Author: Bailey Runholm

So I Can’t Play H! – Review

Published by Bailey Runholm

I’m normally a big fan of the harem genre, with quite a few over the past few years really standing out in our massive bag of anime goodness and setting the path for other franchises of their kind to follow. I’m talking about the shows like Grisaia and Nisekoi, Henneko and OniAi, and of course DxD and Monster Musume, with them either having great comedy, interesting backstories and/or just enough fan service to satisfy our otherworldly desires. With the good comes the bad however, big examples being IS, Testament of Sister New Devil and the infamous School Days, where you ponder big questions like “Why am I even watching this?” and/or “What was the creator of this even thinking!?” because the story is going nowhere, the characters are bland and boring and the shows, especially in the last two shows listed, are borderline hentai. In which case, you’ll probably have more fun watching hentai seriously then watching shows that are just continuous teasers just to try and rake in a quick buck. So out of …

Megadimension Neptunia VII – Review

Published by Bailey Runholm

The word ‘love’ is often a strong word used to show how much affection someone has for someone else or something else, and that is definitely me with the Neptunia franchise. I can still remember the first time I played mk2 back in mid-2013 and just how fresh and fun the game was for me mainly because I hadn’t really properly played a JRPG before. Between the story, gameplay and overall quirks, and just the endless amounts re-playability the game had. After that, it was straight onto Victory, which I ended up buying on the day of release alongside a majority of the DLC, and my feelings only grew for the series, hell, I spent New Years Eve of 2013 just playing the game. Ever since then I’ve tried my best to get the games on the day of release, pre-ordering the physical copy of PP the day of it’s announcement, and in the case of the Re:Birth games trying to get my hands on the limited editions. However, the release schedule of the games have …

Beauty Who? – The Boy and the Beast Hits AU & NZ Cinemas this March

Published by Bailey Runholm

If you’ve been paying attention to anime films as of late, you would know that over the past decade a director by the name of Mamoru Hosoda has been an absolute powerhouse, pumping out great film after great film. If you don’t know him by name, you probably know him by movie. Firstly there was The Girl Who Leapt through Time, his first major film outside of an established franchise, followed a few years later by Summer Wars, a personal favourite of mine, and then most recently there was Wolf Children. If I didn’t know any better, Hosoda is well on his way to becoming the next Miyazaki, hell people have even pointed out the clear influences of Miyazaki in Wolf Children. That’s right, I said it No I’m serious, Hosoda’s work easily rivals the great Miyazaki. If you don’t believe me, look at how big Hosoda’s main three movies have been around the world, it’s getting to the stage of how “The Great One’s” original three were. Honestly, it gets me excited to see what Hosoda …

A Wild Catgirl Appears! – Review

Published by Bailey Runholm

THE RIDE NEVER ENDS If you’ve been paying attention to SnapThirty this past month you might’ve seen a new addition to the team pop up here and there, “Hey how’s it going?”, doing his own take on SnapThirty’s, is that how you write that?, First Thoughts on some major 2015 anime that the guys missed out on, covering the recent release of No One But You and stirring the anime communities pot with his take on the current level of toxicity throughout the community. So, to finish off his check-list and become a full-fledged member, in his eyes at least, he needs to do a complete review of a game, anime or manga AND he needs to be a part of at least one episode of SnapThirty’s, again is that how you write it?, podcast: The SnapCast. However, with the second option out of the window because the rest of the team seem to keep recording them without him, cheers boys, the newest member of the team instead decided to go and review something. I …

Gatebox – Waifu in a Box!?

Published by Bailey Runholm

Over the past 10 years or so the tech world has grown immensely, from fancy consoles like the PS4, Xbone and Wii U, to figures that control games, like Skylanders and the amiibo craze, the beginnings of the VR and AR world with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive and now…2D girls controlling your electronics, helping you with day to day tasks and basically ‘The Waifu Age’ is now upon us hip hip hooray for NEETs everywhere. I can already hear the celebrations from here No I’m serious, the Japanese have once again figured out a way to completely blow my, no our, minds with something we never really thought we’d need, or want for that matter. Vinclu Inc., a company only formed in 2014, are developing what they call a “World First Holographic Communication Robot that enables you to live with your favourite character.” The device, or maybe I should say ‘she’ I really don’t know at this point, will help you with day to day tasks, like waking you up in the morning, letting …

First Thoughts: Girls Beyond the Wasteland – WHAT A LOVELY DAY!

