yea we doin this again. thought i'd get a blog post out before the month ends.
contents:
ā¢ Yeah I Guess - anamanaguchi
ā¢ Perfect Pinterest Garden - ninajirachi & underscores remix
ā¢ Beauty Sleep - jane remover
ā¢ games i've been playing recently
ā¢ shows i've been watching recently
been listening to a lot of individual music lately and not any particular albums so you're getting mostly singles. at least until smile :D plus+ drops and fingers crossed it's something i wanna talk about.
there's also a lot of non-music talk in this one because i make the rules around these parts. enjoy the ramblings!
Yeah I Guess - anamanaguchi
you simply must watch this music video. i implore you to. the creativity and absolute whimsy that anamanaguchi is putting out with this one really makes me smile.
i love that this song about authenticity and the freedom in realizing that matches this absolutely crazy video- it's exemplifying that feeling you get as an artist of "oh wow, i can literally just make whatever i want, huh?" and having this as a result of that. there are no rules!!! not to mention the music is a banger. i've yet to find an anamanaguchi song i don't fuck with. their incredibly blown out guitar in this one gives it such a cool punk rock feel that i enjoy. who cares if it's messy? it's raw emotion! it's human.
hoping for an album! š¤
Perfect Pinterest Garden - ninajirachi & underscores remix
of course i'm looking forward to the next porter robinson remix album, i'm just a normal guy. so i'll reserve a lot of my opinions for when that comes out. this particular remix, however... hrm.
i think it's just alright. i know literally just made a ninajirachi blog post and glazed underscores in the last one but i think that this remix could have benefited from having just one guest artist instead of two. i think the divide between the two artists are incredibly evident in the song with them slicing it down the middle, working on their halves, then stitching it all back together. it doesn't feel very cohesive when i'm listening to a song then going "ah, here's the part the other artist worked on." i will say i enjoy underscores' verse of the song more, sorry!š¦
i do love the idea of making music with your friends though it's quite cute that they all worked on a song together :]
the music video is cute, it's 3D models of the three of them dancing in some geometric backgrounds on loop. they should commission me sometime ahah................ hah...
i'm looking forward to the jamie paige remix! as well as getting to listen to a bunch of artists i've not heard of yet. i just wish they didn't have someone so problematic on the list of guests... (cough dj not porter robinson cough)
Beauty Sleep - jane remover
really fun song! it's so jane remover, i don't even know how to describe it, but the beat and melody are so recognizably jane remover. though i will say the screamo edm turn at the latter half of the song was a fun surprise! i wish the breakdown wasn't so repetitive, i would have really wanted to bounce around the walls to it.
i thought that the lyrics were quite cute and almost romantic. i really don't have much to say about love songs these days, huh?
games i've been playing recently
not really music related but this is my blog and i can do whatever i want. you simply must hear of my escapades.
rift of the necrodancer (2025)
i bought this game on sale because i had eyed this game for the longest time and damn it i needed a new rhythm game. i remember playing the demo for this game about a year or so ago and i had so much fun. it's a falling notes game with a twist wherein the notes are monsters that have special properties and must be slain to the beat depending on their behaviors. once you get into the groove of it, it feels incredibly satisfying.
being able to play the full version now, i was surprised to find that it had a story mode. it's essentially a sequel of their previous game crypt of the necrodancer (2015) where the main character cadence is transported through a rift into a modern setting of their previous world. i had never played crypt simply because i never thought i'd be able to multitask both a rhythm game and a dungeon crawler at the same time, but you never know. maybe someday i'll try it.
rift is fun and i like how it has steam workshop integration, making it moddable as people make their own charts and custom character portraits. super fun!
dressmaker (2026)
this was graciously gifted to me by a friend who knew i would love this game. thank you bestie, you were right!
dressmaker is simply a game about making dresses. clients come in, they request a dress with certain parameters and stats, you design them and gain new styles and fabrics as your friendship with them progresses.
i am a fashion game enjoyer and played a bit of style savvy in my day. dressmaker really hits that spot in my brain where my creativity gets to shine while still trying to aim for the parameters set by the client's requests. i get scared being given too much free will (which is why i'm not as obsessed with minecraft as most) so being given a concrete task and aiming for it is what satisfies me during the gameplay loop. i have the sewing assist on in this game because i use my hands to draw for work and i can't risk getting carpal tunnel any earlier than i'm set to. despite that, the sewing mechanic still takes a bit of effort and i enjoy tetris-piecing the patterns together on the fabric.
a lot of this game is also resource management- being restricted to the funds you have really makes you a lot more resourceful with your designs! with a good quality of life update and a deeper story/relationship system, this game is definitely set to be a candidate for many well-deserved accolades.
shows i've been watching recently
frieren: beyond journey's end (2023)
i didn't hop onto the frieren hype train when it first started simply because of the reputation of its fanbase. now that i was in need of a new dinnertime show, the stars aligned just right for me to be in the mood to give this show a shot.
frieren is a good show so far! i just finished episode 6 where she, fern, and stark are about to embark to the nothern lands past the checkpoint. i love its emphasis on connecting with the people and the world around you, figuring out what you value and the people who have changed you in your life.
