mikogalatea: Rita and Estelle from Tales of Vesperia, having just celebrated a victory in battle. Estelle is delighted, while Rita is still a bit awkward but nonetheless pleased. ([ToV] Rita/Estelle)
2025-03-26 10:49 pm

the brightest star in the sky (ocean?)

It's been a little over two weeks now since I actually did it, but I finally beat Tales of Vesperia! \o/

I'm so happy to have finished this game at long last. I've had such a fun time with it, even if I did miss out on some stuff thanks to the game being infamous for having a lot of easily-missable sidequests and whatnot. There were a good amount of missables I did get to see, though!

Now I just want to write some manner of ficlet for Rita/Estelle before I fully move on to a different game, because that's my OTP by far. I have a decent enough idea for it, but I need to get my writing muse into gear so I can actually do it...

As for what game I want to go for next, I might replay Star Ocean 1 through the R version on the Switch. Yes, yes, I talked about potentially getting right back into the SO series about a year ago and ended up not doing it at the time, but this time I've actually been thinking about Ioshua and Erys again after all these years, and there's no motivator for replaying a game quite like having feelings about favourite characters. Whether I replay it now or end up shelving it for another time again, at least it's a relatively short game -- which, if I do start the replay sooner rather than later, would make it possible for me to finish a playthrough before The Hundred Line releases near the end of next month.

Speaking of upcoming games, a new Nintendo Direct just got announced for tomorrow, which is a bit of a surprise to me considering we're getting the Switch 2 Direct next week. Makes me wonder what they'll announce now, near the end of the first Switch's life... No, I do not have clown makeup on, unlike a good chunk of the rest of the Fire Emblem fandom. I'll laugh if we actually do get the much-rumoured Genealogy remake after all this time, but I'm not betting on it at all.
mikogalatea: Estelle from Tales of Vesperia, smiling while just having brushed the tears from her eyes. ([ToV] Estelle)
2025-02-16 11:01 pm
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up the mountain again

When I'd last played the Switch version of Tales of Vesperia back in 2019, I'd just returned to Dahngrest after finishing up at Ghasfarost, immediately before the next major set of events that happened there.

Since I picked the game back up just over a week ago, I've made it to Mount Temza -- slightly past the farthest point I'd ever gotten to in the 360 version!

Some assorted thoughts, with spoilers for up to Mount Temza )

I think I've got a hard boss coming up very soon, so I'm wishing myself luck with that...
mikogalatea: Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth, brandishing her sword. ([Rayearth] Fuu)
2025-02-11 06:40 pm

clamping down

It's my birthday today, so let's blog about happy things!

First up, I seem to have started the year in a CLAMP kind of mood, and I'm largely chalking that up to the fact I picked up the TV anime of Magic Knight Rayearth on Blu-Ray in a sale. I'd seen the OVAs (radically different as they are) and read the manga before, but this is my first time seeing the TV version. So far I've finished the first set, which puts me seven episodes into Part 2.

Once I've finished watching Rayearth, including revisiting the OVAs afterwards, I'm thinking of rewatching the X movie and finally watching the TV version of that all the way through while I'm on a bit of a CLAMP kick.

Secondly, I resumed playing Tales of Vesperia again a few days ago, for the first time in nearly six years! I'd been meaning to come back to it for ages, so it's just as well I finally did so. ^^; I'm hooked on it all over again, and I still love this cast. Estelle remains as cute and loveable as ever, Yuri remains as great a protagonist who's easy on the eyes as ever, and Rita remains as gay and tsundere as ever.

I've just hit the Sands of Kogorh now, and I'm aiming to at least get as far as I originally did in the 360 version (Mount Temza, according to my own notes) before I remotely think of putting it aside again.
mikogalatea: Shiori from Revolutionary Girl Utena, screaming in frustration after having lost a duel. ([Utena] Shiori; FML)
2025-01-15 10:54 pm

ugh

I wish I could hit a reset button on this year. It's gotten off to a terrible start for me.

As if injuring my arm last week wasn't bloody awful on its own, today my Switch seems to have randomly died -- even though it was working just fine just last night. The screen went black and stayed that way when I was booting up a game like usual, pressing the home button didn't do anything, going from TV mode to handheld mode didn't do anything, and after turning it off it's refused to turn back on again at all. That'll be several hundred hours worth of progress in Fire Emblem and Zelda and Pokémon gone...

