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happy birthday! i hope you had a lovely day, take care 🎉🎉

Merry Christmas!

Hey just letting you know Higu SotsuGou isn't really a like anime continuation thing and ONLY makes sense if you've read the higurashi VN and the Umineko VN I see a lot of the reviews calling it a reboot or something like that when it's not at all. It's an Umineko prequel to fill in the gap in time between Higurashi and Umineko.

Thanks, I've been doing well, wby?
Oh man, I was thinking of reading death note's manga these past few days, but haven't started yet. As I've heard many good things about the series, it will be worth giving it a shot.
Well, I'm just watching Spring seasonals at the moment, though I have to admit I'm struggling a lot to keep up with the good weekly releases due to my messed up schedule XD
Ohh, have you seen the trailer of RE new live-action series? Any thoughts in case you've seen it?

Btw, sorry for the SUPER late reply T-T. Hope you've been fine in the meantime :D

Np, I'm glad to hear that!

It's been a while already, what have you been up to lately?

Hey, happy birthday!

Hey man, hppy birthday! Hope you enjoy it :D

Hey man!! Sorry that I kinda fell off the face of the Earth! Hopefully you've at least seen that I've been doing List updates and therefore haven't died or anything. XD But yeah, I've totally fallen off of doing anything else on MAL sadly, and I honestly don't fully know why. It's not like I never have nothing in particular that I'm doing, time that would be perfect to just write some stuff. But the last time I've said anything to any of my comment-buddies on here was a truncated response to someone's comment back in March 2021 and the last time I've written a blog post was my New Year's update from January 2021; pretty much a year of silence. Not for lack of having anything in particular to talk about either. I've had things going on and multiple ideas for blog posts; I've REALLY been itching to update my Top 100 List! But yeah, sorry for the silence. I'm visiting my friend's David and Ashely right now and arrived earlier than usual so they're both still working and David in particular had to go into the office for meetings soon after I got here. Also, I tend to sleep a lot less than them, so I figured this weekend away from home would be a good time to finally catch up with the MAL buddies!

So, the biggest life update for me right now is that I'm going to be moving next month! In a number of ways, I've been pretty miserable here in New Mexico. It's pretty much a social deadzone for me. I love David and Ashley, but there's a 3.5 hour drive in between us. I've been doing as much as I could when it comes to dating, but I've had next to nothing come of it over the last 2 years of trying. I actually had a "real" girlfriend for a few months this year, but I guess she didn't like how quickly I was falling in love with her and she had some other issues with me and cut things off. She also lives in Albuquerque (like David and Ashley) so that was a bit of an issue as well. That break-up hurt pretty badly and was pretty much the last straw of me really wanting to give up on this place. So yeah, I'm moving back to Ohio where my family is and will actually be living at my mom's place for the immediate future. I feel a little concerned about "living the stereotype" as a 30-something geek living at his parent's house, but I really don't want to deal with trying to find a new place and coordinating that with my move in addition to working on selling off my house in New Mexico. Also, my mom lives by herself in a house that she and my dad bought just a year or two before he died and it's a bit of a fixer-upper so I'd like to help her out with coordinating and paying for some renovations that are still badly needed. And I'm going to continue to work with my current office, just on as a perminate teleworker now, so it's not like I'm going to be a deadbeat leech of a manchild. =P Beyond that, I'd changed my location on one of my dating profiles to Ohio once things were pretty much set in stone for me to move and I've actually connected with someone in the area that I'll be moving back to! We're kinda just texting right now, feeling like we're just biding our time until I make the move and we can meet in person, but I'm pretty hopeful about her! ^_^

