knows it. So it's really, really hard at the end of the day to have a lot of sympathy for Dungeon Master, while Virgil at least works through some of his issues.

Come 1995 and of course I'm going to see the parallels between Mighty Max and YST/Ronin Warriors-- sketchy mentor characters contrasted with really bright, caring and trusting main characters (with a fantastically written female lead this time as well!)and later Pretear. In fact a huge part of me feels like Himeno and Max would benefit from being in group therapy together-- especially with the "everyone around me lied by omission almost right to the end because they refused to believe I would mature to the emotional challenge of handing The Truth" plot point.

TL;DR

American cartoons in the mid/late 80's and early 90's weren't quite as "dark" or edgy enough to catch the culture zeitgiest that anime later did--<i>but</i> if anime had taken longer to catch hold here in the States, you can absolutely see where American cartoons were stepping up to the same level of maturity, aging with their audience and filling the emotional need for more mature stories that had been growing the entire time Regan had his iron-fisted control of the FCC.

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

Bonkposting

I was randomly re-watching BONKERS this week. Coincidentally, that show turned 30 this year... Now that's *bonkers*!

For the uninitiated, it's a Disney TV Animation-made series that had the usual 65-episode run. It was a WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT-inspired show made at a time when Roger Rabbit's future was up in the air, and this series - inspired by ROGER RABBIT'S core premise of cartoon characters living in our world and being the actors of their animated pictures - just so happened to be in development. Seemed to be the perfect "that'll do" situation! Its production history, so complicated it scrambles my brain, but fascinatingly so, like any troubled production. The entire show, including an episode that was held from TV for years due to depictions of bombings (in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11), is available to view on Disney+.

The show itself is every bit as puzzling as its production history, no matter which batch of episodes it is or who animated on them. It feels like it's a weird outsider-artist's attempt at a wacky, spontaneous Tex Avery-inspired cartoon, but it frequently misses the rhythm even though it's earnestly trying with everything it has got... That is all juxtaposed with this very high-grade art direction and animation (for a 1993-era animated TV series, that is), particularly the episodes made at Disney TV Animation Japan. It's like I'm watching some badass '80s anime take on L.A., but with these silly-looking 'toons. A hell of a contrast! But the show's weird attempts at zany humor are all the more questionable because this is a DISNEY SHOW, you would think they could pull this off. I know it's popular opinion that Disney animation, all throughout history, was never "funny"... Though I beg to differ. Disney TVA, from my perspective, tended to be more "fun adventure" than wacky comedy. Not in the wheelhouse of, say, ANIMANIACS or REN & STIMPY. Bonkers D. Bobcat himself actually started appearing on one of Disney's attempts at a wacky show, RAW TOONAGE, a year earlier. There was also this show called THE SCHNOOKUMS & MEAT FUNNY CARTOON SHOW, which fits this bill, too. The respective executions of these shows apparently left a bit to be desired.

I first saw BONKERS when its re-runs aired on Toon Disney, a long-defunct channel, in the late '90s and early '00s. That was the way I, a 1992 baby, could see all of those early-era Disney TVA cartoons and many of the ones that were part of the legendary syndicated "Disney Afternoon" block. I saw almost all of 'em, from DUCKTALES to TALESPIN to TIMON & PUMBAA. That was a brief period of time though, when my grandmother had a cable package that included Toon Disney. Later on, she didn't, and neither did I at my house... So I went a good many years without seeing those shows again, the only one I had pieces of on VHS was NEW ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH.

I'll tell you what *weirdly* filled the void for me...

SONIC ADVENTURE.

Yeah, you heard that right... SONIC ADVENTURE. And by that, I mean the original version released for the Sega Dreamcast in North America in 1999, which I got sometime in - I wanna say - spring 2000? Easter present, maybe?

Now, my grandmother still had Toon Disney when I had SONIC ADVENTURE... Because at the time, Toon Disney was airing... ADVENTURES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG! That's right, the DiC cartoon from 1993. The wacky one. I sometimes caught it in passing, but I really wanted to see it now that I was playing SONIC ADVENTURE religiously circa mid 2000... But it was never on when I was over there, I had only caught a commercial or two. I remember catching one during an airing of BONKERS, and it was like "The SONIC show... Whoooooaaa." My 7 1/2-year old brain on a high of some sorts, 'cuz that's just how my weird-ass autie brain works you get the gist?

Anyways, when I no longer could watch Toon Disney, I had SONIC ADVENTURE...

Here are the weird connections I made between SONIC ADVENTURE and Disney TV Animation's output circa 1987-1995:

Anthro animals, check. Goofy villain, check. Sonic's design channels Felix the Cat and early Mickey, very much Western "funny animal" in spirit. Coincidentally, FELIX THE CAT: THE MOVIE was airing on Disney Channel and Toon Disney around this time, I remember seeing commercials for it at the time... And remembered seeing scenes of him running around some palm trees, a jungle-like setting... and I thought it looked kinda Sonic-y and kinda cool. Moving on: Tails' bi-plane, the "Tornado". TALESPIN vibes. Has two tails, 'tis his nickname... What else, Station Square, a city with both humans and cartoon animals, reminding me of not only BONKERS, but also Duckberg. The "At Dawn" section of the "Speed Highway" level in particular had those vibes, for me... And then you have the Mystic Ruins, the spacious jungle hub world with the temple. Disney had a couple of "jungle" shows at the time, outside of the JUNGLE BOOK-inspired TALESPIN, you also had JUNGLE CUBS (basically MUPPET BABIES by way of JUNGLE BOOK), MARSUPILAMI (a very bizarre adaptation of the Franco-Belgian comic of the same name), and the aforementioned TIMON & PUMBAA spin-off.

So yeah, SONIC ADVENTURE and certain Disney TV Animation shows were kinda "linked" in my brain circa 2000-ish. It's a thing my brain does, it makes these weird connections or associations with disparate media. Like, I'll be hyperfixating on three or four separate things in a period of time (say, September-November 2005)... And because of that, they're all linked in my head. I'll think of one of those things, and I'll think of the three, if that makes sense.

In fall 2002, for my birthday, I received a DK book called DISNEY: THE ULTIMATE VISUAL GUIDE. It had a two-page spread dedicated to the DTVA stuff, and lo and behold, BONKERS was on there... and it all came back... And for whatever reason, I built up BONKERS in my head as this amazingly funny thing. It was even in the name, and at the time, I was developing a cartoony slapsticky idea of my own... Which totally morphed and mutated over two decades into the behemoth beast that it is now... Partially thanks to BONKERS, a show that's considered one of the worst of the Disney Afternoon and that whole era of DTVA... I simply had to see this show again, and all the other Disney TV Animation cartoons that weren't being shown on any other channel.

And I eventually caught a few of the Bonks on Toon Disney somewhere's else in mid-2003, and remember thinking "Yeah, it's as cool as I thought!" But then many, many moons later - with much more knowledge under my belt, a lot more context, a lot more animation history, etc. - I gave it a proper revisit. This was probably right around the time it came to Disney+, and after hearing other outlets either fairly criticize or outright trash the show. I mean, ANIMANIACS - probably fueled by Steven Spielberg's beef with Disney/Eisner at time, which affected ROGER RABBIT plans going forward - was roasting BONKERS. And what I saw was a show that was certainly a mess... I mean, when your plug is pulled halfway through production and your show is straight-up rebooted w/ an all-new supporting cast and main character redesign- it's a miracle the show even got made, finished, and was somewhat watchable. I have a soft spot for it, really. There's a kernel of a really cool, wacky, ROGER RABBIT-lite there... and under different circumstances, it could've really stuck the landing... But it meant a little something to me, and that's all that matters.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

I've been on a slight classic Disney TV Animation kick.

