Trash Taste Podcast - This Might Get us Back Into Anime | Trash Taste #320

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

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Hi, I'm Laura Clary, mom, chaos coordinator, and someone who has learned the hard way that back to school season is basically a second mortgage. Last year, my daughter decided she absolutely needed this very specific backpack, not just any backpack, the backpack. I found it, I bought it, I sent her off on the first day of school. She lost it by week two, gone forever. So remember, with Amazon's low back to school prices, just spend less on your kids because every dollar you don't spend on them is a dollar you haven't spent on them. Welcome back. What are you doing, gone?

No, no, no, no. What's on vocal warm-ups? Okay. Hey, dude. Hey. on command. You can't, that's not a real yawn. That's not a real yawn.

No, no, no, no, that's just, that's just. That was a real yawn. I'm telling you, that was deep. I feel like you, I feel like you went to a real yawn halfway through the yorn. No, I can, can you not force yawns? No. Why? No, you can, you just haven't tried.

You never thought to. It's like, you know, if you're an actor, yes, baby. But it's like trying to fake laugh. Fake laughing is like the hardest fucking thing in the world. What do you mean? That's easy. Yeah. Was that convincing?

No, no, okay. Listen to Joe talking about shit for the 50th time, God. And you'll lock the power to fake laugh, okay? Joe, Joe, Joe, give me a fake laugh. That's not the light yagami laugh. Come on. That's not the light yagami laugh. Wait, was that intentional?

That was real. Okay, I was gonna say, I was like, Harry's scared. I would just like, yeah, okay. Actually, no, that was completely fake. fake actually. Yeah, I'm just a good answer. No, you know the fake laugh because someone will like laugh for like literally 0.3 microseconds so they can change the subject. Okay, okay, next topic. The next topic is going to be the trash taste show. I'm your host Connor and we're joined once again by Joey and God. Yes. Hello. Hello. Who's up? No fake laugh today. Only real life. Shut the fuck. God. What's up? What's up? What's going? All the other points of conversation topics, we'll go through them, and you give me your reactions. Maybe a fake laugh or two. Okay.

Okay. Let me prepare the fake laugh. You have the most terrifying fake laugh. What do you mean? Your face becomes like Jacqueline Hyde. Yeah. Yours is like, you're like American psycho laugh. Your face, I feel like your face is a runaway car. It like takes control of itself at the reins.

What do you mean? I've never heard. The body takes over the laugh. You have no control anymore. You're my, I can see it in your eyes. I just channel like the spirit of light yagami in like every time I laugh, I guess. Yeah. But uh...

What's up? What's up? How you guys been? Been all right? Yeah. Traveling a little bit. Yeah, we've all been traveling a little bit. You guys just came back from the US of A. Yes, we did. How was that?

How was that? Anime Expert? Uh, yeah, I mean, you know, he used anime Expo. Conno didn't go. What do you mean I didn't go? He didn't go to anime Expo. What do you mean I didn't fucking go? Tell me the hours you spent in the convention.

Seven? No, you did not. He's like seven, actually. That's why you had like, I saw you like briefly for one day and you're like, okay, I got a panel. And that's it. That's my, that's all I'm doing today. I don't want to be in there very long.

Yeah, that's true. I honestly walked the convention hall for the first time in like, in like years, because I had a free day. How did you survive that? It was the first day. It was the first day and it was the non-busy day. Right.

It was fucking packed. still. Damn. And it's weird because it's just kind of like walking around I'm like damn where the anime at?

It's uh this year was more and more so it's just I see V-tubers I see Gatcha games you just described

modern day Arcopro bro bro it's like it's not anime city anymore it's V-tuber Gaja game city and there was the Crunchyroll booth and then I don't remember

much other anime there. That was essentially it. That he had a booth. How was that? I didn't check. Great. Book walk out of booth.

Book walker. That was in the catacawa booth. Yeah, I wasn't able to. I never time. Right. Right. It's hard, man. I mean, you know, like, wo is me.

But, you know, when you're being perceived constantly, you kind of don't feel like super able to, at least for me, you know, because, you know, people always want to take pictures. I want to talk to them too. And I want to chat with them. nice. But also there is that kind of like, okay, then, you know, I'm not really doing it for me anymore. Like, I'm doing it for, like, other people to see me. Yeah. And if they're not paying me,

then what's the point? No, well, it's just like, you know, you just kind of get tired and you're like, I like to see these things, but at the same time, I don't like them that much that I want to be, like, a revolving door. Yeah. You know, and like, almost like a bit of a circus animal to some extent, because, you know, people just want to keep taking pictures. Yeah. Which is fine, because, I mean, look, I'm very, very fortunate. I'm very lucky and I can walk around and there's tons of people who want to appreciate my content and they appreciate what we do

on the show. But, you know, at the same time, I'm still human. Yeah. It's hard to juggle that. Internally, I don't know how to balance that. And so it's good for me because if I'm only in there for a couple of hours, it's like, I don't feel bad then about

anyone who stops me when I'm not streaming. You know, I can chat real quick, take a picture, say thank you. You know, thank you for watching my stuff. And sometimes there's really cool stories too, which, you know, you'd miss out on. Where they'll be like, I went to the Trash Taste show

or, hey, I met someone who was, who'd actually been a part of one of my streams where I gave like $100 to a bunch of people and asked them to film that day. Yeah. And that was awesome. Actually, I forgot that you were, a lot of the time you were at Canada Canem,

Anime Expo, you were at the eyemouse booth this year. I was mostly at the IMS booth. Yeah, I didn't realize she had a booth this year. Damn. And, yeah, she got some, like, claw machines there. I just realized we got hell of scammed. Oh, really? Because I asked how much her booth was.

you know. Was like a similar size to ours? It was smaller, but we didn't do anything with us space. Yeah. You know, because in AX, and I don't know how most conventions work.

I've only, I know that there's a limit with conventions on how much of your booth can be storage. Yes. Like, because they don't want,

they don't want it to be like stalls, right? They want us to be booths. They want to be interactive. Yeah. They don't want you to stock, pile a ton of inventory, try and sell a ton of inventory.

It's not what it's meant to be. It's meant to be, you know, so we had that large booth and we used all of our space for inventory. And I remember there was like not much room back there. Yeah. And, you know, same kind of thing here. But obviously we were more so, yeah, it was kind of crazy. Yeah.

Oh, damn. That's the size of the booth. It wasn't awesome. It was two thirds are booth size. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it was like two, it was like, I don't know, like half of our cost. And it's fucking way cooler.

It's just way cool. It was so cool. It was so awesome. But, like, I remember you were, like, working the cashier there and you were streaming. Doing a bunch of stuff there. Did a, you know, obviously, I was, I wasn't, I didn't have any part in this, but I watched the booby meet and greet. Yeah. So that was fun.

Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, there were a lot of, like, big booths and, you know, like I was saying before, like, a lot of it was, you could tell the biggest booth outside of, like, maybe Crunchyroll, which as Crunchyroll does at anime, every anime expo, they have, they go. They have, they go fucking extra. I mean, this year they had a live recording booth or something. A live dubbing booth. Oh, yeah, they did. Yeah, they had a live dubbing booth where you could, you know, cue up.

And they had like sound engineers there to like live dub anyone who queued up for this event. Oh, so you get like experience dubbing and anime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's kind of cool. And I was just like, damn, I know how much an engineer costs for like a normal dubbing. Like, God knows hiring out a full-on building a doving studio, then hiring out an engineer, two engineers to run the booth for like the full entirety time of the entire time of the convention.

I was like, holy shmoney. Yeah, but aside from that, you know, you have the big gacha booths as well. But this year, I think what brought the most headlines, booth-wise and other reason-wise, is probably the love and deep space booth. Have you seen... Did you see me the videos?

Have you seen what was happening with the... That's how I know, you know, on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah, I envy to be... I want to be Twitter free so bad. Dude, I stopped using Twitter like... It didn't... It didn't pop up your Instagram

because it was like on my Instagram as well. No, the only thing that popped up was like the seven-hour line of people, like, waiting outside. I was just like, I'm glad I didn't go this year. So... I don't know anything that happened on the inside, so... So...

So, love and deep space had an interactive experience. And... What do you mean by that? It's exactly what you think it is. It is exactly what you think it is. A few, I know a few people who took part in this interactive experience. So they had cosplayers. And I think they, they had cosplayers

as the different characters. And you could line up to your favorite character and have an IRL experience. We had to reserve. Yes, reserve. Okay, okay. Even though, I assume because the line was like, I never saw the line like dip down at all.

It was always like full, full, full. But you could have an interactive experience with the cosplayers. And, you know, I thought when you go to like, you know, other gadget game booths and you can take, you know, pictures with the cosplayers and it's like, you know, the same kind of thing. I was like, damn,

The level of interactivity, they get away with the love and deep space booth, is on a different level. Yeah, I was about to ask, like, how many nipples were twiddled, huh? Like, how many... Well, it's like a lot of hugging. Yeah. You can do the fake kissing thing where you put your... They, they, uh, you can put handcuffs on the boys and, uh, step on them. I believe...

