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23rd Tournament was truly a legendary moment for the announcer xD I think the way I was ranking the arcs this time, I just felt like the Cell arc didn't have the exact type of Dragon Ball flavor I'm craving at the moment. Maybe it has to do with how serious much of the arc is without very much comedy (besides Mr. Satan lol)

Haha, that was a smart call, even if I've only logged on at the very end of March. I've watched a few stuff with my brother (which I'll get around to adding eventually) but yeah this year's not going so well lol. I'll still get a few stuff done, but nothing to the extent that I wanted. Need to catch up on a bunch of manga too, haven't read any of the last batch of HxH chapters for example.

I did go back and read your thoughts on Dragon Ball, we pretty much align on the Buu Saga but obviously we disagree when it comes to the Cell Saga. Though I can understand your issues with the Cell Saga. Kinda surprised your rant didn't include Gohan's transformation being unlocked after 16's death despite lacking any emotional connection to him, I imagine you probably complained about it in the chapter itself but that was one of the issues you pointed out about the Cell arc back during our first conversations about it that stuck with me. I will say in terms of characters to connect with, you say there's only really Trunks & Krillin but unless I'm forgetting something Piccolo is pretty solid in this regard too. He doesn't really have much to do during the Cell Games portion, but I found him enjoyable while he was in focus. Was there a reason he didn't work for you?

Glad to see the Cell arc didn't wind up on the bottom though, lol. Glad we both seem to agree that the Piccolo arc is the low point of the Dragon Ball, albeit I think I ranked it above the Search for the Dragon Balls mostly due to how short that segment of the series is.

Added Cowa & Neko Majin to my Plan to Read, though I'm not sure when I'll get around to read them. I do need to check out the SandLand anime, and also finish Toriyama's Manga Theater. And since I've never read Dr. Slump, I've got a lot of Toriyama works ahead of me. It'll be interesting to get your thoughts on the DBZ movies and especially Super.

Ah yeah, I heard about David Lynch's passing. Some some interview clips from him following his passion that endeared me a bit more to the man, though I still yet to have watched anything from him. Next new series I end up watching that's not anime, will probably be Twin Peaks. It's been high on my list for awhile anyway but Lynch's passing does move it up, and I have watched Atlanta since which I know cites Twin Peaks as an influence (Donald Glover has said he always wanted to make "Twin Peaks but with rappers").

I'm a bit lazier when it comes to seeking out new music, when I want to seek new stuff out I often just go to youtube music's new releases tab and click on random songs if something about the thumbnail/title interests me or if I'm familiar with the artist. I assume the music shown is based on what I listen to, so it usually works out to find some new music, but I'll also of course just keep up with certain artists on my own.

So yeah, I've definitely listened to Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay and I would also consider it the best album of the year. I don't tend to listen to a lot of albums throughout the years regardless, but I did make more of an effort this year but I didn't think anything came close to Magdalena Bay's output. Never got around to listening to The Cure's new record though, but I did enjoy A Fragile Thing. Was pretty shocked to see The Cure released new music tbh. Wasn't expecting new stuff from them or Billy Joel.

I'm not sure I like Imaginal Disk more than Mercurial World, but I would agree that it's probably the better album. Feels more varied and interesting, maintains the strong & smooth transitions between songs, and while I haven't dug much into it lyrical, I do feel like the story of the album is a bit stronger/more clear than Mercurial World (at least, the ways in which "She Looked Like Me!" and "The Ballad of Matt & Mica" connect is stronger than "The End"/"The Beginning"). Would just need to listen to them both back-to-back to know which one I prefer though I think I would lean Imaginal Disk.

Regardless, Imaginal Disk doesn't have a bad song on the tracklist, and it's pretty hard for me to pick a favourite song from it. I think my top three would be "She Looked Like Me!", "Death & Romance", and "Angel on a Satellite" (in tracklist order) but plenty of other songs are in contention like "Image", "Cry for Me", and "The Ballad of Matt & Mica". I guess those might be my top six, though "Fear, Sex" is also up there, as is "Vampire in the Corner", "Watching T.V.", "Tunnel Vision", maybe even "True Blue Interlude" despite it's short length since I do love it. Maybe you'd have an easier time limiting favourites down so you're not just listing half the album, what are the highpoints for you on Imaginal Disk?

And I did like the Vampire Weekend album but I wouldn't say it was one of my favourites. Never really listened to much Billie Eilish, but "Birds of a Feather" is definitely my favourite song of hers from the few I've been subjected to, so maybe it's worth getting into.

I never looked into much of people's impressions of Tears of the Kingdom, I think I heard it was mostly more of the same, so nice to hear it did make several improvements, even if you enjoyed BotW more. I don't think I'll ever bother with Tears of the Kingdom myself though.

Love both Super Mario 64 & Sunshine. I like Odyssey more than both of them, but I still think both of them are two of the best Mario games. Sounds like you wouldn't really agree with Sunshine being one of the best, which is fair enough. I think the games biggest problem was requiring you to complete the first seven missions, removing the freedom which was the best part of 64's design. And the chase Shadow Mario missions aren't really interesting either. Still, I love Fludd and the world, I thought they did a good job of making the most of out the setting for the various themes, and being able to spot levels off in the distance from other levels was always cool and helped it feel like a world than video game levels. Delfino Plaza is probably my favourite hub world in video games.

You going to be playing the Galaxy games next then? Never played the 2nd since it wasn't apart of the Switch collection, but Galaxy 1 is a lot of fun, albeit I don't enjoy it nearly as much as 64 or Sunshine, largely due to the more linear level design (and I think Mario's slower too).

Despite being a big Kirby fan, I never really played the original Dream Land, and I think I only played Adventure briefly. I definitely need to get around to playing those, good to hear that Kirby's been good for the jump. Haven't played either Link's Awakening or Echoes of Wisdom, probably won't but I'm sure they're good.

I've played a handful games, but nothing too substantial. A lot of my gaming time went to MultiVersus, which if you know anything about the game it's probably that's it's already dead again, as the current season will be the final one. Hard to be too upset about it, the gameplay was always very fun imo but almost everything around it was horribly run. If it wasn't for all the perks I got from being a Beta Player, I probably wouldn't have given it much time at re-launch, and they only got worse as it went on.

Besides that, I put about 40-ish hours into FFVII: Rebirth, which I believe puts me at about halfway through the game since I'm doing all the side content. Stopped mostly because I got busy and haven't found time to jump back in but I did love what I've played so far. I never really held the Remake's linear design against it, but I have found the more open world design in Rebirth a lot more engaging, I do really like going around and completing the checklists of tasks.

And the changes to combat are fantastic, it's so good it sort of makes me like Remake less. Like I think I'd have difficulty going back to re-play it without the synergy attacks or the actions we can use without ATB. In the Remake, I felt like I was incentivized to keep swapping between my party members in combat because the AI was awful and getting me killed on the toughest fights, but in Rebirth I'm swapping because it's building towards synergy abilities and this system is a lot more rewarding.

And story-wise, I'm still really enjoying all the stuff that's just covering the OG game's story and/or expanding it. The stuff that's entirely new I'm pretty skeptical on but I'll wait until I finish the game before commenting. Hopefully I can resume playing it soon. I also need to get back to FFXVI, beat my second playthrough, and then play the DLC.

Oh, and one last gaming thing is that the Switch 2's direct is almost here, and the last Switch direct is coming up several hours for now? Since the latter direct will probably happen by the time you see this, anything in there you looking forward to? I don't expect much to get announced personally, but if Hollow Knight Silksong is there that's enough for me. But more importantly what are you expecting/hoping for the Switch 2? I'm looking forward to more details on the new Mario Kart 9 but I hope we get some other strong launch titles announced. And I also hope it comes out this year.

Hey hey! After may latest read of the manga I realized just how steadfast of an ally Kuririn is, and I had to show my appreciation in the character ranking xD I've borrowed your designations for my arc ranking, and here is what I'm feeling right now (always subject to change in the future):

1) Namek arc
2) 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai
3) Saiyan arc
4) Piccolo arc
5) 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai
6) Boo arc
7) 21st Tenkaichi Budokai
8) Red Ribbon Army arc
9) Search for the Dragon Balls arc
10) Cell arc

fr, may the Master rest in peace...

Yeah, it's definitely the first time I see someone having the Tenkai Budokai Announcer among their favorite characters, lol

Why is the un-named tournament announcer one of your fav characters?

