The positive of a meritocratic media industry: lots to watch

The negatives: viewing it all on release...

There will be stuff I miss it's a given, but been another good season and thankfully no production delays, so without futher adou:

Actually I read the Manga

The Banished Former Hero lives as he pleases: tried reading this a while back....dropped it after 2 chapters because it was bland. The anime ain't different in fact only thing good about it was Outro by AIMI

Chillin in Another World with level 2 super cheat powers: in comparison to the above, THIS is a lot better, lot more light hearted and fun tone (though the MC has a 'rage of quiet man moment) fun op, I realise between this and Eminence in shadow, I may have a thing for voluptuous wolf girls....

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll use my appraisal skill to Rise in the world: before you go 'another Isakai', I'd give this a shot especially if you loved Realist Hero or recruiting in Slime. The MC isn't powerful but can see the talents of others and recruits those talented to improve his domain. Can't praise it enough and one of the best father's in Anime too.

Grandpa and Grandma turn young again: This is concentrated wholesomeness, as couple been together for 70 years thanks to a golden apple on their orchard gain the ability to turn young again, but still retain their grandparent way of living. It's just sweet to watch and makes you happy.

The heavy hitters

Mushoku Tensei jobless reincarnation S2 cour 2: shits hitting the fan again, we had another 'Turning point' episode. It's just the king of Isakai, excellent animation, story and va work like this scene REALLY showing how a person trapped in another world might react thinking there's no way back.

Konosuba, God's blessing on this wonderful world S3: the patron saint of gender equality is back and it's just fun with the gang back together.

Kaiju No. 8: This one you can tell is getting HEAVY investment to be a longer franchise, from the great animation and music, op and ed the story has the right mix of humour, action and character moments to watch

Bartender Glass of Gods: This is apparently one of two old shows coming back this season, they REALLY put their all in the animation quality for this show and it's a perfect nightcap anime, something after a long day at work to turn on and watch

Spice and Wolf: Merchant meets the Wise Wolf: the other returner and making my 'wolf girl' problem worse. They focused hard on animation, va work, music from the op alone it's fantastic to see this return in a proper way

Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba Hashira Training Arc: the quality is still top tier, all that needs to be said on this series.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime S3: warning the first episodes are mainly talking and meetings to provide set up, THEN you get the payoff and realise 'Rimaru's side is OP as fuck!', good to see it back and hopefully regularly but sane quality as I want to eventually get to see our boy Zegion in his prime...

****Aquired taste ****

Tsukimichi Moonlit fantasy S2 cour 2: I WISH I could put this at the same level as Slime (especially since the manga came out before) but it hasn't been given the same time to establish itself so still aquired taste. Does the same as slime as slow build up but when the MC realises 'oh the goddess isn't looking', shit kicks off FAST lol

Viral Hit: Korea really portraying their schools having a bullying epidemic lol, but in this one a bullying victim learns how to fight thanks to a mysterious YouTube channel and streams his own fights with bullies to earn money.

Re:Monster: this is very early slime in the way the MC is Isakai'd as a monster and gains powers by consuming others but in this one, well...

The Irregular at Magic School S3: The return of the op MC with a sister who's favourite song is 'Sweet home Alabama'. It's enjoyable if you like an OP MC and the this series always have great op and ed

Not seen enough of so first impressions

Wind Breaker: The fight scene in episode one was fantastic alone so I'll try to watch more of it later

I didn't see Black Butler or Train to the End of the World as well as others as didn't have time, but I'd like to DISHONOURABLELY mention The Misfit if Demon King Academy as wtf are they doing with the CGI!?! I stopped watching after the production issues last time but holy crap I have no intention of picking it back up if they go Seven deadly Sins level of bad in animation!

That is recount territory as I'm hearing it was just around a 400 vote difference but with Abbot supporting the incumbent and Trump not being involved at all, doubt it'll change.

