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We'll go through 'reading' first, because, well, I read through a bunch of stuff. Manga-wise it's a bit thin, but I did catch up to at least May's chapters of My Hero Academia. I'm not sure why the manga is kind of losing me, though. I guess while the concept of the whole Hawks/double-agent/mega-injustice-league stuff is genuinely interesting, the execution is not so much? Or maybe I've just absolutely had it with 'who's the traitor' plotlines stretched across so many months.Other manga that I read included the entirety of Demon Slayer (thank you, very well-animated anime adaptation), plus, thanks to some recommendations, a bunch of rom-coms that I really did enjoy a lot -- Kaguya-sama: Love is War (very on-point comedy) and The Devil is a Part-Timer.
I did go through a bunch of physical books I've been planning to read for a while. I finally finished the second book of A Song of Fire and Ice, Clash of Kings. It's always pretty interesting, having seen the show, to look at some of the foreshadowing that takes place in the books but are completely absent in the show. The earlier seasons do try and mirror most of the books more faithfully, which means that there's not a lot of new content for me to read here, but it's always nice to read the books that inspired the TV show.
I also went through a bunch of World of Warcraft novels. I read through Night of the Dragon, which is a sequel to Day of the Dragon, one of the very first actual novels I read, and it was a pretty fun read. Being a lot more aware about the WoW game franchise as a whole, it's neat to actually have a 'face' to put the names like Rhonin, Sinestra, Veressa and the rest to, y'know? Back in the day, all I had was the book's cover to really imagine what some of these characters looked like. I'm also currently around halfway through Before the Storm, the prologue-novel to the Battle for Azeroth expansion. It's pretty neat. I'm also starting on my huge War of the Ancients collected edition, which is sure a big book. I've always disliked that this storyline injected time-travelers for honestly no real reason other than to tie it to the present-day characters, and I felt like the book perhaps would've flowed better without it, but oh well.
Comic-book wise, I've been combing through a bunch of TPB's I have at my home from gifts or whatever that I simply didn't have time to read before. I blazed through the two later TPB's for the Knightfall saga, and it's... it's neat stuff, but Jean-Paul Valley as angry emo Batman sort of lost its steam after the first huge TPB centering around his fight with Bane. The publishers and writers also jump back and forth on whether they want Jean-Paul to actually be super-violent and all Punisher-like, or for him to actually be heroic-but-conflicted, and that leads to the eventual conflict feeling very much lukewarm.
Without any real order, I've also been blazing through a bunch of Marvel comics TPB's that I have borrowed from people, mostly X-Men stuff because I'm a huge X-Men fan... but most of my exposure to X-Men came from the cartoon, the 80's Claremont run, the movies and general Marvel comics exposure like crossovers and video games and stuff. I went through the first two huge TPB's of the original Age of Apocalypse, which is... neat? It's always fun to see these alternate-universe dystopia stuff, but I did feel like while they had a lot of good concepts, it's always kind of jarring whenever these crossovers basically jump around from different title to different title, and reading it in TPB format basically means that you swap protagonists very, very rapidly and it doesn't really end up feeling like a properly cohesive story.
I also read the highly-acclaimed House of X/Powers of X TPB, a ten-parter that reboots the X-Men... and I really adore some of the stuff done here, like the concept of Moira's new mutant powers as she basically reincarnates herself and gets to relive different lives where she allies herself with different major mutant figures and it all leads to the mutants being fucked by Sentinels in the far future. And I do like the idea of Krakoa as a mutant nation (granted, they've done this a bunch of times before, haven't they?) but the bizarre portrayal of most of the mutants basically existing in a weird cult-like euphoria doesn't sit well with me. I enjoyed the read, still, but I do think that it's over-hyped.
I read the 2018 run of Guardians of the Galaxy. It's pretty cool! I don't really have much to say about it, I enjoyed my read through it and I feel like it does a good balance of using the characters popularized by the MCU movies and assorted MCU-related material as well as other less prominent characters. I also read through the Silver Surfer: Black miniseries, which tied into this one somewhat. It's also pretty neat; the writing and the monologues really made it a lot of fun to read and I'm someone who usually finds these sort of 'god-like entity' comic books tedious. But this one isn't.
I read Avengers vs. X-Men, too, which is the Phoenix Five one, and... the art sure is pretty, but I do think that there's a significant case of Civil War syndrome where Cyclops and Captain America (especially Cap) ended up getting a significant injection of unreasonable jackassness, which took me out of the story a bit. The heroes end up acting sort of like villains, and while Cyclops and the Phoenix Five at least had the excuse of being mind-controlled by the Phoenix. I feel like the story was concluded relatively well, even if the huge 'death' at the end does feel extremely lukewarm. Less interesting was the much shorter and IMO less entertaining Inhumans vs. X-Men, and... wow, I see why the Inhumans apparently get such a bad rap among many fans I talk to. A few select Inhumans aside, the conflict really doesn't portray the Inhumans in a particularly good light, huh?
