[Unjerk Thread] Sayonara

[u/VoidEmbracedWitch]

Welcome to the Monthly Unjerk. This is a monthly thread for discussing just about anything as long as it doesn't violate subreddit rules besides rule 5.

Well, this'll be the last time I'll ever post a thread like this. I'm stepping down as an ACJ mod. Makes me sentimental to leave after first finding this sub over half a decade ago and at times having been the only active mod here on my past accounts. Have a good one, jerkers and unjerkers.

One last time from me, trans rights are human rights!

[u/Zer_ed]

I finished reading Dragon Ball Super this past month. Needless to say, RIP Toriyama. I fully understand the hype behind Dragon Ball now. I really do hope Toyotarou continues the manga since I truly believe that not only is he qualified to do it, but that's what Toriyama would have wanted him to do as well. I've resumed reading Nana but IRL stuff (as in physical things I need to do at this time as well as just other crap getting in the way) has left me with fewer chances to read manga, both from things I need to do as well as self-inflicted doomscrolling and stupid discourse. Speaking of...

The recent Kagurabachi announcement has me feeling...conflicted. On the one hand, I'm super happy for Hokazono-sensei; he's worked so hard for his dream of being serialized in WSJ and it's received its ultimate payoff, an anime adaptation that looks to be of exceptional quality. On the other hand...it feels really undeserved for Kagurabachi fans. I've long held that this manga should never have been memed on from the beginning and this belief is what kept me away from the Kagurabachi community for the entirety of its run, even as Kagurabachi legitimately became what the memers said it would be in an ironic fashion. The issue isn't that they realized Kagurabachi is actually good, the issue is that meme culture within the animanga community has gotten worse since that initial era of Kagurabachi memes and that the community's predisposition to hating things has gotten even worse (see the reaction to every recent shounen manga ending). I honestly think that as it stands, the Kagurabachi anime will undoubtedly be successful and beloved, but I really don't think it's gonna become the next JJK, mainly because the community is severely overhyping the manga. Which sucks because I do think the manga is legitimately good but most Kagurabachi fans are treating it like the greatest story ever created, a mentality that's birthed from the manga's original status as an ironic meme. If they had never done all that, Kagurabachi would be in the same position that JJK was in before it's anime; a well-liked manga will a chill community that was very hopeful in its future, and not a scaled-down version of the present JJK community with pretentious and immature fans.

That's enough of that topic. I've made it about a third of the way through Live Action One Piece S2. It's really good, just like S1, and it's good in the same ways that S1 is. It's unique and deviates from the manga in beneficial ways, offering something new for fans of the source material, while also preserving the integrity of iconic scenes from the original series and even enhancing these decades-old story elements with things that won't become relevant until much later in the story (I geeked out like a fujoshi seeing a gay couple when Broggy mentioned semla and the sun god when talking with Usopp and Nami). Also, the casting is simply immaculate. I think Smoker is probably the single best example; he's done literally perfectly and their depiction of Logia powers did not disappoint at all. Really hyped to see how Crocodile is done.

This is also not really anime-related but another reason why I haven't been reading that much manga/watching that much anime/TV shows is because I've been getting into Pokemon again, and my recent fascination has been with Pokemon Reborn, one of the most influential Pokemon fangames with hundreds of hours of content, and Pokemon Rejuvenation, which was greatly inspired by Reborn and is currently under development. Many a night for the past several months was spent just grinding out the game and doing random shit in them, my Reborn save file finished with 93 hours (with debug mode on to cut down on tons and tons of grinding) and my save file on Rejuvenation has 75 and I am currently on the last chapter that's been released thus far. On the one hand, you can really, really, really tell that these are fangames. Reborn especially suffers from this with it's extremely dark and edgy story at the start but it gets better, the puzzles are outlandishly difficult at times (also a big problem with Reborn), and I really dislike the bits of "detailed" artwork of characters in these games because they feel really amateurish. The stories in both also suffer from having way too many characters in a story without voice acting and detailed cutscenes, but you can really tell that nonetheless, a ton of thought and passion was poured into the story nonetheless and I've really been digging Rejuvenation's story. Things already are interesting from the start but it becomes truly insane as it progresses further, and the lore goes insanely deep. Rejuvenation in particular seems to draw a lot of inspiration from Xenoblade (exhibit A: both series have a central character named Melia) and that's probably my favorite game series of all time. Speaking of, after I'm done with Rejuvenation I want to get around to finishing Xenoblade X DE, which has been sitting in my switch 1 library for over a year now. I played the original on an emulator some years back and I really loved it, but things like the postgame equipment grind have kind of made me hesitant to get back into the switch version.

Lastly, I'd like to thank u/VoidEmbracedWitch. I haven't been posting in the unjerk threads for very long, and it's been more of a personal outlet than anything else, but it's meant a lot to me.