I don't, I think they'd step on you, me. Oh, it depends on... I don't know, right? I think it depends on... Whatever flows on, you know? It depends on... It depends on the dynamic. Right.

Uh, but, uh, Emily took part in this booth. I mean, you didn't have to say that. Yeah, I knew. And she showed me her video of her taking part in the 11 space experience. It's very funny. I have never, did you see the video? Yeah. She said, I think she said, like, I looked like a virgin.

I have never seen Emily stun locked in her, like more stun locked in her life. She was literally like, what do I do? Like. It was very funny. Yeah. Oh, bless her. But yeah, some interactions definitely were just like, there was some wild interactions, as you'd probably get.

And I'm just like, damn, the 11th East Face fan base continue to get some wild stuff. There was this, like, whenever they would leave the convention, they had to, like, part the crowds waiting for the cosplayers. It was ridiculous. Jesus Christ. And it looked like fucking Michael Jackson. Yeah.

Like, it was insane. Hey, shout out to the Lads community. Yeah. You guys are dedicated as far. Yeah, I also saw, this was like the fucking randomest thing as well, just logging on like Twitch and seeing you stream talking about love and deep space, Connor. I did, yeah. Yeah. I did know, I got kind of really into the hole and I was like, I'm going to do a fucking deep dive of the drama.

Did you hear about this drama? No. I love, I love that you're on my. It's so sick. It's so sick you don't know any of this shit. I get to hear about it on TrashTay. That's so, it's great. It's like I get rotted from the inside.

And I can't stop, Jerry. And I try my best to stop, but I can't. Take it from me. It's very easy. So what made you want to fall into this rabbit hole? What is this drama? So the drama was, and I feel so bad because we recorded an episode of Emily, and it very quickly dated itself. There's not a great episode about Love and Deep Space.

Because there was a huge drama that happened afterwards. Okay. Where they were going to release a character. People in China lost it, TLDR. And then they canceled the character. which then pissed everyone on the, like, Weston and global servers off, because they were like, we still want the fucking new guy. Yeah, right.

So it led to a whole drama. But, yeah, I covered it because I thought it was a really interesting, like, gaming story of, like, the power that sometimes fandoms yield or don't yield. It's all really subjective, really, to, like, the guy calling the shots if he feels like it's a big deal, you know. So, wait, so why was this character canceled to the game? Okay, can we pull up Valca? Wait, is this like... No, no, I'm gonna show you a picture of him.

Oh, okay. And then I want you to... I would love for you to see maybe why... Why you think he might be canceled just off like... All right, analysis. It's this guy. Yeah, yeah. This is the one.

This is the guy. That's just the guy. Okay. I mean, he seems like a normal bloke. So the problem is they think he's gay. They think he looks too gay in China. Is that the reason? Is that really?

That's like one of the big reasons. Yeah, because they had to make an official statement claiming, like confirming none of the characters are gay and none of them would be gay. What? Because I heard a big reason was that the fan base in China were unhappy that they were releasing a new character and there was like no new content for like some of the older characters. Yeah, yeah. There was a couple of facts. I mean, those were the first two initial ones.

Yeah. from everything I kind of gather. I mean, obviously, I am, I am mostly meming here. Please, manisplain to me. I am mostly meming here because it's very funny. Yeah. They see a guy that looks pretty straight. Yeah.

What does they even mean, first of all, to be like, this guy looks gay. Yeah. You know, he looks pretty heterotry. Yeah, I'm like, nothing about this character looks gay in any, I mean, from my perspective, anyway. I don't know what they were looking at. Anyway, so, yeah, that happened. And then, you know, people were upset because some of the other characters didn't get,

main story content because the game has main story and also like obviously a bunch of other stuff but the main story is apparently quite a popular thing so then people started getting like going crazy obviously there's a ton of bots involved too on the Chinese side people were like right and then you know these things happen where like people will go to the headquarters and film themselves like

putting the finger at it and then you know because stuff like that happens the company does like countermeasures like hey we're not going to let you come because they still allow people to come into the building. Oh. But obviously, like... That seems like a health house.

Yeah. The action of doing that, like shutting it down, causes a headline, I think, that puts more eyes on it and then fuels the cycle. Streisand effect. And then somebody sent like cow shit in the mail to the headquarters, which caused another headline, right? Because these things keep causing headlines.

And then it kind of blows up. And then they start grasping at other straws. Because people will just, you know, and there are like, I'm sure there are people who genuinely are furious, but it does feel like a lot of dog piling just because people love a fucking good dog pile. You know what?

I take back the shout out of the last community earlier, maybe... No, because I think most of them are like fucking chill and don't care about this. Right, yeah. A bunch of crazy people. The vocal minority. But also people who love shit stirring.

Yeah. We don't give those people enough hate online, but there are a lot of people who don't care what the drama is and are just like, how can I fucking get in? Yeah. How can add fuel to the fire? Because it could be like the vocal minority, the very vocal minority in, you know, any place.

But when you have a country like China, Like the vocal minority is still a very, very large amounts of people that are pissed off. Because you, like, when you read a comment section, you know, you see like a crazy comment, right? The most people, I think, don't care about or like think you're taking this way too seriously. Right. But there are 10,000 people that are that crazy that will agree with you and press like and show support. Because they're also fucking crazy. Or, you know, crazy to an extent where, like, they are super passionate about this.

And there's normally people who are a bit more, you know, not to be me, but well-adjusted, who don't center their entire personality around a game's release. Yeah. Yeah. Who, yeah, it sucks, but I'm not going to fucking get up in arms about it. Are way less likely to engage or care. But they are by far more of the majority. Maybe they feel, you know, I think the normal take is like, hey, it's kind of a bad idea

to cancel something people worked really hard on. Yeah. For like mismanagement, truly. Yeah, honestly. Or because he looked a little bit gay. Like, I'm sorry, if you have to make a statement that none of your characters are gay, I think you've lost it. Like you've, you've lost control of like, that's so funny. Any public like control of this story. Like seriously, I think that's like you've,

there was nobody in the department with a cool head who could have been like, guys, let's let's lock in. Yeah. Let's figure out how we're going to write this out. I didn't realize that that was part of a public statement. I think you can Google it. I'm pretty sure this was a statement. Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm just out of the loop, but I look at that character and I'm like, What makes that character in particular look any more or less gay than the other characters? No, there's like 500 apologies. You gotta put like, lads. You can have to narrow it down.

Lads. New character. Lads, characters aren't gay confirmed or something? I don't know. What is this? What is this drama, bro? This is stupid.

I'll have to look. What comes up? The Valco controversy and cancellation. I don't know Yeah There was something where they said Like they clarified Guys Chinese guys

What the fuck is there Oh my Lord So it was a mess Anyway So I got really excited to talk about it Because I thought It's really really interesting Because we haven't

The only of the time I can think about Where there's been such a difference In China versus like Not that's like a war But like the global Reaction of a game versus a different country

Like getting up in arms in a way that it's like it impacts each other. It's like maybe like, I don't know, maybe Slay the Spire with the Chinese review the ASCO that happened with Slayerspire 2 and they like nerfed a card. I don't know if you saw that. Start your Alienware journey with the streamlined Alienware 15.

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They nerfed a card and then because Chinese people, you know, they don't really give, there's not like a clear way for them to give feedback other than Steam reviews. We'd like review bomb the game. Oh. Because they're like, you nerfed the card I liked. Oh.

And the game, you know, it's ridiculous. Right. And to the, you know, to us in the West, it's like, this is, what the fuck is this? Yeah. So I thought it was really interesting from the perspective of like, fandoms,

because another big aspect of this was that like, a lot of Chinese fans were like, well, we spend all the money on the game, so we get to decide what's right for the game. And I mean, sure, in some aspect, you're probably catered to. But I think every good game company is going to be focusing more on the markets

they're trying to capture, as opposed to the markets they have captured. And players always fail to realize that because they think, well, I'm the one who spends the most. It's like, bro, they already got you. Yeah. They know you, they know you're going to keep spending. Yeah.

They want to get more. You're in the spider's web already. They're trying to get more people. Because they also know that even if you are the biggest whale, you will, it's just human nature. You will, no matter how much stuff they pump out. Like you, you just will. So they're always trying to get a new player to capture that, that new fan. And hopefully, whilst doing that, keep you engaged.

Yeah. The priorities not to, you know, they don't just, they don't just blow up. and they're like, well, guys, we've got enough players. Let's stop there. It's like, no, they're always trying to expand and they're looking at the markets, right? So obviously in this case, they, you know, whatever, there was a panic in the,

I think it's a, like, when I look at all their responses, I just, it's like classic horrible mismanagement of like the situation. You know, when you do like five apologies, you've kind of lost. You need to either like one apology or no. Right at the end or like no apologies at all and just fucking send it.

