Long time no see! I have been reading/watching a lot of stuff since my last post, but because it was mostly non-fiction, which I ultimately decided not to include in these blogs. After some trying I just don’t think I’m all that good at writing about non-fiction, and some of it is, like, I feel kinda awkward occasionally talking about a very serious and real topic next to video games and trashy manga lol.
Suicide Girl - Atsushi Nakayama
A dark magical girl manga with a twist: it’s positive in tone, and doesn’t hate you, the reader. However I’m front loading this post with Suicide Girl because it requires trigger warnings for explicit imagray and discussion for basically everything related to suicide ever. I’m not going into a ton of detail, but if that’s not your cup of tea just skip over this one.
After a failed group suicide that was actually an exorcism (we’ll get to that in a sec) super sparkly cheerful happy-go-lucky anime girl Kirari Aokigahara awakens into her powers as a suicide girl. See, suicide only exists due to the influence of monstrous “phobias” that attach themselves to people going through difficult times. However, if the phobia is defeated within 6 hours of the person killing themself time will reverse to the moment before they die; and while this doesn’t cure a person of all of life’s ills, without the despair-inducing influence of the phobia they’re able to think clearly. Of course as long as phobias still exist a new one can always attach itself to people, which is where the suicide girls come in. With her new power to fight the phobias Kirari vows to defeat every single one and end suicide forever!
Anyways, to activate her magical girl transformation Kirari has to hang herself with a cutesy noose and then uses it as a weapon.
I really did like Kirari as a protagonist. Her happy peppy attitude isn’t forced, though, givin the story starts with her joining a group suicide she has some layers. I can never forgive her for having 3 whole yandere stalker GFs and still going for the boring nothing boy of a love interest. The plot is pretty straight forward, and filled with fun battles and cool character/monster designs.
All in all the manga is solidly trashy, but it's good trash. Fucked up magical girls that actually get the good ending they're fighting for are hard to come by.
Knives Out movies - Rian Johnson
I watched these with my grandma, mom, and one of my sisters. A real intergenerational experience.
Usually I’m very bad at ranking things, but this is a rare case where I definitively have a favorite and least favorite, and since there’s three movies that leaves a nice little space in the middle for the other one. Hurray! So since the series is an anthology I’ll talk about them in that order.
Glass Onion is perhaps peak covid era media. Every single one of those people, every one of them, those aren’t fictional characters to me, those are the assholes clogging my social media feeds, the news, conversations in daily life. Those characters are the demons that haunt me. I don’t think my grandma understood how real they were. Loved it so much when they started ripping each other to shreds. I will remember the Mona Lisa scene forever.
Knives Out was very solid of course. I don't think the series would've gotten two more movies (nor would I have cared to watch them) if it was mid at best. Love a good story about a family of dysfunctional weirdos.
Wake Up Dead Man felt way more about the themes than the mystery. Watching the first two movies I was piecing together the plot along with the characters, watching Wake Up Dead Man I was confused and Father Jud was confused and everyone was confused until the killer exposition dumped the entire plot at the end of the movie before dying.
The convoluted elements of Knives Out felt believable because it was about an eccentric author, his dysfunctional children, and the mystery behind his inheritance. Glass Onion’s fantastical elements felt believable because it was about a super star billionaire with the money to do whatever he wanted, and his inner circle of yesman influences. Wake Up Dead Man was about… a corrupt small town priest. It was still a good movie, just not nearly as fun as the first two in my opinion.
And that’s my official and correct l ranking of the Knives Out movies.
Magical Girl Dandelion - Kaeru Mizuho
An ongoing series. This is a normal magical girl manga, no dark twists or faustian bargains, just girls fighting monsters with the power of friendship and plucky attitude.
Our main girl Tanpopo longs to be a magical girl and protect people from fiends, evil monsters that exist to spread chaos and fear. Slight roadblock, her life long best friend and protector, the mysterious Shade, just so happens to be a fiend himself. After Tanpopo awakens as a magical girl can the two remain friends??
(The answer is yes of course)
The magical girl and monster designs are top tier. My two major complaints are:
1: Tanpopo fights with an umbrella which is my favorite unconventional weapon, but it's almost always obscured by magic rune effects.
2: Shade’s design is pretty boring compared to the rest of the main cast. I suppose that makes it easier to draw him in fun poses while floating around, but in non-action scenes he’s unfortunately very boring next to all these super cool characters.
Besides those little nitpicks it's definitely a manga I'm going to be following from now on!
Shino Can’t Say Her Name - Shuzo Oshimi
A short manga about a girl with a severe stutter. It’s a short and sweet read. I appreciated that the manga didn’t end in Shino being “cured” of her speech impediment, and instead treated it as a normal aspect of her life.
Aethermancer - moi rai games
Roguelike monster tamer game. It’s still in early access, but what I’ve played was very fun. I’ll warn for bugs and crashes, though I can’t be sure how much of that is the game itself vs my shitty laptop.
Aethermancer has you running through small procedurally generated areas fighting 3-v-3 monster battles. At the start of each round monsters generate aether based on their element, which is then used to perform actions. The roguelike elements come in with how you acquire and level up your monsters. At the start of a run you get to pick one monster out of all of the ones you’ve caught so far, and from then on you’re presented with a few randomly chosen monsters at the start of each area. Everytime you win a battle in addition to EXP your monsters gain “Worthiness” which carries over between runs and gives persistent upgrades.
Not much in the way of plot so far, but honestly who really plays roguelikes for the plot. Maybe the full game will surprise me with some super cool dramatic twists, but the gameplay, even as technically unfinished as it is, is more than enough for me. All of the currently available monsters play differently from each other, interact in interesting ways, and have fun designs.
As of writing there are 3 zones, each ending with one of two possible mid-bosses (that you can catch for your team!) and the early access final boss, which is a unique character with a very fun gimmick. Overall I’m excited to see where the game goes!
Pluribus - Vince Gilligan
One of those things that's frying my brain too much to talk about in as much detail as I'd like to. It's really good. Go watch it now.
The Ones Who Stay and Fight - N.K. Jemisin & Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in The Omelas Hole - Isabel J. Kim
Grouping these together because they cover the same topic, are short, and once again, frying my brain to talk about. Both are responses to Ursula Kroeber Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, which I’m sure needs no introduction. I don’t know, I was just on an Omelas kick for a day. Of the two I liked the second one more. All three of these stories are very short and available for free, so go read them and make yourself feel smart!
The World Is to Dig - They Might Be Giants
I’m not enough of a music analysis guy to say anything more insightful than “it was good” or “I liked the lyrics”, but I’ve listened to the whole thing over and over enough times that I feel like I should bring it up anyways. I’m just gonna list my (at the time of writing) favorite song(s). Maybe I’ll do this again the next time I get hooked on an album?
Favorite songs: Sleep’s Older Sister, Character Flaw, What The Cat Dragged In.
6/20/2026