Playing

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time – YEEAAAHHHH FINALLLYYYY I AM PLAYING THIS WOOOO!!  Fantasy Life was my #1 favorite game on the 3DS (do you remember the feature where you could set your favorite game in your profile so it would be visible to your friends?  I used Fantasy Life for mine!).  I love its adorable and colorful and silly and optimistic world so much.  I tried the same approach I used when I played the first game and chose both a combat Life and a crafting Life (I just can’t NOT be a Tailor!), but with a huge skill tree in this game that wasn’t present before, grinding is a little overwhelming.  And there’s the new Artist Life that I want to try out too… maybe it would be much better to focus only on one Life and grind others later once it’s nice and easy to warp around and gather stuff, rather than doing ALL of the quests for ALL of your Lifes at once.

There are more layers of complication in this entry as well… in addition to the big skill tree for every Life of your own character, you also need to equip your party members with gear, which was never something you had to worry about in the first game.

And there are so many game modes, too… 😵‍💫  There’s the ‘main story’ map (“The Past” with some excursions into the Depths area in “The Present”), the town-building aspect (the non-Depths area of “The Present”), the massive open world which is a whole separate map from everything else and doesn’t seem very involved in the main story (“Ginomorsia”), a roguelike mode (“Snoozaland”, which maybe gets a pass because this was added in a free update patch as a bonus after the game released), and I just recently unlocked some kind of temporary instanced dungeon mode that grows from tree saplings?  That’s like, a lot of unrelated gameplay to manage on top of juggling the various tasks for your Life (which multiplies if you try out more than one) and the main story.

So, there’s a lot more ‘brain energy’ involved in playing this compared to the first game, which makes it a little less cozy and relaxing… but taking your time and exploring what you like at your own pace keeps the many levels of management stress at bay.  There’s not really any way to get anything wrong, just a lot of different areas to invest time in, so you can relax a little.

I’m very, very grateful that there are so many shortcuts in the menu for jumping straight to your Life Master or teleport directly to an NPC that gave you a quest, and the ability to see which material shops in which towns stock the stuff you need for crafting.  Shortcuts that make the repetitive stuff and quest management just a little bit easier make a big difference when there are so many other systems.

Mysterious Thief Emerald – Mentioned this last month in my list of Otome Jam 2026 entries I was interested in.  I LOVE IT!!!  The writing is super fun, the characters are great, and I LOVE A MAGICAL GIRL PHANTOM THIEF, I DO.  The Saint Tail DNA is there, with a magical girl “save the unsuspecting humans from the evil jewel that’s subtly stealing their life force” slant, and I am into it, especially when a second magical phantom thief shows up.  The dynamic between the three main characters is great because they rib each other but generally get along (feels like the kind of story that would be very easy to just have all the characters hate each other and make all of the dialog sarcastic, but Mysterious Thief Emerald avoids falling into that trap).

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Watching the BF Play

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – Even with Ages being my childhood version of this duology, I’ve NEVER seen how the game changes when you play a “linked game” version carried over from Seasons, so it’s almost like new!  Hey, so it turns out Princess Zelda is in this game??  And bombchu!  AND the Biggoron’s Sword?? 🤯 The sword is so big, it shifts around the interface at the top of the screen lmao.  Never realized there’s such a significant amount of content that’s totally unique to a linked game that you’d never see if you only owned one of the two games.  Playing both from the Switch Online Game Boy collection is nice and convenient, because going back and forth between the two to input codes is very fast and easy.  If you have the Switch Online service then I highly recommend playing it that way.

Dual Hearts – The Playstation era is totally unknown to me as a Nintendo kid, and there are soooo many cool JRPGs I’ve never seen before.  This is one of them!  The character designs and environments in this are soooo nice.  And I LOVE the Alundra-like plot of diving into dreams themed around each respective character (same developers, idk how much of the specific team overlaps).  Really enjoying this one!  Tumble is so cute, he’s like a giant rideable pudding-bunny!

Special Shout-Out To…

A special shout-out goes to Big Walk, which occupied a lot of my attention this month despite that I’m not even the one playing it.  I got invested in three different youtube channels playing it (it’s fascinating how each friend group approached the puzzles & their necessary communication in different ways!), but Stumpt is the only group that continued uploading multiple parts beyond the intro and reached the ending.

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Reading

King Arthur & The Knights of Justice – The 90s cartoon this is based on was mentioned last month, now it’s time to read the modern comic.  I ended up reading both volumes this month!  It’s like a magical boy story but idk, didn’t really grip me, it isn’t goofy like the cartoon, and the premise of “footballers in King Arthur times” is so silly that idk if it works to try to make it serious.  Now somehow I have to track down the crossover chapter where these characters meet Princess Gwenevere & the Jewel Riders because that’s the whole reason I put in this research in the first place lol.

