bonutzuu

My Anime/Manga of 2021

I lived the NEET life for a few months this year and watched/read so many things. This post will contain everything I’ve started/finished this year.

Note; this post is very long.

Anime

I looked through my list and realized that even if it’s a year with lockdowns, I barely have any titles to add here. So this year I will do something different and just comment on everything I started/finished this year.

Here goes!

Norn9 Vars Common Mobile – first impression review

I will do a review on the Norn9 mobile free version, since the full version is not available in my region.

Norn9 is an otome game that follows a bunch of teenagers with supernatural abilities as they journey across the globe in a mysterious flying ark in order to reach ‘The World’, a peacekeeping organization with unknown goals. The World’s existence is top secret, so naturally, these teenagers’ journey has to be strictly confidential… however, the crew soon realized they have two more people than they were supposed to be carrying (not including Sorata), and because of that, there may be enemies among their ranks.

Which one of them are actually fakes who snuck on board?

Back in 2016, I wrote a review for the Norn9 anime (which is this one). I think many of the comments I wrote there still holds for the game.

Bye, King’s Raid – just another King’s Raid post

So I’ve decided to leave a game I’ve been playing for 5 years. What happened?

It’s normal to grow sick of a game, but after staying with it for so long, that game becomes a habit and a part of life. It becomes harder to quit after investing so much of your time (and perhaps money) into the game.

But I feel like after so long, my love for this game has died out completely. The only thing stopping me from quitting for the longest time was my weekly guild raid runs, and even that felt really tedious. I’m no longer excited for new content or balance patches that the players have been asking for since forever. I wrote a lot of guides for the game, including beginner’s guide, content guide, and all heroes overview, and one day I just don’t feel like updating them with new info anymore.

For a while I’ve felt like the first line of QUEEN BEE’s Kaen, Dororo‘s opening theme. ‘Party is over, but I still want to dance.’ The party is King’s Raid.

It’s not the lack of new content or the lack of communication between Vespa and the players, it’s just that I’m so tired with the game’s instability and repetitiveness, and trying to keep up with the META that changes with every patch (most of them are new heroes that old players like me haven’t saved enough resources to build lol). I haven’t built half of the heroes I wanted to build, but I don’t feel like it anymore when I know that the heroes I built will probably be useless.

King’s Raid was ‘a game you play with love’, as they like to advertise themselves back during the open beta in 2016. The Vespa staff on the Thai side were super friendly and engaging with the player community. This died out when King’s Raid expanded (the staff were replaced by bots), and died completely when JP server launched. Events after that just became ‘for JP whales’ and the other servers were pretty much just secondary. This is completely normal, you treat people with money better, sure, but at least don’t trigger the Korean players’ rage so much… (Notably the fanart and hero design contests. Vespa never had another one because almost every entry that made it past the first round were JP, only one from TW/HK server I think? It’s okay if the quality of the work was actually superior but I feel that there were so many good works from other servers that just flew under the radar)

Yuureitou – bonutzuu’s manga archive

Two years ago, an old woman was tied to the hands of a clock tower, and her body broke when the clock struck twelve. The culprit, her adopted daughter, committed suicide afterwards. The clock tower became known as the ‘ghost tower’ haunted by something… or someone.

Amano Taichi was an unemployed man about to be chased out by his landlady. While on a job hunt to earn his rent, he ran into a mysterious person ‘Tetsuo’ who told him about a treasure hidden somewhere within the ghost tower. Taichi paid the tower a visit only to find himself knocked unconscious and tied to the face of the clock, similar to the old woman. Before he was brutally murdered, Tetsuo rescued him, and so together they tried to uncover the truth behind the murder two years ago.

Yuureitou is not a manga I’d normally read, but hey it was on sale (149 baht for 9 volumes, that’s about 0.50 USD per volume). The manga was printed with thick eye care paper and ink that doesn’t smudge, so it was a mighty good deal for a manga this good.

