Take on the role of a hunter and slay ferocious monsters in a living, breathing ecosystem where you can use the landscape and its diverse inhabitants to get the upper hand. Hunt alone or in co-op with up to three other players, and use materials collected from fallen foes to craft new gear and take on even bigger, badder beasts!
Despite having pre-purchased this game, I probably won't be playing it on the day it releases.
This is because I know the servers are going to be utterly hammered, and I will probably be much happier trying a few days to a week later, when everything has settled down.
It has been a few months. I can wait a few more days.
Hi there. I really enjoy reading your translation of Honzuki no Gekokujou, I started reading it before reading the manga so I have a doubt about Maïne's mother. Is her name Eva or Eifa?
I’m translating エーファ as “Eva”, which is a real Germanic name.
If you’re into detailed dissections of the names in this series, and also into being potentially massively spoiled, the Japanese fan wiki has an excellent page trying to match the katakana names to real-world equivalents.
I don't have any Youtube links this time, because a cursory search doesn't turn up anything. But just to make a note for myself for songs I liked from Spotify:
Another song that got me through today's inevitably painful gym treadmill session. I don't know why I'm putting myself through this every day, but at least Spotify makes it less torturous.
Still Nanahira's Spotify Artist Radio list, obviously.
Is there some way to stream audio (and only audio) from my Android smartphone to my PC?
Specifically I was wondering if I could watch anime on my smartphone, using it as basically a second (tiny) monitor, while still keeping track of audio notifications on FFXIV. At the moment I just keep a small always-on-top Media Player Classic window in the corner, but it kind of covers a few shortcuts, so I have gotten used to CTRL-A back and forth.
Most of the Googled answers I've checked are for both audio and video. Not sure if I can separate them.
Quick Review: There is a story in here, somewhere, buried deep within the rest of the prose. Analogies about needles and haystacks may be apt. I hope you like tangential exposition.
Rentt Faina is an adventurer who has been trying to grind levels for ten years, and is no closer to ranking up. He has this complex about wanting to prove himself and his own ability, so he goes solo, against just about every adventuring tradition.
So when he discovers an undiscovered side passage in what should have been the newbie dungeon and gets attacked by a dragon, he quite obviously dies.
This all happens more or less at the beginning of the story.
Rentt wakes up to learn that he has turned into an undead Skeleton critter. He spends a bit of time grinding levels, and soon Pokemon-evolves into a Ghoul, with the aim of eventually evolving into a Vampire, ie someone who looks sufficiently human.
That is the gist of what happens in the first volume, in terms of important plot progression. Everything else is about Rentt's life prior to being killed, how his long years at the lower levels of the adventuring ranks means he's a lot more well-liked by the population of the town than he thinks, and how he has a low-powered but unusual combination of traits that help him now and then, and also easily identify him to the other townspeople, despite his efforts.
Also there's a convenient contact for him in town who happens to be a genius magician and a young woman. Because the narrative needs someone Rentt can trust who can help him with the day-to-day concerns of living in a town while being undead, I suppose.
The entire thing is written in this strange, distracted style. Rentt seldom undertakes any deliberate action (or set of actions) without spending multiple paragraphs contemplating it and considering alternatives and outcomes. It quickly gets tedious; I don't know if this is an artefact of the translation, or if the original Japanese is equally tedious. I spent most of the story wishing that Rentt would just get on with it, rather than carefully explaining to the reader why he is doing what he does, and not some other hypothetical action.
This continues to the rest of the background infodumps, which are presented as long passages jumping back in time to when Rentt first encounters such-and-such newly-introduced character, whom readers have just met for the first time. A long story is told about how Rentt befriends those characters, and then we jump back to the present day, when more time is spent catching us up from that digression.
As I said in the Quick Review, there is a story in here. There is some mystery about the undiscovered passage in the newbie dungeon and what is in it, especially since the passage seems to relocate from time to time. Rentt has to resist the urge to give in to his instincts as an undead, which includes eating people. Everyone wonders how monster evolution works, but nobody really knows.
These plot threads should have been given more attention, rather than used to sew together a light novel made up of large patches of exposition. I don't know if this will improve in later volumes, but quite honestly I have lost all interest in finding out.
Sometimes I wish I could have some kind and understanding person (or group of persons) explain to me all the various unspoken rules and etiquette of Tumblr.
This includes both the bits that deal with other people and other users, and the bits that deal with Tumblr's coding and how it affects what happens when I do various stuff.
If you're wondering, nothing much in particular prompted this thought. I was just curious why posting something would have it turn up in a search of the tag, but reblogging my own post to add further information would have it disappear entirely from the search results, even with the same tag. How does that work? Is it just for the person who reblogs? I don't think this sort of thing happened when I reblogged someone else's post, but I cannot actually recall.
There is something oddly amusing about playing Spotify radio while labouring on the gym treadmill, and hearing a cute high-pitched Japanese loli voice go "MEIKU SAAMU FAKKINGU NOOIIIZU".
(Nanahira, "Fly Away", if you're wondering. Censored version here.)
I've been using foobar2000 as my music player on my desktop (as opposed to my phone, where I'm still looking for a good Android one) for the longest time, but I have only decided to start looking into customizing the UI only today.
