#the pokemon were named after dbz characters

[beebeemagica]

I thank god everyday that aol hometown died and no one will ever stumble on my self-insert pokemon fanfic 😬

[i-keepmyideals]

Akira Toriyama

My first anime were Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Inuyasha and Dragon Ball Z. They were all on air at the same time when I was really little. The first time I saw DBZ was when I was like, five years old. I had just come home from my morning kindergarten class and my older sister was in like 4th grad at that point, so I was home alone with my dad for most of the school day, I would sit at the living room table and turn to Cartoon Network. Toonami used to come on in the afternoons and I think this might have been a marathon. The first episode of Dragon Ball Z I saw as the second episode when Raditz had touch down on earth. I was so into this man with crazy big hair fighting this guy in a orange jump suit and a green alien. It was fast paced and fun. After that, I was hooked. My sister didn't really care for anime other than Sailor Moon, so she wouldn't play fight with me, but I didn't care much. I'd just watch TV and pretend to be fighting with Goku

I'm from a small village of about 3,000 people. I'm black and there were other black families, white families, Hispanic families, I think my sister had a Japanese friend at some point. It was a very mixed community and everyone was welcome and everyone had their quirks. I was the only person that really watched anime, but I didn't feel ostracized. That is, until we moved to the south side of Chicago where it was, like, a 99% black community and people weren't so open minded. And the kids were mean in a way I wasn't used to. It was hard growing up as a black girl that liked anime. It's still kinda hard now in some places, but I held on to my favorite anime and they helped me make the right handful of friends.

I remember watching Resurrection F and getting so excited for Dragon Ball again. I remember being really little and my dad buying VHS tapes because they were Dragon Ball Z and I'd really want them. At that time we didn't know that the VHS tapes were waaaaaayyyy ahead of the US airing of the show so I was confused when one tape was somewhere in the Cell Saga and the androids were there lmao I remember not being super into Super, ironically. I remember laughing at 2AM with my friend like a year or two ago when I found out there were characters named Granola and the Heeters and losing our shit about it. I'm looking forward to Daima and I really want to play Sparking Zero when it comes out. I saw an article a week ago where Toriyama was talking about how excited he was to be working on some projects.

And then last night about ten minutes after I came in from work, another friend on discord told us Akira Toriyama passed away. And I was in disbelief, cuz ain't no way he died. He has so much going on and was looking forward to. And I think that's what made me cry after a while last night. He was so excited, so happy and so in love with what he did. Thinking about how he won't be able to work on these things anymore and see them come to fruition made me so sad. I was sad for his family for losing a loved one so suddenly and keeping that to themselves and grieving for a week before sharing it with the public. And then finally, I cried for that huge chunk of my life that was shaped by Akira Toriyama.

He didn't just make an anime or a cartoon, he made childhoods. He was an inspiration. So many mangaka we have today were influenced by him. Oda, my favorite manga and anime creator Kubo, Kishimoto. the creators of the big three, all point to Toriyama as their biggest inspiration. Without Toriyama, the world of anime would look very different. A lot of out lives would be very different. He is the reason why a lot of us began to draw, or learn Japanese, or get into making music. Yeah, we might not have known him personally, but he still touched our lives in some way, whether you are a Dragon Ball fan or a Chrono Trigger fan, or something else in between.

So, don't feel embarrassed or silly for mourning the death of a technical stranger. He did a lot for the medium and a lot for us fans. It's only natural to feel saddened when someone like that passes away. Same for when Kazuki Takahashi passed or Stan Lee. Yeah, I might have clowned Dragon Ball Super, but it didn't really matter. Toriyama was doing another victory lap at that point. He truly did it all. He did so much work that I think I can really say rest easy and in peace.

Thank you Akira Toriyama for creating a safe space for me when times were tough I faced really harsh bullies. When things were really looking down, I could think of Goku's goofy smile and turn on an episdoe of Dragon Ball Z and feel a little better. Thank you for being such an inspiration to myself and other creators I look up to. Thank you for working so hard, you did amazing work.

[medea10]

My Review of Requiem of the Rose King

How did I get into this anime? Let’s just see what my thoughts were the second I saw the promo poster.

“This looks like something that should have been made 15 years ago and something Studio Gonzo should have put a pin in. Are there going to be a bunch of Texans doing English accents? This looks to be promising to the female yaoi demographic. How is there not an ALI PROJECT song prepared for this? Wait, can we still get an ALI PROJECT song for this anime? Why isn’t there an ALI PROJECT song for this anime?!”

This story is loosely based on Shakespeare's plays. England has been in a hot-bed of royal fights over which house is fitting of being crowned King of England, the house of York or the house of Lancaster. At the beginning of our story, it’s decided that Henry VI is the rightful king. But let’s see if a certain Richard has a say in the matter.

Richard is the third son to the Duke of York (and his name’s sake). Richard was loved by his father but despised by his mother. Take your pick, it could be because Richard is neither man nor woman, Richard was born under a bad omen, or the fact that Richard looks absolutely nothing like his parents or his brothers. Despite the harsh shitty upbringing, he’s still devoted to his father and wants to help his father pursue the crown.

However, Richard’s father fell to defeat at the hands of the house of Lancaster. But Richard is determined to keep the dream alive by having his elder brothers Edward and George hold the crown once it was won by any means necessary. He’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty or setting up anyone that gets in his way. But aside from that, there is a bit of a love story that revolves around Richard and Henry VI.

Neither of them knows of each other’s family name (at the beginning), but things get tumultuous when everything is out in the open.

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: Before I go into who is in this anime, I must always praise this one voice actor. Mitsuki Saiga! If you need someone who can play literally every gender in the known world and even a few undiscovered ones and Megumi Ogata is in the can, Mitsuki Saiga can get the job done! Okay now that I got that out of my system, FUNimation nabbed this one at the last minute and saw it quite fitting to give this an English dub. Oh fuck! The Texas brigade dubbing something clearly British! It’s Black Butler all over again where J. Michael Tatum is the clear winner and everything else is on levels between ‘okay’ and ‘cringe’. I don’t know. I’m not brave enough to hear the English version. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

JAPANESE CAST: *Richard is played by Mitsuki Saiga (known for Drew on Pokemon AG, Maria on FMA, Yelena on Attack on Titan, Henry on Black Clover, Kurako on Princess Jellyfish, Wolfram on Kyou Kara Maou, and Rossiu on Gurren Lagann)

*Henry is played by Hikaru Midorikawa (known for Zel on Slayers, Zora on Black Clover, Tamahome on Fushigi Yugi, Li on Code Geass, Yoshino on Clannad, Best Jeanist on My Hero Academia, and 16 on DBZ)

ENGLISH CAST: *Richard is played by Ciaran Strange

*Henry is played by Landon Mcdonald (known for Enmu on Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, Shun on Rent-A-Girlfriend, and Shiba on Tokyo Revengers)

SHIPPING: Characters screwing each other in more ways than once. There’s a lot of betrayal, usurping, and manipulating people’s emotions just to get their way.

Yeah, that’s Shakespeare!

Anyone named Henry loved Richard. Anyone who looked like Henry VI loved Richard. Anyone whose sperm has come from a Henry and has a penis loved Richard. Is that gay enough for you now, fangirls? Okay, how about any women? Yes, there was Ann, Richard’s childhood friend. Ann loves Richard too, but she’s being lead astray because of her father and her betrothed.

Oh sure, Ann does return to Richard. But that’s only after she becomes a pregnant widow. But this is such a staged marriage. They haven’t slept with each other! Well Ann doesn’t know about Richard’s peculiar body, so we can’t blame him there. Richard still yearns for Henry even though he’s long gone. Even after that, Richard finds himself spending nights with Buckingham. Richard almost ended up in certain trouble after many nights of fucking. But the point is, there’s a lot to unpack here. At least Richard isn’t the only person with a messed-up love life in the family. His eldest brother Edward really is no better.

Let’s just say that when it comes to Edward, he has shitty taste in women. He was betrothed to another woman at the start of his kingdom when he met Elizabeth and got married to her. And don’t get me started on that bitch either. She married into the royal family with the mission of destroying it because they killed her first husband. She didn’t love Edward. She just wanted to have babies with him and have them take over and do her bidding when they’re older. Even when married with kids, Edward had a bit of a hedonistic lifestyle. I honestly think he fucked around too much and caught something.

Do I have a ship that I support? I know fans of the franchise have chosen what side they want to be on when it comes to Richard. Team Henry, Team Henry, Team Henry, or Team Catesby. I’m just going along for the ride and seeing what happens next. Go team!

HALFWAY MARK: The York’s getting the crown for England wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Warwick (a long-time ally) turned out to be a double-crosser early on. He betrayed King Edward and offered his daughter Ann to Edward of Lancaster. But to cover his bases, he offered his other daughter to King Edward’s brother George. It all comes crashing down as Warwick is taken out on the battlefield by Buckingham (posed as Richard). The Lancaster family is captured. Edward is murdered in front of his mother by Richard. Edward is fine by this as he does have a thing for Richard. Like I said, any sperm that came from Henry has a thing for Richard.

But the biggest hit for Richard came in the form of learning that Henry was indeed THAT Henry, the previous king and (to Richard) the reason why his father perished. Though we all know that it was Henry’s wife Margaret that killed Richard’s father. Henry winds up with a bout of amnesia and is unable to remember Richard or the time they spent together. Richard’s mother goes and makes things worse by poisoning Henry with words disparaging her son. You’ll find this happens a lot throughout the rest of the series. Hearing Henry repeat his mother’s words made Richard snap and kill Henry. Of course, Richard had orders by his older brother to kill Henry, but I think Richard was acting on impulse. After that, he hooks up with Ann (after he kills her husband, father-in-law, and father).

We then get into a time-leap. King Edward is a skirt-chaser. George is drunk. And Richard is married to Ann and taking care of her and the baby she had with her previous husband. But everyone seems to believe the lie that the kid is Richard’s. Even though Ann’s child looks like her previous husband and IS his. I will not say the names of the kids these people had because everyone’s name is the fucking same. Geez England, add some different names please. Not everybody has to be named Richard, Edward, Henry, and Elizabeth.

ENDING: Richard is now King of England. Now it wasn’t an easy path to get to the throne and he was behind several people in line. First, both of Richard’s brothers died almost at the same time. George was murdered and King Edward croaked from an unspecified illness. Next in line would be King Edward’s eldest son (who is still a child). Richard and Buckingham had to take care of King Edward’s crazy widow in the meantime. She had her eyes on the throne and a slow-moving coup in the works with her supporters. Richard was able to do away with Elizabeth and her children. A few episodes later, two of her children were poisoned and I’m sure Richard will get blamed for that. And then a certain thorn in Richard’s side continues to stir up trouble and that is his mother. She tries to get the public enraged by telling them Richard is a demon. But a stunt by Buckingham and Richard fooled the public and they are all in agreement that he must become king.

But Richard’s problems are only beginning. There’s still that slow-moving coup I was talking about in the works to oust him. Henry might still be alive. Richard’s body is still a cluster-fuck! No, seriously it is! He has breasts, a penis, and now I think he has a uterus. At least it feels like it when he got a check-up and we’re aware of how many nights he’s together with Buckingham. This however wasn’t the only time Buckingham fucked Richard as he kinda betrayed the crown and was beheaded as a result. Now Richard is going through some severe Henry-withdrawal. Oh yeah, Buckingham’s real name was Henry. Imagine that! Another character named Henry that has an unhealthy lust for Richard. Just because Buckingham is dead doesn’t mean the trouble is over. An uprising is coming from this weird guy that we see smiling and plotting, Lord Richmond. He thinks he deserves the crown and wants the death of Richard. In fact, he’s the guy that gave the poison candies to Edward’s sons.

Richard’s wife Ann was worried as her health was declining due to tuberculosis and wants her son to have nothing to do with the crown. So Ann dies and they fake her son’s death and have him go in hiding with a fake name. And then Richard’s crazy mother (who I’m surprised is still alive given the average life span of this family) comes out to call him a demon once more and rooting for Richmond to defeat her son. To top it off, I’m pretty sure he caught tuberculosis from his now deceased wife.

So now it’s a showdown between Richard III and Lord Richmond. Who will come out vict…I don’t even need to finish that question because everyone and their mother knows who wins. Richmond takes out Richard. But we end with Richard’s only loyal ally Catesby coming to rescue him. But we’re pretty sure Richard is done for. Whether it was the battle or the tuberculosis, he’s done for.

Shakespeare works are not for everyone. Even the more amusing ones like A Midsummer Night’s Dream are not for everyone. It’s an odd taste. And it’s not going to help when the mangaka comes out to say that the manga has so much more that the anime has neglected to show and a lot more sex scenes. In my case, it does entice me to read the manga. I’ve seen so many thoughts on the internet surrounding this one particular anime. Most of them hate it and others see it as an underrated classic. I just thought it was okay.

In fact, I would like to think of this anime as a picture book. Maybe it was just bad timing with me and most people who watched this anime at the exact same time as Demon Slayer’s recent season. Because going from that to Requiem can give you whiplash. But the way the animation was, it almost felt like a picture book. That’s the nicest way I can put it for an anime that doesn’t show much in terms of a battle when every other episode has Richard in a battle.

If you are a Shakespeare enthusiast, I would say give it a chance. This wasn’t my cup of tea, but I’m glad I was able to give it a chance. I’ll still stay on the record that Romeo x Juliet was the best anime adaptation of a Shakespeare play.

If you would like to watch Requiem of the Rose King, FUNimation and Crunchyroll have every episode (including the recap) available for streaming.

[sscoutregimentss]

i know we as a collective society believe in gamer! eren supremacy. and yes, this is a good take. however, may i introduce to you: normie/fuckboy/jock eren with gamer/nerd gf. thoughts under the cut (safe for work, pg-13, also slight snk spoilers for season 3 and up!)

see, eren isnt necessarily a fuckboy. in fact, hes very loyal! he doesnt really think that way about any girls or guys except you. but hes popular romantically and had a reputation for sleeping around before he met you (not that theres anything wrong with that but ya know word travels fast across campus). plus, cmon the dude is in a frat, super hot and has a tongue piercing. he cant blame anyone for thinking he is a fuckboy bc he exudes the energy.

you are kind of the complete opposite. you dont really enjoy parties and you keep to yourself. you're a total wreck when it comes to flirting and your kinda oblivious to whenever people like you. you dont have many friends and are a bigger fan of 2d people than 3d.

either way eren finds you so so so cute. he first approached you at one of his frat parties. your roommates convinced you to come after she said that someone (read: connie) had a dance dance revolution mat, but you kinda just stuck around in a corner staring at your cup once you lost them. he looks you up and down-- your outfit was pretty cute, a short plaid orange pleated skirt, dress shirt, orange cardigan and black beret laying neatly upon your head. and your face... he couldn't help himself but try to talk to you. you were really anxious because wahhh scary sports guy you dont know but he was kinda instantly comforting? in a way? and he was freaking pretty. he looked like a final fantasy character--long haired characters were your type. the rest was kind of history.

a lot of people are shocked when they find out your dating bc you two are so different (some people are surprise eren “dates” at all) but no one dares question your relationship when they see how much eren dotes on you. he has so many polaroids of you in his wallet-- from the many arcade dates you bring him on where you decimate him at almost every game, you awkwardly posing in the hentai section of bookstores, or just candids of you being intensely focused on a puzzle in a game. whenever you guys go out to eat and somethings wrong with your meal, he'll send it back (in a polite way, of course, but hes still assertive.) or if you buy like a figurine and its misisng something hes marching up to the cashier stand for you. he always has an arm around your waist or is holding is hand in yours. sometimes you just cling onto his arm and rest your head on it (hes comfy!!!!! and you are always tired) your both pretty clingy, but you get kinda awkward when you two are around people you know so he just kinda subtly holds you as to not make a scene. its nice. hes comfy.

youve got dual monitors, a pc you made yourself, rgb keyboard, the whole nine yards. all your consoles are up to date and you keep a handheld system on you at all times. you spend most your weekends watching anime and movies and tv shows and your shelves are piled high with books and comic books. eren literally does not understand any of it. when you told him you built your pc he goes "you made all those microchippy things? youre soooo smart babe". when you talk about some of your weirder or more complicated animes he nods along but honestly he gets so lost ("so like, lemme get this straight, the kids dad's wife ate his mom?" "yeah but like she was turned into a titan so she didn't realllllly know it was the dads wife, but like she literally walks past this titan shifter so i think she knew." "thats crazy.") and he will never understand the point of otome games when hes literally right there. he actually has a really bad habit of getting jealous of characters you have a crush on but you just find it funny. sometimes he gets an ego boost when they look like him because even if they look like him he is actually real so they can suck it.

