Strider Hiryu

Well I just landed myself a PS5 thanks to an email invite, thank fucking god. On a fricken adrenaline high right now and so freaking pumped because it means I finally get to play Cyberpunk. Gah!!!!!!!
If you'll excuse me I'm going to go calm down now and let this adrenaline high subside.

Well I just landed myself a PS5 thanks to an email invite, thank fucking god. On a fricken adrenaline high right now and so freaking pumped because it means I finally get to play Cyberpunk. Gah!!!!!!!
If you'll excuse me I'm going to go calm down now and let this adrenaline high subside.

Well I just landed myself a PS5 thanks to an email invite, thank fucking god. On a fricken adrenaline high right now and so freaking pumped because it means I finally get to play Cyberpunk. Gah!!!!!!!
If you'll excuse me I'm going to go calm down now and let this adrenaline high subside.

Its been a month since my root canal. I had another appointment yesterday for the rest of the work. They removed the temporary filling, xrayed it to make sure its all good, then did the permanent filling, then shaved/shaped the tooth for the crown, then imprinted my teeth/jaw line with a mold, then put on my temporary crown. Took them an hour. My new permanent crown will be ready in 2 weeks and then I'll finally be done. This root canal situation has been quite the experience. $1200 total after insurance. I have another tooth that might need one if it gets another cavity. If that happens I think I'll have that one pulled instead since its in the far back. Screw all this. x_x

I got a root canal today. F*ck that. Took 1.5 hours this morning. The tooth wasn't cracked so it didn't have to be pulled. But he had to cut a couple millimeters off my jaw line in between the 2 teeth so a crown could get properly mounted. The inside of my jaw looks totally jacked right now. And he accidentally cut the base of my tongue because I guess I moved it by accident. That hurts more than the jaw right now. I have a temp filling in the tooth and it the tooth looks like a square. I have to let this heal for almost a month before I can get a crown molded for it. Fml.

I got a promotion with my job yesterday. I'll now be making more than I ever have doing this. $60k a year to do something I barely got paid $35k for at my previous company. The best news is that I'll have Saturdays off, and get off by 6-7pm on most days. I don't have to go to bed like some retiree anymore. So hopefully by the end of this year. Battlefield 6 will be out... it will be good... and maybe we can get the band back together @Sledgstone and @Strider Hiryu. Even though Strider is PC master race. I'm sure it'll have cross play. My gaming life has really suffered these past 3 years.

Fruits Basket ep 16.... the onions.... so many cut onions.... 😭

Street Fighter V was free last month. I loaded it up for the first time, played 4 matches and now my forearms are on fire... yeah I'm too old for this.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/grant-imahara-dead-mythbusters-host-was-49-1303101
Can we just end this fucking year already before it starts getting anymore ideas?
Fucking gutted over this. Grant was always my favorite host on Mythbusters.
This news comes even more at a shock considering I also found out one of my old co-workers also died from the same thing.
God this year sucks.......

Turns out I had some sitemap issues, SEO issues and some issues with the https changeover that google absolutely did not like. It looks like google wasn't crawling the site or at least not crawling and indexing the site like it should have been for who knows how long. I think thats all fixed now and I think google is indexing correctly again. Will this increase our users online? I have no idea, lol. But at least the site should be a bit more visible with google now.. at least until google gives me another email about errors again.
As of now from over the last 5 months our best search term that gives us results is:
"one punch man english dub"
The lowest search terms that somehow loads one of our pages:
"utz cheddar cheese balls"

