Content before Fall 2019, posted exclusively to This Thing is Neat
Madoka Magica’s place in the current anime production landscape is a bit tricky to pin down, to be sure. But despite some contradictions in the series’ image, Madoka Magica itself is an outstandingly solid show, owing largely to keeping a strong hold on its core ideals.
Nostalgia is such a weird idea. Parts of it are clearly tied to good memories of your own past, sure - it's the whole reason why people have comfort foods and hold onto familiar objects from their childhood like stuffed animals. Then there's a huge aspect of it that's not even tied to anything specific - even something similar to what we know can draw out that craved feeling of comfort. And, if you hit a sweet spot, you can get the same impression off something that's by all means outside of your own experience.
"Body swap" stories have made the rounds dozens times. Its ilk of well-worn and seemingly-predictable contrivances are what can make subversions so very very fun.
One of those elements that instantly makes a setting feel fleshed-out and well-realized to me is the presence of conlang, or constructed languages. It's dead impressive that the invented "chaos language" in NieR: Automata is custom-made just to deepen the series' often-haunting and sometimes-thrilling soundtrack.
By any objective measure, Robot Alchemic Drive is a garbage game. Yet I love this rough little clunker so very very much.
Monogatari is fairly hard to recommend out-of-hand. It’s also not-so-secretly a personal favorite of mine. It has a broad and well-balanced cast, every single episode is a visual treat, and in retrospect the anime is possibly the most one-to-one adaptation of a source material I’ve ever seen that still manages to take advantage of its new medium. How those three things in particular reinforce one another is what makes Monogatari grab you and never let go.
There is, to understate it, a mile-long list of various problems with the way that anime and manga tend to portray relationships.
Yesterday, it was announced that The Last Remnant would be discontinued for PC in a week and some change. For sales/support reasons? Some issue with licensing? Who knows! Point is, no new players on those games. This isn't even the first time this has happened by a long shot.
Back in the college days, Saints Row 2 was our vice of choice. Yet even with our inbuilt good faith in in the series, I've barely spent a third of the time in Saints' Row The Third as I have its predecessor. So what happened here?
I love me a good JRPG. I have for about two-thirds of my life now. But here's the thing - I can only really play a very limited number of them.
It's so satisfying when a score is so well-matched to the material it's created to accompany that the two can become inseparably associated in your mind. Kids on the Slope is on the top of its game with regards to this.
I find it strange how little I remember about Hamtaro. So, being a millennial, I went to see if I could stream a few episodes somewhere to jog my memory. I had no such luck.
It’s quite rare that I proceed into a game, movie, series, or any other work of fiction not knowing much. I lucked out in that, all I really knew about Kokoro Connect at the time was that people tended to like it.
The Yakuza series of games has been gaining a lot of traction recently in the West . Like with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s sparse inventory space, its unwillingness to let the player off the proverbial leash works in its favor.
Just like what seems like everyone who even remotely keeps up with modern anime releases, I’ve had an eye on the runaway success that is [Boku no | My Hero] Academia. You come for the flashy action and cool character designs, you stick around because the cast is so gosh-darn endearing.
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