Bess posts
Posts: 103
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February Media Favourites/Recommendations
Good afternoon!This is going to be another very short post as I once again sunk basically all my time into the video last month, but I did go see Mamoru Hosoda's new film BELLE on the day it released here in the UK and made a thread about that on my Twitter that you can check out for my thoughts!Otherwise, here are the videos I enjoyed:the feminine urge to be... feminine? by amandamaryannaWhat is Happening to Women's Figure Skating? | An ...
February Updates
Hey guys,I hope you're all safe and well. We've had a few extreme storms back-to-back in the UK recently and some uncomfortably close calls flood-wise in my area but I fortunately haven't been too affected. It's been another month of intense work on the video and not too much else so I'll get straight into updates on that.Last time I made one of these posts I was about to start writing the video script. I *finally* managed to ...
January Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hi guys!This will be a very short post as January was entirely subsumed by me working on the new video and most of my time was spent rereading/watching things for that rather than getting to anything new!One new thing I did manage to read, however, was Kataribanashi-hen. Last time I mentioned Kataribanashi was in my bonus arcs video; as a little recap, it's a series of short story ideas that won a competition held by 07th Expansion in the 200...
January Updates + Wataakashi DVD Commentary Summary
Hi everyone!I hope 2022 got off to a good start for you all! I'll jump right into video updates. I'm currently refining my notes right down ready to write the script which is not as far along as I'd hoped to be by now, but my planning document ended up at nearly seventy pages, so that would be why (there is something very wrong with me). I'm still not sure what the runtime for the actual video will look like and thus how long it w...
2021 Retrospective and 2022 Plans
Hello everyone, and Happy New Year!This post is *long*, so I've included headings -- feel free to scroll to whichever part you want to read. First of all, though, I want to say a huge thank you for all your support in 2021. This Patreon really helped buoy me through some tricky financial situations over this last year, and the ongoing encouragement and kind words were often what gave me that push I needed to work on a video in the evenings af...
December Updates
Hey guys!Another month has passed, and I'm back with another update. Apart from some tentative tackling of job applications which I'm otherwise mostly leaving for January and a lot of sleeping and watching anime I’ve not been up to much, so I'll jump right into how the Gou/Sotsu video's coming along: first things first, sadly not unsurprisingly, I can say for sure now that I won't be able to get the video out by the end of t...
November Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hey everyone!I've been making the most of having some more time on my hands to watch/read/play things so here's what I enjoyed most in November:Ghosts of the TsunamiGhosts of the Tsunami is a non-fiction book by Richard Lloyd Parry covering the 2011 tsunami in Japan, focusing in particular on an elementary school where most of the student body very tragically lost their lives and how this came to be.I'd had this book on my to-read lis...
November Updates
Hey guys!I hope you're all well. I've finally had some time to just chill out the last few weeks and mostly do whatever I want which has been great. I'm going to be looking for a full-time job come the new year, but until then I'm largely free! This of course also means that I have some more time for YouTube right now as well, and so I'm here to announce my next video: A Higurashi Gou/Sotsu Retrospective (preliminary title).Ye...
October Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hi all!Here's what I enjoyed watching in October:Alice in BorderlandAfter how much I enjoyed Squid Game, I was left craving something similar, and had often seen Alice in Borderland brought up in such conversations. The series is originally a manga, but I opted to check out the Netflix drama adaptation.AiB follows Ryohei Arisu and two of his friends as they find themselves in a suddenly seemingly empty Tokyo where they have to compete in a va...
Mirai: A Celebration of Moments
It's here! Thank you all as always for your patience while I pulled this one together, there were a lot of unexpected disruptions last month and I really wanted to take the time to make sure I got the video right.This was honestly a bit of a scary project as my relationship with this film is such a personal one. I put a lot of thought into what form exactly the video should take and am really thrilled with how it ultimately turned out. It end...
October Updates
Hello everyone!I hope you're all well and enjoying the autumn weather (or whatever season it is in your part of the world) -- though here in England it's been surprisingly mild. A lot has happened since we last spoke: I moved (twice, to be precise, which I don't recommend), turned 24 and submitted my Master's dissertation. I was also ill for a little while recently (just a sinus infection, but my family seem to be passing things b...
September Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hey everyone!Here's some faves and recommendations from September.Death Billiards/Death ParadeDeath Billiards is a short film that came out in 2013 as part of the Young Animator Training Project, an annual project funded by the Japanese government that spawns a number of anime (the original Little Witch Academia film was another from the same year). Death Billiards became the basis for its own TV anime, Death Parade, with both being brought t...
September Updates
Hello all!I've spent most of the last month holed up indoors writing my Master's dissertation, but most of the hard work is now behind me and I feel creatively refreshed, so I'm ready to start on a new video. As previously mentioned, it's going to be the tentatively titled Mirai: A Celebration of Moments, covering the film by Mamoru Hosoda. This should be a relatively short video in the ten- to fifteen-minute range and will probab...
August Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hey guys!Yet another busy month once again left me with less free time for ~media consumption~ than I'd've liked, so just two little recs that were easy to squeeze in when I had the chance to watch or play something!Rilakkuma and KaoruRilakkuma and Kaoru is a Netflix original stop-motion series following the daily lives of Rilakkuma and a few friends, as well as their roommate, Kaoru (Rilakkuma is the little brown bear you see on some Jap...
August Updates (10k subs, 50 patrons and more!)
Hi guys!How is everyone? I feel like I've been saying this a lot recently, but it's been a very busy month for me. I've now submitted all my assignments for my Master's and only have my research project/dissertation/the report I'm producing for the agency I'm working with left. Those are due in in about two months. I'm leaving the city where I've been doing my degree this month, so I've spent a lot of time with...
