Mento's Month: December '24 (+ GOTY Stuff!)

Game of the Month: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (MachineGames, 2024)

Welcome to the last Mento's Month of the year and, man, if I haven't spent all of December trying to get my money's worth out of this free Game Pass trial. Wait. Never mind, I'll unpack that sentence later. As has become semi-tradition at this point, whenever the end of the year approaches and F.O.M.O. crashes into the ring for a mid-card grudge match with S.A.D., I spend the Bing points I've accrued all year by hitting links about windsurfing or crochet and answering the most facile trivia questions imaginable on another month of Game Pass to sweep up as many current-year highlights as I can. Marathon gaming is a great way to add to the already hectic schedule of the holidays, I've found, and this year's bumper crop is another good reason to check in on Microsoft's untenably generous service.

To that effect, I've played eight games from 2024 (plus two from previous years for the last two Indie Game of the Month entries) across the past 31 days and now have something resembling a respectable if far from complete GOTY list to see out the year. Of those eight, the one I appreciated the most was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: a very faithful attempt to recreate the magic of the original movie trilogy and its combination of action, spooks, levity, big rocks, BDSM gear, and a scholar with an archeology degree going on and on about something that happened in the Old Testament like that makes it verifiably true.

Runners-up, in order, include:

Nine Sols, a Souls-style explormer with a ruthless feline extraterrestrial protagonist looking to visit vengeance on his former colleagues and mentor who dispatched him after he'd discovered one inconvenient truth too many. While the story and worldbuilding is top-notch, almost uniquely so for a game of this more action-heavy genre (barring a few other examples I can think of like Iconoclasts), the punishing, parry-based combat was the facet that really captured my attention here and forced me (in what felt like the first time in forever, as lazy as I've become as a player) to actually knuckle down and learn the game and specific boss patterns over a painstaking process pocked by constant failure. It's dispiriting to play games that way but—as any fighter, rhythm game, or shoot 'em up fan will tell you—very rewarding when you're able to take a step back and see how far you've come from the button-mashing noob you once were. If you're prepared for the challenge (or just want to bump the difficulty down to something reasonable, as that's an option too) I'd argue it's possibly the best explormer from this year: of course, I will have to first play Animal Well, The Lost Crown, Ultros, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Ufouria 2, and a few others to verify this. Ah, what a terrible burden to have.

Next down the list is the last game I played: Dungeons of Hinterberg by Austrian team Microbird. A 3D Zeldersatz with some very ambitious art and game design, it splits its focus between the usual environmental-puzzle-laden dungeons and a mild social-sim aspect where you befriend townies and other tourist adventurers for various boons. The story of a skiing resort town that changed direction for its tourism brochures when magical portals to self-contained dungeons starting popping up all over its pristine Alpine forests and mountains gives the developers an opportunity, one close to their hearts I'm sure, about the commodification and gentrification of natural beauty spots and the idea of escaping to such a retreat after becoming enervated by the rat race of being a young urban professional with something to prove to the world. That they were able to come up with something novel for each of the game's 26 dungeons—including one that's deliberately meant to be kinda lame—is an impressive enough feat for a small studio, let alone that it's all in this gorgeous 3D cel-shaded style and has a whole bunch of systems and sidequests besides. Nothing too elaborate or mechanically dense but a very welcome Zeldersatz to discover this late in the year.

Next we have Another Crab's Treasure, which takes you on a journey through an underwater setting that's Lordran by way of Bikini Bottom. As a hermit crab dispossessed of his conch home by a dubious tax collector, Kril must at first navigate the various governmental barriers between him and his home before all hell breaks loose and the plot kicks in proper. See, this underwater kingdom has been adversely affected by human waste, much like the rest of the ocean, and that manifests in this brain-eroding "goop" that causes formerly sapient sealife to suddenly become mindless monsters, with Kril bouncing from one catastrophe to the next as he seeks a legendary treasure that his dispossessor tasks him to recover. The game's combat and character development has been greatly streamlined here and there's much more in the way of traditional 3D platformer gameplay, a combination I didn't know I wanted until this game appeared, and while the bosses aren't easy (it is a Soulslike, after all) there's not a whole lot of tactical options you need to process to figure out how to beat them. Mostly it comes down to a high level of skill, which is where the game's accessibility option of having a big gun strapped to your back comes in handy if you were just drawn in by the colorful world and characters and are less in the mood for Sekiro but with crustaceans.

