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  • One Punch Man

    I love One Punch Man. In fact, I would say it’s the best anime for someone first getting into anime or webcomics. It’s that good. I think there’s a few reasons for why it’s just so good.

    The first is that the story is OPMC with no limitation. There is nothing stopping Saitama from just walking up to every enemy and slapping them. And well, that’s kind of exactly what he does. Every time we see a new villain we see them with the knowledge that Saitama is gonna walk up and slap them. What the story does is build around how we get to that slap. How Saitama gets involved and how other characters interact with these villains.

    In the Anime, this is solidified right in the first few episodes where each episode introduces a villain, shows them doing evil, shows someone failing to stop them, then showing Saitama accidentally pass them by while living his daily life and demolishing them before either continuing on with his life or crying at how easy it was. On paper this might make Saitama seem like a flat two dimensional character. However, the story subtly builds substance to Saitama’s character by showing bits and pieces of his daily life showing he has normal struggles just like the average human allowing us to emphasize with him.

    On top of this, the animation and facial expressions are made in such a way that the humor of his failures are taken to the extreme. One of my favorite is when he realizes that he might miss a sale in the market because he was busy fighting a monster that could level a city. This is the kind of worry that I have as a poor college student which makes it incredibly hilarious and relatable since I’m sure many viewers would have a very easy time understanding that feeling.

    The overall design of Saitama as a character also helps with the very simple appearance in comparison to the incredible detailing of other characters. And the use of this detailing often is used to highlight some of the humor like in the hammer scene where Saitama manages to grab the hammer and the overly detailed swing emphasis the comedy of the situation.

    The story does it right by making the story not about Saitama’s strength but a story about Saitama as a character and showing him lose part of himself (heh see what I did there?).

  • Breakers Treats Us Like We Are Stupid

    I couldn’t finish it. I literally couldn’t. I said I’d write a review and usually I make sure to read all of the story that I can to make sure I can give a full opinion and analyze why I have that opinion but I really just couldn’t continue reading it.

    Asura recently added a new webcomic titled Breakers. When reading the synopsis, I really thought that I would enjoy this webcomic and honestly wasn’t expecting to be unable to finish reading all 29 chapters that are currently out. I managed to get to chapter 15 before I couldn’t continue.

    So is it bad? No. It’s just not for me. Why? From now on there will be spoilers. Skip to the next line if you want to avoid spoilers.

    So right from the start we notice that this story is an isekai story where the main character has some kind of broken advantage over everyone else with the addition of the MC having prior knowledge about this supposed game he was isekaied into. This doesn’t actually mean anything bad but generally puts the story under the banner of OPMC, progression fantasy, and isekai which have many overused tropes that require some thinking to stand out as a story.

    Let’s hit upon the first issue. The main character is OP and the story shows us this right from the beginning by showing how skilled the MC is at the game they are playing. This tells us the MC is high on the competence value. The story then throws them into the game as the supposed “weakest character” but the MC literally looks at their traits and goes “oh gee I’m so OP.” This is supposed to mean they will be OP but their strength comes from the speed of their progression. This actually seems like a great way to balance an OPMC and it’s basically the same formula Solo Leveling used when choosing the weakest E-rank as the start of the story. However, there’s kind of a big problem with the execution of the supposed “weakness” of the MC in Breakers. They really don’t seem weak at all.

    We’re thrown into a situation where the MC and his little group is attacked by an enemy group. Initially this seems like the awakening moment that we saw in Solo Leveling where we build empathy for the pathetic MC and then watch as an external force swoops in to save the MC. From there the rest of the story focuses on the progress of the MC attempting to gain enough power fast enough to stand on their own. This is the expectation I have for a story with the set of characteristics Breakers presents in it’s synopsis and initial chapter. However, this kind of doesn’t happen?

    The MC somehow gains the power to solve their problem during the first fight meaning I really can’t see them as weak no matter how much they keep saying they are week. The art really tries to depict them as weak but the art can only go so far when literally every single plot point is trying to show how powerful the MC’s abilities and intellect is which allows him to maneuver his way to a win. This really makes it difficult for me to go, “Ah yes. This main character is weak and has to get stronger quickly to survive in this world.”

    Despite the MC’s obviously increasing ability, we never actually see him fight because he’s supposedly, “super weak.” which honestly feels ridiculous since many parts of the story make no sense. Almost all the problems introduced in the story are solved in a chapter or less and almost all of them feel like a two dimensional problem.

