Category: Special Articles

Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – UT: Stella of the End (84/100)

by SuperWooper, posted in Anime Reviews, Special Articles

As of mid-2024, a good majority of the games Key/Visual Arts have put out are legally available in English, with the exceptions of Air, Kud Wafter, their Prima Doll kinetic novels, the Rewrite fan disc, and Summer Pockets: Reflection Blue. Before 2015, it was nigh impossible to procure their games outside of fan translations, but now almost their entire library is available. Hell, just a few months ago, their first visual novel, Kanon, FINALLY got an official English translation and release in the US, 25 years after its 1999 release. Now that I’ve played a good majority of their games—mainly their kinetic novels—and seen anime adaptations of the ones I haven’t played, I’ve gotten a bit familiar with their formula. I like the anime adaptations of Air, Kanon, and Clannad, but haven’t played the VNs for Air and Clannad yet. The game version of Air, while an important piece of Key’s legacy, has a lot of problematic aspects that really did not age well; Harmonia is fairly good but a big chunk of its lore doesn’t make sense, Loopers suffers from not doing enough with both its large cast of characters and premise, and while I enjoyed Lunaria: Virtualized Moonchild, it only started getting good in the second half, and the first half of the game is a bit of a climb. I have mixed feelings on the games of theirs that I have played, but that’s not to say I hated them. There are two that I genuinely enjoyed without any reservations: Planetarian, their first kinetic novel, and the subject of today’s review, Stella of the End.

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Guest Post: Unearthed Treasures with Firechick: Digimon Adventure Pilot (82/100)

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Special Articles

Digimon has been a part of my life for about as long as I can remember. I religiously watched the 1999 TV series as a kid, along with the seasons afterward (With the exception of Data Squad and Fusion). It’s one of those series where every time I rewatch it, I always manage to discover something new about it. At one point, I saw commercials for Digimon The Movie, but I couldn’t go see it in theaters at the time due to other obligations like school. Years after that, I was able to rent it on VHS from a video store. It was…certainly something. I found out later that Saban’s Digimon The Movie was actually three movies mashed into one, cutting a lot of content in the process, far more so than they did with the series. Later in life, I saw two of those movies in their original format, this one included, with English subtitles, and I was surprised with just how different they were from the edited versions that made up Digimon The Movie. Coming back and rewatching the Digimon Adventure Pilot as an adult, with full knowledge of the TV series, I’m even more impressed by just how good this short film is as a prequel to the series and on its own merits.

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Guest Post: Unearthed Treasures with Firechick: Dog of Flanders Movie (97/100)

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Special Articles

I’ve watched many movies throughout my childhood. Namely the Pokemon movies, some Disney movies (namely Aladdin), and others. But none of them have really made a huge impact on me because of the limited time they have to get made. Characters aren’t always developed, plots are too narrow, and some just turn out plain terrible. Before 2010, I had never even HEARD of anything called The Dog of Flanders. I only learned about it through this review. When I first read it, I thought, “Can a movie really be this good?” Curious, I tracked it down and found it on YouTube…and I was absolutely not prepared for what I saw, and boy am I glad I followed his recommendation. This movie, to me, is a masterpiece on every level. This is my personal gold standard for not only animated movies, but for movies that are adaptations of books, and movies as a whole overall. I’ll try to be as objective as possible, but I can’t help but gush about it, as it’s such an underrated movie that rarely gets the appreciation that it so deserves! But I’m gonna tell you all about it and I’m not ashamed to say it: Dog of Flanders is my number one favorite anime movie of all time, and movie of all time in general.

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Guest Post: Unearthed Baubles with Firechick: Pokemon Trading Card Game GBC (65/100)

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Special Articles

Hey Pokemaniacs, remember when we used to collect Pokemon cards, trade them with our friends, and participate in card battles? I sure do! In light of the Pokemon games’ massive success, companies began marketing it to hell and back, making and selling all sorts of tie-in toys, games, and cards to further make money off the franchise. In 1998, someone had the bright idea to turn the then newly born tabletop paper card game…into a video game. Yeah, so weird, right? But the game turned out to be pretty decent for what it was, and I remember playing and liking it as a kid. For a time, the game was available on the 3DS Virtual Console, which has now been shut down, but as of now, it’s available on Nintendo Switch Online as part of its GameBoy library, so you don’t need to worry about physical cartridges running out of internal battery power and losing all of your progress. But how does the game fare as a video game? Well…not that great.

