1920×1200 | Illustrator .AI

Today’s raid got cancelled due to a lack of people, leaving me with a lot more time than planned. Unfortunately the sides of this image get cropped out – there’s actually more traced than is visible, but since 16:10 is slightly taller than 16:9, those extra bits are lost. Either way, I think this turned out fairly good, though I still think that the earlier Sanya & Eila one came out the best of them. It’s nice to finally complete a project like this, anyway. With any luck the upcoming second season’s inevitable additions to the cast will also result in some quality frames for some more work to do. In the mean time, I’m not sure whether this sudden burst of creative energy is going to continue or not. Feel free to make requests, but I can’t guarantee anything.

1920×1200 | Illustrator .AI

Looks like I might actually finish a traces project, albeit two years after starting. Decided to knock this one out first since she’s so easy in comparison. Just one more to go, but I doubt I’ll be able to get it done in a single sitting. That said, I intend to be very idle the next two weeks, so who knows. After that I’ll probably ask for suggestions then disappear for months again and never fulfil them. Most likely I’ll dig up and finish the one I started here.

1920×1200 | Illustrator .AI

When I ditched PinkuBentoBox I said I was done with vectors. However a sudden surge of creativity combined with increasing pre-expansion WoW boredom and the fact that I’m between jobs at the moment have together conspired against me. It’s been quite a while since I watched anything that really grabbed me and made me want to do one of these, so instead I ended up digging up some old source images I’d nabbed from Strike Witches back in 2008. I always thought the three I did were some of the better ones I’ve produced, so I thought it might be worth filling out the rest of the cast, not that I’m promising anything. I guess this is kind of semi-relevant again anyway since there’s a new season of they’re-not-panties-so-it-isn’t-embarrassing starting in a couple of months.

I may end up moving over some of the better ones from PBB but the bulk I’ll probably leave behind.

Periodically I like to pull out a visual novel and play it through. I don’t do it very often, so I’m not extensively experienced in them, but recently it has seemed like there have been more and more available, both as fan translations and actual commercial releases. It makes for a nice break from watching terrible anime and procrastinating over updating this blog. Anyway, I recently finished Aoi Shiro. Aoi Shiro, for those interested, is a so-called ‘all-ages’ yuri VN by Success. Originally released in early 2008 for PS2, the PC port (which the translation patch is for) was released November 2009.

Two things attracted me to this enough to give it a spin. The first was that, as an all-ages game, I was fairly confident that I’d be getting a half-decent plot. I don’t have anything against 18+ games, but if there isn’t a half-decent story to keep me interested then there are far more expedient methods for obtaining such material. The other thing which piqued my interest was the fact that this is a yuri story. Apparently there is some connection between it and Success’ previous yuri visual novel, Akai Ito, but this was not expanded upon within the novel itself.

One of the first things that struck me upon loading up the game was the production values. Most likely this simply highlighting the fact that the bulk of similar games I’ve played are either fairly old or doujin games, but I was fairly surprised to find every line of dialogue in the game is voiced, with mouth movements and eye blinking animated for any non-event CG sprites. It’s a minor thing but it contributes quite a bit to the experience. The art in the game is also fairly nice, with an appealing if slightly staid set of character designs.

Voicing of dialogue isn’t really that uncommon, but usually the protagonist is not included in any voicing. Generally this is because the protagonist is little more than a generic avatar for the player himself. The generic male protagonist in these games is one of the reasons I think I find so many VN anime adaptions completely vapid. Shouko, as protagonists go, is refreshingly well-rounded and avoids a lot of these pitfalls. I’m not sure if it is simply expedience or a deliberate consideration, given that as a female character there is already a major disconnect between the usual male VN audience. The decision to flesh her out in detail results in Shouko receiving at least as much character development throughout the game as the rest of the cast, if not more.

As far as the plot of the game goes, it’s fairly good. It’s not going to be winning a Pulitzer any time soon, but it is intriguing, well-paced and pitched fairly well. I’m a big fan of the particular storytelling style which crops up in a lot of these games, where there are multiple endings reachable, and each major route through the game reveals a new aspect of the overall situation. The addition of a ‘true’ scenario unlocked upon reaching the end of all the other routes, which draws together all the members of the cast and ties together the various elements of the plot into a lasting resolution is fairly nice. It actually surprises me that this kind of semi-nonlinear, branching plot structure is rarely seen outside of the visual novel genre. The most common complaints about Japanese games in general recently have seemed to be hinged around the uninteresting and linear nature of their plots. I would love to see this particular structure used more.