Last month's Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Pepper Grinder sandwich Another Crab's Treasure, above, as the fourth and sixth entries leaving the seventh spot to be filled by the naughty puss of Little Kitty, Big City. A 3D platformer with a whole lot of puzzles and obstacles to overcome, LKBC is mostly about cuteness but still has some intriguing urban level design to navigate as you continually open up shortcuts and find new paths as you go about solving the problems of the local wildlife, including a few other cats, a self-conscious chameleon, a wayward family of ducks, and the one friendly Shiba Inu in a town full of unfriendlier ones. Your only true goal is to get back to the high-rise apartment you fell from, which requires you devour four fish to recover the necessary amount of energy, but besides that one objective that can be mainlined within an hour there's plenty of incidental mayhem to check out and collectibles to find. There's some strong aspect of earlier misbehaved animal sims too such as Goat Simulator and Untitled Goose Game (not to mention Catlateral Damage, with which it shares a similar mission of knocking plant pots off shelves, responding to humanity's open defiance to the power of gravity) and with little in the way of conflict or violence it's definitely an "all-ages" type of game. Scratched a 3D platformer itch this year, what with Astro Bot currently beyond my reach, even if there's not a whole lot to it beyond its wholesome charms.

No. 8 on my list is Still Wakes the Deep, a first-person horror adventure game from UK devs The Chinese Room, who'd had some previous experience with this genre through Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It sees a Scottish electrician, Cameron "Caz" McLeary, get fired from his job on the perilously dilapidated oil rig Beira D on the same moment that it drills through something Not Of This Earth and then has to elude Lovecraftian terrors as he desperately looks for a way back to the mainland. The game splits its time between stealthily evading his former associates, now utterly insane creatures, while navigating the rig's crumbling architecture through some taut underwater and high-altitude climbing sequences in a structure similar to Dead Space where those pesky monsters took down some rather important systems that need to be repaired or rebooted. Great command of atmosphere and pacing, some deeply unpleasant (but well-rendered) body horror everywhere you turn, and an excellent sense of verisimilitude which only serves to emphasize the sudden uncanniness of this unknowable invader all the more potently.

Botany Manor, our ninth game, is considerably more chill as first-person adventure games go. Taking on a picturesque style similar to Myst or The Witness, the goal is to explore the titular manor as its middle-aged academic owner while growing a bunch of exotic plants with some very specific demands before they'll blossom. Demands like a certain sequence of colors or sounds that you have to put together from clues lying around the vicinity. The game complicates things further as it continues to unlock more of the manse by having you focus on multiple plants and their clues at once, so there's a process where you have to sort out which clue refers to which plant. Other than that, though, it's a relatively brisk and easy and relaxing "one of those" that highlights the joys of horticulture and the colorful rewards that come from carefully tending to a plant's needs. A wisp of a game but a very amiable one that proved a fine way to get the ball rolling on this month's activities.

Last on my current top ten is Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, the sequel to the equally larcenous Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. Instead of the dungeon-based Zeldersatz it was before it has fully embraced a run-based model with those same top-down shooter mechanics, not dissimilar to The Binding of Isaac. You smash (TV) through the wall of the bank, steal from safes and mug employees, and get back out before the timer reaches the end and the cops start showing up in ever deadlier waves. You're given various objectives in addition to just swiping cash and will slowly accrue more burglary tools, upgrades, fancier weapons, and cosmetic hats for your shallow shallot to covet. There's an overarching narrative too but it's the same type of meme-laden shaggy dog story as the first game: you're just a vegetable that does crimes, and you don't really need much more than that to go on. I appreciated the constant stream of permanent upgrades (the only way I'd play a run-based game these days), the silly humor, and the fact that it wasn't super long like so many of these regular progress-wipers can be.

