#115 - Well Into Summer

 Hello everybody!

The Suits didn't show up yet, which a positive thing. So, what have I been up to?

I was physically and mentally unwell for a few weeks. I was expecting a doom that did not yet happen. After a few more weeks of nothing happening, I realized that I didn't need to be so dang depressed and drown out my problems with anime. Just this week I declared that things are back to normal. So... what all did I do? I actually marked off a lot of things from my to-do list. Here's a quote from the list:

• Gurren Lagann the Movie: Childhood's End -6/17/23
• Gurren Lagann the Movie: The Lights in the Sky Are Stars -6/17/23
• 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams -6/17/23
• Phantom of the Idol -6/21/23
• Dragon Goes House-Hunting -6/21/23
• Photo Kano -6/22/23
• Blood: The Last Vampire -6/23/23
• Howl's Moving Castle (Movie) -6/25/23
• Blood+ -6/27/23
• Birdie Wing Season 2 -6/27/23
• Blood-C -6/28/23
• Blood-C: None-None Gekijou -6/28/23
• Blood-C: The Last Dark -6/28/23
• Appleseed (2004) -7/5/23
• Appleseed Ex Machina -7/5/23
• Heya Camp Episode 0 -7/6/23
• Heya Camp -7/6/23
• Heya Camp: Sauna to Gohan to Sanrin Bike -7/6/23
• Yuru Camp Season 2 -7/6/23
• Yuru Camp Season 2 Specials -7/6/23
• Onimai: I'm Now Your Sister! -7/7/23
• Ya Boy Kongming! -7/8/23
• Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie -7/10/23
• Bocchi the Rock! -7/11/23
• Patema Inverted (ONA) -7/12/23
• Patema Inverted (Movie) -7/12/23
• Ride Your Wave -7/14/23
• Garden of Words -7/17/23
• My Girlfriend is a Gal -7/19/23
• My Girlfriend is a Gal: My First Cultural Festival -7/19/23
• Miss Caretaker of Sunohara-sou -7/19/23
• Guilty Crown -7/20/23
• Domestic Girlfriend -7/21/23
• Weathering With You -7/22/23
• 5 Centimeters Per Second -7/23/23
• I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level -7/24/23
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Book) -7/25/23
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach - Ruin (Normal Ending) -7/27/23

As you can see, I completed a lot of anime and a few other things. I am now on the second Hitchhiker's Guide book. I started FNaF Ruin on the 25th (because it was released at midnight that night) and completed it today. I must say, it is quite interesting.

I considered not sharing about all the anime I watched, but I decided on saying something after all. That will make this the longest post to date. >:3

