KARKAT IS SO FUCKING WEEEIIIRRDD. he’s weird! he’s a regressed brat baby shithead who never learned how to regulate his emotions and therefore he has to shove them onto strangers online, and while that’s fun, he’s just so mean. unnecessarily mean. aggressively mean! and this would be fine, but they’re so over it. it was cute at first until he directed his spite beam into their personal issues.
which is the thing! he expressed frustration with the fact that he knew nothing about them, and the moment they really opened up, he effectively went “HA, SUCKER!” and slapped those back at them like a wet fucking fish. it hurt in a lot of places, but mostly the pride. how dare he be so, so sweet to them one day, proclaiming that he enjoyed being around them(?) enough to be their friend, only to LITERALLY take it back the next day.
and on top of this, drag all of this unnecessarily drama into it. using dave as their mediator, even managing to get jim involved (which was just as much as their fault, but you know), and then being so stubborn about everything. he can’t even take a fraction of the heat he gives and it’s disappointing. he’s weak, what did they expect? someone who could keep up with their level of prospective spite? what a joke.
which is another thing in it of itself. they don’t want to be spiteful. they’re over feeling any type of way that isn’t completely neutral or friendly (in their own way) towards people at this point. they’ve exhausted all of those feelings with vriska. that’s why not taking karkat seriously for so long was so easy, because it’s just a joke, a game, until it wasn’t and he hurt them in a way that actually held weight. the thing about terezi is that i don’t think they generally do things out of spite (EXLCUDING VRISKA!!!!!!!!!!!). which is weird, because their native language is razor blades and knives, but they’d rather fuck with someone and be “mean” as a type of resource in order dig up information or just simply be entertained for a few conversations. karkat, however, makes them do things out of spite. they don’t even think fucking with him is that fun anymore, they’re just resentful.
lastly, they’re just like impressed with how right and yet how wrong he is about things. he’s right that they manipulated him, but he assumed there was malicious intent behind it. nope! he assumed that they were comparing him to their karkat because they wanted to desperately fill the karkat shaped hole in their karkat shaped heart. yes, but no! man this dude sucks. >:[ >:[ talking to him only ever upsets them at this point.
a bunch of totally irrelevant thoughts about okamiden under the cut because I love you all and also the game is almost nine years old but that won’t stop me from yelling about video games
praying for you on mobile that this read more functions properly
there’s no coherent order here btw I’m just rattling shit off while this movie buffers. Also I recently 100%’d both (I hope I never see a stray bead again in my life) so I’m probably motivated to do this since they’re both Fresh in my mind
I’m gonna get this out of the way first since this is about to become a rant mostly on okamiden, so to be clear: I like okamiden. If I didn’t I wouldn’t’ve played through it at least three times now. It might not sound it for a few minutes here, but I do enjoy the game, adore the series as a whole, and am still happy okami even got a shot at a sequel.
Now without further ado, stuff that annoys me to no end:
My biggest gripe hands down is that for some reason god only knows, they made the choice to NOT have all the brush gods return. FOUR brush gods didn’t make the cut and it’s such a disappointment. I miss Moonrise the least, since it wasn’t really practical beyond quick demon scroll farming ig, but missing Mist, Blizzard, and Catwalk (for a reason I’ll get to in two seconds) is just disappointing. There’s no shortage of ice monsters, and there’s an entire ice area, but no Itegami? Mist warp is replaced by kagu’s charm which is alright I guess, but slowing down time was satisfying against monsters and for the occasional puzzle. NOT getting to see a kitten god is a tragedy. You give me baby gods but remove the cat? Cowards. Sure, young Gekigami is there and I would die for him, but where’s my kitten, Capcom?
What annoys me further, though, is that despite having four unused brush gods, they decided to add two new ones? I’ll totally admit that “it ruins the zodiac motif of the first game!” is a nitpick, but that was always a cool little detail to me so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But what really bugs me is the penguin. His only technique is to guide your partner around - basically making your partner WALK - but we get him instead of the god who has “walk” right in their technique name please capcom I really want this baby cat. If we’re gonna get a mostly pointless skill (not in application, but it could’ve been some other brush god’s deal, or just an accepted mechanic like Rao or Kagu and their prayer slips - you don’t get a brush technique to use them, you just guide them WITH the brush) but nah we got penguins. Like cool, but also why?? The whale annoys me too since again, it goes against the theme of the first game, but at least its technique is kind of interesting for puzzles, and it has a less obvious existing god it could come from. (I guess Gekigami could work? but magnets aren’t his thing, being a badass lightning tiger is his thing) idk it could’ve been an item or something perhaps. Idk, credit where credit is due, at least they were trying new things.