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – Just like with Oracle of Seasons last month, I was able to read along with the manga while progressing through the game, which is quite a treat.  There is a bit more story and depth explored in the manga and even more great scenes with Ralph (one of my overall favorite Zelda characters btw).  Particularly notable about this volume is the addition of a totally new character that isn’t present in the game, a knight named Raven who serves Queen Ambi in the past and connects Link personally with the time period of the past.  And he’s like, rly cute. 👉👈

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie – A great listen during some car rides.  Some investing twists and turns and over-the-top fake-outs (the girl found in the library is SO extravagant, the method of death for the other murder is SO grisly).  But no one can pull the wool over Miss Marple’s eyes. 🕵️‍♀️

In the Forests of Serre by Patricia A. McKillip – Isn’t the Kinuko Y. Craft cover art sooooo pretty? 🥰  This was my beach read over vacation this month!!  I liked it so much, I picked this book to talk about with my friends when we had a casual book club get-together (of the ‘talk about whatever you’ve read recently’ variety).  McKillip’s writing style is magical and enchanting, like reading a poem, while remaining easily-followable and manages to avoid going abstract or purple.  While reading, I feel like I’m enveloped by the spells that weave around the princess in her dismal situation in the stony cliffside castle and the prince stumbling through the mesmerizing forest in pursuit of the firebird that has bewitched him.

Romance at Droitgate Spa by P.G. Wodehouse – This is so frickin’ funny lmao.  The breakout star of this story is definitely the magician (“The Great Boloni”, sounds like “baloney” lol) that can’t seem to stop performing tricks with every motion, even mid-dialog.  I could envision this character very easily in Ace Attorney with a bunch of animations where they are shuffling cards, pulling rabbits from their sleeves, and producing coins from behind other characters’ ears.  This is a public domain short story that you can either read in one or two sessions or listen to as an audiobook on Youtube in under an hour, and I can’t recommend it enough, it’s SUCH a quick and easy read/listen and it’s guaranteed to make you smile.

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Watching

Galaxy Angel – Officially available on Youtube both dubbed and subbed.  EXTREMELY silly with EXTREMELY 00’s-style anime humor.  Some of the girls’ missions to themed planets and abandoned satellite outposts are great sci-fi premises. I like when we catch glimpses of the absurdly personalized bedrooms each character has on the ship haha.

Sailor Moon Super S – HELIOS TIME AT LAST YEEAAHHH WOOOOOOOOOUUURUAAAAGHH. (One of my favorite Sailor Moon characters btw. I can’t resist a precious gentle unicorn boy 🥺)  This is the very end of what was dubbed into English for TV, so the adventure of reliving that nostalgic time has come to an end. 🥲  Of course we could watch the Viz dubbed version of Sailor Stars, and there’s aaaaall of Crystal to go through if we really want to.  But once the Super S Movie is done we might call the Sailor Moon Extravaganza quits for now and replace this time with other things to watch.  Btw, the ending theme for this arc is bumpin’.

Lucky Star – Yet another old classic which I’d never seen before I started this month… (and yet strangely I feel certain I’ve seen the full introductory dance sequence in the form of gifs… 🤔)  Sometimes I check the wiki for explanations of the references after some episodes, a practice which brings to mind my reading of Sparknotes for an extra layer of understanding when I’m reading classic books lol.  My favorite character is Miyuki because I love her pink hair and that she is sweet and very smart. 😊

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This was a pretty significant month for me IRL, I don’t think I want to make a regular thing of sharing personal life stuff online but it’s enough to say that August was a very happy month for me. 🤗

Playing

My Friendly Little Island – Super cute little Game Boy indie game with good vibes and satisfying progression.  Seems like there are a ton more GB Studio games now than the last time I searched for them, so I’ve got to remember that that’s a whole other category of good games to check out and play.  I really enjoyed playing this, and unlocked lots of worthwhile secrets! 

Hunt A Killer: Lakeside Slaughter – Okay so when the heading of this section is “Cool Stuff I Liked Playing in June 2026”, that means physical board games go in this category, right?  We celebrated Memorial Day a little late this year, and this game was something that the fam got together to solve.  We’ve played a few games in this Hunt A Killer series, with I think our overall favorite being Dead Below Deck for stumping us the longest.  Lakeside Slaughter had a more straightforward resolution but it still led to some great cooperative moments, such as dramatic readings of the alibi interviews, assigning different people to figure out different coded messages (one was a ROT13 cypher!  shout out to doyoulikethisvideogamesong), and when we took a lunch break to eat the good stuff from the grill, the conversation about murders and motives continued while sitting on the porch outside (I wonder if any neighbors overheard? 🤔).

