#overall season 1 solid 10/10 season 2 was like.. 8/10? 8.5?

[creaky]

jinx fans how are we feeling

[formulaorange]

Fall 2023 Anime Review

The 24 episodes series this season are popping off. Honestly one of the better seasons for anime that we've had in a few years.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (1/2) - 16/28 Episodes This show almost feels like a fever dream. There's a fuzziness to the animation style that also gives it a ghibli vibe. Definitely one of the more memorable and important fantasy series out there. It has something about it that gives it more of a deeper meaning than other series and definitely feels like each episode is it's own piece of a puzzle. 10/10 - Masterpiece

The Apothecary Diaries (1/2) - 12/24 Episodes I wasn't sure what to expect from this series but I thoroughly enjoy it so far. I ended up going ahead and reading the manga because I wanted more content. Just a fun medical mystery type show with some goofy scenes and bits of almost romance? Looking forward to more episodes in the future. 8.5/10 - Very Good +

Shangri La Frontier (1/2) - 12/25 Episodes I genuinely enjoy this series. It does have a bit of an SAO vibe initially but it moves past that real quick. I think it's one of the more enjoyable series for people who actually enjoy and appreciate video games. Overall, the game itself just looks like a lot of fun and you can tell the mc is enjoying it too. 8/10 - Very Good

Shy - 12 Episodes I don't know why people aren't into this series. I think it would definitely have done better had it come out during the peak of hero shows but it still hits. I think it's a really well done story and the animations are also satisfying. Reminds me a little of Justice League or Young Justice. Honestly a fun watch. 8/10 - Very Good

SpyxFamily - Season 2 - 12 Episodes This show never disappoints. Each episodes is just as entertaining as the first season and I don't feel like a single episode has been wasted so far. I'm still very much looking forward to future content. 8.5/10 - Very Good+ Dr. Stone - Season 3 - 11 Episodes For some reason I always seem to put off watching this series but as soon as I get into it, it's so worth it. Definitely still holding up to the pilot season and I'm just as stoked for future seasons. Solid consistency. 8/10 - Very Good The Eminence In Shadow - Season 2 - 12 Episodes This had such a banger first season. Definitely just a fun show for me that I try not to look into too much when watching. Has straight forward fun protagonist and the story hasn't flopped so far. 7.5/10 - Good+ Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions - 13 Episodes The first few episodes come off as a cheesy Sherlock spoof but it definitely takes off on the later cases. It becomes less overall about the cases but the combo of the two and the different situations they end up in. By the end of the season I felt like the cases they worked were fun and interesting and I liked the character building. 7/10 - Good My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-rank Adventurer I gave this 3 episodes. Honestly I think ending it at episode 3 was fine.. The story feels weak but it's a nice short story if you watch the first 3 episodes and don't care the whole demon lord plot. 5/10 - Average The Rising of Shield Hero - Season 3 - 12 Episodes I got through about 4 episodes and really enjoyed it and then it just went downhill. It turned into some kind of monster raising anime with a side of shield hero. I initially dropped it but decided to come back and finish it because i'm still attached to the overaching story for some reason. I found the last 3 episodes were decent and did add to the overall story but I still had such a rough time in the first 3/4. 4.5/10 - Less than Average Goblin Slayer - Season 2 - 12 Episodes I was so disappointed by this show. I honestly can't remember how the first season ended but I don't feel like it needed this season. Felt much more like the standard harem isekai with very little interesting aspects to the story. Not to mention the whole elf incest story line they threw in there. Definitely won't be coming back for a 3rd season. Had a really hard time getting through this one. 3.5/10 - Bad/Very Bad

[buffaloareafishfrygal]

June 2, 2023

Potters Field Restaurant and Pub

425 Potters Road

Buffalo, NY 14220

I decided to venture out for an out of season fish fry to celebrate “National Fish and Chips Day!” Every year the first Friday in June! Mark your calendars for next year. Why is it that South Buffalo has so many great fish fry joints?

We pulled up around 5:30 pm. Tiny parking lot that holds maybe 8 cars but we were able to find side street parking on Woodcrest Drive without a problem. Fun neighborhood pub vibe with friendly people enjoying a drink at the bar to kick off the weekend. We sat ourselves inside at one of the 12 tables surrounding the bar. There was outside seating available on their front patio too. (6 tables) It’s a small venue but I really like how it doesn’t feel crowded as you eat.

Our waitress Molly greeted us and got us a our beers. She was very sweet. Nice selection of everybody’s favorites. Not a ton of choices, but something to please all tastes. I ordered the beer battered fish but they also had Italian breaded and panko. Broiled options were lemon pepper, Cajun, or Parmesan crusted. Skinless haddock also available in a half size. Fish came out crisp and piping hot. Great taste and perfectly cooked. (9)Just a wee bit greasy but not overwhelming. Besides that my only complaint was the portion size wasn’t huge like others in town. I’m afraid if I ordered the half, I would have wanted more. They had a great offering of sides. You know I need my holy trinity! Each fry comes with coleslaw and Mac salad and then you choose your potato. (Choices! Now that’s the bomb in my book!) Cole slaw was not very crispy. A mix of green and purple cabbage with carrots mixed in. Oil based dressing. Kinda bland. (7) Mac salad was elbows with carrots, egg, and celery. Lightly dressed. Good not great. (8) Now here is where they get MAJOR props from me… you can choose your type of potato. Fries, sweet potato fries, potato salad or German potato salad. I wanted to try more than just one, so I ordered fries and a side of German and American potato salad. They only charged me $1 extra for each. What?!? I was ecstatic. The holy trinity just became the fab five! Fries were skin on. Nice and crispy with the perfect amount of salt. Run of the mill but nicely done. (9) Potato salad featured onions and peppers with cubed white potatoes. Flavor fell short. Definitely missing something.(6) German was a pleasant surprise. Again featuring cubed white potatoes. Had a nice vinegar kick but could have used a touch more bacon. (8) Tartar was really yummy. Creamy with a heavy pickle presence.(10)

Overall a very solid fish fry. (8.5) Just the choices alone bump it up a notch. Great atmosphere and from what I hear, new owners. South Buffalo peeps. Staff was friendly and very efficient. I will be back for sure!

[willowish]

So I watched all 4 series/seasons of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and I'm gonna map out my thoughts on all of them and rank them on the Weeb Ass Shit scale

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: 8.5/10 overall

Weeb 2/10 - Other than being a magical girl anime, there's not much you need to know about Japan or anime, and magical girls are more common in western cartoons now, so it ranks low imo

Ass 4/10 - There are panty shots and, unfortunately, a hot spring episode, both of which are made worse by the main character being 9, but the worst part imo is the magical girl sequence going out of its way to show her regular clothes coming off before the new outfit goes on. Lots of magical girl anime have Vague Nudity during the transformations, but this feels extra weird

Shit 2/10 - I would say there aren't many major plot holes or instances of bad writing, I really enjoyed the story, and it used the 13 episodes it had wisely, getting straight to the point. Not telling the viewer Nanoha's fake, non-magic explanation of why she's going away is the only thing that jumps out as lazy writing, but it doesn't really matter anyway since she explains for real in the end. There are a few one-off remarks about Nanoha's family that I initially was like "ok, not gonna explain that?" but then I remembered this is technically a spinoff of Triangle Heart, so those were probably added for Triangle Heart fans, not new viewers

Season 1 was an intriguing story that drew me in pretty quickly and one that could honestly stand on its own. I remember finishing episode 13 and thinking "what could possibly come after this, that seemed like a solid story to me!" It may seem odd to think "I don't really need a follow up season on this good anime," but the alternative comes up later. I think this was my favorite season, partly because Yuuno was a main character and he's my favorite. Pity me.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's: 8/10 overall

Weeb 3/10 - I don't have many specific examples, but I feel like this season had more anime tropes/Japanese culture in it. The only example I can really think of is Hayate bathing with Shamal and Vita, but I made a mental note after watching that the weeb ranking was higher

Ass 4.5/10 - Same panty shots and weird transformation sequences as before, as well ad aforementioned bathing. There was also another scene where a monster with tendrils or whatever grabbed Signum and her boobs got squished by it. You know what I mean.

Shit 3/10 - This was another really solid plot, and again it used its allotted episodes well, but I feel like it wasn't quite as good as season 1. Plus it had Hayate's paralysis heal after the Book of Darkness was destroyed, which is a dumb trope, but I don't dock more points for it because the book was causing the paralysis to begin with, and it didn't vanish overnight at least.

I didn't like this one as much, especially at first, but I really liked Nanoha getting more involved with the Bureau and official magic business, and I somehow didn't see the twist at the end of Graham and the Liese twins being part of the problem. Loved the peak 6 years ahead at the end where everyone's older, and Yuuno getting teased about "making process" with Nanoha was cute (and painful in retrospect, RIP Yuuno idk why the writers shoved you aside so hard). I once again thought "that was a great story with a solid wrap-up, what more could there be?" and yet there was more.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS: 7/10 overall

Weeb 3/10 - Anime battles, power levels, pupils aiming to surpass their mentors, pretty standard anime fare that's easy to understand, if you saw Dragonball as a kid you get it pretty much, and we're not in Japan anymore Toto, so don't worry about that

Ass 5/10 - Same stuff as before, including a weird, OOC scene where Subaru wakes Teana up by... groping her boobs. It was so out of place I almost had to make sure it was the same anime. Also, a 6 year old girl transforms into an adult woman à la Black Lady, and watching a grown woman in a vacuum sealed bodysuit with boob socks cry and act like a 6 year old is SUPER weird. At least Black Lady didn't act like Chibiusa...

Shit 4.5/10 - Wouldn't it be dumb if you named an anime after the main character, then divided focus between her and a new cast of characters so she's barely the main character anymore? Yeah, it was dumb. I like the idea of showing how Nanoha has matured by having her become a mentor to a new generation, but removing the focus from her so much was... idk, not what people were watching for? Also taking the really cool sci-fi magical girl anime to a more politic/bureaucratic place with power struggles in the Bureau was A Choice, but there were still plenty of cool fights, so it's fine

Remember Yuuno? The writers did for 2 whole lines of dialogue. Anyway, petty grievances aside, this season grew on me slowly. I didn't like Subaru and Teana much at first (loved the episode where Nanoha blasted Teana with a huge magic beam then Signum punched her later lol) but they moved up to Fine by the end. I passively wondered why all of the combat cyborgs were women, then they dropped the "all of us have a genetic copy of our creator in our wombs in case he dies" shit and I wished I was dead. Weird shit aside, I liked it overall, and, ONCE AGAIN thought "yeah, this would be a satisfying place to end this tale!" and I was right that time.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid: 3.5/10 overall

Weeb 5/10 - This is An Anime alright. Training camps, hot springs, sports tournaments, we've got some prime examples of Anime here

Ass 6/10 - I'm tempted to rate this higher, but I feel like if 10 is hentai then any higher than this is too much. But there's a lot more sexualized bullshit here. I was literally 28 seconds into an episode and Fate's clothing got shredded, SPECIFICALLY on her chest, during a mock battle. We've got double the kid-to-adult boobification sequences, and we've got a 14 year old nun with battle underboob. Can't forget sexual harassment of a 10 year old at the hot spring!

Shit 7/10 - Don't watch this. You know how I praised the others for being complete stories that used their 13 episodes well? NOT VIVID!!! The first half of the show was just putzing around and introducing Einhart, a convoluted character with a dumb concept and confusing motives (she explained them many times and I still don't know wtf she wanted). The second half got into the only thing that was kind of interesting, the magic/martial arts sports tournament thing, and THEY DIDN'T FINISH BECAUSE THEY RAN OUT OF EPISODES!!! They got to episode 12, didn't even try to finish, and used the 13th 23 minute slot as a RECAP EPISODE to, idk try to drum up interest for a season 2? Didn't happen, because the show was ASS, so if you cared (I don't, I considered not finishing after every single episode) you can just read the manga I guess I'll say it again, don't watch this. First of all, if Nanoha being the protagonist only part of the time annoyed me, imagine how much I loved her being a background character. Also, you know how magical girl anime are about fighting to save the world and stuff? And how one of Lyrical Nanoha's draws was the really cool sci-fi magic battles and the repeated reminder that Nanoha was putting her life on the line as a 9 year old, making the show somewhat darker than other magical girl shows with protagonists that young? What if we made it a slice of life sports anime where a group of kids tries to get stronger and win the sports tournament against tough foes! Fucking yawn. When you go from a kid learning how to output strong magic without killing herself to a bunch of kids playing the water and practicing "cutting water" you have to wonder where you went wrong

Unrelated overall thoughts:

It's probably not intentional, at least in the way I'm interpreting it, but the gender in this show is pretty delicious sometimes. LOVE when Intelligent Devices refer to their female users as sir, specifically Bardiche calling Fate sir is very good to me. Also a big fan of Olivie being called a king instead of a queen. A lot of girls in ViVid have typically male names, like Einhart, Harry, and Victor. Also Otto is a trans man, he told me himself.

As you know, Nanoha is well known for having two hands- one for Yuuno, and one for Fate. The show directly implies Yuuno likes Nanoha and less directly implies she also likes him. The show also makes Nanoha and Fate really gay, but not "overtly" (other than both being Vivio's moms) because homophobia. Which is more canon? Both. Why? Here's a diagram.

As we can see, Vivio, Nanoha's child (I know she's adopted, that's not important here shhh) represents both Yuuno and Fate. We can also see that Nanoha loves blonde people.

As for the movies, I think season 1 was the better telling, but I honestly preferred the 2nd movie's telling of A's plot. Something I HATED!!! about both movies was the WEIRD lighting/shading choice for Nanoha's/Fate's chests that emphasized their nipples??? SO weird, I literally did a fucking double take every time that showed up.

TL;DR Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is good! Ignore ViVid

[satellitesunset]

Hey Myle this is a really random question that I totally thought of myself, but if you fancy answering it, feel free because I'm genuinely really curious!!! How would you personally rank the seasons based on their music? Do you have any highlights or best episodes musically for each season??? xx

emily my beloved <3

so i went the extra mile and did a whole rating for (almost every glee song) in order to rank the episodes therefore the season

Glee Seasons Ranked Solely Based on The Music

season 2

rated 9.5/10

best episode(s)

the closet thing to a perfect glee season musically, pretty solid, it took everything season one had and improved to be damn near flawless, most episodes in the seasons pass with flying grades, it's fantastically balanced, there's a delightful versatility, the only criticism I have is couple songs being assigned to the wrong person, but also most of them are perfect

Rumors (10.5/10)

Born this Way (10/10)

The Sue Sylvester Shuffle (9.5/10)

Grilled Cheesus (9.5/10)

New York (9.5/10)

highlights

ever single kurt solo, iwthyh, aiwnsgb, blakbird, le jazz hot, my boy shined

best worst songs, so many songs that shouldn't work end up being immaculate shout out to afternoon delight for being a BOP.

almost every duet, they snapped, i can't think of a bad one.

Finn's vocal improvement is brilliant.

I love Tina's rare moments where she shines, especially pure imagination.

season 4

glee finally figured out how to do good group performances. so many excellent new voices, I love Marley's, Jake's, and Brody's, although a lot of said new voices end up not being so good (I'm not a fan of Kitty's or Isabelle's, and Cassandra too many songs), I love many of the choices for songs although some of them get repetitive.

rated 9/10

best episode(s)

Diva (10/10)

Feud (10/10)

I Do (9.8/10)

honourable mention to The New Rachel, Britney 2.0, The Break Up, Thanksgiving, and Sadie Hawkins who are all 9/10s

highlights

artie!! so many good songs from him

baby got back, Iconic hit.

being alive, one of the best Kurt solos.

season 6

rated 8.5/10

surprisingly a solid(ish) season, although I didn't rate the vocal adrenaline songs because not putting myself through those, a bit repetitive more often than not, but the episodes that are good are impeccable.

best episode(s)

Jagged Little Tapestry (10/10)

What the World Needs Now (10/10)

Transitioning (9.5/10)

The Hurt Locker, Part Two (9.5/10)

season 3

rated 8/10

we've entered the mixed territory, this season is v hit or miss, I don't like wss or the jarring amount of pop songs, but overall it stands, if wobbling. there's also a massive amount of whiplash when listening (and watching) this season, besides the 6ish episodes that are genuinely good, every episode has some high highs and low lows.

best episode(s)

Michael (11/10)

Saturday Night Glee-ver (9.5/10)

highlights

Ben gcv my beloved

the national setlist are solid

kurt deserve better they did him so dirty this season 😭😭.

season 1

rated 7.5/10

it (and s5) suffer from a thing in which it's too much focused on 2/3 people, as a concept and song choice wise, it's excellent, but it's always finn, will and rachel, with some artie and mercedes every now and then, so for examples, almost all competition group numbers sound the same, and this coming from me an avid enjoyer of will's rapping and rachel however when this was good, it was brilliant when it was bad it's rotten.

best episode(s)

Laryngitis (10/10)

Vitamin D (9.5/10)

season 5

rated 7/10

it suffers from the treatment of focusing on the same voices the worst,especially in s5b, it's repeatedly Rachel.Blaine.MercedesSolo.Rachel.BlaineSamDuet.Rachel.Blaine.MercedesSolo.SamDuet.ArtieSong.Rachel.Blaine.MercedesSolo. where's TINA?? Kurt??? which isn't to say I hate these voices, I love mercedes getting the spotlight, and Rachel has so many good moments but it sort of gets boring when it's the same people every time. but then you also have Eliott and the early episodes are pretty good, basically it's confusing and messy in an underwhelming way.

best episode(s)

Frenemies (9.5/10)

Bash (9.5/10)

Old Dog, New Tricks (9.5/10)

Tested (9.5/10)

highlights

the song choices?? bash is perfect choice wise for example, this season didn't miss.

the starkurt duets are masterpieces.

[pair-annoyed]

Anime I Watched in Quarantine

With some of the restrictions being lifted, I wanted to make a sort of master post to see just how much I’ve watched in my time off. Plus, I wanted to share something more lighthearted with everyone.

All of these anime will be rated on a 1-10 scale, 10 meaning masterpiece, 1 meaning complete garbage. I’ll also share what I liked/didn’t like about each show. This list will go in chronological order, and will encompass all anime from 3/13 - 6/13. Multiple Seasons will be grouped together. 

1. Beastars - 8/10 

I dig how human and down-to-earth Beastars is. The pacing was a nice and the animation was unexpectedly great! It’s driving force is its characters and their interactions. Felt a little slow at times, and Juno annoys me, but that’s okay. I’ll be watching season 2.

2. Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun - 8/10 

Oh my god! This visuals for this were absolutely wonderful! It did feel a little cliche at times, I won’t lie. But, I still loved all of these characters and the nice balance between creepy and comedy. 

3. Ao No Exorcist - 6/10 

I posted about this one after I finished it. The ending really pissed me off. I feel like if I had watched this when I was 13, I would’ve given it a higher score. Compared to some of the other shounen I’ve watched, this felt a bit basic. That doesn’t mean I still didn’t like it. Still have to get around to watching season 2...

4.  Kaichou wa Maid-sama! 6.5/10

Shoujo usually isn’t my cup of tea. Maid-sama was a nice way to ease into the cliches of shoujo. Misaki is a great protagonist and the ending Maid-sama was so satisfying. I’m only giving it a low score because of its slow pacing and lack of certain character development. 

5.  Violet Evergarden Gaiden: Eien to Jidou Shuki Ningyou  - 7/10

I’m a big Violet Evergarden fan to begin with, so of course I liked this movie. It did not resonate with me as much as the series itself, but I still enjoyed it. Kyoto animation is never disappointing in their visuals and sound design 

6.  Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! - 8/10 

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren - 6.5/10 

Chuunibyou was a breath of fresh air for me. It was so different from all other romance anime I had seen at the time. It for sure has a slice of life vibe to it, but it was still so good! It reminded me of being in middle school and my “chuunibyou” phase. The second season was not as enjoyable as the first. I guess I just had higher expectations for Rikka and Yuuta. 

7. Dr. Stone - 7/10

Dr. Stone is honestly such a perfect shounen for me. I’m a science nerd, and with taking AP Chem this year it was kind of nice to sorta apply my knowledge. This show also has some of the best reaction images ever. The tone, however, is a little inconsistent which made it hard to keep watching. I do love the relationship between Senku and his Dad, that whole sub-plot was so endearing.

8. Oshiete! Galko-chan - 6/10

This one only gets a low score because its so short and the op takes up like half an episode. This show had been in the back of my mind for a while. I decided to watch it after seeing a video essay discussing it. Its masterful subversion of tropes and stereotypes was refreshing. The message of this show is so positive, and everyone can benefit from watching something like this.  

9. Mairimashita Iruma-kun  - 5/10 

The second half of Mairimashita Iruma-kun was so much better. I’m not completely sure why I didn’t like this as much as I should have. Overall, its a really average show. The comedy (and musical numbers???) give this show and charismatic and chaotic vibe. I’m someone who focuses primarily on character-character interactions, and this show definitely had it. It isn’t monogatari levels of dialogue but it’s still nice. For the studio’s low budget, they were able to make a really bright and colorful show. I’ll be watching season 2.  

10. Byousoku 5 Centimeter - 8/10

Very. VERY. Pretty!! This one was another one that didn’t completely resonate with me emotionally. I still loved the story and the way it was told. Its not like Your Name or Tenki no Ko, it’s realistic and grounded.

11. Mob Psycho 100 - 8/10

Mob Psycho 100 II - 9/10 

Style alone made Mob Psycho 100 so impressive. By the second half of each season I was emotional invested in Mob and his whole journey. Season 2 is receiving a higher score because it was able to make me cry. That’s something I NEVER expected. I’m mad I didn’t watch this sooner. It is a great balance of action, comedy, and heart. 

12. Noragami Aragoto - 8/10 

Not sure why I put off Norogami’s second season for so long. I absolutely loved it. The focus on Bishimon was a nice change of pace and it was great to see Yukine develop more as a character and begin to loose his arrogance. Kazuma was my favorite character in all of this. His ability to affect the people around him was presented nicely. I was emotionally invested the whole way through, and I’ll probably pick up the manga. 

13. Ookami Shoujo to Kuro Ouji - 3/10

Ah yes. My least favorite thing on planet earth. This is a wonderful example of Shoujo at its worst. Their relationship was incredibly toxic, and the characters themselves were poorly developed and generic. The whole time all I could think was that I was watching normalized Stockholm Syndrome. Our MC deserves so much better. 

14. Youjo Senki - 6/10

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to like Youjo Senki as much as I did. I’m not usually one for iesekai. The action was great, but the use of CGI bogged down scenes. I do NOT really like the protagonist that much because she came across as apathetic. Towards the end, I started to like her more. This was also my first military/warfare-focused anime. If either a movie or second season is made, I will probably not watch it. 

15. Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica - 6.5/10

I wanted to like Madoka Magica more than I did. I really did. The style was compelling and the story was interesting. Especially in the beginning, a lot of the death and sad stuff didn’t feel all that sad. The last 4 episodes are a solid 8/10, I love time shenanigans. The emotions and character development really shined through in the end. Madoka is such an inherently kind-hearted person, I love her so much! 

16. Yakusoku no Neverland - 8.5/10 

I was expecting Yakusoku no Neverland to be more graphic, but I’m kind of glad it didn’t go that route. Like Madoka, the last four episodes had me really invested. However, the character development was not as rushed. It’s a smart show and welcomed change of pace. Emma is my favorite character and you bet I’ll be watching season 2. The more I think about this show, the more I appreciate it. 

17. Mo Dao Zu Shi - 9/10

Mo Dao Zu Shi 2nd Season - 8/10 

I know that is is technically a donghua, but I’m counting it as an anime because its on MAL. Amazing visuals and an incredibly layered story.  Censorship makes it difficult to fully appreciate this work and its original novel. Even though I was confused for the first 2 episodes, Mo Dao Zu Shi did a great job of developing the time period and character relationships. The second season wasn’t as satisfying as the first but still great! I don’t think I’ll be watching the live action anytime soon, but I believe that a 3rd season is confirmed for 2020.

18. Banana Fish - 8.5/10

I knew nothing about Banana Fish going into it. Although I didn’t cry at the ending, it definitely made me feel some type of way. Kind of... numb. Banana Fish is painfully realistic. So much so that I had to take a break after episode 15 because I felt sick to my stomach. I also praise Banana Fish for it’s healthy, non-fetishized relationship representation. Eiji and Ash have such a complex but healthy relationship. I hope Banana Fish is able to pave the way for better representation in media. 

19. Promare - 5/10 

Why do people praise Promare so much? I hated how predictable it was. The whole movie felt like a 2 hour animation flex for Trigger. The only character in this movie that didn’t manage to piss me off it some way was Lio. The only other thing I’ve seen by studio Trigger is Kill la Kill, so compared to that, this felt like such a step down. :( I was disappointed. 

20. Given - 6/10

Given made me both sad and made me want to start a band. Overall the animation is nothing special, I do like the reactions that some of the characters had. Especially that “It’s Mutual” gif set. I couldn’t get over how much Ritsuka looks like Kageyama. My only complaint was how rushed Mafuyu and Ritsuka’s relationship felt. More time should have been dedicated to Mafuyu dealing with and moving past the loss in his life. All that said, I’m still watching the movie.

21. Enen no Shouboutai - 5/10 

Generic Shounen, bad ending, great animation. Need I say more? I did not watch Soul Eater (made by same creator), but this was enjoyable. Really cool fights, not so cool character development. A lot of the explanations towards the end felt like complete bull shit. Same energy as using fancy sounding science words to explain things. 

22. Hataraku Maou-Sama - 5.5/10

This is another show I felt I would’ve liked more if I watched it when I was younger. The iesekai trope is so beaten down that classics like this don’t really carry as much weight as they originally did. A 24 episode season with more Slice of Life episodes would’ve benefited this series greatly.

23. BNA - 7/10

BNA, in my opinion, was so much better than Promare. Like Hataraku Maou-sama, BNA would’ve benefited from a longer season with more Slice of Life Episodes. Trigger’s newer animation is beautiful and I really hope BNA gets renewed for a second season. The ending was cliche as hell, but still really enjoyed this show!

24. Devilman: Crybaby - 7/10 

A.K.A. The one show I’ve got to watch when I know I’m alone. The use of multiple languages besides Japanese in the sub was a unique take. The animation was also a little jarring at first, but I came to love it. The themes in this are not the most positive. The end left me feeling numb, but also appreciative. Ryo pissed me off as soon as he tried to kill that cat, so it was hard to sympathize with him in the very end. It is a really good show, but also sickening, Watch at your own discretion.  

[luuuna-rambles]

Lost Rewatch: Season 1

Overall Review:

So, I’ve heard more than once recently that Lost ‘got worse as it went on’. And now I have finished the start of it all... yeah, that’s just not true, is it?

Which isn’t to say it’s bad; it’s fine. But that’s about all it is: fine. There are some great episodes here and there, primarily the ones focusing on Sawyer and Jin/Sun, but then there is also a lot of ‘meh’ episodes to slog through. While I like one character (Shannon) a lot more this time round, others have gone down a lot in my opinion of them (Jack, Kate, Charlie, Boone). There is a lot of set-up in this series, which is understandable, but slightly annoying when you have to watch 40 minutes of something that you know won’t go anywhere in future.

So all in all, pretty good; still a solid season of television, but nowhere near as good as this show can get.

Episodes Ranked:

Exodus, Part 1: 9.2/10

Outlaws: 8.6/10

...In Translation: 8.5/10

Exodus, Part 3: 8.5/10

House of the Rising Sun: 8/10

Confidence Man: 7.2/10

Do No Harm: 7/10

Exodus, Part 2: 6.9/10

White Rabbit: 6.8/10

The Greater Good: 6.7/10

Raised By Another: 6.5/10

Solitary: 6.4/10

The Moth: 6/10

Numbers: 5.8/10

Special: 5.5/10

Homecoming: 5.2/10

Pilot, Part 2: 5.1/10

Pilot, Part 1: 5/10

Deus Ex Machina: 4.9/10

All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issue: 4.5/10

Walkabout: 4/10

Tabula Rasa: 3.5/10

Whatever the Case May Be: 3/10

Born To Run: 2.5/10

Hearts and Minds: 0.5/10

Overall Average Ranking: 6.264/10

Main Characters Ranked (As of Season 1):

Sayid

Sun

Sawyer

Hurley

Jin

Locke

Claire

Shannon

Michael

Jack

Walt

Charlie

Kate

Boone

Current OTPs:

Sun x Jin

Claire x Kate

Current NOTPs:

Jate (Would be fine if not for how quickly it happens and all the weird shots of Jack stalking Kate)

Sayid x Shannon (I mean, it’s cute and all, but it makes no sense from Sayid’s perspective)

[sueboohscorner]

#Bull Season 4 - Episode 8 - Safe and Sound

Here are the review and recap of Episode 8 of Season 4 of Bull.

This week’s episode opens up with the case of the week details, and they are the following, Two brothers are in Mum and Dad’s Closet, and they found Dad’s gun and the younger brother shot his older brother, and Dad gets put on murder charges for killing his son. As the episode moves forward, we are faced with the reality that the younger son has been planning his brother’s murder for many months now. And we later find out that Dr. Bull is placed in a difficult situation. In which he had to report the child to the authorities and get his friend out of jail, but he has to put his son in prison. Throughout the episode, we were seen the relationships that are developing and taking place in the episode are the below

1. Bull and Isabella

This week’s episode gave us a much-needed update on the relationship, at the start of the season we were only given bedroom scenes where they discussed the relationship between Bull and Benny and not the relationship that they are trying to rebuild before the baby comes in 4 months. In this week’s episode, we were given moments that they have been discussing the nature of their relationship and the future for them as a couple together. The moment that pulled on the heartstrings was Bull, and Issy is scared and terrified as they should be as new and older first time parents. With the case of the week, I believe that Dr. Bull was struggling with the situation of the case of the week in his mind. Because he is terrified and struggling to come with the idea that Baby Bull is coming to in seven weeks.

2. Dr. Bull and The TAC Team Dynamic in this episode

This week’s episode showed us how the TAC team could work together to a common goal and having to present the findings to the parents of the child that they are defending, that they are shown how they can work together as a team

3. Dr. Bull and His Friendship with the Client’s parents

As this relationship has been presented through the episode, we find out they have been friends since college, and he wants to help his friend out of the situation that he is in, but we find out that Dr. Bull believes his younger son is a dangerous human being. But because of the friendship, Dr. Bull is forced to tell them first. But because his son confesses to killing his brother to Dr. Bull, he has to report the situation to the Judge and discuss the case, and we find out later that Dr. Bull has lost his friend from college because he had to do his job to protect others from getting hurt more.

4. Benny and Bull’s Professional and Personal Friendship

After last week’s episode we saw the continuation of the relationship, between Benny and Dr. Bull in the car when the case was not going their way and he was being a friend to Dr. Bull because I like to believe that they have rebuilt and re patch the road that Dr. Bull started to create holes in after sleeping with his sister again.  As I mentioned in last week’s review of the episode, I believe that Benny is concerned for his friend, as he should be because of he believes that his friend is struggling with new transition to becoming a dad for the first time and he can see how his friend is changing his mindset and still can do his job at the best of his ability but I also like to believe that Benny is saying the right things about the case and make sure that his friend is okay for his sister’s mind.

Defense Strategy for the Case

The defense strategy is the following is to find the jury members that have empathy and social norms in them. To feel sympathy to the defendant for having the gun in the house.  

 Overview of The Episode

This week’s episode was another solid entry to the season 4 of Bull, we had some of the flair that we had in season 3 episodes, with that we had some significant interactions and moments from Bull and Issy to the Team working to make together sure that they can prove the information in the case is correct

Bull and Issy’s Scenes of their relationship, The young actor who played the younger son, The yawning through The TAC Team scene and the scene at the end of the episode and finally Bull begins to questions, his future style of partnering

And the worst moments of the episode were, Some of the courtroom scenes with the other lawyer I, I believe they were not up to the standard of Bull regular style and Bull, and Issy Scene was only 2 minutes long, why can we have a more extended scene with the two of them, please. I want an episode dedicated to their relationship development. Overall the episode was well-written, and I like this style of the episode of which we have an equal balance of courtroom and TAC office scenes. The episode was intense an 8.5/10.

Because It was mentioned in the episode of Bull, that Baby Bull is seven weeks away; I was wondering the predictions of when Baby Bull is coming in which episode of the season. Place your predictions in the comment section down below, and we can discuss it.  

[xtremedespair3d]

Happy New Year 2019 - 2018 Review: My Worst Year Yet

The end is near...

The end of the year and almost the end of the decade, we’re going to be at least one year away to enter 2020.

This was a good year, but as the title implies, there were some severe downs, but before I talk about my really long story about my experience with 2018, let’s start this post with the good old top 10s, but this time, I’m finally going to start from 10 to 1 because I’ve been doing the other way around for years and that’s not how it works. Not everything will have comments because I almost have no idea on what to write in some entries and don’t want to make more repetitive and simplistic than some of the entries of each list are.

This is indeed my longest Tumblr post yet, so I hope you enjoy:

Top 10 Best Anime: This list was honestly really difficult to make compared to the others, mainly because I watch a lot of anime and can’t choose which ones I really liked the most except for the final top 3. I would have liked to extend the list to Top 20, but I want to be consistent with the other lists (Sure there are shorter lists but I don’t want to go over 10).

10.- Toji No Miko: I’m highly indifferent with this series overall, the characters, the universe, the world building, etc., at least this was successful enough to spawn a game and now a spin-off series for Winter 2019 (Looks like they could be shorts but who knows), not the biggest franchise in existence but it’s got potential.

Despite my mild interest, my jokes that this looked like Kancolle (Because it features one of the character designers) and Touken Ranbu (just sword wielding) had a baby will live on.

9.- Fate/Extra: Last Encore: Another controversial Fate “adaptation” in recent memory. Yes, I was surprised and yelled like crazy in confusion with the changes from the game on the first episode alone, but despite this series turning tables from the game but still following how things went linearly, it’s not worth the hate or anything.

Some people have called it confusing, which... parts of it were but Last Encore is not worth the hate. It’s not by any means bad, you have to understand that it’s its own thing and what not.

Fate/Extra is probably my only Fate/Type-Moon media I got into before even getting into their anime adaptations, which I’m happy for it.

 8.- Darling in the Franxx: Alright, call me out on this one, but it did nothing wrong!

When it first started, there were mixed feelings for its fan servicey start with naked Zero Two, in the middle of the series, everything seems like it was going fine and I liked where the story was going, but then there was the Bitchigo controversy, it’s probably not the series’ breaking point, but at that point it looks like the hate was carried until the end.

Why do people hate Franxx? As if people were expecting too much on how should the story be or anything.

Trigger and A-1 may or may not sound like an interesting combo, but it looked like it was more A-1 than Trigger. As a Trigger fan (I’m more into their originals, adaptations don’t work for me), I really hope people don’t hate Trigger forever for Franxx, but who’s actually to blame here?

 7.- Steins;Gate 0: This one is a little controversial to add considering there was a lot of hate on it, I don’t get why, if the first season is considered a masterpiece, how could Steins;Gate 0 fail to follow the formula? (I’m an animeonly fag, what do you expect?)

 6.- Zombieland Saga: This one gets a big seal of approval as a birthday gift of mine (it came out on October 4th), and one of the best originals too.

Really hoping for a second season. (Don’t care if it’ll be as shit as Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul)

5.- Cells at Work! / Hataraku Saibou: This one wasn’t on my Summer 2018 radar until I saw the first two episodes and I immediately loved it.

Seems like those Osmosis Jones/Ozzy & Drix jokes got to convince me to watch it. (I actually only grew up with the Osmosis Jones movie, I never saw Ozzy & Drix in my entire life ;_;)

4.- My Hero Academia season 3.

3.- Devilman Crybaby.

2.- Pop Team Epic.

1.- Today’s Menu for Emiya Family / Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan: Another one of Ufotable’s visually departive series (Meaning that they’re different from their usual productions (God Eater also comes into this territory but not as visually different than Himuro no Tenchi and Emiya-san. Sure, Ufotable had different and the common solid color visuals back in the 2000s but nowadays seeing Ufotable taking this direction is amazing).

Since it’s a cooking show, I would definitely love to copy the recipes as told in the show (wonder if they’re good enough to make the food actually taste good), and I also had this tradition with a mutual of mine of watching every episode when they came out monthly (it’s a monthly series).

Honorable mentions:

Yuru Camp

B: The Beginning

A.I.C.O Incarnation

Golden Kamuy

Aggretsuko

Castlevania season 2

Touken Ranbu Hanamaru season 2: Since Winter 2018 feels like a long time, I genuinely forget this existed. 😂

Violet Evergarden

Dagashi Kashi 2

Overlord II, III

The Ryuuou’s Work is Never Done! / Ryuuou no Oshigoto!: I haven’t seen this Day 1, but I binged it a few months later.

Citrus

Lupin the 3rd Part 5

Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card

FLCL Progressive, FLCL Alternative

Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

Senran Kagura: Shinovi Master Tokyo Youma Hen

SSSS.GRIDMAN

Ace Attorney season 2

Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san / Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san

Goblin Slayer

Gakuen Basara

High Score Girl

Top 5 Worst Anime:

Caligula: I always didn’t like the game, haven’t played it myself, but looking at it, the art is unappealing, the characters, the universe, pretty much everything, not even Persona 1 writer Tadashi Satomi would make the game any favors. (That’s mostly on the game, anime may differ but I just don’t care at all.).

Grancrest Senki / Record of Grancrest War: As someone who’s not really into the fantasy genre, but let’s be real, this one’s probably the most boring fantasy anime I’ve ever watched in my life.

Parts of it, like the political drama, was great, but everything else? I felt like I didn’t care at all, well, not always super ignorant, I dunno, it’s just that I wasn’t the biggest fan of this show.

Persona 5: The Animation: This one may be the worst Persona adaptation yet, the pacing was all over the place, animations on the fight scenes are weak, a gratuitous ending to the base series leading up to the special for New Year’s.

What about the surprise the director teased a while before the series began?

P5A was bad, but it wasn’t offensively bad, I’m not mad at it for being bad.

The time when the OVA, Dark Sun has come out, apparently they decided to announce ANOTHER OVA for March 2019 to conclude the story... Seems like there’s no end.

I’ve also been waiting for the surprise the director teased for so long and I don’t think as of the writing of this will ever get paid off.

Junji Ito Collection: At first I was intrigued on how they would capture the Junji Ito horror, but weeks later, as I kept watching it, it was feeling a bit boring, like it feels slow. Then I heard that it’s one of the worst anime of 2018 so far, that’s... actually quite exaggerating, well, it’s bad but it’s not THAT bad.

Tokyo Ghoul:re: Pierrot once again ruined Tokyo Ghoul, no surprise, but maybe even worse. From the obvious rushed story to the lackluster fight scenes, even the first Tokyo Ghoul season had better animated fight scenes.

Top 10 Best Movies:

10.- The Shape of Water: Technically it was 2017 film but it came out in Mexico like in January 12th iirc, I thought it was a good film, I’d need to watch more Guillermo Del Toro films, particularly the Hellboy films now that the reboot is coming out next year. 7.5/10.

9.- The Cloverfield Paradox: Quite optimistic that there’s a new Cloverfield movie since the original (over 10 years) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2 years ago), but it turns out that it’s quite a flawed movie, It did nothing wrong! 7.5/10.

8.- Aquaman: Definitely my favorite DC film yet (GTFO Wonder Woman with feminism and everyone complaining on the final fight scene with overuse of CG (if it hurt the film that badly, then the film is not worth a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes), I definitely loved the VFX on Atlantis and the final fight with Ocean Master. Speaking of Ocean Master, I love that they animated his helmet eyes a la Deadpool. 8/10 - Rank: A.

7.- Overlord: Whether this would have worked as a Cloverfield movie or not, I love me some World War II zombie film by JJ Abrams. (Speaking of non-Cloverfield film, I would have liked to watch A Quiet Place.) 8.5/10 - Rank: A.

6.- Mission Impossible: Fallout: My first interaction with the Mission Impossible franchise was with the first film when I was at the English school I used to study, I would have liked to watch Rogue Nation when it came out in 2015 but I haven’t developed my habit of absolute moviegoer until 2017, now that they announced Fallout and will have Henry Cavill (with his mustache, the main reason for the Justice League mustachegate), I would not hesitate to see it.

Even if I have only seen the first film, this is already the best Mission Impossible film yet, definitely felt the thrills for the action and it make me like Henry Cavill more, especially the fucking arm reload.

Too bad August Walker died, but I couldn’t help to say “Superman died again but permanently.” Now I’m definitely looking forward for more Mission Impossible films. 9.5/10 - Rank: S+.

5.- My Hero Academia: Two Heroes: Since MHA is so popular, even in Mexico, there was always bound to be quite the mouthful fanboys in my theater, may be the most annoying experience yet but I wasn’t really annoyed as much as the next entries.

Just a heads up, the loud crowd in my cinema don’t really ruin my experience on seeing the movie. 9/10 - Rank: S.

4.- Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple: Our second anime movie experience and the one time we get to see an anime film on the afternoon because with My Hero Academia and Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel have been on the night.

The best thing about Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple is that it came out exactly on my sister’s birthday, August 25th.

My sister hasn’t seen Bungou Stray Dogs but she didn’t mind and accepted my request to go see it together, and I couldn’t be happier to see it on her birthday.

Not much to add on the loud crowd but the loudest ones were a bunch of fujos fangirling out at this Dazai x Chuuya scene and this part where the Shibusawa fight from the end of the film ended, someone sneezed, another guy replied “bless you” loudly and everyone else laughed. Didn’t ruin my experience, but come on... 9/10 - Rank: S.

3.- Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel I. Presage Flower: Like The Shape of Water, Heaven’s Feel I was a 2017 film and came out in Mexico in January 2018, but that aside, it was the first film I’ve ever seen in a cinema and seeing anime visuals and animation (especially Ufotable’s) was pure eye candy and it was a dream come true.

This kickstarted our (my older sister and I) hobby of seeing anime movies to the cinema with the previous entriesI (sorry but we won’t allow our mom to watch anime with us, we’d rather have the annoying people in the cinema than hearing her whine about every bloody scene she sees). 9.5/10 - Rank: S+.

The second film, Lost Butterfly, was supposed to come out, but it got delayed until January 12th, damn, so close, so I think I had a perfect chance to watch the first film this year because at the time I didn’t trust much the disributor, Konnichiwa Festival, for bringing anime films I’d like to see the most, or anything from series like My Hero Academia and Bungou Stray Dogs (They also brought A Silent Voice and Your Name).

(For some reason I’ve always been typing “Passage Flower” instead of “Presage Flower”, in what universe have I made that up?)

The fact that the second film comes out on January 12th is almost exactly like about the same time the first film came out on Mexican cinema on the 19th, that’s quite an amazing (or disturbing) coincidence.

2.- Ready Player One: I’ve been optimistic about this movie and heard a couple of good things about the book and its concept, but it was full of controversial hate, but... why?! IT DID NOTHING WRONG! The film did well, whether you’re a bookfag or not, but even some bookfags didn’t like how the film turned out, but who cares? It was still fun. 9.5/10 - Rank: S+.

1.- The Incredibles 2: I’m happy The Incredibles 2 is finally here, continuing the cliffhanger from the first film and everything, my life is complete. 10/10 - Rank: S++.

Top 6 Best Marvel Movies: I always tend to make my normal movie lists a bit Marvel heavy, because they’re all so good, so I decided to make a separate list of their own.

5.- Black Panther: It’s probably a bit more popular than Avengers: Infinity War for its cultural impact and everything, but it was still a good movie, to say the least (I’m probably the more big team-up type than standalone). 8.5/10 - Rank: A.

4.- Ant-Man and the Wasp: It’s still worth watching, but I feel like it’s the least relevant MCU movie of the year, except the quantum realm stuff and... the post-credits scene. My sister and I lowkey laughed our asses off that Hank, Janet and Hope vanished from the snap. 8.5/10 - Rank: A.

3.- Deadpool 2: Worthy sequel, and pretty weird for Fox to release a PG-13 version, Once Upon a Deadpool, just when people were skeptical that Disney with the Fox purchase would PG-13′d Deadpool when Fox themselves are the ones doing it first, but for a good reason...

(I made this image myself)

Well, that too but most importantly... THE X-MEN AND THE FANTASTIC FOUR IN THE MCU!

Speaking of Once Upon a Deadpool, it will come out on Mexico on January 1st but I’ll go see it on the weekend. Anyways, the score for DP2 is: 8.5/10 - Rank: A.

2.- Venom: The best movie birthday gift I’ve gotten, AND IT’S NOT TRASH, OKAY?! I’ve seen plenty of fan arts and they make up for the fact the film is trash, and it also represents people just simply like shipping Eddie Brock and Venom. 9.5/10 - Rank: S+. (Want to fight me about the score?)

1-B.- Avengers: Infinity War:  YES! Infinity War is everything I wanted! I love the film to death, and I’d really love to own the Blu-Ray like I do with Civil War. Too bad THERE HAS TO BE SOME PEOPLE WHO DISLIKED THE FILM!

Some people complained about the plot structure for being hard to follow, some for the CG, and some simply because they were like “ehhh, I didn’t like it.”, BUT..... RRRRRRRGGGGGGGNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHHH!!! 👀💢 

IT’S A BIG MOVIE, THE ENDING MAY HAVE BEEN SHOCKING BUT IT WAS MEME-TASTIC AND EVERYTHING, IT’S SILLY FOR HATE TO EXIST ESPECIALLY WHETHER FROM CASUAL MARVEL VIEWERS AND SUCH.