I think one of the worst ones that came to mind. What, I mean, this, in terms of scale, I have never seen a situation. No, the scale was crazy. This much as well. But I remember there was this like, there was this other game or something. I don't remember it was like an animal game. I don't know if you saw this. But they basically opened it up to their user base to make, they had an AI storytelling

competition, right? What? Of who could submit the best prompt. AI, no, the best AI movie. The best AI movie. Right? Okay.

We killed a fucking forest in Wyoming. Yeah. Yeah. And surprisingly enough, the internet didn't react to that one. Surprisingly enough. Can you search up? AI movie competition? AI movie competition game drama or something like that.

Let's see. Party animals, that's right, party animals. Okay. Wow, it was party animals. Yeah, party animals. You know party animals? I do know party animals. I played party animals.

Oh. Way, way, way, long ago. That's crazy. Damn. Sorry to hear that. I mean, I played it one time. Yeah. I don't know.

It's not like it's my fucking favorite game at all time. So what happened after they got all of this? all of this backlash, right? All this backlash. They didn't even backpedal. They, they, they, double down's a risky gambit. But they didn't double down either.

I think they did something really bad, so they were like, I think the second response they made was like, guys, we see you're a little bit upset. So, uh, maybe what we'll do is we're going to have a vote. We're going to have a vote, guys. What do you guys think we should do? Do you think we should? have a real like competition for like real artists,

but also keep the AI thing, or should we remove the AI thing altogether? You know, and they literally had a Twitter poll, right? To be like, do we keep this competition and also add another competition for like real artists? Or should we just, should we just scrap this idea and just do something else? And people like, bruh, how the fuck did you miss the messaging

like that bad? What the fuck do you think? You know, doubling down. That is an exceptional. Jesus Christ. Doubling down, obviously fucking terrible. But my God, fence sitting in this situation? I was like, this is, this is awful.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these companies, you know, they just hire a fucking marketing guy. And they don't, you know, the truth is like people in companies don't know how to deal with this shit. There are not a lot of people out there that are like experienced enough

in like online fucking backlash to tell you how to deal with it. You know, it is a skill that is not a lot of people have. But, you know, if you want to, you know, fence it, so to say, the best way to do is just say nothing. Yeah, exactly.

The truth is, is that people have a short attention span and they move on. That'll be a couple of people that always mad at you, but the loudness of it will go. Yep. Yep. Because there's a World Cup game on tomorrow. There is.

And I got to talk about the World Cup. Yeah, exactly. You know, like that's all, you know, they're running it back. There's no wall. You know, like there's always something that's going to overshadow you and make your news story look like nothing. And that's the truth. Yeah.

I mean, this, this L.A. trip was pretty much the Anime Expo and watching World Cup trip for myself. Yeah. The World Cup's over now. But when we went to AX, it was like deep in the World Cup. And yeah, I'm be real with you. Like, we briefly talked about the World Cup like a few podcasts ago. It was only just a head.

Yeah, it only had just started. And we have now kind of like, you know, we're just about to finish the World Cup now. And, yeah, I've been in full World Cup fever for the like entire month. I hate to admit it because I really hate FIFA. Yeah. But it's been really fun. fun. It's been really, really fun. Like, do you know what actually got me like super? Like, I enjoyed the 2022 Qatar World Cup for like the games were like really exciting. We had some

really, really good storylines. Uh, but I don't think I was as invested in that one as I was this one, because what got me invested in this one looking back is just the memes. The memes are good. And for like, it's just this magical feeling of just for a two week period. for like maybe the group staged. It just felt like we had achieved world peace. You know what I mean? No, it does feel chill. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you hear some of like the stories coming out, even as like a non like football fan? I saw like that whole weird thing about like all the countries in FIFA trying to claim Hatsunemiku or something. Oh yeah. I just see that. I saw that mean.

That was like Brazil. Yeah. Brazil got it. They've ever beat Norway got it. Yeah. And then those that Japanese guy at one of the games when Japan lost way, he like broke down crying because he lost Miku. Well, that was funny. Yeah. I think the memes this World Cup has been absolutely top tier.

But I think even like beyond that, some of the stories that have come out of just human beings just getting on well with each other. Right. So I think some of the fandoms that have gotten some of the most attention, especially at the beginning of the World Cup, were Scottish fans. and Scottish fans in Boston. I was like, that was, they, did you hear about Scottish fans drinking Boston dry? They literally ran out of beer in Boston. And the only thing left, the only thing left was Bud Light.

And they're like, that's where they do. They're like, hell, though. To be fair, I think if it was like 2 a.m., I've got a killer buzz going. Yeah. And you're like, there's only Bud Light left. I'm like, I'm like, it's time to sober up.

Yeah, yeah. I just think that I can't sink that long. Yeah. And this is, this is Boston, by the way, you know, out of all like the cities. That's so funny. This is a city in America that is known for his drinking culture. Like, what do you mean you're out of beer? Yeah, I saw a few interviews where it was like some of the pubs were saying like on, like the amount they were selling when Scotland was in town was three times the amount as St. Patrick's Day. Holy shit.

I believe it, bro. I believe it, man. The Scots can drink, bro. Yeah. From a Scottish family, you know, like, I remember a lot of the family parties. I was like, is this right? Like, this cannot be healthy. Yeah.

And you have like, you had like Mexico, the Mexican fans and the Korean fans. So this World Cup was hosted by technically three countries, Canada, USA, and Mexico. Right. And some of the games were played in Mexico, including like the South Korea games. Yeah. And the Mexican fans and the South Korean fans, uh, so there's a little bit, there's a little bit of history there, where in one of the previous World Cups, uh, Mexico were due to go out and Korea were already out.

Uh, but Korea, like, they managed to beat, I think, Germany or something, even though the, that match meant nothing. But because they had this upset win, it meant that Mexico went through to the next stage. Oh, okay. And the fans remember that. And so what happened when the South Koreans went to Mexico is it was a full-on love fest man. Like, my man. No, no, no, no. Half of my feed during that week was just like Mexicans making out with like random Koreans on the streets during like the celebrations. It's just, you have like the cultural exchange as well with South Koreans.

Geographically, they couldn't be further as long. I know, right. So the Japanese people go to Texas and try and barbecue. Oh, yeah. Oh, I did say that, yeah. I saw a bunch of, like, Asian-American streamers, like, going to the games and, like, pretending to be Japanese for, like, shits and giggles to, like, get the fucking reactions.

And then it worked. When I was, because I flew to New York for the start of my trip, and on the flight over, like, half of the, like, Japanese people on my plane were wearing jerseys. Jesus. Because it was like right before the start. Right, right. I mean, obviously, you know, they have the new New Jersey, New York stadium, they call it. I mean, it is basically New York, even though it's technically in New York, because it's very close.

Yeah. And it was always, it was honestly, like, really wholesome just to see, you know, for a brief period, like the US get like probably the best PR they've gotten in like such a long fucking time. Because I'd never seen so much positivity in like concentrated. Yeah, I can see what you were saying about the wall piece. Yeah, you realize we have no enemies, bro. Yeah, we have no enemies. When the men doesn't tell us what to think and who to hate, we all fucking, we fucking love each other, bro.

Gather around and a bunch of fellas kicking a ball around. Yeah, when you meet a guy also wants to watch the game, you can't help me like, dude, nice, man. Yeah. Hell yeah, that's sick. And, you know, that's, I think. Love to see it. And I hate to give that to FIFA.

I hate to fucking. I hate to. I hate to. So evil as a company, but, you know, you, but that's why they, you know, they, What is it? They call it the beautiful sport. Is that what they call it? Yeah, yeah. Beautiful game.

The beautiful game. You know, it is, it is truly the greatest sport in that sense that it really disconnect the world. Yeah. And I hate to give it to them. Yeah. And like, you know, as a footy fan, I think this World Cup is going to be one that is going to be remembered for a very long time. I think so. Americans will take credit to be like, it's because it was hosted in the USA.

But I think it was just, I think overall, I don't know how it ends yet. But I think overall, in terms of like why this World Cup is going to be a big cultural one, is number one, the games have been amazing. So we've had more games and more countries being represented. And we've had some amazing stories like, have you heard about like Cape Verde and what they achieved in the World Cup? No. So they are a tiny nation. I think like 300K people. 500K people off the coast of, I think they're off the coast of Africa.

Yeah, yeah. Correct. And they not only got. through the group stages, but they managed to like almost beat the world champions Argentina. Yeah, it went into extra time. And one of my favorite stories from this team is

there's a few things. So one of their keepers had like this standout game against Spain and he went from 50,000 followers on Instagram. And can you check how many followers he has now? So can you put Cape Verde goalkeeper Instagram. In the group stage as well, he also did not let a single goal through. Damn. Yeah, he was very good.