The good news to take from this is NOT to get blackpilled as has been shouted by the media cronies, a 'far right gun YouTuber' with little political experience and has video like this managed to SERIOUSLY challenge an establishment crony.

Just observing the disaster of Suicide Squad game, the calamity of the current Doctor Who and many other franchises along the way, it feels like we are on the eve of a purge in western media where a lot of franchises are going to die or at the very least, be put on a very long hiatus.

In my opinion, a lot of these survive off habit, you get used to enjoying a certain thing, you regularly consume certain thing and never think about it. Until they make something that breaks that habit it won't die so thought I'd list off some of those bits of media that killed off a franchise:

Command and Conquer= C&C4: This one singlehandedly killed the franchise, even before they used it's corpse for a mobile game. The complete removal of bases from the game itself was the dumbest decision ever made, but not the first time EA would remove a core mechanic from a major franchise..

Battlefield: Battlefield 2042: the other example by removing classes for 'operators' in the game probably damaged it more than just how much it was a buggy unplayable mess. It was such a bad decision that they put the classes back in but with talk of the next being a live service and even the return of operators, I can hear the death chimes for this franchise just like honourable mention the Medal of Honour series.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi: it's amazing how this single film started this franchise tanking that was bought for billions and even had people appreciating the prequels more. From the bad writing, stale acting and stupid plot, this killed the enthusiasm for a decades long series.

The potential new ones: AC Shadows and GTA6: these two in the future have the possibility to kill their respective franchises. We are finding more and more on AC that it's looking like every wrong move has been taken and with how lackluster Mirage was received, it ain't looking good. GTA6 however, there's a possibility it'll simply be another Cyberpunk in just not meeting expectations which IS recoverable.

Just thought this was interesting to discuss seeing franchises both established and barely formed (cough Trench Crusade) killing themselves in a single release especially around our current time.

Prefix: This has NOTHING to do with the US elections or Trump directly, this is about the principle in general.

Have one of my friends in London (pray for them) recently chatting to me over some games, talking about how they recently got their voting ballots mailed to them. It's slim pickings to say the least but for one of the positions they only had the option of Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Greens snd Reform.

They're looking into the Reform candidate as they MASSIVELY went down in their opinion due to recent capitulations so they told me they'd spoil their ballot like last time when they only had 4 options and Reform wasn't even a choice than endorse ANY of these parties.

I personally think this is the right choice. Everyone SHOULD vote but if none of the candidates match up to your morality or standards, you should be given the right to put none of the above or straight up spoil your ballot in refusal to endorse. The UK ballots apparently don't have a 'none of the above' option even though it is perfectly legal to spoil your ballot and is in fact counted as a spoiled ballot on election day.

I'm just thinking back on how humiliated Haley was when she lost a primary to 'none of the above' and relating it to the poor voter turnout numbers of the UK and other Western countries. Imagine if all those didn't vote turned into refuse to endorse votes, might be enough to show how much the emperor is without clothes.

If you want a detailed explanation of the Amazon show, I did it in this post here but the short answer is it's actually good and not really woke at all.

This post is more discussing a something that looks to be the future of the franchise in terms of lore so there will be spoilers for the show.

Basically in the show, ALL lore related to Fallout New Vegas has been erased. The fractions are either not mentioned at all or severely diminished in terms of the NCR, some things in 1 and 2 have been changed (like Vault 15 which Shady Sands was built around is not mentioned at all) and it looks like they are only using the setting of New Vegas in a season 2 as they show the strip at the end of the season.

This is one thing, but I also recently heard of a Fallout 4 update and DLC planned where the update is optimising for 'next gen' consoles and the free DLC will introduce a new fraction to the commonwealth to stop...

..the fucking Enclave...

They seem to be only keeping lore cannon completely in Fallout 3 and 4 so does the Legion exist any more? Are the Followers of the Apocalypse still around or they gone too? Does any of the characters we liked from New Vegas exist either like Boone, Veronica or Cass?