hes rlly supportive tho. erens a rlly passionate person and he loves you a lot so he pours a lot of passion into what you do. if you are into esports/fps games hes cheers you on all the time and does all the raging for you ("BABE THAT GUY IS STREAM SNIPING! HES STREAM SNIPING YOU HEY ASSHOLE STOP CHEATING OFF MY GIRLFRIEND" "eren he cant stream snipe me because i dont stream" "oh i thought that just meant cheating"/"WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL HER?" "eren its okay i can just report him" "NO NO LET ME AT HIM IF HE WANTS TO CALL YOU A BITCH I CAN CALL HIM MUCH WORSE" "um guys im gonna mute my mic for a second if you need me text chat") if youre into cozy games he likes to watch you play and gives you ideas on where to put things. like in minecraft he makes you put a second bed for him even though he doesnt play and he helps you name all your pets. you get a little less intense with cozy games so you sit on his lap and he lets his hair down puts his head on your shoulder and points at where you should place stuff. he still rages though? this is eren jaeger we are talking about. ("aw, she wont move to my island." "WHAT? who does that little ugly squirrel think she is? you think youre too good for MY y/n's island? i'll shave your unibrow off. then we'll see what island will want you" "leave hazel alone! shes cute!"/"dude that hamster guy with the glasses looks like armin" "graham? what? armin doesnt even wear glasses" "no no look at it more" "oh shit youre right") rpgs/otome games are kinda a wild card with how he acts. if its an otome game and the character looks like him he is more into helping you out because it reaffirms to him that you find him good looking but otherwise he is just sulking and calling them annoying ("princess y/n... i know im just a servant, but i want to be with you forever!" "pft. get a load of this guy. clingy much?" "its romantic! youre jealous.")

one of his favorite things to do with you is cuddle and watch anime. usually he lies his face on your thighs or chest while watching and you play with his hair or he holds you in his chest and you play with one of his hands while the other goes behind his head. he grew up on some of the classics like naruto sailor moon one piece pokemon and dbz but he never got super into it until he started dating you. you put him on to soooo many good shows (cartoons, anime, and live action) hes both a crier and he is a get-angrier(?). he gets mad on characters behalfs and you have to pause the show so he can rant about how annoying someone is or he feels so bad for someone so he has to take a minute because hes tearing up. he likes slice of life anime because the friendships <3 theyre so wholesome and they remind him of him armin and mikasa but he also likes shounen because it is entertaining to watch fights. he gets really into them actually. he also has this really bad habit of whenever there is a character with no parents or a dead mom he goes "oh same" or "welcome to the club buddy" under his breath. when theres a cute couple in an anime you both like guys get matching keychains of them unless one of them dies because he thinks its bad luck. his favorite animes are haikyuu, your lie in april and code geass.

you are equally supportive of erens volleyball career. you know all the rules because sports anime and you actually find yourself really liking it in 3d as well (it is lacking in bromance and screaming but you let it slide). you go to all his games and he always texts you before his practices. has a habit of kissing you before games and one day after he kisses you go "gg ez win" as a JOKE but then they like decimate their long time rival marley university and get into nationals (is that a thing for volleyball idk sports) so hes convinced its because you did your "gamer magic". now every time after getting his good luck kiss he interlocks your pinkies and you go "gg ez win" and he goes “yes.” because to this day he doesnt know what it means (he thinks googling it is like breaking the magic)

okay im gonna stop while im ahead BECAUSE I COULD TALK ABOUT THIS ALL DAY I MIGHT JUST GO AHEAD AND WRITE SOME ONESHOTS....

[sparklymuses]

►   BASICS  ...  ??

·         PEN NAME:  Sparkle.

·         PRONOUNS:  He / him.

·         ZODIAC SIGN:  Capricorn. Literally do not give a single damn about zodiac signs but hearing about them and all that is interesting. I’m a goat.

·         TAKEN  OR  SINGLE:  Single. Would like to be taken but I don’t trust dating sites.

►  THREE FACTS  ...  ??

·         I have a certificate in Art and a diploma in Graphic Design !!

·         I grew up with the Playstation 2 and many of the games inspired me to pursue cartoons and animation as my passion. I also wish to make a video game one day because of their way to explore stories no other medium can.

·         My favorite video games are Kingdom Hearts 2, Metal Gear Rising, and Asura’s Wrath. One of my favorite movies is Shin Godzilla. Current favourite animes are Jujutsu Kaisen, Madoka Magica, and My Hero Academia. Most recent stuff I’ve watched is Oddtaxi, Spy X Family and Black Clover.

►  EXPERIENCE  ...  ??

·         PLATFORMS USED: Discord, tumblr and I used deviantart for the longest time until the update came along and made all the profiles look hideous. Place was also kinda dead so ... I tried my luck here. I also did Youtube roleplay when I was super young.

·         I started back in 2014-ish on deviantart playing Adagio Dazzle from MLP before going onto Peko, but if we want to be specific I’d say 2008 with Youtube RP with a group of three friends. We met up every day just to fuck around with DBZ fights and plots with muses of Sonic OCs and Pokemon OCs; it was amazing.

►   MUSE PREFERENCE  ...  ??

·         GENDER:  At first I didn’t think I had a preference, but then I realized all of my muses are ... girls. It never struck me at first, but I don’t know why  —  I just like girls.

·         LEAST FAVORITE FACE(S):  Personally, I don’t give a damn about face claims. As in I don’t care whoever you use - play them as a character however you want.

·         MULTI OR SINGLE:  I’ve used single accounts for the longest time, but I cannot recommend multi-muses enough. Not only do you not have to make a new page and set your shite everytime you want to try someone new, but even if they don’t work out it’s not a big deal.

►   FLUFF /  ANGST  /  SMUT  ...  ??

·         FLUFF:  Having times where muses calm down from the hardened persona’s a lot of them are crafted out to be to just be kind and relax with another soothes the soul. I don’t do them a lot compared to angst or memes, but just having a time for your muse to be happy tends to make me feel happier.

·         ANGST:  Angst is probably the most I’ve written out of these three ?? It is a lot of fun to consider the darker side of your muse and writing it out. I know everyone kinda does the meme of “ haha my muse about to have bad time ” but there is an interest of how dark you can be with your muse. Having them come out the other side is interesting.

·         SMUT:  I’ve done no smut in tumblr RP  -  mostly because of people’s rules and I mostly reserve anything lewd related. Also people are really really angry for certain muses doing lewd stuff. I don’t do any of that and I’m against minors doing lewd stuff. If I were to do smut RP, it be in Discord with close friends.

·         PLOT  /  MEMES:  I personally like to meme and plot! I think memes are easier since they’re more digestible and just ... kinda easier to think up on the spot. I love to talk plot with other people, but I tend to notice that plotted stuff gets dropped more frequently. I don’t know if that’s me or if I’m unlucky - but after talking so long about plots only for them to get dropped it’s kinda sad. I love plotting but I just don’t do it as much nowadays.

tagged  :  @cantillat​ tagging  :  anyone interested !!

[stardvstmemories]

NAME — leigh GENDER — genderfluid STAR SIGN — gemini HEIGHT — 5′8″ AGE — 26 WALLPAPER ON MY PHONE — my partner. i love him,,,,, EVER CRUSH ON A TEACHER —  not that i can every remember COOLEST HALLOWEEN COSTUME — uuhhh probably my fallout character FAVOURITE 90S TV SHOW — yugioh, pokemon and dbz were my jam growing up LAST KISS — w/ my partner after i got home with food lmao HAVE YOU EVER BEEN STOOD UP — n. no? FAVOURITE PAIR OF SHOES — my boots! they’re weatherized nikes that we got at ross for like $60. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO VEGAS — only once. we were there for a whole week bc of a taekwondo tournament years and years ago. FAVOURITE FRUIT — watermelon and green apples FAVOURITE BOOKS — uuuuhhhhhhhhhh probably the warriors series lmao ALL TIME FAVOURITE SHOWS — if anime counts, jojo’s bizarre adventure (wow big surprise there) LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN THEATRES — fuck if i remember TAGGED BY  — stolen off the dash~ TAGGING  — you! the one reading this!

[tryinghuman]

Whatever made you think up the names for hue shade tone etc? I think they are adorable and wonder if we will see more in the future along the same way.

They were some of the first characters so their names go waaay back.  I was watching a lot of anime in the late 90s and it was common for characters in those series to have naming conventions (ie Sailor Moon characters named for their planets/traits, DBZ’s Saiyans named after vegetables, Pokemon villains named after cowboys and famous historical people).  

ANYWAY, I thought I should do the same thing.

The Greys - Named after color terms (Hue, Tone, Shade, Pigment)

The Reptoids - Named after muscles and anatomy terms (Brevis, Longus, Gracelis, Magnus)

The Nordics - Named for Judeo-Christian connected UFO stories (Fatima, Vereveil, Enoch)

Majestic12 Agents - NUMBERS

I was also going to have all my human protagonist have their names start with ‘R’ but dropped that pretty fast. :P

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z Movie 15: Resurrection F

“Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F” premiered on April 18, 2015.    Notably, it had a U.S. theatrical release only a few months later, in August.   Movie 14 got a U.S. theatrical release, but it took a lot longer, and fans didn’t really have any reason to expect that much.   In 2013, we were just waiting for Funimation to release it on home video.     But I think it says a lot about how successful Movie 14 was.    Not only did the sequel get made only a couple of years later, but the big shots in Japan who run all this stuff finally realized that there’s an international audience just as eager to pay for this stuff.   I want to say the Broly movie got released in the U.S. even faster, but I’d have to look it up.     And from what I understand, the Broly movie did even bigger business than Movies 14 and 15, so I think it’s safe to say that if they keep making more of these, we can count on a speedy localization.

Do we have Fox to thank for this?   I mean, would any of this Dragon Ball revival have happened if “Dragon Ball Evolution” hadn’t bombed so badly?    I mean, let’s say they did a good job and made DBE really kick ass, like the Thor movies.   By now they probably would have made a nice little trilogy, starring a mostly whitewashed cast.   Maybe the third one would be looked down upon, or they’d try to do a reboot like with the X-Men franchise, and people would write pointless thinkpiece articles asking stupid questions about “Dragon Ball fatigue”.    Teenage Justin Chatwick stans would be blogging things like “OMG Did you know there was a Dragon Ball Evolution cartoon?!?!?”   Maybe those live action movies would be better than Dragon Ball Super, but they’d probably also mark the end of the franchise.   At least with things as they are, there’s no telling how much more Dragon Ball content we might be getting in the 20′s.

Gee, Toei, how come your mom lets you have two logos at the start of the movie?

I just found this out last night, but Res F has the distinction of being the first movie where Toriyama wrote the actual screenplay, as opposed to just coming up with the plot and story, as in Movie 14.  I’m a fan of Toriyama’s work, obviously, but I’m don’t subscribe to the idea that anything he does is pure gold and everyone else who contributes to this franchise is ruining it somehow.   There are GT apologists who would try to argue that GT was more legitimate because Toriyama had some vague influence on the production, and he drew SSJ4 Goku once, so that means it’s magically awesome.  It just doesn’t work.    Movie 14 is better than Movie 15, and I don’t think that’s because one screenplay was better than the other, but the point is that you can’t just add more Toriyama labor and guarantee a superior product.

So there’s three big problems I have with this movie, and when I rewatched it this morning, my opinion hasn’t budged since 2015.  

First, the sole premise of this movie is that Frieza comes back to menace the good guys again.  That’s a bad move, period.   I find Frieza overrated to begin with, and they’ve already done handful of Frieza comebacks before this movie was ever conceived.    Even if it was a good idea, it’s so obvious that it’s barely worth doing.   When the DBS: Broly movie was first announced, I was worried that they were making the same mistake again, but then it turned out they had a bold twist on the character to justify the effort.   And that’s what it takes.   If you do something obvious and predictable, if you repeat an idea you’ve already used before, then you’d better have some sort of big twist to make it fresh.   Movie 15 does not have this.    It does an admirable job in spite of that flaw, but it’s a pretty serious flaw. 

Second, the visuals are bland and unimpressive.    The point of this movie is that Goku and Frieza are going to have a rematch of their epic showdown on Namek.    I just went back in my archives and pulled up a still from the Frieza Saga, and it looks ten times cooler than anything in the movie.   They were fighting on an exploding planet, surrounded by red skies, lightning, molten lava, and tornadoes.     Movie 15 boasts the same guys, supposedly more powerful than ever, but they fight like they’re in a video game, and the background is just this dismal cloudy sky.   They had 23 years to figure out how to raise the stakes, and all they could come up with was making Frieza yellow and Goku blue.  

Third, everyone acts like an idiot in this movie.  Like I said, we’ve done this dance before, but everyone just repeats the same mistakes and forgets that characters can do things that they’ve done in the past.   Sometimes I can’t tell whether it’s an honest flub, or a deliberate callback to classic DBZ.   All I know is that I remember how it went the first time, and you’d think the characters would too, since they lived it.   

Now, in spite of those issues, this film does a pretty decent job working with what it has.    It’s not nearly as bad as Movies 10 and 11, which commit these same three sins and puts the main characters on the sidelines.   But it’s a step down from Movie 14, and around the same time, Dragon Ball Super was starting up on Japanese TV, and that show was just adapting the movies for the first 32 episodes, so I was pretty displeased with the state of the franchise in 2015.

All right, let’s get started.    The movie opens in hell, which is pretty interesting, because up until now we’ve only ever seen Toei’s version of DBZ Hell.   There’s a lot of inconsistencies, like whether or not you get to keep your physical body, and whether or not hell is even that bad a place to be.   Since Toriyama wrote this thing, I have to assume this is his official version of DBZ’s Hell.    Conveniently, we find that it’s got plenty of layers to it, including a scary looking realm full of bats, an ocean full of Pokemon fish, and underneath all of that we have an idyllic meadow with pink trees.   

This is where Frieza’s being kept, and he just has to hang from the tree in some sort of testicle-looking thing.  There’s angels and fairies and a stuffed animal marching band, and it’s pretty cute, but I can see where you’d get sick of it after a while.

And Frieza’s been here for a while.    This movie is set in the year Age 779, and Frieza was killed by Future Trunks in Age 764, so he’s on Year Fifteen of his infinity-year sentence.   Has he been stuck in this particular torment for the entire time?   Who knows?   I don’t know much about Japanese afterlife mythology, but my understanding is that it’s like an even more complex version of Dante’s Inferno, where there’s all these different ordeals you have to suffer through for extraordinarily long periods of time.    Maybe they let him out part of the time so he can get beat up by Pikkon and watch Goku beat Majin Buu.  

One touch I appreciate is that he’s still in his Mecha-Frieza form.   Does it make sense for him to retain his cybernetic parts when Trunks chopped him up into so many pieces?    I don’t know, but Mecha-Frieza is my favorite Frieza, so I like the nod to that moment.  

Meanwhile, Frieza’s private army somehow still exists after all these years.  This movie calls it the “Frieza Force”, which I’m not too wild about, but I’ll run with it.   I think it’s kind of stupid to keep calling it that so long after Frieza’s death, but maybe it’s a bluff to anyone who doesn’t know Frieza’s dead.    At this point, all they have left is the name.   One of Frieza’s administrators, Sorbet, has taken charge of the whole thing, and I guess he’s done a fairly impressive job if he’s kept it going this long, but all he’s really accomplished is to oversee the slow dissolution of Frieza’s holdings.  

Funimation made a lot out of the idea of Frieza as an emperor, suggesting he was a head of state and the planets he conquered were part of a vast interstellar nation.   I think in the dub there was a comment about how the Frieza Force used to control like 70% of the known universe, but none of that’s in the Japanese version.   The original premise of Frieza is that he just has a bunch of guys fighting his battles for him, and he buys and sells planets to finance all the wine and spaceships he goes through.   I rather prefer that sort of aimlessness about his organization.    If he were like a Roman Caesar, you could at least balance out his brutality with the semblance of authority he brings to his conquests.    A Pax Friezae, if you will.  But he’s not Diocletian, he’s a trust fund baby who just happens to be nigh invulnerable.   He never cared what happened to anyone else, or how things would run after he was gone.   