Be sure to check out Welcome to Go! Go! GOTY 2024 for a table full of (comparatively) in-depth reviews for all of the above and any more that appear in January, which is when GOTY should actually happen consarnit. That's why I won't put the finished list here yet: check back in with me after January's sweep up for a definitive list (or, ideally, after February when I'll have played Ys X as well). Instead of that, for now I'll offer this:

Games of a Year

As has become another tradition for me and my typically tardy approach to playing new games, I've put together a list here of each Game of the Month in chronological order. I've already expounded on each in their respective "Mento's Month" entries so I'll just include those links along with some runners-up.

Projected Adjusted GOTY 2024

In about five years or so, once I've played everything from 2024 that caught my eye, I'm guessing the GOTY rankings will shift quite a bit. No real objective basis behind this list: just vibes for the most part based on what I know about these games and my own tastes. I'm curious if these predictions will pan out but I'll probably be too busy fending off irradiated space octopuses in 2029 to remember to check.

(On that note, I'll be creating a few more "GOTY (Adjusted)" lists for 2022 and 2023 over the next month so if you're on the same slightly delayed train as I am when it comes to game purchases keep an eye out for recommendations.)

1. Ys X: Nordics
2. Astro Bot
3. Metaphor: ReFantazio
4. UFO 50
5. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
6. Nine Sols
7. Dragon Age: The Veilguard
8. Visions of Mana
9. The Rise of the Golden Idol
10. Animal Well
11. Minishoot' Adventures
12. 1000xResist
13. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
14. Dungeons of Hinterberg
15. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
16. Another Crab's Treasure
17. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection
18. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
19. Unicorn Overlord
20. Bakeru

The "Indie Game of the Week" of the Month: The Case of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games, 2022)

Only needed a couple more Indie Games of the Week to hit that big 400 but it's a real hard choice selecting a winner between the two of them. The Case of the Golden Idol (#399) is a fantastic deductive adventure game that has you picking up keywords and inserting them into statements to create the solution: it's something that could've theoretically existed as far back as the text parser days of the genre yet to my knowledge it's the first of its type. Its slightly perturbing art style took some getting used to but you can't argue it doesn't give the game a distinctive look to go with its distinctive gameplay model. Really excited to check out its sequel, The Rise of the Golden Idol, sometime in 2025 or beyond.

Likewise, Cocoon (#400) excels due to its novelty—something Indies are far more proficient at pulling off over the more risk-averse larger AA and AAA games—and I was glued to it until its eventual conclusion much like a moth to a flame. Jumping into worlds, sometimes while carrying other worlds with you, made for some conceptually bizarre but intuitively followable environmental puzzles. Can't wait to see what that studio comes up with next.

The Bonus Indie: McPixel 3 (Sos Sosowski, 2022)

Normally I invent some contrivance as to why the Mento's Month Bonus Indies can't just be a regular IGotW piece, like they're either too short or they were put out by a major publisher which would disqualify them as "Indie", but in this case it's purely because IGotW is done for the year and they're taking this game off Game Pass before Jan 1st. So hey, that's a good enough reason for making it the last Bonus Indie for the year, right? C'mon, it's New Year's Eve, let me have this much.

McPixel was WarioWare if it took place in a chaotically stupid version of the MacGuyver universe (or rather, a different chaotically stupid version of the MacGuyver universe that MacGruber inhabits) and very little has changed in this sequel (there was no McPixel 2) as the titular borderline-psychotic bomb defusal expert, public micturition proponent, and inveterate groin kicker goes about his day in any number of unlikely settings. You're not only encouraged to find the correct series of people or things to click on to defuse whatever bomb is nearby—you usually only have time to click on one or two things before it goes off, and the results are rarely what you'd expect (which makes the few times they very much are what you'd expect all the funnier)—but also all the bad endings, because the developer hid most of the best jokes there. Completing a scenario by following the correct course of action awards you a silver medal, while finding all endings/gags on top of that nets you the gold. The game typically throws several of these scenarios at you at once, and you cycle through them until you're able to "save the day" for each. Any that remain silver rather than gold can then be revisited later through the game's quick menu to sweep up their remaining conclusions.

