Weekly summary: July 30 - August 5, 2023

[alchemicink]

It's been sort of an up and down week for me, swinging wildly from "I'm having a great time!" to "everything is awful" and then back again. This probably has to do with a lack of sleep more than anything else (I fell asleep twice writing this post), so hopefully the upcoming week will remedy that.

Anyway, let's talk about fun stuff instead.

I finally FINALLY started watching a Kamen Rider series, months after I first said I wanted to 😅 I picked Kamen Rider Kuuga because it's on Tubi and I heard it's generally a good series to start with.

I looked up nothing about this show beforehand, so imagine my shock at learning Odagiri Joe plays the main character! I yelled at my phone in surprise 😂 Anyway, he's been in a lot of stuff, but I always associate him most with the movie "Shinobi: Heart Under Blade" (which is a live action adaptation of the anime Basilisk.) He's a ninja in that movie with a sort of mohawk/mullet hairstyle, so it's weird to see him have regular hair in Kuuga!

As for the series itself, I've really enjoyed the first three episodes so far. My only complaint is that some of the handheld camera footage is hard for me to watch. But that's usually pretty brief.

Also, I learned as I started watching Kuuga, that it used to air back-to-back with Mirai Sentai Timeranger. That was on my to-watch list too, so I've decided to watch both together as the original broadcast schedule intended!! Timeranger premiered two weeks after, so I've only watched episode one so far, but it looks promising. I remember enjoying the Power Rangers counterpart as a kid, so this will hopefully be a good partially-nostalgic watch.

I might try to make some posts along the way as I keep watching instead of throwing my thoughts here in the weekly summary. We shall see!

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I'm still deep in my G-witch hyperfixation right now, and stumbled across a controversy this past week sparked by a Gundam magazine interview and then Bandai Namco's incredibly dumb response to it.

I wrote some thoughts on the whole thing here

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Does anyone else get a spark of joy whenever you have a successful trip to the grocery store? Maybe this is just a me thing? 😅

Anyway, I stopped for groceries one night after work this week. As I usually do. And they had everything on my shopping list... which was excellent because the store I go to is usually missing at least one or two things. Being able to check off the whole list was so satisfying 😅

I was just thinking this week about how something small like that really puts me in a much better mood than usual. It's the little things in life, yeah?

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Fic reveals for seasonsofdrabbles were on Saturday!

I received four excellent gifts this time:

☆ To Sip and Savor (Star Trek Voyager; Janeway/Tuvok)
☆ But First... (Star Trek Voyager; Admiral Janeway; pre-Endgame)
☆ The Next Step (Wednesday (TV); Wednesday/Bianca)
☆ Bad Luck, Good Luck (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood; Riza/Winry)

All of my gifts were super lovely, so I definitely recommend checking them out! And check out the rest of the fics in the collection here.

Author reveals are on Monday, so I'll share my fics in next week's summary.

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Weekly music stuff!

HSJ's song this week is a fun one! So back in 2015, Yamada starred in the live action movie version of Assassination Classroom. And, as usual with Yamada's acting projects, hsj contributed a song for the production. (This one in particular was for the movie's closing credits.)

Only thing was that hsj didn't release this one as hsj. They created a whole "alter ego" group called Korosensations (which is a reference to Korosensei, the teacher in Assassination Classroom). It was so silly and fun, and is still probably one of my favorite eras of hsj.

So this week, they didn't give us the music video, but instead a concert performance of the song. The concert performance is fun though because you really get to appreciate how silly the choreography is (very tentacle-esque, like Korosensei). Also, I unironically love their outfits for this song. They look like something I would have wanted to buy in Hot Topic in 2005 😂

I might eventually write a whole post about Korosensations, but for now, just enjoy this performance!

Band Maid has been kinda quiet lately as they've been busy touring a lot, but they did share a new music video this week for Shambles, which is the ending theme for an anime (Kengan Ashura, which I've never seen). Anyway, I absolutely love the opening guitar riff in this. Also, English subtitles are available!

Lastly, something a little different than usual! I'm not able to watch season two of Star Trek Strange New Worlds yet, but I've been keeping up with the chatter about this season. And nothing looks more gutsy than an honest-to-goodness musical episode! The reviews I saw on Twitter have been really positive about how the episode turned out, so I'm excited to see it eventually.

And I'm extra excited because they did release a lyric video for Status Report. I felt it was a little cringey during the first watch, but then I played it again. And again. And again. I've really grown to love it, and I've been singing "most unusual, so peculiar" to myself around the house for days now 😂

Kudos to everyone involved. And extra kudos to all the faces Captain Pike makes specifically in this video.

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Speaking of Star Trek, I wrote another Trek Thoughts post this week, reminiscing about my earliest introduction to the franchise. I was feeling quite nostalgic!

I really need to get myself a VCR...

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Lastly, to circle back around to Gundam, I learned that Gundam Wing is up on the GundamInfo YouTube channel again. I'd really like to check it out if I have time. It was such a popular series that it feels like I probably should just to see what all the fuss was about 😁

But with everything else I'm watching right now, I don't know if I'll make it. We shall see!

Wishing everyone an outstanding week ahead!