Anyway, on to anime talk! (sorry, this is going to be pretty rapid fire and spastic) I'm glad you liked Tokyo Godfathers! I actually re-watched that and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya during Christmas time last year. I started the "New" Higurashi last year, but have had it essentially "on-hold" since watching episode 6 in March. I've been trying to slowly go through and get my "Watching" stuff cleared out again lately, so I'll probably get back to it "soon". The last thing I finished off was Uramichi Onii-san which I liked a lot more than I expected to. I haven't been watching a whole lot of seasonal stuff lately. After the decent block of stuff I was watching with David, I did watch a decent amount of stuff again during the Winter 2021 season, but since then I only watched two or so shows each season. I see that you just recently saw Belle and seem to have liked it pretty well. I got to go see it in theaters a month ago and liked it a lot, but the theater actually hurt the experience for me. I think the sound system was screwed up or something, like at least one of the speaker channels for the surround sound was broken or something, because whenever any of the songs came on the sound was totally off, like it was quieter instead of louder like most movies and that it sounded like it was in a tunnel or something. During my long drive home (the nearest theater playing the move was 1.5 hours away) I listened to the soundtrack on Spotify. I really want to get the movie on Blu-ray as soon as possible so I can re-watch it with proper sound. Hopefully GKIDS puts out the US release soon. I was also more satisfied with the final Rebuild of Evanelion movie than I was expected! And speaking of GKIDS, I have the super deluxe special edition of the original Evangelion TV series and the old movies waiting for me at my mom's house (had it shipped there since I wasn't sure when it'd be delivered). Really looking forward to re-watching that and hope Evangelion 3.0+1.0 gets its US Blu-ray release soon so I can directly follow that with a re-watch of the Rebuild movies. Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop was also a pretty damn delightful movie! Shadows House was another anime that I watched with David and was one of my favorites from the past year. I was a little concerned with some of the deviations they made from the manga, but I think it mostly worked well in the end and I'm interested to see what they do with the second season. I actually need to catch up with the manga. This season I'm watching Slow Loop and the second season of Arifureta. Slow Loop is a nice little "cute girls + activity" slice-of-life about fly fishing and it's been a nice fun chill watch. Then Arifureta is complete trash that I just watch for the lolz; sadly though, the second season is more competently made than the first so it hasn't been as much of a so-bad-it's-good watch this time around. I mean, the edge-lord power fantasy harem antics are still stupidly ridiculous and provide some pretty good laughs at times, but not as many as before. And that's most of the things of note in anime watching on my end. There is a LOT of stuff that's come out in the last year or two that I really want to go back and watch, but just haven't had the time. I mean, from sequel content alone I have a lot of stuff I need to get around to! Dr. Stone, Fruits Basket, Demon Slayer, Made in Abyss, etc. etc....

Anyway, hope FMA is treating you well so far! Generally, I'd mostly say that the older anime can be skipped in favor of going directly into Brotherhood, but the old anime does have its charms and some people do complain about the first few episodes of Brotherhood breezing through the content it's re-telling from the first anime a little too quickly in order to get to the newly adapted stuff. And there is at least ONE scene in Brotherhood that's a direct reference to a one-off plotline in the old anime, so that can be a pretty nice payoff. ^_^

Man, looks like you STILL can't reliably get a PS5 for retail price! Though I'm still not in any major rush to get one. I've actually slowly gotten back into playing through the first Final Fantasy game via my PS1 copy (Final Fantasy Origins). I really regret not just playing it on Easy mode, though. There is a stupid amount of grinding in normal difficulty. But I guess I'm locked in at this point. How are the Final Fantasy games treating you? Have you finished FFVIII yet?

Oh yeah! I did actually finish my first AMV since the last comment I wrote to you! It combines Asobi Asobase (on of my favorite comedy anime from recent years) with a song from Babymetal (which is unironically my #5 favorite music act at this point): CHIGAU!
Sadly, the video quality went down a bit with the transfer to YouTube; not sure if there's something I need to learn about the best formats to use when uploading to YouTube or what. The beginning is a bit choppier than I'd like as well, but aside from that I'm pretty happy with it. After doing this AMV, I did start working on another, but got distracted and it's been on hold for probably more than a year at this point. Another thing that just kinda gone by the wayside and such. =P

Your Monogatari Chronological Order Rewatch post is pretty neat! And I totally agree; episode 12 of Bakemonogatari is my favorite episode of the franchise and in the running for my favorite episode of anything ever. One of the more random Top 10 List kind of posts I've been thinking of doing is for my favorite individual episodes of anime, or of TV in general, but the non-anime stuff might be a little odd to shoehorn into the list, so I'd probably just keep it as just anime. Alternatively, I've been considering a list instead of my favorite "moments" in anime which might be a little more interesting. It could still have a number of individual episodes included in that list, but could have a little more freedom for other things, like single individual moments that are just seconds long, or moments/events that might span multiple episodes, and could potentially go deeper into their personal meaning in my own experience. Like, two very different examples that I'd include on that list would be: 1) The moment of the comet impact in Your Name. Not only is that a spectacular moment in the movie itself, but when I saw the movie the first time in the theater, right when everything went quiet on the moment of the impact and the sound of the impact didn't "reach the camera" yet, some guy in the theater just blurted out, "Oh damn!!" and it was just amazing! 2) Haruhi 2009, Endless Eight. Just, fucking Endless Eight! I think you watched Haruhi years later and probably knew about E8 beforehand. But I lived through that shit!! And I fucking LOVED IT!! XD It is the most memorable event of my life as an anime fan! Sorry if I might have talked about this before, but I had read all of the novel fan translations in the series up to that point, so I knew the story, so it wasn't especially critical that I get as much adaptation as possible. So when Endless Eight just "didn't end", it didn't bug me as much as most people at the time. In fact, I was amused as all shit! I was watching the new 2009 episodes with friends at the time and I remember laughing my ass off when episode 3 didn't end the loop! At that moment, I KNEW that they were going to do 8 renditions of E8. After not closing it out at the third episode, that was the only amount that made sense to me. I even made a post on some anime forum at the time making that prediction, although I haven't been able to dig it up. Anyway, I laughed, but my friends that I was watching the episodes with were NOT so amused and they just told me to let them know when it was over so they could start watching again. XD