    What do I mean by a two dimensional problem? They literally feel flat like they have no substance. So what does that mean? Alright. So the issue the MC runs into is that his sister is captured by the enemy. Great. This is an incredible problem that the MC can use to grow and overcome. Wait. He just looks at a minimap and that’s it? That feels kind of lame… there wasn’t any difficulty! Oh wait, he gets caught by the enemy while escaping! Oh but it doesn’t matter because he can now use his other incredible ability to steal powers to get out of all his difficulties. The character technically grew more powerful but the characterization of the character didn’t grow a single bit.

    Every time in Solo Leveling he had a power up, we saw the development of a new person. The old E-rank falling away to make room for the shadow monarch. And then it all culminates in the realization that he had become the shadow monarch and was the shadow monarch the whole time with that ability hidden inside. This kind of story has substance. A three dimensional character which I can dig into. However all of the characters in Breakers are flat as paper. There’s nothing to dig into.

    Now this doesn’t mean Breakers is a bad story. In fact, some people in the comments on Asura seem to like this story a lot. However, it’s not for me. I like thinking about stories. I like deep connections. I like watching a character develop as a person. And I’m tired of all these system stories that seem like copies of each other.

    My final verdict? 4/10

    5/10 art

    3/10 story

  • I’m Writing A Book

    As the title says, I’m writing a book. This might sound a bit crazy because it is a little insane. Anyway some posts on this website are probably going to start being utilized to talk about my book. I’m going to continue doing webcomic and anime reviews and I’m probably also going to help advertise for some writing groups that I’m a part of.

    If I’m going to be real, I don’t really get why anyone would want to read a book written by a pessimistic weirdo like me but I guess an idiot can make gold given copious amounts of time. I’ve been working on this book for the better part of a year and actually started this website with the intension of using the website as a way to expand upon the book. I really have no idea what I’m doing anymore and am probably going to have to figure a lot of this crap out.

    Either way, I’m down $500 with three months of my savings gone so let’s hope this whole book thing works out. If it doesn’t I’m probably going to go back to my spreadsheets. Ah yeah I should give a list of what to expect on the website for the next week.

    • Wednesday
      • Review of Asura’s Breakers
      • An update on my SFM failures
    • Thursday
      • Why One Punch Man S1 is so good
    • Friday
      • A little bit of my book
    • Saturday
      • Review of One Punch Man S3 till now
    • Sunday
      • Review one of my top 50 webcomics
    • Monday
      • Andor is a really good series
    • Tuesday
      • Likely just a post that will outline the posts for the next week.

    I’m reducing the number of posts because I need to make more time for finalizing the book. It’ll realistically not change much since it’s not like I write that much to begin with. Quantity in writing is not really my strong point anyway. Being coherent in my writing for multiple paragraphs is even harder especially when I decide to just sit down and ramble for a few minutes which is often the case. Many of the posts just go through some very light editing and much of what you read is basically the same as how I speak it. Anyway, there’s some cool topics to look forward to in the next week and I am very excited to share the initial chapters of my book.

  • Short Chapter ≠ Bad

    One of my favorite webcomics of all time is Nano Machine which has been getting shorter and shorter over the past year. But actually, has it been getting shorter? The average number of panels is less than at the beginning of the series but not by any significant quantity. So why do people complain about the chapters being short after the number of panels have been down for months?

    It isn’t uncommon for a webcomic to release shorter and shorter chapters as the buffer publishers build up are depleted. Typically, an artist and author along with their production team finish 30-40 chapters before even the first announcement for the webcomic is made. From there it depends on the studio how many chapters are completed and the rate in which they are published.

    Currently, Korean publishers mostly follow weekly and biweekly releases while Chinese publishers follow 2-3 releases a week. If you actually sit down and think about it, it means these teams sit down every week and finish hundreds of full drawings a month. The only way this is profitable for publishers is for artists to get paid almost nothing for their work and it is actually fairly well known and well documented the state of living for artists in Korea, Japan, and China. When you consider this, the shrinking chapter size after the first 30-40 chapters is a pretty obvious result of how these stories are published.

    So we have a little bit of a shrink in chapter size. That explains a large majority of “short chapter complains” So what? Why do people think the size of each chapter has changed so much even though the quality and length for a webcomic like Nano Machine really hasn’t changed. Well, when you read a webcomic you aren’t just reading words. You’re reading art. So many people scroll past all of the incredible art without realizing how much time and effort goes into the art rather than the little text bubbles. If you just read a webcomic for text bubbles you may as well go read a book instead. The whole point of a webcomic is to leverage a more direct form of visual media to paint the picture of a scene faster and more effectively than a book could ever hope to show.

    So, next time you come across a “short” webcomic try to enjoy the media for what it is. A comic.

