Heyoo, Welcome to my profile, This is Nalusa Falaya, I started to avidly watch anime in late 2019 with anime like Golden Time, Death Note and Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo, They were the first shows I watched when I got interested in the medium but none of them was the actual first anime I've watched, I used to watch hundreds of Detective Conan episodes in 2015-2019 and it still stands as my favorite anime ever made.
One of the biggest reasons why I made this account is to talk to new people, So if you want to send me a friend request or generally interact with me, I'll be happy to reply, Although I can be pretty bad at communication, Especially considering that my English is kinda meh.
I don't know what more to add in this bio, I'll just put my 3x3s...
(I limited it to a 3x3 just out of style, If there are more than 9 entries I favorite then I'll just say them underneath the picture)
Anime 3x3
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Made in Abyss
Hunter x Hunter (2011)
Code Geass
Detective Conan
Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru
Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day
Death Note
Erased
Video games 3x3
Presentable Liberty
GTA San Andreas
Doki Doki Literature Club
Persona 4 Golden
Minecraft
Assassin's Creed: Black Flag
Resident Evil 4
Firewatch
Stardew Valley
Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Minecraft: Story Mode are among my favorites as well
Western movies 3x3
1: Harry Potter series
2: The Lord of the Rings series
The Dark Knight
Inception
Interestellar
The Departed
Catch Me If You Can
The Shawshank Redemption
Léon: The Professional
Inside Out
Boyhood
My top 8 favorite characters in fiction, I like them all the same and give the work they're in an easy 10 with 0 hesitation
Delilah from Firewatch
Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club
Severus Snape from Harry Potter
Meruem from Hunter x Hunter (2011)
Komugi from Hunter x Hunter (2011)
John from Unordinary (Please read this webcomic)
Joker from The Dark Knight
L from Death Note
-I'm an INFP-T
-My favorite musician is Michael Jackson, Although I don't listen to many artists specifically, I don't know the artist behind 90% of the songs I listen to
-I watch subs
-I spend more time on Youtube than watching movies, watching anime or playing video games
-I can speak Arabic
-Nalusa Falaya is a mythical creature
-If a piece of media makes me cry, It gets a 10, without any other requirements.
Speaking of new features, do you have something in particular you want MAL to add? Like do you think MAL could really do with a certain addition to the website?
Well, since I'm also using Anime-Planet, and I like the interface of that site very much, my perceptions on what I'd like in an anime website are colored by the features already present there. On the other hand however, MAL turning into a clone of A-P interface-wise wouldn't do all that good, since then I'd have almost no reason to use it in addition to A-P other than the social stuff.
So I guess, assuming minimal changes are made, I'd appreciate having a bigger default font size, as while zooming in is a way of dealing with that problem, sometimes I forget to do so and end up reading those letters made for ants, which isn't good for my eyesight. A lot of people are clamoring for dark mode too btw, but I wouldn't strictly require that, as, while I do use dark mode on A-P, MAL's light mode isn't as bright as A-P's to my experience so it suits me just fine.
Something that would really benefit everyone else using this site that isn't aware of the existence of A-P and its features though would be to further develop the genres and themes thingy (the also recently added - last year iirc - equivalent to A-P's 'tags') so that people can look up using combinations of genres and themes, or excluding genres/themes e.t.c (for example search for Detective and include or exclude Sci-Fi e.t.c); this would help people to find stuff more catered to what they'd want to see instead of just seeing what has a high average score or is the latest seasonal fad or whatever. The way I see it, the fact that more obscure anime is harder to find here in comparison to A-P might even play a non-negligible part to the mentality seen a lot on this site of obsessing over seasonals and high scores and dismissing older or lower scored shows. So yeah, I'd appreciate a better implementation of the genres/themes in the search, since as it stands, it's prejudiced towards the popular and new shows in expense of everything else. Not that this feature being implemented will change these mentalities overnight, but it could perhaps at least help some people find stuff they wouldn't have otherwise.
(Sadly, couldn't find a Spirited Away new year's fanart, nor a Princess Precure one, but I found this cute Ultraman one, and thought maybe you'll like it)
Thank you for the picture. (Also you remembered about me liking Ultraman (as I think we talked about that before iirc), that was kind on your part - I wouldn't think you'd recall something like that after all those months after all (so perhaps it's also kinda impressive in a way too))
It's pretty cute indeed, and though the Ultramen in this picture are from series I haven't watched as of yet, I can thankfully recognize most of them due to having frequented the r/Ultraman subreddit enough to get acquainted with them too.
(Btw, I'm in a hiatus from anime - and watching series or movies in general - atm, but I'm thinking when I leave that hiatus to watch an Ultraman series again, since it's been a while since I last saw one.)
Oh, hi! :D Yeah, it's been a while, glad to hear from you again! ^u^
I hope you're having happy holidays, if you celebrate anything around this time of year, too!
Oof, yeah, school sucks. Sorry to hear that, but I'm glad you're managing, at-least. And thanks! I think the artist did a very great job with it! :)
I've been doing alright, thanks for asking! Suppose the biggest news I have is either that I left Honeyfeed and moved to Scribble Hub, or that I started reading the JoJo manga, lol
Welp, it's been quite the eternity since I've logged in here, wanted to come back before the year wrapped up.
