Kandagawa Jet Girls PS4 [REVIEW] | Censorship Waves

As promised last summer when we reviewed the Kandagawa Jet Girls TV series, we’re finishing up this niche multimedia series by talking about the game of the same name, released westward digitally on PS4 and PC via Steam.

As with most of these niche (and honestly non-niche as well) anime multimedia franchises, both the game and TV series exist as their own semi-separate thing, despite having the same basic premise and, to promote each other, basically, and this also using some lifted sequences from the anime.

Though in this specific case you really could have guessed this was based on a videogame, since the whole setup is so light on story, but heavy on “plot”, and just the idea itself of mixing shooting into jet ski racing is very videogamey, borne from the need to spice up the basic formula and find a way to incorporate clothing destruction into this one too, as it’s the brainchild of Kenichiro Taniguchi, the creator of Senran Kagura.

Of course it’s him. Though this time is developed by Shade Inc (the Bullet Girls series, Gun Gun Pixies, Samurai Maiden) and Honey Parade Games, the latter also having co-developed the Splatoon-clone of Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash, so it fits thematically in the “literal wetworks und anime lesbians” sense.

Just this time with the framing of a Wave Race style game.

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Bad CGI Sharks (2019) [REVIEW] | #thesharklist

With a title like that, you know you’re either in for something that will serve as a perfect snapshot of the era, or you’re gonna eat some rotten bait, punished for willingly walking into an ACME trap.

I do like how to the point it is, like, you already know how crap these modern shark movies are, we’re gonna come clean and maybe lower your expectations even further to the point you may actually like our film, if it can actually somehow rise above being another self-deprecating joke stretched to feature lenght runtime?

This one was also surprisingly elusive since it never streamed on something available here, and out of pure stubborness i ended up importing the US DVD release, i guess Wild Eye Releasing has an exclusive deal of sorts just with Mark Polonia.

That said, this is in a way the “bad shark movie to end all shark movies”, despite some issues we’ll go over, after we go over the plot, because Bad CGI Sharks actually has one.

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[EXPRESSO] Disgaea Mayhem PS5 | Flaccid Flannery

Turns out the demo for Disgaea Mayhem wasn’t really that misrepresentative.

Yes, the full game IS is better than the demo, but also indicative of this being indeed a cheap project the company really didn’t believe in, one they just kinda slapped the Disgaea name on to ensure it sells some copies, even if it the story fits the zany nature of the NIS series, being about a mercenary tasked by an Overlord princess, Tichelle, to retrieve legendary flan desserts from demons that defected from her army.

Combat isn’t as refined as more recent traditional Warriors title or Dynasty Warriors Origins, but it’s decent, there are some fun weapon movesets, the borrowed mechanics from the Disgaea games help, overall the core gameplay is good enough.. shame there’s really nothing around it, just a handful of overly simple levels that are frankly interchangeable, as they have nothing going on: no bases system, no attempt at any kind of gimmick, nothing.

Just kill very small amount of peons, do it two more times, then reach the level boss area.

It feels like a musou game made by people that never actually played a musou game.

Rinse and repeat 3 times for most of the few story chapters, maybe stopping a bit to grind if underleveled, not that it’ll make the campaign last more than 6 hours, with very few post-game content as well, gated behind way too much grind, and it’s easy to accidentally overlevel yourself, killing the little “balance” it had going on.

Plus frankly the game looks cheap, like a late PS Vita project resurrected and souped up a bit.

Yet, i don’t find Disgaea Mayhem to be THAT bad, it’s “just” disappointing, underwhelming, overly basic (to the point it feels half-baked as a whole), very short and content starved.

[EXPRESSO] Deep Water (2026) | Shark Ditching

Renny Harlin, better known as the director of the original Deep Blue Sea, Cliffhanger and Cutthroat Island, having finished early this year the new awful Strangers trilogy nobody asked for, he’s back doing what he’s best known for: sharks.

Actually, that’s kinda unfair, as Deep Water is mostly a survival film about an international flight that crashlands somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, with the surviving passenger and crew members forced to find a way to survive and escape the deadly debris of the torn plane, while also avoid being picked off by a group of shark cycling around them.

Mind you, i’m glad there are sharks in the film, frankly i would have been surprised if they weren’t, because this is such a deliberate throwback to late 90s disaster-survival films and horror b-movies of this ilk, with just a veneer of realism to avoid it killing any tension.