I also read Earth X... which was pretty heavy stuff, and another one that puts the Inhumans in a lot more morally-ambiguous light. This one is a lot better than IvX, and the huge, huge plot twist at the end regarding this alternate-universe Earth and the Celestials is genuinely well-done. Actually a pretty highly-recommended one from me!
Movies-wise, thanks to having to interact with family all the time we've decided to go through a lot of movies. And one of the undertakings we did was to watch through all of the James Bond movies. I'm not sure if I'll ever do reviews of them on this site, because that's a lot of movies and a lot of rather outdated values in them, but for the most part I know the best ones that I liked among them -- From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, The Living Daylights, Goldeneye, Casino Royale and Skyfall. Plus Moonraker for hilarity's sake. Not a whole ton to say, James Bond movies vary a lot in quality and tone and it's pretty interesting that the reception to these movies vary wildly, with some people liking the camp, some people disliking it, and some people wanting super-serious stuff. I really find myself in the middle. I don't care for campy nonsense and over-the-top Q gadgets as long as the movie itself is pretty solid, and likewise, I don't particularly think turning James Bond into John Wick is necessarily a right way to make the movie suddenly 'mature'. I've also watched through the first two Austin Powers movies, which are parodies of the Bond spy genre, and they're decently funny.
As far as other movies go... I watched a bunch of the newer Fast and Furious movies, which... they're basically making it the new James-Bond-meets-superhero-movies-but-with-cars, yeah? Particularly the latest one, Hobbs & Shaw, which literally features a super-soldier straight out of Marvel comics. I had intended to rewatch all of the MCU movies, but haven't really managed to progress much after the first phase. It's something I intend to eventually do on this blog, though maybe not in the near future. I watched that movie 'Underwater', too, which is an interesting twist on Alien but with Cthulhu? It's an interesting concept but I'm not sure if the execution is all that great. The movie itself is solid, I suppose. I watched the Kingdom live-action adaptation. It's a'ight, very faithful to the manga, and it's fun to see Yoshizawa Ryo of Kamen Rider Fourze fame act as the Emperor of China.
I also watched Justice League Dark: Apokolips War... and really wasn't prepared for what it was. I kind of expected another Constantine-centric fest similar to the first Justice League Dark animated movie. Turns out it's some 'huge crisis at the end of the universe' style bit where everyone dies. There are some interesting focus characters here (mostly Superman, Constantine, Robin and Raven) that draw from previous DCAUOM movies... but ultimately, it's kind of a mish-mash of various random aspects of previous DC movies, and honestly more of an excuse to torch-and-burn the continuity. I don't really have a whole lot of attachment to these versions of the characters, but it's honestly still kind of depressing. It's sort of a stealth Flashpoint movie, and that's how the movie ultimately ends. For what it's worth, the animation and voice acting is decent, and what little we get of the dwindling cast is decent as far as these things go, but I really didn't care for the movie all that much.
I brought the game a while back, so I finally had the time to finally finish Warcraft III: Reforged. And it's a pretty good remaster, just perhaps not for the price it's asking. The graphics are fantastic, the models are amazing (they have individual models for each of the 'repaint' creeps, which is surprising) but ultimately I think the biggest complaints from the game's detractors is that it's mostly a fresh coat of paint on what's basically the same game. And while I don't necessarily want them to change any of the existing levels, adding parts to it -- like what they did in the Dalaran and Stratholme levels -- would be much more appreciated. Hell, I had expected them to throw in some actual new content, too -- maybe adapting Warcraft I and II very loosely in a special campaign, or the period of time between Warcraft III and World of Warcraft vanilla? I still won't complain too much, it's a playthrough that I really did enjoy, although I haven't really played Warcraft III in over ten years.
As you can probably tell by my revamped Breath of the Wild monster review thing, I've been playing through Breath of the Wild. It's a game that I have a lot of conflicting opinions on. On one hand, it's an amazing RPG game and exploration game. On the other hand, I'm still of the opinion that it doesn't feel quite like how a Zelda game has been geared to fit in my head. Part of it is my just getting old, and part of it is the fact that the BOTW world is so wide and so dependent on you having adequate in-game resources that it makes exploration and finding the best parts of the game so frustrating without a guide. Still, I did go through a lot of the DLC content (which I bought like two years ago) and a lot of sidequests that I never did. I cleaned up most of the side-quests, memory missions and the Ballad of the Champions DLC. And while I'm probably going to eventually finish most of the shrine quests (not the shrines themselves, though) and the Trial of the Sword, I probably wouldn't aim for anywhere near 100% completion.
