Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp (Season Two) (2021) [REVIEW] | A Comf Supreme

I’ve been waiting for a second season of Yuru Camp for 3 years, like most fans of the series, and i was ready to “jump on it” as soon it was announced, Room Camp was nice and served its purpose, but my lust for more comforting camping and anime girls being cozy in a world where you still can.

Not that i was gonna go camping anyway even without the pandemic thing, at least not in the japanese mountains, probably i would have stayed at home and catched up with the episodes late at night after work, with a blanket and hot cocoa, just to enhance the experience. 🙂

Given the nature of the show and the fact i “recently” reviewed the first season and the short spin-off series, i won’t be going over what the series is about in detail or attempt a plot summary because i would need to describe what happens in every single episodes, and still, it wouldn’t work because it’s a slice of life about camping, with 5 young girls going around and “relax to the max” with said outdoor activity and all that it entails.

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Cells At Work – BLACK (2021) [REVIEW] | Defective Form

I planned to review this TV adaptation of the Cell At Work spin-off series Black Code, as i heard the second season was delayed to summer 2021…. but clearly i was wrong, as both the oddly short second season of the main series AND the spin-off series started airing back to back in early January… so that threw me a curveball, as i was planning to revisit the first season of Cells At Work before the second one hit, but still, i’m reviewing this in detail, i’ll get to the main series eventually.

Regardless, it’s even better, since using anime to guilt-trip people into having a more healthy lifestyle is a proper “thing”, and it’s beautiful.

I loved the first season, it was absurd but also a very fun way to combine the old french edutaiment series “Once Upon A Life…Time” (or Micro Patrol, if you lived in an European country in the 90s you mostly likely have seen or heard of it at some point, it’s quite famous even in Italy) into a shonen manga format, so your body is basically a city-temple where every cell exists for a purpose, be it carrying packages of oxygen to the lungs, keeping track of information, and each episode it faces a new treat, usually viruses that are quite stabbable by the white blood cells, as they lunge with knives at the bacteria like a fuckin Hellsing villain. Gotta love how the violence is basically pardoned by the educational facts about cells, how the body deals with extraneous material, etc.

And how you basically have plenty of antrophormic Amazon delivery people taking drinks from the vending machines that are inside of you. Lucky bastards?

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[EXPRESSO] Run Godzilla iOS | Tamakaiju

Toho plans to release not one, not two, but THREE Godzilla mobile games this year worlwide, and the first one is the already available Run Godzilla, which isn’t an endless runner (despite the title kinda implying it), but more a simulator-raising game where you take care of your very own kaiju in order to… make it run like a horse.

I’ve seen people describe it as basically Uma Musume but with kaijus instead of horse girls… and it’s not that far off. And by that i mean it’s basically a stat building game where you increase the stats of the monster before taking on races, where you can just tap a button to encourage the monster to go faster, but that’s about it, you don’t control the kaiju directly.

Strenghtening the monster is done via a typical idle game setup, as you juggle resources to have enough people praying for the monster to grow, extend the time they will stay in the group, pick up apples and gems to recruit more people, and change weather to influence the growth of a some stats over others. The kaiju itself has an “expiration date” which can’t be extended, but the following generation/monster will inherit some experience points, and the loop repeats.

It’s more complex to look at than to actually play, just a thing you’re supposed to tinker with on a somewhat regular base, as timers keep running regardless, so you might come back to find the your digital “pet kaiju” (one you don’t have to feed or “poopscoop”) already dead/expired.

It’s a thing to thinker with more than play, and while it’s very honest about it, outside of the initial novelty it’s hard to care for long if you have at least another free-to-play game/app you keep coming back to regularly.

Happy Easter

I guess, here in Italy we’re still knee deep in quarantine, so much theathers didn’t even re-open, and we still have no dates for when some of the hot new movies will hit streaming services here, so that’s why i haven’t posted a review of Godzilla Vs King Kong, i simply have yet to see. And boy i do wanna see it BADLY, even if i really wanted to see in theathers…. it’s not gonna happen this year where i live.

So look forward to some more anime reviews from last season (i do plan to see and review Godzilla Singularity Point, though), and MAYBE an EXPRESSO review of the Snyder Cut of Justice League. MAYBE because i really don’t care about it to be honest, but i did watch the theathrical cut back then, which gives somewhat of a limp excuse and – regardless – is more than i can say for Man Of Steel.

I probably won’t, because it’s 4 frigging hours, but who knows.

Azur Lane: Slow Ahead (2021) [REVIEW] | Slice O’ Boat

Might as well, since that second season or second adaptation of the Kancolle anime is still nowhere to be seen, so once again Azur Lane will outright “eat its lunch”.

And i did already review the previous Azur Lane anime adaptation, so i feel kinda obliged to cover this one as well. Not that it shares a direct connection, as it adapts an on-going Azur Lane 4-koma slice of life manga, Slow Ahead, which omits the whole “kriegsmarine” (and annexed wave ruling) aspect of the franchise and just focuses on the daily lives of the shipgirls living in the Azur Lane base, taking as main characters the girls’ quartet of Laffey, Z23, Ayanami and Javelin.

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Zarkorr! The Invader (1996) [REVIEW] | Cinephiles Of Earth, Beware…

You can hardly go more Z-grade cinema than with Zarkorr! The Invader from Full Moon Entertaiment, at least regarding movies that do have production values and some backing behind them. Of course, you can go even worse, as the company itself demonstrated last year by making a zombie movie about the Coronavirus… and by that i mean putting a shitty comical dub track over Bruno Mattei’s Hell Of The Living Dead, with a tiny bit of new footage to act as a “framing device” of someone watching Hell Of The Living Dead while quarantined at home. Good lord.

But thankfully this is just Full Moon Entertaiment doing a direct-to-video kaiju movie, about aliens that have been observing Earth for centhuries, and one day decide to challenge mankind by sending in a huge monster called Zarkorr to wreak havoc with its size and lazer eyes. As the human champion, they choose an incredibly average postal worker, Tommy Ward, as the only one who can defeat Zarkorr and save the planet.

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