Do not let the fact some of the characters we’re presented before or on the plane include esports squads, grandmas saying “you’re a 5 out of 10” impropted to people, ipad kids, the attitude and cliches are done in such a retro fashion, from the characters being either rude assholes or saints, with an expecially assholish one that you know has a “shark food soon enough” label, and which you indeed look forward to see its inevitable fate come to pass, the kid character being clever yet tempting death at least twice, the heroic sacrifice by the consumate character actor that is arguably on autopilot, etc.

Deep Water is essentially a 90s styled disaster-survival-shark film, and its retro nature it’s both charming but also obviously dated…. yet in this case i think it comes off as a decent genre thrill ride of yore, and better because it’s confident in what it is.

Great White Death (1981) [REVIEW] | #thesharklist

The frenzy was immediate, the clones numerous and fast, sometimes bothering to swap the shark for some other animals, waterbound or not.

But the mid-70s were also the period for exploitation cinema blooming into grindhouse theathers and drive-ins, and among them there was also the “Mondo movie” craze… well, it was that trend of exploitation still surviving almost 2 decades after the 1962 film Mondo Cane (an italian idiom translating roughly to “Doggone World/The World’s Gone To The Dogs”).

While the cannibal craze was indeed at its peak, with good ol’ Cannibal Holocaust releasing just 1 year prior, director and producer Jean-Patrick Lebel figured you could mix the “killer shark” and “shockumentary” subgenre in one, so the world was given Great White Death.

And you know it’s gonna be a good one when they have not one but two different title “sequences” that still use the same title.

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[EXPRESSO] Pokemon Champions iOS/ SWITCH | Pokécore Posse

While this launched earlier on Switch (as Pokemon F2P games do nowadays)…. i couldn’t be arsed, but since the iOS/Android version released recently, i figured i’d give Pokemon Champions a proper go.

Pokemon Champions is indeed what you’d think it was and what it is advertized as, a competitive focused title that it just about the Pokemon battles, with a sprinkle of context-story of you being a new promising Pokemon Trainer that “inherits” a gym in the city of Frontieropolis, and you’re expected to bring it glory by raising the ranks.

Combat is the classical turn based affair of the series, which is good, as is the idea of streamlining info, explaining move effects more clearly, letting you customize aspects like IV or the pokemon natures, to help new players get ready to battle ASAP…. problem is the tutorials given are shallow and lackluster, not even properly explaining all weather effects or how these work against or alongside priority moves.

This means longtime series players that already knew the many systems and all the combat intricacies will immediatly have an edge, and there are no NPC battles to let players learn on the field before entering ranked or random.

Plus, aside from some roster “omissions”, there isn’t much content yet, and in a strange effort to balance itself despite the F2P economy, the single currency can’t be bought with money, but you can get bundles of deluxe training items, the expected “Battle/Season Pass”, and Pokemon Home support means the hardened Pokefanatics can import meta-relevant Pokemon of recent series titles from there.

It’s a pity because otherwise it’s actually fairly decent, an actually solid foundation, and even with its F2P economy and tutorials nowhere as in-deep as needed, it does manage to make competitive more accessibile, which i think it’s good.

Sand Land manga [REVIEW] | ♪ ‘Cause Beezlebub ♪

Akira Toriyama needs no introduction, but most of his non-Dragon Ball or Dr. Slump related works do often fall through the cracks, so to speak…. so one wonders why the hell in 2023 and 2024 there was a sudden deluge of adaptations of his Sand Land manga series.

Even here we got a new edition for the manga as a small volume or a deluxe big one inclusive of extra material, alongside the film, the anime series on Disney Plus and even a videogame for PS4/PS5/X-Box Series and PC was made.

It wasn’t even an anniversary thing as Sand Land was released in 2000.

I guess why not, 2023 was kind of a slump for most DB related projects, mostly leading up to the announcement of Sparking Zero, and i guess why not, just using the Akira Toriyama name ensures sales, and unlike most of his other short stories that were eventually compiled in volumes alongside other one-shots (like Pola & Roid, for example), people knew of Sand Land existing, as the “desert manga with demons and tanks made by the Dragon Ball guy”.

