Tag: video games

Overgeared webtoon review – Very standard power fantasy

Overgeared? More like overrated, am I right? I’ve seen people commenting about Grid / Greed all over the place even in the manga that has nothing to do with it. It was always a bit baffling because I read the original webtoon that got cancelled after about 20 chapters. It was nothing special. I tried to read the web novel, but between the so-so translation and Greed’s juvenile thought processes, I couldn’t get into it.

But eventually all the references piqued my interest again and I finally tried the new webtoon. Right when 87 chapters were out, so I got a nice good binge out of it. I learned a lot of Korean while I was at it too – not from Overgeared but because I forced myself to do one brief Memrise review or Anki review for every chapter of Overgeared I read.

Summary: Shin Youngwoo, Username: Grid. In the words best virtual reality game , bad luck always revolves around him. But he stumbled across a job during a quest, the strongest legendary job out of over 2 billion players!

Like I said, a standard power levelling fantasy. Weak loser with plenty of debt suddenly finds a wonderful job/artifact/whatever and becomes powerful. His whole family depends on him, his classmates and former bullies are green with envy, every hot girl in the game longs for his touch… You’ve seen it all before. If you haven’t, I have. And better done, to boot.

It’s a very common thing in Chinese cultivation series, though it usually involves finding an ancient treasure or realm. For Korean series, the whole gimmick about finding a hidden, powerful class was popularized by The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, and I don’t think it’s been done better since then. I’ve also enjoyed other series, usually involving time travel, about characters becoming overpowered in game worlds.

I have a special love for Emperor of Solo Play because it’s short and complete and the MC was so utterly self-destructive… then it caught up to him in the end XD! It was so silly that One Man Army mocked it by having the MC consciously take care of himself and his finances. Rebirth of the Thief Who Roamed The World was okay-ish, except for the “romance” and some ridiculous shenanigans outside the game. It’s also complete and not that long if anyone is interested. Reincarnation Of The Strongest Sword God was interesting early on, but got so ridiculous with the power creep that the author wrote himself into a corner and had to drop the series.

Point I’m trying to make is, Overgeared has been done before. I honestly think it’s popular with people who haven’t read many of these kinds of series, so something like this is new and satisfying to them. The money-grubbing habits of Shin Youngwoo a.k.a. Greed are old hat to me, he’s not particularly good-looking or smart or witty to make it understandable why people are falling all over him. He just makes good weapons and is lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. That’s all it takes to make the ladies fall over themselves for him.

Buuut, I didn’t make this post to trash Overgeared, believe it or not. If power leveling fantasies are your thing – and honestly they are mine or I wouldn’t have read so many – then it’s a decent read. You still get the rags-to-riches experience you crave, and unlike many other heroes Shin Youngwoo does actually pick up a (virtual) wife if that’s what you’re interested in.

It’s just that compared to other series, the world is very narrow and poorly fleshed out. Shin Youngwoo has been based in the same two towns for 90% of the series’s length, so you don’t get the variety of locales and NPCs that you do in most RPG manhwa. He’s been hanging out with the same people, using the same weapons and artifacts (until recently), fighting the same small pool of enemies and the same overarching bad guys (church of Yatan). So it’s not bad, but it’s not impressive either given what other series in the RPG power leveling fantasy genre are capable of. He’s not even enjoying his money apart from buying a fancy car he almost never drives.

TL;DR Overgeared is overrated but not actually bad. You can do better, but you could do a lot worse than reading it if game world series are your thing. I’ll still be reading it as updates come out, but really it’s nothing special.

Quick thoughts on the two Touken Ranbu animes

Touken Ranbu is a popular Japanese smartphone game about swords that come to life in the form of handsome young men who then protect the world as we know it from the evil Time Retrograde Army. That’s the premise, anyway, but the whole game is just a gender-flipped version of the usual “collect pretty girls” kind of smartphone game, pandering to female customers instead of male ones.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s never really seemed like my kind of thing. Still doesn’t, but it came to my attention recently when I heard there was going to be a collaboration between Touken Ranbu and Granblue Fantasy, a browser/smartphone game I dabble in occasionally. On one hand you don’t need to be familiar with the source material to play a Granblue collab, but in the case of Samurai Shodown and Shadowverse, I found myself not enjoying the story because I didn’t know the characters or their backgrounds. So this time, and seeing as Touken Ranbu has two animes out, I thought I’d check them out and see if they were any good.

 

That was the plan. The reality was a little different. First I tried Katsugeki! Touken Ranbu, which is currently airing and up to episode 10 or so right now. I made it through two episodes. That’s enough for me. The animation is nice and I don’t mind history shows but

  • Yagen is dull, Kunihiro is extremely annoying with his constant squealing of “Kane-san! Kane-san!” Kanesada is kinda ordinary, Tonbokiri is boring, Mutsunokami’s lively act is also annoying.
  • Those kinds of stories where the heroes are always one step behind the enemy are frustrating to watch.
  • The action is all just running around slashing at stuff.
  • Animation is nice but the CG really clashes with the ancient setting.