Unfortunately the endings were probably the weakest element of the story. While the endings themselves were fine, the ‘happy end’ epilogues seemed very weak. Only the true end has a remotely satisfying epilogue, and it comes at the expense of an abrupt and slightly confusing final sequence. I also felt that there were elements of the plot which were not expanded upon enough, and I ended up being left with a few questions. The foremost in my mind is that we never have it fully explained why the protagonist has the ability she does. The idea that there is magical power in blood is a fairly standard trope. The exact same logic is used to justify boob-biting in Tsukihime[link nws] or at least half the sex in Fate/Stay Night[link nws], and the quasi-vampiric Shouko nomming which effectively takes the place of sex in the various routes are perhaps a slightly more tasteful reinterpretation of the same core concept. The reason why her blood is of particular power is explained within the plot as well, relating to her backstory, specifically that she had consumed the same medicine that had been keeping Nami from aging. They never did, as far as I recall, state categorically whether the references to her having eaten ningyo flesh was literal or simply an illustrative reference to the similarities between Yasuhime and Yao Bikuni of the ningyo story from Japanese folklore. Anyway, that aside, it is never actually explained why Shouko was able to take that medicine without any side-effects. It becomes an extremely major plot point, but the actual reason why it was possible in the first place seemed to have been left at the door. Perhaps it was a reference to Akai Ito, which having not played that game I would not have been aware of.

I played through the routes in a fairly conventional manner – Yasumi, Migiwa, Kaya, Nami, Kohaku then the true route. I probably enjoyed Kohaku’s route the most out of all of them. She was the character who interested me the most, and seemed to have the most mystery around her. It seemed like there was a lot more about her which ended up going unrevealed, which is a bit of a shame. I also noticed that there was a bit of inconsistency in Shouko’s character in some of the routes which was not there in others. Specifically, in some of the routes she has a lot more personal strength of will. In Migiwa and Kaya’s routes, she is a much stronger character. Kohaku’s route made her seem much weaker and more reliant on the rest of the cast, especially Kohaku herself. This may simply be a matter of expedience, where she takes the more submissive role in when paired with a stronger character.

I was also a little bit disappointed at the fact that the rest of Shouko’s classmates don’t play a large part in the story other than providing a vehicle for plot advancement, a bit of character development, and comic relief. I will admit I was crushing a bit on Ayashiro. Incidentally, they could probably have done with giving some of the other girls in the kendo team a few moments. The way that everything is presented you could almost be forgiven for thinking that the team is three girls and a manager.

However, niggles aside I enjoyed the game quite a bit and would absolutely recommend giving it a spin.

IT’S.BEEF.TABOO.

It’s been a while since I finished Episode 3 of Umineko no Naku Koro Ni. I actually started playing this ages ago, but didn’t get very far in and stopped because I had the completely misguided idea that maybe I could watch Deen’s utterly horrible anime adaption in lieu of playing the game. Damn you, hindsight! I wish I hadn’t held off on this for so long, because by now pretty much anything I say is already going to be old news and superseded by Episode 5 revelations, so as usual I’m probably wildly off. No episode 5 spoilers please, let me finish it first

Overall I don’t think Episode 4 was anywhere near as strong as 3 was. The plot, while more complex, had a lot of downtime and took an absolute age to get interesting. Additionally I think it lacked the same level of tightness that Episode 3 had, primarily because the story plays out in Maria’s past, Ange’s future, the Typhoon *and* the Meta-game. Probably the aspect I least liked was how much time was spent reinforcing that Maria and Ange both have shitty lives, though in the end this turned out to be fairly important to the plot, it was very heavy-handed in its execution and honestly made me dislike Maria even more than I already do. I almost ended up sympathising with Rosa more. Imagine having to deal with a child like Maria. uuu~ uuu~.

