I meant to do this a good few weeks ago, but I kept putting it off until finally realizing that the spring lineup is going to start in a few days. Procrastination, my mortal enemy, we meet again. So here we go, the WH staff’s little spring preview covering what shows we’ll be watching for the upcoming season.

Summaries are from AniDB and chartfag’s Spring 2009 list.

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Okay, so we established last week that I love platformers. It’s also a fact that I love Nethack, possibly the finest procedurally generated Roguelike dungeon crawler out there.  So when I learned through one of the BoingBoing.net of a game that was described as a combination of La-Mulana (which I wasn’t familiar with) and Nethack (which I was intimately familiar with), exactly half of my attention was earned. And when I downloaded Spelunky, and gave it a try, I immediately saw why this game was being called a contender for the best freeware title of the year…in January. The many reasons why (and a link to get it) after the jump.

This minigame sums up almost every deathtrap in Spelunky in one go.

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In this episode of Sora Kake, we are treated with a totally pointless baseball filler. Goodie. A mysterious masked QT-powered pitcher has been defeating professional baseball teams by striking out all the batters in the spirit of dojo yaburi. Former star player, Itsuki Kannagi, is called out of her forced retirement to deal with the menace.

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Lately it feels like I haven’t been watching as much anime as an anime blogger should, so I’m curious to see how much anime other fans watch, from the aniblogging community to casual/average fans. I don’t think I’ve fallen off the bandwagon, because my anime viewing always decreases as a semester drags on. Of course adding a good RPG to the equation doesn’t help either, as I’m more of a gamer at heart, and a good game will override watching anime. There are often times that I don’t watch anything for several days, so my estimate is probably 2-3 hours a week when busy (or when a good RPG gets most of my free time) and 6-7 when not busy. So my big question is how much anime do you guys watch?

This week’s You Might Like It concerns the Japanese freeware adventure game Doukutsu Monogatari, known in the West as Cave Story. It’s excellent for a lot of reasons, but I’ll get to those in a minute. First I have to set the stage. I might as well get the Quick-and-Dirty out of the way before the break.

Well, this isn't the worst place I've woken up with a hangover...

The Quick and Dirty
- Cave Story info, walkthrough, and downloads for the game and translation patch at
http://www.miraigamer.net/cavestory/
- A platformer in the vein of Metroid or Castlevania
- Freeware, made single-handedly by one-man team Studio Pixel
- Other draws: emotive and adorable characters, original weapons and power-up system, holds its own against classics in the platformer genre. It’ll also be coming to the Wii via Wiiware in the future!

Now, I’m going to get a bit…scholarly.

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I went into Toradora not expecting much; a typical slice-of-life school piece with a balanced load of drama and comedy with all the typical things that happen in school slice-of-lifes like sports days, culture festivals, school trips and plenty of love triangle misunderstandings focusing around a “delinquent” protagonist. In other words, I was expecting Toradora to be kind of like School Rumble.

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The scene looks hopeless in the illusionary world as the robot tries to pick the girl up from the snow. As her existence begins to fade, she can finally hear the robot’s voice and explains her purpose in this world before using the accumulated orbs of light to perform a miracle. As the illusionary world is destroyed, she says thanks and goodbye to her daddy for being there with her, finally revealing their identities to be Ushio and Tomoya respectively.

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I place the blame squarely on Yamcha.

I know when and where I was when it happened. I was sitting in the airport, waiting for my flight home. It was December 17, 2007. I was bored, and I had an internet connection, so to kill the time I decided to take a few minutes to try this game Yamcha had recommended. “Kingdom of Loathing”–what a nonsensical thing to name an online RPG, I thought. Well, I’d give it a spin anyway. I remember thinking as I logged on, hey, if I like this, I might get a couple of months’ worth of entertainment out of it!

Yeah, right.

One year to the day later I found myself sitting in the same airport, playing the same game, and a bit stunned at the year-long journey into a bizarre blend of pop-culture, gaming satire and surprisingly deep gameplay I’d undertaken–and am still undertaking!

The dreaded sabre-toothed lime, both feared enemy and loyal citrus-based familiar.

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I’ve noticed a recent trend that’s been affecting contemporary anime comedies, namely the emergence of the hardcore anime comedy. By hardcore comedy, I mean comedies that deliver barrage after barrage of industry related jokes, and are obviously intended for the hardcore otaku segment.

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Protip: if you’re part of a blogging team, try to post an update frequently enough that you don’t have to reset your password and reintroduce yourself every time you decide to get off your butt.

Well, that’s the position I find myself in. I’m Mr Bound, I blog here about every…six months? My own interests skew distinctly American. Sure, my favorite film’s Princess Mononoke, and the Nausicaa manga is among my favorite all-time reads, but in the past I’ve blogged about things like the American animated series Avatar and films like Cloverfield. And now, my plan is to get back on the blogowagon by starting a new feature, entitled You Might Like It. I’ll tackle games, comics, and even the odd TV show that you may have never heard of but might (in my estimation) enjoy.

That’s about it until this Friday, but expect me to encourage submissions from readers of this fine blog for things to review! My interests are broad, so don’t be shy!