Category Archives: magpie

Wednesday’s Child/Loading…Review of Gris

This is the most beautiful game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a lot of beautiful games. In fact, art style is a major factor for me in choosing a game in the first place and in my ultimate rating of it. For example, Final Fantasy 7 makes pretty much every list of best gamesContinue reading “Wednesday’s Child/Loading…Review of Gris”

ESC #25: DessArt Day 3 (Bookmaking)

Nicole taught us how to do a fun and easy pamphlet bind with a paper cover, and some folks painted really pretty watercolor covers for their books. Favorites on the menu included the blueberry pie and the salted caramel mousse, but the butterscotch bars and meringue cookies also got lots of thumbs up. Ugly ButContinue reading “ESC #25: DessArt Day 3 (Bookmaking)”

Cartoons for Grownups: What Does it Mean to Win? (Solo Leveling and Hell’s Paradise)

It’s a structure that’s common to a lot of shonen (teenaged boy) anime series, video games, fantasy novels, and heck, classical epics (Dante’s Inferno, anyone?): it probably has a name already that I’m too lazy to look up, so I’ll just call it a Tower Quest. A Tower Quest is where the protagonist works theirContinue reading “Cartoons for Grownups: What Does it Mean to Win? (Solo Leveling and Hell’s Paradise)”

Cartoons for Grownups: What Does It Mean to Be Human? (Kaiju No. 8 and NieR: Automata)

A lot of the anime I watch poses this question, probably because I tack toward sci-fi and cyberpunk shows. But it’s hard to think of recent shows that orbit around it more than these two–one of which is about a near-future monster-fighting task force (Kaiju No. 8) and the other, about Humanity’s attempts to reclaimContinue reading “Cartoons for Grownups: What Does It Mean to Be Human? (Kaiju No. 8 and NieR: Automata)”

Cartoons for Grownups: What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? (Apothecary Diaries and Raven of the Inner Palace)

These two shows have a lot in common: they’re both based on light novels written by Japanese women authors; they both follow quirky harem residents in an alternate/fantasy version of Imperial China; they both have an episodic mystery structure where the heroine plays detective; they both build romantic tension between the heroine and the EmperorContinue reading “Cartoons for Grownups: What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? (Apothecary Diaries and Raven of the Inner Palace)”

Gosha Update! Plus Honey Cake and Lamb’s Ear Tea

Not only does Gosha get to ride around on Hormat’s shoulder and be fed cherries in this episode, but he also seems to have adopted another baby chick like he did last year. AND, big news, there may be a Mrs. Gosha…. She only shows up in a few frames–she seems a little more shyContinue reading “Gosha Update! Plus Honey Cake and Lamb’s Ear Tea”