Since I'm on my weekend atm from the new job (after 6 days of hell, fuck this essential business shit people be crazy) I decided to watch the new Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 that was put up on Netflix last Thursday. Note that this is only half of what we're supposed to get so my opinions are only reflective of that and they may change come the release of the final 12 episodes. With that in mind lets begin.
As most of you know I'm a huge fan of the GitS franchise ever since I saw the first movie over 15 years ago and have since seen and read everything released since then with the exception of side stories never released in the US (and own all of that as well) so my opinions on this are coming from a long-time obsessive fan so please keep that in mind. Also I will refrain from divulging any spoilers as you'll probably watch this anyway when you get a chance (please note its in Japanese only with English subtitles due to the "rona").
Quite honestly I'm not entirely sure how I felt about this as a whole. On one end it's not bad I might go as far as saying it's pretty good for a cyberpunk show but this is not GitS and this is not SAC for me. Hell I never thought I'd say it but Arise is a lot better then this and I have way to many gripes about that show to even begin. At least Arise felt like a GitS show and story even if it was blandly done with some pretty bad writing (the Arise movie was grade A GitS though, I definitely suggest watching that).
My major gripe is they explain nothing of what happened in the 11 year time span between Solid State Society and this, nothing. They go over world developments and why things are the way they are but they in no way explain major plot elements behind why the Major and her crew are in the US (2045 starts out in the US, not a real big spoiler), they vaguely explain the main premise driving the plot forward from that point (a point that does not seem very GitS like to me), why certain characters are no longer seen or heard from (until later in the 12 eps), and just all around weirdness that is this post Solid State Society world. It's aggravating because the way things were left at the end of SSS you would of thought we'd be getting another procedural GitS season driven forward by strong character driven episodes and interesting plot lines, instead we're left with boring long winded arcs that get nowhere (and maybe 2 enjoyable episodes not part of the overall plot) and in the end we're left with a major cliff hanger at the end. It's aggravating honestly and it seems more like this season was made to pander more to western audiences with short attention spans instead of the original core fanbase (sorry, venting a little. I felt very betrayed by this). Like I said though if this was non-GitS related I'd say it was a good show if not a little pandering.
Music wise (yes I'm a huge fan of the SAC soundtrack, there's a reason I own all 4 soundtracks) I was utterly disappointed. Yoko Kanno is nowhere to be found here and it's extremely noticeable but it's to be expected as she's mostly retired from the industry. This left a sour taste in my mouth since, as I noted above, I'm a huge fan of the SAC soundtrack and it was one of the major reasons I enjoyed the first two seasons so much. Don't even get me started on the OP, not my cup of tea and certainly not something I'd associate with GitS (though I do like the ED).
Animation wise I can't stand the full CGI or the character redesigns. This felt way to much like I was watching cutscenes from a game 10 years ago. Not to say the CG isn't crisp or anything it's very well done and the fight scenes are a joy to watch. Sadly this isn't Pixar level CGI and it shows. Maybe I'm bitter because they went full CGI instead of the traditional/CG blend they did with SAC and 2nd Gig but I found this to be way more off putting than I thought it would be. Plus the Major's redesign makes her look like a 14 year old teenager and that's just not my jam (where's my hot, sophisticated badass woman?).
Thankfully the characters are the same and that was a joy to behold. Watching them interact with each other was extremely enjoyable and I'm happy to see they weren't changed one bit (this goes for the Tachikoma's as well so if you found them annoying they're still going to be annoying (I, personally, love the adorable little trouble makers)). The new characters are just as enjoyable and I just love Purin, she's beyond adorable with her little crush on Batou.
All in all like I said above I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the show. Part of me wants to destroy all the masters and make everyone forget this and the other part of me just thinks it's a below average GitS that just so happens to be somewhat enjoyable. Granted we're only 12 episodes in and my opinion might change once we get the last 12 episodes (did they ever announce when that'd be?) but those are my current thoughts on the show. If I had to give it a rating out of 10 it'd mostly likely be a 6 (which pains me to do considering how generous I was with Arise). Do I suggest watching it? Honestly that's for you to decide. I gave my honest thoughts so take them how you will though but if you are a major fan of the GitS franchise don't get your hopes up to much (then again maybe this is to your liking).