But I digress. This episode didn’t really solve or clarify the events of the previous episode. However it does end up cutting off several major theories, which is useful. I particularly like the new Blue Text / Red Text dynamic, it finally feels like the game between Battler and Beatrice is purposeful. It also contained a very important statement from Lambdadelta and Bernkastel in the reverse tea party at the end. Specifically, there is no way for Beatrice to win. This means that there *does* exist a physical, non-magical solution to the entire situation. This was fairly obvious already, but it is nice to have the game categorically confirm it in this manner because there was always an outside chance that there wasn’t a solution. We also know from their statements that the bulk of Battler’s theories are completely wrong, even though Beatrice hasn’t denied them herself. I suspect that some of them are fairly close to correct in a few cases, but there are some that are clearly off too.

This episode raised two very large and very important questions regarding the actual identities of our two game participants. Who is Beatrice? She – or someone called Beatrice at least – clearly existed at some point, and it was clear that her origin and identity is a major plot point which we lack most of the details regarding. Solving this will very likely get us much closer to the whole solution. Her deliberately asking Battler about this was a very major hint.

The other question is, of course, who is Battler? We’ve been led to believe so far that he’s the son of Rudolf and a woman who has not appeared in the games that passed away years before. However we’ve now found out that his parentage is not confirmed, which throws a lot of his backstory into doubt, as he now must be considered to be essentially an untrustworthy narrator. Additionally there’s the question about his ’sin’ which Beatrice seemed to be so upset about. From the context this was discussed, it clearly relates to his parents and something that he did in the past. It’s vitally important that we unlock this mystery, as we’ve been told that whatever it was that Battler did set everything into motion. However, despite Beatrice’s very negative response to Battler’s lack of knowledge, they are apparently not acquainted at all. Honestly I have no idea what is going on with this particular plot point, but I suspect that these two major questions are probably inter-related. It is entirely possible that her assertion that the two are not related is a case of splitting hairs.

We receive confirmation in this game that the hidden second mansion, Kuwadorian, does indeed exist hidden in the forests in Rokkenjima. Additionally, somewhere inside the main family mansion there is a path which leads to this secret mansion – Nanjo mentions specifically that he was taken there by Kinzo. In addition to this, we have the knowledge that, around 10 years before the family is murdered, the secret shipments of luxury goods to Kuwadorian suddenly ceased. This ties in very nicely with the general timeframe of the story which Rosa gave us during Episode 2, where she mentioned that she had found the secret mansion and met a girl there who died after falling from a cliff as they tried to make their way back to the main mansion together. I still have my doubts about the veracity of the details of her story – it seems to me to be entirely inside Rosa’s character to have pushed the girl off a cliff – but I think we can at least take elements of it as being true. Specifically, there was a hidden mansion, a girl lived there, Kinzo visited it regularly, and after the girl died the mansion was essentially sealed off.

My personal theory here is probably fairly simple and obvious but I think it ties into various hints and side comments we’ve had. I think Kinzo knew a Beatrice. She was probably a woman of around similar age to him, and lived in Kuwadorian. I think that Kinzo had a child with that Beatrice, and then she died. Beatrice II was raised in secret, and Kinzo probably raised her in the image of her mother. To Kinzo she was probably essentially Beatrice reincarnated. Recall his comments about having ‘bound Beatrice to him’ and so on. Her parentage would also explain why she would have a strong claim to the Ushiromiya fortune. But she died (escaped him), and Kinzo’s other children were a disappointment to him, leaving him with no one he felt worthy of continuing after him. If you consider Beato to be little more than a girl concieved in secret who died before her time and maybe haunts the island, then this also ties in with Lambdadelta’s remarks regarding her origins as a ‘pitiful soul’ that is essentially only using LD’s powers as a witch.

Returning now to Battler, it is very important to note that he is definitely the grand-child of Kinzo. This means that there are six (if you count the above theory) possible connections he may have to Kinzo. Rudolf, Krauss, Eva, Rosa, Beatrice I, or Beatrice II. The current facts laid out in red do not actually preclude any of these things. What was invalidated was Battler’s assumption that the woman he knew as his mother was his actual mother. His father being Rudolf has not been ruled out. Additionally there’s the splitting hairs issue I mentioned before. Beatrice says that she and Battler are not ‘acquainted’ with each other. This means they have not ever exchanged words, have not been formally introduced etc. If Beatrice was his mother, but died in childbirth, then Battler would not be acquainted with her. Similarly if he was given to his ‘mother’ immediately after birth. Beatrice and Battler could easily be related (mother/son or brother/sister) in the latter case, and the connection would be quite allowable within the confines of Beatrice’s assertion. If this is the case – and I’m not convinced of it myself, but I have to admit it seems plausible – then it might explain why she was so upset at Battler.

