Welp, it was the launch day of Hello Kitty Island's first expansion, Wheatflour Wonderland, and well, it was a day. For PC players, it was also the drop of Content Update 3, so even though I bought WW, I couldn't start WW yet because I had a ton of other quests to do first. Like a huge stack of quests when I logged in. I spent 2 hours clearing quests this morning with no start to WW, then had a doctor's appointment, so I had to leave, then come back in the afternoon.
The NekoPara OVA was a crowdfunded project released in 2017. In one hour, it covers the basic story of NekoPara vol 1. Though it is much shorter than the VN it's based on, it has the added benefit of the main character Kashou, being fully visible and voice acted. In the VN, he has no voice acting and his face is obscured.
NekoPara vol 0 is a short bonus volume that takes place before vol 1 begins. It's about an hour long, and Kashou isn't really in it. It just follows the catgirls in a day in the life.
NekoPara Extra is a short VN prequel to NekoPara 1. It was written as bonus content and published in 2018. It features all the catgirls much younger than in the regular volumes. You see Chocola, Vanilla, and Coconut as kittens. Maple, Cinnamon, and Azuki are already grown, but still cute.
Before the NekoPara anime came out, NekoPara had two OVAs, that were bonus content. The NekoPara Extra OVA is about the same story as the NekoPara Extra visual novel. You meet Chocola and Vanilla as kittens getting used to the Minaduki household, and having their first Christmas there. The whole OVA is about 21 minutes long.
The animation is pretty good, very traditional. All the characters look very distinct and accurately represented of their VN artwork. I'm not sure, but it sound like the same voice actors for the VN were used for this OVA. It's all in Japanese, so I watched it with subtitles, which seemed accurate enough. I was able to follow what was going on and everything.
This OVA is available for free through a Steam purchase of the NekoPara Extra VN, which is only 5$, so I think it's worth it.
I have 3 and a half months left of this year. Is there anything I wanna try to do before it ends? Also, we're getting into the holiday season, which is the busiest time of year. What should I prioritize? Let's see...
Well, I have 2 chickens now, that's it. And I can pet and feed them once a day. And "my" ranch isn't one I built on my plot, it's an instanced area prebuilt. No cows in my yard outside my house.
The Tailor Tickets I was excited about? They're for makeup colors, not costumes. And the daily quests that reward them are broken and disabled for the time being.
Why am I playing this morning? Because even after servers went up yesterday afternoon, I couldn't login until it was time for bed.
It's not like I don't have anything to do. I have a quest log completely full of quests to do, and villagers I haven't maxed friendship with yet, and things, and stuff. Plus, I have an entire zone I haven't set foot in yet, but that's waiting on my quests to be done first, I think... Maybe I've been off the game too long. Maybe some more recent starter guides will give me some direction. But yeah, I'm not as excited as I was.
Welp, it's come to this. No longer are we playing in fairy tales, no more fantasy, no more classical music. Barbie's in high school now. Everything looks completely different, because this movie is from a completely different studio. I've heavily considered skipping this video, but it got a good review from Darling Dolls on Youtube, so I'm going to give it a shot.
Wow, the graphics are so bad. The good mocap is totally wasted on these models.
Oh, god, I'm 15 minutes in and it hurts! It hurts so bad. Early 2000's teenage drama without an undercurrent of fantasy or monsters? I don't think I can do it. I hated public school, and wanted to die there, and this movie is giving me trauma flashbacks. I can't watch it.
I know I did one of these yesterday, but I'm on my period and Barbie movies make me feel better.
This one is a direct sequel to the first Fairytopia movie made the year before, with a lot of the same cast. Bonus tho! One of the side characters is voiced by Andrea Libman who also voices Pinkie Pie in My Little Pony, so there's that. She sounded a lot like Pinkie Pie too! But she's not a main character, so it's not that important.
This time Prince Nalu is in trouble. Why is this Barbie's, I mean, Elina's problem? Shouldn't Mermaidia have their own protective forces trying to rescue him? But then it wouldn't be a Barbie movie.
The new character is Nori, she's a blue haired mermaid, and kind of a crab. If she wasn't in a fighting mood over Nalu, I'd say this would be a cute femslash ship.
At least Nalu's doing a good job sending the evil henchmen on a wild goose chase, because it's taking Elina and Nori a while to get their shit together.
Why does Laverna still exist anyways? I thought she exploded into confetti at the end of the first Fairytopia movie...
Maybe Dandelion is Elina's girlfriend instead... Am I supposed to like Bibble? Because I still don't like Bibble yet. Oh well, at least I've finally seen this movie.
It's been a few weeks, but I'm back on my Barbie movie grind. This one is The Magic of Pegasus. Not based on any story I'm aware of, but they featured some musical bits from Beethoven to give it a classical feel. No big name actors for the villain anymore. No big name actors to speak of, all just regular voice actors. Oh well.