THE PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T LIKE THE FILM, THEY DESERVE TO BE SNAPPED BY THANOS. QUE SE VAYAN A LA CHIN--

Alright, enough rambling, I loved the movie, I was definitely shocked by the ending (It’s not a bad ending that would ruin the film, don’t even dare to say that, please), but it’s a good set up for Avengers: Endgame. 9.5/10 - Rank: S+.

But... I gotta admit that it was my #1-A movie of the year, but there’s one movie that absolutely dethroned Infinity War...

1-A.- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: This film... THIS FILM, THOUGH, this is legit the best Spider-Man movie ever, with really awesome animation style, reminiscent of a comic book, the best easter eggs and everything.

Also, at the Stan Lee parts, from his cameo to his quote and a thanks to him and Steve Ditko, I legit cried at thiose parts for a small bit. I don’t even want to think about it. 😭

Some random notes before even seeing the film include buying a lot of the promotional items from my cinema (pictured)...

Out of all these items, I got...

...This cup when my older sister and I went to see My Hero Academia: Two Heroes on November 30th.

I did not hesitate to buy a keychain, let alone TWO (one for me and another one for my sister), there was a different keychain, the one with just Miles but I prefer the Spider symbol because I love symbols.

This popcorn bucket. I had a Spider-Man 3 plastic bucket, but it seems like I can’t find it somewhere in my house, sadly. But at least we needed a new bucket.

Along with the bucket, I also bought this cup (which I forgot about to take a photo of it and took it at home as you can see here).

So I got two of the three cups pictured way above, I also wanted to buy one of the wristbands but my family wouldn’t let me and it was too much to buy, they even told me I wouldn’t even wear them all the time. Oh well, at least I’m satisfied with the keychains, the cups and the bucket.

Happy to hear that there’s a female spin-off in the works, so my body is definitely ready to see more of the Spider-Verse with animation this beautiful. 100/10 - Rank: S++. Sorry Avengers: Infinity War but GTFO, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has easily won my heart and it’s my #1 movie, not just for this list, it’s my definitive #1 movie of 2018!  👑 (Yes, I know I put The Incredibles 2 on the other list, consider it as #1-C)

Since it came out on Mexico on December 25th, it’s the best Christmas gift I’ve ever had in my entire life. (next to my new Huawei Mate 10 Lite, I needed a new phone really bad)

There’s an all-female spin-off in the works, so my body is definitely ready to watch more Spider-Verse related films with this beautiful animation (if there could be a different visual style than Spider-Verse, I’m probably fine with it, but it seems unlikely to happen (please don’t, the visual style from Spider-Verse looks damn fresh to change))

I’m still in awe from what I just saw...

I really need the Blu-Ray to come out faster like Venom did two months after it came out theatrically so I can own it and watch it a billion times! PRONTO!!!

(Also, to any critics or haters, get the fuck out of my sight, please)

Top 10 Best Movies (Definitive): I may have mixed things up by making two separate lists, one for Marvel and another one for movie, so I had to make a PROPER list of my movies of the year to avoid inconsistency.

10.- The Shape of Water

9.- The Cloverfield Paradox

8.- Overlord

7.- Mission Impossible: Fallout

6.- Aquaman

5.- Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel I. Presage Flower

4.- Ready Player One

3.- The Incredibles 2

2.- Avengers: Infinity War

1.- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Top 10 Best Games:

NOTE: I honestly don’t like making the best/worst games lists because it’s all based on “experience” and there are so many games released every year and I don’t have the money to buy every single one, and most important of all, I have neither a PS4 and a Switch, nor a powerful PC. I still make this list anyways because I like acknowledging some of the games I’m the most interested for their existence, I still wish I can play them, but they’re there. Enjoy the following entries:

11.- Fate/Extella Link.

10.- Valkyria Chronicles 4.

9.- BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle.

8.- Soul Calibur VI: I’m not really much into Soul Calibur but VI has picked my interest mainly because of the character customization and every tweet I’ve seen of it, and 2B.

7.- Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight / Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight: At first I wasn’t really fond on the idea of Persona dancing games since Persona 4: Dancing All Night, but when both P3D and P5D were announced, I redeemed myself on the concept.

6.- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

5.- Girls’ Frontline (English and Japanese versions): My only disadvantage with the EN version is the censorship and that really bothers me so bad. I hate the topic of censorship in general. Too bad I haven’t been playing a lot of it lately, and I feel bad for it, haven’t even picked it up back with my new phone... But I can still appreciate the cosplays and fan arts.

4.- Dragalia Lost: I played it for like a week but I stopped because I ran out of space in my phone. This is my biggest problem with Nintendo mobile games, they’re always constantly asking for mobile data and they’re space consuming. It has potential to become Cygames’ next big franchise, though.

3.- Deltarune: Haven’t played Undertale myself and this was an excuse to get myself into it, even if it’s some sort of an alternate universe or whatever the many people who played it just experienced. And the game is free to play, so there’s nothing about money to worry about.

2.- Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

1.- Spider-Man PS4.

Yes, I included two gacha games. What? You don’t think gacha games are “games” and instead they’re just money making machines? I can tell you’re making fun of my decision, and it’s true, but they have rights to be games whether you decide to spend your money or not. I don’t have much time to rant about gacha games and stuff, so let’s move on.

Honorable mention:

Detroit: Become Human: Call me out on this one because I gotta talk about this game.

Sure, David Cage may be a divisive developer among the gaming community but there’s something about Detroit that I’m hearing praise from the media and other YouTubers and then there are my “friends” who definitely hate him and his games.

This is one of those cases where I really can’t even bother to choose a side. (but I’d definitely be one of those who do like Detroit, I mean, the fan arts of Connor and his actor himself can make up for it, besides, I still got my copy of Heavy Rain)

Worst Games of the Year:

I mentioned that I don’t have the consoles to play most games, there are games that are so bad even to look at that are exceptions for me to play:

4.- Radical Heights

3.- Fallout 76

2.- The Quiet Man

1.- Metal Gear Survive

Everything mentioned this list are 0/10 - Rank: E-.

Artists Of The Year:

Ogata Tei: Finding this artist was like fate. I first found Ogata on Pixiv with this illustration on December 2017, and at first it was like any other artist I follow, I have to check their gallery and if it’s good enough, they deserve a follow, but when they started doing the Childhood Friend series (pictured below), I feel like my life has changed.

For safety reasons, I tend use Chapter 0 as a better way to show everyone the start of the Childhood Friend series without using the very first tweet, because... I don’t know what to make out of it, it’s not too graphic, but take a look for yourself. It is chapter 0 after all.)

The moment the reservations of the doujinshi went live in June, I did not hesitate to ask my older sister to buy it for me and finally received it on December 6th (technically it should have been on the 5th because the mailman came home but my mom wasn’t there to sign the package, but we do not talk about that part of that day ever again. The reason why is that the mailman thought I looked too young to get and sign a package (I hate my genes)... That is until Ogata decided to open reservations for the sequel the moment I got the doujin ), it was a long wait but it was worth it... That is until Ogata decided to open reservations for the sequel for C95 the moment I got the doujin, worst timing ever.

To be honest, this series is the only thing that makes me happy, ever, everything else I love is always being ruined by assholes and their heartbreaking traumatizing opposing opinions. Thankfully there’s no hate in this.

This series is very dear to me, I really hope it keeps going because I occasionally get scared for the series to end and I’d be forever sad if it does (I’ll eventually move on but my heart won’t change).

Maybe the saddest thing about the series is that I’m the only one who makes fan arts and a Custom Cast/Custom Order Maid 3D2 recreation of the Childhood Friend character. It’s a good thing that I show my pride for the character and all, but it’s only me and I can’t be the only one with that pride, I’d love to see other people do shit, even some of the artists I follow that are friends with Ogata.

Souryu: Not the first thing (have seen a bit of his pictures on Pixiv before), but I was brought to this artist more with this web series I also love to death. (NSFW)

I’m also happy to see his manga, Machimaho, has an English release now.

Sakiyamama: The list was originally going to be just Ogata but I wanted to include Sakiyamama because not only his recent bunny pictures (as of the writing of this post) are really really good, he’s actually a really fun person to talk with and he’s gained my respect more than I already have. MAX!

(Would Sakiyamama be a good candidate to make a cover for my novel? Maybe, maybe not...)

Song Of The Year:

Casey Edwards - Devil Trigger: Even for a 2019 game like Devil May Cry 5, Devil Trigger just rocks. Now, when DMC5 comes out, we all can’t wait to pull our devil trigger.

The following part is my really long review of 2018, if you don’t care about what happened to my life in the year and my personal problems, you can skip to the very end until you find the following sentence: “You’ve reached the end of my long review of my 2018 experience.“

Now, let’s talk about why did I consider 2018 the worst year yet. Everything continues with the same problems as last year and some new ones that are even worse. This year was full of disappointments and few ups which either matter or get ruined.

Starting with what’s essentially the most horrifying experience I’ve ever been in my life and it’s all got to do with my older sister. First off, on February, we were hanging out with my aunt on a shopping mall, we were eating ice cream and for some reason, my sister and my mom were arguing and something made my older sister rage quit the plaza we were. We slowly followed her where she was going, later we returned to our house, my sister later came back home and everything went normal.

Then, comes the worst of her moments yet, two months later, everything was going fine on home, until I heard my mom calling me and I started hearing my sister’s very creepy yelling, my mom was holding her on the floor and she ordered me to call my aunt and ran to go buy medicines, my aunt came home to hold my sister down with my mom to give her the pills I had to bought, etc. A lot has happened in that afternoon. Even my mom has called the cops.

A few hours have passed, the cops came home just for a talk about the situation, and I guess that’s about all I witnessed because I didn’t do nor payed attention much on there other than shaking a cop’s hand.

I really wish I shouldn’t discuss about this on a wide public like the internet considering that my mom told me I shouldn’t tell this to anyone... “ANYONE”. Not even my BFF classmate on WhatsApp (at the time when I was at school), not even on Twitter nor Discord, which I talked about what was happening at the very moment and that made me feel like a genuine social media addict, tweeting and telling my (not-so) friends on Discord as if social media has become my life journal or something.

As for what I told on my classmate, I told him afterwards that I shouldn’t have told him about what happened with my older sister when my mom told me not to tell about this to anyone, at least he kept the secret.

Speaking of school, the situation that we went through, my mom decided I wouldn’t go to school for a week.

I think at the moment the cops came to our home, I heard that my sister has depression, and with that, my sister eventually started going to the psychologist.

Then on October 15th, it happened again, except that my mom straight up sent me to my aunt’s house to sleep there for tonight because my sister was going crazy again, hopefully I didn’t get to witness her meltdown... Except the next day, early in the morning, when I arrived home on taxi, I saw my sister’s right arm with blood and a few hours later, her arm is full of scars, ouch. (Her arm is probably healed by now because I don’t see the scars lately).

Aside with all of my sister’s creepy anthics, I’ve had a few share of problems, mainly at school.

The problem is that I harmed two girl classmates in different occassions, I know I wouldn’t hurt women and I normally wouldn’t be the type to hurt women, but Mexican schoolgirls are just the worst. One instance was that I was being yelled at because I wasn’t into the teamwork enough and hadn’t done anything and I just went all out, I was gonna choke and even bite her neck off. The other one was where I was gonna slap a chubby one but I slapped another girl next to her unintentionally and we were arguing about it.

After a while I forgot about it but now I dare to bring these school memories again...

Anyways, I think that’s the end of the stories of my older sister’s madness, even I get flashbacks of those moments and I everytime I typed everything down, my head always twitched, and done with my brief stories about my problems at school.

You may have already gotten sympathy for what I’ve been through, but it seems like I’m about to ruin the moment.

Now, let’s move on with my problem with personal opinions, again. Yes, I know you may be sick of me talking about this topic over and over, but trust me, I’ve been given enough tips and some of the same ones, so let me give one last rant so I can get my last laugh on my friends, this may be like a rewritten version of this post I made last year (make sure to read it before reading this, if you like), but this one features recent events and a better conclusion. Time to end this by going all out. Enjoy.

My 2018 in a nutshell.

Where do I begin? This entire year was still through my usual problems with my obsession with personal opinions, but I can’t tell if it’s equally bad or worse than what I went through with 2017. I think it’s the latter because it all comes with the “Franxxgate” (That’s how I dub the hate around Darling in the Franxx as a whole) and it’s probably one of my few breaking points this year.

Pretty much every anime “gate”, from the Apocryphagate from 2017, to 2018′s Franxxgate and even FLCLgate from a group of friends lead by a certain person with a P on their name I interact with (while there’s the opposing side of the fandom where Toonami-fags still love watching FLCL), completely breaks me. (Everything needs a “-gate”, okay?)

With that being said, in late September, I jumped to the conclusion that anime in general has become my most sensitive topic yet, and I wish I wouldn’t talk about anime with anyone, and I also declared to fuck anime as a whole. I mean, let’s be real, what’s even the real point for anime adaptations to exist? For the money? (I’m using this excuse to every industry or even art itself), Most adaptations don’t even work, and they don’t get fans or something.

If you’re really THAT badly disappointed by these shows or anything else in general, the first thing that comes to your mind is deleting them, right? but before you do that, you should at least consider what would you do to rewrite those shows, like, how would you make them good? If you’re a heartless cunt without any soft spot for the creators and intentions (unless they really make some outrageous shit), then delete is indeed your only option.

I’ve always seen these sorts of situations as “Aw, the performances and the music (and occasionally the well written characters) are so good but the overall story SUCKS.”

Also, if I answer what do you like and you come up with “good”, don’t come up with such bullshit at my face, it’s impossible for anything to be “good”, define “good”. I don’t want subjective answers, try to give something more detailed.

Anime aside, let me talk about how people criticize in general, based on experience.

I just never understood how there are people who are fans of something but dare to say some flaws despite saying that they like it, that it’s great, etc. That’s fucking ironic and downright stupid!

For example, there’s a guy who likes, uh... Game X, but they find like a couple of problems, but they still think they like it and what not, fucking ironic.

(I probably would like to use Persona 5 as a proper example instead of “Game X”, but it’s too much of an offensive example for me to use, to be honest...)

I saw this tweet that says “It’s okay to criticize things you love.”, and while it’s true, and there are times I criticize things I love, for example, the MCU for lack of crossovers between the TV shows and the movies (probably my biggest problem would be the Marvel Netflix shows, they still reference the Avengers, I see no relevance for their existence), but most of the time, I never give a fuck about the flaws from everything I love.

One of my friends replied me that it is and proceeds to talk about his “tough love” for Dragon’s Dogma. Keyword: Tough love, this is one of those words I’ve honestly haven’t heard in a long time, but applying it here is not something I asked for, I just don’t have tough love for everything, I’ve mostly never been the type to spot flaws and criticize them, I’m the type of person who blindly praises or hates anything, without having to explain in detail what I like or hate (occasionally), I’m never going to be a critic like you, I’ve always been a blind fanboy and will continue to be, whether you like it or not.

Speaking of critics, I never liked people who are still being critics, they could bring fair points but at the same time what they say it’s always clichéd, they throw words like “predictable”, “clichéd” and stuff like that.First of all, I can’t even tell what’s predictable, well, there are times that I know what’s going to happen next, but I actually have fun guessing rather than criticizing, it’s actually good for me, same goes for clichéd, I have no idea what are people even talking about when they say “clichéd”. Sure, people may use tired tropes, whether for seriousness or satirical purposes, it all depends on the execution, for the better or for worse. If you’re looking for some form of art that’s not predicatble, that’s not clichéd and everything, it’s impossible to find one because every single creator makes the same mistake of making their series with, you guessed it, tired tropes. Hell, I may even do the same mistake too, because why the fuck not? Whether for seriousness or for satirical purposes.

(I always have the guilty pleassure for everyone to hate me mainly because I’m a blind fanboy and accuse everyone and calling them supremacists or something. I saw this Comicbookcast2 video a long time ago titled “FUCK BLIND FANBOYS” or something. The video has been deleted, and when I saw it, it was offensive for me, but I actually want to watch it again. Sorry for being political at the supremacy part, but that’s how I always feel. Speaking of supremacy, despite my anger at everyone’s opinions, I’m never right and don’t have the power to change their minds, fucking weak-ass knucklehead me.)

The point is, there’s a game/show/movie that you’ve been excited for it for so long, and in general it turned out to be a really great product, you try it yourself, you think that it’s really good but then you come out and explain that there are some severe flaws and everything else to criticize either some aspects or the entire product, do the flaws really ruin your hype? Does it ruin how you wanted it to be? Pathetic.

Okay okay, I know I know, I get that nothing is “perfect”, I get that a lot, but if you want to be like a true fan about a particular product or even a franchise, without all of the ranking from best to worst and vice versa type, don’t give a shit about their flaws, just ignore them, just enjoy everything that’s going on, that’s my definition of a true fan. That’s my motto I’ve been following for a long time. But alas, this definition of “fan” is dead, and the meaning has never been this way.

Well, there are times that I even say the same things, I can detect some flaws too, but most of the time, there are things that I care about in my life that I tend to ignore their flaws all the time. I can’t criticize, I can’t hate some aspects, I almost just don’t know how to do these things.

There are times that people tell their opinions as if they’re facts. There’s that same dude who told me about tough love, he started that sentence with “It is.”, he also told me those same words a few times. But still, I don’t fucking care if something is trash, I don’t care if even if it’s your opinion or if it’s an actual fact, don’t try to brainwash me or even anyone with your bullshit!

It’s like people don’t know how to enjoy things anymore, well, it’s always been this way but I’ve never been this deep with this level of hypocrisy, cynicism and intransigence. With people not appreciating art sometimes, I can even go far to think that Art is Dead. (I’d write a blog post about it but I mainly would love to write a book about it and point out every single types of criticisms I can gather from experience and memory)

This isn’t about toxicity, SJWs or anything, some of them must be intellectual people who think they’re “right” on what’s bad, it’s bad.

My biggest problem is that I ALWAYS happen to start a topic and let everyone bring their worst opinions possible, I always takes opinions by heart and I always go compusively defensive about everything and try to justify what happened while having a “Oh, I get how the creators feel about this, I feel connected” kind of mindset or something.

I just happened to be sensitive about everything, even the slightest negative word, once I hear words like “okay”, “bland”, and everything else, I lose brain cells, always.

Even WORSE is that I′m friends with some people with the worst opinions possible. (Probably would like to call them out here, publicly on Tumblr, but nah, whoever reads, I’ll tell them.). Talking with these people has been my largest waste of time I’ve ever had. I’m sick of talking to you, you disappoint me.

Everything I’m saying is pretty much beyond autism, bipolar or multiple personality disorder material, I’m genuinely like some criticism censorship madman, please, accept it.

Everyone always told me “it’s just their opinion” and everything but it’s the same thing when I got bullied, everyone always told me “Just ignore them.” and ignorance was never in my motto, I just want everyone to stop. I also get told a lot that I need to tolerate and respect them, I kind of do that but at the same time I always get headaches, like my brain is always going to explode, I’m always trying to resist the pain like this. (This video also depicts my procrastination on writing my novel). Even if I were to ignore their opinions, their words are stuck in my head and can’t stop thinking about them, it’s like I’m a magnet, like I’m traumatized by your words.

This is also going to affect my life as an author, sometimes I’d definitely consider taking feedback on plot points, characters and writing mistakes, but when I get comments like either my works or what I’m doing in the future flat out suck, things could get complicated.

I could rant about how “creative freedom” is dead, from trying really hard at complex narrative and “original” ideas to even sexual content, by always being ruined by negativity and I almost don’t believe criticism can’t help but it’ll be for another post, if I actually can depending on my mood.

Suddenly, on September 18th, I found a video talking about the personal opinions by SrPelo, not only it was really hilarious, it actually depicts pretty much everything that’s wrong with me.

(There are English and Spanish versions of this video, but I recommend the Spanish version, it’s funnier. There are English captions, though.)

But has the video taught me anything? Kind of, I got some of the points but eventually I’m still defensive.

Going back to the topic of fanboy-ism (Not fandom, it’s a specific thing), what happened to the passionate people and their rage when I say something like “I’m not into Franchise X.”, “I don’t care about it.” or anything? Why won’t YOU be mad at me when I say such things or some worse shit? Actually, that doesn’t matter, because that’s into toxic territory, you do have a sense of “I don’t have a problem with people enjoying what they like.” instead of “Why do you have to enjoy it? Don’t.”, at least you do have some mental stability unlike me.

Okay, this has been really convoluted, I ran out of ideas and it feels like it’s getting nowhere that I lost you, so let me jump to the conclusions:

PLOT TWIST! PLOT TWIST!

It’s time to confess that nothing in life convinces me anymore, there’s a lot of things I see and when I finish, I always say “I liked it”/”it was good”, but in reality, I feel nothing, NOTHING. I can’t simply say “It was okay” nor even “I didn’t like it.”, I just feel neutral about everything, I’m indifferent and shit.

When I see new things I might get into, I experience it, some say that it’s bad and stuff like that, I’m always neutral in the end yet unnecessarily defensive, well, I am defensive for their existence in “art”. I’m just someone who always defends art by thinking that every creator put their efforts into. (Of course, it doesn’t mean “every single” creator in existence, there are some who are absolute assholes.)

There are things that seem new to me, sometimes I got high hopes to like them when I experience them but at the same time I’m kind of neutral about it, I probably don’t have that much high hopes to become part of my life compared to my existing interests, if there’s something really interesting from something I really care about my life but some may be getting hate from it, I get really triggered. I don’t get disappointed in most things, sometimes I can’t really tell if I actually like them or hate them.

There are also things that normally aren’t part of my life, or stuff I don’t care but may intrigue me someday or in a different Earth, yet I’m gratuitously defensive on their place in art.

What have I been gaining from all of this? Power for being right myself and be capable of shut your mouths off. But, like I stated, it’s not like I could brainwash everyone with my own words based on experience of offending people sometimes.

I’ve had this sort of existential crisis for 2 years and I don’t think I’m ever gonna stop, no matter how many times people tell me to stop.

Before I go detailed with my resolution, let me say this: Either people should say something that don’t (indirectly) piss me off or should I not take their words by heart ever again.

(Crowd yelling at me for what I just said)

Okay, it’s a little weird but it’s true.

I’ll make a list of my worst features that you still may or may not interact with me ever again at a later time too, if I feel like it, but in conclusion, let me say this:

I’m a self-centered person who refuses to listen to anyone’s opinions on certain things (or pretty much everything) and refuses to accept the reality, the facts, and has a distrust agenda (or I claim to say that because I still trust some people), doesn’t have identity of his own and relies on others, doesn’t feel bias and can’t share the same logic, thought-process or even common sense (?) than you have. I just want to have my own opinions, my beliefs and everything but I’m feeling like I’m surrounded by opposites.

