1805: Christmas is Over

Well, it’s the evening of Sunday December 28, and I’m counting down the hours until I have to get up at some ungodly hour in the morning and trudge all the way to work. (Okay, I drive most of it, but there’s still an honest-to-goodness half-hour trudge at the other end, which I’m really not relishing in the current cold weather.)

The Christmas break has been nice, and the fact I’d spent the previous few months at work, away from home (as opposed to working from home as I was previously) has made me appreciate it somewhat more. I’ve enjoyed the time off, I’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to just relax without the pressure to “do” anything, and I’ve enjoyed having the time to indulge in some favourite games, TV shows and anime without time commitments.

I finished the Hanzou story in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus today — that’s one of the four stories in the game. I enjoyed it a lot; gameplay-wise, it’s a significant improvement on the first game thanks to its jump to 3D, and its narrative is interesting. Throughout the course of the story, we learn some new things about the main cast as well as get introduced to the newcomers in this particular installment: the girls of the Gessen shinobi school, and the new members of the Hebijou school that Homura and her gang hailed from in the original game before being exiled following the events at Burst’s finale.

My initial reaction to the Hanzou story was that I was slightly disappointed there weren’t more of the visual novel sequences giving background on the girls and how they were feeling about various things — but on balance, I think there was a good amount. The game didn’t try to do too much: it introduced one major plot/background point per character through several of these sequences peppered throughout the course of the entire narrative arc, and the rest of the story was delivered through snappy but enjoyable talking-heads sequences that were just about characters talking to one another, not narration. It worked well, and it teased just enough information about the Gessen girls to make me want to find out more about them: fortunately, I can now do just that by playing through their story, followed by Hebijou and finally Homura and her friends in the Crimson Squad.

I also, as we saw yesterday, made a start on Final Fantasy. I’ll be writing more about that as I make more progress through it, though with my intended creative writing project in January this will likely be over on the Squadron of Shame forums rather than here.

I’ve also watched some anime for the first time in what feels like months; I’ve been continuing with the farming-themed series Silver Spoon, which was recommended to me by some anime-loving friends, and I’ve been reminded what a good show it is. It has an enjoyably understated plot about a teen boy feeling somewhat out of his depth in an agricultural academy, and some appealing, entertaining characters who occasionally reference recognisable anime tropes without being defined by them. There’s one character in particular who looks like he would be more at home in a series like Dragon Ball Z, for example, so seeing him mucking out cows and working with chickens is rather entertaining, to say the least!

Anyway. Early-ish night for me tonight due to the aforementioned Danger of Work bell tolling, so I’ll sign off there and simply say I hope you all had as restful and pleasant a Christmas as I had, and are looking forward to a good new year.