Didn't think I'd be gone for this long. Considering I didn't even rate everything from last year, so I'm halfway through March but I can't even start March Mania 2024 until I finish 2023. Don't think I'll end up getting much done this year lol. Though I got a vacation from work coming out so hopefully I can get a few things done.

162 countries is insane, what was your method of choosing what to listen to? Like did you just venture for greatest selling albums or the best critically received albums? I also assume you used that ratemymusic as a source to find these, or did you go through like wikipedia (Wiki was my source when I was going through the years).

Mate, I'll be honest, I started my through the years music project with 1950, and the 50's were a rough decade to get through. Maybe it's because I was relying on the wikipedia pages to pick out the songs to listen to but those are like my shortest playlists by far. So maybe going deeper and less of the hits would provide more interesting songs but I don't know if I'll ever make time to seek out songs from the 50's or even attempt the 40's. I did scroll through albums of the year to see if I recognized any of them, Elvis & Buddy Holly were sort of my saviors for the second half of the 50's so seeing them is helpful, but a lot of the earlier 50's ones I don't really recognize. And I see Doris Day got your album of the year for 1949, and see was like my hero in the first half of the 50's so maybe one day I'll go through and check those albums out.

One note for Millennium & X-Files, since Millennium's life was during X-Files, after it was cancelled it did sort of have it's finale as an episode of X-Files. I'll state that I haven't actually seen the crossover episode, it was one of the ones I happened to miss (if I did see it, I forgot it), but if you watch all of X-Files first you will spoil Millennium to some extent. My recommendation would be to watch all of Millennium after X-Fiiles' first movie. It's been decades since I seen it, but the first movie should operate as a decent pausing point, and it's around the time Millennium was airing anyway. But the Millennium crossover is in Season 7, so I'd just recommend fitting it in before that. Although, apparently fans of Millennium like the crossover episode less than the people who just watched X-Files, as apparently it's not a great send-off to the show and the crossover with Millennium isn't even the most memorable part of the episode apparently, so maybe it's better you don't watch Millennium first lol. I can't really comment much since I haven't seen it, or even finished Millennium yet. But eventually I will.

I find that I have a hard time focusing on more than one type of media at a time. Like since I haven't been on, most of my free-time has been going to video games, not only have I not really watched much new tv, but I haven't really kept up with new music all the much lately. I caught up with a bunch of 2023 stuff before the end of the year, but it's largely been video games. Got a PS5 in the last year, and played a good chunk of Final Fantasy. Still need to finish my second playthrough of XVI and do the DLC for that game, and I just started Rebirth, though I plan on pausing that for anime soon.

Kirby & The Forgotten Land I played when it first came out and I loved it. Big Kirby fan, and Forgotten Land is easily a top three game from the Kirby franchise for me, it might actually be my favourite in the series. It's surprising that it took Kirby so long to have a proper 3D game, but they really nailed it out of the park. I assume you finished it by now, your overall thoughts I imagine are still positive. Have you ended up playing any other Kirby games yet?

I didn't bother with Tears of the Kingdom, since while I did enjoy my time with Breath of the Wild, once the Odyssey came out I kinda moved on to that and never really came back to it. I've heard mixed things on whether it's better or not than Breath of the Wild, where do you land?

And the most unfortunate part of this post, Dragon Ball. I've seen you been reading it a lot lately and it's not hard to figure out the inspiration why. I don't really know what to say about Akira Toriyama's death outside of that it really sucks, especially considering he seemed pretty excited about Daima. He's basically responsible for my childhood, one of the most influential artists ever, and definitely the creator that's influenced my life the most. I don't have much planned for my March Mania this year, but I know for a fact I'll finally be watching the Dragon Ball movies.

But regardless, I went and checked some of your comments. I loved your Vegeta rant, the idea of him & Oolong being secret best friends is hilarious. I guess I never really thought much about it but yeah, the turn does sort of just happen.

It's been quite some time, but the most recent run of Hunter x Hunter has ended and I didn't end up re-reading anything in prep and for the most part that wasn't a problem. It was really only the last chapter were I was struggling to remember the actual details of what was going in, but thankfully, much of the last run was dedicated to the Phantom Troupe's backstory, which took me completely by surprised but I loved it. Since you were following community reaction with Togashi's update, did anyone predict this? To be honest, I never expected to get much insight into the Troupe's past, sans maybe The Kurta massacre itself. It's just not very Togashi-like to have an extended flashblack like this, the closest any of his series got to this was Gyro's past. Every other flashback backstory seemed to be relegated to side-stories, like the Hiei/Kurama extra chapter in YYH, or Kurapika's backstory being it's own two chapter volume.

I'm guessing it was one of those chapters you mentioned making you tear up? It was such an unexpected joy to get to see these characters, and how surprisingly wholesome their origins started out. Never put much stock in their name, beyond it sounded cool, but them starting off as like a fandub performing group was so perfect. And it was interesting thinking about how this backstory recolours some of the earlier stuff in the series. Specifically with Pakunoda's feelings to Killua & Gon, knowing how Chrollo was before then following him into the descent of villainy, hearing Gon & Killua's reasoning for going with the hostage exchange being that they wanted to avoid Kurapika going down the path of a killer must've hit especially hard. Paku's face in the panel after Chrollo mentions he'll end up killing a bunch of people speaks volumes. Outside of Sheila who dipped, the other members shown like Phinks, Uvo, or Shalnark's expressions were more neutral, but Paku looked devastated.

It will also be interesting to see what the future of Hunter x Hunter holds, since it seems like it'll no longer be serialized in a weekly format. I'm fine with whatever as long as more comes out, I suspect a monthly release but I don't know.

I can relate to not being able to revisit a lot of songs you like, though for me it's not because I listen to a lot of new stuff, definitely not to the extent you do. I tend to have several songs that I play on loop for a bit, and once they leave that rotation, I just never really return to them. At least not intentional, sometimes they come up on one of my generic playlists when I'm not sure what I feel like listening too, all that to say that most of my favourite artists I mentioned months back, I haven't really listened to in quite some time, sans maybe a couple of my favourite tracks. That includes Gotye, I can understand liking Somebody That I Used to Know the best, and I get not liking that it doesn't feel very connected but that's short of what I like about it.

Yeah, I can't blame you for not wanting to deal with 1975's album length. Kinda surprised you ended up liking this more than the Gotye album, but I gather that's because it's a more cohesive product? This album's fresher on my mind so I feel like I can actually comment. I've always liked Matty's vocals but I do kind of agree about the lyrics being on the bland side here. Outside of "Part of the Band", I like the lyrics of "Looking for Somebody to Love", if only because the subject matter is more interesting, and I like the lyric in "Wintering" about his mom's bad back, I think it gives the song more personality. The rest of the album, I think the lyrics are mostly serviceable, "All I Need to Hear" is a perfect example of a song where the lyrics are serviceable but nothing beyond that. "Oh Caroline" lyrics are intentionally bland, Matty said the thing he liked about that song was that, outside of maybe the cuck lyric, any artist could cover it and it would make sense. Personally, I think that made it one of the worst songs lyrically on the album, sonically I still really like the track but I do like "Africa" by Toto and this song definitely feels like it aped from that one. "I'm In Love With You" is my least favourite lyrically, I get why but the chorus feels super lazy. It's not quite catchy enough, or sung with enough conviction, to justify being that repetitive. I still don't dislike the track but I can agree it's definitely a lowpoint. "Looking for Somebody to Love" was one of the high points for me though, I can get finding it annoying but I do like that it's busy, I think it's matches with the school shooter concept. "About You" is another one of my favourites from the album, I think it goes on a bit too long, but I really like the mood of that track and the female vocals in the bridge is my favourite moment of the record.

I've also listened to some of your suggestions since the last time I logged on. First I listened to Alvvays' Antisocialites. I was really taken aback but how retro/classic it sounded, I get like a 1970's vibe from a lot of these songs. Part of this surprise was because I didn't know what jangle pop was, but the bigger reason was when I went to listen I didn't re-check your recommendations, and mixed up the descriptions from Alvvays & Magdalena Bay lol, so I was expecting synthpop when I started. But regardless, I did really like this album, I can't say it's an all-time favourite, maybe my favourite from 2017 (It's this or Paramore's "After Laughter"), but I don't really have any complaints, all the songs were just really nice. Picking my favourites would be tough, but I'd either go with "Dreams Tonite" or "Lollipop (Ode to Jim)". The former is probably the song the pops up in my head the most from the album, particularly the title drop line in second verse, the melody line there has just popped up in my head at work sometimes. The latter song I think it just generally the most engaging of the songs. At least from what I can remember, this was months ago. "In Undertow" and "Plimsoll Punks" are two others that stand out to me.

