At this point monster collecting games seem to be connecting with social simulation games. Pokemon is probably the most well known example of this, the Pokemon franchise has had a long history of appealing to social simulation fans with Hey You Pikachu and Pokemon Snap more well over a decade ago. You are startig to see games emerge that blend the two genres together. Rune Factory where you have monster farms is the most notable example of this currently. It’s interesting to see the growing overlap between the two markets beginning to grow. The sim RPG genre is near and dear to me games such as Harvest Moon, the parent series to Rune Factory and Pokemon were what I grew up on so returning and getting back into this niche again years later earnestly and seeing how it’s evolved is an exciting experience continued experience.

Today the topic is the perpetually entwined with Pixiv manga magazine, Monthly Comic Gene. Comic Gene markets itself as a boys’ comic magazine for women. It’s home to a number of series localized in English. To name a handful of notable properties which are currently running in its pages there is Merman in My Tub, Polar Bear in Love, Servamp, and Angels of Death. Monthly Comics c Gene also has a Pixiv exclusive web magazine counterpart called Gene Pixiv which is also home to anime adapted projects such as this season’s Africa Salaryman and Skull-faced Bookseller Honda.

I have had a fascination with this imprint for quite some time, there is a lot of ground breaking work anyone can enjoy being published by Kadokawa Shoten and Comic Gene is the perfect example of this. The series have gorgeously experimental ideas and artwork pushing the boundaries of comics. I sincerely hope Comic Gene continues to exist for many years to come as fantastic products always emerge from it.

Doraemon Story of Seasons is a relaxing break and a breath of fresh air. While to some it may be boring, to me personally it’s adorable aesthetics, charming characters, and easy to pick up gameplay created an experience I continued to have a desire to return too. Brownie Brown, credited as a co-developer Doraemon: Story of Season with Marvelous, continued their use of the grand mythical tree  theme with this game. The soundtrack is a stand-out exceptionally well done one.

The fantastic soundtrack accentuates the whimsy and peacefulness of the game. The unique character designs from the Doraemon series serve well for a departure from most games. Based on Fujiko Fujio’s original classic beloved manga and anime series, the wonderful pastel backgrounds and cell shaded character animations create a truly unforgettable farming experience. For fans of both the classic blue robot cat as well as Story of Seasons fans, Doraemon: Story of Seasons is a game not to be skipped.

As I continue to gradually work my way through the incredibly dense, rich worlds of Animal Crossing, Legend of Zelda, Kunihiko Ikuhara, Masaaki Yuasa, and Harvest Moon I thought I would take some breaks to do some more casual writing. Harvest Moon SNES, the first entry in the Story of Seasons franchise, ends on a rather bizarrely abrupt note. Your father really only appears on the title screen and the final cutscene along with your mother who is even less of an entity in the game. He will send someone else entirely an in-game year prior to send a message that they’re going to appear in the third summer of your life on the farm a flurry of unconnected cutscenes plays and that’s it you can no longer continue the game with a random starry night sky staying on screen, after they tell you how all your hard work amounted to nothing, forcing you to turn your game offf and back on again.

Early on into my exploration of the video games and Harvest Moon can be a touch repetitive. Maddeningly so if played for too long at a time. This is a franchise best played with frequent breaks between play sessions. The early entries suffer from trying to over compensate for this repetition by adding stakes to keep gamers invested. The problem is this whole franchise never needed any stakes and the similar Animal Crossing franchise knew this from the outset if your purpose is to make people relax do not try to build tension with a deadline that potentially ends with the need to restart the entire game. Either your goal is to make me relax or you are holding everything I build up hostage for three years.  At the bare minimum, you don’t need to have an ending where the dog barks sadly while its owner is dragged off from their home forever in your feel good games.

Hana to Yume Ai is one of the newly launched digital manga magazines and one of my personal favorite among those. Talented manga-ka’s works such as Marimo Ragawa’s manga can be found in the magazine’s pages. There is one or two duds in the lineup such as inexplicably bizarre romance between a woman and her dog but by and large the magazine has a solid creative lineup. Nari Kusakawa’s works were introduced in English speaking markets through the now defunct manga division of DC Comics, CMX. Kusakawa sensei even has a series presently running in the digital magazine.

A little self promotion here, just a reminder for anyone who was not aware I have a Patreon now so if you’ve been supporting my writing over the years and want to donate the link is here:

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Young Magazine the Third is a manga anthology released by Kodansha. I decided to try an issue since it is home to 10 Dance, a BL ballroom dancing manga I am rather fond of. There is several hundred pages of blood and gore with only a few series I honestly could say I enjoyed. Morning Two magazine this is not. The longer I continued to read the magazine the more I found myself flipping through the pages. I am so far removed from this magazine’s target demographic despite being in its age range and target gender. The gag manga was pretty much all I found that kept me reading. There is an audience for no purpose guilty pleasure shocking violence it just isn’t me and that’s probably the last time in a long while I’ll check out this magazine, until I decide to make the same mistake again, because such is my nature.

The most recent issue of Hana to Yume sadly didn’t feature as many of the magazine’s heavy hitters this issue. There was a new chapter of Ninkoi at the end though! The gag manga regulars were my favorites as always. Anonymous Noise has ended its run in the magazine a while back. It’s definitely an inclusion to the magazine that I miss. It’s unfortunate Takane and Hana’s attached JDrama adaptation is not available legally anywhere at present in Canada.

I’m tired and depressed so today is just another rambling about the media I consume. My attention has once again been drawn too a cute video game for the Nintendo Switch which has been out for a while now called Little Dragons Cafe. The game has several technical flaws such as lag but they did little to damper my experience and I continue to return to the title to play more and more time and again. From Harvest Moon staff, the property is set in a quaint restaurant in the country with storybook graphics and soft, soothing music. The experience is a very welcome one and is almost entirely tension free escapism. Now if I could be excused, I need to stare at the ceiling and wait for Samurai 8 to officially drop in a few days.

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