He has 29 million polls. Holy shit. Just to show you the scale of football. That is starting off a fuck yeah, dude, good on him. Good on him. And they were, you know, like he was going to go to penalties, which is great. Yeah. That's the true 50-50. Yeah. And unfortunately, mess you got a goal. But there's, there's still a story. There's still. that I think is even more interesting than this one, because this is like a fucking wholesome story, but because Cape Verde aren't known as a footballing nation.

Right. Right. So one of their defenders, before the World Cup, before, you know, having this heroic performance in the entire World Cup against Spain, Argentina, or everything. So one of their defenders, one of their players got hired of LinkedIn. Because he got hired off LinkedIn, because I believe they just don't have a football league.

They went to the hobby section. He got hired of LinkedIn. And the guy thought it was a scam for like ages and ignored it for like months and months and months. From bank worker to World Cup. Yeah. That is crazy. This is so fucking cool.

That's like some kind of movie plot where you're like just when I thought I was out, they dragged your back in. That's crazy. That's really cool. Yeah, this is like so fucking insane to think about just what they've achieved and like the storylines behind it, which is what I think really has really made this World Cup. I really hope K Verde gets a lot of like tourism after this. I think it will. I think it will.

I'll be real with you. I'd not heard of this place before. No, I don't know the name, but like, yeah. I mean, good on them, dude. Yeah. That's so sick. Yeah. And like, honestly, outside from the games and like beautiful stories like this, I think this has been a World Cup of Superstars.

Normally in a World Cup, you have a few people who show up and a few people who just, you know, don't show up at all. Don't meet the hype. But in this World Cup, it's like pretty much almost everyone who is a big name has showed up on the big stage. And I think I see like, I almost see like

a passing of the torch as well because you still have like the old goats. Like, you know, Messi and Ronaldo. Yeah, of course. But a lot of like young audiences are starting to find out about other superstars like Mbapé, Harland as well. Harland is Norway's like Starstriker,

and he's really made his rounds along like the younger generation. He's just really funny. And he's a really funny guy. He's just one of those guys that is just, you can just tell he's so fucking funny. Yeah, okay, this guy is literally just a modern day Viking. Okay.

Can I see what you'll say? Yeah, can you search up? Can you say Erling Harland's running? or something like that. Oh, is this the guy with the, oh, yes, okay. I was about to say it's the forehead guy. Go, go, yeah, go to images. Oh, I want to, I want to see.

There's this, this one image of him, like, running full pelt towards a running meme type of, yeah, running Holland meme. Yeah, let's, let's, yeah. That is so good. Holy shit. It's just, he's like fucking Inosuke. Yeah, right? Oh, that's all that.

Yeah, okay, I did see this guy's face a lot in a lot of means, yeah. But it's, like, he is just a cartoon character. Yeah, just, uh, yeah, everything about it was just fun to watch. Yeah, yeah. And it was the first time Norway had qualified, I think, in a long time, right? Since 2000s. It's been 20, yeah. And then on top of that, they had a very good performance.

And they, you know, nearly be at England. Jeez. So I think if the final few games can deliver, which by the time this goes out, we will know who the World Cup winners is, hoping it's England. I'm sure there's going to be an insane amount of controversy or something that happens.

And we look so silly here. Yeah. Yeah. Like, God, I hope it's good. Well, it was so weird just to see the vibe shift so suddenly because everything was all wholesome. Everything was great. And then the one USA game happened

where... Oh, now what happened? I'm also out of the show. No, they... Well, so there was an incident where in a game against Bosnia, in Herzegovina, USA played them.

And they won, but they got a red card. Which means that that player can't play the next round. Right. You stop from that. Because otherwise, you know, there's... It would kind of be a little too easy to be a bit aggressive towards the later of the game

when it doesn't matter as much. And, you know, as... It was a harsh red card. So, you know, even me watching me and Connor watch it live in one of the US bars. And it was like, it was a very, very harsh red card. A lot of people probably wouldn't have called it ascending off. But this is football.

This happens. This happens. There are a lot of controversial decisions and decisions that are in contention. So he was going to be banned for the next game. And then Trump steps in. Yeah, Trump. Trump has put a call in, is real, to get the red card removed, and it was removed. What?

Yeah. Which is insane. Yeah. Oh, my God. And then, you know, people who, you know, people are so dumb sometimes and they cope and they're like, why wouldn't Belgium want to face the U.S. in true strength? Isn't that honorable? It's like, it's not about what the fucking honor is, bro.

It's the rules of the game. It's the fucking rules of the game. You can just pick when they apply to you and you want to be full strength. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, you know, I also don't think it was a red card. I think it was very, very harsh calling.

But when you are getting governing bodies to intervene in a sporting event, that's when, I mean, it was so fucking surreal to see. We all knew FIFA was corrupt. You know, that's open knowledge. But my God, just to see, just to see it just so in your face.

They made up the Peace Prize. That didn't exist. They made it for Trump. Yeah, I did see it. And I felt so bad for just so bad for, for just like, you know, I felt so bad for just the fans of, you know, the actual American US soccer team fans. Because, you know, it went from like, I was cheering for them. I wanted to the underdogs to win. I think the world was actually, for the first time, cheering for the

US football team because they were performing well. They were, like, surprisingly really well. And then overnight, they just became public enemy number one. Yeah. And then the next game against Belgium, where they had their boy, it was like the shattest game. Start your Alienware journey with the streamlined Alienware 15. They designed this machine to refine the essentials, creating a more focused gaming laptop for players who demand quality without the clutter. They designed a brilliant 15.3 inch 16.5 hertz display seamlessly into a portable 15-inch body. You get a larger immersive window into your game that still travels easily wherever your mission takes you.

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Yeah. It was such a sad performance. They lost 4-1. Yeah. It was just brutal. Jesus. The goalie, like, did a really horrible, like, misplay. Yeah.

It was, like, cost them a goal. It was bad. Yeah. You know. And then Belgium looked amazing on, like, pure spite. Like, it was pure spite that dragged them into this. And then the next game, they looked so ass. Yeah.

And I felt so sad. because I was like, DAP, it felt like in that like brief two week period, I was like, damn, football was really taking it's like, like, in the forefront of like US culture. I was like, maybe this has an opportunity to get people in America into football more than like usual. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did. But then that one, that 48 hour period of just this controversy happening, the vibes being killed.

Yeah. And then seeing their team go out in the most like, well, you know, it's horrible way possible. Big boy Trump couldn't take five minutes and not being in the spotlight. I was like, damn. I think this has sent the culture back there for like another five years.

Yeah, we watched one of the games in a bar. Yeah, it was really fun. We watched the Bosnia game. Yeah. And the vibes were really great because obviously Americans are like super stoked. The funniest part for me was consistently people cheering

and not understanding offside. because they would score a goal and it was so off, like, it was offside, you could see the guy, the offside ref, and the guys in the bar are still going crazy because they don't know, they don't know, they don't know what's happened yet.

And then when the goal gets taken away, they're fucking fuming, they're screaming. And it's like, brother, it's offside. And they're like, this rule should be removed. It's like, you know, the game would be really fucking boring without offside. Yeah. It would be a really shit game.

And then the other thing I noticed, that people were like definitely aren't used to if they've never watched football is like diving. Oh, yeah. They call it a flopping. They got flopping now. Flopping now. Yeah. And yeah, it is kind of one of those inexcusable things that when you watch it, you're like, I, yeah, I don't like.

Yeah, I don't think that. Nobody thinks it's good. Yeah. I wish they were stricter on it. Because I think it would be better for the game if it was not. I wish they were as well, you know. And they were. I mean, obviously in some games they have been, you know, now they introduced a rule recently. I don't know what I said recently. or when they introduced it.

That if you are caught faking a duck, like faking getting hit to try and get a yellow card or a penalty, you could get a yellow card or, you know. Okay, good, yeah. But they rarely enforce it or check. So I think they need to be a bit stricter on it. Because I think it just kind of ruins the game.

Yeah. None ruins it, sorry, it doesn't ruin the game. But it, you know. It's one that you just roll your eyes at. Because you're like, you're cheering for your guys and they're doing so good. And then you see them do like, they're just the cringiest die.

I get it. They want the pen. but you're like, brother, come, it's hard to like, it's hard to be like, yeah, man, that's so cool. And I feel that's like one of those things about football soccer, where like non-football fans look at and just like, go on. Like, what is this shit? Yeah, I mean, there should never be an incentive to do it. Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a big incentive.

One of my other favorite clips of Harlem is there's a clip of him like getting like a fucking, like, awful slight tackle. while he's like full on running, doesn't go down. And the defender gets stretched it off because he's injured. Tackling hard. This is an absolute unit. I mean,

bro is built like a fridge. It's crazy. Bro is built. Yeah. He's built like a rugby player. He is, he is, man. He would be a phenomenal rugby player. He'd be a great rugby player.