Welp second round of layoffs today at work (oh we weren't going to have anymore my ass) and I got myself a permanent vacation from work again. At least this time it's not an outright firing and I did get paid for the whole day plus I'm getting paid for the entirety of next week as well. Also get to retain my health insurance to the end of the month (which means my ass needs to get down to the pharmacy and get my HBP meds refilled before I lose it).
Fucking sucks after putting all that time into that fucking company and learning shit I never wanted to learn in hopes it'd help keep my job. Fat lot of good that did. They also had the audacity to say I'm able to be re-hired once market conditions favor them hiring more people. When will that be? Fuck knows but I have no intention of going back unless they're willing to hire me back at more or equal to what I was getting paid (though, in all honesty, not fucking worth it).
Now I get to experience the joy of finding a new job again in a market overflowing with job seekers and nobody's really hiring in my area right now due to this epidemic. Not only that I need to find a job that pays roughly what I was getting which is going to be hard around here as well. Looking like I'll have to go back to retail which will be a massive hit in pay for me.
I also get to experience filing for unemployment for the first time in my life. So looking forward to that.
Sigh, on the bright side I have plenty of time to watch anime and play games until I find a new job. Guess that's a silver lining.

They done went and did it like I was predicting,
Finally. I've been wanting to play this since I beat Automata and now we'll get to play a remaster. Was kinda hoping they'd remaster both games but I'm quite happy with one of them (as the story beats are only slightly different between Gestalt and Replicant). Now if only they'd give us a release date (better not be in September, that's Cyberpunk time x.x).
Not entirely sure what this will be about but we're also getting a smartphone game. Still haven't announced if it's getting a release over here or not but still cool to see we're getting more Nier titles to continue the fantastic lore of this universe.

They done went and did it like I was predicting,
Finally. I've been wanting to play this since I beat Automata and now we'll get to play a remaster. Was kinda hoping they'd remaster both games but I'm quite happy with one of them (as the story beats are only slightly different between Gestalt and Replicant). Now if only they'd give us a release date (better not be in September, that's Cyberpunk time x.x).
Not entirely sure what this will be about but we're also getting a smartphone game. Still haven't announced if it's getting a release over here or not but still cool to see we're getting more Nier titles to continue the fantastic lore of this universe.

So over the last two weeks I've finally taken the time to watch two of both Arkada's and Geoff's most recommended anime both of which scored pretty highly on each of their respective top anime of the decade videos. Those of course being anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day and A Place Further than the Universe. I also watched them because they've been sitting on my lists forever but I thought I'd open with that little bit.
We'll start with anohana. Quite frankly I honestly don't see where all the love Geoff has for this anime comes from. Don't get me wrong it's a good show and I actually did cry during the final episode (extremely emotional and it's really hard not to let it hit you right in the feels) but I just can't see why it's highly praised. The story is alright (dealing with the loss of a friend and the drifting apart of close friends after said death), characters are so-so with most being bland or downright unlikable  (Poppo is the only real character I actually liked, Naruko being the second after I got over my initial dislike for her), animation is top notch, and the soundtrack also gets high marks. Sadly though it felt like a lot of the events in the show were just placed there to add extra, unneeded drama and filler to continue the show for it's 11 episode + movie run (note I haven't seen the movie yet, not available on streaming services and I have not got around to dling it). Again I liked the show overall I just don't know how it gets such high marks from people when there are other shows and movies that do drama and loss so much better then this one. Still recommend giving it a watch if you want to ball your eyes out in the last episode (and for Poppo's hilarious antics and lovable nature).
As for A Place Further than the Universe I'm totally on board with Arkada's gushing about it. This show was a pure joy to watch and I'm actually extremely sad it was only a 13 episode run. It's definitely one of those cute girls doing cute things shows but it's also so much more then that. You have four girls going to Antarctica for completely different reasons (one to make the most of her youth, one as a job and to embark on a journey with actual friends, one trying to run from her past and do something interesting, and one looking for closure after a past incident involving the frozen continent), becoming friends, facing various hardships, and growing as individuals before the climax. Throw in a bunch of cute antics here and there, some minor and major drama, fights, penguin obsession, long sea voyage with plenty of sea sickness, and interesting and hilarious side characters and you pretty much have one of the best shows to come form the 2018 Winter season and season as a whole. Quite frankly this is another of those this is what Strider looks for in an anime shows and I rate it as high a Violet Evergarden (in fact it's the only other show outside of VE that's gotten a 10/10 from me in the last five years). Sadly it doesn't have a dub as it didn't get a BD release in the state as of writing this (which disappoints me just as much as the lack of a VE BD release) but if you can get over having to watch it with subs I highly suggest giving this one a watch, it's definitely worth it if you're looking for a laid back, relaxing show.
I would talk about Sound! Euphonium as well (finished watching it before I started anohana) but I kind of want to watch the movies first (which I can't find anywhere x.x) and I really don't want to sit here tying up a novel. Suffice to say I loved every minute of this anime and would also recommend it (I mean it deals with a school orchestra band trying to get to nationals but the character interactions alone are worth watching this if you don't want to watch school band the anime).

