Thoughts about Hana Awase New Moon -Himeutsugi Volume-

Hana Awase New Moon -Himeutsugi Volume- is the Nintendo Switch rerelease of the second game in the Hana Awase tetralogy, which originally debuted as a series of Windows PC games back in 2012. The Switch port from dramatic create (HuneX) comes with an extra short story as a bonus with each volume, as well as multilingual translations (text only) and an upgraded card battle system. 

I played the previous game (Hana Awase New Moon -Mizuchi Volume-) back when it was first released on the Nintendo Switch in English in late 2023, and really liked its blend of unhinged plot twists, menacing love interests and hanafuda tournaments, so it was only a matter of time before I got to the second game in the series: Himeutsugi Volume. Each of the four games is based around a specific love interest (or love interests) from the 'Five Brights', the star pupils of the card-battling school the main character attends. 

Thoughts about Battan's The Golden Fly (Kinbae) via Kickstarter

A while ago I backed the Kickstarter campaign for Battan's The Golden Fly (Kinbae) doujinshi to be translated into English and distributed by The Beguiling's BDP Press. Having discovered it by happenstance I didn't back it for any particular reason; I simply liked the artwork and this description:

"The Golden Fly showcases Battan's dreamy art and writing perfectly, a short story that showcases all of her talents. In her gorgeous, inventive layouts and breathless art The Golden Fly tackles class, yearning, loathing and the subtle, complex eroticism within, proving yet again she is one of the most important creators in yuri manga today."

Report: QUEEN BEE in London at the Electric Ballroom and HYPER JAPAN festival (July 2026)

Goodness, it's a been a long time since my last post! Since KobaP left Capcom and Sengoku Basara news dried up entirely, I guess I lost the passion to maintain this blog. I loved that series so much.

However, last week I had a wonderful experience seeing 女王蜂 (QUEEN BEE/Ziyoou-vachi) live at two different London performances in two days, and I couldn't resist putting a few words down about the shows.

A little background: QUEEN BEE (I'll refer to them using the official English name they used at the shows) are a Japanese rock band who dabble in experimental styles (as well as fashion). They have become massively more well known in the last few years as their music has been used in popular anime like Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia, Fire Force, Hell's Paradise, Undead Unluck, Raven of the Inner Palace, Chainsaw Man, Oshi no Ko and Dororo, and many years after constantly stumbling over their music when looking for a certain niche CD series with a similar name to the band's, I finally got the chance to see them live. 

The band were initially announced to be playing the HYPER JAPAN 2026 festival at Olympia on 24/07/2026, which I usually attend anyway, so of course I bought tickets for that. Then, since they were in the country already, an announcement was made that they would also play a solo live at the Electric Ballroom in Camden on 23/07/2026. Even though going to a standing concert the evening before a three day convention felt unwise, I couldn't pass up the rare opportunity to see them twice.

I've never been a person who likes to do things halfway. Fortunately, I'm really glad that I went to both shows; both had similar setlists but I think I got more out of the second after having seen them the day before.

Streaming: Autumn 2017 anime first impressions

Whew. There are a lot of heavy-hitting sequels this season, and also quite a few cases of series changing streaming services in between seasons, so putting this first impressions post has taken absolutely ages. Shoukoku No Altair, Ballroom He Youkoso are both continuing from the Summer season and on top of that my schedule is already pre-filled with a staggering number of follow-ups to beloved titles, which means that anything brand new has a harder job than usual to get my attention. I also decided to try out a HIDIVE subscription since it isn't all that pricey and they snagged a couple of titles I wanted to see; the lack of apps is still disappointing. I can't get the service running on any of my usual devices at all. Please hurry up with a solution, HIDIVE, or stop enforcing exclusivity!

I don't have much time to moan about the state of streaming in the UK this time, partly because I want to go and clear New Danganronpa V3 as soon as I finish this post and partly because actually, we're in a very fortunate position now. Animax UK is as good as dead, Viewster gave up on simulcasting, and the US anime distributors finally remembered that we exist. If HIDIVE sorted out the app issue and Netflix would just stop blocking legal simulcasting from titles which would otherwise have appeared on Crunchyroll, everything would be close to perfect.

So with all of that said and done, I'll move on to the first impressions of all of the new anime content!

Streaming: Summer 2017 anime final impressions

Another season has come and gone. Summer 2017 wasn't the strongest season of anime I've followed; in fact, it was rather weak overall, which is probably for the best as there are suddenly plenty of interesting games I want to play! I'm currently working through New Danganronpa V3 and the mobile port of Gyakuten Saiban 6 (or Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, to use its long-winded localised name). Both are fantastic and titles I have been looking forward to for a long time, so it's going to be tough going to tear myself away and watch all of the first episodes for the upcoming season in between gaming sessions!

A final impressions post requires the usual completely arbitrary top three, and accordingly here it is.

