expedition 33 is to jrpgs the same way evangelion and madoka are to mecha and magical girls, in that it genuinely is as good as everyone says but it's also given a bunch of genre oldheads an enemy for life

I am equal parts morbidly curious and terrified by what might be found dissecting Hideki Kamiya's brain.

This is another frustrating misconception. "Nintendo" here actually means, specifically, Kensuke Tanabe, the director of the Metroid Prime games. Yoshio Sakamoto is the director and writer of the "main" games. Samus literally hunts down criminals in the mangas.

Thing people misunderstand about power fantasies is that they aren't some kind of fictional model which one fits into; it's about the way audiences choose to engage *with* the text. Doomguy and Master Chief are power fantasies not because they are strong men with gun, but because players want a gun.

OK I'm seeing too many comments and QRT's being silly and dumb (but not me, I'm smart and considered), so I'm going to point out that the main problem is that Americans think Samus is Boba Fett, while the creators in Japan were more likely thinking of these:

Every post about ZA is like "I empathize with TPC and how difficult it must be for the worlds highest grossing IP to supply competent artists with "dollars," and I would loathe to assume my opinion is worth more than dirt. All that being said, I somewhat disliked the mega designs. Please dont shoo-"

One Piece discussion is demonstrative of how broken a lot of online discourse has become, given so much of it hinges on people painting pretty basic and agreeable egalitarianism as some kind of cutting radicalism about overthrowing the government and creating a free state.

I find it equal parts fascinating and hilarious how, in lieu of having greater ethos like Rider and Ultra have, Sentai's producers decided the solution to their declining cultural relevance was to just do whatever the hell they felt like doing. The result:

Manga discourse on social media is so poisoned by bad rhetorical arguments and para-social communities that I genuinely cannot trust a single thing people say about Oshi no Ko and it's actual quality at this point.

So, to recap for those at homer: The final Super Sentai series has now had to redo its entire last stretch with a completely different actress for one of its leads, as a result of the first actress being fired by her agency following a prolonged tabloid harassment campaign. Happy 50th, Sentai!

Metroid is a fascinating study of fandoms vs shifting official presentation, clashing visions of what and who a character is, and also of a franchise that is way more popular overseas than it is in its home country.

I think this mix-up, while hilarious, makes a lot more sense when you consider the scope of Japanese sci-fi. Japanese media never coalesced the kind of pulp space hero archetype which was foundational to the West. Samus in her original conception was Ripley in a space-suit, not Heinlein.

I wrote more words about how it feels to be a translator watching the games press report on AI and labor, coming from a field that's fought these battles for decades. It may look like I'm beating up on one outlet, but it's not about them; I've been trying to write this for me and my peers all year.

dude I can't believe that anyone with a single brain cell reads Higurashi and thinks that it *isn't* condemning nationalism broadly+Japanese ultranationalism specifically. there's a whole scene in Matsuribayashi where a guy spouts far right talking points while spooky music plays. be serious.

Funniest revelation of the second HBR/Angel Beats collab is the implication that Jun Maeda had been sitting on the desire to write explicit yuri for over a decade, and just never told anyone before creating Ruka.

The more of Metroid fans I see, the more it becomes apparent the Samus really is the female equivalent of Master Chief culturally; A character whose immense popularity is rooted less in the text of the source material so much as the power fantasy they create merely by existing.

Main thing I can say about the Metroid Prime 4 discourse is that a lot of people have a distressingly parasocial obsession with the idea of Samus as a character and what she represents, and I think that's *really* effecting how people are interacting with what has been revealed.

Banjo-Tooie Ending E

Seeing Western critics on the mainstream continuing to bemoan the industry as "betraying" Sayo Yamamoto has genuinely left me wondering what the actual response was from Japan regarding Yuri on Ice, especially given how many myths and conspiracy theories seem to circulate the anime's production.