The other thing that urks me is Fallout New Vegas was the best written and world built game in the franchise in competition with 1 and 2. The fact they are bringing back the Enclave for 4 just makes me think the writing staff at Bethesda aren't that creative at all and they're just rehashing old plots again and again than try some other direction or a new take on an old fraction. It's REALLY not giving me hope for Elder Scrolls 6...

TDLR: Bethesda may be doing what Disney did to Star Wars Extended Universe and erasing lore not made directly with Bethesda

So I watched the whole thing, I had a day off today (didn't time it like that) and I thought I'd share my opinions on it. I took a few notes thoughout but I'll give a TDLR then I'll go for spoilers to discuss it. As a prefix, I went in with low expectations.

TDLR: it's actually alright, the one thing that might bother me most is a few lore issues

Spoilers: To set this out, three things I have to state:

Fallout 2: 2241

Fallout New Vegas: 2281

This TV show Fallout: 2296

Ok now the timeline is set up I can state this, THEY NUKED SHADY SANDS AFTER 2277. NCR are practically gone, they either joined the Brotherhood, joined Vault 4 which is a Amazon made Vault along with 33, 32 and 31 or exist as a remnant faction. They were the raiders in the first episode that infiltrated 32 to get to the MC's Vault 33 to get her dad who turns out, an ORIGINAL vault tec employee and HE was the one that nuked Shady Sands...because his wife (MC's mom) found out NCR existed so they don't need to be in the vaults anymore. This was the BIG thing that stuck out to me as a "WTF they did this? This can't be cannon!?' moment. Oh and the show confirmed Vault-Tec started the great war, they arranged it in co-operation with Robco, Big MT, REPCONN and West-Tek. And the end of this show (which is setting up for a season 2) implied a House Wins ending for Fallout New Vegas

The good: Set design was on point, I can't really complain about that as they portrayed power Armour well. One of the main characters, the ghoul Cooper (best character) because he fought in them during the battle for anchorage KNEW their weakpoint so in the last episode took out several Brotherhood. The OST is still good and enjoyed seeing before the war and the action scenes were good and very gory.

The bad: Lore wise, it's a mess. Not just the whole 'a bad dad nuked Shady Sands' and no explanation for it other than 'he's a Vault-Tec employee', a lot of things were inconsistent. The West Coast Brotherhood having the same Vertibirds as the East coast and an airship not to mention the West Coast recruiting openly. The main 'bad woman' is over 200 years old but no explanation for it really, oh and shes the original creatir of Cold Fusion, that's the Macguffin everyone is working around (it was on an Enclave scientist which also Enclave exist on the MAINLAND WEST both Brotherhood and NCR wiped them out) and in the end, the Brotherhood now have access to cold fusion. The lore is such a mess to a long term gamer. Also apparently there's a serum now that halts Ghouls going feral, that's new. And no mention of any other vaults most critically Vault 15 which Shady Sands was built around.

The ugly: let's talk about how woke it is, to be honest it isn't that woke. The biggest woke character might be the 'main villain' who made to be the sympathetic villian as it was actually the MC's father fault. You might say the evil capitalists colluding with Vault-Tec not just to start the Great War (which goes against House's lore in Fallout NV) but the experiments in the vaults but that's a stretch as Cooper's wife who's Black, she's the cunt that proposes that idea in the meeting, so not painting diversity in a good light as the new villain in Vault 33 is also diverse. Maybe Knight Titus who was such an unlikeable dick was hating on white guys but he barely lasted one scene so meh.

Honestly, the best people were the white guys, the MC's brother using his own intellect investigates the truth behind their vault on their own and it's heavily implied either him or Betty the new Black overseer posioned all the raiders in revenge. Cooper as it showed prewar him discovering the truth behind Vault-Tec and as a Ghoul the guy everyone is scared to fuck with as he demonstrates his skills.

