The vibes around Pokémon Champions have been mostly bad for a number of reasons since it launched today, but really I should have caught onto how much of a disappointment the Switch battle simulator would be right when I booted up the game and it handed me the absolute most sauceless Pokémon trainer this side of the Paldea region.
Jean Mallard's signature technique involves applying watercolors almost like oil glazes, layering colors from light to dark in a slow, meticulous process to achieve incredibly vivid colors and smooth gradients.
Square Enix is partnering with Google to integrate its AI large language model Gemini into Dragon Quest X, creating a Slime character that players can chat with. This character will respond with AI-generated text, offering tips, tricks, and advice as players navigate the game.
The best argument I can make for why I like reading fiction in translation is because it facilitates the psychedelic experience of encountering someone else's subjectivity twice over. The translator must act as a prismatic filter, faithfully attempting the impossible task of replicating someone else's experiences and ideas. To read in translation is to read two stories in harmony with each other: The one the author wants to tell and the one the translator has brought into your linguistic world.
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The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter tells of an elderly bamboo cutter who discovers a tiny, radiant girl inside a glowing stalk of bamboo. He and his wife raise her as their own daughter, naming her Kaguya-hime. As she grows, she becomes extraordinarily beautiful, attracting suitors from across the land. Five noblemen seek her hand in marriage, but she tests them by assigning each an impossible task-such as retrieving the Buddha's stone begging bowl or the jewelled branch of Mount Hōrai. Each suitor fails.
MG Raiser from MangaGuardian is a tiny shelf adapter that takes that double-row habit and makes it less painful. It is a compact L-shaped stand that lets you display two rows of manga in the same footprint, with the back row raised just enough to stay visible. Simple plastic geometry aimed squarely at overcrowded shelves, it solves a niche problem that anyone with more than 20 volumes has quietly dealt with at some point.
Virtual Cram School Wish High is a new online school by Tokyo-based company Luminaris. According to the publication, all teachers are "active VTubers," meaning streamers who use digital avatars to represent themselves instead of showing their real faces. Tuition at the online academy is the equivalent of around $63 per course per month, on subjects including mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, world history, Japanese history, and geography.
The original legal case concerned a doctor who was prosecuted for performing gender reassignment surgery on transgender women, amid law enforcement frustrations that female-presenting transgender sex workers could not be prosecuted for their profession due to their being legally male. The doctor was found guilty of violating Japan's eugenics laws, which prohibited surgeries resulting in sterilisation if they were deemed inessential.
You've got your obvious bangers, such as Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and Jujutsu Kaisen, but there are at least twenty weekly releases currently airing that are worth watching. Hell's Paradise, Fate/Strange Fake, Sentenced to Be a Hero, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Trigun Stargaze, Golden Kamuy - I could go on, and that's without including the stuff that just finished airing, such as Spy x Family and To Your Eternity.
We can now look back on November 28, 2025, as the start of a mass-psychosis event. In an era of neo-puritanical television slop, a fresh, horny breeze swept in from Canada: Heated Rivalry, a six-episode series about two professional hockey rivals turned lovers, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, stirred something deep in the American psyche. Ordinary taxpaying adult women, many of them my friends, suddenly lost control of their faculties over "the gay hockey show."
Netflix has been getting cozy with more traditional (and financially concrete) release models. Its KPop Demon Hunters made a small fortune after just one weekend in theaters, while the Stranger Things finale earned around $20 million by premiering in 600 theaters.
but thanks to the opening of Pokemon's first ever amusement park on 5 February, this year, they are likely to come earlier. Unlike the rollercoaster-filled thrills of Tokyo Disney Sea or Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, PokePark Kanto is essentially a forest populated by models of the creatures from the perennially popular games. Nestled in the quiet Tokyo suburb of Inagi, half an hour from the city centre, the park is a walkable forest with more than 600 Pokemonin it.
Anime fans won't be getting any respite from the streaming service price hikes that now feel inevitable on every platform every couple of years. Crunchyroll announced today that it will be increasing the monthly costs for all its plans by $2. That means the Fan tier will now run you $10 a month, the Mega Fan Tier is $14 a month and the Ultimate Fan Tier is $18 a month.
The second film adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's 2004 eponymous novel, this new one is considerably inferior to Edge of Tomorrow from 2014, Tom Cruise's own Groundhog D1ay with mechs. It's not a question of budget or aesthetics simply a gaping hole of engaging characterisation and inner spark that makes this time loop a grinding chore, rather than a thrilling jailbreak from eternal recurrence.
Slowly but surely, Monster Hunter Stories has established itself as more than just a spin-off of Capcom's famed action role-playing game. It has gone from a small project on the Nintendo 3DS to an ambitious Japanese RPG on the Nintendo Switch that punched above its weight. Now in its third iteration, Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is the franchise's coming-out party. The entry is launching across multiple systems for the first time, and it's taking a different approach to the story.