I'm talking mid-1980s to early 1990s era DTVA... The era of DUCKTALES, CHIP N' DALE RESCUE RANGERS, TALESPIN, DARKWING DUCK, etc. I loved these shows as a kid, as I caught the many re-runs of them on Toon Disney in the late '90s when staying over my grandparents' house during the summer days before my mum got home from work.

And the funny thing is, when reading up on these shows and their histories... If a ton of these shows were being made today? I think they'd be met with a lot of doubt and skepticism on the Internet...

Like... "TALESPIN? Wtf is this? JUNGLE BOOK characters as cargo pilots in an INDIANA JONES-esque adventure setting? Chip and Dale lookin' like Indiana Jones and Magnum P.I.? Trying too hard to be relevant and cool. So dated! A Disney cartoon about Gummi Bears??? A candy??? Disney is totally out of ideas, man-"

And yet, the fledgling division - a brainchild of the newly-arrived CEO Michael Eisner, who saw that Disney had long barely contributed to the world of episodic television animation - went through with these shows circa 1985-1993... They came out, kids and audiences watched them, they all did very well, are fondly-remembered favorites of American animation's 2nd Golden Age. The early batch of shows arguably changed the game for TV animation in the states, which was by then soaked in toy commercials and cliche kidvid stuff.

And I almost get the feeling that once the Golden Age went full-throttle with the advent of THE SIMPSONS, Nickelodeon's "Nicktoons", Warner Animation's offerings (many of which involving Steven Spielberg!), MTV's groundbreaking adult cartoons, and many more, Disney TV Animation did have some re-routing. The early '90s was a kind of weird era for them, when they put out shows like BONKERS, RAW TOONAGE, and THE SCHNOOKUMS AND MEAT FUNNY CARTOON SHOW. The game was changing fast, and soon they were wowing once more with the likes of GARGOYLES, and venturing into other territory with shows like PEPPER ANN. They'd get creators of shows that were hits on other networks, such as Paul Germain from RUGRATS, who co-created RECESS with Joe Ansolabehere, who had previously worked on another iconic Nick show, HEY ARNOLD!

Kinda makes me think of where Disney Animation has been for a bit these past few years, in an era where the mainstream feature animation game is changing fast. And how! And it's not that what they do is bad or - as largely insufferable people say - "mid". Release something like ENCANTO or RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON or even STRANGE WORLD in 2015, it'd be praised, most people would be in agreement, "Yeah, another strong entry from the revitalized WDAS." Of course, RAYA and ENCANTO enjoyed solid reviews and excellent streaming results, and STRANGE WORLD even got pretty passing grade reviews (whereas something like the MARIO movie... Didn't. Funny how that works), but large chunks of weird animation fans on the internet seem to think they're all just "mid" or whatever... It's some console wars-caliber nonsense, I think, that's reductionist. If I didn't like something, I still acknowledge the hard work put in by the filmmakers/crew (especially crucial amidst the writer and actors' strike), and go about my day. I'm not pitting STRANGE WORLD against PUSS IN BOOTS 2, for sure. There's no reason for me to do so.

I thought about how in ANIMANIACS, they took potshots at BONKERS. The same era as "SEGA does what NintenDON'T." Those extreeeeeeme aaaaattitude '90s!

I know, because I lived most of that decade.

BONKERS is a show that fascinates me (I recently wrote a little thing about it on my main tumblr), and I thought while watching it... Release this show in 1988, and *not* 1993, it's likely hailed as groundbreaking. A cartoon trying to be zany and fun like 1940s Tex Avery cartoons, visually satisfying and nicely realized, and much more original than - say - the umpteenth CARE BEARS cartoon or the new Hanna-Barbera ersatz Scooby-Doo stuff. But, post-TINY TOONS, post-REN & STIMPY, and sitting next to ANIMANIACS, it seemingly just could not compare. It also didn't help that it was heavily inspired by the amazing film that is WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, its characters and premise ostensibly being a replacement for a property Disney could no longer do stuff with because of their feud with co-owner Spielberg. (Which puts TINY TOONS and ANIMANIACS' potshots at Disney and BONKERS, respectively, into perspective.)

Similarly, Hanna-Barbera - long one of the studio names synonymous with TV animation in America - were in an odd place themselves, until they - under the stewardship of one Fred Seibert - began bringing in some incredible talent like Genndy Tartakovsky, Paul Rudish, Rob Renzetti, to name a few... We had moved away from the likes of YO YOGI!, TOM AND JERRY KIDS, and SIMPSONS-chasing "adult" cartoons like CAPITOL CRITTERS and FISH POLICE... 2 STUPID DOGS, which had been dismissed as a REN & STIMPY wannabe by some folks back in the day, was really a launchpad for those talents. And soon, Hanna-Barbera Productions was rockin' the mid-to-late '90s with all the iconic Cartoon Network shows we all know and love... Kinda makes me think of how Illumination gets looked at, they've been around for some time and they "churn out" stuff that's just "mid" or "bland" or whatever, but I think post-SING 2, post-MINIONS 2, there's a sort-of newfound appreciation for them in some circles. Somewhat. SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE got a pass from a lot of people engaging in these weird console wars, despite its middling critical reception and a lot of folks saying it actually wasn't good. (I liked it fine, but I felt it was more a "Mario's Greatest Hits" showcase than an actual movie.) But, Illumination has an adult animation division (Moonlight) firing up, some pretty dynamic side projects and shorts, too. They even got talent like Benjamin Renner, who directed the upcoming MIGRATION. They're doin' something right if they got him.

I think, more than anything, things change so fast in entertainment. Tastes change, things trend, animated movies take a while to come out and are largely determined at a stage long before a print (or digital file) of the finished film projects onto a screen somewhere. How does one know what the world looks like, culturally, five years after they have started their film? Let alone 2 years? It's why I don't pile on films like ELEMENTAL, STRANGE WORLD, LIGHTYEAR, RUBY GILLMAN, et al losing money. They seemed surefire when they signed off on them, and like William Goldman said... No one knows anything!

I dunno, I thought I'd just relate some current feature animation things to what was happening in TV animation some 30 years ago... all because I was watching TALESPIN and BONKERS and such-

[barbwritesstuff]

Top 5 TV series!

I forgot I put that 'top five' thing into my queue and wasn't sure what prompted this message until I scrolled back through my blog.

Thanks for the ask, anon! I hope you're ready for some unpopular (and very dated) picks.*

5. Art Attack

Look, I was a lonely kid. For much of my childhood it was just me and my brother... and this very keen British man who taught me how to turn scrap paper, paint, and foil into my own spaceship cockpit. Ideas from this show allowed me to decorate my room as a kid, got me through high school art class, and saved my arse several times when I was a kindergarten teacher in South Korea.

One of the best informational programmes ever made. They should bring it back.

4. Air Crash Investigation

I'm sorry. I know it's cheap. I know it's tacky. I know all that. But I love this show. I love learning about and solving mysteries that aren't murders (sorry Sherlock), and the terrible acting makes it so much better. I can't watch this show with people, because I always try to guess the cause of the crash before the end of the episode and yell it out... and I don't know anything about planes to I'm usually very wrong.

