Gyokuyoutama

Here we go:
 

Happy New Year subspuffers! I wish y'all a nice 2024

Here we go:
 

Here we go:
 

I had a dream that I've already forgotten most of the details about.  Something about a relative going crazy and being barricaded in a room.
 
But I do clearly remember someone telling me at the end: "If you learn nothing else from this, it's that you should always keep a really big knife next to your bed."  Then I woke up and since it was around 3 AM I went back to sleep.
 
But I guess this dream convinced me since apparently I set an alarm titled "BUY KNIFE" before going back to sleep.

I had a dream that I've already forgotten most of the details about.  Something about a relative going crazy and being barricaded in a room.
 
But I do clearly remember someone telling me at the end: "If you learn nothing else from this, it's that you should always keep a really big knife next to your bed."  Then I woke up and since it was around 3 AM I went back to sleep.
 
But I guess this dream convinced me since apparently I set an alarm titled "BUY KNIFE" before going back to sleep.

The only non-streamer game/non hyped AAA game that won any category was Dave the Diver (unless I missed something.)
 
I'm not angry, it's about what I expected.  It's like expecting to get quality out of the Oscars or the Hugo Awards or something; that's not what they are about.

A game that didn't receive any updates for the last 3 years.
A game that is just Fallout 4 with less features, which already had less features than New Vegas, with most of the new gameplay copied from No Man's Sky.
 
Fuck off.

I came across a old copy of Battlestar Galactica (the new one) and watched the end of season 3.

In retrospect this show was pretty damned lame and embodied the "mystery box" style of storytelling even more than stuff like Lost.  The show absolutely relies on leading the audience along with mysterious mysteries which the writers obviously hadn't thought of.  But more annoyingly when some of their revelations caused obvious contradictions, rather than exploring what these revelations would actually mean, they just doubled down on their solutions.  One of the most obvious examples of this is
 
 
What's more annoying is that even when it is pointed out that some of their choices don't make sense, the creators are still doubling down on their choices.  The most glaring example of this comes with
 
 
I had to put most of this in spoilers since I've spoiled some of the biggest reveals in the show.  But honestly if the show were good it would survive being spoiled in this way.  You cannot watch the show again without being annoyed at how obviously forced later story moves were, and how little they make sense overall.  The show really drags them out too.  When they reveal four of the cylons at the end of season 3 they drag it on for several minutes before they finally say that they are cylons (though none of the characters are really clear on how they came to that conclusion.)  It's obviously designed to increase the hype of initial viewings since that particular reveal is so far out of left field that you probably guessed something else was going on.  But when you rewatch it it's just annoying; you know what's coming and there's nothing interesting about having it dragged out.  It's like watching a jumpscare heavy horror movie when you know where all the jumpscares are, but they take too long to get there while not doing anything interesting.
 
I don't mind shows being written as they go, or the writers changing their minds as they write the show.  Probably 95% of what happens in the third season of Twin Peaks was never even dreamed of during the first season, and a lot of it would have seemed contradictory to what they were doing back then.  But none of it actually contradicts the first season, because David Lynch takes his work seriously.  He doesn't view the show as a mystery box that he should be praised for crafting, where the point is to be amazed at the plot twists.  He views it more like a dream that he is having and is figuring out at the same time that the audience is.  Thus Twin Peaks is heightened on every rewatch, (same thing with his movies) while you really can only watch something like Battlestar Galactica once.

This video is a more accurate representation of Legacy of Kain than anything I could possibly say about it.
 
 

I present to you the greatest anime opening ever made:
 
 
I guess to appreciate this you have to have both played Snatcher and watched Patlabor, so maybe the audience here is just me.
 
But the rest of you may be interested to know that this was literally drawn in MS paint.  No seriously, that's what the description of the video says.

The big part of why I love tired dog so much is that he worked perfectly for listening training.
 
-Reasonable conversation Japanese.
-Japanese subtitles to clear up ambiguities/allow using dictionaries.
-No English translations when I found them, meaning I couldn't cheat.
 
Now he's gotten big enough that he hard encodes English subs above the Japanese subs.  All the more power to him since I like it when any independent animator grows, but it kind of sucks for my intentions.
 
With all that being said, how did I find him?  I literally do not remember.  I vaguely remember seeing one of his videos come up in a Japanese twitter feed, but I do not remember whose it was or why I was reading it.  Probably I started at some vtuber and then got off course? Who knows.
 
So I guess tip 1 is if you just randomly go through as much content as you can, sometimes you stumble onto stuff.
 