Either way, I liked the album enough that I decided to check out Blue Rev when that dropped. Considering Antisocialites is one of your favourites, I'm curious to what you think of the follow-up, because personally I think I might like Blue Rev a bit more. I think Antisocialites is probably the more cohesive product, but the tracks that stood out to me from Blue Rev really connected with me stronger. The album felt a bit more dynamic to me also. I think it comes down to mostly being just a Singles guy, the albums I like the most tend to be the ones that give me the most songs to return to, and while I looped Antisocialites as an album more than Blue Rev, I've probably played my favourite tracks from Blue Rev more frequently, and most of Blue Rev is solid anyway. It's not the case where I just really like a handful of songs.

Anyway, the highlights for me this time around were "After the Earthquake", "Belinda Says", "Many Mirrors", & "Tile By Tile". I don't have much to say on the last three, although as someone who deeply loves Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven is a Place on Earth", I think it's like he perfect 80's pop song, "Belinda Says" kind of cheated it's way into my heart there. But "After the Earthquake" is by far my favourite song by them, and a top five, maybe top three song of 2022 for me. I love the energy this song possesses, I think it matches the pace your thoughts can have during crisis like these, and I love the sudden dynamic shift during the bridge. It fits the the mood of the lyrics as those are the most depressing thoughts expressed in the song, and kinda feels like the sobering sad moment of the realization of what was lost, but also just sonically it gives the song so much life. It stills followed the template of verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus that most songs are confined to, but very few do that drastic of a shift, it makes the song feel more engaged and real than a lot of other ones. And I just love the lyrics, I really like stories of expressing personal apocalypses basically, and I think the song does a good job of expressing the thoughts of someone potentially losing someone due to this earthquake/car crash scenario.

After them, I did check out Magdalena Bay's Mercurial World, and while Alvvays' didn't give me an all-time favourite album, Mercurial World is absolutely an all-time favourite of me. When it comes to albums, I typically only listen to them full, in-chronological order once because I don't find most albums give me a reason to loop the album. Usually I pick up my favourite from an album, and just loops those, and even in cases like Antisocialites where that's the full album, I don't necessarily loop them in the track list order. I alphabetize a lot of my music mostly because it just makes it easier to keep track of it, so that's usually what I do. But Mercurial World is built around the tracklist's order in a way that's more sonically necessary, or more overtly important so even people like me can pick up on it. I totally looped this entire album multiple times.

The transitions between songs are so smooth, sometimes while gaming when I looped it would take me a few to realize I'm onto the next song because the transitions are so seamless. The obvious highlight being "Dawning of the Season" to "Secrets (Your Fire)", that one is so perfect. This album reminds me of Marianas Trench's "Ever After" in a way, one of Josh Ramsay's goals for that album was to make it all one long song. There'd be not cuts, every single song would just transition naturally into the next one. But I never really liked how he accomplished this, because for the most part, rather than feeling like it was one continuous song, it felt to me like he just stitched an instrumental interlude in-between every song, that lasted too long to be an effective transition, whereas Mercurial World most of the transitions feel pretty snappy. In Marianas Trench's defense, the album came out in 2011, and I probably haven't heard it in full in like a decade so I could be exaggerating how bad those transitions felt, but it definitely wasn't to the level showcased here, and Ever After doesn't even loop on itself.

That was one of my favourite discoveries, that the closing track "The Beginning" loops perfectly back into the opener "The End", it's just perfectly matches the album's theme of this kind of circular looping nature of own our existential narratives. Lyrically it doesn't really do much with the concept beyond like just bringing up the questions and the eternal resolution, so I'm not sure it's really saying anything but I appreciate carrying the theme over musically. The only other slight issue I have with the album is that unlike Ever After, they're inconsistent with the transitions. Especially in the second half of the album, they kinda just stopped doing it, it was pretty disappointing after the first half was filled with them.

On an individual song basis, all the songs were pretty good. The standouts for me were definitely "You Lose!", "Dreamcatching", & "The Beginning", I played those songs long after I was done listening to the album in full, especially "The Beginning", that song's just like pure joy. None of the songs were really bad, though I don't care much for "Domino" much on it's own, and obviously "The End" & "Halfway" don't really have much purpose outside the context of the album, but yeah I loved this.

I was pretty excited when I found out they released a deluxe version of the album, but I kinda hated it. I appreciate that they didn't just do basic acoustic remixes of their songs, I like getting more weird interpretations like an 8-bit version of "You Lose!" or a Spanish version of "Domino", the secrets are cute I guess, and I like the two new songs, though I do think they're weaker than most of the songs on the original tracklist. So I did get good music out of it, but the order of the tracklist is baffling to me. They didn't add any transitions with the new composition, they only subtracted them. "The Beginning" no longer loops perfectly into "The End" because the stick some secrets and a new version of "Mercurial World" in between them. They clearly put effort and thought into the deluxe track listing, but I don't understand what they were going for. Rather than expanding on what they accomplished in Mercurial World, they simply removed the element that made it so special to me.

But anyway, I loved Magdalena Bay even with how souring the Deluxe version experience was, I'll have to at some point check out their earlier works, and listen to your other suggestions. King Grizzard still sounds insane for their work ethic, but also kind of the most intimidating to get into, so I might go for Phoebe or Sufjan.

I love the idea of active listen, I kinda do something similar. I usually have something going on admittedly, for example when I listened to Mercurial World I was leveling up in Sonic Frontiers. If you haven't played Sonic Frontiers, in order to level up Sonic's speed or ring capacity, you have to talk to this NPC who can level you up but he can only level you up one stat at a time. So basically while listening I was also mashing to go through his dialogue tree to level up to 99 because I grinded all the materials in the fishing game to get to full level. It did take at least half of the album to get my stats up to 99 (I was at like lv. 25 for speed & lv 10 for Rings). It's the worst part of the game , I hope they patch an option to level it all at once. So I'll do a mindless task like that or like Tetris (which I did for Taylor Swift's Midnights) but generally I also try to give music at least 90% of my attention anytime I listen to new music. Which is a big part of why I don't listen to as much as I want.

I also love the idea of listening to music from different countries. That's something that I might consider doing, I don't tend to check artist's origins all that much, but I'm certain most of my artists are also from the States, though obviously I know got a lot from UK, Canada, & New Zealand, at least some of my favourite artists are there. Also, a good amount of music from Japan because anime, and I know I have a few songs from Russia but I do like the idea of culture traveling through music.

The only music project I did that was kind of similar was Wikipedia has a bunch of pages of "Year in Music", and I wanted to say I know & like a song from every year, to an extent. Since I went through all those pages from 1950 onward until I reached a point where I knew a lot of music, and kind of just listened to a bunch of random songs listened on the page. That's actually how I discovered Patti Smith since the album name Horses stood out to me, and what lead me getting more into Kate Bush since I listened to her songs when they came up since I trusted her from "Running Up That Hill".

Speaking of Patti Smith, and I swear this is related, have you ever watched the TV Show Millennium? If you haven't, it's an interesting show if only because it lasts three seasons but it feels more like three different shows that just happened to share the same characters & consanguinity. I haven't seen Season 3 yet myself, but I know a good deal about it and I know the production history, which mirrors the latest Star Wars trilogy.

Basically the gist is, during the height of X-Files popularity, Chris Carter was able to make another show with Fox during X-Files fourth season. For Millennium's second season, Carter would be too busy with X-Files fifth season & The X-Files movie to continue showrunning Millennium, so he handed the keys off to the writing duo of Glen Morgan & James Wong, who truly took the wheel (writing 11 of the 23 episodes) and drove the series in a completely direction. They were only contracted for one season, so come season three they left & Carter returned (not to the same level, three had a troubled production), who apparently wasn't a fan of the direction the show took in season two. So he wanted to return the series to what it was in season one but so much had changed in season two the show could never return to season one, so season 3 ends up with it's own identity as they had to come up with something to return the series to it's roots without. I can't comment on season three yet, but I can confirm that season one & two feel drastically different from each-other, though I enjoyed both versions of the show.