• The Gurren Lagann movies were pretty good. I liked the ending more than the series. I just wish it was dubbed liked the series was though. :/ Maybe they couldn't get the voice actors back. One day I'll pick up the Blu-ray boxset that has the series and movies.
• 100 Sleeping Princes had an alright story, but the execution was pretty poor.
• Phantom of the Idol had a really interesting start... but that quickly diminished.
• Dragon Goes House-Hunting was funny all the way though. I highly recommend it.
• Photo Kano had fanservice going for it. But other than that, it was alright with the romance and characters. I did enjoy it enough though.
• Blood: The Last Vampire was a good movie but I think I would appreciate it more if the art style wasn't so realistic. Being all digital and from 2000, the lines are also thick because of the low-res screens they were working with back then. If the lines were thinner it'd be easier to watch.
• Howl's Moving Castle is a great movie. Plenty more praise can be found online.
• Blood+ was a very good story. And at 50 episodes, there is quite a lot to enjoy. It did get a little backstory-heavy at the end though. I recommend if you can sit through a 50-episode series.
• Birdie Wing S2 was enjoyable, but not as much as the first season. They focused more on backstories this time and things felt a little repetitive at the end. However, the last episode also was rushed and would have made a more lasting impact if dragged out. I wish it was 13 episodes instead of only 12.
• Blood-C did not hold up to the quality that the prior series and movie had. The very last episode also felt rushed and I wish there was another episode. It did have its sequel movie that was closer to that of prior Blood entries, but it lacked aa big climax.
• The Appleseed movie from 2004 and its sequel were pretty interesting. I liked the art style of the first one though as opposed to the realism they wanted in the sequel.
• Heya Camp was a fun addition to Yuru Camp. Yuru Camp is also the chillest anime you will ever come across. I can't describe the feeling of just wanting to lay your head back and let it play... Except only the first season is currently dubbed and I saw it back before that point. -_-
• Onimai was enjoyable, but an adult man being inside a middle school girl's body is more of a problem than what the series portrayed it as.
• Ya Boy Kongming had such a great start. It was phenomenal for the first few episodes but then it became kind of dull by the end. I enjoyed it still and do recommend it. The English VA for the main girl is also the same VA as Kurumi from School-Live, which is my favorite anime. That brings me happiness. :3
• Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie was only enjoyable because of the stories I made up in my head. Shikimori is secretly an alien. That is how she was such a ninja in the first couple of episodes. The main guy is the target she was sent to keep track of. Why else would she bother with someone pathetic like him. And then there's Shikimori's rival who came from the same planet. Conflict arises because they both are after the main guy. As you can see, I am really bad with names. Any character with more than 2 Kana in a name, I will forget.
• Bocchi the Rock was alright. Bocchi was such a relatable character that it hurt. She's a much more extreme version of me though. Maybe because there's only one season of it right now, but honestly, I think I like K-On more for a high school music club.
• Patema Inverted got me hooked very quickly. The ONA was great. Unfortunately, the four ONAs (plus a prologue) make up the first third of the movie. The movie was still great though. I really want it on Blu-ray. I highly recommend it, but only the movie. You are not missing anything within the ONAs.
• Ride Your Wave was alright, but I lacked the ability to connect with the characters.
• Garden of Words started out pretty straightforward... but oh man the last part of it got me. I recommend it as a sort of extra beginning to Your Name. I rewatched it again after the Garden of Words. I definitely recommend it as well.
• My Girlfriend is a Gal provided plenty of fanservice... but I really don't remember much from it. It was eh, I guess.
• Miss Caretaker was pretty interesting. I liked the premise and the characters. I might recommend it if you are cool with more fanservice.
• Guilty Crown was good. I would probably call it great if I could understand it more. I liked the first part of the series which was more episodic in style, and I also really liked the big scenario shift (no spoilers here). The ending was a little... Is that it? Huh. Alright. I recommend watching if you want to use your brain to draw your own conclusions.
• I was hoping Domestic Girlfriend to be more enjoyable, but it was a lot of depresso. It was alright.
• Weathering With You continues on from Garden of Words and Your Name. :0 I liked the setup and characters and whatnot, but in the end, it didn't feel as big of an impact as Your Name was. I did enjoy and recommend it, so long as you continue in the movie release order starting with Garden. In fact, Suzume is after Weathering. But... I have yet to watch it. :/
• 5 Centimeters Per Second is kind of early on in regards to the Your Name Cinematic Universe, but it really doesn't hold much weight. You'd have to do some mental gymnastics to make the connections. Stuff before Garden is really only nodded at and not really canon events. Anyway, 5cm/s as its own movie is kind of interesting, but it's not really satisfying. It presents some ideas and doesn't really go anyway with them.
• Killing Slimes for 300 Years was pretty interesting and I enjoyed it. But, it was alright. It kind of reminded me of RPG Real Estate.

My goshness, it's Joever. I had much to say just about the anime I've recently watched. I was planning on watching another anime movie... but that was an hour ago. And I still have much more to say.

A little while back I put the first 180 songs from Gaming Mix on a single CD. It had to be saved as a Data CD in order to fit the 12+ hours onto a single disc. I then planned on having another 521 songs of Gaming Mix on a single Data DVD (because that's how much could fit) but that almost worked. My DVD player is too old and can't read Data DVDs, only Data CDs. -_- I tried multiple tactics, but what I finally settled on was just make a menu for the 500 decided-upon songs split across two DVDs with the regular DVD format.