Yeah. With that form. Amazing, amazing rugby player. He's a great football. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, enough football Yeah, outside of that, I also got to see the world premiere of Kagurabachi episode

one. Oh, shit. How was it? Um, is it, is it, does it, because I'm excited for the anime. Are you excited for it? Okay. I want to know. Is it, is it worth the hype or? Um, yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank God. Okay. So, so. So obviously, Kagurabachi, the, uh, became a meme for become for being the greatest new manga to ever come out. Before it came out. Before it came out. And then it came out. And people were meming on it. And then the meme died. And then if you kept up with the manga, you'd realize, holy shit. It's actually really really good. This is actually really, really good. And so the anime is coming out. And it is being animated by Sypick. Okay. Previously Cy Games pictures. Yep.

who have not done a massive, an IP as big as Karagabachi before. It is not Mapper. It is not UFOsball. But it is one of the most promising new studios, I think, that have been around for a while. They have used their Uma-Musine money very, very wisely, and I've used that to fund a lot of, not only anime original projects, but use that to fund some very exciting projects. And I think Kagurabachi is them putting their foot down as a possible new, like, superpower in the anime.

Yeah, contender for like the big Shonen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. In the, in the, in the anime studio space. And so I saw the first episodes and I was trying to compare it with some other Shonen first episodes, right? Because I was thinking about episode one, JJK. It was, it was fine, you know.

It was, I'm gonna use Jerry's word. It was okay, you know. The episode one, JujK is fine. Yeah, it was fine. It was fine. You know, we had the brief fight with, schooner and Gojo and that was basically just like a little taster

but I don't feel like you've really popped off until maybe the first domain expansion by Gojo I feel like that's when it really started to take his round before. Yeah, that is when it blew up. Yeah. I can't even remember My Hero Academia's episode one. It's where, you know, he's dreaming about all my

totally so fucking awesome and then he's like, eat my fucking hair, boy. Yeah. Oh yeah, that was it. And then is a big punch. Wuxi sees Midoria training. Yeah. You know. I would say that what side games have done with Kaguribachi episode one is that they have made

that statement clear that they want this, they want to hit the ground running because they showcased a very, very impressive fight scene for episode one. And I was trying to think if there has been, I've seen a more impressive fight scene within in an episode one of a big shonen adaptation. And I'm struggling to think right now, maybe there's gonna be some other show that I'm forgetting, but, but what they did is they took,

what I think is a very, very simple fight in the manga, and they expanded it to be really, really fucking cool. They went, they did go above and beyond. It was not something as stylistic as some of the modern JJK seasons. I would say the action felt very, very, very, grounded. So I'm gonna spoil a little bit of chapter one, at least the action scene. Sure. Okay. So if you want, if you're scared, we're just going to be talking about it.

Time stamp on screen. Yeah. If, okay. So in the manga, do you, in, in the manga, the main character, Jihiro just goes up against a bunch of like a lot of people. And what he does is he has his aura moment. He activates his sword. And then he's slightly, the entire crowd in half. Kuro. Yes. And that's it. That is the action scene in chapter one of the manga.

What the anime does is that scene is still there, but before that scene, they add a full-on John Wick, one man versus many. Like it's one man versus many with Chihiro just like slicing people down. And I would say, you know, the closest thing I can think of, in modern anime terms is the maki fights, uh, maki versus the, uh, the clan fight in JJK, where it's like, kind of like kill bill. But I would say unlike that, the action scene in this is a lot more grounded.

And what really impressed me was the choreography because it felt very John Wick-esque, right? It felt super grounded. I don't, I think, I might be misremembering with this, but I think when the fight started, there was like no music, right? Oh, okay. There's no music and it really put emphasis on the like sound design, right? Another thing that really impressed me was the use of the terrain within the fights, right? So with a lot of anime fights, what you see is open fields, two anime characters going like blow for blow. They have people flying through buildings and everything like that.

What I saw in this first, first fight was Chihiro like fucking dodging people, going up staircases, like throwing the tables to people. them like slicing the table and them. Very Jackie Chan. Yeah, and then him just like fucking throwing a knife to this person, takes the sword, gets the next person. It is like, he's like using the terrain to his advantage within the choreography of the fight. As you would in a real fight.

As you would in a real fight. And I was like, this is so fucking cool to see this kind of choreography in a show like this. Because all of this is done before he activates any powers at all. And yeah, it did feel very. John Wick-esque in terms of the groundedness of the fight choreography, the impacts of every slice, every

uh, every hits, you, you've truly felt that impact. It wasn't like, it wasn't floatier at all. And yeah, I was like impressed that they managed to put this all in like a 20 minute starter episodes. And I think it's going to leave a much bigger impact than if they had just adapted chapter one panel by panel by panel. Right. But I think it also,

shows that, hey, they are expecting this to pop off. And I don't think they're, I don't think they want to wait, like the, like, normally was shown and you have to wait like, what, like maybe a season, maybe eight episodes before, you know, the fan base really gets going and the hype really gets going. I think they want this to pop off from episode one. They know the attention spans dwindling. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're just like, all right, let's cut the chase.

You know, it's everything, anime lags behind manga, obviously, and the trends in manga. And I feel like that's been the trend in manga for a while now, that your chapter one needs to go insanely hard. Yeah. Because otherwise you're getting the axe. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. So I think it's obviously a natural conclusion of that aspect of manga creation

kind of coming in, like in the time lag, right? Kind of getting to anime. Yeah. But I also think it shows a different level of expectations as well. Because in the olden days, manga readers would just be like, can you just adapt this panel by panel, please? Yeah. That's what we want.

We don't want to shit adaptation, but just follow the manga. And now it almost seems like the expectations with what Mapper is doing, with what your photo is doing, is that just adapting it normally just isn't enough anymore. You need that extra level of, you know, cinematography or that extra level of taking the source material and enhancing on it, adding your own artistic interpretation of it. Which can go one of both ways, depending on how it's done. Which can go one of both ways. But it definitely, I think it's going to be a very, very hype first episode when it airs,

but we're going to have to wait all the way till next year until... Oh, I'm so excited, though. Until it's so annoying. It comes out. I want to watch it. It is very, very annoying. But from just episode one, obviously, this is just me talking about episode one. It looks very promising.

I believe, man. It's the greatest anime ever made. Yeah. And it hasn't even come out yet. Catch good, any other panels? Any other panels? I really, really wanted to go to the Edge Runners 2 panels. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's not coming out. That's coming out in October, right? This year, if I'm not mistaken. I'm excited, man. I like that. That sure fucked me up, so I'm, I'm ready to get fucked up again. Hell yeah, dude.

I can't hear that song without crying, bro. No, no. I don't. Even in my head, I hear it, and I, like, I'm tearing up. Yeah, fall 2026. Full, 226. You don't have to wait long for this one. Yeah.

So I believe they aired the first episode in the panel of this. Right. But also they've released all the character designs. And this was one of the things I was most excited about, because when it's like studio trigger, one of the things I think they are so good. They go to do a lot of things, but one of the things they consistently are at the top of their game

is character designs. Oh, yeah. 100%. I think they are a trendsetter. And every time they come out with a new character design, It's like, God damn, how do they do it again? How do they keep cooking? And they're just releasing new character designs now,

and I'm like, yeah, they did it again. Fire. You know, they could have gone for Lucy 2.0. This fire. I get excited. That song's so sick. Yeah, yeah. Do you have the poster?

Yeah, I mean, you just go images. They all look so good. They all look fantastic. It's like the second row. Yeah. Like landscape one. Yeah. Oh, this one.

Yeah. Yeah. But as soon as I saw the pink head go, I was like, they knew what they were cooking. Yeah, yeah. They knew what they were cooking with this one, man. They're going to cook so goddamn hard of this, I can tell. Yeah.

I'm excited, man. I'm excited. But, you know. Do you need more edge runners in your life corner? I do. I mean, I think, you know, I love fantasy. But, you know, it swings and roundabouts. When I've had enough fantasy, I'm like, okay, now I need more gritty sci-fi.

Can we come back? I'm missing my sci-fi. I won't lie to you. And look, I don't want another ghost in the shell. I want something new. Yeah. Like, I've had that dish. Give me something else.

But did you see the new ghost of the shell? I haven't seen it, but I, I don't know. It's so hard to because I love the original so much. Right. And standalone and complex is fantastic. 100%. And the OG Ghost in the Shell is an experience. Sometimes I don't know what the fuck was going on in that movie.

But it didn't matter because that's not what I was there for. It's the vibe. I was there. And literally, I'm there to be in the vibe of the world. You played the original Cybermunk, right? what, 2027? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, okay, I played week one.

