I’ve been rather quiet when it comes to writing lately, and that’s not good for my longterm creativity. So I’ve decided to return to writing a bit with a little project that’s rather low maintenance. I’ll be writing my thoughts on at least 4 things I’ve tried or completed every week. This week I’ll be sharing my thoughts on things I’ve tried in four categories: Tea, TV, Video Games, Music.
Without further ado:
Tea: Harney & Sons Chocolate Mint black tea+ Sadaf Cardamom black tea
I like this combo of tea a lot. I mainly drink tea for the caffeine but this is a pleasant flavor that has a little minty kick. Added some Agave nectar as sweetener and just combined both two packets in some boiling water, so it was a pretty simple combo to make. Definitely recommend this as a cheap and quick little tea concoction.
If I had to give it some kind of star rating, probably 3.5/5.
TV: Release The Spyce
Watched three episodes of this anime recently. It’s about a bunch of girls who are spies with superhuman powers granted to them by spices. I don’t have a final opinion on this since I watched so little, but it kept me interested. I’d say it reminds me of an anime version of Totally Spies. Some of the writing is ridiculous, like the explanation that girls are primarily employed as spies because spice (K2??????) apparently works on girls only…which is some weird faulty biology stuff, but the general tone of this show is you’re a fool if you apply that level of logic to it.
Another thing that attracted me to this show is its score. It’s very unexpected. You see a show about a bunch of little anime girls with superpowers, you don’t expect to hear tracks that sound they could be in a dancehall club or something. There’s even some beats I hear throughout this show that sound like some form of trap music that transitions into dubstep. Very weird.
I checked out the composer’s information, he made this track I can only describe as “tropical emo synth-pop” with english lyrics called Waste on soundcloud. If Release The Spyce turns out to be awful, I can say I recommend checking out the the first few episodes for this weird music dynamic alone at least, it’s rather entertaining.
Oh, and I watched it dubbed. Feel like it’s too ridiculous for me to have to pay full attention to the screen at all times. The site I linked lets you switch it to dubbed rather easily.
Music: WEGAHTA TAPES VOL. 1 — Sideshow
I haven’t paid enough attention to the lyrics to make a final verdict on this tape, but just off the vibes and beats, I dig it. The first track samples this japanese song and Sideshow raps over it in — what’s probably a lazy comparison but — Earl Sweatshirt flow. Good background music at the very least. Definitely made me want to relisten and check out more stuff by Sideshow.
Games: Pokemon Puzzle League
This was available as a throwback game for Nintendo Switch Online, I played it for nostalgia sake and not gonna lie, I got my ass beat on normal difficulty. I thought whatever mechanics I had back when I first played this game would instantly return, and for all I know — they did. I don’t remember me ever being good at this game. But man, I was surprised at how difficult it was to beat the first stage vs. Gary. Took me about 4 tries. Embarassing.
Pokemon Puzzle League is a tetris-like puzzle game where you try to connect pieces of the same color to remove them. Set up a bunch of combos and you’ll send a bunch of junk to your opponent’s side. It’s honestly pretty simple.
The soundtrack to this game is still pretty good, but mostly because it’s just instrumental versions of the localized Michael Jacksonson-influenced-ass Pokemon anime soundtrack. That soundtrack is one of the few bright spots of that show. Not a hot take to anyone who has gone back and watched it probably, but the Pokemon anime is ass. It’s horrible. I don’t think the Pokemon creator— Satoshi Tajiri — even likes it. It’s a monster of the week show with boring one dimensional characters that is very clear in its intent to sell Pokemon merchandise to kids. But it probably functions at that job decently given Pokemon’s success.
The reason I said the creator probably doesn’t like it is because of the comment he made about the dark (and lowkey kinda horny) Pokemon Adventures manga that he described as the world he envisioned. The manga is completely separate from the anime and has a dark world where a lot of gym leaders are corrupt and people literally die.
Anyway, mentioned all that because the anime and the Pokemon games are usually separated, Pokemon Yellow and this random spin-off are one of the rare times they converged. For the most part, this game was probably just a ploy to ride Pokemon’s success and bring Tetris Attack to North America, cause as far as I know, there’s no true Pokemon crossover mechanics in it. I think it’s worth trying for a few minutes though to hurt your feelings.
That’s all for now. Thanks if you made it this far, but don’t feel good about yourself, as this wasn’t a lot of writing. So you don’t get a cookie. Unless you bake one yourself as reward. If you do that, feel free to let me know, that’s a pretty cool dynamic you got going on there. If you have any feedback, also feel free to let me know!