Other games I've been playing on-and-off include Metroid: Samus Returns on the 3DS, the remake of Metroid II. It's fun to just play a game that's just 'kill enemy, move on to next level', and the fact that this works on old-school brutal Nintendo mentality where there aren't exactly a lot of convenient save spots and checkpoints makes it actually surprisingly difficult and fun. I sped-run through Batman: Arkham Origins, which was great. I've also been playing a bit through my Witcher 2 save file. Apparently I last saved at the beginning of Chapter 3, thinking that it would be as expansive as the first two chapters. Turns out I was wrong, since it took me like two or three sittings to finish the third chapter and that's including looking up a guide to see if I missed any side-quests. Turns out the final chapter of Witcher 2 is indeed that short. So I guess I'll be tuning into The Witcher 3, the big bad motherfucker game that apparently 'defined the genre' after it released. I have heard loads of good things about Witcher 3 so I'm excited to get started on that.
I did purchase the Pokemon Sword DLC, but I haven't played it a whole ton as of yet. Do expect more Isle of Armor playthrough, though I really don't find a whole ton to really say about the expansion. The story of the expansion is pretty short and if you power through it you could finish it in an hour or two, and the Isle of Armor itself is charming but ultimately I do feel like it's just kind of a proof of concept of a Wild Area that's a bit more intricate than the 'two huge grasslands separated by a road' that the original Wild Area in mainland Galar is. Seeing a lot of new Pokemon in the Wild Area is nice, but at the same time it does feel like kind of the bare minimum of content you need for a DLC, and I suspect a good amount of development time just went into the environments and revamping the 3DS models to the high definition of the Switch models in preparation for generation nine.
I also played through the Ashes of Outland single-player adventure in Hearthstone, which is... pretty simple. At least it's a solid story unlike Galakrond's Awakening, although it's kind of short and the focus on almost entirely Hearthstone-original characters does end up making the story feel kind of just... there. I dunno, I feel like they could've done a bit better in making the fight against the Rusted Legion last longer than two or three fights. Really loved the Felstorm Hurricane level or whatever it's called, though.
Being a huge D&D geek, of course I've heard and listened to the Critical Role, the original high-profile D&D youtube/podcast thing. It's amazing, and I've finally caught up to the last-aired episode of the second campaign, finished the epilogue special editions of the first campaign, and watched a bunch of their wacky one-offs. Also another great D&D podcast is the Unexpectables, which I also caught up to during the quarantine. Both are very fun and have amazing characters, and I really do like putting them on the background while I deal with housework and stuff.
And... television. I've finally finished up the ersatz episodes of Kamen Rider Blade and Kamen Rider Ryuki I haven't watched, and blazed through the first 30 episodes of Kamen Rider Agito. Planning to finish up Agito sooner or later, and this basically means that I've watched through almost the entirety of the Heisei era, with only the second half of Agito and Kuuga (I can't find good subs anywhere, although I'll be looking) left. I've also watched the two newest Sentai shows, namely Lupinranger vs. Patranger and Ryuusoulger. LuPat was pretty fun and probably the one I like better, although it does feel very static and the ending is kind of underwhelming. Ryuusoulger was also very fun and bubbly, but I just really didn't really care all that much for the plot. That's more thanks to the actual vibe of Sentai itself than anything, though. I'm not sure if I'll be committing and sitting down and reviewing all of these in-depth, so I'll just acknowledge that I've watched them, is all.
I also watched the first season of the Harley Quinn cartoon in a single sitting. I attempted to do reviews for this, but ultimately all I ended up doing is going "I really like this joke, that joke was also funny, and hey that's a neat easter egg, I can't believe they made this joke, ha ha swearing". It's really great, though, the humour and writing is pretty on-point and the more adult swearing is pretty neatly contrasted with the charming take on most of the characters and the very tongue-in-cheek tone of the jokes. I'm a huge fan, and while I don't really have a whole lot to say, just note that I really like this show.
Over the past couple of months, even before quarantine, I've also watched a bunch of TV shows on-and-off. I watched through a bunch of the older One Piece movies, I've watched the first season of 'That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime' (which is Overlord but with a far more wholesome plot and a lot less edge), the first season of 'Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba' (very solid animation, very solid soundtrack, very solid vibe and the story's very decent -- I'm told the manga gets into high gear in the arcs after the anime stopped), Netflix's Witcher adaptation (a great adaptation of the novels I did and the vibe of the video games), most of the second season of Star Trek: The New Generation (the first season is kind of an embarrassment, but the second season is very decent, particularly episodes 10 and 11). I'm planning to finish the anime for Kaguya-sama in the next month. And I plan to learn the story of Persona 5 via the anime adaptation; since I don't have a PS4 to play and it's not out on PC, that's about the best way for me to experience it, I feel.
