Kingdom (2012)

Well well well. I started watching this anime out of curiosity, what I found was a surprisingly fun and engaging anime! with a twist involving a lot of tears. So far I have watched only the first season and I'm not sure if I'm going to watch the second season anytime soon.

While I'm watching this anime I noticed that some subtitles didn't match what the characters were saying. It got me pretty confused, as I would hear a character call a name and the subtitle just wrote a whole different name! 

This series be it anime, manga or novel is based on a historical story from China. Originally the people were Chinese and had Chinese names but, the ones telling the story are Japanese! While I never read the manga for this series, I understood quickly that the problem with my subtitles weren't due to negligence or malice from the people doing the fansubs. Rather, it was a pretty controversial problem amongst the Kingdom fans. As I understand, the whole work is made with Japanese names for Japanese consumers. Some fans of the series refuse to use the Japanese names; as the story is about historical Chinese characters with Chinese names, and that explained the difference in what the voice actors were saying and the subtitles.

I totally understand where these people are coming from but, personally I couldn't keep up with each character having two names and the name that I would read being something like "Piao" and hearing "Hyou" I simply couldn't handle it, so I opted for different subtitles that wrote the Japanese names, not because I disliked the original Chinese names but, because the audio and subtitle discrepancy as I mentioned earlier.

There are a lot of reading material for this particular topic, away from the plot of the story. So I would say it's ok to check them out without fear of spoilers:

• r/Kingdom Chinese vs Japanese names, and how this affects Kingdom's popularity
  
• Retired Kingdom manga translators "Turnip Farmers": A Note on Naming.
  
• Spreadsheets of character names.
  
• Wikipedia - Hanyu Pinyin
  

LasTame (2023)

 In a market filled with Isekais, none of them made me tear up as much as this one did.

Higeki no Genkyou to Naru Saikyou Gedou Last Boss Joou wa Tami no Tame ni Tsukushimasu LasTame for short. Or The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior. I wouldn't blame you if you rolled your eyes after reading the name, because I did too. But with that said, the story is your run-of-the-mill reincarnation into a game world. 

The main appeal comes from learning that Pride; the female main character, is originally so cruel and despicable and after remembering she was reincarnated, she turned into the most kind and empathetic person imaginable. After all, she knows what her character's main role in the game is to be the ultimate villain and because of that she can foresee her future as doomed, so she tries to steer away from her bad ending so to speak. It is an anime about drama and the interactions between characters, with a lot of talking and in our case reading. 

It is these character interactions that made me tear up and even after being finished with the anime I returned to episode#9 with a box of tissues in hand, it's that good. The visceral emotions in the 'interrogation' scene were so gut-wrenching and heart-aching that I had to give it one more viewing. Safe to say tears were shed, phenomenal scene and anime. 

I don't expect most people to get that sentimental from the events of that episode or even the whole anime for that matter but, it struck me personally.

Also, the creator(s) must have a thing for feet, I bet. There are two separate occasions were Pride's feet were kissed (even licked!?). I don't get the appeal towards feet personally but, I guess the context makes it acceptable somehow..

Now, in terms of cuteness.. it is conveyed by the emotions in the scenes rather than the visuals but, there is cuteness nonetheless. Like these chibi animations at the ending.

Precious little Tiara..

I really wish to see a second season of this in the near future.

Cuteness Rating: 7/10.

Overall Rating: 10/10.

Artist @HamsterFragment

WARNING CONTENT MAY BE DISTURBING!

Back in 2018 I stumbled upon this account on twitter (X) @HamsterFragment. The artist on this account is a complete mystery, not much information about who they are or what they are going through exactly.

Their artwork is themed around the idea of ending one's self, in a litany of creative and mind boggling ways. I got the impulse to write about this account because it occurred to me that it could be deleted one day, either by twitter (X) or by the artist themselves, since they are no strangers to deleting posts.

The profile has zero followed accounts and 282.9 thousand followers as of writing this (2/18/2024). Searching online yielded a fan-made subreddit r/hamsterfragment and a well maintained Danbooru tag, from which you can find most of HamsterFragment's artworks.