Example:

Me: "It's the bulkhead! Check the bulkhead, you fools!"

Voice over: "The investigators check the bulkhead, but find nothing."

Me: "Yes! Because it's clearly the wings, like I've been saying all along."

3. Justice League Animated Series

I got into this series really late. I'd just moved out of home for the first time to go to film school and was having a hard time making friends. I don't know how it happened, but I somehow ended up watching the entirety of the DC Animated Universe during that time, which is impressive, because internet was expensive and terrible where I was living, so I had to go to the library, download episodes, and walk the 45 minutes home carrying my massive old laptop. It was a feat, but it was worth it. This show did what the Avengers couldn't, made me love superheroes.

2. Yu-Gi-Oh!

When I was 12 I was the best Yugioh player in my school. Sure, it wasn't a big school, and not everyone was into the game, but it was still a big deal for me, especially as I was also the only girl who played. The game has since evolved way beyond my skill level, but at the time, I was a god among mortals. 12 year old mortals, but still. I got up early every morning to see the latest episode, and then I went to school ready to d-d-d-d-duel.

Xena: Warrior Princess

I'm sorry. This show is just so nostalgic for me. For a while, I grew up on a farm with no actual TV signal, but we did have old VHS recordings of Xena and I watched it religiously. Lucy Lawless is amazing and this show is forever the best thing to come out of the 90s (and I say that while also, myself, being a product of the 90s). It has:

Monsters

Magic

Mayhem

Queer Love (not explicitly stated, but this wasn't queerbaiting, this was censorship, they were a couple by the mid point of the series, they just couldn't say it, so instead they made a lot of unsubtle sex jokes and came up with obscure reasons why they always had to kiss to save the world).

Aotearoa (New Zealand is the most beautiful place on the planet, I'm sorry if you disagree, you are wrong).

Tonal whiplash (not just between episodes, but sometimes in the same episode, and it was wild)

One very horny vampire episode

Xena can sometimes fly without any explanation

They met an early reincarnation of Jesus and he was a conman living in India?

You know that scene where Character A gets hurt and Character B goes absolutely feral? This.

Leather bikinis and ninja kicks except it's ancient Greece, maybe

The musical episode was the best episode

They fight on ladders a lot and I just think that's neat

*Disclaimer: I am into more modern and normal things but I'm in a nostalgic mood, so these are the things you get to hear about today.

[anna-neko]

ok @misterdadguy FOR NEXT TIME, LET US AIM TO READ ANOTHER QUARTER OF BOOK

this puts us almost halfway thru the story! You will know you in right place, as Mort will be in a TAVERN the line to stop - "Everyone had seen Mort run through it three times. He just hadn't opened it" get ready to watch ya boi learn the job a bit, mess up, meet some new cast members…. (a few things will seem like Good Omens references.... but this IS Pratchett we talkin about, so really, it's all comin from the same creative pool)

lets do some Sir pTerry notes so far! behind cut to save others timelines

DISNEY at one point had optioned Discworld, MORT specifically, for an animated movie

the deal eventually fell thru as Discworld came as more of a complete package than they wanted (don't know details of rights sales/ownership here. Gonna guess it was maybe similar to Jim Henson's MUPPETS being diff package to Henson Workshop creatures type thing?) a lovely pre-production concept art by Claire Keane. Keli to Ysabell contrast is really *chefs kiss*

Another lovely art: its not quite as book described, but maybe this is what Disney was already rewriting it to be? absolutely captures the PRESENCE of Ysabelle in Death's house tho

This is purely "pop culture has ruined me" but for the first day kept reading "Mort" as "Morty" each time its there, right. as In Rick and Morty almost kinda works in that hilarious awkward way, as for MOST of the book everyone keeps referring to him as "boy" and he corrects "Mort" Every. Single. Time. So did my brain kept forcefully correcting and rereading the name each time, to get it right ahhh Mortimer, we really in it this time

so basically Discworld summaries is literal shitposts. Perfectly accurate, but they all come off this way! like, u try a good summary that isn't spoilers: "if Meet Joe Black was B-story to Great Expectations" that is my summary for this book, make up your own when you ready!

*flipping thru notes* the scene with the thieves was fav funny bit: the dashes swears being so effortlessly pronounced! Also reannual plants!!! a throwaway joke that'll get reused like…10 books later

Geography notes: All the diff places have diff rulers here, all their own city-states. Sto Lat has a King, Ankh-Porpork has Patrician, Djelibeybi had pharaohs? ("sto lat" if the T is softened up & the "a" is sounded out like "eh" it very much sounds like "100 years" in russian. Make of that what you will) When they mention Klatchian and whatnot - The Seriphate of Klatch, desert country, across the sea. At this point of the books, a world-map hasn't been properly created (didn't bother until the late-90s) so don't worry about keeping some places straight. The important part is if a certain fiction VIBE is there, roll with it (it's probly another 2 pop-culture references holding up a pun)

A round of applause for Death naming his horse BINKY I like to headcanon that bebi~Ysabelle was allowed to name horses

Also, again a throwaway line, but SUCH A GOOD JOKE - Death commenting he gets his coins in pairs i read it, nodded, moved on… like an hour later the full meaning of the line smacked me upside the head

When they go to visit a certain dude ready for reincarnation - in real life, that name is a reference to a Tibetan monk … who turned out to be fake btw, buuuut he did published lots of books!

This book was written in the 80s, so i feel some stuff may have been more obvious to people closer to that pop~culture era Once we hit the mid-90s (later books duuh) …. u gonna be seeing it Every Line!! Like you know, if today I make a Seinfeld reference, half the room will give blank stares, and half will nod knowingly... LIKE THAT!

oh, and just a heads up goin ahead, as we will be meeting WIZARDS dog-Latin will happen! As in basically take a normal English phrase, and translate single words into latin, so it kinda forms a phrase? Not following any proper latin grammar rules.. but it looks fancy!

"I feel like there's opportunity to see how someone can lose themself in their work that it erases part of who they are" YES!!! you are a bit early on this point, but this is EXACTLY what will be happening to Mort, in a way….. don't wanna say too much, you will absolutely see it happening in the later part of the book

Ysabell is….. oh there's a reason she is the way she is, and there will be a fantastic scene which breaks it down. For the current moment, she is basically playing out The Great Expectation novel, what with being so stand-offish and constantly calling him "boy" Altho thats the entire b-plot in itself…. Sir Terry absolutely makes parts of all his books this way, and it never gets old!!

