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kiss him, not me, rendering ranger R2, balatro and minecraft: the movie. kiss him, not me. this is a show i watched yeeeeears ago when it first aired and i really liked it, but at the time i was starting to slip from watching anime weekly so i never fully finished it, i got maybe halfway in before i just got distracted and never managed to go back. since i was getting back into anime this year i decided this had to be one of the first shows i went back and finished and immediately ordered a Blu ray of it online and I'm really glad i did, it's still one of the funniest and most relatable shoujo series I've ever seen and has one of my favourite main characters in any show, plus the romance at the series core isn't half bad either, though it does all come with some asterisks, mainly over just how much of the series it adapts. i will get that out of the way first, the show doesn't adapt the whole manga, only the first 8 volumes and nothing is really resolved in it at all, you get a few big scenes and a few characters do get major arcs, but at least two get sidelined because of how the show adapts the manga and where it leaves off, which is a real shame, of the 14 volumes this only covers the first 8 and does leave some stuff out, so if you do plan to watch this, which i 1000% recommend you do, go in knowing that you will need to finish it with the manga. that said i do think the anime is a great way to experience it and i think that's down to one big thing, the voice performances. the VA's here, at least in the dub, kill it, not all of them are great (mutsumi and Igarashi mainly both sound a little ill fitting and too old, but they do still do a good job), but the ones that nail it *nail it*, serinuma especially gives one of the best VA performances I've seen in a show and makes all the comedy shine all that much more, she kills every scene especially when she shows serinuma going level 9999 fujo, it's constantly hilarious. Nishina too is amazing, she gets the comedy almost as well but pulls off a really interesting take on an ojousama character in a way i haven't really seen before. they're the main ones i think stand out but the rest of the cast still do a good job, it helps that the characters they voice are usually really fun. serinuma is the highlight, some of the best rep fujoshi ever got and she's consistently super funny, i like that she isn't really ashamed of her interests and tries her best to share them with the people she cares about, as someone who has gotten a lot of undue harassment online for being a fujoshi it's nice to see this and it feels downright inspiring, same for the weight loss she undergoes as the series big lynchpin of the series where the guys go from uninterested to starting to fall for her, it even inspired me to try and lose a little more myself and that's never a bad thing, her method wasn't the best but i think it's a good message to have and I'll never fault a series for that. nishina is great too! a more refined fujousama, she's a ton of fun and i think she has the best dynamic with serinuma, they get along great and the scenes of them sharing their passions together are really sweet, plus it's always funny to see the boys get mad when she makes strides with serinuma, i do have to say it is nice how the series doesn't even make a big deal of the fact nishina is a woman who has an interest in serinuma and it's nice that serinuma is also just fine with it, it's not as obnoxious as i find a lot of these kinds of romances to go (i really do not like yuri) and it's handled well enough that i even found myself rooting for her over the boys, plus she kills it in a Sebastian cosplay. the rest of the cast are fun too, mutsumi is the highlight of the male cast, i love his nonchalant attitude and his obliviousness makes for some of he shows best jokes, he even has some of the best arcs like the island and the arc with his brother (which has a very funny twist with him that got a lot of laughs from me), if one of the guys were to get with serinuma he's the most deserving, he's just a good, if dense, guy and he has the nicest dynamic with her out of the boys, being the only one who just likes hanging out with her and they make very cute friends. the other boys do have their issues though, Igarashi is just a little boring, both in his design and personality, he's like the leader and the posterboy and that's kind of it, the mature one and one of the more subtly pushy boys but he's just not all that interesting and he gets no real arc over the show beyond the same "maybe i should be less pushy" that all the boys get, he's pretty easily my least favourite. nanashima is a lot more interesting, but also total asshole, easily the most selfish, sexist and mean of the four but he's also the one that i think has the most interesting arc as he slowly redeems himself, by the end i found him to honestly be really sweet and the arc he has with his sister is one of the best here, even with some of the iffy stuff in that arc (if you know you know), plus i think it's funny how he just looks like her husbando, a wish we've all had at least once. shinomiya rounds out the rest of the main cast and he takes a while to really show himself much, for the first half of the series he's just kind of there but once they find his gimmick (cross dressing) he becomes a lot funnier and more likable, though he doesn't get much of an arc here, since his big arc occurs just after the show ends, but he'd be my second favourite of the boys, he's just so funny in those later episodes. that's really it for the main cast, though i like some of the side characters they don't show up all that often, like serinuma's brother or the villain of the series in mutsumi's brother, a creepy pervert substitute that has a thing for basically every member of the main cast, he's kind of cute though not gonna lie. the show's other big selling point is easier to explain, it's fujo bait, it put the guys in homoerotic situations for laughs and for those uwu sparkle moments and it always works on me, it's consistently super funny seeing them react to it and the ship fodder is very real and very high quality, even the show itself seems to have some favourite pairings, this won't appeal to a ton of people but it sure as hell appealed to me and it was the big selling point for me, I've always felt no shame for what i like and I'm sure as hell not starting to now. the shows music is worth a mention too, while the background music isn't the most memorable the shows OP and ED are both pretty great! the OP "prince x prince" was sung by the Japanese male cast and it's really catchy, but i think the ED, "Dokidoki no Kaze" by