That's interesting that you had moved around when you made your previous comment! Hope everything went well in the end and that you've been able to settle in alright!

And, yeah, I think that's more or less it as far as how things are going on my end! I've really just trying not to die inside too much here in New Mexico and since making the decision to move, just been waiting for that time to come! Hopefully I can make the time to be a bit more active on here again. Talk to you later! ^_^

Oh yes, i completely agree with you that other characters of the franchise should take the main spot instead of Leon(at this point, we can even consider labeling Resident Evil animations as Leon's spin offs). Looking back to the first animation, i think Degeneration already fulfilled its objective of reuniting Claire and Leon as a duo, but RE:ID might have been done that way due to the success of RE2 remake, so I guess this understandable.(F Jill Valentine. i mean, RE3 remake was more like a side mission from RE2 than a game itself)

I'd also enjoy if they brought a good villain from the games to an animation, like you said, though it seems really hard to do that since all of them transforms in something weird and ugly in order to be exploded with a bazooka for the sake of our eyes , hence narrowing down any outcomes of this idea. But i gotta admit i was really glad when I saw they brought Sherry back in RE6. Seeing the little kid that was rescued back in Raccon city was kind of nostalgic(and i feel it would've been even better if Claire was also there, taking in account the last cutscene from RE2 remake).

Speaking of RE6, I agree with you that the game itself is pretty fun and entertaining, though i can't overlook the fact that the franchise strayed away from its original premise,mostly, after RE4 skyrocketted TPS action gameplay. But i guess biohazard and village were good enough to keep up with RE's reputation.

So you are a true man of culture by having physical copies of these movies. I remember that when i found that there were RE animations movies , I wasn't looking forward to see something good at all, due to my dismay at the live action adaptations. Fortunately, it turns out i was wrong and those movies really made my afternoon.

I look forward for the next review and thanks for accepting the friend request! :)

PS:lol, it would have been a blast if they'd added Ashley in this ONA, not only as picture, but also as a character.

hello today I finished watching Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (I would have finished watching it yesterday but my brother took off my PC)

I read your review and let me tell you that I also saw the error of the closing shot of Leon walking towards the White House, it was ugly but since it stays that way.
I agree with you that this installment would have been better as movies rather than a 4-episode ONA. I remember when I put Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness on my to-see list, it said MOVIE, I don't know where that idea turned and they turned it into an ONA.
I'm sorry for my English, he's a translator, I would like to have you as a friend if you don't mind. Thanks

Hello friend, i've just watched resident evil:infinite darkness and i consider your review pretty much similar to my thoughts on the movie(yes, i also think it should ve been a movie instead of 4 episodes).

I really enjoyed the story with the political/military background, which stood on the fine line between reality and fiction, despite the fact that Claire's plot could be discarded without any major loss,cause it served just as a device for plot developing.Speaking of plot devices, i felt most characters were a waste of a good potential, aside from the PTSD soldier, like, he was conscious of his actions and goals even after turning into a monster( and the heart thing hits different ,mainly when it stops beating).

Ah, something that also bothered me besides the plot was what has been done to the relationship between the two aces of capcom's franchise. I am really afraid of what they had on store for us when it comes to the sequence of re6(wut are they planning for real aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa), what if they ignore it at all?!

So, anyway, it was enjoyable, but i still think the spectacular actions scenes in vendetta were far better than this attempt of filling a gap from timeline without a signifficant add to the main story.
Hope we can get along :) and thanks for the review!

I thank you for accepting my request.

Yes, it is always to find people who share the same taste as you.

I really like Lia's songs, even, I found your profile in the comments on her profile.