Princess Keli is …. ooooh boy is she a major plot point, not spoiling. The man does not write in anything needlessly, everything will come back in some way

YES YES YES 100 TIMES YES on certain puns needing a minute to…. "digest" or "sink in" as it were. There is ONE line in freakin Monstrous Regiment, that no joke, took me MONTHS! Like within the story it works a certain way [it works!! it makes perf in-fiction sense!], but then fast forward and us goin to see Beetlejuice musical and a song lyric suddenly snuck up and my brain went "hol…up… wait wait wait… motherfuck!!!" as the secondary meaning of the pun from the novel suddenly made too much sense! (which i then inflicted on a friend some weeks later, and his reaction was just as priceless)

This is the absolute wonder of Pratchett's writing - he will tell a great story, it will be very engaging! But on 2nd look… all these lil hidden puns and references and extra touches come thru, and it … just… SUDDENLY EVEN BETTER

[bmpmp3]

I READ a lot of different manga recently and i WANNA talk about em :)

SO LIKE i ADORE stories about the entertainment industry like music actors celebrity whatever i LOVE IT so oshi no ko had been on my to-read list for like a bajillion years now BUT queen bee doing the ending song for the anime (MEPHISTO!!!! LISTEN TO IT!!!!!!!!!! ITS SO GOOOOOOD!!!! LISTEN TO EVERY QUEEN BEE ALBUM RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!! the opening is good too) finally pushed me to read it (not watch it sorry... normally the anison industry has this symbiotic relationship between the songs and the shows where the show makes people get interested in the musicians and vice versa but as a person who cannot watch a single episode of a show ever (jk.....probably) I only ever check out the manga and osts HJKFJFDHKDSLS its kinda cool that the first episode is like a movie length adaptation of the first volume of the manga though from what i can tell) AND its very good!!

i did NAHT expect the reincarnation stuff (all i knew was it was a manga about an idol who has kids in secret) but theres some glimmers of interesting concepts touched on with that (kinda like half way between the modern isekai “i just am the person i was before i died just in a different body” and the 90s shoujo manga style “im mostly the new born person but there is the remnants of someone else in here”, it hasnt touched on it That Much but what they brought up is interesting, like that kid has simultaneously been alive for over 50 years and also is incredibly 15 years old hjkfdsjhfds) but it’s a showbiz mystery thriller with so much tonal whiplash OF COURSE i’d like it those are like. my favourite genres hjkfddsjklfd

so far ive been digging it. OR... well i’ve caught up and the last third has been. a little odd? i know i just said i love my tonal whiplash but it feels a little like its going really fast but also like. dropping some plot threads and character arcs that i was kind of hoping they would go back into? it’s still ongoing though, it could easily bring stuff back and turn around. im assuming this is a symptom of the weekly release schedule? 99% of the manga i read is monthly or occasionally volume at a time so im not as familiar with the structure. is the author like. okay. i know they take breaks but man. i could feel it with the arcs about the manga authors. salutes

that does remind me though. this isnt a manga ive read Recently (i first read it like a year or two ago) but recently i finally was able to collect all volumes of penguin revolution (VERY DIFFICULT FEAT for some reason all the volumes were cheap as hell except people kept listing volume 6 for like hundreds of dollars and i was like. its not worth that. i was finally able to find one for like under 15 bucks after like a year but MAN) and its interesting that like oshi no ko felt like. the slightly bloodier penguin revolution. penguin revolution with more blood and less acting magic hallucination little girls (actually what was that one little girl who showed up for a chapter....maybe they both have equal amounts LOL) JK JK they’re probably not very similar ones an award winning 2020s era seinen and the others a weekly shoujo from the mid to late 10s that was cut off short and while well rated, largely forgotten (not to me...to me its Everything) so they got different things going on  its just little blonde boys and their mother situations put me in the mind of penguin revolution...i should reread it again...

ALSO before i started that i read sweat and soap and um. first of all. that man is a little freak <3 second of all ITS REALLY GOOD its a really nice and sweet story about a couple navigating their relationship, the first chapters are a little clunky (i think the author mentioned it was a one shot that unexpectedly got picked up for a full series so thats why the first chapter is a little fast lol) THIRD OF ALL the depiction of bullying and how it can affect one later in life even as an adult was Very well done like especially how the bullies themselves may have completely moved on, thinking nothing of it even while it still consumes you, real ass shit for a manga about a little freak who sniffs <3 also just a very funny and fun manga with pretty great characters. if i ever get physical copies some of those book covers are gonna be. hard to explain

speaking of real ass shit before that i also borrowed sand chronicles from my library (<3 my local library it has so much manga for some reason!!!!) and that was ALSO 99% really really good as like a decade long coming of age character study about this girl and her trauma and how she attempts to navigate it, very realistic in a lot of ways, i mean it was heightened in classic 2000s shoujo ways but so many of the characters had me going like damn. i feel like i know these people jfkdshfds its good!!! EXCEPT. why’d they make that one guy marry his cousin. 99% good and 1% girl why. oh well, im still glad i read it, sometimes i find that something that does most things fantastically and one thing really bad has a lot of value as someone who loves media analysis LOL

OH and i havent finished this one yet, but seeing that little red bespectacled blonde twink and his 2018-ass undercut reminded me that i’d been meaning to read trigun, i watched the original anime when i was like 10 but all i remember is like. the opening theme guitars. something about plants. love and peace SO this is basically a new experience hjkFjdskdjfkds its good so far! I’ve only read like 3 chapters but i like it! i wish i could watch the new show too (i love that style of 3d animation) but as i said before. watching a show is. a monumental task. maybe someday

ANYWAY this has been BEEBEEPBEEBEEEBEEBEEP (news jingle) things i have read in the past couple months thank u and good night

[cureblogging]

Been stalling on writing the mid-season Suite review because if you know me you know I hate not liking things and it turns out I didn't like a lot of what they chose to do at the end of this first half so uh. I guess I'll just do abridged thoughts:

Siren's/Ellen's arc is a worse version of Eas'/Setsuna's. It's like they looked at Setsuna for 5 seconds and said "ok that looked cool, let's to it again" and tried to recreate her beat by beat without really understanding the core of her character or trying to adapt it to Siren's development.

Also, so many of the conflicts were based on misunderstandings that lead to petty bickering, and the protagonists are really slow to learn from their experiences. I was extremely on board with the dynamic between Hibiki and Kanade but they ran out of good reasons to be defensive toward each other by the 5th episode, and every conflict that came after felt artificial and forced.

I'm not commenting on Ako/Cure Muse because all things considered she didn't really add much to the show yet. I just hope her arc will go better than Siren's.

Still, there's some stuff I love about the season. For starters, Hummy carries this show. My favourite mascot so far by a long shot. She's like if Papyrus was a cat and also an Opera singer; her unwavering belief in others' capacity to do good is reminiscent of Nozomi's unstoppable optimism. You will do better: that is a threat and a promise. I love that energy.

Also, as a 90s kid, I can't help but feel extremely nostalgic for the aesthetic of Suite. It still has that late 2000s anime vibe, but as the city and the people depicted in the show are a little more abstracted from Japanese culture, leaning more western in that regard, and for that reason Suite ends up being the first season I feel a strong sense of recognition and resonance whenever I watch an episode. It's subjective, of course, but I'll take any reason to enjoy myself watching a show.

That's basically it. I want to love this season, so I'm really hoping the second half gets better.

[destiny-smasher]

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet is a Damn Mess

Strap in lasses, lads, nonbinary finery, and everyone around and inbetween. This one's a doozy. I won't be describing any post-game/end-game details specifically, but I *will* be mentioning in vague terms some of the late game stuff, in case you're sensitive to spoilers.

This rant starts with things I liked (which it does have!), then goes full tilt into spicy rage. So avoid it if you're for whatever reason sensitive about an unfinished game being talked about like it's an unfinished game. Do not try starting some argument with me, these are my personal opinions and not a scored/professional review. Enjoy your game if you're enjoying it and ignore this grumpy 90's era gamer.

TLDR bullet points at the tail end for those that benefits.

So I've put in 16 hours into Pokemon Scarlet. Did like, 2/3 of the main story badge quests, I would say, caught a bunch of mons. Aaaaand I'm done with this game. I am not of the opinion that without the tech performance issues, it would magically be this super amazing Pokemon game. Personally, I'm just not impressed with it. And we'll get into why I just don't think it's a well designed or well made product or RPG.

