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From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman (Katainaka no Ossan, Kensei ni Naru: Tada no Inaka no Kenjutsu Shihan Datta noni, Taisei Shita Deshitachi ga Ore o Hōttekurenai Ken) season 1

This was certainly a show.

Beryl is a teacher at a small-town sword dojo who is thrust into the spotlight by an ex-pupil, and comes to realize that all the people he's taught over the years have excelled far beyond anyone's expectations.

The first episode was intriguing, focusing more on a cast of characters around Beryl than making it a harem, for which I was appreciative. Ultimately, though, the cast turned out fine, with none having any strong personality traits to latch onto beyond surface-level. There was plot and things happened, as well.

I don't want to give the impression I hated this show, far from it. Watching the episodes was enjoyable the whole way through. But there's not a lot to latch onto, nothing that really connects me strongly with the characters or themes. Likewise I struggle to say anything negative, nothing was really terrible or brought the show down. The experience was like eating a loaf of bread. French bread, sure, but afterward it's just bread.

It's fine. I can recommend it to anyone who likes the "I can't believe it's not isekai" genre. But for anyone else I don't think it stands out all that much. Neither trash nor treasure.

There's going to be a season 2, and that's... fine. Whatever. If it gets bonkers and weird get back to me. Otherwise I don't want to watch anymore.

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Absolute Superman #7 quick thoughts

This is a very creepy version of Brainiac, and while I didn't enjoy reading it very much, it's captivating to watch this brainy maniac at work.

It was also surprising how much his themes tie back into Superman's origin and current arc, even as they're entirely disconnected from one another. The ideas of exploitation are fully-integrated into Brainiac's origin in the Absolute Universe, and it's a nice touch, all things considered.

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Ichi the Witch chapter 39 quick thoughts

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DNF: Poitionomics (Project DeBa24)

I have never really been one for cozy games. Sure, like everyone who ever owned a Nintendo DS, I played Nintendogs and Animal Crossing, and I played them for a fair amount. But when I bought Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time and Bowser's Inside Story, those cozy games fell by the wayside, and I haven't ever revisited them.

In Potionomics: you are Sylvia, a young witch whose uncle has just died, and left her his potions shop... as well as a considerable amount of debt to work off. Left with nothing but gumption, an owl who is more than he seems and a working - if run-down - shop, Sylvia must work hard to pay off the debt and make friends in a new town.

Like Stardew Valley before it, I played for about an hour and realized this wasn't going to be my kind of game. Anything that relies on self-motivation - your Outer Wildses and Skyrims and Animal Crossings - is going to be my kryptonite, and I won't be as invested in playing it. I need a goal, a reason to be doing this to keep going. Even Balatro, where watching number go up is big draw, becomes tedious after awhile, and I drop to just one game every so often because it gets to be too much. And don't get me started on roguelikes!

All this to say: I don't think I would enjoy what this game has to offer. But let me make some notes about that which I almost enjoyed.

The art style for this game is a fun one, a blend of Team Fortress 2 or Pixar movies, where characters are highly stylized and flexible. I met a few characters (Mint, Quinn, Just... Owl and the person to whom we owed our debt) and they all were designed to be fun and engaging, charming and bubbly. In fact, "bubbly" seems to be the operative word to describe this game: it's light and fun and doesn't want you to be too worked up about the debt.

I don't know if I didn't like the game's personality or I just didn't like the game. The art style is unique amongst other titles I've played, which draws me in, but something else repels me. I'm not sure if I need more grime under my fingernails or an environment to enjoy this art style more.

Time played: 84 minutes

Next game...?

Oh, that's everything. All of my backlog and all completed. Somehow I've added more items to my backlog (Date Everything! and Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore have somehow crept into there) but I think for now I'm done buying new games.

Besides... the family plan just started up. And now I have access to so many more titles. But I'm going to take it slow and play the games I want to.

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DSTLRY Impressions: The Missionary and Blasfamous

Some covers are just striking. They lead you to strange places and paths you would normally never walk, just to see what that was about.

I saw the cover of The Missionary and was intrigued by the smirking rapscallion on the cover. I had also never heard of DSTLRY before, and so I decided to take a look at what they were offering.

It didn't interest me all that much, but two titles drew my attention. I'll read and remark on Blasfamous first since it's completed.

Yes it was the boobs that drew my attention, don't get distracted now

Clelia (a real name that means "famous") is a popstar for the Order, the newest religious schism in Christianity, doing her best to follow God, save sinners, perform miracles, and maybe just send every soul who worships her to hell.