It's been a while indeed. I was a little bit worried tbh, as when someone doesn't login for a while, sure it might be because they have other things to do irl, but there's also the thing that I can't know if anything might have happened irl (knock wood), so that when I happen upon accounts that haven't logged in for a while (especially if it's been years) I think that it might be that they moved on from anime, but there's also the chance they could have, y'know, passed away (again knock wood). And this ties into a wider consideration that nobody on the internet knows you well enough to know if something happened to you, but I guess this goes hand-in-hand with the nature of most online communications that don't take place in privacy-invading social networks so oh well. (So tl;dr good thing you're okay)
Good thing you found something that automatically saves your progress. I looked at its website and Nimbus does seems a little bit overkill to me (since as you said it has a much wider purpose than autosaving), but since it works for you, all's good. (when it comes to stuff not imposed to them by work/school, people should use the tools/software they are most comfortable using imo)
Btw, in other news, recently MAL finally bothered to introduced an actually useful change, a new WYSIWYG BBcode editing interface similar to Anime-Planet's (thought I'd mention it since iirc we had talked about more comfortable editing interfaces before). For the moment it only appears on the forum posts and PMs, but they said they'll add it to the comments section as well 'soon' (when that will be remains to be seen ofc though). So at least you might be able to more easily style the text after pasting it from Nimbus or something. Autosaving/drafts-saving and dark mode still isn't on the horizon however, but even this is something I guess.
Oh and BTW, sorry for taking such a long time to reply, I'm in the last year of highschool now and probably the busiest I've ever gotten, and (don't know if I mentioned this before) since a reply usually takes like...10+ for me to make, since I'm kinda socially anxious with people, I'm not sure I'd be consistent with replying in the future as well, so apologies about that.
It's all right. As I said above, I did think you were probably busy. And you can take as long as you want with replies, no problem, as indeed along all those other irl concerns, there's also the matter of deciding what to say, phrasing your reply e.t.c which does indeed take a while.
Belated Merry Christmas btw :)
Thanks for the Xmas wishes. :-)
Btw it occurred to me, we're closer to New Year rn, though it might probably be a tad too early to wish Happy New Year from now. (Stay tuned for the actual New Year's wishes tommorow night then I guess :-) ) Hope you'll have an enjoyable New Year's Eve with all your loved ones then.
Good! I've finished community college and will be going to university in a couple of weeks; I'll even be living on campus!
Beyond that, not much has been going on. However, I sadly lost my job (sort of) in August. Basically, I was suspended for getting drinks from the soda fountain (mainly frozen lemonade) without paying for them (there were other small things, but this was the big one). Per advice from my parents, I resigned that evening to avoid being fired. Sure enough, I got a call a couple days later saying I *was* fired (until I told them I'd resigned via email). Anywho, I've applied for a couple jobs since then, but nothing has come up. Dw, though, I should be able to find something :)
Happy birthday! :-)
I hope both you and your family are doing well, and wish that this new year of your life goes well for you.
(Also, here, have an image of Detective Conan holding a bday cake I guess :P)
apologies for the rude delay in my reply; some tragic shit happened in the family and it's been a new type of hectic these past few weeks. Was in the middle of writing a reply about 3 weeks ago but the electricity went out and everything got deleted so that was really upsetting, apologies again.
No need to apologise; hope everything is all right now and that whatever happened didn't affect you too heavily.
And losing what you were writing due to a powercut must've been really frustrating; it's been a while since a power outage in particular affected stuff I was writing (using laptops helps with that too, since the laptop battery gives a bit of a safety net of at least half an hour whenever this happens - which thankfully isn't too often), but other factors (like user error and program crashes) can also cause this, so I know all too well how it feels.
What might help in case something like this happens again is to write your stuff in general (and specifically MAL replies in this case) in programs where you can save your progress often, like for example Notepad or Word (I personally prefer Notepad for this case, as I can write the BBcode without the program judging my spelling or anything, but Word has this feature where it can restore the document in case the program closes suddenly due to e.g. a powercut, so that can be useful in cases when powercuts are frequent), and copy what you wrote in the MAL text field after you're done.
(Personally I started doing this so I could write my replies in an interface more comfortable than the MAL text field as well as be able to take breaks between parts of a long reply, that is write part of the reply at one time, do something else and continue later, which really helps with not having to write the reply in one go and getting tired because of that, but it can also help preserve the stuff written in case anything happens as I said above.)
I understand the heavy temptation when you usually spend your money on physical stuff like food or a room decoration maybe, but have to convince yourself that "aye, maybe spend like 5 euros on this thing you can get for free in two clicks". And factors like art being very subjective so you can spend money on a game or manga that you end up disliking
Yeah, this is the gist of it basically. And in regards to enjoyment of stuff being subjective, that's why I find previews (or demos in the case of games) pretty useful in helping with judging whether to buy something, especially when its cost is higher, but sometimes (in the case of manga in particular, as with games, even when there aren't demos, there are playthroughs that one can watch while trying to think if the sort of gameplay shown would be something they'd be able to pull off) the like 5 pages of preview might not be enough to judge, so I often use pirate sites for a more extended preview, with the result that I often however get carried away and read the entirety of what's on there which means I don't need to buy the manga volume anymore. In at least a couple cases though, I first read what was on the pirate site - which was what had been released thus far -, and when the next volume came out, I bought it as the series was kinda niche so it wasn't pirated even after 5 days or so passed, and I was kind of impatient so I didn't feel like waiting any further in case it got pirated, since there was also the possibility nobody would do it anytime soon (so pirating could also lead to a legal purchase in this roundabout way, though that's rather rare).
Of course though, when something is low in price (below 3 euros in the case of games for example) I often forego trying a demo or watching a playthrough and just buy the game (in that way saving the time I would've used doing these things; time is money as they say), as even if I don't like it and end up dropping it like half an hour in, at least that wasn't such a big loss moneywise.