But first, the things I liked, or even loved. Because there are definitely some things I did like and love about it, especially after checking out the story (I recently watched all of the main story scenes from where I'd gotten to the end credits).

Opponents have never had this amount of personality put into them. When stacked against other peers in the gaming landscape, it's still kind of laughable how limited these characters are in a lot of ways, but SV goes to further lengths than any previous game in giving opponent trainers and story characters specific designs, bits of life in their animation, and even some mid-battle dialogue, on top of some of them even having…more than single note to their personality! Crazy, I know. It does still feel a bit flat without voice acting (we'll touch on that later) but it is SOMETHING. Character models look much improved from Arceus, and they do much better and more interesting things with what story there is, for the most part -- the one area I will concede I think this game clearly beats Arceus in, objectively.

The music is inconsistent imo BUT the songs that are bops are great, and naturally they're reserved for fights. I blame Toby Fox for this and Sw/Sh having some truly fun tunes, but I'm sure the other people working on music are doing work. Pokemon has never had TERRIBLE music, it's always been at least good if not awesome, and at least the Switch games are pushing things somewhat forward. My favorite tracks in the game are probably the Gym Fight (the opening part with the brass, before the vocals kick in), the Star boss fights, Nemona's Battle Theme, which I love that we get a few variants of (reminds me of Marnie's theme, my fav from SwSh). And speaking of Nemona…

Nemona is probably the best character in the entire Pokemon franchise at this point, at least to me. I mostly write YA fiction, sometimes from a perspective of trying to sift through the silt of my youth and identify who I 'truly was' as a youth given how like half of my personality was stifled and suppressed. And Nemona's the first time a Pokemon character has felt like someone I would write myself, felt like someone who reminds me of why I like the things I like. She captures the essence of the gameplay of Pokemon into a passionate youth who walks a fine line between teaching the player the ropes while alluding to her being much better at fighting than she's letting on, all because she just loves doing it, loves growing and learning and being impressed by others doing the same. Pokemon games struggle with their rivals usually, and even their gym leaders, because they honestly aren't that great at Pokemon battling, usually? But with Nemona, they've found a clever solution to that issue: they can allude to her experience, but her context with your character is that she's 'senpai,' she's the older student teaching you, so naturally she's going to go easy on you. It's a shockingly elegant solution to a problem the franchise has basically always had.

Beyond this, she just has a cute, cool character design that's pretty recognizable despite wearing the generic school uniform (she at least squeezes some bits of uniqueness with her green highlights and arm guard). She's a bit of a one-track mind but within the world of Pokemon that honestly fits right in. I have some personal bias here that I tweeted about already, but I just really like her, and I love seeing a character so overtly passionate about battling and looking to your player character to grow to be a fitting rival to her. She specifically says this, but it's clear enough before that point -- and it's also funny how ironically BAD people in this world are at Pokemon battling, so honestly, can you blame her for being desperate for some real competish? She does still lay flatly on the side of being fully supportive of your character and not truly feeling like an actual rival, something the series seems honestly afraid of at this point for some reason. But at least there's context. She's adorable and I like her a lot, she reminds me of my younger self. And as someone whose favorite genre is fighting games? Her motivations totally speak to me. Even her intro animation to a battle feels like something out of a fighting game.

Nemona represents pursuing your passion and letting yourself LOVE the things you love, letting yourself get EXCITED about having new people in your life to share those things with, and I just love her so much for it. I didn't expect going into this game that I'd end up having such a strong emotional reaction to any of its characters but Nemona made me cry tears of happiness (literally right now, thinking about and writing this up after watching the ending of the Victory Road path) because I GET IT, girl. And she's going to help kids out there feel OK with pursuing their passions, pursuing bonds with others, pursuing mutual growth and self improvement, and that makes me extremely happy.

( - Continue Reading after the line break - )

Arven's story takes that well-tested shortcut of 'make audience feel sad for a dog,' but it's a plotline we've not really seen in the games, and it's great to have here even if it's a bit on the nose. It also gives his rough exterior at first some depth when you realize what he's trying to accomplish, and why, once you learn about his backstory. It's a sweet side story and I also liked how it tied into your movement abilities out in the field. And Penny's side plot…well, it's a little convoluted and undercooked but it is something different, as well, brushing against a pretty meaningful topic without ever diving deep enough to do much with it. And Penny herself is fun, with a great character design, with the Team Star members being certainly recognizable and just wacky in their very high-school-esque, over-the-top premises and personas.

The Star gang is amusing enough, Penny's role was not at all a surprise but that's fine because it just made sense and added up nicely. Penny as a character is great, too, it's actually refreshing having someone prominent in a Pokemon game who...just doesn't seem to love Pokemon the same way everyone else does? Who's jaded and cynical. I like that. Honestly, she looks a lot like my wife and shares a lot in common? (her name is even Jenny so, funny coincidence)

I also loved Car- I MEAN CLINT. What a fantastic character design/concept (yet again), just awesome and fun. Pokemon needs more of that -- just embracing the goofiness. And also just older characters who persist in the narrative without staying back in your home town or whatever. Moreso than any other Pokemon game before it, SV actually has what I'd say is the best cast of human characters. Now, without getting full on into the negatives just yet, bear in mind…this is still Pokemon as you know it. Very limited interactions, very basic scenes, bare minimum animations, no voice acting, barely any character development. It's still clearly going for the designs first and foremost, and they are varied and appealing, for sure. The 'Normal' type gym leader with his Nick Cage ass businessman schtick had me chuckling in a way no Pokemon game has made me react to an opponent trainer. Just seeing Gym Leaders being presented as PEOPLE who have…LIVES…and JOBS, with the Pokemon battling being like a side thing, or like a new job, that's such a huge change and it's refreshing.

There's only a handful of truly animated cutscenes in the game, which have that weird hollow feeling to them with literally no voice acting, but it's more than Pokemon games have really done before. The human characters actually look pretty good even up close, too, and do many of the Pokemon -- and touching on that, I think a lot of the new mon designs are great. GameFreak seems to have figured out hair physics, and HOO BOI do they make sure you know it with the many overdone, strange, wacky hairstyles in this game. And they also seem to have actually figured out mocap, from the looks of it -- during the brief actual cutscenes, the characters actually animated naturally and look pretty good (even if there's still a lotta rough edges in the presentation otherwise).

As for the story itself, it's again, pretty barebones, super basic, but still a noticeable step up than previous games. Like some degree of effort beyond the norm has gone into story this time, which I can appreciate, even if none of it reaches what is standard for other high profile JRPGs these days. Having multiple threads you progress at your own pace, and then tying them together is nice - and they do weave the main characters of all three together in a way that's simple but effective and organic. I have to wonder what they might have been able to do had they focused their energy into telling ONE story instead of three. Like having them more tightly threaded together to form one plotline, I mean. But what's here is at least more interesting than previous games I've played (I skipped the DS era but I hear people liked that era's worldbuilding). Even when I felt done with the game, I still looked up the story scenes I missed as I was just enough invested and curious to see what they did with them. Pokemon is, for better and for worse, squarely targeted at kids in its design and presentation, and I think what's here is certainly more substantial than what the series has done before, both in visual representation and the basic but relevant to kids plots it has going on.