But even if I hear a different group with one unanimous opinions and another one with an opposing unanimous opinions, I can’t choose sides nor I would like to do so. And I’ve never been on your side nor would like to be in it. (This goes back to my brief discussion on Detroit: Become Human).

Let me tell you something: When you have a conversation with a friend you respect the most but comes up with opposing opinions, that they don’t like aspects of them, etc., your first instinct would be respectfully disagree and talk it out, but that aside... do you know how it feels like?! I’ve been through that pain a lot! And not a single time I could learn to get a grip on such conversations!... At least the one thing I can do is boycotting conversations where opinions and criticims get out of hand for my views.

Let me give you a life lesson: You should have a digree of distrust, everytime you ask one person that they should try X and they give their own opinion, you don’t need to buy it 100%. You have to learn to investigate things yourself, and when you see the general reception for the X you’re seeing, you should be unsure and should check X out yourself. When you hear different sources saying different things, you shouldn’t trust any of them and investigate yourself, that’s the basics of my life experience.

I may sound like I’m manipulative, like I want people to be exactly like me or that I want to meet new people like me, basically forming a legion with similar mindset or something, I can confirm and deny on wanting to achieve such goal. It’s really strange that I can say yes and no to something I don’t really think about.

The thing is, I’m just loyal to art, attached to everything, well, not 100%, there are things that do look like trash trash, when there are things look good but people say they’re trash, I’ll never forgive them, depending on their attitude based on experience, I’m never gonna forgive anyone.

Also, (this next part may go into artist (as in illustrator) territory, but still), let me tell you this: I HATE criticizing artists! I’m not the type of person to mock or downright criticize anything they do! Well, I do have rights to express mixed feelings about some things they post online which I don’t feel convinced from a previous picture I was heavily invested or something, but I can’t say those mixed feelings in front of their faces and I should reconsider! I have absolute pride for artists no matter what they do. And if you dare to make fun of them, comically or not, you can shove it.

I’m not always supportive of “every” single creator out there, there are some who are scumbags or corporate bullshit.

I’m also optimistic, unlike you. Not at everything, but there are things that sound intersting, but too bad there has to be some haters. I know I’d have to adjust my eyes to take a proper look but there has to be some sort of potential somewhere.

You think you’re critics? On a Gordon Ramsay/Master Chef kind of scale? I’ll tell you what, try to put on a creator’s shoes, or try to imagine a different Earth where you’re an artist (illustrator, writer, etc.), even if you tend to criticize others, and when you create something, I won’t hesitate to Gordon Ramsay you’re ass off.

Whenever you bring negative comments from something good, I always, ALWAYS, want to counter your opinions very offensively like this, but sadly I can’t, but I think it’s fine because I am scared of getting blocked or banned from a Discord sever. (Discord has ruined my life lol)

But alas, with all of the bias people show, mainly negative from something I find interesting, seeing this happening everyday and telling right at my face, I happened to become a broken person now, no thanks to you, yes, as ridiculous as it sounds, even indirectly.

I’ve had this thing with personal opinions and trying to bear them up my ass. I’m just tired, I’m sick of everything. Either everyone needs to stop or better, I should stop because I’m always the one to start causing trouble by a disagreement.

One way I would like to stop what’s happening to me is to break up with the people I talk with (mainly Discord severs because they’re the worst), or even better,  retire from the internet for good, but I don’t think I’d have the ability to do that. Perhaps the only way is just to have some more mental stability myself, to learn to actually calm myself.

People have even told me to take a break from the internet but I just can’t, there’s lots of good things I don’t want to miss.

Here’s my final strike to end this long rant to relieve my 2 year long stress once and for all (hopefully):

You all must be good at parties.

At last, that’s the end of my life experiences, sorry to make you read through that pain that was my emotional ride you wouldn’t even care because, while it starts creepy at first, later it just fell apart with my obsession with opinions, let’s move on to some other negatives from 2018 in general and let’s go with the ups.

There’s no shortage of celebrity deaths and yet it managed to be worse than 2016, the one death that got me hard was Stan Lee. That instantly made 2018 much worse than it already is.

Without Stan Lee, there’s not gonna be any more Marvel movie cameos and I wished I could meet him in person one day, now my dream is dead.

Stefan Karl, Stephen Hillenburg, even the youngest musicians, many more.

With Stan Lee and Stephen Hillenburg both passed away in November, it reminded me of Roberto Gómez Bolaños, better known as Chespirito, which he passed away in November 28th 2014, that made me think that November is a cursed month.

This shit is really sad.

Now that we’re done talking with the negative, let’s talk about the positives, sorry it took so long with the negative, but here we are to change the mood.

The best thing that has happened in my life that I can think of is that I get to travel for the first time, I traveled to Irapuato, Guanajuato to meet my uncles (relatives to my dad), and the place itself was great. We stayed with my uncles’ for a week, the week of E3.

When we first arrived, the weather was cold, even at summer, there was a really nice shopping mall and it had a restaurant with genuine ramen we ate, everything was great.

The worst part of the trip, and by sleeping at my uncles’ house was that my body was always itchy and I couldn’t stop scratching and always put mosquito repellent.

Another best moment of my life, well, it may sound dickish that I did it, but I didn’t get to go to study to a new school after I ended preparatory school. Mainly because I wasn’t entirely sure what to study, I needed a break from my underwhelming experience at the prepa and because my mom wouldn’t pay us, my older sister and I, both schools for like hundreds of thousands of pesos.

Next year I’m gonna start studying plastic arts, maybe I’d like to learn more about drawing than my current skills, I just want to improve but at the same time, to be honest, I don’t really feel motivated to study art at all, mainly because I want to focus on outlining and writing my novel for real.

There are minor complaints I had this year and it’s got something to do with the TV side. Right at the end of watching every show from Agents of SHIELD to Westworld, I’ve been a little burnt out on watching TV shows, so after Legion and Westworld ended, I wasn’t feeling like watching TV anymore, not even the Marvel Netflix shows (let’s be real, they’re all super boring anyways, they even put me to sleep; but I feel bad for some of them being cancelled, though.).

Despite my lost interest on watching TV now, I’m still going to watch Agents of SHIELD and The Blacklist when their seasons 6 come out.

You’ve reached the end of my long review of my 2018 experience.

FINALLY!

Let’s finally talk about my resolutions and we can end this year once and for all!

Some of the resolutions are like last year’s and some may be new but I hope, I REALLY HOPE, to achieve them, and after that, we can finally talk about what I’m looking forward the most in 2019!

Resolutions: I may have fulfilled like at least one of the resolutions I made last year, well... half of it, and it’s going to the gym, because, I really need to get in shape before I turn 20. I’m not fat, it’s just I got the belly. I gave up on the swimming part because I wasn’t interested and motivated, especially at this weather right now.

Anyways, that gym talk aside, I really haven’t fulfilled my resolutions at all, the worst offender being my resolution of writing my novel because I had a year long writer’s block (yep, that long). As for the “try not to be a jerk”, from what you read from my long rant, I hope that should be the last time.

Let me rephrase my resolutions and then add some new ones, I really hope I could have the mental energy and the will to fulfill them all.

If I can’t fulfill at least one, most or even all of the resolutions, I’m pretty much fucked.

Write my novel for real: I’ve been wanting to write my novel this entire year but I’ve made little to no progress at all, I was struggling on finding a way on what kind of story I would make, but my bigger problems were that I was focusing on wanting to make a pen name for myself use that to start my social media accounts and everything, I did it but I felt like I wasted it. I may give up on the pen name idea and use my real name, unless my family or anyone else would find a perfect pen name for me and hold off until I get my novel written halfway.

I also need money ready, have a PayPal and a Patreon, the money to pay for stuff like cover artist, domains for my website, ec. I’m still waiting to get my hands on a credit card so I could make money because I haven’t gotten any.

I didn’t enter to a new school right now so I could have had the time to write my novel, but I just wasted that opportunity.

I also got this fear that I may run into identity problems or something, when it comes to my edgy shitposter self and my author self, I don’t want to run in the same problem James Gunn did, I want to become separate entities (that sounds like some sort of multiple personality disorder like I lowkey have (not really)).

Even worse is that I had at least one person who I’ve been talking and talking about my dream project, the characters, headcanon-ing(?) random events and everything for YEARS. I also had different people who I talked about the project, but not as much as that one person who I’ve been doing it for a long time. I would ask the people I explained about my project and everything for a while to forget about it, but it seems like it’s such a harsh request, maybe keep everything I said a secret would be better. Speaking of which, that’s why I tend to be secretive about what I want to do and everything lately, this goes full circle to the previous paragraph about identity. The one person also went far commissioning art of my characters, while I was honored for that, I feel like it’s a little too soon... Well, if it’s like a normal artist commissioning OCs and stuff like that, it’s fine, but the problem is that I’m making OCs with the sole purpose of them existing into a real novel and everything, and it could be dangerous.

I got lots of ambitious goals and ideas and I can’t really explain everything, I’d love to handle everything by myself, I can find my own innovative ways to market my novel and everything.

One thing I can say about what I want with my novel is pretty simple:

I need my stories to exist: Commissioned fan arts of my characters aside, I want my stories to exist for real, I just can’t leave my dream universe to collect cellular dust and simply use my imagination, occasionally draw those ideas, etc.

Money: No surprise, that’s quite an obvious thing to do, but depends on how much royalties do I get with Amazon or I simply make my money with PayPal and/or Patreon.

...Did I say Amazon? That’s right, I’m planning to self-publish my novel with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

Wanting my novels to becomea franchise: Okay, this is a little too much, and there’s a weird pattern I noticed that if you say “This is going to be the next X franchise” or “I want this to be huge!” or something like that, you’re bound to fail, and if you say “I don’t think I might make it” or similar statements that you wouldn’t be successful or anything, you’re bound to succeed. I know I’m escalating things up but it’s what I want the most, but I don’t want it to be adapted into Hollywood and that kind of shit, I want it to be adapted into a video game series, which I originally planned to make this into a game series, but since I would never figure out how would I study game design or anything, I gave up on the idea and chose something easier, writing a novel.

I wasn’t kidding that I have ambitious goals and ideas...

I don’t have a lot of motivation to write my novel, the only thing I’m motivated to write are Tumblr posts...

I’m always like “Gotta write” and I just can’t. There’s something about trying to structure sentences something that always throws me off, it’s just hard.

I haven’t been in the mood to continue trying to outlining the plot and the characters, I’m waiting for the right time to continue, and that time would be starting 2019.

I don’t want any more excuses and I need to find a way to motivate myself to write, I need to write for real, I don’t need to worry about writing garbage words or anything, I just need to write. X_X

Anyways, moving on to the next resolution.

Change my behavior (for the better or for the worse): After I made you read through my psychosis (If you read all the way through the end, good job. If you skipped it, why would you do that? It’s important), it probably should be time for me to change because even I get tired of the way I’m acting right now.

What do I mean to change for the better or for the worse? In one hand, I do want to act like a good person, I need to be more understood in a few cases and try to be more honest, but that honesty sometimes could be rude. As you can see, sometimes I could rude, I tend to make insulting comments and sometimes I delete them because I’m scared that I might end up being blocked and/or banned, even if I intended to make jokes. Basically I’m not gonna delete my comments, as rude as they may be, I really hope anyone won’t take them very seriously.

If I can’t manage to be more respectful towards others’ opinions and be a good person through the entirety of 2019, you pretty much know that I’m quite an angry, trigger-happy person like I’ve already been this year. Or maybe I can be kind of a tsundere, right! I sometimes even I was a bit of a tsundere this year! :3

Despite my good behavior and actions, I’m still going to have my trust no one motto. Sure, I can still understand some people’s opinions, but sometimes I can’t 100% take them. Sometimes you just gotta find things out by yourself when you hear different sources with different opinions, that’s the basics.

(God, talking about basics make me sound like I’m Genjou Kakouton from Ikki Tousen)

I dunno why but I’m already imagining that my behavior change would feel more like personality disorder (why am I so obsessed with personality disorders?), anyways, I really hope I could definitely change the way I am and everything, hopefully.

(Be nice with me or else we’re done, okay?)

Draw very often: I’ve pretty much given up on drawing at this point, and I’m even going to enter art school soon and, to be honest, I don’t feel like I’m really interested in art school at all.

On one hand, I do want to learn to draw better, but on the other hand, I really don’t feel like going to school right now... even I don’t know why my head feels like it doesn’t want to do shit.

I just lost patience in drawing, I really struggle on how should I do the roughs and my inking always go wrong. Don’t even get me started on digital art, that one’s my absolute worst nightmare. Layers, brushes, brush sizes, everything about digital art drives me crazy now.

Drawing has always been my favorite hobby, it’s not like I got a slump, I can randomly do sketches of my OCs or even my favorite characters, the problem is the willing to draw.

I’m 19 years old and I expect to draw better right away...

I was originally going to make an Infinity Stone variant New Year drawings, with each stone representing a character from their colors, I realized that I wasn’t going to have the patience to do everything right.

Besides writing my novel, I would like to draw very often so I could improve. I’m more on the traditional side, so learning about digital might be a pain in the ass but it should be worth it. Well, maybe I don’t need to draw literally every single day because I could get carpal tunnel, but that’s the point of learning to improve your drawing, by doing so everyday.

Anticipations: My favorite part of every New Year is talking about what I look forward the most. For the most part, I’ve seen plenty that will come out next year, but maybe not everything will come in 2019, so delays would eventually happen, but in the mean time, we can acknowledge some upcoming things.

Anticipated anime: When new anime seasons come closer, my anticipated anime will always differ, depending on what announcements I see, they’ve always gotta be in the same year or next year (2019), but alas, here are some of the biggest titles I have in mind:

(Note that some of the titles mentioned here are from Winter 2019, so close and I already addressed some of them on my previous post, but I feel like rewriting what I said here in case if you don’t want to read it all)

One Punch Man season 2: This one I’m genuinely cautiously optimistic, or perhaps I’m 50/50, I don’t have the highest hopes to be good (at least visually), but I’m strangely happy to know if it’s going to look like crap because I want to see it burn and everything (I’m a little insane), I’m never going to forgive the studio change shit move.

On December 21st, the first trailer has finally dropped, and even with the little animation shown, but the main thing that matters to me is how it looks, and it looks... not really what I expected but it could be a mixed bag.

On one hand, it still looks a bit like the first season, which I’m happy, on the other hand, they added filters and the character designs (especially King’s) look a little off, even if it’s supposed to have the same character designer from the first season, but I thought the designs may differ from animation or something.

I saw a comment that OPM S2 appears to be made by the Prison School staff, while I’m not entirely sure if it’s true but I figured since Prison School is made by JC Staff, no wonder why OPM has similar visual filters or something.

(Can’t properly upload GIFs to Tumblr and the GIF button sucks)

Madhouse’s animation style will always hold a special place in my heart, and as I previously stated, it still looks okay, may change when it comes out. Can’t give a seal of approval yet, but there’s potential.

Mob Psycho 100 II: Unlike One Punch Man, I’m glad Mob Psycho 100 is handled at better hands and I’m happy season 2 is happening. I still wish OPM S2 could have been aired on Winter 2019 with Mob Psycho 100 S2 to have a ONE combo but OPM S2 being on Spring when MP100 ends is the closest I could get (I’m never going to stop repeating this, because it’s true)

Enough OPM talk, looking forward to MP100, I’m still wondering if it’ll go two-cour a la My Hero Academia to adapt every chapter until the very end or it’s still one-cour and wait until a third season gets greenlit and then it’ll adapt the final chapters.

Kemono Friends 2: Like One Punch Man season 2, I extremely don’t have the highest hopes for Kemono Friends 2 at all, especially after you know what happened.

Whenever people see something Kemono Friends related, they can’t help but always, and I mean, always spam “No Tatsuki No Tanoshii” or a difference sentence but with the theme of “bring Tatsuki back” or something, from the two trailers and even some things that are not intended to spread the hate. (Seriously, why would you do that? It’s just the artist, Mine Yoshizaki, drawing, why even go with the “No Tatsuki No Tanoshii” mood into something innocent as this?)

Speaking of the trailers, the second one is the worst that has come out, besides from the thousands of dislikes, to no one’s surprise, the worst offender has got to be the new human character, Kyururu, immediately leading me to believe that Kaban-chan got retconned... That is until I got an anonymous message that she wasn’t retconned, she was referenced at some points or something, based on screenings of what I assume to be the first episode, don’t know any more of the screening stuff, but let’s wait until the first or later episodes to see if it’s true.

Perhaps Kemono Friends 2 could be a prequel? One of my friends told me it could be a soft reboot after I showed them the message, but it doesn’t seem likely. And the fact that it’s another prequel would cause any sort of problems. For one, there’s already a prequel, which is the Welcome to Japari Park anime series (not to be confused with the manga of the same name because it’s completely different...?), it may not show much but there’s Mirai and Caracal, unless it could be a sequel to Japari Park after what happened to Mirai or something, who knows.

Despite all the negative press that it’s getting, I’ve been seeing a lot of comments that express excitement, which I don’t mind, actually. I’ve also seen comments that the animation looks better than the first season’s, while it may be true, but it’s a bit disrespectful for Tatsuki.

Once it comes out, let’s see how it’ll go.

(Wow, there’s S2 after S2...)

Kemurikusa: After Tatsuki got fired from the Kemono Friends franchise, I wonder what would his future be, and it appears that he started making shorts and posting them by multiple parts on his Twitter, which is fine, but what about any full fledged anime series? Well, that actually happened, and it happens to be a remake of one of his old web series.

I don’t remember when have I scrolled through Tatsuki’s old CG movie portofolio, but I’m sure it was definitely when the initial teasers for Kemurikusa (or simply known as “Tatsuki’s next anime” series at the time) on Comiket were revealed.

I’m still wondering if this is an all-new reboot, a prequel or a sequel of the original web series, but the answer lies until I see it.

Kimetsu no Yaiba: I’m so looking forward to this one, Ufotable’s next big TV anime project, and it happens to be a Shonen Jump series, which makes things much more surreal than Katsugeki: Touken Ranbu.

Yeah, I’m pretty much a big Ufotable fan right now. (though the only disadvantage being Girls’ Work nowhere in sight)

My Hero Academia season 4: I’m surprised to hear that it’s going to come out on the Fall season compared to the usual Spring release. And I was immediately begging for it to come on my birthday but I realized that My Hero Academia is a Saturday show and the first Saturday of October is the 5th, which is sad for me.

Azur Lane anime: As much as I love the game, I’m definitely excited for the anime, I even went so far to make a predictions post, but at the same time, since I rambled that adaptations are worthless of existence if you’d prefer the source material way better, I’m scared that it may turn out mediocre (maybe as or not as much as the Kancolle anime (which I dunno why I started developing mixed feelings since I liked it when I saw it back in 2015 ;_;))

It may or may not be a 2019 release, depending as time goes on and see if there are any new trailers or any announcements over the course of the year.

When the anime comes out and it becomes subject of a disappointment, I feel like it could be kind of an understatement, either from people who don’t play the game or the ones who do, I dunno, I’m relying on my beliefs on how it’s going to do for the moment, it’s a strange situation where I would like it at first but I get mixed feelings eventually.

Fate/Grand Order Babylonia TV series / Fate/Grand Order Camelot movie: Sometimes I forget which of the two FGO anime projects are a TV series and a movie. Anyways, I’m looking forward to these, but I feel like no one is accepting these Fate adaptations lately and it’s making me angry and sad.

As to why are Babylonia and Camelot the most popular chapters in FGO, I asked on a Discord server I frequently interact with, and they said that the previous chapters are bad and forgettable, I was like really speechless and turns me off, I mean, real talk: Why does FGO got a bunch of chapters and you either like none of them or the entire fan base agrees that every chapter before Babylonia and Camelot are... bad?! You can’t do that, they’re... there! If so, what’s even the point of these chapters to exist?!

Alright, that’s enough rant and I ran out of ideas.

Anyways, I’m more curious on the Camelot movies because if they’re released theatrically, I really wonder if they would come out internationally too, especially in Mexico. I really wonder if there are plenty of people who play FGO like my sister and I, either the Japanese version, the North American version (which seems unlikely because it’s region locked). I’m also curious about the releases since it’s a two parter, if it’ll be yearly release, it’s fine, but if it’s like the K Seven Stories films which come out months and months, I’ll definitely run out of money (not much than the game (if I had any money for the game)), but if it’ll be TV films, that’s much better.

To be honest, I can’t really see the appeal as to why are Babylonia and Camelot good in terms of writing because I haven’t looked up on translations and I don’t play the NA version at all... I hate Camelot so much because it was so god damn hard, Babylonia not so much iirc. And I’m lazy to look up said translations or even watch videos of the NA version.

NOW, WHEN THEY COME OUT, DON’T YOU DARE TRASH TALK ABOUT IT, PLEASE DON’T BE FATE/APOCRYPHA 2.0 TO BRING IN THE HATE OR ELSE...

(Source)

Anticipated games: Even if I still haven’t owned a PS4 and a Switch, I’m stll looking forward to the games, nonetheless, though I’m sad that there’s plenty of games that came out for years and I’ll never get to play them all, especially since we’re getting into next-gen console territory. Anyways, here are the biggest games I’m looking forward:

Devil May Cry 5: I’m happy to see there’s finally a new Devil May Cry game after 10 years since DMC4 came out. I only played DMC1 and DMC3. With the reveal at E3, the song Devil Trigger is the second best thing to come out of it (the first being the reveal itself) because I couldn’t stop listening to it for like a week and occasionally a couple of days, etc.

Every gameplay footage I’ve seen of the game and it’s looking damn fresh. I’m also happy to hear that DMC5 is taken place after DMC2 in the timeline, that’s one of the things from the DMC lore I always wanted because I didn’t want prequel after prequel.

Seems like my sister is really thirsty to get a PS4 to play DMC5 (because she was the first one to get into DMC after all, and when she asked me to play DMC1 for a little bit, I played the rest of it (and she never got to play DMC1 again and DMC3, unless she gets to play the HD Collection)).

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes: I genuinely have mixed feelings for Travis Strikes Again. In one hand, I’m happy there’s finally a new No More Heroes game after a long time, but in the other hand, it’s not No More Heroes 3, like I always wanted, which that’s part of my disappointments with this game.

The more I look at it, the more I started to feel like I’m not really fond of the direction Travis Strikes Again is taking, particularly the one element I like the least is all of the indie game stuff. The game doesn’t even look good too, for a game made in Unreal Engine 4, looks like crap.

The biggest thing that completely hurt me is that Robin Atkin Downes is NOT reprising his role as Travis. He tweeted about it on September 2nd, 2017, a while after the game was revealed. Although, based on newer footage, it seems like Travis does sound like Robin Atkin Downes, if my ears can’t deceive me, but I can’t jump into conclusions 100%.

