[PC] Review – Holostars EN Original Visual Novel “Doppelgänger”

Here it is, my once a year review of a visual novel and of course Holostars had to be the main driving force for me to write up this review 😳 The brainworms go deep.

Doppelgänger is an original visual novel created by the Holostars EN Team (basically the managers of the team got together to make this for the fans. Thank you mane-sans!) as a Halloween project for Holostars EN in 2023.

The visual novel itself is more on the darker side and is non-romance focused (debatable in some routes), so for the fam reading this at home, don’t label this as an otome game lol.

This will be as spoiler-free as possible, but if you want to read my overall thoughts you can skip to “Final Thoughts“.

[Figures & Statues] Figure-rise LABO Hatsune Miku Kit

Bandai is known for creating Gunpla, plastic kits of Gundams in which you put together the Gundam yourself. In recent times, Bandai has been experimenting and branching out with making kits of popular female characters with the latest technology in injection moulding.

Through this venture, Bandai released a line called “Figure-rise LABO”. As of 2022, there are 4 characters within this line, where each character figure themed after different techniques of injection moulding. For example, gradient hair for Hatsune Miku and “close-to-transparent skin tight clothing on skin” for Asuka Langley.

These Figure-rise LABO kits can be put together with no glue and bare minimum tool requirements (cutters/nippers are needed to cut the “gates”).

[Mobile] 📖 7 Days On Duolingo Challenge – Is it Worth It?

Learning a new language may be a bit daunting and even if you wanted to learn a new language where will you start? There are language learning classes that operate during the weekends but those may be expensive over time. You could do self-study, which may require buying textbooks but it is not quite the same as having a formal face-to-face learning experience.

Not all people have the luxury or opportunity to learn another language. For instance, America’s education system really doesn’t push students to learn a second language as it is not mandatory and is a missed opportunity to learn at a young age as they are more susceptible to soaking up another language as the brain still develops. Which leads to adults going out of their way to learn another language through other avenues such as through tertiary studies, if they are so inclined.

But enough of the essay on why language learning is important, what I’m getting at is this question: Is there an affordable or free way to learn another language?

Yeah. Like I said before, self-study is a bit more affordable than paid classes or tertiary studies but the motivation and responsibility to keep studying is based on you rather than a teacher/school pushing you to keep excelling. If you lack in motivation you may just fall off the wagon of studying. But there may be a way to fix this….

Introducing…. Duolingo.

*slaps hood* This bad boy holds about 37 languages, can be played via app or desktop browser, free to play (with ads) and has ranking boards in case you wanna learn language so hard that your brain explodes just to get that coveted No.1 spot.

I tried out the app version (I am not sponsored or anything lol) for about 7 days learning Korean and I thought it would be best to write down my thoughts in a blog post. So let’s go.

[Figures & Statues] Cu Chulainn 1/8 Scale Figure Review

Look at him spin.

[Anime] Thoughts on… Roommate & One Room (Anime Review)

I was initially going to review RoomMate by itself but when I found out it was a spin-off of another anime that shares the same concept called One Room (replace the dudes in RoomMate with cute anime girls and that’s the anime), I decided, what the heck, I’ll check this one out and see if its any better than the dumpster fire that is RoomMate and y’know what it is. One Room isn’t exactly “anime of the year” material but at least it ain’t RoomMate.

So I’ll be using One Room as a way to compare and analyse RoomMate and see what exactly went so wrong. Just to make things clear, both of these animes are in the ‘first person anime’/’point of view anime’ genre much like my good ol’ friend Makura no Danshi (I take all the bad things I’ve said about it back now that I’ve watched RoomMate). One Room was released on January while RoomMate released afterwards in May, these animes run for about 4 minutes. Both share the same animation studio (legit thought it was by the same studio that did Makura no Danshi, guess I was wrong) as well as the same directors/writers/storyboarders/staff which kinda creates the problem of a staff going from catering to guys with One Room to catering to girls with RoomMate, usually the transition doesn’t go so well especially when both rely heavily on fanservice… which I’ll talk about later.

Anyway, lets get this shit show rolling.

it ain’t gay if its in space

[PS4] Thoughts on… Persona 5

For these past few days (which turned into weeks), I have been enslaved by Persona 5 and only now have I been emancipated. To tell you the truth, I’ve been playing it 24/7 for the past 2~3 weeks–which ended up being almost 170 hours of gameplay, give or take–and just finished it yesterday. As promised I’ll do a little small review to give my thoughts on it.

I’ll give a little warning now: I will talk a little bit about spoilers, if you’re planning to play it yourself and rather go in blind, by all means stop reading this post. If you don’t care about spoilers or have finished it yourself then enjoy a bit of my rant. The first parts won’t have heavy spoilers but the discussion on the story will, so proceed with caution.