on the topic of men in magical girl shows being treated worse than women in shonen... mot only is it not true but a lot of men in magical girl shows are actually nuanced, full fledged characters with their own personalities and characters arcs.
mamoru chiba may be the poster boy for the male damsel in distress in magical girl shows but he's actually very helpful to sailor moon, supporting her both emotionally and in fights and doing everything he can to be useful to her. he even had a whole arc in the dream arc about wanting to be more useful to usagi.
syaoran li starts out as a rival to sakura and proves to be quite capable, even collecting a few cards on his own. he slowly becomes friends with her and eventually, her boyfriend. in clear card he's a very loving boyfriend and does everything he can to support sakura and make her happy.
touya kinomoto is sakura's brother who knows about her powers but doesn't tell her. he watches sakura from a distance and protects her in any way he can.
yukito tsukishiro is the alternate form of yue. he only knows about this near the end of the sakura card arc. but even then he's a good character with a full fledged personality. also he and touya are such a good couple.
masaya aoyama puts on a facade of the perfect, popular boy but deep down he's cynical and hates humanity because of what they're doing to the planet. but him meeting ichigo and spending time with her opens his heart. he also takes on the role of blue knight to protect ichigo.
shugo chara has many magical boys. tadase hotori, kukai souma, kairi sanjou, and nagihiko fujisaki are all just as important as the girls and they have their own character arcs. even ikuto is quite a complex character, that is if you take away his whole deal with amu.
princess tutu has just as many main male characters as female characters, probably even more and they're all extremely important to the story. mytho is the prince from the story drosselmeyer wrote who went into the real world after he shattered his heart to seal away the raven. fakir is a descendent of drosselmeyer and starts out mean but eventually grows to care about ahiru and plays a very important role in the finale. drosselmeyer is the driving force behind all the events in the series.
the precure franchise, although it did some of its male characters dirty (*cough pikario and takumi cough*) also has some great male characters.
seiji sagara is megumi's childhood friend who finds out about her being a precure. even though he doesn't have any powers he does his best to support her and her friends.
prince kanata is the catalyst behind haruka becoming a precure and he's a capable fighter who does anything to protect his kingdom and supports the girls whenever he can.
henri wakamiya is the first ever male cure (although he's not on the main team) and gives a wonderful lesson about gender expression.
masato aikasi starts out being very conservative but after his heart is opened by henri, he starts to learn that gender roles are stupid and even stands up for his sister against their grandfather.
and now we have cure wing, who is going to he the first main male cure in the franchise.
even though there are male characters in magical girl shows who are either done dirty or quite useless, a lot of the time the authors actually develop the male characters just as much as the female characters.
and this should be an example because if these shojo magical girl authors can put just as much care into their male characters as their female characters, then what's stopping these male shone authors from doing the same to their female characters? shonen being aimed at boys and the authors not knowing how to write women is not an excuse. if shojo authors just said they don’t know how to write men, they would get laughed at. so why is it seen as an acceptable excuse for male shonen authors.
and even if there is a lack of men in these magical girl shows, so what? men have like 148293 shonen anime with generic male protagonist #738383 who beats up bad guys and gets a love interest whose only purpose is either the damsel in distress or fanservice bait. let us have a genre made for women by women. it won't hurt you.