Suda has also stated that there will be No More Heroes 3 if Travis Strikes Again is successful, but given the timing of the release, January 18th, that’s a week before big titles like Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out, even if it’s a week, Travis Strikes Again probably won’t succeed in sales, if it indeed happens, there will be no No More Heroes 3, seems like my hopes and dreams are shattered. Travis Strikes Again will have similar problems to The World Ends With You: Final Remix, which sold poorly and a sequel is now unlikely.

I think I started to hate how developers always bring these “We’ll make a sequel if our product does well.” excuses, they don’t know if their product may turn bad critically and financially.

Despite my skepticisms with how the game looks and everything behind it overall, I’m ironically still rooting for Travis Strikes Again, I still want the game to succeed somehow and to live up my No More Hero spirit. I want it to either make or break a good comeback for a series I love the most.

But gameplay aside, my main priority is the story, it may or may not answer a few things about what happened to Travis and Santa Destroy in 8 (or 9 as it’s released in January 2019) years since No More Heroes 2, I JUST WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING. I may have high expectations from said things, that aside, even if the story is crap (or rather the whole game) is crap, it seems like Travis Strikes Again could be my biggest dealbreaker ever, if I’ll be 100% sure about that. (Like how Danganronpa V3 brought one of the worst plot twists yet, I’m not 100% sure if I should be disappointed or just deal with it despite having mixed feelings).

I can’t hate Travis Strikes Again, I can’t feel disappointed on it, I want to like it and everything on it, etc. (Since I’m an indecisive person, I can’t even decide which feelings should I choose?)

While I don’t own a Switch (yet), I may watch some playthroughs if I can, but this is something I’d really love to play the game myself, I wouldn’t mind reading spoilers, but at the same time, I’m conflicted on what to do.

Anyways, it’d better be successful or fail, if it fails, say no more to No More Heroes 3, my hopes and dreams for a real NMH3 will be forever shattered and lose faith in Suda51 for good, and I poured tears of joy (I legit cried) from the Travis Strikes Again announcement from the Switch reveal in January 2017 in vain.

...That is until December 20th, I was watching the Famitsu presentation but my mom turned off the internet 30 minutes later, but when I woke up that morning, literally the first thing I saw on Twitter was a tweet by Grasshopper where they tweeted that... ROBIN ATKIN DOWNES IS RETURNING AS TRAVIS AFTER ALL! Then I saw the Gematsu post about the season pass and HOLY SHIT, SHINOBU AND BAD GIRL!

I’m happy that they both got revealed (and their returning voices, double yay), but I’m more surprised on Bad Girl because ISN’T SHE DEAD, THOUGH?! Ahem, yeah, isn’t she supposed to be dead or there may be some sort of simulation from the Death Drive, I dunno, but hey, at least Badman (which he’s voiced by Steve Blum, which is nice) can get to have a reunion with his daughter... kind of.

There’s also this new character as one of the stage bosses, Brian Buster Jr., I don’t think I would find anything to add to the character (haven’t seen him much at all), and I’m not much familiar with the actor, Greg Ellis, but I checked his portofolio and I am somewhat familiar with his works now.

With all that said, my faith in Travis Strikes Again has restored, but I need to see how would Henry and Sylvia look like after all this years and my life will be completed.

Oh, but when his translator announced that Travis won’t be in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate LIVE, THAT I won’t ever forgive! ¡Pero qué vergüenza que se sirvan de este tipo de trampas!

(This is worse than the FFXV anniversary stream which it was basically a funeral for the DLCs)

Code Vein: I was so looking forward to this one this year, but months before the game came out in the September release date, it got delayed until nexr year, I don’t know why but if they got some stuff to improve, let them take their time. Besides, I already got God Eater 3, anyways.

Azur Lane: Crosswave: If the anime wasn’t enough, there’s also a PS4 game of Azur Lane already. Seems like AL really has escalated quickly.

It’s developed by Felistella and Compile Heart, which the latter is known as the makers of the Neptunia franchise. It’s a love it or hate it kind of situation with their games, though I’ve seen more hate on the Neptunia series from one person (sorry for calling you out if you’re reading this) than... Erin Fitzgerald’s Noire, but that won’t stop me from trying to play Azur Lane: Crosswave.

However, some of the games from their portofolio may be mediocre at best, I may expect AL: Crosswave to also be somewhat mediocre or maybe even New Gundam Breaker level garbage (okay, my expectations are outlandish), but I still hope it’ll turn out to be a good game.

I definitely like what I’m seeing so far, especially the character models because it feels nice to see the shipfus brought to 3D.

They also teased that there are two original characters, they haven’t revealed them yet, and when they do, I’m sure they’ll look great, they may be exclusive to the game, but that won’t stop me for wanting them to appear in the base game. (It’s a similar situation on how I want Charlamagne from Fate/Extella Link to appear in FGO eventually)

Unlike the anime, this one is indeed planned to release sometime in 2019, though a delay may eventually happen, but we can still count it as a 2019 release for now.

By the way, both Granblue Fantasy and Azur Lane are getting console games when Fate/Grand Order hasn’t gotten one yet. ;_;

Anticipated movies: When it comes to anticipated movies, my top picks are always Marvel movies, because why the fuck not? As in for anime movies, my top pick would be Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel (the FGO Camelot movie too but if it would be a theatrical release, which matters for me the most), but there may be other non-Marvel, non-DC movies

Avengers: Endgame: At last I’ve been waiting for trailer AND the title for the long called Avengers 4. Really hoping for Endgame to top Infinity War.

Spider-Man: Far From Home: Still waiting to see the trailer right now, but it seems like it would create problems of spoiling Avengers: Endgame or something, for the moment, the synopsis and the trailer description from CCXP are enough for me to get hyped for the film...

...Give me the god damn trailer, Sony, Marvel, whoever (certainly not Disney).

Between Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home, I’m debating on which one of these films are gonna be my #1 film, it’s the same problem I faced on the last minute before seeing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, I was like “which one should be my #1? Infinity War or Spider-Verse?” and it turned out to be Spider-Verse, no surprise.

Captain Marvel: This one I feel like I’m the least hyped for Captain Marvel compared to Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home, but I’m still gonna see it, anyways, I just want to see what happens to Carol Danvers to not be around in the first Iron Man movie and The Avengers.

Dark Phoenix: I wonder if this could be the last X-Men movie made by Fox because of the Disney-Fox deal, depending on the success.

I’m also surprised that they dropped the “X-Men” on the title, but it’s still being used internationally (including Latin America).

Not that I think X-Men: Apocalypse was bad, but I do acknowledge that it was bad, I hope Dark Phoenix could be better than Apocalypse.

New Mutants: It still baffles me how would Fox drop the first trailer of New Mutants ages ago and then delay the film for a full year.

I heard they would capitalize on IT’s success and I feel like it would be copying someone’s success and it could fail very badly. I still want New Mutants to be succesful, somehow.

Speaking of IT...

IT Chapter 2: Just want to say definitely looking forward to Chapter 2.

Joker origin movie: It’s a movie coming out on my birthday! This time, coming out EXACTLY on the 4th, instead of the 5th like Venom. I’m really interested to see how will Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker would be like, he certainly looks way better than the Jared Leto Joker.

Also, I thought the one DC movie coming out in 2019 was Wonder Woman 1984 but then I realized it’s coming in 2020, so in 2019, I got the Joker movie and I also forgot this one was coming out too...

Shazam!: There isn’t much I would talk about Shazam, though, just that gonna see it, I don’t have much thoughts on the film itself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Star Wars Episode 9: After The Last Jedi and Solo, I really hope Star Wars could win fans back, sure, they did part of it with the revival of the Clone Wars series, but the hate still lies around the movies.

The Last Jedi sure caused a lot of backlash, maybe everyone has been relying on fan theories way too much to be disappointed on how the film turned out, even if it’s not that, then who knows how the backlash came from. Solo, sure, kicking Phil Lord & Chris Miller was a dick move from Disney (but firing James Gunn was the ultimate dick move), but the final film turned out decent enough, sadly it’s a financial failure, though (like I care about financial successes or anything).

This is one of those cases why I hate fandoms so much, contrary to what critics believe that TLJ is a great film, with high scores and everything, and then everyone else just call it an ultimate disaster.

I’m not that passionate with Star Wars to believe if I like TLJ or I hate it (I’m sure there’s an Earth where I do hate TLJ when I’ve been a life long Star Wars fan), despite having a bit of history with Star Wars (with the cartoons and even got a Lego; I’ve never seen the films ;_;), I’m indifferent with the franchise, but I’m on a mission that I’m going to watch the new films starting with The Force Awakens, I’m just liking the newer films without having to pay attention to the entire lore and everything (don’t worry, I do watch videos about easter eggs and references). I’m not the type of person to hate TLJ.

There hasn’t been much Episode 9 news lately, but by the time being in 2019, there will be trailers and everything.

Glass: Split was probably like my very first M. Night Shyamalan film, or maybe I’ve seen parts of The Last Airbender but in the form of promos or something, I can’t remember but Split was definitely my first Shyamalan film.

I really loved Split, and I heard that it was a sequel to Unbreakable, which I got to see it recently, which now I’m ready to watch this interesting trilogy.

Despite having a rough year, having a lot of issues, being an asshole, and everything else, I still had a lot of fun. I also made a lot of new friends from Discord, sometimes they can be tolerable, other times can not, not just my friends, anyone else too, but that’s just me.

I really hope to achieve new things, obtain new interests and habits, I’m going to do everything leading up to become 20 years old. Though, I’m still expecting a genetical change like I’ve always been and nothing happened, but I’m sure I’ll kickstart a new life starting at 20.

Let the new year begin, 2019, also known as the year set in Akira, Blade Runner, The Running Man and other few movies taken place in 2019, but the previously mentioned are the biggest ones. We still don’t have the technology that’s straight out of the future, but it’s getting close.

Thank you for the support, I love you all and let’s have a great 2019 together.

Twitter: @HKomaeda.

Discord: XtremeDespair3D#8157.

[highschoolharrier]

Terrific 22 Girls Rankings (September 24th)

With the first big meets of the season out of the way, we are starting to get an idea of who is a serious contender to qualify for NXN and who isn’t but with 2.5 months away from the big dance, still expect a lot of change in these rankings throughout the season.

There is still a poor picture in the Southeast, Northeast and Northwest as those programs generally don’t intersect as much during the regular season compared to the other regions. The Southwest can also be difficult to pin down with fewer major meets and states like Utah being 2-3 weeks ahead of the rest of the region in terms of where they are in their season. 

It’s also worth noting that some of these courses that we are basing rankings off of are virtual grass tracks and don’t exactly represent the conditions at regional meets and definitely not the national meet. As we get closer to the end of the year we may see changes based on how teams fare on sightly more difficult courses. 

This weeks initial rankings are strongly influenced by both last year’s finishes at NXN (and how their seasons have started this year) as well as big meets like Woodbridge and Bob Firman. With the depth CA has to open the season, they get the nod for 2 at-large bids to open up, although obviously much can and will change in the next couple month. Initially the Midwest and Southwest are strong candidates for an extra spot and also receive 3 teams.

For those new to how the Terrific 22 works, here is some info: Unlike many rankings which are based on how the ranker feels the teams would finish if all the top national teams lined up against each other, this ranking set is designed around the setup of the cross country team national championship put on by Nike.  Each region is allotted two places and then four wildcard spots are awarded to regions we think will get them.  Therefore, the rankings are based on who would be predicted to qualify at the time of the rankings and how those teams would fare against each other, not who we think are the overall 22 best teams.  

Each team will have a surety rating.  A surety rating is not how strong the team is compared to the nation.  A surety rating is a rating based on how likely that team is to qualify out of their region, or rather how competitive that team is in their region alone.  Therefore you could see a team with a lower surety rating ranked above a team with a higher one, which simply means it is less likely they qualify but more likely they would place ahead in a head to head competition.  This is not a computer rating, this a “hunch”.  No team will receive a surety rating above 9 until October.

Surety rating guide: 10= qualified; 9-9.5= automatic qualifier almost guaranteed; 8-8.5= should qualify and should be a lock for wildcard spot if necessary; 7-7.5= will require a solid outing to qualify for nationals but very realistic chances and is a strong contender for a wildcard spot; 6-6.5= very shaky in terms of ability to qualify outright, may be just slightly better than other teams looking to auto-qualify and has little chance to get wildcard bid.

Rank-Team-Region-Surety Rating-Notes

1) Summit (NW) 8- Won NW Classic with virtually the same average and point total as last year but a spread almost 30 seconds bigger. Summit may be far enough in front to absorb that, but if any other top teams can tighten up, it may allow them to sneak past Summit.

2) Fayetteville Manlius (NY) 8- Won East Syracuse Minoa invite handily, but with a 2:14 spread. At current, their 5th runner is almost 90 seconds behind their 4. There are a few truths in life, one being the sun will always rise and the other is that FM will be ready for nationals, but can they make a serious run with how big they will need their #5-7s to improve?

3) Buchanan (CA) 8- Won Woodbridge on 6th runner over SLC, 1:30 spread with 17:06 average.

4) Flower Mound (S) 8- Ahead of SLC by virtue of a 4 point win at Marcus, they've continued to impress win a 40 point victory at Milesplit XC invite. They have a respectable spread just over 60 seconds.

5) Southlake Carroll (S) 7.5- Second at Woodbridge, 17:11 average with a 49 second spread.

6) Great Oak (CA) 7.5- 3rd at Woodbridge by only 6 points back. 17:15 avg with tight 31 second spread.

7) Beaver Creek (MW) 7.5- Won MSU Spartan Invite with 86 points and a solid 4 in the top 10. The bad news is their spread was 3 minutes which is by far the largest of the top programs listed here. If they can develop a 5th this year, they will be a program to watch for a podium finish.

8) Naperville North (MW) 7.5- Despite graduating a few key runners, NN has returned with a vengeance, winning first to the finish with 45 points and a 17:55 average. This is only 23 seconds slower than last year for the national runners up in 2018. 

9) Lone Peak (SW) 8- Took Bob Firman with 77 points over Springville and Boise Senior. Ran roughly same average as Boise did last year before finishing 10th at NXN.

10) Saratoga Springs (NY) 7.5- Won Guilderland Invite with 35 points and 1:26 spread.

11) East Grand Rapids (MW) 6- Michigan programs, generally excluded from NXN, but at least one program has decided to race in the past. They've started the season off great, recently winning the Jackson Invite with 38 points and an 18:59 average with a 59 second spread.

12) Wayzata (H) 7- Won St. Olaf Invite over St. Michael Albertville, although much further behind where they started off last year. It could have been the heat, the team training through, etc. Emma Atkinson has not raced as of yet, and their top returner means a lot to the program. They do have a new coach and sometimes the transition period takes a while for the squad to get used to.

13) St. Francis Sacramento (CA) 6- Fourth at Woodbridge, 25 points behind GO, second fastest average at 17:07 but large spread at 1:53.

14) Newbury Park (CA) 6- Fifth at Woodbridge and fourth CA team, but handily beat Desert Vista of AZ who will be a contender for an auto spot out of the SW which will be a big card up their sleeve. 

15) Desert Vista (SW) 6.5- 6th at Woodbridge with 17:28 average and a 2:04 spread. Crucial to note, Grace Ping did not race! This can and will affect the team performance dramatically when she does, but missing a big race like this may mean various things and we won’t speculate.

16) Springville (SW) 6- Second to Lone Peak at Bob Firman. Beat Boise Senior which is in the running for an auto spot for NXN.

17) Edina (H) 6.5- Won Applejack Invite with 38 points and a 19:21 average, slightly better than 2018.

18) Boise Senior (NW) 6.5- 3rd at Bob Firman behind Lone Peak and Springville.

19) Weddington (SE) 6.5- Won Adidas XC Challenge with and 18:42 average and a tight 38 second spread.

20) Marist (SE) 6- Won Wingfoot Invite with an 18:54 average, 22 second faster than last year's winning average by Marietta.

21) North Allegheny (NE) 6- Won PIAA Foundation Invite with a 19:56 average. Had a large spread of 2:29.

22) North Hunterdon (NE) 6- Has not raced top varsity squad yet.

[junker-town]

Big East basketball summer power rankings

The name on top is a familiar one, but the Big East should be anything but predictable in 2019-20.

Due largely to the lofty standards the league had set for itself in recent seasons, 2018-19 felt like a small, but noticeable step back for the Big East. It never felt like the league had a true national title contender, the middle of the conference was softer than usual, and when the dust settled on the 2019 NCAA tournament, the league had produced a record of 1-4.

If the conference fails to send at least one team to the tournament’s second weekend — or fails to produce fewer than two total victories — in 2020, it will be nothing short of stunning. While the top of the league might not be quite as strong as it was three or four years ago, you still have multiple teams that appear fully capable of seeing their seasons end in Atlanta next spring. You also have two players destined to be on everyone’s preseason All-American team, and a handful of exciting young talent that should make league clashes appointment viewing throughout the winter.

The real step forward for the league should be in the belly of the conference, where the quality of teams 3-7 should be significantly better than it was a year ago. The question then becomes how do you organize that middle group of teams, which on paper appear to be extremely similar?

Let’s give it a shot.

10. DEPAUL BLUE DEMONS

2018-19 Record: (19-17, 7-11)

2018-19 Big East Finish: T-8th

DePaul has finished last or tied for the last in the final Big East standings in each of the last three years and nine of the last 11. With that in mind, placing them anywhere but the bottom would have felt too much like a classic summer hot take.

The loss of do-everything leading scorer Max Strus (20.1 ppg) looms large, but Dave Leitao does return a double figure scorer in Paul Reed (12.3). Reed also led the Demons in rebounding last season at 8.5 per game. The real intrigue with DePaul lies in a solid freshman class headlined by four-star forward Romeo Weems. Transfers Darious Hall (Arkansas) and Carte’Are Gordon (Saint Louis) should also help in the effort to replace Strus’ production.

9. ST. JOHN’S RED STORM

2018-19 Record: (21-13, 8-10)

2018-19 Big East Finish: 7th

The Red Storm snuck into the NCAA tournament last season, falling to Arizona State in a First Four game. Then all hell broke loose.

Chris Mullin stepped down as head coach, Shamorie Ponds and Big East Defensive Player of the Year Justin Simon both bolted for the NBA, and then an embarrassing coaching search came to a merciful end with the hiring of ex-Arkansas head coach Mike Anderson. Having Mustapha Heron (14.6 ppg) and LJ Figueroa (14.4 ppg) back is nice, but this feels like a classic transitional year for the Red Storm.

8. BUTLER BULLDOGS

2018-19 Record: (16-17, 7-11)

2018-19 Big East Finish: T-8th

This is the spot where, on paper at least, the league sees its first significant drop-off.

Butler was the only team in the conference last season to finish with an overall record below .500, just the program’s second losing season since 2005. Kamar Baldwin is fantastic, but the question is whether or not the Bulldogs will have better pieces around him than they did a year ago. If that question is answered in the affirmative, it will likely be due in large part to the help of Valpo grad transfer Derrik Smits (the son of former NBA player Rik Smits) or top 100 recruit Khalif Battle.

7. PROVIDENCE FRIARS

2018-19 Record: (18-16, 7-11)

2018-19 Big East Finish: T-8th

The No. 7 spot feels too low for a team that is as complete on paper as this Friar squad appears to be, but hey, someone has to go here.

Head coach Ed Cooley flirted with the Michigan job for a short stretch in May before announcing that he would be returning to Providence for a ninth season. Eight days after Cooley’s announcement, Alpha Diallo — the team’s leading scorer last season and arguably the best defensive player in the Big East — announced that he would be back for his senior season. The return of Diallo plus the addition of high-scoring UMass transfer Luwane Pipkins could have the Friars back in the NCAA tournament after a one-year hiatus.

6. GEORGETOWN HOYAS

2018-19 Record: (19-14, 9-9)

2018-19 Big East Finish: T-3rd

Year three for Georgetown under Patrick Ewing has the potential to be the most exciting yet. The Hoyas lose leading scorer Jessie Govan, but return an exciting nucleus of young talent. James Akinjo, Josh LeBlanc and Mac McClung all made the Big East’s All-Freshman team last season, with Akinjo and McClung both averaging double figures in points.

Ewing hopes that the answer for Govan’s departure lies in the massive form of NC State transfer Omer Yurtseven. The 7-footer was inconsistent at times during his two seasons in Raleigh, but at his best, he was one of the premiere frontcourt players in the ACC.

5. CREIGHTON BLUEJAYS

2018-19 Record: (20-15, 9-9)

2018-19 Big East Finish: T-3rd

Creighton was arguably the Big East’s greatest overachiever last season, winning 20 games and finishing tied for third in the league standings despite being picked to finish ninth at the start of the year. That wasn’t enough to get the Bluejays into the NCAA tournament, but it was enough to significantly raise expectations for 2019-20.

Greg McDermott returns the bulk of his offensive production from a season ago. At the top of that group is leading scorer Ty-Shon Alexander (15.7 ppg), who will be asked to produce even more as a junior now that Martin Krampelj (13.5 ppg, 6.9 rpg) has moved on. Mitch Ballock (11.1 ppg) and floor general Marcus Zegarowski (11.1 ppg, 3.2 apg) are also back after rock solid 2018-19 campaigns.

4. XAVIER MUSKETEERS

2018-19 Record: (19-16, 9-9)

2018-19 Big East Finish: T-3rd

Xavier was a quiet force down the stretch last season, winning seven of its final nine regular season games under first-year head coach Travis Steele. That run wasn’t enough to compensate for a 3-8 start in Big East play, but it was enough to get the team into the NIT and raise expectations significantly for 2019-20.

Four Musketeer starters explored their professional options during the offseason, and all four chose to return to school. Headlining that group is Second Team All-Big East selection Naji Marshall, who led Xavier in scoring (14.7 ppg) and rebounding (7.2 rpg) and was second in assists (3.4 apg) last season as a sophomore. Steele also brings in a five player top 25 recruiting class, and a pair of potential impact grad transfers in Jason Carter (Ohio) and Bryce Moore (Western Michigan).

3. MARQUETTE GOLDEN EAGLES

2018-19 Record: (24-10, 12-6)

2018-19 Big East Finish: 2nd

Marquette was receiving significant national top 10 love in the moments immediately following Markus Howard’s announcement that he would be returning to school for one more year. Then, shortly thereafter, the Hauser brothers announced their intentions to transfer. Now, there are some projecting that the Golden Eagles won’t even be a top five team in their own conference.

The way that people are talking about Howard and Marquette this summer reminds me a lot of the way people talked about Carsen Edwards and Purdue a year ago. I’m not guaranteeing that the Golden Eagles are going to be an Elite Eight team that comes within a shot of knocking off the eventual national champions, but I do believe there’s still enough around Howard — perhaps the most explosive scorer in college basketball — for this to be a legitimate top 25 team.

For starters, people should realize early on this winter just how good Koby McEwen is. The Utah State transfer averaged right around 15 points, five rebounds and three assists per game in his two seasons with the Aggies, and his game should serve as the perfect backcourt counterpart to Howard. Experienced forwards Sacar Anim and Theo John are both back in the fold and have the ability to flourish in expanded roles.