Anyway, Sorbet just doesn’t have the manpower to hold their territory, and all he can do is pull his soldiers out when uprisings get too intense.    His only recourse is to wish Frieza back to life with the Dragon Balls, except he can’t find the Namekians’ new homeworld.    There’s Dragon Balls on Earth, except that’s where all the Super Saiyans live, so it’s dangerous.   But today, he’s decided there’s no other way.    To be on the safe side, he leads an away team with just himself and his aid, Tagoma.   That way there’s less chance of them being noticed by the ki-sensitive fighters on the planet.  

Sigh... this is why I hate the fucking Frieza Force right here.  It’s the same old spaceships, same old uniforms, same old plans.  Their shuttlecraft just looks like their regular ship, only smaller.    Frieza’s been dead for fifteen years, and after all this time, their biggest idea is to try to bring back LOWARD FUREEEZA SAWMA.  If that was such a hot idea, then why did he get killed in the first place?

What annoys me is that there’s probably an interesting explanation for Sorbet’s strategy.   You’d think he would be happier with Frieza gone.   He runs this whole outfit, and even if their domain is smaller than it was under Frieza, it belongs to him, so he’s richer and more powerful than he’s ever been.   But maybe he just can’t appreciate that, and he liked it better when he was a middle-manager for a big shot like Frieza.   But that never gets explored in the movie.   Sorbet just acts like he’s wishing back Frieza because he’s supposed to.  

Anyway, it would be risky to try to go through Bulma to get the Dragon Balls, but Emperor Pilaf has a Dragon Radar of his own, so they strongarm him instead.   I wonder where he got that thing.   General Copper from the Red Ribbon Army had one that was never seen again, so maybe they stole it from him?  

Meanwhile, here’s baby Pan.    I thought Pan’s appearance in these later movies conflicted with the final three episodes of DBZ, but maybe not.   The dub said she was three, but the subs said she was four.   And those last three episodes took place in Age 784, while this movie shows her being newly born in Age 779, just five years earlier.    So Pan could still be four years old when she fought Wild Tiger, and her birthday just hadn’t come along yet.   

Anyway, Piccolo’s keeping an eye on her while her parents are shopping.   

Then the sky gets dark, and Gohan and Piccolo know that someone’s wishing on the Dragon Balls, but they don’t know who or why.   Oh, by the way, there’s a big statue of Mr. Satan here, and that’s his only appearance in this movie.  

So Sorbet makes his big wish to have a resurrection... of F.   Which stands for “Frieza.”

Just like the title of this cartoon!

But Shenron explains that it would be kind of dumb to do that.   This was the thing I never understood when this movie was first announced.    During the Frieza Saga, Shenron was used to wish back everyone killed by Frieza and his men, and Kami said that this would only work for those who had died within the past year.     The implication being that Shenron can’t revive people who have been dead for a really long time. 

But Toriyama seems to have taken that into account here.   Shenron explains that he can revive Frieza, even after fifteen years, but he can’t restore all the damage to his body.

This leads to a quick flashback of Trunks killing him way back when.   I’m glad they included this, since it’s worth explaining just how Frieza died in the first place.  Trunks chopped him into pieces, then blasted the pieces.    Apparently, after all this time, Shenron can only undo the blasting and the dying, but not the chopping.  

However, the medical technology used by the Frieza Force has advanced somewhat since the Namek Saga, so Tagoma believes they could finish the job of putting Frieza back together.   Sorbet decides it’s worth a shot, so we’re off to the races.

So Shenron plats along, and a bunch of Frieza chunks fall to the ground.    I like the sound effects they make when they land.   

Creepily, the pieces try to gather together again.   I don’t know if this is Shenron’s power trying and failing to complete the resurrection, of if this is some function of Mecha-Frieza’s cybernetics.     Either way, it doesn’t work.

But the pieces are all still alive, which is siiiick.    Frieza’s eye even opens and looks at them, suggesting that he’s somehow still conscious in this state.    See, this movie still has some cool stuff in it.

Then Shenron asks Sorbet what he wants for his second wish, and Sorbet had no idea that he would get more than one.    He considers wishing back King Cold, but before he can decide...

... Shu wishes for cash, and gets it.    Sorbet’s angry about this, but he has to hurry up and return to the ship before the Z-Fighters find him.    The funny thing is that Shenron leaves after this second wish is granted, but in the Dragon Ball Super version, he grants a third wish, and Mai uses that one too.   This is why I’ve spent the last 16 years confused over whether Buu-era Shenron grants two wishes or three.   Apparently, the deal is that it’s three, unless you use one to wish a lot of people back to life at the same time.    Then it’s two.    So did Toriyama goof, or was the wish to bring back Frieza hard enough that it counts as two wishes?    It doesn’t matter much, since Movies 10, 13, and 14 all played fast and loose with Shenron as well.

So now they have to load all the Frieza chunks into a big garbage can and haul them back to their ship.  

They almost forget a piece, but Pilaf saves it for them.   I wonder what would have happened if they left that eye behind?

So then they heal the pieces in their medical machine.  I don’t know how this was supposed to work, but I assume they needed someone to stitch the pieces together, then they loaded him in the tank for a while, and then they had to take him out again, dress him up in his uniform, and put him back in to cure a while longer.   Also, they have Japanese punk band Maximum the Hormone playing on the stereo the whole time they do this.

“F” is a pretty good song, and I’m glad they put it in this movie, but I’d probably like it more if I liked Frieza more.    The story goes that Akira Toriyama heard this song, probably because the band wrote it as a tribute to his character, and the song inspired him to create the story in this movie.   

Anyway, Frieza breaks out of the tank and splashes green crap everywhere because he’s such a drama queen.   

Sorbet explains everything that’s happened, and Frieza seems mostly bemused by it all.   He’s displeased that he had to wait in hell for so long, but at least he’s out.    Sorbet mentions that they plan to wish back King Cold next, but Frieza tells them not to bother, since he apparently doesn’t like his dad that much.   This should be the tip to these idiots that this scheme will get them all killed.   

Frieza kills a guy just to see how his skills are holding up, and he declares his intent to take revenge on the two Super Saiyans who defeated him.   Remember, he still owes Goku for beating him up on Namek, but Trunks killed him before he could get to that point.    And that’s my main problem with all of this.   We already did a Frieza comeback, and it was Mecha-Frieza invading Earth in the Trunks Saga.    He miraculously survived Namek, his soldiers spent months putting him back together, and then the very first thing he wanted to do was go to Earth and kill Super Saiyans.   Does any of this sound familiar? 

Besides that episode, we had several other stories that repeated the same theme.    Movies 5 and 6 were basically the same idea, but with Frieza’s brother as a stand-in for Frieza himself.    Episode 195 of the anime had Frieza come back as part of a revolut in hell.    Movie 12 had Frieza come back, only to get killed again by Gohan.     Dragon Ball GT had Frieza come back and fight Goku.     I think Toriyama’s attitude is that he didn’t write those stories, so they don’t count, but it doesn’t change the fact that the audience still saw all of those.    By the time this movie came along, “Frieza comes back for revenge” had been done several times.   

Tagoma points out that maybe we shouldn’t rush back to Earth and get wiped out in a hopeless battle.   Again.     He suggests that it might be wiser to focus on rebuilding the Frieza Force, but Frieza kills him for his impudence, along with several other flunkies who just happened to be nearby.

At least Frieza has a reason for wanting to start with revenge.  As far as he’s concerned, the Frieza Force can’t rebuild to its former glory, not if they have to hide from the Super Saiyans the whole time.    Sorbet points out that Goku’s even stronger than he was before, citing his defeat of Majin Buu.   Amazingly, Frieza’s heard of Majin Buu, since his father once told him that he should never mess with Buu or Beerus.  

But this doesn’t worry Frieza much.  He figured Goku would become stronger, and he thinks he can as well.   Frieza was born with this unnaturally incredible power that he has, so he’s never needed to train or improve his strength.   But now, he thinks that if he does train, he can surpass Goku after about four months.   This is basically the Dragon Ball equivalent of “Why doesn’t Bluto eat some spinach and beat the hell out of Popeye?”

Here’s what blows my mind.   In the subs, Frieza estimates that he’ll reach a power level of 1.3 million.   I’m amazed that they’d even cite a power level this late in the franchise, let alone a number that low.   Frieza claimed to be at one million in his second form, so I think everyone agrees that we passed 1,300,000 a long time ago.     Hell, there aren’t any scouters able to measure that high anyway.    

Seriously, is this official canon?  It has to be right?   Toriyama wrote that line himself.   Is he saying eveyone from Second-form Frieza to Golden Frieza ranges from 1 million to 1.3 million?  So like, Perfect Cell would be 1.1 million, I guess, and Majin Buu’s 1.2?    That’s wild.   I kind of like it.  

What I don’t like is that it’s a little convenient that Frieza can catch up to Goku so easily.   It took Gokue fifteen years to reach the level he’s at in this movie, and Frieza manages to tie him in just four months?   If it was that easy, why didn’t he just do pushups for a week before he came to Earth the last time?   He could have wiped out Trunks in an instant.

Moving on, a few months later, Jaco the Intergalactic Patrolman arrives on Earth to warn Bulma that Frieza is coming to Earth with a thousand soldiers.   

I won’t get into Jaco’s whole deal, because I still haven’t read his manga yet, but baiscally he was friends with Bulma’s older sister back in the day, and Tights told him that Bulma knows the Super Saiyan who beat Frieza.     The problem is that Goku and Vegeta aren’t on Earth right now, because they’re training with Whis on Beerus’ world.   Bulma can contact Whis by holding up delicious food and calling out to him, but she doesn’t know if he’s listening.   Also, Jaco waited until an hour before Frieza’s arrival to say anything, so now Bulma has to scramble to alert the others.  

Here’s some bank robbers.    I like this bit, because in the dub, they say “We’re as rich as rich guys!”

There’s just one problem...

Krillin’s a cop.

Then Bulma calls him and tells him the bad news.    I feel like somewhere in the dub, Krillin observed that Majin Buu and Gohan could at least buy them some time, but then it turned out Buu was asleep the whole time, which was why he didn’t show up in this movie.    I must be thinking of the DBS version.     This is why I’m not big on Buu as a good guy, by the way.    They have this insanely powerful good guy on their team, and then they never do anything with him.   He slept through this crisis and the Tournament of Power, and I didn’t see him in the Broly movie either.  

Anyway, Frieza killed Krillin the last time they met, but Krillin’s got big brass balls, so the first thing he does is suit up to fight his punk ass.  18 offers to go in his place, but he wants her to protect their kid while he’s gone.  

Also, he asks her to shave his head, so he’ll look even cooler for this.

To be honest, I liked Krillin’s hairstyle in this movie, but yeah, bald Krillin is the way to go.   

As he flies off into the face of certain doom, his big brass balls clanking as he goes, 18 thinks about how cool he is.   Get you a lady who admires you half as much as 18 admires Krillin.

As Frieza returns to Earth, he goes over some details with Sorbet.    In particular, no one could find the Super Saiyan who actually killed Frieza, and Sorbet speculates that he may have moved to some other planet or died while Frieza was in hell.    Of course we know that Future Trunks returned to his own timeline, but Frieza doesn’t and never will.   This loose end doesn’t seem to bother him much, and I don’t think that makes sense.    Yes, from a dramatic standpoint, he ought to be more concerned about avenging his loss to Goku, but Trunks was the one to kill him, and I feel like Frieza doesn’t spend nearly enough time in this movie thinking about his own mortality.  

Sorbet points out that even if Frieza kills Goku, he could just be wished back to life like Frieza was, right?  But Frieza plans to destroy the Earth along with Goku, thereby eliminating the Dragon Balls and Earth’s hell.  For some reason, Frieza seems to think that Earth has it’s own particular version of hell, and the only reason he ended up in that meadow of fairies is because he happened to die on that planet.    So I guess he thinks that if he blows up the Earth, that hell will cease to exist as well?   How does he know that?   

Is that why he’s not worried about dying again?  Does he think if he dies someplace else, he’ll end up in a more favorable afterlife?   What happens if you die in outer space?    What sort of hell is Tagoma in right now?

At any rate, Frieza thinks he has all the angles worked out, and he checks to make sure Sorbet is prepared for his “emergency plan” in case things don’t work out.   This is as close as we ever get to any sort of character development for Frieza here.    The last time he went to Earth, he didn’t have a plan B, and now he does.   

Meanwhile, Goku is training with Vegeta and Whis, just as Bulma said.    Recall that Whis is even stronger than Beerus, who dominated the boys in the last movie.    So Whis can fight them both at once without any trouble at all.

But their training wakes up Beerus, so they have to explain how they pay Whis for his lessons with tasty food from Earth.   Beerus is annoyed that Whis would eat this stuff without him but he’s awake now, so he can have some of the pizza they brought over.    

Meanwhile, Frieza’s ship lands on Earth, and a bunch of his goons come out.   

Then he blows up North City, which he calls his way of saying hello.  

So it’s up to the Z-Fighters to hold the line until Goku and Vegeta check Whis’s voice mail.   Unfortunately, they’re kind of light on guys.   We have Piccolo, Tien, and Krillin, and Gohan’s here, but he hasn’t kept up with his training.   That’s why he wore a tracksuit to this party, because he couldn’t find his gi after all this time.  Tien told Chiaotzu and Yamcha to stay out of it, since this fight would be too much for them.    Okay, but why?   Frieza will blow up the Earth if he wins, so what difference does it make if they stay out of this?    At least if they show up they can help.   

On the other hand, Krillin brought Master Roshi along,   He can’t even fly!   Somehow, everyone involved in making this show decided that Roshi is cooler than Yamcha, which is stone cold, 100% false.   Master Roshi belongs in jail, and it doesn’t even need to be a fancy jail with a roof because he can’t fly out anyway.

Then Bulma shows up with Jaco to tell the others that she couldn’t raise Goku and Vegeta.   Also, she wants Jaco to help, even though he only planned to pass along the message and GTFO.     Bulma trash-talks Frieza, because she figures they still have the upper hand.   After all, Gohan’s strong enough to kill Frieza, right?   But Gohan explains to her that Frieza’s much stronger than he was 15 years ago, so none of them stand a chance this time around.

She asks Frieza to wait for Goku, so he agrees to hold off for ten more seconds, and then he sics his army on the Z-Fighters.   I bet she wishes she had told Goten and Trunks about this rumble.  

People talk about this part as the highlight of the movie, and it’s definitely one of the better parts.   It’s certainly fresher,since we normally don’t see six or seven guys battling a whole army like this.   Also, I like the approach of limiting the cast to a manageable number.   I think it’s tactically unwise to leave Yamcha, Gotenks, Buu, and Chiaotzu out of this battle, but leaving them out of the movie is worth it, if it gives Tien a chance to shine for a moment.    I’m not saying I like Tien better than the others, but we’re in a situation now where they can’t all share the spotlight, so if we have to pick one, let’s make that decision and run with it, and hope Yamcha gets a turn in a later film.

The problem I have with a fight like this is that they have all these extras floating around in the background of almost every scene, so it’s like Piccolo will do some cool spot with five or six bad guys, while fifty more just sort of stand there and watch.    The only explanation I can come up with is that the Z-Fighters are moving so fast that most of the bad guys simply cannot react fast enough to keep up.

For example, you have this scene, where Gohan zips through a whole bunch of guys and takes them all out while they look like they’re standing still.    Also, it’s pointed out several times that the Frieza Force isn’t nearly as strong or as well-disciplined as they used to be.    Hell, the next movie makes a plot point out of how hard it is for them to recruit good fighters.

Even Jaco makes these guys look like geeks, and he’s a comic relief guy.   

But he’s clever, like when he tricks the bad guys into getting eaten by a giant fish.   How did he know this thing lived on Earth? 

At this point, Sisami enters the battle, and he’s at least strong enough to give Piccolo a hard time.

Also, his shorts are a size too small, but his slutty uniform is his only distinguishing feature, really.

But Gohan steps in and turns Super Saiyan to take him out.   Not sure that was a smart play, since they’re trying to buy time for Goku to arrive.    A drawn out battle with Piccolo might have been just the thing they needed.   But I suspect this scene was intended to introduce the Super Saiyan concept to the audience.

