like a star, like a firefly

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.

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.

Finished Gundam Witch from Mercury! (Did so almost a week ago now, actually!) I enjoyed it a lot, even if it might've done with even one more cour to help flesh out certain plot points and characters.

I'd put it in second place below Iron-Blooded Orphans, but I can't really rank the Gundam shows I've watched more than that because the only one I've seen any part of in the last decade is 00's first season! Wing, the movie trilogy version of the original, Seed and Seed Destiny were all a longass time ago for me, as is 00 S2. ^^;

While I won't be jumping into another Gundam show right away, I do have a few to pick between in terms of which one I want to watch next:

*Original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series. This would be my first time watching it in this form, and seeing it would let me follow it up with other things from the UC timeline; I've heard particularly good things about Zeta.

*Reconguista in G. I saw the first few eps of this back when it was originally airing, but don't remember much about them besides liking the oldschool-flavoured art style and the cheerful ED. Would be the easiest one out of this batch to watch in terms of episode count, being as it's only two cours, but I've heard the story can be tricky to follow. I'd also like to check if it fully stands alone as another AU Gundam, or if it expects any particular level of familiarity with UC going in.

*Wing. One of my firsts in multiple ways; as I've said before, this would be very interesting to revisit.

*G Gundam. This would be completely new territory for me. Most of what I know about it is that it's one of the most atypical Gundam series and that it's amazingly ridiculous.

I'm open to any recs as to which of the above to go for next!

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.

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.

With the Winter season just wrapping up, I might as well pull together a rough list of Spring 2021 anime I want to at least try out:

*86
*Pretty Boy Detective Club
*Cardfight!! Vanguard overDress (don't ask; this'll be my first time watching anything from this franchise)
*Fairy Ranmaru
*To Your Eternity
*Joran: The Princess of Snow and Blood
*The World Ends With You (maybe? I'll admit I never got very far in the original game...)
*Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song

Quite a decent amount on my plate, then, and as always it remains to be seen what I end up sticking with. I will say I'm hopeful for the 86 anime, though, as I really like what I've read of the light novels.

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!

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!

Man, Sarazanmai ep 9 was bloody intense.

What a good episode. What a good show. The final two eps had better stick the landing.

Sara-cky seven, dish! Or is it not so lucky?

( Sarazanmai spoilers; relevant warnings might apply? Has mentions of disturbing relationships from other series )

I can't believe there's only four eps left now.

It's Thursday again, so you know what that means.

( Spoilers for Sarazanmai ep 5 )

One day I might actually use a Sarazanmai icon to talk about Sarazanmai with! I've been trying to represent more canons I like in my lineup since the number of default slots was increased for paying users; this includes some pretty obscure ones, naturally, with the one I'm using on this very post being a prime case in point. (That's Lena from the light novel 86, by the way. 86 is really good.) If Sarazanmai keeps being as good as it's been, I don't see why it shouldn't eventually get its turn. :3

Better late than never, here's my thoughts on episodes 5 and 6 of Yuri Kuma Arashi.

( Spoilers for those episodes, allusions to later things; warning for mentions of rape and murder )

I'm aiming to watch the rest of the series early next week.

Managed to squeeze in a couple more episodes of YKA this morning before Funi went down for its scheduled maintenance... which takes me up to ep 4 now!

It's no spoiler that I'm continuing to like the OST. As for the rest...

( Spoilers up to ep 4, allusions to later stuff )

Now I'm a third of the way through, my current verdict is that YKA is... okay. It's not one of the worst things I've ever seen, and it's not one of the best things I've ever seen. Will later episodes shake that up for me? We'll see, hopefully before too long.