So believe it or not I have never watched a Studio Ghibli movie in full before. The most I have seen is half of Howl's Moving Castle when it was shown in High School before I had to leave. Beyond that and a few scattered bits of info on some of the earlier movies, I've had very little experience with Ghibli.
So considering Ghibli is such a cultural super giant I decided 2026 was the year I finally changed this. So join me as throughout the year I tackle every Ghibli and Ghibli adjacent movie.
Real quick let me lay down the rules. Any movie by Studio Ghibli obviously will be watched, but also any movie by Hayao Miyazaki as well. On top of that I've added a few movies that were assisted by Ghibli as well as movies by Studio PONOC (which is made up of former Studio Ghibli employees.)
The general order is seen below, though I may change it if need be. I tried to go by oldest to newest in general, though you'll notice a few exceptions to that. I will also use this to link to the reviews as well once they are created.
Lupin III - The Castle of Cagliostro
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Castle in the Sky
My Neighbor Totoro
Kiki's Delivery Service
Porco Rosso
Princess Mononoke
Grave of the fireflies
Only Yesterday
Ocean waves
Pompoko
Whisper of the Heart
The Cat Returns
My Neighbor the Yamadas
Spirited Away
Howl's Moving Castle
Ponyo
The Wind Rises
Tales of Earthsea
The Secret World of Arrietty
From up on Poppy Hill
The Tale of Princess Kaguya
When Marnie was there
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
The Red Turtle
Mary and the Witch's Flower
The Imaginary
Earwig and the Witch
The Boy and the Heron
Also if needed here is the link to the google document I'll be using for this as well.
I'm hoping you guys enjoy my thoughts on the movies I watch on this journey. Stay tuned!
Final Fantasy II (Pixel Remaster) (6/28/26) - Score - 8/10
Ah Final Fantasy II, the FF community's favorite punching bag. As someone well known for enjoying games others hate and disliking games others like, I was very intrigued to see what my thoughts would be on this game. Granted, I am playing the Pixel Remaster so some of the rough edges from the Famicom version have likely been smoothed away. But considering that most people in the west have likely only played versions of these games with those edges sanded off (anything past the Playstation release,) I was still curious to see if any of their criticisms held water.
Honestly, not really. Don’t get me wrong, the way leveling up in this game isn’t perfect. Leveling magic, while it did get me to engage with magic a bit more at first, quickly becomes a chore. You have too many spells, so it’s unlikely you will be able to level all of them up with extra grinding. So forget trying to learn the toad or mini spells because it’s not worth your time to grind out the levels for them. And while I was hopeful this game would have me engage with more spells than most FF, ultimately you only need to level up the attacking spells and the status curing spells. Anything else isn’t worth worrying about and you’ll likely get a few levels just by using it naturally.
But beyond that, I thought the idea of leveling each individual attribute was honestly pretty great. Overall it really didn’t change how I played the game compared to the other Final Fantasies, but it did make me a bit more conscious of my actions in battle as opposed to just spamming attacks 90% of the time. Plus it kind of acts as a proto class building system, where you can kind of mold your characters into whatever you want them to be.
Now the big thing you always read online is that you need to attack your own party members. You do not need to attack your own party members to level up HP. People have said this even on Pixel Remaster threads and I have to imagine if they are doing it, they’re only doing it because they think so due to it being all anyone talks about. And as someone who didn’t do that, I feel like you’re wasting your time as the game is already pretty easy as it is. Very rarely did I struggle and when I did it was usually due to confusion or stone status effects. Once I leveled up Esuna and Basuna it was mostly smooth sailing. If you play the game like normal (and don’t turn off encounters or play a mod of the original that lowers encounter rate) you’ll have plenty of levels to handle the late game challenges.
Another complaint I've seen is that apparently people don’t like the key word system, which I just plain do not get. I personally loved it, as learning what to do next felt like I was actively participating in a conversation. Learning words and then asking other people about them just felt like a super neat solution to the text limit to still make the conversations engaging. While it’s nothing ground breaking today and we have much better ways to convey that feeling of engagement, this feels miles ahead of any other RPG on the Famicom at the time.
Which is also true of the story. While nothing ground breaking now, it’s a pretty compelling plot that’s way darker than you might expect. Feeling like a proto version of Final Fantasy IV, you control 3 characters with a rotating fourth slot as you try to stop the evil empire from mass killing the world’s population (you may sort of fail at this, holy shit do a lot of people die.) I think due to the simple nature of the characters here and the fact that you have 3 permanent slots, the rotating cast bothered me less compared to 4. Because of that I grew more attached to these guys then I did 4’s characters despite them having way less depth. On top of that, death is a real thing in this game and it kind of shocked me how many characters die here, especially having played 4 before this.
For me FFII stands out both for how innovative it was at the time and how it still stands out as unique even today. I’m very attached to retro games that were never iterated on such as Zelda II. I think the differences in FFII help to make it stand out way more from its contemporaries, with the battle system feeling unique from 3 and 5’s class system while still feeling different enough from 1 and 4’s more standard battle system. But beyond that, FFII is still very much your typical classic Final Fantasy. It’s a game I think that gets unfairly thrown under the bus by people who likely have not played it and are only parroting what they hear from famous Youtubers. If you have played it and did not enjoy it, fair enough. But if you have not I highly recommend you give it a go if you're a fan of retro RPGS. Also it has Beavers…I think?
2026 - The Year of Ghibli - My Neighbor the Yamadas
One thing I’ve realized when it comes to this era of Disney is that while all of the Miyazaki directed films have a mostly similar visual vibe to them, anything not by Miyazaki and especially anything by Takahata can be anything goes when it comes to visuals. From more realistic character designs, to talking Tanukis to…this movie, Takahata seemed a lot more willing to not stick to just one distinct style. Because of this we get easily the most visually unique Ghibli movie as I tackle the last movie of the 90’s, My Neighbor the Yamadas.
The best part about My Neighbor the Yamadas is by far its visual style. It goes all in on mimicking the more comic strip style of drawing from its source material and the end result is a very visually distinct movie that had me interested from start to finish in just how stylish it was. Having a sort of red bull commercial vibe to its animations, the simple designs paired with a fantastic use of digital color makes it stunning to watch and I feel like there are very few things like it.
The thing about this movie though, is it’s not a movie. Takahata has experimented with a movie being made up of small vignettes before with Only Yesterday but that still had one overarching plot that joined all the smaller stories together. Yamadas doesn’t have anything of the sort. You could make the argument that there are themes of ‘family helping you get through the tough times even though they drive you nuts,’ but at the end of the day it overall is just a series of unrelated short skits packaged into an almost two hour experience.
To some extent this is fine. There are plenty of movies that do the same thing, Disney is certainly no stranger to the concept. A lot of the skits are pretty funny too, assuming the humor is your style. And for the most part, the majority are fairly short. But the issue is, IT’S TWO HOURS. Like holy hell it did not need to be that long. Some of the skits easily could have been cut and one of them, the biker skit, goes on way longer than it needs to for what actually happens in it. I think most people will enjoy parts of this movie, but it is a big ask to hold them captive for two hours to watch small skits that don’t really connect in any meaningful way.
For me, I enjoyed what it was but I'd be lying if parts of it fell a bit flat for me. Unlike with Totoro, the lack of any meaning helped in making the boring parts feel less like a failure on the movie’s part and the bland skits I could easily move on from. I think that fact plus the unique visual style had me overall enjoying this more than some of the more duller Ghibli movies. And some of the skits when they hit were really charming. This movie has some banger comedic lines such as “Let us through, our daughter’s about to be kidnapped.”
Yamadas is a very interesting experience and I'm unsure if story wise it should have been a movie. But I’m very glad I watched it since as we return to Miyazaki, most future Ghibli movies tend to maintain the status quo when it comes to artistic style. Except of course, Princess Kaguya. Which in many ways this movie feels like a precursor to that when it comes to the visuals. But it will be a while before I get to Takahata’s last film, so in the meantime get ready for what is arguably the most well known and beloved Ghibli film next time.
Born of Bread (6/27/26) - Score - 6/10
With Nintendo deciding that Paper Mario works better as a Zelda like adventure game (play Origami King, it’s great), fans of the RPG styled games have been ravenous. Due to that, there has been a slow trickle of Indie developers making Paper Mario likes. Bug Fables is the most well known and arguably one of the best, since for me it takes everything Paper Mario N64 did right but improves upon it by not having Mario and instead having a cast of three friends with in depth characterization. While I enjoyed Bug Fables greatly, I haven’t been itching for a new Paper Mario like most of the internet has since there are so many other RPGs out there to check out. That said, after checking out Born of Bread on one of my demo night streams, I enjoyed the charm and character animations enough to buy it when I saw it was on sale.
Born of Bread has you playing as Loaf, a bread boy who was baked thanks to a magic cooking spell his baker of a father accidentally discovered. He along with his many friends must stop an evil shadowy empire from returning by finding crystal stones before the bad guys do. Yes this game is heavily inspired both visually and story wise by TTYD, why do you ask?
Let’s start with some of the positives. The game is fairly charming with humor that while not laugh out loud funny did have me snickering at points. Loaf, while mostly speechless, has a greater range of expression than Mario and for better or worse most of his replies tend to be pun based. The bigger positive though is that the partners are pretty fun with constant interjection even after their chapter. The worst part of an RPG is having a whole cast of characters and only the ones currently in your party interject on the current situation, usually to just make some observation. Here every character will interact throughout the journey and you do get the sense that they become friends with each other. Lint, my favorite character, is just as important as Chloe is and so on and so forth. They truly feel like characters and even though Paper Mario fans will claim Paper Mario’s characters are so amazingly deep, it’s nice to have characters that aren’t paper thin.
Another positive is the soundtrack and visuals. The soundtrack is very Paper Mario inspired but unlike thousand year door it actually is pleasing to the ear (yea sorry, I think TTYD has one of the worst soundtracks of all time.) I’m not the biggest fan of the unreal engine world environments, sometimes it works and other times it feels a bit fake. But the characters themselves are wonderfully animated, heck the reason I even got this game is because of how cute and adorable Lint was in the demo.
I also find the exploration of the game mostly pretty good and while some of the side quests are a bit annoying overall I had a fun time combing the world for all its secrets as I unlocked new abilities. The level design is fairly basic, but I think it keeps things short enough to never feel like a repetitive slog.
Now on the more negative side of things, this game is over all a bit under baked. The most obvious issue right off the bat is it is insanely glitchy. So glitchy in fact the main menu screen has a button to fix your save data by unequipping items in hopes it fixes whatever glitch is occurring. I luckily did not encounter any game breaking glitches but some of the ones I did encounter were:
One side quest was just impossible to complete as I could never turn in the items to Papa Baker. So I was missing an item bag upgrade for the entire game.
At one point the butterflies that help you fly up to reach tall platforms glitched, so they remained stuck to me indefinitely until I reset. This meant I couldn’t use any other butterflies until I removed them also.
I went out of bounds somehow in the misty woods and had to reset in order to progress.
At points the camera glitched and would not follow my character correctly
The map got locked on to one location and wouldn’t let me open any area so I had to reset.
Plus many more minor graphical glitches and some game play issues I’m not fully sure were glitches or not. The point is it’s hard to recommend this game to people as the odds of them not encountering some major glitch through casual game-play are so low. Most people would be less tolerant of glitches than I, so while this isn’t the worst part of the game it is something I felt necessary to disclose. I’ve also heard there are some game breaking glitches but I luckily did not encounter any. Unfortunately it looks like this game will not be updated any further by the developer, so any glitches are likely in it for good.