Based on that, I think two episodes of the show is enough. Maybe I will google around and find out what the Time Retrograde Army is really after, but TBH I don’t really care. At least now I’m familiar with the main characters in the show, which should be enough for me to understand the GBF collab.

Once I was done with Katsugeki! Touken Ranbu, I checked out the first 5 minutes of the other anime, Touken Ranbu Hanamaru. The former aspires to be a standalone series, the latter is pure fanservice for players of the game. Those first 5 minutes alone introduced at least 10 different characters, all vaguely good-looking bishies without much to distinguish them. It looked like a slice of life show, but with that many characters introduced at once without introduction I didn’t feel like watching any further. Might be fun for people who are fans already, but not for me.

Welp, that’s enough experimentation for one day. While I was at it I also downloaded some episodes from other shows airing this season, but it will take a while for me to get round to watching them. I have so many other things I want to watch instead, mostly TV shows and Cantonese dramas. I’ll squeeze in some anime here and there as I get the chance.

Update: I ended up Skipping every bit of text in the Touken Ranbu collab, just like I’ve done with all the other events for the past year. I don’t know why I bothered, really. ^^;;

Watched Gamers! episodes 1-6

Gamers! is one of those shows where you think about dropping it after every episode, but you decide to watch one more before dropping it, then one more, then one more… I’m already up to episode 6.

Plot summary from Wikipedia: Keita Amano is a lonesome boy who enjoys playing video games but lacks any friends. One day, he is approached by the beautiful Karen Tendou about joining the school’s Gaming Club, but Keita ultimately rejects her offer as he is not into competitive gaming. This rejection sets off a trigger of events in the lives of Keita and his fellow students in matters of both video games and romance.

The anime title isn’t really all that accurate. It’s about people who all tend to like games to a certain extent, but the real point of the show is wacky romantic hijinks where A likes B who likes C who likes him back but thinks B really likes D who does like B but also likes A, and round and round and round it goes.

It’s almost hilarious how many unlikely misunderstandings Gamers can fit into one episode, with people walking in on the most unlikely situations or hearing only part of a conversation and getting completely the wrong idea, and on and on and on. If you like romantic triangles and love decahedrons, Gamers is definitely the show for you.

If you like games, on the other hand… I was drawn to Gamers because I saw a screenshot of a parody of Granblue Fantasy that Keita and his friend like to play. I thought it would be that kind of show where you’re always catching references and parodies to popular video games. And there’s an element of that, but it more or less disappears after the first two episodes in favor for romantic misunderstanding after romantic misunderstanding. The show is called Gamers, not Games, I guess.

The reason I’ve been feeling like dropping it from the start is that a romance show lives and dies by its characters. If you like them, you’re solid. If not… TBH they’re all really annoying, especially Keita’s everyday otaku shtick and Karen’s lovestruck teen gimmick. I’ve been sick of them from the start.

What keeps me coming back, however, is the way the show keeps throwing out curveballs when you expect them to go straight. I fully expected lonely Keita to jump at the chance to make friends via the gaming club, but he turned them down. For fully understandable reasons, but it was a surprise nevertheless. Then when Chiaki and Keita finally met, I was certain they would end up as an item, but they ended up hating each other – or claiming to, anyway. And then at the end of episode 6…. @___@

In short, Gamers is full of surprises so I won’t drop it no matter how much the characters piss me off. I’m looking forward to seeing how the show changes based on the events of episode 6. Please don’t reset to the status quo, please don’t reset to the status quo… I will post a final review when the show is done.

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! Season 1 anime review

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!, most sensibly abbreviated Konosuba is a light novel by Natsume Akatsuki that was adapted to two seasons of anime in 2016-2017. I only watched the first 10-episode season, which was 10 episodes too many and I’m not even sure why I stuck it out that long.

Summary (from Wiki): Following an untimely and embarrassing death, Kazuma Satō, a Japanese teenage shut-in NEET, meets a goddess named Aqua, who offers to reincarnate him in a parallel world with MMORPG elements. Despite being offered a godlike item or ability to use in this new world, Kazuma, following some provocation, chooses Aqua herself to accompany him to the town of Axel, quickly finding her absent-mindedness to be less than beneficial. With Aqua unable to return to the afterlife until the Devil King is defeated, the two form a party and recruit two other members; an explosion-obsessed magician named Megumin and a masochistic paladin named Darkness.

As I mentioned in my last post on Tsuujou Kougeki (I’m not typing the full title out, gimme a break), the trend these days is towards subversions and deconstructions of the “hero goes to another world” genre. In Konosuba the twist is minor – instead of Kazuma becoming overpowered like other heroes are implied to have done, he has to start from level one and work his way up normally. It’s just a minor setback really, because we all know in the long run he’s going to end up rich and powerful anyway. And besides, Aqua has a cheathax that prevents him from dying for real, so he’s essentially immortal. That’s overpowered in and of itself.

