“We shouldn’t have done this,” my partner lamented as the pizza I had brought home because we were both too busy to cook grew cold. “I never should have agreed to do this. These fucking cards are taking over our lives, and I just want to slow down again.” Three plastic storage tubs towered over our dinner table. Inside them were Pokémon branded yo-yos; several plastic figures of Ash, Pikachu, and friends; packs of the Pog-adjacent Pokémon Action Flips; and several dozen unopened Base Set, Base...

Far and wide, Metaphor: ReFantazio is celebrated as the latest, and potentially greatest, role-playing game to come out of ATLUS, a studio famed for creating both mechanically pristine and thematically compelling titles. This acclaim is well earned as Metaphor trims the fat that weighed down the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games that this title iterates upon. Metaphor has a much tighter narrative and moves at a breakneck pace compared to titles like Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal, which...

The future of VTubing is Indie, and these are some of the people leading the charge. In January, Yatta-Tachi was able to interview Motoaki Tanigo, the CEO of Cover/hololive; one of the largest and most significant VTuber talent agencies in the industry today. A recurring theme that emerged throughout that interview was how VTubing as a medium would grow, with Tanigo’s vision being a Cover-led breakthrough into mainstream cultural, professional, and advertising spaces. While it’s understandable...

How do you even review a Zelda game? They're some of the most overtly influential video games in the medium's history and are directly responsible for the art form's growth several times over. It's impossible to review a new mainline entry into the Zelda franchise in a vacuum because the series is forever linked to a legacy of industry-defining greatness. These are the questions I would be asking if The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom didn't live up to the standards set by the franchise, but...

The last chapter of Gege Akutami’s Jujutsu Kaisen manga released on September 29th, 2024 and I’m now convinced that we’re living in the endgame of “shonen” as a genre. The popularity of the series and its impact on popular culture goes without saying; after all, the manga regularly tops sales charts and the anime adaptation swept this year’s Crunchyroll Anime Awards. Jujutsu Kaisen is clearly a landmark achievement in manga with characters, artistic sensibilities, and themes that resonate with m...

Model, panel host, and sex worker Ronnie/Bunni Black described the anime community as having "cognitive dissonance" towards adult content. As sex workers in the anime community are quick to note, anime conventions court noteworthy cosplayers, but give them little support to make the most of their attendance. There's a misogynistic contradiction of femme cosplayers needing to meet fetishized beauty standards...

Even if you've played every Persona and SMT title, probably don’t know is that the first games in this franchise are based on a series of books from the 1980s called Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, and that each and every one of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games in this series still draw inspiration from these books today! These books are the origin and future of the Persona franchise, and if you want to know about where they've been and where they’re going before starting Persona 3: Reload, you need to know about Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei.

PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is on track to be gaming’s best hidden gem of 2023. Described as a must play for horror fans by But Why Tho’s own Kate Sánchez; the game is a masterclass in occult horror, ensemble cast storytelling, and narratively intuitive game design. Available for only $20 on both Steam and the Nintendo Switch eShop, this game is an exemplary visual novel that both advances the genre and serves as a fantastic introduction for those new to the form.

Releasing just as scene kids came into their own, digital spaces became readily available to most American teens, and anime had finally carved out a small niche in mainstream culture, Death Note was destined to be a cultural phenomenon. In the years following the anime’s 2006 premiere, you couldn’t go to a convention without seeing clusters of Light, Misa, and L cosplayers. You couldn’t...

About once every three or four months I find myself asking, “Do I even like anime?” While anime and manga make up some of my formative media experiences and tie into the personal and professional achievements that I’m most proud of, I just can’t deal with them sometimes. I think this is why 'No More Heroes', a 2007 game for the Nintendo Wii, resonates so deeply with me. Developed by Suda 51’s Grasshopper Manufacture, this game’s protagonist, Travis Touchdown, is a parody of undeservedly boisterous cishet fanboys who wrongly think that they are the only real anime and manga fans.