Why485 After Hours - Expect Trash

For me, it's Eliza.

Star Detective has been a very fun season to follow because not only are there actually some compelling mysteries within the show (e.g. why is Arcana Shadow working for the bad guys?), but there's been a deliberate metatextual mystery going on with who Cure Eclair is.

Toei has made a whole event out of this. At present there are 4 candidates for which character she is. Also worth noting is that no VA has been announced for Eclair, and all four of these girls have different VAs. I have two opinions on each of the candidates: how likely they are to be Eclair based on the show's logic, and how likely I think they are based more meta/marketing/messing with the audience logic.

I thought this would be fun to capture for posterity, so here's my thoughts after the break!

I forgot to write about this when I got it, but last year I was gifted this (huge!) VF-1 and I've been admiring it ever since. For more details on the toy itself, there's a good overview on it by Anymoon here.

For most of the time I've had it, I've left it in GERWALK, since I think that's the most visually interesting (and kind of my favorite?) mode, but the fighter mode and battroid modes are both equally gobsmacking in how detailed they look. I really wish I had photos of it in fighter and GERWALK mode, but photos really don't do it justice.

What I'm most impressed by though is the insane degree of articulation required to make this all work. Like, holy crap the engineering behind this thing, especially given how well everything fits together and how tight all the tolerances are, just blow me away.

More than anything else though, this has me 100% convinced that you could never actually build a VF-1. The number of moving parts, that all have to be powered, the way that the VF-1 design is actually three completely separate "units" (the fuselage, and both engine "nacelles") that are just attached together in the shape of a plane, it's just impossible. And I'm just talking about the transformation, completely ignoring the part where it still has to be a functional airplane with working engines.

Finished Maebashi Witches! I decided to watch all three of the final episodes in one go, and that worked out great because it's basically a movie, and it was a great ending to the series.

I have two main criticisms of the show though and I want to get them out of the way before I talk about anything else:

First, there is a sort of "commercial stink" to Maebashi that is a bit hard to shake. This is backed by Sunrise, and it does feel like the show pulls its punches sometimes because they need to sell merchandise and are potentially setting up a franchise here. It can feel a bit clumsy at points because of this factor.

Second, it definitely needed another episode or four. It's very ambitious in what it's trying to do, and even with the really fast pacing it has, they clearly couldn't fit it all in 12 episodes. Kyouka's arc suffers the most, the main thread of which gets very conspicuously dropped. It's too bad, because Kyouka gets a lot of interesting setup and implied backstory that never pays off.

I think the biggest thing that had me coming back to Maebashi is that it feels like a passion project that the people behind it really wanted to make. This is despite the aforementioned "commercial stink." The writing in particular is grounded in a way that I don't see often in anime, let alone with a budget this big. The girls all have very real and modern problems. There's more to talk about here, but it's something that deserves its own post.

Another thing I really loved is just how detailed it was. Especially in the earlier episodes, this was one where I watched every episode at least twice. The episodes go by so fast, cover a lot of ground, and waste zero time. Almost every line, every shot, has more going on than you will pick up at first glance, and every reveal adds context or recontextualizes scenes from earlier episodes in a way you'd only understand on a rewatch. It was such a treat watching the episodes live and speculating with others!

One more thing. Azu! I love Azu so much! What a fun character. I love her self-loathing that she takes out on other people. I love her growth into being less of an acerbic asshole to others. I love her look. I love her purple. She's cute when she's fuming at others and herself, and she's especially cute when she does something nice, because Azu can never be honest about it and is afraid of breaking down the defensive wall of self pity and hate that she's made her identity.

Looks like Katherine is making her game debut! I recall seeing her name a couple times in old Endless Monday art so I went digging and with hindsight, she actually appeared semi-frequently pre-Dreams and Deadlines. It's all pretty early art, but I love seeing this stuff!

The first design for Kath was actually with green hair, shark teeth, and heterochromia, but she pretty quickly turned into the red/pink haired blue eyes design that she keeps for the remainder of her appearances. Funny enough, the most recent drawing of Kath (from 2020) has her wearing the same turtleneck that Penny wears in her final design. Before Penny had it, she used to just wear a white dress shirt.

The fact that Kath starts to disappear from the Endless Monday art around the same time that Penny and Whiskey start to make more prominent appearances (and the whole shirt thing), got me wondering if maybe whatever Kath's characterization was supposed to be, got split into Penny and Whiskey's role.

I posted about this earlier on BlueSky, and to my surprise, hcnone themselves actually responded! They also drew a cute picture of Kath.

katherine was kind of a redundant character when i was doing the old illustrations since blythe was a more interesting evil boss to me, but she still has a bunch of lore that i'm actually able to explore properly in a longer narrative context now, so i'm pretty excited about that

Look at how MOTIVATED Penny is!

The other funny thing about this season is that allegedly Precure has been kicking around the idea for a detective themed show for a few years now. There's definitely some brainworm over there because even Idol had a fun filler episode with Hamori playing detective.

Friendy's design having a detective theme, which has almost nothing to do with either the show or her characterization, was always kind of strange. Now comes along Anna, who looks almost like an alternate universe Iroha, making the whole thing so much weirder. Hair ending in upturned curls. Similar hair and eye colors. Even their outfits are somewhat similar, and they're both purple Cures! One is the de facto leader of her team, and while the other is officially. The cherry on top is that Friendy still looks more like a detective than Answer, the actual detective Precure.

