Demon Slayer – Kimetsu No Yaiba: The Hinokami Chronicles PS4 [REVIEW] | Content Slayer

Since SEGA announced its clear intent to unsurprisingly milk the series for all its worth and do so before the 3 anime films hit (after all, this isn’t Dragon Ball or one of Jump’s big shots, so after it ends interest will peter out faster than some of you might imagine) with a Hinokami Chronicles 2 announced earlier this year and having just come out for all consoles (Switch aside), i figure we talk about the first game, which had been quite elusive to secure at a reasonable price, at least it was in my region for a good while.

The PS4 version to be precise (played on a PS4 Pro, to be even more precise), all updated and with all DLC characters snatched on sale, btw.

Here it’s where i usually discuss the series/source it’s based on, which might seem silly right now, since Demon Slayer/Kimetsu No Yaiba has been pretty popular, even outside of the hardcore anime circles, but i feel it’s a series that got extremely lucky, for many reasons, and one where the anime had to do a lot of legwork to popularize it, which in itself is kinda par for the course, the usual for new shonen series that become the next big thing, but let’s just say ufotable wasn’t served “prime Kobe beef” material to work with…

My feelings for the series as a whole aside, let’s discuss plot.

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One Piece: Grand Battle PS1 [REVIEW] | East Blue Smash Stone Brothers

As announced, we’ll be reviewing a handful of One Piece videogames this August, basically the entire Grand Battle sub-series… at least the games that got localized or released westward as well, so logically enough we’re starting out with One Piece Grand Battle, the first one, released for the PS1 in 2001 and brought to Europe in 2003.

It’s so early that it’s ALMOST the first game ever based on One Piece (that would be an action RPG-card thingie for the WonderSwan, never release outside of Japan, like the console itself), but it is the first game ever developed by Ganbarion, which will be handling a majority of the One Piece videogames for more than a decade (and also come back to developed One Piece World Seeker), alongside other anime related/based project for Namco Bandai, like the beloved Jump Super Stars for DS, Dragon Ball Fusions for the 3DS… and also Pandora’s Tower for the Wii.

Being this early in the One Piece anime it means it mostly depicts the “East Blue Saga” ensemble of arcs and basically the prelude of the Alabasta one, though here it stops even before Whisky Peak (due to some characters appearances), hence before Little Garden, so it’s kinda of tease, not gonna lie, but what can you do, it was pretty early in…

At least it has the classic “WE ARE” opening from the anime (kinda), might as well since the original japanese titles puts the “From TV Animation” well before the actual name of the game.

I didn’t play this one until i finally was able to find a copy for a reasonable prices years ago, i did actually play the PS2 game also called “One Piece Grand Battle” well before, so i was expecting a Power Stone clone, just less refined since it’s obvious a far earlier iteration on the idea…

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(Mini) One Piece August is coming back, baby!

Yeah, that is pretty self-explanatory, since i’ve done this before, many times, but yeah, we’re back to a (mostly) One Piece exclusive August, as the first half of it, i’m gonna review One Piece media, in this case videogames… though it will have to happen in “redux” form since IRL events and academic endeavours are kicking my ass harder than planned.

So we’re gonna basically look at the One Piece Grand Battle games released westward for PS1 and PS2… and i was gonna do more but it just ain’t happening, as i realized bitterly.

And FIY , this has been planned in mid-January 2025, with the idea of finishing up the collection for One Piece videogames… as in, the ones that were released in Europe or globally, this time around.

Minus the VR one since i still don’t own a PS VR.

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Kancolle 1944: Itsuka Ano Umi De/See You Again On Another Quiet Blue Sea (2022) [REVIEW] | The Real Fleet Girls

So yeah, that “season 2 which it’s actually not a second season” of the Kancolle anime did happen, i wasn’t able to re/write any of my old pieces on the first season and the follow-up movie, but we can actually do that next year, since this – let’s make it EXTRA clear – this ain’t the continuation/second season, but a completely different Kancolle anime project that had been years in the works without any info or proof it wasn’t scrapped… until it resurfaced in early 2022 as Kancolle 1944: Itsuka Ano Umi De, translated/localized “Kancolle 1944: See You Again On Another Quiet Blue Sea”.