Haha! It’s pretty funny that you responded when you did because I had one of my longest stretches of comment-radio-silence on here from July up until late September, so people who actually responded in a timely manner to my comments in July waited about two months for me to respond back to them, and then your response came to me around the time other people were responding to my late-September comment. XD Okay, that was kind of a random thing to bring up, but it was something that amused me. =P

That’s cool that you’ve gotten into a good anime groove. I’ve technically been keeping up with my quest to finish shit this year, but some weeks it’s really been “just technically” and I didn’t watch anything all that significant, like I just finished a few random two or three episode hentai OVA that I’d watched the first episode of way back in the day. XD A lot of my “cop-out” weeks I blame on quarantine weirdness and also the end of the fiscal year stuff for my job which was 30 September, one of the main reasons for my radio-silence on the people that were quick to comment back to me in July. XD

I did get a few more substantial things finished in my last two weeks, though, with Guilty Crown and Mouryou no Hako. Both had some interesting bits to them, but were ultimately pretty boring. But at least I finished them!

Yeah, leading up to the new Higurashi series, I was super wishy-washy about it. While Higurashi is one of my favorite anime series of all time, I loved the older adaptations so much that I didn’t know if I really needed a new “reboot” of the series, which is what it seemed to give the impression that was what it was going to be. Especially since I wasn’t particularly keen on the art style. But yeah, then I heard that it wasn’t really a reboot and it was more of a sequel(?) thing instead, because When They Cry is a weird fucking franchise. XD So yeah, I’ll need to get that started up whenever I can squeeze something new into my anime watching schedule while also doing my Finish Them shit and dealing with life and shit....

Actually, I say that, but last week I spent some vacation time staying up at my friend David’s place and we ended up starting four new series together from the current Fall 2020 season while I was up there: Akudama Drive, Moriarty the Patriot, Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, and Magatsu Wahrheit: Zuerst. I’d say that all four are adequately promising, but Akudama Drive and Sleepy Princess are my favorites so far, for very different reasons. Akudama Drive is a crazy high-energy cyberpunk action-fest while Sleepy Princess is a cute, funny, and chill slice-of-life parody of fantasy tropes. I was initially not all that interested in anything from this season other than the new Higurashi until I watched the Mother’s Basement Fall 2020 video and then I became interested in nearly every one of his recommendations plus a few of his honorable mentions. XD Hopefully I can keep up with these new shows now that I’m back at home watching on my own, while also keeping up with finishing things. We’ll see!

Glad you’re already getting some use out of the recommendations! It was a fun quick list to put together. ^_^ I’m a little sad that I’d sold off my old Steel Angel Kurumi DVDs. I have a pirated copy downloaded for whenever I’m ready to rewatch it, but it’d still be a nice series to own. I’m kind of surprised that someone like Discotek hasn’t license-rescued it for US release; seems like something that’d be right up their alley. Speaking of Discotek, I somewhat-recently started watching Sorcerer Hunters with David. He’d seen it before, but it’s my first time. We’re only two episodes in, but it’s a pretty fun old-school series so far and might be another good series to fit into the recommendation list for you.

That sucks that England is having more issues with COVID, too. I mean, your handling of the pandemic is probably a lot better than ours, but that’s not exactly a high bar to clear. And it’s kind of scary how things are coming out about how people who have gotten over COVID have been able to catch it again later, that natural antibodies don’t seem to stick after fighting off the virus 100% of the time. Just makes it all the worse that our crazy leadership hear is trying to push the whole “herd immunity” strategy. Good thing that we’re almost-certainly getting a new president in January and he’s already putting together a legit taskforce for the pandemic, with actual scientists.... Hopefully Trump doesn’t do too much damage in his last two months....

Overall, I’m mostly doing alright. Before I took my trip to stay at David’s place, I got a COVID test just to be safe and it came back negative. Yay. And we’re still mostly teleworking, although we worked in-office full-time for the last few weeks of September for our fiscal year closeout. Now we just go in once a week for training/meetings on Wednesdays, except for today since it’s a holiday here. Yay! I am looking forward to when COVID really clears up. But again, with news about how people have been getting re-infected, I worry that the best we’ll get is a time when it will become like a super-flu and we’ll need to get new vaccines for the virus every year or something. We’ll see.

And no, sadly still no progress on the dating front. I still check my online dating profiles a few times a week and send out messages every now and then, but no new solid prospects. Hopefully some day something can happen? Again, we’ll see. Getting past COVID would hopefully theoretically make it easier.