Other projects I've been doing? As I may or may not have said in that one review that I posted last week I've actually finished my reviews of the 2011 Hunter x Hunter anime all the way to almost the last episodes of the Chimera Ant arc, but I'm proof-reading them and will probably release them incrementally in the next couple of months.
Doing this blog a lot in quarantine does also make me realize that I'm probably going to cut down on the quantity of posts. Not to say that I will be writing less, but I feel like I'm actually posting a far better article when I don't just bum-rush and try and do thing per-episode. I feel like I get a lot more comfortable reviewing things like two or three episodes in one go, particularly for less content-heavy episodes like, oh, Kamen Rider episodes or Pokemon episodes. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but sometimes you just don't have a whole ton to say about a single episode and the review ends up becoming a summary, and I feel like these couple past months really allowed me to practice doing more succinct reviews.
With 'Reviewing Monsters', I have finished up drafts for all the Digimon released until early 2020, although I'm going to want to proof-read them a bit. I'm taking a bit of a break from D&D and taking it slow. I do think looking forward I'll be focusing mostly on 5E material instead of jumping around from one version to the next, because it's a bit more organized, I feel, what with the D&D Beyond site and all. I do expect a couple more extra Reviewing Monsters articles about Legend of Zelda, Magic: The Gathering and a couple of Pokemon human characters to pop up soon.
That's about it, I guess. It's been a long while of doing nothing but trying to entertain myself at home.
I did go through a bunch of physical books I've been planning to read for a while. I finally finished the second book of A Song of Fire and Ice, Clash of Kings. It's always pretty interesting, having seen the show, to look at some of the foreshadowing that takes place in the books but are completely absent in the show. The earlier seasons do try and mirror most of the books more faithfully, which means that there's not a lot of new content for me to read here, but it's always nice to read the books that inspired the TV show.
I also went through a bunch of World of Warcraft novels. I read through Night of the Dragon, which is a sequel to Day of the Dragon, one of the very first actual novels I read, and it was a pretty fun read. Being a lot more aware about the WoW game franchise as a whole, it's neat to actually have a 'face' to put the names like Rhonin, Sinestra, Veressa and the rest to, y'know? Back in the day, all I had was the book's cover to really imagine what some of these characters looked like. I'm also currently around halfway through Before the Storm, the prologue-novel to the Battle for Azeroth expansion. It's pretty neat. I'm also starting on my huge War of the Ancients collected edition, which is sure a big book. I've always disliked that this storyline injected time-travelers for honestly no real reason other than to tie it to the present-day characters, and I felt like the book perhaps would've flowed better without it, but oh well.
Comic-book wise, I've been combing through a bunch of TPB's I have at my home from gifts or whatever that I simply didn't have time to read before. I blazed through the two later TPB's for the Knightfall saga, and it's... it's neat stuff, but Jean-Paul Valley as angry emo Batman sort of lost its steam after the first huge TPB centering around his fight with Bane. The publishers and writers also jump back and forth on whether they want Jean-Paul to actually be super-violent and all Punisher-like, or for him to actually be heroic-but-conflicted, and that leads to the eventual conflict feeling very much lukewarm.Without any real order, I've also been blazing through a bunch of Marvel comics TPB's that I have borrowed from people, mostly X-Men stuff because I'm a huge X-Men fan... but most of my exposure to X-Men came from the cartoon, the 80's Claremont run, the movies and general Marvel comics exposure like crossovers and video games and stuff. I went through the first two huge TPB's of the original Age of Apocalypse, which is... neat? It's always fun to see these alternate-universe dystopia stuff, but I did feel like while they had a lot of good concepts, it's always kind of jarring whenever these crossovers basically jump around from different title to different title, and reading it in TPB format basically means that you swap protagonists very, very rapidly and it doesn't really end up feeling like a properly cohesive story.
I also read the highly-acclaimed House of X/Powers of X TPB, a ten-parter that reboots the X-Men... and I really adore some of the stuff done here, like the concept of Moira's new mutant powers as she basically reincarnates herself and gets to relive different lives where she allies herself with different major mutant figures and it all leads to the mutants being fucked by Sentinels in the far future. And I do like the idea of Krakoa as a mutant nation (granted, they've done this a bunch of times before, haven't they?) but the bizarre portrayal of most of the mutants basically existing in a weird cult-like euphoria doesn't sit well with me. I enjoyed the read, still, but I do think that it's over-hyped.
I read the 2018 run of Guardians of the Galaxy. It's pretty cool! I don't really have much to say about it, I enjoyed my read through it and I feel like it does a good balance of using the characters popularized by the MCU movies and assorted MCU-related material as well as other less prominent characters. I also read through the Silver Surfer: Black miniseries, which tied into this one somewhat. It's also pretty neat; the writing and the monologues really made it a lot of fun to read and I'm someone who usually finds these sort of 'god-like entity' comic books tedious. But this one isn't.