So I didn't play the same game that you probably played, to be honest. Have you played the expansion? No, I haven't, so I beat it in the first week. Bro, you got to play the week. Whilst I was fighting for my life to get through it with the bugs, because remember when it came out? Yeah, yeah. It was, it was bad. Yeah.

You know, and back then it was also kind of shitty because, like, everything was broken. So it's like, I had this gun that would just, like, trivialize the game. Yeah. You know, and like, I didn't give a fuck about the stuff. story because I was still at that point where I didn't care. And I was, and I was just kind of treating it as like cyber GTA. Yeah. Which I guess is what it's supposed to be. But, you know, I think they went for a heavy narrative. You should, uh, have you played the DLC? No, I've heard it's amazing. You should play the DLC. I think, you know, you played the base game, so you kind of know

the story anyway, but I think the DLC. Idris Alba, right? He's amazing. Idris Elba is amazing. It's got a fantastic fucking story as well. I think the best story in cyberpunk, 27, uh, 27-27. so far. And I think you coming back to play the DLC is almost like you just wiping the slate clean and playing like a sequel or like a side story, I guess, because I feel like there, by the time the DLC came out, this is what, this is the vision that was sold to us. And it's such a fantastic game. And I'm sad that, you know, I'm sad that it got, had to get rushed out in the, they're done updating it now, right? Like, I think they, did they announce that last year?

I think. Because they were still doing updates. I'm not sure. Is Subpunk still being updated? Because I know they were doing updates for a long time. But I think they stopped. Oh no, no, yeah. It's still being updated. Yeah, I mean, so that's kind of why, like, I'm kind of waiting for me to get to the point where I fully have forgotten everything. Yeah.

About this game. Because I know I wanted to revisit it. at some point. But we'll see. We'll see. I think it's going to be a vibe thing for me. I think it'll be a thing I have to come back to it and I have to really appreciate what it became.

But such a shame that it took so long to come out. Yeah. It was overhyped. Bricked my PC a couple of times. You know, like it was, it was, it was, I, you know, I'm sure anyone who played it on release will remember. Like, it was a really unfun game to play. But I played through it because at that time when I was streaming,

it was right when I started. and it was like, what you do is play the new game. Yeah. So I just did that. And I didn't really want to. I wasn't going to consume the story. So it's like kind of pointless. Yeah.

Okay. I got an even harder sell for you. Sure. I'm going to try it anyway. I'm going to try it anyway. Sell me. All right. Keeping to theme of cyberpunk edge runners.

All right. Cyberpunk edge runners. Weathering waves collab. I fucking knew. I fucking knew you would react like that. I saw a lot of people. I saw so many clips of people crying. I was...

Do you hear you run this? Wuthering waves did a sidepunk edge runner collab. And apparently it was... Oh, I did see that. Apparently it was like God tier. I'm trying to sell it to you guys because the collab is permanent or the collab story is permanent.

And you can skip straight to the collab. Yeah, I heard people were like crying over this. Yeah. So, let me sell it to you guys because I think it would be really cool for you guys to experience this. But it is Edge Runner's episode 11. Oh, shit.

It is an epilogue to Lucy's story. Right. I'm gonna cry thinking about that. I fucking cried. I was like, I don't need to know the epilogue. They're broken, bro. I was- Lucy's broken.

I was really like, I came into this because I've played some gadget game collabs before, as I'm sure you guys have. And it's just like, hey, here's like some fun fan service between like the characters and, you know, and this collab and all, look at them, they're interacting and stuff. So what makes this collab special and what makes this collab different? This back-to-school season, spend less on your kids with Amazon. Hi, I'm Laura Clary, mom, overthinker, and someone who has a complicated relationship with the back-to-school supply list.

Can we just be honest for a second? Kids are expensive. Last year, I went all out on my daughter's school supplies, color-coded folders, the fancy pencil case, gel pens and 17 colors she absolutely needed. By October, she had one pencil left. One. I don't know what happened to the rest, and honestly, neither does she. Amazon has everything your kids need for back-to-school at prices that won't make you want to cry in the school supply aisle. Great prices, huge selection, and when half of it goes missing by October, at least you didn't break the bank.

So remember, with Amazon's low back-to-school prices, just spend less on your kids, because every dollar you don't spend on them is a dollar you haven't spent on them. And you can know this because I wasn't paid to promote this collab at all. You son of a bitch, John. Promoting Gatcha games on the pot for free. But genuinely, like, even if you're not a Gatcha game fan, if you're an edge runners fan, fucking highly, highly recommend just playing through this collab story. You don't need to play through the rest of weathering waves

if you don't like Gatcha or whatever. And you can understand this without playing the rest of the game? So what I think makes this collab good is that it feels like, even though it's in the Weathering Waves game, It feels like a cyberpunk story with the weathering waves characters cameos as opposed to the other way we're out. Oh, okay. Right.

The biggest, the biggest downpoint of this collab is that you are having this really emotional story with Lucy coming to terms with everything that's happening. And then the main character of Weathering Waves, Rover, is just standing there. That's the biggest thing. But, you know, I get it. It is a collab. But like the original writers for Edge Run has worked in this collab story, which I think what makes it really special. I would argue that Rebecca gets even more screen time in this collab.

Wait, episode 11. Yes. Wait, how? I don't want to spoil. Okay. I don't want to spoil. Because we all know what happens in episode 10. I don't want to spoil, but it is kind of like explains.

Okay. Oh, shit. Okay. Because I'll let them cook. I'll let them cook. I like, genuinely, like, genuinely, I don't want to spoil because I would like, like, I would be cool with edge runners fans. Yeah. If you have an adversion to Gatchie games, I get it.

But if, like, you are fan of edge runners, this is a story that I, you know, that wasn't needed because edge runners had a conclusive ending. But it was highly welcome just to see the, like, Lucy and these characters get the closure that you didn't know they needed because the ending of edge runners. was very abrupt, you know, very, very abrupt. And here you really get to dive much more into, like, their mentality and the entire journey of edge runners. And it's a fucking beautiful story. And, yeah, I, I teared up. I was, like, tearing up during the ending, man.

It is, it was, like, fantastic writing. Word, word, word. Since 0.3 seconds ago, I've been thinking about it. But, Joey, you went off to the most remote island in Japan. One of the most remote islands. One of the most remote islands. In Japan? Yeah, I went to the Ogasawada Islands, which is, you guys don't know,

it's a thousand kilometers south from the mainland, which is, and somehow it's still Tokyo, which is the weirdest part. It's part of Tokyo prefecture. Oh my God. Which is the craziest thing. But yeah, I just came back from that a week ago. I went there with the Cold Ones Boys, shout out. And yeah, they wanted to film a video.

there so they were like, hey, do you want to come with us to the Orasawada Islands to just get fucked up for a week? And we're like, sure. I've always wanted to go here as well, because there's another island kind of close by to there called Aogashima, which is where the main setting of your name is based off of. That's like north of there. So, yeah, I went there and a tiny, you know,

archipelago of like, I think it's like seven or eight different islands. 2,000 people live on this island. And it was just really fucking nice. Easily, one of the most beautiful coastlines I've ever seen in Japan, if not the world. Damn. Just really, really pretty. And of course, you know, you're on a fucking tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Yeah. And you have all these people of just living the island lifestyle. So just some of the nicest locals that you'll ever meet there. None of them can speak English, but you know what? couple of bruskees will fix that. How do you, I'm guessing there's no airport to this island and you need to take a ferry. Yeah, there's one ferry that leaves from Takashiba port in near Shimbashi. That leaves every three days during on seasons, which is current right now.

Off seasons, it's like once a week. And it's 24 hours. So we got on the boat at 10 a.m. Right. on, like, I think it was like the Thursday, and we got to the island 10 a.m. Friday. Wow. And it was the roughest boat ride I've ever been on in my life. I mean, you're going out into some pretty treacherous waters.

How big was the ferry, was it? So it was, it was pretty big, actually. So the rooms, it could probably hold maybe a thousand people on this boat. It was pretty massive. It was like, I think it was about six or seven stories high. And, yeah, like, it has like a restaurant in a... Did people have one of those, like, drive-in ports? Like, people bought their cars?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can drive in with your car and stuff like that, yeah. Yeah, Japan has a ton of these. They like manufacture a ton of... Obviously, there's so many ferries you need for Japan. Yeah, the Ogasawamadu. Yeah, that's the boat there that we were on, the very left one there.

Um, yeah, so... Oh, wow, that's actually... Actually, no, that's a pretty standard Japanese ferry liner. Yeah, yeah. These are pretty common everywhere. Yeah, pretty standard. They have like a giant two deck for cars and lorries. you know because of shipping and then they have normally like two decks but like chilling yeah

and then there's normally if there's like if there's beds or whatever or box they have that too yeah they had like different levels so you'd have like the economy class which is literally just a giant room uh with like tatami mats on it where you can just kind of pick your corner and just like sleep there makes sense and then the most expensive rooms were like hotel rooms that had like two beds in it that have like a private room and stuff like that uh i opted to go for the the middle class which was basically, the only way I could describe it was if you put a capsule hotel inside of a boat. Oh, yeah, that's pretty soon. So it's basically just like a standard bong.

