Erufailon4

  86 Eighty-Six: Part 2   (seen 3 episodes)   One of the best anime of the spring season, possibly of the entire year, is back with more delicious social commentary that does not know the meaning of the word "subtle". This time with an entire new country and a chuuni loli! Quite a change from the first cour's grim war story. But fear not, for the Anvils That Need To Be Dropped are still being dropped, in beat with those sweet Sawano/Yamamoto BGMs. Oooh yeah. Also the new OP is great .  Demon Slayer: Mugen Train Arc (seen 3 episodes)   It's train time, baby! Again. Yeah, this is a TV broadcast version of the movie that I have already seen. Not much to say about it. The OP and ED are pretty good, although to be honest neither is Gurenge or Homura levels of instant classic. So yeah. Um. I guess this is a thing that exists.  Mushoku Tensei: Part 2 (seen 3 episodes)  This show does not need an introduction: if you haven't seen it, you have at least heard of...

There are very few things a manga collector can get that are cooler than what I got today. It's just impressive in almost every way, to the point where even knowing roughly what it contains couldn't prepare me for actually seeing it with my own eyes. I am, of course, talking about the Viz Media deluxe edition box set of Hayao Miyazaki's legendary Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind .  Bought from Amazon Germany at the price of €57.18, the package arrived on time and in good condition. I had it delivered to a Posti parcel point (just across the street from where I live) from where I picked it up. I luckily had a bag with me to carry it because let me tell ya: it is heavy. 3.5 kg to be exact, might not sound like a lot to some, but I'm a scrawny weeb not used to carrying around stuff that heavy.  Anyway, on to the actual unboxing. The set is in a large (26 x 10 x 18 cm) rigid cardboard box, with an illustration and the title on the front cover, an introductory text on the ...

It's a great time to be a manga reader in Finland. Not one or two but three  new series have had their first volumes released during the last month, and since the roughly two-month period following a volume 1's release is the sweet spot where starting to read a series is at its easiest, having three of those at the same time is a big deal.  First off, we have Astra: Lost in Space  (彼方のアストラ, in Finnish Astra - avaruuden haaksirikkoiset ), which I personally was very excited about, having seen the excellent 2019 anime adaption when it aired and recently rewatched it. Publishing an easy-to-approach sci-fi manga during a time when space is a more prevalent topic than it has been in years is a smart move from Sangatsu and I hope it pays off for them financially.  Another safe and anticipated title is Weathering with You  (天気の子), of course an adaption of the Makoto Shinkai movie of the same name, which had a Finnish theatrical run troubled by COVID lockdowns in 2020. ...

When I started the first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion  on Netflix in June 2019, I did not expect it to become the journey it became. While I was not all that much into it every single second of the following two years, it nevertheless stayed deep inside me and occasionally rose to the surface whenever I was reminded of its existence. And as the months went by and the long-awaited release of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 , the final rebuild film, grew closer, I started getting reminded of it more and more, until 2021 arrived and the film was finally released in Japanese theaters, prompting me to revisit the earlier parts of the franchise as I waited for the international release.  It's such an interesting franchise, in many ways. There's a lot going on, even when the pacing is at its slowest, not just in the story's world but on a meta level as well. Evangelion has interpreted to be many things, from a normal mecha action series, to pretentious pseudo-philosophical nonsense, to a...

It's been a while since I've published a blog post. Late 2019, I think? I used to be somewhat active on my old WordPress.com blog during 2019 but then shit happened (including, y'know, a global pandemic) and I didn't really have much time to spare for something as time-consuming as writing. (Also I didn't really have anything I felt like I needed to write about.) But lately I've been feeling the urge to share some thoughts with the world in a longer format than just tweets, and since using WordPress.com as a free user is not the greatest way to go about having a casual blog, I decided to migrate to Blogger.  My old blog went offline earlier this month. I didn't really feel like bringing over any of my old posts. They're still accessible through Wayback Machine if someone in the world, for some reason, wants to read them. I don't. It's not like they're all bad, but I've changed a lot in these two years and don't particularly want to be...