The other major issue is what I would describe as a general lack of polish, especially when it comes to game-play mechanics. What I mean by this is that it is very easy to quickly make the battle system become unimportant as I quickly unlocked a multi hit move early on onto Lint and was able to clean up every battle within two moves. With Bug Fables, the battle system was clearly designed with a sense of strategy in mind. Even on the easier difficulty, very rarely could you just spam the same move over and over. You had enemy types immune to certain moves and you had to be smart about how many magic points you used when attacking since healing wasn’t always a certainty.
In Born of Bread, all enemies can be hit by basically every move. There is however an elemental system of some sort that has certain moves doing more against certain enemies ala Pokemon. BUT, and this is a big BUT, hell if I could tell you how it works in detail because I never paid attention to it due to it not really making much of a difference since EVERY group of enemies went down with Lint’s move in at least two turns. So just picking the high cost multi hit move every turn was always the smartest option regardless of element type.
But you may ask, what about running out of magic? No worries, you seem to level up after 3 battles because enemies give an insane amount of EXP early on, which heals your magic so you’ll always have more available. I have never seen a game that gave level ups out as fast as this one, it felt like I couldn’t go two seconds before I hit the next upgrade and health refresh.
Because of this so much of the game's mechanics didn’t matter much because the game didn’t do anything to make them matter. I pretty much used Lint for most of the game, poor Yagi maybe getting into one or two fights when I accidentally left him out to use his overworld ability. I very rarely paid attention to all the moves anyone could learn, as pretty much the multi hit moves were always the best option. And if they weren’t, Loaf gets plenty of strong single hit moves I could use. Comboing that with Lint’s move that decreases defense made bosses go down fast. Healing moves were particularly useless since I was healed after only a few battles most of the time. I don’t even know what most of the special moves do, because I never needed to use them.
The worst part of this lack of planning is that the game gives you healing items like they’re going out of style. To the point where my bag was constantly overflowing with items I never needed. Hell so many of the shops only have healing items and I don’t think I ever once purchased one from them outside of very early on in the game. Though even then, early on was especially rough in managing my inventory as my wallet was overflowing for a bit since it took way too long to get a wallet upgrade and the only thing I could spend money on was useless food. So I would just have a ton of money go into the ether that I could have used for some of the badges and such later on.
Which when it comes to badges, like in general I just went for more magic points to let Lint keep using his moves. I had no real reason to use some of the more unique effects badges gave because again, I never needed to.
Just so many elements feel designed in a vacuum, with no real thought put into how they would work together with each other. I don’t know if it wasn’t play tested enough, but some slight tweaks here and there would make the battles much more engaging then they actually are. Maybe it would feel a bit better on the harder difficulty, but uh after how many times I played the prologue if I had to reset one more time I would have lost a friend (Don’t ask).
And this sort of lack of care is found throughout the game even outside of battles. For example there is a race mini game that has you running from one area of the world to another, but the game doesn’t turn off enemy encounters or pause the timer during them. Meaning if you get into an enemy encounter by accident (which was very easy in some of these due to not being able to see the enemy ahead of time) you’ll likely lose the race. Or later on in the game you get the ability to use a hook-shot like item to cross gaps. But uh most of them I was able to just jump myself because I had earned enough running shoes that my momentum carried me over these large gaps.
I think that’s the biggest problem with Born in Bread in general is that it’s very under baked. It looks super polished on the surface but as you play it it’s a gooey mess that while still entertaining, doesn’t hit as hard then if it had just had a bit more time to refine itself. It’s unfortunate as there is a really good game here deep down. As the game is though, it’s a fun time but nothing revolutionary. If you’re a fan of Paper Mario, I do recommend this one as you will still enjoy it. But for most people you do have much better options available.
Yacht Club games is a beloved developer, despite the fact that up til now they’ve technically only developed one game. That’s part of the reason they’re so beloved though as they went all in on making their kick starter stretch goals more than simple additions, resulting in Shovel Knight becoming a behemoth of a game with four unique campaigns. But while I love Shovel Knight, Mega Man style games aren’t nearly as near and dear to my heart compared to other genres. So when they announced their next game would star a cute mouse and take inspiration from the Oracle Zelda games, I was beyond ecstatic. You would think with this much hype, the odds of the game being a disappointment were all but inevitable.
Nope, the game is fantastic. While some might be disappointed that the game is less of a Zelda like and more an amalgamation of influences, for me that’s never been an issue when it comes to these types of games and if anything is a positive. In a lot of ways the game plays more like what you might expect Oracle of Seasons to play like, since it is lauded as being heavily battle focused. Add in some Dark Souls elements, some gothic horror vibes and the level design of Shovel Knight and you get an excellent top down adventure game. That last part I think is vital, the areas of the game play out much less like your typical Zelda dungeon and more like an action heavy gauntlet filled with tricky platforming and navigation. Environmental puzzling is still a focus mind you, but the game is more like Shovel Knight then you might expect. Though this might not work for some people.
A lot of people have complained about the game being impossibly hard, especially at the start. To that I look at my stream VOD and may need to play some golf because my ego is starting to get a bit too large. Look not everyone is going to be good at souls like game play styles, it certainly took me a bit to grasp the rhythm of those types of fights. It also helps that I’m much better at 2D games of that genre then I am of their 3D counterparts. For most people I assume it’s the opposite, with trying to battle in a world where you can only aim in four directions not feeling great to play. That’s why Yacht Club included a plethora of options to tweak the game however you like. Some do shut off achievements, but if the game is too difficult you can just adjust it to help ease some of the growing pains of learning how to approach this game’s fights. On top of that, even if you do die, due to the Spark Container system, you won’t lose your money unless you die with no sparks. Meaning you’re not locked to returning to the same fight you just did if you don’t want to (since you can have multiple sparks) and you can spend all your money before you fight again, having death resulting in very little consequences. It’s a great innovation to this genre and makes this an easy recommendation for beginners to the souls genre.
But apparently if you ask the internet, even this is not enough. No I guess all games should appeal only to what that one guy on reddit wants the game to be. Look I understood the complaints with Silk Song because while I think people blew its difficulty out of proportion, the lack of options can be rough to deal with on top of some of the questionable choices by Team Cherry. But since this game has plenty of options for every player, at some point you just have to ask why they’re playing a game that’s clearly not made for them. Not every game is going to be made for you and that’s fine. If you don’t like Soulslikes that’s not a big deal and you shouldn’t be whining to the internet to bend the genre to fit your specific preferences. Plus if you want a similar game that isn’t soulslikey then play Pipistrello, it’s awesome.
But those aspects aside, I think the game is more than fair in its difficulty. If anything the game gets too easy the more upgrades you unlock via your exploration. But with an expansive New Game + system and plenty of options to increase difficulty, if it was something I was truly bothered by I have ways to improve that as well. Overall the bosses were not what really enjoyed about this game, with most being fairly forgettable. Instead the fantastic world and exploring it for all its secrets was easily my biggest highlight. It was honestly my favorite part of Shovel Knight, exploring the town levels and interacting with the NPCs. Being able to do that on a larger scale with it being the main focus of the game was awesome.
Once you get used to it the game controls are very slick, letting you zoom your way through levels as you tunnel and un-tunnel from platform to platform. I do think though for me most of the games many items felt a bit unnecessary. On a subsequent play-through or with the randomizer I could see myself giving the other weapons and sub-weapons a try but I never found any reason to use anything but the whip and the throwing axes (quote from Simon Main in Smash Bros.) The fact that you have 5 different weapons, such as sick daggers or a cool blaster, is a neat idea but you’re talking to the guy that uses the Splatter Shot Jr. in Splatoon. Are you really surprised I didn’t experiment more?
Beyond that the game is gorgeous, really highlighting how pretty the game boy color art style can be. They even go the Oracle of Ages route of having some pixel splash art screens of Mina entering a new area which are just gorgeous. And of course the soundtrack is fantastic, but that’s much to be expected when you have Jake Kaufman and Yuzo Koshiro creating it.
Beyond that I don’t really have much else to say. The game’s levels are tightly designed (though Septemburg was the one level I didn’t enjoy all that much), the quests are fun to figure out and complete and the game doesn’t overstay its welcome. Easily one of the best games this year and more evidence that Yacht Club Games can still create a fun experience even when their main character isn’t wielding a shovel. Granted…she does dig so….uh maybe they do need dirt…
Remember when I said Porco Rosso was the silliest Ghibli movie? Uh throw that idea out of the water because it’s definitely this one. Cat doesn’t feel very much like any other Ghibli movie due to that, and part of that is thanks in part to how it came to be. After Whisper of the Heart, Ghibli commissioned the author of the original manga to make a short story based on the Baron character. This seemed to be sparked due to a theme park wanting a cat themed short and thus this film started life as that project before the theme park cancelled their plans. Shifting gears to make it a sort of ‘Ocean’s Wave’ type of project, it was used to train the newer animators entering the studio. Eventually the short got expanded into a full movie and the end result is one of the funniest movies made by Ghibli.
First off, this movie technically debuted after Spirited Away. Due to its very loose connection to Whisper of the Heart, I moved it up a bit in my watch order. Also concerning Whisper of the Heart, I've seen many people call this a sequel to that movie and my response to that is “you have not seen this movie.” Heck at least one person said this movie makes no sense if you haven’t seen Whisper of the Heart. Which….what? Literally the only connection this movie has to Whisper is that there is a cat named Muta and the Baron cat character is in both because he’s so cool you guys. Which the Baron and his sick design are really the only reason this movie even exists.
The thing about this movie is there is zero deep meaning to this one. That’s not to say you couldn’t take some sort of message from this movie, but the movie is more concerned with drawing silly cats than it is in trying to have any sort of morale. In that department it succeeds greatly. While arguably the digital painting of this movie leaves the human characters looking extremely un-Ghibli like, the benefit is that it enhances the cat’s animations to the point that I can’t imagine the movie without it. Pairing that with the decision to not draw them anthropomorphic cats (besides the baron,) it goes all in the cats being normal cat shaped but standing on their hind legs. This and the flat coloring leaves a weirdness to their movements that just enhances the odd aspects of this film even more so, enhancing the Alice and Wonderland like narrative.
It also helps that this movie is really funny. From the tuxedo body guard cats throwing cats out of the king’s procession, to the king having the cat executioners throw failed comedy acts out of the castle abruptly (I really like cats throwing people,) to anything Muta does, the movie feels like it has more in common with the Emperor’s New Groove then Princess Mononoke. This isn’t a knock on the movie mind you, just that it’s a deeply silly movie and that is part of why it tends to not rank high on many people’s Ghibli lists. People expect Ghibli movies to have classically beautiful art and thought provoking stories and Cat Returns isn’t really concerned with either of those. It’s an entertaining movie about silly cats in a cat kingdom trying to poorly repay a debt to a human girl.
I really had a fun time with this one, but if I was to rank it, it’s probably about just average when it comes to the other Ghibli movies. And that’s fine, not every movie or experience needs to be high art. Unlike Totoro, which I feel wanted to be high art and didn’t really reach what it was aiming for, Cat Returns knows what it is trying to be and does that thing really well. And also the true message of this movie is that the Baron is so cool and everyone should have a crush on him.
If you asked me before I watched it how I thought this movie would start, never in a billion years would I have answered “with Olivia Newton-John’s version of Country Roads.” Nor would I ever think it was going to be a major focus throughout the movie. Apparently this song was just really popular in Japan at the time, specifically this version of the song. Despite being blindsided by it though, it’s hard to think of the movie working without that song being there. That’s kind of the thing with Whisper of the Heart though. It’s both a bit of an oddity compared to other Ghibli movies while at the same time feeling like one of the strongest contenders for what a Ghibli movie is.