It opens with some nice figure skating. Looks like they mocapped a figure skater for this, cool cool. The villain is some magic asshole named Wenlock with a magic wand. Well, they got the whole thing rolling in the first 20 minutes. The pegasus's name is Brietta. If Annika is 16, then Brietta is 32. And Wenlock is old... and chasing after teenagers, gross.
Wow, Ken, I mean Aiden gets to be sassy this time! Lucky him. Barbie, I mean Annika, gets to be quite sassy too. Lots of sass in this movie. Poor Brietta has to be a mount this whole time. Oh, Aiden's a blacksmith, not a prince. Neat.
Apparently this movie had some 3D special effects, but I can't see them now, don't have a 3D TV.
Oh yay! More figure skating. Oh, this time it's speed skating. Oh man, that little polar bear is trouble.
Okay, that was a cute movie! Lots of delicious karma and it ends with more figure skating. I always forget the last 5 minutes of the movie are the credits. WAIT! A special surprise at the end of the film! Delightful. I won't spoil it. Yeah, that was nice, and I needed nice today, so good.
I've been playing HKIA since it's PC launch in March, and I'm still having fun. I'm not as up to date on all the quests as some people, but I have most of the login rewards, and I'm getting the hang of things.
I still need to figure out how gardening works, because my Merry Meadow is an overgrown mess. It was desolate for the first month, then I gave a Nul a water sprinkler hat, now it's completely full of random flowers I don't know what to do with.
Barbie Fairytopia is the fifth Barbie movie, and the first one to have a completely original story. It's not based on any particular folktale, ballet, or anything else, just generic fae folk fun. There is an evil sorceress, but this is the first movie where they didn't pay for a celebrity to voice the villain. Shame. In fact, they really limited how many voice actors they paid, half of them doubled up on roles.
Elina is a disabled fairy, who has no wings, and gets picked on, but she's the only one immune to the everyone with wings sickness the evil sorceress makes.
Her best friend/pet? is Bibble, a blue puffball that speaks babytalk jibberish. Bibble has a fanbase, but I'm not sure why.
There's no singing, and no real love interest, though the mermaid prince is a little creepy, but it's fine. He's not in the movie long.
In the end, evil sorceress turns to confetti, and the queen of the fairies gives Elina magical prosthetic wings. I dunno what kind of message that gives to disabled kids, but whatever, it's a Barbie movie, and they wanted the doll to have wings, obviously.
Was the movie good? It wasn't bad, and I was entertained for an hour and 10 minutes, and now I'm inspired to make fairy costumes for my Barbies. So yeah.
Princess and the Pauper, one of the most well-known Barbie movies. A retelling of the classic novel the Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, but with girls and singing, and cats and shit. I've never read Mark Twain's book, so I have no idea how close the movie holds to the original. Probably more of a loose inspiration.
This is the first movie with a brunette Barbie, who gets to be the pauper. The pauper looks pretty good for someone struggling with debt. She has a pretty ballgown, and nice makeup. She doesn't look poor.
Martin Short is the celebrity voice actor for the villain, Mr. Preminger. He's worth his weight in gold in this film. The villain doesn't have magic powers in this movie, but he's got tons of character. And henchmen.
I think possibly the best part is the cat that acts like a dog. Erica's love song to the cat dog is cute too. Wow, King Dominic's singing voice sucks ass. Julian's is much better.
Okies, this movie is hella long, but the matching wedding dresses are cute. The bloopers with the credits really made it worth it to stay one extra minute. Ooh, there's a sing along with the DVD, but I don't have the words memorized after one viewing. Okay! Final thoughts, worth the hype it gets. Possibly my favorite so far.
Hell's Most Incompetent Demon is a fluffy gay romance by Silvana Falcon. I read it on Kindle Unlimited, and liked it so much that I bought it digitally and in paperback!
Here's my eloquent review on Amazon: This was EXACTLY what I wanted! So freaking cute! So absolutely, completely cute! This is exactly what I look for in a book. Both main characters are so cute I'm dead. Read it on Kindle Unlimited, and liked it so much, I bought it to read again later. SO SWEET! I loved it and I can't wait for the next book in the series!
A lovable human and a demon who can't do his job right fall in love. That's it. And it's perfect. I can't wait for the next book in the series "The Wimpiest Vampire." That's not scheduled to come out until New Years Eve though, so I will wait. And it will be worth it.
Can I also point out this book has a nice cover? It shows the two main characters, not just some photoshopped set of abs like 90% of the romance genre. I'm so sick of seeing pictures of muscular abs...
Okay, so Equestria Girls Summer didn't work. I tried to do entirely too much, worked my ass off in the first month, and burned out in the second month. I like what I did get done, but I need to slow the pace by double or something. Since I feel lost and directionless now, I'm gonna recap my original goals for this year and see what can be salvaged for the last 5 months.