Speaking of more cosmic stuff, I read a couple of parts of the Annihilation storyline, mostly the main Annihilation TPB, the prologue and the Ronan tie-in issues. It's nice to really get a feel of how these characters were before a lot of the post-Guardians of the Galaxy movie turned them to basically be MCU clones! Ronan in particular is really great as a Judge Dredd-esque 'I will return the Kree into what they were even though they rejected me'; Drax as a single-minded hunter to get revenge on Thanos... Annihilus himself is probably the weakest part of that storyline, being kind of a generic doomsday villain, but it's actually not a bad space-opera huge crossover story.
I read Avengers vs. X-Men, too, which is the Phoenix Five one, and... the art sure is pretty, but I do think that there's a significant case of Civil War syndrome where Cyclops and Captain America (especially Cap) ended up getting a significant injection of unreasonable jackassness, which took me out of the story a bit. The heroes end up acting sort of like villains, and while Cyclops and the Phoenix Five at least had the excuse of being mind-controlled by the Phoenix. I feel like the story was concluded relatively well, even if the huge 'death' at the end does feel extremely lukewarm. Less interesting was the much shorter and IMO less entertaining Inhumans vs. X-Men, and... wow, I see why the Inhumans apparently get such a bad rap among many fans I talk to. A few select Inhumans aside, the conflict really doesn't portray the Inhumans in a particularly good light, huh?I also read Earth X... which was pretty heavy stuff, and another one that puts the Inhumans in a lot more morally-ambiguous light. This one is a lot better than IvX, and the huge, huge plot twist at the end regarding this alternate-universe Earth and the Celestials is genuinely well-done. Actually a pretty highly-recommended one from me!
I read through the first Marvel Zombies TPB too. It was... eh. Pretty basic Elseworlds stuff, neat but unmemorable. Also read through the 2009 Dark Avengers storyline, which wasn't terrible but really does felt like it could've been spaced out just a bit more in terms of pacing; a common complaint that I do have with a lot of these newer comics. It really does feel like the writer wanted to tell a Goblin-and-Sentry story, but was sort of pigeonholed into writing for an ensemble cast. The Siege bit that followed afterwards is something I read too, but that was mostly just pretty much regular crossover stuff that I enjoyed but honestly didn't care much for.
I also read the first two TPBs of the relatively newer run of Immortal Hulk... and that was really awesome. It's really hard to describe that run, but between treating it the Hulk more as an undying force of nature, the surprisingly well-written spiritual/mystical monologues, and the fact that we actually get to see the Hulk interact and be creepy and anti-heroic but not outright an asshole... I think this might be my favourite incarnation of comic-book Hulk. Oh, and the writing's pretty great, too -- all the monologues, particularly when the story starts to really get on the way at psycho-analyzing the various Hulks... as someone who barely has any knowledge of the previous Hulks, it's actually pretty cool to actually get to see a lot of development that's surprisingly easy for even a more casual fan like me to access.
I read both Cosmic Ghost Rider TPBs ("Baby Thanos Must Die" and "Cosmic Ghost Rider Destroys the Marvel History") which is pretty fun since it's a bit of a more tongue-in-cheek take on the concept of Frank Castle in the future being transformed into a god-like being and then getting thrown back into the past... although in the first TPB, the character really doesn't feel like an old Frank Castle and more like a Deadpool wannabe? These two are probably my favourite reads in this batch of comics, though, mostly due to the tongue-in-cheek tone.
I also read a bunch of Secret Wars (2015) stuff -- the full Secret Wars TPB, plus a bunch of the Battleworlds stuff like Ghost Racers; Attilan Rising; Thors; Marvel Zombies; Age of Ultron vs. Marvel Zombies; Red Skull. By and by, I think that I've never been the biggest fan of these huge Crisis-style crossovers, but I kind of appreciate that most of the main story is relatively contained to like a handful of characters trying to figure out Dr. Doom's brand new world. It does feel kind of odd that the huge "end of the 616 and Ultimate worlds" crossover is so dependent on just hanging around an alternate universe, but oh well. A lot of fun zaniness happened here, and my favourite is probably the random Casablanca-inspired Attilan Rising or the various Thors of the multiverse acting in what is essentially a cop drama.
I read both Cosmic Ghost Rider TPBs ("Baby Thanos Must Die" and "Cosmic Ghost Rider Destroys the Marvel History") which is pretty fun since it's a bit of a more tongue-in-cheek take on the concept of Frank Castle in the future being transformed into a god-like being and then getting thrown back into the past... although in the first TPB, the character really doesn't feel like an old Frank Castle and more like a Deadpool wannabe? These two are probably my favourite reads in this batch of comics, though, mostly due to the tongue-in-cheek tone.