Say what?

There's a strong theme throughout here of worship, gods and celebrity. It's telling that the way the bad guys manipulate souls into hell is by using Christian Music, since combining the two creates a corruption that's powered by religion. I know I've seen a few Christian celebrities talk a big game about being pure and good, but actually have skeletons in their closet.

I don't think the rest of the book justifies that theme. It devolves very quickly into a heaven and hell fight once again, with an interesting quirk at the end that doesn't reinvent the wheel. It's a series where hell and what remains of heaven are both not particularly nice or even good, and I find those boring.

I don't hate it, but I don't like it very much.

Bryce Hunter is a good Mormon man, never drinks, lashes out or even swears. But after witnessing his wife of 16 years having an affair, he's done being nice. Meanwhile, Uvydus is a demon who's been mean and a liar for a long, long time. Perhaps it is time for him to be slightly better?

There is a strong sense of "divorced dad energy" to this comic at first blush. "No more Mr. Nice Guy" is a saying we all cringe at, imagining 13-year-old atheists and Discord sever moderators and incels. Teaming up with a demon screams Shadow the Hedgehog levels of edge and cynicism, and cheating on your terrible wife to be with someone from years ago has the same energy as getting a toupée and buying a convertible.

But... unfortunately, it is quite good. Nobody is quite so awful as might be expected from the premise; in fact, most people are fairly understandable in their motivations and beliefs, even those as strange as a rebel in hell, trying to overthrow Satan.

Even the main characters feel believable. Uvydus and Bryce are a play on the Venom/Eddie dynamic where both of them are a little bit nicer but also a little more insane. Uvydus genuinely wants (in appearance, at least) to help Bryce escape from under a layer of self-repression he's had his entire life, and Bryce wants to feel better about himself and his low self-esteem. Their relationship develops from there in a way that reminds me strongly and favorably of I Love You, Man.

The action's fun, the plot is fun, and while this seems to be a heaven and hell situation where both are jerks, they are jerks in distinct ways, which makes all the difference. This is a comic I want to follow, and although it has some troubled history by the looks of it, I will be standing by when it updates.

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Metamorpho: The Element Man

This series had a consistently-silly tone throughout and I am not sure how to feel about it.

The returning adventures of Metamorpho! Can the ever-changing man juggle his appearance, personal life, superhero life and pop stars?!

This book was a two-fold turn-off for me. I love the angst that comes with someone monstrous trying to remain human, something like the Thing or the Hulk, and usually Metamorpho is good for that kind of angst. But not so here: he's a Silver Age hero in full, jumping into action in the blink of an eye, dropping quips like it's nobody's business.

That's the other part that annoyed me: it's explicitly written in the style of older comics, cheese and all. I watched and enjoyed Batman: The Brave and the Bold, but even there the way Metamorpho came across annoyed me quite a bit. Put this guy front-and-center here once again, and you get something I'm not thrilled by.

But it was fun to talk about, at least. The things that happen and the way characters talk (and by God, the way they're drawn and move about!) is incredibly silly, and it feels like the sort of thing designed to be shared to point and laugh at it. I just don't personally think it's a good reading experience.

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Super Titles: Superman Unlimited #1 and Supergirl (2025) #1 quick thoughts

New titles? New opinions! Now let's get into it!

Dan Slott has a fairly polarizing reputation, in that he's fairly polarizing and it's fair that he's polarizing. You can't write Superior Spider-Man and not have some people raise some eyebrows, and Spider-Boy is just a powder keg waiting for ignition. But on the whole, I have found him to be a competent, occasionally-great writer, and I look forward to his work.

The first issue of Superman Unlimited has some problems (the art is hit-or-miss, often miss) but it's got heart. I think it has one of my favorite interactions between Superman and a civilian, just because it's something I've never thought of before.

Delightful. And the rest of the issue is interesting, in the way it upends the status quo, but we shall see where the rest of it goes.

Not sure how I feel about this one, yet. The tone is decidedly retro, with speech bubbles finally making a comeback, but methinks Supergirl thinks a little too much on the whole, and I could do with some streamlining on that front.

At the very least, it's fun and charming, and an imposter plot is always a fun ride. We'll see if I get off early.

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"The Solitary Cyclist"

A young woman named Violet Smith comes to Sherlock Holmes with some distressing problems: her employer keeps the company of a drunken rapscallion, and worse, a cyclist is following her from a great distance away.

