Happy Lunar New Year 2021

Let’s start off with a happy new year and lunar new year at the same time. I decided to skip January’s update because absolutely nothing of interest happened in that entire month for me. Instead of filling dead air with random nonsense, I decided to post pone any news until (hopefully) something more interesting came my way and luckily it did. So let’s post the obligatory anime lewd new year picture and get on with what’s been going on! It’s the year of the ox by the way - so naturally everyone is drawing lewd cow girls.

Artist Credit blueorca

It’s been a long while since I posted anything paranormal related, so I wanted to correct that mistake. And today I have a YouTube channel actually worth checking out that isn’t clickbait nonsense. It’s called Small Town Monsters and is part of a very down to earth crew of paranormal researchers doing their best to chronicle the spooky stuff out there. What’s nice about this particular team is that they’re still in their infancy stage, and do not have the “taint'“ of major television network editing and hyperbole that most paranormal content creators suffer from. They recently released one of their earlier documentaries on their channel for free, and you can watch it below if you like it in its entirety.

If looking for a giant hairy monster in the woods is not your cup of tea, perhaps watching someone carefully crafting a miniature house would be? Strange to suggest I know, but after the ruckus of 2020 I saw a lot of people get riled up for various reasons. I feel like we all can slow down a bit and take the time to enjoy the little things in life. Literally. So my next YouTube channel suggestion involves a craftsman who deals in making miniatures with inexpensive dollar store materials. It’s pretty fascinating to see what comes out of their ingenuity and a relaxing watch for a rainy afternoon or something right before bed. The channel name is Hanabira工房 and it will be added to The List.

Onto the gaming stuff. I mentioned this a lot in my previous updates, but since it gets buried over time I realized it’s worth mentioning again. I use to play SHMUPS a lot in my childhood and they always have a sentimental place in my gaming heart after all these years. Even though I’m far removed from the “scene”, I still look up playthroughs and keep tabs on some of the news relating to them. I was astounded to find out that a popular SHMUPS series R-Type is actually getting another title in their lineup when they were supposedly done with their last installment. The game is called R-Type Final II, which is pretty funny considering they are taking a page out of the Final Fantasy playbook by not actually being the last game ever made by the developers. I’m especially excited about this release because it’s going to be on multiple platforms including PC. Because I long ago sold off all of my consoles and only game on PC at the moment, my options are limited in what I can play when it comes to niche titles. None the less you can check out the latest trailer below (it doesn’t show much but it’s something) and supposedly the release date is going to be April 29th 2021.

I know most of the folks who visit this site are curious wanderers from my YouTube channel. So I always make sure to include some form of mobile gaming news on my updates so they don’t leave in utter disgust with all of my other interests! So without further delay, I am currently testing a game called Red Pride Of Eden which is actually getting a global release (supposedly) sometime this year in 2021. The game is already out in Japan but has a somewhat (from what I can tell) small player base and isn’t well known. Without talking too much about it, it’s one of the better quality of life focused games out there that I have tested to this date. You literally can pop on and do everything you need to do in 15 minutes. On the other hand, it’s one of the most brutal (in terms of summon rates) games I have ever experienced in the last 2 years of mobile gaming! So I’ve decided to test the game longer than I usually do to see if it gets any better. You however are more then welcome to try out the JP version if you like right now regardless of my opinion. No VPN is required and any Android platform of your choice should work just fine. You can get it here.

Artist credit DSマイル

A final thing I want to mention about my YouTube channel and those who subscribe to me and check out my community tab. YouTube has a strange algorithm and bot who “shadow bans” content it finds “questionable” but not rule breaking. This is very frustrating for someone like me since a lot of content that I potentially push out falls within this category. Keep in mind that none of my stuff is monetized voluntarily as well, yet YouTube still pushes quite a standard on content creators who are in the same zone as I am. It’s also is a bitter pill to swallow when they announced adding ads on videos this year regardless if the creator enables monetization or not. In any case, I just want to throw this message out there that sometimes you may not get any notifications at all about the stuff I push out because of this censoring bot. I have no control over any of this and it’s as frustrating to me as it may be potentially be to you. All I can say is that if you do fancy what I have to say or what I’m doing, it’s best to just bookmark my community tab and check up on me once in a while. That way you won’t miss a post or video that I exclusively post on there. I’m also going to change things up a bit now by posting videos on the community tab without using their baked in system - because that system is what censors me and shadow bans the notification in the first place. I am going to make a regular post and then link the video directly so it bypasses (for now) the bot. As always I am open to chatting with you guys, so feel free to post anything on any of my community stuff regardless of the subject. If I can answer it - I will try. With all of that being said and done with, let’s look forward to a more productive and interesting 2021. Happy new year and lunar new year to all of you! Character below is completely unrelated to anything I have posted. I don’t even watch the anime - I just like the character design! Her name is Ghislaine Dedoldia and I’m sure you can find more of her if you wanted to.