To wit, Sorbet is horrified by how easily his best warrior went down, but Frieza isn’t surprised at all, since he’s the only one on his side who’s seen Super Saiyans in action.    He didn’t know Gohan could turn into one, but it’s the same diff.

This blue guy tries to apologize to Frieza for their defeat, but Frieza blows them all up.   I’m just pointing him out because this guy was voiced by Team Four Star’s Scott Frrerichs, which still blows my mind to this day.  Also, for some reason, I thought he played Sisima--Shisami, Sashimi... the red horny guy. 

Everyone agrees that they stand no chance against Frieza as he is now, and Frieza takes out Gohan first just to emphasize the point.   I guess this is his meta-revenge for Movie 12.

Piccolo has to use a ki technique to restart Gohan’s heart, and a senzu bean helas him after that, but they only have one left, so that won’t last them much longer.

Finally, Whis checks his messages and Goku and Vegeta hear about Frieza.    Whis can take them back to Earth, but it’s a 35-minute trip, so it’s up to Goku’s Instant Transmission.   

All right, let’s get on with this.    Frieza insists that he’s learned from their last fight, and he starts out with his “final” form, except it’s not his final form anymore, because he has a new one, so right off we see that he really hasn’t learned anything.     He wants Goku to turn Super Saiyan, but Goku doesn’t need to, and they fight like this for a while.  Does this really make sense.    Frieza came here for revenge, so why is he bothering to play-fight like this?   

Eventually Vegeta gets so bored with this part of the battle that he jumps in and starts attacking Goku.   Frieza mistakes this for a show of loyalty to him, but in fact Vegeta’s just sick of Goku milking his turn.  

They agree to put all their cards on the table, so Goku reveals his strongest form, which he calls a combination of classic Super Saiyan and the Super Saiyan God form he used in the last movie.    This eventually came to be known as “Super Saiyan Blue”, because duh, but for marketing purposes it’s still officially called “Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan” or “SSGSS” for short.   I have no idea who thought that was a good name for this.   

So Frieza shows Goku his new form, which is just his “final” form with a different color scheme.   He says he “settled” on this color, implying that he could have made it look different if he wanted to.     I like that idea, because it goes along with my contention that the Xenoverse games should let you customize transforms along with your character.   If you want your guy to turn into a Super Saiyan Purple, you should be able to, or if you want your Frieza Race guy to have a Crimson form instead of Golden, you should get to have that too.

On the other hand, this is fucking stupid.     It’s the same fight from 1990, except the characters are different colors.   This is the sort of thing critics make fun of DBZ for, and Toriyama did it unironically.   I mean, I get it, Super Saiyan 3 is just SSJ1 with longer hair and no eyebrows, but it’s the way the character is used in the story that sells the form as being more powerful.    

The problem here is that both guys have new forms at the same time and they’re supposed to be stronger than almost every other character we’ve seen before.  And yet this fight doesn’t look all that different from what they were doing a few minutes ago, before they transformed.   

On top of that, we have these really shitty CGI animations that look like they were taken out of a PS3 game.   I mean that literally, because when I watched this movie, I noticed it right away, because the way the characters move looks exactly like they do in the games I play all the time.  I didn’t mind it so much on the first viewing, but now that I’m looking at screencaps of it, it just looks really awkward and bad.    It’s fine in the games, because it’s interactive, and I can control what’s happening.    But in a movie, it doesn’t work at all, because Goku has this blank expression on his face the whole time.   Also, there’s no physics on the tails of his belt.    He’s rushing Frieza here but they’re just hanging at his hip like he’s standing still.

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?   These shots aren’t even that long, and they don’t look that complicated, so I don’t understand why they didn’t just go ahead and use traditional animation.    I mean, the Frieza soldiers from earlier were rendered this way too, and I get that, because there were literally a thousand of them, and they wanted to have hordes of them milling about in the background.   but this is the main hero and villain in the forefront of the action.    If the entire movie looked like this, I wouldn’t have a problem with it at all, really.     It’s a “contract with the audience” thing.   If the whole movie is CGI or 2D animation, we can accept the visuals we’re given,  but once you start switching media unexpectedly, it becomes very jarring.

Then Beerus and Whis finally arrive to collect the dessert Bulma offered them.    Wait, he said it would take 35 minutes to get here.  Have Goku and Frieza been fighting for 35 minutes?

I get the joke here, that you’ve got this interplanetary grudge match playing out nearby, and these two dorks are more interested in eating ice cream, but it sort of undermines what little tension there was to this story.   When Res F was first announced, lots of fans joked that Frieza would find himself completely outmatched by the Z-Fighters.    Goten could kill him by himself.   But Toriyama introduced Golden Frieza to get around that, which means at this point, Frieza has leapfrogged Cell and Majin Buu to become the strongest villain again, to the point where he might rival Beerus if he put his mind to it.   Frieza’s a big deal again, except there doesn’t seem to be much concern over it.    Everyone seems confident that Goku can handle it, and if he can’t then Vegeta can, and if things really got out of hand, Whis could kill everyone in one hit. 

At one point, Frieza finally notices Beerus and asks him if he’s going to interfere in the battle, but Beerus insists that he’s just here for dessert, and he’s totally neutral in this.  

And Frieza seems to think he’s winning, but then Goku informs him that this Golden Frieza form has a weakness.    Frieza was so thrilled to have the new form that he rushed to Earth as soon as he discovered it, but he hasn’t learned to regulate his power at this level, so he’s going to tire out in a few minutes.   Goku should know, because he ran into the same problem with Super Saiyan 3 a few years back, and the same thing happened to Frieza when he fought at 100% of his full power because FRIEZA HASN’T LEARNED A DAMN THING SINCE THE LAST TIME THEY FOUGHT.    This movie is just so dumb.   The fact that Goku has to explain this to him again is absurd. 

Frieza thinks Goku’s bluffing, but this time the CGI battle shifts into Goku’s favor, and Frieza can’t hit the block button fast enough or break Goku’s combos.   

Then they fight underwater, which is just as murky and grey as the sky, only there’s bubbles down here.

Finally, we reach the point where Frieza’s punches don’t even work, and Goku pokes him in the tittly and punches him.

So Goku tells him to get out of here, just like he did on Namek, and Frieza throws a fit, just like he did on Namek.   This fight is the worst.  I mean, it’s not Gohan vs. Dabura levels of bad, but at least Gohan and Dabura did original stuff while they were shitting the bed.

Then Frieza signals Sorbet while he’s crying, and Sorbet shoots Goku with a ray gun to take him out of the fight.  

And this is dumb too, because it’s the same mistake Goku made on Namek, twice.   Only this time, Frieza actually got the drop on him, which is dumb because he’s basically doing the same thing Piccolo did to Goku at the 23rd World Tournamnet.   Whis even warned Goku about this overconfidence earlier in the movie.  I mean, it was forteshadowing, which ought to be okay, except when everything else in this movie is a retread of Frieza’s other appearances, foreshadowing is kind of a bad move. 

But Goku’s not the only dumbass in this movie.    Frieza decides not to kill Goku while he has the chance, and instead invites Vegeta to do it for him.   He even offers to make Vegeta his second-in-command, although his entire Frieza Force is dead except for Sorbet.   Geets declines, which isn’t exactly a shock, since he’s hated Frieza for destroying Planet Vegeta.   You know, the thing that happened forty-odd years ago that Frieza probably should considered before asking Vegeta to rejoin his team?

Instead, Vegeta tells Krillin to give Goku a senzu bean, and when Frieza tries to stop him, Vegeta deflects his attack so that it kills Sorbet instead.  

In return, Vegeta demands to take over the fight, now that we’ve come to his favorite part, the “Frieza-murdering” part.   Frieza mocks him for thinking he stands a chance, but Vegeta turns Super Saiyan Blue himself, and now Frieza realizes he’s totally screwed.    I guess he figured Goku would be this strong, but he never imagined he’d have to fight Vegeta at the same level at the same time.  

This is my favorite part of the movie, where Vegeta informs him that he learned to go Super Saiyan shortly after Frieza’s death.   Then again, why didn’t Frieza know about any of this?    Sorbet had been spying on the Earth for years, and he seemed to know just about everything else about what was going on.   Why didn’t he tell Frieza that Vegeta was living on Earth and that he was about as strong as Goku?   “Hey, look, I know you think you can handle Goku with this Golden form, but just understand that you’ll probably be fighting Vegeta at the same time, and he’ll be about the same level.”

For that matter, why did Frieza invade without checking to make sure Goku was on the planet first?  

So it looks like everything’s coming up Vegeta in this movie, although this part of the fight is anticlimactic, becuase Goku had already softned Frieza up for him. 

But then it turns out that Vegeta swallowed a bottle of idiot pills too, because when Frieza’s Golden Form wears off, he gets desperate and blows up the Earth to escape.  You know, just like he did on Namek.  At least I can sort of excuse Vegeta for this, because he wasn’t there the last time Frieza pulled this trick, except that Vegeta should have seen it coming, because he pulled the same stunt himself when he first came to Earth.

So yeah, the Earth explodes, again, which just makes the Dragon Ball Wiki that much harder to read, because they count both explosions as dates of death for every character.    Goten died in Age 774 and Age 779 and whenever else he would have died naturally.  

But all the main characters who were watching he fight are okay, because they were standing next to Beerus and Whis, who made a force field to protect them.    Vegeta’s dead, though, because he suffocated when the planet blew.   On the other hand, Frieza would have survived, because he doesn’t need air.    On top of that, he took out the Dragon Balls, so there’s no way to undo this with a wish.   

Then Whis reminds Goku that he has the power to rewind time by three minutes.   Yeah, I forgot about this.  Earlier, when Beerus woke up from his nap, Whis mentions how Beerus has a nasty habit of destroying things accidentally, so Whis has the power to rewind time and undo it if Beerus does anything especially stupid.  

So now Goku has a chance to kill Frieza properly, which he should have just done in the first place.   

KILLER QUEEN DAISAN NO BAKUDEN BITES THE DUST

So Frieza’s dead again... until they bring him back for the Tournament of Power, because for some reason fans want him to keep coming back for more of this crap.

Vegeta is understandably upset, because he thinks Goku just jumped in for no reason, but he calms down once he finds out Frieza was about to blow up the planet.

Bulma promises a big feast for Whis and Beerus for helping them, but she adds that it’ll have to wait for them to wish back everyone who died when Frieza destroyed North City.   Well, that’ll take six months, because the Dragon Balls haven’t reset since the last wish, right?

Then Goku proposes that he can Vegeta actually practice working together, in case they need to really join forces next time.   Vegeta’s like “nuts to that” and Goku’s like “same here”, so at least they have that much common ground.  

The end credits are accompanied by “Z no Chikai” or “Oath of Z”, by Momoiro Clover Z.    This song rules, and it’s really much better than Movie 15 deserves.   

In the post credits sequence, Frieza finds himself right back where he started, and the angels and fairies welcome him back to hell.    Looks like Tagoma had the right idea after all, huh?

And I guess that about sums it up.   I feel like this movie wasted an opportunity to do something truly interesting with Frieza.     You have a guy who was invincible, then he got killed and spent 15 years in hell, only to get wished back to life by his desperate troops.    This could have been a chance for him to ponder his own mortality and the futility of power and revenge.   What good does it really do to kill Goku when they both know what awaits them on the other side?   What difference does it make to escape the afterlife when you know you’ll just have to go back eventually?    You could try to have Frieza answer those questions and have him become a much more desperate and complex villain.   Instead, Toriyama just went right back to what he had already written in the Trunks Saga.  

Sadly, this looks like the final entry under the Dragon Ball Z brand.    Now that Dragon Ball Super is a thing, it looks like any new Dragon Ball stories, like the new Broly movie, will be produced under the DBS branding.    I kind of wish DBZ could have closed out on a better note than this.   

On the other hand, that Broly movie was a lot better, and even if it was officially titled “Dragon Ball Super: Broly”, I find that it’s hard for the Z to drop out of the public lexicon.   When I went to see it in January, the theater had it listed as “Dragon Ball Z: Super Broly.”  Old habits die hard, I guess.    Maybe one of these years, we’ll see the end of the Z, but not yet.  

[ladykf-writes]

Fanfic Writer Appreciation (and a little self love)

Sooooo, as talked about I wanted to do a little promo. I may not always be my favorite writer, but I try to be one of my cheerleaders. And well, if you’re here you obviously have some interest in what I’m up to.

SO! Here’s a list of my currently-published WIPs and some info about them, in the order that I’ve updated them, most recent to oldest. 

Feel free to ask questions about any of them!

Dog Whistle (Ao3 || FFN) - started off as a prompt from @snackarey​ when I reblogged some Soulmate AUs. This one was a prompt for soulmates (Zack/Kunsel) who felt what each other felt - like pain. Needless to say, this went into a canon divergent AU where Kunsel felt some of what Zack was going through when Hojo got a hold of him after Nibelheim. And saved him, setting off an ever-increasing list of revolutionary consequences. It’s nearly 58K, and though I’m a little stuck I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Dewprism: Journey to the [Relic] (Ao3 || FFN) - this actually has a lot more written than I’ve posted, I just got a little frustrated because well... the fandom is teeny tiny and there’s no real feedback. But! It’s an interesting piece. It’s a semi-novelization where I’m taking the old PS1 Classic from Squaresoft, Threads of Fate/Dewprism and merging the two storylines. Basically... you can’t play the game anymore unless you got it from the PSN for your PSP or... PS2, I think? Or emulate it, of course, you can do that. And I wanted to bring the experience to more people, because it’s got such a great story.

It’s Not a Game (Ao3 || FFN) - this is my Avengers/FF7 crossover, and funny story, it was actually born out of a comment back on my old Genesis RP blog about how Genesis would totally be Tony Stark’s favorite character if he played Crisis Core. It’s turned into a full blown fixit I have a type and I actually have like, 90% of the next chapter done, it just doesn’t feel quite right so I haven’t posted it. And am, of course, stuck. There’s a case of choice paralysis here; the premise is that, in the MCU, FF7 is a series like it is in our world, and Tony is a fan. So he goes to make a simulation to do a self-insert... only he somehow transports himself (and Bruce) to a dimension where it’s real. A “Stark-insert” someone called it; and it does use a lot of “Self-Insert” tropes, actually. There’s just so many ways it could go that I’m stuck on choosing exactly how to progress here.

Party of Five (Ao3 || FFN) - the MMO AU! This was actually originally a prompt @up-sideand-down​ got, that I got permission to take off with. It’s a modern AU AGSZC where they meet online playing this MMO I made up that’s based off of FF7 and modeled after a mashup of like, me studying WoW and my experiences playing SWTOR. I’ve actually got some ideas of where it’s going, I just got too caught up in technicalities and need to reroute it back to the relationships going on.

Welcome to FF7 (series link, Ao3) - this is me hashing out basically what I think went down pre-games. Most of it is headcanon, I cannot stress that enough. It’s based off of the little we know, of course, but there’s just so much we don’t that it’s mostly headcanon. Tons of OCs. It’s a whole series, and they overlap - different sections that follow different departments, mostly. The base story is Welcome to ShinRa (Ao3 || FFN) and that follows the man who will become President Shinra from back when they first discover mako energy. I’ve also got Welcome to the Science Department (Ao3 || FFN) which starts off with college students Gast and Grimoire and how they get drawn into the beginnings of what becomes ShinRa Electric.

And last but not least, honorable mention to Times of Change (Ao3) - this was actually a piece inspired by @deadcatwithaflamethrower‘s Re-Entry series. I desperately need to reread that before I can hope to continue this, but... one day. One day.... I don’t suggest reading it right now, my headcanons have changed and it needs an overhaul. But you’ll see eventually.

And now... the WIPs you haven’t seen. (Under a cut)

By fandom, just to keep things straight, but in no particular order otherwise.

Compilation of FF7

The Snowball Effect (Ao3 || FFN) ... sequel? continuation? - as one of the gift exchange presents I’ve just done this past month, it is definitely standalone as is, but if I ever figure out where I want to take it, I’ll continue that one. It was just far too much fun.

The Price of Freedom - the sequel to To Be Human, which... I’m looking forward to, but I really burnt myself out on TBH so it’s going to be longer than anticipated before I approach this one. TBH definitely stands on its own, but there were some loose ends left to tie up, so we’ll see how that goes. And when it goes, when I’m ready to approach that again. TBH needs some editing, too... lots of work there.