Violet Smith is like Violet Hunter in a lot of ways; besides sharing a first name, they share a spirited and fierce self-advocation and narrative agency. It is just unfortunate that's the people she faces are a particularly vile brand of criminal, and she's not given as big a chance to shine.

This one also starts off innocuous but gets quite dangerous by the end. Sherlock Holmes is twice dismissive in this case - once about Violet'd situation, the next about Watson's methods - and this proves to be a flaw that almost causes the case to unravel. It is interesting to see him in a situation where he at first doesn't think anything is going on, but as the gravity of the situation sets in he steps up to take care of it.

There is a twist in this one, not the best in all of Doyle's bibliography, but sufficient enough to surprise. The perpetrators' ultimate goal is one that might be triggering for readers of the feminine persuasion, so let there be a trigger warning for abduction and forced marriage. I also don't know whether the treatment of Miss Smith is sexist or realistic; I think the story is good but I find the events uncomfortable. Do with that what you need.

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"The Dancing Men"

Another one of those "what seems innocent at first actually turns out to have sinister connotations" mysteries that Doyle and Holmes are both so fond of. A series of dancing men, would appears to be children's drawings, is causing no amount of endless stress to a man's newlywedded wife, and it is up to London's premiere consulting detective to determine what they mean.

I would call this one solid. It has a nonchalant introduction that ramps up into something tragic, an explanation that makes perfect sense, and a methodology that proves Sherlock Holmes is quite genius. I think for the novelty alone of Sherlock Holmes being a code breaker, I would recommend that you read it, but amongst the other mysteries I think it pales in comparison to some of the good twists out there.

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Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

The most impossible Mission: Impossible mission movie of all time. The movie itself is... good enough.

Coming off the cliffhanger from the last movie, Ethan Hunt and his IMF team are scrambling to find the key to disabling the Entity. Meanwhile, the nuclear powers are at the controls, wondering if they'll be the one to launch the first strike into armageddon, wondering if they can trust Hunt to save them one last time.

The story is not really there to speak of. Most of it consists of Ethan and company traveling from A to B to get thing C after a great deal of trouble. The plans in this one are the most straightforward of any Mission: Impossible plans so far, and most of them go off with the usual expected hitches.

What I don't like about these movies is the greater focus on Ethan Hunt as God's Specialist Boy™ and the Chosen One. A lot of this movie is made of Ethan's destiny, how he was meant to do this, something I don't think is particularly warranted in a series based on working hard to overcome. Not that Ethan doesn't, but I think his idea of destiny is that it's horseshit.

There's also a focus on comedy that falls flat too often in this movie. I did chuckle on occasion but more often I was stone-faced when something "humorous" happened. Tom's comedy bits fell through more than any others, however, and Simon Pegg's were nailed every time.

But there's not only bad and mediocre in this movie. The stunts are once again quite breathtaking, though they've become by-the-numbers in this movie. There's a scene in a submarine that is striking and tense, but the climax of the movie on Ethan's side leaves a lot to be desired. In total, it's a Mission: Impossible movie, and the stunts deliver. It's the perfect movie to take your dad to on Fathers' Day (Hi dad! I had fun at the IMAX theater!).

And finally, I think this movie's greatest strength is its greatest failing: Ethan is surrounded by interesting characters doing interesting things, but they are often not allowed to do so to allow IMF to do their thing. A president struggling with what may be the end of the world? Security secretaries, suggesting a heinous action to save everyone? A researcher in the arctic who has had a finger on the pulse of the black box operations since the beginning? All of these people were fascinating to watch, and even when we didn't get a lot out of them, they were memorable and engaging.

Alas, these movies must center on Ethan Hunt, by their very nature. And in this movie all the other members do get a chance to do something cool; I will refrain from spoilers so you can go in blind, but suffice to say I was happy to see them all get a chance to shine.

Should you watch it? Sure. If you've seen and enjoyed the other movies you'll probably enjoy this one. But I don't think it's a shining example of what the franchise is capable of, and if we want to have that, I think we need to focus more on the surrounding cast than Ethan Hunt himself.

(also side note: was I crazy or did Paris and Benji have some solid chemistry? Both me and my sibling noticed it during the hacking scene in the vault, and personally though I am only lightly a shipper I would ship that pairing. That's what I mean when I say there should be more of a focus on the greater circle of characters: there's potential there that could be tapped into)

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DNF: Claw of the Conciliator (Shadow and Claw and Book of the New Sun as a whole)

I think I just don't get it.