Also a brief aside here, but it also bugs me how basically all of the upgrades/alternate brush techniques (like deluge, or the lightning bolt) are locked behind the Yakushi village quest. I don’t mind one or two being that way, but they ALL are, and I’d rather they have more story/sidequest significance. Like rather than inviting x number of people to the village to get a technique every. single. time. You could have more of those fun little interactions with characters, or doing something kind for them, and surprise! New technique! It just feels a lot more rewarding to stumble on to a new technique because you helped Himiko’s attendant honor her grave, or helped a dude catch a big fish, or won a race and got a key item, as a more straightforward reward for talking to and helping people, versus just mashing A and checking back every so often to see if you have access to a new upgrade.
What’s completely unforgivable to me on a TECHNICAL level is. So. Fucking many. Loading zones. Each major area has like ten, and some of them are a tiny transitional area that are maybe three Chibi’s size. (Off the top of my head is southern ryoshima, not that I expect there to only be one loading zone, the DS can’t handle that, but there are a LOT. Even just a tiny room (things like when you bomb a whole in the wall, it needs a loading zone to load one chest and nothing else)
(this little area)
Another would be the upper area of the playhouse, but at least there’s a little more going on than “we can’t load a straight line and three npcs, OR a single gate and two npcs. One or the other” I understand that the DS was a limited hardware. I don’t expect okami levels of size/performance/detail on this considerably weaker handheld. It’s not a fair comparison. But when a game like Phantom Hourglass, a ds game that came out a whopping three years before yours, with similar detail and animation quality, handles open world segments and loading zones much better than you do, there’s a problem. That’s one of the biggest reasons I sort of wish it was delayed til the 3ds came out, because at least they may have had a bit more technical wiggle room. Fortunately the load screens are just a quick black out, but when you constantly need to back track to talk to someone or get a chest you missed, its just. Very irritating. Maybe I’m overestimating the DS’ processing abilities but it doesn’t seem to be as big a deal on other games I’ve played.
Also, I can’t tell if its just me or if its actually happening, but it seems like okamiden is...slow? Not so much chibi’s movement speed (he IS slower than Ammy but given how this game handled those loading zones, having him dart around the area would probably be more of a pain) but combat feels slower and a bit less smooth than Okami. Again, yes, different hardware, but other DS games have handled quick, smooth(er) combat so I’m not sure why it just seems like everything combat oriented is a bit stiff. It also seems like using brush techniques in the overworld, (things like galestorm and inferno come to mind, but even cherry bomb) seem to drop the frame rate? It definitely feels like the game lags when these are used, especially in more populated areas (which for okamiden, means even two entities on screen). It just feels like this game had optimization issues.
They also made some just strange gameplay decisions. Like, this game is obviously geared towards younger audiences, which is fine, but it’s obnoxiously handholdy sometimes, especially early on, even when you pick the option at the start of the game that says “hey, I know what I’m doing, I’ve already played okami and/or okamiden before, leave me be” and it’s especially frustrating to be trying to perform the solution to a puzzle only to have to wait for a cutscene or dialogue to tell you the solution before you can finish what you were already doing (like, for example, drawing the sun in the sky in hana valley (iirc?) but you have to have Kuni prompt you to do it first, and the game lines up the screen for you, even though I already drew the sun in the sky in that spot. At least the first game acknowledges that you’re trying to draw the sun)
What’s EXTRA weird about that though, is that despite making the game easier/more accessible for little kids, they made some weird changes that would seemingly make it more difficult. Like, why is there a timer on your celestial brush now? I know the in-universe explanation is “Chibi’s a puppy he’s not as good!” but what’s the actual, game design reason? Similar is the decision to not have ink regenerate over time. It’s not like it was hard to run out of ink in Okami, especially if you use the celestial brush to fight, and inkfinity stones certainly got plenty of use in my playthroughs so I don’t think it was a balancing thing. Was it to hammer in that chibi isn’t as good as Ammy cuz He’s Baby? A difficulty thing? Because if so, why? It’s so counterproductive to the kid-friendly, easier, more accessible direction to add a kinda arbitrary difficult mechanic. It feels like either they were making changes just to make changes, or they just did it to make chibi a less good amaterasu without stopping to consider “oh right, this is supposed to be easier”