(I don't recall if I said it before, but I tend to avoid pirating games, as them being essentially software means there's a real risk the pirated copies might have viruses in them, and most games are discounted a lot anyways, so monetary considerations are less of a factor most of the time as oftentimes waiting long enough means the game will go to a price I'm willing to pay eventually; of course there are also games that seldom go down in price, like japanese games, but I have enough of a backlog so I don't bother with pirating these as well most of the time, especially since worse case scenario is I might resign myself to watching a playthrough instead when I'll want to experience them)
And I'm glad you didn't lose any of the CDs on the bus, you probably didn't have the luxury to buy any CD you wanted so I bet the ones you had were decently valuable to you.
Iirc most of the cds I listened to were my mother's, so most tracks of those weren't exactly to my taste: my "favorites" of those (i.e. the ones I preferred in comparison to others) were an album of the Moody Blues and an album of the Police - so yeah, good thing I didn't lose them on the bus. The only cd album I owned back then was a compilation album of the top UK songs or something, which I decided I wanted to buy because the cd section of the department store had this rack where the cd played and you could sample it with headphones, but it costed around 15 or 17 euros iirc so my mother was pretty reticent about buying it and I had to practically beg her; that album had 2 cds, but I lost one of them in the meanwhile (not on the bus though, it's probably somewhere around the house), but at any rate I still have the jewel case with the track listing, so it's a pity that cd got lost, but given how I can now find most of these tracks online, it's not too big of a loss overall.
I'd imagine if someone got a different product than what they had expected in a thrift shop or so, they'd go argue with the seller actually, but I'm not sure if it's just an accepted risk to buy from thrift shops there, maybe it's just the known meta and I'm the weird one, lol.
Well, the cd cost like 1 euro (so it also wasn't such a big deal moneywise), so I guess it felt easier to just let it slide in that one case, as making a ruckus would just make me seem like an asshole and this was a one-off incident too (hasn't happened before or since), so it wouldn't be worth it, especially if it meant risking to get on the store keeper's bad side.
Oh, and side note. If shmups aren't your forte due to the quick reaction time and general hectic nature, then I wouldn't recommend Papers, please tbh. It's a game where you have to cross examine multiple documents and their information, date, seal, etc. looking for a discrepancy while being timed, so it gets really stressful and restless, but if you're cool with that and wanna give it a try, then hell yeah. It's a great game imo :)
Yeah, I'm probably going to try it at some point, but since I got it from a bundle ages ago (so the related spending was both a low amount and long enough ago) if it turns out I can't handle the gameplay it won't be such a big deal, given how I can also always watch a playthrough or something in that case.
It seems you're quite the veteran when it comes to Nintendo. I've always wanted to join the Nintendo gang since a lot of their games interest me a lot but I've never had a console and it hasn't been long since I've discovered emulation so I kinda missed out on them but it's cool, looking forward to play Mario Galaxy, lol.
I'm not really that "affiliated" to Nintendo tbh, I just played games that happened to be released on Nintendo consoles (which, considering how Nintendo had a much bigger part in the console market back in the 80s-90s, I didn't have to go all that much out of my way to do).
In terms of consoles, I got a Wii (which I've stashed somewhere since it turned out most of its lineup is either Nintendo titles or shovelware, without much in between) - but, despite that, I haven't played Super Mario Galaxy as I didn't happen to buy it - , a DSi and a PSP (gotten for a low price when a local electronics store was clearing up old stock), a 2DS (again gotten for a low price when a new electronics store opened and had discounts on the occasion of it opening), and a PS4 (gotten for my birthday around 3 years ago).
I don't really use the portable consoles anymore, especially as it's hard to find games for them nowadays (though I did use the PSP for slightly more time as I used a hack so that I'd be able to put emulators and pirated PSP games on it), and I use the PS4 more rarely than I thought I would as well, as most games sold in physical format (it's a bit of a pain to try and download digital games, and especially those with a bigger file size) are action games (pure action or action-RPGs) and, the way the controls are in general, most other genres aren't that comfortable to play on it, so in practice I only use it when I'm in the mood to play games of these genres. (Now that I listed them, it seems like indeed I have more Nintendo consoles than non-Nintendo ones, but that's only due to the portable devices)
But at any rate, I still mainly use the pc when it comes to gaming, as the pc as a platform has a wider variety of games available for it, as well as a wider selection of games in general since the game selection isn't limited to a specific span of time like what happens with the console generations (so I don't think you've missed out on much by not having a console; heck, I wanted a "proper" gaming console even since I got the Wii and saw it wasn't that, and now that I got it after wanting it for so long, it just sits there most of the time...).
Once again, glad you liked Cinderella Phenomenon. :-)
For the record, when I referred to an "unaccounted for" witch, I meant Lucette's mother, as iirc it wasn't mentioned at first that she was not only a witch, but their former head as well (I don't really recall if it was mentioned in any route other than Waltz's too; maybe it was, but the fact that she didn't awake from her slumber in those routes meant that this plot point didn't have much impact even if/when it was mentioned in other routes).
And yeah, if you don't feel like playing the other routes, you don't really need to, since Waltz's route was the one with the true end; you could always watch/skim through these routes from a playthrough on youtube or something after all.
I'm a bit surprised you didn't like Our Life tbh, since it seemed like the type of slice-of-life thing you might've enjoyed (given how you said you wanted to feel like you were chatting with someone), but in retrospect it did have a lot of "flavor" choices whose impact isn't all that evident or immediate (I believe these probably added up over time to affect the sort of relationship between the MC and Cove), and, now that you said it, I do recall there were times when I had to pick an answer that was the "least worse" so to speak, in that it wasn't what I myself would've ideally picked but was the best option available. I guess these things didn't affect my ejoyment too much because I had played enough other VNs before this, so I had already experienced having choices that didn't exactly match what I would've said if there was a freeform text insertion system or something, as well as VNs with flavor choices. So it's no big deal if it wasn't to your taste, you can drop it no problem.