Yeah. You know, because I've seen the fairs before. They have the open tommy rooms. Those are pretty rough. Those are really rough. Because you, not only are you sleeping on a tommet, you're sleeping with like 40 other people that are, you know, a lot of them are old. Sorry. But they're like, snoring, coughing.

Yeah. Always like groaning, making noises, moving around. It's a rough sleep. It's a rough sleep. So thankfully the Cole ones boys have money. So they gave me the middle room. But. What the fuck?

Let's be fair. Here's for my guess. There's probably not many premium rooms available. There weren't that many premium rooms available. And also because it was like peak season for Ogasawara like domestic travel. The rooms are also just really fucking expansive as well. Like these like these boat rides for the for the best room, I think like one way is like close to a grand.

Are they... What? Yeah. When I got like my like gigas suite on the cruise, it was like a one of one room. Yeah. We had like a whole bathtub in your room. Right.

Uh, that was like none of them. Oh, really? Yeah. It was like 500 bucks. Yeah, the top room one way is like Juma. Oh, this was also a 24 hour ferry as well. This is a 24 hour ferry as well. But yeah, it had like a bar in it.

It had like a restaurant in it and stuff like that. So it had all the, you know, showers. How full was it? How many people are going to these islands? Um, well, currently it's like, peak season right now for school holidays and stuff like that. So it was pretty full. It was almost full all the way there and all the way back. And I also realized as well when we got to the island that the ship not only carries passengers, but it also carries all of the cargo that is then

sold at the supermarkets on the island. So the supermarkets only get on the on seasons, the supermarkets only get stocked up every three or four days. Or actually even longer than that because it's one boat there and then another boat back. So it's like once a week, essentially. Yeah. That they get stocked up. So is it not two boats? There's one boat. So it's, it's one boat that leaves, stays on the island for three days and then comes back to Tokyo. Oh. Oh, so you got the exact same boat back? It didn't leave. Exact same boat back. Interesting. So the boat stayed at Chichima Port, which is in the August Island's island, for three full days until we got back on it to go back. I wonder why that is. I feel like, probably because it's just such.

a long trip. Yeah. But I feel like you'd have like rotating crew. Maybe there's not enough demand. Maybe there's other like smaller cargo boats that come into now. I just love logistics. I love why the people. I'm sorry. I get excited. I'm like, my guy, is that really? I mean, they most certainly figured it out. Like that's, makes the most sense. Yeah. I just wonder why. I think so. But that just means that like during the winter months, for instance, like these, the ship only comes and goes once a week. So they only get stocked up once every two weeks if we're doing the math correctly. But yeah, so luckily we went on during the on season and like it was somehow cooler there than it was here. I don't know how that works. I thought it would

be way fucking hotter. But some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen, the people there was so nice. The food was really cool. One of the delicacies or I guess specialties on this island is sea turtle. Oh. Yeah. So they literally just, uh, there's a, I heard it from one of the locals. They have this really interesting system where, like, on the way to the island, if you're standing outside and, you know, watching all the other islands pass by, there's so many sea turtles in this ocean because the ocean is just crystal clear. You can see pretty much like, you know, many, many meters down and you just see this huge amount of sea turtles. And I always thought, like, sea turtles were like, maybe not endangered, but at least like protected, you know, animals. So when I saw that it was on the menu, I had to ask being like, so, like, so, like, like, sea turtles were like, maybe not endangered, but at least, like, protected. animals. So when I saw that it was on the menu, I had to ask being like, so like, what's the deal with, you know, the sea turtle stuff? And the woman explained to me that on that island, there is one guy who is allowed to catch and sell the sea turtles on the island. He has some kind of special permission or some kind of special license. That's cool. I guess he's like a fisherman

of some kind that allows him to catch the turtles and sell it in a way that is non-destructive. That's like those feudal jobs in England things. are still maintained by like some people. Yeah, yeah. That are really cool. Yeah. So, you know, I'd never seen sea turtle being sold before at a restaurant. So I was like, I have to try it.

I think I've eaten not salt water. What do you call it? What do you call not salt water? Fresh water? Yeah. Oh, like supon. Yeah, supon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've had supon before as well. So I thought at first it was supon. Yeah. But it said umigame, which is sea turtle. So I was like, it's different to supon. But if you've had Subon before, it's pretty similar. Right. In terms of like flavor and texture.

And it was really good. The seafood there obviously was Burson. And yeah, we just got really shit face for three days on. I mean, I don't expect nothing less for the cold ones. If you do with the Chad and Max, you know. They're probably to call an emergency shipment of liquor once they arrived fucking out. It's going to be like the Scotson Boston again, you know. Chad is not built for a Japanese supply chain.

Like these poor islands, man. I still don't want to give too much away because, you know, it's their video. But yeah, the whole premise was they wanted to go to the most remote pub in all of Japan. And I guess there was one pub here that's owned by like a half Japanese, half America guy. No, it was a pub. Yeah, it was like a pub slash bar called Yankee Town. And it was really cool because it was this like wooden shack that was hand built by this one guy over the course of 10 months. And it was really cool.

And he was telling us all these stories about it. And he was just like, yeah, so how did you like build the place? And he was just like, well, you know, I had this plot of land that my grandfather had left to me. And I wanted to do something with it. So I wanted to, you know, build like a pub or like a bar kind of deal. But in the middle of this plot of land, there's this giant tree that's been there for like hundreds of years. And he was like, well, I could like cut it down to make room for it. But fuck it.

I'll just build around it. So in the middle of this pub, there's just this giant tree that's growing straight up through the ceiling. Oh, that's okay. And it just gives the coolest vibe ever. And this guy was just telling us all these really cool stories. What the fuck does he do when it rains? Uh, I don't know. I don't know, but, uh...

Oh, yeah, yeah, this is it here, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Just the chillest vibes. There was a bunch of, like, locals who were there just, like, strumming on their guitars and just, like, having the most island of life possible. I love those kind of bars because the bar that almost forces you to be friends. You have to talk to everyone there.

Yeah. Because there is nothing else. Exactly. That is the point of what the bar was meant to be in the beginning. Yeah. To kill some time and socialize. Yeah. By the end of the night, it was just a race between Chad and this other Japanese bloke

that we made friends with of just trying to buy everyone beers. So just one person would just be like, Like nine coronas, please. He just passed them around in the pub. Damn. Yeah, really cool vibes. How many people were in this bar? Was it like full?

Well, there was eight of us. And then there was four other old blokes who were just like, I guess three of them were locals. One of them had come from central Tokyo. When you're the majority, you get to be the vibes setter too. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds so awesome. Yeah, really, really good vibes.

Really good vibes. And there was a beach there that was really cool. that had a sunken World War II ship that had been there. Because if you guys don't know the history of the August Sauta Islands, it was owned by the Americans up until around the 60s, I believe, something like that. It was a little bit before Okinawa was taken back. And so there's, I traveled around on the island, and there's just a lot of like kind of old Navy sites and stuff like that

where like the bunkers used to be. and one of the shipwrecks that's like just probably not even 50 meters off the coast of this beach is just this old World War II shipwreck. And you can swim up to it. And now because so much time is, you know, so much time has passed since this boat had sunk there, it's just turned into its own reef ecosystem. So if you go out there and snorkel, you can just see like all this wildlife in and around the ship. shipwry.

Yeah, it's like, what do you call it? Like when they drop, they drop cars into reefs to give them, like, room to make reefs or something. Oh, really? Yeah, I've seen them, they drop, they just drop shit in that. Maybe they'd fly tipping. But I assume they're doing it for the car. Yes, yes.

No, Your Honor, I'm helping the local ecosystem, Your Honor. No, I'm, uh... I'm not littering. I'm not littering. I'm building them a home. The fish need it. But yeah, look, as rough as the boat right there and back was, I'm very glad I went there. Again, one of the most beautiful islands I've been to in Japan.

Yeah. I'd highly recommend it. I did want to go to the other island, Hajima, because apparently there is an even smaller settlement over there. I think it's like 150 people live on that island. Yeah. And they're known for like glassware, which I bought a couple of things from. But yeah, it's just really, really pretty.

if you just want to kind of get away from everything or 419 people there you wow um but yeah if you just want to get away from everything and just like live the island life like this is it uh okinawa is cool and all yeah ohshima was like that too although way more people yeah yeah yeah yeah o'shima was was really cool because there was like no no convenience stores

yeah there was yeah i don't know i think o's like 10,000 population can you check oshima population yeah which is in tokyo as well um but you know they're like losing people as well. What is it? Let's have a look. 6,000. 6,000.

