Believe it or not, girls with animal ears are cute… Too bad Yaya didn’t wear the cat ears.
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Chou Megami Shinkoku Noire Gekishin Black Heart – First Impressions
In the past year, Compile Heart and Idea Factory has been expanding the Neptune franchise by making various spinoffs in order to reach a wider audience. Last year, they made an idol simulator, which left a disappointing taste in my mouth. This year, they released a strategy RPG featuring Noire (Chou Megami Shinkoku Noire Gekishin, 超女神信仰ノワール激神) and planning to release an action game, which is developed by Tamsoft, the makers of Senran Kagura at the end of this month. While I’m not interested in the latter, I decided to get this game since I enjoy Noire/White Heart’s personality. Since I’m close to half way done with this game (currently on Chapter 4), it’s time to reveal what I think about the game first hand.
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Weekly Anime Impressions – Summer 2014 – Week 6
Happy 25th Birthday!

It seems like yesterday since I turned 24 years old. Like last year, it has been a calm year thus far except for the couple big snowstorms. Not to mention, I have been focusing primarily on learning new vocabulary and Kanji from playing video games and memorizing them through flash cards. I am still planning to tackle grammar needed for JPLT (will focus on N3 next year) with the references I have since there are apparently not many good advanced level textbooks unless you want to learn from one that is only in Japanese.
As I turn 25 years old, I have a feeling that 1/4th of my life has already passed by me although I look younger than my actual age. During those years, I have been focusing mostly on education. After the fall semester, I will finally complete my master’s degree and find my first job. I have high hopes that I will get a good paying job, but it won’t be easy. Once I get a one, I don’t expect things to be drastically different depending on the workload. In fact, I will be able to cover more types of content and be able to attend Anime conventions. Not sure which one I will go to, but Otakon is a good possibility since it’s only about a 3-hour drive from where I live. I’ll figure it out once I get there.
With that, feel free to say Happy Birthday in the comments below. I will be streaming games today and tomorrow, so feel free to watch on Hitbox, if you want.
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Weekly Anime Impressions – Summer 2014 – Week 5
Changing Views on Legal Streaming and Decline of Episodic Blogging

For a while now, I have noticed a downward trend in the blogosphere since 2012 as episodic blogging is coming out of favor with bloggers either giving blogging or forego other types of content such as essays, analysis and reviews. With Hanner’s Anime Blog throwing in the towel just a few months ago, I wonder if episodic blogging has outlived its usefulness in an age where legal streaming is widespread. Furthermore, I think there are better ways to present an analysis rather than share than in 12 separate posts.
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Atelier Ayesha Plus – Final Review

Koei-Tecmo’s acquisition of Gust has left a bad taste in most fans’ mouths when they decided that they are not going to include dual audio in Atelier Ayesha (I shared my thoughts on this issue in an editorial about localization issues I wrote early last year). Not to mention, there has been reports that they poorly handled Escha and Logy localization. Eventually, I ended up just importing the Japanese copies of the game since I knew enough Japanese to understand most of the game.
Although I considered getting a Japanese copy of the game for the Playstation 3, I decided to wait since Gust in December announced a Plus version for the Vita. Since I finally finished the game, it’s time to share my overall thoughts about the game.
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