What I liked about Konosuba: The world of the game is very bright and colorful. The land is largely peaceful, the people are fairly friendly, the food looks delicious and in general it looks like a nice place to live.

I also like shows that deal with the practical “what are we going to eat and where are we going to sleep” issues of otherworldly life. It’s a big achievement for the team when they finally get upgraded from living in stables to living in a deserted mansion.

It’s interesting to see how a team with such wacky but powerful characters manages to gel and work together to defeat the powerful opponents they occasionally have to face.

What I disliked about Konosuba: The trashy fanservice and perverted unfunny humor. The goddess Aqua doesn’t wear underwear and prances around in a “dress” barely long enough to be called a short top. If you heard that and thought “Woo hoo!” this is the show for you. Otherwise it just gets annoying, not just Aqua but also other characters like Darkness and the succubi.

Darkness is especially annoying because she’s always writhing around thinking perverted things whether the situation calls for it or not. Usually not. And Kazuma uses his stealing skills to steal panties… Ranma 1/2 ended 20 years ago, dude.

There isn’t much progress made towards finding and beating the Demon Lord in season 1. Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! is more a slice of perverted life show with occasional battles than an RPG-based action show. It’s a good watch if you find fanservice funny or interesting or enjoy constant innuendo. Fans might say “There’s more to the show than that!” but a week after finishing this show, only the slimy frogs, the battle against Verdia and the Destroyer and the fanservice scenes (succubi, Darkness’s wild imagination, Kazuma’s panty stealing) come to mind when I try to remember anything. This really isn’t my sort of things so I’ll pass on season two. Next!

Thoughts on Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Nikai Kougeki no Okasan wa Suki desu ka?

I’ve only read the free sample pages of Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Nikai Kougeki no Okasan wa Suki desu ka? provided by Fantasia Books and don’t intend to read any more, but that was enough to form a general opinion. The intention of the free sample is to help the reader decide if they want to read any further, after all, and 70 or so pages of a book is a pretty substantial freebie. This post will contain a few spoilers, so read chapter one and two if you haven’t already.

On to the meat. We all know other world/isekai light novels are all the rage these days. Every other LN features a hero ending up in another world somehow where he somehow becomes overpowered and a chick magnet and all the other otaku fantasy wish fulfillment tropes that the genre is so well-known for. Other world stories are so common these days that’s it’s hard for new books to make a dent – unless they either subvert or deconstruct the genre (getting increasingly common these days) or add some kind of spin or gimmick.

Enter Tsuujou Kougeki – Do You Like Moms Whose Normal Attacks Hit the Whole Enemy Party Twice? The twist here is that the main hero Masato does not go into the game world alone but is accompanied by his doting mom Mamako and it is Mamako, not Masato, who becomes the overpowered hero. It’s pretty funny how he gets so worked up and excited about being the Chosen One… then his mom just walks up and snags the two most powerful weapons in the game. Not only that, but the in-game guidebook suggests there might be other such overpowered mother-son pairs in the MMMMMORPG game. It would be interesting to meet them and see how things go.

So the unexpected swerve is an intriguing one, enough to get even a light novel avoider like me to read it. The problem is, it’s not quite what I expected. I should have smelled a rat when I saw the cutesy, fanservicey picture of Mamako on the cover. What I was expecting was a normal mom, late 30ish early 40ish soccer mom with the dignity and gravitas to match. Putting a regular, realistic everyday person into these kinds of situations is always much funnier and more interesting to me anyway.

Mamako is just annoying. Ditzy, clingy, manipulative, always ready to use tears to control her son if nothing will work. Doesn’t know jack about what’s going on, won’t share what little she does know, won’t listen to common sense advice but charges ahead without a thought in the world. Is this really a woman in her late 30s? How did she survive long enough to breed? The worst part is her fake crying to weasel her way into or out of situations. That’s just plain dirty. The excessive focus on her young appearance and on Masato’s brief moments of attraction to her are just pig-disgusting icing on a pig-disgusting cake.

Masato is no paragon of virtue either. He’s whiny and too cranky and rude towards his mother. I’m sure we can all remember times when we were a little sharper with our moms than we had meant to be, but to snap and snarl at her all chapter long is just… ick. And all that whining and crying just because his mom has better weapons instead of creating a build and learning skills to make the best of what he has. I blame Mamako for bringing him up wrong, that’s what. Plus he’s 15 years old, what can I say?

I didn’t read enough to get to know the loli merchant and the tsundere sage better, but I doubt they’ll be any better than the already-low level established. The tsundere in particular killed my desire to read any more. You know she’s just going to argue with Masato and beat him up all the time but she’s still going to “win” his affection over any better girls in the series anyway. Just thinking about it gives me a headache.

TL;DR – The premise was interesting, but the ditzy personality of the mom and the whiny, cranky personality of her son ruined the whole thing for me. If they make an anime I might try an episode or two, but the interest I had in Tsuujou Kougeki is gone and probably isn’t ever coming back.