For these two, am I allowed to summaries of games I didn’t personally play? 🤔 I watched @wreckscalibur play these, right beside him on the couch, so we kinda enjoyed them together.  The experience was there, so I’m officially proclaiming: It counts!

The Adventures of Elliot (Demo) – The full version is out although we haven’t picked it up yet, but the demo was beefy!  I’m definitely intrigued by the (Radiant Historia-like?) story and the wonderful characters.  The spiritual succession from the Final Fantasy Adventure/early Mana series is tangible, which is a good thing!  I’m sure we’ll check out the full version before too long.

Live A Live – Rounding out the HD-2D Power Hour, my partner is playing this for the first time – I’m familiar-ish with the SNES game through the old LParchive Let’s Play.  I gave the whole LP a skim and made notes of secrets and missable stuff for him (there are a lot).  We still have the last couple of chapters to get through, but man, this game is so good.  There’s a reason it’s been such a beloved cult favorite for all of this time, and the remake treatment is both faithful and beautiful. 🙏  My fave characters are Cube, the Earthen Heart Shifu, and [REDACTED]. 🤗

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From the many game showcases and conferences this month, the Wholesome Direct was a massive highlight.  My most-looked-forward-to’s are Capy Castaway, Froggy Brews, Humblets, and Otterly Lost.

From Nintendo’s Direct, the strong points for me were Hello Kitty Party Land (the Premium Edition comes with a coloring book 🥺), a new Xenoblade game, and a very brief but very exciting glimpse of the Ocarina of Time remake.

Also, Yoshi & the Mysterious Book released this month.  It has a very cute visual style which I love very much but sidescrolling platformer gameplay isn’t fun for me.

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Reading

Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, Vol. 2 – Vol 1 was mentioned last month, Vol 2 is the conclusion (so nice to finish something quickly!).  Things wrapped up nicely, with a cute glimpse at a “How did the characters first meet and become friends?” flashback.  The colorful, sparkly art is the highlight, or maybe the story emphasis on Gwen’s Mom and her sister Kale, who were once Jewel Riders themselves.  Drake is redesigned to be WAY too “cool”; he should be more of a hopeless dweeb to match his role in the original cartoon.  It seemed like Merlin’s out-of-character behavior was going to be an important plot point, but then the story ended and a “reason” for his lashing out was extremely briefly mentioned in the epilogue and I was just like 🤨 okay??  We’re just glossing over the casual intention to usurp the throne I guess.

Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Tangle & Whisper –  Had to read some backstory just to learn who these characters are, which involved some research into what chapters they first appeared in and which compilation volumes those ended up in (answer: it’s the end of vol. 2 and some of vol. 3).  The “Eggman War” storyline was just. not interesting to me at all LOL so I skipped most of that and just started reading Tangle & Whisper.  Got some cute one-off chapters at the start, including some which didn’t feature a single Tangle and/or Whisper at all for some reason (cute stories anyway though), followed by a more serious exploration into the friendship between these two and (gasp) Whisper’s tragic backstory!  …Also found that they feature in a TailsTube video!  How cool to have read these comics and then see them in motion, with voices!  I like Whisper a lot, she is super cool. 🥷

Three Blind Mice – Needed an audiobook to listen to on a drive and picked this.  Similar in premise to And Then There Were None.  Very evocative writing where you can tell what some of the original stage directions were (it was a stage play before being published as a novel), and easily visualize some of the dramatic cinematography.  The “other stories” are a handful of Miss Marple mysteries which we’d also recently listened to from a different collection, but also some Poirots which were new (to us).  I never get tired of any of them. 😄

The Burning Page – Started reading this in April, then my library hold lapsed, got it back early this month, read a few pages, then totally forgot about it (not the book’s fault, I just super dedicated myself to art and opening up some merch stores), then my hold lapsed again.  Then I got it back last week and have slowly (very slowly) been reading just a little bit at a time.  Idk, the stakes are high in this volume and the main emphasis of what’s going on is a big confrontation with the big, dangerous badguy, but to me, the story was much more fun when the characters were actually participating in the premise promised by the blurb (world-hopping librarians traveling to unique alternate histories to collect rare editions of books that are only available in that world).  It isn’t really this book’s fault that my interest is waning, because that whole concept of “the stakes eventually raise higher than the fun original premise” is so, SO common in EVERY media, it’s like, a staple of storytelling.  Just the usual case of me liking the first book in a series the best and falling off after that.