All in all this is probably why, as I already said, I tend to prefer plot-focused VNs - that is perhaps precisely because most of the choices offered in these VNs are plot related, and are thus more limited, in the sense that they are about "do something or something else" instead of "say something one way or another", so satisfying the player's personal communication style isn't something these VNs tackle, and as such it's one less point to succeed or fail at script-wise.
In conclusion, I guess perhaps slice-of-life works better when it's in a non-interactive format, like an anime or perhaps a choiceless/kinetic VN after all.
Again again, sorry for the exceedingly late reply, I took some time to play Cinderella Phenomenon and it was just quite the shitty days recently, sorry again)
Once again, no need to apologise. I had thought playing Cinderella Phenomenon would take quite a bit of time, since when I myself played it, it iirc took me around a week (or a bit more) to play all the routes and this playing it like 8 hours a day (it was summertime), so I figured it would probably take you more than that if there was other stuff in your life as well, so I expected your reply to "delay" a bit, so no problem.
I'm sorry to hear that these last few days didn't go that well for you btw: I hope that at least you had things like your hobbies to help you cope through all that, and that things will go better from now on.
But I think the main thing where my points or actions revolve is that aside from tolerating ads, I don't have any way to really support a creator that I think deserves support; being a 16 year old Egyptian boy who doesn't have a job [...] if I can't do that, I don't really wanna feel like I'm taking in all the content without giving something back to creators I really respect [...] it just feels like the fairer thing to do on my side, like a matter of principle a bit, lol.
Yeah, I really get that, and did think that this was probably the case, since as a teen without any disposable income of my own as well I wanted to minimize the expenses I incurred on my parents so I tried to avoid spending on any non-essential stuff, which included stuff like purchases I could avoid or subscriptions for stuff only I was interested in, and a result - especially after getting an internet connection at home - I ended up pirating stuff a lot (unlike you though, I was a rather more unscrupulous person, as I didn't think about supporting anyone). Even nowadays that I have some disposable income of my own, and that along with gaining that financial independence I started having considerations about supporting stuff I like using or the content of which I enjoy, I still have this mentality of hesitating when it comes to non-essential subscriptions/purchases, so I still pirate stuff quite a bit - old habits die hard I guess...
So I think you thinking about supporting creators even at this phase is quite admirable of you, especially considering a lot of other people (like past me, but also many others e.g. many of those who reply in favor of piracy when such a discussion is brought up in the forums here) are unscrupulous like that and don't consider this stuff at all or use excuses (like bad localisations or whatever in the case of anime) to avoid thinking about it.
Don't know if the previous paragraph was phrased a bit too weirdly or aggressively since I didn't really think about the phrasing as I was writing it and was just going a bit from the heart, since I kinda feel some guilt or accountability for stuff like piracy or lack of monetary feedback from me...
I thought the way you phrased it was fine, and yeah, as I said above, you being principled like that is rather praiseworthy as it's rather easy to not feel guilty since in many occasions pirating stuff is as easy as visiting a certain website (which can happen as easily as clicking on a search result of the title, especially when it comes to manga/webtoons) and clicking on the title you want to watch/read, so that the brain simply doesn't have enough time to make the thought process that would bring forth this sort of guilt.
Folks pirate it so they don't get ads I think in the middle of listening to music, since the premium doesn't have that iirc. It's really cool btw to know that listening to stuff on mp3 players or downloading songs from cds was the normal thing and that you kinda miss these days a bit, I guess most people who're born in the 90s would reminisce about stuff like that but it's always endearing to see, that the old technology stuff is still more comfortable and convenient for you. Maybe you can cheap ones in a garage sale or something so you don't bet too much money that the player isn't in good condition
I wonder then if using an adblocker on just Spotify in particular would do the same thing or not, but I can't check since I don't use it. As for the method used to 'pirate', I'd imagine it's probably something like constantly signing up for trials of the premium tier with different emails or something - this is at least what people who "pirate" Netflix over here do afaik, but it sounds kind of inconvenient as a method.
Also not all older stuff was more convenient. At the risk of continuing to sound 'old', I'll just say I also had a portable cd player (won it from a Christmas school raffle iirc) prior to getting my mp3 player, and once when I went to an elementary school field trip I had filled my bag with cds, and when I wanted to listen to something from another cd, I had to stop the current cd, switch out cds, start the new cd and go to the track that I wanted to listen to with the next track button; it was already kind of inconvenient when I used it at home, and attempting to use it in a moving bus made it even more so - at least I thankfully didn't lose any cds. So I was pretty glad when my parents got me an mp3 player for Christmas 1-2 years later, since I thought "Yay, I can now listen to stuff from lots of cds all in one place! :D".
Garage sales aren't really a thing around here, though thrift stores are, but I usually don't check the electronics section there, as on one hand there is indeed the risk of stuff there not working properly (the people working there offer to demonstrate that something at least turns on, but not much further than that) and nowadays there's also the added risk of said objects being contaminated with disease (I'd presume the people of the thrift store might at least clean up a bit a newly received item, but I've no idea whether it's thorough enough to eliminate all disease particles, plus other customers with the disease might've touched it in the meanwhile). What I do buy from thrift stores are movie dvds and music cds, since they're usually so cheap (1-2 euros at most) so that even if they aren't working (they are sealed with tape, so I can't know whether they work before buying them) or are a completely unrelated cd (has happened once with something that at first sight seemed to be a pirated copy of a film, but turned out to be a video recording of a cultural event instead) it's not a big deal, plus it's easier to clean these up due to them not having as many different surfaces that could've been contaminated.
