Current Cool Things

Purpose?

The purpose of this page is to journal about the current things I'm into.

Each entry will...

1. Be given a date
2. Have some sort of visual indicator (eg. an image and/or gif).
3. Be based on what is currently fascinating to me. which will not always be modern. (like ps2 games, older 00's anime, citypop, etc).

11/7/2024, First Ever Entry

Recently, I've been geetting into this into this new anime DanDaDan. It's basically about two people, a popular girl (Momo) who's belives in ghosts and evil spirits and a nerdy boy (Okurun) who believes in extra terrestials (aka, aliens). Imma try my best to not spoil it but essentially... they dare each other to go to an area that they belive has a ghost or alien sighting. This introduces the paranormal being very real in their world, causing them to see and experience both ghost and alien activities. It's animated by the same people behind the Scott Pilgrim Takes Off anime. I highly, highly reccomend checking it out while it's still fresh and new. Episode six came out today (a new episode comes out every Thursday at 11 AM; Eastern Time)

11/14/2024, I... I just can't.

*Spoiler Warning for Dandadan*

Today, the seventh episode of Dandadan came out. I decided to wait until I got home to watch it. I'm glad I did. It was cool and funny at first... then it got to Acrobatic Silky's flashback. I broke down completely, and i usually don't cry when it comes to any form of media. I guess I've been holding a lot in lately, just the weight of a past figure suddenly showing or trying insert themselves back into my life. Still refuse to include them as it caused both a lot of fun with a lot of stress and worry. I just kept crying while seeing her get hurt by those yakuza with her daughter crying in the background. What got me completely was seeing the daughter be taken away while she was basically crippled. I'm not trying to sound cool or anything like that. It just... made me cry a lot. I'm still crying.

11/22/2024, I been busy...

Things have been... draining, for the past week? I decided to finally try out a physical sport I wanted to do for the past four years and it's hard! Like "Challenge accepted" hard! Shits's tiriring but gets fun once we get to the live drilling. It's 5 sets of a practicing a move on each other, we practice other moves with the last 30 to 15 minutes being either suicides, lifting or dragging your partner from one end of wall, then they pick up or drag you back to the start. I swear, either I'm messing up the techniques or I'm just not that strong yet. But rarely do I feel feel fustrated. Just confused or gassed out from drilling. Just means carries are not gonna work for me until I get my strength back.

ALSO! Watched the episode 8 of Dandadan! Shit's GAS again. Aira still pisses me off, but... atleast she's way more competent now due to last episode. I still wish it was just Momo and Okarun again. Was way more entertaining than "I'm pretty, therefore I was gifted to see demons" F outta here. But yeah, I got a feeling Aira's not going to leave. *sigh* That's all for now. AND PLEASE!!! WATCH DANDADAN! IT'S PEAK!

1/21/2025, things are not so good right now...

I. Think. I. Am. Extremely. Unmotivated.

I haven't done anything outside of school besides game and watch YouTube. Well, I did watch this zombie show called Black Summer. I liked how more grounded it is, esspecially in season 1. But back to what I was thinking on below the title. For some reason whenever I'm not doing the phsyisical activity, the want to do basic tasks like get out of bed, take a shower, and not overeat seem a lot harder. It's almost like a crutch. No. I don't think that's the right word. Would cope be a better descrpitor? I believe it would be a better descriptor. It's been a while since I've done one of these. Got busy with school, then started to feel numb after staying inside an not doing the physical thing!Then again, I've been feeling that every fucking winter since 2020 I despise winter so fucking much I hate it I hate I hate it I hate it so fucking much WHY DOES IT HAVE TO LAST SO LONG!? Then I remember I have things to occupy myself, like drawing, and beatmaking, and adding on to my website. Is this what depression feels like? I felt it last year around the same time. I ended up just botttling it in until I could air it out on the mat, nothing really helped. I can't stand to see myself like this, yet I continue to go back into old habits, like some sort of snake eating cycle. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense. Basically, I haven't beel feeling very good about myself for ignoring my needs, like putting my creativity into this or my other hobbies besides gaming which is starting to become stale for me. Mainly because I tend to play the same types of games but try to widen my range through emulation. Wow, I am really going all over the place!