I'm only going to reupload some of the unassuming pieces for this blogpost.

Please take care of yourself.

Figu@Mate (2006)

 

A couple of weeks ago I found this video of Miku singing a segment from the Figu@Mate opening, which I have never heard of before now. All I can say is "It's pretty dang cute!".

After watching this animation I got curious about the original... (NSFW)

It's not bad, I prefer the vocals in the one below a lot more, I don't know why there is a deferent vocal performance to begin with but, I like it!  (NSFW)

  

More reading material about this if you're more intrigued:

• NND Medley Wiki - Bepis NND Medley Wiki
• know your meme
• Wikipedia - Gashapon

La Femme - Paradigmes (2021)

 

Paradigmes is a Synth-pop album from the French rock band La Femme, released on the 2nd of April 2021. The embodiment of a bop and a good time. It is also on YouTube. 

    Pictures from Discogs.

Day of Infamy (2017)

 

I dare not call this a review, it's more of a personal retrospect.

I got formally introduced to first person shooters back in 2009 with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), it was the latest Call of Duty game which everybody was playing. I got hooked on shooters since then, playing every Call of duty that released after MW2 until CoD: BO2. I also played Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, 4 and Battlefield 1. It was apparent that I liked first person shooters but, even when I would play these titles my friends would find the way that I played.. different. I would be the only one who equip smoke grenades, light machineguns and go in my own little world of mimicking tactical or more realistic gameplay, even when it was clearly inferior to playing the game gung ho style, in terms of score and kill-to-death ratio. 

I was having fun in my own way so, me finding out about games that took a more realistic take on FPSs was one of the reasons that encouraged me to buy a PC. The ability to takedown targets with a single shot (given it's a rifle caliber), the introduction of classes like the officer, radioman and machine-gunner, where every class had a role to fulfil, was the reason that I bought Day of Infamy the year it released.

5 Apr, 2018 @ 12:09pm

The game features your typical game modes of capturing, defending and attacking points around the map, nothing interesting in that regard. The game's vibe comes from the beautifully voiced radial menu, in which a player could bring it up and rely information to his teammates. From requesting ammo and reinforcements to giving orders as the officer to flank left, right or holding position but, most importantly of all, requesting smoke coverage! Day of Infamy allowed it's players to spam the voiced dialog to request smoke and when acknowledged, the team would throw every smoke grenade they have and sometimes an officer with the help of his radioman, would call for a smoke barrage to block the vision of the enemy and ensure a safe passage for their allies. I loved this feature!

18 May, 2018 @ 9:49pm

Day of Infamy's German voice acting is some of the best I have ever heard in a WW2 game.

And

Along with the ability to mount your machinegun on any surface using the bipod and not being able to aim down the sight when the bipod was detached, were simply marvelous.

17 Nov, 2018 @ 11:49pm

As always this me just rambling and sharing my screenshots, no real point in making this other than to record my experience with this game.

19 May, 2018 @ 1:52am

Being set in WW2 and using the Source engine, gave the game enough chunkiness to simulate a soldier with a lot of equipment on his back in my opinion.

16 Mar, 2018 @ 3:52am

Day of Infamy had an amazing WW2 arsenal from rifles, sniper rifles, machineguns, submachineguns, pistols, rocket launchers and flamethrowers. All of which are brilliantly modeled with crisp sounds.

7 Jan, 2018 @ 11:56pm

The game does feature a lot of blood, gore and dismemberment, bullets can cut a body part and explosives turn men into burnet nuggets.

28 Oct, 2017 @ 11:35pm

In 2018 the game would receive a free community update: Screaming Steel. A WW1 themed maps, classes, guns, gadgets and helmets.

Sadly, not many people played this game, it would always have a very low player count, which meant fewer servers and usually far away ones. Resulting in high ping and long search times. According to the SteamDB site, Day of Infamy peaked with around 9,000 players in October of 2017. The daily player count would stabilize at ~500 concurrent players, then peak to 4,000 in April of 2018, likely due to the game being on sale and free weekends. Day of Infamy would continue to drop in player count from a couple hundred to a meager 20 concurrent players. The game is practically dead, which saddens me deeply.