KonoSuba: God's Blessing in This Wonderful World! 3 (2024)

After a lengthy wait, KonoSuba: God's Blessing in This Wonderful World! 3 is the third season based upon the light novel series, taking place after the movie. It is eleven episodes long, so it’s not a long season. The first episode of the season encapsulates what the series is about: Kazuma, and his whims. He can be very relatable, and not the perfect protagonist. Despite that, there is a certain charm to his genuine and honest behavior, not to mention how hilarious it can be.

On the face of it, if you look in as an outsider, Kazuma is living a good life. He has his own harem, being the goddess Aqua, the wizard Megumin, and crusader Darkness. yet the truth is that it’s not the stellar life that Kazuma thought he would be in such a scenario. Everyone has their own weird quirks: Aqua is dumb, Megumin is obsessed with the uber powerful Explosion magic, and Darkness is a massive masochist. Yet, despite their dysfunction, somehow, they manage to work very well as a party.

Like the first two seasons, this is mostly a slice of life anime, with only a very vague objective of defeating the Demon King of this world. As such, the plot moves very slowly, and daresay, without much direction. It meanders towards the overall goal but constantly gets distracted. Just like the characters, the anime takes it as it comes and there can be a certain charm to it.

Unfortunately, that slow plot is used as an advantage with the animation, or rather, the lack of quality of it. The show always seemed to be low budget, with many scenes have low detail, and limited animation. This season, despite having a new animation studio, and the success of the anime, continues with the low quality. There is very limited movement in a lot of the scenes, and it constantly has the characters pausing, with the whole scene being static, for comedic effect. Unfortunately, it pauses for much too long so that it ends up feeling like a waste of time, rather than cleverly using the effects for humor.

The poor animation is compensated by fantastic voice acting. All the voice actors seem like they’re having fun with their characters. However, this is a love it or hate it feature, as the anime as a whole can be loud and noisy. Characters are constantly screaming with over-the-top reactions. This can be hilarious to watch, and you can’t help but be caught in the moment for many of those scenes. It can quickly turn a boring scene into one that splits your sides.

Surprisingly, there are no massive Demon King moments in this season. The characters are thrown into the capital city without much choice. The capital contrasts with Axel, which was a beginner town. The capital is constantly being attacked by the Demon King’s army, and here we see that they are a threat. It’s just that Axel is such a beginner city, and the characters accidentally fall into the way of the Generals, where they fluke their way to victory, do we feel that it is all a joke.

After the capital, the focus returns to Axel and it develops the relationship between Kazuma and the rest of his party. The romantic side of the relationships doesn’t really progress too much, but rather it’s on the camaraderie. The anime is best when the party comes together, hatches a plan, and while they might botch the execution, they still pull through. This culminates into a heartwarming event towards the end of the season and really shows off the potential that the party has.

Overall, if the anime hasn’t won you over by now, KonoSuba: God's Blessing in This Wonderful World! 3 won’t. It’s more of the same, but in a good way. Yes, the anime is loud and noisy, and there can be a lot of bickering, but it’s also funny and Kazuma being such an unsavory, yet realistic and still quite reliable character, sets him apart from other isekai protagonists.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations Legacy United Doryu (Core)

Review:  #851

Name:  Doryu

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Decepticon

Line:  Generations - Legacy: United

Year of Release:  2024

Size Class:  Core

Mold Status:  retool of Legacy United Snarl

ALTERNATE MODE:

Transforming into a blue and white robotic Stegosaurus, the color scheme can make him look out of place.

While he is generally okay, from the back, you can tell that the hind legs are the robot arms, given that the fists are painted silver and sticks out.

Doryu, being in the Core class, is a small figure, above is a comparison against a Deluxe.

He has no articulation in this mode, all the limbs are basically fixed, any articulation used for robot mode or transformation that's available here is not meaningful at all.

The tail is also a bit stumpy, and as mentioned the robot fists stick out behind, and they make the rear legs kind of too big.