After an unexplained survival from the end of the last book, our "hero" Severian continues on his journey through a world with a dying sun.

It's becoming very apparent that this is the kind of book you read with your eyes wide open. The kind that has a lot to analyze, a lot to question, and a lot to ponder as we follow the story of this unreliable narrator. The kind of book that I hate reading.

Well, that's not entirely true. I do like me a good unreliable narrator on occasion, but almost the entirety of this book is designed to confuse, confound, and mislead. It makes the experience of actually reading it quite difficult.

These books are a classic for a reason, but it feels like a challenge to pick them apart and find the actual themes. I'm much more casual about this kind of thing, so I won't enjoy reading the series. I saw it described as a Sci-Fi setting using the vocabulary of mid to high fantasy, and that feels entirely appropriate. If you like having your mind messed with, this is the series to get into. Just know that I can get quite heavy at times.

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Black Canary: Best of the Best

Ladies and gentlemen and those unaffiliated, get ready for the match of the century! In this corner, the reigning champion of hand-to-hand combat, the woman who has made her body into a weapon: Lady Shiva! And in this corner, the dark horse in this match-up, the scream queen to end all scream queens: Black Canary!

Six issues, six rounds. Seven-to-one odds. Can Black Canary make it? And why is she even doing this to herself?!

Could it be... for love? Or something more complicated?

Chalk this one up to another good Tom King story. Not great (I wouldn't put it up there with Vision) but competent, drilling down into a character who hasn't got as much spotlight and what makes them tick. In this case, Dinah Lance.

I was skeptical, at first, that such a match-up would be in any way even, and it's really not, but it is more interesting than just a one-sided beat-down. There's a part in this nonlinear story that goes into the training that Dinah has to go through to get on a level where she can challenge Shiva, but we also cut back and forth to her mother, for whom she is doing this whole stupid thing and with whom she has a lot of complicated feelings. The fight itself is the culmination of a lifetime of the life Dinah has lived in her mother's shadow, training and fighting and getting back up when it hurts.

I don't think I'd point to any of the points in this series and say "That was great" but it was consistently good. The fight itself told over six rounds has its own twists and turns that show Dinah climbing the almost-insurmountable odds bit-by-bit, sometimes hanging on by just a fingernail, to prove that she may yet be able to defeat her opponent. Maybe.

I quite enjoyed it. I get the feeling that reading it all at once would be a more cohesive and understandable story, since reading month-to-month makes things more difficult with all the flashbacks and cutaways, but I am not sure at this time I want to read it again.

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Logan the Wolf

There's an art to writing a good Wolverine fight. The balance between knowing he's not going to die but still not being completely invincible, and the animalistic violence he inflict all make for a good time.

In that respect, Logan the Wolf is fantastic. The choreography is great, showing a version of Logan during the Viking Age, when his violence may not have set him apart. There's a few moments during this film where I went "Wait that was so cool" and had to scrub back through to get a clear view of what had happened. It's fast but smart, which make for an entertaining view.

The acting is not very good, though it is only a small part. I get the people making this are stunt actors and in that respect they have done absolutely phenomenal work, but I think some of their line reads could have had a second take with just a little clearer diction.

Ah, but I cannot nitpick too much. This is free on YouTube and it's a love letter to Vikings and Wolverine. Give it a watch, it's only 12 minutes, and if you like Wolverine it'll make your day.

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Green Arrow (2023) #24 quick thoughts (no spoilers)

The story arc Ollie has been in recently has had him more reactive than usual, but I liked the way he acted in the end and how even though he caught the bad guy last issue, there was more work to be done. There's a monologue in her to Benítez, especially that feels like it understands Ollie's character perfectly.

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How a Game Lives (book review)

(Disclaimer: above is not the book I received. I don't want pictures of me on the internet so this is what you get)

I ordered this book back in 2024, just before I moved, so I thought "Well let me just put in the new address". I didn't think I would be so settled by the time it came here, but I was glad to wait.

First, some notes: the book is hefty. The thing is big and weighty. It's the perfect book to put on a hope chest in the living room and let someone discover it.

The materials for the book isn't quite what I'd wish for. It's some pretty thick paper so the ink doesn't run, but I would've preferred it was glossier for a better textural experience.

Finally, the book stands on its own as an art piece, even the default edition that I got. It's striking and can stand out when facing forwards, but can also belong quite easily on a regular shelf.

I'm very happy with the result. I love Jacob Geller's essays and I'm thankful I can own some physical manifestation of them. Here's hoping to many more in the future.