This movie is in dire need of a remaster. The streamed version looked like an old jpeg, and the DVD was super pixelly. It was difficult to keep my attention on the story. And for some reason, half the dialogue was super quiet.
Unlike the Nutcracker, I don't know the original story of Swan Lake, so I have no idea how much of this movie is true to the original or made up to make Barbie look good.
The ballet dancing was mocap again, and that's always a plus. the dance sequences were possibly the best parts.
The celebrity villain voice actor was Kelsey Grammer, and he's fine, but not my favorite. He sounded too normal and not evil enough. What I couldn't stand was Odile's voice. That was too loud, and painful. I guess her voice actor is famous too, but I still couldn't stand it.
The end was fine. Another fairytale wedding with a guy who looks fine, I suppose. I will say, Odette's dress is amazing, as it should be, and I mean better than the finale dresses from the first two movies. I hope the next movie is easier to watch though.
The second Barbie movie is Barbie as Rapunzel. They took many artistic liberties with the story, no one ever climbs up Rapunzel's hair except in a dream sequence. There is some meta in that dream sequence though, because she dreams she's doll sized and Gothel waves her around like a doll!
The celebrity voice actress for this one is Anjelica Huston as Gothel. She's amazing, of course. They really use all their budget on the villain, I swear.
It was cute though! Barbie/Rapunzel got a talking rabbit and a talking dragon with daddy issues and a prince. She's gotten proposed to in both movies I think. Happily ever afters every time.
Umm... I dunno what else to say. Barbie's dress is pretty?
I got stressed with Equestria Girls, and I got some new Barbies recently, so here we are, Barbie's first movie, Barbie and the Nutcracker. It is not exactly the same as The Nutcracker. They took some artistic liberties, added a rock monster, yeah. They seem to have used motion capture for the dancing segments, but not for the entire movie.
One score, they managed to get Tim Curry for the Rat King, and Tim Curry is Tim Curry, so yeah.
Did I like it? It was a slow start, but I at least watched it until the end, so there's that. It was cute, and I'm bored, so it's fine. I won't go buying this movie to have a hard copy or anything like that, but it's free on Youtube if you search, so yeah. Will I watch this again around Christmas? Maybe? Aside from the mocapped dance scenes, the animation was pretty janky. The music was all Nutcracker music, so it was fine.
I'd pick it up from a bargain bin, you know? It's bargain bin worthy.
One major change is they've cut out a bunch of story, less quest dialogue and fewer cutscenes. I know most people skip them, but that doesn't mean you should remove them! Also, now from levels 1 to 50, you teleport automatically to your quest objective. No more auto running, you just blink from one place to the other. Of course, after level 50, you have to pay cash to keep teleporting, or just run like you used to. Another new thing, they're doing a collab with an orange cat that looks like Garfield, and making a big deal out of it, and I don't care.
I've been playing original Aura Kingdom for many years, so this new server and it's changes had to really wow me to get me to leave my old server, and it didn't. I'd rather they just improve the server they had! Oh well...
The songs are not catchy. The constant emphasis on competition makes me uncomfortable. We have a whole other team of Shadow Bolts, but we never get to know them, like their names or anything. Only one of them gets any consistent dialogue, and it's morose.
One feature I did enjoy was the deleted scenes. They gave Sunset and Sci-Twi a little more story, and I liked that. I would have loved to see Sci-Twi's song as a duet with Sunset Shimmer instead.
Oh yeah, and I didn't care for the animated shorts. Unlike the ones for Rainbow Rocks, these didn't really add any context or even make much sense.
Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks is the second movie in the Equestria Girls spinoff series. Yes, I saw this one in theatres too, and I had a great time. Since the story is music focused, there's double the number of songs as the first movie, and they're lots of fun.
The new villains are the Dazzlings, a trio of horse sirens who sing to make everyone argue, and feed off the negative energy from the arguing. They also have some powers of hypnosis with their voices, so they manipulate Principal Celestia to turn a friendly musical showcase into a battle of the bands.
The human characters summon Twilight Sparkle to come back and save their version of Canterlot. But Twilight is worried she won't be able to do the thing, blah blah blah. I didn't come here for Shakespeare. I came here for cute cartoon girls singing songs, and Rainbow Rocks delivered.
As you can guess from the matching cover, Equestria Girls: Through the Mirror is the first book in their book series, and it's a retelling of the first movie. Since it's a book, there are no musical numbers, and some scenes have been adjusted, some bits taken out, others added. Naturally, there's no musical numbers, but more effort is put into narrating how Twilight Sparkle is feeling.
