Neckspike's Stuff

The homegrown video game game show has had it's 10th anniversary this year, which feels insane time is fake. It is fun, it is silly, spend an hour watching some peeps fail at video games, draw badly, and have a good time.

There's 644 episodes in the playlist at the time I post this. That's a lot of entertainment!

A project I'm always excited for, Pop Arena's Nick Knacks is an incredibly engrossing deep dive into the history of Nickelodeon going show by show chronologically. It starts with the early local cable network Qube and I've learned so much fascinating stuff.

The playlist for the full series is here.

That shitty eyeliner pencil carried goths for decades, that and the red/brown lipliner that was #666.

Black Fox: Age of the Ninja subtitled on Tubi Black Fox: Age of the Ninja english dubbed on Tubi

Putting the links RIGHT up top there because it rules that it's on Tubi now and you can just watch it for free (in North America, a VPN probably works if you live somewhere else.)

So if you know me at all you know I have such terminal tokusatsu brainworms. I first encountered Chihiro Yamamoto in Ex-Aid's Dr. Pacman movie and then in Ultraman Geed, and Kanon Miyahara in Kamen Rider Amazons. I will watch pretty much anything for either of these amazing women. I own a copy of Bravestorm for the 5 minutes in the last third of the movie where Chihiro finally gets to go sicko mode with a sword.

So when I saw a blurb about how Koichi Sakamoto was directing a fantasy jidaigeki starring Chihiro with Kanon as a major antagonist I had to have this. It's a companion piece to the anime film by Studio 3hz which I should probably see at some point but it's a complete story and requires no knowledge of the other film.

It did not appear through the usual 🏴‍☠️ channels and I ended up importing the bluray from Japan and watching it raw.

It was totally worth it. I could watch the action scenes in this film all day. The plot is pretty simple and Sakamoto has called it a "martial arts fairy tale" which I think really fits the vibe.

Chihiro's Rikka is the granddaughter of the current leader of the Isurugi clan of ninjas known as the Foxes. A young woman named Miya comes to them fleeing a gang of warrior monks called the Negoro-shu, wanting to hire the Foxes to avenge her father's murder. When Grandpa sells Miya out to the Negoro-shu Rikka gets out the Black Fox armor her dad made her and goes on a non-lethal ass-kicking spree to save her from the local lord who wants her weird powers and prove this is a new age where we shouldn't just be killing everyone.

There's a sequel hook at the end, and we're getting a sequel next year in Sakamoto's Ninja Wars: Black Fox VS Shogun's Ninja. Shogun's Ninja is also good and I'll probably post about it another day, but I'm super stoked for Chihiro's Rikka vs Kanon's Okyo from Shogun's Ninja.

Watch Black Fox, it's awesome.

[Image description: Illustration of a cozy room with an older woman asleep in a chair. A grasshopper the size of a cat has claimed her lap and looks very satisfied.]

Art by Marine Haddock

a/n: Yeah Christmas happened earlier in Gotchard but fuck it i do what I want. This fic is dedicated to Sammi and Miyu because he is not beating the Alatagations. Read on AO3.

The apartment above Kitchen Ichinose was warm and cozy. Not massive, but the large living room that meant Tamami and her new husband could have their chosen families over had been a big selling point for the building. Room to entertain. Room to do projects. Room to raise a family. The listing called it “quirky”, and the western style fireplace certainly was, but they’d loved it.

Behold! It is BLOG!