I will say that after looking up the final hour of the game, I do get what all of the hub-bub around it is. My wife and I were literally talking about how a Pokemon game could be so awesome if it functioned more like a traditional RPG with actual party members, inter-party dialogue, that whole shebang, and while it's…extremely ROUGH in its execution due to the technical problems and lack of presentation, you can totally see a glimmer of this in Area Zero, and even what little is here is honestly pretty cool, interesting, and has a complete mini-story-arc going on. I want to play a full Pokemon game that has something more like this all the time, with multiple humans, each with their own teams to manage, even -- it'd make for a great spinoff imo, but what's here is…at least different, trying new things that actually have good ideas. GameFreak certainly seems to have lots of good ideas they are struggling to implement, yet they clearly are in over their heads on how to do it.

And on that note, that's it for the positives. You may have noticed I have barely talked about the gameplay, and predominantly have been talking about the characters, what bits of world-building there are, and story. That's because as a video game, I just found it really boring. Time to get nitty gritty on why I personally didn't even find a very engaging video game buried beneath all of the tech issues.

I will not dedicate much time to this game's inexcuseably poor optimization and tech issues. For a first party Nintendo game, this is a new low. I have never seen a Nintendo published game look and run this awfully, and I'm sure many have been startled, shocked, and disappointed by this. By now, if you're reading this, I'm sure you're well aware of these issues. I personally don't expect most of the problems to improve even with patches, in part because a lot of this stuff just isn't 'fixable' in a post-release sense, generally speaking, AND the companies involved have like zero incentive to meaningfully address or even explicitly acknowledge them. But it's a big deal, and I'm glad it's been talked about. Let's move on to the gameplay.

This is an "open world" game, yes. In a technical sense. In a barely functioning sense. But it is a far cry from understanding what makes for a compelling open world game, or even a modern, by-the-numbers one. It at least is attempting something, but bleh. It's so hollow. There's basically two types of open world games at this point. ones like Breath of the Wild or Outer Wilds that basically leave everything up to the player to decide where to go, what to do, and give them a vast array of unique locations, landmarks, and the like to pique their curiosity, with baked in interwoven systems that can be learned and mastered over time. Then, there are by-the-books open world games, with vast maps populated with a bajillion icons, a giant checklist of tasks to do with a trickle feed of rewards and a linear story to complete, where player experience/strength is measured more with numbers than knowledge. Pokemon Scar/Vi is neither of these types of games, really, but is trying/pretending to be both, and fails at capturing what either does well.

All it really has going for it, in my opinion, is the same old song and dance we've been doing for decades: the core Pokemon formula of discovering, catching, and raising teams of creatures to fight. It sure does do that, and in a more traditional way that Arceus, with the more traditional trappings and mechanics all accounted for, plus the obligatory time-consuming gimmicks. Even just some level balancing could've gone a LONG way to making the experience really feel more open-ended, and giving opponent trainers, especially gym leaders, some more bite, especially if they scaled their teams to how many badges you had (like the actual Pokemon lore) would have been awesome. But it wouldn't save a lifeless, boring husk of a world map from being oddly unpleasant to navigate back to the world, though, while it IS very good that they have opened up that world for us to explore more at our own pace, it's got major problems imo. Let's start with the map…'design?'

The world doesn't really have much design TO it, really. It's a series of pathways with hella empty space in-between, with lots of artificial divides that discourage exploration, locked behind the movement unlocks you complete in Arven's story (or maybe jumping backwards up a fucking hill because lol game's unfinished). It doesn't feel like one giant level laid out in themed zones, with environmental 'puzzles' to work through. It's just…a big mess of shapes. A giant circle of places to go to accomplish tasks -- and while you CAN technically do them in any order, you are basically punished for trying to do them outside of an intended order, due to the strict, linear levelling nature of Pokemon. Shit isn't designed or balanced around numbers-based combat in an open-ended scenario. Nothing seems to scale, at all, in any way. In Elden Ring or BOTW this is fine because you can use cleverness, strategy, items, summons, friends, WHATEVER, to tailor the experience, and when things are too easy it's usually still fun because it's a great measure of your character's growth, often due to overcoming things balanced against you to get that extra edge. You can summon your friends into Paldea which IS cool but what can you DO together? Those raid things? Which are boring, slow, and easy as fuck and the screens before/after take longer than actually playing them (which usually is just spamming your Super Effective move repeatedly when it's even functioning correctly). Trainers don't stop you in your tracks but what is the damn POINT of them, even? Everyone's got like one, MAYBE two monsters, and gym leaders don't seem to put up much of a fight at all, either. I GET hella kids will play this but that was true on GB and they had SOME more there.

In fact, backtrack to the GB games. I still distinctly remember exploring Mt. Moon for the first time. It was a maze. It was full of fucking Zubats and Geodudes, and trainers who had Pokemon my Fire starter and normal types struggled against. It was memorable as a challenge, as an environment to work through. Most Pokemon games have locations like that, at least in older gens. This game seems to be lacking in any of that despite the open world format being ripe for putting things like that in. I don't remember locations really, apart from a handful of small landmarks shrouded in buildings in the towns. I, uh, stumbled upon a neat cave tunnel one time, which had…some of the usual Pokemon you'd expect, maybe a TM or something, and that was basically it? Nowhere else in my 16 hours of playing felt like I had DISCOVERED anything, save for the single ominous glowy nail stuck in the ground I saw. And yet multiple times in Arceus I experienced at least a sense of discovery when I found a unique patch of land with a wisp to collect or an Alpha Pokemon tucked in a cranny somewhere you couldn't see from a distance, or a nice place to stock up on certain items, or a shiny Pokemon that made its presence VERY VISUALLY APPARENT the second it was on screen, from at least some amount of distance (rather than you tripped over it when it pops in three feet in front of you with a color so barely different from the norm you don't even recognize it as a shiny). I'm sorry, this world is mostly hollow, vapid, and boring for me to navigate, worsened by the performance issues really hampering things.

There are giant arrow signs pointing to where you can actually go because the world design doesn't make much sense. Ladders stuck into the side of rock faces because…no reason? They're just…there. They make no sense with the design of the landscape. Doesn't feel like a world. You can't rely on the map to figure out where to go sometimes due to the way things are laid out, too, with entrances to some of the northern regions being really obtuse. Towns stutter and chug as NPCs pop in and out and flicker, they don't really have anything interesting to say, anyway. Houses can't be entered, trainers aren't deliberately in wait for you but just…standing aimlessly around, waiting to be talked to - and of course they almost always have a single mon and that's it. There's barely any landmarks to get you curious to check something out, and on the rare occasion when something visually looks…"interesting" (read: different but ugly because this game can't render for shit), when you go to check it out, it's usually just…a big blah, nothing exciting. I will say that at least there DOES seem to be some kind of neat sidequest involving glowy nails stuck in the ground (presumably to unlock a mysterious Pokemon, I assume). THAT is something! Give us more of that! That is actually using your open world and Pokemon formatting to do something fun and interesting the old style of games wouldn't be able to do the same.

