Where have I been and what have I been doing?

No, I'm not dead, I've just been doing other things. There's been a lot of stuff going on with me, school, and my family lately and that kind of means website maintenance has been set to the backburner for a long long time. I've been making a lot of new projects (and so far not finishing any of them lol) and playing a lot more video games recently and honestly I forget I have this website most of the time. Don't get me wrong I love working on the site but I've been doing a lot of other things. This website is most likely not going to be worked on for a long while or maybe not at all going forward. This is not the end of my website making shenanigans however! I have a very exciting announcement to make!

Me and my best friend are co-making a website together! She has always been interested in making one as well so I thought that it would be fun if we shared one. It's still a work in progress right now (she doesn't know how to code and I am very slow because I am new) but this is where all of my attention will be focused on from now on. Here's the link if you want to check it out! cupcakeshark.neocities.org

I don't have a lot to say other than I'm working hard to quickly build things on our new site so we can get to posting and sharing fun stuff with people. We are both very excited about this project so that's about all I am going to say for now (even though I made a website so I could share things I am not one for writing a bunch lol). So I guess until next time, Bye-nee~~~

WOOHOO!!!! NEW UPDATE IS FINALLY HERE!!!!! :D

After so long I finally have a nice enough looking home page!!! Yippee!!! So much has happened for me in the time between the last post and the update but I am just so happy to finally have something nice done for the website. Even though the current update is done doesn't mean I'm still not working on the site as a whole. I genuinely love my site so much and even though it's hard for me to write and code to maintain it, it still brings me genuine joy to work on it and makes me proud to call it my own website.

Thank you everyone for being patient with me while I work on the site! I appreciate everyone who has visited my site and everyone who continues to come back! If you would like to send me a message I now have a chat box open, feel free to write something if you want!

Until next time, Bye-nee~~~

I just figured out how to see my site traffic and like, where did you all come from?............

I am really unused to people looking at what I post and just seeing the number of people that click on my site makes me really anxious. It makes me feel kinda bad that I haven’t updated the site yet and so many people have looked at my kinda pathetic site. I’m also really sorry to anyone who checked back on the site to see if I’ve updated it yet. I jumped into making this site headfirst with absolutely NO knowledge of HTML coding and it was silly of me to think that I could make something good and quick without ever doing this before or even learning anything about it beforehand. It’s also silly of me to compare myself to other people on Neocities who have their own cool websites but I do it alot anyway and it kills my motivation to at least try and code something.

I am just really sorry that I got way too ahead of myself and promised things that I couldn’t get done in time. I am still working on the update and do intend to finish it, but this time I’m not gonna give a time on when I will finish it because I know I probably won’t make it. I just work way too infrequently to give a reasonable window of time where I could finish things. Thank you for 1,000 visitors though! Even though it makes me anxious that people are looking at the things I write, it still kind of motivates me ya’know? Like even though I know that the site is just kind of a blog right now it makes me want to make sure the update will look and function really nice for all of you. I want to make sure that people who bother to click on my website in the first place have a nice time while they are here.

Upcoming blog posts

I am planning on writing a review on WonHobby Spring 2023 soon. I know that WonHobby isn’t as big as Hobby Fes but there were a few announcements I thought were pretty neat. Also on the first of June be prepared for a larger than normal post. No it is not pride related, it’s just kind of coincidentally on the start of pride lol. Anyway I think that’s all for now Bye-nee~~~

Almost 3 months after it released, guess who FINALLY watched the new Super Mario Movie... This guy...

After the Nintendo Direct announcing that Chris Pratt was going to voice-act for Mario, and we all memed on it, I don't think anyone's expectations were really high. I went into the movie hoping it wouldn't be too “how do you do fellow kids” or too “this movie is for super hardcore Mario fans and it's only Mario references” kind of movie, and to my delight it wasn't. It was a fun and nicely paced movie that you didn't need to play every Mario game to understand. I watched the movie with my best buddy and he had only played the original mario game on the NES and he had a good time watching it as well. I enjoyed the accessibility of the movie and I did enjoy all of the references to past games, because they were either things in the background or really cool musical motifs from past games. My favorite was Luigi's ringtone being the gamecube start screen. I really enjoyed the pacing of the movie because you never stayed in one location for way too long and the transitions didn't drag on. Although I have to admit the beginning scenes with the dog could have absolutely been cut out. It just felt like generic Illumination stuff that had nothing to do with the actual story. I thought that Charlie Day as Luigi was actually a good voice cast and that, even though the cast is all just popular people, no one did a terrible job (even Chris). Also Seth Rogen Donkey Kong is still absolutely hilarious to me. I liked the Mario movie waayyy more than I thought I would and it was a fun and short movie which, as someone who doesn't like sitting down for long periods of time and doing one boring thing, is really good.

Figures I ordered came in!!!