Being neither directed by Takahata or Miyazaki but rather by Yoshifumi Kondō, it feels like it in many ways acts as a middle ground between the more fantastical Miyazaki movies and the overall more grounded Takahata movies. Despite what the movie posters may have you believe, there are no magical or supernatural elements to this movie just set in modern Japan. Yet somehow the gorgeous backdrops and animation of the city still evokes the same vibe as something like Princess Mononoke. It takes an everyday city and everyday actions of school kids and through the background and animation, paints the mundane in such a fantastical way that it feels like something you’d see from a fantasy movie. It’s something I greatly appreciated about this film, being easily the clear winner so far at how gorgeously it depicts modern society. It’s also arguably a pretty effective advertisement to make people want to visit Japan as now I want to visit Japan. I already did, but now I want to do so even more.
But the point is that the way the movie is animated and the way the story is told there is a sort of fantastical quality to the story that doesn’t really exist in most of Takahata’s works (please ignore the talking Tanukis.) And while Miyazaki has done some films that lean into this territory, I think this movie does a better job at depicting mundane in a real way, while something like Totoro there is this constant disconnect between the realistic elements and the fantasy elements. Totoro isn’t making everyday life feel like a fantasy, it’s just adding fantasy elements to everyday life.
Getting more into the story, I do really like Shizuku as a character. While her romance with Seiji didn’t compel me as much as romances in other Ghibli movies, I don’t really think the romance itself is really the point of her character arc. More the inspiration she gains from Seiji and the confidence to put her creative energy into something even if it doesn’t work out. Trying as hard as you can in the now and putting your all into something and not worrying about the future. It’s a movie I could see a lot of artists really resonating with.
I do think where this movie loses me a bit is in its pacing. A lot of the early parts of the movie tend to be a bit aimless, with no sense of direction. You could make the argument that it mirrors Shizuku’s life at that moment, unsure of what she wants to do and not really doing anything with her creativity. And while I would agree, it still feels like it takes the movie half its run time to get to any sort of concrete narrative. Yes Ghibli films tend to be character focused, but compared to the other heavily character focused movies in their catalog, Whisper in particular seems to just have scenes that don’t add anything to our understanding of these characters and also tend to not be interesting on their own.
My biggest example of this happens after she stops at the antique shop for the first time. There is a good twenty minutes (I did time it) of screen time before she visits the shop again and finally continues the romance aspect of the movie. And while to say there is nothing interesting in that time would be a lie, a majority of those twenty minutes are spent on Shizuku’s best friend and her crush on a boy in their class. A boy who then confesses he actually has a crush on Shizuku, a plot point that goes nowhere and doesn’t really add much to the movie beyond “teenagers are confusing.” I found nothing about this entertaining on its own and the fact that it doesn’t seem to serve any point just really started to make me lose interest in a movie that I already felt was meandering too much.
Luckily Country Roads came in to save the day. That scene with Shizuku singing to the violin rendition of everyone’s favorite Fallout song is easily the strongest scene in the movie. It has stuck with me to this day and will likely be what I remember most about this movie. And after that point the movie finally seems to have a consistent pace in terms of what it wants the movie to be about and I was on board for the second half. But it did seem to take its time to get to that point.
I think because of that, while you would think due to the subject matter I would like this as much or more than I did Kiki’s Delivery service, this movie didn’t hit me as hard as that one did and is a bit too long for its own good. Pacing is probably what I would cite as the movie’s biggest problem, but your mileage will vary greatly when it comes to this. For me I had just watched a bunch of slice of life Ghibli films back to back (ignore the talking Tanukis) so to get one that just spends a lot of time not really moving anywhere likely felt worse to me then it actually is. Like I said the film has this sense of mundane beauty to it and I imagine most people will enjoy the film even when it’s not really moving anywhere. It’s still a fantastic film whose messages to those who like to create are great, I just think for me the feelings of burn out and depression from Kiki’s Delivery Service are a bit more relatable than the heavier focus on romance and having a creative muse this film goes for.
And I think that’s the thing for me. Kiki’s Delivery Service is such a similar movie and due to its tight pacing and its subject matter being more relatable in a personal way, while this movie is very good, it didn’t really impact me in the same way compared to if I had watched it first. Unfortunately not every movie can be watched before all the others. And yes I am in fact saying I relate more to the teenage witch than I do to the creative writer character.
Whisper of the Heart is a great movie and it’s a tragedy that its director Yoshifumi Kondō died only three years later, with this being the only film he directed before his passing. He was poised to be the successor to Miyazaki and Takhata and it’s interesting to imagine a world where that came to be, as I do think he married their ideologies in a way that no other director has yet to do.
Score - 3.5/5 Stars
Of all the non-Miyazaki films, the one most people are likely to have heard of is… Grave of the Fire Flies. BUT, after that they’re mostly likely to have heard of this film. And by hearing of it I mean saying “isn’t that the movie with the Tanuki who use their ball sacks to fly?”
While not technically inaccurate, I feel it’s unfortunate that this seems to be a lot of westerner’s experience with the movie. Unlike Miyazaki, Takahata seemed largely unconcerned with how his films were seen outside of his home country. In doing so a lot of his movies use Japanese customs and knowledge that, while common knowledge for those in Japan, are either not something we’re aware of or something bizarre to us that stands out in a different way. Case and point, the fact that Tanuki have large testicles that they can transform and stretch. This is universally seen as at least a little bit funny in the west and by and large the only thing people mention about this movie due to how much it sticks out compared to what we are used to. To the point that many of my friends, despite being more in tune with anime culture, only knew about this movie for this fact and maybe a bit of the general premise.
The point is the movie never really treats this fact about Tanuki as this huge joke, it’s just something they have and can do. That’s not to say none of the scenes involving it aren’t humorous, but It’s not nearly highlighted as much by the movie compared to how most people who haven’t seen it perceive it. In fact that scene that everyone talks about, where the Tanuki fly and fight with their balls, it’s one of the most depressing parts of the film and arguably any of the Ghibli movies so far.
Oh yea, I went there. Pom Poko is a sadder movie than Grave of the Fire Flies. Look, putting aside my opinion on that movie, Pom Poko legitimately left me a little taken aback by how the movie ends. Straight up the Tanuki lose and either end up all dead or forced to survive in a world they could not stop encroaching on their life.
It’s interesting because I critiqued Nausicaä for being a bit too on the nose with its environmentalist themes. And while in hindsight my opinion of that movie has gone up, I still mostly feel that way. Arguably Pom Poko is even more straightforward with what it’s saying. The movie is easily the most blatant of the Ghibli movies, with no real hidden themes to it. The Tanuki are having their forest home encroached on by the growing Tokyo and they spend the whole movie trying to fight back to stop their construction. It’s very much in line with a lot of movies of this era like Ferngully, in showing how bad a disregard for nature is. But unlike Ferngully, this movie is much more successful in conveying its message.
Partly I think this is due to a few factors. The framing of it as a sort of nature documentary I think was a great directive choice that helped to keep me engaged with the characters more so than if it wasn’t here. Despite arguably Shoukichi being the main character, this effect makes the Tanuki as a whole feel like the main characters and endears you to them. It also helps with making the time skips forward feel very natural.
The humorousness of the early part of the movie got some legit laughs out of me with clever timing and funny imagery (not ball related.) But I think mostly the fact that they didn't win really took me by surprise. While a downer ending can sometimes really just upset me, here the ending is more bitter sweet which doesn’t lead to it being overwhelming emotionally. But it’s still clear that the Tanuki lost the war handily. Many named characters died and the ones that are left are mostly just surviving.
I think compared to Nausicaa, where everyone just listens to her at the end, it really hit me harder than I was expecting. Maybe it’s just the state of things nowadays but I think in thinking about it this part of this movie has aged really well. There is a part where the Tanuki reveal themselves to a news crew and tell them to stop destroying their home. And while the narration states it does have some effect on future construction, ultimately these Tanuki still have their home destroyed. And a part of me was like “people are gonna see these talking Tanuki and these unbelievable things they’re doing and just go on with their lives without making any changes?” And then I look at the world around us today and go “oh yea, they would.” It would just be shot down as being fake and then the people in charge would just do what they want anyway.
I think because of that realization on top of the fact that I was enthralled with the movie from beginning to end, this movie stuck with me so much more than I ever thought it would. It’s not a perfect movie mind you. I think parts of the ending are a bit rushed and while I get what they were going for with the ship scene, I feel like it felt a bit odd in how it was shown even though that might be because of my lack of understanding of every bit of Japanese culture. I also think the ghost parade scene while beautifully animated goes on for way too long in what up to that point had been a mostly well paced movie.
But none of these faults hampered my overall enjoyment of what I think is a very underappreciated film. I don’t think it’s the most impactful Ghibli movie, but I compare it to Porco Rosso which I felt would be deeper than it was and was goofier than I was expecting. Coming into this movie thinking it was going to be just a goofy movie and leaving with how deep it could really be, definitely helped me see it in such a positive light.
Score - 4/5 Stars
Ok, strap in for this one because holy shit, this movie. Look I knew going into this I would likely not enjoy every movie I watched. Ghibli is a good studio but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t released a poorly thought out movie. And while I did not vibe with Grave of the Fireflies or my Neighbor Totoro, I hesitate to call either a badly made film. I think the films themselves were made fairly well, even if they were a bit boring. It’s mostly the messages or lack of a message that I take umbrage with when it comes to those films. Ocean Waves however, is an unenjoyable mess of a movie for many reasons.
It does feel like to some extent that I’m punching down by throwing this movie under the bus. It was an hour long TV only film that was worked on by new Ghibli employees to help in training them. In that regard, it’s not really a surprise that it feels weaker than every movie I've watched before it. The thing is though, from an animation standpoint the movie is charming. The animation is more simple than some of Ghibli’s other fairs, but it’s got a charm to it that I very much enjoyed. Even the music has this kind of charming clumsiness to it, with one song showing up quite often at odd points that has a sort of ‘high school musical trying their best’ charm that you can’t really hate.
The problem with the movie is everything else. Mainly the characters, which is not what you want to hear when watching a character driven plot. The basic premise of the movie is that a boy named Taku has a best friend named Yutaka who falls in love with an exchange student from Tokyo named Rikako. Due to Yutaka’s infatuation with this girl, eventually it leads to Taku being involved in a situation where Rikako tries to go back to Tokyo to visit her father. That event eventually leads to a fallout between the three, with a resolution to their relationships happening during a class reunion while they’re in college.
If you have seen this movie you know I am greatly over simplifying things and arguably being very generous to the movie in that description of the events. I should also add that the pacing is horrendous, the majority of the film is the trip to Tokyo, the scene of Taku and Yutaka falling out happens and then we immediately cut back to the present with them making up. The reality though is what I actually watched was an hour of a girl being the biggest fucking asshole i’ve ever seen to a guy who was also sick of her shit, until the end when the film tells us actually he loved her the whole time.
Let’s see if I can break this down as best I can. I’m going to go more in depth than usual in explaining the plot because I kind of have to really get across how awful this girl is. Taku is a pretty vanilla character, but he’s mostly a chill and good guy. His best friend Yutaka clearly means a lot to him (more on this later,) even though we only get to see him early on. The only reason Rikako really enters Taku’s orbit is due to Yutaka (who is really only in love with her cause she’s pretty,) mentioning to her that he’s a good guy who worked a job during High School.
Rikako, who I must remind you is awful incarnate, decides to then use this information to her advantage. While they’re on a school trip to Hawaii, she lies to Taku telling him she lost her money. Not only does she ask for more than what Taku initially offers, she berates him for his country accent and in general the only reason Taku even gives into her is because she tells him that Yutaka said how awesome he is. So ok she gets a bunch of money and then doesn’t pay it back at first.
