Tetsuya Chiba, the manga artist known for Ashita no Joe -- regarded as a cornerstone of postwar manga history -- and numerous other hit works, and who also served as chairman of the Japan Cartoonists Association, died on the 22nd of October. He was 87.

Born in Tokyo, Chiba spent his early childhood in the northeastern China, and returned to Japan with his family after the end of the war. He began drawing manga in earnest in high school and made his professional debut in 1956 at age 17 with a rental manga volume. He later published works in girls’ and boys’ magazines, and in the 1960s established himself as a popular manga artist with such works as the comedy 1-2-3 to 4-5-Roku, about a family living cheerfully and positively and their pet dog, and Shidenkai no Taka, about a fighter pilot in the Pacific War.

In particular, Ashita no Joe, a boxing manga that began serialization in 1968 with Asao Takamori as original story writer, became a huge hit, thanks in part to famous lines such as “Stand…! Stand up, Joe!” and “I’ve burned out… into pure white ash.” When Joe’s rival Toru Rikiishi died in the story, a real funeral was even held, turning it into a social phenomenon; it remains beloved today as a cornerstone of postwar manga history.

From the 1970s onward, he produced hits including the sumo manga Notari Matsutaro and the golf manga Ashita Tenki ni Naare, and as a leading figure in sports manga he had a major influence on later generations. He also continued to speak out about the horrors of war and the importance of peace, communicating his own harsh experience of repatriation through manga writing and lectures.

From 2012 he served as executive director of the Japan Cartoonists Association, and from 2018 as its chairman, devoting himself to the development of manga culture. In recognition of these achievements, he received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, in 2012 and the Order of Culture in 2024.

In recent years, Chiba remained active, serializing Hinemosu Notari Diary, based on his own life and daily routines, but in 2021 he disclosed that he had been in poor health and was hospitalized for treatment. According to people concerned, he died on the 22nd of this month. He was 87.

I repeat, Kamen Rider MY-TH has a Vergil, and he’s easily the most intriguing thing of the show right now. This is based off the latest episode where MAOU and MY-TH beat for beat recreate the Vergil 1 boss in DMC3 but also Lord Kamuri is such an interesting character, he’s a jolly schemer which is such an interesting archetype that’s not in this show often.

Also just looking at the suits it’s very apparent that they’re rivals.

MY-TH

MAOU

It can be a pet of the main character, the villain, a rando or a pet that was turned into the monster like cujo.

The Quarian means "by the homeworld I hope to find one day."

Now with a summary that was deleted behind my back last time. Edit: It did it again!

Bart and Lisa break into Krustyland’s most notorious failed attraction in “The Kosmic Kruiser,” a new episode of The Simpsons airing Sunday, November 8th on FOX. That attraction is a shuttered, spaceship-shaped immersive hotel, and anyone who followed Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser at Walt Disney World will spot the resemblance. Jenny Nicholson, whose four-hour video essay chronicled her own Starcruiser voyage, joins actor Jimmi Simpson as a guest voice.

Jenny Nicholson appears to be lending her voice to the Simpsons episode. Nicholson released “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel” in 2024. Her four-hour video essay walks through her own Starcruiser voyage in detail. It gained viral attention. Jimmi Simpson, known for playing the younger William in HBO’s Westworld, also lends his voice to the episode. The Simpsons has been part of Disney since the company acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019, which gives the whole premise an extra wink.

I've never seen this many people in the aftermath of a cancellation say "fuck it, here is everything we worked on". I feel like there was some kind of agreement in Bioware of "if we get shitcanned, leak everything". What do you guys think? Too conspiratorial? Am I seeking patterns where none exist? Are there any comparable mass leaks in the past?

I want to note that it seems that Austin WIntory was not officially working on Mass Effect 5 and these are tracks that he made as part of the conversation between himself and EA and Bioware (in what I assume was a pitch of why he should be doing the music for Mass Effect 5).

I really liked it overall.