So sometime early March I bought two lucky star scales off of Solaris japan (i had seamail shipping) and they came in yesterday! They were both preowned but they were in excellent condition. The first one was the Kusakabe Misao 1/12 scale School Uniform ver. By Wave. I got her at 5,500 yen while her average aftermarket price is around 4,400 yen. I don't really mind this though because it's about a $8 USD difference so it's not too bad (at time of writing), also she doesn't come up on yahoo auctions japan too often so I was happy to have an opportunity to get her at all. My second scale was the Takara Miyuki 1/8 scale by Clayz which I got for about 2600 yen. She comes up even more infrequently on yahoo japan auctions only having one auction in the last 180 days and she sold for 9,800 yen. I looked at other japanese sites that sell anime figures and the only other listings I could find of Miyuki were two listings on Amazon jp and they were both 33,000 yen. So all and all she was a real steal! Although her right leg was not bent back enough so I had to bend it back enough for it to fit on its base and, thank the gods above, the figure and the base did not break. Other than a small dent on the left side of Mikuki’s box there were no other condition issues with the figure and Miaso and no problems with her figure and box.

Update on the site

I know in last week's post I said that a big update would come that week and then just didn't….. Well I'm almost done with the update now! I'm about 85% done so it hypothetically should be done either tomorrow or the day after that. Anyway that's all I have to say for now, Bye-nee~~~

~ Quick spoiler free review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ~

First and foremost I want to say I had a lot of fun with this movie. I have enjoyed every other Guardians film up until this point and I was not disappointed with this one. I enjoyed the soundtrack but I think that the first movie has the best soundtrack out of all of them. Even though the third movie had Hatsune Miku in it the song itself was only played for about 15 seconds sooooooo….. Anyway even though Guardians of the Galaxy is a superhero movie I feel like there wasn't enough action in the movie, and this is coming from someone who hates action scenes. I feel most of the movie was just people talking and it kind of not going anywhere sometimes. It just didn’t have the same vibe as the first movie where these incompetent dorks are out fighting bad guys in space and almost dying but ultimately coming out on top. A Lot of that was sacrificed for more lore, which is fine I guess since it was the last movie in the series and all, but it just wasn’t as satisfying to me to watch as the first. There were a few issues with pacing where it would just drag on for too long and kind of go nowhere but I feel like that's common with most modern day Marvel movies. My favorite parts of the movie were of course the ones with Comet in them. I was really surprised that we didn’t get more Comet content because I feel like she would have made a great comedic side story C for the movie and maybe break up the pacing a bit. It just felt like the movie was taking itself too seriously sometimes and a comedic break every once in a while would have been nice. I am going to have to remove a few points from the movie because I drank 2 full cups of Blue Raspberry slushie during the movie and then proceeded to have a massive tummy ache, I do not make the rules I only follow them. But I will give the movie points because Chris Prat said the fuck word and somehow the movie is still rated PG-13. All and all I think the 3 movie is a nice little send off to the series and even for its faults it’s still pretty good.

~Site updates~

I am going to be changing the entire layout sometime this week. Hopefully with this change I’ll be able to make the website look and run cleaner. I want to be able to have different pages for my different hobbies and not just have everything be locked to the main page. I also want to have art of my actual website mascot on screen too lol. Drawing and making assets for a website takes a long time and sense for a long time I didn’t know what my website would look like I put off making any because I was unsure if the assets would carry over into the new layout. This being said, the update I'm planning will not be the final form of this website. It's just a stepping stone until I get my coding skills good enough to where I can make the layout I want (but that's gonna take a long time and I have so many things I want to post). Look forward to seeing my mascot soon! Bye-nee~~~

This has been an amazing year to be a Vocaloid fan!

First it was the announcement that Miku Expo would start taking place at physical locations again opposed to online. Next it was the amazing Miku figures at this year's Winter Wonder Festival. Then it was Teto getting herself a proper synth voicebank. And after all of that Hatsune Miku comes to the big screen in movie theaters all across America. Absolutely amazing. In all fairness she wasn’t physically on screen but a vocaloid song did play during the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 so I take it as a major victory. Am I way too excited about this? Probably. BUT it’s really cool to see a vocaloid song in like a full blown Marvel movie. This is proper Vocaloid history right here. I’m planning on seeing the movie this weekend so I’ll do an update and tell you my thoughts on the movie after I see it. I’ve been listening to the song nonstop since I learned about it this morning and its absolutely been stuck in there ever sense, there is no hope of getting it out. I am suffering from Miku madness right now.

Anyway that’s about all for now. See ya sometime next week! Bye-nee~ (≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆

Look who hasn’t posted in about a month ( 〃．．)

I’ve meant to do a lot more work on the site and post a lot more things but I haven't. Doesn't mean I don't have future plans, just means I've got distracted with something else (yet again). In the time I haven't been updating I've been reading some manga that I told myself I’d get around to reading, and eventually did, to my credit! I've been reading Yotsuba&! And Girl’s Last Tour. I started reading Girl’s Last Tour when I was on a trip to Colorado like 3 or 4 years ago and I was surprised when I had even remembered that I read half of the second volume (back when I didn’t know you had to read left to right and not right to left). I love the feeling of total isolation that the backgrounds give off and it's what I imagine when I imagine that I am the last one on earth. This is why I'm probably gonna only read the manga and not watch the anime, from the little I've seen of it (and I've only seen a little bit) it tries to go for a more realistic setting instead of a stylized one and it just completely takes me out of the story. I’ve only gotten to the third volume of Girl’s Last Tour and the fourth of Yotsuba&! But I’m sure I’ll finish them slowly but surely.