And by “years in the works” i mean that there was enough time for rival series Azur Lane to make its own anime series with Azur Lane: The Animation, and then adapt a spin-off 4 panel manga into animation with Azur Lane: Slow Ahead… so much time that i did review that!

Look, i’m sure Kancolle still has its fans (me included) and a decent player base in its original browser game iteration, but even when this new anime series eventually surfaced… it did so to a dead fanbase, as the franchise was basically “dead” in terms of international appeal, with most people moving on to either Azur Lane, give Arpeggio Of Blue Steel a rewatch, or moving on to other gacha (or gacha adjacent) games with a similar theme, a healthy playerbase or some other anime-multimedia franchise that had content and had become popular, like Umamusume Pretty Derby, with the anime series and its seasons managing to keep interest even when the main product (a F2P smarthphone game) was delayed for 3 years before even just Japanese players could get their hands on it, alongside the spin-offs, related projects, even a brand new feature film.

Sometimes there’s taking so long that the fanbase dies in the meantime in terms of “being late”, as Kancolle 1944 demonstrates, but let’s get to it!

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Kangadawa Jet Girls [ANIME+OVA REVIEW] | There Is More To Racing Than Tits

There are many of these niche multimedia projects in the “anime sphere”, and sometimes they do get fairly big and well known even if they are still dedicated to relatively fringe, very specific audiences, like Girls Und Panzer, but most often than not these are fanservice heavy, borderline soft porn-adjacent… and while some of you might have thought of Valkyrie Drive (we’ll get to that, eventually), yes, i can see why, but this is NOT that Marvelous project.

This is the one with the jetskis anime girls, again a Marvelous co-produced multimedia affair, and unsurprisingly Senran Kagura’s producer (well, ex-Senran Kagura producer, nowadays) Kenichiro Taniguchi, is involved with Kandagawa Jet Girls too, there are anime boobs involved, after all.

I planned to review both the anime series (with its OVA) and the PC & console videogame, but due to schedule woes, we’ll have to tackle the game at later date, maybe next year.

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Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 PS3 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As promised, here we are again with more Dynasty Warriors Gundam, though don’t worry, Koei had an habit of making their old Warriors games in a sub-series obsolete or needed when making a sequel back then, and they mostly kept at it, since they also did this with the Attack On Titan hunting games by Omega Force they published.

So if you never played the first DW Gundam, no need to fret, my boy, as Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 is basically a revised and greatly expanded follow up, with more Gundam series covered properly in Story Mode, improved graphics and performance (while still retaining the same art style, for better or worse), and a revamp to the old content, with new systems added for good measure.

The game covers/retells canonically most of the same Gundam series already featured in the first title, though now with Char’s Counterattack added and the previous anime storylines redone and expanded in terms of events narrated and details, and even more of the non-UC series represented in the non-canonical stories offered in the secondary mode, with Gundam Seed Destiny, Gundam F91 and Gundam Victory and their characters featured in this non-canon mode.

We’ll talk more about that later, as there are some changes and additions to gameplay, one of the more welcome ones is how you can just keep dashing instead of the “start & stop” finnicky dash of the first DW which required you to spam the jump/dash button, balanced out by a fuel/stamina bar that takes a bit to recharge once depleted, and while there are still robots (hence they still have that weight to their movements), the MS feel more fluid to control here, and there are more enemies on screen too.

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Dynasty Warriors Gundam PS3 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

I don’t think Mobile Suit Gundam needs an introduction, given its one of the more popular and old mecha franchises that are still around, arguably THE mecha franchise if there ever was one.

You know it, you love it… i mostly kinda experienced it via osmosis, as i never fully bothered to be invested in any of its many iterations, be it the classic 0079 original, the Z Gundam one, the super deformed Three Kingdoms ones, the ones about milfs and kids building Gunplas.

Or the space tomato lesbian one. Or whatever the new Gundam series that will come out in the meantime of me posting and you reading this will be about.