In an funny aside, season two seemed divisive like Last Jedi but not within the fandom. Millennium is kinda niche so it's hard to get a strong grasp, but it's seems almost universally considered by both fans & critics that season two was Millennium at it's best, but behind the scenes it seemed like Carter wasn't the only one who wasn't a fan of the new direction, as apparently several writers, directors, and even lead actor Lance Henriksen weren't fans of what Morgan & Wong did to the show.

Anyway, season two is where Patti Smith comes up. Season two of Millennium is a very ambitious show, sometimes to the show's detriment as the episodes that don't work, don't work because they're trying too much, but the absolutely high point of their ambition comes with Patti Smith. I'm going to put this in a spoiler tag in case the show is on your to-watchlist and you want to go in blind, it's not really a plot spoiler, but it will change the experience if you know it's coming. I just need to gush about it because it's really cool, and if you don't care about watching it, it's at least a neat thing or potentially a motivator to watch it. I know it's one of the reasons I was excited to start watching it, since I did know about it before starting.

Yeah, the first five parts of JoJo should be one entry from my understanding of the guidelines, as those five parts continue the same volume count. Definitely wish JoJo was the rule and not the exception with the guidelines. Pokémon Adventures is probably a much bigger victim of this than Chainsaw Man, since from my understanding each game generation gets their own arc, meaning that series is probably never ending.

lol, I totally see that comparison to Oda's writing with Chi-Chi's marriage, like I do think this is also what happened with Observation Haki and Mantra.

One last thing about manga, Hunter x Hunter is back! I couldn't believe it when I heard Togashi had joined twitter and started sharing progress on new HxH chapters. It was so out of left field, I loved it. I haven't been following his feed much, but I don't suspect more than 10 chapters before he breaks but I'm so grateful to just get that much. Especially as I hear more about the effects of Togashi's back issues, getting anymore feels like a miracle.

Am a bit worried about feeling lost jumping back in though lol. It's been a least a year since I've re-read some of those chapters, and the Succession War has more moving parts than I think I've seen a story have, certainly when it comes shonen. Might end-up having to re-read a bunch, but I'd rather spend my free-time also catching up on all the other manga I've ignored. When HxH was last releasing, it was the only thing I was reading, it'll be cool to read it alongside everything else I think. And with HxH, I'll actually be reading weekly.

With music, I do want to note two things before I continue. Firstly, I'm pretty bad at describing music sonically, so I might mess up with a genre tag though I'll probably try to avoid labeling them. You are definitely way better equipped at discussing that. And secondly, that it's really only been this past year that I started listening to albums in full. Of course, there were a few artists/bands I listened to their album releases as they came out over the years but typically I wouldn't explore past the singles or whatever songs I heard on TV/were suggested to me. But now, if I heard a song from an artist I really liked, I'm more likely to check out their album.

Which brings me back to Taylor Swift, because you mentioning hating "You Need to Calm Down" & "ME!" reminded me that I think Taylor Swift often picks the worst songs to be singles lol. I don't like those tracks either, they're the low point of Lover and yet they're the ones that's suppose to sell us on it. I was dreading entering Reputation because of how much I hated "Look What You Made Me Do" and granted you didn't like the album, but would you agree that it's not really representative of the rest of the album's sound? I feel like outside of "New Year's Day", it's probably the song with the least in common with the rest of the tracklist, though maybe that's just my bias since I myself do like a good chunk of that album. I also do like a lot of your favourites too, "august" is probably my 11th favourite.

Have you listened to Midnights yet? I think it's pretty consistent, "Vigilante Shit" is the only song I didn't like, though the album's maybe bit too samey for how long it is. Though to contradict what I just said, "Anti-Hero" is probably my favourite off the record (not counting the bonus tracks), so Taylor got this single right.

My favourite Kate Bush album is Hounds of Love, when I went through the discography I probably would've said The Sensual World was my second favourite, but the further I get away from the Bush marathon, the more I find myself returning to tracks from The Dreaming more than any other of her albums. "Suspended in Gaffa", "Get Out of My House", and especially "Houdini" are some of my most replayed songs from her. And yeah, I love the donkey noises too. & lol at Stranger Things just getting worse.

One thing I really appreciated about Kate Bush was how often her songs were about more interesting topics than just typical break-up/love/romance stuff. Like I mentioned "Houndini" which is basically a love song but it's such a specific & unique situation, it just makes it more interesting than most. Though I think 50 Words for Snow is probably the album with the most interesting song concepts. Like I don't know that "Misty" really needed to be 13 minutes long but I do still like that song and part of the reason is because it's this weird dark song about a one night stand with a Snowman. "Snowed in at Wheeler Street" is another great concept for a song.

Of the artists I mentioned that you don't really know, Gotye is the one I'd most recommend. I discovered him, & Kimbra, through his single "Somebody That I Used to Know", which is I'm pretty sure it was a worldwide hit so there's a good chance you've heard it. And the great thing about Gotye is, if you had heard it, whether you hated it or loved it, I'd still recommend the rest of his discography because none of his other songs are really like that. One thing in particular I love about Gotye, the diversity also extends to his music videos. The music video for STIUtK is pretty memorable itself, but the most of his other ones are actually animated, with each one being pretty distinct. One is stop-motion, another one is like a Ghibli-like anime, etc. I don't really watch much music videos now, for example I don't think I've watched a single Swift, Bush, or Patti Smith music video in full, but I do enjoy music videos, and Gotye probably has my favourite of any artist.

Heh, The 1975's actually my favourite band. If you didn't like their first album, I probably wouldn't recommend checking out their second either. If I had to describe the difference between the two, it's less emo and more new wave, with a pinch of funk, but while I like their second album more, I don't think it's different enough that I could recommend it to someone who didn't like the first. Personally, I really like both albums, but with that said they didn't become my favourite until their third album.

I remember an interview from Matty during promotion of the second album, where he says something like "genre's are so irrelevant to me" but that mindset wasn't reflected in his actual music until A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. The singles went from like this really pulsing song with raw vocals to an autotune dance pop to RnB, and the full album kept up that variety, even having a song where the vocals were done by Siri, so it's more like Siri-storytime set to their music. Their following album was even more varied, their first single "People" was what wiki calls anarcho-punk, with like screamo and sounds absolutely nothing like the rest of their discography. Beyond that, the album contains country, reggae, acoustic folk, and even a Greta Thunberg climate speech. I don't like it as much as a Brief Inquiry, as Notes is too long (it's like 80 minutes), doesn't have a theme tying it together whereas Brief Inquiry has the online relationship things (even if it's not great), and there are duds for me on Notes than any other album.

This variety is why I loved "Part of the Band" as the lead single, because like "People", it was another song that sounded nothing like anything else on this discography, except "Part of the Band" is far more my type of music. Now that Being Funny in a Foreign Language is out, I've seen they scaled back on the variety of their recent albums, producing a more cohesive identity like they did on their first two records. Admittedly, this is a bit disappointing for me but I do think this worked out in the album's favour. Not sure where I rank it among the others, might be my second favourite.

Have you checked out Being Funny in a Foreign Language yet? Definitely interested in your thoughts.

And yeah, I just haven't listened to Bon Iver though I really need to. Even years before the Swift songs were a thing, I somehow stumbled across their song "Perth", and I love that song yet never followed up on it. Between that, the Swift songs, and The 1975 comparison, I really gotta get into them properly lol. Maybe they'll be they next artist discography I go through completely.

The Cure are great! In terms of albums, I've only heard Disintegration, and Wish in full. I don't really remember Wish beyond the fact that I liked it, but Disintegration is definitely a special album, though I don't rank it as highly as you. For me, when it comes to music I do tend to be very vocal/lyric driven, when a song has an extended instrumental section, especially if it's a loop, I tend to lose interest. It's my biggest problem with Prince (& 1975 to a lesser extent), I prefer going with the album version in most cases, but there are a handful of Prince songs I take the Singles edit simply because it feels like the songs waste my time with some of these instrumental outro loops or whatever. Anyway I bring this up because Disintegration is one of the exceptions, there's just this great mood to the instrumentals that I don't mind these songs taking like two full minutes for Robert Smith's vocals to kick in.

I haven't listened to much of Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, or Neil Young. Honestly not sure I've heard any Neil Young but that seems unlikely to me so I assume I've heard something. I've never been the biggest Beatles fan and I've heard little of him outside of them, but from what I sampled he is my favourite of the Beatles.