The main two, Lucy the Vault dweller and Maximus the Scribe are pretty incompetent. Lucy is just TOO naive for the wastelands and suffers everytime for it and Maximus is more aware of his surroundings but isn't the most competent or making the best decisions.

So that's my notes for Fallout series, I know it's weird, it ain't too woke, is actually alright but the one part it doesn't make sense is the lore timeline. This has to be a seperate TV universe is my only conclusion. Feel free to ask about any aspects of the show and I'll try answer as best I can.

TDLR of my answer: yes because they're a shortsighted death cult

Was watching this latest video from Sargon (which sidenote glad he's back to these short form videos) and was going over how the left tried to use the recent strike in Israel that killed aid workers including 3 Brits to get a heavy response but there was no call for action, just a lackluster 'that's bad, shame they died' than the gunboat response they PROCLAIM the West still does.

I say this many times, the left live SO LONG as the West protects them and rather than forming a symbiotic relationship with this knowledge, they're a parasite that drained the strength of the West and are now surprised that the protection is disappearing. Especially on the LGBTwhatever side as I have warned only 14% (probably less) of the Earth even TOLERATE gays, and you introduced the 86% to your safe zone.

This will probably end up in a purge, either the Muslims/Latins/Africans do it because they tried to target THEIR kids or they complete the death cult and essentially kill themselves by their own idiocy. What I will warn though is we are approaching the point where there will be NONE that can realise reality and there will be only the zealots remaining in the left. In these circumstances, we can only purge and no second chances, remove from any kind of power and put your own protection first, we may be approaching the final act on this cult.

I knew I liked them for a reason other than they fit a criteria of women I'd like to date, they get attacked from both right and left like the gamers, men and autists..

Going on from this video from Dev, there seems to a weird attack on them from the more 'manosphere' right where they are saying it's gay to like tomboys (because it's emasculating going out with a woman that works out or likes to help in men roles)

This is weird as on the flip side we have the very known left angle where they basically see tomboys and to a degree femboys as not fully transed and we need to cut their tits off to make them men

Both sides are equally retarded..

It's weird as on the one side, I think they're attacked by the left because tomboys prefer the company of men beyond a purely sexual relationship so are more inclined to be on their side and on the right I'm guessing it's because they aren't the submissive trophy wives they're supposed to be??

It's a weird horseshoe, just let the tomboys hang out with men and quit trying to doll them up or maim them..

Yep that time of the year, you know how it goes, I'm one guy so haven't watched everything and some things just aren't for me so feel free to mention ones I miss, go into detail about the ones I mention or if you think Disney and DC do it better currently, without futher adou:

Actually I read the Manga

My Instant death ability is overpowered: I'd actually stick to the manga for this one. The anime isn't bad but they've skipped A LOT that misses out how truly broken he is like killing an interdimensional monster that can ear realities or literally killing judgement day that heaven surrendered.

The good shit

Shangri-la Frontier season 2: Holy shit do FZMZ know how to make a good intro. The majority of this season is just ONE boss fight but fucking hell does this boss make a FromSoftware look nice! Still highly recommended

Mashle Season 2: so happy this is back, especially with an MC who's solution is basically apply punching till the problem is solved. While the outro is good I DARE YOU not to not to bop to the intro!

Solo Levelling: THEY DIDN'T FUCK IT UP! In fact they seem to be adding here and there to improve it, similar to Bleach TYBW. I would add the intro to your gaming playlist if you gotta get your grind on.

The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: this one caught me by surprise, fantasy in a world of magic and labyrinths, a low ranked adventurer finds a secret path, runs into a dragon, dies but comes back as an undead. It's really good, got great pacing, character development and a solid intro and a very somber, melodic outro

Classroom of the Elite S3: welcome back to a series with more head games than an ex with schizophrenia. Even the intro tries to put you in your place!

Aquired taste

Tsukimichi Moonlit fantasy S2: the goddess in this makes me appreciate Aqua more... not only did she ditch our boy on his looks, she then kidnapped a girl with a princess complex and a bully victim now thanks to his power rapist tyrant to be heroes instead! Fortunately our MC is getting more powerful naturally he might be able to bitch slap her personally soon..