Sound! Euphonium: A Love Letter to Adolescence
Hi everyone! Today I'm super excited to share Sound! Euphonium: A Love Letter to Adolescence!! Apologies that it's coming a little later than I'd hoped -- I ended up going on a ten-day trip this month just to visit friends in another part of the country that I wasn't sure was going to happen, but I used whatever time I could grab to keep working on the video and we made it in the end! I also had a bit of writer's block with th...
July Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hey everyone!Another month is done, and so it's time for another one of these posts. Here's what I've been enjoying in July:Higurashi Gou (manga)If anybody isn't aware, the Gou anime was accompanied during its runtime by a serialised manga drawn by Tomato Akase which is still in progress. I checked in on it every now and then before it had been translated and it was obvious to me even with my limited Japanese that it included a gr...
July Updates
Hello!I hope you're all well and having a good weekend! Here in England we're enjoying a mini-heatwave which I've been taking full advantage of -- I spent yesterday at a picnic and just got back from a street food market. Not too much to say this month other than that the poll for the next video wrapped up a few days ago with Sound! Euphonium just managing to win out. I was expecting it to be more or less a clean sweep so I'm happ...
Video Poll #3
Hi everyone!It's time to vote on what the next video will be! I will be taking it slowly with this one as I need some time to recuperate after a really busy few months, but it'll be good to know what I'm tackling so that I can let the project begin to take shape in my head. As usual, I'll let you all know what the schedule is looking to be once the poll is over. Just the two options this time so that we can make sure one of these ...
Understanding Watanagashi-hen: A Guide to Mion Spotting
I can't believe I made it in time! Here it is, my new video: Understanding Watanagashi-hen: A Guide to Mion Spotting, and my way of marking Mion's birthday this year. It's a very weird feeling to have a video done this quickly after having had almost all large projects for the best part of a year -- I hope it's a nice refresher for you guys too. This was mostly a pretty low-key affair, but I did get a little emotional writing and ...
June Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hello again!As you guys know it's been a really busy past month for me so this post is mostly going to consist of all the YouTube I've been binging when I've been able to grab some free time! I do have two games to mention first, though:The Red Strings ClubOne of the things I really love about the Switch is all of these smaller games it plays host to which put more of a focus on story than gameplay. The Red Strings Club is one such ti...
June Updates
Hey everyone!Here's a late June updates post to let you know what the next video is going to be. Still playing around with titles, but I'm going to be trying something a little bit different next: a guide to Watanagashi-hen; specifically how to differentiate between Mion and Shion in the first half of the arc. Of course, the video will be much more than just a list of hints, and will include plenty of my usual analysis.In essence, I see a...
Shiki: An Exploration of Horror in Anime
Good afternoon everyone!It’s done!!! Here it is: Shiki: An Exploration of Horror in Anime. I never expected when setting out on this project for it to become one of my biggest undertakings of my time on YouTube so far, it's been quite the journey. It’s somewhat similar in approach to How Higurashi Scares Us though with less of the scope, and it’s the video that’s taken me the longest and arguably the most effort after that one. I’m ...
Video Preview
Good evening all!I was just running a quick test upload on the start of the upcoming video to screen for any copyright issues (none so far) and thought there was no reason why I shouldn't share it here as a little preview! This is just the draft for the intro to the video, which is looking to be about 35 minutes all in all (close enough to my original goal lol).This is where I can reveal that this is my first video edited with Final Cut Pro! ...
May Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hi guys!It's been an exceptionally busy month for me and I haven't had much time left over for other things after uni stuff and working on the video, but I still have a few recommendations!Coffee TalkCoffee Talk is a short visual novel by Indonesian indie studio Toge Productions--part of the influx of such titles in recent years, as mentioned in my video on VA-11 HALL-A. Also not unlike VA-11 HALL-A, Coffee Talk is set entirely within a c...
Video Update
Hi guys!This is just a quick update to say I'm going to have to push the video deadline back a week or so (I originally wanted to have it out next weekend, the 5th/6th). This is partially due to unforeseeable life stuff cropping up that stopped me from working on it for a while, but also because I took a look at the original Shiki novels and decided I wanted to read them before making the video as I felt they would really enhance my understan...
May Updates
Hi everyone!This is the fifth week of work on the new video, so I thought it was about time I updated you all on how it's coming along. The plan at the start of the process was for the video to be up by the end of week eight, and I'm on track to meet that deadline—namely, the 6th June. With any luck, maybe it'll even be up a bit sooner.I only finished up my rewatch of Shiki last night—as is becoming increasingly typical of my vide...
April Media Favourites/Recommendations
Hey guys!I recently came up with this idea for an additional series of monthly posts to do on here: a little recap of what I've been watching, reading and so on that can also double up as a list of recommendations! My typical monthly update posts usually focus on video stuff, so I thought it would make sense to separate this out, and hopefully it's something you'll find interesting. There's no saying stuff I cover here won't c...
April Updates
Hello!How are we all? It's been a busy few weeks for me between publishing the last video and various other bits and pieces on here, and travelling back to my flat and getting stuck into the second semester of my degree. I've got a few things to update you all on.First off, I've gotten lots of nice comments and messages about the guide video which has been really rewarding. Quite a few people have already told me it really helped them...
Video Poll #2
Hi everyone,It's time for another video poll! I'll be lifting two options from the last one and adding a new one to replace VA-11 HALL-A.MiraiIn Mirai, little Kun grapples with the realisation that the arrival of his baby sister Mirai means everything is going to change.A magical film from Mamoru Hosoda about finding your place in your family, and a shorter and more free-flowing video about my personal experience with this film.If you wan...