Okay having slept on it, I've currently gaslit myself into this 100% without a doubt being the Back to the Future Precure.

Anna (MC, left in the above image) goes back in time and inadvertently runs into her mother Mikuru (right in the above image) but doesn't realize it until later in the show. Keeping this a secret from Mikuru (who is not stupid) becomes a fun running gag.

Anna's over-arching goal while in the past of 1999 (which by the way, is ~30 years in the past just like Back to the Future's 1985 -> 1955) is to get back to her time. Helping her is our mad scientist inventor fairy boy Jett, with all kinds of wacky eccentric inventions and ideas.

During their adventures, Anna runs into her future father who ends up falling for her instead of Mikuru after Anna saves him from the monster of the week and a funny subplot of the show is Anna and friends trying to hook the two of them up.

According to my spreadsheet I only watched four things last year. That's not totally true, because I did watch the first episode of a few other shows (e.g. Ruri Rocks). However of that handful of anime, Apocalypse Hotel was the only one I finished. To be honest, the majority of my scant anime watching time was devoted to the currently airing Idol Precure, getting about 20 episodes into Star Twinkle, and finishing my rewatch of Sky Precure.

All that said, I want to do a big roundup of the everything I sort of watched, even if it was just for a couple episodes! This got way out of hand, but I've had this all bottled up for a while now and need to put it to proverbial paper.

It's taken me basically the entire year, but I finally finished my rewatch of Sky Precure and oh boy do I still really really love this show. Something I've been grappling with though, is why do I like it so much when it's so easy to poke holes in the quality and plot? Why does this show get such a pass? I think I finally get it.

Half of it is just that the things I love about the show, I really love. E.g. This is still far and away my favorite team of all the Precure teams I've seen so far, and how much I love these characters goes a long way in making it easy to just overlook the show's faults.

The other half of it though, is that the ways in which Sky Precure are bad, are all interesting to talk about. (E.g. Captain Shalala.) It's a very "fixable" feeling show, with a strong base to work with, and so many cool ideas, I can't help but think about all the what ifs.

Like, I can't believe nobody ever questions the fact that Big Princess seemingly just created life out of nothing? That is huge and raises massive moral and ethical questions! Big Princess in general is such a wild character to add the show and its lore. There's so much to unpack with just her character that it's something I could fill a whole embarrassing post with. Like, in another story, she could easily have been the villain here. I'm half-joking but the over-arching plot is basically about dealing with the consequences of her actions.

Holy cow what a year. I don't think I've ever had this many games that I wanted to highlight, and even crazier, almost all of these games actually came out this year! As always, the rules here are only that I played it in 2025, release date doesn't matter.

Game of the Year: Endless Monday

A game that wears its heart on its sleeve. It's a wonderfully crafted little thing with fantastic art and a charming everything. Penny is my new favorite girlfailure. Skye's post-employment antics break my heart. Tiger-chan has got me ending sentences randomly with, "As they say." It's as funny as it is both relatable and depressing. I love this game so much I bought merch (Penny plushie) as soon as it went on sale. It's an incredibly specific game for an incredibly specific kind of person, but if the words "Jira jumpscare" mean anything to you, I highly recommend checking Endless Monday out.

Best Building Game But Good: Aviassembly

If I see somebody start using blocks to build a spaceship/boat/whatever I immediately tune out. I just can't do these kinds of games anymore, because to me they feel more like physics toys than games. Aviassembly though, is weird. There's gameplay. You have specific goals to accomplish, a limited budget, a limited partset, and it's up to you to put something together than can accomplish the mission. Missions reward you with bigger budgets and more parts. I got sucked into this game hard when it came out, to the point where I beat the entire ~14 hour Early Access campaign in 2 very long sittings over a weekend.

Best Glidecore Game: Desecrators

We've seen plenty of Playstation looking games. We've seen a handful of N64 looking games. When are we getting the 90s hardware accelerated Voodoo graphics games? It's a very specific look, and Desecrators absolutely nails that late 90s look when everybody figured out colored lights and lens flares and blending and you got games that looked like tech demos. Desecrators plays as smooth and polished as it looks too, and is an easy recommend for anybody looking for a 6DOF shooter.

Best Warthog Game: Easy Delivery Company

I stumbled across this on a Next Fest, gave it a try, and immediately fell in love. It has a ton of charm and character, and the vibes are immaculate. You recklessly drive your little kei truck with really fun physics and bouncy suspension to deliver packages around snowy mountain towns all set to a great soundtrack that I've actually listened to outside of the game. I'm very picky about vehicle physics since that's kind of my thing, and I love the way the truck drives in this.

Best Game I Can't Recommend: skate.

This game is the very definition of slop. It is the most edges sanded off shareholder approved soulless grating online-only microtransaction driven live-service game you could possibly make about something that is fundamentally a counter-culture staple. And yet, I keep playing it. It's a comfy game that I keep coming back to because skating around and doing tricks by flicking and rotating the thumbstick just satisfies a very specific part of my brain. I actually like this game a lot, but man, I really can't recommend it because it's basically everything wrong with modern games.

Best Examples of Good Indie Gamedev: Easy Delivery Co. / Hijong Park's Defender Patrol