Bay 12 Games Forum

Konosuba is one of those "lol I'm a parody but also not really" type of shows where they look at and recognize how totally stupid things are and then do them anyway, laughing all the way. There's a certain kind of charm to it, but I definitely don't feel like it justifies the love I sometimes see of it. It amazes me that anyone's attracted to Aqua - seeing someone act like she's at all a decent waifu is basically my red flag that that person is someone who values body over everything else... Combined.

As far as suggestions, I have this prepared and on hand for anytime someone asks me for suggestions:
YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA YUKI YUNA

One might surmise that it's my favorite anime or something. 

Outside of that, for other unusual reccomendations:

• A-channel was pretty good SoL stuff. Nothing super unique, to be honest, but the humor is solid and the girls are cute. The cast is pretty well-balanced and play well with each other - it's a good palette cleanser between more serious and gritty anime.
• Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a classic, and about as close as I can get to Monogatari's epilepsy animation without getting a headache - offset by the cool 50's posterboard asthetic. That has some weird darkness in it, but is still really funny, and if you really want a mindfuck you can finish it off by reading the manga from halfway after the anime's over.
• If you're looking for a movie, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is pretty good. It doesn't take a lot of the usual routes you expect with anime nowadays, and the animation is quite beautiful.
• Made in Abyss is not for public watching because of the loli nipples and gore, but goddamn is it a gripping story. You can't help but root for Riko's success even as you wince in anticipated horror as she descends deeper into the nightmarish abyss. Absolutely fucked up anime, but also 9/10 quality or better in nearly every respect.
• Nichijou is fucking hilarious and, to this day, the funniest anime I have ever watched. Yuuko watching her principal take off his jacket to reveal his bulletproof vest before suplexing a deer in the school courtyard will never not be the peak of absurdist humor. And Hakase is maximum cute.
• Searching for it on Youtube also led me to Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou, which, while not quite as funny, is also hilarious and a refreshing break from cute girls doing everything, having only one real female character. It's an endless font of memes, best friends being best friends at each other (and not shounen "I'LL DIE FOR YOU" friends, more like "Yo, put this crab in your pants it'll be funny" friends), and other SoL shenanigans with the twist that instead of cute girls it's a bunch of high school dudes doing it, which makes a surprising amount of the comedy like 3 times better.
• Kanata no Kyoukai is also pretty good, and has one of the more realistic male friendships I've seen (I talk and joke about fetishes with my bros all the time). The main girl is both cute and shockingly badass, and there's this awesome sense of mysticism pervading most of it. The fight scenes are beautiful and the relationships are poignant... And the ghosts are weird. Really, really weird in some cases. Looking at you Mr. "I spooge stink juice all over everyone if I don't like the idol presentation given to me".
• Denpa Onna to Seishun no Otoko is really good and super atmospheric - make sure to watch episode 13 for one HELL of a twist too. Despite not doing anything super new with the medium it feels oddly unique and satisfying, possibly because it actually has a plot in between the SoL stuff. My only regret watching this anime was that I can't get more of Ryuuko's smile - absolute 11/10 best girl forever she is my fucking waifu material, that one.
• Rokka no Yuusha is hard to explain without spoiling, but let's just say it's a lot cooler than it first appears. And it doesn't seem exactly bad at first, what with the main character being something of a toned-down Captain Jack Sparrow mixed with a happier Batman. There's a vomit loli, a bunny girl, a catboy, and while it might seem like a brainless adventure story at first, it very, very much is not. Let's just say that if you gather seven heroes and have eight of them, interesting things are about to happen.

That was about as incomprehensible as Bernie's speeches.

Socialsm. Noun. An evil ideology in which employers are forced to give advanced notice of how long the employed will be working.

Yeah, picked a hell of time to transfer from CKII, because my game crashes now whenever I try to play it.

There's only a couple mods out for the new update though, so you're not missing very much if you can't access the workshop. I only can because I avoided the craptastic new UI update

So I solved the epic corruption problem by releasing Africa and the Middle East as vassals, and then maxing out my slider to root out corruption, at about 40 ducats per month. I'm now, as a continent-spanning empire with three end trade nodes 100% under my control, making a whopping 3 ducats per month, which is nice. China, who I'm in a personal union with, has exploded, but now that I can see them I'm preparing expeditionary forces to help them reconquer their old lands. Unfortunately, because Mongolia never exploded, gathering Mandate is basically impossible for them, as an event keeps stripping them of it due to the horde in the north.

Heh, I think that realistic travel time for information and such would be an interesting mechanic.

It would certainly make blobbing harder, if vassals on the other side of Europe could revolt and you'd only hear about it months later.

Recent update seems to have borked the CKII transfer system, and no matter what I do the development of every province has become 1-1-1... so I spent some time going around the map giving a bunch of different tags big honking piles of mana.
Some of it seems to have gone into development but most of it seems to have gone to technologies. I guess all those little smol nations floating around from CKII are going to be the bigger provinces, since they're going to get to invest their mana in one place instead of just piling it in the capital or spreading it out uselessly thin.

A bit irritating for my Megacampaign, but I guess it won't break things too bad. Might go through in a few years and hand out more 9999 bursts of mana to certain tags. Hopefully encourage more dev investment.

Gokushufudou is excellent. 50% of what makes it so great is that it has a classic film noir aesthetic - detailed art, lots of low angles, hardboiled people all over the place - and it plays into it as hard as possible before slamming on the subversions.

I love the way the dude obviously still thinks in Yakuza terms, despite the problems being decidedly mundane and non-threatening.

Latest chapter he's teaching a kid subtraction by drawing little figures of a crime lord and his underlings before asking how many remain if seven guys are "whacked".


And of course the wife being scarier than the hard-boiled ex-criminal is a classic, almost cliche trope, but it's so cheesy it's good.