Lu Xiaofeng and the Craft of Character

Lu Xiaofeng has four eyebrows. He is known throughout the land as the man with four eyebrows. When people hear his name, they either shrink in fear or rush to see whether he really has four eyebrows,

That’s how we were introduced to Lu Xiaofeng, the wuxia equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. And this is a good tip on how to make a character memorable: give them special traits that both pique the reader’s interest and make them memorable.

In this post, I will attempt to break down the components that make Lu Xiaofeng so iconic that my dad, at 50 years after reading the novels, still remember who he is. Despite not being a qualified writer, I will try to summarize some characterization tips I got from reading the series.

*this post is done as an assignment that I half-assedly did, so I apologize in advance for the quality

Ludwig Kakumei – bonutzuu’s manga archive

Welcome to another entry to the manga archive where I write about manga I’ve read.

TBH if I hadn’t already bought the entire series, I would drop this manga after chapter 1. However, I’m glad I didn’t.

Ludwig Kakumei or Ludwig Revolution follows Crown Prince Ludwig as he journeys the land in search of a suitable bride. However, back at home, the king’s new wife plots to assassinate him and make her son the heir instead.

Chrome Breaker volume 3: chapter 11-13 – bonutzuu’s manga archive

So a long while ago I wrote about volume 4. Now, I am able to get myself a copy of volume 3 and I’m very excited to fill in the gaps between chapter 10 and 14.

Just to recap what happened, Akira came to live at the Crimson headquarters and rumors were flying around that Chrome is head over heels for her. Meanwhile, Seishiro recalled that as a young boy, he swore to protect Akira, but currently his role is being replaced by Chrome.

Later that night, Akira and a kid were chased around by a dead priest controlled by eyepatch girl. Akira was at the last stage of her awakening as Maria’s Daughter, and the trigger for her final awakening would be intense fear. But luckily, Chrome was on his way.

Seishiro got so overwhelmed by watching Chrome’s battle, realizing that there is a gap between him and Chrome that no talent or hard work could ever close. Meanwhile, Akira was held captive by eyepatch girl and a mysterious man. She dreamt of her first meeting with young Chrome, who had one black wing and had blood all over him. That recall of a memory from eight years ago made her awaken as Maria.

Taisho Otome Otogibanashi Ep. 3-4 – life is a fairy tale

Okay, I need to get caught up. I’m lagging behind the releases. Ugh, exams…

It’s episode 3 of Taisho Otome Fairy Tale. Tamahiko continues to warm up to Yuzuki. Tamako appeared and kicked up a storm in their house.

Aw it’s so cute how these two are so shy around each other awwwwwwww

Josee, the Tiger and the Fish Movie – life is beautiful (the pandemic cannot stop me from watching this in theaters)

Note: this is not much of a review as it is a record of my experience watching this movie.

Bangkok is a crazy city. If you’ve been here once, you’ll get what I mean. And because it’s always so crazy crowded, the pandemic hit us hard and Josee got postponed twice before finally coming to the theaters at the beginning of November 2021.

Even though it’s during a pandemic… the department store that housed the cniema was practically overflowing with people. Especially with kids from the nearby school who were finished with their Saturday classes.

I was already burned out by wading through crowds of people (it’s like Black Friday crowd every single weekend, gosh) to the cinema to buy tickets. I almost shoved a bunch of highschool boys out of the way since they were crowded in front of the ticket machine. I brought my Asian mom with me because she was worried that I’d be in the only person in the theater like that time I was watching Violet Evergarden Movie in March, and she offered to pay for the tickets. So we got the premium couch at the back of the theater because she wanted to sleep throughout the show.

It was the last weekend before Josee left theaters, so the cinema already took all the posters down. I had to make do snapping a shot with my laptop screen instead lol

So we grabbed lunch and waited 30 minutes of advertisement before the movie finally started.

Taisho Otome Otogibanashi Ep. 5 – here comes Miss Ryou

Ahhhhh here comes the most difficult story arc to get through of Taisho Otome. Arghhhhhhhh

Anyway, for the first half, we have some family fluff between Tamahiko and Tamako. We see more of Tamahiko’s softer side. Tamako left for Kobe. It’s a good conclusion filled with warmth and fluff.