It's not for a particular reason, I just didn't find many that grabbed my attention. I played retro-styled games before, like I guess Mother 3 or Undertale or something, but very little like...pre 2000 games you'd find in a Gameboy or SNES that scream Retro (a few exceptions of course like Shining Force or Virtua Cop 2). And it's the same thing with point and click games, or at least what one would imagine when thinking of a point-and-click game, like I played Papers Please which you can get through only using the mouse, but keyboard shortcuts are very encouraged, I guess it's not really as "calm" as some would imagine point-and-click games to be and like...extremely overwhelming and stressful but I digress. I think I'm fine with the complications of setting up emulators and getting rom files, I'd certainly need a bit of knowhow on things but I can handle the tedious rummaging if the game is drawing enough. And I'm glad I could experience their stories indeed in their contemporary remakes, there are many people who have a very soft and loving spot for certain retro games and that the company cares enough to remake them is a really nice thing to know :)
Ah, I see. Well, when it comes to finding stuff, there's also the aspect of what you happen upon, so you might also have been unlucky enough to not happen upon anything you'd like well enough.
I haven't played the games you mentioned actually: I haven't played Mother 3 (looked it up and seems the english translation is unofficial btw), but I played Earthbound a bit though it didn't draw me in enough to continue with it. I also haven't played Undertale - but did watch a playthrough of it - as I'm bad with shmups and stuff (I might've mentioned that earlier too, not sure) and Undertale has this thing where you have to at least avoid these bullets and stuff and I thought I'd be bad at this avoiding part. And I haven't played Shining Force or Virtua Cop 2 either iirc; Shining Force seems interesting btw - I'll keep it in mind to play later. I also own Papers Please (got it from a bundle or something) but haven't played it yet.
In case you wonder what I played instead in terms of retro games, iirc on the Nintendo side I've played various Mario installments, Duck Hunt, most Donkey Kong installments, a bit of Legend of Mana and Chrono Trigger e.t.c., and on the Sega side a bit of Sonic (I wasn't very good with its gameplay though, so didn't get very far), Alex Kidd games (who was also the mascot of Sega prior to Sonic, and is my pfp rn btw), a bit of Phantasy Star (though I played more a bunch of niche text adventure games set in that setting) e.t.c. In terms of pc games, I've also played various DOS games, mainly adventure games - point-n-clicks but also text adventures - , but also other genres as well, as well as various early-mid 2000s games (I did play a few of those when they were still new, but played most of them later).
In regards to emulators, it indeed seems like you've managed so far just fine (given how Shining Force is a Mega Drive/Genesis game, and Virtua Cop 2 is an arcade game apparently), but in case you need help with other console systems, there is this site that helped me somewhat when it came to the emulation of systems I didn't have as much familiarity with (and yes, that site is literally called Fantasy Anime, and it indeed has anime as well).
As for the remakes, personally I'd think that it's not so much that the companies care, but rather that they see that there's a demand for this kind of stuff, and so make these remakes (especially in those releases where they don't add as many improvements) in order to make money (you might say though that they wouldn't have released them if they didn't care at all, especially when it comes to a few more obscure titles that still got remade, so in some cases at least it's probably a combination of the 2 instead).
I think it's just because I've never seen it pop around anywhere in the (admittedly very western) environment I get my music from, which I think makes sense since according to its wikipedia page, it was a particular success in countries like Greece, France, and Italy reaching the top of the chart. [...] And honestly I almost never listen to the Egyptian radio or any radio actually but I doubt Egyptian radio would be the type to broadcast foreign songs just due to tradition.
Ah, so it was more of a local hit apparently - that makes sense.
I also almost never listen to the radio on my own accord, though I used to do so a lot more before I got an internet connection, since I could discover new songs that way. Nowadays I only listen to the radio when my parents turn it on during lunchtime to listen to the news and the preceding and following noon/early afternoon shows, which talk about both stuff covered on the news, and other topics that are more like empty talk to pass the time (at least imo).
Glad to hear you like this game.
When it comes to the routes, Fritz's and Waltz's are precisely the 2 routes that are locked at the start until 2 of the 3 initial routes are completed (i.e. you get the good end for them), because they are the ones that reveal the most details about what led to the current situation, why certain stuff happens e.t.c - Waltz's route in particular is what I'd consider the closest to a "True" route (vn lingo for the route that clears up the underlying mysteries the most), since it reveals quite a few details that bring a new understanding about certain aspects of the plot. (I was also looking forward to Waltz's route when I first played the game btw)
So you'll have to play at least one more route before heading for Waltz (I would recommend saving Waltz's route for last tbh since it reveals so much stuff, but if you're looking forward to it that much, you could theoretically play it after it's unlocked and then play the remaining routes with the new understanding about things gained from said route). Personally I'd recommend going for the Karma route next, since he also improves during his route (and he actually isn't as much of a douche as it might seem at first iirc), and his dynamic with Lucette is rather good too imo (and it helps that Lucette, as you might've seen, is the kind of person that doesn't take crap from anyone).
As for Rumpel and his route, iirc his personality during the Common route (the part before the route choice screen) can probably be ascribed to his amnesia since
his original personality turns out to be a different one; I'll just say he's a good person, perhaps a tad too good for his own sake
Btw at least imo I didn't really feel as much of a dynamic between him and Lucette in comparison to other routes, and he also has a character trait surfacing later in his route that I personally found kind of annoying (but you might like it instead, since it's the kind of thing that can be perceived differently by different people).
In regards to Mythros being a witch, yeah he is the kind of character that is suspicious right from the start (considering even Lucette as she was at the start thought so as well), but I'll just say that
Mythros isn't the only witch that is unaccounted for in the beginning
And yeah, I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy Waltz's route a lot, since I did so as well.
