Reliving my Childhood with Kuma Miko

Discussion,

No, I was not a cute loli shrine maiden. Yes, I did spend most of my time talking to a bear. His name was Teddy. We even went to the bathroom together. (So sorry about that time I dropped you in the toilet, Teddy…)

Community

Kuma Miko has made me realize something that’s missing from most anime. A community. Here is the entire social circle of your typical school anime main character:

  • A couple of classmates.
  • One or two teachers.
  • Four or five clubmates.
  • The immediate family (often limited to a single imouto, the parents are mysteriously absent).
  • The immediate next-door neighbors (but not the family two doors down).

And that’s it. Do anime characters never get out? For comparison, here’s a subset of the people I interacted with regularly in high school: Continue reading Reliving my Childhood with Kuma Miko →

Xenoblade Chronicles X — When Will it End

Video Games

xenoblade_x

Xenogears is one of my favorite games ever. Crazy religious conspiracy theories, mecha, reincarnation… what more could anyone want? So I was pretty excited about Xenoblade Chronicles X. I probably shouldn’t have been, seeing as how I had played Xenoblade Chronicles before.

Both games have barely anything in common with Xenogears. The gameplay is essentially an offline MMO— you have a limited number of abilities, they all have cooldown times, you trigger them at the right moment.

I spent 100 hours on this game.

It was not time well spent. You have to spend a ton of time grinding. And the combat system isn’t much fun. To make things worse, most of the quests are in the form of “Gather X Items / Kill N Monsters”. Continue reading Xenoblade Chronicles X — When Will it End →

I am Trash Part II

Discussion,

As you may recall, six months ago I read Mushoku Tensei and greatly enjoyed the experience. So I decided to read another well-regarded web novel, Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari, or The Rising of the Shield Hero. From the title, you can probably guess precisely what is doing the rising.

It starts out similarly to Mushoku Tensei— a loser otaku comes to another world. This time instead of starting as a baby and “working hard” to earn his triple loli harem, he’s born as a hero except everyone hates him and everything is oh so unfair. He buys a loli tanuki slave and she’s the only one who truly loves him. Then it’s the same idea as Mushoku Tensei, he builds up a loli army in a loli village and saves the world.

If that were all I would have enjoyed it even though it’s trash. But… that’s not it. Know how I mentioned that everyone hates the main character at first? The lead in all this is the daughter of the king (named “Trash” throughout the book), who is literally named “Bitch” throughout the entire 300+ chapter book. Oh, actually, occasionally the author changes her name to “Whore”. This girl is the epitome of evil. She keeps trying to kill the Shield hero, tries to murder her sister, her father, her mother, sells the country out to the enemy, etc., etc., all by seducing men other than the hero. Then the hero executes her. There is an entire chapter dedicated to this brutal execution, with everyone cheering for her death. Then she comes back to life and she gets executed again, this time by graphically described and in fact videotaped multiple days of rape. As as if that’s not enough, she comes back to life and goes through a similar treatment again. Continue reading I am Trash Part II →