2. SETON HALL PIRATES

2018-19 Record: (20-14, 9-9)

2018-19 Big East Finish: T-3rd

First, Kevin Willard said “thanks but no thanks” to the Virginia Tech job. Then, All-American Myles Powell turned down the NBA in favor of returning to South Orange for his senior season. Those two decisions have Seton Hall in a position to make a run to the NCAA tournament’s second weekend for the first time since 2000.

Powell isn’t the only returning talent Willard will have at his disposal in 2019-20. Eight of the team’s top nine scorers from last season’s NCAA tournament squad are back (shoutout to Michael Nzei on making the quick transition from high-level hoops to high-level finance). If that weren’t enough, 7-foot big man Ike Obiagu is eligible and ready to shore up the inside after sitting out last season following his transfer in from Florida State.

1. VILLANOVA WILDCATS

2018-19 Record: (26-10, 13-5)

2018-19 Big East Finish: 1st

Leading scorers Phil Booth and Eric Paschall are gone, but there’s still reason to believe Villanova will be better in 2019-20 than they were this past season, a year which ended with the Wildcats claiming their fifth Big East regular season title in six seasons.

Returnees Collin Gillespie, Sadiq Bey, Jermaine Samuels and Dhamir Cosby-Rountree all played significant roles last season and should be expected to take steps forward. The biggest cause for optimism should reside with the top five recruiting class Jay Wright has brought in. That class is headlined by two five-star players — Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Bryan Antoine — who should be good enough to start from day one.

[xtremedespair3d]

Anime Winter 2019 Final Impressions + Plans for Spring 2019

(I’ve seen Screen Rant and Crunchyroll using this shot as a thumbnail for news posts when the second trailer dropped, so I might as well use it too 😂)

The very first anime season of the year ends and we’re moving on to the next one, and it appears that this season is going to be the best one yet, before I discuss why with what shows I’m going to watch, let’s go back to the Winter season to rank every show I watched this season!

(Just don’t expect to see Kaguya-sama on this post, I haven’t really watched it at all, sorry. (but I will binge it eventually))

1.- Mob Psycho 100 II: Mob Psycho 100 continues to be a sakuga wonder and powerful storylines, I always thought the first season would be much more memorable for me, but I think this season definitely tops the character development and plotlines.

As for the sakuga wonder, this proves why Mob Psycho 100 is being held at better hands unlike One Punch Man, it went from Madhouse to JC Staff which is utterly disappointing, but Mob Psycho 100 being adapted by Bones and continuing to work on it is the best thing the series ever has.

I still haven’t read the manga but I can probably tell this is not the series finale, I wonder if there could still be a third and final season so it can adapt the final volumes of the manga, since it has ended recently, that third season would come in a quicker time, maybe like a year, a year and a half, or two, I don’t know, but it’s not impossible for that to happen anytime soon.

10/10 - Rank: S++ - 100% - AOTS #1.

2.- Kemurikusa: This all-new reboot has completely lived up to my expectations and it delivered some neat changes to the original and some big surprises.

Part of my experience was a bit dragged by the uncultured assholes that is 4chan with “Kemono Friends 2″ is better and such (Since it’s 4chan, some of them could be trolls, some of them could tell the truth, can’t really tell for sure), but it didn’t completely ruin my enjoyment of Kemurikusa, this is no big deal. And then there’s also the janky animation, but it’s Tatsuki’s quirk, so I’m not completely bothered by that and let him have it.

There are still some plot holes around the universe and everything else that raises questions after witnessing certain moments, but I think it’s best to leave things as it is, I wouldn’t expect Tatsuki to answer every single question, or even touch the world again.

I wonder what's next for Tatsuki now that Kemurikusa is finished when it comes to a new TV project, another remake of his classics or a completely original series? He would probably continue doing shorts for now. Either way, I totally need more Tatsuki TV projects since Kemono Friends. But for now, I would expect to see shorts being posted by parts on Twitter and then the full compilation on YouTube and NicoNico.

I almost forgot, I needed to address something: For the longest time I’ve been hyping up to watch the original 30 minute series before watching this reboot, I realized that you don’t really need to watch the original, but you should at least acknowledge its existence. But if you want to compare this to the original that badly, then you do need to watch the original. (We’re back in square one lol)

And for all the haters, please read this thread, and when you finish doing so, apologize and go take the L, conche tu madre, thank you.

10/10 - Rank: S++ - 100% - AOTS #2.

UPDATE - April 4th: Okay, a week after the finale’s release (Wednesday), Tatsuki out of the blue released a brand new 12.1 short video! (So far it raises so many questions)

I genuinely did not expect to see more Kemurikusa content, sequels even, but this is quite a surprise. I don’t know how long this is going to be but I’m sure it could be a weekly release. Anyways, this is really neat.

Smiley Riku is best Riku.

3.- The Promised Neverland: This was a pretty solid adaptation and the suspense has kept me on the edge of my seat constantly.

I’m so happy to see that a second season got announced for 2020. I wonder if it’s going to be a My Hero Academia situation, where it started with 13 episodes (in TPN’s case, it was 12 episodes long) and later seasons have two-cours.

9/10 - Rank: S - 95%

4.- BanG Dream! season 2: The first season heavily focused on building Poppin’ Party, this season features all of the bands and some episodes were focused on each band, which I was really interested, definitely looking forward to the 3rd season in Fall. (which I genuinely forgot it was coming out too)

Speaking of season 3, I recently researched that Rokka is a member of RAISE A SUILEN, and I wonder if S3 might get a storyline with Rokka becoming a member of RAS.

This looks way better than Monster Strike, I like that the characters have more like shading/lighting than being pure cell-shaded anime-like, but my common complaint with Sanzigen, or maybe even CG anime in general, is that they tend to make some background characters completely hand drawn which doesn’t blend well with the CG characters, it’s just horribly noticeably bad and inconsistent. You can add hand drawn effects and such, but for the love of god, never do hand drawn background characters and even main characters in flashbacks. (like Lay and Tae)

The third season was originaly going to come out on Fall but it got delayed to Winter 2020, which is a bummer, it could have been like BBK/BRNK three years ago but time is always needed.

9/10 - Rank: S - 96% - AOTS #4

5.- Ikki Tousen: Western Wolves: After spending an entire week binging everything Ikki Tousen, I couldn’t wait to see what Western Wolves had in store given on what I last saw with Extravaganza Epoch (even though I kind of forgot already), with 3 episodes for 3 months, this was a solid series with good fan service.

I hope I won’t wait for another 5 years or so for another series.

8.5/10 - Rank: A+ - 88%

6.- Kakegurui XX: Now I’m worried if this was a worthy follow-up given MAPPA’s track record of making crappy second seasons, best example being Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul.

Occasionally I was less motivated to watch an episode when it came out raw and rewatch that episode with subtitles by whatever group and sometimes I also felt like this series was way over-the-top than I previously felt like the first season

Anyways, I thought it was a decent follow-up.

7.5/10 - Rank: A- - 76%

7.- Manaria Friends: Decent series, but the most important thing I want to talk about is, this was supposed to come out on April 1st, 2016, but it got on hold a month prior its release. Since CygamesPictures was founded in 2016, perhaps they took the series and reworked into what it is now, after 3 years of reproduction and release, I wonder if it was even worth the wait. I’m also surprised the show is 15 minutes long, I’m not sure if this was part of the original version, but it’s that kind of short.

For some strange reason, I wish any footage of the original version of Manaria Friends would be leaked somewhere. 😁

Now with Manaria Friends released, and with the upcoming Princess Connect! Re:Dive anime series (and maybe they even took Granblue Fantasy: The Animation (that’s right, it’s confirmed that it’ll get a second season) away from A-1, that’s my theory), let’s see what does CygamesPictures have in store when it comes to anime based on their IP and maybe even original projects of their own (which has gotten me more curious since I’m an original anime fanboy).

Also, the show’s English title is called “Mysteria Friends” for some reason. (Well, not really “for some reason”, there’s definitely a reason why, but I’m not that big of a Rage of Bahamut person)

I never knew the show was going to be 10 episodes long, since it premiered late in January, I thought it would run for 12 episodes which it could be in April, which is way late to the Anime Winter 2019 closing party, but closing the series at episode 10 feels like a good time.

7/10 - Rank: A- - 74%

8.- Boogiepop wa Waranai: Not much to comment on this one, and I haven’t really read the LNs, but this one seems interesting. The only thing I’m not a fan of is its own style of character designs, it just looks weird and doesn’t really respect much to the original artist’s style, which lead to this whole thing with this Twitter rants and Kadokawa apologizing for the miscommunication (Can’t stop talking about this), so I guess the damage control wasn’t worth it to get used to the anime’s designs. At least the animation and visuals look good, though.

7/10 - Rank: B - 70%

9.- Lupin the 3rd: Goodbye Partner: After Part 5, I didn’t expect a new OVA special would appear right away, it’s a self-contained OVA special, it doesn’t have anything to do with Part 5 at all, though.

The only thing I’m super dissatisfied is that in 37 minutes, it seems like there was a huge skip, we jump to a crazy situation right away, after a conflict Lupin and Goemon had with Jigen minutes prior, we see that they’re working together again, like, what? It’s just feels so random...

7/10 - Rank: B+ - 72%

10.- Mini Toji: This franchise continues to give less of an impact in my life and to consider it to be on the range that of Kancolle and Touken Ranbu (you know, those games I always joke about that Toji no Miko is their baby), one year later after the base anime series, they decided to make a short spin-off series, I couldn’t turn down the offer to watch it, I was curious on what’s it going to be, and the show overall is alright, it is funny at times and I had some laughs but it’s not too hilarious.

As for the chibi style, it just looks so weird. Seeing the image below which I found in 4chan when episode 8 came out just makes me wish they could have chose this style instead of the one from Mini Toji because the current style just looks so wrong.

And there’s also the most painful, if not, the worst running gag ever, Kaoru is always getting mission jobs from her boss, every episode we see her tired and it makes me feel super bad for her, let her rest, let her suffering end. ;_;

Not to mention the show has a very sluggish pace, everything happens so fast I don’t even have time to understand or even laugh at what the fuck is going on. For a 3 minute short series, the best thing they could have gone is make a shorter opening or don’t feature an OP at all, just feature a title card to open the show and that’s it. Or maybe they could have extended the run time to 7 minutes (a la Sugoiyo!! Masaru-san) so I can enjoy the pace better.

Unlike Manaria Friends, I did know but then I forgot this series was 11 episodes long, but at the same time it threw me off thinking there could be an 11th episode but then I realized episode 0 counts.

6/10 - 60% - Rank: C-

And now... time for the top 3 worst anime of the season!

11.- W’z: I’ve probably never paid a lot of attention to the trailers (and even vaguely remember it), I thought it would be a stand-alone and different kind of series with a lot more music themed or something, but when the series premiered, it revealed itself as a sequel to Hand Shakers... THAT’S RIGHT, A SEQUEL TO HAND SHAKERS NOBODY ASKED FOR.

Despite being surprised that W’z is a sequel to Hand Shakers, I’ve grown to really like the series overall in a short amount of time, it makes me like Hand Shakers more than I previously could.

In like 3 or even 4 episodes, I couldn’t stop fanboying out constantly seeing the characters from Hand Shakers who look so grown up after the 10 year time jump after the series happened.

I mentioned that I thought that W’z was self contained, there are some moments and characters that are barely self-contained because the plot is all heavily linked to Hand Shakers (not that I’m complaining, though). I genuinely didn’t care much for the new characters, except Yukiya because he’s the adopted son of Break and Bind (Real names: Reijiro and Yukine Araki, respectively) , and he’s the McGuffin for accessibility to the Ziggurat to find Nagaoka and Mayumi. The one character I was the least satisfied for their lack of development was Midori, at first he’s had a couple of interesting moments, but the rest he barely appeared in the series and only in the previews, but in episode 9, they finally gave him plenty of screentime and even dropped some good info bombs on what the Ziggurat can do and stuff, so that redeemed my feelings on the character.

Another complaint would be the DJ Nielsen character, he’s got interesting motives and he’s the one who gave Reijiro baby Yukiya in a flashback, but his rapper-kind of voice can be so annoying. He and CHU2 from BanG Dream S2 would make a great team, or maybe a contest on who speaks the worst. (SPOILER ALERT: It’s a draw, they’re both so bad in different levels)

Then we get to episode 10 where the most important thing is that NAGAOKA AND MAYUMI FINALLY SHOWED UP. It actually took so long for them to appear because there was like a lot of stuff in the way, but whatever, I was so happy to see them... albeit with a caveat. Since the goal was to get Nagaoka and Mayumi out of the Ziggurat, it turns out that the duo themselves can’t get out because they want to live a normal life and Nagaoka was sick, as Mayumi said. It’s a little sad and it sucks that they can’t get out, but at least Mayumi had a phone call with Koyori after all.

I thought episode 12 with a Midori/Seba episode (it wasn’t an episode dedicated to those two) and to be on par with Hand Shakers with the 12 episode total, but I’m glad there was a 13th episode to have a good conclusion, and boy, this episode delivered some good surprises: The biggest moment is where Nagaoka told Yukiya how much he has grown and then Yukiya himself straight-up called him “Dad”, like three episodes prior, I had theorized that Yukiya would be Nagaoka and Mayumi’s true biological son but I backed off because I thought it would be disturbing (maybe not really, Mayumi must be old after the 10 year gap and she and Koyori don’t look like they have aged at all), BUT IN REALITY, HE REALLY IS, GOHANDS THE FUCKING MADMEN. The second thing I was happy to see was Makihara, at long last the man finally shows up, he always narrated the first few episodes and I couldn’t stop saying “Show yourself, Makihara!” or something and then there were a couple of namedrops, they took so long but maybe they wanted to save Makihara’s appearance in the flesh for last.

This may not be the biggest deal, but since every single character from Hand Shakers appeared in W’z all grown up and such, the one thing I really wasn’t happy with is the absence of Hibiki and Kodama. Sure, they both got namedropped once (though Kodama was namedropped twice) and mentioned their current careers (Kodama being a singer and actress and Hibiki being a costume designer) but I never got to see them at all, maybe they weren’t the most popular amongst GoHands’ staff. They weren’t my bigger favorites of the Hand Shakers cast (and I don’t mean it in a negative way) but seeing them how they have aged would have been really worth it, come on, GoHands!

Despite the hideous visuals GoHands has grown to have in recent years, I really liked W’z, it makes me like Hand Shakers more than I previously could. If I really liked the show so much, then why it’s in the top 3 of my worst anime of the season? Well, mainly for the aforementioned hideous visuals, while they don’t bother me much, it’s for the sake of people who can’t stomatch it. (Says the guy who put Kemurikusa on second place and gave it a 10/10, Rank: S++, 100%).

Like Kemurikusa, W’z also has a couple of plot holes, which I don’t really expect they could get answered that much, but some parts certainly raise a lot of questions, most notable, this Composer character, we never got to see who was this Composer Senri and Hana worked with. (They both don’t have in common, but they both made me ask questions about the plot and lore.)

Regardless on how you feel about the visuals nowadays, I still want GoHands to continue doing projects, one day they’ll return to their former glory with good visuals like the K franchise and they’ll win their old fans back, but the more important thing is that I still want to see them creating interesting stories.

I’d like to see more stuff taken place in the Hand Shakers universe, just don’t make sequels with every 10 year gap because I don’t want to see all the characters from Hand Shakers and W’z grow really old and die, prequels would be fine to explore more on the Akutagawa/Okuike families and/or fill the 10 year gap between said series. If GoHands decides to make completely different IP that’s not set in the Hand Shakers universe, being its own self-contained universe, I would be totalyl fine too. (I previously thought W’z was a self-contained series before it premiered after all.)

You can call me a lunatic or tell me I’m high, and say whatever you want about Hand Shakers/W’z, I’ve grown to like the franchise and I got the balls to tolerate the visuals unlike you. Besides, It’s not about the visuals anymore, it’s about enjoying the story a lot more.

By the way, I made this meme ages ago and I’m so proud of it. 😂

5/10 - Rank: C - 52% - (AOTS #5 :^) ).

12.- Virtualsan - Looking: This got announced and released a trailer simultaneously out of nowhere, but when I saw the trailer (though it was focused at introducing the main VTubers) and the opening preview, I always thought the show was going to look half-assed, and indeed it did. And speaking of the opening, this series should have been hand-drawn so it would have been cooler to see the VTubers that way.

The bigger problem is that there’s no Kizuna AI at all, which many people aren’t happy with, I’m not worried too much since I like seeing the other VTubers (people should at least watch other kinds of VTubers, not just Kizuna AI alone). Even if Kizuna AI sings the first opening theme, it won’t make up for the fact that she’s completely absent. (At least try to learn to like other VTubers the same way you have your many normal YouTubers/Let’s Players you like, you dumb fucks)

The weirdest selling point of this show, Hideaki Anno was involved in the series. Yes, you read that right, the very same guy who did Evangelion and Shin Godzilla. No wonder why there’s this one sketch where we see the main cast dressed as the girl school uniforms from EVA.

The title of the show, Virtualsan - Looking has given a lot more meaning as I kept watching, it turns out that it’s actually referred to the VTuber Baacharu always watching, he always pops up at the very start of every episode and he’s a recurring star in “Listen Sister!” (forgot the name already, oops) where he always get thrown by Tokino Sora in order to confess to Sister Claire herself [Tokino]. Then he occasionally appears at this Siro segment where some VTubers take a seat and Siro gives a lot of trivia about different topics (then Baacharu became the last guest to star in this segment). It all makes sense now, but for some reason the subtitles called Baacharu “Virtual”.

Speaking of localization, for some reason Crunchyroll decided to license the series a week after its release, but guess what? The episode release schedule was behind, they simulcast the previous episode before the new one aired in Japan, that is until with episodes 5 or 6 which made things even.

There’s no real reason for me to hate this series, I quite enjoyed it and had a lot of laughs throughout the series but the half-assed special effects and stuff are not for the faint of Western audiences’ heart.

Though, I gotta say, this has the potential to spawn more genuine VTuber anime, I’m really optimistic to see more of them in the future.

4.5/10 - Rank: D+ - 48%

13.- Kemono Friends 2: *sigh* Oh boy, trying to write a series review on this one is going to be really tough, but to make it short, it’s as expected, Kemono Friends 2 is a soulless cash grab of a show, a shadow of its former self, definitely the WORST of the season. There’s just so many problems the show has:

Recycled storyline from the first season with a new human character nobody asked for.

Boring ass opening theme song that isn’t memorable and isn’t singable like WELCOME TO YOUKOSO JAPARI PARK.

Having two characters who serve the Raccoon and Fennec-type of roles. (despite having them featured in the OP numerous times and started to appear on episode 10)

Ceruleans look like unfinished CG mess compared to every character and heck, even the Ceruleans from the first season.

Occasionally inconsistent framerate from character movements, most of the time is a bit slow but there are a few times that it goes really fast.

Completely wiped out Serval’s memories of the events from the first season

etc.

Let’s go part by part:

The biggest crime of this season is of course not following the To Be Continued teased at the end of the first season and they decided to soft-reboot the series with a totally new human character, Kyururu.

Then, enter Armadillo and Pangolin, two characters who are looking for Kyururu for reasons [that is from the beginning of the series, later it was explained why they did it, it was to bring Kyururu to Domestic Dog], sound familiar? That’s because their roles are very like Raccoon and Fennec from the first season... when Raccoon and Fennec ALWAYS appeared in the opening (and then finally appeared on episode 10).

Speaking of the opening, the theme is a boring jazz earrape and it’s certainly not memorable or even singable as the first season’s opening, WELCOME TO YOUKOSO JAPARI PARK, those days are over.

I mostly didn’t even care for literally every character in the series. However, there are characters I do care, Kaban-chan (which I’ll discuss about her in a bit) of course, I will always care for Kaban-chan, and Domestic Dog, she’s the one Friend I’d definitely protecc because she’s a doggo and I feel bad for her in episode 8. The characters I’d definitely least protecc are Kyururu, nobody asked for a brand new human to take the Kaban-chan role, and Serval, because she doesn’t remember shit about the first season, they kind of ruined her character.

Serval was the worst change that has ever happened to her, as I stated, they basically wiped out all of her memories of the first season (or so it seems). Caracal told Serval that she had traveled with a human before and there was a small flash with Kaban-chan’s silhouette, this is one of the many things this season broke my heart very badly.

As for Caracal, the chemistry between her and Serval this season didn’t absolutely work here. Her character is depicted kind of a tsundere compared to her Welcome to Japari Park version which, gotta be honest, I definitely prefer the Welcome to Japari Park version and voice way better than the Kemono Friends 2 one. Without disrespecting the VA way too much, her voice for Caracal didn’t work for the character.

Rewatched a small portion of the first season, despite Serval having the same VA, she sounds a little different in Kemono Friends 2.

Speaking of Welcome to Japari Park, there’s the finale coming up in two weeks, so I hope it has a better conclusion than Kemono Friends 2 (which I’ll talk about later).

Now... let’s talk about Kaban-chan! If Serval wasn’t that of a poorly written character enough, Kaban-chan has definitely suffered the most! At the end of episode 5, a paper plane with a flame on its tip was flying out of nowhere, just to drive the Beast away, I heard a voice and IT WAS KABAN-CHAN!!! I was so happy that she finally appeared and I was eager to see more of her in the next episode, then the next week came and... she had plenty of screentime but... SHE DIDN’T DO SHIT! SHE DIDN’T DO A LOT OF SHIT, LIKE, SHE COULD HAVE INTERACTED WITH KYURURU A LOT MORE ABOUT WHAT DOES SHE WANT AND EVERYTHING, I CANNOT FORGIVE THIS EVER!

Well, it’s not like I wanted her with Serval to be like “Hey, Serval! Do you remember me?”, I understand she had her reasons and she must have been aware on Serval’s memory or something, but at the same time, she didn’t do a lot, though later in the episode, it was more focused on Kyururu talking to the owls about the origin of the Ceruleums, Kyururu theorized that the Ceruleans must have been spawned from the sea, and they all decide to test this out, which I don’t really blame too much that it turned out that way because they need to focus more on the overarching story of Kyururu’s search for her house, but come on...

At the end of the episode, Kaban says goodbye to the main trio, but most importantly, to Serval, as she asked Caracal to take care of her, she was downright sad.This episode was completely unsatisfying that I went so far to make a review out of it.

But that’s not the end of Kaban-chan, as she did appear in the final episodes, which I’ll talk about them in a bit...

But I gotta say, I really dig Kaban-chan’s new design. She has indeed grown up given by her height and her matured voice. 👌

There’s something I haven’t discussed very often and that is the NicoNico ratings. I haven’t seen these very often but I’ve seen two screenshots of two random episodes of the ratings, and guess what? Japan definitely voted for the “I didn’t like it.” option! Here’s a screenshot of episode 6:

This is the exact same episode with the underwhelming reunion with Kaban-chan, it deserved it.