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Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – A Little Lily Princess (90/100)

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Special Articles

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “What?! Why would anyone adapt a classic Victorian era novel into a visual novel?! This is gonna suck soooooo bad!” Yeah, adapting a Victorian novel into a video game is definitely not the norm. Was anyone really expecting this? And did anyone even want such a thing to happen? Well, Hanako Games thought it’d be a great idea, and they made A Little Lily Princess. Now, as of this review, I’ve finished this game, read the book, and I’ve seen three adaptations of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess so far: The 1993 movie, the 1986 British mini-series/movie starring Amelia Shankley, and the 1985 anime adaptation, the latter two I think are some of the best adaptations. I can definitely say for sure that A Little Lily Princess is up there with those two in that it’s one of the most well executed, well thought out adaptations of Burnett’s novel, though I won’t deny that it does have some flaws that prevent the game from being truly great.

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The 4 (8?) Forms of Ancient Greek Love, Using Anime

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Special Articles

Relationships are complicated. From learning how to communicate and respecting each others boundaries to how they are established, grow and change, there’s a lot that goes into them. And this is true for all relationships, not just the romantic! Friends can grow apart without proper communication, or grow into a romance with it. Family can be pushed away when you don’t respect each other properly, or you could pick up a whole new one from those around you. In my eyes it’s these complications, these ugly details that each of us interpret differently and draw our own lines with, that make relationships so difficult to portray and discuss in media. Why some may love and believe one character dynamic but push back and scoff at another, why some may see a romance where others see a deep friendship. And the best part? When approached in good faith and earnestly thought about, no one is wrong, because each of us are looking for something different.

So to help figure out what relationships mean to me, and hopefully you as you read this, lets took a look at the various form a relationship can take as defined by the Greeks, using examples from anime to illustrate them. Sound fun? Good, because I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. So without further ado, let’s dive into the 4 (8?) forms of Ancient Greek love, and my first big post since retirement!

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What’s Cooking

by Lenlo, posted in Special Articles

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since my last post here announcing my semi-retirement. Now that we’ve all had some time to digest that, and I’ve been able to rest and get some of my energy for writing back since I’m not stuck doing 4 posts a week, I wanted to let you know about a few things coming down the pipe. I know some of you were worried that the site would end entirely, so let this be a public notice that we’re still here, and I’m still writing. Just not weekly.

Within the Week

First up is something I’ve seen a lot of people clamoring for and hoping we keep doing, and that’s the Seasonal Previews. Well don’t worry, because we’ve actually almost got the Summer 2024 Seasonal Preview ready to go, with only a few more blurbs left to write. You can expect that sometime this weekend most likely, early next week at the latest. Additionally, I do still plan to cover the First Impressions of the Summer season. It’s a lot, but that’s actually pretty fun for me and I’m looking forward to it. I assume Wooper and maybe Amun will join me on that as per usual, so look forward to that as well when the Summer season starts.

2-4 Weeks Out

After the Season Preview I also have a few reviews I’m working on for a couple of Spring shows. Since I’m not writing weekly posts, I’m actually able to prepare these in advance, meaning I should be able to get all 4 (That’s right, 4) out in a pretty reasonable time. You can probably expect one a week once the season has ended. I won’t spoil what shows these are, since that’s part of the fun, I’m just letting you know that they are on their way!

1 Month or More

Finally we have the long term posts, the sort of unique articles I’ve been wanting to do for a while but never had the time for. These are akin to the I watched Black Clover so you don’t have to post I made back in 2020, big, chunky things that don’t really fit into our normal content. Because these are big and chunky, as well as hyper specific, they take a tad more time to write. As such, I don’t really have a set date for when you can expect these to go up. Suffice to say though, I’m actively working on them between reviews. As for what those posts are, here are my working titles for the two I have in production right now:

My Hero Academia – The Life of a Super Hero (Series) – A look back at how My Hero Academia started, what inspired it, where it went, and the author behind it all, Kohei Horikoshi

The 4 (8?) Forms of Ancient Greek Love, Using Anime – Analyzing the various words/forms of Greek love using anime, as inspired by Vinland Saga

Both of these posts are still in the preproduction phase for me, I’m blocking them out and researching them. I expect the Greek love one to be done first, simply because it requires much less research than the Horikoshi one, but who knows. Don’t hold your breathe on these, I’m still figuring out how long it takes me to write this sort of stuff. Just know they are out there being worked on.