The robot weapon can attach to the back.

To be fair, at this size, and considering what the mold is achieving (three different modes), this isn't a bad beast mode.

TRANSFORMATION:

As expected, he's not too difficult.  The front splits into two to form the robot legs.  While the tail also splits, stand him up, and straighten the rear legs for the robot arms.

ROBOT MODE:

Doryu is a retool of Snarl, so he has very Dinobot-like features, but on the whole, this isn't a bad robot mode.

He has a backpack but since it's hollow and sits somewhat flush to the torso, it's not bad at all.

He gets a new head at least, and it is a very G1-looking head, and looks good.

Size-wise, again, he is a Core class figure so it stands to reason he is tiny.

Articulation is one of the better ones of the set as he has joints for his head, shoulders, elbows (!), hips and knees.

Doryu has two weapons, a scythe and a sword.

He can hold both in his hands, and the scythe is definitely the cooler looking weapon.

The scythe being bigger but not oversized, helps with its menacing feel too.

A strong robot mode, thanks to the extra articulation and cool weapons.

OVERALL:

Doryu is one of the better molds in the set, as he does not feel as compromised as the others.  The color scheme is kind of weird, and it is still had to shake away the Dinobot-like looking modes but it's a solid figure that can stand on its own.

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Mary Skelter: Nightmares (Vita)

Mary Skelter: Nightmares is a dungeon crawler JRPG for the PlayStation Vita. In it, you take control of Jack, who is in a world that has been taken over by living dungeons. Jack and his friend Alice managed to escape from jail. During the process, Alice discovers that she is a Blood Maiden, someone with the power to kill the monsters of the dungeon, known as Marchens. Jack isn’t completely useless either, as he has abilities unique only to him that can assist other Blood Maidens.

As Jack and Alice find themselves in the city, they are joined by other Blood Maidens. They eventually explore the dungeons and clear them. In the first few chapters, there is a lot of worldbuilding where we learn about the powers of the Blood Maidens. While they can kill Marchens, their blood will eventually send them crazy, into Blood Skelter mode. This is where Jack comes in, as he can somehow prevent the Blood Maidens from losing themselves this way.

The gameplay is a typical dungeon crawler, taking place in first person as you explore the dungeons. Given it is a Vita game, the graphics are not the greatest, but still decent. There are random encounters, as well as dungeon traps, which can be quite annoying. Given the first-person view where you are limited to four directions, it can be difficult to see more of the surroundings than what is right in front of you. It doesn’t help that the map only maps the current square that you’re on, rather than what you can see.

As you explore, there are things you can find such as treasure chests and levers that will open doors. A gimmick here are that Nightmares will appear. Upon which the map disappears, and you need to run away from them. If the Nightmares catch up, you can still try and run away or battle them, but that will only stall them as you cannot kill them unless certain requirements are met. It’s not as tense and urgent as it sounds, but it is also still somewhat annoying. They end up disrupting the flow of exploration, so it sounds like a good unique concept but ends up grating on your patience.

The battle system is a lot more normal though, given it is a turn-based system. You can have up to four characters, plus Jack, in your team. Jack only plays a support role, such as using items, guarding a character and some other special abilities. The Blood Maidens on the other hand are the offensive ones, able to attack and other special abilities. There is a simple weakness system, and constantly dealing damage will fill a gauge where the characters can go into Massacre mode, temporarily upping all their stats. The battle system at the end of the day isn’t innovative but it is serviceable.

The difficulty at first seems manageable, and the game allows you to save anywhere, at most times. The caveat being that you need to remember to save because if you die, you will have to reload your save. This can be very annoying and frustrating when you play long sessions and are just exploring and exploring, then you accidentally find yourself in a bad spot and lose hours of progress. This is especially true when there are massive difficulty spikes with the bosses. You can easily be defeating the enemies within the dungeon only to be annihilated by the dungeon boss. Once again, this can feel unfair, even for a dungeon crawler.

