Manga Pulse 385: King Stalker

I think it may be time once more for a couple of manga. Handpicked by our inexpert staff who can barely manage to punch manga titles into the mighty oracle itself. At least they actually remember to prepare and be read by this episode. Instead of desperately attempting to catch up on the chapters required while the other mumbles their way through a review.

Tim has a request, The King’s Avatar. It’s a manhua where a man stumbles into a gaming cafe and takes over for the manager and demonstrates how awesome he is by making her win the match in a few minutes. It’s revealed he played pro in an MMO but, for reasons we have yet to see, was forced to give it up and leave. The interesting part is him trying to work his way back up while going over meta strategy of gaming. The dull part is seeing him “in the game” as his character which drops it to a Borders.

Weltall’s review, Ijousha no Ai, begins innocently enough when our main character is in elementary school receiving a confession. Elated, he offers to walk her home later. Shortly after, another girl confesses. Main finds her creepy and says he would but there’s this other girl see. So she goes off to kill the other girl. Main is still troubled seven years later when another girl becomes interested in him after he starts seeing his crazy stalker out of the corner of his eye. As with so many psychological slashers we review, it gets a Read It Now.

Popcorn Pulse 89: The Light

Let’s say you managed to make a horror movie using a, then, relatively unknown paranormal phenomenon. You’ve managed to recoup your costs and make a tidy profit to the surprise of everyone. A sane person would pick up their chips and head to the cashiers window, turn it in for a check, then head up to their now comped room for a nice rest before celebrating with a nice dinner. Someone with a gambling problem would say to let it ride and be surprised when the roulette wheel doesn’t land on thirty six a second time.

Which is how we got White Noise 2[2007]. Nathon Fillion replaces Keaton as our dad figure. When he wife and son react to their diner breakfast like they had just sampled from the desert bar at Golden Coral, they get shot to death by a passerby who turns the gun on himself. When Nate tries to kill himself and fails, he can now see auras of people who are about to die. What in the grand hell this has to do with EVP is beyond anyone’s guess.

Tim’s movie is Swiss Army Man[2016]. Daniel Radcliffe plays a corpse who befriends Paul Dano. Which makes it sounds like the autobiographical tale of Michael Cera meeting John Mcain. Dano plays a loser who may or may not get lost on an island who escapes because Radcliffe’s corpse saves him and has odd abilities like being able to snap his fingers and start fires. And the boner compass. Can’t forget the boner compass.

Weltall goes back to Youtube and finds something amazing in that it’s completely politically neutral and awesome. Ants Canada is a channel by a man who own ant colonies that put those silly farms to shame. Episodes are done with a focus on topics like trying to protect them from outsiders, finding them proper food. Getting rid of rogue escaped ants. All done with nature channel quality and enough science to keep the nature minded happy.

Manga Pulse 384: DevilDevilDevil Man

Something’s happened. We seem to have some sort of fever and lightheadedness. Accompanied by the smell of sulfur and an acrid smokey smell. No, Tim’s mother hasn’t appeared within a pentacle. We’ve caught the fever of Amon and he’s contagious. Continue reading “Manga Pulse 384: DevilDevilDevil Man”

Popcorn Pulse 88: Upgrade Death

We decided on doing something a little unorthodox for us. Instead of settling on a movie that Tim has to scour second hand or that Weltall has just happened to see we picked something in the theaters. And so we choose Upgrade[2018].

Or at least we would have jointly discussed it if Tim had bothered to go and see it. Sure he made some excuse about going on vacation in Tennessee as though they have yet to have received the gift of the motion picture in the south. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the movie was released on June 1st and has vanished from most theaters in just over two weeks. Apparently this movie is Hollywood’s awkward junior high phase and they want to bury it with all of those bad memories. A shame considering that it’s a much better movie than even the trailers make it out to be.

Michael Keaton has had quite an interesting career. Per request, Tim is talking about White Noise[2005]. It’s one of those films that takes a lesser known paranormal phenomenon and has no idea what to do with it. In it, the wife of Keaton dies and starts talking to him through EVP. This leads Keaton to finding a murderer who was also listening to the dead but they were telling him to kill for reasons that no one can even postulate.

Weltall then talks about Death Wish[2018]. One of the few newer movies that Tim has actually seen and was able to comment on. If only he was as prepared when it came to the movie we planned and agreed upon. It features a large measure of restraint from Eli Roth who didn’t turn it into an hour and a half of Bruce Willis practicing street surgery on those anyone within a mile radius of his wife’s death.

Manga Pulse 383: Yo Neverland

Another trip to the bookstore? Yes, we made it out one more time. Just in case anyone didn’t believe we take advice from out listeners. Not the parts about lighting ourselves on fire because we know that’s all in good humor. That and we did that once and it wasn’t nearly as exciting as you might assume. A pity we no longer have the video.