One new feature McPixel 3 sports is an overworld where you can spend money earned from finding all these endings to the scenarios—a small pittance for each gag found, plus a much larger payout for 100%-ing it—to unlock new levels. This extra process doesn't really add too much though besides a whole bunch of walking across screens, nor honestly do the new more elaborate mini-games which have you completing little action sequences, such as a shoot 'em up level, to resolve a scenario instead. These action sequences can often get in the way if they already take some time to complete and you're revisiting the level over and over to find that one elusive bad ending gag somewhere. An example would be a short Final Fight style brawler level: there's a separate gag ending if you destroy the car while beating up the thugs, since you also need to ride it out of there once you're done, and so instead you just slowly push it out onto the road since it's been rendered inoperable. Amusing, but it means completing that brawler mini-game at least twice to get both variants of the ending.

Last, there's Steve. Steve is just some wiener who keeps popping up in random places and his appearance often means getting to attempt one of the unique Steve scenarios, which are far less engaging as they usually just boil down to choosing from a multiple choice prompt rather than McPixel's (occasionally) more thinky "use X on Y" puzzle solutions. Some part of me wonders if this isn't a jab at Henry Stickmin, which employs a similar gag-filled approach to short-form adventure micro-gaming but reduces the player's role to choosing from multiple prompts, but I could just be imagining it. After all, this guy is Steve, not Henry. One benefit to the Steve scenarios is that they're replayable like the normal levels, and so you can get a bit of extra moolah by completing them as well if you ever needed an easy cash injection to move the game along.

I don't think many of the new additions to the format really improve things at all but at the end of the day it's more McPixel and this shit is still hilarious to me. It's hard to do humor right in games and harder still when you give yourself the restriction of zero dialogue or text or really much beyond visual context clues, but the developer's forte of physical comedy is as much on display here as it was back with the first game and given McPixel feels like a combination of WarioWare—where the quickfire nature of the skits really help with any weighted hit/miss ratios—and MacGuyver parodies and piss jokes I'm surprised I don't hear Ryckert sing its praises more often. Worth checking out if you were a fan of the first game, otherwise you're better off playing that instead as it has a lot less superfluity impeding the goofs. (Rating: 4 out of 5.)

The Weeb Weeview

Did I hear someone ask for a "Top Ten Anime of 2024" list on their video game-centric forums? No? Well, as always, I aim to please myself if no-one else:

1. Dandadan

Daniel Father Daniel, as it's known formally, is a show that seems to pride itself on being utterly unpredictable (provided you haven't read ahead in the manga, of course). One moment it's a high-velocity supernatural shounen like YuYu Hakusho, the next a cute yet realistic depiction of awkward goofy teens in love (like a few others on this list), or it's a whole episode dedicated to an emotionally harrowing tale of someone's life falling apart before they died and became a monster. It's never content to rest in one place for long, and that goes equally for Science Saru's fluid animation as much as it does its mercurial tone. Just a joy to experience every week and a show I hope will stick around for many more seasons to come, the second coming soon in July (though I'll admit they ended this first cour on a really evil cliffhanger and probably shouldn't have).

2. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

This is really just the second half with the first-class mage exam, as the previous half aired in autumn '23, but there's something both achingly beautiful and sad about Frieren's nigh-immortal existence even for all the show's moments of levity and incredible visual spectacle. A show that reflects on mortality, loss, legacies, the passage of time and our perception of same, and (for real) the friends we made along the way as much as it is about annihilating arrogant demons with Pink Floyd laser shows. One example of several this year that the anime high fantasy genre hasn't been completely wrung dry by a thousand copy/paste isekai just yet.