The other technical issue, albeit (much) more minor, that bugs me is good god the models on the adult dogs are bad. There’s some other bad models, but honestly most of them are fine, even charming, but oof. Ammy, who hurt you? They occasionally look okay during shiranui’s cutscenes, but they look pretty wonky most of the time, esp in the legs. I wouldn’t mind if it was just the canine warriors when they make their cameo, but Amaterasu looks a bit different than I remember. Again, not expecting the same quality on the whole as okami because they’re on two very different systems, but some of the models just really coulda used some tweaking. Again, while probably consequence of hardware limitations, a lot of animations just feel stilted and lazy. It’s just a little hard to get into some of the more emotional or dramatic scenes when they’re clearly cutting corners. It doesn’t ruin the game for me, but it does stick out, especially when you inevitably compare the two. I can’t really get a good clip of them moving around but, here’s at least one clip
also, just for pure viewing pleasure:
Leggy
Also this is disgustingly long so I’ll try and be quick about this, but the dungeons and bosses feel rather repetitive or samey. Not in design (I like most of the boss designs) but mechanically. They mostly just all follow the puzzle formula of “use your partner’s skill to get them across an area you can’t cross, then pull yourself over to them. Maybe use a secondary skill of theirs to turn off a switch/barrier. Boss fights are much the same, and they feel like a much more of a pattern to follow than okami’s boss fights. Like, there’s still definitely a pattern, but they seem to have a few more attacks or a little more variety to what they do than a simple dodge twice > use skill > repeat (Orochi do NOT interact. Please. Three times was enough.) Okamiden’s bosses also seem to have less of a build-up/impact than okami’s. Orochi, blight, definitely ninetails, and lechku/nechku all were in one way or another presented in the story before you enter their respective dungeon, and you’re given a sense of why your fight is dire, often on a large scale, and given time to care about the people you’re helping. And none of them are the final boss. Okamiden doesn’t really touch on this as much, and usually won’t address that area’s big bad until you’re already going after them. Not inherently bad, most games follow this route anyway, so I wouldn’t really rag on okamiden for this except its a sequel to okami who, imo, handled bosses from a story perspective better.
Also I gotta be real. Akuro? Not at all my favorite villain. He’s. Very cliche. Which isn’t inherently bad, I’m a sucker for cheese, but its just kinda underwhelming? His design isn’t at all interesting - look yes yes I know I know. The final boss in Okami is a manatee fetus in a big red ball but at least he mixes it up and hits that neat note of how he’s Ammy’s opposite in so many ways. Akuro? He’s a floating mouth with an eye in it and he just. Does nothin else. At least they were sensible enough to not have Yami talk at all because Evil Overlord Of Darkness talk is always clunky. Akuro talks too much. His evil laugh is definitely a stock sound effect. Also I hate, literally always hate, the “everything you’ve ever done was all according to my plan!!!11!1″ trope. It’s stupid. I’m sure it’s been done well but not here. I actually genuinely forgot that stupid detail because it was so unnecessary and tired. I guess that means they got me with it twice? Good for you Capcom, good for you.
Also his final form is. Oh man I dunno. It’s cliche, okay? Cliche as all hell, Dark Version of Yourself is a very basic concept to use especially on a FINAL BOSS! LIKE HIS FINAL FORM EVER!! and I can’t help but be a little disappointed especially since we’ve basically seen it with Ninetails already - and fuck, he had brush techniques we COULDN’T use (yet)
...but I’m also an edge lord and dark chibi looks cool as hell, and it IS a challenging fight more so than most of Yami’s forms. Also, while annoying, the glowing red eyes during the dark sun parts of the fight is a cool effect. I’m here for it. And yes I was thrilled we got a transformer for him AND his cool weapon and yes I used it the whole second playthrough.
Like admittedly, that’s a good boy, but I just am kinda :T about him as a final final boss.
There’s other stuff, mostly at the fault of bringing back another time travel deal (which means I have to see that stupid, eight-headed, scaley motherfucker AGAIN!! TWICE!!! AGAIN!!) but that’s a gripe too. I don’t like doing the cutting QTE thing with orochi again. Don’t detract from what I did the first time around, and especially don’t ruin the fact that nagi killed orochi’s last head on his own! (at least iirc, and im pretty sure I do, but this shit starts to blend after 60+ hours of wolf god) They let Susano kill orochi’s last head on his own which is good, but let my man Nagi have his moment. Just sit your ass back and let me know I beat the first game without the little puppy’s help. That’s a total nitpick but cmon. Let me have this.