Yeah, electronic gaming is a far third place hobby for me after anime/manga and tabletop gaming these days, but I have keep keeping up with the new console news and it is pretty cool and interesting stuff. I think the big PS5 video that showed a bunch of the games coming out on it came out after my last comment?? Yes, this video. I’m pretty excited about FFXVI! Yeah, it’s an action RPG, but I don’t really mind. I’m loving the look and theme of it and have accepted that FFX/FFX-2 will probably be the last fully traditional turn-based mainline games in the franchise. So I’ll definitely be getting a PS5 eventually, but since FFXVI probably won’t come out for at least another 2 years, it will be at least that long until I need to buy a PS5 unless something super crazy awesome comes out before then. But in most cases, I can wait when it comes to video games since I have a super crazy backlog. I’ve bought next to zero new video games at full price (near release date) in the last 10 years or so other than FFVII Remake. I’m generally perfectly fine with waiting a bit to play things and saving $30 or so. And good on you for liking FFVIII more than FFVII! As I mentioned before, FFVIII is what I generally consider to be my favorite game in the franchise. Although, I absolutely love Triple Triad (the card minigame), but maybe that’s my tabletop gamer brain speaking. ^_^

Ugh, that sucks that you are having issues with torrenting and such. Although I mostly haven’t had issues with freely using the internet, I really should invest in a VPN as well for security’s sake and to futureproof my free use of the internet.

Yeah, since my last comment, I have finished listening to the other two parts of the Bakemonogatari audiobooks and actually wrote a review for the Monogatari Series: First Season audiobooks. Spoiler: I love these audiobooks a lot! Finishing up Bakemonogatari was actually enough for me to bump up the Monogatari Series on my Top 100 Series list from #6 to #3! Might not seem all that significant, but there hasn’t been any real movement in my Top 10 for the last 9 years since Madoka Magica came out. I mean, You Name kind of sort of broke my Top 10 when it came out, but soon after that I decided to separate out standalone anime movies onto their own list, so yeah. And yes, I loved Araragi and Senjougahara’s date in the audiobook, although there were some pros and cons to it compared to the anime. Senjougahara’s harassment of Araragi in the backseat of the car was absolutely amazing in the audiobook! But I felt like they kind of flubbed the voice acting for Daddy Senjougahara during his conversation with Araragi, which was disappointing since I loved that scene in the anime. I mean, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the voice acting for Episode in Kizumonogatari, but it still felt off. But yeah, I got into more detail about the voice acting in my review if you’re interested. And I’ll be waiting a little longer before I go ahead and listen to Nekomonogatari (White). I have a few other non-light-novel audiobooks that I’ll be listening to while I continue to hope for more First Season audiobooks to be announced. Please Vertical??? Or I guess I could just buckle down and actually finish reading the First Season books with my eyes? =P

The non-anime-related audiobook listening that I’m currently doing is Axiom’s End, a sci-fi novel by a YouTuber named Lindsay Ellis who I’ve somewhat recently gotten into. I’m about 7 hours into the book so far from my last drive to David’s place and back last week, so about half way though. It’s been a pretty interesting book and looking forward to finishing it. I’ll most likely be doing that when I drive back home to Ohio for Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks, which is about 22 hours’ worth of driving each way, so I’ll easily finish that plus be able to crack into a big long 45 hour fantasy book that I have in my library (The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson).

Yeah, I haven’t done any new blog posts since my last comment to you other than my weekly Finish Them updates. Hopefully you’ll be able to make a new blog post soon. I do enjoy reading your stuff. I think a merch post would be cool to read/look at. Good luck with your move! Or hope it went well if it’s happened already.

So I was able to take the day off and do a Satoshi Kon marathon for the 10th anniversary of his death. It was a nice bittersweet experience. And you know what? Perfect Blue is still my least favorite of his major works, BUT I did love my re-watch of it MUCH more than I remember liking it when I watched it as a teenager 20 or so years ago. It got bumped up from a 7 score to a 9 and now actually registers on my Top 50 favorite standalone anime movies at #26. So yeah, BIG bump up and now I need to get a Blu-ray copy to replace my old crummy Manga Entertainment DVD. For Paranoia Agent, I didn’t want to risk burning myself out so I only watched the first DVD volume (4 episodes) of that for the marathon and sadly haven’t gotten around to finishing my re-watch of that yet. Just too much stuff to watch!! But based on just that, Paranoia Agent and his other three movies have stayed in their respective spots on my favorites rankings.

And not too much else to report from me! I still need to buckle down and make a choice of video editing software so I can get cracking on making AMVs again. =P Oh! Since my last comment, it was announced that the first new Haruhi novel in 9 years is finally coming out this month!! I’m really excited about that. Yen Press is going to be releasing a digital version of their English release the same day as the Japanese release, so I’ll be reading that while I’m at my mom’s place for Thanksgiving. Hopefully I can finish off my read of the manga version by then as a refresher of the story arcs that were never adapted to anime since I haven’t read any of the novels since the last two came out 9 years ago! XD But yes, I think that’s mostly it for me now. Hope you’re doing well and talk to you later!