NEXT DAY ETA: Looks like my Switch works again now! I didn't lose entire playthroughs' worth of progress after all! Still, I really could've done without that unnecessary stress!
mikogalatea: Link from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, climbing a sheer cliff. ([Zelda] Link)
2025-01-11 09:10 pm
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three cheers for writing challenges

[community profile] threesentenceficathon is back again this year! \o/

I've been looking forward to this! Sadly, I don't know how much I'll be able to participate this time because I had the rotten luck of injuring my right arm in an unpleasant slip-and-fall accident the other day, but I'm still taking stock of prompts that catch my interest and thinking of what I'd like to do if I can.
mikogalatea: Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena, laid out on autumn leaves in her Rose Bride dress. ([Utena] Anthy)
2024-11-27 11:04 pm

rose and release

I finished my Utena rewatch. Still one of my favourite anime. ♥

Scattered thoughts )

I plan on rewatching the movie and rereading all the manga (first manga, movie-manga, After the Revolution) soon.
mikogalatea: Touga and Nanami from Revolutionary Girl Utena. He's walking out on a conversation with her. ([Utena] Touga and Nanami)
2024-11-25 08:39 pm

some of the most painful Utena episodes

Episodes 31 and 32 still hurt. Poor Nanami.

I want to throw more bricks at Akio. I've got ep 33 next, so I'll want even more bricks for that. Bastard.
mikogalatea: Saionji and Nanami from Revolutionary Girl Utena. She's found him camping at night and has dropped to her knees in dismay over a misunderstanding. ([Utena] Saionji and Nanami)
2024-11-20 12:00 am

if you can't break the egg's shell...

That feeling when I watch what's ostensibly a comedy episode, yet the analysis notes I write down for it wind up going to incredibly depressing places. :(

Utena's comedy episodes are odd beasts, because when you rewatch them with knowledge of the whole show, they turn out to have a fair amount of unhappy subtext and/or foreshadowing that makes them hard to laugh at in hindsight. That said, I don't agree with the implicit notion that the show has no genuine comedy and that every single thing is actually secretly horrifying; then again, it's mostly little moments that I find funny, like the endings of some Shadow Girl plays or Juri wanting a turn in a massage chair Nanami was sitting in.

Next up for me is eps 28-29, which I'm not looking forward to all that much because ugh, Ruka. It's possible that I might end up not hating him as much as before, but I don't exactly expect my opinion on him to do a 180, and just seeing him in the episode preview had me cringing already. ~.~

I'll do it for Shiori, though! And for everything that comes after these episodes!
mikogalatea: Nanami from Revolutionary Girl Utena, running away in tears. ([Utena] Nanami; crying)
2024-11-15 09:12 pm

start of the trauma arc

I just got to episode 25 in my Utena rewatch, and it's made me glad I decided to watch it on its own, because it's fucking me up right now. ;.;

Just two points among many:

1. I'm having feelings about Anthy, just as I'm pretty sure this is the episode where Anthy herself caught real feelings for Utena.

2. I want to throw a fucking brick at Akio. There are two major reasons why and other reasons besides those.

There's several episodes from the Black Rose arc I have a lot of feelings on, too.
mikogalatea: Utena and Touga from Adolescence of Utena. She's sitting before him in the elevator, and they're separated by a glass wall. ([Utena] Utena and Touga)
2024-11-07 09:46 pm

the early trauma episode

I love episode 9 of Revolutionary Girl Utena so much. I have about a million feelings about the coffin flashback alone.
mikogalatea: Touga from Revolutionary Girl Utena, sitting on the edge of a bed with his shirt mostly open and looking unusually closed off. ([Utena] Touga)
2024-09-22 11:19 pm
Entry tags:

what's with October and these sorts of prompts?

Whumptober 2024

Angstober 2024

Mostly posting the links here for reference and easy access, though I haven't decided yet if I'm actually going to do anything for either of them. That said, I do fancy the idea of doing something, even if it's just a single fic! I have a particular character in mind to have as a whump subject at least once, too. *ahem*
mikogalatea: Anthy and Utena from Revolutionary Girl Utena, kissing. ([Utena] Anthy/Utena)
2024-06-11 10:26 pm
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to the other side of the storm

I finished Yuri Kuma Arashi on Sunday. With that, here's a bit of commentary on the final three episodes, followed by some thoughts on the series as a whole.