Muh feels. Holy cow my eyes. 😭 MHA's dub fell a week behind last month so I just got to the end of the fight and the Nighteye hospital scene. I wasn't expecting that from MHA. It doesn't help that Kono Oto Tomare's finale was phenomenal and also misty eye inducing. Anime brutalized my emotions today.

Looks like hundreds of users are browsing AC in waves.. the ip#s are all almost the same, coming out of Singapore. It started like 3 days ago. Either somebody posted something very popular in Singapore, or theres some weird Singapore search engine that just wont be content until it searches through every single page on the site.
Search engine bots running through the site:

 

I'm going to take a moment to say that out of all the games I've played throughout my time as a gamer Nier: Automata is probably one of the best games I've had the pleasure of playing in a very long time. By saying this I have just beaten it (well I beat it last night but I went through to get ending D today (I cheated so I didn't have to do the whole tower section again and reloaded at my save right before the final two fights). I'll most likely be redoing the whole Tower chapter again tomorrow so I can get D on my main save file so I can get ending E, the true ending. Wish me luck because I hear the final section to get E is a nightmare) and yes it took me forever but I'm glad it did. I've played many games that have great stories, great characters, great world building, great gameplay, and yes even great soundtracks (you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't think the OST for Nier was a major component of it) but none of them have ever encapsulated me this much (I say this having a complete obsession over the Suikoden series of games, by far my all time favorites when it comes to world building/story/characters).
I've never come to care for characters so much as I have with 2B, Pascal, and A2 (screw 9S, sorry to everyone that likes him but I do not like his character and don't get me started on actually having to use him in combat. Worst parts of the game for me even with his story being so damn good). Everything they go through and everything they experience from the minor gains to the major losses all resonated with me (and in some cases absolutely gutted me, I'm looking at you Pascal). I won't be ruining anything about their stories here or giving a major plot developments but DX will definitely understand where I'm coming from. You really grow attached to these characters in ways you don't notice until something major happens. Hell I've never been attached to a character as much as I am to 2B. Watching her grow throughout the entirety of her play through (and 9S's), watching as she struggles with the things she had to do before the events of this game, watching as she gradually opens up more to those around her, and watching her become more accepting of the new truths around her was amazing. Most main characters never get this treatment with all these minor nuances and most are lucky if they get the character growth she did. A2 is similar in a lot of ways but her growth comes a lot faster and it's harder to get really attached to her since you don't spend as much time with her (but damn do I love her sassy personality, her interactions with Pod 42 are gold). I really wish she'd of gotten more attention than she did (and you really don't even understand the depth of her backstory and character unless you read about the stage play Yoko Taro did that tells it (it's briefly mentioned in game but not much is said)). I won't get into Pascal other than he's a very well written character, lovable, and gets the shaft hard and it really sucks because he's so lovable.
Story wise it's really just your typical sci-fi plot and while good is nothing really to write home about as it's the characters that make this game so good (not trying to undermine it by any means but it's certainly not Tolkien levels of epic). It also pays, while not necessary, to have prior knowledge of both the original Nier's story and Drakengard's story as it actually helps you understand a lot of the what happened in the past to lead to where this game is at storyline wise (hell three of the NPC characters are directly from the original Nier). I'm really glad I went and read up on them before beating the game, it really helped me understand a lot of what I was seeing toward the end and helped elaborate on a bunch of the in-game text documents you find. Though it might be easier to get that backstory soon as rumor has it we might be getting a remake/remaster of the original Nier or maybe we'll get a brand new game.
The OST is where this game truly shines (so much so I bought it, a rarity for me as I usually don't buy game soundtracks (the only other exception being the Journey OST)). As I said above it's a major component of the game and a major factor behind why I love this game so much. Hell I can't even listen to Weight of the World anymore without getting teary eyed (such a great song, don't think I'll be able to do the Nier raid in FFXIV anymore with the music on. Might end up ugly crying (and they won't be manly tears)). It really sets up all the pieces quite well and adds a lot of the emotional undertone to the game.
As for gameplay I'm not the biggest hack and slash fan. Never really have been as I've always gravitated toward RPG's and Strategy games while only playing the occasional hack and slash (I mean before this my only real forays into the genre were the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors games) but I gotta say I really enjoyed the combat in Nier. After getting used to it (which did take awhile) I started to really enjoy dashing in, slashing like a mad man, evading when needed, and rotating in Pod Programs (I'm a big fan of Mirage, so OP with fully leveled weapons). Bosses are a blast as well if not somewhat annoying depending on which one you're fighting (I'm looking at you eyeball of death). My only two complaints about combat are the Pods (outside of programs they're practically useless (and I say this knowing full well how many times the missile pod saved my ass)) and the 9S hacking mini-game (god was this one of the most annoying parts of the game for me and it sucks that its so fucking powerful. I just hate the randomness of what you'll get every time you hack into an enemy).
I really don't know what else I can say about this other than I finally understand why everyone has been praising it since it came out, it really is that good. I can't recommend this game enough and it's definitely worth the money (I only wish I'd of waited on buying it until they released the Game of the YoRHa Edition so I could get that damn dynamic theme and avatars). I also need to thank Platinum Games for making it and Yoko Taro for creating such a wonderful world (he's a mad lad and I love it, I really hope we're getting a remake/remaster of Nier or another Nier game in the future as this man needs to be at the helm again). This truly has been one of my best gaming experiences in a long time (outside of Detroit, which is still a masterpiece imo).
Now to move on to other games finally. Maybe now I can finally get Horizon beaten or maybe not as I did get Pokemon Sword for Christmas and that will probably eat up my free time until Cyberpunk (hey don't judge me, I actually still like the Pokemon franchise and this one, from what little I've played, is really fun and I'm liking a lot of the new editions to the main game play loop).