Also, the pacing feels...off. During the end bits. Kurow has his whole heel-face turn thing a bit abruptly, which I get but, if they really wanted to hammer in the betrayal thing, might as well either do it as Akuro’s going for orochi’s blood, or just give the kid more time to react and give us a better sense that something isn’t right. I dunno, it’s not a big deal, but there’s just parts of the game that seem to drag or be over super quick, and it doesn’t strike that happy medium often, but that may just be taste.
I do like okamiden, I promise, and most of the characters are still really solid, the world is still charming, I love its aesthetic, chibi is a good boy and I am so, so glad they gave him a little baby victory howl, I appreciate that they tried to do some new things - and some of them did work for me! - I just think it could’ve been a lot better too.
Blocking ads on our phones is way harder than it should be so I figured I'd make some recommendations. These are not the only options out there, just the ones that I know and have used.
Please note that browser-level and system-level adblocking are complementary; you'll have the best experience if you use both of them together as they each block different things in different places. If you want a basic idea of how effective your combined adblocking setup is, you can visit this website in your mobile browser.
Lastly, there is some additional advice/info under the readmore if you're curious (EDIT: updated March 2025 to add more adblocking options for iOS and to add info about sideloading altered versions of social media apps that don't contain ads on Android and iOS).
Android
Browser-Level
uBlock Origin (for Firefox)
System-Level (works in all apps, not just browsers)
AdGuard
Blokada 5 (completely free version) OR Blokada 6 (has some newer features but they require a subscription)
iPhone/iPad
Browser-Level
AdGuard (Safari extension; free for basic browser-level blocking, requires a subscription or one time purchase of “lifetime” license for custom filters)
1Blocker (Safari extension from an indie developer; can enable one built-in or custom filter list for free, requires a subscription or one time purchase of “lifetime” license for enabling multiple filter lists and updating filter lists to the latest version automatically)
Wipr 2 (one time purchase from indie developer; simplest option to use, but also the least configurable. Best if you are looking for one time set and forget and don’t need any custom filters. Note that it does not have a system-level blocking option)
System-Level (works in all apps, not just browsers)
AdGuard (requires subscription or one time purchase of “lifetime” license for system-level blocking)
1Blocker (can activate without a subscription, but requires subscription or one time purchase of “lifetime” license to enable system-level blocking AND browser-level blocking simultaneously)
AdGuard DNS only (this is free and does not require the AdGuard app, BUT I would only recommend it for advanced users, as you can't easily turn it off like you can with the app. Credit to this Reddit thread for the DNS profile)
Some additional info: browser-level blocking is a browser addon or extension, like you might be used to from a desktop computer. This inspects the HTML code returned by websites and searches for patterns that identify the presence of an ad or other annoyance (popup videos, cookie agreements, etc.). System-level blocking is almost always DNS-based. Basically whenever an app asks your phone's OS to make a connection to a website that is known for serving ads, the system-level blocker replies "sorry, I don't know her 🤷♂️💅" and the ad doesn't get downloaded. This works in most places, not just a browser, but be warned that it might make your battery drain a little faster depending on the app/setup.
Each of those types of blocking has strengths and weaknesses. System-level DNS blocking blocks ads in all apps, but companies that own advertising networks AND the websites those ads are served on can combine their services into the same domain to render DNS blocking useless; you can’t block ads served by Facebook/Meta domains without also blocking all of Facebook and Instagram as well because they made sure their ads are served from the same domain as all the user posts you actually want to see. Similarly, browser-level blocking can recognize ads by appearance and content, regardless of what domain they’re served from, so it can block them on Instagram and Facebook. However, it needs to be able to inspect the content being loaded in order to look for ads, and there’s no way to do that in non-browser apps. That’s why using both together will get you the best results.
These limitations do mean that you can’t block ads in the Facebook or Instagram apps, unfortunately, only in the website versions of them visited in your browser. It also means ads served by meta’s/facebook’s ad network in other apps can’t be blocked either (unless you're one of the rare beasts who doesn't use facebook or instagram or threads, in which case feel free to blacklist all Meta/FB domains and watch your ads disappear 😍; I'm jealous and in awe of you lol).
