My first experience with the works of Akira Toriyama was from a pack of bootleg playing cards. One day in the 90s on the drive home from school, a friend showed off these flashy, foil-covered, tacky playing cards with the most amazing art on them. Some kind of family of
anime
A lot of anime that take place in remote, picturesque Japanese towns are specifically trying to push tourism to their real-life settings, betting on the “otaku pilgrimage” effect proven most famously by Girls & Panzer. Pon no Michi— which, if you didn’t notice, is actually punning on the name
Gran Turismo 7 is a beautiful video game and I legitimately relish driving cars in it. I love its approach, its perspective, the sheer love it displays for its all-consuming obsession with autosport. Also, every time I play GT7, it asks me at least once if I am very rich—
anime
Nothing is impossible in mahjong, though. Play long enough and you will see some things.
anime
video games
Nier from Granblue Fantasy is the evil catgirl. This is 2B from the videogame Nier: Automata in the fighting game spinoff of Granblue Fantasy where Nier, an evil catgirl, is also present.
anime
Though there isn’t a ton of mahjong in this episode, I managed to squeeze quite a bit out. This is actually the episode where I decided to write this series, as the subs were finding such new and exciting ways to blow it on terminology.
anime
This wasn’t necessary to specify before, but I’ll restate that I’m using Bilibili’s subs, with all of the mahjong-related flubs that they make. There are a few fansub efforts around Pon no Michi that fix incorrect translations, but I conceived of this idea while looking at
anime
This introductory week has to introduce the girls, reveal the parlor, reveal Chombo the mascot character, teach the girls mahjong, and get them in a game all in one shot, so it's very heavy on mahjong stuff. This post is even bigger than the last one, so let&
anime
I had been looking forward to Pon no Michi (The Way of Pon), or perhaps I was looking forward to what I thought Pon no Michi might have made happen. Anime series about niche interests always bring new converts into the fold— I was myself inspired to learn mahjong by
Heads up: the game I’m about to talk about prominently features themes of suicide, bullying, abuse, and self-harm. While I’m at it, despite the banner I have chosen, there is little in the way of gore or disturbing horror imagery: the nastiest things you see in this game
anime
Some of you will probably want to know what the mystery of Quaschika is, and to be quite honest this show can be a bit of a slog. A few episodes in I was only slogging through it to find out for myself as the show waved “this week, Quaschika!