So just found out Spotify has all of the My Hero Soundtracks (I now have epic music to game to) and all the music from Zombie Land Saga on it (even the insert songs, I get to listen to Saki's song legally now. Fucking yay!). Completely lost my shit when I found out.
Glad to see Spotify is starting to get more Japanese music streaming rights and is finally getting all those anime OPs/EDs that I love. Makes listening to them so much easier now (instead of rummaging through my 191 gigs of music). Now if only they'd get there hands on Myth & Roid's shit (outside of the one album) so I can listen to some Shadowgraph (they're extremely protective of their stuff as it all used to be up on Spotify then it was all removed suddenly).

Lets take a moment of appreciation for how utterly bad ass Maki's fight was on this weeks Fire Force. Same dude Arthur struggled with. That rig Vulcan set her up with is wicked. I'm really not ready for season 1 to end. Same with Dr. Stone. Both totally different series with outstanding world building. Its gonna feel a bit empty when they're done. MHA will probably start picking up steam soon though. Stars Align has been a nice surprise, and Azur Lane is totally my guilty pleasure this season. *ahem* But I digress.

Muh feels! 😭 Fruits Basket has been so good, but ugh. Two eps on Uotani and Kyoko. Why'd Kyoko have to die? It's just a sad fact at first, but now that they gave her character so much depth with Uotani's recollection it hurts. The New Years ep would have been even worse if I knew her like I do now.

