like a star, like a firefly

Three Hopes, Leicester edition

Marianne with her hair down. Enough said. ♥

Three Hopes, Faerghus edition

Ingrid with a bob? Annette with a headscarf and adorable coiled braids and boobies? Mercedes still looking cute as all hell? Yes please to all of 'em!

Looking forward to similar showcases for the Deer and especially the Eagles~

Hands up who's played Pokémon Legends Arceus and was surprised by how aggressive and dangerous Paras and Parasect of all things can be?

*raises hand*

I'd also ask around about what were particularly scary encounters for people, but I only got this game about a week ago as a birthday present, so while I've been pretty addicted so far I'm only on the... eighth main plot mission at the moment? I spend a lot of my time just exploring and mucking about, to be honest. ^^; (Particularly scary encounter for me so far, though: that alpha Honchkrow at Cloudpool Ridge that comes after you if you so much as sneeze at any of the Murkrow in the area!)

Winter 2022 anime I'm checking out, with the days they air in GMT time for my own reference:

*Tokyo 24th Ward (Wednesdays)
*Sasaki and Miyano (Sundays)
*Tribe Nine (Mondays)
*Sabikui Bisco (Mondays)
*Case Study of Vanitas second cour (Fridays)

It's a much smaller list this time, as I've found it's pointless putting too many shows on my plate at once in a season when I never end up committing to all or even most of them while they're airing. ^^; Five shows that are decently spread out in the week should be more manageable, though.

I just found out there's a Star Ocean 6 coming out next year.

... I wish I had a PS4.

Cool things to look forward to next year that got announced or received updates recently:

Pokémon Legends: Arceus! I'll be skipping the Diamond/Pearl remakes because they don't offer enough things the originals didn't to justify the expensive double dip for me (though I'm glad to hear they're at least updating the annoying HM stuff to be more in line with newer games) but Legends looks really interesting and different and I hope it can be at least half as good in execution as it is in concept! Also doesn't hurt that it'll have some new Pokémon and new regional variants for some old ones. I see from the latest news about it that there's going to be a new alternative evolved form for Scyther, my all-time favourite Pokémon; if that means Scyther itself can get a fresh dose of love by extension, then I'm all for it. :3

Triangle Strategy! Coming next March! This is another one with a cool concept that I really hope the final product can pull off. I never did finish the prototype demo that came out earlier this year, but having another update about the game has given me fresh motivation to do so.

Happy Dangan Ronpa S! A spinoff that's basically NDRV3's board game mode writ large! I got pretty addicted to that mode at one point, so I'm looking forward to even more fun interactions with my old favourites. Only a couple of months left to wait for this one!

Tribe Nine! The latest from Too Kyo Games! After it's only had a concept movie for over a year, it's finally been announced to be a mixed-media project with an anime, a mobage and a Webtoon, potentially among other things. The anime's coming surprisingly soon, starting in January, and I'm hoping it'll at least be good fun. I enjoyed last year's Akudama Drive a lot.

AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative! Honestly, I'm not sure if the original really needed a sequel, but I loved it so much that I ain't gonna complain about getting more!

There's more besides, but this is the stuff I most wanted to write about.

Just making a few lists for myself...

First up, a to-do list of games to play:

( Hey, hey, oh~! )

Next, tracking the Spring 2021 anime I want to catch up with and finish:

( Pink blood, pink blood, pink blood... )

Finally, my tentative list of Summer 2021 anime I'll at least check out one episode of:

( How many, or how few, am I likely to stick with this time? )

Also a reminder to myself to watch the last four episodes of Magical Girl Site if the show's still on Amazon (I didn't expect to actually kind of like that edgefest, though to be fair I went in with low expectations to begin with), and to maybe start Love Live! Sunshine!! again (I tried watching it back when it was originally airing, but went off it because I hadn't seen the original at the time and this show expects viewers to have already seen that; now I have finally watched the original recently, I think it's worth giving Sunshine!! another shot).

Storytelling pet peeve of the day:

( CW: bullying, victim-blaming )

Just one of many tropes that really need to go away... and it's sad that I have to wish situations like that would go away in real life as well.

Triangle Strategy looks really cool and interesting and I'll definitely be taking a look at its prototype demo ASAP.

Here's the Winter 2021 anime I'll be trying out:

*Gekidol
*Horimiya
*I★CHU
*So I'm a Spider, So What?
*Sk8 the Infinity
*Otherside Picnic
*Wonder Egg Priority

I would've had Skate-Leading Stars on there as well, but I've already dropped it because I found the characters to be very unlikeable. They mostly seem like a bunch of jerks, and they're not even the kinds of jerks I find fun to watch. =/

I'd also watch the upcoming new Precure if Crunchyroll ever included Europe (or at least the UK) in the territories it'll stream it to, and the new Show by Rock!! if Funimation ever put up the subbed version for the second season of the original show...

Finally, I'm continuing Higurashi and D4DJ from the previous season!

Out of the whopping thirteen series I was interested in checking out from the Autumn 2020 anime season, I've stuck with seven of them. (Well, almost eight, but I ended up dropping Assault Lily just the other week.) Ultimately, the list of shows I kept was:

*Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou
*Hypnosis Mic
*Talentless Nana
*Akudama Drive
*Adachi and Shimamura
*Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club
*D4DJ

I actually think that's pretty good going!

Yesterday's episode of Akudama made me tear up. ;.; That and Higurashi have been my top picks this season.

I'm still all right, in case anyone was getting a bit worried!

Rather than playing much in the way of video games in the last couple of months -- I haven't even made much headway into my current Three Houses run since my last post -- I've been falling into other hells. I was in Precure hell for a bit around the end of August to early September, as one series from that franchise (specifically Kira Kira Precure a la Mode) finally got made available to my country fully subtitled, though I've taken a break from that because I can only binge on so much of it at a time; it's good fun and I'm enjoying it, but it's still a kids' show with a predictable formula all the same.

Over the last month has seen me fall into a particularly embarrassing hell -- Vtubers. ^^; It's amazing how much time can disappear even when I just watch a bunch of fansubbed clips; it's not even like I've fallen far enough into this rabbit hole to watch several-hour livestreams! All I'll say about this topic for now is that I think I largely prefer Nijisanji folks to Hololive.

I've even been teetering on the lip of Show by Rock!! hell in the last few days, possibly because watching a bunch of cool song covers by Vtubers has put me in the mood for music anime. I do think, however, this show stands out a lot for the fact it's got girl singers and boy singers in the same series. They're usually totally segregated in this genre.

Most of all, though, I'm going to be checking out a lot of new anime this season. I only watched a couple of summer shows (namely Deca-Dence and Lapis Re:LiGHTs, both of which I actually still need to watch the last few episodes of), but this time there's over a dozen series I want to at least check out the first ep of. (Many of them were originally going to start in spring or summer, but, well, 2020 has been what it is.) Taking a deep breath, they are:

*Higurashi no Naku Koro ni NEW
*Assault Lily Bouquet
*Hypnosis Mic
*Jujutsu Kaisen
*Warlords of Sigrdrifa
*Talentless Nana
*Akudama Drive
*Adachi and Shimamura
*The Day I Became a God
*Gymnastics Samurai
*Dropout Idol Fruit Tart
*Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club
*D4DJ

I'm obviously not expecting to keep up with every one of these, and I can even see myself dropping most of them, but we'll see what I end up sticking with!