I also read a bunch of Secret Wars (2015) stuff -- the full Secret Wars TPB, plus a bunch of the Battleworlds stuff like Ghost Racers; Attilan Rising; Thors; Marvel Zombies; Age of Ultron vs. Marvel Zombies; Red Skull. By and by, I think that I've never been the biggest fan of these huge Crisis-style crossovers, but I kind of appreciate that most of the main story is relatively contained to like a handful of characters trying to figure out Dr. Doom's brand new world. It does feel kind of odd that the huge "end of the 616 and Ultimate worlds" crossover is so dependent on just hanging around an alternate universe, but oh well. A lot of fun zaniness happened here, and my favourite is probably the random Casablanca-inspired Attilan Rising or the various Thors of the multiverse acting in what is essentially a cop drama.
Some of the others are neat, but I don't have much to say. Venom (2019) and the accompanying Absolute Carnage is a neat little jaunt, but I'm not the biggest fan of the more cosmic stuff. The writing is great and like Hulk it's definitely a fun, concerted effort to bring the character in new directions. X-Men (2019) is well written but I'm extremely not a huge fan of the Krakoa stuff and it's a testament to the writing that it still held my attention. Ghost Rider (2019) and Dr. Strange: Damnation are all nice reads but nothing too spectacular. World War Hulk was... interesting, but everyone's kind of a dick and I'm not a fan of that.
I also dipped my toes into the Ultimate universe. And... okay, without trying to be mean, holy shit these series had all of the tropes that I dislike about the 2000-era comic books, and holy shit they tried to be 'mature' at the cost of turning everyone in the story kind of unlikable. I read through the first two "Ultimates" titles and hoo boy, so many of the heroes are downright unlikable and are so bizarrely distilled from their mainstream/616 counterparts. Hulk and Giant-Man gets turned into essentially villains, Black Widow is a straight-up psychopath, random people die just for the sake of drama, and throughout it all Captain America is a completely unlikable jerkwad acting like the most cranky, self-righteous old man ever. I'm also not sure about the story just pussyfooting around whether Thor is a mental patient with delusions of grandeur or actually a god (because norse gods are so lame and unrealistic or something) but they actually have Asgard in this continuity so okay, sure. There are a lot of unmistakably good parts that would come to influence the MCU as far as a pragmatic adaptation of the Avengers go... but man, I did not enjoy reading through these. Despite the comics' intent, the Ultimates end up actually do becoming America's secret super black ops team and are so obsessed about their reputation, and it's really hard for me to root for any of them. Except for maybe Thor.
Ultimate Spider-Man is a lot better, but the story is pretty decompressed, huh? It at least is very faithful to how Spider-Man and his cast should be. Sure, there are a bunch of reinventions of the characters and the setting, but I really do get the feeling that the writer actually likes Spider-Man and is just trying to reinvent the franchise in a more accessible way. It's nowhere as terrible as Ultimates was, although the pacing is pretty slow and I'd be pissed if I read it from a month-to-month basis. I also read through the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, which comprises "Ultimate Nightmare", "Ultimate Secret" and "Ultimate Extinction". It's basically what Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is based on, sans X-Men and Avengers Ultimates crossover... and it's not terrible? There are a bunch of changes that made me frown and go 'why though' and a lot of the writing and jokes didn't age well... but it's not terrible. It's just different. I didn't mind this one.
I do plan to dip my toes into some of the better-reviewed "new wave" Marvel characters. I liked Gwenpool, and I've heard nice things about the Kamala Khan Ms. Mavel, Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider, Miles Morales Spider-Man and Spider-Gwen stuff.
Movies-wise, thanks to having to interact with family all the time we've decided to go through a lot of movies. And one of the undertakings we did was to watch through all of the James Bond movies. I'm not sure if I'll ever do reviews of them on this site, because that's a lot of movies and a lot of rather outdated values in them, but for the most part I know the best ones that I liked among them -- From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, The Living Daylights, Goldeneye, Casino Royale and Skyfall. Plus Moonraker for hilarity's sake. Not a whole ton to say, James Bond movies vary a lot in quality and tone and it's pretty interesting that the reception to these movies vary wildly, with some people liking the camp, some people disliking it, and some people wanting super-serious stuff. I really find myself in the middle. I don't care for campy nonsense and over-the-top Q gadgets as long as the movie itself is pretty solid, and likewise, I don't particularly think turning James Bond into John Wick is necessarily a right way to make the movie suddenly 'mature'. I've also watched through the first two Austin Powers movies, which are parodies of the Bond spy genre, and they're decently funny.As far as other movies go... I watched a bunch of the newer Fast and Furious movies, which... they're basically making it the new James-Bond-meets-superhero-movies-but-with-cars, yeah? Particularly the latest one, Hobbs & Shaw, which literally features a super-soldier straight out of Marvel comics. I had intended to rewatch all of the MCU movies, but haven't really managed to progress much after the first phase. It's something I intend to eventually do on this blog, though maybe not in the near future. I watched that movie 'Underwater', too, which is an interesting twist on Alien but with Cthulhu? It's an interesting concept but I'm not sure if the execution is all that great. The movie itself is solid, I suppose. I watched the Kingdom live-action adaptation. It's a'ight, very faithful to the manga, and it's fun to see Yoshizawa Ryo of Kamen Rider Fourze fame act as the Emperor of China.