Giving my thoughts on Idolmas was really fun, so I'mma do it for a few more series too. Next up - Heard very, very good things about this one:

Finished Idolmaster. What an incredible journey that was.

The Hazbin Hotel end credits music after the most harrowing episode of TV you’ve ever fucking seen:

Were learning that Tatsuya Nagamine, the director of Heartcatch Precure, and one of Toei's finest creative voices, passed away over the summer... Its honestly a shock... and so young, at just 54. Rest in peace Nagamine... thank you for everything 😢 x.com/shota_/statu...

Thing I've come to learn from years of interacting with ChanOtaku is that the most bigoted and offensive people in the room are practically always the most incoherent.

We now begin the True End.

obviously not a new topic of discussion but it really is crazy how perfect a name nuzlocke is for the challenge despite having literally nothing to do with the rules and being a result of like 8 coincidences piling up on top of each other. maybe he was right.

First thread was getting kinda long, so here's a refresh as I cover the OVA!

쿄코만 남았다

Comments to this tweet fascinate me if just because it seems like most of the people present have come away with a weird romanization of One Piece as being demonstrative of battle manga as a whole. When I've read a good amount of 2000s battle manga, and they're not like that.

green idol secretaries unite🤝

Decided to give a full watch to S1 of Hazbin Hotel before watching Season 2. In short? Very good, albeit it very flawed. And entirely undeserving of the obsessive hatedom which it has generated.

On one hand, it needs to be reinforced that this is the fault of the agency, not Toei. On the other hand, what the actual fuck.

This is a very good comment in this screenshot Something I would add onto it is So much of the sex-negative feminists you see online that fell for a right-wing psyop a decade ago Do not realize how many of the stuff they complain about in anime... was made by women as self-expression

So as an update, the woman behind the original video just posted a "response" to the criticism on Instagram, and it is kinda comical how much it seems to just entirely ignore the actual critiques to instead make the issue about people being mean to her.

Beginning to notice that himejoshi online have developed of labelling literally every dynamic with more than 3cm of edge as "toxic yuri". Really not liking that trend.

Part of what gets me about the Western obsession with Utena, alongside the attempt to distort it into a magical girl series, is that the discussion *never* actually seems to involve the actual darker contents of the work. It's all swords and girls kissing, and not the abuse, incest, or rape.

Rebirth #art

Imagine being *this* badly cooked by the second editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics.

a few nights ago i had a dream that there was a scooby doo/girls band cry crossover halloween special so obviously i had to draw it

Proudly proclaiming that Otaku are incapable of creating anything new whilst having an entire collection of CLAMP manga in the background is....a choice, to put it bluntly. Unrelated Picture:

Funniest part of Cinderella Gray is watching people try to reconcile how these two images can be technically the same character.

What genuinely baffles me is how so many Western faux-feminists have tried to invent some kind of super-special classifier for Mahou Shoujo, in spite of the actual intended meaning in Japan being cartoonishly simple. It's girl's tokusatsu! If you know what a Kamen Rider is, you know Precure!

Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because @jay.bsky.team and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default. Here's how to turn it off. First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner

Just saw tweets about tonight’s Gozyuger episode. Jesus Christ man.

So for something lighter, the other main Umamusume manga gave Bakushin a girlfriend and made her an ikeman. Yes, the most "canon" Uma/Uma pairing now involves Bakushin of all characters.

As awful as the whole situation is, it was pretty surreal to see TV-Asahi cut right from the end of Gozyuger, with no next time trailer, outro or anything, then run the same Acuvue commercial four times in a row. Super Hero Time ending with the announcer cursing out the viewers would be less awkward

This might very well be the most spectacular shitshow in tokusatsu history. Even the Super-1 fiasco is less insane than what is going down here.

Reminder for toku fans: In Japan, a celebrity’s talent agency holds inordinate power over them and how their image/likeness is used by companies who hire that talent. While we will never know the whole story, I would say it’s a much safer bet to direct your anger to the talent agency, not Toei.

style study with some #touhou