The money was actually for funding a secret trip to Tokyo to try to convince her father to take her back. Her mother and father have split up, and despite her being on her father’s side, she had to move with her mother. She hates her mother now and she also hates the town she currently lives in (and we will be reminded of this constantly,) not wanting to make any friends and the only friend she does make is so she could be used as a part of this scheme to get to Tokyo. Said friend calls Taku because holy shit what the hell is Rikako’s problem, as well as the fact that she knows from Rikako he lent her money so she thought he knew what was going on.
This leads to the entire middle of the movie being Taku offering to escort her to Tokyo because he’s a nice guy and he is such good friends with Yutaka clearly she must be an incredible girl. Taku ends up just being treated like shit by Rikako the entire time. From taking over his hotel room after fighting with her father to trying to use him to make an ex-boyfriend jealous I just kept staring aghast at the gall of this girl. Rikako kind of admits she was wrong at the end of the trip,, so you would think this would be a turning point for her right?
No, because upon returning to school she proceeds to ignore Taku, because his usefulness to her has now ended. Word of the trip has gotten out to the other students though and Yutaka asks her about it because of course he would. This results in her saying Yutaka is disgusting and that she hates all the people in this town upon him confessing his love to her. Taku, ready to defend his bro, confronts Rikako who slaps him (Taku does slap her back, but honestly fair.) Then when she’s being confronted by the other students ~~for being a massive bitch~~ for not wanting to participate in any of the school fair activities, Taku overhears this and decides not to defend her which prompts Rikako to slap him again.This prompts Yutaka to punch Taku for not defending her and then all three of them never talk for the rest of high school. No I’m not making this up, this is what actually happens.
Cut to the class reunion. Yutaka makes up with Taku after picking him up at the airport before they both go to the reunion. Rikako does not show up, but apparently she told one of the girls that she met the day before she was going to Tokyo and it’s implied she wants to see Taku. This results in Taku somehow coming to the conclusion he’s been in love with her the whole time and I kid you not the movie does a vocal flash back on his interactions with her and it’s literally just 3 minutes or so of her berating him and being awful to him set to romantic music with the only positive line being that she wanted to see him in Tokyo, a line THAT IS MADE UP FOR THIS FLASH BACK BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T EVEN SAY IT TO HIM. The film ends with them meeting up at the train station and me screaming out loud because what the fucking fuck.
Look I get writing teenagers as unreasonable and illogical is true to life and can be entertaining. You can do that for sure, you don’t need all your characters to be likable to tell a good character driven story. They can make bad decisions, that’s not what I have a problem with here. It’s that the movie itself is trying to convince me that the conclusion of an hour of two characters having not a single positive interaction is that they were actually in love the whole time and it’s a beautiful romantic story. I have many issues with that. Show me irredeemable people all you want but the moment you try to act like their actions are either not as bad as it seemed or even worse, a positive, you lose me. We don’t see the movie from Rikako’s perspective mind you, but I find it insanely hard to believe that Taku could look back on his High School years and think “Yea, I loved that girl who took advantage of me and never has one nice thing to say to me.” And even if you want to argue that this kind of thing does happen in real life, the movie shouldn’t be justifying it as a good thing. It makes for a really shitty story that I want no part of. It’s not like you’re just showing events that happened, you are painting a narrative and in doing so making a point that the audience will think on. And this is not the point you should be making.
The point they should be making is that Taku is in love with Yutaka. No I’m not kidding, there is enough evidence in the movie itself that with some slight changes to the ending the story could easily have gone in that direction if not for it being made in the 90’s. And it would have been a much better and more engaging story if it did. Rikako being unpleasant for an hour would have been much more bearable if it made Taku realize that actually I hate all girls and want to date my best friend. But sadly this is not the real direction the movie goes in the end.
I also should note this is the only film in Ghibli’s catalog that has not received an English dub, so I did watch it in its original Japanese. This didn’t really affect much, but I figured I should mention it somewhere.
Ocean Waves, while it does have a sort of charm to it, is mostly a boring hour of watching one character be absolutely awful to other vanilla characters and then the movie trying to convince you that she’s worth falling in love with because she’s pretty. I did not enjoy watching this movie, I do not enjoy its message and I’d rather deal with another hour of trying to get rid of a bat in my house (which did happen that same night) then have to watch this movie again. The only reason it’s not getting the lowest rating is I do think the animation team did a good job. But I do not recommend you check this movie out unless you're morbidly interested in watching what is by far the worst Ghibli film I've seen at this point.
Despite ultimately not being a big fan of Grave of the Fire Flies, I did like Takahata’s directorial skills. He immediately set himself apart from Miyazaki in a way I found intriguing, having a more down to earth and relatable quality to his works compared to Miyazaki’s more fantastical approach. So I was and still am very interested in seeing more work from him. Luckily I wasn’t disappointed when it came to Only Yesterday.
Only Yesterday tells the story of a young woman named Taeko, who upon traveling to the countryside for a workcation begins to recall memories of when she was ten years old. That’s basically the story in a nut shell. Yes, some of the memories give meaning to the events of the present day and her reactions to those memories drive the romance plot line forward. But for the most part the movie is very much just her recalling moments of her life with the present day acting as a framing mechanism. It’s a very character driven movie in this way and I could see many people being bored by it. And I'll admit parts of the movie didn’t do much for me. The scene of her picking safflower, while very pretty did have me losing my interest and overall I do feel the movie is a bit too long for what they actually show off.
Despite this, I overall came away from this movie very positive. The memories are by far the most interesting part of the movie, even if I was a little confused on the meaning of some of the memories (if there was a meaning.) The vignettes of her life are entertaining, aided by the fact that her past was filled with entertaining and intriguing characters. It’s also hard not to like Taeko, who tends to retain a positive attitude about life even when arguably it’s understandable if she didn’t. Some people have argued that they see her as neurotypical, and while I can see that to some extent, I’m not sure if I agree or not. But I do see her as both sympathetic and could easily see multiple different people including myself relating to aspects of her childhood.
The big reason this film won me over though is it’s one of the most artistically intriguing films due to it being animated. This type of film, where someone reflects on their life, has been done all the time in live action. But the advantage animation has to this type of movie, that i’ve never seen done before, is that you can make the memories look different from the present day. Sure live action has tried this in some ways, but never to the extent Only Yesterday tackles this. The present day is lush and colorful, showing off Ghibli’s talent at fantastic landscape shots. The past however features more pastel colors with limited backgrounds and heavy uses of white space. It creates this interesting dichotomy between the past and present that kept me engaged even through the slow moments of the movie.
Granted I wasn’t a big fan of all the animation choices. Like with Grave of the Fireflies, the character’s mouth movements try to aim towards more realistic, much to its detriment. I’m sorry but the way they animate the mouth makes Taeko look like an old woman when she’s only 26. Your mileage may vary and it wasn’t enough to distract me too much but it was very noticeable to me. Especially due to this being dubbed, where for the first time in my life watching an anime, it was extremely noticeable at times that the words weren’t matching the lip movements due to the more realistic mouths.
But yea I think whether you like this movie depends on if you're ok with a slow character drama that relies heavily on the conflict being all internal and only implied to the viewer. It’s clear Taeko has a lot of baggage from the way her family treated her. While I don’t think she was abused, it has left her less willing to take risks and caused her to be more reserved than she was when she was 10. While sometimes the memories seem to not have any deeper meaning beyond just showing her life when she was 10 I do think most of them do relate to her situation of wanting to move to the country and start a relationship but fearing making the plunge. From the first few minutes, in a pleasant conversation with her sister in the present day, her sister is laughing at how she holds on to something from when she was 10 and Taeko’s reaction to that frames her relationship with her family from then on.
It’s a deeply intriguing film in that regard and I highly recommend checking it out if this sounds like your kind of thing. It’s a film I highly respect even if I’m unsure if it will make my top 10 list.
Nintendo has this thing called Game Trials, where if you’re signed up for Nintendo Switch Online they sometimes offer up a game for free for a limited time. Usually this is done with stuff like baseball video games, to encourage you to buy the full version after getting addicted. I’ve never really taken advantage of this before because I've either owned the game they were offering or it was a baseball game.
Ironically, on Memorial Day I went to my aunt's house for a barbecue and was talking to my cousin’s husband who is also into video games. I always enjoy talking games with them, and even recommended Slay the Spire which they greatly enjoyed. One of the game’s he suggested for me was Ball X Pit, a game I knew about from doing research for my Name That Game Tune that featured games that came out last year. Because I knew it was rogue-like, and since I already had Hades II in my backlog, It wasn’t really on my radar. Plus I’m not super big on breakout style games. But I figured I’d keep it in my back pocket as something I maybe would try in the future if it went on sale. A few days later it was announced as a game trial game.
So here is the thing. While I didn’t really rush through this game initially, once I got into it enough I wanted to finish it before the weekend was over. What’s the point of a free weekend if you end up spending money in the end? Look, I know Nintendo wants me to spend money, but I need my money for other things, like pies and pastries. But the point is that because I wanted to get the credits in one weekend I did not do everything possible in the game since with the massive amounts of characters and upgrades you could keep playing for a while if you wanted to 100 percent the game.
But honestly, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t. Ball X Pit is a game where your character walks down a vertical corridor shooting balls to take out approaching enemies in a block formation. Unlike most block breaker games though it’s honestly more of a shooter than a game where you need to reflect the ball back at the blocks. There is a character who functions more like this, but mostly you're just shooting out your balls and trying to get them to bounce to hit as many enemies as possible before you take damage upon them reaching the bottom of the screen. It’s much more approachable than a block breaker and partly this is due to the rougelite element.
While the enemy formations may slightly change between maps, the levels themselves don’t really benefit from any of the rogue elements. Instead the big draw is getting new types of balls and then fusing those balls together to make better balls, while also freeing up a spot to let you get more balls. So for example you may have a ball that freezes enemies that you could mix up with a ghost ball that passes through enemies and it creates a wraith type ball that does a mix of what both balls did but a bit more. Some balls don’t have these evolutions that create a new ball but you can still fuse the balls in a more standard combination of both. On top of that, most characters can shoot little baby balls so the result is a lot of balls all bouncing around in a satisfying way as they quickly clear out the enemies. But then you add the rouge lite elements of leveling up for future runs and you can quickly become a ball master.
And the thing about this is that while the game is fun, it quickly will start to feel like going through the motions with how easy it is. Like keep in mind I have not played the new game +, but as far as the base game is concerned it does feel a bit mindless at times. At points I was playing the game while dozing off and still having an easy time of it despite not paying full attention. There are some sections of the game that are more tricky than others, like the mushroom forest, but those felt like the exception not the rule.
While some characters are way more challenging, characters like the Embedded are brainless to control since they have a piercing shot that only works on the first pass through the enemies, locking the balls at the back of the enemy blockade. I never lost a run with the Embedded because his ability was just so good. Later on you even unlock the ability to bring two characters together combining their abilities, so you can imagine pairing over powered characters together just makes things even more so.
This isn’t per say a problem, but the thing is with something like The Binding of Isaac, it’s fun to get an over powered build because it’s not really planned ahead. You just happen upon the right items so getting to blitz the end game feels like a reward for finding just what you needed. Randomness can be fun when you get a lucky run. Here though while some combos do work better than other combos, on most of the characters I used it felt like any combination would do just as well. Every run felt like a lucky run, especially as I unlocked more upgrades, because actually choosing doesn’t mean as much in the grand scheme of things.