Tim reviews The Promised Neverland. From the cover, Tim assumed it was one of those slice of life mangas that make him search longingly for a hangnail to remove. It is about an orphanage where a whole herd of children live in a seemingly timeless era where no one has a computer. Except when they’re taking tests. There’s a twist to everything which earns it a Read It Now.

Weltall’s Neeko wa tsurai yo is a manga about what we can only call “millennials”. The obnoxious version of a vague generation propped up by clickbaiting articles desperate to milk a little ad revenue from hate-sharing. The main character, Niito, is educated and young but not working or doing anything. She’s boring and would be improved by being thrown face first into an emptied pool. For the crime of being so boring that we’d rather be practicing calligraphy it earns a Burn It.

Popcorn Pulse 87: Moose Knight

Part of one of those things we normally do during the show is take note of what exactly we are reviewing. This is so we can later write up these incredibly professional descriptions. Which we write as the mighty alphabet company told us we didn’t have enough original content to deserve ads. We still don’t have ads but we’ve made this a habit and we’re not stopping now.

So when Tim falls asleep on the job, claiming something about working or some other excuse like the bitch he is, we’re stuck staring at an episode description the same blank expanse of a sheet of paper daring a writer to be creative. It will come down to Weltall then having to comb through the episode and gambling whether or not he can find the titles of what we talked about without having to listen to the entire episode.

Dual review Cashback[2006]

Tim Welcome to Mooseport[2004]

Weltall Last Knight[2015]

Manga Pulse 382: Devil Girl

After the general grumble about us not purchasing as many manga, and relying on other more lazy methods, we decided to purchase a least one more. This meant trekking all the way over to the local Barnes. We brought enough supplies to make the ten minute journey, browsed the shelves and choose a volume which hadn’t been reviewed before.

Tim purchased a copy of Devilman – Grimoire. Tim was only familiar with the original title thanks to the episodes brought over in the late nineties and his most recent review of the source material. While he wasn’t paying attention it bloomed into a couple of sequels. This time we have Amon living with Miki who believes herself to be a witch. She plays at summoning demons one night right as they’re attacked by some real ones. By accident, she summons Amon into Akira’s body and he starts killing demons around for reasons. It’s still good enough to get a Read It Now.

Weltalls physical copy of manga is Magical Girl Apocalypse. No, it’s not an apocalypse where magical girls are are driving resurrected gas contraptions along the desert of Australia. It’s an apocalypse of attacking magical girl looking things. While this does sound like yet another manga Weltall has reviewed, it gets a Crackers.

Popcorn Pulse 86: Overboard Hangman

Is it possible to make this show into a documentation of violations on cruel and unusual punishment? We don’t think so. What film could possibly be on the Hague convention of banned weapons? Oh look, another Uwe Boll movie.

Tim and Weltal discuss Postal[2007]. The edgiest of edgelord games from the early two thousands got a movie adaptation. This is impressive as there is basically no story in either of the games. This should allow Boll to do something interesting and adapt the loose elements into a story. But Boll is a German who has has been bred for efficiency rather than creativity. At least the guy who played Scut Farkus got a paycheck out of the whole thing.

Tim then talks about Overboard(1987). Or at least he talks about how a single hypothesis about the movie and the relationship between the main characters has spread like an infection across the internet. Being the inarticulate bastard he is this comes across as clear as mud. Which is par for the course around here.

Weltalls movie is Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman[2005]. A movie based on the true story of England’s last executioner. As hard as it is to believe, the jolly old land of tea and chavs used to execute the occasional twat who failed to pay their TV license. As with any film based on reality, a lot of details are fudged and dramatized to make a story.

Manga Pulse 381: Hatchi Love

Guess who’s back, back again? Probably some random celebrity who has a long history of saying something stupid and/or inarticulate. It turns out that age doesn’t automatically make people smarter or enhance their ability to communicate. And so they repeat their folly and the news breathlessly reports on it as though this is a fresh turn of events. All the while, click click click and the ad revenue comes trickling in.

Tim’s review is for Hachimitsu ni Hatsukoi. It’s a romance about two childhood friends who discover the power of hormones now that they’ve started going to high school. Our main character, Koharu, takes until the sixth chapter to discover that the reason her heart beat is irregular around Natsuki, isn’t because he emits microwaves and screws with her pacemaker. While it’s predictable and by the numbers, it’s so inoffensive it lands squarely at Borders.

Weltalls manhwa Love Parameter. Weltall doubts whether it counts because it’s a webcomic rather than print, the oracle assures us that manhwa is generally all things comic in Korea. It’s about a sad sack who can get dates and even get to intercourse but annoys girls so much they will leave midway boning and never call again. He stumbles into a traveling magic shop that hands him a pair of glasses that allows him to view things like a dating sim including prompting his responses to girls. It’s pretty direct though not hentai, in case you need to be warned not to read it while babysitting your six year old nephew. It gets a Read It Now.