Of course, some kind of horribly melodramatic plot where Girl-Beatrice and Rudolf have some kind of secret love affair culminating in Battler, with Rosa following Rudolf to one of his secret meetings after and then pushing the girl off a cliff in rage or something seems to be needlessly convoluted, and a simple application of Occam’s razor probably would suggest that Battler is simply the son of Rudolph and Kyrie and there was some kind of cover-up and baby switch.

Either way, we know from this episode that Kinzo was definitely alive at the outset of each episode, that Shannon and Kanon somehow are able to remember previous iterations, and that Maria is even more irritating than we previously thought.

Image Source: Pixiv

Omo wrote an interesting article over here regarding Aria’s setting, specifically what purpose there is in using a blatantly science-fiction setting rather than simply setting the story in the real-world Venice. Rather than doing my usual thing and writing a gigantic comment, I’m going to use it as motivation not to be lazy and actually sit down and write something.

I think there are many reasons why Aria has its science fiction setting, and while I think Omo does hit on the most major of them, there are other factors at play too. Suspension of disbelief is probably the most major goal with the setting. By setting the story in Bizzaro-Venice situated on Kevin Costner’s Mars we are subtly being told to leave our preconceptions based off any knowledge we have of the real Venice behind. Religious and political elements become largely irrelevant.

It’s also worth noting that the setting basically works as a caveat emptor for the author. Using the real-world Venice is restrictive. Certain landmarks are in very specific places, and there are a lot of small details which need to be fairly accurate. After all, the story itself revolves around the daily life of the people of the city, told through the eyes of a girl who is still learning about it. If some details are wrong, some landmarks are in the wrong place or something, well then that’s because they had to build it in a slightly different place because it’s not the real Venice. If the author wants to put some special building into the place, work in some special landmark, or anything like that, then she’s able to do so with no repercussions because it’s not the real Venice. If she wants to work in a creepy giant cat-thing, that’s okay because it’s clearly a work of fiction. It’s set on Mars!

The setting also better allows the work’s tone to be expressed. Neo-Venezia is almost utopian in its presentation (I say ‘almost’ because Utopia implies perfection. It’s close to a utopian ideal, but not quite there). One of the enduring charms of the series is Akari’s purity and innocence as she interacts with the people of the town. Everyone is kind to each other and the closest the show ever comes to conflict is a slightly angry old man with a heart of gold. By separating from reality, you can essentially make an idealised vision of Venice. You don’t need to know about the fact that a lot of the expansion of the real city was due to wealth brought back after the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. You don’t need to know about their military campaigns. You don’t need to know about the fact that the city is in decline, both figuratively and literally. Neo-Venezia can be the beautiful, perfect Venice it is because of the setting.

I think it’s also very important that the setting itself be separated from the ‘real world’ of Earth because of some subtle implications that this has on Akari as a character. It’s often forgotten that all the other characters in Aria (with the exception of Ai) grew up in Neo-Venezia. Akari traveled there from another planet. She is an outsider. Granted, this could be just as easily achieved by setting it in the real Venice, and having Akari come from Japan, but I think it was fairly important that notions of race and country of origin be left out (see the previous point). I actually find it fairly interesting that this particular element of Akari’s character. We never hear her talk about her family, and she is more interested in corresponding with Ai than she is any actual relatives she has. I always saw this as a subtle suggestion that her reasons for coming to the city were due to some kind of issues with her family on Earth, and I think that this is another point where the setting enhances the point. Akari comes from the ‘real world’ of Earth but because she is able to see the beauty of the city and its people, she is accepted – in fact, the spirit of the city (aforementioned Cait Sith, who creeps the shit out of me) allows her to see and experience things that none of the other characters are shown. Neo-Venezia will accept anyone from the ‘real world’ regardless of their circumstances. If the real city was used to drive this kind of point then it would seem fairly cynical and condescending, wheras the setting allows us to accept this at face value.

So in the end, the setting really is critical to achieving the level of emotional engagement and appreciation for Akari’s childlike wonder and innocent love of her adopted home. Also, the best characters definitely row their boats with both gloves on.