rie murakawa is the shows best song, it's an amazing ED and i never once considered skipping it, it made its way into a lot of my playlists. there's also a live action drama version too, i haven't checked it out yet but the casting seems really solid and the bit i did see got the energy down perfect, so consider that a possible alternative if the animation doesn't super appeal to you. the series itself is pretty easy to find and cheap on Blu ray so i would recommend tracking it down, though i did also see a full upload of it on youtube if that's more your speed, either way it's worth watching, especially since you can easily breeze through it in a night or two. so covering the Minecraft movie comes with a major caveat, unlike a lot of the game movies i cover where I'm already super familiar with the games, in this rare case, I've never played it, at all. if anything i went in knowing as little about it as anyone in the cinema could have, i bet even the parents in the room knew more about the game than i did. i have no Minecraft experience, i own a vita copy but I've never loaded it up and I've never really felt like i even wanted to play it, i only own that copy because it came in a bundle with a copy of PSVITA pets, a game i wanted, the only experience i have with Minecraft is a few screenshots and the net video, one of the best net videos, Minecraft with gadget, but this is not much to go on. i did ask my sister for some info on the game and this did give me a clearer picture ( i didn't even know it had an ending at all) i still went in as blind as i possibly could have, this was my first real Minecraft experience and i really didn't care for it. this wasn't a massive shock at all, granted, I'm not really into Hollywood movies and i find them to be pretty difficult to watch a lot of the time these days, even the good ones, and much of this i just found to be grating, not helped by just not getting anything like the references or what people were finding funny, my experience was like that scene in the reze arc where makima and denji go to the cinema. i just find myself confused and mildly alienated which i guess makes sense, it's a movie for the TikTok generation and even though i am a Zoomer by age, i just don't like that kind of humour, I've never even used TikTok. i thought it was pretty ugly too, Minecraft's art style just does nothing for me and the movies is just, it, but more uncanny and gross looking, i found that with the enemy and villager designs especially, just nasty and greasy. it's not all bad i guess, the movie clearly does have some creativity behind it and i like Jason mamoa's performance a lot, plus there is a clear love for games here that extends outside of Minecraft in a way that doesn't feel as performative as a lot of these kinds of movies, so that was neat and there were jokes here and there that did make me laugh, but i usually just found myself bored at it. i didn't hate the movie or anything, it was just very kind of nothingy and not for me, it's a brainrot movie and that's just not a crowd i fall into, i didn't scream at chicken jockey or Steve or anything, i guess that's a side effect of being terminally offline, in this case i might even dare to say it was a good thing, it was especially a good thing that i saw this in my own home and not a theatre, i think this new rash of people acting like total jerks in the cinema is a really bad sign and it's made me a lot more weary of going to see major releases, not everything needs to be a TikTok trend or a viral moment, people should just turn off their damn phones every once in a while. balatro is a game i never really intended to play, the idea of it while novel felt very just, not for me, i don't like roguelikes and while i like card games, i prefer weirdo retro handheld TCG adaptations over poker and the like, plus the whole aesthetic just never clicked with me and i always found the culture surrounding the game to be a little off-putting with all the talk of addiction and the like, the game seemed like a perfect skinnerbox in all the worst ways. this was until it came up on PS plus and i decided that i would try and drop the judgment and at least give it an honest try. with this in mind i can fully and honestly say that yes, i was right in most of my initial impressions despite it being a very solid and original game that i do enjoy. the basic idea is poker but a roguelike, with you building hands to gain points in order to bypass certain thresholds, it has some quirky things thrown in like vouchers that can give you larger hand sizes or more draws and ability cards that can manipulate your total points by giving you bonuses and tons of other whacky things, it's charming enough and it is super fun building different decks with those abilities, leveling up your hands and giving your cards different effects like multiplayers or having them giving you money for playing them, there's a lot to it and it's impressive to see how much you can break the game, though I'd still call it very difficult, it took me a good while to finish my first run and even now I've only finished enough to beat the big 4 final bosses. that said as you may have assumed, this is a total gambling skinnerbox, it's known for being so addicting because that's simply what it is, it's designed to keep you hooked even though it doesn't have that real money gambling aspect to it, in a way it's kind of perfectly designed and impressive that it can do that so well. i am not a gambler but even i was having trouble sleeping over a desire to play it and having dreams about it, similar things happened with my sister too, it's the main reason why i held off and didn't buy a physical copy of this for the longest time, i didn't want this game in my house permanently but eventually i did cave and get one under the promise that i would eventually sell it once i beat those 4 final bosses, which I've now finally done, this thing fucking scares me and i need rid of it asap.. anyway, other stuff, the music is good but there's really only one track so it gets repetitive very fast, feels weirdly hypnotic sounding too which i think is what adds to its whole, skinnerbox thing, a little unsettling. the aesthetics also don't do much for me, i like the cute designs on the jokers but beyond that it's very bland, even the indie game themed decks don't do much for it. that's really all there is to it, there's some harder challenge modes, more jokers and things to unlock and different beginner decks to try but that's really it, there's no story or anything and i don't have much to add, the physical copy does come with a few joker cards though, that's cute, still, maybe avoid this game, it's actually a little scary.