Joni Mitchell is definitely someone I'm more curious to check out. I only know "Big Yellow Taxi" & "Help Me" and I like both of them, especially the former. One thing I'm curious about, when I was going through Kate Bush, I looked at some reddit threads to get a community consensus of her work, and someone said something to the effect that 50 Words of Snow was almost more like a Joni Mitchell album than Kate Bush. Like they'd recommend it more to people who were big fans of Joni Mitchell than Kate Bush, does that seem accurate to you?

As for Bob Dylan, he's like Prince for me where I like most of what I've heard from him, but his discography is so intimidating I doubt I'd ever go through it all. I've just heard significantly less of his discography than Prince's. I've probably only heard like two, maybe three of his albums in full. Blood on the Tracks being my favourite album, with "Tangled Up in Blue" being my favourite song of his. People insult his voice a lot, and fair enough if people don't like it, but I love his vocals, and I can't see a song like "Tangled Up in Blue" working as well under anyone else's lungs. As an aside, I think 1975 is one of the best years in music, definitely the best year of the 70's imo. Don't know if you categorize music by years at all, but from the 70's, 75 is the standout for me, though I still have a lot to listen to from that decade though.

As for the more recent artists, I've heard Sufjan Stevens' "Chicago" since it was in a None Piece video, and I love that song. Definitely sounds like someone I should check out. Phoebe Bridgers is only someone I know because of her features on songs from The 1975, Taylor Swift, and MUNA, but never listened to any of her own stuff. I've had heard great stuff about her, so I'll probably try and listen to more of her stuff, upgrade her from just the featuring artist label.

The other three I've never heard. Magdalena Bay sounds the most appealing to me immediately, because synth-pop is definitely a genre I really like. King Grizzard & The Lizard Wizard sound the most interesting for sure, not in a way I'm sure I'd even like but definitely in a way I'd respect. Hell, I respect them for releasing 5 albums in 2017, I checked their Wiki page and it seems they've also released 5 albums this year? That's insane, I might have to retract my comment about Prince having the best work ethic I've seen in music lol. And I have no idea what jangle pop or shoegaze mix means tbh, but it'll probably be more fun to find out by listening than Google, though I'm not sure when I'll get around to checking them out.

This is been pretty long but I just have one last question I want to ask, do you end up replaying songs a lot? I find myself constantly repeating songs, part of why I don't listen to as much different music because I really like wearing myself out of certain songs I guess. I can find myself looping the same handful of songs for a day or two before I move on. Just curious how you balance all the new releases vs. listening to old favourites with how much music it seems you're keeping up with.

Kinda fitting that not long after we start talking about Mononoke, they announce a movie for it. Seems some people are speculating it's going to be a recap of the series or something, but either way it's perfect timing. I'll definitely watch the Akayashi and Mononoke proper before the movie comes out.

Totally understandable, one of my bigger problems with Goodbye Eri was that I don't think it gets interesting until the final act, so I don't blame you for dropping it early. I do think the strongest element is the visual presentation anyway, but had you read it, I'd be pretty interested in what you thought. Of the Fujimoto stuff I've read that you haven't, it's probably the one most worth checking into. And as a side note to Fujimoto, I'm unreasonably upset that Chainsaw Man part 2 is just continuing on from the Chainsaw Man entry on MAL. I get why they're doing it, but it annoys me nevertheless, especially since it seems inconsistent with the anime database, as split cour shows are still separated.

Interesting. I've never thought of the world-building in One Piece that way, I definitely agree that One Piece's world has, since the time-skip especially, started feeling a lot smaller than originally presented but I've always attributed that towards the shift to narrative progression in the time-skip as opposed to the previous episodic nature of the One Piece arcs. Like it a decade, almost to the date, from Luffy's declaration that he'll defeat Kaido in Punk Hazard to him actually doing so in Wano. But yeah, I definitely think Oda's connection-heavy storytelling definitely plays a big part in this now thinking back. I was happy with the Zoro Dojo connection just because I was worried Oda was going to give Zoro himself a far more direct connection, but having that connection at all doesn't really add any value I think. Or the reveal that Whitebeard, Big Mom, and Kaido were all part of the Rocks Pirates. I still think Luffy is the main problem when it comes to determinism of One Piece, because if he didn't have all this "chosen one" stuff it wouldn't matter if the other Yonko all started on the same crew, Luffy would serve as the counter-example that you don't have to be some fated figure to achieve success. But yeah, I get the comedy being enough.

I will say I still do like how much Oda weaves connections together though. Very few series have the length and history that One Piece do, so getting connections hundreds of chapters later can be a uniquely rewarding experience mostly exclusive to One Piece. Like, I loved the reveal that Koala from Fisher Tiger's backstory grew up to be a Revolutionary, I think I was almost more excited about that than Sabo lol. I definitely get the problem, but it still definitely works on me from time to time.

I have to ask, what did you think of the Laboon/Brook reveal? Personally it's one of my favourite moments in the entire series but it's arguably the most egregious example of Oda connecting everything together, at least in pre-time skip.

Also on the note of manga, I read your comments on Dragon Ball, I don't think I recognized how much retreads were in the Piccolo arc when I read it. But definitely another reason why it's probably the worst arc of the series proper (discounting GT & Super of course).

I love that you mentioned Folklore, since that's exactly what finally got me into Taylor Swift. My history with Taylor Swift started with "Love Story" back when it first released, and I kind of wrote her off immediately. A few years later I'm listening to Pandora and this song with like really biting lyrics come on that and to my surprise it was Taylor Swift's, "Blank Space". So I ended up getting into 1989 at the time, an album I mostly enjoyed. But she followed that album up with stuff like "Bad Blood" and "Look at What You Made me Do", two songs I really don't like so I went back to ignoring her entirely. Once I heard "exile" on a Todd in the Shadows video, I decided to give Folklore an entire listen through since I liked that one song more than anything else she released. I loved Folklore so eventually I had to give Evermore a listen to, and then I decided to just go through her entire discography, except I only listened to the Taylor Version's of the albums that were available.

Folklore is still very much her best work imo, and most of my favourite songs come from there, but I ended up enjoying a lot of her catalogue. The only real exception was the first album, she constantly sang with what felt like a fake country accent, it might've been genuine at the time but it sounded so inauthentic and cringy that I gave up halfway through the album and just moved on. But yeah, it was definitely fun going through all of Taylor's Swift discography, she definitely changed her sound up enough throughout the years to remain interesting, and usually for the better imo. I once considered 1989 her only good work, and now it's not even top five.

What are your favourite songs by her? I can give my top ten.

I. my tears ricochet
II. mirrorball
III. exile
IV. gold rush
V. Forever Winter
VI. Renegade
VII. The Archer
VIII. Soon You'll Get Better
IX. this is me trying
X. long story short

The last artist I went through their full discography for though was actually Kate Bush. And I did it about a month or two before she blew up thanks to Stranger Things too. Which side-note, have you watched Stranger Things. I've been meaning to forever but finding out the last season has movie length episodes have further pushed me away from starting it. Did watch the scene with Running Up That Hill though, and that was very well executed. Anyway, I'd say Kate Bush didn't change her sound as frequently as Taylor Swift did, only her last two albums sound like a noticeable departure, but I feel Kate Bush had a much stronger, more unique stronger artistic sound.

Bush and Swift are definitely two of my favourite artists. Along with them, off the top of my head, some of my other favourite artists are The 1975, Prince, Patti Smith, Marianas Trench, Gotye, Kimbra, Baby Queen, Escape the Fate, Falling in Reverse, and EDEN. I listen to a lot of music though so I'm sure there's plenty I've left off, besides I wanted to focus on artists that I've heard pretty much their entire discography. I haven't heard all of Prince since he had the best work ethic of any artist I known, as he basically released a new album every year since 78 until his unfortunate death but I've listened to a good chunk. Not the biggest variety of genres here, but yeah.

Who are some of your favourite artists? I know you're a big fan of Susumu Hirasawa but who else?

Yeah, once I realized I could probably hit 500 anime completed, I added a bunch of like music videos to my list. It makes the milestone far less impressive when you actually look at it, but I don't care, I like having the big number. I doubt I'll ever reach 1,000 completed, even if I keep up with March Mania for another decade, so it's cool to hit the last big milestone number I'm probably ever going to reach.

