Isekai isn’t always bad; two atypical and fun isekai series from last anime season

"The thing I hate most passionately about isekai slop is the false modesty of a fake underdog."

Bonus: Momentary Lily Spoiler Space - what if a post-apocalypse didn't make any sense

As the guy from Hand Shakers says, this stuff just won't mesh.

Unfortunately, GoHands' Momentary Lily is the boring kind of bad anime

...like a conversation between robots programmed only to spout catchphrases like Pokemon babbling out their own names at one another.

Tohai settles gang wars with mahjong, and maybe also some spare organs

(As a general content warning, Tohai— yes, this mahjong anime— contains frequent graphic violence, including dismemberment, mutilation, torture, and sexual violence. Do not watch this series unless you are ready for anything; the violence escalates as the show goes on.) All the different Japanese manga magazines have a brand, and

What do we know about the connections between GQux and Gundam? A Missing Persons Investigation

(There’s no video release for Beginning, so I am running a bit off memory of a movie I saw last week. I will get things wrong; forgive me.) GQux Beginning wants to fit its whole alternate One Year War onto film, but as it only has so much time

I can't explain GQux without spoilers, so you might just want to go see it yourself, but just in case I wrote 2000 words on it

This is not Hideaki Anno's Gundam, everyone please stop calling it that

I’d tell you more about the Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves beta if I hadn’t spent half my time waiting for a match

I had a great time playing City of the Wolves over the weekend and I’m looking forward to the completed game, but whether I buy it on launch or wait until it’s on sale depends entirely upon whether or not this online matchmaking experience improves.

Bonus: Some of my favorite characters in Virtua Fighter 5 REVO

Now that the review-vital stuff is out of the way, I want to talk about the point that actually makes VF so fun and so rewarding to return to. That’s the characters, and how well-defined they are. I get that they don’t have the lore and story modes

Virtua Fighter 5 REVO with rollback netcode is my Forever Video Game

Listen, I reviewed this game the last time it came out. On the Xbox 360. For Joystiq. Nine years ago. So I’m not going to write the same review again, say everything I’ve been yelling on street corners about Virtua Fighter for twenty years. I’ll try and

The Colors Within/Kimi no Iro is concentrated sweetness and transcendent performance

Her direction is natural, intimate, soft, gentle and sweet like a hand cradling your chin. She makes you feel like you are physically sharing the same space as the characters. It’s no surprise that her works have forged some pretty intense connections with their viewers.

I want to see impact and physicality in the new Virtua Fighter, and I don't want to see super meters

"...what I truly love about Sega’s arcade games is that they have always pursued a kind of magical realism. They’re obsessively detailed... but they aren’t actual simulations of real life. They’re exaggerations of it. That’s where you find the magic."

PSO2: New Genesis is probably a misfire, but that didn’t stop me from having a great time with it

After Thanksgiving this year I got pretty sick. On the one hand it was a pretty nasty cold, and the cough didn’t completely leave after two weeks. (After that, family emergency followed, wiping my December clean.) On the other, I had just purchased a brand new gaming PC, and

In honor of VF5 R.E.V.O, I'm going to teach you basic Virtua Fighter offense.

I’m seeing a lot of people in the fighting game community get curious about Virtua Fighter 5 now that it finally has decent netplay coming via the re-release VF5: R.E.V.O., and I’m really happy to see it! Virtua Fighter 4 and 5 were games ahead

games

Gapoli Pt. 2: I am going to review a bunch of medal games, and you're gonna either like that or you won't

We can say that an anime is officially “for old people”– or, charitably, "a nostalgia title"– when it gets the pachinko/slot treatment. Incidentally, there are two different Code Geass slots on Gapoli.

arcade games

Gapoli is not the Sega/Sammy Super Game, but you can trade your points for a TV, so maybe it actually is

Before I go any further I need to explain the weird, fascinating legalized prize-room gambling going on in this app.

I revisited the Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy in theaters and it's still a masterpiece

(This will contain spoilers for the now over 40-year-old original Gundam films. These plot points are so old and so well-known that even if you haven’t seen Mobile Suit Gundam, you’ve probably seen an anime that’s made a joke about them. Giving you a spoiler warning for

I saw Atarashii Gakko the other day, and now I understand with all my heart how those idol guys feel

I saw a major Japanese idol group a few years ago. I won’t say who because I don’t want their fans to read this and take it the wrong way. That’s how idol stuff is, I’ve learned. There’s a reason for that word, “idol”, and

arcade games

I inevitably got hooked on Konami medal games for a week - 2 - Coin pushers, horses, and everything else

"For example, the game gates progress with gear that only stays equipped for one dungeon and which costs medals to use: how interesting, you know what we call that? An ante!"

games

I inevitably got hooked on Konami medal games for a week - 1 - Intro and Bingo

(This ran quite long so I decided to split it into two pieces: one is a general introduction to the concept, and the other is about the various bingo games I played.) Recently I got hooked on watching a Youtuber play various Japanese medal games— fake money gambling games with

How to properly use the AI Analysis feature to correct your mahjong style in Riichi City (or wherever else you play)

If you want to get better at riichi mahjong, studying and evaluating one’s own games is a must. A major part of sharpening your technique is looking at your own decisions honestly, asking yourself “why did I do that?”, and using that information to correct bad habits. Lately, a

The Kimagure Orange Road movie is a slow execution of a romcom heroine

I came to the Kimagure Orange Road movie as part of an ongoing discussion between myself and other otaku friends who are likely reading this. Drawn in by the virtuosic opening sequences and Akemi Takada’s drawings of the heroine, I watched about 13 episodes of the TV series before

Otakon 2024: on Sunday walk into the game room, dethrone the guys winning at Gundam, then immediately leave

(I've got hardly any photos of interest from Sunday, so I'm going to continue to use Saturday shots, and use this space to show the cool cosplays that I didn't have room to put into prior reports.) You partied hard on Saturday and you

Otakon 2024: every year me and a bunch of old dudes get in a room and yell about Shaider

Friday was quite a night and I was really in no hurry to wake up the next morning. I don’t think I was at the convention center and about until about 11 or so. From there we hit the artists’ alley for quite a long time, because… Saturday is

Otakon 2024: how we beat the autograph line

(When I wrote this I realized I had written thousands of words more than I expected; if you're wondering where I've been for a couple weeks it's been this. Breaking this up into pieces was the only way to make this not just a