I didn’t even plan to ignore Gundam, i just never really went deep into any of its iterations, as it happened, and – as i think i’ve said before – i’m actually way more familiar with frigging Sgt. Frog (yes, Keroro) than actual Gundam, so it both kinda counts and not really counts at the same time, meaning i’ve been told the series is about the horrors of war more than the cool robots… but the robot do LOOK cool, there’s no anti-memery (or counter arguments, and so on) to argue that at simple skin deep fact, them mobile suits design are legendary stuff.

So in a way i’m really not “qualified”… or i was, because this did serve as a gateway entry for me, sure i love them Dynasty Warriors, make them cool looking robots instead of superhero fantasy warlords, just as good, or even better, i will finally learn what the fuck the original Gundam and some other of its series are about with Dynasty Warriors Gundam, why not?

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Asterix & Obelix XXL 3: The Crystal Menhir PS4 [REVIEW] | XXS-ix

One might wonder why i’m not reviewing this one as a Platformation Time Again subject.

That is because, confusingly, the third entry in this series of platforming-action games… isn’t a platformer at all.

Yeah, took me by surprise because why wouldn’t it be, especially now with the retro 3D platformer revival going on to this day?

Regardless, this is the third entry in the series, meaning its a brand new game developed by Osome Studio, makes sense as they handled the remasters/ports of the first two games that launched on PS2 20+ years ago, as Microids is definitely seeing a lot more return in using the Asterix & Obelix license than others, like their Marsupilami game (remember that? I kinda do and kinda not), not really a surprise, since the Uderzo & Goscinny created comic book series has been popular for decades in Europe, France obviously, but others including Italy as well.

But we’ve discussed this before, so let’s get to the plot.

The plot is also untied to the previous XXL games…. or is it?

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[EXPRESSO] Kaiju No. 8: Mission Recon (2025) | Kompilation Kaijus

I usually rag on compilation films for anime series… for the obvious reasons, but i did watch Kaiju 8 Mission Recon it because i was curious about the manga but i never had time to check that or the anime out,, so i guess compromise it is.

Speaking of, the premise it’s set in a sci-fi future where academies train young people into anti-kaiju troops to dispose of the endless hordes of big ass monsters attacking Tokyo on a daily basis.

The protagonist, Kafka, actually a man in his 30s, working on cleaning up the kaiju remains and debris, after he flunked his entry exam as a soldier, but one day, while on the job, he’s infected by a parasite that lets him turn into a humanoid kaiju…

Obviously one of these new series that rose up after Attack On Titan success, even if the similarities are only superficial , as Kaiju 8 is more inspired by Ultraman (and a bit by Patlabor) than anything else, and the tone is more akin to One Punch Man than AoT… and honestly i think it’s pretty fun.

Nothing we haven’t seen before, but done fairly well, the animation is quite good, the action is solid, the kaiju designs are pretty cool, the cyberpunk aesthetic is well done, and i do like the protagonist being an older man than usual (despite being a teenager at heart) not just used for comedy bits.

The new material is a post-credits slice of life bonus episode about the other characters’ day off duty, which i feel is needed because these recap films of shonen battle manga series usually sacrifice most non-action scenes, especially if they aren’t about the protagonist.

Hope i can set some time aside to see Season 2 when it airs later this year.

Platformation Time Again #3: Asterix & Obelix XXL 2 PS4 | DS, PSP

HISTORY

Since i’ve given a basic description/primer for Asterix & Obelix as a whole for the Platformation review of the fist XXL game, i won’t be repeating that, so i will simply refer you back to that if you are not too familiar (or at all) with the series.

What i will do is talk about the context of the platforming genre as the time XXL 2 originally released, because in just 3 years after the first Asterix & Obelix XXL came out, a lot happened.

As i said, even the first game felt kinda old fashioned compared to other platformers on offer at the time, heck, not even going back to the original Conker’s Bad Fur Day, in 2003 alone Jak II kickstarted the whole “teenage edgelord “phase of the genre, influenced to be “more mature” thanks to the rise in popularity of games like the 3D Grand Theft Auto games, and this was made even more clear when Sonic Team clearly saw Naughty Dog’s sequel “dark” turnabout and made the Shadow The Hedgehog game.

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