3. KonoSuba Season 3

Though speaking of isekai, that oft-visited genre is occasionally capable of producing gold among the usual torrents of silt. KonoSuba (short for Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o!, translated as the somewhat ironic "A Blessing on This Wonderful World!") debuted quite some time ago now, defiantly parodying the tenets of the isekai genre back when they hadn't really yet been set in stone, at least in the anime world. Perennial real-world loser Kazuma and his girlfailure Harem from Hell embark on some of their funniest adventures so far in this season, between his newfound gift for mimicry and the smugness that comes from being (temporarily) good on funds.

4. Solo Leveling

Though not much to write home about in terms of plotting and character development—weedy kid almost dies in a special instance dungeon, becomes the only enhanced human "Hunter" capable of growing stronger through levelling up rather than hitting the gym, and evolves into a terrifyingly powerful (and ripped) combatant in short order—Solo Leveling was a frequent guilty pleasure of mine back around the start of the year, having previously enjoyed the Korean manhwa it's based on and regularly delighted with A-1's kinetic adaptations of its many intense fight scenes. It's really been a blast just watching others react to, say, the gruesome denouement with the Lizards or the one-sided duel with Knight Commander Igris the Bloodred (and if he sounds like a Souls boss, well, he mostly fights like one too).

5. Delicious in Dungeon

What I appreciate most about Delicious in Dungeon, besides its dry sense of humor, is how much it feels like a show made by a fan of western CRPGs. The mangaka Ryoko Kui has been known to doodle elves from various other media, including Pillars of Eternity, Baldur's Gate, and Pathfinder (last I heard, she was eagerly anticipating the Japanese localization of Wrath of the Righteous) and you can tell that D&D/Forgotten Realms influence has informed a lot of Delicious in Dungeon's trappings and monster encounters if not necessarily its distinctive worldbuilding and loopy personality. Like, this could've been set in Waterdeep and the Undermountain had things shaken out differently (though dealing with WotC/Hasbro right now sounds like it'd be an absolute nightmare). Just one agreeable facet among many of this well-crafted dungeoneering/foodie sitcom.

6. The Elusive Samurai

Some truly stunning visuals and a mostly for-fun alternative history lesson are a couple reasons to get into The Elusive Samurai, but it's really a case where even if it's loosely following events from Japan's tumultuous 14th century (though they were all pretty tumultuous until the 1600s) there's no way to predict what kind of preternaturally gifted foe the young Lord Tokiyuki will face next nor how he'll use his equally prodigious evasive skills to get the best of them. It has its moments of darkness, especially in that pilot when the protag's entire dynasty is massacred, but is otherwise a bouncy and gripping jidaigeki adventure serial that really goes to town on the animation for some of its set-pieces.

7. Oshi no Ko Season 2

The audience's enthusiasm for Oshi no Ko has dampened somewhat with how the manga concluded, and whether the show will last long enough to get there remains to be seen, but this is another season where you have the joys and travails of fame and artistic expression as a backdrop to a smoldering revenge story that slowly makes more progress (or maybe the vengeance plot is in the backdrop, since it's easier to plan a revenge killing from the shadows). That, along with some unpleasant revelations spurring on the pair of reincarnated twins and the specific problems that come from adapting the works of others, especially those super protective of their own IPs and characters, made for another compelling season of drama. (And, hey, on that note maybe the showrunners here will just make up their own ending like the Game of Thrones guys did.)

8. The Dangers in My Heart Season 2

This show, where a dorky and insecure little king somehow captures the heart of the prettiest (and goofiest) girl in class, is just cuteness personified even if it doesn't shy away from the typical hamfistedness and miscommunication problems that accompany a lot of awkward teenage romances. This second season ends on an incredible moment that should change everything going forward, paying off our investment in these characters and the slow development of their feelings towards each other.

9. Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!