2023.09.24 5 Star GP 2023 in Sanjou
Sanjou City Public Hall
504 people (sold out)
Hanan vs Waka Tsukiyama
The Hanan to Club Venus saga continues. I mean not really since Mariah was about to leave and it’s more just a fun interaction than a real story per se but it’s still fun seeing them interact. Anyway I thought this was a perfectly solid singles opener. Maybe a little slow but I think that’s understandable given Hanan was in the 5 Star and this is right in the peak of when people were dropping like flies. It’s interesting in hindsight given where Hanan’s at now and the two of them feuding over the New Blood Tag belts but nothing crazy, totally fine for what it is. - 3
Koguma vs Saki Kashima vs Yuna Mizumori
Wow…. Saki before the days of “No running, no bumps, no high speed”... I had fun with this but it’s also a very standard house show sort of high speed three way. It was fine and the finish was fun but there was really nothing to it and all 3 of them can for sure do more. In my insane dedication to watching my backlog shows it’s such a bummer seeing perfectly fine matches like this that just have no story running through them at all. - 2.5
Suzu Suzuki & Mei Seira vs Megan Bayne & Hanako
Mei really really brings out the best in Megan and Hanako is so good, especially for how long she’d been around at this point. I don’t like Megan no-selling and warping a whole match around her at the best of times, but she actually gave Suzu & Mei a little, and even got to lose bc she was with a rookie! She’s also at her best just literally tossing someone like Mei around, even better given how much fun Mei obviously has doing it. She took some gnarly bumps here too that were really not necessary for what the match was or this house show but I hope she had fun. - 3
Red Stars: Syuri vs Starlight Kid
I thought about skipping this match bc I didn’t really want to watch Kid bust her ankle, but she came in with it already taped up and was pretty clearly trying to work around it already. Given she was working against that I thought this was really solid and I remain pretty consistently impressed the 5 Star is as good as it was given the backstage stuff at the time. I liked Kid trying to work Syuri’s leg vs Syuri being. Syuri. And you could kind of see Daichi and Syuri using the fake checking on Syuri’s knee at the end to actually check on Kid’s ankle, which I thought was sweet. I’m sure in a better situation Kid and Syuri could do way more than this but I still liked it. Oh, and the booking of this show itself - like, the order of the card was fucked. Why on earth was this not the main. On a 5 Star show where it’s the only 5 Star match???? - 3
Mina Shirakawa & Mariah May vs Natsuko Tora & Ruaka
Every Rose Gold match is a precious treasure to be cherished, and this was the last one…. Truly tragic, not doing anything crazy but an enjoyable sendoff for a tag team I would not have expected to like as much as I did or see kiss as much as I have. I hope everyone else is taking notes. - 3
Giulia & Maika vs Hazuki & Saya Iida
This would be like a perfectly fine house show main event but again it’s just absolute nonsense that this was the main to this show. Has no character stuff really at all even, coming during a weird down period in the on-again-off-again Maika leaving DDM story that ultimately went nowhere. Not that that's their fault but it still sucks. I did actually end up enjoying this more than I expected to, my hopes weren’t high going into it but I enjoyed every combination of people in this and Hazuki and Maika in particular were really cooking, that could very much be My Shit and I’d love to see a lot more from them together. I mean I would like to see a lot more from Hazuki all of the time in any context but this was a good combo. All in all perfectly solid house show when you take into account when it took place and what was going on. - 3
Today is a soundtrack song from the first movie, right near the beginning when all the characters first appear and are introduced (as the title "The Keroro Platoon Appears" implies). If you listen closely, you can even hear parts specific to the respective team members, like the start of "Giroro's longest day" when he first appears or the hint of more traditional music when Dororo comes in. (^.^)
“Monsters: Ippyaku Sanjou Hiryuu Jigoku” The January 2024 Netflix Debut
The team and key image (shown above) for the anime adaptation of Eiichiro Oda's Monsters one-shot manga were unveiled via the official X account for his One Piece comic. In January 2024, the anime will be available for streaming on Netflix globally. Japan will also be able to stream it on Amazon Prime Video. The length of Monsters will be one television anime episode.
19. If you could go back and change one show, what would you change?
OH THIS IS FUN. I have enjoyed almost all the sentai I've seen but I think the one I would love to do this for is Kyoryuger. I was really excited to see Kyoryuger since I loved Abaranger and Ryusoulger and thought another dino sentai would be fun. I also am pretty positive feeling about most of Riku Sanjou's stuff so I thought it would be an easy watch from the clips I'd see. Unfortunately it ended up being one of my least favourite sentai seasons. The set up seemed so strong and all the characters had really great concepts but it felt like the show just failed to follow through on anyone outside of Daigo. Even Daigo's stuff failed to land for me. I'd change it so everyone got to develop themselves more and lend themselves to actually becoming a slightly dysfunctional team. Amy ESPECIALLY needed more focus. The idea of her being this rich girl with not a lot of real world experience felt really wasted and there was no real satisfying story around that.