I actually completed the first one with only one easily-correctable error. So far, I need to re-render the ISO and then burn it to a disc. I won't do that until I finish the second one though. Oh man, it was pretty tedious doing something 241 times. I am not looking forward to making 259 more menus. It's split that way based on file size and not the length of music. Despite Disc 1 having fewer songs and an over an hour less of music, the file size for Disc 2 is significantly shorter. My current predictions point it to being about a whole gigabyte smaller. Anyway, slowly getting to the near-23 hours of music on Disc 1 took a while, but it was nice to go through a big chunk of Gaming Mix again. That is what I had has background noise before binging anime as background noise.

I'm streaming again, Minecraft VR Experiment. I also acquired a new helper for my Megurigoaka Minecraft Map, so some progress has been made there. I recently cracked down on the Population: Xelanater world. I spent a lot of time over the past few weeks while I binged anime for 10-12 hours a day. That was during the two weeks I wasn't streaming. Since I started streaming again, I haven't been on there much. I have very vivid images of the series (not movies I watched) from My Girlfriend through Domestic Girlfriend while on the world. I set up an outpost in a dark forest, cleaned up a stronghold, did some work around town, and did a few other things while those series played in the background. The music from Gaming Mix I had playing early on during my time there was not as memorable.

I've kind of been getting out more, other than church on Sundays. On the Fourth of July, I went to a friend's house to watch fireworks. On July 16th (the Sunday before last) I went on a short hike to a creek with a close acquaintance, her boyfriend, and one of her friends. I still message my acquaintance nearly every day... Anyway, at first we had to collect everybody. My RCA's [Really Close Acquaintance] boyfriend was driving his truck. He picked her up, then me, then my RCA's other friend. From there, it was a short drive up the mountain. We arrived at the start of the short hike and trekked forward. For my RCA's friend, it was a bit of a struggle. She was tired from walking up the slope.

Toward the end of the hike was a rough area of rocks and sand, for when the creek was full of water and it became a big river. For part of getting to the water, I held my RCA's friend's hand to keep her steady. +1 Point for me, tee-hee. At the creek was pretty chill though. Then at the start of the hike back, I got to hold onto her hand again, for a lengthy amount of time. Yeah, another point of positivity for me. After the drive back down the mountain, we visited a park and relaxed a bit. After that was the pool at the apartment complex where my RCA's friend lives. On the ride back, I delivered one of my four water bottles to her. 3 Points of positive encounters? Man, I was on a roll that day.

I gave my RCA my towel because she did not have one. She along with her boyfriend and friend went swimming while I laid down on one of the reclined poolside rubber-strapped chairs. I was tired and considered falling asleep. At the end of the day, we dropped off my RCA's friend, because we were right at the apartment complex. :P It'd be cool to see her again, but my RCA is not doing well since her recent ex is already dating someone else, so I don't know when we'll all hang out again. I was dropped off next and my RCA returned my towel. That was an enjoyable Sunday.

This past Saturday was a church beach day. At first, we ended up at the wrong beach. An hour later we were at the right one but drove around the area looking for parking. After another hour we finally made it there. I mostly read Hitchhiker's Guide while at the beach. There were some Black Forest Juicy Burst Mixed Fruit snacks. Oh man, those were great. I still have one package left. We stuck around for a few hours then went home. There were no problems after that. And now for next week Saturday, I plan on going to the beach with the college-age group again. Last time it was us + whoever else from the church, this time it will be us + a bunch more college-age groups.

Just this past Tuesday, the 25th, I accompanied my cousin, her boyfriend, my sister, and her boyfriend at my sister's house for a game night. Sure, I was the 5th wheel but whatever. I got used to that in high school. We played Spicy Uno, Carcassonne (the board game), and Titanic. Yes, I took a picture of the Titanic board once it was set up and almost posted it to Twitter because of the recent events with the Titan sub. Next time, whenever that is, we are likely to play Back to the Future, Mexican Train, and/or Risk: Transformers Edition.