As for non-vtuber videos, you can pretty reliably find yukkuri videos anywhere, and sometimes they work for listening practice.  If the computer voice isn't so fast you can avoid problems with people slurring words (obviously you want to know how to listen to that eventually, but in the early stages I think it's okay to not worry about it and just focus on the words.)  But in my experience yukkuri videos tend to intentionally go fast and use poor synthetization to the point that even Japanese people can't understand them without subtitles.

There's a lot of skit style channels like totally not-Kaguya Luna's:
 
 
But I don't know any reliable way to find these either, I just stumble upon them or have them recommended sometimes.
 
Sometimes I thought it would be fun to find a video of some Japanese people reacting to American movies, since then at least you'd know the context.  But I've been able to find maybe 10 of these, ever.  I don't know if Japanese people just don't make them, don't post them in places I know about, or if they are buried by the algorithm (most searches EVEN USING JAPANESE tend to turn up American or Koreans instead), but they practically don't exist.
 
Now obviously you can get a ton of Japanese video content by going to Nico Nico, but in my experience that's a quick trip straight into the deep end.  Once you get past vtuber content and anime clips Nico Nico Douga tends to be extremely dense meme content.  I have a feeling that even if I spent a year researching nothing but it, I still wouldn't understand most of cookie ☆.
 
So my main answer is: I dunno.  Sometimes you find stuff.

I present to you the greatest anime opening ever made:
 
 
I guess to appreciate this you have to have both played Snatcher and watched Patlabor, so maybe the audience here is just me.
 
But the rest of you may be interested to know that this was literally drawn in MS paint.  No seriously, that's what the description of the video says.

Every time one of these images pops up I always think about how much I miss print gaming ads:

 
They just have a much different feel to them, and honestly do a much better job of actually selling the product than modern video ads. Like showing me the PS5 logo with a bunch of 1 second long clips of various games with no title attached to them doesn't sell me on the PS5, especially assuming I'm a random consumer who doesn't know what those games are already.

I think that might be it honestly; modern gaming advertisement just makes the assumption that everybody ALREADY KNOWS what their product is, so they have no reason to actually try to...sell it.

I have a confession to make:
 
I was Zecora the whole time.  Big Macintosh too.

I have a confession to make:
 
I was Zecora the whole time.  Big Macintosh too.

I finished playing the Castillo Duology, Castillo - Shattered Mirrors and Castillo - Nine Circles, and I found them really interesting.
I actually played the first one last year, but the sequel Nine Circles came out in October.
 
Out of the gate, both games attempt to be something quite rare in the FPS space, they are trying to be a hybrid of collect-a-thons and FPS.
 
The first game, Shattered Mirrors, takes heavy inspiration from Mario64.

Rambling Overview
 
So in summary, the first game is a weird experience that mostly functions.
It's this combination of ideas from Mario64 and FPS games made by someone who clearly doesn't understand FPS games.
In a world of polished FPS gems and bland clones which miss the point, Castillo is neither of these.
It's a FPS collect-a-thon made with a clear vision and a lot of heart, but is really rough all over.
 
So let's get into the sequel which came out bit over a year later.
The second game, Nine Circles, follows something closer to Banjo Kazooie.
 
Rambling Overview
 
So I'm fascinated by the Castillo games, because I'd say they achieve being collect-a-thons, but fail at being engaging FPS games.
The FPS mechanics are incredibly basic at best and enemy damage, both taking and receiving, is incredibly unintutive.
 
There are interesting worlds to explore, but the level geometry is all slipshod and janky.
The story, while basic, is taken seriously and has stuff going on, but is plagued with audio issues.
There's a lot of heart and design intent, but polish is nonexistent.
 
It's like playing someone's college term-project, but they had money and time to make it a decently long experience.
Polish is nonexistent, but a lot of ambition and positive energy went into building the game.

Why I do not regret spending an average of 30 minutes studying Kanji, grammar and general reading for 3 years straight:
 
Because people like this get paid to localize anime and manga:
 

 
"Lame translation" = "it's not a hip wacky translation so no one gives me back pats."
 
"You are already dead" is legitimately a great translation for that line, especially since Kenshiro means that literally.

Everyone needs an automobile, even those with many tails. This was the largest auto I could afford. Should I therefore be made the target of fun?

Everyone needs an automobile, even those with many tails. This was the largest auto I could afford. Should I therefore be made the target of fun?

https://twitter.com/mollyyncy1/status/1732382047581446282/photo/1

Watched a couple made-for-TV movies with the gimmick being they're made to look like breaking news broadcasts (so for the original TV viewers it would look indistinguishable from actual newscasts). They're neat for that reason alone, especially if you're old enough to remember watching actual broadcast television.
 
 
I really like the climax on this one, at about 1:25:00,