Pseudoregalia is insanely good

Remember some years ago when people were posting online like “in Russia it’s illegal to post this picture of Putin 🤣” with this pic?

Now that’s the USA.

As someone who actually did learn Japanese through watching anime, it took me about 3 years. I started watching anime regularly in 2018 and when I was watching Hori-san to Miyamura-kun in 2021, the last two episodes had not been subtitled, so I watched them raw and mostly understood it.

A lot of people will say that it’s impossible to learn just via watching anime, but have not actually tried it. Yes, if you have subtitles on, it’s easy to let yourself totally ignore the Japanese. But it’s not impossible, and if you are focused, you can still learn even with subs turned on.

Later on, I started taking classes in Japanese at college and started learning a lot more. But just knowledge from watching anime was enough to pass an oral placement test and skip the first 2 semesters. If you are serious about learning Japanese, I recommend taking classes or studying it seriously online. There’s also better input resources than anime such as streamers or even conversation analysis audio for linguistics research.

But I am convinced that anime is still a very good tool because many people like anime and are already very motivated to watch it. This is a very big strength because the biggest obstacle to learning language is giving up. This, combined with Japanese’s very very simple grammar and verb conjugations actually makes it a very easy language to learn, imo.

Imo, pre-2012. I think you could also argue that 2018 or 2020/2021 is the start of the modem era of anime, or even 2006.

Picture is of “Front Mission” (1995). I’ve never played or heard of it, tbh it is just taken from the Wikipedia page for tactical RPG.

Agree with Gordon Freeman 100%. I might also suggest the Guide from Terraria and the CS:GO player models. Maybe also the player character from Noita, the goat from Goat Simulator, Quote from Cave Story.

These ones may be more niche, but for me personally I would also add Guy Spelunky, Princess Remedy, and Worm (Worms Armageddon).

I don’t believe it actually bans “Pikachu” when spelled as 光宙 because ピカチュウ is actually a pretty reasonable reading, although maybe not the #1 most obvious one. Based on a random Japanese article I read about it (link), I really don’t think 光宙/Pikachu will be technically illegal, although all the English articles will say so because it’s click fodder.

The law bans: things that are not related to the kanji reading at all, things that add unexpected extra stuff on the end of the obvious reading, or things that mean the opposite of what the kanji means.

I don’t believe any of this applies to Pikachu, and the examples they cite are not really comparable.

In 10 months, Dark Souls III will be 10 years old

If someone has never really seen any anime before, I think Mushishi is a good one to recommend to people. It doesn’t contain any of the less-palatable anime tropes, can be enjoyed by any age group, and is just overall really chill and interesting. It’s also episodic, so if they watch 2 or 3 episodes and decide it’s not for them, they still get a full story without missing out on anything.

Little Witch Academia is what got me into anime, good pick.

For me it’s tied between Dark Souls (2011) and Universal Paperclips (2017)

I don’t believe I misrepresented anything, I never said that the currencies or battle passes were paid. OC asked if people would recommend, and I think I wouldn’t recommend because I didn’t enjoy it and I described the reasons I didn’t enjoy it, which as I said in my comment were aesthetic complaints (rather than monetary or gameplay or anything).

My objection is based on vibes because I think vibes and aesthetics and artistic direction are important to me, and those are the grounds on which I don’t like Deep Rock Galactic

Yes I know. I just mean that the multiple currencies is something I didn’t like and is a downside of the game for me. Not only because I think they are not fun to collect, but because they aesthetically remind me of pay-to-win currencies and it’s a slight ick. As they say in the article, they deliberately copy elements from other games to add to their own. That’s cool, but I don’t like the specific things they copied: battle passes and multiple-currency upgrade trees.

I personally would not recommend it. I’ve played ~20 hours with friends. Despite being a simple co-op game, it has these seasonal battle passes and multiple currencies that I would expect from something like Fortnite / Call of Duty / pay-to-win mobile games. That’s mostly an aesthetic gripe because it doesn’t directly effect the gameplay, but I’m not a huge fan of the gameplay either. Combat is really imprecise/messy, which I’m sure is the point but I can’t get behind it. May be worth to play with friends, but I would not recommend it solo at all. What I can say I really like though is the 3D map tool for the randomly generated caves 🤤 beautiful 3D map

5a has headphone jack. My 5a broke recently so I “upgraded” to an 8a and it’s been exclusively worse. No headphone jack, fingerprint scanner barely works, effective battery life is less…

Nightmare Kart
https://youtu.be/t7nGTQZJiSw
https://youtu.be/QwcVSTkZf-k

I’m never sure where to draw the line with metroidvanias. Does Dark Souls count as metroidvania? or Link’s Awakening? Cave Story?

Minecraft - mouse tweaks, Alex’s Mobs, The Bumblezone
Morrowind - I forget what it’s called, but the one that adds the mainland
Risk of Rain 2 - any character by Enforcergang. Especially classic sniper and rocket

Hibike! Euphonium was directed by Ishihara Tatsuya, who has also done a bunch of other must-watch anime.
Kanon 2006, Clannad, Haruhi Suzumiya, Nichijou, Dragon Maid S, and of course Hibike! Euphonium.

Mushishi is awesome and is one thing that I think you can recommend to any age group-- 5 years old or 105 years old.