Another one down

This past Monday was the last day of the semester, yet I've still been busy with school. Handed in the last of my assignments yesterday, had an oral test for Japanese on Tuesday, continuing peer tutoring shifts, it's still oddly busy. I've got my final for Beginner's Japanese II on Monday, and once that's done there'll be nothing more to do this year, though I'll have to keep practicing my Japanese as I've got an entire semester before the next level.

I'm starting to give some thought to what to put into my year in review post. Rather than simply have a post like last year, I'm planning to make something in Decker (maybe even submitting it for Deck-Month). Gonna be a learning journey there but should be fun!

One exciting recent development is, my friend Harper hooked me up with a film camera! I've wanted to learn to shoot film for a long time but never quite got that going, so now I've got the hardware and no excuses!

What I've been playing

I finished Little Witch Nobeta which I liked quite a lot! I wrote about it on Backloggd, but will replicate here for good measure.

The rare game that clearly draws inspiration from Dark Souls but doesn't just try to replicate it, and is definitely the better for it.

Learning to use the different magic types to maximize effectiveness and take advantage of their various effects keeps things fresh.

Balancing melee, parrying and dodging in order to more quickly replenish mana stores, allowing for more frequent and more devastating magical attacks incentivizes taking bigger risks in a way that I found very enjoyable.

Nobeta herself and each boss character clearly had the most time spent on design wise. Basic enemies have far fewer distinguishing features, falling into a handful of distinct types. This does help to be able to more easily identify how to engage with enemies, which is nice, and most basic enemies have differently coloured variants, requiring shifts in tactics.

All around solid, and I'm looking forward to playing more of it.

So yeah, I liked it!

M2's ShotTriggers DoDonPachi DaiOuJou (aka Blissful Death Re:Incarnation) came out this week so I've been playing some of that. It's been a lot of fun trying out the different modes and learning its intricacies. Maybe one day we'll get a home version of SaiDaiOuJou since I missed the one on 360.

What I've been watching

I've been making my way through Revolutionary Girl Utena which I am, for the most part, enjoying. It's absurdly uneven, going from an episode full of intrigue to one where a character turns into a cow, and back. I hear it's going to take a certain turn soon and am not really looking forward to that as the "hints" (let's be real, they're not subtle) at it have been unpleasant to say the least. Still neat to see this finally, knowing how much later anime it has influenced.

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but I am a big appreciator of Takashi Miike's works. When I first stumbled across Ichi the Killer as an edgy teen, I've been pretty well hooked. The variety in his works makes it really hard to get bored.

I finally got around to watching Yakuza Apocalypse after learning it was on Tubi, which was one of the few platforms where the audio for it wasn't out of sync. I'd meant to watch this one years ago when it first came out but didn't get to it and then forgot about it.

It is absurd in all the best ways that make Miike's works fun for me. You've got vampire yakuza, a gun-toting priest, an otaku martial artist (The Raid's Mad Dog), a frog costumed deadly assassin, and kaiju. It's trashy but damn if it isn't a lot of fun.

Reading

So I haven't quite had time to read just yet as I'm still preparing for my exam, but I've got a few things that I'll be reading ASAP.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go which has been on my list for years but I'm finally going to get to it.

Renkon also introduced me to Tales & Feathers Magazine. They have the stated goal of luxuriating in slice of life fantasy, which honestly, I think we could use a lot more of. I've been enjoying getting into literary magazines and the short fiction they contain as it has fit into my schedule more easily.

You should check out

Puzzle Wednesday recently released the first episode of Margin Time, an interview series. This first episode interviews Kirk Lindsay about his game Combo Postage!

I recently read this piece about AI and Trust and the ways in which the companies making generative AIs, text based ones in particular, abuse human tendencies to trust.

Also, with the holidays here why not get that going with Hatsune Miku covering a holiday classic.

That's all from me for now. I'd love to hear what you've been enjoying lately. I sorted out adding webmention support last week so any replies to my post about this will show up here as comments!