March Round-Up '24

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it, and I hope everyone had a nice March! This month had a lot of ups and downs for me, with high points including seeing people I love in person, and low points mostly being tied to continuous dental problems (with one last big challenge to deal with, which I'll post about separately this Tuesday). As always, I'll give a brief look at media I enjoyed, with the addition of little things I have going on and a small recap of what I did.

Today's for creatures with long ears that hop around!! ...hmmm wait a sec that doesn't seem ri-

Nice Happenings

Chris' parents drove out to hang out with us for a couple days and the respite was definitely needed after the difficult past few months. We had a blast sharing our favorite places with them, including delicious food spots, an indie dress shop, an art gallery, the local zoo, and enjoying time at the arcade together (his mom's amazing at Skeeball!!). I miss them a lot already and look forward to when we can see them again!

Their favorite place we took them was to "Old Place," a majestic BBQ eatery in the mountains with wild peacocks roaming around!! The peacocks were very loud and followed us around (it was exciting!!)

I went to the Zoo with my little sister, Niki! We hadn't seen each other since last year because we've both had a lot going on in our lives, so it was nice to hang out and catch up a bit as we looked at cute animals. She has a lot of great big things going on in her life so I'm glad we could celebrate a little together before life gets even busier for us both.

This jaguar was making lots of rumbly noises! I'm happy we could see her!

Projects

My partner is working on a new game: a bump-action rpg! I'm designing characters and such for it! I can't give away too much for now, but I was given the okay to show the character design for the protagonist; they're very cute!! Chris has been working hard on building the mechanics for the gameplay, and I'm excited for him to share more when he's ready!

The first day of Spring was this month, so to celebrate I made a new design called "Door to Spring!" It features a bunny in a dress with a rose bush behind her, flower petals flying out from the frame she's featured in. It was nice to have something in time for my shop's big Spring Sale (special thanks to those who got a shirt from that)! Some fun facts about this piece include that the gingham pattern in the "doorway" was originally going to be on the dress itself, but my partner suggested it be in the bg instead (I think that was a great call!), and the colors I used were taken from Threadless' official Spring palette.

I'll talk about it more in a different section, but Final Fantasy 7's story is absolutely CONSUMING my brain, so I drew some fan art of the character Cait Sith in one of my streams! I'm planning to make a whole bunch more art of the other characters too - possibly for a birthday project - so be on the lookout for more if you enjoy FF7 as well!

With my next (and final big) dental operation coming up I'm in huge need of help one last time, so I'm opening commissions for a bit longer. The prices start at $50 for Half-Body character art, and $100 for Full-body character art, with digital and physical forms of art available. I'm planning to offer other options that would contribute to my dental needs fund - I'll post about this on Tuesday, April 2nd - but commissions will definitely be a big part of it! Please reach out if you'd like one via a direct message on any of my social media!

Here are two commissions I finished recently! Thank you, Ann and Hazbomi!!

I love to hand-make cards, and made a super cute one for a friend's birthday recently! The dragon's wings fold out to reveal the name banner and birthday box! It also shows the back/tail on the other side of the dragon. You can't tell from the pics, but the scales are shiny!

I made some cute teeny lil' cards for my and Chris' parents for Easter! I love sending them small reminders to show we're thinking about them, and holidays are a good excuse to make something to mail their way. The cards are sparkly and egg-shaped (my idea), so that when you open it it's like you're helping the chick to hatch (Chris' idea)! I've made a variety of Easter cards previously, but I enjoyed the simplicity of these.

Games

By far, my biggest time investment this month is in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. I can't express how huge of an impact this game and its many offshoots had on me in my youth, and this second part of the remake reminded me just how deeply I love all of this game's characters. While I enjoyed the fresh take on the story and especially loved all of the rhythm-gamey and QTE segments, I felt like overall it wasn't as strong as Remake. I'm tired of games trying to make everything "open world" ala BoTW-style exploration (please, AAA, stop doing this) especially since this one doesn't actually give you all the tools you need to truly explore AND clutters your awful map with tons of icons that I couldn't care less about. The UI was pretty poor for the menus, some of it hiding or moving details from places you'd expect or being redundant, and the options for specific parts of the game were so vague and samey that it was confusing (referring specifically to restarting from parts if you don't get through a big fight or section on the first try). I liked some of the assorted mini games, but when they were bad they were REALLY bad (looking at you chocobo missions & box-throwing challenge). For all these gripes, I continue to come back to the game - mostly to finish the side quests that I skedaddled past in my pursuit of the main story - because this world has a tight grip on my brain. I had a pretty up and down experience with it, but I'd say I like FF7: Rebirth overall!

YOU CAN PET THE BABY CHOCOBO!!! (I cried from joy when I did this)

Sylvie RPG: 7 Elf Apocalypse was wonderful to watch Chris blast through! With delightful bump combat, adorable graphics, an intriguing world, and soooo many secrets, it gave me a lot of inspiration and reiterated that not all games need super detailed graphics to be excellent. Reading the design notes revealed that my own partner was a big inspiration for this game's conception (with his bump-action rpg) - so cool!!! Please play this game!

