Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

Anime Year In Review: 2024

Normally I’d write a music round-up at this point in the year, but 2024 was kind of dreary for my music library. I bought a new album by PSB (the boys from the shop full of pets) and a new album by PSB (the broadcasting that is a service for the public) and neither of them really stuck in my mind very well. (Sorry, gentlemen.) So let’s talk about anime instead.

I don’t do that here very often. Which is odd because I used to have an entire secondary blog about it. And: Why didn’t I just fold that content into the main blog instead of deleting it? Dingbat.

Anyway.

So, 2024. What kind of year was it for watching Japanese animated TV shows?

Eh? Much like with the music of the year, “Not as good as 2023” is a valid answer. (Your mileage will, of course, vary. I am led to believe that for pop music at large, 2024 was bountiful. I’m happy for y’all enjoyers!) I mean, last year we had the start of both Frieren and Apothecary Diaries, each of which will probably feature on best-of lists for years to come yet.
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30 December, 2024
Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing Out

Say you’re a high-school-aged boy, and for whatever reason you’ve turned out to be a kind of magnet for really weird stuff going on with various people around you. Like, pulling an example purely out of thin air, there’s a girl who wanders around in a bunny-girl outfit to prove that nobody can actually see her… except you, of course, or there’d be no plot to this story.

This is basically the core premise of the Rascal Does Not Dream light novel series that later became an anime series followed by a string of theatrical release movies. Most folks refer to it as the “bunny-girl senpai” show, since that’s the first novel installment from which the anime series takes its name.

Following on from the televised show that covers the events of the first handful of novel installments and an absolute tearjerker of a film dealing with the contents of the paired novel installments after that, Sister Venturing Out is… almost anticlimactic.

It’s still very good, though.

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21 December, 2024
Satisfactory: FICSMAS Takes Its Toll

Well, this is moderately embarrassing.

Insert “record scratch” meme, here.

There I was, minding my own business, preparing a new site for a couple of electronics products (Remote Control Units and High Speed Connectors) when I saw something shiny.

We all like shiny things, right?
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12 December, 2024
Satisfactory: FICSMAS 2024

With the 1.0 release of Satisfactory comes the first “true” version of the annual FICSMAS event. The inaugural rendition came in December of 2020, right at the time I’d just bought the game… which made for a slightly odd first impression, indeed. The developers tinkered with it a bit once or twice since then but mostly it was just a low-priority side-project amusement for the team.

This “northern lights” effect is a new addition for 1.0, and I love it. I want it all year ’round, now.

Now, though, it’s fully fleshed out and polished to a higher sheen. Let’s get into it.
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8 December, 2024
Satisfactory: Water Reclamation

When you break past the point of sending the Phase 3 shipment up the Space Elevator in 2024’s Golden Joystick Award Game-of-the-Year-winning Satisfactory, what you’ve mainly done is unlocked the twin titans of the mid-to-late game: Aluminum and Uranium. I have a couple of posts about nuclear power in the archives, and yes I’ll need to revisit that topic at some point because things have changed with the advent of Version One Point Oh. Today, however, I want to talk about waste water reclamation, a key part of the Aluminum production process.

Let’s get into it.
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24 November, 2024
Satisfactory: Waste Management

The core focus of Satisfactory is on automating the production of things. Iron products, steel products, aluminum products, all of these things need factories to extract the raw materials and turn them into fun and useful objects. In the process, however, you end up with leftovers and other unwanted fillers of inventory, such as plant matter and the remains of hostile creatures. Once you’re past the early game stages and no longer need biological gunk to power your empire, nor do you need spare ingots and whatnot, what do you do?

You sink them for Awesome Shop tickets, of course. And the best way to do that is with a fully automated waste management factory.

I later changed the sign’s text to “Trash 4 Tix” because I’m clever like that. Also please note that this bin faced the wrong direction at the time of this screenshot. Whoops.

I completed such a build this weekend, and here’s how it went:
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17 November, 2024