In particular, my own route preference order is from most to least preferred Waltz > Karma > Rod (I liked how Lucette bonded with her stepfamily and discovered they aren't bad as she had thought after all during this route, but didn't like how Rod couldn't go ahead with confessing his feelings to the toy store owner and stupidly put that curse on himself) > Fritz (I didn't like his route's gimmick very much, but his dynamic with Lucette is good iirc) > Rumpel (yeah, this is dead last for me; I didn't dislike it or anything, I just didn't like it as much as the rest; hopefully you'll like it more).
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Well, since I'm also using Anime-Planet, and I like the interface of that site very much, my perceptions on what I'd like in an anime website are colored by the features already present there. On the other hand however, MAL turning into a clone of A-P interface-wise wouldn't do all that good, since then I'd have almost no reason to use it in addition to A-P other than the social stuff.
So I guess, assuming minimal changes are made, I'd appreciate having a bigger default font size, as while zooming in is a way of dealing with that problem, sometimes I forget to do so and end up reading those letters made for ants, which isn't good for my eyesight. A lot of people are clamoring for dark mode too btw, but I wouldn't strictly require that, as, while I do use dark mode on A-P, MAL's light mode isn't as bright as A-P's to my experience so it suits me just fine.
Something that would really benefit everyone else using this site that isn't aware of the existence of A-P and its features though would be to further develop the genres and themes thingy (the also recently added - last year iirc - equivalent to A-P's 'tags') so that people can look up using combinations of genres and themes, or excluding genres/themes e.t.c (for example search for Detective and include or exclude Sci-Fi e.t.c); this would help people to find stuff more catered to what they'd want to see instead of just seeing what has a high average score or is the latest seasonal fad or whatever. The way I see it, the fact that more obscure anime is harder to find here in comparison to A-P might even play a non-negligible part to the mentality seen a lot on this site of obsessing over seasonals and high scores and dismissing older or lower scored shows. So yeah, I'd appreciate a better implementation of the genres/themes in the search, since as it stands, it's prejudiced towards the popular and new shows in expense of everything else. Not that this feature being implemented will change these mentalities overnight, but it could perhaps at least help some people find stuff they wouldn't have otherwise.
Thank you for the picture. (Also you remembered about me liking Ultraman (as I think we talked about that before iirc), that was kind on your part - I wouldn't think you'd recall something like that after all those months after all (so perhaps it's also kinda impressive in a way too))
It's pretty cute indeed, and though the Ultramen in this picture are from series I haven't watched as of yet, I can thankfully recognize most of them due to having frequented the r/Ultraman subreddit enough to get acquainted with them too.
(Btw, I'm in a hiatus from anime - and watching series or movies in general - atm, but I'm thinking when I leave that hiatus to watch an Ultraman series again, since it's been a while since I last saw one.)
(Source)
I'm doing pretty good too, thanks for asking. Are you planning on going to college or whatever after you finish highschool?
(Thanks. And yeah, the artist did a great job! Much better than my original reference, LOL.)
I hope you're having happy holidays, if you celebrate anything around this time of year, too!
Oof, yeah, school sucks. Sorry to hear that, but I'm glad you're managing, at-least. And thanks! I think the artist did a very great job with it! :)
I've been doing alright, thanks for asking! Suppose the biggest news I have is either that I left Honeyfeed and moved to Scribble Hub, or that I started reading the JoJo manga, lol
It's been a while indeed. I was a little bit worried tbh, as when someone doesn't login for a while, sure it might be because they have other things to do irl, but there's also the thing that I can't know if anything might have happened irl (knock wood), so that when I happen upon accounts that haven't logged in for a while (especially if it's been years) I think that it might be that they moved on from anime, but there's also the chance they could have, y'know, passed away (again knock wood). And this ties into a wider consideration that nobody on the internet knows you well enough to know if something happened to you, but I guess this goes hand-in-hand with the nature of most online communications that don't take place in privacy-invading social networks so oh well. (So tl;dr good thing you're okay)
Good thing you found something that automatically saves your progress. I looked at its website and Nimbus does seems a little bit overkill to me (since as you said it has a much wider purpose than autosaving), but since it works for you, all's good. (when it comes to stuff not imposed to them by work/school, people should use the tools/software they are most comfortable using imo)
Btw, in other news, recently MAL finally bothered to introduced an actually useful change, a new WYSIWYG BBcode editing interface similar to Anime-Planet's (thought I'd mention it since iirc we had talked about more comfortable editing interfaces before). For the moment it only appears on the forum posts and PMs, but they said they'll add it to the comments section as well 'soon' (when that will be remains to be seen ofc though). So at least you might be able to more easily style the text after pasting it from Nimbus or something. Autosaving/drafts-saving and dark mode still isn't on the horizon however, but even this is something I guess.
It's all right. As I said above, I did think you were probably busy. And you can take as long as you want with replies, no problem, as indeed along all those other irl concerns, there's also the matter of deciding what to say, phrasing your reply e.t.c which does indeed take a while.
Thanks for the Xmas wishes. :-)
Btw it occurred to me, we're closer to New Year rn, though it might probably be a tad too early to wish Happy New Year from now. (Stay tuned for the actual New Year's wishes tommorow night then I guess :-) ) Hope you'll have an enjoyable New Year's Eve with all your loved ones then.
Beyond that, not much has been going on. However, I sadly lost my job (sort of) in August. Basically, I was suspended for getting drinks from the soda fountain (mainly frozen lemonade) without paying for them (there were other small things, but this was the big one). Per advice from my parents, I resigned that evening to avoid being fired. Sure enough, I got a call a couple days later saying I *was* fired (until I told them I'd resigned via email). Anywho, I've applied for a couple jobs since then, but nothing has come up. Dw, though, I should be able to find something :)
How have you been?