Do you have a cool collection set-up like a lot of Youtubers or anything for your films? All I have is a dinky three cube storage shelf for my games and DVD's, and they're all kind of crammed in together, they're organized by like console in stuff but I have a back and front row with every shelf so it's pretty cluttered. I'd like to eventually get a better way to organize them but since I've mostly gone digital, it's not been high on my list.

I have read your review now and I do tend to agree with, what I really liked about your reviewing, and what you're saying here with Takahata and Grave of the Fireflies, is the importance of the context you watch the movie in. It's not something I think about much but I would tend to say art is a conversation with it's audience, not a statement to them. It's cool there are movies that can grow with it's audiences, makes me think I should re-watch stuff more often. It'll be fun to see how the new re-watch works, I imagine it'd resonate stronger.

I looked up Kenji Nakamura, and see the only other thing I've seen that he's done is [C] Control . . . I'm kind of glad I didn't know that going it, might've made me a bit hesitant to watch Kuuchuu Buranko. It's been a decade since I've seen it so I can't be too harsh as I don't really remember it now, I don't think it was awful but my impression of it isn't very high either. Either way, Kuuchuu Buranko was amazing so I'm definitely down to watch more of his stuff.

Added Kemonozume to my list, and Mononoke has been on my PTW list for ages. But "flamboyant punk rock Mushishi" is like the best sales pitch ever lol, so I'll probably try and get to that sooner. I did briefly consider it for last month, but because of it's connection to Ayakashi I opted against it, since I'd want to watch both. And I think that's why I haven't watched Mononoke first, I see that you didn't rate Ayakashi that highly either. I'll probably watch that first regardless but do you think it's necessary or even worth watching?

That's probably a better way to go about watching Angel's Egg, as an experience rather than a puzzle. I'm not sure I was ever going to be able to do that unfortunately. I ended up enjoying the movie regardless so I guess it doesn't really matter but yeah.

lol, the real fatal flaw of Deadman Wonderland is how forgettable it is after the first chapters. I do think you're right about Minatsuki, that sounds familiar.

Despite Tokyo Ghoul being my least favourite of the three, I actual agree with your reasons. The finale episode of season one I liked a lot for tackling the life philosophy of "It's better to be hurt than to hurt others", it felt like a personal attack in the best way. And I barely remember any of the female characters in Tokyo Ghoul, which is an improvement over Power. I think I like Chainsaw Man the most for the opposite reason, from what I can remember of all three, it's the only that really indulges in the wackiness. Granted the Bat Devil arc was mostly bad because of that, but I think a large part of why I don't care for the ending is they mostly abandon that and play it straight.

Speaking of Chainsaw Man, Fujimoto recently put out another whopping 200-page one shot out recently, "Goodbye, Eri". I think it's arguably his most interesting work plot-wise and visually, at least from what I've read. There's no way to discuss the former without spoiling but the latter is interesting largely because it features a consistent panel layout with another unique touch that meshes really well with the story. It's something you'll immediately recognize within like two pages so it's not really a spoiler but I'm going to spoiler tag the more specific version of the presentation cause it will sort of hint towards the plot and it still might be better to learn that yourself going in blind.



I didn't love it like Look Back though, didn't emotionally connect with me at all, I think because I didn't really care about the characterization, and partially because I think it takes awhile to get interesting. I'm curious to know what you'd think of it, but obviously it's not a strong recommendation since I didn't love like it Look Back and you enjoyed Look Back less than me. I totally get if you don't want to read it. I will say, I already kinda didn't want Chainsaw Man part 2 since 1 was a complete story, but I really don't want it now. I'd much rather Fujimoto just keep making these movie-length one-shots, hard to imagine these two won't stand as his most interesting works.

I've switched to reading One Piece weekly, even started reading some other Shonen Jump series weekly too. It was pretty fun for awhile, getting to kind of rank each series weekly or following the rankings and speculate with others on potential cancellations of the newer stuff. I've kinda been losing interest in this, I know I'm enjoying these series less because of it so I've been scaling back. I might go down to reading monthly, that way I get roughly three to four chapters and can still somewhat keep up with the community discussions. Though right now I'm reading in chunks of every two weeks.

It's definitely hurt One Piece, I hated the Big Mom fight, I think it's one of the worst constructed fights in all of One Piece, but my dislike was definitely heightened from reading it week to week, since it despite only being an handful of chapters, it felt never-ending. So I was also getting bored of Wano for awhile there, and Luffy's power up definitely spiced it up but as I was reading the reveal I thought it was lame.

To clarify though, I absolutely love the power, and I loved it immediately, it was the only thing I liked about that chapter. And the chapter after the reveal where Luffy's toon force were on full display against Kaido was the most fun I had with a One Piece chapter in ages, at least since the Raid started. However Oda didn't need to change Luffy's Devil Fruit to have this power. I didn't expect it to be this over the top cartoony but functionally this was I expected Luffy's awakening would be. And my problem with the reveal lies with the fact that the only thing changing Luffy's Devil Fruit accomplishes is to further lean into my least favourite part of One Piece, the amount of determinism in Luffy's journey of becoming the Pirate King.

Luffy being a destined "chosen one" isn't anything new, and I think Oda handles it a lot better than most (like how Luffy may have all the special qualities you can have like Conqueror's or Voice of All Things but at least he isn't the only one) but it's never been aspect I've liked and every further element Oda adds that makes Luffy's eventual victory feel like a fated occurrence disengages me further with Luffy's actual journey. Especially in shonen stories of this ilk where I think inspiration is baked into it's DNA, so giving Luffy stronger connections to deified figures just kills any inspiration I can take from him.

I also do think the reveal was just generally sort of poorly handled. I don't believe Oda plans out everything well in advance, I don't buy for one second Haki was intended from the beginning, or even intended like pre-Thriller Bark, but I do think Oda did a great job of incorporating them into the series. But still, all the foreshadowing to this reveal being so close to the reveal combined with the reveal itself having the Gorosei randomly exposit to each-other about the Fruit's power and history in a very "As you know" manner felt rather clumsy to me.

I ranted a bit there but I'm mostly over it now, I like the powers themselves a lot and I accepted years ago Luffy was going to lean more towards determinism than determination in the end when they started adding prophecies and back in Fishman Island.

It's actually why Zoro's my second favourite character in the series, because he serves as the biggest counterpoint to the determinism angle in the series, as he currently is just some guy who decided he was going to be the greatest swordsmen and dedicated himself to that goal. I would've been far more upset if it was revealed he had some prominent connection to Wano, but thankfully Oda just connected his dojo to Wano, which I think was a good compromise to still give Zoro some sort of reveal in Wano without really altering his history. Which was a concern I had since we know nothing of his parentage.

I'm also greatly looking forward to re-reading it all once it's done. I've gone through most of the pre-time skip stuff like three times so I'm pretty well-familiarized with those parts of the story, but a lot of the post-time skip I've only gone through once and my memory of them is pretty hazy. Hell, I don't even remember all of Wano that well anymore lol.

Yeah, Tatami Galaxy's premise is fantastic and they really got the most out of it. How excited are you for the sequel series to Tatami Galaxy btw? I'm cautiously interested, seems completely unnecessary to me though. And lol, Night is Short is probably a fantastic drunk movie either way. Do you have a lot of anime on Blu-ray, or is it just your favourites? I've mostly stopped collecting physical media, though I made an exception for Satoshi Kon (still need to grab Perfect Blue, and maybe Paprika). Even with gaming, I've gone mostly digital.

I'm glad you suggested it, I think I said it in the thread, even if I'm not sure I even liked it as a whole, Belladonna of Sadness is like exactly the type of anime I wanted to watch last month.

I should clarify, after Night is Short I did purposefully watch anything. After finishing Night is Short, I put a bunch of anime into a randomizer, and just watched what came up first. The only other exceptions is I knew I was going to end with Angel's Egg (hopefully as my 500th, which I succeeded in doing), and I know my brother wanted to watch Spirited Away so I just watched it with him but otherwise everything I watched was just a product of the randomizer. I thought this made the experience more fun, though it did lead me to not necessarily watching the best stuff. I don't think I'll wait another year before watching some of the stuff I missed out on this month. But yeah, I didn't choose to watch Grave of the Fireflies first intentionally, it's just came up first.