So yeah, the blogs not dead! I promised it wouldn’t be and that we would instead be shifting to more irregular content, and I’m sticking to that mission statement. Thanks for coming along for the ride and I hope you enjoy what I have cooking!

State of the Blog – We need to talk

by Lenlo, posted in Special Articles

Hello everyone, Lenlo here. Lets talks, about the state of the blog, the state of my life, and where things are going. Or well, I’m going to talk, y’all are going to read.

As many of you have noticed, posts have been slowing down for a while now. I’m months late on things like the 2023 Anime of the Year, as well as the Dr. STONE S4 and Undead Girl Murder Farce reviews. Some of you also probably figured out those were never happening. Well I’m here to talk about why, as well as the future of the blog. Simply put, I’m tired. So very tired. I’ve been doing this for almost 7 years at this point, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot! I remember every single series I’ve covered, and I valued every comment. But… I just don’t have the energy for it anymore. Not only can I not handle 3-5 posts a week on top of my  regular life, watching anime in this way, looking for things to praise or criticize, taking notes as I watch it… it’s ruining my enjoyment of them. I can’t do it anymore. So… I’ve decided to follow the rest of the writers and retire, from weekly posts at least.

What does this mean for the site? Well for starters, it’s not necessarily the end. I’ll still write the occasional review or post that interests me, I do still enjoy writing the larger reviews, but I’m going to do it on my time, as I naturally finish a series, without any weekly posts or other deadline considerations to worry about. I’ll also continue to post any guest reviews, such as Firechick’s, for as long as I am able. But basically this means all weekly, almost daily, content is coming to an end for the site. Everything else, we’ll see. As for how long this will go on for, the server is paid for until 2025, so at the very least it will remain up for another 18 months. All the old reviews, all the posts, the comments, those will all stay up until the end of next year. Once that time runs out I’m going to evaluate where we’re at and decide whether or not to pay for the server for another year.

So yeah… That’s the news. I talked it over with the other writers in the discord, and they support my decision. They understand that some day, all things must end. That every dreamer must wake. And while I tried to put it off, I held on to this place as best I could, it’s my time. Effective immediately, for the sake of my own mental health as I finish this last busy summer semester of my Master’s degree, I am retiring. I apologize for the series left half-finished, for the incomplete weekly roundups. I might, hell I probably will, write a review for a couple of them. But those will come out on my own time. So until then, chat with you in discord whenever I can, and I’ll see you around space cowboy.

Midseason Musings

by Amunchet, posted in Currently Watching:, Some Quick First Impressions, Special Articles

Hello, and welcome to an unscheduled, random post from Amun!  As we reach the halfway point of one of the most hyped seasons in recent memory, I wanted to check in and see which shows have met expectations, which have disappointed, and if there are any gems in the crowded field.  Without further ado, here’s my take on the shows I’m watching this season!

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Chainsaw Man – A Pre-Airing Primer

by AidanAK47, posted in Chainsaw Man, Currently Watching:, Other:, Special Articles

We are mere weeks away from the airing of Chainsaw Man and I thought I would take this time aside to have a little chat. I solemnly swear this post will have no spoilers and is just a means of helping newcomers get why this show is a big deal, what you could expect and how you shouldn’t walk into this expecting it to blow you away. I mean the series already has haters which even the most beloved of series have but I do understand how this series may not be for everyone and if you read the season preview you can likely tell who I have had fairly heated arguments with about it. So I have tried looking at opinions from those who were not quite as keen on the series to perhaps put forward reasons as to why this may not click with you. I have structured this post in a way where I will detail one positive and then one negative and by the end you can make your own judgments.

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