Every O-Kiku

Probably hear a bit from me about this one over the next month, wip of the oil painting I'm making for the cover. MyAnimeList has a cool contest going on with Kadokawa where you get your own chance to write a light novel. So I'd like y'all to meet Agnes.

Agnes was not the type of person to go on grand quests. Despite some small affinity for magic, she was pretty happy to live her simple life in a foothills farming village no matter what that damned prophecy said about the fate of her family line. Her foolhardy son though? He rushed to thwart the wicked King of the Giants. And when he failed his son took up the task. When Agnes hears news her grandson might still be alive but imprisoned by the Giant King? Well, that's when she decided it was time to make the trip herself.

I've had a lot of fun writing the rough draft and am honestly pretty happy with how the story developed. Lighthearted romp with a couple of solid traveling companions and got a chance to use Argos, my longstanding TTRPG world that's kinda like if Greek Mythology got to hang around a Byzantium that made it to the Renaissance era.

Chapters will come out once a day through August and into September. I spent the first leg of the contest writing a full rough draft so it's easy to keep that consistent, just edit and post. Naturally I'd appreciate the support for the contest end but hope people like the story too. Contest wants us to use Honeyfeed, which is a neat platform for people to put serialized writing out there.

Back to Skip & Loafer, and while this chapter doesn't give a whole lot to talk about I do like where it seems to be headed. We really have two stories. Mitsu bookends a middle about Shima. So let's start with our dorky girlie. Pretty simple, Mitsumi will go home over Spring Break because she'll be too busy studying after that. Unfortunately it does not seem like she will be going with Nao-chan, which is a crime that can only be paid for by showing her and Goro having fun together.

But I do like getting to check back in on Ishikawa. It makes a lot of sense to do that before you launch into a final year of school that has a lot of promise. Probably won't be the last time we see them though, especially if Nao's not going because we do have that setup about bringing her boyfriend to meet her mother. Assuming we end the series at graduation like so many do, that'd probably put us past the century mark. I just don't see wrapping everything up in about fifteen chapters after Mitsu gets back.

And the middle? Hey I've been proven wrong on this sort of thing recently but I dunno...the bits with Sousuke and his old acting pals always feel a little more oddly out of place. We see them having a party for Ririka to congratulate her on getting work again. It's cute, she ponders the possibility of them having a relationship before blowing it off. There's a cool aspect about her using some particular phrasings Shima's used before to refer to her journey back from the scandals of yesteryear.

Ahhhh! Ultimate mail call. Stop-Hibari-Kun Vol. 2. I still have that part of me that can't believe I'm actually getting a proper English release of this. Once again, Peow did a great job with the production. You are paying a premium but its worth it for a shorter series like this. Great quality pages, the proper and smaller second dust jackets look great, nice index for some of those cultural references in the back.

Also finally checked a big one off my list. I remember Madoka Magica being a pretty damn big deal when it came out in 2011...but this was the dark ages as far as my anime fandom is concerned. I was barely easing back into One Piece around this time. And the plain truth is...rubbed me the wrong way the anime you "just gotta see" was being described as like if Neon Genesis Evangelion was a magical girl show. Largely because y'know...Revolutionary Girl Utena exists.

Still, Madoka Magica has stood the test of time, its been almost 15 years so I figured I'd finally check it out since it is quite short. Which I'll say right now I think was one of the big drawbacks. Awkward length for something like this at 12 episodes. But a weird case where either shorter or longer would work. A 6-episode OVA could get this same story without quite so many drawn-out scenes of talking over slideshows of city scenes, but the full 24-26ish would have probably given this one a chance to show, not tell a lot more of what it's trying to do.

As-is, it was interesting to delve into a little of the fandom discourse about the show and all now that I could understand it because I did see a fair amount of what I felt. Madoka Magica does something interesting, but I don't know if I'd really call it a deconstruction of the magical girl genre. Just saying magical girl and using the aesthetic doesn't really accomplish that. You know, Utena had a first season where it was played pretty straight. This felt a lot more like a seinen having a lark about taking some magical girl concepts to their logical extremes. Reminded me a little of the whole Brony phenomenon around the same time kinda, it can be fun to be subversive like that but it's a fine line.