I'll be honest, I've been trying to read this book all week, since Tuesday, and it's Friday night now. I can't do it. It's an easy read, it's not difficult, but it's BORING. I'm only halfway in, and I DON'T want to read any more! I don't! I'm bored! And I'm not opposed to kids books. I have and have read every Ever After High book that was published! This does not contend. And the thought of forcing myself to read 8 more volumes of this? Kinda killing my vibe right now. So yeah, I'm removing the book reading portion from my Equestria Girls Summer challenge, for the sake of my own sanity.
Equestria Girls was a big deal for me in 2013. I was unemployed, depressed, full of anxiety, and My Little Pony was giving me life. So when Equestria Girls was in theatres, I went to see it in person, with a friend. Surrounded by parents with kids, and a few other weirdos, it was a magical experience.
I bought the DVD, and I've rewatched it a few times, but I rewatched it today as part of my Equestria Girls Summer. The intro song remix still gives me chills. I still bop along to the songs, and I still got a little teary at the end.
Equestria Girls isn't Shakespeare by any means, but it makes me so happy. It's not everyone's favorite EG movie, but it walked to the next movies could run. It really made a successful spinoff to the My Little Pony IP, doing something no other MLP generation had tried!
It's been an emotional year, which has made it incredibly hard to get things done as I'd like, so I think I need to reassess my goals for the rest of the year. New plan, Equestria Girl Summer!
My dudes! A new NekoPara volume is being added! I thought NekoPara was over. I thought Vol. 4 was the last one! But there's more! And I'm totally gonna ship Fraise with Shigure.
NekoPara After comes out in ten days! I'm so excited! More delightful catgirl goodness! More wildly inappropriate little sister shenanigans! I can't wait!
I need to reread everything I have, and rewatch the OAVs and the anime, and photograph my figures and plushies! EEEEEEEEEEEE!
Hello Kitty Island Adventure for Steam got their first content update today! More items, more stuff in the mountain zone, more endgame quests, but I'm not on endgame quests yet, so I won't know how those go.
What I'm really digging are the quality of life updates they added to the game. Like how if you miss a day or two, your spawned resources stack up to 3, and if you go in on day 3, you get a ton of resources! Everything is everywhere, and it's nice, because you can't always go on a gathering run every single day.
Here's my first book review. I wasn't going to include book reviews in this blog, but I've been reading a lot on Kindle Unlimited, and I want to remember some of these books, which is why I made this blog to begin with, to remember things.
Sent to a Fantasy World and now all the Men want Me is an obviously named romance isekai by Jacklyn Osborn. It's not a manga, but a fairly hefty novel with nice cover art. It took me a few tries to finish it, but it has a bunch of things I like, like a well-meaning protagonist, passionate love interests, steamy smut, and a happy ending.
It is volume 1 in a 4 part series, but I actually decided not to read the rest of it because it's a "why choose?" series where the protagonist's harem just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I prefer more one on one romances. Still, the writing was very good, so I went back to Jaclyn Osborn and started a different series they wrote.
Since the world is, in fact, not ending, and my life is not falling apart at the seams like I thought it would, I've decided to get back on with my goals for the year. I've done surprisingly good on my doll goals and I've been artistically productive, so I figured I'd review and possibly revise my media goals.
Unluckily in Love is a boys love visual novel by Ebi-hime, a writer I've had mixed feelings about, but can't seem to get away from. The main couple are two men named Yuel and Tavi, and they're cousins. Not only are they cousins, but Tavi doesn't shut up about how much he loves his baby cousin. I get a little bit of ick from it, but I found out there are 3 other visual novels by Ebi-hime about the same couple, so these two characters are clearly very dear to her. And I'm writing a sci-fi drama about clones in love, so those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. She loves this couple enough to write about them 4 times, and it turns out I've already bought 3 of them, so I better get used to this couple if I wanna finish my backlog. So, if fictional incest gives you too much of the ick, don't read this one, or To Have and To Hold, or All Idleness and Ephemera. They all feature the same two characters, coming together in alternate realities, but I think they're cousins in every single one. Ebi-hime clearly has a thing for it, and I'm in no position to shame her for it.
Well, this is a long term game, and I've had it for 3 weeks, and I'm having a great time. I haven't unlocked all the zones yet, or all the features, but I'm having fun! I haven't pushed too hard, I'm about 20 hours in, and it's all been good so far. the map is friggin huge, and I'm not done finding it all. It seems like a slog if you run everywhere, but if you unlock all the teleportation mailboxes, it's pretty easy to get around.
When I first heard of Hello Kitty Island Adventure, I assumed since it was a mobile game first that it would be absolute trash riddled with microtransactions, which killed me because I've been a Hello Kitty connossiour for decades. Much to my surprise, there are no microtransactions whatsoever as of the launch weekend for PC and Switch. I chose to play on my PC, because that's what I'm most comfortable with.