Spoilers for all of YKA; warning for mentions of the usual things about it )

I'm still willing to turn this series over in my head a bit more, and while I do have very mixed feelings about it and I can't see myself having too much fannish attachment to it, I can see myself revisiting this series sometime in the future.
mikogalatea: Masako from Mawaru Penguindrum, sipping a cup of tea while looking out of a window. ([Penguindrum] Masako)
2024-06-08 09:52 pm
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heading back into the storm

After I'd first started watching it about five years ago and only gotten halfway through before wandering away from it, I've finally started Yuri Kuma Arashi again with the aim of finishing the whole show! I've now just finished episode 9.

For now, I don't have any further comments on the first six episodes to add to what I previously wrote about them, so here's my scattered thoughts on eps 7 to 9.

Spoilers for up to ep 9 of YKA, with relevant warnings (particularly for rape and murder) and some cranky feelings about a certain villain )

I'm intending to watch the last three episodes in the next few days, and this time I definitely won't wander off from it like I did before!

I also started rewatching Utena recently, which I think was long overdue, especially with it being one of my favourite anime series ever. That's what inspired me to restart and finish YKA now, actually. I'm considering rewatching Sarazanmai while I'm at it, too, as it's been a while since I was watching that while it aired and it's only 11 episodes.
mikogalatea: Severa from Fire Emblem 13, nonchalantly brushing one of her pigtails over her shoulder. ([FE13] Severa)
2024-04-07 12:21 pm
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the silliest priority?

With the 3DS going offline tomorrow, I've finally gotten around to doing the one thing I absolutely had to get done while that console's online services were still active...

I got Benny and Beruka married through My Castle battles in Fire Emblem: Fates.

There was a point to this! I'd hit a point in Conquest where both the next main story battle and the My Castle defence thingie had nothing but promoted enemies, and I felt like my party hadn't been raised as well as it could've been, so I wanted to make Ignatius exist so I could use his paralogue (which IIRC is the one child character paralogue that's recommended to do relatively early instead of later on) to get people's levels a bit higher.

Dunno when I'll get round to actually continuing Fates, though. I could barely remember how to play the bloody game, which makes me glad for the trend of people making Their Castles easy to seize! (If anything, if I do go back to Fates, I might start a new file for Birthright and make progress there before picking my Conquest run back up.)

It's just funny to me that, with so much going away along with the 3DS's online functionality -- with plenty I'll miss and things I straight-up missed out on like SoV's DLC -- this of all things was what I really wanted to achieve before the deadline!
mikogalatea: Hawlucha from Pokémon, striking a pose while standing on a treebranch. ([Pokémon] Hawlucha)
2024-02-27 02:36 pm
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we're on the road to Lumiose City~

Pokémon Legends Z-A releasing next year!

Getting a new Legends game was my biggest hope for this year's Pokémon Presents, but I didn't expect my wish to come true in this way! (I'd been expecting something Unova-based, if anything, given the references to it in the Scarlet/Violet DLC and the fandom rumours about Black/White remakes... which surprisingly ended up not being a thing here, even if I think it's a bit too soon for them right now anyway.) As someone who actually enjoyed X/Y and really liked Kalos as a region, I'm happy to see it finally get some more love.

Also, since it's not coming out til 2025, hopefully that means it'll get the development time it needs and won't suffer from the same jank as Scarlet/Violet -- because as much as I love Violet, there's no getting away from the fact it is super janky in ways it really shouldn't be!

I should get back to Legends Arceus at some point in the meantime. I still haven't done the postgame storyline yet!
mikogalatea: Mathis from Virche Evermore, with an adorably flustered blush at having been caught in the middle of writing a novel. ([Virche] Mathis)
2024-01-12 05:06 pm
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black lycoris of love

I just finished Virche Evermore about a week ago, and because I loved it so much, I thought I'd do a personal ranking of the characters and throw down my thoughts on all of them.