Granted the game has like 20 characters so there are definitely some characters where choosing is more vital. One character for example can only do damage via AoE attacks, so picking any ball that doesn’t have one of those would be a waste of time. Or with another character who shoots all its balls from behind the enemies, you’ll want to pick anything to make better use of this odd gameplay style so you don’t get overrun by enemies. The combining of characters later on also adds an interesting layer of choice and helps to make the less powerful characters more functional. There are some pretty unique characters too, like the guy who turned the game into a turn-based battle or the characters that shoot out all of the balls twice mirrored but do half damage.
On top of this there is a town building element where you build buildings to add effects and stats as well as to add new characters. There is a whole element where you need to position the buildings in a way so you can bounce the characters off of them to build the buildings or harvest the materials you need to build more buildings. I wasn’t a huge fan of this, it felt a bit extra and mostly overwhelming despite the actual execution being less so. I do think having the in between section helped in making the game less mindless, but I don’t know if this was the way to do it.
While I appreciate that there is more to do in this game, I’m more than happy with beating it within my allotted time. Sure I could get everything in the game but I don’t think I personally would feel rewarded going through the effort. Even if some characters are a little harder, I do think most of the game is a bit mindless with stages being a bit too long for the amount of effort you need to put into them. I could very well see myself playing new game plus and just feeling burnt out on just beating the game just to beat it.
Overall, it’s a fun time. If you like block breaking or very easy bullet hell style shooters and you like rouge likes you’ll likely have a fun time. Though if you have sensitive eyes uh just be warned that the game can be a bit much to look at. Lots of flashing lights, lasers, balls and rainbows bouncing around can strain your eyes or possibly much worse.
As mentioned in the past, I try to discover new indie games when I can and events like E3 and the slew of directs can be helpful in finding something that sparks my interest. Many years ago (seems to be about 4 from what I could research though it felt longer) the trailer for Gecko Gods dropped in one of these events and I was intrigued. It wasn’t clear entirely what kind of game it was based on the trailer, but the vibes and the description of it being a puzzle game had me intrigued enough to add it to my wish list on steam. It then sat there for a long time with constant delays leading to me wondering if it would ever come out. But it’s finally here, so was it worth the wait.
Here is the thing, as a passion project that someone clearly put a lot of time into, it’s a cute little game. It’s an enjoyable time and I don’t want the creators or anyone to think they made a bad game because they didn’t, they made a decent game. But that’s kind of all it was for me.
In Gecko Gods you play as a Gecko who can walk on walls and ceilings because that’s how geckos work. I was expecting then, that the game would make great use of this unique movement style for some mind bending puzzles. We instead get a take on the Breath of the Wild formula with open world exploration of islands to ring bells for some bigger purpose. I say ring a bell instead of ‘solve a puzzle,’ because at least early on it’s mostly just spatial awareness being tested more than anything. Of which I did horribly at, but personally I blame being distracted by twitch chat on that. Later on you do get some more explicit puzzles, such as slide puzzles and rotation puzzles as well as a slew of light puzzles. These are fine and arguably the highlight of the game but the further I played the more I realized the game is a bit unfocused. What I mean by this is instead of going all in on creating exploration puzzles or ideally making the focus be navigation via walls and ceilings, it tries to do a lot of other things that don’t really fit the game being built here.
For example, this game has enemies. You are a gecko, not known for its combat prowess. But beyond that the combat feels so inconsequential. You explore the world and then sometimes pot robots will attack you and you just quickly kill them. It feels like it was just added because some games have enemies despite them rarely coming across as dangerous. Honestly the idea of you being in danger at all rarely happens in this game, to the point that I didn’t even realize I could die until the last section of this game. Apparently your health meter is your tail that will get shorter the more damage you take until you die, but considering for most of the game I ran into spikes and enemies and never got close to death I don’t know if I could be blamed for not realizing.
So much of the game’s mechanics feel just kind of added in without fully realizing how they can work with or enhance the core of the game. I think the most glaring example of this is the end level, which suddenly just becomes a precision platformer in a volcano with an escape sequence. I need to remind you, you are a gecko who has spent most of the game clinging to walls. Jumping between spinning blades is not something they excel in. Granted since you have such a high tolerance for damage, it wasn’t hard in the end, just baffling. The temple before this had an entire intricate light puzzle that felt very end gamey, so for the true end game to be this sort of thing just felt at odds with most of what I had been doing in the game up to that point.
Which I think is mostly what I’m most disappointed in with this game. What’s here isn’t bad, but I see the potential for something more if the focus was a bit more refined. But considering how long the development took as is, I’m not surprised with what we got.
One other thing to note is that the game on the Switch at least had some low quality textures, though that may very well be due to it being on the switch. The art direction though is fantastic and the music was incredible, easily my favorite part of the game. Overall as someone who has played a lot of different games, it doesn’t leave much of an impact on me. But I do think most people will have a good time with it and I think the developer has potential to create something incredible in the future. There are a lot of good ideas here and I think with more experience I could see them creating something that could really leave an impact on me.
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Chibi-Robo (5/10/26) - Score - 9/10
Chibi-Robo has been a game I’ve wanted to play for a while. I even had the chance at one point to purchase it for…300 dollars. I passed because…300 dollars. With it finally available on the Switch 2’s Nintendo Classics service though it was finally time to give this game a go on stream.
First off, it should be noted that while I have not played Chibi-Robo before, I have played games that have shared Chibi-Robo’s DNA. The reason for this is due to the origin of the developers of this game, Skip Ltd. Basically a whole slew of creative employees from Square (Who worked on games such as Live a Live, Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger,) went on to form a company called Love-de-Lic. Love-de-Lic only made 3 games but you’ve likely heard of one of them, Moon: Remix RPG. Moon is an insanely creative and subversive game for its time and despite its obtuseness, I greatly enjoyed my time with it when I streamed it 5 years ago.
After Love-de-Lic folded, the game designers and artist who made up Love-de-Lic went on to found 3 different game studios. Those being Punchline, Vanpool and of course Skip Ltd. And if you’ve played any games from these companies as well as played Moon you quickly realize that they tend to all share a similar vibe. They also tend to be some of the most unique and creative games of all time. Chulip, The Tingle games, Captain Rainbow, The Art Style games, Dillon’s Rolling Western and of course Chibi-Robo. Most of them tend to be very weird and likely not everyone will gel with them. But for me I’ve loved most of the games I've played from these studios and would like to play even more of them. But having really enjoyed the two Tingle Games as well as Moon, I knew Chibi-Robo would gel with me.
Chibi-Robo right off the bat is much more approachable than Tingle or Moon. It’s more forgiving, especially with what starts off as its main mechanic. Similar to Moon the main ‘goal’ of the game is to go around interacting with the weird denizens of the Sandersons house and make them happy. In Moon however, you had a time limit and once you hit it you would have to restart the cycle similar to Majora’s Mask. So how far you could explore the world and what you could do was limited by that counter, which could be expanded as you made progress. Chibi-Robo is very similar in that regard due to your battery only lasting so long before you need to plug yourself in and recharge. As you progress in the game by getting more happy points, you gain a larger battery allowing you to explore longer.
But the thing is with Moon doing this kind of acts as a puzzle to solve, trying to figure out what you could do to increase your very limited timer. In Chibi-Robo, while some activities are difficult with a limited battery (like going outside, going upstairs or going down the drain,) overall you have a lot more options since outlets are fairly plentiful throughout the household. The only thing holding you back from exploring is making sure you top off your battery and keep an eye on it before it runs out. That’s not to say there are no elements of the battery limit creating a puzzle scenario, but it very quickly becomes less an interesting game play mechanic and more just an annoyance you have to keep track of. Especially the more batteries you earn.
In general Chibi-Robo feels like a filed down Moon in this way. Some of the rougher aspects of Moon that would turn most players away are lacking, but some of the more interesting elements and weirdness tend to also be lost. This has allowed Chibi-Robo to easily obtain the largest cult following of these types of games, though having a cute mascot also helps it as well. That’s not to say that Chibi-Robo is bad because of this, just to point out that for most people what seems as jarring or weird to them for me felt more muted. Chibi-Robo is weird and its gameplay can be a bit jarring as you do chores and tasks but for me it felt a bit safer than I was expecting.
That said, it’s still really good. A filed down Moon or Tingle is still a great game because it retains the same vibe and game philosophy that made those games fun. The game lives and dies on its charm and its cast of zany characters kept me engaged the entire time. On top of that, while at times I felt a bit lost as to what was needed to progress the plot, I almost always had some avenue to explore. It scratched that kind of itch I have when playing puzzle or mystery games where I keep exploring different paths to see what opens up. Just as I start to run out of things to do, I enter the bedroom and gain the ability to squirt liquids. Or I find a shovel. It’s the kind of 3D platforming type game I really gel with and want to see more of. It’s why I love Banjo Tooie, just figuring out where to go next feels very satisfying.
While it's very generous in giving you money and happy points to allow you to progress, I’m mostly ok with this because there are still enough obtuse sidequests that give some of that friction I like without it being too frustrating. Granted having a twitch chat helped, but even if I didn’t have them I never felt like Chibi Robo felt like it was unfun in its difficulty. Doing chores and helping characters also felt rewarding because I was constantly entertained by this bizarre world.
That said, I do have some minor complaints. The fact that the plug mechanic quickly becomes irrelevant in terms of game play choice is disappointing. I also think that while most of the items being in a menu are fine, the copter being tied to the game’s menu is annoying when you consider how often you need it for platforming. Having to drag it out and then put it back away wouldn’t have felt so bad if it was just a button press.
Overall Chibi-Robo is very different from most of the games the AAA studios pump out. I can see why a lot of people gravitated towards it, because it’s weird enough to be intriguing but not too weird and difficult to turn people away. It’s like people want to rebel from the norm, but not too much you know. So I’m very glad if this game was an introduction to the work of these talented game developers and I encourage them to maybe dip a little deeper into the pool in the future to see if they would be into some of the more bizarre games. Even still Chibi-Robo is fantastic and now I can join in with everyone else being sad that he’s dead.
Watching All of One Piece - Master List of Posts and Tiers/Favorites
This will be my last One Piece post for a while, since the next arc of the show hasn't even begun dubbing yet. But before a hiatus from One Piece posting I wanted to make a master list of all my blogs as well as post some tier lists of my favorite arcs and characters as well as my top 5 OPs and EDs. So let's start with the master list for those that missed out on a blog.
1. The East Blue Saga
2. The Baroque Works Saga
3. The Sky Island Saga
4. The Water 7/Enies Lobby Saga
5. The Thriller Bark Saga
6. Summit War Saga
7. Fish-Man Island Saga
8. Dressrosa Saga
9. Whole Cake Island Saga
10. Land of Wano Saga
11. Egghead Island Arc
With that out of the way, let's get to the fun part.
TOP 5 Openings
The top three were easy but narrowing down the last two was tough. Ultimately animation won out since some of the ones i cut had great songs but stretches of just ok animation like Wake up (which also has that weird black beard section) and Kokoro no Chizu. Ultimately I'm happy with what made the final cut, but just know there are a lot of good openings in One Piece.
All of these have great songs, animation that matches with the music and they also tend to be openings I think fit the mood of the current arc really well and also show a lot from the arc instead of just making up random stuff. There is one semi-exception to this but I think it still works.
#5 - Hikari E
It was between this and Brand New World for the #5 slot but this one has an edge due to fitting the vibe of when it plays better (except you know, spoiling Robin joining) and also It's Chopper's first OP. Fantastic song that just really fits the mood of one piece at this point. The animation sequence at the start with everyone doing their moves is super cool and is timed well to the music. It was the first opening I declared was my favorite and it still holds up.