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Two-Face

I am not certain about this book. It is self-contained and everything set up pays off, but my feelings on it still need to be sorted out. I suppose it's a book that makes you believe crime could be changed for the better, and that it is a tragedy takes away the dream for cold hard reality.

Harvey Dent is back as an attorney. His other half has been locked away in his head while he brings a measure of order to organized crime, but things gradually start to unravel as the show he puts on turns into a farce.

I don't especially like the idea that nothing can change in Gotham, just repeat. That's not really what Batman stands for as a hero. And the portrayal of mental illness is... interesting. I don't know if I like it right now.

But there's a lot to like about this book. Harvey Dent being his own antagonist brings an air of unavoidable conflict to the story, and the disillusionment from his new assistant matches that the reader feels. Not to mention there's multiple twists that feel like they're pulled off well, and it's a book that reminds you that both halves of Two-Face have great capacity, one for good, one for evil.

It's a very thematically-rich book. Enjoyable? I don't know. I feel like I need to read it again to get everything laid out: reading it month-to-month you forget some things. And it's an easy book to recommend to people, if only to get their take on it. There's just something missing in it for me, something I can't lay my finger on at this time. I know I would have liked to have seen Harvey as an actual attorney for crime for longer, as this isn't really the bulk of the series, but I can't really hold that against it because it was trying to do something else.

It feels like the kind of series you need to read with a friend so you can argue about it. Give it a read, then come back and tell me I'm wrong. I dare you.

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Ms. Marvel (2014)

I never read Ramona as a kid (I read Ribsy in the same universe) but I remember distinctly listening to one chapter where Romana is drawing an owl, and then to her horror discovers that the girl sitting next to her was copying her own owl, and because of the order of things the copycat would go first and so Ramona would look like the copycat and everything was just awful and-

It takes a special kind of skill to understand the heart of a child. "How do you do, fellow kids" is a meme because as adults we put those things behind us to become other people. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways." (1 Corinthians 13:11) We lose sight of the things that mattered to us before we learned to prioritize; we forget the time when everything matters, and everything is important.

Kamala is one of the best-written teenagers I've seen in fiction. Even though she gets superpowers and she has that kind of drama happen to her, the story is grounded in the community that surrounds her and the things she wants and thinks she wants. Boyfriend troubles and someone called the Inventor are equally-big problems to deal with. Her family is grounding her, which means she can't hang out with Lockjaw, the teleporting dog from the Inhumans. It's all emotion, all the time.

I had heard about this comic before, but I'd never had the opportunity to sit down and read it. In 2014-2015, when I got into comics, I was still pretty conservative and Islamophobic, not ready to accept Kamala as a character. But recently, a friend of mine recommended it to me. He grew up Jewish but connected strongly with Kamala's hybrid Pakistani-American culture and strict, religious family. I can't deny I can see a lot of the same things from my own background, though obviously growing up Evangelical in America is like getting a tan in Texas: it's not all that special. But all of that wouldn't be nearly so good if every single character in this book weren't wholly unique and rounded.

It is just... it's so fucking good. It's one of if not the best street-level superhero comic out there, grounded firmly in a culture and vibe specific to Jersey. It's about community, friendship, love and sacrifice and I was hooked from the beginning. Even the stuff that's weird or off-kilter I can't really fault because it leads into something better.

I was so hooked, I forgot this was in 2015, when Secret Wars happened. I remember reading Silk and having it end abruptly due to the incursions. I didn't expect a repeat to happen here.

The last four issues are some of the most emotional story beats I've ever read. Kamala is told outright by (light spoilers!) Captain Marvel that the world is going to end, and there's not a lot they can do about it. She then has to figure out what to do with the time remaining.

It's... it was hard to watch. I get misty-eyed thinking about it, and it chokes me up, to see people struggle to get by in the face of eternity. I don't know what I would do; I would hope I would be brave, strong, maybe even steady for someone to lean on. But the community rallies around Kamala and her family, and in the end they spend the last days of the old universe together in a dance party. I knew it wasn't going to be the end, but as an ending it was powerful.

So yeah. It's better than you've heard. It's perfectly understandable why Ms. Marvel has remained in the zeitgeist all this time, and even in future adventures where she's a shadow of the complicated, realized person she is here, she's still a cut above most other characters. I am definitely going to follow wherever she goes; it's the kind of book that makes me doubt I could ever make anything as good, but if there's one thing it taught me, it's that we should always try.