Oh, so your first watching of Grave was probably closest to my initial reaction? Interesting, so maybe it's something I should re-visit at some point in the future. I'm not sure how likely that is, but I would've preferred to connect with it. I have seen Only Yesterday since then, and I definitely enjoyed that movie a lot more. I don't know if you read my thoughts but it's a fascinating production. The fact that the present day stuff was recorded prior to animation and sometimes with the actors in the same room, with the the animation being guided by their performance, added so much to the realism. It's probably the most realistic anime I've seen, and a lot of the comes from their facial expressions and character acting. And the fact that those segments were all created for the movie with only the flashbacks being from the source wasn't like surprising because they did feel distinct from each-other, but that's the kind of adaption choice I love. It reminds me of Kekkai Sensen, season 1 was way more interesting to me because it was mixture between the source material's episodic nature and Rie Matsumoto's thematic-drive over-arcing narrative. The second season lost her as the director and they just adapted the manga straight, and while it wasn't bad, it was definitely lacking in comparison. I get the appeal for straight adaptions, and how risky it is, but I wish there more interesting ones like Kekkai Sensen or Only Yesterday as both I feel really added to the experience. Even the Yuasa adaptions of Tatami & Night is Short had more interesting creative decisions apparently. I haven't read them, and it doesn't seem like you have either, but from what I read like Night is Short was multiple nights in the novel, and Tatami Galaxy only had four loops I think.

Anyway, I do think Spirited Away is my favourite Ghibli film from those I watched, but Only Yesterday's probably second. I actually think Only Yesterday in a lot of ways is maybe the better crafted film, like the ending especially, Spirited Away's ending is a little weird whereas I think the credits sequence of Only Yesterday is the emotional high point for the film but Spirited Away's endless parade of creativity is just hard to beat.

Kuuchuu Buranko is my favourite thing I've seen this month! I immediately loved the series look but the first episode had me a bit worried because narratively I thought it was rather weak, so I figured it might be a case where it's strength lies solely in it's aesthetic but episode two showed that wasn't the case. That boner episode is one of my favourite episodes in all of anime and while it remained my favourite, Kuuchuu Buranko produced several more all-time classics by the end. I really loved the amount of inter-connectivity between all the stories too. It was so satisfying to see characters from earlier episodes pop up with a case of their own, or to get different perspectives of own scenes, really made the world feel more lived in. Fantastic series.

Of all the stuff I finished in March Madness that you haven't seen, I'd recommend Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Kafka's, outside of knowing about him I certainly wasn't, but it's very weird, surreal short story. The content of the story itself is at least mildly interesting to ponder over and I've read some solid analysis of it but it's how well the artwork and especially the animation match the oddity and twisted nature of the story that's the selling point. Nice little slightly demented twenty minute experience.

The last thing to discuss is Angel's Egg, I'm really curious to read your experience with this. I don't know if you read my posts but the short of it is that I wasn't able to come up with my own cohesive interpretation of the film, especially with the ending notes, on my own. I had some thoughts here and there but nothing that ever fully realized. Read/watch a bunch of other people's interpretation afterward, and it's super fascinating to here more fleshed out interpretations, with pretty much all of them feeling valid. Which of course is the power of the film. It's certainly a movie that my affection for it has grown way more after the credits when researching/reflecting on it then the experience of actually watching it albeit despite the slow pace, I was never bored with the movie (outside of like the over two minute shot before the boy breaks the egg), it was a fascinating movie to think about, with astounding artwork (Amano is a god), and I did find the moment where my theory about Noah's Ark was proven right when the boy explicitly detailed it, even if most things after threw me for a loop.

Deadman Wonderland featured rape!? Damn, I really don't remember anything about this story lol. Was it like, Shiro's mom, or Shiro herself? I knew you weren't going to like Shiro, Minatsuki had completely forgot existed and had to google to remember who she was. I don't blame you for disliking either of those. I do wonder if I re-read Deadman Wonderland if my score would change, especially since it clearly hasn't stuck with me that well, but I don't think I'd score it as low as you do, because I do still enjoy more typical shonen stuff as sort of comfort food. And I want to say the Forgeries arc was pretty solid shonen from memory, at the very least I recall liking the old man with the fire powers story a good deal when I read it.

I didn't really like what I saw of the Tokyo Ghoul anime, outside of the OP, ED, and surprisingly the final episode I loved. Never continued on past the first season since I wasn't a fan and I heard the anime adaption completely went off the rails and manga fans especially hated it. I see that you rated Tokyo ghoul the highest of the three, what do you think makes it the best of three?

Oh, and One Piece's last chapter was pretty monumental, what were your thoughts on that controversial reveal?

I've added all those work to my watching list so I'm definitely intending to watch all of them at some point. It might be like last year where the last week I dedicate entirely to just cramming a bunch of films in. Haven't really been off to good start with zero anime.

Angel's Egg is an anime I feel like I've known about for like almost a decade at this point, and it's something I've been really interesting watching but never got around to. With everything everyone says about it (the different interpretations you mentioned), and how different and interesting it sounds, I have a terrible tendency to put it off because I want to make sure I experience it in the right mindset. Like I want to make sure I'm fully decided to the film when I watch it. Which I think is why I've been favouring Shonen Jump stuff lately, since that's such a low level of mental engagement I need to maintain, there's no mindset I can read One Piece in where I feel I'm doing it a disservice.

But I've been thinking that's pretty dumb, and I'm never going to end up watching the movie if I keep going like that.

Even though I want to focus on more obscure things, I'm definitely not just going to watch us the unknown stuff, so I do appreciate the Takahata amount. I've known about him for quite awhile too, especially Only Yesterday which I heard a lot of great things from another friend. I think my mentality was to go through Miyazaki first then Takahata, but I'm fine skipping straight to Takahata, as while I liked every Miyazaki film I've watched, none of the managed to connect strongly with me.

Although, I think I'll try to watch Spirited Away this month. It's about as far away from obscure I can get, but it's easily the most cultural significant anime film I'm yet to see. For similar reasons, I might watch Grave of the Fireflies because while I want to focus on lesser known stuff, not having those two films on my anime resume feels wrong.

Also I noticed you started reading Deadman Wonderland. That's quite a nostalgic series for me, in fact when I first joined MAL back in 2012, my profile picture was of character in Deadman Wonderland called Crow. Despite that nostalgic fondness, my actual memory on the series is actually rather vague, I kinda just remember a few of the earlier plot beats and vague impressions of what happened later. I'll admit I was a bit of surprise to see you start this, it doesn't strike me as a series you'd be particularly fond of. What are your thoughts on the series thus far?

Oh, Brothers was Josef Fares? I had no idea, I really should pay more attention to the credits. I haven't played any of his other games, but I've been hearing a lot about him recently as It Takes Two has been on almost every "best game of 2021" list I've seen, and Josef himself seems like a legitimately cool person.

It's pretty interesting that he shifted gears into a focus on mutliplayer since Brothers on it's surface seems like a game perfect for co-op but all it's power comes from being a single-player experience. Which side-bar, I heard the Switch port added multiplayer, that seems like a mistake. It might be fun to replay under the context, but I hope nobody's first experience with it is the multiplayer mode. Anyway, I wonder what the motivation for switching to multiplayer was? I assume it's because it's easier to meld the storytelling and gameplay when you add a human connection to it with a second player, but maybe striving to create the human connection is the whole point?

Even though I haven't played either games, I do actually appreciate his focus on multiplayer experience, especially locally. I'm not really a fan of playing games online, and so many games have neglected the local experience in favour of online. Case and point, Nobody Saves the World. It's a very fun top-down action rpg dungeon crawler game where the gimmick is your character can transform into many different forms like Mermaid, Horse, Bodybuilder, Rat, etc. I thought it'd be a fun game for my brother and I to go through, but it turns out that co-op is exclusively online for some reason. Game's still fun but that was definitely a disappointment. So to have someone who's dedicated to keeping those experiences alive is something I'm grateful for, even if admittedly I'm not so certain I'll play them myself. Hopefully one day you'll get to play either of his multiplayer games too, since they're both apparently excellent.

I'm so bad at following anime movie news, I had never even heard of Inu-Oh. So I checked out the trailer and I already loved it. Definitely going to watch that when I can. Looks a lot more appealing to me than a lot of his more recent-ish output like Ride Your Wave and Lu Over the Wall. Doesn't seem like it's on any streaming service atm, so it'll probably be awhile before I watch it, but I do intend to watch some of more of Yuasa's works next month, namely Tatami Galaxy and Night is Short.