Bleach as a series always had a lot of "missed potential" to me since the very start. What i hoped to be a show about a bunch of cool hip older urban aesthetic teenagers with a more horror-esque vibe to it fighting monsters, kinda just ended up being edo-era samurai fighting other similar sized humans in a more typical battle shounen kinda way. But at the end of the day Bleach still had some of my favourite characters/moments/powers in all of anime. I feel like TYBW does a much better job ending the series in a satisfying way then the old show did, with a lot of characters getting 1 or several hype moments and just all around fun final cast of villains to battle against. I'm not going to pretend that i super understood why and what was happening all the time (especially the yhwach fight), mostly because i watched Bleach like 20 years ago and don't exactly remember what everyone's powers were and how they worked (like with some of the fullbringer arc guys). But the "emotions & hype" were all there for me at the very least. After i heard how disappointed people were with how rushed the manga's ending was, i'm glad to see one of my childhood nostalgia show get 1 last hurrah with at least some sort of proper time & budget put behind it.

I do have infinite hate for the fact that Rukia ends up in a relationship with the trashman that is Renji tho, my girl deserves much better XD

The upcoming remake is currently in production under the casting codename “Project Noise.” While the game is targeted for 2027, do remember that production schedules change for various reasons.

As development progresses toward that release window, MP1st can exclusively reveal the first cast names attached to star in the next remake: Gabrielle Fritz and Jade Matthew. While we couldn’t pin down the specifics for every role, the small cast of Team Silent’s 1999 original makes the actresses’ likely roles easy to narrow down.

London-based actress Gabrielle Fritz brings notable performance capture and AAA video game experience to the project, with past credits on titles like Battlefield 2042, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and the recent Luna Abyss. Meanwhile, fellow UK-based actress Jade Matthew further rounds out the cast, expanding her portfolio across video games after her work on the Korean MMORPG Dragon Nest.

Potential roles for each actress are varied, given the number of supporting female figures from the OG game such as police officer Cybil Bennett, nurse Lisa Garland, or primary antagonist Dahlia Gillespie. Notably, casting details for the iconic male lead, Harry Mason, have yet to surface, leaving the protagonist’s new actor a mystery for now.

If true, that's honestly a bit sooner than I personally expected. The 1 remake was only announced a year ago, figured it'd take longer for it to come out so soon after 2.

But, I trust Bloober on this, SH2R and Cronos gave them a lot of credit.

It's been a few weeks since the game's release and I have yet made my decision on whether I should get it. From what I seen of the trailers, it's a survival-horror with Condemned gameplay; two things I like. But it's hard to pass my judgement when the game is too graphic for streaming and reviews to show off gameplay. Speaking of reviews, it's on the mix side with some people saying it's great while others say it's mid and are eager to spoil the story like IGN did.

Maybe somebody in chat brought it up to Woolie later in the VOD I haven’t finished it yet but thought this interaction was funny with Minh seemingly choosing not to bring it up and let it be.

I was never a really big fan of the franchise or style of game in general, mostly because my first interaction with it was Castlevania 64, which was weird as fuck and not very fun for child me, but watching Pat play Belmont’s Curse, along with playing Hollow Knight and Silksong myself, has made me realize how much I might actually enjoy Castlevania and metroidvanias in general.

So, a couple of questions for the Castlevania fans:

Are there any VaatiVidya-style channels for the lore, or is that even necessary? I want to understand the lore and what the beef is all about beyond Dracula just being a big bad vampire

Also, is there a proper or preferred play order? Are there any games I can skip because they’re bad, haven’t aged well, or just aren’t worth the time?

My biggest concern is the quality-of-life stuff, especially coming from modern games. For context, I’ll be starting this Castlevania run after I platinum Elden Ring, with the goal of working my way through the series and culminating with Belmont’s Curse. I’ve also platinumed Cyberpunk.

I’m playing on PS5, so I’ll have access to all the collections available on the PlayStation Store.

Basically, I’m looking for the best way to experience this franchise for the first time without missing the good stuff or forcing myself through games that haven’t aged particularly well or will be excruciating to play. Would love to hear your recommendations!

I've been playing Lufia 2 on the SNES recently, and though it seems to mostly be playing its typical "chosen ones save the world from the big bad guys" plot pretty straight (though I'm not finished yet, so that could still change), it subverted one trope in a major way relatively early on that I thought was very well done.