If you're going the HS romance route, your only two options are the super earnest ones like the above or the super jokey and meta "playing around with an unusual premise" approach like this one, which is kind of like how a lot of isekai just adapt some fun conceit and run with it as far as they can go. Here, the plot is about the shoujo (girls') manga cliché of a secondary female character who loses the boy to the (sometimes) more deserving female lead, often introduced halfway through the plot as a sudden triangle-shaped impediment to the main love story. Those losing heroines all congregate together here to emotionally support each other, with a male shoujo manga stan somehow caught in the middle occupying some manner of universal confidante role. It's sweet and amusing and overindulgently well-animated (by A-1, of Solo Leveling above and others) but the character work for these unlucky-in-love gals is definitely the highlight and I liked the way they all took turns to sing the ED for each episode.

10. Shangri-La Frontier

This is an odd case where we got the second half of the first season at the start of 2024 and the first half of the second season as the year ends. So I guess in a sense we got a full season of this superlative MMO-based show that thoroughly explores the type of metagaming and theorycrafting and min-maxing that happens at the highest echelons of obsessive gamerdom, as its mostly naked (due to a curse) protagonist continues to outthink not so much the overpowered monsters in his path but the developers that came up with them and assuredly coded in some very specific strategy to defeat them. Superb action scenes, between the latter half of the first season's run in with Wezaemon the Tombguard (a unique monster—a step higher than a multiplayer raid boss) and here in the second season with its mecha fights and altercations with some metallic scorpions who were supposed to corral players away from certain zones by being next to impossible to defeat (if you aren't some obstinate player like Sunraku anyway). If you ever wanted an anime based on that one Elden Ring "Let Me Solo Her" dude who has absolutely no fear, this is it.

Honorable Mentions:

I Parry Everything

This show ended up being way more fun than I anticipated, never dropping the kayfabe that the protagonist became far too modest after his past failures to recognize how absurdly overpowered his basic "parry" skill has become. That they ended the season with him essentially defeating the entire Shinra army, Bahamut Zero, and the Sister Cannon all on his own is just the cap on a subtly funny deconstruction of how the utility of a well-timed parry has increased in value many times over in recent gaming history thanks to Souls games and their ilk.

VTuber Legend

Though never quite managing to be as unhinged as the real thing, VTuber Legend works as a rags-to-riches show all about the chaotic creative expression that comes from finding your niche in the increasingly crowded market of CG avatar streamers but it also functions as a window into that same universe. If you've never delved into Hololive or VShojo this anime gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of madness to expect from those crowds. I appreciate also that the show (and its tireless localizers) managed to recreate how much of the humor comes from the peanut gallery of commenters: you'll have to freeze-frame to catch most of them as they whiz across the screen but there are so many great jokes packed into those incidental lines of text.

Wind Breaker

Exceptionally well-animated "bancho" delinquent fighting comedy that was more wholesome than I expected. Some great character work that's almost reminiscent of a sports drama, where every side character and villain seems to have their own flashback episode, and the odd choice to have the lead be this male tsundere loner who cannot emotionally handle expressions of genuine friendship and camaraderie made for some funny interactions.

And now, to further cement my unfortunate status around here as an irredeemable otaku, my impressions of next season's slate of mostly trashy isekai anime based on having read (some of) their manga:

• Solo Leveling Season 2: I'm guessing this season will cover up to but possibly not including the ant-infested Jeju Island arc, which the first season spent some not inconsiderable time setting up (including the finale's cliffhanger). Not to spoil too much about how S1 ended but Jinwoo has many more tactical options to employ going forward so there'll be some pretty spectacular fight scenes to come. Stuff that will make the Igris duel look like a slap fight between kindergarteners.
• Shangri-La Frontier Season 2 (second cour): Well, yeah, goes without saying. Season's been great so far, even including Sunraku's little side adventure in the mecha fighter game to recharge his batteries (which wasn't strictly filler, since it served to introduce two upcoming characters), and the current cour is ending with a pretty spectacular fight with a certain big wolf that's been capturing my rapt attention. Definitely looking forward to more birdmaskman in the new year.
• Sakamoto Days: Badass John Wick former assassin thing, if Wick had gotten a little doughy in his retirement and took over a conbini. Similar mix of action and comedy as Dandadan; I've only read a few of the manga because I decided I wanted to see it in action.
• I May Be a Guild Receptionist, but I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time: Overly descriptive and literal titles are usually not a good sign but this is a pretty funny office comedy (and another addition to the "OP protag" lineage) take on having a thankless desk job while surrounded by flashy but incompetent prima donnas. Even though she's head and shoulders above any other adventurer, the protag just wants the job security and health benefits of an ordinary 9-5 job and will annihilate anything and anyone to prevent getting fired for moonlighting or forcing her to do overtime. Also, it's from CloverWorks, which might be reason enough to watch it (they of The Elusive Samurai and Wind Breaker, mentioned above).
• Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!: There's been a few manga and even an anime or two about elves living in modern Tokyo in a "reverse isekai" situation (including a show not too long ago, Otaku Elf) but this one's neat because the hero and the titular elf travel back and forth between worlds due to some odd rules. The guy, from modern Japan, dreams of living days and weeks in the alternative world and whenever he dies there he wakes back up here. It's not clear to him if it's a real place he's travelling to until he happens to perish alongside his elf adventurer partner and she wakes up in Tokyo alongside him. Usual fish out of water fantasy comedy for the most part but it benefits from bouncing between two worlds rather than always being stuck in one.
• From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!: For a country not particularly generous towards its trans community there's a whole lot of genderswap stories being made there, and they're usually more sensitive than you'd expect. This one's entirely played for comedy though (not in a mean way at least) as a well-meaning middle-aged dad, who has that ideal mix of awkwardness, kindness, and firmness towards the younger generation, takes over the typical otome game role of the "ojou-sama" haughty noblewoman highschool bully while his real-world wife and adult daughter do all they can to assist from the sidelines. It's yet another "villainess ain't so villanous" sitcom (see also: My Next Life as a Villainess) but the dynamic is funny (being an older Japanese person, he's terrible with the gaijin names everyone has in this 18th century European-coded setting) with a super wholesome protagonist who's easy to root for. Kinda like if you dropped Mr. Rogers into a dating sim. Man, that's a weird image.
• The Daily Life of a Middle-Aged Online Shopper in Another World: Regular thirtysomething gets isekai'd, survives in this dangerous new fantasy world via the power of Amazon Prime. If you ever wanted to see a dude fight off a dungeon boss while riding a construction vehicle this show will provide. Otherwise it's mostly just some more generic isekai business (and even more harem shit, though at least the protag's civil enough to only reciprocate the feelings of one of them).
• Even Given the Worthless “Appraiser” Class, I’m Actually the Strongest: I don't have high hopes for this one. Pretty much another Arifureta type where a protag betrayed by his party almost dies but finds some secret incredible power and goes about saving the world while surrounded by beauties. Not quite as moody though and the manga did have some cool battles at least. Depends if it can follow Arifureta in being at least somewhat self-aware enough about its angsty wish-fulfilment nonsense for some jokes.
• I Left My A-Rank Party to Help My Former Students Reach the Dungeon Depths!: Well, same scenario as the above really. I just wanted to say about this one (more a warning, really) is that while 90% of the time it's another cutesy harem adventurer party thing that other 10% involves some real grunchy and unpleasant business as the protag's shitty old party gets their comeuppance and then some. Gross SA scene and everything. Morbidly curious how graphic the show will go when adapting it given how tonally out of place that arc is but otherwise I'm not sure I'll bother following it that far.
• Mashin Souzouden Wataru: I probably won't be watching this kid's shounen adventure anime, which looks to combine both Minecraft and selfie sticks going by its trailer, only that I did a Game OVA feature on its original incarnation Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru earlier this year and so I might just side-eye the reviews to see what's going on with it. Heck, if it does well enough we may even get a whole new Keith Courage in Alpha Zones game out of it.

Too Long, Do Relinks

• Indie Game of the Week 399: The Case of the Golden Idol
• Indie Game of the Week 400: Cocoon
• Indie Game of the Week: The Fourth Hundred (List)
• Welcome to Go Go GOTY! 2024