The Unnamed Pokemon/FF7 crossover that I’ve talked about for... a couple years now (yikes) but now actually have a plot for. It’s very interesting to me, putting Pokemon on Gaia, and seeing how that changes everything. Because like, they’d have presumably used Mew’s DNA since there’s no Jenova (I can’t see them using Deoxys, which would be the closer parallel) and since there’s no Chaos, Grimoire is still alive. Which means no extra Drama between Lucrecia and Vincent - and really, there shouldn’t be the stress between Vincent and Hojo over her being sick because Mew would theoretically be much more compatible with humans than Jenova was.

What I’m saying is Seph has three parents and at least one set of grandparents and a much more stable Sephiroth (and Genesis and Angeal, thanks to Lucrecia teaming up with Gillian) leads to some very interesting changes. Like deciding they don’t want to fight the Wutai war anymore. >_>

Hold My Flower - a timetravel fic featuring our one and only flowergirl, who has had enough of people messing up her planet and refuses to just... let it die. She is, unquestionably, a force of nature. No fragile flower to be found here, this is the gal you see in the OG who threatened a mob boss and meant it. Heaven help anyone who gets in her way. She’s going to save the world. Possibly in a Turk Suit, don’t look at me.

The Long Game - Reeve goes back in time, and holy crap this one is a monster I am truly intimidated by so it’s gonna take a while for me to get going on that. XD But basically, similar premise to the above - the world isn’t healing and someone has to do something, so Reeve is nominated due to his position in ShinRa and potential to... he’d say “influence” but let’s call a spade a spade - manipulate people and events to a more favorable outcome.

A third BIT fic is one that I started writing with my friend @askshivanulegacy back in... damn, somewhere between 2011-2013, before we switched to writing SWTOR fic together. It’s one where Zack is sent back in time, and the differences in him post-Hojo change things even before he can start deliberately changing anything. But I got permission to take and remake that, so I intend to, one day. It was Good Stuff. And you can never have too much timetravel.

Dragon Ball Z

So, this is an oooooold fandom of mine - the first fanfics I ever wrote (under a different name, no I’m not telling XD it was ten years ago) were for DBZ, and definitely the first ones I ever read, back in the days of dial up. And I read a couple interesting takes on Chichi/Vegeta fic... and I was talking with @vorpalgirl about it and said I’d love to try my hand at something with that one day. I think they have the potential to be a really great pair (don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the canon pairings but those two have a lot of potential) so... yeah someday I might dip my toes back into Z. It’s on the wishlist, as well as reviving and cleaning up an old unfinished work of mine. Someday~

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Seven Years Lost - this one I’ve been debating a long time, and even did a little on! It’s basically how I rationalize what happens when Link pulls the Master Sword out and - well, spoilers but it’s a really old game so - when he comes out as a teenager and is immediately able to handle a nearly-adult body. It involves a dreamscape scenario where he communicates with his past incarnations and learns from them, and from sharing dreams with Zelda due to their bond.

Sailor Moon (manga/Crystal based)

Second Chances - I read a lot of SM fanfic back in the day, and my favorite ones were... more real? Like, there were more consequences to these 14 year old kids out there fighting for their lives and sometimes losing them. I’d like to tell a story through Minako/Venus’ eyes primarily, covering what that’s like, and then I also just really want a happy ending for the senshi/shittenou? So... yay canon divergence, lol. You guys know the deal by now. XD

Star Wars: Legends Era

United We Stand - SWTOR fanfic, baby! Basically, I’m just dying to see the eight classes cross over each other, and I will bend canon to do it. For anyone that’s played the original class story lines, there is some cross over but believe me when I say there were huge opportunities that were let drop by nature of the game. Just with the two Jedi stories alone... but that’s #spoilers for a not-as-old game so I’ll leave that be and only elaborate if asked.

(And do feel free to ask about any of these! I’d love to hash them out more.)

[legendarymasterwolf]

E3 2019: My Thoughts on What We Saw

Alright, E3 is over this year, which means it's time to go over what we saw and my thoughts on it.

This is late, so some stuff here will be out already.

I'll be going by publisher alphabetically, so first up, we have...

Borderlands 3

I'm so freaking hyped to get lost in this hilarious world again. I've played Mordecai in Borderlands 1, Zero in 2, and Claptrap in Presequel. Still trying to decide who to play as in 3, but right now, it's looking like I'll pick FL4K, since he specializes in long range and has a few cute beasties by his side. Also, we're getting not one, but THREE action skills with each character. Not only that, but you can sacrifice your grenade skill for two equipped skills.

The Children of the Vault look like some worthy successors to Handsome Jack for title of "Best Borderlands Villains", though we'll see how they pan out on release date.

The gameplay that we saw of Moze looks smooth. Heck, everything about this game looks sleek and refined without doing away with the art style. Also, guns with legs.

Anyway, we not only got the gameplay reveal, but also Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary, a new DLC for Borderlands 2 that sets up 3, so I'm scrambling to finish the Handsome Collection on my PS4, which just got a lot more difficult now that I've bought RDR2 finally, along with several other games.

Control

I loved Alan Wake, and this is from the same people, so I’m hyped. The game looks great, has a suspenseful atmosphere, and it seems to play well. I’m looking forward to release date.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reboot

I haven't bought a COD game since "Black Ops 2", though I have played the newer ones with a friend of mine. It looks good visually from the reveal trailer I saw, I'll say that much. No gameplay yet, but I know it'll be gritty, focusing on some of the more shocking moments of the original trilogy, like "No Russian" from MW2 or the nuclear explosion from MW1, so it seems we're bringing in more edge to the series. Still, I'm glad the campaign is back, and I'm interested to see how it will look.

12 Minutes

A twelve minute time loop where you're forced to relive the death of your wife and the only way to break it is to find out why she was killed? Sign me up.

Code Vein

I remember this one from last E3. Still the same opinion, too. Anime style souls game that I might buy for the story, which looks interesting.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

So this looks REALLY good. It's like a deep RPG, deeper than Xenoverse was, with mechanics besides fighting like fishing, and as for the fights themselves, they seem to be more strategical than before, with a healthy dose of classic DBZ fisticuffs in there for good measure.

Elden Ring

A Souls game written by George RR Martin? Don't know too much about it besides that, but it looks cool based on the trailer.

The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan

Basically, another Until Dawn, but on the open sea during a storm. And I'm totally okay with that.

Deathloop

Another game from Arkane? The guys who made Dishonored? I'll take it. Besides, another time loop premise sounds interesting.

Doom: Eternal

If Fallout 76 was any indication, Bethesda desperately needs a win now to restore faith in their studio. Besides a few of the other games announced at E3 2019 that could do so, there was one that stood out in particular: Doom Eternal. I’ve already played all the Wolfenstein games, with the exception of one upcoming entry on this list, and based on what I’ve seen of Eternal, I’m going to like it due to the similarity in gameplay.

GhostWire: Tokyo

The presentation on the new game from the makers of Evil Within, another series to try now that I have a PS4, was memorable for a few reasons. First off, Ikumi Nakamura, the game’s creative director, was the main presenter and she was adorable. Seriously, it’s probably one of the best E3 presentations I’ve seen this year. I can’t remember the last time I saw one so genuine like hers, plus it helps that the Internet has fallen in love. As for the game itself, it looks great, with people disappearing in Tokyo and it being up to some guy with a bow and supernatural powers to find out why. The reveal trailer was all we got, but still, I can’t wait to play it.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

The first game I’ve ever preordered, and this comes from a guy who never preorders on principle. It’s a Wolfenstein spinoff with BJ’s twin daughters, so yeah, I’ll buy it. Plus, it’s co-op, so I’m playing this with my best friend. Still trying to decide which twin to play, though. Probably Jessie, since my friend is gonna want to play Soph.

Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory

Looks interesting, plus the gameplay reminds me of Shadowrun Returns.

The Sinking City

This one’s already out, but it looks good. Hopefully, it’ll be received better than Call of Cthulu before it. Plus, I’m all for a game where the protagonist is losing his mind, like Dead Space.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood

Set in the World of Darkness universe, like Bloodlines, except you're a werewolf instead of a vampire and it's from a different studio. Gameplay was revealed behind closed doors, but it looks good from what I've heard. We don't have too many werewolf games around.

Cyberpunk 2077

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY!

Yeah, this might be the first game I preorder for myself, since now we finally have a release date: April 16th, 2020. The new trailer we got gave us a glimpse of a default male V as well as what may be Jackie’s death (please don’t kill off Jackie, CD Project RED, I like him too much already). After V’s employer tries to double cross him, V tries to kick ass with his twin arm blades, which look really unique, before said employer shoots him in the head. The trailer ended with a major surprise: as V comes to in a junkyard, a figure in jeans, a tank-top, and a silver left arm approaches, and kneels to reveal a face and voice that sounds suspiciously like Keanu Reeves.

Yes, that’s right, for those who haven’t heard by the time this is posted, Keanu Reeves is in Cyberpunk 2077 and he’s playing Johnny Silverhand, a legendary rocker in the world of 2077 who may not be what he seems.

After the trailer premiered onstage, Reeves came out onstage to promote the game. He could barely get through the start of his speech, people were that excited to see him in the flesh. There was even a great moment where he described the game as “breathtaking”, to which a fan shouted out, “You’re breathtaking!”, to which Keanu responded in kind. We don’t deserve this man.

Anyway, at the end of his speech, Reeves gave a new look at gameplay as well as the game’s release date. The glimpse was only about 20 seconds long, but still, the new look at the combat, hacking, and what is presumably a digital afterlife or something like that was enough to get me even more hyped for this game.

Seriously, I couldn’t be more hyped. This game is gonna be massive and I just might preorder it.

My Friend Pedro

Switch game, but still looks cool. It’s already out now.

Sea of Solitude

I need to play more games that make me feel like this. The art style looks gorgeous and the theme is depression, so yeah, I may buy this one if I like what I’m hearing.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Honestly, EA's part of the the expo was kind of depressing, especially when it got to Anthem. However, we did get more of Jedi: Fallen Order, and for that, I'm grateful, because this game looks great. Both the combat and lightsaber look slick as does the gameplay in general, and the voice acting is on point, from Cameron Monaghan to Forest Whitaker. We need a good Star Wars game for current gen consoles, and while The Old Republic is still my favorite, that's for PC. Also, while it has been announced that there are no microtransactions in the game, I'm sure EA will find some way to screw it up, but for now, it looks awesome.

Greedfall

I’m interested. Story and premise have me, a mix of 17th century colonialism with horror and the supernatural. Gameplay looks like my kind of jam, and we may be getting romance options too, based on some trailer observations.

John Wick Hex

Gameplay seems unique, plus it’s John Wick. I will always take more of Keanu Reeves.

Grandia HD Collection

I like JRPGs like this one, though it’s for Switch, so I can’t play it.

Way to the Woods

Looks like a cute adventure puzzle game. I might get it for PC.

Wasteland 3

This series looks like tactical Fallout, so yeah, I’m likely to give this one a shot since it looks good.

Blair Witch

A Blair Witch video game? That’s psychological horror?! With an adorable dog companion named Bullet?!?! Yes, please.

We didn’t get much besides a trailer and some gameplay, but I’m eager to see more.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel

Ugh, why is it that last year I was complaining about not having a PS4, now this year I’m complaining about not having a Switch?!

Anyway, this looks great and I want to see more. Especially since I’ve heard it’s going to be scarier than Majora’s Mask.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

Looks good on the graphics front, plus the gameplay additions looks promising.

And once again, I can’t play it.

Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

Out of all the games on this list, this is the one I want to play most that I can’t play because, you guessed it, I don’t have a Switch.

I loved the original Ultimate Alliance games, so I’m sure the new one is gonna be a hit, what with the new combos, character designs, and references to the MCU, plus it’ll tie us over until Marvel’s Avengers.

Pokemon Sword and Shield

The Pokemon look cute, it is set in the world’s version of the UK, gameplay looks improved, and once again, I can’t play it.

Empire of Sin

It looks cool, plus I need more Mob style games to play. It’s also made by the people who are responsible for the next game on this list...

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

It’s only in pre-alpha, but still, this one looks good. The original is on the Steam store, and there are fan made patches that improved upon what was originally a disaster. The sequel looks like a smoother version of its predecessor, with a few new abilities and mechanics put in. Again, it's in pre-alpha, so the final product will look much cleaner, but for now, I'm excited for its release date.

Shenmue III

First off, I’m royally pissed that Epic stole this one. That being said, the game looks great and I’m looking forward to continuing Ryo’s story on PS4. The gameplay looks great, the atmosphere is enthralling, and the English dub sounds good this time around. Still pissed about Epic, but at least I can play it on PS4.

The Outer Worlds

This still looks great. Since Fallout 76 took a nosedive and kept on going, we need a game like this to get that bitter taste out of our mouths. This still looks like a cross between Fallout and Borderlands, the true New Vegas spiritual successor that we need right now. The companions actually look helpful, have personalities of their own, and the Flaws System sounds really interesting, giving your hero a perk in enchange for a debuff for the whole game. Also the humor is great, too.

Marvel’s Avengers

Yes, the character designs don’t look so hot. However, those can be changed on the road to launch. That aside, I liked what I saw. The gameplay looks great, the voice cast has some top tier talent for the industry, and the promise of more heroes to be added after launch without the attached microtransactions has my attention.

Dying Light 2

I only played the demo for the first one, a game I still need to play, but I liked it enough to want a sequel. The usual free running mechanics look smooth, plus the addition of player choice shakes up the game, making your playthrough unique, so yeah, more of the good old stuff with a few new things sprinkled in.

Final Fantasy VII Remake and Remasters

The remake of FF7 looks AMAZING. The hybrid combat system looks like a dream, plus the character designs look top notch. In addition, the voice cast sounds on point for their respective characters. The hype around this thing was evident from the incessant cheering, we want it that much. We even have a release date: March 3rd, 2020. It’s been a long time coming, but it seems the wait to experience this classic for the second time on a different system will have finally been worth it.

Also, there was content announced for FF14 as well as two remasters: Crystal Chronicles and FF8.

Bet your ass I’m buying the remaster for FF8.

Biomutant

This has been described as Fluffy Devil May Cry. It’s accurate. I didn’t know you’d be able to customize your character, to! Combat looks fun, and it appears there is humor present if the narrator is anything to go by, so I’m interested.

Destroy All Humans! Remake

I never played the original, but I did read about it and hear about it from a friend. From what I’ve seen, the remake looks fun! Good parody of the 1950s and the updated graphics look great. Plus, Krypto seems like a fun, grumpy protagonist.

Gods and Monsters

This looks like a cross between Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Legend of Zelda. Considering it’s being made by the same creators of the former, I can’t wait to see more of this in the future.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint

I’ll be honest, I still haven’t played any Ghost Recon games, so maybe here would be a good place to start. Gotta say, I like the way Jon Bernthal presented. He just seemed at ease onstage. Plus, Bernthal’s dog looks adorable. Bam Bam is the real hero of the Ubisoft press conference.

Anyway, it seems Bernthal is playing Cole D. Walker, one of the antagonists of the game. Didn’t see any gameplay, but still, the game looks good. I need to play more tactical shooters in general.

Watch Dogs: Legion

I played the first Watch Dogs game. Thought it was cool, but overall it was a bit disappointing. I still need to play the second one, but I heard it was a major improvement, even if it wasn’t a financial hit. Still, this one put a smile on my face. The ability to recruit and play as anyone? A sarcastic AI as your companion? A grandma assassin? I will take all of it, thank you.

Also, grandma assassin.

Did I mention there was a grandma assassin?

Can’t wait for March 6th.

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

The LEGO Star Wars games were some of the first games I ever owned back when I played on the PS2, so I’m hyped for a collection of all 9 films in one game. We don’t know much beyond the announcement trailer, but hey, I’ll gladly take this one when it comes out next year.

Baldur’s Gate III

A video game that plays like a DND game? I can’t wait. Haven’t played the other games, but I’m sure I’ll be fine once I play that tabletop prequel they mentioned.

Battletoads

It’s an Xbox and PC exclusive, but still, glad this is getting a remake.

Bleeding Edge

This looks like an Overwatch reskin. The combat itself looks unique, though, so we’ll see how it goes.