I also watched Justice League Dark: Apokolips War... and really wasn't prepared for what it was. I kind of expected another Constantine-centric fest similar to the first Justice League Dark animated movie. Turns out it's some 'huge crisis at the end of the universe' style bit where everyone dies. There are some interesting focus characters here (mostly Superman, Constantine, Robin and Raven) that draw from previous DCAUOM movies... but ultimately, it's kind of a mish-mash of various random aspects of previous DC movies, and honestly more of an excuse to torch-and-burn the continuity. I don't really have a whole lot of attachment to these versions of the characters, but it's honestly still kind of depressing. It's sort of a stealth Flashpoint movie, and that's how the movie ultimately ends. For what it's worth, the animation and voice acting is decent, and what little we get of the dwindling cast is decent as far as these things go, but I really didn't care for the movie all that much.
I brought the game a while back, so I finally had the time to finally finish Warcraft III: Reforged. And it's a pretty good remaster, just perhaps not for the price it's asking. The graphics are fantastic, the models are amazing (they have individual models for each of the 'repaint' creeps, which is surprising) but ultimately I think the biggest complaints from the game's detractors is that it's mostly a fresh coat of paint on what's basically the same game. And while I don't necessarily want them to change any of the existing levels, adding parts to it -- like what they did in the Dalaran and Stratholme levels -- would be much more appreciated. Hell, I had expected them to throw in some actual new content, too -- maybe adapting Warcraft I and II very loosely in a special campaign, or the period of time between Warcraft III and World of Warcraft vanilla? I still won't complain too much, it's a playthrough that I really did enjoy, although I haven't really played Warcraft III in over ten years.As you can probably tell by my revamped Breath of the Wild monster review thing, I've been playing through Breath of the Wild. It's a game that I have a lot of conflicting opinions on. On one hand, it's an amazing RPG game and exploration game. On the other hand, I'm still of the opinion that it doesn't feel quite like how a Zelda game has been geared to fit in my head. Part of it is my just getting old, and part of it is the fact that the BOTW world is so wide and so dependent on you having adequate in-game resources that it makes exploration and finding the best parts of the game so frustrating without a guide. Still, I did go through a lot of the DLC content (which I bought like two years ago) and a lot of sidequests that I never did. I cleaned up most of the side-quests, memory missions and the Ballad of the Champions DLC. And while I'm probably going to eventually finish most of the shrine quests (not the shrines themselves, though) and the Trial of the Sword, I probably wouldn't aim for anywhere near 100% completion.
Other games I've been playing on-and-off include Metroid: Samus Returns on the 3DS, the remake of Metroid II. It's fun to just play a game that's just 'kill enemy, move on to next level', and the fact that this works on old-school brutal Nintendo mentality where there aren't exactly a lot of convenient save spots and checkpoints makes it actually surprisingly difficult and fun. I sped-run through Batman: Arkham Origins, which was great. I've also been playing a bit through my Witcher 2 save file. Apparently I last saved at the beginning of Chapter 3, thinking that it would be as expansive as the first two chapters. Turns out I was wrong, since it took me like two or three sittings to finish the third chapter and that's including looking up a guide to see if I missed any side-quests. Turns out the final chapter of Witcher 2 is indeed that short. So I guess I'll be tuning into The Witcher 3, the big bad motherfucker game that apparently 'defined the genre' after it released. I have heard loads of good things about Witcher 3 so I'm excited to get started on that.I did purchase the Pokemon Sword DLC, but I haven't played it a whole ton as of yet. Do expect more Isle of Armor playthrough, though I really don't find a whole ton to really say about the expansion. The story of the expansion is pretty short and if you power through it you could finish it in an hour or two, and the Isle of Armor itself is charming but ultimately I do feel like it's just kind of a proof of concept of a Wild Area that's a bit more intricate than the 'two huge grasslands separated by a road' that the original Wild Area in mainland Galar is. Seeing a lot of new Pokemon in the Wild Area is nice, but at the same time it does feel like kind of the bare minimum of content you need for a DLC, and I suspect a good amount of development time just went into the environments and revamping the 3DS models to the high definition of the Switch models in preparation for generation nine.