  • It’s Okay To Do Nothing

    I’m not exactly the best student out there. Everyone that knows me probably knows how laid back I am. Being relaxed doesn’t mean I don’t try to optimize. Optimize? Optimize what? Everything. Optimize my time. Optimize my food. Optimize my fun. Optimize my optimization. Optimize. Optimize until I don’t have a speck of waste.

    Now Optimize doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun. Quite the opposite in fact. Optimization could be a reason to have fun since I would need a break to be optimal. So it’s necessary to play video games or watch youtube for four hours in order for me to maintain my “mental health”. Right?

    Yeah. No. That’s not what mental health is. So why am I even writing this? Well. Because to hell with optimization. To hell with mental health. To hell with all of it. It doesn’t matter. People say to meditate and focus on the present. That’s great if it works. But, it still doesn’t solve the heart of the issue. The issue of trying to “make the most” out of “something”.

    After I got stuck in the hospital and wasn’t able to go to school, go to work, go to the gym, do anything, I realized how much optimization was ruining my life. You don’t have to do anything. Meditation is just a blueprint for doing nothing with extra steps for those that can’t wrap their head around the idea of doing nothing. Doing nothing is okay. I meditated and found it did nothing because I was still trying to optimize my meditation. It sounds stupid because it is. So here’s my tip.

    Do nothing.

  • Limiting An OPMC

    I’ve read a lot of webcomics in the past few years and some of them I feel get very little recognition for how great they were. Among my list of favorites is Drug-Eating Genius Mage which is a webcomic translated by Asura a few years ago.

    The story starts off like many other fantasy stories with a character basically showing off how powerful they are. In this case, the character is showing off their power against some demon king enemy which is also pretty standard in fantasy stories. We then find out that this is just some kind of game and see the main character create a new character in the game with some supposedly strong traits with very negative traits too.

    This is actually one of the first webcomics to come up with this method for balancing an OPMC which made it an especially good read when I first started reading it a few years ago. Unlike in Solo Leveling where the constant power scaling and increasingly powerful characters caused a slippery slope of exponentially increasing power, the limits of the main character in Drug-Eating Genius Mage where very easy to define because the main character literally had to take drugs to stay alive. This meant there was an inherent weakness built into the character which the writer could use to create conflict more naturally.

    However, just making an interesting mechanic to limit the power of your main character really isn’t enough to say it’s one of the best. The way the limiter plays into the worldbuilding helps reinforce the main character’s place in the story. We can see this example with another webcomic that I regularly follow which is Terminally-Ill Genius Dark Knight which is also translated by Asura. In this webcomic, the main character has to kill monsters to extend his lifespan. This sounds like a very good way to limit the main character’s power and initially seems like a way to generate conflict and for the most part it does do all of these however it doesn’t generate conflict as naturally.

    So what do I mean by generate conflict naturally? In Drug-Eating Genius Mage, the main character has to strategically decide when to use what drugs in different situations. They main character also has to manage the source of his drugs to ensure he is able to sustain himself while also trying to improve his own ability. In Terminally-Ill Genius Dark Knight, the main character basically just needs to find an excuse to kill a bunch of monsters. The first few situations where this limitation is used at the beginning of the story show a great execution of this limitation but as the chapters have progressed the limitation can now be seen as more of a nuisance rather than a limitation as the main character has grown strong enough that the limitation feels annoying.

    Both of these limitations feel the same as they interact directly with the ability for the main character to function in the story however the limitation in Drug-Eating Genius Mage makes the threat of the limitation feel linked to the world and less a mechanic that stands on its own.

  • Necesse Is Pretty Cool

    I found this game about a week ago when it went on sale for it’s 1.0 release and started playing it. It feels kind of like a more organized and user friendly terraria with other neat mechanics from other games. To be honest, I went into the game not really expecting much since I haven’t really played many games from this genre in a few years. The sandbox like feeling of Minecraft and Terraria with the exploration and such quickly sucked me into the world and I found myself 10 hours deep on my way to kill the third boss.

    I honestly have found it surprising how these small indie games are giving me so much more fun per dollar spent than the big names such as battlefield 6. I spent so much money on battlefield and still have played it less than Escape From Duckov which was released after the battlefield 6 launch. I also think that these indie games are much easier to play than these big AAA games.

    Almost all the indie games I pick up now days are games where I can pick it up and put it down at any point in time and save my progress to that point. And if it isn’t made in a way that I can put it down at any time, I can at least figure a way to put down the game within two to three minutes if the need arises. This has come to be an increasingly difficult situation to find myself in when playing competitive online games which is almost seems like every major game studio is trying to force players into.