Gears 5

We got a little more on Gears 5 this time around. We’ve got a look at Kait and how the Locust influence is threatening to tear her apart (that’s what I’m assuming, I’ve never played the Gears games). We also got a new mode, Escape. I might get it, since it’ll be available for PC.

Halo Infinite

If this is what Xbox Scarlett looks like, then Sony might have actual competition for once. This is the best the Halo series has looked in years, and considering how let down some felt after Halo 5, it’s about time. We’re getting the same badass Master Chief back, this time with no AI companion, as Cortana has suffered corruption due to being around for longer than normal and has gone psycho as a result. Regardless, the graphics look amazing and I can’t wait to see how it looks when it releases Holiday 2020.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

I never played the original, but I might have to now, because this looks cute. The art style looks great and I’ll always be interested in games where you fight things ten times your own size. Plus, it seems to run smooth, and just by the sound of the story, it already has my heart.

Psychonauts 2

To cap things off, let’s end with a game I’ve been excited for since I finished the original months ago. The game seems to be coming along great, if the first level is anything to go by. Returning voice cast, new enemies and powers, new environments to explore, Jack Black voicing a Brain in a Jar, need I say more?

Also, this game looks to explore the water curse put on Rasputin’s family, so it will be a more personal and chilling story as well.

________________

So, there you have it. That’s my thoughts on E3 2019, half a month late.

What are you guys excited for? Leave a comment letting me know, especially if there was something I left out!

Until then!

[kokichi-and-co-imagine-blog]

*dramatic point* You there! *dramatic pose* Grookey, Sobble or Scorbunny?

Ooh boy…

My friend, you don’t know what you unleashed. 

Before we get started everyone, a quick and obvious Disclaimer: Know that the opinions on the starters are strictly my own and are just that, OPINIONS. They are not fact, they are not the be all and end all. Ultimately, it comes down to taste, and having different tastes is fine. And if your opinions on the starters differ from mine, that’s great. It’s only a game after all and it’s only designs for fictional magical animals. Now, with that out of the way…

Let’s get started.

Scorbunny:

When the starters were first revealed, Scorbunny was the one that jumped out to me first. Might have something to do with me seeming to like fire starters the most in general. The Charmander line (though don’t get me started on how I feel on how much Game Freak seems to pander to this thing. GIVE OTHER POKEMON LOVE GAME FREAK!!!), Cyndiquil line, Chimchar line. That’s three out of seven before gen 8. Admittedly, water types also tie that number (Oshawott line, Froakie line, Popplio line), but in gen 6 I was also a big Fennekin fan and in gen 7 I was all aboard the Litten train till I found out that they had to make my precious kitty stand on two legs. Don’t get me wrong, I like Incineroar, but I was really really hoping for some lean tiger/leopard/cheetah looking pokemon on all fours. Wasn’t a fan of the bipedal choice, but that’s just me. Though I will admit, the Heel idea was a good one.

Anyway, back to Scorbunny. Scorbunny was the first that popped out to me. It looked energetic and sweet. I was slightly worried though with the bandage on its face that this meant we were going back to fire-fighting types but I wasn’t too worried.

After a little while though I ended up changing who I wanted to use as a starter. Blame the fan-artists for that one, the flood of small cute comics for a certain water lizard (we’ll get to Sobble in a moment) kinda shifted the tide. 

By the time the 3D models were leaked, I wasn’t really planning on using Scorbunny anymore, and honestly the models didn’t help. Raboot was okay, perfectly fine design for the awkward middle stage. But Scorbunny… I don’t know, Scorbunny was WAY too human like for me. I’m not even entirely sure HOW to describe it, it just gave off that impression and it didn’t sit well with me.

When the official 2D art came out it helped a bit, but by that time I had already started the game and chosen my starter. And still, the human like feeling is still too present for me to be completely comfortable. I don’t know, it reminds me far too much of human sports anime protagonists. And I get it, that’s kinda the point with it being a soccer player but I can’t really help how I feel. I have warmed up on it though.

Admittedly, the line probably has the best, at least in terms of gameplay, signature move of the starters. And it does look freaking awesome.  

Sobble:

Ooh boy. Ooh boy.

Warning in advance guys, this is going to get kinda ranty. 

As I mentioned above, after a little time sitting with the starter designs, I ended up finding myself liking Sobble more and more. Sobble’s design is adorable, and it helps that I’m also at times feeling tons of anxiety and social intimidation. All the fanart helped too. This little guy stole my heart. I thought it was going to be perfect.

And then the 3D models leaked. 

I was not happy.

Drizzile… once again, a decent awkward middle stage, though those oven mitts for hands I was not fond of.

But Inteleon. INTELEON.

Listen, I get what Game Freak was going for. Spies are a major thing in Britain, from 007/Bond, to MI6 in the Mission Impossible movies. And it makes sense from a story stand point. The shy, easily intimidated Sobble grows up, becoming a super suave and confident spy. It fits. It honestly does.

BUT WHY DOES THAT DESIGN LOOK SO UGLY?!

Now, before we go on, going to rehash the disclaimer above. This is my personal opinion on Inteleon. If you love it, good for you. I am legitimately happy for you. It’s good that you like it, can enjoy it. I wish I could. I do not like it when I dislike a Pokemon, any Pokemon. Especially when the reason I dislike it is simply because I’m not a fan of its design.

But Inteleon. I can’t help it. I just hate it:

Those freakishly long and WAY too human-like hands on a lizard that, while I know were purposely designed, look like gloves. Yes, it goes with the spy motif, but to me it just looks awful.

The stick-thinness of its entire body. Like, its body literally looks like a rail, it’s arms and legs look like a stick-figure’s. It doesn’t even have any real shoulders! (admittedly, part of this may have to do with some… bad memories. My father passed away 4 and a half years ago from colon cancer and during the last few months of his life, he was anorexic. Scarily so. So yeah, might be some repressed stuff going on there. Of course, I could be over-analyzing this and it has nothing to do with it. Who knows?)

That stupid looking cape. Yes, I know it’s a membrane that acts as a glider. Actual lizards have this, and it helps with the spy theme. But to me, all I see is a stupid tiny cape. 

Seeing it in 3D made me just give up on the line. I just couldn’t get myself to like it. Even now, with official 2D art, I can’t get myself to like it.

And of course, that brings us to the final starter. 

Grookey:

There’s a reason I saved Grookey for last. Grookey was the exact opposite of what happened to Sobble for me. 

When I first saw Grookey I was not a fan. Oh sure, it was kinda cute, but something about the design just felt off to me. I think honestly it was the mouth. It just reminded me of a beak for some reason. Still does occasionally, though I’m much more okay with it now. But yeah, it was the least impressive to me of the first stages. I din’t hate it, but it didn’t get a reaction out of me. So I thought I wasn’t going to even consider it.

Then came the 3D leaks.

 And that changed.

Thwackey is my favorite mid stage starter this gen, and definitely ranks high up in mid stage starters over all. It looks really good, like a perfectly natural progression that doesn’t need to rely on teenage awkwardness. Yes, the teenage awkwardness is a perfectly fine design strategy, but I’m so much happier when it isn’t necessary. Thwackey just looks like an older Grookey that is now seriously considering drumming. And I love it.

And then Rillaboom. I will admit, at first sight I wasn’t blown away or head over heels like I am with some final stage starters (Infernape, Primarina, Greninja and Decidueye just to name a few), but I was fine with it. I was okay enough that I felt like going Grookey was an okay final option. Admittedly, I did consider boxing my starter for the first time ever, but after a while things changed. And I genuinely began to like Rillaboom.

The name is fun. Rillaboom is nice, and when you combine it with the usual “Go _!” you of course get Go, Rillaboom! Or, Gorilla-boom. That is a stealth pun I can appreciate.

Rillaboom’s design also grew on me. It’s a drummer and a good one. Usually I’m not a fan of Pokemon carrying around equipment as part of the natural look to them (way too many questions on how that works biologically to me) and at first this kinda turned me off when I saw the drum, but I’ve come to like it. It probably helps that the official 2D art doesn’t have it, which makes me think it isn’t a natural thing it just gets. And those dreads made of shrubs and vines. It’s nice. Plus, a grass gorilla. Thank you for this perfect opportunity to make some Dragon Ball Sayin nicknames. (My current one is named Broly. Rillaboom really reminds me of the new DB Super Broly who I really like, as opposed to the old DBZ one. But that’s a character analysis for another day.)

Ultimately though, it just has the most Pokemon-esque feel to it. I’m not a fan of people in general saying “Oh, that Pokemon is awful because it doesn’t look like a Pokemon!” but sometimes I get it. I understand that urge. And while I never would say a Pokemon is objectively awful for any reason, ESPECIALLY that reason, I can still understand it. And that’s what the other starters felt like to me. Not really like Pokemon. They are decent designs, well thought out ones. But I personally don’t like them, especially on a Pokemon.

So ultimately, TL;DR I’m on Team Grookey.

Closing Statements:

So, I know this has gone on quite a while, but I think it’s really important I end this discussion with a certain message.

It’s okay to like a Pokemon. Any Pokemon. And it’s also okay to dislike a Pokemon. Any Pokemon.

Human beings have tastes, and we all have different ones. I’m going to like certain characters, art, music, etc. that you may or may not like, and vice versa. And this is fine.

Ultimately, be kind and be respectful. 

We’re all still people and fans after all.

[zdbztumble]

“Kingdom Hearts II” revisited, Part VI

On the one hand, I can understand how something like this could slip under the radar, as it’s a small point; on the other hand, that small point can make a big difference, depending on who you are. It matters less to me, as I’ve played the game before, but it still bothers me: why would the Secret Ansem Report you get after the retreat from Hollow Bastion give away the name “Radiant Garden?”

In any event - the second pass at the Disney worlds is considerably shorter than the first. I had forgotten how zippy this stage of the game could get. In a way, I suppose that’s a bit of a missed opportunity to let the Organization show their stuff a little, but this game is plenty long as it is, so I can’t say that I fault them for that. As it is, I think the second pass is slighter than the first on content...but it’s also better in how it spaces that content.

Before we get into each of the worlds, though, I want to touch on the concept of “filler.” Whether it’s worlds in the Kingdom Hearts series, non-manga-inspired episodes of Dragon Ball Z, non-League related episodes of Pokemon, or even individual scenes in a movie, there’s a fairly common attitude that treats any and all filler as automatically bad - that anything not immediately germane to the central plot is a flaw. I’ve never understood this line of thought. The “filler” episodes of Gohan surviving alone during the Saiyan Saga are a highlight of the DBZ anime. All my favorite Pokemon episodes are “filler.” Filler is only a bad thing when it takes up too much time, distracting or undermining the larger story. But when it’s well-placed and well-paced, it can be as good as any plot-centric episode, and can even enhance the greater story through unexpected means.

I said in Part IV that I can understand how this game got the reputation for the Disney worlds being filler based on the back half of the first pass, but thinking more about, that isn’t technically true. I can still certainly see how those worlds would give that impression, because the story falls into a repetitive stall, but technically, things related to the main story do happen - Pete and Maleficent try to rebuild their forces, and get thwarted. That this was done in the way it was, with so little variety, cost the story a sense of progression even as nominally important events, like Disney villains being turned into Heartless, took place. By contrast, the second pass on the Disney worlds has more true filler. But because it’s shorter, and because there’s more variety in how things play out in the respective worlds, the overall effect is much more pleasing to my narrative instincts, even if it falters a little at the end.

As it did in the first pass, the Land of Dragons follows naturally from the set-up immediately preceding it (assuming that you play through the worlds by villain level.) In this case, Sora has finally learned the plan of Organization XIII - let the Heartless run amok, then harvest the hearts released when the Keyblade slays the Heartless. Since lives will be in danger if he does nothing, Sora has no choice but to keep fighting. And, when the player arrives in the Land of Dragons, this is exactly what we see illustrated. I know that some people object to how brief Xigbar’s appearance is, but I don’t see how that’s a problem. The Organization’s plot is established by this point; one can easily assume that Xigbar is in the Land of Dragons to further that plot. By the end of the level, that’s confirmed; he was turning dragons into Heartless. And just as Xaldin was teased in the first pass at the Beast’s Castle without getting into a direct scrap with Sora, Xigbar here is given some build-up ahead of his role later in the game - and, by succeeding in making a Heartless, and leaving his Nobodies behind to fight, he avoids coming off as ineffectual, the way he did during the Organization’s first appearance to Sora in Hollow Bastion.

What’s more, the Land of Dragons is arguably more concerned with bringing Riku back into the plot. At this point in the game, we have just seen him leave the ice cream and photo for Sora, but to actually show him taking a personal hand in trying to keep the worlds safe is a significant step. A case could be made that this should have happened earlier in the game, but Riku’s absence from the first pass is a concept that’s grown on me as I’ve gone on playing. There’s a real impact to his finally turning up in a Disney world at this late stage, and I like that Sora was 1. not made arbitrarily stupid for the sake of “mystery,” and actually recognized Riku right away and 2. did have a moment of doubt and confusion about Riku’s alliances. Plus, there’s a great comedy bit derived from all this too: “He was rather rude.” “Then it WAS Riku!”

From there, we have the Beast’s Castle and Port Royal - two worlds, back-to-back, that feature members of the Organization taking a very direct hand in the events playing out, more than any other Disney worlds. It’s Xaldin and Luxord doing the honors, and they are a perfect example of what I’ve meant when I’ve said in the past that Organization XIII works better as a concept and a collective than as individual members. I’ve never meant that in a pejorative sense; what I mean is that it’s the group, the monolithic unit of the Organization as a whole, that is the antagonist of KH II. Xemnas may be their leader, and Xehanort its instigator, but they are a hive mind when it comes to the goal: collect stolen hearts to get hearts for themselves. The individual members shown in KH II don’t really have their own agencies beyond serving that goal, except for Axel, and they aren’t very fleshed out as individuals. Xaldin is just as one-note and empty of personality as Zexion and Lexaeus were in CoM (though gifted with a much better English VA), and Luxord’s gaming sensibility (and Demyx’s incompetence) are only a slight step above that. But they don’t need to be any more defined than they are, because they’re 1. Nobodies devoid of hearts (at this point in the series anyway) and 2. cogs in the wheel that is Organization XIII. Unlike the Organization members we meet in CoM and R/R, they aren’t commanding huge chunks of screen time to blather repetitively among themselves - they appear when the story needs them to, and no more. They provide gradually greater challenges for Sora in combat, creating a boss battle ladder to climb until Xemnas is reached, and also help build up the scale of threat that Organization XIII really poses to Sora after being absent for so long in the first half of the story. It’s video game logic applied to story, and very effectively so IMO.

For some people, the limited screen time of characters like Xigbar, Luxord, etc., and the lack of backstory for them, is a flaw in this game. It should be obvious by now that I don’t share that complaint. For one thing - we are given backstory for Organization XIII, just not an excessive amount of it. And why should there be any more to than what the vanilla version of the game provides in gameplay and Ansem Reports? How much backstory did we get on Jafar in Aladdin, Ursula in The Little Mermaid, or Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty? The story functions well without excessive backstory for the villains for many reasons - chief among them that it isn’t a story about them. This isn’t the tale of dark protagonist Xehanort, falling into darkness and continuing on as the Nobody Xemnas to try and regain a heart. KH II is a point in the series where the staff still clearly remember who the protagonists are, and KH II is a story of resolution for their stories begun in KH I. It’s the resolution of Riku’s struggle toward redemption, begun at the end of KH I and continued through R/R before reaching its climax here; it’s resolution for Donald and Goofy’s quest to find King Mickey, and Mickey’s quest to set the worlds to right; it’s a resolution for Kairi, left alone with fading memories at the end of KH I but determined to set out and find her friends again; and it’s resolution for Sora, recovering his powers and his whole self after the events of CoM while slowly confronting what became of his Nobody in that year, and finally finding his way home after his long journey. At the risk of sounding pretentious, it’s the Odyssey to KH I’s Iliad, and Organization XIII are the cyclopses, sirens, and witches. I don’t need - or want - detailed backstories on them when the story I’m engaged in concerns the people they’re getting in the way of.

(I also think it’s notable that Xaldin hasn’t really been pushed aggressively as a major character since KH II. His brief appearances in later games don’t even attempt to expand his personality; by contrast, Zexion/Ienzo, Vexen/Even, Marluxia, and Larxene’s revivals are treated as much bigger deals, but in all the time we’ve spent with them past their supposed deaths, and for all the background and lore given to them, there’s been no appreciable expansion on their personalities. They’re all still playing the same one or two notes they had in the first place, with the only difference being that their presence is disproportionate to their role in the story and their ability to justify their screen time with personality.)