One note: some apps may behave unpredictably when they can't download ads. For example, the Tumblr app has big black spaces where the ads are, and sometimes those spaces collapse as you scroll past them and it messes up scrolling for a few seconds (UPDATE: looks like the scrolling issue may have actually been a Tumblr bug that they have now fixed, at least on iOS). Still way less annoying than getting ads for Draco Malfoy seduction roleplay AI chatbots imo though. And honestly *most* apps handle this fairly gracefully, like a mobile game I play just throws error messages like "ad is not ready" and then continues like normal.
One final note: on Android, you may actually be able to find hacked versions of Meta’s apps that have the ad frameworks removed. In some cases they are a little janky (unsurprisingly, apps don’t always take kindly to having some of their innards ripped out by a third-party), and they are often out of date. BUT in return you get an Instagram app with no ads whatsoever, and some of them even add additional features like buttons for saving IG videos and photos to your phone. However, use these apps at your own risk, as there is functionally no way to validate the code that the third-parties have added or removed from the app. Example altered IG app (I have not vetted this altered app, it's just a popular option): link.
It is technically possible to install altered apps on iOS as well, but Apple makes it much, much harder to do (unless you are jailbroken, which is a whole different ballgame). I'm not going to cover sideloading or jailbreaking here because even I as a very techy person eventually grew tired of messing with it or having to pay for it. If you're interested you can read more about the different ways to do sideloading on iOS here.
Rules: Post 10 gifs of 10 manga/anime/movies/tv shows you love without telling the names then tag 10 people.
Gonna be sliding some games in too, because I love those stories just as much~
Okay, math really isn’t my specialty, but Seto and Mokuba are supposed to take their combined 4% of the company stock and earn 100 times that amount, right? And I suck at dealing with abstract numbers, so let’s just say for the moment that Kaiba Corp is worth $1000. 4% of $1000 is $40, and $40x100=$4000…
So doesn’t that mean he’s asking two children to pay him 4 times what his entire company is worth?
That’s…not possible. It’s not humanly possible.
Now maybe we’re just dealing with a good old fashioned case of Writers Can’t Do Math--I mean, it’s not like Virtual World is exactly known for being a totally coherent arc that makes absolute sense and has zero plotholes ever--but there’s something else that’s interesting about this scene. Aside from the Noah stuff, you can take almost any Virtual World flashback and point to the exact line from Mokuba’s post-Death T narration that the anime expanded it from. But as far as I can tell, this is the one exception. It’s the only flashback I can find that isn’t directly part of the anime-exclusive Noah plotline and doesn’t have at least some kind of basis in the manga.
The anime writers must have included this moment for a reason. But what reason? What purpose does it serve?
First of all, if we assume the math’s not a mistake and the challenge really is supposed to be impossible, then what would Gozaburo stand to gain from it? Why would he threaten to send Seto back to the orphange if he needed him as his heir?
And that raises the other big question about the Virtual World arc: why would Gozaburo keep Seto around for years and put him through the training from hell if he was planning to use him as a host for Noah all along?
Seto offers this theory:
And while Gozaburo never directly confirms it in the sub, it is pretty much the only explanation that makes sense. So if he was secretly pitting Seto and Noah against each other in a messed-up Ten-Year-Old Deathmatch over control of Kaiba Corp and Seto’s body, is it possible that the loan could have been the final test?
Seto claims that he was supposed to be “a dog with no bite”--in other words, that Gozaburo always wanted and expected Noah to win, and beating Seto was just a formality. So it makes a twisted sort of sense that he’d rig the final challenge.
And that totally reframes Seto’s takeover attempt.
He was blackmailed into signing a binding contract for a loan he couldn’t possibly hope to pay off, with mysterious consequences if he failed (getting sent back to the orphanage was just the threat Gozaburo used to get him to sign--we never actually see what was in that contract). If the goal was to raise 400 times what the company’s worth, then what Seto actually managed to do–take over the company by buying up 51% of its stock–is significantly more feasible than what Gozaburo was asking him to do. This wasn’t a long-calculated revenge. It was an act of desperation.
But clearly Gozaburo wasn’t happy that Seto found the one loophole that could have saved him:
It’s that “mortgage your life to me” line, more than anything else, that makes me think this whole sequence is actually part of Noah’s Arc after all. Either Gozaburo’s making a veiled murder threat, or he means it completely literally: if Mokuba hadn’t come to the rescue at the last minute, Seto would have mortgaged his life, his existence in his own body, as payment for losing the secret competition.
So, uh. I guess the takeaway here is that the block of swiss cheese that is the Virtual World arc actually has one less plothole than we thought, but to no one’s suprise, Gozaburo is a monster.