Basically I'd change it so that there is much more equally spread storyline and development for everyone to that their compelling entrances don't go to waste
What were the quests you recommended again for Bond farming? I remember something about some nodes also dropping Hellfires, but gamepress/the wiki don't seem to list those at all
yeah, i dunno why they still haven’t updated with that information. you have to look at free quests in atlas academy DB to see what drops hellfires.
to make it simple, i’m not sure what kind of farming setup you’re working with exactly, but your best shot is probably sanjou san-bou in heian kyo. it’s a 3/3/2 hellfire drop node with mid-HP lancers and then two zerker bosses, so if you can get past the lancers most classes should be able to do it.
if you don’t have heian kyo finished or it’s just not working, armory of the fallen warriors in LB2 (this has a pretty high HP saber boss though) or nemesis island in atlantis (this is a zerker node, so rough if you’re quick/arts looping) have hellfires and max bond.
if you can’t get any of the hellfire nodes to work and just want to focus on bond, most arts loopers with advantage against assassins can do secret hangar in olympus or ba men cave in LB3 quite smoothly.
if you don’t have LB access outright, shinjuku 2-chome can be pretty good to quick or arts loop on because of its caster mobs, although the archer boss might be hard to oneshot. there’s also hidden village in camelot, which has slightly lower bond reward but can be reliably 2 turned if you have rider kintoki.
the short answer is: any free quests that rewards 815 bond while costing 21 ap that you can do consistently, preferably one that atlas DB says drops hellfires but these are weirdly rare (most hellfire nodes are 795 bond for some horrible reason) so depending on what your game has access to that may or may not be feasible. if you need help figuring out a team setup that works consistently on any of these i can also do that.
"We were worried that you wouldn't come back for a long time, did you know? Master was adamant on not sending anybody else to Ikedaya, except for us five."
Yasusada sighed. "Of course, Mutsunokami understood why he had to be part of the team, but Master made up his mind...you have to lead us to the mission."
Nagasone didn't say a word, nor did he acknowledge everything that Yasusada was saying. But he knows that it was still an important thing, that soon led to him being appointed Captain for the main mission.
"I know Master wouldn't want Mutsunokami to even lead the team at Sanjou Bridge...and you needed a tantou for the mission to go smoother..."
Izuminokami chimed in. "But y'know, Nagasone-san, he was more than just some substitute. He was...awfully important too, even if his former master had nothing to do with us. If given a chance, our Master would definitely argue with the Government to let another toudan in a standard six-men group just so he could be with us."
Nagasone nodded, this time clearly acknowledging them both. He knows where this is going at some point. "Believe me, I am grateful for him, for what it's worth. I'll be sure to give him proper thanks when I see him again."
Yagen Toushirou...thank you...for looking out for my comrades all this time...
Kore ga prologue hajime no ippo
Fumidasanai yatsu ni wa nai shinpo
Tsune ni number one player
Kechirasu ze hater
Yukute habamu yatsunya payback
We are the dream team
Sono na wo BUSTER (bros!)
Bukuro daihyou kasu kettobasu ka?
Ikuze fake rapper taiji nai yousha
Nasake muyou "Iccho honki dasu ka?"
Jakusha ijime wa gara janee
Kyousha taosu koto ni shika kyoumi nee
Dare ga sakeru orera kyoudai no kizuna
Uzuki dasu ze ano hi no fuzu kizu ga
One for the show, and two for ma bros,
nara three for the hood, de orera sanjou
Ore ga Ichiro kokora de ichido
Omishiri oki wo rep BUSTER BROS yo!
One, who's the one shin no RAPPER
Two, rule the world I'm the leader
Three, ie yo say ma name louder
Ore ga Ichiro (big bro in the house yo!)
