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 →