A few quick updates on Breaking Down The Knightfall Saga, and how I intend to cover Cyberpunk 2077.
Read moreUpdate on Knightfall, Cyberpunk 2077 Coverage
Ghost of Tsushima: Video Game Review
Ghost of Tsushima was the last game I beat in 2020 – I completed the game on New Year’s Eve on a launch PS4, and in spite of that console’s age, Tsushima is a title that looks and plays beautifully.
Read moreTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: TV Review
A long time back I reviewed Smiley’s People. At the time I’d seen the previous series – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – but I’d never gotten around to reviewing it. With the show having come out on Blu-Ray and being available through Netflix on-disk, and having seen the film a while back, I figured it was about time to revisit it.
Read moreKnights of Sidonia Vol. 8-11: Manga Review
Volumes 8-11 of Knights of Sidonia are where Nihei steps firmly into New Battlestar Galactica Territory. We had a bit of that in the earlier volumes, but here there’s the level of internal political dissension I associate with that show.
Read moreSilent Mobius Vol. 1-5: Manga Review
As part of this COVID-19 world, I’ve been trying to get through some of the manga titles on my reading list. One of the ones I’ve been working on is Kia Asamiya’s urban fantasy Cyberpunk opus, Silent Mobius.
(Note: For the purposes of this review I am reading the Viz Media release – the Udon release is incomplete, and the Manga Planet release hasn’t come out yet).
Read moreThunderbolt Fantasy Season 1: TV Series Review
There have been varying attempts in the past to tell dramatic and mature stories with puppets. The works of Gerry Anderson are great examples of this. Well, it turns out there’s a tradition of these kind of stories in Taiwan and china, through glove puppetry. We got a real great example of this a few years ago with the Taiwanese and Japanese co-production, Thunderbolt Fantasy.
Read moreRobin #5 Recap
When we last left off, Robin was in a grave predicament.
Read moreUzaki-Chan Just Wants To Hang Out: Anime Review
This week I’m covering an anime from last year that I omitted from my 2020 Anime Recommendations list – not because I didn’t like it, but because I wanted to spend a little more time on it – Uzaki-Chan Just Wants To Hang Out.
Read moreRobin #4 Recap
We’re continuing with the hunt for the Blackgate escapees.
Read moreLet’s Play Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land: Part 112 – Fast Retreat
We start to make our way to the next memory crystal, but get ambushed and have to fall back to town.
Read moreRobin #3 Recap
It’s time to go back to Robin, and deal with the aftermath of the Blackgate Breakout.
Read moreA Night at the Opera: Film Review
The Marx Brothers are kind of hard to review. You’re either down for their antics or you’re not. If you’re down for their antics, the question becomes whether the connecting plot of A Night at the Opera is enough to string the bits together. I think it is, but it really depends on your taste in comedy.
Read moreLet’s Play Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land: Part 111 – Homebrew God
The party gets some exposition on the history of Duhan.
Read moreLet’s Play Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land: Part 110 – Continued Exploration
We continue through B8 to our next story objective.
Read more5 Anime Recommendations from 2020
2020 has, thankfully, passed, so I have a list of some (but by no means not all) of my favorite anime from that year, in an unranked list.
Read moreLet’s Play Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land: Part 109 – In the Door
We finally get out of the lobby and start exploring the East wing of B8.
Read moreLet’s Play Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land: Part 108 – Crowded Foyer
We return to B8 and encounter a bunch of monsters in the level’s “foyer”
Read moreThe Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook: Book Review
I like cookbooks. They are the fusion of my love for cooking and food, and my background in technical writing. I also love fantasy fiction & roleplaying games, with The Elder Scrolls series in particular. So, when I first played Skyrim and found there was cooking in the game, one of my first thoughts was “Man, an Elder Scrolls cookbook would be neat!” So, when one finally came out, I knew that I needed to check it out. Much as with the second Von Bek novel, I should have been looking at the Monkey’s Paw.
Read moreCity in Autumn Stars: Novel Review
In my review of The Warhound and the World’s Pain, I lamented that the book felt too short, and that the sexual assault sequence served no purpose. I should have noticed the finger curl on the monkey’s paw.
Read moreAkudama Drive: Anime Review
We occasionally get new Cyberpunk anime every now and then, though usually, the protagonists of those series have some degree of… license by the establishment. The Major in Ghost in the Shell is a government agent. So are the protagonists of Cyber City Oedo 808. The Knight Sabers from Bubblegum Crisis are superhero mercenaries who contract with the government. Rare are the cyberpunk anime that have protagonists who work for hire, not only outside the law but in violation of the law. Akudama Drive is one of the series that fits that theme, and utterly nails the concept.
Read moreKuma Kuma Kuma Bear: Anime Review
I’ve generally avoided a lot of the more OP Isekai Anime series – no wish fulfillment shows with characters that have a superpowered cheat ability getting ported into a fantasy world modeled on a MMORPG in my watched list. Oh, there are Isekai shows on there, and even ones with people who have abilities that are somewhat overpowered (Log Horizon comes to mind). However, all of those are ones that are cases where an existing power from the game’s world is applied differently. Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear is the first show with this concept that I’ve ended up watching, and it’s probably the best place to jump in on this idea.
Read moreNintendo Power Retrospectives: Part 109
Another light issue, but we get our first dedicated coverage of a third party N64 game.
Read moreIwa-kakeru: Sport Climbing Girls: Anime Review
Iwa-kakeru kind of got a bad break. This year was the year where we were supposed to get the Tokyo Summer Olympics and with it, as one of the new events, Bouldering – or Sport Climbing. So, Iwa-kakeru would have been placed to perfectly strike when the iron was hot, adapting a manga about this brand new Olympic sport, to rise off of the heat of that Olympic fever. And then COVID-19 happened and the Summer Olympics were pushed back at least one year. So, the question becomes whether Iwa-kakeru can hold up without that boost of Olympic excitement.
Read moreTonikawa: Over The Moon For You: Anime Review
I’ve reviewed most of the anime adaptations of Hayate: The Combat Butler, and reviewed much of the manga that’s been officially released in English to date (in spite of the official US release being several years behind the Japanese release – which has since ended). When I learned that author Kenjiro Hata’s latest manga, Tonikawa, was getting an anime adaptation, that show quickly ended up on the list of shows on my watchlist for that season, and I was not disappointed.
Read more