This is very funny because, two years ago, Pop Team Epic also a lot of dislike ratings, but it’s not because PTE is bad bad, I think it’s because it’s a kuso anime and people would follow the gag that it sucks or something, but in the case of Kemono Friends 2, it’s plain bad.

Moving on, episode 9 came by, the PPP episode, and there was no Crunchyroll-Hime cameo from the first season, wow, the disrespect. Then we get to see Crested Ibis again! Though she was not a main Friend of the episode (as it is a PPP-centered episode), she has become more of a minor role, just doing auditions, she even name dropped Alpaca.

Next we’ve come to the one episode where Armadillo and Pangolin finally captured Kyururu and brought to her master, the master appeared to be a Friend called Domestic Dog. She started talking to Kyururu that she has finally met a human after a long time, she brings Kyururu to her house and OH MY GOD, SHE MADE DOG SOUNDS, DEFINITELY PROTECC, I’M BEING SERIOUS, PROTECC.

Then comes the scene where Doggo was protecting Kyururu from the Beast, the moment I saw her full of scratches and dirt, my god, I cannot unsee that, that was horrifying.

(Yes, I couldn’t resist bringing John Wick jokes)

Then when doggo let go of Kyururu, to come back to her friends, I felt so bad for her. I saw a comment on Crunchyroll where someone said “Oh no, she’s Seymour from Futurama” and things couldn’t be any more painful.

Right at the end of the episode, these two Friends from a promotional poster I saw a while before the series premiered finally showed up.

They’re purpose was to give Kyururu some sort of existential crisis (well, not that much) by asking her if her house really exists, why did she made her drawings, etc.

Now we’re finally in episode 10 where Raccoon and Fennec finally appear after being in the OP literally every episode ever (Maybe I was asking for meaning or pay-off way too much), then KABAN-CHAN REAPPEARS and that time she was hella serious because she, the professor and her assistant, found out that there were Ceruleans being spawned from Kyururu’s drawings. Kyururu then made a drawing of literally every Friend she has met, including Pigeon which she just met but wanted to include her, and that immediately screamed maximum danger, as I thought there would be a huge army of Ceruleans shaped like the Friends, this is where things got interesting.

Episode 11, comes this war of Friends vs Ceruleans shaped like them, blah blah blah...

Episode 12 came and NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT THE ENDING!

THE ENDING, I.... TAKE A LOOK AT THIS!

Then there’s the post-credits scene:

My face during the very end:

................................................................................................................................................................................................can somebody explain to me what the fuck just happened?

That Kaban-chan and Serval scene........ how could they do this to me.... and I don’t mean it in a good way.... Then that drawing with Mirai and two other Japari Park workers...................

THEY JUST MADE KABAN-CHAN SUFFER!!! ;_;

AND THEN THAT JAPARI PARK FRIENDS DRAWING, WHO ARE THE OTHER TWO WORKERS, MIRAI GETS TO CAMEO, EVERYTHING AAAAAAAAAAAAA

FUCK... THAT!!!

Sure, these moments should bring hype and I should be happy that they did this, the Kaban-chan and Serval scene and the drawing, but it won’t work for me, Kemono Friends 2 tries really hard to redeem itself with hype-worthy moments like these, they just won’t make up for this irredeemable garbage.

Now, I wasn’t a douche on watching the entire series, there are some moments that I found genuinely interesting, had some laughs and made me smile (probably out of confusion, I have problems smiling even on inappropiate shit), the models perfectly capture Mine Yoshizaki’s art style, but without disrespecting Tatsuki, at the same time the models feel lifeless compared to the first season’s.

One thing I don’t understand about the designs is that I’ve seen people in 4chan blaming Tomason for the lazy designs and stuff, or something like that because I’ve seen them use “they” and I don’t really think they’re referring to Yoshizaki, they must have been really referring to Tomason, and that’s not true, Mine Yoshizaki does all of the Friends’ designs, and please don’t call some of them lazy, don’t disservice the man.

Then there are also the next episode previews made by Kikuchi Milo featuring the characters from the first season. Because of Crested Ibis’ minor appearance in episode 9, now I kind of wish the Friends from the first season to show up in the series, not just the next episode previews.

There were also two ED themes, which I find it bizarre that a one-cour series changes theme songs.

We never got to learn more about the Beast character though, she was like an underdeveloped Friend and she behaved more like a genuine tiger animal or something, we never get to learn her origin, or even her race.

Boy, this review turned out way better than I expected, I had a lot of fun writing about this soulless pile of trash. I hope the Welcome to Japari Park finale will help me forget this shit, let’s see how it would build up to the first season of Kemono Friends given that it’s a prequel and this is really old footage, I’m sure there must be how the future of the series got set up or something.

This might have been the most brutal anime review I’ve ever written but it’s the truth.

Watch Kemono Friends 3 get announced but inb4 it could be an adaptation of the mobile/arcade game of the same name instead of following the anime’s overarching story.

Though I think if Kemono Friends 3 happens, it could still be a continuation of the anime's story and it has nothing to do with the mobile/arcade game of the same name. It could be a similar situation with Welcome to Japari Park where there's a manga and a short series and they're both totally unrelated.

To conclude this series review, let me just say this:

Kemono Friends 2 is the Pacific Rim: Uprising of anime.

0/10 - Rank: E - 0% 🔥 🔥 🔥  Hail Hydra (or in this case Hail Kadokawa) No Tatsuki, No Tanoshii

Fuck you, Kadokawa. 🖕

Fall 2018 ongoing:

At last, ongoing anime from the previous season, I wasn’t having this streak lately and it was about time I had it.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: JoJo Part 5 continues to be strong. There’s not much to add but I got some small things to say: When I’m 4chan threads, seeing screenshots of Part 4 makes me realize that Part 4 is the WORST looking and poorly produced part out of all the rest, thankfully Part 5 looks way better.

Since I was so accostumed on how the characters sound like in All Star Battle and Eyes of Heaven, the new voices have definitely grown on me now.

Also, how does King Crimson work?

Ace Attorney season 2: I genuinely had this post written with JoJo as the only ongoing Fall 2018 anime alone and somehow I have forgotten about Ace Attorney despite still watching the series. I feel like I enjoyed the Bridge to the Turnabout episodes a lot more.

I felt like this second season has genuinely given me a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth unlike the first season, which it definitely lead me to drop the series, but I didn’t drop it completely, I have picked it up again around episode 10 because I felt bad.

Now, let’s start talking about the Spring season, and why is this going to be the best anime season yet? Well...

1.- Kimestu no Yaiba - April 6: I’M SO LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS ONE! Ahem, well, to tell you the truth, I just love being wowed by Ufotable’s fantastic visuals. I’m definitely checking this one blindly, I feel like this is something I should read the manga because I’m starting to feel like it could be an unfaithful narrative mess, and it’s already making me sad. But is Ufotable the type of studio to go off the rails and completely butcher the story? (Probably God Eater as people say but I don’t really see what’s with the hate and why is it offensively bad, I played God Eater Burst long afterwards, though. Call me an Ufotable stan if you want, but I really don’t see any problem with God Eater even when I binged it years ago, aside from a bit of animation hiccups (probably the/my first with (modern) Ufotable having a bit of hiccups) but I don’t mind it, I just enjoyed the way it is; people are gonna tell me this too and I’d be like totally disagreeing their opinions, refusing to seek the reality; I’d love to rush my ass off and read the manga like I did with One Punch Man, My Hero Academia and Monster Musume but I’m just so lazy to do it now, and I can’t read manga with over 100 chapters long.)

I always watch a lot of anime without even reading the manga first, even I don’t read JoJo (Even though I know some of the biggest spoilers from every part through the games) and Mob Psycho 100, but for some reason Kimetsu no Yaiba feels like a huge deal for me, I wish I couldn’t let the opportunity of reading the manga first go to waste, yet, I’m here about to watch the anime. I wish I could have realized this sooner.

Anyways, enough of that insane talk and wouldn’t boost hype confidence, I’m still going to enjoy it regardless how the story goes and the music might be something worth praising because the composers are fucking Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina, animation and visuals are no surprise worth of praise , I’m just ready to watch Ufotable’s next big TV project since Katsugeki: Touken Ranbu. (yes, there was 2018′s Emiya-san chi no Kyou no Gohan but it was a monthly series and each episode was 12 minutes long, so it’s not kind of a big deal; then there’s also the Heaven’s Feel movie trilogy (loved the second movie (even though I’m an anime only, I’m legit scared of Gavin and other kinds of elitists now; even though he unfollowed me)), but like I said, TV project)

As of March 27th, I read some news that Ufotable is under investigation over tax evasion and now I’ve grown way concerned than I was. It may not affect the releases of Kimetsu no Yaiba and even Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel III but I just don’t want to see Ufotable close. After Kimetsu no Yaiba come out, let’s see how Ufotable will do.

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Quick update, I HAVE read the first three chapters, it’s relatively solid and given on the scenes I’ve seen in the trailers, I do believe Ufotable is going to make a pretty good job on adapting the series faithfully narratively.

But most importantly so far, I hope Ufotable will do justice this panel! Which I had posted this on my Kemono Friends 2 series review.

Bones disappointed me with the anime version of Mina’s “NO WAY” scene from My Hero Academia, and I hope Ufotable won’t do the same, I want a perfect recreation of that Tanjiro face.

Here’s the comparison below:

Anime:

Manga:

Do you agree on this? (If you don’t, it’s fine, don’t worry about it)

UPDATE - April 13th:

UFOTABLE, YOU FUCKING BLEW IT!!! GET BANKRUPT!!!

I changed my mind about Bones with the Mina “NO WAY!” part, it actually looks faithfully recreated, UNLIKE UFOTABLE.

(Alright, I gotta stop updating this post constantly with what’s happening right now)

RELATED: What will Ufotable’s final release be?

2.- One Punch Man season 2 - April 2nd: I’ve said this before and I will say it again, I’m NOT expecting OPM S2 to be any good and I’m NOT looking forward to it, even if I say that, I’m still going to watch it, regardless, but I’m not very hopeful for the visuals (Man, all I ever care about in anime is the visuals, I don’t give a crap of the story, I just want good animation!).

Since the release date is revealed to be April 2nd, which is Tuesday, I’m going to miss the good old One Punch Man Sundays when the first season came out, but Tuesdays are a good day for anime, so it’s worth it.

Well, I wrote that sentence literally like a day or two, and a new visual got revealed, it looks clean but it’s already not gonna look like that, very S1-like, given the first teaser trailer released. That aside, Viz Media confirmed that it will be premiered on April 9th on Hulu (RIP Daisuki.net), which that’s on Saturday, so that’s close on the good old OPM Sundays 4 years ago.

Actually, I’m pretty split on that information, in one hand, the official Twitter account tweeted the visual with the April 2nd release, but in the other, Viz Media tweeted that it comes out in the 9th and calls it “the same day as Japan” and “ Details and availability regarding the April 2nd special programming in our territory are currently unavailable.”, I’m so confused.

(Sorry, this post has been in progress for the entire Winter season and I’m writing stuff I was currently experiencing at the time)

March 18th, the second trailer dropped and somehow I’m kind of alright with it, still not super impressed but at least it’s kind of something. But the biggest let-down is the new opening theme by JAM Project revealed in the trailer which it’s not as great as THE HERO. I’m a bigger fan of the way THE HERO is, I’m probably the more upbeat type of person, and with this? I don’t want something calm, I wanted a more action packed song! I hadn't payed a lot of attention to the editing of the trailer with the black screens, but yeah, it's so bad.

The more I think about the trailer and seeing people’s reactions, I’m starting to think it’s really looking like absolute ass than I previously mentioned, so I couldn’t agree more. But hey, at least I love seeing some of the jokes and memes related to the trailer.

I thought I had to wait until AnimeJapan to drop the trailer but they decided to do it now.

I now understand what’s with the April 2nd and April 9th releases. The April 2nd release is going to be more like an special of sorts and next week is when the series for real starts. It’s the same issue I had with Kemono Friends 2, but that was unpredictable at the time, so with One Punch Man, I can totally wait for next week. (At the time of posting this, the day has come)

3.- Attack on Titan season 3 second cour - April 28th: It’s seriously been like annoyingly forever after the first cour ended in Fall 2018, but I’m finally it’s going to continue.

I still don’t know what took so long, but whatever.

4.- Isekai Quartet - April 9th: From what I see now, this is going to be more like a show with different isekai projects focused as sketches or something, I randomly thought it would be a crossover but apparently it’s not the case. Regardless, I’m still going to watch and enjoy the way it is.

By the time I saw its announcement, I immediately went to binge Re:Zero, I have seen Youjo Senki, Overlord and Kono Suba, so I needed to watch Re:Zero so I can be complete or something.

Since I write this post as time goes on, the trailer for Isekai Quartet has released and indeed it is a crossover like I wanted!

5.- Girls’ Frontline comedy anime short - ???: It appears that we’re getting our first Girls’ Frontline anime and it’s a comedy which it’s even cooler.

The trailer was first revealed on a BiliBili livestream on January for Chinese audiences, then a few days later, there was another livestream taken place in VTuber Nekomiya Hinata’s channel for Japanese audiences, where they showed off the same trailer but one frame of new footage and then there’s a new trailer for another Girls’ Frontline anime, that’s right, we don’t have just one, but two different Girls’ Frontline comedy anime, this one’s focused on the AR Team and 404, and the other one has a variety of T-Dolls featured, but the former is the bigger focus here.

What I find rather surprising about this short anime is that ever since they showed the trailer on said livestreams, there’s no official upload of the trailer, not a whole lot of news sites reported about this, and not even a full release date after two months. I thought there would be more information on AnimeJapan 2019 but there was nothing in sight.

So I guess I’ll have to wait until April to see if this will indeed come out, it could be a surprise release not everyone is going to notice or it might be delayed to Summer. Nevertheless, I’m excited to see this one, and the other one too but I prefer this one with the AR Team and 404 the most.

By the way, thanks for tagging me twice on these Girls’ Frontline anime, Moetron. I’m happy that I let you know these trailers exist. Here, have this powerful image of G11 meditating.

6.- Fruits Basket remake - April 5th: I never watched the original Fruits Basket and I’ve been seeing a lot of announcements about returning English voice actors and stuff, I dunno why but I’m thinking the remake could be overhyped with all this stuff, but I’m sure it’s still going to be enjoyable for the people who read the manga, who watched the original anime series and newcomers alike.

Speaking of the manga, I wondered why is there a need for a remake now, one of my friends told me that there could be an actual ending of the series since the original anime prematuredly ended when the manga was still going at the time, so I believe the remake might add the manga’s ending or something, I don’t know anything about it but it sounds like a likely thing to happen.

7.- Miru Tights - May 11th: There isn’t much to comment on this one, but it’s interesting because it’s basically Yom the anime. Yep, the man of the thights is getting an anime. Who would knew one day this would happen? Also, it comes out on May 11th, it’s kind of an unusual date even for a web series.

8.- 四月一日さん家の (Watanuki-san Chi No) - April 19th: After Virtual-san wa Miteiru, it seems like the anime industry wouldn’t give up on start making anime with VTubers now.

Unlike Virtual-san wa Miteiru, this one’s not really classified as “anime”, it’s more like a drama as its official Twitter account says or something. Well, at least this show stars Tokino Sora as one of the three leads, so it’ll be interesting. Though I’m not sure anyone would really like to torrent this but at the same time it’d be a waste not to.

9.- Bungou Stray Dogs season 3 - April 12th: I’ve watched the first two seasons of the show in December 2017, then watched the movie in my cinema with my older sister on her birthday, I’m definitely quite a fan of the series, not completely hardcore as I need to read the manga, but I’m fine for now. Anyways, I’m glad there’s a third season happening and can’t wait to see it.

There was originally going to be a Chiitan anime this Spring but it got delayed to Summer. And yeah, you read that right, a Chiitan anime.

HONORABLE MENTION (Since that just happened): Pop Team Epic special: I genuinely forgot a special was going to occur on April 1st (being April Fools), but I’m glad I watched it and still loved it like the base series and now I want season 2.

Thanks for reading this post, this must have been the longest post I’ve ever made yet for so many reasons. What’s your most anticipated anime of the season?

Twitter: @HKomaeda.

[clubsocial-india]

New on Sports Illustrated: NFL Mock Draft: Vegas Odds Predict First Round

What would happen if the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft goes exactly how the oddsmakers in Vegas predict?

The 2020 NFL Draft is just hours away. Thousands of mock drafts have been produced so far, but this one is a little different. This mock isn't predicated specifically on team need, value or hype. Below is what Vegas oddsmakers believe is most likely to happen on Thursday night based on betting odds. 

1. Cincinnati Bengals: QB, Joe Burrow, LSU

Oddsmakers in Vegas are no longer posting any betting odds since they have learned it’s a foregone conclusion that the Heisman Trophy-winning LSU quarterback will be the first player off the board.

2. Washington: DE, Chase Young, Ohio State

The star Buckeye had a stellar junior season that saw him lead the nation with 16.5 sacks, six forced fumbles and 21 tackles for loss in just 12 games. Barring a last-minute shock, Washington will grab the player who many draft experts have rated as the best overall prospect in the entire draft. He is now -1430 to land with Washington at DraftKings sportsbook.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +550; Defense -900

Young Draft Position Odds Betting: 2.5 (Over +415; Under -875)

3. Detroit Lions: CB, Jeffrey Okudah, Ohio State

There’s been growing speculation that the Lions could trade down with a team looking to jump up to acquire either Tua Tagovailoa of Alabama or perhaps Oregon’s Justin Herbert. Okudah is an ideal fit for Matt Patricia’s press coverage scheme. William Hill now has the standout cover corner as a -150 favorite to land with the Lions.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +400; Defense -600

Okudah Draft Position Odds Betting: 4.5 (Over +115; Under -145)

4. New York Giants: OT, Jedrick Wills, Alabama

The growing speculation that Wills is coveted by Dave Gettleman has become a reality with the oddsmakers. FanDuel sportsbook now has the outstanding offensive tackle out of Alabama as the favorite to be the Giants’ pick at No. 4 at odds of -175. Wills is also now a monster favorite in the “First Offensive Lineman Drafted” market at odds of -188 at William Hill. Meanwhile, at FanDuel sportsbook, the odds on the Giants going with an offensive lineman with their first pick now stands at -400.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -110; Defense -110

Wills Draft Position Odds Betting: 8.5 (Over +160; Under -200)

5. Miami Dolphins: QB, Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama

Despite all the smoke screens that Miami prefers Justin Herbert at No. 5, the front office decides to invest high draft capital on the former Alabama star QB. Tagovailoa is now a -160 favorite to be drafted ahead of Justin Herbert over at FanDuel sportsbook.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -925; Defense +690

Tagovailoa Draft Position Odds Betting: 3.5 (Over -360; Under +280)

6. Los Angeles Chargers: QB, Justin Herbert, Oregon

Herbert has all the tools of a prototypical NFL prospect: size (6-foot-6, 237 pounds), speed (4.46 40-yard dash) and superior arm strength. At FanDuel sportsbook, Herbert is a prohibitive favorite (-950) to be drafted ahead of Utah State’s Jordan Love (+560).

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -700; Defense +535

Herbert Draft Position Odds Betting: 5.5 (Over -110; Under -110)

7. Carolina Panthers: DL, Derrick Brown, Auburn

Brown is the prototypical NFL run-stuffer at 6-foot-5 and 320 pounds that NFL scouts and GMs crave as cornerstones of their interior lines. Brown is a defensive tackle with a rare combination of size and disruptive traits. His overall draft position number (8.5) has seen significant sharp steam with the under now juiced to odds of -200 at FanDuel sportsbook.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +185; Defense -275

Brown Draft Position Odds Betting: 8.5 (Over +150; Under -200)

8. Arizona Cardinals: OT, Tristan Wirfs, Iowa

The Cardinals made the single biggest splash of the 2020 offseason by stealing superstar wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins from the Houston Texans. Our SI Crystal ball predicts that Arizona will look to stay on the offensive side of the ball (-315). Arizona is favored to draft an offensive lineman (-200) with their first-round pick over at DraftKings sportsbook. Wirfs’ overall draft position market (8.5) has seen sharp action in recent days on the under which now stands at -170 at William Hill.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -315; Defense +225

Wirfs Draft Position Odds Betting: 8.5 (Over +140; Under -170)

9. Jacksonville Jaguars: LB, Isaiah Simmons, Clemson

The odds on his overall draft position projection of 6.5, which once stood with heavy juice (-160) to the under, now stands with moderate juice (-140) in the opposite direction on the over. This strong move coincides with significant support from sharp bettors that arguably the best overall prospect will not be selected by either the Lions at No. 3 or the Giants at No. 4.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +120; Defense -175

Simmons Draft Position Odds Betting: 6.5 (Over -140; Under +110)

10. Cleveland Browns: OT, Andrew Thomas, Georgia

The odds on Thomas’ overall draft position projection of 10.5, which once stood with juice (-130) to the over, now stands with juice (-130) in the opposite direction on the under at William Hill. At DraftKings, the Browns are prohibitive favorites (-305) to go offensive line in the first round.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -600; Defense +400

Thomas Draft Position Odds Betting: 10.5 (Over +110; Under -130)

11. New York Jets: OT, Mekhi Becton, Louisville

The Jets are favored to go offensive line and they do just that by landing the 6-foot-7, 360-pounder out of Louisville. Becton has seen his draft stock tumble with the oddsmakers adjusting his overall draft position number from 8.5 to 10.5 at DraftKings sportsbook after word broke over the weekend of a recent failed drug test. The Jets have been known to shock fans on draft day and do so once again taking a risk on a talented player with tremendous upside.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -500; Defense +350

Becton Draft Position Odds Betting: 10.5 (Over -125; Under +105)

12. Las Vegas Raiders: WR, Jerry Jeudy, Alabama

The Raiders need star power in their first season in Las Vegas and they get that in one of the best route running wide receivers to come into the NFL in decades. Nearly every book has Jeudy favored as the first wide receiver off the board, slightly ahead of CeeDee Lamb. The Raiders are heavily favored at odds of -167 to go wide receiver with the No. 12 pick at DraftKings sportsbook, with Jeudy’s overall draft position number (12.5) continuing to be shaded strongly to the under at odds of -155 at William Hill.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -225; Defense +170

Jeudy Draft Position Odds Betting: 12.5 (Over +125; Under -155)

13. San Francisco 49ers : WR, CeeDee Lamb, Oklahoma

San Francisco is heavily favored (-177) to draft a wide receiver with the No. 13 selection at DraftKings sportsbook. Lamb is the second betting choice in William Hill’s “First Overall Wide Receiver Drafted” market at odds of +130, only slightly behind Jeudy (+120). Lamb has seen his overall draft position number of 13.5, shaded heavily to the under (-175), adjust to 12.5 juiced (-130) to the under at William Hill.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -225; Defense +180

Lamb Draft Position Odds Betting: 12.5 (Over +100; Under -130)

14. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: OT, Josh Jones, Houston

The first real curve ball of the night comes at pick No. 14. Tampa Bay is heavily favored (-400) to go offensive line in an attempt to bolster the protection in front of Tom Brady at DraftKings sportsbook. With four offensive tackles already off the board, the Buccaneers select fast-rising prospect Josh Jones 13 spots earlier than his overall draft position projection at William Hill.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -550; Defense +300

Jones Draft Position Odds Betting: 27.5 (Over -110; Under -110)

15. Denver Broncos: WR, Henry Ruggs III, Alabama

The Broncos are strongly favored (-200) to draft a wide receiver at pick No. 15 in the first round at DraftKings sportsbook. John Elway lands Drew Lock one of the most dynamic wideouts in this year’s draft in Ruggs. Pay attention to the significant move on Ruggs’ overall position market (15.5), which now stands heavily juiced to the under at odds of -280.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -290; Defense +200

Ruggs Draft Position Odds Betting: 15.5 (Over +165; Under -280)

16. Atlanta Falcons: DT, Javon Kinlaw, South Carolina

The oddsmakers at DraftKings sportsbook have the Falcons favored (+100) to go defensive line with their first-round pick. Atlanta wants to add another pass rusher, even with Dante Fowler Jr. and Takk McKinley already on the roster. Kinlaw is solid value this late in the first round.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +300; Defense -250

Kinlaw Draft Position Odds Betting: 13.5 (Over -125; Under +105)

17. Dallas Cowboys: CB, C.J. Henderson, Florida

The Cowboys lost top cornerback Byron Jones in free agency. The oddsmakers at DraftKings sportsbook list cornerback (+175) as the favorite for Dallas at pick No. 17. The juice on his overall draft position (16.5) at Bovada now stands at a whopping -600 to the under.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +200; Defense -250

Henderson Draft Position Betting Odds: 16.5 (Over +350; Under -600)

18. Miami Dolphins (via PIT): OLB, K'Lavon Chaisson, LSU

Chaisson is a -200 favorite to be drafted ahead of Kenneth Murray (+154) over at FanDuel sportsbook. The Dolphins come to their second of three first-round selections having already added their franchise quarterback. Now it's time to continue to rebuild the roster. Chaisson’s athleticism enables him to be one of the best edge pass rushers in the draft. With Kyle Van Noy on one side and Chaisson on the other, tackles in the AFC East are officially put on notice.