Hoping to watch some more obscure/niche anime as well. The only thing I know for sure is that I want to finally watch Angel's Egg, any other off-the-top of your head suggestions for anime films?

I had never heard of the Toriyama collection, and while I was not surprised to learn there was one, I was surprised to see it pop up on Viz. Should probably get back to reading those, its always fun to dive into the early works of artists I like, even if the one-offs don't wind up any good themselves (though I've enjoyed a decent amount of what I read in the collection).

Reading your comments it seems like Dragon Ball's holding up for you so far at least! I liked your mention about Goku and Bulma representing the two clashes of Dragon Ball's world, the traditional Chinese and the technology. I got the clash between the characters obviously, but I never realized how it matched the mish-mash of Dragon Ball's world design.

Oh that's good. And lol, I imagine the conversations with that friend about Chainsaw Man were pretty fun.

Oh no, I should've linked the World Apartment Horror movie, so you don't have to search for it. The link for the movie on youtube with English Subs.. I would assume it wouldn't be blocked in your reason, and it does seem age-restricted so if you don't have a Youtube account the link's worthless. I still haven't watched it yet myself. Have no idea when I will either, but I have it saved on my watch later.

Speaking of the risky proposition of referencing other films, it occurs to me that this is something the MCU sort of thrives on that never had a potential backlash because the MCU is very homogenized in it's visual story-telling. They're functional, but none of the MCU movies I've seen really go beyond that. Except maybe Black Panther, as that was the only one I've seen that had strong shot composition (the Killmonger fire scene stands out to me). The visual effects are usually strong in all the films though, which are nice.

It doesn't really bother me per se, especially when watching a camrip lol, but re-watching the Raimi films and they definitely pale in comparison to the Raimi movies. The Doc Ock scene was a great, wasn't a surprise to learn from my brother that Raimi has a history in horror. My personal favourite part was in the first film, when Goblin bombs the testing site and the explosion seamlessly transitions into the graduates throwing their scholar hats into the air. Such a slick, and fun transition.

I've also only seen the Amazing movies once when they first came out, and I recall enjoying both of them, which puts me in the minority (at least for the second ones). That said, I'm not sure I'd call either of them great movies. The things I recall liking from them were Peter & Gwen's relationship, probably my favourite of all the Spider-Man movies love relationships, and I really liked Spider-Man's personality, the quips and humour of the character. One of my problems with the Raimi trilogy was Spider-Man barely ever quipped, him never shutting up has always been a fundamental part of the character, so I was elated to see that translated into the movie counterparts.

That doesn't really translate to them being good movies albeit, and most of the stuff I remember about them besides those two qualities are negative. One of my favourite things in the first two Raimi movies were the moments where the citizens supported Spider-Man in a moment of crisis. TASM tried to do this with the Crane scene but it just came across a super hokey, and since a villain wasn't present (from memory), it lacked any significant impact. And the movie ended with the final phone message from Uncle Ben, but it wasn't written like something anyone would actually say without like, knowing they were about to die or something. I imagine I'll re-watch all the films at some point, but not really looking forward to re-watching those.

And I'd feel remiss to say, that upon re-watching the movies, Tobey did quip more than I remembered. He's basically mute compared to Andrew & Tom's Spider-Man, but I was happy to see more of that aspect of the character was represented than I remembered. And of course, it didn't really make sense for the story in Spider-Man 2 for him to be quipping all the time, so I always gave that one a pass.

Ah, I don't have a car. I think there are other options that aren't too far out, so if there was something I needed to see in theatres I could work something out, but otherwise it's just easier to wait for them to become available on streaming (or getting caught in a leaked rabbit hole). The old theatre was only about an hour away on foot, so I never minded making the walk if I wanted to see something spontaneously.

I've played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons now! It wasn't on X-Box Live, but it was on sale for two dollars so my brother just bought it for me anyway. I looked it up on Howlongtobeat.com, and once I saw that it was only three hours, I decided to wait until I had the free time to just do it one sitting.

First thing I'll say is I do kind of wish I played it on the Playstation because of how the analogs sticks are positioned. I think gameplay wise, having both sticks on the same level would've been better than the X-Box's set up with the left stick higher up and the right stock lower down (which in a way, matches the brothers' heights so it kinda works). That, and the triggers on the dualshock are more comfortable imo.

But that didn't really dampen the experience. The gameplay itself was really fun. I love the short length here too, because within the time limit I think they managed to get everything you could get out of their limited control scheme without any segment feeling too long. I guess, maybe the boat rowing segment lasted a bit longer than I would've liked, but I was impressed by the pacing of the different tasks you'd be giving throughout the game. My favourite being when you're climbing that castle and have the ropes attached so you're swinging all over the place. Unless they wanted to make the game really challenging by making you do different tasks with both brothers at once, I don't think there's much more you could do with this gameplay. It really impressed me just how much it got out of it's gimmick from a gameplay perspective.

Story-wise, I was surprised by the lack of any discernible dialogue, yet without that they still managed to convey the simple story really well, as well as the personalities of the brothers. One of my favourite things about the opening sections is interacting with the different townsfolk with the each of the brothers. It tended to go with the older brother being responsible and helpful while the younger was being a little kid, but other touches like the older brother not being good at music while the younger is, it allowed me to get a better sense from the characters just by playing the game.

Another example being the Spider-lady we rescue. I chose to constantly interact with her with both brothers, and seeing the older brother start to flirt with her while the younger brother seemed to start liking her less was really funny at the time, and allowed me to get more enveloped into the adventure through my own actions. There are cutscenes and they are helpful, I think the older brother getting a flashback to fishing with his father was really important (the younger brother had already felt like the main character due to starting with his flashback, so having this helped make them feel on equal grounds as main characters, which helps makes the ending more devastating).

Also, I did not see the Spider-Lady being a Spider-Lady but I definitely was starting to question why she needed rescuing with all her insane feats during the journey. They did a really good job of hinting towards that twist, I think there was even a spider drawing in a cave at one point. Which, just as an aside, character models have aged a bit, and there were at least one instance of really noticeable texture pop-in but in general, this game's environments are breath-takingly beautiful. I took every opportunity to have both brothers sit on the bench and just gawk at the scenery.

Another thing about the story that surprised me was just how graphic and dark it could get. I should've suspected as much with the fairytale vibe to the world since unless Disney is involved those tend to get extreme, but when your going through the forest at night and you come across those three hanged bodies, that shocked me. And later, when you actually stop someone from hanging themselves too, that was a pretty powerful moment I thought. Or traveling through the ruins of a battlefield with giant corpses all around that you have to like shoot mutilate to get by.

But obviously it's the ending of the game that's going to stick with me the most. When the gameplay and story elements truly mesh in a beautiful way. The Spider-lady boss was quite fun at first before it got pretty sad with how she was just trying to get away. I jumped when she delivered her final blow, as that's when I realized I was probably finishing this game with only one brother. Seeing the brother dying was sad enough, I was not happy that the game wanted me to bury him personally lol. That was a such a brilliant knife-twist. It's much like the earlier example interacting with the village people. The game could've done a cutscene to get their personalities across, but it lets you do it yourself. The burial could've just been a cutscene and still be effective, but they make you do it yourself. The game never broke me, but this was the second closest they came.

The closest they came was when the younger brother has to cross the river by himself. This is the most genius moment in the entire game. First, I love the fact that we're left with the right side of the controller. Pretty much every game ever has conditioned us to use the left stick as a primary method of movement. So losing that at the very end and being left with just the right stick, it just made the loss that much more pronounced to the player personally. Having lost the left side for a little bit before this point of the journey, means it's not something that's going to immediately cross the players mind.

After the second time I wasn't able to cross the river, I thought of the older brother, and I used his command and it worked. This was the most emotionally powerful moment, and the climax of the game. Every-time the game had me use the older brother's command to accomplish tasks I previously couldn't have me fighting tears. Just a powerful way to convey the power those we love leave behind. And the ending being the father just breaking down in tears hurt too.

Last comment about the game, I really appreciate that the trophy/achievement list had nothing to do with the story, but were all these sides things you could do throughout the journey. Like, if you're playing the game you're going to get through the story anyway, I liked that I was rewarded for exploring and experiencing more of the journey. Like with saving the suicidal man and getting him that music box or helping those turtles.

So yeah, fantastic game. Definitely an all-time favourite now.