With that rant finished: the same problems with the wording of the dialogue as the first pass plague Beast’s Castle still, and Belle and the Beast remain too far down the road to romance given the nature of their ticking clock. There’s also a huge lapse in logic - the idea that Belle wouldn’t have been told, by the servants if not by the Beast, about the rose. But I do like how direct a continuation this world is from the first pass. Xaldin’s efforts to make the Beast a Heartless were fleshed out more than Maleficent’s and Pete’s were at any point, and the growth in the Beast’s character during the second pass is nice. Belle’s passivity compared to her movie counterpart is made up for (somewhat) by her quick jab and rescue of the rose. And I managed to beat Xaldin on my first try, without being reduced to Last Hope even once! (One minor nitpick about this world’s second pass, though: if Jack can keep his Santa suit in gameplay, why can’t the Beast keep his ball outfit?)

Port Royal is a massive improvement from the first pass. It’s amazing what loosening the shackles of the source material can do for this series. As brief as it is, it’s a creative way to use an element from the movie, and the first pass of the game, in the Organization’s plans, and it has a lot of great little character beats. I like Jack referring to Luxord and the others as “Organizers;” I like Sora’s prank on Jack with the Keyblade (levity with Sora done right - take note, future series entries); I like Peter Pan turning up as Summon in this of all worlds (I’d completely forgotten he was a Summon, so that was a nice surprise; it did occur to me after I found him that Summons don’t have a story justification here the way they did in KH I - a minor, and possibly inevitable, retcon); and I like seeing Sora show signs of weariness from his journeys. You could argue that his getting teary-eyed at seeing Mulan and Shang together was an earlier sign of this, but here, it’s made explicit. Though I don’t know why he had to cover his feelings with silliness; in KH I, Sora has no problem expressing doubts, exhaustion, and longing.

Another nice touch in Port Royal’s second pass is the way that it gets started - with Elizabeth declaring that she doesn’t want to sit around waiting anymore, and wants to go out and find Will. Because that couple had prompted thoughts of Kairi in Sora earlier in the game, it’s very natural to make the thematic connection between Elizabeth’s actions and Kairi’s here without anyone explicitly commenting on it. This is the way to tie related but distant story elements together. It isn’t necessary - or desirable - that every connection is called out for what it is, but doing it once or twice strengthens the overall effect when later moments pass unremarked upon. It’s a lesson KH III failed to remember, as the only time a connection between Sora and Kairi and the ill-fated Disney couples is made happens after everything Disney has already passed.

Just having the order of the worlds mixed up slightly gives the second pass some variety, but even more comes in Olympus. This is a world largely concerned with its own internal story, tying up the loose ends from the first pass. But the moment when Sora encounters Nobodies in Hades’ layer, only to be saved by Heartless, is a very nice - and subtle - way to keep the greater story in mind. We never learn what those Nobodies are up to specifically, which Organizer sent them, or what set the Heartless to attack them - but their presence means that Sora (and the player) can’t forget that Organization XIII’s plot is never far, even when it isn’t front-and-center. Olympus also demonstrates how to incorporate Final Fantasy material properly, thanks to Auron’s brief flashes of memory - they’re short, and they’re tied into what’s going on in the story instead of distracting from it.

Agrabah is almost as subtle in the way it handles the Organization - an unseen member orchestrates Jafar’s release, on the hope of making him a Heartless. It’s a slight role for them, but a different sort of slight role than they had in Olympus. This is where the variety counts for something compared to the first pass; if not a whole lot is progressing in the plot, at least things play out in a different way in each world. My problems with Agrabah’s second pass are all to do with the world on its own terms; I find the controls for the carpet riding a little wonky, and the world has the opposite problem to many later ones in that it gives the Disney hero nothing to do with defeating the villain while Sora does all the work. The resolution with Iago is nice, though, and I’m sorry this series never closed things out on Agrabah with a King of Thieves adaptation.

It’s only when we arrive at Halloween Town that I think a Disney world (on the main World Map, with combat) can truly be said to be all filler. No one from Organization XIII is present, no schemes take place behind the scenes; the only story here concerns the local Disney characters. And with the beat of him being excited to see Santa played out, Sora ends up without anything to do - he’s along for the ride with Jack. However, even with that, I would say that the second pass on Halloween Town is how to do filler right in a video game like this, because this side excursion has plenty of thematic significance. Dr. Finklestein’s puppet doing bad things out of a desire for a heart is the whole of Organization XIII writ small, and gives a preview of the pathos to come with them. And of course, Sora is once again reminded of Kairi in an adorable closer for the world.

Sadly, the last in the line-up is Pride Lands, and I was once again disappointed by this world. Taken as a whole, it’s probably the weakest of them, not counting Atlantica. That’s a huge shame, because it’s such a wonderful idea for a KH level, for many reasons. Besides being derived from one of the best and most popular Disney films, and offering great form changes, taking Summons from the first game and expanding on them in the sequel - treating them as true characters, who remember Sora and their adventures with him - was a beautiful concept. And it works so well in the Land of Dragons, even as Mushu gives way to Mulan as Sora’s chief point of contact. But Pride Lands just couldn’t pull it off. Here on the second pass, the Scar ghost makes for an intriguing idea made laughably underwhelming in execution, and the final Heartless boss is disconnected from any story content within that world or the larger plot. This is filler done wrong, and the best I can say for it is that it gave Sora more of a role than the first pass did - seeing him employ reverse psychology was fun.

(I might as well touch on the two optional worlds - true filler if there ever was any - while I’m here. I still think the 100 Acre Wood was needlessly shoved into the flow of the story during the first half, and the concept is still repetitive from the first game, but I have softened a bit from my earlier stance that it shouldn’t have been brought back at all - the minigames are a lot of fun, even if the world doesn’t quite pack the emotional punch it did in KH I. Atlantica, on the other hand, remains a colossal disappointment. I had forgotten just how much it forgets and/or ignores from KH I once Ursula shows up - logic is out the window at that point, the way Ariel and the others react to her. Her song is the worst of the bunch, and Ariel isn’t even involved in fighting her this time.)

I’ll go ahead and close on Hollow Bastion, and the second pass at Space Paranoids. Once again, we have some variety here. This time, it comes in the form of cross-cutting - cutscenes of Leon racing around preparing things juxtaposed with Sora’s gameplay inside the system. The only other time in the series I remember cross-cutting being this effective was in juxtaposing Aerith’s briefing of Donald and Goofy in Traverse Town with Leon and Yuffie doing the same for Sora in KH I. And there is an absolutely wonderful moment where Cid and Merlin finally come to a head (“OLD loon, you say!?”) It was another of those delightful bits that I’d forgotten about, and it only underscores how mistaken an idea it was to abandon this little unit in favor of “original” characters. When has Ienzo ever shown this kind of chemistry and interplay, with anybody?

But I do have to close on a negative this time. There are some nitpicks to be had with the second pass at Space Paranoids, such as Sora being more awkward about hugs than a computer program. There are legitimate story issues, such as the lack of good reason for the system going screwy. And there are missed opportunities - one of them related to that last point. Xemnas, or another of the ex-apprentices, could have been responsible for setting that off, which would have gotten Organization XIII involved in the last world right before the home stretch.

Less detrimental to this story, but more detrimental in the long run to the series overall, is the fact that the reveal about Hollow Bastion once being Radiant Garden doesn’t yield any revelations about the tritagonist of the series who came from said gardens. Kairi’s past is the one loose end from KH I that this game won’t end up resolving, and the series has never properly addressed it. Ansem SoD, possessing Riku, seemed to know her, and declared her “Princess” in no uncertain terms; one could infer from that that he knew her. The Final Mix of KH I would reveal that he deliberately selected her for an experiment to find the Keyblade. That this is all we’ve ever gotten - and that backstory concepts that might have suited her were given to other characters - is ridiculous. This game, if not the exact moment when Tron reveals the name Radiant Garden, was possibly their best chance to rectify this, and they blew it.

[medea10]

My Review of Mawaru Penguindrum

How did I get into this anime? I’ve known of this anime’s existence for a while and was well-aware that this series was directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. Anime director of the beautifully complex Revolutionary Girl Utena and…kappas eating people’s asses fame of Sarazanmai! Well, this anime was made somewhere between both of those I just mentioned. And as long as I don’t see penguins eating people’s asses, we’ll be alright!

Kanba and Shoma Takakura are twin brothers living alone with their baby sister Himari. Time has not been kind to this family as these siblings lost their parents a while ago and Himari has been sick her whole life. In fact, Himari is given a few months at the most to live. During one of her brief breaks away from the hospital, Kanba and Shoma take Himari to the aquarium. They do the usual thing like watch the exhibits and buy souveniers. Unfortunately, the day ends in tragedy as Himari collapses. She is immediately transferred to a hospital and is later pronounced dead.

After being dead for a few minutes, Himari jumps up wearing a penguin hat that was recently purchased at the aquarium. Apparently her life has been extended a bit. Being brought back from the dead thanks to a penguin hat was strange enough. Then you have these three penguins hanging around the home all of a sudden doing odd jobs! Then Himari (while wearing the penguin hat) tells her brothers they must find the “Penguin Drum” or Himari will die. Their target for the Penguin Drum lies with a young girl named Ringo Oginome. She contains a diary that supposidely predicts the future. And it goes insane from there!

Survival tactic! Shall we begin?

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: So this anime is a couple of years old and dubbed by Sentai Filmworks. It’s what I would expect. You’ve got the usual voices of Monica Rial and Luci Christian. There are the veteran voices like Hilary Haag, Cynthia Martinez, Shelly Calene-Black, and Dave Matranga. You’ve got voices ranging from great to mediocre. And then there’s…Oh dear.

Hello Illich Guardiola. We meet again.

Yeah, he’s one of the main leads of this anime. And we don’t hear him anymore! Reason why is due to the fact that he was charged with sexual assault on a child, but was really getting married to a 16 year old (with her parents as a witness). Regardless of your thoughts on Guardiola, this is one of his final roles before all this happened. And I have the same opinion as many do with a lot of his roles…he’s okay. Aside from that, I noticed there were a lot of cast changes on a lot of the minor characters throughout the dub. I’m not sure what the case was and I didn’t really notice the change all that much. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

JAPANESE CAST: *Shoma is played by Ryouhei Kimura (known for Hinata on Angel Beats, Takizawa on Eden of the East, Judar on Magi, Hachiken on Silver Spoons, Hiyori on Free!, and Taishi on Tokyo Ghoul)

*Kanba is played by Subaru Kimura (known for Takeshi on Doraemon and Terasaka on Assassination Classroom)

*Himari is played by Miho Arakawa (known for Concordia on Pokemon BW, Sonia on Danganronpa 3, and Ginko on Yuri Kuma Arashi)

*Ringo is played by Marie Miyake (known for Aki on Silver Spoon and Hideki on Love Live)

ENGLISH CAST: *Shoma is played by Blake Shepard (known for Soma on Food Wars, Otonashi on Angel Beats, Natsume on Inu x Boku SS, Alex on Domestic Girlfriend, Kyousuke on Little Busters, and Laito on Diabolik Lovers)

*Kanba is played by Illich Guardiola (known for Yoshino on Clannad, Takamatsu on Angel Beats, Kanae on Maria Holic, Kuze on ef – a tale of melodies, and Shidou on Highschool of the Dead)

*Himari is played by Monica Rial (known for Bulma on DBZ: Kai, May Chang on FMA: Brotherhood, Index on Railgun/Index, Nyamo on Azumanga Daioh, Stocking on Panty & Stocking, and Mei-rin on Black Butler)

*Ringo is played by Emily Neves (known for Kotomi on Clannad, Kanade on Angel Beats, Minene on Mirai Nikki, Kumin in Chunibyo, and Yuu on Watamote)

SHIPPING: Wow, this gets bat-shit early on! Take a sedative, y’all!

In the early episodes of Mawaru Penguindrum, we see Ringo infatuated with an older man named Tabuki. He’s a teacher at Shoma and Kanba’s school. But it gets creepier when Ringo crawls under this guy’s house to listen to his various noises, steal curry his girlfriend made, use aphrodisiacs on him, and have elaborate plans to seduce this guy. However, it does get a little sad when you realize this girl is trying to win over Tabuki to somehow become her dead sister (that died the day Ringo was born). But then it gets really fucked up when she tries to rape Tabuki not once, but twice. Yes, you heard me! In one episode Ringo comes up from the floor boards naked as a jaybird and tries to jump in bed with him (thankfully he wasn’t at home). Then in another episode, Ringo drugs Tabuki and Shoma, dresses up like Tabuki’s fiancé and was ready to do the deed. We are eight episodes in at this point and hoping to the anime Gods that this kind of batshit insanity ends quickly.

(It doesn’t. It gets worse.)

From one train-wreck of a character to another! Let’s talk about Yuri. This is Tabuki’s fiancé turned wife. This is the woman Ringo was trying to get rid of so she can have Tabuki all to herself. But it turns out Yuri has history involving Ringo’s sister Momoka. Yuri loved Momoka. So much so that she sees Momoka in Ringo and Yuri ends up sexually assaulting Ringo. And that’s just layer one with Tabuki x Yuri. They have their own ambitions and they all involve Ringo’s dead sister. Their love for each other is quite fake. And it wasn’t until Tabuki got stabbed by a jilted lover of Yuri’s that they just settled for each other.

And then you’ve got Masako trying to shower love on Kanba. They’re blood brother and sister.

Can we talk about something normal here?

Right, this is an Ikuhara directed anime. Nothing’s ever going to be normal here.

After learning about the relationship between the Takakura siblings, I wondered who really loved Himari most and if Ringo was going to get any love either. It was very clear that Kanba was the closest to Himari. I know Shoma was the one that saved Himari when they were children, but there are scenes with Kanba accepting items from Himari that he would never normally accept from any female. Not to mention Kanba willing to sacrifice his own being to save Himari more than once.

As for Shoma, I know he had his fill of Ringo and her bullshit early on. But things became a lot more civil between the two. Almost friendly! But then Shoma learned about Ringo’s sister Momoka dying in a terrorist attack and became absolutely riddled with guilt. Well, that’s because Shoma’s parents are to blame for that attack. So he was very distant with Ringo. But we do get a love confession at the end of the series. But…well, shit happens!

THE PENGUINS: In the first episode, Shoma, Tanba, and Himari were given three penguins shortly after visiting the aquarium and getting that penguin hat that changed everything. These penguins can’t be seen by anyone else and throughout each episode, they’re seen doing ridiculous things. Even during the tensest moments of the series, we’ll see one of these little penguins doing something unbelievable. I think the most ridiculous moment has to be in the hospital where we see one of them stealing women’s underwear. Shoma’s in the freakin’ hospital after getting hit by a car and we have to watch a penguin fishing for panties.

Fine, I admit it. I was laughing my ass off when one of the penguins was fishing for panties. I am an immature degenerate.

MARCH 20TH, 1995: In terms of Mawaru Penguindrum, this is a very important date. First of all, it’s the day that Shoma, Kanba, Masako, and Ringo were all born. Not only that, but this was the date of Momoka’s death when she was in that terrorist attack in the train station. But did you know this particular date has left a mark in Japan? That day was when a cult released Sarin gas throughout several trains in Tokyo, killing 13 and injuring over 5000.

FORESHADOWING?!: It might have been some major foreshadowing where we see Ringo’s plush toys every now and then. Normally I wouldn’t give it another glance, but watching this immediately after viewing Sarazanmai and seeing an otter and a kappa together like that, I’m starting to wonder. Mawaru Penguindrum was made in 2011 and Sarazanmai was made in 2019. Maybe Sarazanmai was in the works for many years and we just didn’t know it.

ENDING: So it’s pretty clear that Ringo’s sister Momoka had a powerful diary. So much so that even after Momoka’s death, people want to get their hands on it. Yuri wants it to revive Momoka. Masako wants the diary to make her younger brother Mario better (as he’s sick with the same illness as Himari). Both Yuri and Masako have part of the diary but can’t really do much with it as it is split in half. Momoka was able to create miracles with her diary when she was alive. Things that are written will come true, but comes at a price to Momoka’s body and she would ultimately die from it.

