Bought tickets to see Nobuo Uematsu in concert in a few weeks.

What is my life even now.

I'm not trusting western internet consensus on anything ever again.

That said, there's definitely works that have awful fanbases that misbehave terribly and are famous for that.

Whether the work is good or bad is separate.

Turns out these people are doing a job, and they want their coworkers to do well and the larger environment stays healthy with positive relations.

Crazy. Unthinkable.

The weird thing is how once the ball has started rolling culturally, that audiences just propel along themselves. Even if there's no brand pushing that mentality on their own.

Like with anime/manga audiences in the west. Especially between works under the same publisher. In the same magazine.

It's the end stage of treating brands as an identity. Associating with the same brand means that you are one of that group now too.

People should have more to their identity than that, but people have been trained not to because it helps sales. Coke v Pepsi. Britney vs Christina...

Almost done with the first half. Not really sure why S2 is dumped on so much. Is it because this character driven show got very dialog heavy?

The novels already were this heavy on conversations and lore dumping (anime skipped a lot of it) so I'm kind of not seeing that big of a difference.

And I want to play the PS2 Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games in JP because I think that'll help build familiarity for those historical names in JP the way it did for me in English.

And Atelier. And Falcom's PC98 lineup.... These are the *high priority* ones. There's no time.

Still need to continue the old FF JP playthroughs. Put that on hold until I'd finish 7R, but decided I don't want to bother finishing.

But then I also have that FFT remaster, and Tactics Ogre Reborn. And Ace Attorney. And the other 2 Fate routes. And Ataraxia.

And increasingly less free time.

I mean, I'm only now watching Re;Zero S2 because I put it on hold when I started reading the LNs in English. And then further put it on hold when I started reading the LNs in Japanese.

I get it.

Like 3's thing is loss of innocence and the emptiness of chasing material wealth and hedonism. The antagonist force are literal fascist pigs. They even wear masks on top of obvious Nazi uniforms! It's wild Nintendo made it.

Mother 2 is unbelievable heights over 1. And 3 does the same again. It's kind of insane what a few generations of time to cook could produce.

Love 3 starting with a small town being introduced to the concept of money and commerce and just instantly turning capitalist and evil to set the tone.

I mean you say that, but I've been on fairly large servers where the "history channel" was literally a honeypot to catch the illiterate offense seeking alt-right racist bigots. It's like 99% of them in history circles online, especially in the gaming space.

The Mother of all indie RPGs.

I figured the game was quite religious when one of the menus was presented as goshuin stamps. But it's nice getting a deeper understanding and appreciation for what it's doing.

That professor also struggled reading some of the full names out loud. So characters in the game struggling with the names and shortening them isn't a bit.

Also the kami descending down from a cloudly realm to bring life to areas is pretty much reflected in the game directly too.

Went to a lecture about the Shinto religion given by a Japanese professor and it made a lot of things about Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma click.

The names of those gods typically are written in katakana only, and they often are that weirdly long.

On that note, it's a shame modern Japanese devs don't really do tabletop stuff that much anymore.

They used to make games based on this system back in the day. Even console titles that boast tabletop play accuracy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_W...

Whoever came up with that price tag position on the Frieren is a genius.

People were getting heated about Beyblade, so anything is possible.

The weirdest development at cons the past few years is that every single year, the number of Mahjong tables and players increase.

Dude was especially chill in person too. The exact right vibe for it.

Hellsing, Alucard cosplay

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 2 - Tequila Joseph Joestar cosplay

There were actual tequila bottles in that basket.

Hollow Knight, hornet cosplay

Elden Ring Nightreign, Duchess cosplay

Bob Ross cosplay

Cosplay I especially liked this year.

... I should try and get some solo clears with Duchess.
#animecon #animeconnl

Still struggle with camera settings a fair bit, so I'm shocked I could get a decent shots in during Coda's show.
(Fast movement in the dark is hard)

Really happy to have heard Bloody Stream, Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town, Stand Proud live.

#animecon #animeconnl #jojosbizarreadventure

And Maron from IOSYS.

Anyway, I met CODA.

I think that might be the first time I've talked wrestling with a real person in this country. And it immediately just went into AEW, DDT, TJPW, NJPW.

"Are you going to watch Mania this weekend?"
"Only if I'm bored enough, on a second monitor maybe."

Biggest surprise this year was multiple people started conversations with me because they recognized my shirt and the cap I was wearing.

The shirt was the title card to the Legend of the Galactic Heroes OVAs.

The cap, NJPW.

One person recognized both.

‪Ancient china always sells gangbusters.

I remember looking up sales date for Kususiya, and it was always leading the charts with genuinely incomprehensible margins.