It's not too difficult, since all I need to do is Google the necessary search terms, viz "foobar2000 customization". Which led me back to foobar2000's website, but at least I also had a random Reddit post explaining the very basics.
Most of it is plug-and-play. There's basically only two plugins at work here, UI-wise: Columns UI (available on the foobar2000 website), and "foo musical spectrum" (which needs to be Googled, and the version specifically for the Columns UI). Columns UI is what lets me put everything in little boxes like that, while Musical Spectrum is the, well, spectrum analyzer thing at the bottom.
As usual, the primary issue is that once I've started fiddling with the settings, I don't really want to stop. Now I'm wondering if I should change the colours, or if I should leave well enough alone, lest the entire thing turn into some horrific hue.
J-Novel: The Magic in this Other World is Too Far Behind
Since this is the first time I'm doing a quick review, a brief explanation of "isekai": it translates to "other world", and refers to a genre of story where someone from our world is transported into another, often fantastical one. There are several variations from there, such as being able to go back and forth from the other world to this one, or having multiple other worlds, or a native of the other world arriving in ours. Think Alice in Wonderland and similar stories.
A popular formulation of the isekai genre is the "tensei", ie reincarnation. Someone dies in this world and gets reborn in the other, whether as a newborn (and thus has to go through infancy and childhood again), or as they are (or an idealized version of themselves). This case isn't it, but it may come up later.
J-Novel Club link
Quick Review: Insufficiently fun. The main character is less interesting to follow than the more "standard" isekai protagonist-types, who unfortunately exit the narrative halfway through to pursue their own. All we're left with is someone who loudly claims he doesn't care, and so we fail to understand why we should either.
Suimei, Reiji, and Mizuki are three high school students who suddenly get summoned into a fantasy world to defeat the Demon Lord. Standard Isekai stuff.
Except while Reiji and Mizuki are regular teenagers, Suimei is actually an accomplished "magician" (the specific term used) who already had plenty of adventures and magical fights in his backstory. He hides all of this, even from his friends.
As the title implies, Suimei's "magicka" is significantly more advanced and complex than the more basic "magic" of the fantasy world's "mages" (all terms in quotation marks are apparently semantically significant). He also has had experience in life-or-death battles in the underground magical society of our world, so he's paranoid and quick to assume the worst of people.
So while Reiji and Mizuki agree to go defeat the Demon Lord (along with the princess of the magical kingdom, Titania), Suimei absolutely refuses, mostly because he doesn't think any single person, no matter how powerful and heroic, can defeat millions of demons. Instead, he just wants to research how to go home.
The story is basically a series of events wherein Suimei acts like a jerk because he doesn't trust any of the fantasy world people, because in his experience everyone just wants to take advantage of every hint of weakness in others. It is only after a lot of dangerous misunderstandings and overt threats (from him) and violence that he stops being a huge jerk.
The narrative states several times that Suimei is a nicer person than he seems at first. However, he keeps acting like a jerk as a first resort, claiming (apparently accurately) that he doesn't care what others think about him, as long as he gets what he wants. Which is usually quite selfless, but presented in as selfish a way as he can.
This may be a reasonable progression from his Dark And Gritty backstory, but is not actually fun to read. Even worse, he falls into the cardinal sin of a protagonist in that he tries not to care about events around him, actively ignoring plot hooks and opportunities to not be a massive jerk.
The aloof refusal to be involved in alleviating the problems of others is very, very frustrating to read.
Suimei does rationalize it all away, but his sympathies and empathies are all in his thoughts, and almost never in his actions.
And I focus a lot on Suimei because quite frankly, every other character is just a prop. The first volume involves the "greatest mage" of the kingdom, Felmenia Stingray, jobbing to Suimei, then being a victim of a plot (due to her narrative-stated self-conceit and pride) that nearly kills her at Suimei's hands. Suimei does apologize after the fact, but Felmenia has suddenly fallen in love with him by then. Somehow.
As for Reiji and Mizuki, they're just mentioned as going through the standard extremely quick growth in power through next to no effort that usually happens in isekai. Then they leave to go fight the Demon Lord, along with Titania. That's about the gist of their characterization. Tantalizingly, everything else is reduced to a "and Suimei chatted with another character about their trivial school days" line. So we see all the justifications for Suimei not wanting to fight the Demon Lord, but Reiji's acceptance of that quest is just "yeah, he's always like that, but he does think it through, despite my saying at the time that he doesn't". And Mizuki is now just a lovestruck follower to Reiji.
I suspect this is an attempt to satirize the standard isekai plot developments, but honestly I feel like following Reiji, Mizuki, and Titania would be far more entertaining than watching Suimei try to pretend he doesn't care about anything.
The second volume only has the first part released so far, but it already has Suimei easily defeat high-ranking adventurers and then manipulate them (with mind magic) into thinking that they defeated him, just so he can keep a low profile, as opposed to keeping a low profile in the first place by not insulting others.
Also for some reason the adventurer's guild in this fantasy world is like a lot of Japanese light novel fantasy world adventurer's guilds, in that they resemble some sort of very polite and professional Japanese service center. Given that this did not get pointed out, I think the author just threw it in because that's what they're used to, rather than another attempt at satire. So it's unclear what parts of the isekai genre are being played straight here.
