2026 Media Goals update 3

I've been going super hard on my other hobbies, so my media backlog is barely touched, but I have made some new progress.

An Older Guy's VR First Love Manga Review

An Older Guy's VR First Love was written by Violence Tomoko and published in English in 2022.  It's about a middle aged man and an elderly man who meet in a VR world, with the avatars of young ladies, and fall in love.

As a person who's fallen in love with people online before, this story really resonated with me.  It's sad, beautiful, and familiar all at once.

I suppose it could be considered both BL and GL, since the characters are both men, but both have female avatars, but really, I just feel like it's neither, and just a unique story about an experience probably more common than people would like to admit. 

I finally watched Kpop Demon Hunters!

Okay, okay, I FINALLY sat down and watched Kpop Demon Hunters.  The soundtrack kept popping up on my Kpop radio station.  And the merch is so cute, but I refused to buy any until after I saw the movie.

I'm on board.  It took a good 10-20 minutes for me to get used to the animation style, but once I did, it was pretty smooth sailing.  It was a fun movie and I had a great time.  I love Kpop, so the soundtrack was right up my alley.  The choreography was very familiar.  The songs were catchy.

Rumi, Zoey, and Mira?  I think those were their names.  They're demon hunters.  But Rumi is half demon and forced to hide it.  Bummer.  But in the end, that secret is blown, but they all sing their problems away while violently destroying demons, and it all works out.

The villains, the Saja Boys, were fine.  Their numbers were good.  Aside from Jinu, none of the other guys got any real character development, so I guess they're not important.  I would have liked to get to know them better, but fuck it. 

2026 Media Goals Update 2

Well, the good news is I've done a considerable amount more gaming.  The bad news is I'm still not really cracking into my backlog.

Books.  I'm behind on this.  I completely stopped reading on Kindle for a while.  I've been pushing myself really hard in other areas, so I need to take a step back from them and let myself sit and read more.  My Kindle might need a charge.

Why I changed my mind on Hello Kitty Island: City Town

Okay, hear me out.  I know I said I wasn't going to buy Hello Kitty Island's new expansion, City Town, because it costs more than Wheatflour Wonderland, until it went on sale, but I've done some serious thinking in the meantime, and I feel in the current cozy game market, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is still significantly more honest, upfront, and reasonably priced than other cozy games being pushed right now.  Sure, there are a lot of free to play games coming out, but listen, the games run on servers, and servers cost money, so they'll get the money out of you one way or another, and I feel that HKIA's competitors are doing so much more deviously.  I feel more comfortable giving my money to Sunblink for solid expansions full of content and costumes, then getting individual outfits sold to me in lucky boxes or whatever.  I still feel that Sunblink is being honest and fair, and they have yet to introduce gambling mechanics and predatory microtransactions.

Could they potentially turn around and introduce gambling mechanics and predatory microtransactions?  Of course, we're in the worst possible timeline.  Everything horrible that can happen, is happening.  But I don't feel that Sunblink has reached that point yet.  Yes, they said they were going to introduce smaller content packs this summer, but I'm not going to judge them until they're out.  I only have a few months to wait.  In the meantime, I'll check out City Town, and judge it on it's own merits.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Review

Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream came out on Thursday.  After 12 years of waiting since the last Tomodachi Life, it's finally here.  I got it on launch day.  And I've played it and watched others play it.  I'm really glad they made it compatible with the Switch 1, because skipping over a whole console would have been pretty mean.  It's probably the last Switch game I'm going to be concerned with, though.

The Mii Creator is very robust, easily double the amount of features the basic Mii creator has, including more noses, eyes, ears, and the introduction of face paint, which people are using for all sorts of cool effects.  In addition, all the base hairs are improved, so imported Miis from your system look nicer too.

Once you have a few Miis, gameplay is surprisingly cozy and cute.  Animations are adorable, interactions are sweet, most Miis get along very well...  It's definitely less chaotic than it's predecessor, which some people like and others don't.  I'm actually okay with it, because I don't want bad things happening to my precious little Miis.

Hello Kitty Island News, and my plans regarding...

Welp, news came out today.  The City Town DLC is gonna be 25$.  That's more than I'm willing to pay, but the base game has gone on sale a few times, so I'm sure the DLC will go on sale too.  I would have bought it in an instant if it was 15$ like Wheatflour Wonderland was, but this price hike is a little to much for me.  

Also, they're gonna start adding paid cosmetic packs this summer.  This isn't surprising, but I'm still disappointed.  When getting cosmetics and furniture is the core gameplay loop, having some for sale is definitely pay to win.  I don't know if I will quit the game entirely, but I will be very reluctant to pay for future content from here on out.

I'm not mad, just disappointed.