Even Arceus did this way better, with all kinds of little nooks and crannies with specific Pokemon hiding in wait, motivating you to check out the parts of the map you haven't been to. It wasn't super advanced, but it was something. Here, everything feels fucking RANDOM. Even items feel absolutely random, and near as I can tell, many of them literally are. There's some TMs that do seem "deliberately" placed but not in a way that generally feels rewarding to get to, and every other item literally feels randomly scattershot around, and often seems laggy to get picked up for some reason. Also, why is everything you pick up in a pokeball again? We finally ditched this shit in Arceus, where items are actually recognizeable out in the field, and make SENSE, and you combine them and use them in organic ways. The only crafting we have now is for TMs, which IS a cool idea, but I don't really like the execution since it entails 'parts' from specific Pokemon, whereas I think it'd have been better to give you a few options per TM, and/or types, or…something less finite and rigid, given just how many Pokemon exist. That's a minor complaint, it's really fine I suppose, but I already miss the much more beneficial item crafting of Arceus, which meant I valued every healing item and pokeball I used and stockpiled until the late game, where I felt rewarded for having made so much progress so as to not even worry about that stuff.

Not to mention from a tech spec the game can't even render an open world that functions properly. Shit pops in SO close to you. And it's not just a visual thing, it directly impacts the gameplay in a negative way. Your big dragonbike will trip on the smallest mon that popped in ten feet in front of you and whoops, you're stuck in a battle now. See a Pokemon you wanna fight but overshot where it is slightly? It despawns and guess what? It ain't comin' back because when something disappears it doesn't necessarily mean it's still there, it's probably just fuckin' gone now if it's a wild mon.

Briefly, let's touch on Tera types. Fun idea, on paper. In practice...just more nonsense than it's worth, tbh. And it's patently clear they wanted a fancy new visual gimmick without needing to actually render new mon designs so hey, slap a wonky texture and a hat on their head that makes things easily interchangeable. I will admit the idea of being able to swap a Pokemon's type temporarily is a great one, though, especially given just how pivotal type matchups are to the strategy and success of the mainline games, but the implementation here is...just kinda half-baked, in my mind. Not to mention the raids somehow being even worse than before, despite having some more interesting ideas. Like they're just WAY too difficult, or WAY too easy, and/or way too buggy/laggy.

There's a new cooking system, and unlike the curry system it's less engaging to do, much more finnicky, AND is just plain unclear. Like. Someone explain to me how the cooking system even functions, why it's useful, HOW and WHERE you can even see what food effects you currently have active and for how long. Big waste of time, not to mention how comically bad the foot eating animation is, on top of how finnicky the sandwich minigame itself is (psst, GameFreak, just…just add a SHADOW, you know? so we can see where the heck objects are going to land?)

Oh and there's a day-night cycle, but it's terrible. There's no in-game clock (just a vague symbol that changes, on your map, which is easy to miss to begin with). It's not based on real-world time. Lighting will SUDDENLY change from night to day, no inbetween, seemingly. This happens during big battles, cutscenes -- you'll start a boss fight in the day, end it at night, watch a cutscene in the day, and then suddenly it's night time when you're out of the cutscene. You cannot seem to fast-forward it or change it in any way, so if you want to catch something during a certain time of day, sucks to be you, I guess. Arceus did not have these problems, not any of them as I recall.

Which brings me to probably my biggest gripe with the gameplay: it's back to being pointlessly slow, boring to look at, and generally a terribly clunky sense of flow. Arceus was laughable amidst other AAA franchise peers but it at least got lots of quality of life things improved to make game flow FASTER and more seamlessly. In ScarVi, basically EVERYTHING Arceus did to somehow address Pokemon's awful pacing has been undone. Practically all of the same bullshit is here and accounted for when it comes to battles, using items, buying things, it's all clunky as hell. Want to buy multiple lemonades at a vending machine? Have fun scrolling the text and waiting for it every single time. A mon changes stats in a fight? Watch every single individual stat change animation in sequence, every time. Using an attack that hits multiple times? Watch the dinky little animation, then the HP decrease, every single time, and of course with pointless text boxes slowing things further. ANY time HP changes in any way, you have to sit and wait a second for the bar to change. Except, actually, not always -- seemingly at fucking random it just…won't show it sometimes?

Did a move miss? Cool, just don't bother animating it! Did a Pokemon dodge? No animation for that either. Can you run away? No animation for that, either, just an arbitrary "dunno, you couldn't escape for SOME REASON" Why. Why is this shit still a thing in a top selling RPG in 2022? Arceus also did most of this shit, too, and it's pretty dumb, to be frank. Just a QUICK little jump and rotation of a Pokemon model as the text tells you it missed, SOMETHING. And Arceus actually let you RUN AWAY by just…literally running. Not to mention how seamlessly it allowed you to switch Pokemon and use items, even out in the field, by letting you sort things and use item bars. Like modern video games do? None of that here. Hope you like sifting through like ten pockets of random shit to get whatever specific thing you need, then click on a mon, play a glaring sound effect they refuse to get rid of, then wait arbitrarily for it to do its thing, and get a text prompt telling you it did its thing. I know there's an 'auto heal' function on the menu, which IS something, at least? And you are picking up healing items a lot, which does show some degree of foresight (though again, feels more random than anything). But the clunky UI and beeping and booping and ALL of this fucking waiting for plain text scrolls to describe things that don't need describing and could be SHOWN with just super basic, quick animations…this isn't charming at this point, it doesn't feel deliberate -- it feels lazy.

Oh, hey, by the way, remember how an exciting addition to the past few entries has been customizing your character with different outfits and hairstyles? WELL FUCK YOU you don't GET to customize your character as much now. No new outfits to find. Nearly every damn store sells like 10 color variations of ONE thing, maybe two, and almost all of them are so boring and bland! Want to change your hair? Hope you don't like wearing hats, then, because for no good reason the game just DOESN'T let you wear hats with certain hairstyles! At all! Just can't be done I guess! They've never been EXTRA with the cosmetics but this is devolved BACKWARDS, not even from Arceus but from games BEFORE that one.

The game is just awfully inconsistent, all around. The feel, the presentation, the animation, the MUSIC, even just the textures on things…it all feels so hodgepodge. Arceus was light and muddy and didn't look very great usually but it was at least somehow consistent. And I get it, they're clearly commissioning and outsourcing a lot of stuff, but then if that's the case, why does so much still feel so shoddy? If you're gonna outsource, fucking OUTSOURCE -- you're POKEMON, the highest grossing media franchise on the planet. Hire voice actors, hire animators, hire people who know how to make games actually run on the Switch, hire people who know how to make these potentially cool building look GOOD, hire people who know how to apply natural looking textures and polygons to natural environments.

This lack of consistency just gets jarring, especially when stacked with camera wonkiness, framerate dips, etc. And of course you can't edit options anywhere for this shit. Find the loud 8-bit chimes every time you scroll text or use items annoying? Find some songs too repetitious? Too bad. You could completely turn the sound off, I guess?

And YES, I will bring up voice acting, because YES, a series THIS huge should fucking have SOMETHING, somewhere. Not literally everything needs VO, even though just some basic sounds would go a long way. But the CUTSCENES? With named characters who even by now actually somewhat animate? Why are they all muted? It was kind of cute on the Wii when they did it with Twilight Princess, a game that was actually oozing with detail and production (by Nintendo's standards then), and characters who animated in ways that made them genuinely interesting to look at. But here, it's like…I dunno? It just feels EMPTY. Like it feels like voiceover is missing, because...it literally is. If other RPGs that sell a FRACTION of the copies Pokemon does can have two or even MORE voiced languages, why are we getting literally nothing here? It's not a "stylistic choice," it's just boring. And if people don't want the VO then hey maybe let us mute JUST the VO -- that is, if you're capable of getting that to work. Arceus had its issues. It absolutely did. When that game released, I thought it was a new low for the series, production wise. How ironic, given how much worse this game is in that department. But Arceus had a strong sense of FLOW. It was so organic and fast-paced compared to other Pokemon games, filling out the dex was more enriching and involved, side quests contributed to an overall theme and focus, everything was streamlined, sped up and improved -- even the holy battle system was CHANGED in ways that made it faster and more interesting imo. I'm not saying you need to ditch this entire classic style formula, Legends can easily be its own side series, but DANG did ya'll drop the ball on picking up what inherent improvements it made and reverting back to the slower, boring stuff, INCLUDING releasing two versions.