There has been a person who noticed my absence from Discord. I'll nickname her... Cassie for these posts. She likes Five Nights at Freddy's and since Ruin just dropped, I might as well. Anyway, a few days before I was expecting bad things to happen to me, I went into Invisible mode on Discord and started an experiment of who would notice first. It took 10 days before a message showed up from someone unexpected. Cassie dropped in to see how I was doing and hoped everything was OK.

Who is Cassie? She is one of the people who attempted to end her life a couple of months ago, during the same time that three others did as well. We had several direct conversations since then and I was invited into a once-private-now-public Discord server that she started. Anyway, I only shared a little bit about I was unwell at the time. She dropped in again a few days later, sharing about how I was granted a moderation position on the server (because it went public and so she needed some help). After I was feeling better, I sent her a positive message. And when I made a mini-announcement in Milli's server about being better, Cassie was the one who had such a positive reaction as well.

Where am I getting at with this? Honestly, it's just a personal confidence boost that I (probably) needed. Cassie appeared to be concerned with my condition and also joyous about my recovery. I've shared before, I think, about how it doesn't feel like many people appreciate me being around despite knowing that I am still here to help out the people I know. But these recent interactions with Cassie brought me a certain level of happiness. There is at least one person who would be sad if I disappeared quietly like what I suspect of the Suits. I am glad she is still here today.

On a lighter note, the Pavlov engine upgrade happened recently. Yeah, I am sad about the old maps not being compatible, but I am looking forward to all the new stuff that will be made. I also played a fair amount of Sven Co-op not too long ago, but since my installation is 27 GB because of all the custom weapons, skins, and maps I don't keep it installed very long. I moved it off of my SSD again because of FNaF Security Breach taking up 88 GB after Ruin was added.

I've been jumping around a bit, adding new details that came to mind in various places. So... what else do I have to say after 2 hours straight of writing? I'm hoping Saturday the 5th's beach day goes well. I need more sun and I bet it is good for me to get out more. I also got back to emailing Lura. She's in Albania for a few weeks and will be sharing pictures of what's there. :3 SunnySide Magic High was renamed to Sunnyside Magic High. Oh wait, that's old news. It is now named S-Rock.

Well... kind of. It's actually Sunnyside: Royals of Cora [S:ROC] but I make the joke of calling it S-Rock. The main thing I wanted to share is they started an IndieGoGo On June 6th. This might be old news, but I'm still sharing the full thing now.  That didn't last long before renaming the series and then putting it on Kickstarter instead. It was a 45-day campaign and with only three days to go, it is only 20% of the way funded. Truth be told, I am expecting the Kickstarter to fail.

I'm not totally pessimistic though. From what it seems like if the Kickstarted doesn't hit the nearly $6900 USD (I kid you not) then another plan to raise the money will be put in action. It is looking like either Patreon or Ko-Fi are the candidates. Since that is likely to take many more months, I do not know what the plan is as of now. It would be great if it succeeds though. There is good potential for the series to be something far greater than the Minecraft roleplay series it once was. It also has the potential to be greater than the scripted, animatic series that I greatly enjoyed. But... I'll be the judge for that last goal...

And now, I think I shared all the important stuff. over the past month+. What did I do today specifically? I missed my stream on Tuesday because of the game night, so I did an early stream yesterday hoping to get two done in a day. Being the procrastinator I am, today was the day I actually did two streams. Other than that, I read more of Restaurant at the End of the Universe and finally completed Doom Eternal on my Switch. Ancient Gods Part 1 was started as well. As I mentioned earlier, I also completed the standard ending for FNaF Security Breach - Ruin. I'll start going for the other endings later. I may need to wait a bit until there are guides for help though- the game is only three days old.

Two and a half hours later, I am satisfied with what I had to say. I feel a lot better about getting all of this caught up. Hopefully, there are no typos because I am too tired to read. I'm absolutely going to bed after I post this.

Remember how I keep saying I talk a lot about the things I like? I hope you have not forgotten. ;) Thank you all for reading. Bye!