After adoring Gurumin last month, Chris' next stop in the Falcom library is Zwei: The Arges Adventure. He's still playing through it, but it's filled to the brim with personality that can only be found in the early 2000's era of games. This unique title combines dungeon crawling where you swap between siblings Pokkle and Pipiro as a two-in-one character (Pokkle smashes into enemies with a sharp weapon, whereas Pipiro dazzles with magic spells) and a Tamagatchi-like pet simulator (a cat or dog, who also acts as a helping hand when traveling with you). You don't gain experience by bonking baddies - instead, you level up purely by eating food!! Puns abound and gorgeous, adorably rendered atmospheres wow in this wonderful little game, and I'm excited to see where Zwei takes us.

Look how charming these graphics are!!

I'd gotten Digimon Survive for Chris as a gift for Christmas, and we were both very excited to finally dig into it... however, we were met with uninteresting characters and poor writing (which is BAD for a game that's mostly a visual novel), plus gameplay that presented more frustrations than payoff. It was annoying to move from place to place, both on the overworld and inside rooms/areas, and the tactics gameplay didn't feel rewarding whatsoever. We were both heavily disappointed with the game since we love Digimon and ended up dropping it around chapter 4 or 5. I don't see us coming back to it unfortunately.

The digimon portraits and their small animations were pleasing at least!

Anime

There was a HUGE sale on Sentai Filmworks' website, (there were things for like $2... it was wild), so Chris & I picked up some of our favorite series EVER as a little treat! Hakumei and Mikochi: Tiny Little Life in the Woods became a fast favorite when we first saw its breathtaking scenery and lovely characters, and Kino's Journey (the original from 2003) is a thoughtful, beautiful tale about a traveler and their talking motorcycle as they journey across the world. Tamako Market is a newer fave we watched last year - I love how amusing each of the shop owners are in their little community - and the Trails in the Sky OVA was picked up just for fun (it's a very cute special, but it's mostly just fanservice for those who played the game). All of these combined for much less than the cost of a new game when individually they'd go for around $60-$80 at least? Yes PLEASE!

Alien Nine is, at first glance, a cute show about girls tasked to chase down aliens from terrorizing their school. It doesn't take long to show its truly sinister nature though, especially since the show itself is only 4 episodes long (covering half of the manga's full story). I personally love adorable facades layered betwixt unnerving monsters and psychological undertones, so I enjoyed it! I would hope to see a continuation or reboot that covers the series in its entirety someday, but for now I'll be looking to the manga to see where the story goes.

I hadn't seen Trinity Blood since I watched a handful of episodes in high school, so it's been fun revisiting and seeing more of the show. The dark, gothic aesthetic mixed with futuristic technology is really cool, and I always enjoy when a series has supernatural elements (like vampires!!). We're only about halfway through, but we're enjoying the dub embracing the show's inherent silliness.

With the passing of artist legend Akira Toriyama, Chris and I decided to give the original Dragon Ball a watch. I'd only seen a couple of episodes from this series as a kid, perhaps from somewhere in the middle, so I'm not terribly familiar with the work as a whole but liked what I'd seen of Dragon Ball over Z. The visual design is awesome - Toriyama's sense of form and playfulness is exemplary - however there was quite a bit of "humor" that I'm not a big fan of... We only got a couple episodes in before watching something else, but maybe we'll pick it up again someday and it'll get better from there.

Puar was my favorite part of Dragon Ball when I was younger!

Movies

We've been enjoying a bunch of Wes Anderson's works this month, and funny enough, they're all love letters to different kinds of storytelling. Oscar-nominated short The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar was neatly shot and delightful, very deserving of its win this year. The French Dispatch was an intriguing (and riotous) serenade for the printing press, featuring short stories taking place in a fictional French city. Asteroid City was my favorite of the Anderson movies we saw - I thought the collection of personalities shown in the story made for a fun mix, and the story itself as a tribute to plays and playwrights where it would go back and forth between the world of the creator and creation was very cool.

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day we wore green, ate delicious food, and watched the latest film from Irish studio Cartoon Saloon: My Father's Dragon! Absolutely dazzling visuals and excellent shape designs make this stunning to view, and though the story itself was a bit lacking, it made up for it in having lots of cute animals onscreen.

After completing FF7 Rebirth, I was craving more FF7 content, so I watched Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children for the millionth time to sate my hunger. As many times as I've watched this film, viewing it with the context of how they're handling the remakes made for a unique experience this time; as this is a sequel to the original game, it probably won't reflect the finished remake's ending! If you aren't familiar with the games in any capacity this movie probably won't make a lot of sense, even with the added context in the "complete" edition... if you HAVE played any of FF7 and haven't seen it, I'd recommend it! I personally enjoy this movie a lot - it's extremely silly and puts a big focus on sick action scenes, but overall it makes for a fun piece of media with some very cool remixes of the original soundtrack.

I think Cloud's biker look in the movie is really cool!!

Onward to... BIRTHDAY MONTH!!!

I know so many people with birthdays in April, including mine (April 19th) AND my partner's (April 20th), so we'll have a lot to celebrate! I'm not really sure how I'll commemorate our special days, aside from potentially decorating our place and making food in a FF7 theme... and I'll definitely be busy working toward my big medical goal (again, posting about this Tuesday, April 2nd). Thanks for reading 'til the end, and I hope your Spring brings you much growth and joy!