games

Someone is wanting to put me on the spot and jump the gun (and throw in at least one more cliche here). This week they are asking me to make a decision I was putting off for at least another week, but I’ll give it a go. Remember, I’d love to answer a question from you so fill in the survey below or DM on twitter.

What was your favourite anime this Spring?

Anon

At the start of the season I would have said Fruits Basket without hesitation. So much nostalgia there for an anime that had come back in such a beautiful form and one that seems to be incredibly consistent in its tone and quality. I have almost no complaints about this rebooted series as it is everything I would have asked for in a reboot and I eagerly await more of it.

But… it didn’t end up my favourite of the season.

I would still strongly recommend watching it to anyone who asked even though we’ve still got a ways to go with it, but while I love the low key emotional viewing experience each week, Fruits Basket has ever been one of those anime that I love in the moment but don’t really remember a lot about after. I remember how it felt and I remember I enjoyed it, and if this new series is anything like the original, I’ll happily go and binge watch it on a rainy weekend, but it doesn’t have quite the impact of some of the other anime this season.

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Which brings me to the question of what ended up being my favourite anime? I really enjoyed Midnight Occult Civil Servants and Kenja no Mago but neither is actually all that good. They both just hit the tone and niche that I really enjoy and they were like comfort food this season. No matter how busy I got I loved coming back to these two as they demanded little from me but were always enjoyable (assuming you like that kind of thing).

However, low key entertainment and comfort food aside, there is one anime that consistently bowled me over emotionally, had fairly solid visuals, and basically just managed to be the stand out of the season. And no, it isn’t Demon Slayer, though until the introduction of Zenitsu, Demon Slayer was running a close second on anime I was really enjoying this season.

No, it was surprisingly Attack on Titan Season Three Part Two. Where Part One managed to get me to reinvest my interest in the plot, part two has delivered superbly with character moments, clashes and conflicts that have been a long time coming, and an endless, mind-blowing amount of exposition and back story that has made me want to go back to the very beginning and watch again because it feels like everything I thought I knew about the story just got turned on its head in the very best way possible.

Admittedly, Attack on Titan has had a lot more episodes to build up to this kind of moment and there’s certainly been some down time in the series, however, that doesn’t take away from how good watching this season has been and it has certainly been the one anime I would not miss no matter how busy I was over the last few weeks.

While the reader poll for best of the season is closing very, very soon, the winner will be announced in a week, so in the meantime how about you let me know what your favourite anime this season was in the comments below?

As always, if you want to ask me a question please DM me on Twitter or complete the survey below.

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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This week I face my toughest challenge yet… I have to admit I have terrible taste in music. But that’s okay, at least nobody is asking me to try to save the world. This is a fun question and one I’d like to know about my readers so please answer the question in the comments below and remember, I’d love to answer a question from you so fill in the survey below or DM on twitter.

Do you have a favourite musical genre/musical artist, or are you simply open to listening to whatever catches your attention/puts you in a good mood?

Alexie the Great

This has probably become apparent to anyone who has read my top 5 opening or ending lists, but I have really bad taste in music. Actually, that’s not entirely true. What I do know is that if you go through the music on my phone you’ll start wondering just how such a collection ever got thrown together and to be honest there’s no real logic at work here.

I grew up with parents that listened to a lot of 60’s and 70’s music. Bubble-gum pop music was a special feature and I can sing all the lyrics to some truly pointless songs. Combine that background with an intense study of classical pieces and jazz music through many, many, many hours of music lessons growing up, plus a love of movie and game soundtracks, and you have the makings of a truly insane collation of songs.

One thing I do know is that I’m more inclined to listened to music I’ve heard while watching something, so TV, movie, or anime soundtrack, because when something is audio only I can’t take it in. I really struggle to listen to audio without a visual element. Forget mixing up lyrics or mishearing them, half the time I couldn’t tell you what language a song is in unless I already know the lyrics.

Which meant as a teenager movie soundtracks dominated my CD collection. One thing I’ve noticed though, is movie soundtracks provide a fairly wide range of music genres so there’s no particular style of music that really stands out to me.

Naturally I now have quite a few anime soundtracks in my playlists, but I also have a whole bunch of music from bands I hadn’t heard of until I watched an AMV or some video on YouTube that used the music and credited the song. I’ve hunted down more than a handful of albums based on a song I’ve wanted to find and then that in turn as exposed me to yet more songs by that artist or band.

So I guess I’m open to whatever happens to catch my attention at the time for whatever reason. Honestly though, about the only time I listen to sustained music for hours is on the car trip from where I live to a city and then it is more about whatever I can sing along to that will keep me awake and focused on the road. David Bowie works a treat for that I might point out. Though Bowling for Soup certainly keep things bouncing and Marianas Trench is always good for the drive.