#4 - Carmine
Look I know there is probably some recency biased, but man watching this again next to all the Op's, it's one of the best fitting openings for when it plays. It fits the vibe of the end of Egghead so well with both the animation and the song itself. On top of everything, the animation is breathtaking. Just a solid opening and even if it falls back on my list with time, I'll still always like it a lot.
#3 - We Are (2008)
Part of me wanted to include the original We Are, but i knew I was always including this version. Just a sick ass re-mix. While you could argue playing at the end of Thriller Bark is a bit weird, I think considering what happens next and how it's the start of the end of the first half of the show, it's a fitting opening to play before the events of Sabody. Also I think it fits with the vibe of their group fight against Oars as well. Shout outs to the sick seagull at the start.
#2 - Saikou Toutatsuten
Probably my favorite animation wise by far. The framing of the circle circle framing through out multiple scenes will never not impress me, and the song is just catchy as hell. I think vibe wise it mostly fits the arc where it plays as, but that animation man is the major winner here.
#1 - We Can!
Look, is this the best opening in my top 5? Probably not. It has them fighting Jack for some reason and in general you could argue parts of it don't really check some of my criteria. The thing is while i would agree with that, it's still my favorite because of three major reasons.
1. It is my favorite opening song bar none. I do think that alone shouldn't determine a good OP, but it does really help.
2. This is my favorite use of timing the animation to the music in any OP. Especially the water gun scene. Timing will always win me over and I think this opening has some of the best timing.
3. I think despite showing some nonsense fan fiction scenes, this is one of the best fitting openings for the vibe of the show during the arc it plays. The song has three moods to it, the first fitting that brand new adventure vibe and the high of coming off of Dressrosa and how that really made the crew into a bit of a big deal. It also has the slow section that has an era of mystery to it that I think vibes very well with the lore aspects of the Zou arc. And the third section has a heroic air to it that fits how confident they are at sticking with the samurai to save Wano despite how big this undertaking will be. This Opening and this part of the show is peak One Piece to me and I will always loves it.
TOP 5 Endings
Endings was mostly easier since there is a huge gap where the show had no endings. I was also a bit more lax when picking these compared to OPs, if only cause there were really only a few openings that really stood out to me.
5. Dear Sunrise
This is partly in here because I needed a 5th pick, but I do really like it. I love showing how every crew member joined and the song is reminiscent of the first ending vibe wise, but a much better song.
4. Raise
Look I know this is the second newer ending on here, but to be honest a lot of the One Piece endings just didn't do much for me. I didn't really miss them for that reason since only two of the older ones stood out to me enough to make this list. But that said this ending is sick. Great animation, great song and a perfect vibe for the ending of Wano and for Yamoto in general.
3. Adventure World
A very simple ending but man I just love this one. I don't know if it fits the vibe of the show at the time but the fan drawings, the great song and Chopper being silly will always keep this one fresh in my mind.
2. Run! Run! Run!
Easily the best of the older endings. Fits the vibe of the show so well and seeing all the young versions of the crew and their sad backstories is so good. Also I really, really like this song.
1. Punks
Shout recency bias all you want, this is easily the best One Piece Ending. Everything about it is perfect. Killer song, matching vibes to the show and to the art style itself, and just fantastically animated despite it's simple nature. Yes the Straw Hats don't appear but they're not even really the focus of Egghead Anyway.
Arc Tier List
Alright the first tier list. Some of this may change with time (since the ones from the time skip have already changed position sightly) but in general this is my ranking of every arc that's in the manga. I'll also give a brief summary of my reasoning for each arc (though read the blog posts if you want an in depth breakdown.)
S
Dressrosa - While not the best constructed arc, for me the combination of a lot of characters I really like showing up here, a tournament arc, the best villain in the series and a fantastic finale all just make any of the lows matter very little to me. I love seeing a mass battle that brings people together as a team and this is the only arc that really nails it perfectly.
Drum Island - The first arc I ever saw and it still holds up today. Even if you ignore that Chopper is my favorite character, some of my other favorite characters also show up here. Chopper's back story hits me every time. There is a reason this arc got me to watch One Piece.
Water 7 And Ennies Lobby - Arguably one of the best constructed arcs. All the highs are great, but I don't think they hit me nearly as hard here as they do in the two arcs above this one.
A
Zou - A nice breather arc that introduces a fun new race, some great lore and adds back in a sense of wonder the show was missing since Skypia.
Egghead Island - A plot heavy arc that, while it does suffer in the middle, has one of the best conclusions of any arc and makes me excited for the future of One Piece.
Whole Cake - Solid arc that actually makes Sanji not awful. Treating Mama as a horror monster is great and the chase at the end was a fun way to end the arc. If only the fight against Katakuri wasn't so long and drawn out.
Post War Arc - I already liked this backstory the first time I saw it, but now having watched Dressrosa, this is a great arc that I wish was set before Marineford. I also really like the bits with the crew trying to get to Luffy before seeing his message and deciding to work hard for two years as well as Jinbe giving Luffy back his hope.
Sabaody Archipelago - A solid intro the the greater world of One Piece while also setting the stage for the second half and really showing how tough the new world will be and how far behind Luffy is.
B
Arlong Park - Arlong Park is a fantastic arc that clearly cemented Nami as one of my favorites. While I think Drum Island handles the formula a bit better, Arlong Park is the originator and one of the only things I think that drags it a bit down is Arlong's minions being kind of lame (except one.) On top of that this is the start of Luffy getting unnecessarily sidelined for a bit, which also doesn't help. Still a fantastic arc.
Baratie - At the time I think I liked this more than Arlong Park, and while it's still a toss up, I think the long reaching impact of Arlong ends up pushing it over for me. But Baratie is a fantastic arc with goofy characters, good Sanji moments, and great moments from the rest of the crew that all set up future events. The first truly great arc of the show.
Punk Hazard - This i the first in a line of three arcs in a row in B tier that have some really awful and unlikable characters and that also tend to feature a lot of running around. I think those aspects among others tend to make people hate those and this arc. But for me, not only does it act as a great set up arc for future events, it also let's us see the Straw Hats work off of each other again in a way we hadn't seen in a while at the time. On top of that Law and Smoker are here and Chopper gets to doctor.
Thriller Bark - I can understand why a lot of people don't like Thriller Bark. Compared to what comes before and after it feels more inconsequential and it also introduces some really awful and unlikable characters. It also is arguably one of the funniest arcs and for me what pushes it over the edge is I really like seeing the Straw Hats work together. This is the first and honestly only time we've seen them all take on one opponent together and I think seeing that payoff after Water Seven really sells me on this arc. The lows are bad, but they didn't bother me enough to take away from that high.
Impel Down - Impel Down does the impossible and makes Buggy enjoyable. Mostly it's thanks to Mr. 3, but this is the most i've ever enjoyed Buggy and so far the most I ever will. It also brings back the amazing Mr. 2 as well as introducing Iva who are bother fantastic. And of course I can't forget about Jinbe, my second favorite character in the series. Impel Down on paper should have been an arc I was bored by, but it's executed so well that even the bad parts don't feel that bad.
Post Ennis Lobby - We meet Garp and learn more about the other goings on in the world as our team chills after a hard fought and emotional battle. It's a classic One Piece arc staple and it's still good here. No real complaints and a lot of fantastic character interactions.
Return to Sabaody - A arc that felt like a breath of fresh air for me after Marineford. I was eagerly anticipating the crew reuniting, and I wasn't disappointed. The fake Straw Hats as a whole are funny as well, but overall it's just a wholesome arc where we finally get some joy after all of Luffy's sorrow.
Fishman Island - Fishman island, similar to Wano, has some of the worst moments in the show. Sanji is at his absolute worse here. But it's highs are some of the highest in the show. The calling back to Arlong Park and the themes of racism being generational and then how they use Jinbe and Luffy to conclude the arc are fantastic. I also really enjoy getting to see all the Straw Hats show what they learned over the two years. I understand if the lows are too much for you, but for me they were worth it for the brilliant parts of this arc.
Alabasta - Alabasta is the first big One Piece arc and sadly while it succeeds in some places, it fails hard in others. The entire lead up with the trek across the desert is painful and while it does pick up in the end, I think the use of fake deaths like many arcs in this show really harms this one (you know who I'm thinking of in particular.) Vivi is fantastic though, and overall the arc has more highs than lows. I just also think Dressrosa takes what Alabasta laid down and does it so much better.
Syrup Village - Syrup village is the first good arc in One Piece and while Ussop would fall off for me for a while afterwards, his introduction and the character dynamic of the group fully forming was a fun time. I also think Kuro was the first interesting villain even if his plan is stupid. I'll take him over Buggy any-day.
C
Land of Wano - Land of Wano is the poster child of high highs and low lows. At it's best it's one of the best arcs in the show with fantastic characters and funny and amazing moments. But at it's worst, it takes everything I don't like about the show and turns it up to 11. A Drawn out boring intro, awful characters, fake deaths galore, and taking a generally sad situation for Wano and just beating me over the head with it so much that the impact doesn't hit as hard. Sadly unlike with fish man, the lows just beat out the highs a bit for me to rank it anything other than average.
Skypia - One of the only arcs so far that has this grand sense of adventure that I really enjoy. Unfortunately the fake deaths, Luffy being condemned to snake jail and the lack of interesting characters does leave this one a bit middling.
Amazon Lily - All of these next few arc are pretty much the definition of average. Decent arcs that either don't really do anything too wrong or right, or arcs that are pretty good with one thing I didn't enjoy that drags it down. Amazon Lily is the latter, with me enjoying it at the time despite being apprehensive about solo Luffy. The issue is, I've gotten really sick of the Hancock joke so for that I think high C is a good spot for it.
Little Garden - Despite liking Mr. 3 later on in the show, similar to Buggy I wasn't big on how drawn out his antics were here. But the bigger issue I think is Mr 5, who I kind of hate, by this point had gotten extremely old. Beyond that though, funny arc with two great new character additions with the giants.
Reverse Mountain - Reverse Mountain is a perfectly average arc. While Laboon will become a bigger deal later down the line, his first appearance is enjoyable but nothing mind blowing.
Logue Town - Also a pretty average arc though a few points docked because again I don't really like buggy. But Smoker being here balances it out.
Romance Dawn - A good introduction to the show that doesn't really leave much of an impact compared to what comes after it.
Jaya - This is a good introduction arc to not only Skypia but more of the history of the world of One Piece. It's also our first introduction to Black Beard so it's a pretty important arc. It's also an arc where characters spend most of the time laughing at Luffy including one of my least favorite characters in the entire show. Which sadly does bring down what is a decent arc.
D
Marineford - While I understand what people like about this arc and the Ace and Luffy relationship is good, it's not enough to win me over over everything else. Especially since later arcs do the mass battle scenario way better. Whitebeards crew as the main focus does nothing for me, the fights are a disjointed mess of aura farming and the emotional impact is lessened by Ace's backstory being shown after this arc. Other arcs may have worse flaws then this one (I think Wano is a bigger mess overall) but this one doesn't have enough high points for me to really enjoy it.
Whisky Peak - A great introduction to Baroque works ruined by the Luffy and Zoro fight. It will remain one of the worst decisions in One Piece.
Orange Town - This arc is mostly a nothing arc that while the development of the main cast is good, Buggy is an extremely unlikable villain at this point in the show and his crew is so much worse.
F
Reverie - While the subject matter is neat, the stretching of this out over multiple arcs and the over use of flashbacks in this arc turning it into a glorified clip show just kills any enjoyment i had watching this.
Long Ring Long Land - The worst arc in all of One Piece and the first time I had to take an extended break because of how much I didn't care. Zoro and Sanji fighting is one of my least favorite bits in the show, Foxy and his crew are just not funny and extremely unlikable and losing Chopper even for a moment is a sin.
