I wasn’t feeling the greatest last week. I don’t remember exactly what set me off, but it’s probably better off I don’t try to or it might put me in a funk again. I am a bit disappointed that I never ended up making an addendum post though.

I’m feeling much better this week though. I’ll just have to write a bit extra to make up for it.

I’ve been feeling a bit of the writing bug as of late. I often get this way when I’ve been reading a good book or experiencing a good story. That’s certainly been the case reading the Mushoku Tensei light novels (just finished the 5th of 26th last night) I’ll talk about those a bit later, but the more pressing question now is am I going to do anything about this bug.

I’m of two opinions about this. Of course, I’d like to take advantage of this spur of creativity, but the issue is I have two old ideas that have been rattling around in my head for years that I’d like to do something with. One is an idea for a light novel series and one is an idea for a game I’d like to make.

It might seem obvious to go with the light novel idea since that’s what initially gave me inspiration. Though I feel some hesitation because I’ve also been wanting to try some game development as of late after seeing a lot of Youtube shorts of Pirate software over the past couple months (if you haven’t heard of them, I recommend checking their shorts. Pretty inspirational stuff)

One of my life’s dreams is to create a story in some kind of medium that people can enjoy. I actually dabbled in both writing and game creation when I was young because of it. While I got some praise for my ability (praise that might have gone to my head back then), I never took it beyond an amateurish level. Instead I got lazy and let the skills rust.

In the past I’ve often been worried about what it would take to fix up those skills or whether I could ever recapture that talent. I realize that’s the wrong mindset though. My skills definitely need polishing again, true, but like learning Japanese, it’s a lifelong process. It’s not about a destination. It’s not about being too far or never being able to catch up. You just keep learning and moving forward. Doubting oneself is never going to help.

Though talk is cheap. I can say these things, but I need to actually start doing. In which case, I’m going to stop talking about it and start doing.

Here’s what is going to happen. I’m going to start work on both this week. I wont commit to anything major, it might even only be an hour for each, but I promise to do something. Next week I will try to do the same amount or more, and I’ll do that until eventually something is done.

I can’t promise I’ll have much to show here (at least at first), but I will try to mention what I am doing each week. Just like I do with everything else.

Japanese

I’m not sure how much I mentioned it before, but I’d been working on an Anki deck based on Wanikani’s content. In the past, I had reached level 60 on Wanikani, although I was going through the content again from level 0 as I wasn’t confident in my retention of it all. The problem is that Wanikani’s review system only lets you level at a certain rate (I’m level 33 now after restarting) and I needed something a bit faster, thus the Anki deck.

I just finished the deck. What that means is that I’ve learned all the words from the deck, and from here it’s mostly about reviewing to solidify what I’ve learned. Right now, the system gives me about 500 cards (words) to review a day, but once it gets down to double digits I’ll think about starting a different vocabulary deck

If you don’t understand that, don’t worry about it. It just means I’m keeping consistent and that I’m looking to add more to it when it gets a little less overwhelming.

I haven’t been playing much of VNs in Japanese. I was trying to read Sakura Moyu again, but it’s just not been grabbing me. Instead I find myself wanting to try Rewrite again or the newly rereleased Kanon (I even did a couple test runs on both) Maybe I will switch over or maybe I’ll pick up something completely different (would kind of like to read something I haven’t read before)

Anime

I haven’t been watching a whole lot of anime. Though I still try to watch at least an episode or two before bed.

No real progress on 86 or .hack. Still intending to finish both, but I’ve got too much other stuff that’s been eating my time.

I’ve been primarily focused on Gundam Zeta and Mushoku Tensei. Mushoku Tensei I initially wasn’t going to watch S2 in favor of reading the light novels, but unfortunately the internet started spoiling me on stuff that was happening. Thus I had to quickly (over a few days) catch up to the recently airing episode.

I will say that right now in the light novel (after book 5) I’m almost done with seasons 1 content. While mostly a retread of what I know, there are a few things the anime fails to cover. Also, I think I like it more. Maybe it’s because the source material is always best or that I’m just naturally fond of reading. I don’t know.

It looks like each season covers about 6 books worth of content. Meaning I wont catch up with where I am in the anime until book 12. Though it also means that there’s going to need to be at least 2 more seasons of the anime before it finishes.. Which means it’s going to be hard to recommend friends see it.

Though I want to emphasize, it’s really good. I know some of my friends are sick of isekai, and I can empathize (despite mostly enjoying it) But this one resonates with me a lot. Mostly because while the protagonist has a lot of bad qualities, he’s trying harder to do more with his life and be a better person. Which I think is something that is lacking from a lot of stories (Most of the time you get a protagonist that has strong morals/sense of justice or is super thickheaded)

Gundam Zeta is weird. The characters don’t feel as well written as the original. A lot of the time they’ll do or say random things out of nowhere. Kamille says in one episode that he’s autistic (not sure if that was an accurate translation) which might explain some of his randomness (while other things might be explained by his new type thing) However that’s kind of being generous, and it doesn’t explain the other 99% of the cast.

It’s not bad. I’m obviously still watching it. However, I’m kind of missing the first series. While it wasn’t perfect with issues like this, things felt a lot tighter?

I’ve also had an urge to watch Record of Lodoss War recently. Though I’m going to try not to start it before I at least work through some of the backlog more. Though between reading Mushoku Tensei, game playing, Japanese, and now the projects I’m starting.. It’s going to be a challenge!

Games

After finishing Eiyuden, I thought about starting my replay of the Trails in the Sky series. I even went through the effort to figure out if there was a way to play it in Japanese (there is but no way to do it with voices unless you do the vita version) I tried to play a bit, but something wasn’t clicking.

I think I still don’t really care for it’s gameplay. I’m contemplating cheating again (like I did my first time) but I’m worried that might not get me as invested (A problem that I ran into my first time trying to play it) Not sure what I’ll end up doing, but I DO want to play through it considering I have all the game and the Cold Steel series (as well as one of the ones that comes after that) I’m tried of hearing people praise the hell out of it and feeling like I’m missing something.

It’s kind of how I feel about FF14. Though it being an online game, and one you have to pay for, it’s a lot harder for me to indulge in my curiosity for it (much as I have tried to get into it before) If I had some friends to play with, maybe things would be different. Though as it is most people I know who play it already have established characters and it’s a lot harder to really do much with them.

Anyway, apologies for the slight digression there, the main reason for not getting into trails however has more to do with the Elden Ring DLC coming out. As you can imagine, as someone who both attained 100% steam achievements and platinumed the game, I was at least interested in checking it out.

As to how it is, I’m afraid that I can’t really sing many praises for it. Partly because playing Elden Ring at this point feels more like a routine rather than something I do because I enjoy it (just because I think I played it too much in the early days) Partly because the DLC doesn’t really do anything different, it’s just more of Elden Ring.

Which might seem like a good thing at first, but it’s actually making the flaws a lot more apparent. Namely the story and quests being hard to follow because of the open world nature (and sticking to that Dark Souls way of never telling the player anything they don’t seek out) That paired with the way some bosses are tuned to be more bullshit than before… It’s just not very enjoyable

I keep thinking I should probably stop and do something else, but then I’ll load up Elden Ring and play it until bed time. It’s a complicated relationship I guess. I’ll probably still try to beat it before I start anything else, though I hope I can either start enjoying it or finish it quickly and be done with it.

That’s all I got for today. Been writing for a couple hours now and I still need to finish my Japanese reviews on Anki. I also got some projects I need to start laying the foundation for.