The Fire Opal – A physical book which I’ve set aside for reading outdoors, and I spent recent months reading comics in my sunshine reading time so this one has been getting neglected, even though I’d basically already reached the end.  My progress through his book has been on-hold for so long, the last time I mentioned it was in my 2025 yearly summary.  Also, this is book 4 of a series I first started reading as a teenager, easily 15 years ago (or more?) – the magic system based on colors & shapes in this world is sooo cool, and don’t you LOVE the beautiful cover art by Stephanie Pui-mun Law?  Anyway, now that I’m finally wrapping up the story, the important plot explanations are being discussed by the characters, and I can’t BELIEVE how badly I failed to catch on to the hints that were dropped about the real identity of the male lead from the start.  I definitely was supposed to latch on to the fact that the cousin and her husband that he disapproved of were some of the main characters from book 3, and to notice the suspicious way that he smudged his name when he was signing documents… I didn’t even reread book 3 all that long ago, his name & relation to the previous heroes should have been fresh in my mind, so I don’t feel that I can blame the fact that my reading sessions were so broken up.  I just wasn’t paying attention and the super obvious hints flew over my head. 😅
But also, yaaay for Ginger landing herself in a position of power just by being her sweet self 🤗 and burning to smithereens everyone that wronged her. 😊  She deserves a little vengeance inferno, as a treat.

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Watching

Oh My Goddess: The Movie – I have an extremely nostalgic connection with this movie because I first watched it over a friend’s house when we had a slumber party (where we also connected our Game Boy Advances with link cables and played Four Swords!).  This is such a good endpoint to finish off watching the Oh My Goddess anime series in its various incarnations, even though the actual air date of this was between the 90s OVA series and the 00s one.  You need some introduction to Peorth and Chihiro and others just to know who they are, as well as get a feel for the escalation of Belldandy & Keiichi’s relationship, so it’s worth watching the 00s seasons first.  Plus, the high drama going on in this movie just makes it the perfect place to wrap up the story.  🤗  (I like Celestine.  hes hamdsomne)

Tokyo Mew Mew – I’m in the thick of the back half of this now, beyond what 4Kids dubbed, so I gotta watch subs now, which drastically slows down how frequently I can catch an episode.  Man, 4kids really cut off right before things went off the rails in a glorious way, with Ichigo actually turning INTO a cat, and that she can talk to other cats now?!  Okay!

Sherlock Hound – Have actually been watching this now and again with my partner for a long while now, but since we finished all of Oh My Goddess we filled in that space with what we haven’t seen yet of Sherlock Hound.  These stories are just great. 😊 The doggy characters are soooo endearing, every episode has some manner of very exciting vehicle chase scene, and the vintage English dubbing is delightful.  Very fun to see how the Sherlock Holmes stories are adapted, a similar feeling to watching anime Poirot & Marple.  Genuinely shocked that even super diehard Ghibli/Miyazaki fans never seem to mention this, and it never gets mentioned in cozy/wholesome anime lists either.  Is it really just the fact that absolutely no one knows that Sherlock Hound exists?  Well I’m here to tell you: it does, and it’s good!

Okay, guys………… I have something to admit to you all…….. I have never actually watched any significant amount of Cardcaptor Sakura!! I had caught it once in a while on Saturday mornings, but I truly do not remember much from it, other than the catchy English theme song that it got.

With so much new Cardcaptor Sakura news coming about, I really, really want to see this amazingly cute and classically retro series for myself!! So, my list of episodes here is for me to watch, as well, lol!!

Check these links for:
episodes 1-12 (you are here), 13-24, 25-36, 37-48, 49-60, and 61-70.

These are official, legal streams from Crunchyroll – watching them here helps support the anime industry!

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Episode 1 – Sakura and the Strange Magical Book

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Episode 2 – Sakura’s Wonderful Friend

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Episode 3 – Sakura’s Breathtaking First Date

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Episode 4 – Sakura’s Exhausting Sunday

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Episode 5 – Sakura, a Panda, and a Darling Little Store

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Episode 6 – Sakura and Memories of Her Mother

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Episode 7 – Sakura’s First Burglary Attempt!?

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Episode 8 – Sakura’s Rival Appears!

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Episode 9 – Sakura and the Mysterious Brooch

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Episode 10 – Sakura and the Flowering Sports Day

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Episode 11 – Sakura, Tomoyo, and the Giant House

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Episode 12 – Sakura’s Never-Ending Day

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Check these links for:
episodes 1-12 (you are here), 13-24, 25-36, 37-48, 49-60, and 61-70.

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