I also played through the Ashes of Outland single-player adventure in Hearthstone, which is... pretty simple. At least it's a solid story unlike Galakrond's Awakening, although it's kind of short and the focus on almost entirely Hearthstone-original characters does end up making the story feel kind of just... there. I dunno, I feel like they could've done a bit better in making the fight against the Rusted Legion last longer than two or three fights. Really loved the Felstorm Hurricane level or whatever it's called, though.
And... television. I've finally finished up the ersatz episodes of Kamen Rider Blade and Kamen Rider Ryuki I haven't watched, and blazed through the first 30 episodes of Kamen Rider Agito. Planning to finish up Agito sooner or later, and this basically means that I've watched through almost the entirety of the Heisei era, with only the second half of Agito and Kuuga (I can't find good subs anywhere, although I'll be looking) left. I've also watched the two newest Sentai shows, namely Lupinranger vs. Patranger and Ryuusoulger. LuPat was pretty fun and probably the one I like better, although it does feel very static and the ending is kind of underwhelming. Ryuusoulger was also very fun and bubbly, but I just really didn't really care all that much for the plot. That's more thanks to the actual vibe of Sentai itself than anything, though. I'm not sure if I'll be committing and sitting down and reviewing all of these in-depth, so I'll just acknowledge that I've watched them, is all.
I also watched the first season of the Harley Quinn cartoon in a single sitting. I attempted to do reviews for this, but ultimately all I ended up doing is going "I really like this joke, that joke was also funny, and hey that's a neat easter egg, I can't believe they made this joke, ha ha swearing". It's really great, though, the humour and writing is pretty on-point and the more adult swearing is pretty neatly contrasted with the charming take on most of the characters and the very tongue-in-cheek tone of the jokes. I'm a huge fan, and while I don't really have a whole lot to say, just note that I really like this show.
Over the past couple of months, even before quarantine, I've also watched a bunch of TV shows on-and-off. I watched through a bunch of the older One Piece movies, I've watched the first season of 'That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime' (which is Overlord but with a far more wholesome plot and a lot less edge), the first season of 'Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba' (very solid animation, very solid soundtrack, very solid vibe and the story's very decent -- I'm told the manga gets into high gear in the arcs after the anime stopped), Netflix's Witcher adaptation (a great adaptation of the novels I did and the vibe of the video games), most of the second season of Star Trek: The New Generation (the first season is kind of an embarrassment, but the second season is very decent, particularly episodes 10 and 11). I'm planning to finish the anime for Kaguya-sama in the next month. And I plan to learn the story of Persona 5 via the anime adaptation; since I don't have a PS4 to play and it's not out on PC, that's about the best way for me to experience it, I feel.
Also, superhero shows. As you can tell, I watched a lot of them and have reviewed all of them on this blog, but the ones that are probably incoming in the next couple of weeks as I wrap up the seasons would be the final season of Jessica Jones. I'm not probably going to review all of the superhero shows I watch anymore -- I'm a huge enough of a geek that I'm likely to watch them all, but probably not really talk about them all. I'm around halfway through Titans season two, and maybe this is the month I finally finish Doom Patrol? I'm not sure if I'll ever review Doom Patrol, though. It's a very hard show to really review.
Other projects I've been doing? As I may or may not have said in that one review that I posted last week I've actually finished my reviews of the 2011 Hunter x Hunter anime all the way to almost the last episodes of the Chimera Ant arc, but I'm proof-reading them and will probably release them incrementally in the next couple of months.Doing this blog a lot in quarantine does also make me realize that I'm probably going to cut down on the quantity of posts. Not to say that I will be writing less, but I feel like I'm actually posting a far better article when I don't just bum-rush and try and do thing per-episode. I feel like I get a lot more comfortable reviewing things like two or three episodes in one go, particularly for less content-heavy episodes like, oh, Kamen Rider episodes or Pokemon episodes. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but sometimes you just don't have a whole ton to say about a single episode and the review ends up becoming a summary, and I feel like these couple past months really allowed me to practice doing more succinct reviews.
With 'Reviewing Monsters', I have finished up drafts for all the Digimon released until early 2020, although I'm going to want to proof-read them a bit. I'm taking a bit of a break from D&D and taking it slow. I do think looking forward I'll be focusing mostly on 5E material instead of jumping around from one version to the next, because it's a bit more organized, I feel, what with the D&D Beyond site and all. I do expect a couple more extra Reviewing Monsters articles about Legend of Zelda, Magic: The Gathering and a couple of Pokemon human characters to pop up soon.That's about it, I guess. It's been a long while of doing nothing but trying to entertain myself at home.
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