I hope both you and your family are doing well, and wish that this new year of your life goes well for you.
(Also, here, have an image of Detective Conan holding a bday cake I guess :P)
No need to apologise; hope everything is all right now and that whatever happened didn't affect you too heavily.
And losing what you were writing due to a powercut must've been really frustrating; it's been a while since a power outage in particular affected stuff I was writing (using laptops helps with that too, since the laptop battery gives a bit of a safety net of at least half an hour whenever this happens - which thankfully isn't too often), but other factors (like user error and program crashes) can also cause this, so I know all too well how it feels.
What might help in case something like this happens again is to write your stuff in general (and specifically MAL replies in this case) in programs where you can save your progress often, like for example Notepad or Word (I personally prefer Notepad for this case, as I can write the BBcode without the program judging my spelling or anything, but Word has this feature where it can restore the document in case the program closes suddenly due to e.g. a powercut, so that can be useful in cases when powercuts are frequent), and copy what you wrote in the MAL text field after you're done.
(Personally I started doing this so I could write my replies in an interface more comfortable than the MAL text field as well as be able to take breaks between parts of a long reply, that is write part of the reply at one time, do something else and continue later, which really helps with not having to write the reply in one go and getting tired because of that, but it can also help preserve the stuff written in case anything happens as I said above.)
Yeah, this is the gist of it basically. And in regards to enjoyment of stuff being subjective, that's why I find previews (or demos in the case of games) pretty useful in helping with judging whether to buy something, especially when its cost is higher, but sometimes (in the case of manga in particular, as with games, even when there aren't demos, there are playthroughs that one can watch while trying to think if the sort of gameplay shown would be something they'd be able to pull off) the like 5 pages of preview might not be enough to judge, so I often use pirate sites for a more extended preview, with the result that I often however get carried away and read the entirety of what's on there which means I don't need to buy the manga volume anymore. In at least a couple cases though, I first read what was on the pirate site - which was what had been released thus far -, and when the next volume came out, I bought it as the series was kinda niche so it wasn't pirated even after 5 days or so passed, and I was kind of impatient so I didn't feel like waiting any further in case it got pirated, since there was also the possibility nobody would do it anytime soon (so pirating could also lead to a legal purchase in this roundabout way, though that's rather rare).
Of course though, when something is low in price (below 3 euros in the case of games for example) I often forego trying a demo or watching a playthrough and just buy the game (in that way saving the time I would've used doing these things; time is money as they say), as even if I don't like it and end up dropping it like half an hour in, at least that wasn't such a big loss moneywise.
(I don't recall if I said it before, but I tend to avoid pirating games, as them being essentially software means there's a real risk the pirated copies might have viruses in them, and most games are discounted a lot anyways, so monetary considerations are less of a factor most of the time as oftentimes waiting long enough means the game will go to a price I'm willing to pay eventually; of course there are also games that seldom go down in price, like japanese games, but I have enough of a backlog so I don't bother with pirating these as well most of the time, especially since worse case scenario is I might resign myself to watching a playthrough instead when I'll want to experience them)
Well, the cd cost like 1 euro (so it also wasn't such a big deal moneywise), so I guess it felt easier to just let it slide in that one case, as making a ruckus would just make me seem like an asshole and this was a one-off incident too (hasn't happened before or since), so it wouldn't be worth it, especially if it meant risking to get on the store keeper's bad side.
In terms of consoles, I got a Wii (which I've stashed somewhere since it turned out most of its lineup is either Nintendo titles or shovelware, without much in between) - but, despite that, I haven't played Super Mario Galaxy as I didn't happen to buy it - , a DSi and a PSP (gotten for a low price when a local electronics store was clearing up old stock), a 2DS (again gotten for a low price when a new electronics store opened and had discounts on the occasion of it opening), and a PS4 (gotten for my birthday around 3 years ago).
I don't really use the portable consoles anymore, especially as it's hard to find games for them nowadays (though I did use the PSP for slightly more time as I used a hack so that I'd be able to put emulators and pirated PSP games on it), and I use the PS4 more rarely than I thought I would as well, as most games sold in physical format (it's a bit of a pain to try and download digital games, and especially those with a bigger file size) are action games (pure action or action-RPGs) and, the way the controls are in general, most other genres aren't that comfortable to play on it, so in practice I only use it when I'm in the mood to play games of these genres. (Now that I listed them, it seems like indeed I have more Nintendo consoles than non-Nintendo ones, but that's only due to the portable devices)
But at any rate, I still mainly use the pc when it comes to gaming, as the pc as a platform has a wider variety of games available for it, as well as a wider selection of games in general since the game selection isn't limited to a specific span of time like what happens with the console generations (so I don't think you've missed out on much by not having a console; heck, I wanted a "proper" gaming console even since I got the Wii and saw it wasn't that, and now that I got it after wanting it for so long, it just sits there most of the time...).
It was a great day :)
Once again, no need to apologise. I had thought playing Cinderella Phenomenon would take quite a bit of time, since when I myself played it, it iirc took me around a week (or a bit more) to play all the routes and this playing it like 8 hours a day (it was summertime), so I figured it would probably take you more than that if there was other stuff in your life as well, so I expected your reply to "delay" a bit, so no problem.
I'm sorry to hear that these last few days didn't go that well for you btw: I hope that at least you had things like your hobbies to help you cope through all that, and that things will go better from now on.