So yea Fire Force is pretty fucking amazing and you should all be watching it. Not entirely sure what else to say about it outside of the fact its animated by the guys that did Soul Eater, it's out special teams of fire fighters that fight literal fire demons (well humans turned into infernals as they call them) using pyrokinetic powers (or none at all in the case of some of them), and it's everything I didn't know I ever wanted wrapped up in an anime. Yea, I'm extremely onboard with this show. I'm just sad episode 3 is delayed for a week but it's completely understandable considering the tragic loss of life this week with the KyoAni fire.

I checked error logs but I couldn't find anything. So I changed a couple settings for the gallery and did a couple test uploads. One image loaded fine, the other upload was 3 images at once. Everything worked ok. One of the issues might have been a file size limitation. Anything around 4mb might have been timing out. I increased the upload size for all usergroups. If anyone wants to test some image uploads, go for it. 10 mb is now the largest image the forum will take at the moment. All of my test images were no bigger than 1.5 mb. We still might get an image upload timing out for large images but that might be a hard server setting I'd have to look for.

I have to say I've played many MMORPG's over the years from good to bad but I don't think I've ever played one that has consistently proceeded to exceed my expectations like FFXIV has and Shadowbringers has more than done so. I think this expansion ranks up there as probably one of my all time favorites RPG's in general and all time favorite FF game ever (yes beating out FFIX) that's how wonderful it is.
Yea I know, FFXIV fanboy praising his addiction but SE and the XIV team have really outdone themselves with this expansion. The story is phenomenal from start to finish with a very emotional plot, some of the best dungeon's I've ever had the pleasure of grinding through (with the exception of one), phenomenal boss fights (that final fight is amazing, I can't wait to see the Extreme mode of it), great character writing (even better than before, I'm more attached to these NPC's then I ever was before), and an amazing soundtrack (I refuse to listen to music while playing in 90% of the zones because I love it so much). Granted this is just the base Shadowbringers, there's still two years of patches to go through and my opinions might change later on (I mean we still don't have raid access and the Nier 24-man doesn't launch until Oct) but I don't think I've ever felt this complete and satisfied with a game expansion/dlc. Yoshida and his team really outdid themselves this time and I look forward to the next two years of content and the next expansion to come.
On another note I've learned that I can't do hardcore gaming hours anymore. After 3 days of 12-16 hour gaming sessions (Friday - Sunday) I'm really feeling my age (sad to say when I'm only 33). I've never been this physically and mentally exhausted in my life (and my job is both on a daily basis). Thank fucking god I'm on vacation this week to recover. Don't think I'll be doing this for the next expansion but is was totally worth it for the payoff we got in the end. Also thinking I should post updated pictures of my character since she's gone through some pretty drastic changes since the last time.
 

So it might be a tad bit early but I'm thinking that The Promised Neverland is going down as my anime of the year (beating out Boogiepop, Demon Slayer, and Fruits Basket). Man was that a fun trip through some pretty gruesome themes and interesting concepts. Highly suggest watching this when it gets dubbed (unless you want to watch it subbed (I mean come on it's that good)).
I knew going into it that it was a horror/psychological anime but boy do they trick you when you first start watching it as it's all fun and games right until the end of the first episode. Quite honestly I really don't know how to summarize my thoughts on the show because it's hard to really say anything without ruining the shows premise and horror element (which they really drive home in the latter episodes).
I will say the story is pretty damn good from start to finish even if they leave you with more questions then they do answers (I know they'll get into that later (it got greenlit for another season) but they really do a bad job setting up why things are the way they are in the first season but I guess its the same in the manga), the characters for the most part are intriguing and interesting (most of the secondary cast it rather bleh but the main characters really sell the show and does the main antagonist)), animation is top notch and damn well done (some of the best this year only taking second to Demon Slayer for me), and the soundtrack is damn good (that opening though, not Demon Slayer topping but still damn good).
Honestly I'm disappointed I didn't watch it when it was airing but I'm glad I could just marathon through it in three days because waiting each week for one new ep would of been painful. Happy its getting a second season but I'm sad that won't be until next year at the earliest. Solid 9/10 for me (would of gone 10/10 but there were a few things I had issues with toward the end). Now I just need to watch Kaguya-sama and Quintessential Quintuplets and I'll be caught up on last seasons shows that I wanted to watch.