Over the years I’ve built up a fairly substantial figure collection. One of my major issues as my collection has grown has been space. Currently I have four IKEA ‘Detolf’ cabinets, side by side. The problem is that they’re all pretty much full. To make matters worse, as expected with cheap and nasty options (though these things aren’t nearly as cheap in Australia, sadly) they generally aren’t that incredible. They do the job admirably, the large amount of glass and minimal frame mean that there’s nothing really in the way of your eye. They’re also easy to outfit with lighting, though I haven’t done this as I’m always worried the heat from any extra light sources may cause my figures to start to sag faster than normal.

I obviously don’t want to get rid of any of them, since for the most part I try to be fairly picky with what I get in the first place. However that just postpones the inevitable. They are also not actually that good at keeping the dust out, mainly because there are large gaps down each side of the door. My room tends to get a bit dusty, and so keeping the models behind glass as much as possible is a necessity, but that’s only useful if they don’t get covered in grey fuzz while trapped in their glass prisons, something which isn’t really occurring. I hadn’t realised the extent to which the dust had accumulated inside until this evening. For some reason it’s less obvious when they’re behind glass.

It all came to a head today when I received Alter’s Fate T. Harlown Shin Sonic Form. This figure is absolutely gigantic, far bigger than I had expected, though I should probably have. She dwarfs Alter’s old Fate Testarossa from ‘06, which was previously the largest figure in my collection aside maybe for Hayate or the MG 1/100 Ex-S Gundam. Sonic Form Fate, when using the Zanber form blade rather than the two smaller swords, is big enough from the tip of her hair to the tip of her sword to span the bulk of two Detolf cabinets, horizontally. She literally cannot fit into a cabinet at all while holding either of her weapons.

This, coupled with the fact that we recently found out that our landlord intends to sell the house we’ve been renting for the past few years has left me thinking that it’s definitely time to re-evaluate my storage options. The trouble is that previous attempts to find appropriate cabinetry has been an exercise in frustration. Storage places and furniture places never turn up anything appropriate and I’m nowhere near competent enough to DIY my own cabinets. I’m not entirely sure where to look. You’d think that large-sized display cabinets would be all over the place in Melbourne, since as a city we’re absolutely mad for sports of any description and a sizeable number of people collect sports memorabilia or sporting trophies. Maybe they all buy from IKEA.

Figure collectors of the interwebs: how do you store / display your collection? Any tips where to start looking given that the usual furniture places have previously been a bust?

Image Source: Pixiv

It’s kind of bizzare, really. I can’t think of any previous instance where a Japanese RPG of any description has been available to PAL gamers months before the game is released in the US. Generally it’s us in PAL land that end up getting the short end of the stick. My understanding is that the US release of the game was scheduled for digital-only release via the Playstation Network, but it seems that it’s been held up while the game gets ported to the Xbox 360 for a multi-platform release. But I digress.

I picked up the Collector’s Edition of the game as an import from the UK. The game has a different publisher in the UK, to the US. Whether this means that the localization is different between the two is not known yet but I would expect that Aksys and Ghostlight probably shared the same translation between themselves. The release itself is puzzling. It’s a full disc-based release (which I don’t mind – to say that the state of broadband in Australia is primitive is an understatement) where the US release was set to be digital only. Yet the odd thing is that I could find no mention of the game at any Australian retailers. It carries an Australian ratings sticker: MA15+, which is currently our highest ratings bracket because of the actions of an odious little man from South Australia.

The collector’s edition came packaged with a hardback artbook, about 30 pages, all color. Form factor is the same as a PS3 case, so slightly shorter than a standard DVD. The artwork contained in there is what you’d expect. Some concept art and a bunch of CGs. The package also came with a set of six postcards, and what was billed on the packaging as an ‘A3 poster’. Apparently someone at the publisher needs to learn some basic print terminology, because as it turns out the poster is closer A5. Paper sizing works such that A1 is half the size of A0, A2 half the size of A1 and so on. EDIT: It is actually A3, and I am blind or something.

The game itself is fairly mediocre. The interface is fairly clunky around the menu systems and there is an extremely irritating half a second lag between a line of dialogue displaying and the character’s voice actually playing. The dialogue itself is completely in Japanese – there is no English dub. Which honestly is how I prefer it, but this will probably limit the game to a fairly niche audience.