Chaisson Draft Position Odds Betting: 16.5 (Over -160; Under +120)

19. Las Vegas Raiders (via CHI): LB, Kenneth Murray, Oklahoma

Murray grew up idolizing Ray Lewis and his game is very similar, making plays in coverage and against the run. Murray dominated at Oklahoma and he will fit in great with Jon Gruden’s style of defense. Murray is now -500 to be drafted in the first round at DraftKings sportsbook.

Murray Draft Position Odds Betting: 21.5 (Over -120; Under +100)

20. Jacksonville Jaguars (via LAR): WR, Justin Jefferson, LSU

In 2019, the 6-foot-1, 203-pound LSU receiver hauled in 111 balls to go along with 18 touchdowns. Jefferson is rising up draft boards and is easily one of the hottest players as we approach the draft on Thursday night. After landing Simmons at No. 9, the Jaguars are enjoying the best draft of any team if the betting odds hold true to form. The juice on the under (-270) on Jefferson’s overall draft position number continues to steam as oddsmakers at Bovada do not believe he makes it beyond his projection of 21.5.

Jefferson Draft Position Odds Betting: 21.5 (Over +180; Under -270)

21. Philadelphia Eagles: WR, Denzel Mims, Baylor

The Eagles are heavily favored (-200) to draft a wide receiver with pick No. 21 at DraftKings sportsbook. Alshon Jeffery, DeSean Jackson and Nelson Agholor missed a combined 24 games last year. Agholor is now wearing Silver and Black in Las Vegas and Jeffery’s future in Philly is uncertain to say the least. However, the Eagles will be disappointed to see four wide receivers already off the board when they are on the clock. Mims has been rising up draft boards after scoring 28 touchdowns in three seasons at Baylor. He is now nearly a two-to-one favorite to land in the first round. Mims is a -200 favorite to be drafted ahead of Tee Higgins (+154) over at FanDuel sportsbook.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -200; Defense +150

Mims Draft Position Odds Betting: 32.5 (Over +125; Under -195)

22. Minnesota Vikings: CB, Kristian Fulton, LSU

The Vikings are favored to draft a cornerback (-110) with their first of two selections in the first round of the draft. After seeing Okudah and Henderson off the board early, they grab Fulton just a few spots ahead of the oddsmakers’ overall projection number of 24.5. At the NFL Scouting Combine, Fulton clocked in with a 4.46 40-yard dash and 35.5-inch vertical jump, both among the best marks for a cornerback in this year's draft class. Fulton is a -235 favorite to be drafted in the first round at FanDuel sportsbook.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +140; Defense -170

Fulton Draft Position Odds Betting: 24.5 (Over -110; Under -110)

23. New England Patriots: DE, A.J. Epenesa, Iowa

With a total of 12 draft picks, including four in the top 100, New England will have a chance to replenish a roster that most notably lost arguably the greatest quarterback in league history. After losing Van Noy in free agency, the Patriots begin to reshape their front seven with Epenesa. In 2019, Epenesa recorded 11.5 sacks, 14 tackles for loss and four forced fumbles. The oddsmakers have adjusted his original draft position projection of 32.5 down to 29.5 as sharp steam continues to pound his under as a mid-20s selection. Epenesa is now a -175 favorite to be drafted in the first round at FanDuel sportsbook.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +110; Defense -140

Epenesa Draft Position Odds Betting: 29.5 (Over -110; Under -110)

24. New Orleans Saints: LB, Patrick Queen, LSU

According to the oddsmakers at DraftKings sportsbook, the Saints are favored to either draft a wide receiver or linebacker with their first-round pick. With Justin Jefferson off the board, the Saints turn their attention to the linebacker position. Queen (6-foot, 225 pounds) produced 85 tackles, 12 tackles for losses, three sacks and an interception for the National Champion LSU Tigers.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +110; Defense -140

Queen Draft Position Odds Betting: 23.5 (Over -110; Under -110)

25. Minnesota Vikings: WR, Brandon Aiyuk, Arizona State

We have seen the juice flip in regards to Aiyuk’s overall draft position number in Vegas. Previously the over was juiced to -145 on his projection (32.5). However, we now see an adjusted price of -135 in the opposite direction to the under. The oddsmakers continue to see sharp action that one of the true risers in the draft finds his way into the first round. The Vikings traded talented, but often disgruntled wide receiver Stefon Diggs to Buffalo earlier this offseason. With their second selection in the first round, Minnesota drafts the Arizona State star who caught 65 passes for 1,192 yards and eight touchdowns and shined as a return man in 2019.

Aiyuk Draft Position Odds Betting: 32.5 (Over +105; Under -135)

26. Miami Dolphins: S, Xavier McKinney, Alabama

McKinney is a -190 favorite to be drafted ahead of Trevon Diggs (+146) over at FanDuel sportsbook. Regarded as one of the top safeties, the two-year starter at Alabama was highly productive, racking up five interceptions, two TD returns, six sacks, five forced fumbles and 11 tackles for loss over the last two seasons. The comparisons to Earl Thomas make the Dolphins look to McKinney. McKinney will join a defense that was transformed via free agency with the additions of CB Byron Jones and LB Kyle Van Noy. He will fit in nicely in a potentially dominant secondary that also consists of standout cornerback Xavien Howard.

McKinney Draft Position Odds Betting: 24.5 (Over -110; Under -110)

27. Seattle Seahawks: DE, Yetur Gross-Matos, Penn State

The oddsmakers at DraftKings sportsbook list defensive line as the favorite for the Seahawks at No. 27. Gross-Matos is now a prohibitive favorite (-250) to go under his draft position projection number of 27.5. The 6-foot-5, 266-pound edge rusher would be the first Nittany Lion to be selected in the first round since Saquon Barkley went No. 2 overall in 2018. The Seahawks could lose star defensive lineman Jadeveon Clowney to free agency and the talented Nittany Lion helps fill that potential void.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +135; Defense -180

Gross-Matos Draft Position Odds Betting: 27.5 (Over +160; Under -250)

28. Baltimore Ravens: LB, Zack Baun, Wisconsin

The Ravens are favored to draft a linebacker with their first pick at DraftKings sportsbook. Baltimore enters the 2020 NFL Draft with inside linebacker being one of their most pressing needs. Baun had a 2020 NFL Scouting Combine drug test come back positive for a diluted sample. His draft stock isn't likely to be significantly impacted because the positive test won't count against him under terms of the NFL's new collective bargaining agreement. In 2019, Baun finished among the nation’s leaders with 19.5 tackles for loss and 12.5 sacks. He’s shown the ability to play both in the middle and around the edge as a versatile run stopper and pass rusher.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +110; Defense -140

Baun Draft Position Odds Betting: 32.5 (Over +105; Under -125)

29. Tennessee Titans: OT, Austin Jackson, USC

The oddsmakers list offensive line as the favorite for the Titans at DraftKings sportsbook. The Titans immediately shore up their offensive line in the first round after losing Jack Conklin in free agency to the Cleveland Browns. Jackson is a great athlete with quick feet and excellent agility. The sharp steam (-210) has begun to take shape in his overall draft position market (29.5) as bettors believe Jackson will be the sixth offensive tackle selected among the first 32.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -130; Defense +110

Diggs Draft Position Odds Betting: 29.5 (Over +180; Under -210)

30. Green Bay Packers: WR, Tee Higgins, Clemson

The oddsmakers strongly (-285) believe the Packers will look to get Aaron Rodgers some help on the offensive side of the ball in the opening round at FanDuel sportsbook. The oddsmakers have made drafting a wide receiver the clear betting favorite (-105). The former Clemson star fits the betting bill as the best wideout on the board at No. 30.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense -285; Defense +180

Higgins Draft Position Odds Betting: 32.5 (Over +100; Under -120)

31. San Francisco 49ers: CB, A.J. Terrell, Clemson

After landing the much-needed star wideout in Lamb at No. 13, the 49ers now aim to shore up the back end of one of the league’s best defenses. Terrell is now a -270 favorite to be drafted in the first round at FanDuel sportsbook.

Terrell Draft Position Odds Betting: 33.5 (Over +100; Under -125)

32. Kansas City Chiefs: CB, Jeff Gladney, TCU

The oddsmakers at DraftKings strongly (-190) believe the defending Super Bowl champions will look to shore up their secondary with their first-round pick. There’s some steady steam that Gladney will be the final player chosen on Night 1. If this pick comes to fruition, this will mean that no running backs will be drafted in the first round, with the Chiefs passing up on adding Georgia’s D’Andre Swift.

SI Crystal Ball Betting Odds: Offense +120; Defense -190

Gadney Draft Position Odds Betting: 32.5 (Over +115; Under -135)

First Round Recap By The Numbers

(6) OTs drafted

(6) WRs hear their names among top 32

(5) Clemson and Alabama lead the way with the most players drafted

(3) QBs come off the board

(0) RBs or TEs drafted

MORE FROM SI GAMBLING:

SI's 2020 NFL Draft Prop Betting Guide

SI Gambling's Favorite 2020 NFL Draft Prop Bets

When Will D'Andre Swift Be Selected?

When Will Yetur Gross-Matos Be Selected?

When Will Jalen Reagor Be Selected?

When Will Tristan Wirfs Be Selected?

April 23, 2020 at 06:07AM NFL Mock Draft: Vegas Odds Predict First Round from Blogger https://ift.tt/2VPhxxZ

[flauntpage]

Phils’ Offensive Woes Return as Momentum Disappears in Loss to Padres

If you were hoping Charlie Manuel’s presence would magically provide a sustainable fix for the shortcomings of an underperforming lineup, well, I’ve got bad news for you.

The offense immediately heated up when Manuel joined the team in the dugout on Wednesday night as it batted a combined .337 and plated 26 runs over three games (8.67 runs per game).

That production and the good vibes have each quickly disappeared, however, as the Phillies reverted back to their familiar struggles at the plate over the final two games of a disappointing series loss to a Padres team that entered the weekend only 11-20 since the All-Star break.

The Phillies were blanked over the final six frames on Saturday night. They followed up that effort today by scoring only two runs on four hits. The lineup produced a combined .156 batting average in the back-to-back losses.

And just like that, their momentum is gone, although manager Gabe Kapler seemed pretty pleased with the team’s overall effort.

“Obviously, it’s frustrating to lose today’s baseball game,” Kapler said. “Really proud of the grind in the at-bats, saw 110 pitches off their starter, saw 27 pitches with three outs in the ninth inning.”

They did see quite a few pitches, particularly in the ninth against Padres closer Kirby Yates, but Phillies couldn’t do anything against a San Diego bullpen that began the day owners of the NL’s fifth-worst ERA, though they also had its second-best fWAR.

How exactly does that happen?

Padres relievers have the league’s second-highest K/9 (9.89) but also possess its second-worst BABIP. In other words, they’ve been unlucky.

That luck evened out in the final two games of this series as the Phillies produced only a single hit while failing to score in six innings against San Diego’s bullpen.

In the process, the Phillies wasted another solid performance from starting pitcher Jason Vargas, who was one out away from recording his third quality start in four appearances with the Phillies. He limited the Padres to only two earned runs over 5.2 IP and now has a 3.52 ERA since arriving in Philadelphia late last month.

Despite the Phillies’ offense reverting to the familiar lifeless iteration that we’ve too often seen prior to Manuel’s arrival last week, Adam Haseley worked his way back from an 0-2 count to draw a crucial two-out walk in the sixth inning. Jean Segura followed with his second double of the game to score Haseley with the tying run, and it appeared the Phillies might yet still find a way to scrape together a win.

That thought would be short-lived, however, as recently-acquired reliever Jared Hughes gave up a go-ahead solo home run to San Diego’s Austin Hedges, who also had a career-high four hits, on this 0-2 curveball:

Austin Hedges homers (9) on a line drive to left off Jared Hughes Exit Velocity 102 MPH Distance 388 FT Launch Angle 20.06#FriarFaithful vs #RingTheBell pic.twitter.com/EgNLR0T6Be

— Strand Sport Stats (@StrandStats) August 18, 2019

Like it has for many Phillies pitchers in 2019, the home run continues to be problematic for Hughes, who had been excellent in recent seasons at keeping the ball in the yard. Here’s his HR/9 over the last three seasons:

2017: 0.6

2018: 0.5

2019: 1.2

Interestingly, Hughes entered today’s game throwing his curveball on only 8.5% of his total pitches this season. Opponents were 0 for 10 with 5 Ks against it prior to Hedges’ home run. So there’s that.

Harper Exits With Dehydration

Bryce Harper left today’s game in the sixth inning after experiencing symptoms of dehydration. After the game, Kapler provided an update on Harper.

“Bryce was experiencing some blurred vision, and we weren’t sure what was going on with him, so we took the most precautionary measure we could and got him out of that baseball game,” he said. “Turns out he was dehydrated, he got an IV, and we were able to clear the symptoms, at least for the time being.”

Harper spoke to reporters after the game, but I didn’t feel like transcribing my recording, so here’s part of his comments:

Bryce Harper said he feels fine after the game still has a little headache but he’s OK after suffering from dehydration. And even with the #Phillies losing two of three to San Diego he still trying to have a positive outlook on rest of season. pic.twitter.com/OiwaNjj3BX

— Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) August 18, 2019

Thanks, Howard.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem like anybody is overly concerned.

Hoskins’ Miserable Stretch Continues

What in the world is going on with Rhys Hoskins?

In his first 102 games this season, Hoskins hit .263 with a .922 OPS, but after an 0 for 4 afternoon Sunday, he remains in the midst of a brutal 8 for 73 stretch that has seen his average and OPS plummet to .237 and .854, respectively.

Despite the ugly numbers, Kapler remains confident that Hoskins is on the verge of breaking out.

“I thought Rhys’ at-bats were great today, and I’m feeling pretty protective of him right now because I know how hard he’s working,” he said. “I know how much effort and time he’s putting in, and I think the at-bat quality remains strong even though at the end the results aren’t there. And I know how disappointed he is in it, and I’m disappointed for him because I know this is going to turn around for him.”

In the eighth inning, Hoskins did drive a 3-1 pitch to the center field fence that fell a foot short of tying the game. According to MLB’s Statcast, the swing produced a .520 xBA (expected batting average). It’s been that kind of stretch for Hoskins in recent weeks.

Here’s what he had to say about his prolonged slump:

I feel great. Obviously, it sucks to not contribute and not produce, but swing-wise I feel great. I feel like for the most part I’m seeing pitches. I’m seeing the ball fine, just for whatever reason, things are a little off. The last couple weeks when I do click something, it’s right at somebody, so that’s baseball. Unfortunately, I know it’s really cliche. I wish I had a different answer. I’ve sat for hours and hours and looked at film trying to find something that I can go in the cage and take a thousand swings to fix, but at some point, you just gotta keep going up there and stuff will turn.

  Segura Hustling

We will end on a positive note, I guess.

Segura has been criticized for a lack of hustle at times this season, but his heads-up base running stood out on what appeared to be a routine RBI single in the first inning. Segura’s hit left the bat with a 103 mph exit velocity, but he aggressively rounded the first base bag and took second when center fielder Manuel Margot fielded the ball flat-footed.

It didn’t amount to an additional run, but with such little margin for error in a packed wild card race that’s filled with average teams, the Phillies need to take every inch they can get. Plays such as that one could end up being the difference. Maybe.

I don’t know, I’m trying here.

The post Phils’ Offensive Woes Return as Momentum Disappears in Loss to Padres appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Phils’ Offensive Woes Return as Momentum Disappears in Loss to Padres published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[highschoolharrier]

Terrific 22 Boys Rankings (Pre-Season)

This is the first Terrific 22 ranking for the 2017 season.  Next ranking update for boys will be once the season gets started in a month and a half.  If you would like an explanation on the rankings and the surety ratings, please read here.

Rank-Team-Region-Surety Rating

1) Loudoun Valley (SE) 8.5- LV is making a big jump this year.  The VA 4A state champs and 3rd place NXN SE finisher looked strong heading into the season but now even more so after a couple top notch transfers have declared including a 9:02 runner in Sam Affolder.  

2) Great Oak (CA) 8- D1 state champs last year and 5th place at NXN, Great Oak is now synonymous with top level consistent performance.  They have the fastest average of returning teams in the 3200 with a 9:25 and could lead a contingent of CA team that may include as many as 4 squads this year at NXN.

3) Downers Grove North (MW) 8- DGN made it to NXN last year and finished 12th after winning IL 3A and placing runner-up at NXR MW.  The majority of that team returns this year and their experience should help them go far at nationals.

4) Christian Brothers(NE) 8- Perennial powerhouse CBA was third at NJ MOC last fall and placed first at NXR NE then 7th at NXN.  They return a strong squad that averaged 9:28 this spring.

5) Wayzata (H) 8- While Wayzata graduated some important runners, everyone else in the Heartland graduated more. Last year they placed 11th at NXN to go along with a MN 2A and NXR Heartland title.  The top 5 averaged 9:30 in the spring.

6) Carmel (MW) 7.5- After finishing runner-up at the Indiana state meet and 7th at NXR MW, the Carmel boys hit the track hard, averaging 9:28 for 3200.

7) Loyola (CA) 7.5- The D2 runner-up at state brings back a solid crew that averaged 9:28 during track.

8) Jesuit (NW) 7.5- While only finishing 3rd at OR 6A with no post season finishes as a team, Jesuit averaged 8:52 in the spring for 3k which easily translates to sub 9:30 for 3200.  

9) Springville (SW) 8- Another region where graduation opens up some big gaps. After placing 4th in UT 4A and third at NXR SW regional, Springville placed 15th at NXN and return five runners from that squad.  They averaged 9:43 for 3200 in track.

10) Dana Hills (CA) 7- Bringing back 4 from their runner-up team at CA D1 state last year, the Dana Hills boys averaged 9:41 this spring.  There is a chance they could improve on their 14th place finish last year at NXN.

11) St. Johns (NE) 7- While only finishing 6th at NXR NE last year, St. John’s had a great year on the track averaging 9:36 for 2 miles.  

12) Burnt Hills (NY) 7.5- 6th place at NXR NY last year with only one senior in the top 5, Burnt Hills also won NY B then placed 2nd at Feds.  Their spring 3200 average was 9:37.

13) Woodlands College Park (S) 7.5- College Park finished at 9th in TX 6A, then runner-up at NXR South before finishing 21st at NXN.  They returned enough talent and experience to run 9:39 for their returning 3200 average.

14) Roosevelt (CA) 6.5- 3rd in CA D1 last year, Roosevelt finished out the year hot with their top 5 returners hitting 9:28 average for 3200, all of whom ran at XC state.

15) St. Xavier (SE) 7.5- Returning 6 of 7 from last year’s 13th place team at NXN should get them back in the big dance.  The returners bring the slowest 3200 average from the spring on this list at 9:49.  St. Xavier was runner-up at NXR SE after winning KY 3A.

16) Flower Mound (S) 6.5- 3rd in TX 6A then 6th at NXR South, Flower Mound gets the nod over the Woodlands this year due to low stick Alex Maier who will also be looking for top individual honors. Their spring 3200 average was 9:36

17) Staples (NE) 7- With a competent fifth runner, last year’s 22nd place NXN squad could return as four of their top 5 come back.  Staples won New Englands, was NXR NE runner-up and averaged 9:44 last year.  

18) Woodlands (S) 6.5- Your TX 6A state champions from last year looked in contention for a national title but struggled at NXR South finishing 3rd and getting in on the wildcard before finishing 8th at NXN.  They look like they will be in the same position this year, getting in on at least a wildcard bid. Woodlands averaged 9:42 this past spring.  They were last years Hoka Postal Nats runner-up last year with a 9:20 avg.

19) Central Valley (NW) 6.5- Second in WA 4A last year but only 11th at NXR NW, CV helped themselves this spring by averaging 9:43 on the track.

20) Middleton (H) 6.5- Finishing 3rd in WI D1, Middleton did not move on to compete in Nike Heartland.  They made good progress in the spring, though, and is averaging 9:41 with top 7 all under 10.

21) Palmer Ridge (SW) 6- PR is barely sliding in over the rest of the field currently but their 9:49 average for returners is enough to get it done for the time being. Palmer placed 7th last year in the NXR SW regional.  They were also the CO 4A champions last year.

22) Niskayuna (NY) 6.5- After a very rough race at NXR NY in 2016 (13th overall), the squad developed a tight pack during the track season having a 26 second spread and a 9:44 average.  

Photo courtesy of MonsterVSRobot.Com.