Sometimes you just need an anime comfortable with being stupid. Rooster Fighter delivers that in spades. Kaiju attack the Earth, which is rad Kaiju are cluckin' cool but our noble protectors? Chickens. Which makes about as much sense as anything else I suppose. We got Keiji and his mighty sonic crowing abilities. Elizabeth the hen from a wealthy family and her Batman-style gadgets. Then lil Piyoko who's a chick with a Yakuza daddy she wants to be like.

And we wrapped up Demon Slayer just in time for them to start releasing the final arc. Really showing the strain of the weird way they released this series. Hashira Training Arc was good but just felt so strange to be its own thing. You get a last hurrah with all of them, delivers on being a training arc, then the finale is legitimately cool.

Finally the pot boils over and these novel-chapters give way to the declaration of martial law by First Prince Benjamin! First of the batch to be so straightforward, high octane energy as we start to see something develop I figured we'd get out of this arc for a while. A big event where we winnow a lot of princes out quickly. Ninth Prince Halkenburg is already on borrowed time as is Benjamin. And we we start moving some of the big threats around.

Second Prince Camellia has been on the backburner for a while but Benjamin comes charging into her room during massage time. And look, I can appreciate me a good old fashioned tits-out gun battle. That's rad and I like to think Togashi just gets away with stuff like this, panels felt a little like The Woman Called Fujiko Mine so I'm happy.

Okay you know it's a great HxH chapter when we're starting with some weirdo video game power. Here in our flashback about the run-up to declaration of martial law we go even further back to before the Succession Contest. At this point I'm starting to think someone saw the multilayered Harald/Loki/Rocks flashback in One Piece and decided he needs to one-up that. And wondering if we're going to actually cover the fallout in this batch.

Okay, I kid because we do see some of that this chapter. The forwards-backwards aspect of this run of chapters has actually been quite fun. And here we see an interesting ability out of Furykov. This nenputer lets him analyze other nen abilities and counteract them? Does that mean Furykov is an exorcist? I do like this theme among Benjamin's men that their abilities all revolve around support and they tend to be good at the basics when it comes to combat. Really gives Benjamin a lot of potential given his ability can keep theirs if they die. And of course, here we use it to delve into Beyond's curses which is neat. Really speaks for itself so what else do we have?

We have a lot this chapter, many different things happening to take in. That said...look at Ragnir. I know logically we've been seeing him next to a giant Luffy but now in this context? Jinbei and giant chipmunk? Golden.

Also love the little bit with Loki as well. He is such a tsundere. Like, more than any of the princesses and it continues to be one of my favorite parts of his role in the arc. Of course, they're worried about Luffy and Brook is doing his stuff with Shuri. Anything else we want to add?

I swear...all I wanted ever since we saw the pretty, pretty face under the boar mask was an excuse to make that idiot Inosuke crossdress. Did I think we would? No! Because this wasn't a shoujo series. So happy to be wrong. We got all three! The Entertainment District Arc was really just a lot of fun all around and I could feel a favorite coming right off the bat. Only thing I really didn't like was it felt like Nezuko was underutilized...which seems to be a theme. But man, when she jumped in she jumped in.

Tasty! Demon Slayer was off to a great start with the first season and I was really intrigued by the prospect of our next major arc taking place on a train. Since this is typically a One Piece blog first, great example in Enies Lobby. Never really liked how the spy thriller devolves into a big series of 1v1s in a pretty empty building when the train was such a cool, underutilized setting getting there.

The Mugen Train though? Man everything I love about this kind of setting. Confined but with a sense of danger if anything goes awry. Then you have the excellent addition of a main villain using dreams as a weapon. Do feel like there was a missed opportunity letting Nezuko have more of a hand in waking everyone up but otherwise this was super, super fun. Really, really liked the gag about how Inosuke thought the train was a monster and how it paid off.

Figured it was about time to revisit Demon Slayer with the final arc in the anime coming around soon. Think I watched the first season when it came out and something about it rubbed my sweetie the wrong way at the time so it kinda just fell by the wayside. Liked it alright but also that was right before the big pandemic year so it felt so much longer ago than it was in reality. We sat down to give it another shot over dinner and I've been loving it. Also just in general gotta respect the mainstream success this series has had. I know it's a function of them being around my age and probably growing up with Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura and Inuyasha like I did but every time I go to the grocery store I see at least one Latina mom rocking a Demon Slayer shirt and if that's not a sign anime nerds won in the end I don't know what it.