And then we get the bombshell of Takakura family. Kanba isn’t really Shoma’s real brother. He’s really related to Masako (the girl who’s been chasing him down for nearly half the series). They’re twins! And as for Himari, she’s not related to Shoma either. This makes Shoma the only real Takakura. Apparently, Himari was an unwanted child and was sent to a place called the “Child Broiler” to disappear. Hold the ending for a second!

WHAT?! A Child broiler! Where unwanted children are gathered and are burned and turned into smoke. What kind of holocaust shit is this?! Dude, burning children is not cool! I had to do a double-take when Tabuki told his story about that place. But when I learned about Himari almost dying there, oh hell no! I just had to get that off my chest.

BACK TO THE ENDING: Despite Kanba and Himari not really a part of the Takakura family, they’re still getting the brunt of the blame for what their parents did. I mean, their parents are part of a terrorist organization that caused the death of a lot of people. So it does get to the point where Tabuki snaps and tries to kill Himari as revenge for Momoka. And Shoma has been a depressive basket-case since learning about Ringo’s sister dying as a result of his parents. This happy, little family that Shoma, Kanba, and Himari built is crumbling down. Kanba is actually in cahoots with his parents who are still alive and not in prison. Himari and Shoma remember the truth that Himari isn’t really their sister and that Shoma saved her. This leading to Himari leaving Shoma to go with Kanba!

Kanba is pretty far gone at this point. His objective is to save Himari and that’s all. He doesn’t care about his real siblings Masako and Mario. Mario is just as sick as Himari and can only live because of a special penguin hat much like Himari’s. Kanba is following in his parent’s footsteps of setting off bombs and causing mass destruction. In a showdown between him and police, he was already pretty beaten up and Masako ends up saving him and taking the brunt of the attack. And that’s when Sanetoshi steps up!

Yeah, this guy has been seen around almost hauntingly throughout the series. Halfway into the series, he was the doctor with special viles to help Himari live. Yeah, he’s a ghost, but he still twerks things to his liking. He’s the reason why there are two penguin hats and surprise, those hats are really Momoka split in two. Sanetoshi then has Himari and Masako live a little longer. And then he burned Momoka’s diary while Ringo is surrounded by flames. Next to come will be Kanba’s big bang by setting bombs all over the train. A revisit to what his parents did on the day of his birth. Thankfully, he was stopped by Ringo who recited something related to the diary and her sister. We end this stand-off with Shoma admitting his feelings for Ringo and a final touching moment between Kanba and Himari. Kanba and Shoma end up disappearing and wiped away from everyone’s memories.

Okay then!

So Masako and Himari don’t remember them having an older brother and Ringo doesn’t remember being told she was loved. But it’s a happy ending I suppose. Mario and Himari aren’t going to die like what was indicated throughout the series. Tabuki and Yuri are going to stay together and bury the hatchet over losing Momoka all those years ago. But there are still clues that indicate that Shoma and Kanba indeed existed. So will we ever see them again? Who the hell knows? Ikuhara-san gives me headaches.

Yep, it’s an Ikuhara brain-fart classic. It was a fun yet confusing ride. And isn’t it just perfect timing that while watching Penguindrum, they announce a recap movie? The franchise is still as popular as ever if the crowd-funding site reached its donation goal in less than one hour. I know it’s been 10 years since the anime’s debut and it’s only a recap, but who knows! We could get an extra at the end that could indicate a return or something that involves the girls reunited with Kanba and Shoma.

Oh dear…um, who’s gonna play Kanba if this gets picked up overseas? Because there’s no way Illich is ever coming back.

Once again, I always enjoy the art and animation here. No matter what Ikuhara anime you watch, you can tell that there’s so much inspiration from Rose of Versailles. And why not? That’s a great freakin’ anime, somebody relicense it please! But art alone isn’t going to hook a lot of viewers to this one if you aren’t used to this kind of thing. Many of Ikuhara’s animes deal a lot with fate and destiny and going through the weirdest things imaginable in order to get there. It won’t always make a lot of sense. And when you see penguins roaming around doing weird-ass shit, even during the serious moments, you might get thrown off.

Once more, I recommend you watch Revolutionary Girl Utena and Yuri Kuma Arashi first to get your feet wet. Then watch a few Bakemonogatari episodes too. I know Ikuhara isn’t involved in the Monogatari series, but it’s good practice. Then, I think you’ll be ready to take this series on.

If you would like to watch Mawaru Penguindrum, all 26 episodes are available to watch on Hi-Dive.

Now what’s my next Sentai…AND NO, I WILL NOT REVIEW REDO OF HEALER!

Hell yeah! Shoujo-Ai in the house!

[kintatsujo]

Um... This is going to sound like a weird question, but... you watched Yu-Gi-Oh back when it was still airing, right? What was that like? Did you have any theories or predictions about what would happen? Were they confirmed? What was the fandom like? Was there discourse? I ask because I was so little back then that I only caught snippets of episodes, so by the time I actually got into the fandom the series was over and I got spoiled pretty much immediately. Sorry if this is out of the blue!

okay lol sorry for taking a bit to answer this it’s been

one of those weeks

Okay so yes!  Yugioh was the first fandom I was actively in and yes, there was fandom fighting

We basically fought about literally everything; it’s a lot more laid back even if you consider that I’m better at picking people to be in a community with now

Some Debates included 

what continuity was Better (much like today but complicated by the fact that for a while it was harder to get one’s HANDS on certain continuities; which is why there are people who think Series Zero was Super Serious as opposed to being Pretty Silly)

Shipping wars, as you’d expect, but Silentshipping was actually a pretty huge ship at the time (and I’m still convinced its rarity now was because of a concerted bullying effort, given the reaction I still see to @shizukazilla every time someone finds it)

Whether or not Alister was a dude or a chick in the Japanese, which lasted about a week but was quite vicious

“Yami Terrence,” where someone insisted Malik was going to be renamed “Something stupid like Terrence” randomly on her personal shitty-ass Geocities site (which was literally just a profile about herself with a random rant about how much she hated the Yugioh dub) and then an entire section of the fandom took it as gospel that this was going to be his name until the episode he’s first called “Marik” aired

Lots and lots and LOTS of Tea bashing, which I am quite relieved most of the fandom has moved on from because I Have Seen Things Which Cannot Be Unseen

“It’s impossible to do a good nexgen”

I did indeed have at least one theory confirmed and that was basically that Atem was going to die (and I feel bad about that in retrospect but my tendency to be too genre savvy for my own good is one I’ve had for a long time)

The biggest subset of fandom theories was generally about what Atem’s actual name was going to turn out to be and they were pretty much all wrong

Also: The reason I never much got into Yugioh The Abridged Series is because initially it was literally all jokes we were literally all making with some shit that made me genuinely uncomfortable thrown in, go figure I guess?

There were a lot more fics and speculation based on the video games than there is now and I honestly miss it even though I never did play them

At its height Yugioh was absolutely more popular than Pokemon.  Like, I’d walk through the store and there’s Mai on the TV Guide.  I have so much random ass packaging from cereal bars and cereal; also the cereal was basically triangular Captain Crunch and again I genuinely miss it

The readership for one of the fan magazines thought Johnny Depp should play Malik in a live action movie and I’ve never forgiven them

A “dueling tutorial” DVD that one of these magazines put out where one of the kids insisted on calling Celtic Guardian “Seltic” Guardian like the basketball team and clearly was very smug about the dub pronouncing it “wrong” (the dub isn’t pronouncing Celtic wrong btw)

actually on that note of non-digital fandom both Junior and Senior year of high school I basically sat and watched my Junior year boyfriend’s buddies play Yugioh and DBZ every lunch and one of the kids insisted on calling his all-female monster deck his “Vagina Deck” (I know), plus there was a lot of ragging on Exodia

SO MANY little independent fansites like oh my god, like if the internet were a vast ocean and Tumblr were a continent these would basically have been the Pacific Islands 

one of the most notable fansites was run by this guy named Edo and a Big Theory is that Edo Phoenix was actually named after him; he actually made this like, really broken little computer game for the card game I think he never finished but which Invid played for like weeks worth of hours

There was a Mary Sue Test people kept referring people to that was more stringent about character design than whoever drew the Battle City background characters

there’s

there’s a lot

it was a lot

[sphinxsmuses-archived]

OOC: All Available Muses/Characters!

Fire Emblem Three Houses:

Diana Fotieni (A student at the Academy under the Blue Lions house training to become a knight one day. She is studious and trains hard, seeming always serious but holds a secret soft side to her once one gets to know her better.)

Final Fantasy 14:

Shay Pierina (A Miqo’te who was found as a child outside a small village that is part of the Ul’dah kingdom. Adopted by kind Hyurs, she lived in poverty but didn’t let it bother her and worked to protect her family. After discovering the Echo, she happened upon a member of the Scions and decided to join and travel away from home.)

Josephina Adrahgan (A Miqo’te from a family of nobles. After her family tried to arrange a marriage between her and another noble family, she decided to run away with her fat cat named Chubchub and ended up joining a troupe of Dancers and decided to travel with them)

Pokemon:

Chiyumi Muzai (A newbie Pokemon trainer from Hearthome with a Piplup named Pippin as her starter and a friendly Swablu by the name of Peeps. Shy and slightly clumsy and tends to attract Pokemon when she doesn’t want to)

Blair Mahou (Braixen Gijinka who thinks she is a magical girl. Flirty and mischievous sometimes but mainly likes to help people with her ‘powers’. Likes to put on a show in order to gain reputation and hopes to get her own tv show)

Peeps (An Altaira Gijinka girl who can’t speak human very well and tends to just say Peep or chirp or hum. Very innocent and naive and loves to give hugs to people and can be a tad air-headed. Belongs to Chiyumi)

Soul Eater:

Kayleen Baxter (A girl full of fear after her parents were killed by a witch in front of her eyes when she was a child. She only survived when a Meister came and fought off the witch, but she ended up running away. She became scared of everything, her soul unstable.)

My Hero Academia:

Tia “Usagi” Faye (Bubbly kind of girly girl whose quirk is electricity and magnetism. She uses this alongside rollerblading to fight and calls herself Usagi for the jump tricks she can pull off while blading around. A student at UA. Also has a The World Ends with You verse where she is a Player.)

Kyana Aeira (A wannabe heroine with the ability to conjure fire. Easily excitable and tends to rush into fights without thinking but wants to help the world and has a big heart. Also has an Overwatch verse.)

Fandomless:

Adelaide Maidie (A magical girl with the ability to turn into a fluffy pink cat. She thinks it’s fun to pretend to be a cat, accepting fish, milk, even pets and brushes from anyone fooled by her tricks.)

Nikki Irving (An oddball of a girl who stumbled upon a cursed Eldritch Being who had been shrunk and turned into a tiny octopus. She decided to keep it as a pet, named it Tickles, and has no idea it is slowly influencing her mind.)

Miyu Neraida (An innocent angel curious about the human world. Very naive and quick to trust others and has a sympathetic heart. Also has a fairy verse and a Yugioh verse)

Poppilina “Poppy” Puddlington (A slime girl adopted by a rich noble family. Poppy is curious about the world, exploring it with her favorite treat, candy, on hand at all times. Always happy to make more friends)

Kalliphae Myressei (A moth woman with the ability to heal others using a powder that emits from her. She is a princess of a far off kingdom. Acts with a noble air and always tries to follow her heart. Has a My Hero Academia verse where she is a assistant teacher/nurse.)

Orabella Kalon (A shy summoner who can summon tiny birds, fairies that serve Titania, and a spider. Wants to teach magic to others as she finds it so fascinating and wonderful. Has a League of Legends verse)

Cheza Fènghuáng (A phoenix princess from a Matriarchy kingdom called Nán Sòng. A major bookworm and very anti-social, usually staying inside and reading unless her mischievous mother makes her go outside to meet people. Has two retainers that follow her sometimes.)

Ourania Thanos (A dragon that can turn into a human. Cocky, egotistical, and loves to show off to others. Loves to fight people just to fight strong opponents and also loves to eat lots of meat and drinks lots of ale. Has a Monster Hunter verse where she is a Jinouga gijinka)

Iyumi Akuma (A bratty, whiny, wannabe queen with high delusions. She can be a major pain, demanding attention or demanding servants but deep down wants a king to serve and be submissive towards. Can change to be better with time.)

Chloe Thaleia (Mischievous thief from a family of thieves looking for her older brother who left home when she was a child. Will steal from you playfully then give it back once she’s caught. Has a magical greatsword she stole that can use the four elements but she has no idea how to use it.)

Colette Eirina (Princess of Maas Kingdom and a rather air headed one at that. A hopeless romantic who reads tons of romance novels and is very naive but a sweet and kind person willing to help others. Though she mainly needs help herself. Has a Legend of Zelda verse and Konosuba verse)

Fairy Tail:

Emilia Clarimond (A Celestial Wizard from the town of Hargeon with Chinese Zodiac keys. Loves to dress fashionable and can be kind of bratty. Has the Monkey, Tiger and Mouse Jade Keys. Currently looking for a wizard guild to join. Also has a Fate series verse where she is a Master and a fandomless verse)

Kingdom Hearts:

Xia Malificia: (A Nobody OC. Mischievous, flirty, and beautiful, she loves to charm men into giving her money, power, or information. Or all of the above. Has plant powers where she summons vines to her aid and can summon Alraune Nobodies. Wants to possibly join Organization 13.)

Ai Malificia: (Somebody of Xia. Very sweet and gentle, innocent and shy. Kept safe in her mansion home, she knows very little of the outside world except what she has learned from books until the day she fell into darkness when Heartless attacked her home of Radiant Garden.)

Yugioh:

Christina Terrwyn (Spunky, rambunctious tomboy with a dragon deck. Has Digimon, general fantasy verse and DBZ verse. Loves to show off and take things to the absolute extreme. Has DM and GX verses.)

Aku Yazoi (A wannabe punk who is hot tempered and tries to act cool but is a sucker for cute girls. Is kind of a dweeb. Is from 5Ds. Also has fandomless verse)

Nier Automata:

10B (A Battle Unit android who is more emotional than the androids of YorHa usually are. She is playful and a tad flirtatious, calling people darling just for the fun of it. She is also very protective of humans or anyone she deeply cares for to the point where she will kill whoever harmed them)

[the-strongest-decoy]

power of haikyuu!!

real sauce guys

so i’m (was??) an anime noob who descended into the madness of otaku-dom about a year and half ago- 2 years if you round it up. it was definitely after i came to tumblr coz my early days here were obsessing and screeching about this show called the 100 and Bellarke 

then it was bnha (a hard-core kacchako stan) and then i watched haikyuu after one of my kacchako mutuals reblogged haikyuu gifs and it was getting annoying to not know what everyone was raving about

so i ended up watching haikyuu, and it has resulted in this blog

today after dinner i was chatting with one of my friends, he was kinda busy and hadn’t watched any of the awesome anime from last season and i was telling him to get on with watching Kaguya-sama love is war that’s hella fun and the promised neverland that’s the next gen death-note. and then he let’s slip that he hasn’t watched haikyuu!! and i’m like!! “dude!! what are you doing in life if you haven’t watched haikyuu? everyone needs haikyuu in their lives!!”

keep in mind this guy has been watching anime since dbz and pokemon days. i still haven’t watched dbz or all of pokemon just episodes here and there

he says okay and then he tells me that i should watch this anime that’s excellent and has death-note vibes and is excellent but he just couldn’t recall the name of the anime no matter how hard he tried and he didn’t want to spoil the anime for me either. 

me, an unconsciously-confident-level-6 otaku, “hmm that’s alright just tell me the character names i might be able to guess it still”

“okay there’s these characters called 9 and 12-”

“Zankyou no Terror?” 

“........ fuck yeah! it’s zankyou no terror! yes, that’s what it’s called! have you already-”

“no i haven’t. i don’t even know the premise. it just so happens that those 9 and 12 characters are voiced by Ishikawa Kaito and Saitou Souma, whose characters in haikyuu!! wear jerseys of the same number (Kageyama and Yamaguchi)” 

he gave me a stunned look. honestly, i’m stunned myself. tbh, i almost started talking about how i thought it could have akaashi and bokuto’s VA too with 4 and 5 but i held it in and thankfully so, coz that’s blood lad, also about which i know nothing about

so ladies, gentlemen, nb and agender friends, that’s the power of haikyuu.