    I don’t want another competitive game. I want a game that I can come back to my dorm room at 10pm after dying on homework and studying to drown all my pain away in a nice relaxing video game. Crazy how all these studios expect us players to turn their game into our lifestyle. I aint doin that.

  • Follow Expectations

    I often read many webcomics that attempt to make a scene more “memorable” or hook more readers in by doing this “subversion of expectations” tactic where they twist something in the story to catch readers off-guard. However, I really don’t get how this strategy is supposed to work because it often is not executed like a twist where the twist is somewhat foreshadowed to give the reader at least an inkling of what is happening.

    One of the most common kind of subversions of expectations is for when two characters are talking about some kind of agreement and suddenly the main character goes and does something totally unthinkable in that situation. It often just makes me scratch my head and ask myself, “What the hell am I reading?

    I would list examples but there are so many that I think it would be more worthwhile to list my reasons for why I think this tactic is just not as effective as following the reader’s expectations. One of my favorite webcomics that follows expectations is Another Typical Fantasy Romance Novel which is the perfect example of a story that does exactly what you expect and executes it in such a way that you get more satisfaction out of reading it than these supposed subversion of expectations stories.

    The way the story manages to be not completely predictable is by leaving little holes and gaps for how the end goal of each issue is resolved leaving room for readers to guess the plot but maintaining a level of predictability that ensures the reader never leaves because the story didn’t go the way they expected. Because of this, I have continued following this webcomic for over a year already even though I am not really a big fan of romance novels.

    It does also help that the characterization of the major players in the story are especially distinct and the author manages to develop characters that are predictable yet deep allowing the author to have holes in the solution but still have the end goal clearly defined throughout the whole story. It also helps that the story never “backpedals” which is a big issue I have with other romance novels.

    By keeping the progress of the romance at a steady but slow progress and making the end results predictable, the author of the webcomic is able to add small variations within each arc to prevent the story from becoming stale while also providing the readers with a satisfying conclusion to each arc.

  • Stormgate :(

    I really like starcraft and I’ve always loved RTS games. When I first heard that the developers of starcraft were making a new RTS game that was supposed to be an improved version of starcraft, I was very excited. Unfortunately, my hope was shattered during the alpha tests where pretty horrendous performance issues and many other questionable design decisions made me rethink my choice.

    Now that the full release of Stormgate is out, I’ve decided to look through all my opinions again. When I started writing this post I actually thought my thoughts would change but unfortunately not much has changed. My somewhat old computer still struggles to play the game at a reasonable level of performance and the characters aren’t synced up with what they say. It really feels like they rushed out the project and it’s kind of disappointing. I’m keeping an eye out for other upcoming RTS games because I’ve been keeping track of three or four indie titles that seem much more promising than this.

    Kind of a bummer but at least it’s free.

  • What Even Are Ranks?

    One of the biggest aspects of Lit-RPG is the assignment of numbers or letters to various levels of power. One of the biggest aspects of cultivation stories are the cultivation levels that the characters reach throughout the story. Much of these stories depend on ranks and levels to set clear limits for how power is measured just like how class is measured in real life. In fact, these ranks are often a direct mirror to political and economic power in the world the author tries to paint. This often brings up a very difficult issue that many stories have to solve in some way.

    Often, the main character or their party are under leveled and in theory by the world’s logic should not win a certain fight. The main character, expectedly, wins anyway through the help of some BS ability or through some rule that “transcends the barriers of level”. These solutions to power scaling issues honestly feel very disappointing to read. I thought the whole point of these levels were to give a framework for the functions of the world and making a hole for the main character to get past these issues without any reasonable conflict really makes the story feel like the main character obtained an undeserved victory.

    I see this pattern a lot with Murim and other cultivation stories where the main character learns some neat technique that supposedly “transcends the barriers of stage” or some BS without really explaining how exactly this power is quantified. In fact, in many of these stories the reader really gets no idea how powerful any of these levels are because in the end the levels don’t actually matter that much only the fact that the main character is supposed to be weaker than the enemies they are going against. However, when the purpose of level is just meant to be a means to say “The main character is weaker trust me” it kind of makes levels lose all meaning. This can clearly be seen in many popular stories such as World After The Fall where the author has basically given up on trying to power scale and just has characters fight to judge the power difference.

    Somehow, by not introducing some kind of power scale, the conflicts feel more real as it doesn’t makes sense for someone to be able to precisely judge the difficulty of their opponent without a large amount of prior observation.

    In the end, I think many stories fall into this trap of trying to make their main character feel weaker compared to their opponent instead of showing through the actions and reactions of the two characters than the main character is actually weaker until they use their special ability or cool new technique to get them to win. The power scale should not do the heavy lifting of upping the tension.