Hope you're fixed for propane and have a nice, cold six-pack of domestic beer ready because we have a new season of King of the Hill! AKA the best US-made slice-of-life anime out there. Most people seemed pretty happy with the revival last year and we had a lot of fun here covering it as well as a Top 20 of favorite episodes from the original run. Like I've mentioned there, King of the Hill was always a special show for me because I grew up in a pretty rural town like Arlen only one state over from Texas. Not many shows really gave me that down to Earth reflection of the world I grew up in. And the adventures of Hank Hill were so, so good at that.

Now, the one critique I had with the original revival season was some of that spark seemed a little lost. There's an issue with the revival being a bit...anachronistic. The way I put it then was it felt like some parts of the show wanted to poke fun at the here and now while some wanted to run with ideas they had at the original conception stage about ten years ago. Which is further compounded by never really knowing how much time has actually passed. It's weird for Connie to be in college, Bobby running a restaurant, Hank being retired, and his younger half-brother being older than Bobby was in the original run. And it rubs me the wrong way a little when it doesn't really need to do that.

You do still have some of those growing pains, but at least one great spot where they have a little fun with it and at least acknowledge it's weird for Bobby to be a 21yo chef referencing Urkel. Still, there are some where it gets in the way like the Sci-fi con episode pictured. Great plot with a solid resolution, would have been better if you didn't feel the need to make 90s-style jokes about these types of cons in an era where these things have become a lot more normal. Thing is, these are pretty small complaints and they're pretty in line with the main ones I'd point out if you asked me about the original run. There it'd feel like Bobby was acting 10 in one episode and 16 the next. Happens a lot with these adult animated shows (except American Dad which nails the family dynamic) and it only really sticks out because King of the Hill is so grounded at its best.

I like this, excellent diagetic exposition setting this one on the timeline. We've worked our way back to the martial law declaration and here we have this goon cheerfully opining about how this is the kind of shit he's here for. I like it so much we're breaking our arbitrary late-nite release rule. And eh, we don't have One Piece this week.

We also get a lot of fun stuff about some of the other goings on. Quite like the bit with Seventh Prince Luzurus and Basho being all like, woah dude do we really have to flush the drugs? Lowkey one of the things I like about HxH is Togashi does manage to work in some mild stoner bits because it's one of those things that's gotten so ubiquitous in Western media but is still quite taboo in Asian stories. So seeing stuff like Basho/Luzurus and Morel or even D2 and the NGL Commune gives this series a little bit of verisimilitude you don't often see.

Said it before, but you always know you're in for a great Jojo's chapter when it opens with philosophical rambling about the nature of the world and humanity. Here we have one about how all progress begins with rocks and you know? I can buy it.

Looks like we're coming to the end of the Usagi, Fraud, & Suspicion story segment and it's been a doozy. Blowing up lions, Dragona's love life, lot of fun stuff all around honesty. Anything else we wanna add?

Guys look! We have returned to the mysterious CHAMBER OF LINES! I don't know why I love stuff like this so much, but it's such a departure from the otherwise lush and modern scenery of the upper tiers of the Black Whale. Obviously the lines are some variant of that Nen script we've seen a few times across the series. Makes me think of the entrance and exit to Greed Island.

I just always like seeing it, and don't forget that Chrollo is running around under the assumption there will be some spot like this. Now of course, part of the appeal is it is rare we get to see it. And there is an interesting example getting into the finer points of the Succession Contest. Ninth Prince Halkenburg is our subject ostensibly, in that King Nasubi is speculating on why his fire isn't lighting up. Correctly guessing he has a power that has his soul in another's body. Which is copacetic for the Contest. However, he does casually mention that Kacho's did. So her case is quite different. I have wondered if the deal there is the sort of thing where it's more like Fugetsu's memories of Kacho, but we'll leave that to ponder as the story inches closer to the point we left off in 410. This is still stuff that would have been happening during Morena and Borksen's time together.