I finally had a bit of time to browse through Mangadex this weekend. While I didn't find any "true gems" that would stay with me, I did find a few titles that grabbed my attention. Here's the list:

• Devious Miss Crimson - short (9 chapters) action series with simple, messy drawings and edgy writing. It's an alright read if you're bored.
• Frog in a bottle - oneshot about growing up. It has beautiful art, weird premise and mediocre execution. I REALLY love this artstyle, feels nostalgic.
• One-Armed Amy - another oneshot, this time about a living doll and father-daughter relationship. It's cute and sweet, if a little predictable.
• Soldier and Whitesmith - steampunk attempt at the ship of Theseus question, with ship being people in this case. It's not bad just... feels like there's something missing for me.

That's good to know, thanks!

I didn't expect the kid to take his research online, good for him! I really needed some bee fluff today too.

Much obliged for that! I often think about writing on what I'm playing but end up forgetting due to time constraints - threads like this one definitely help with that.

I get that, it's just if there's no mod to post it I think it's better to have a topic rather than not, especially since it can be pinned afterwards if any mod stumbles into the community again.

We could also bully them into setting up a bot that would post those automatically but this might have its own issues since some people disable bot submissions.

That sounds encouraging. I've been meaning to give it a shot but the backlog is a fickle beast and lives by its own rules.

How're the Kb/M controls?

Majikoi! Love Me Seriously! S - it's a wacky visual novel about a group of high-schoolers in a world where melee combat is pretty much commonplace and all the girl MCs are action manga level of strong. Series is hilarious and I can't stop playing it after getting swept of my feet by Momo in the first game (ended up blazing through it in two days which doesn't happen often these days). This one is a sequel with the same (though epanded) crew and I really can't wait to jump back in.

As for the monthly thread, I feel like if it doesn't happen "officially" the first person to have something to write should just post one themselves instead of waiting. Not like there's a lot of activity here so it should remain visible long enough to gain traction.

Damn, end of an era... Good luck A-Chan! (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)7

This has be kindasortagenerally known already, it just doesn't really matter if nothing is done about it.

TL;DW:

• Patrick Breyer and Niklas Nienaß submitted questions to the European Commission on the topic of killing games (the latter in contact with Ross and two EU based lawyers).
• EU won't commit to answering whether games are goods or services.
• EULA are probably unfair due to imbalance of rights and obligations between the parties.
• Such terminations should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis (preferably by countries rather than EU).
• Existing laws don't seem to cover this issue.
• Campaign in France seems to be gaining some traction. Case went to "the highest level where most commercial disputes submitted to DGCCRF never go".
• UK petition was suppose to get a revised response after the initial one was found lacking. Due to upcoming elections all petitions were closed and it might have to be resubmitted.
• Also in UK, there's a plan to report games killed in the last few years to the Competition and Markets Authority starting in August (CMA will get some additional power by then apparently).
• No real news from Germany, Canada or Brazil.
• Australian petition is over and waiting for a reply. Ross also hired a law firm to represent the issue.

This is a simplified version of simplified version, watch the video for more info.

It kind of makes sense considering their lore is connected to Advent. It's an interesting choice by Cover, I wonder if it'll be a one-off or something they'll play into more in the future.

They're just aiming for the older MLG headshot compilation folk.

Translation of the Break Blade's final chapter is finally here and it's a bit of a bittersweet moment.

For those unaware BB was a fantasy mecha series, which ran between 2006 and 2022. While it wasn't perfect, it had some pretty interesting writing and ideas - especially early on. There was mystery, intrigue, some political shenanigans and a lot of action. Things did slip a bit in the later parts of the story (I'm not sure if it had to do with author's health, creativity issues or just lack of compatibility with serialized schedule) but overall it was a pretty fun ride - even if not a complete one (story concluded but there were some set ups for new arcs).

It also had some great feeling battles, with chunks of armor and parts getting dented, shot up and broken in a very satisfying manner. You could really feel the strength and weight of each hit.

It wasn't a best thing ever bot boy was it a fun ride. I'm going to miss this series.

I think they might be used as another step to bring Koga's coolness out to everyone. I'm sure she wouldn't want to disappoint a kōhai looking up to her.

I'm not going to trudge through days of content to confirm because it's not that important but I'm pretty sure she did talk about planning to graduate even before the CN fiasco happened (as in, plans came before, I think she talked about it after leaving Holo).

As for Kobo... I'm in two minds about this. On one hand, it's fair to be worried considering what happened. On the other, Kobo feels a bit more "detached" from the core Holo fan base and had some Chinese content already if I recall correctly (stuff like song lyrics etc), so this might work out for her. Maybe?

I'm sure Cover wouldn't go for it without some serious risk/reward balancing and I hope they prepared contingency plans in case things go south. All we can do for now is wait and hope for the best.

Yeah, I just watched the Ubisoft Forward stream with some additional details on the new update. Can't say I'm a fan but whatever - guess they still can't let go of their obsession with him.

I might be missing something since I'm not completely dialed in with TD lore but didn't we kill Keener? Are they bringing him back or will this just be more of his usual gloating through audio logs? I'm not sure how I feel about either of those options.

Guess I'll wait for a full detail breakdown before thinking about coming back.

Koga's about to go through introvert's nightmare. She had a good run at least.

That doesn't seem to do much for me unfortunately. In my case the potential time I need to reserve for a gaming session tends to take precedence over hype whenever I'm in a lazy, scroll-focused rut. Still trying to get back to a recent(ish) release I was super hyped playing during its beta period... At least I have a semi decent explanation for this one, I guess.