And lastly, why in the fuck ARE we still doing this double version bullshit? It's not cute anymore. You're not doing anything meaningful with it. It's just there to boost sales. Cut it out. Another thing Arceus addressed, by the way, and ditched. Because it's pretty dumb. Give us meaningful choices, yes -- like our starters. Remember back in the day when that wasn't the ONLY choice you'd get that would limit what Pokemon you'd have? Give us more of that, if your real goal is to encourage players to trade. But it's not -- it's to arbitrarily sell more copies to the people who will double down JUST to…own the same fucking game twice. And we still fall for it.

And in the end, isn't that how we ended up here? Because we keep collectively giving GameFreak the benefit of the doubt. We keep cutting The Pokemon Company slack. We keep letting Nintendo off the hook when it comes to Pokemon, specifically, in a way no other franchise except KIND OF Sonic gets away with. Pokemon means the world to me. I got into writing fiction because of Pokemon. I treasure those early days of the franchise, and I still treasure the POTENTIAL it is brimming with, as new kids get into it in numbers untold of, and as kids who grew up with it are adults, hungry for more -- and yet does GameFreak acknowledge that a DECENT PORTION of its audience are adults? Nah.

"But it's made for kids." Miss me. Miss me with that tired ass excuse. It's old and stale and not applicable anymore. Kids don't deserve games that run like ass, held together by tape and string, with bare minimum presentation yet a premium price tag -- oh, and make that price tag DOUBLE for lots of folks due to the unnecesary dual-release thing. You know what other games came out this year that were made for kids, and even specifically on the Switch? Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Splatoon 3. Some recent TV shows made for kids? The Owl House, She-Ra, CentaurWorld. And they're all fucking great, well produced, well made, and all pieces of media adults can easily pick up and enjoy even if they're not the target audience. And at the end of the day, people of EVERY age deserve to enjoy things they love, and deserve GOOD, well made things that money is getting spent on.

This would be an entirely different conversation -- a non-existant one, really -- if GameFreak was actually an indie team, making actual indie games. You may have blinked and missed it, but they HAVE made indie games -- multiple by now. And they never seem to take off. Just throwing that out there. GameFreak seems to want to cling to some fantasy of being a plucky indie developer, yet insistent on trying to stretch their too few workers too thinly rushing out multiple things out the door (ScarVi and Arceus absolutely did not need to release in the SAME CALENDER YEAR). I'm sorry but when you're an "indie team" operating under the highest grossing media franchise on the planet, AND you want to be producing multiple games simultaneously, AND you want to try doing ambitious things, AND you don't want to (or more likely, don't GET to) take your time on them, AND you don't want to allocate the people, experience, resources necessary to get things to actually function properly, much less look and feel good? Pokemon Scarlet/Violet is what you get.

And it's not some anomaly. This was to be expected. We could all pretty much see this was where the franchise was going when Sword and Shield happened. And there's no reason for this trend not to continue at this rate, with record setting sale numbers in its opening days.

I love the potential of this world, and other franchises that have found success have been able to BLOSSOM in beautiful ways from that success, in this past decade specifically (even just the past 5 years). I really like many of the individual characters in this specific video game. I love seeing Pokemon games try to FINALLY mix things up in meaningful ways, it's long overdue.

But I'm probably just "too old" and "too grumpy" to appreciate the shoddy quality, repetitious and boring pacing, and overall lack of foresight or game design present in modern Pokemon games. Many will gobble this game up and enjoy it, and I am honestly really happy that can still happen even with the state this game is in. I was likewise able to enjoy Arceus more than any mainline Pokemon since Gen 2, even though the game felt like a glorified tech demo. The Pokemon formula just isn't enough for me anymore, and The Pokemon Company absolutely has all of the time, money, and resources they could want to make the games elevate to the standard of quality you'd expect from a brand that performs like Splatoon, like Mario, like Zelda, like Animal Crossing -- and a franchise that reels in adults to a kid's game in ways essentially no other franchise does. It's fucking weird how scared of quality production values the Pokemon games are in a lot of ways. Meanwhile, look at what Bandai Namco has been able to pull off when given the reigns: games that look and feel like actual modern video games, still kid-friendly, but also aware that adults like Pokemon, too. Why do actual Pokemon games seem terrified of this?

Dear GameFreak: Get over your indie complex. You don't get to pretend to be indie while selling more copies of a single game than every other indie game combined, and then do it AGAIN like 8 months later. Also? A Iot of the people who put you on the map -- people who were kids years ago -- aren't kids anymore. Stop pretending your entire audience is literal children, because many of them are not, and I'm sure you know it. But even if all of them were, you used to treat kids with more respect in how you designed and balanced stuff. Stop being afraid of that, I feel like most anyone picking up a damn Pokemon game in 2022 has some idea of what they're getting into.

Dear Pokemon Company: Let GameFreak fucking have TIME to make quality games. Give them proper resources, experienced programmers and artists, hire some actual writers maybe, voice actors. YOU HAVE SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY. Stop being greedy shits rushing more and more out the door just to keep growing when you are already so huge. Your games are suffering from it and it's embarrassing given how successful you are. You invest SO MUCH into animation, marketing, cards, merchandise, and the actual GAMES -- the part the MOST amount of your audience engages with the most deeply -- are getting starved for time and resources. What the fuck.

Dear Nintendo: Ya'll are fucking better than this. You may not always make smart business choices, or even MODERN game design choices (though you're starting to get your heads on with that, small steps at a time), but at LEAST you've always been known for QUALITY. This messy product is a notable low for you. You should be embarrassed that a game this ugly, buggy, stuttery, rushed, and unfinished got your stamp of approval. If I was you, I'd be rushing people in to help patch the issues, and sitting down with all parties involved to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I know the ownership/management of Pokemon games is this weird mishmash in a way no other Nintendo property quite deals with so I'm sure there's stuff going on behind the scenes we don't know. I'm just mad, I'm tired, I'm fed up of seeing a franchise SO FULL OF POTENTIAL get this treatment. Unless something substantially improves, I'm done with Pokemon -- and that doesn't matter to the corporations involved. But it sure makes me upset, personally, and I'm certain I can't be the only one.

I did not get to the end of Pokemon Scarlet.

GameFreak did not finish their damn game, so I don't see why I should, either.

TLDR;

+ Great character designs and new Mon designs + Actual splashes of genuine worldbuilding and personality + We are technically allowed to do what we want + Pokemon formula/numbers game is addictive -That addictive formula is like 25 years old ya'll, gotten stale -Technical issues are HELLA BAD but you know this -Game is just overall kinda ugly already, WITH terrible optimization -World is flat and empty, devoid of life or anything interesting -Gameplay is slow, repetitious, mind-numbing -Basically everything Arceus addressed/improved, this walks back on