But, right along side those I’ll have the 1990’s Sailor Moon theme song, Spice Girls, and some Savage Garden.

Yeah, my taste in music kind of sucks but it works for me. I’d love to know what music works for you?

As always, if you want to ask me a question please DM me on Twitter or complete the survey below.

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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Still on the hunt for questions, however I did like the most recent inquiry that came through. As always, I’d love to know your answer to the question and if you have something you’d like answered, be sure to fill in the survey below or DM me on Twitter.

Is there any genre of anime that you have yet to watch a “definitive” title? In other words, for many genres you’ve probably encountered an anime that just links to it. Ex: Action anime = DBZ Horror = Tokyo Ghoul, etc. What genre have you not experienced that yet?

Anon

This is probably where I admit that of the big 3 shounen titles, Bleach is the only one I’ve watched. I did try Naruto and One Piece but for various reasons just never got into them. Then again, it isn’t as though I haven’t watched plenty of other shounen titles and while some might be arguably more definitive of the genre than another, I don’t think it matters all that much.

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Even in the question examples, I found myself wondering whether I’d class Tokyo Ghoul as a horror. Certainly there are parts of the story that are horrific but I would watch that more for a dark action than the horror elements. For horror I’d turn to Shiki or Higurashi.

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That said, there are plenty of ‘big’ anime in various genres that I’ve just never gotten to. I still haven’t watched Spice and Wolf despite it being endlessly recommended, there are plenty of sport and harem anime I’ve never tried or gone near, and literally hundreds of comedy anime that I either never even started or didn’t watch all of it (Gintama comes to mind, though I did really enjoy season one, I felt one season was enough).

So pretty much I don’t really feel there are ‘definitive’ titles for genres, though there are very popular examples from the genre. Even then, there are always plenty of anime I haven’t watched despite how much anime I try to watch. That’s kind of what I like about it because there’s always something new to find and experience.

But I will throw this question over to the readers and see what they think. Please leave us a comment below.

As always, if you want to ask me a question please DM me on Twitter or complete the survey below.

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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Just a heads up that I’m running low on questions again so if there’s something you’ve been wanting to ask, take a minute to fill in the survey and I’ll happily take on your question. So far there have been only two questions I haven’t answered. The first was just someone being a troll for the sake of it so I just ignored the question. The second one asked me about my work in the real world and that’s one question I’m going to continue to avoid answering on my blog. Sorry, but I’ve just drawn a line on that one.

However, today’s question is kind of fun and I’m looking into getting into it.

What games have you been playing recently?

Anon

It’s actually been a fair while since I’ve discussed games on the blog at all. Part of that is because I haven’t really played anything new and part of that is because I have so much anime content there really just doesn’t seem to be a lot of time or room to write about gaming as well. Still, it isn’t as though I haven’t given some time to games recently.

Over the last couple of months I really got into Darkest Dungeon. I read a review of it on someone’s blog (and I cannot remember who it was) and it looked interesting so I marked it on steam for when it had a price drop. Naturally it soon did and I picked it up and decided to give it a go.

For a really simply concept it actually ended up being a lot of fun and I worked my way through to the end of the game on the easier setting. The last dungeon actually ended up being a bit of a disappointment given the second last dungeon took me ages to beat, but otherwise I had a great time with it. The music gets a little repetitive and the dialogue, which is pretty fun and quippy in a morbid kind of way in the beginning, also gets kind of samey by the end, but for the price it was an interesting game.

I remember how crushed I was when my first adventurer died. And then I had a whole party wipe-out. But I also remember how excited I felt the first time I actually took out the Shrieker before it flew away.

Anyway, I am going to try to beat the dungeon on a harder setting but not right now.

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I’ve also recently had a bit of a look back at Fallout Shelter. Now, I hit the maximum number of dwellers in my vault ages ago and just kind of stopped playing, but now I’ve decided I want to max out my dweller’s stats so I’m checking in on it periodically just to keep things rolling along and while my dwellers were a little unhappy about some of my renovations to their vault a few key evictions and then some pairing up of key dwellers later and I have a largely happy and functional vault.

I also want to unlock all the weapon recipes so we’ll see how that goes.

But that’s really it for me and gaming. I haven’t gotten into anything overly expansive or time heavy at the moment because I just don’t have time. Still, I think later this I’ll probably start looking for a serious RPG to get into because it has been awhile since I’ve really gotten sucked into a new world and I’m keen to get going again.

However, I’ll throw this over to the readers and ask you what games you’ve gotten into recently?

As always, if you want to ask me a question please DM me on Twitter or complete the survey below.

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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