Also in the time that I’ve been away I've looked into getting a 3d printer! I want to start making my own figures of the characters I like and I think it would be a nice hobby for me to have since I already have experience painting stuff and lots of paints. I think it would also be nice to develop some new skills alongside the ones I already have. I really admire people who sculpt and paint their own figures with actual clay, and while I've TRIED sculpting with actual clay, let's just say for every attempt I got worse and worse and even more frustrated than the last……. But, with a 3d printer you can just sculpt it digitally and then physically print it out, which I think is a pretty cool solution to my clay skill issue. I'm still researching all the stuff I need to get started, and which brands are better, and all the prep learning you gotta do before you actually BUY the thing but I’m having fun doing it.

One more bit about what I've done in this month (and following up on my last post), I did in fact watch the Lucky Star OVA! I have no idea why I thought it would only take place in one setting but I did, and was wrong. Actually to be honest I have no idea where the scene with Hiiragi and Konata was supposed to take place. Was it a wrestling match thing, was it an actual convention? I have no idea, but I did enjoy the usual wacky shenanigans. Actually I felt like the silly-factor was turned up quite a bit for the OVA, which I really liked. It was like eating pop-rocks for the whole 40 minutes and I had a good time watching it. ALSO THEY TURNED KONATA INTO A TREE FROG AND HONESTLY I DIDN'T KNOW I NEEDED IT IN MY LIFE BUT NOW I DO. One more also, I watched the other series that the maker of Lucky Star did called “The Miyakawa's Family Hunger“ and that no one talks about. I can kind of see why since it just FEELS different from Lucky Star even though they have the same humor and art style. I mean I enjoyed it and all but I don't know really. I would recommend it to a big lucky star fan but not to anyone else. Nothing too ground breaking really.

(i'm finally gonna talk about stuff that's happening in the present now LOL)

I'm really excited tomorrow because me and one of my friends I haven't seen in a while are gonna hang out! Hehehe it's gonna be fun. On an unrelated note I'm probably gonna order some posters for my room now that it's all set up and everything. Even though the layout of the room looks good, my walls are seriously bare. Although I gotta clean before I do because it's a mess right now, it's always such a battle to keep it clean. :/

Anyway I hope to make more frequent updates from now on but no real promises. Bye-Nee~ ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ

I’m planning on watching the Lucky Star OVA today! I’m really looking forward to watching it because I’ve already watched all of the anime. I don’t know the plot of the OVA but I’m guessing it’s where the main 4 go to another convention like they did in episode 12 when they went to Comiket based off of the figures they did. Those figures are so cute I would love to get them some day! It reminds me of when I used to go to conventions with my friends and we’d all cosplay as our favorite characters, good times :). Anyway I’m planning on reading the manga soon (but I don’t really know if it will ACTUALLY be that soon) since I learned that the anime didn’t show everything in the manga and I also plan on reading the spinoffs. Speaking of spinoffs I am really excited for the new one they announced with Konnata! I know this is old news at this point but I am still really excited for it. Maybe we will get more news about a release date for it in the new issue of Mitaina this May. And maybe we’ll get news on possible figures or maybe even a possible continuation of the anime! Wishful thinking I know but I can still dream. Sidetracking a little bit I want to talk about Lucky Star’s audio dramas and how no one seems to talk about them ever. I know that selling audio dramas in the west probably won’t be as popular or profitable as it is in Japan and that's why no big distributing company bothers to translate and sell anything, but why don’t any of the fans seem to care? I love audio dramas! It’s like having an original episode of the anime playing and you can listen to it while doing other stuff so you don’t have to sit down and watch anything. I find it kinda bizarre that not a lot of fans bother with the audio drama yet still love the manga because when you really think about it, audio dramas are just the inverse of manga. Maybe it’s an accessibility issue because of the lack of translations, I have no idea. Anyway, I’m absolutely going to enjoy the OVA today! Bye-nee~

☆FIRST POST! FIRST POST!☆ :D ~Hello people! Can you hear me? I am a space dog!~ After almost giving up 5 separate times I finally have my home page set up! Of course I am going to keep updating stuff, but for right now I am just happy to have a homepage that isn’t just text. I’m sorry none of my site links work at the moment, I’m still working on filling everything in. ALSO thank you so much for REPTH for creating the layout :D! I will create a credits page alongside my other pages when I make them but for now here is a link to their neocities website :3 https://repth.neocities.org/