That said, the content of the game is already pitched at a niche audience. The coverage its received might trick you into thinking that it’s an eroge. This isn’t true, though it’s not entirely false either. It’s hardly the first game out there to have merged Strategy RPG and Visual Novel / Dating Sim elements – prior art runs the gamut from Ar Tonelico to Dragon Age. This one’s main gimmick is that the game progresses over multiple generations. The initial generation’s hero signs a pact with a spirit, which also ties his bloodline to her. At each generation there are three heroines. The conclusion of each generation involves hooking up with one of them, and the hero of the next generation will be the son of the previous generation’s hero and the lucky girl you ended up with. At least that’s my understanding of the system. Honestly I think it’s an interesting concept. I haven’t played nearly enough of the game to get an idea how well the idea actually works yet, though.

The actual battle system seemed initially extremely clunky to me, primarily because the bulk of my SRPG experience is limited to NIS games like Disgaea, which are arguably the pinnacle of that particular subgenre. Each character has a number of action points (AP), and a turn order that is affected by their agility stat. Each turn is comprised of a move step and an action step. During the move step, you position your characters one by one – each square of movement costing 1 AP. There’s no diagonal movement so the cost of movement is the simple Manhattan distance between the initial and final positions. After locking in your movements, the AI does the same and all the characters will simultaneously animate moving into their new places.

During the action phase, each character has a set range. You can select any target inside that character’s range, and perform an an action on them. Fairly standard. Every action requires AP, the basic attacks taking between 8 and 10 AP depending on their type – casters attacks are generally more expensive in AP, but have range, where melee attacks are cheaper but short range. You can perform as many actions as you have the AP to do in a single attack, and once you’ve queued them up, you execute them all at once. If your character is out of range for a given attack, they will move into range as necessary (at normal movement cost). You also can perform actions on as many targets as you wish, again limited by your AP.

So far, so standard. But there’s a lot more depth to the system. Every character has a special pattern of squares. These are always relative to the position a character is at and the direction they’re facing, eg one character may have a tile directly behind them, or two squares in front of them. Any allied character standing in one of these special tiles is linked to that character. When either of them makes an action on a target in range for them, any linked character (or character linked to a linked character!) can also spend their action points to perform attacks, moving as necessary. Essentially you can unload dozens of attacks on a single target in a round – though the downside is that the AI can do the same to you.

What this means is that positioning your characters so they all link together is essential. Given that each character takes AP to move, you also want to make sure you move into linking positions with as few wasted AP as possible, to optimize the amount you have left for skills. You keep your squishy magic users in the back, linked to your front line characters so they can perform attacks from distance during the melee characters’ actions. Some skills when combined together will form a different, more powerful combination attack. It’s a fairly simple idea and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s not an original one, but it works really well and I was finding the battle system highly enjoyable.

The game itself isn’t anything special, graphics-wise. The battle system is basically 2D sprites on a 3D background using 3D graphics effects for the skills. If you’ve played Disgaea 3, this is about the same par. The character art and CGs are naturally in HD. I think the game is running at 720p rather than 1080, but I play on a monitor that only supports 720p over component anyway, so I can’t test this. The character art and CGs are fairly nice, provided you aren’t terribly put off by generic Japanese fantasy art with a fairly liberal dash of moe. I actually find the art vaguely familiar, and wouldn’t be surprised if the artist has done other things I’ve played or seen. But it could just be the fact that it’s quite generic. Voice acting is reasonable, with a few recognizable voices so far (eg Ami Koshimizu, Michie Tomizawa, Kana Ueda).

Overall it’s a fairly mediocre game so far, to be brutally honest. I’m enjoying it despite this, and honestly I wasn’t expecting much from it in the first place.

After sticking with the same blog and domain (albiet with cosmetic changes here and there) for nearly four years now, I’ve decided that it’s time to start afresh. RIP PinkuBentoBox.

Still in the process of getting everything here configured just right. Hopefully not doing too much under the hood tweaking like I had to with my previous theme. My hope with this is to begin writing some actual content that is worth reading, rather than massive long-winded essays which I never end up being able to finish. I’ll probably be keeping the vector traces over at PBB, as I’ve pretty much hung up the towel as far as that goes now.

I’m anticipating a bit more to do with games and other miscellaneous topics that strike my fancy will become the norm, rather than purely focusing on anime. Hopefully more regular content too, rather than one gigantic post every six months!

Image source: Pixiv