frieren is not the type of character i expected her to be, and has her charming moments that let you peek into the kind of person she is. she's not incapable of deeper emotion or understanding, and has her own habits and ways of doings things that endear me to her, keeping her from being one note. her companions fern and stark are really neat characters too. i like frieren and fern's dynamic of flip-flopping between whichever one of them is the guardian figure. they take care of each other and it warms my heart. stark confused me at first because why does he have the tendency to run away if he in actuality is so strong? i've only known him for two episodes anyway so i'm hoping some questions get answered.
overall, really nice and i always look forward to watching more.
goodbye, lara (2026)
oh boy, this is gonna be a long one. i binged this show all the way until episode 10 because episode 11 hadn't released yet, and when episode 12 hit it was perfectly incredible to me... up until the epilogue, but i'm getting ahead of myself.
goodbye, lara is an adaptation of hans christian andersen's "the little mermaid" featuring a modern setting and two female leads. as the little mermaid goes, princess lara's curiosity of humans gets the better of her, and her witch aunt gives her a potion that grants her legs in exchange for her ability to speak. however, if she is unable to find true love within a certain timeframe, the potion wears off and she turns into seafoam. there's a lot of shit that happens in between, but basically everything goes bad for lara, and after a sleep that lasts hundreds of years, she awakens in the year 2026 and meets a girl named mari that shows her the meaning of love and humanity.
the themes of this show are hard to follow if you're not paying too much attention to it. i've seen it described as "baby's first revolutionary girl utena," which is another anime with queer and "deep" themes. (wearing an 'i ā¤ themes' shirt) as a fan of themes, i would always find myself pausing or rewinding certain scenes just to really let it digest and think about it for a moment. goodbye, lara's messaging is applicable to most things you could project onto it: it could be about being trans, aroace, having comphet, loneliness, whatever. i think that's what makes its initial episodes so compelling to fans of this show. you could see yourself as someone in lara's shoes (fins?), an outcast for the things or even the people you love.
if any of this interests you and you want to watch this show, i suggest you watch it now and skip this section. despite what i said about the epilogue, goodbye, lara is a beautiful anime with gorgeous animation and music that i would recommend to people looking for a show with a lot of heart and fun.
==== SPOILERS AHEAD
the way i interpreted the story, lara's heartbreak, pain, grief, and pressure of responsibility from being the only one who can bring her family back to life all bottled up and culminated into that giant knife we see over lake biwa. it's said to be representative of her heart, and it seems from what we heard about grace's own experiences, that the blade must pierce the one she loves most in order to find the light again and for her heart to be satiated.
i understand the feeling of wanting whoever hurt you to feel the same pain that you felt. wanting to get back at them, making them regret ever hurting you, it's a sad, frustrating feeling. it's idealized in your head as cathartic, but would it really be? when lara is rejected by her first prince, she manages to control her heart and stop it from stabbing into him. the rest of her time after that is spent trying to protect mari from that position as her (supposed) new prince. distancing oneself in fear of hurting the one you love from how much pain you're in is a deeply relatable position that lara is in, trauma does that to you. which is why it was so impactful when she's swallowed by it in that visually stunning scene in ep12, trying to reach for her light, crawling her way through searing pain towards mari.
life gets complicated, people can love each other but still hurt each other and themselves, but what's most important is that you know what you love and what's most important to you. those are what will guide you to the life you want to lead.
of course, lara finding her magical princess light brings mari back to life. she realized all she wanted was to be able to live in this world with her in it. she wanted to simply be, to live as she is, for love and not for laws. and that just makes me happy.
i'm not of the opinion that the ending of goodbye, lara was bad. in fact, i love that now that she's no longer burdened by the pressure of bringing her whole family back to life, of having to appease to the morals of their merfolk ways, she decides to pursue a life of her own. lara was never an independent person for all we've known her, and growing to stand on her own two feet, literally, is a beautiful ending for her. the only issue i take with it was how distanced and detached she was from everyone, even mari at the end.
the show hiding her eyes and keeping her mysterious just does nothing but make it seem like there's still some unresolved sadness within her. she's perfectly allowed to carry the trauma from what she went through, but this is a fictional story written by humans. these are artistic decisions that they chose to do, and they chose to have her idly on her phone, not hug a crying mari, or even respond when mari says she's going to miss her. it just doesn't feel like the same lara we've seen throughout the previous 11 episodes, but maybe that's intentional too.
i know their farewell isn't final, and that they'll definitely keep in touch, but it just didn't seem like mari, a character we've grown to love at this point, was given the same level of an arc with the execution on that ending. despite that, i loved how she never looked away from lara as she left on the train.
i also want to make it a point to say that regardless of anything, this is an undeniably queer anime. that's all! good show.
==== SPOILERS DONE
rupaul's drag race season 18
oh yeah, been catching up on drag race. currently on episode 12. i'm rooting for jane don't! she's very fun and talented, i hope she wins ^_^ i think darlene mitchell is also so fun, and i love how unabashedly herself she is! that's really about it for the remaining queens so far lol. everyone is sooo good this season, i'm glad they finally got the memo and learned how to sew!
what's next?
i'm gonna be posting another album log soon! it's almost done.. probably coming out early october.
also i heard journal with witch is good. i'll probably check it out soon! until then, frieren will take up most of my watch time alongside rpdr s18 and whatever youtube videos decide to go in my watch later playlist. looking forward to more new music and new experiences in my life.
for now, i'm gonna keep on keeping on. thanks for reading!