1. Tsuredure Children
2. Owarimonogatari second season
3. Saiyuuki Reload Blast

Tsuredure Children was simply the best. I looked forward to it every week despite it being different to my usual favourites in every conceivable way. Owarimonogatari was its usual self and worthy of a spot despite having a short run. And Saiyuuki was sort of average except I needed a third series for the list and it felt good to revisit the past every week.

One notable omission from the full list below is Hajimete No Gal (My First Girlfriend Is A Gal), which I finally dropped two thirds of the way through the season for being persisently mediocre after all. I had hoped for something better; instead, it got worse, and there wasn't even any worthwhile fan service to make the plot feel less awful. I also discovered later on that all of the creepy child molester jokes were actually added for the anime, a fact that is probably going to haunt me for life. I'm not easily offended but they weren't even slightly funny and just added an awkward atmosphere to something which wasn't good enough to rise above the poor taste; what on earth was the team thinking?

Streaming: Summer 2017 anime first impressions

Wow. Crunchyroll nearly completely wiped out when it came to licensing high quality titles this season; if I wasn't already subscribed for a year I'd have seriously considered taking a break if they hadn't snagged Jigoku Shoujo. It's not a strong season to begin with - the majority of titles are 'ok' rather than 'unmissable' - but it's the first where Crunchyroll's dominance in the UK has started to show major cracks. The main culprits are Amazon Prime, who have grabbed some high quality titles once again, and Sentai's new venture HIDIVE. Netflix are also sitting on the sidelines, singlehandedly justifying piracy for many viewers by withholding all international access for anything they touch and treating the anime community like a mindless cash cow. Screw Netflix.

Amazon's anime push is nothing new for this season, but Sentai's relaunch is actively frustrating. To draw attention to their homegrown service they have stopped allowing other anime sites to show their content, which means that none of their shows can be viewed on half my devices and there are no apps whatsoever since the new site is still in beta. In addition, the billing/trial system is poorly described and confusing. Even though their support team is friendly and responsive, by now we've all gone through this many times before with overly ambitious new site launches in legal streaming and it's never fun.

Manga Entertainment's Jerome accidentally hit the nail on the head in one of his characteristic Twitter rants recently when he said, "Isn't that weird? Usually consumers see monopolisation as a bad thing, but anime fans r screaming out for 1 source for everything."

In my mind, there's a simple explanation. Competition is important. The ideal anime streaming market would have sites like Crunchyroll, Netflix, Amazon, Funimation and HIDIVE all streaming every show, worldwide, with subtitles in multiple languages. If Netflix wants to push this stupid enforced 'box set' marathon model, let them do so. If HIDIVE think they are best positioned for providing a unified streaming-and-physical service to the US and English-majority regions, let them. If Crunchyroll think a completely free service on a delay is worth more to fans on a budget while Viewster think fans deserve day-and-date with adverts, fine. The customers can pick which site they find easiest to use, and everyone has legal access to as much anime as possible. The best sites will get the most customers and the anime industry will get feedback on what works best, without all of the lies, exaggerations and excuses.

What we have now is not competition. It's the opposite. As a fan, I don't want to watch some random shounen anime on my platform of choice, so I have to follow the shows I want to watch to the platforms where they end up even if it destroys my viewing experience, as it can easily do when a service is poorly run (Animax UK, I'm talking about you). Fans can't afford to subscribe to half a dozen different platforms to watch half a dozen different shows. Fans can't afford new computers just to have something which works to stream through a certain badly-written website. Fans can't afford to spend hours each week trying to piece together the puzzle of working out which site has the show they want to see for their region (if anyone has it at all) and which language options are available where. It's even worse for casual or new fans, who have no real investment in the industry to encourage them to put up with all of this disorganisation.

Piracy is flourishing because of this baffling parody of the spirit of competition, where the services with the most money grab all of the best shows and lock them away from potential viewers. For most of these sites the distributors aren't being paid based on the number of viewers, they're being paid based on how exclusive their contract is. Distributors like Jerome are incentivised to give exclusivity contracts to each service (or not stream at all, thanks Jerome), and thus we end up in a situation where almost every single title this season is exclusive to one streaming service in the UK. The services don't even specialise in anime genres, so one season you'll have to go to Amazon Prime for your mature, female-orientated entertainment and the next that stuff will be on Crunchyroll instead and Amazon Prime only has action fantasy shows. The cheapest way to subscribe is via annual subscription, but to subscribe to each and every streaming site costs several times more than most fans' anime budgets. Ironically, this current interpration of 'competition' is probably crippling the spending power of Jerome's own physical anime buyers more than he realises.

In short, anime streaming is still a huge mess and the distributors are completely to blame. But as I love anime and hate piracy, I'm forced to put up with it and can't do anything about it other than complain.