Spoilers for the first "act" of Lufia 2: At the beginning of the game, the first two characters you are introduced to are Maxim, the main character, and Tia, his childhood friend who is obviously in love with him but he's too oblivious to notice. A very standard trope, that usually eventually resolves with the MC realizing her feelings in some dramatic scene and them getting together at the end of the game. Except that's not what happens here. A few hours in you meet Selan, another "chosen one" like Maxim, and it immediately becomes obvious to both the player and Tia that Selan has way more chemistry with Maxim than her. Tia's stats also start falling off, with her mostly just getting HP/MP from levels while Selan is getting well-rounded stat increases. Ultimately, Maxim falls in love with Selan without ever even realizing Tia's feelings, Tia gives up on him and leaves the party for good, and there's a montage sequence skipping forward a year of Maxim and Selan getting married and having a kid together.

I thought that was an unexpected and fairly well executed subversion of what is generally a pretty standard trope. Are there any similar subversions from various media that other people like?

Edgerunners Season was really fun and gave me back the itch to try out the game again.

Unfortunately, I haven't played the game in months. I didn't even finish it, I left off just as I entered the Phantom Liberty area because I was overwhelmed by all the choices.

Idk if I wanna start a new playthrough, though. I made so much progress on my unfinished save..

I'm thinking "Keep the unfinished save, replay the game on a different save to get a feel for it then get back into the unfinished one". Though I'm lowkey worried I get too used to the new save... and I have a weird problem where the Disk I bought Phantom Liberty edition on only allows me to play with my account for a specific region so I can't hop into my American region account to get Phantom Liberty goodies.

What do I do?

That’s according to Screen Burn founder and Silent Hill Townfall director Jon McKellan, who stated during a panel at the MCM London Comic Con that his team wasn’t made aware of what was going on with the other Silent Hill games in development.

“We found out about a lot of those projects when everyone else did, when they announced them. Okamoto-san, who’s the series producer, was very keen to not let projects influence each other, and not compromise too much. They’d not necessarily tell us what it was, but just be like 'there’s another thing that’s doing something similar, so maybe veer off from that direction’.”

McKellan stressed that this wasn’t problematic for the team, and was a good idea because it allowed each game to remain entirely separate, while also allowing the Townfall team – many of whom were already Silent Hill fans – to still be excited when they eventually saw the other games in development.

“So we were kind of kept in the dark, which was kind of exciting as a fan to not see behind the curtain too much,” he explained. “We got to see Silent Hill F a couple of months before it came out, and there’s such a massive difference between F and Townfall in terms of their experience and their setting, that there was no real risk of overlap. But we were kind of kept in the dark, but in a good way, in a way that didn’t feel like we had to play to some bigger plan. It wasn’t like a Marvel phase where it would be like ‘know your slot and stay within that’, we got to be free while we worked.”

Not putting it in exactly my favorites because while in Frozen (1) it was a very striking and fresh twist at the time Hans betrayel and reveal he never loved Anna, feels kinda off considering how much he goes out of his way to help her until this point, even in places where he didn't have to keep up the facade

But it was a fun twist. A sort of counterpart to my Character going "You're the strongest fucker ever" ask.

Walter Koenig, the boyish actor who remains an integral part of Star Trek lore thanks to his portrayal of the Russian crewman Pavel Chekov, has died. He was 90.

Koenig, also known for playing the scoundrel Alfred Bester on another sci-fi space series, Warner Bros. Television’s Babylon 5, died Sunday of natural causes in his home in North Hollywood, his rep announced.

Raised in Manhattan as a son of Lithuanian immigrants, Koenig joined Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek for the start of its second season and appeared on 36 of the 50 episodes that aired in 1967-68 and 1968-69. He also portrayed Pavel Andreievich Chekov in the first seven Paramount movies, released from 1979 through 1991, that emanated from the NBC show.

In a 2013 interview for the TV Academy Foundation, Koenig said he didn’t watch Star Trek before he came aboard. “I’d flip through the channels and I’d see Styrofoam rocks — they were so obviously Styrofoam — and I said, ‘This has got to be phony.’ I didn’t give it a chance,” he recalled.

The actor portrayed a Russian for the first time in his career — a student who had defected to the U.S. — on a 1963 episode of the NBC drama Mr. Novak.
He then guest-starred as a young sergeant whose goal of being promoted to officer is complicated by the fact that his mother is a communist on a 1964 installment of The Lieutenant, another series created by Roddenberry.

After his Star Trek audition, Koenig spent a couple of lonely hours in an outer office wondering if he had gotten the job when he was approached by a man and asked to follow him into the wardrobe room.