Artist Credit ぺぺジイ

2020 Is Over Now

It’s that time of year again where content creators across the globe make some type of retrospective of the previous year - and boy was 2020 filled with stuff to talk about. But I don’t want to focus too much on the negative stuff since you can get that practically everywhere; so I decided to do my best to give you my personal take on why 2020 wasn’t as bad for me. Before going on however, I want to make it clear that 2020 was not a good year by any metric, but I certainly didn’t experience the extreme downsides of it as others did. I’m an older guy, and If I created a hypothetical list of my top 10 years and worst 10 years of my life - 2020 wouldn’t make either. I’ll just leave it at that and explain a bit of my reasoning.

Let’s start off with the obvious numbers and where I reside. I currently live in California, one of the worst places to be if you’re someone extremely paranoid about COVID-19. I also want to disclose that my wife contracted the virus this year as well and I was considered asymptomatic (even though I tested negative) due to my proximity to her. It is (and was) not a death sentence as you can clearly see from this blog update, nor am I permanently disabled or traumatized. It sucked when it happened to my wife and it sucked taking care of her and seeing her sick; but that is the case with all major illnesses. We got over it, and now we’re back to our routine. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the general perception of the virus makes it to be pretty nasty if you get it. I can tell you that from our personal experience actually having and dealing with it; it wasn’t as bad for us. I just wanted to throw out some reassuring sentiment for those who might be on the fringes of absolute paranoia.

One of the recurring themes of people in 2020 was that they were shopping like crazy since they had nothing else to do. Yet a lot of folks are reporting they actually saved quite a bit of money after everything was said and done regardless of their shopping habits. I can confirm that this year has actually been quite easy on the wallet even though my Amazon packages have tripled to my doorstep. This is coming from someone who operates this website at a complete loss ($200 a year to be exact - $600 in total since 2017) just for the love of it and you visiting and reading this blog right now. I still pride myself that not a single ad has been shown since its birth (the site) as well. Once again, I’m trying to highlight that 2020 (at least for me) was not as horrible as the general consensus appears to be. I think there’s a fair amount of crap the year dished out, but there’s also a lot of drama queens who want their 15 seconds.

Gaming in 2020 has been a mixed bag for me. Primarily as someone who has a heavy interest in mobile gaming and talking about it on YouTube - there hasn’t been a lot of heavy hitters this year. I was able to partake in a lot of “side game” recommendations, but nothing to topple my 2 day to day games which still remain to be Destiny Child and Last Origin. The lovely lady you see above this paragraph is named Mammon and she is a part of the franchise The Seven Mortal Sins. There was recently a mobile game made in Taiwan for the series which I really hoped was going to be the next best thing considering all the material to work with from the original IP. Alas it was not meant to be as the game was not what I expected and is quite heavy on the paywall while being light on the content. Something worth mentioning is that the game suffers from a surprising amount of restraint in terms of its art direction - ironic considering the source material is anything but timid and there’s a lot of great stuff to draw upon. If you’re interested in the game, I did a very short video on it that you can see here. At least it’s been confirmed that Last Origin Global is being released in 2021 and the new games from S H I F T U P (developers of Destiny Child) may be releasing a new title in the same year. Trailer is below for NiKKE.

Let’s close out the year’s retrospective with some retro chip tunes… except they’re not exclusively retro songs. If you ever wondered what a lot the music you grew up with would sound like on some “older” hardware, then this YouTube channel is a nice rabbit hole to go down if you’ve got the time to spare. It’s called Chiptune Planet and has a lot of popular songs past and present made in 8-bit or 16-bit renditions. My personal favorite is linked below to give you a taste of the work you’ll find there.