To be honest, I'm partly inspired to do this because I heard Mathis is the least popular love interest to the point where he even got rated beneath a few side characters in the Japanese official popularity poll, which I think is absolutely criminal.

Needless to say, major spoilers for the entire game below! )
mikogalatea: Carmine, Kieran and the female player character from Pokémon Violet, posing for the camera at the Festival of Masks. ([Pokémon] Hidden Treasure)
2024-01-11 05:23 pm
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mochi mayhem

The funniest part of the Pokémon Scarlet/Violet DLC epilogue, in my opinion?

Spoilers, especially considering the epilogue is so short )
mikogalatea: Maria from Star Ocean 3, with closed eyes and a decidedly self-satisfied expression. ([SO3] Maria)
2023-12-29 08:11 pm
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at the starry diving board

I think my fannishness for the Star Ocean series might make a huge comeback relatively soon.

Why? Because I happened to get the new SO2 remake for the Switch as one of my Christmas presents this year -- which was unexpected, but certainly a pleasant surprise. I still have my copy of the PSP version, where I'd gotten close to the end of a playthrough with Claude before, but I think this'll be a good way to both have a fresh experience of the game and finally play Rena's side of the story!

It's rekindled my feelings for the series to the point where I've now bought the R version of SO1 on the eShop (with a bonus being that I'd accumulated enough points to get it for essentially free while it's on sale)! Not only that, but since I recently got a PS4, I'm finally in a position where I can play SO5 and SO6 for the first time... and as it so happens, the HD remasters of SO3 and SO4 are on sale right now too, so I might go ahead and get those while they've got money off! The whole dang series on modern-ish consoles!

I won't get to any of them right away, though. First I want to beat Mario Wonder, and then I want to have another go at Iron Leaves in Pokémon Violet now that's come back round, and then I want to finish Virche Evermore (I've been on a bit of an otome kick in the last few months), and then I'd like to do some more routes in Olympia Soirée, and I'll want to jump back to Pokémon Violet again when the DLC's epilogue drops in a couple of weeks' time... in other words, I've got things I want to do in other games beforehand. Still, once I've done all that I'd really like to jump back into the good ol' ocean of stars. :3

I'll most likely play SO1 R first, as one playthrough of that shouldn't take too long, and then I'll go for SO2 R. I'll be looking forward to meeting my favourite characters again, and getting to know people in SO2 I didn't recruit before!
mikogalatea: Carmine, Kieran and the female player character from Pokémon Violet, posing for the camera at the Festival of Masks. ([Pokémon] Hidden Treasure)
2023-12-17 11:20 pm
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hidden treasure acquired

I just finished the story part of the new Pokémon Scarlet/Violet DLC! \o/

To give my brief not-too-spoilery thoughts on the DLC as a whole: I enjoyed Ogerpon's storyline, I loved the challenge that the BB Elite Four offered, Lacey is super cute (especially when she does her "that's just not right" pose) and I like both Kitakami siblings thank you very much.

I'm not quite sure what to do next at Blueberry now, so since I've still got some loose ends to tie up in Paldea -- doing all the Gym Leader rematches, finishing some things at Uva Academy -- I'll most likely get those over with at long last before I look into doing certain things I can now do with the League Clubroom.
mikogalatea: Rosamia from Zeta Gundam, looking a bit taken aback. ([G-Zeta] Rosamia)
2023-12-03 12:17 pm
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quick random thing about gendered tropes

Something I've noticed about fictional characters who are assassins, serial killers or anything along those lines is that they tend to be written in one of two particular ways that hinges heavily on their gender: female killer characters are more-often-than-not brainwashed or otherwise forced into it, whereas male killer characters are far more likely to have at least some agency in the matter. In general, I'm really not a fan of the "men have agency, women are brainwashed" dichotomy that's so abundant in fiction, and this is one area where it particularly sticks out.

All this just makes me all the more fascinated with a certain character from a game I've been playing -- a male character who was brainwashed into being a killer. I won't say who the character is here, since this is quite spoilery both for the game he's from and especially for the specific character in question, but the playing around with a gendered trope here is one reason why I really like him and find him interesting -- even if he does seem to be a polarising character from what I've been able to observe of the fandom so far.

It goes to show that even tropes I normally find irksome can catch my interest if certain details are flipped around.