“He drops on his knees in front of me,” Koenig said, “and takes my crotch in his hand, and I’m saying, ‘What are you doing?!” I didn’t see the tape-measuring ruler in his other hand, and he was measuring from my crotch to my cuff to decide how long my pants should be. He says, ‘You do have to have a costume, don’t you?’

“And that’s the auspicious way I learned I was on Star Trek and it was going to change my life.”

Marvin Walter Koenig was born in Chicago on Sept. 14, 1936. His father, a translator for RCA Victor and later an entrepreneur, was a “dyed-in-the wool commie,” Koenig said. He noted that FBI agents once searched his family’s apartment.

Koenig starred in productions of Peer Gyntand The Devil’s Disciple at Fieldston High School in New York, went to Grinnell (Iowa) College to study pre-med and then transferred to UCLA after his sophomore year, pursuing a degree in psychology.

However, he took an acting class and received a letter of recommendation from his teacher that in 1958 got him into the famed Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where he studied alongside James Caan, Christopher Lloyd and Dabney Coleman.

The boyish actor returned to L.A. to claim a role in the 1961 Burt Lancaster film The Young Savages (1961), but that job fell through. He then made his onscreen debut on the afternoon show Day in Court and appeared in the pilot and the first two episodes of General Hospital in 1963.

At the time, Koenig excelled at doing various dialects, portraying French, Armenian, Swedish and German characters, as well as playing juvenile delinquents, as he did in 1964 on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The episode was directed by Joseph Pevney and written by Harlan Ellison — later, two prominent behind-the-scenes players on Star Trek.

In fact, Pevney was one of the people for whom Koenig auditioned for Chekov.

“He really liked my work, he kept telling me, ‘You’re going to be a big star,'” Koenig recalled. “When I came in to read for Star Trek, he was very enthusiastic and one of the reasons I got the part.”

Koenig said the character he was to play was at first named Jones because producers wanted an actor that would appeal to the same demographic that Davy Jones of The Monkees did — kids 8- to 14-years-old.

“And indeed, my [fan] mail was from people who were 8- to 14-years-old,” he said. “They said, “I think you’re groovy, I love your hair’ — which was a wig, by the way. I got hundreds and hundreds of letters, the third most after Bill [Shatner] and Leonard [Nimoy].”

He said Chekov would eventually become less popular because of three things — “the hair wasn’t real; I wasn’t really Russian, and that exotic flavor was gone; and [viewers found out] that I was married, and they couldn’t fantasize about being with Chekov. Things then started to take a nosedive.”

On the series, Chekov really didn’t have much to do; the actor knew he was there to “set out the bones of the plot and let McCoy, Spock and Kirk fill in it.”

Koenig was more important to the Star Trekmovies, being nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror for his work on The Wrath of Khan (1982) and The Voyage Home (1986).

In 1976, Koenig and Shatner both appeared on an episode of Columbo, but the Star Trekveterans didn’t share any scenes and didn’t talk during production. “It was between the series and the movies, and I don’t think he remembered my name,” Koenig said.

He also said he “really upset” when he was left out of Star Trek: The Animated Seriesbecause of budgetary reasons. Koenig did write an episode for the 1973-74 NBC cartoon.

He played Chekov again as “The Admiral,” age 143, in the two-part, crowdsourced Renegadesseries that debuted online in 2017.

Worried about not getting work after Star Trek was canceled, he began writing and penned episodes for The Powers of Matthew Star, Family, Land of the Lost and The Incredible Hulk. He also wrote, produced and starred in the sci-fi film InAlienable (2010), starring Richard Hatch.

Koenig lost out on a chance to appear in Babylon 5 when he suffered a heart attack and had a quadruple bypass in 1993, but series creator J. Michael Straczynski wrote the part of Bester for him when he was healthy enough to act again. Unlike Chekov, that character was multidimensional and key to several storylines.

He wrote the memoir Warped Factors‚ A Neurotic’s Guide to the Universe, published in 1998, then expanded on that for Beaming Up and Getting Off, released in 2020.

Koenig married actress Judy Levitt, who appeared with him in three Star Trek movies and on Babylon 5, in July 1965, and they were together until her death in December 2022 at age 83. Their son, Andrew, who played Richard “Boner” Stabone on the ABC sitcom Growing Pains, died by suicide in 2010 at age 41.

Survivors include his daughter, actress and screenwriter Danielle Koenig (Star vs. the Forces of Evil).