Thanksgiving Like A Dragon

It’s November time for me and at last; I can combine my love of Thanksgiving turkey with beating down random folks in Japan. Of course - I’m alluding to the release of Yakuza: Like A Dragon which comes out on November 10th - a game I will be playing on day one. I was worried that my time this month would be split between the holidays, Yakuza and Cyberpunk 2077. Of course luckily (and I mean that very sarcastically) Cyberpunk 2077 won’t be released now until December 10th 2020. This will give me ample time to complete Yakuza inside and out while still doing my usual Android game research as I’ve mentioned in my recent vlogs on the YouTube channel.

For the non gamers who visit the site, I do have some rabbit holes for you to go down this month with a couple of YouTube channels I picked up recently that I found interesting enough to add to The List. The first one is going to be tech related and talking about gear reviews - specifically microphones. For any of you fellow content creators (or those thinking about starting their own journey into creation); it’s a valuable resource of information to have from a guy who’s enthusiastic about teaching and reviewing microphones “off the beaten path”. I swear to all things holy and hellish that if someone recommends to me (or anyone else starting out their content) a Blue Yeti microphone yet again - I think I might commit a murder. So to prevent that Pre Crime from happening, please take a look at the channel!

I have an absolute fetish (kinky I know) for travel videos from the perspective of the every day person. Not the overly edited, overly staged, and unrealistically sanguine stuff you get on most programs on official networks. I just like seeing stuff from someone’s point of view and (hopefully) they have something interesting to say (or show) during the journey. So one random night I came across this YouTube channel called Hard Officers (get your mind out of the gutter) and it has 2 likeable eclectic hosts Zack and Kyle who live in Japan and travel to random game stores. I highly recommend the playlist of their journeys to just sit back and loose yourself in some retro games. I do hope they will eventually pick up back their adventures and start releasing some new content for 2021.

Ending off the update with something NSFW since 99% of the people visiting this site come from YouTube. Here is a picture of Vanessa from SF Girls on Nutaku (NSFW). This is a game I tried out recently (since someone suggested it was F2P friendly) and unfortunately did not past my tests as noted on the previous month’s update. Still the game definitely has some charm to it, and I hope the developers well off enough to make something in the future a bit more accessible. If you want to give them game a try, you can create a free Nutaku account and register for the game here (NSFW). Also note it’s available on Android as well - but you have to use the Nutaku App to download it.

Exploring The World From Home

October’s rolling around again so I thought it would be appropriate to talk about exploring dying and dead things in this month’s blog post. The mainstream stuff will be first as always before diving into the more obscure things for my visitors who (mostly) come from around the globe. I’m flattered that anyone finds my site interesting - even more so people from overseas!

I’ve always been an advocate for “the beauty in decay” in which I am referring to the appreciation of rotting stuff. Much like archeologists can learn from studying ancient ruins; I believe we can learn a lot from exploring modern abandoned places. I’ve always been fascinated with Urbex in general because of this (as implied heavily with my recommendations on The List) and it strikes a special chord with me when other people feel the same way. In any case, I have a new Urbex channel to recommend you check out this month alongside a documentary on a dying mall. I hope you find them both entertaining enough to be a gateway drug to what many colloquially consider “Ruin Porn”. The documentary (Jasper Mall) is recently released, so it’s not available online for free to watch. I would encourage if you like what you see from the trailer to consider supporting the creators and renting or buying the video. If you have Amazon Prime however - it’s included with your subscription here.

Moving onto my gaming and anime related stuff - I recently made a new vlog on the community tab on my YouTube channel talking about how I specifically test games once I pick them out. You can watch it down below here if you haven’t already done so. More than likely you found this website out from my YouTube channel, so I would advise you keep the community section bookmarked as I try to update over there as much as possible with smaller incremental stuff as it becomes available.

I end this month’s update with an image of Fenebeth - a character I wanted to use but ultimately could not in the game Illusion Connect. You can find all the details by watching the video above. Farewell Fenebeth - I hardly knew ye! See you guys next month!

Artist Dohwa / 桃花