Villainess level 99: I may be the hidden boss but I'm not the demon lord: another villianess story but told if WE were there as you know we'd power gain the SHIT out of an isekai world!

Banished from the Hero's Party S2: I liked this series for it's slow pace but deep character development and in season 2 we see how Ruti COULD have ended up if she didn't have her brother!

First impressions, didn't really have time to consistently watch but gave episode 1 a view

Gushing over magical Girls: Our girl lives in a world with magical girls protecting her city, dreams to be one, when a magical mascot offers her powers she accepts only to turn out it was for the bad guys and she has some S&M/bondage kinda powrs! There is an uncensored verson...

Brave Bang Braven: I'm kinda annoyed I DIDN'T watch this consistently, its like if JoJo went mecha! Over the top bravado, over the top fights, a soundtrack the CHARACTERS hear playing constantly, it's just fun.

That's my list as already did over 3000 words lol, Honorable mention to Blue Exorcist and The wrong way to use healing magic, just ran out of time so on watch later list.

On the it's alright side, The Strongest tank's labyrinth Raids and Hokkaido Gald are super adorable. They aren't bad, but it's something you can watch in the background than dedicated viewing.

Anyway, enjoy discussing your favourites or any I missed, I'm going to catch up on Brave Bang Braven as I feel like I did it a disservice putting it off!

Making this mostly because I saw this trailer which is the third game this year I'd actually WANT to play and this video from Arch on how because the games being made are all grey goo (sorry, 'quadruple A') they are losing not just to indies but DECADE old evergreen games like GTA V.

Between the constant woke stories and characters, the piss poor game mechanics and the insistence to be 'live service games' I can't tell if it's deliberate sabotage or they were so reliant on ESG that they forgot how to make a game FOR PROFIT.

And a lot of these games COULD be fixed with mods but thanks to the war on non-narrative modders, a lot of them remain a pile of shit. It's why Fallout 4 still has an active playerbase and Starfield is largely forgotten.

I think 2024, we will see at least ONE major studio fall and a ton of cope articles saying 'gaming isn't as popular' while these guys might make the next hit allowing us to drive a Toyota into medieval knights..

I got inspiration for the title from this as given the structural issues within companies due to mismanagement, DEI and ESG pandering this might become a series in 2024..

There was a post preciously on this but in the past 2 days even more shit has happened that this train wreck deserves to be looked at more. To save the word limit I'll give 3 types of breakdowns to choose from for the current situation:

The more outsider friendly explanation of Critikal

The more indepth and updating videos of FalseeyeD, Rev says desu and Khyo

The spastic and autistic yelling of 4chan narrated by a parrot

That out of the way the latest dealings seem to be that there are third party sycophants attacking Doki to defend Nijisanji. It's hard to know if they're doing it for free like Reddit jannies or if they are paid actors in some respects whether literally or figuratively (by access). They're getting destroyed by community notes alone so not a big deal. But something that made this blow up again is that Doki had TWO suicide attempts with the second stopped after her parents spent hours searching for her along with her termination came 2 hours after her lawyer contacted them regarding the 'infamous' document.

I think minimum, Nijisanji EN branch might go, collectively they've lost over 200,000 subs, their stock price is down by more than 15% while Doki is over 550,000 subs in just a week! The more damming statement was from their CEO himself where he admitted they haven't managed the EN branch at all. I don't know how much this'll affect the Japanese branch which is their main money maker but they'll not be able to rival Hololive again after this (unless it turns out Hololive does human trafficking).

The biggest surprise is how many sponsors, game makers and merchandise companies have left contracts or refused to work with Nijisanji after this, some even hinting at future collaboration with Doki instead.