I feel... less bad. Which is a good thing. So... I think typing this was a good idea, because I haven't really had any fun for a while.

OH! ALSO! Black Summer season 1 is pretty good, and Saints Row 2 is better than I rember it being! Check em out!

2/25/2025, Hi... I'm back again.

Still feeling unmotivated. However, some things have changed! It's gonna be a longer entry.

My winter season for sports is over, meaning I have a lot more free time! Plus, I haven't really made time for this website of mine or just... thinking in general. In that time frame, I got accepted into multiple colleges, spiraled into a sense of meaningless (again), reached platinum in Marvel Rivals (pls play it!!), got halfway through Silent Hill 2, the ps2 version, and got parts of some essays done. When I think about the the purpose of this website, it's still the same. Have a place to share my thoughts and cool shit I really vibe with with the hope of others also vibing with it. Its's been a very overwhelming past couple of weeks, usual high school shenannigans. What grounded me, or atleast made me feel a bit lighter and in reality was rewatching two videos from one of my favorite "new-gen" (aka someone who started four years ago) YouTubers, maraganger, a certain power lines enthusiast who likes to talk about niche videogames and mother media. Mara's whole thing is being unbashedly genuine in their videos, using a... I'm not sure how to describe it. It's like they speak similar to a character from Suda 51. Lots of slang with a bit of profanity and articulate wording to describe how much they love a piece of content. It was the night before my tournament, had to get up at 5 and be at school by 6:30. I think it was around 7, I ordered some chinese food and took my phone off the charger and left out to pick it up. On my way to the spot, I popped in my headphones and decided to rewatch their video about growing up, being able to see a lot of weird, strange mixed media with the help of unrestricted access to the internet (I can relate). So I'm walking there while hearing about how they view art and where that comes from. For them, it really comes down to creating for the sake of it, no matter how "bad" that might be. It just has to come out in some form in shape, no matter how weird that may be. They also make it VERY important to be yourself throughout the process and to make it because you want it to be made, not because you want it to be good (which isn't bad either). I continued to watch it, getting my food, going back home and putting it on the tv while eating what was my dinner. What I felt was... peace? Like I was in a moment where I was in a place of limbo, like a time between? Nothing mattered in that moment besides the food beside me, the couch beneath me, and the blue light in front of me. After that video eneded, I watched another one of Mara's videos. This one was about nekojiru, social isolation, and "dead eyes". They talk about the mangaka duo for nekojiru, a manga series that had a very distinct visual style, using mainly cats, pigs, a humans and what it means to them without trying to see her creations as a complete extension to herself. I never really thought about how so many people try to push meaning *ahem,* average pretentious YouTube essayist onto the creator as their actual intent, rather that just say that's what they believe is what the person is trying to convey, which I do appreciate them doing for nekojiru and other people and media they talk about. I sat in the dark, watching their video because it made me both forget about the world for about an hour and reminded me that I'm not the only person who didn't really connect with other people and found themselves online way more than someone at that age should've been. Luckily I stayed away from shock sites, it took me one video to never click on that shit ever again. I'm not gonna say that I'm just like them fr, because that's just horsehonkey. But I do find myself finding some relatability to them and many other YouTubers despite not going through the same amount of shit they did. Makes me feel a bit less isolated in the reality of things. I just realized I've been typing for a while now. But yeah... I did feel bit better watching those two vids, even it was just for two hours. I wouldn't call it wasted time, nor would I call this wasted energy. I simply needed that for that day, just like I needed to type this down and get back to expressing myself on my little space of the interwebs.

6/3/2025, Sad About Binging this show...

