Hey everybody! I spent most of this month either swamped by moving boxes, or lying in a cold-medicine-addled delirium with the Mii creation screen music on loop in my head, or both. But I got some writing out there in the world, read a lot of enlightening reviews, and listened to an ace podcast I want to tell you all about:
Here on the Blog:
Overthinking Bargain Books: Hold Me Closer, Necromancer (It wasn’t bad, it just… I mean… it sure was something, but it wasn’t good)
Oxenfree vs Until Dawn, the Cage Fight (in which I compare the very different styles of two very different spooky games, and celebrate how they manage to be frightening in their own way)
On Lady Geek Girl and Friends:
Trailer Tuesdays: Life is Strange: Before the Storm (there’s an uncomfortable amount of colons in that article title, but there’s unfortunately nothing I can do about it. In any case, woo! Chloe prequel!)
Throwback Thursdays: Black Butler’s “Jack the Ripper” Arc (oh, Kuroshitsuji, my original Problematique Fave)
Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions: A Silly Yet Heartbreaking Story About the Power of Geekdom (this is actually the second time I’ve watched this series; I wanted to see if it punched me in the heart as much as it did circa 2013. Spoiler alert: it did)
Good Words:
The summer anime season threw its premieres at the world this month, which means the blogosphere was awash with the joys and horrors of reviewing them. Vrai and Dee were at the helm of AniFem’s first impression posts, which was a delightfully entertaining time. Except for the fact that a significant number of the most promising titles are on Amazon Strike: a service whose clunkiness and grabby-handedness with big series could perhaps be forgiven if it didn’t lock all its content behind a double paywall that only Americans can use.
To add insult to injury, even Fate/Apocrypha, which dangled the exciting premise of a Fate thing I’m not already invested in in front of me, got eaten by Netflix and so I won’t be able to access it until they dump the whole completed series on there in November or so. Frog-kun says it’s pretty alright though, so I look forward to sitting down and bingeing that nonsense when it arrives. Oh, how quickly I became an entitled child of technology, simply expecting everything to be easily streamable…
In any case, Atelier Emily is doing a series of great meta posts on Made in Abyss, so at least we (read: me) can soak those up even if we (read: me) can’t watch the show itself! And if you can’t ride the wave of whatever international licensing sorcery Madman performed to get their hands on Princess Principal when it seems to be locked in Strike for the US, The Backloggers are reviewing it episode by episode.
PriPri ranked very highly in Dee and Vrai’s reviews, which is great, since it looks to be the gem of the season for me–singing its siren song of crime-fighting teenaged girls, lush steampunk aesthetics, science-magic, and Baccano!-esque car chases and shadowy intrigue set to jazz (composed by Kajiura Yuki, no less!). Combine this with the anachronistic but oh-so-stylish character designs and it hits a certain Cool Factor that has my inner sixteen-year-old self sitting up and taking note. Watch this space for some potential posts on the subject…
For some less contemporary anime, er, fun, Watson and Artemis have bravely teamed up to review series voted Worst Anime of All Time to see if they really are The Worst. The brave souls.
Good Sounds:
So, a bountiful combination of having no internet and having to do lots of driving/menial tasks created a perfect catalyst in which I somehow listened to approximately 22 hours of CoolGames Inc this month. It’s a funny and creative hypothetical game design podcast, in which Griffin McElroy (my God, those boys are everywhere, and they haven’t disappointed me yet) and Nick Robinson receive prompts and suggestions for video games from Twitter, and work the best ones into hilarious and wonderful product ideas.
For a taste of their creative potential, I recommend checking out episode five, in which they conceptualise an edible, 3D-printed, randomly-generated game controller:
And for a taste of their goofy potential, I recommend episode thirteen, which features a lengthy discussion of guns that shoot salt, improvised Oompa Loompa songs, bartenders looking for love, and Griffin explaining how you can clip through to another plane of reality if you take sleep meds and anti-sleep meds at the same time:
That’s about it from me for now, gang. I’ve got another Adventures in Asian Drama post coming next month, a book review (I’m reading again! My God!) and hopefully another AniFem piece in the pipeline. Plus a creative thesis to finish and some IKEA shelves to assemble.
Thank you for reading, as always. Stay hydrated!
The Afictionado 
Gosh, that “Really? That Bad?” for Handshakers so was cathartic to read. I have never noped so hard out of a show so quickly.
Also, loved your Chunibyo article. Helped me to gain a more positive perspective on a incredibly cringe-worthy time in my life that most days is buried deep in the pits of my subconscious. 😛
Chunibyo is a good show that way–it really hit the nail on the head portraying those feelings, both the intense geeky joy and the intense cringeyness that comes after. I think both those things have an expiration date though. Like, you’re much more likely to be embarrassed by your 13-year-old self at age 14 than you are at age 24. Once you move out of that bubble I feel like you get more zen about it, if only from perspective and/or the acceptance that you’ll always be a bit of a nerd so you may as well embrace it 😛