Published by Bailey Runholm

ANOTHER ROMCOM!? So we’re going to start this off with me being completely honest about how I felt prior to the 2016 winter season of anime starting: originally I didn’t much care for it. Besides fangirling over another new anime release from KyoAni with Myriad Colours Phantom World, “KyoAni finds a way!”, nothing else stood out too much to me. Erased sounded alright, but I was going to wait until the show had finished just in case this seasons “saviour of anime” turned out to be ANOTHER flop, I didn’t even give BBK/BRNK a second look until Frank said I should go check it out, Dagashi Kashi was in the same boat until the internet went into an uproar about it and I haven’t even seen GATE yet, so checking out season 2 was pointless. Here come the torches and pitchforks Of course, now that the season has actually started my opinion has changed drastically to what was previously mentioned. However there is one show that has seemed to have gone mostly under the radar that, personally, …

First Thoughts: Charlotte – Tissue Boxes to the Left, Pizza Sauce to the Right

Published by Bailey Runholm

Baz is comin’ to get’cha, boy! I’m not exactly sure what kind of driving force pushes me onto the school-based anime hypetrain, but ever since late 2012 I’ve loved watching these kinds of shows. Of course as a kid I started with the entry anime big guns, Dragonball, Sailor Moon, One Piece and Naruto, along with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! among other shows, however it was school-based anime, K-On! to be exact, that got me so into this wonderful, lively world and even now, 3-4 years later, I love watching them just as much as I did back then. So, to continue on from my recent trend of ‘big anime that we missed from 2015’ I decided to move onto a show that the community had mixed feelings for and a show that I’ve been holding onto in my back catalogue ever since it was announced, Charlotte. Now let me start off by saying I have never seen or played Angel Beats!, Kanon, or Air and I’ve never seen all of and never fully completed the …

First Thoughts: KanColle – World of Warships The Animation

Published by Bailey Runholm

It begins I’m just going to start off by saying that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into when I started watching Kantai Collection. I have obviously seen images of the show flying around the internet, seen the now infamous “Poi” quote and I’ve seen that if you search up a majority of the real ships names on Google you’ll get images of the girls…and not the original warships. But for the story itself I honestly knew nothing about it. So, I went into this world completely blind and watched the first 3 episodes in this 13 episode series, and in all honesty… It was worth it. Kinda. For people who have been either living under a rock or haven’t seen the show for themselves yet but have seen these ‘boatgirls’ everywhere, Kantai Collection, often abbreviated to KanColle, is based off of the Japanese internet game of the same name. The show features anthropomorphism, try saying THAT really, really fast, girls that do battle with the ‘abyssal fleet’, some form of …

Screenshots and More New CG Art Released for Upcoming VN: No One But You

Published by Bailey Runholm

Not even a day or two after I had finished releasing my article about the first new scenes being shown off on their Twitter and KickStarter for their new upcoming game No One But You, Unwonted Studios has again released even MORE new images for the upcoming game, this time opting to show off screenshots of the game, rather than just showing CG and background art. The screenshots in question don’t really give away too much of the story, instead showing semi-random parts of the game. Except for Yui here picking a fight with current best girl Megumi.  By the looks of things, the screenshots show a mixed bag of both ‘common route’ scenes and ‘character route’ scenes. Along with the preview screenshots released, Unwonted Studios have also released one new piece of CG art, showing of a gaming arcade at, what I assume to be, night. Whether this is also just showing a ‘common route’ scene or if its showing off something that may be of importance later in the story I’m not entirely sure, …

New CG Art Released for Upcoming VN: No One But You

Published by Bailey Runholm

For anyone who might not have any idea on what I’m talking about, which I can’t blame you much seeing as it has been a little under the radar, No One But You, often abbreviated to just ‘NOBY’, is an upcoming visual novel developed by a new developer, Unwonted Studios (See: Written in the Sky), and is being published by them and Sekai Project. You know, the guys who seem to be publishing all the big VN’s on Steam at the moment (see: Nekopara Vol.Allofthem, Grisaia and Clannad, just to name a few). So far, the story is looking to be one of the best I’ve ever played in a while. Seriously, if you haven’t checked it out yet then go download the demo on Steam and play it right now! Its okay, I can wait around here until you’ve finished. No seriously, go on. I can guarantee you’ll enjoy it. So, how it’d go? If you enjoyed it then that is great! You can join me on the NOBY hype train. If you didn’t …

Toxicity in the Anime Fandom

Published by Bailey Runholm

Fanbases truly are a wonderful thing. They help to make a show bigger and better, and if a majority of them voice their opinions on something they can invoke change in a show, game or other form of entertainment for the better. It’s a great way to also share content that you create out of love for the medium with the rest of the world, like music or fan art for example. Probably one of the biggest and best examples of fanbases working together would be with the creation of conventions, central hubs of entertainment held over the course of a weekend where fans from across the board go to hang out, buy cool stuff and check out panels hosted by voice actors, YouTubers and artists just to name a few. Specifically looking into the anime fanbases however, it’s not all roses like it might first seem. There tends to be a lot of infighting between specific ‘groups’ in the anime community, and I don’t just mean fighting over whether or not #TeamChitoge or #TeamOnodera …