Due to the first-person view and fog effects, you cannot see that far ahead of you, and stuff to the left and right. Sometimes you cannot even tell if there is an event or another icon until you’re upon it. There are some annoying gimmicks and features of the dungeons, such as when the Nightmares randomly appear, and you cannot open the menu and thus cannot heal outside of battle. You may be forced into a loss situation which can be very frustrating to lose hours of progress. Other times there may be levers or environmental objects that you need to interact with to weaken the boss, but the game does not explain this well.

The story, despite having a decent start and a good concept, ends up being quite boring. The story to gameplay ratio is not great as the game is heavily geared towards exploration. You will be enjoying the exploration but then the story cutscenes ruin your flow. On the flipside, you tend to explore for too long without progressing the story, this is a hard thing to balance, and the game doesn’t do it well. It takes all the way to the end for real progression, and there is supposedly a big revelation but it kind of comes out of nowhere. It’s supposed to be a twist, but it falls flat.

Despite the developer and the design of the characters, this game isn’t as ecchi as you would expect. There’s an optional minigame that plays on this aspect, but it is easily ignored, and everything else doesn’t suggest it much. Despite the predictable gameplay loop of exploring the dungeon, defeating the boss, and progressing to the next chapter, it is still fun to play. The story takes around 30 hours to complete depending on how much of each dungeon you explore. The dungeons can be huge and take hours each. It can be upwards of 40 to 50 hours if you take your time. There are two endings, a good ending and a bad ending, with the postgame content being a humungous dungeon, with a tiny, tiny bit of plot.

Overall, Mary Skelter: Nightmares is a decent dungeon crawler. It can be brutally difficult in the beginning but once you get more characters to put into your party, get access to more skills, and have a general idea of how the battle system works, you can easily wreck the normal enemies. Bosses are still tough and the unique aspect of bosses randomly appearing while you’re exploring with no way out can be annoying and pointless towards the end of the game. It’s still a fun enough game to play.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations Legacy United Gairyu (Core)

Review:  #850

Name:  Gairyu

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Decepticon

Line:  Generations - Legacy: United

Year of Release:  2024

Size Class:  Core

Mold Status:  retool of Legacy United Scarr

ALTERNATE MODE:

Gairyu transforms into a green and black robotic Ankylosaurus.  Since this alternate mode isn't part of the original Dinobots, he doesn't look like a knockoff redeco.

This is a fairly decent robotic dinosaur mode, although the tail ends in what is obviously a robot fist.

As a Core class figure, Gairyu isn't too big, but he is fairly compact and feels good in hand.

His proportions aren't too bad either, which is surprising.  He doesn't have much articulation, just the legs can swing forwards and backwards.

A decent alternate mode.

TRANSFORMATION:

Detach the tail, and then you can flip the back to form the legs.  Fold out the halves of the remaining part to get the arms.

ROBOT MODE:

Gairyu's robot mode is okay, he looks stocky thanks to the wide shoulders, and bulky limbs.

Look from the back, you can see the hollow legs (due to transformation), and quite a bit of kibble.

The head sculpt is great and very G1 looking.

Size-wise, he is short, above is a comparison against Siege Sideswipe.

Articulation is its weak point, mostly due to having to have a combined mode as well.  He had joints for his head, shoulders, hips and knees.

The tail piece forms his weapon, and there's a barrel on top.

Thus Gairyu can hold it in his hand as a sort of gun, which doesn't work very well given that the fist is clearly visible.

Due to transformation, his arms can flex inwards, which really helps with articulation even though he lacks elbows.

Given the limitations of the size class and what it is trying to do, this is a decent robot mode as he doesn't have too many compromises.

OVERALL:

Gairyu is a solid figure, but only if you take into account that it is in the small Core class, and that it is part of a combiner.  The color scheme is meh, but the sculpting and design is generally good.

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