I. Have. Been. Very Lazy. (to put it bluntly).

Quick Recap.
I am currently about to graduate from high school *insert man breaking chains*, started making beats again (will probably not be able to next week and for an uncertain amount of time) and randomly found a cult classic J-crime drama.
So. Back to what I wanted to talk about. Two Saturadys ago I was mindlessly scrolling Netflix for a show to watch. Most of the time they'll say they have something in the search but will instead say Oh yeah. we actually don't have that very popular show/movie. but... we have something that's like it. Like COME ON. Don't even have it pop up in the search bar! I don't want something similar to it, I JUST WANT WHAT I SEARCHED FOR! WHAT YOU DID WAS NOT NICE. IT'S NOT NICE TO DO THAT! Lemme calm down before I go more sidetracked than an episode of Samurai Champloo (No real shade. I love that series. Only only shade for the zombie episode).
Back to what I'm currently writing about.
I was looking for something to watch and was looking through those categories they offer when scrolling down. One of the categories was something along the lines of Class TV Shows. It was normal at first, In Living Color, some other sitcoms... Then I found something really strange. The preview clip shown (I kinda miss when previews before had a clip alonside some music if it wasn't a Netflix orignal. Also, whoever decided to remove the 5-star system did some coward shit!) looked like a home video. One of those b-movie indie films from the 2000s that used a digicam to get footage. It was some Japanese dude in yellow who liked like onepac (wannabe Tupac) at a bowling alley threatening an employee for some free bowling shoes and rounds. Then some other guy buts in but knows the leader of the group. Something about the semi-amatuer cinemotography and ligthing, almost replicating a sort of mock-reality television made me want to watch it. It has a long title, but not modern isekai slop long title. Ikebukuro West Gate Park (2000) (Try saying that as fast as possible five times!) is probably the best TV show I have seen in a while. It takes place and is filmed in Ikebukuro, a crime city, so basically like how people think Baltimore City is like (Just don't mention Downtown), Makoto Majima, a 21 year old reformed deliquent who hangs ou with his friends. The pilot might be my favorite because it's basically a bunch of nothing going on. You get introduced to all the characters. Makoto Majima, the MC, Takashi The King, leader of the G-Boys gang and best friend to Makoto, Ritsuko Majima, Makoto's scam artist mom, and a bunch of other inhabitants of Ikebukuro. One of his friends is mysterious murdered and now he has to figure out who is repsonible for her murder while trying to help find people in the crime-ridden city of Ikebukuro.
Despite being filmed like a b-movie, the show has a suprisingly high budget. In the first episode, Makoto and his friend meet a highschooler who's into to art. The art friend then attracts two girls in which they go around the city, all during night time. They go back to the bowling alley where a mysterious old man challenges Makoto, who is shown to be pretty good at bowling, to a match. The way it works is that whoever knocks over the most pins wins (BARS). The old dude bets his HECKING BMW CAR. What made me like it even more was that the dude gets a gutter ball and cuts to Makoto and his friends driving away in a BMW M3 E46! Makoto then drives back, asks for the ownership, and offers him a ride. The old man says no, then quickly changes his mind. I really liked the somewhat carefree attitute of the first episode, not that the others don't have that vibe as well. They also have the characters rocking street gear and designer. One of Makoto's friends in the first episode gifts him A PAIR OF JORDAN 9'S, and you see him wearing those and other brands throughout the series.
The show also delves into how technology can play a role into crimes, one episode has it where a childhood friend of Makoto who is now a trans man asks for him to get deal with a stalker that's been pestering his cam girl. It's always fascinating seeing tech from the first years of the World Wide Web becoming somewhat mainstream. All footage captured is through the camera iteslf, so no poorly added green screens or screen captures. I always preferred just recoring the screen itself rather than green screening it in, just makes it more believable. They even made an entire website just for that specific episode where she's streamed live 24/7. Since it's using an actual set up from its time, the live stream is in 480p and only runs at about 15 frames per second. Makes the world that more grounded despite some very over-the-top scenes. Suprisingly, for a depiction of a trans character in the early 2000s, it wasn't all that offensive (from my perspective atleast) as his gender wasn't played for jokes. Only thing that sounded iffy was Makototo telling him that a real man would step in. Being a protector is a key part of masculinity, but it felt... weird that Makoto's way of validating his gender identity was telling him something that any good manager would do? Maybe that's just me. There's a bunch of other instances where the internet and other modern tech are used by the main cast.
Maybe in the future I'll make a shrine or a video explaining my love for this cult classic crime drama. There's SO MANY shots that are clip and wallpaper worthy. I found it on Netflix, HOWEVER... some guy archived the entire series, minus the hour and a half special that takes place three years after the events of the show. I genuinely love this show and am mad at myself for binging the entire series in a little under a week. I got a graduation I need to attend later today, my graduation (it's already midnight).

Ikebukuro's the best!