Also I'm not gonna go into detail for these arcs, but I wanted to rank the anime only arcs as well.
Character Tier List
While this isn't every character in the show, it's almost every 'important' character. Don't take every position as like gospel, there are too many characters for me to give everyone a definitive placement. But in general I'm happy with this list and I hope it helps in seeing why I like the arcs I do. My favorite arcs tend to have a lot of my favorite characters where as the reverse for my least favorite. Characters really make up why I like One Piece, so it's not a shock that tends to impact my opinion on the story.
Do note that this list is based on my personal enjoyment of the character. Villains can be awful people but if I enjoy them they're higher up there ones I either don't enjoy watching and only think are scum. This also goes for writing, F tier doesn't mean I necessarily think the character is poorly written. Unless their name is Ulti.
And with that, that's it for One Piece for a while from me. If you haven't yet please check my pinned post for my master list of Ghibli movie reviews, my major project for this year. And as always i'll keep plugging away at writing about the games I beat each year.
Well this is it guys. As for writing this I have watched every One Piece Anime episode currently Dubbed. It's a little strange to be saying that and very much an ending of an era. I've been at this for almost 2 years, so the first week after I finish def felt a bit like "what now?"
I have started watching other anime, beyond the Ghibli movies, and it very much feels like taking off the weighted training clothes. I'm likely to write a blog post about my Anime watching for the entire year if your interested in that, but probably no write ups for each individual series.
But when it comes it One Piece write ups, it will likely be a long while until I write about the next arc. I plan on continuing to experience One Piece via the dubbed Anime, so I don't foresee another Blog post on this topic for a few years.
Well except one. I'm likely to do a wrap up post that will include all links to the previous blogs as well as my favorite Ops, EDs and favorite arcs and characters as ranked by tier list. Look out for that in the future.
But with all that out of the way, it's time for me to tackle the last arc I had on my One Piece Backlog.
If you missed my thoughts on the previous saga, please click below:
Land of Wano Saga
Standard reminder that this is written for people who also watched this saga, so I won't be explaining what happened. It's assumed you've watched the show. I will also try to write with brevity, giving you an overall view of my thoughts without going into extreme detail, but if you've been reading this, you know what to expect.
Music
Again as I've said multiple times now, the background music has sort of blended together that is really hard to tell when a new favorite comes about, let alone remember it for this post. Just know that One Piece's library of background music in general is stellar and keeps getting great new additions.
Opening wise, most of these are bangers. The first Opening, is by this point your classic banger hype opening that introduces any big new adventure. I very much enjoy this one and while the art style of it is not a style I'd want the main show done in, I do really enjoy it in this opening. Nothing that really hooks me but just a solid and fun opening to this jam packed arc.
Meanwhile Angel and Devil is easily one of my favorite 'slower' openings. I say 'slower' as it still has a bit of energy and punch to it, but it's def more aiming for sentimental and thoughtful then trying to hype you up. But I really enjoy this song and while some of the slower ops tend to not really have a theme, this one being centered on Bonney and Kuma really helps in winning me over. On top of that the timing fits the song perfectly especially the dance scene. Just a very solid opening.
Carmine is my clear favorite though. It fits the exact mood of what is going on at this point in the anime. The song in incredible and the animation is some of my favorites, especially the parts featuring the broadcast. It reminds me a lot of some of the FMA openings, and considering all of those are incredible that's a high compliment.
Meanwhile on the ending front, they're clearly making up for lost time as all of these are pretty incredible, though one stands out above all of them. But first we have Dear Sunrise. The song and the animation feel more in line with something you would have seen during the original stretch of ed's way back when, but I like it. I love especially the scenes of each crew member joining. Nothing all that stand out, just a solid song with a classic theme of showing each of the crew members.
The 1 also has the advantage Angel and Devil has of having two great characters being it's focus. The unique florescent doodle animation style as the start is also pretty great. The song isn't my favorite but it's pretty good and resulted in a good fit for it's accompanying OP.
But all of that pales in comparison to Punks. Holy shit I love this ED. First of the retro style to the animation just fits so well with the song on top of just looking perfect. The late night toonami vibes just really work great and it's just a delight to watch. But that song, I love this song. Again it pairs perfectly with the animation but it's also just a banger of a song. Easily one of my favorite Eds of all time and a great way to end this arc.
Egghead Island Arc
So unlike with the other posts, the final saga isn't finished yet. So instead I will only be covering the Egghead Island Arc. There wasn't even any anime only arcs this time.
Egghead in many ways is the anti Wano. Good beginning, rough middle and fantastic ending. The reasons are very different though. Wano's problem is it's too slow in it's pacing and very boring at parts. Egghead on the other hand feels like it just presses the fast forward button at times especially during parts I feel needed a bit more time to leave an impact. So yes I'm saying the problem with One Piece is it needed to be longer.
The bigger issue with the middle isn't just that it's fast though. Firstly, a large section is dedicated to events happening outside of Egghead. While this in itself isn't a problem, the problem is half of those events are about what happen at the reverie. You know…they event we had an arc for just before Wano. Like look I understand some of the events of the reverie make more sense to reveal here, I get why not everything was explained at the time. You know what I don't get, why we had a damn arc for it then. I feel like this is less Oda's fault and more people loving to label things, but it really soured me on the whole reverie. Which sucks because a lot of important stuff happened there.
They also spend a chunk of time on what's going on with Black Beard, Shanks, Kid and Law. I'm ok with this because we just spent a whole arc with Kid and Law and finding out what happened to them after makes sense (even if it's mostly bad news.) Black Beard in general honestly needs more screen time because he's clearly going to become more and more relevant as the saga continues and he and his crew clearly need a lot more development then what they've already got. I think what we did get here is pretty good, especially the look at what Akoigi's role in all this is. Which is once again, pretty confusing. At least he's consistent.
The other big mid arc story line features Koby and Garp. I'll be honest I don't have an issue with this except for the fact that I don't really like the idea of SWORD. I'll reserve judgement to see where Oda goes with it, but the whole idea feels kind of dumb. If it's stuff like Drake being undercover, ok that makes sense but they made it seem like they are just an excuse to allow the marines to do more daring stuff that would normally be against protocol. I don't really get why the marines even have this faction and I also don't get why we haven't seen this before now but I'll wait to see more.
Getting back to Egghead proper though, the second issue with this middle section is what we lose due to all these other story lines. Because we cut away just after the traitor is revealed and then…we cut back to them being caught and everyone mostly fine. Like holy hell I did not like this. They do show a bit of what happened but it just pretty much ruined the entire middle section of this story. I know people have argued "well it was obvious the Straw Hats wouldn't struggle here," but ok then by that logic let's just cut to them getting the One Piece. The journey is the important part.
This is especially rough because York being the traitor has even less impact then it already had. You know how I really love what they did in Wano with Kanjuro and how well they set that up ahead of time. York is basically the opposite. They pick a character we barely see and what we do see isn't enough to really make us care about them or their relationship with other characters. They get taken out pretty much not long after, before suddenly turning up as the traitor a few episodes later. Then they're suddenly caught. There is no room for any impact to land here because everything happens so fast with nothing really being shown that helps develop York as a character prior to her betrayal. We don't feel betrayed because we barely know her and we don't feel the betrayal the other characters have because we barely understand their relationship. And then to suddenly have her be caught makes the whole traitor aspect just feel pointless especially since she is basically out of the plot from that point onward until the very end of the final act.
But aside from my issues with the pacing and their handling of that plot point, everything else in this arc is incredible. Some people might not like that the Straw Hats take a bit of a back seat during this arc. Oh they're here for sure, but the story is more focused on the grander scope here then what the Straw Hats are doing individually. It's clear that the story is ramping up fast for the eventual conclusion, and the only thing I hope is that we still get Character moments and Development from the Straw Hats going forward despite that.
As I said the intro the EggHead is a breath of fresh air after what i went through in Wano, with immediately hooking me with this new island and all the new characters. On top of that Bonney is introduced at the start giving us plenty of time to get to know her so that when her and her fathers backstory is dropped, it hits and hits hard. Bonney has easily become one of my favorite characters which really surprised me as I wasn't expecting it. Everything involving her and Kuma is perfection here.
The other big positive is the ending which I think may be one of my favorite conclusions to an arc in a while. It may not top Dressrosa for me but it's definitely up there. The ending's bigger aspect is what Vegapunk pulls and how that will effect the world, but also the StrawHats trying to escape is also just as interesting. Also obligatory "this is a better battle than Marine ford," statement.
I also should mention in general I like the art direction in Egghead much much better than in Wano. Much better use of color and way less ugly line works. Some of the fight scenes continue to be kind of bad, though I really liked how they did the scene of Luffy playing baseball. I will also say holy shit stop with the bad CGI. So many 3D models in this arc, and while it mostly works for some characters, it's very noticeable when they use it. And just please for the love of god never use CGI explosions ever again. Those were awful looking.
Also there is a lot of stuff revealed here, though just as much kept a secret. I'm not gonna comment on everything, but I'm very excited to have more big twists and to have secrets be revealed. The one big twist I'll mention is while I am annoyed with fake deaths in general, Saul surviving makes sense considering what we have seen of Kuzan's ability in the past. And also, I'm really happy for Robin.
There is a lot of lore stuff to impact, and i'm not sure i'm the right person to do so (though I'll indulgence a bit during the theories section.) So overall I really enjoyed this arc even if I wish it was just a slight bit longer.
Characters
Same deal as last time, though I will throw in a few character portraits for my absolute favorites and least favorites. New characters is much easier this time but if I forget someone don't be mad. Also Old characters is too many to count, so I'll try to focus only on ones that impact the arc significantly or who I have something to say about.
New Characters
Aside from York who I went over during the arc discussion (I don't like her,) all of the Vegapunks are pretty great. I personally like Edison and Atlas the best of the bunch, but I'm very interested to see how Lilith develops going forward. I'm not fully sure how they all work, but I think they all have some great designs and just the idea of them is a pretty neat concept.
Vegapunk Stella however is easily the most interesting. There is a lot to like about him, but considering what a lot of his decisions led to, it's also hard not to get frustrated with the man. I think he's a fascinating character and easily one of the backbones of the arc. Also you may not know this...but he's based on Albert Einstein. Not sure if you noticed.
Ginny is another in a long line of fantastic backstory characters that of coursed died because they were too kind/awesome. You can lump Kuma's parents in here as well. Also I don't think there dead, but I really like Bonney's crew/family.
The sword crew is kind of whatever. Again I'm not big on their concept and I'm really confused at this one girl who the show acts like we already know who she is. Again probably will get more from them later on.
Does Joy Boy count? I mean I guess but he only gets a few lines so uh...TBD pending more information hopefully in Elbaf.
Emet for what little we see of him is neat. He's not much of a character here, but I did like him from what we did see.
The Seraphim are kind of, whatever. I really didn't like Nami not wanting to hurt the Jinbe one, we just went thought this in Wano can we not do this crap again? But overall while a neat concept and I like the continuation of the Lunarians through them, they're kind of just ok.
I'm pretty sure Saint Figarland Garling is new. He like a lot of the celestial dragons is awful, but he's also not a whiny bitch. Considering his new position at the end of the arc I'm sure he'll be very important going forward. So far, I don't really have much of an opinion on the man.
The Old Guys
Again, like most of this arc is old guys so sorry if I don't talk about the 1 second we see of Iceberg.
Bonney is easily the best character in this arc and while she's not technically new, she might as well be. We have got hints of her before now but with the full story everything about her makes sense and we have a completely new perspective on her.
She not only has a fun personality and a heart breaking back story but she just has great chemistry with the crew. I honestly really want to see her join the Straw Hats long term, or at least stick around for a bit similar to Law.