Kore ga densetsu no hypnosis MIC
Hip hop no shin jidai tourai
Mada ikeru ka? Hands in the air yo
Ie yo who's the one, "Sore wa Ichiro"
Kore ga shinseki no RAP new generation
Atto iwa seru flow skill nara ma job
Bibitta gase rapper murder suru senpou
Sokkou de katazukete batoru de attou
Mada minu tenjou ga aru koto ga
Orera no gedou ryoku yami wo kirisaku
Asu ga rain demo nakama wo shinji
Flow de sashite rhyme de utsu panchi
Nai ze genkai, sude ni zendai
Mimon no skill de zenjin mitou sa
Nakamaya kazoku kyodai no tame da
Donna senkyou demo, nigecha dame da
Chuuto hanpa nara de naose
Wack janaize ore ni katsu kanousei
Mukau tekijin, think nara better feel
Mukau toko teki nashida iza shutsujin
One, who's the one shin no RAPPER
Two, rule the world I'm the leader
Three, ie yo say ma name louder
Ore ga Ichiro (big bro in the house yo!)
Kore ga densetsu no hypnosis MIC
Hip hop no shin jidai tourai
Mada ikeru ka? Hands in the air yo
Ie yo who's the one, "Sore wa Ichiro"
Never ever disrespect ma crew
Nakama kazo' nametara kill'em youshanaku
Orera kyoudai soroeba muteki daro
Donna sakusen mo kanpeki ni suikou
Magatta koto ga dai kirai
Suji tosu tame utaukara (gimme da MIC)
Kore wa ketsui hyoumei MIC toushi
Komaku ni kyoumei ukabu meikai na koukei
Yume tsukandara hanasu na kyoudai
Risou ga genjitsu koeru sono hi made wa
(Never give up) koe de shitomeru akuto
Tsugi no inpakuto in soaero rum show
I luv hip hop kore ga michi shirube
Kirihiraku michi de tsurete ku ze ijigen
Tsuite koreru yatsu wa koi iku ze
Arata na tenjou koeta sono saki e
One, who's the one shin no RAPPER
Two, rule the world I'm the leader
Three, ie yo say ma name louder
Ore ga Ichiro (big bro in the house yo!)
Kore ga densetsu no hypnosis MIC
Hip hop no shin jidai tourai
Mada ikeru ka? Hands in the air yo
Ie yo who's the one, "Sore wa Ichiro"
One, who's the one shin no RAPPER
Two, rule the world I'm the leader
Three, ie yo say ma name louder
Ore ga Ichiro (big bro in the house yo!)
Kore ga densetsu no hypnosis MIC
Hip hop no shin jidai tourai
Mada ikeru ka? Hands in the air yo
Ie yo who's the one, "Sore wa Ichiro"
Hanamaru’s second season is so family-oriented and it’s so great and really, I couldn’t ask for a better sequel and frankly, I could go on and on and we’d still be stuck here listening to me ramble till next weekend so here are some of my favorite moments among the brothers (who I classify specifically as “brothers” anyway) shown in episode 6:
The baby Kunihiros. Did Bushi-nii go off to train in the mountains again?
When they smile, all is right with the world.
I have also never been more grateful for their similarly designed uniforms.
Standing side-by-side like this, they both look so gallant. And adorable. <3
Aoe Boys
They both so tol, LOL
Awataguchi kids getting ready for bed.
+2
Hope these two get more screentime in later episodes. I didn’t get enough of them! >3<
Sleepy wakis
I’m glad they got a bigger room.
They all look better in a bigger room. xD
Every time they make an appearance, Hizamaru’s cuteness skyrockets off the charts. x33
The Rai kids (and one lazy guardian).
They’re so happy, I want to hug them and never let go! <3
Already covered the Samonji brothers for the first half but obligated to post this from the montage BECAUSE
Still not sure if I really see the Sanjou swords as “brothers” or not (they’ve always had a more “general family” feel to them, kinda like how I view Date-gumi) but I’ll include them as well cuz why the heck not?