Lazy Boy Central

I. Am. SO FAR BEHIND on G1 Climax this year...just like I was with Best of Super Juniors. I ended up only watching matches I was interested in with BoSJ, and it looks like it'll be the same with G1. I'm probably gonna miss some bangers (apparently the match between Okada and Taichi was really good, but I'm not much for Taichi). So who WILL I be following?

From baby-boy A BLOCK, I'll be following Shooter Shota, Ren Narita, and Yota Tsuji. That first match between Umino and Narita was so explosive and full of energy; these two got that youthful hunger and it shows. As for Yota...I'll just say it man, I am straight up THIRSTING for this man. I've stated before that he's becoming my new wrestler crush, but now it's pretty much official. The glow-up he's had since coming back from excursion has done that man good. He's got that aggressiveness and confidence that's gonna make him a star in New Japan...which always seemed to be the case, as we now know all those mysterious teaser trailers we've seen since New Japan Cup this year were all about him. NJPW clearly wants him to be big, and I gotta say...they hooked me. That man can Gene Blast me anyday.

Okay, now that Sex God Tsuji is out of the way, let's blast through the rest. B BLOCK has all my favorite picks, including himbo supreme El Phantasmo, the ABSOLUTE PIMP Great-O-Kahn (all hail), the guy that nearly paralyzed Kenny Omega, and my favorite boy of all time, KENTA. Tanga Loa is here too, which while it's great to see him again after so long, that rough debut match he had with KENTA was...not so great. Hope his knee gets better. Plus hey oh wow, Okada is in B BLOCK! What a fun way to mix things up. I haven't seen his match against ELP but I remember thinking to myself "oh no ELP, I love you but this will not end well for you." I might be wrong, guess I'll see when I get to it.

C BLOCK and D BLOCK are just sorta "meh" to me. All the handsome mens are on C, my picks being David Finlay, EVIL, and Shingo Takagi (the most handsome one on that block, fight me over it). Eddie Kingston is also on C BLOCK which I admittedly want to see how well he does here. And Aaron Henare's new look sure is something, ain't it? It's very culturally significant and I'm happy for him, but I sure will miss that moustache. Speaking of, we got Alex Coughlin in D BLOCK, who's one of my favorites from the old LA Dojo days (kinda glad he joined Bullet Club and dropped that stupid "android" schtick...same goes for Clark Connors and his whole...thing). We also got Jeff Cobb, another crush of mine, as well as...the rest. I mean there's Naito and Tanahashi and Zack Sabre Jr...lots of legends here. But none of them really tickle my pickle the likes of ELP and Yota do.

So who's gonna win G1 Climax this year? Seems too early for me to tell right now, but if I had to choose, I'm honestly going with B BLOCK's Taichi. I couldn't give two shits about that man, but he's had such an incredibly strong start during this tourney that it's hard to see him not at least reach the finals. As much as I'd want to see Narita or Tsuji from A win it all, I find it more believable to see them at least make it to the semifinals. I'd love to see Kingston be the victor of C BLOCK, but I kinda want to see Finlay up there, since this "New Bullet Club" arc has been picking up lots of steam lately. And for D BLOCK...um...Toru Yano. Because it would be funny.

Good to see the manga coming back from break (hope your eyes are doing better, Oda). Chapter 1088 isn't up as of the time of this post, but last week's chapter was alright. Chaos all over Pirate Island, seeing more of Garp's backstory, plus all that sweet deeplore. Things have been pretty exciting so far, and you can tell things are building up to "the end" with all that's going on. But as cool as all this is, I can't help but be all "when are they gonna get to the Laugh Tale factory?? *sob sob*"

Gear 5 is finally coming to the anime! I'm both excited and nervous about it. The teaser that's been going around looks great, but I don't know if they'll get the cartoony side of Gear 5 Luffy well. It's clearly based on Tex Avery-ass, Looney Tunes-ass western cartoons, and whenever an anime tries to do western style antics, it always comes out...weird. Weird and wrong. They wern't the ones who made Red Hot Riding Hood, so I guess I can't blame them. I heard they got some great anime directors for the Gear 5 premiere, so I'm sure it'll still look as immaculate as most of the other Onigashima episodes.

Crunchyroll is getting some of the more recent One Piece movies, which apparently include Film Gold, Stampede, and Film Red. I've already seen Gold, which is a super fun movie, and I saw Red in theaters. Stampede is the one I wanna see; I've heard there's lots of fanservice in it (not the hot kind) and was pretty good all around. I'd like to see that and maybe rewatch Red in English, which I assume they'll have.

Well I'm certainly still excited for Sonic Superstars. It'll probably be the only game I buy during the holiday season...maaaaybe the new Samba de Amigo game, if money is good enough (it probably won't be). Interested in seeing how an actual new classic Sonic game will be handled.

Sonic Prime seems to be doing well. I'm certainly not paying for Netflix just to watch a cartoon show, but it seems to be doing okay without me. I've at least seen plenty of gifs from it. You know when you see a constant stream of gifs and screens from a thing, they're appealing to the Tumblr crowd well. Things have been getting a bit "Sonadow" around these parts. More power to ya.

I've been hearing rumors of a possible-maybe-but-probably-not-actually-happening remaster of Sonic Heroes lately. That would be great, as that was one of my favorite 3D Sonics growing up. I've heard that the Sonic people are considering doing remakes and shit as well as making brand new games, which is certainly the style of the time. My money would be on a Sonic Adventure 1 remake first, though. That nutty game could benefit from a redo.

But…it’s basically a team-based shooter. Never was a fan of those. Think Overwatch but with literal World War Z piles of raptors to take down. It’s fine for what it is, and I think it can find an audience. It’s just not what I wanted gameplay-wise. It’s also one of those games that sells for full-price but still has a battle pass to buy on top of that, and that’s always yucky to me (even playing on this on Game Pass does not help in that regard).

It figures that when I finally start playing a Pokémon game legitimately without cheating, I find my first legitimate shiny wild Pokémon in what feels like decades.

Been trying to get myself to play Pokémon again. And by that I mean actually play the game and not rushing through it to finally bring in my ancient Lv 100 critters from my HOME account.

I’ve mentioned here before that my Pokemon HOME account has been penalized possibly forever due to my, erm, “use of data altered via unauthorized means.” It only blocks me from Wonder Trades on the mobile app, but the experience left such a bad taste in my mouth that I considered just getting out of Pokemon altogether. All I do is cheat anyway.

Something recently compelled me to give it another go, though. I deleted my old HOME account (and the 500+ shiny max IV legendaries that were in it…they were hacked, don’t feel bad) as well as started a brand new game in Pokémon Violet. All my old critters are gone, and thanks to a full-on console exchange (going from my old Lite to my OG Switch), the old saves can no longer be brought back. It’s a full-on reset.

And I gotta say…it’s actually enjoyable. It’s still early game, but I’m actually enjoying myself quite a bit by doing things legit. Scraping by with what shitty Pokemon I can get in the beginning and making a ragtag team work for me is a joy I’ve been denying myself for a very long time (except for maybe when I replayed Let’s Go Eevee…that was such a pleasant experience, lemme tell ya). Plus I feel I can actually enjoy the game’s story for once. I liked it the first time around, but now I can appreciate it on a new level with this replay. I’m not allowing any HOME-based transfers to other games, though; the critters I catch on here are staying here forever. The ability to transfer ‘mons to other games is what got me hooked on buying genned Pokémon in the first place.