Sure as hell was more well known than Nekomajin.

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Veteran Of The PSN Wars + The August Shakedown

Almost as a divine punishmen (or a reality check), 4 days ago the entire PSN infrastructure went down for an entire day, while Sony is still standing by their decision to abandon physical moving forward, and despite a remarkable backlash that hopefully will keep going, because it should be going and make the company reverse course.

Because, let’s be real, even Microsoft initially said that the X-Box One had to be online only (or how Kinect was gonna be mandatory for it), i remember them telling people off to “go buy a 360 instead, you peasants… and it all had to be walked back when it became both unpopolar and unappealing to customers.

This isn’t fuckin holy text, it’s business, and while i still wish people used half of this outrage for more pressing political issues instead of letting apathy steer us into an Orwellian novel, i’m not here to go on that soapbox… or so i would say if they didn’t immediatly made the gesture pointless by telling it has an expiry date, in a week they’re gonna stop.

As i said before, sadly “gamer boycotts” is a joke in itself for a reason.

I’m not here to tell you what i was obviously gonna think about the issue (of course i was gonna say this situation it’s shit, it’s beyond just “shit”, it’s far worse), i’m here to go full Abe Simpson, sit by the lemon tree and just think back to 2011, when the Playstation Network was hacked and Sony gave everyone a couple of free games.

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[EXPRESSO] Metal Slug Rush iOS | Survivors’ Front

I would like to thank the new SNK for choosing that subtitle, as it really is a gift to “do a gaming journalism” on, especially since it got released not so long after being announced alongside a supposed big return of the series on consoles and PC.

I wasn’t even sure if bother with this, since i don’t need 300 words to review or described Metal Slug Rush, as this is indeed the expected type of experience for a mobile spin-off of an old series, as in, clone what is popular at the moment, what’s easy and dandy to copy-emulate.

In this case, it’s Vampire Survivors, whose formula is now the go-to game type, i mean, they made a Hololive themed one, even that horror comedy, Renfield, got a “Survivors-like” tie-in game, and there’s even a Jujutsu Kaisen game with the VS formula coming up this year,

It is shameless, and it doesn’t really add anything of its own to the formula beside the fact the main weapons are guns and hence long range, plus as every MS mobile spin off ever released (aside from Metal Slug Awakening), it’s basically a giant self-asset flip as it reuses the old sprites A LOT, heck, they even recycled artwork of the Instructor from that Mission School extra mode.

But frankly MS fans might enjoy the old pixel art better, i sure do, and to be honest, it’s a decent VS clone, it’s alright, considered its a F2P gacha thing, one that opts more to force grinding/levelling gear more than other, and at least it doesn’t try to lull you into the extended early period where you’re given enough currency and materials to progress, but instead makes it clear fairly fast that there’s convenience and wares to be had if you have coin.

[EXPRESSO] A New Dawn (2026) | Deidara Docet

Directed and written by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, A New Dawn is an anime film about the creeping effect of gentrification, and how it effected an historical fireworks factory held by the Kaitewaki family for centuries, and in turn Keitaro and Sentaro, the two young sons, and their childhood friend Kaoru, which drifted apart after Keitaro’s father disappeared, leaving the property to rot, while government officials have waited to prey on it for “renovation”.

Sentaro and Kaoru left for the city, but some years after Sentaro drags Kaoru into talking Keitaro out of his reclusive stay on the old family home and factory, as the city is gonna tear it down in a matter of days, which brings the trio close as they once were, and provides them with an occasion to pull off the complex firework display concocted by the father (called “Shuhari”) but never put into action, something that involves a special pigment and pattern, as something of a farewell…

While there is a romantic subplot, A New Dawn is mostly a drama about confronting with the past, coming to terms with modernity but without giving up on craft, tradition and art just because it falls out of fashion, is outright rejected or simply becomes more and more obsolete by the new norms, and it’s a pretty dang good one, with great realistic teen characters, amazing melanchonic vibe, a really good artistic painting-inspired style, and while animation is already damn good, it’s commendable how it’s willing to experiment with stop motion animation sequences too.

Also, A New Dawn fittingly also feels like a light of hope for the anime industry maybe still able to have new talents (this is the directorial debut for Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, whom previously worked on Makoto Shinkai projects) emerge in spite of… well, of itself.

Recommended.