The Professional Gamer - December 4, 2017

Hi all! Feels like its been a bit of a short week here. Let's jump straight into talking about anime.

Food Wars is getting a little better. I'm still not super into the current overall story-arc, but there has been some good jokes in the recent episodes. I also finished watching Konosuba, and am now unsure whether it is complete trash, or a clever self-aware criticism of the isekai genre. At one moment, it is full of upskirt shots, jiggling boobs, and needless explosions. The next, one of the characters is apologizing for everything being his fault and developing a plan to save his friends and the town. I feel so ambivalent about the series as a whole, unsure whether it is a guilty pleasure or a genuine treasure.

On the more serious side of anime, everyone in The Ancient Magus' Bride has a sad backstory--to such a degree that Ruth has supplanted "Jurrassic Bark" as the saddest dog story (or at least the saddest animated dog story). Elias's transformation was a great combination of cool/creepy, and reminds me of the tone of Fullmetal Alchemist. Also, things are getting serious in Recovery of an MMO Junkie: confessions have been made and we can look forward in the upcoming episodes to resolution of the love story. 

On further reflection, I seem to have grown into a huge softy. The majority of my favorite anime for the last year fall squarely into the "romance" category. I'm not sure why this is. My favorite anime of yesterday were various types of action and adventure with a good dose of either science fiction or fantasy. Regrettably, the action and adventure genres have become full of the never ending, power escalation, cast of thousands, shonen anime (i.e. One Piece, Fairy Tail, etc.). And I have no interest in these types of shows, primarily because I want to have a definitive story arc, that has an ending in mind from the beginning. Unfortunately, the anime that actually fits these criteria, has largely been picked up my Amazon for their Anime Strike service. This is a further paywall to access streaming videos, beyond having Prime. This is a high barrier to entry for a number of very promising serials. I don't want to spend that much for an additional streaming service, and I imagine that there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same. People who would really like to watch these shows, but cannot justify the additional expense.

I'm going to cut myself off now. I could keep writing about this subject for a long time. But now its late, and I'm tired. Come back again later for more discussions of how you should spend your limited time to get the best entertainment value out of your time. Have a great week and game on!