So let's switch topics and talk about my first impressions of this latest batch of anime. On top of the titles I liked from the selection below, I'm still streaming Boku No Hero Academia, Nobunaga No Shinobi and Sakura Quest from previous seasons. Crunchyroll's lineup page still has a blank slot which I'm guessing will be filled later in the season too.

Streaming: Spring 2017 anime final impressions

Time is passing by too fast for me. It's difficult to keep up, yet despite some travel I managed to complete all of the shows I was watching in the spring anime season. It looks as though Crunchyroll has lost its monopoly on content at this point, with me finally subscribing to another platform ready for summer to avoid some of the blocks on exclusives the industry seems obsessed with inflicting upon us. What a pain.

I'll talk about it more in my summer 2017 post, but I ended up picking up Re:Creators right at the end of the season after finally gaining access to it. Everything else is largely unchanged from my first impressions post so here is my top three:

1. Uchouten Kazoku
2. Shingeki No Kyojin
3. Berserk

Not a big change there, except that somehow Berserk's terrible animation trounced SukaSuka's melodramatic romance in the final ranking. It wasn't the most life-changing season. All three of those shows are sequels!

Event report: Basara Club Fan Meeting 2017 Spring

It's been a while since this blog featured something like this, hasn't it?

Since real life didn't allow me to attend the previous Basara Matsuri and stage play events, I leapt at the opportunity to apply for tickets to this weekend's Basara Club Fan Meeting 2017 Spring events when the timing ended up coinciding with some travel I'd already arranged. The Sengoku Basara fandom is in a huge lull right now in Japan - even more so than it was prior to the announcement of Sengoku Basara 4 - and it's been a little sad seeing how few signs there are of the series' influence while travelling around the country over the past two weeks. Sengoku Basara merchandise has vanished from most stores, the anime discs are in bargain bins and we just had the news that Sengoku Basara Dokugan, the only serialised manga currently running (not counting the Retsuden one-shots in Dengeki Maoh) is to end in a couple of weeks. If not for this summer's Zangeki Sengoku Basara: Odawara Seibatsu ('Odawara Subjugation') stage play which has just started its major advertising push, I'd be ready to declare the series officially dead.

So it was with a little anxiety that I bought my tickets and turned up at the venue, half-worrying that I might be the only person there! Thankfully, that wasn't the case. The hardcore fans are still eager to celebrate the crazy action of Sengoku Basara even during this period of deathly quiet.

First of all, to avoid any dashing of hopes I want to make it clear that these fan gatherings are just for fun. The gaming media isn't present and there are no major announcements, so this post won't secretly reveal any news about Sengoku Basara 5 right at the end (sadly). If you still want to read more anyway, please go ahead!

Streaming: Spring 2017 anime first impressions

What on earth happened to anime streaming this season? Right as we had finally settled into a wonderful era of Crunchyroll getting UK simulcast rights for almost everything on offer, Amazon Prime and Netflix have both stepped up their plans to grab exclusive licenses with bizarre global strategies; in Amazon's case, they've started licensing some titles for the US only which has left other English-speaking regions in the dust. It's as though we've gone back in time several years! The situation is worsened by UK licensor Manga Entertainment continuing to sit on its own licenses instead of putting them on some kind of simulcasting service. Their decisionmakers don't like Crunchyroll or dub-only outlet Funimation Now, but in the absence of any viable alternative Manga Entertainment continue to license shows and provoke the pirates by squatting on the digital rights for the UK. And so I don't buy from Manga.

I'm desperately hoping that this mess is just a temporarily blip on the path to progress, though it's not exactly unusual for the anime industry to shoot itself in the foot and prevent those who want to from watching and supporting their favourite titles. Global streaming is always such a mess.

All of my ongoing shows have finished other than Nobunaga No Shinobi, which has a second season continuing straight on from the previous one. So will anything new be joining it in my weekly viewing schedule? Let's see.

Streaming: Winter 2017 anime final impressions

Another busy season for me outside of this poor blog, which is limping along on these anime roundups alone these days. I've only been keeping up on the shows which aired on Crunchyroll which was rather convenient and economical. It feels as though this era may be over moving into the spring season, sadly, as it's absolutely loaded with service-specific exclusives; even losing just one must-see title in winter to Amazon Prime was a shame.

I dropped Fuuka partway through its run after realising that it was never going to become the alternate version of NANA I was hoping for, and from all accounts it seems that I dodged a bullet there. I also dropped Ao No Exorcist for no reason in particular. It was too confusing trying to stitch the canonical events from the previous adaptation together.

So let's go with this for my top three:

1. Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
2. ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept
3. MARGINAL #4

The other reason for my lateness in posting these final impressions (and consequently, my first impressions for spring) is a little silly. I loved my top show so much that I was afraid to finish it for quite a few weeks, and ended up trapped in an extended winter much longer than I planned. Several of the shows - most notably Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans - were such emotional rollercoasters that they left me in tatters. I hope the current season will be kinder.