We've heard A LOT this year (and it's only been a month!), we may need to conscript for a war with Russia! Not enough people are joining the military so we may need to look at conscription! If you don't give your mortgage to Ukraine we may need to conscript you and those you love...

In my opinion, it's all bullshit fear mongering. The last time America did conscription during Vietnam, It caused a LOT of 'friendly fire' incidents against officers or those in higher ranks above the conscripted while the loss of Vietnam basically made conscripting unwilling Americans political suicide. Since then the normies are either too jaded to be patriotic to the elites under the guise of 'national defense' to be conscripted or too weak that they'll likely turn on anyone trying to force them to fight so send them to war against Russia....they'll just mass surrender to the Russians giving them all their equipment too.

Just feels like an extremely desperate play by wielding conscription as a threat as then everyone realises there currently isn't enough military TO conscript the current populations and even then how many of them are loyal enough to the elites to conscript civilians?

3 episodes into Solo Levelling and looks like they haven't screwed up the adaptation (unlike Crunchyroll's webtoon attempt) and the rumours that Omniscient Reader may be getting an anime too, seems it's the new goldmine for source materials (as reference, Manga=Japanese, Manwha=Korean)

Thought it'd be something light plus it's good to know unlike Hollywood, Anime doesn't need constant reboots to make new media.

Starting with most likely to get an anime:

Mercenary enrollment/Teenage Mercenary: this one seems like an easy choice, popular, got great characters and lots of action scenes to work with.

Solo farming in the Tower: with success of campfire cooking and Isekai Nonbiri Nouka people really seem to love chill stories like this.

Reincarnation of the Suicidal Battle God: this one also seems a good choice for all the action and the edgy story

Reality Quest: I can see this being picked up for the wish fulfillment angle of bullied gamer becomes badass through a gamer quest mechanic similar to Solo levelling.

Manwha I'd like to see get an anime:

The Knight King Who Returned With a God: I'd like this as it's actually a positive take on faith plus the main character is a cross between King Arthur and Doom Slayer.

Devil Returns to School Days: this one is more for how fucked up the mc is and story can get, kid is put into a coma for years thanks to bullying attack, listens all that time to the his world crumbling around him and regresses to just as the bullying starts to get revenge. Would love to see this animated especially what happens to the person that instigated the bullying on him.

Return of the Mad Demon: as before, would love to see this animated just for how crazy the MC is and how funny his actions can be.

Ones I have reservations being turned into anime:

Lookism: it's a great fucked up story that is just getting more fucked up, wait let me check......yeah it's cults again and a suicide, still fucked up but i don't think it'll translate well in an anime.

The Greatest Estate Developer: this one is for two reasons, 1. Is there is a difference between the original web noval and the Manwha adaptation which i think is WAY funnier and 2. I don't know if they'll capture the emotions as well in animation between the funnier parts and the more somber parts, if it were to be done I think they'd have to approach it a little like Stein's Gate.

unOrdinary: set in a world where many have powers, it's a good story but I worry they'll have to skip the character developments that take A LONG time to adapt it.

So that's a few I'd like to see in the future, hopefully Solo Levelling is such a success we see more of these adaptations done justice, we now just need the Japanese to fuck more so we can get more animators!

What a way to start the New Year, hopefully this isn't a repeat of 2011 but looks like they had 30 earthquakes in quick succession, a tsunami has already hit the northern areas but seems lessons have been learned and people got out quick. And props to the engineers as this is the footage in my feed right now, they really know how to build to resist earthquakes.

Update: as of now around 60 quakes have been recorded, the largest being 7.6 magnitude.

Update 2: had this video from Hero Hei showcasing more footage including a scary one of the effect on rivers. One thing that is disturbing is people are posting fake or non existent addresses hampering rescue attempts. It's unknown if this is malicious, panic of the event or people getting mixed up as there are apparently people just reposting clips of old events like 2011 but should be taken note of.

Take the time today to enjoy yourselves, whether that's with family, friends, pets or just watching some classic Christmas films if the above not an option.