Yeah, I really get that, and did think that this was probably the case, since as a teen without any disposable income of my own as well I wanted to minimize the expenses I incurred on my parents so I tried to avoid spending on any non-essential stuff, which included stuff like purchases I could avoid or subscriptions for stuff only I was interested in, and a result - especially after getting an internet connection at home - I ended up pirating stuff a lot (unlike you though, I was a rather more unscrupulous person, as I didn't think about supporting anyone). Even nowadays that I have some disposable income of my own, and that along with gaining that financial independence I started having considerations about supporting stuff I like using or the content of which I enjoy, I still have this mentality of hesitating when it comes to non-essential subscriptions/purchases, so I still pirate stuff quite a bit - old habits die hard I guess...
So I think you thinking about supporting creators even at this phase is quite admirable of you, especially considering a lot of other people (like past me, but also many others e.g. many of those who reply in favor of piracy when such a discussion is brought up in the forums here) are unscrupulous like that and don't consider this stuff at all or use excuses (like bad localisations or whatever in the case of anime) to avoid thinking about it.
I thought the way you phrased it was fine, and yeah, as I said above, you being principled like that is rather praiseworthy as it's rather easy to not feel guilty since in many occasions pirating stuff is as easy as visiting a certain website (which can happen as easily as clicking on a search result of the title, especially when it comes to manga/webtoons) and clicking on the title you want to watch/read, so that the brain simply doesn't have enough time to make the thought process that would bring forth this sort of guilt.
I wonder then if using an adblocker on just Spotify in particular would do the same thing or not, but I can't check since I don't use it. As for the method used to 'pirate', I'd imagine it's probably something like constantly signing up for trials of the premium tier with different emails or something - this is at least what people who "pirate" Netflix over here do afaik, but it sounds kind of inconvenient as a method.
Also not all older stuff was more convenient. At the risk of continuing to sound 'old', I'll just say I also had a portable cd player (won it from a Christmas school raffle iirc) prior to getting my mp3 player, and once when I went to an elementary school field trip I had filled my bag with cds, and when I wanted to listen to something from another cd, I had to stop the current cd, switch out cds, start the new cd and go to the track that I wanted to listen to with the next track button; it was already kind of inconvenient when I used it at home, and attempting to use it in a moving bus made it even more so - at least I thankfully didn't lose any cds. So I was pretty glad when my parents got me an mp3 player for Christmas 1-2 years later, since I thought "Yay, I can now listen to stuff from lots of cds all in one place! :D".
Garage sales aren't really a thing around here, though thrift stores are, but I usually don't check the electronics section there, as on one hand there is indeed the risk of stuff there not working properly (the people working there offer to demonstrate that something at least turns on, but not much further than that) and nowadays there's also the added risk of said objects being contaminated with disease (I'd presume the people of the thrift store might at least clean up a bit a newly received item, but I've no idea whether it's thorough enough to eliminate all disease particles, plus other customers with the disease might've touched it in the meanwhile). What I do buy from thrift stores are movie dvds and music cds, since they're usually so cheap (1-2 euros at most) so that even if they aren't working (they are sealed with tape, so I can't know whether they work before buying them) or are a completely unrelated cd (has happened once with something that at first sight seemed to be a pirated copy of a film, but turned out to be a video recording of a cultural event instead) it's not a big deal, plus it's easier to clean these up due to them not having as many different surfaces that could've been contaminated.
Ah, I see. Well, when it comes to finding stuff, there's also the aspect of what you happen upon, so you might also have been unlucky enough to not happen upon anything you'd like well enough.
I haven't played the games you mentioned actually: I haven't played Mother 3 (looked it up and seems the english translation is unofficial btw), but I played Earthbound a bit though it didn't draw me in enough to continue with it. I also haven't played Undertale - but did watch a playthrough of it - as I'm bad with shmups and stuff (I might've mentioned that earlier too, not sure) and Undertale has this thing where you have to at least avoid these bullets and stuff and I thought I'd be bad at this avoiding part. And I haven't played Shining Force or Virtua Cop 2 either iirc; Shining Force seems interesting btw - I'll keep it in mind to play later. I also own Papers Please (got it from a bundle or something) but haven't played it yet.
In case you wonder what I played instead in terms of retro games, iirc on the Nintendo side I've played various Mario installments, Duck Hunt, most Donkey Kong installments, a bit of Legend of Mana and Chrono Trigger e.t.c., and on the Sega side a bit of Sonic (I wasn't very good with its gameplay though, so didn't get very far), Alex Kidd games (who was also the mascot of Sega prior to Sonic, and is my pfp rn btw), a bit of Phantasy Star (though I played more a bunch of niche text adventure games set in that setting) e.t.c. In terms of pc games, I've also played various DOS games, mainly adventure games - point-n-clicks but also text adventures - , but also other genres as well, as well as various early-mid 2000s games (I did play a few of those when they were still new, but played most of them later).
In regards to emulators, it indeed seems like you've managed so far just fine (given how Shining Force is a Mega Drive/Genesis game, and Virtua Cop 2 is an arcade game apparently), but in case you need help with other console systems, there is this site that helped me somewhat when it came to the emulation of systems I didn't have as much familiarity with (and yes, that site is literally called Fantasy Anime, and it indeed has anime as well).
As for the remakes, personally I'd think that it's not so much that the companies care, but rather that they see that there's a demand for this kind of stuff, and so make these remakes (especially in those releases where they don't add as many improvements) in order to make money (you might say though that they wouldn't have released them if they didn't care at all, especially when it comes to a few more obscure titles that still got remade, so in some cases at least it's probably a combination of the 2 instead).
I also almost never listen to the radio on my own accord, though I used to do so a lot more before I got an internet connection, since I could discover new songs that way. Nowadays I only listen to the radio when my parents turn it on during lunchtime to listen to the news and the preceding and following noon/early afternoon shows, which talk about both stuff covered on the news, and other topics that are more like empty talk to pass the time (at least imo).