While I don't fully understand her Devil Fruits limits, I do think making it more than just pure age is an interesting take and I do wonder if this say more about Devil Fruits as a whole then we might realize.
Also, While I do like that her actual age is only 12 for character reasons, I do think it makes Sanji look really fucking bad here. Also just the sexualizing clothes she's been put into up to this point. I like the age thing here much better than with Momo, but it's still a bit messy.
Kuma has one of the most heart breaking backstories of all time, this poor sweet man. I was not expecting to learn about god valley via him, and while there is still some questions It was both a pleasant surprise to learn about it and also fucking vile learning what was done there. I really hope Kuma somehow gets restored, but I don't know if that's even possible. I also have many questions about who or what the buccaneers are, but i'm sure those will be answered with time.
Dude it was so awesome to see these guys again. Elbaf has been teased for so long and finally we're going to get to see it for real. And it only made sense to finally bring the first Giants we saw back. The fact that they came to help Luffy due to how close they were to Egghead is awesome and I can't wait to see more of them in the future. They also certainly lived up to their reputation.
I doubt Garp is dead, but I do think it was awesome to finally see what he could do in a real fight. I don't know that I agree with his teachings, but his fight with Kuzan was pretty awesome and I love how much he loves Koby.
Sentomaru isn't a character I really felt much about, and having them basically be on the good side for this arc felt a little good. But I thought they were pretty cool here and I'm hopeful we'll see more of them in the future.
Similarly, learning Stussy was a clone is neat, but she's a character I was mostly confused by and this development didn't really clear up much confusion. Also can we finally make Weaville and his mom important now if we're gonna keep showing her and him?
Look it's pretty funny that when CP0 were first introduced they were one of the biggest threats Luffy has ever faced. Now? These guys are fucking clowns. How the hell did Lucci and Kaku get promoted? Lucci is so dumb here and I'm so glad that even with him getting stronger he still basically gets his ass handed to him by not only Luffy but also Zoro.
Kizaru is a character I already didn't like, and I really hate him here. I get the fact that you could make the argument that he's going through his Kuzan saves robin moment here, except unlike Kuzan he didn't stick to his morals he went against his morals to the very end. I don't respect a man like that and on top of him still having a punch able face, it's hard for me to sympathize with someone who would stand against his closest friends and family.
It's not really a shock that the 5 elders suck, but man do they suck. Especially Saturn, who is the cause of most of Bonney and Kuma's misery. On top of it it's very likely they have sold their soul to the devil, since they all have demonic forms that I'm not even sure are devil fruit powers. Seeing them get curb stomped even if they couldn't die was awesome and i'm sure we'll see more of these guys in the future still.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Ok fine... seeing a bunch of old faces during the Vega Punk broadcast was really neat. There, you happy Icebergfan999?
Oh caribou was here...for some reason.
The Crew
Similar to last time I'm not giving each of the crew their own section, mostly this time because they don't really do enough to stand out in this arc. The Straw Hats more function as a unit here then as individual characters. I love Jinbe, Luffy and Chopper hanging out at the start, and everyone getting over protective about Robin is fantastic. Just everyone is pretty good here and even the bad Sanji moments are kept to a minimum.
This ranking is less for this arc and more just my final personal ranking of the crew so far. Chopper and Jinbe as easily my favorite crew members, with Luffy and Nami being my second favorites. Zoro, Robin, Franky, Ussop and Brook are all great as well just not enough to stand out at the top. Sanji has gotten better, but he has too many lows for me to really like him. Which sucks because he has the potential to be the best written character if not for the pervy stuff.
Questions and
What is the deal with Zou. Who punished him. Why can Luffy and Momo hear him? Yes I'm still wondering this.
Explain Joy Boy more
EXPLAIN D FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. WE ALMOST HAD AN EXPLANATION.
What was the point of Blackbeard's crew touching Saturn? What did that do?
Is Kid really dead? He has to be right?
So Fujitora save some slaves, so is he no longer a marine?
Why did they make a baby Doflamingo
WHY DID THEY MAKE A BABY MORRIA
What role are Perona and Morria going to have?
Why can't they just build new bodies for the 'dead' vegapunks?
Will urouge ever get down from that one cloud he saw Kaido fall from?
Will Chopper ever get a better post time skip outfit then his one in this arc?
Will Robin get to see Saul? She better.
Will Dragon finally do something more than stand around looking cool.
Who the hell is the man with the burn scar. Is it Dragon? Like he knows where the last Ponyglyph is so is it someone we met already or someone new?
Predictions
Vivy will end up meeting up with the Straw Hats again and join them til the end of the show.
Black Beard with go to Wano for Pluton. Will lead to Yamato leaving and eventually joining Luffy.
Bonney will not join the strawhats but will be the Law of the next few arcs.
Lilith will end up leaving the Straw Hats midway through Wano.
Luffy will finally see Shanks.
Enel will come back and be majorly important because moon tribe woah oh oh.
Elbaf will be awesome and Ussop will get to do cool shit.
The Straw Hat Grand Fleet will return, if not in Elbaf then soon.
Well get a awesome sea battle.
The One Piece will be a giant plug that is keeping the Ocean from draining.
Final Thoughts
I'm sad that I now have to wait for more One Piece, but on the other hand it's been a delight writing these blogs for you guys. Look forward to the wrap up post and then my write up in Elbaf in like...4 years.
Look, I try my best to play a lot of unique and interesting games every year, but the truth is that I can’t play everything. I feel like I play more indie games than the average person (or just games in general) and even then I feel like most of my indie list is more well known titles. Or maybe I just have friends who play the really weird stuff and I feel lacking in comparison. I mean I’m probably one of the only people to even know what Eliot Quest is.
The point is, every year that new games come out it’s inevitable that I will miss something brilliant that I may or may not get to in the future. In 2023 I played the indie game Cocoon, directed by Jeppe Carlsen of Limbo fame. It was a fairly well publicized indie game and I was pretty positive about it, being blown away by the puzzle concept of orbs within orbs. Jumping into an orb that contains a world and then jumping into an orb within that orb that has a different world was pretty amazing and using this mechanic to solve the puzzles that let you progress was mind bending. At the time it was a fresh idea to me that had never been done before.
Except it had. Probably before 2023 even, but even within the same year another game was tackling the idea of things within things before Cocoon was even released. This isn’t to say I think Cocoon stole the idea or anything, far from that. But my point is, had I played Patrick’s Parabox in 2023, I would have been singing its praises far more than I did Cocoon, at least from a puzzle standpoint.
Now in truth I played half of Patrick’s Paraboxes almost two years ago on stream. The only reason I haven’t finished it until now is that the person who gifted me the game ~~held me hostage~~ wanted to see me finish it on a private stream and we haven’t had a good time for me to stream it for them until now. Having finally finished it (though not even close to all the puzzles in the game) I can finally tell you how amazing this game is. You’ve likely never heard of it and that’s a damn shame. It’s very similar in vibe to Baba is You, but unlike that game I feel like Patrick’s Paraboxes is relatively unknown. The goal of each level is to take the box with eyes to the goal square. Sometimes you’ll need to place a square on an outlined square to activate the goal, but in general you just need to move your box to the finish line. The caveat to all of this is that in order to do so you’ll have to make use of the game's main mechanics. Chiefly that almost every level involves you pushing blocks into blocks or jumping out of blocks to push a block. Recursion is the name of the game here and while the game starts off not too difficult, the game quickly enters mind bending territory as you try to wrap around how you need to push these boxes to make your way to the goal.
Each world is themed around a different mechanic, but mechanics will keep reappearing as you continue. Some of the puzzles in this game (and keep in mind I haven’t even done the hardest ones yet) are absolute head scratchers which will have you shouting such phrases like “how do I put brown into brown” and “HOW IS THERE AN INFINITY 2!” The game is absolutely a sokaban style game first and foremost but its use of boxes within boxes for its puzzles outshines Cocoon in cleverness at every turn.
Patrick’s Parabox is definitely not for everyone, but if you're a puzzle fiend who loves to have their brain blended, please give this game a look. It’s a shame this game didn’t get the attention it deserved at the time and goes to show you how much being popular and well known doesn’t mean it’s the best example of its style of game.
People will bemoan Nintendo for ‘drip feeding’ us the games that make up the Nintendo Classics library, but I never personally had an issue with this practice. It totally makes sense for Nintendo to stagger release not only to give them time to make sure each game works on the service, but also because releasing batches every month constantly keeps the Nintendo Classics in the news. Though the best reason is that if you released all the content at once, hidden gems will likely get overlooked in their deluge of releases. People will forsake classics like Sutte Hakkun or Kuru Kuru Kururin for playing mario for the 40th time. Which is a shame, I really wish people were more willing to try new things, since it’s likely they might discover an amazing game they knew nothing about before. And Mendel Palace certainly fits that description.
While you could make the argument that it being GameFreak’s first game makes it impossible to be considered ‘hidden’, the truth is that aside from Pokemon most of Game Freak’s other games are not really talked about. Sure, Pocket Card Jockey and HarmoKnight have their fans, and Pulseman is certainly mentioned on Nintendo fan accounts as “the origin of the Volt Tackle,” but those tend to be exceptions rather than the rule. Which is a shame because I honestly think Game Freak’s non Pokemon stuff is some of their best, with being both experimental and at times kind of zany. I didn’t even know this game existed and as soon as I found out it was Game Freak’s first game I had to play it.
Mendel Palace, known as Quinty in Japan, is a game that just oozes charm even to this day. While parts of it feel similar to a mix between Bubble Bobble and the Bomber Man games, its approach to this style of co-op game still comes across as fresh. While the game can be played by a single player, I had a blast playing with my good friend Naran. Arguably the game is easier in some ways playing it co-op since you and your friend can make faster work of the hordes of enemies. But I don’t know if the difficulty difference even matters because in general the game is fairly ahead of its time in ease of access. Death is just a suggestion here as you’ll still start back up on the last level you left off on even if you get a game over. This makes it really easy to keep trying levels without the frustration of losing all your progress. You will lose all your points though, but for most people this doesn’t mean much.
Right off the bat you can tell where Pokemon truly originated. The character sprites and music just screams Red and Blue. Heck some of the songs sound pretty close to actual songs that ended up in Pokemon such as the rival’s theme. This isn’t a bad thing at all mind you, just something I was intrigued by as we jumped into this experience.
The goal of the game is to visit 8 buildings which each house a unique enemy type. On each floor of a stage the goal is to defeat all the enemies, which you do by flipping panels on the floor. Enemies that are standing on a panel you are flipping will get pushed back and if pushed into a wall will be defeated. While some panels are blank, others will have images representing items on them such as stars, which give you more speed, or clocks, that add more to your timer (which upon running out increases the enemies speed.) The further in you get the more variety the panels gain such as ones that flip over all panels in a row, panels that will spin you at enemies and panels that will keep spawning enemies.
The brilliance of this game is that each stage’s enemy has a unique gimmick. One stage has a guy who is very heavy and flipping him moves him very little but also sends a shock wave at you pushing you back. Another features ballerinas who move in a diagonal pattern. But you also get some really interesting enemies like the one that mimics all your moves or the guys who you need to take out fast before they start drawing additional enemies on the floor. All of the stages start out fairly easy but near the end can be a bit of a handful for you and your friend to figure out the best way to take everyone out.
It’s honestly a fun time and I do think the fact that failure is pretty much punishment-less really helped in winning me over. I was always looking forward to seeing what the next enemy type would do and the game just oozes with charm. If you are a big fan of co-op games similar to bubble bobble please give this game a try. It might not click with you, but again you’ll never know if you leave that gem buried.