But they've got some really cool things there too. We did a video with Chris there and it was really fun. And yeah, the islands are really cool. Like all these islands that kind of exist, you know, that... This trip definitely made me want to, like, go to some of the more like major islands off the coast of Japan that I haven't been to. Like Saddozima, I really want to go to Tsushima is another one that I really want to go to. What's the...

I forgot, I want to answer Chris Shodoshoshima, the one between Kobe and... Oh, yeah, I know which one you're talking about. Chicago. Yeah, yeah. It's a pretty big island there's next to the island, Nakajima, I think. Yeah. I think so, something like that. I don't know, sorry.

I mean, it's like a World War II place. Yeah. Again, Japan is 13,000 islands, so it could be any one of them. Okay, 13,000 islands, but like, a hundred significant one? There are, though, let's be real, there are a lot of inhabitable, like, circles. Yeah. I mean, the Orgasawada Islands, again, there's like seven or eight islands, but only two of them are inhabited. Right, right.

Because the rest of the islands, which I saw when I went to, when I rode up, I took like an e-bike and rode to the top of the northern side of Hapagima where you can see the other islands. I looked at some of those islands and I'm like, those are just cliffs. Yeah. Like there is no fucking way anyone can live on that island. But still really, really beautiful. Would definitely recommend. Yeah. Yeah.

But that's been my week. Would you guys ever live the island life? No. I would if it wasn't a thousand kilometers away. It was a little bit closer to the mainland, maybe. I was like, there's like, like, the manly urging me to be like, what if, though? I don't think about like the island life. Think about the country life. The country life? Yeah, being able to like be away from the city. But still on the mainland.

You'd still be able to get things, see a doctor. You know, he's like, what if you have in a medical emergency you live here? Then you have to take, they do have like an emergency helipad there. So if you do have, because there's no hospital on the island. I got like a spot. I got like a mole that I want to get checked. It's like fuck. Well then you got to wait for the boat and three days.

You know what I mean? Every minor inconvenience now becomes a major inconvenience. Or just fucking deal with it, Tom. Yeah, just deal with it. Just fucking man up and fucking die. Yeah, you're on an island. Just man up and die and stop paying medical bills, you piece of shit. But what was also really cool was when we left the island because I guess, you know,

the local economy here obviously relies very heavily. on tourism and stuff like that as well, domestic tourism. So they did this whole like Tyco performance, which was like summoning like the ocean gods for them to have like a good travel and stuff like that. And it was completely like not unnecessary but like completely unexpected. And then as the boat was leaving the dots.

This is unnecessary. Yeah, this is a bit much, isn't it? We're going from Tokyo to Tokyo. But as the boat was leaving, there was this, what I can only describe as this just like train of all these other like fishing boats and like um tourism boats and stuff like that that rode alongside of us for probably about 10 20 kilometers out into open water and one by one I guess all the staff members of like the fisheries and the tourism boats would jump off of

the boats into open water just to be like see ya what it was so yeah so like yeah I don't know how to describe it so it was it was you know the ferry would go off and then trailing behind the boat as people are like, you know, waving the island goodbye, there would just be all these other smaller boats and they would do this performance where like one boat would kind of go ahead and then all the people on that boat would all simultaneously jump off the boat into open waters just as like a final goodbye performance of some kind. And it would just be one boat after another after another. But the last boat, we are probably a good 30 kilometers off the coast. Like this is, they are diving into the open Pacific Ocean.

It is just open water. And all these guys are just like, let's jump in. I don't know how many fucking sharks there are in this thing. But fuck it. Let's go. Damn, they must really care about the tourism economy. That is crazy. I don't think that's what's going to sell me to come back.

If I'm like super honest, like it's cool. Really? Because to me, it's soldered because it just goes. You're now going back because of that? Well, I just, I'm going back. I want to go back not only to explore other islands, but I just think like the, even though you're only there for such a short period of time, the people on the island make you, give you such a homely feeling.

Like they're just like, you're not someone who's just visiting here, you're like a family member who is going away. Oh, that's kind of thing, you know. That's really sweet actually. Yeah, and that, and like, I was honestly like kind of tearing up when I saw her because I was just like, I've never been to an island where they do this kind of shit, where they actually make you be like, fuck man, I don't want to leave. this place is dope.

Like, the people here are so nice and so welcoming that they put on this performance that nobody expects and nobody asks for. And yet they were just so happy that you even came to visit them. That's cool. And, like, that really, like, warm my heart up. And that made me want to come back.

Even though the boat ride was horrendous. But they didn't get, like, a biplane or something, you know. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, put a little, like, you know, airport in there and then, you know, maybe. Or she might took a tiny plane with Chris. Like a Sessna? Yeah, yeah. It was a tiny propeller plane.

It was about like 30 minutes. It was not long at all. It was cool. Yeah, I mean, you know, it makes it easier to go to these places. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, it makes me want to go to more of these islands, for sure.

Because I feel like there's just so much, it's such a unique culture that is so much more different from like anything you see on the mainland, you know? Because, like, again, like, I always, I forgot the entire time I was there. I'm like, this is technically Tokyo.

These people are not speaking in a dialect. Like, they're speaking of, like, anyone in the big city would talk. And yet just being so far away and being so isolated and having this like tight community, it has created an entirely different culture on its own. Yeah. And that's just incredibly fascinating to me because, you know, and made me wonder like, what are the other islands like, you know, like what's like Saddojima like or like Tsushima like, you know? So definitely going to make it a goal to try and explore those places. Yeah, I always wonder what kind of mentality you have, people have to like live on.

remote settlements of like very small population, just isolated from everything. Yeah. Like I remember seeing some videos of like the most remote settlement, which is like a fucking British settlement. It's like, can you search it up, Kai? It's like the most remote settlement in the world. The Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. Oh, Tristan Dekuna, that's it. Tristan. I've never heard of this. Tristan Dekuna is the most remote settlement. It sounds like some Guna on 4chan. Oh, St. Helena.

Yeah. And it is the most remote settlement on Earth. It's like in the middle of the Atlantic. Zoom out, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, sounds like. Holy shit. Look at that ship. That island would have been worth a lot though, back in the day. When we had so much ships,

that would have been something Yeah, I just wonder what, what type of person must be like, you know what? Wasn't this the island that like fucking Napoleon Bonapal was excommunicated? No, no, no. Was it a different island? It was the island, uh, fuck, it was Africa, near Africa. Yeah, I thought it was one of these islands, but. I mean, these, these stations, like, I think it's, it's probably like a weather station island, I imagine.

That's what a lot of these are. No, this is like a full, this is like a full town. Yeah, a proper town. I know, but they probably have a weather station is like one of the main reason. why they probably push people. Yeah. I mean, it looks really fucking pretty. It looks fucking awesome.

Yeah. But also, one of those things where you get, you know, get a little crazy when you stay on an island like that. Yeah. Because, like, me growing up in the city,

and I suppose, like, people who grew up in, like, small towns will be able to relay, but I like, I don't know what it feels like to just go around your local town and just know everyone. Yeah. You know, it's, uh, and this is especially,

exasperated when you're living in a remote island where the population is in like triple or even like quadruple digits. You know, it's, I can't imagine knowing the principal or the fucking school teacher and just going to the supermarket and just seeing like everyone, you know. Yeah, true.

That's, how long does it take to get to this island? Oh, dude. Probably. Not that I'm gonna go anytime soon, I'm just curious. How long does it take to get to Tristan Zikuta? And there are a lot of people who are like, you know, especially like, I feel like less so nowadays. Five to seven days by sea. Yeah, you have to go from Cape Town, which already takes a long time from here.

There are a lot of, like, I speak to a lot of older people. And like, whenever I go to the UK, you know, I'm around, people who are older. And they tell me like these crazy trips they did, like stuff like this where they're like, obviously not like to this extent, but they just go to a place you've never heard of. And you're like, why that? And they're just like, well, why not? Just want us to check it out. But I feel like we don't really do this as much

unless it's like a YouTube video nowadays. Like for people, they're like, I went to the remotest. And even then it's like, I think a lot of people are like, I have seven days. Yeah. Round trip. How often do you use your free will?

Not enough. Not enough. I just, I think about this where I'm like, you know, I do a free will. But also using, using free will sometimes takes, takes energy. I wish, I wish I fully utilize. my free will to the fullest extent.

That is not like always work-related. Lately I have acquired a new addiction, fortunately. Oh, yeah? Pokemon Championships. Oh, the game? Yeah. Yeah, dude, it's fucking great. I've been addicted. Really?

Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's basically, do you know Pokemon Showdown? No. So, you know because Pokemon, to do competitive Pokemon, you have to, like, breathe. Explain competitive Pokemon to me. I have zero knowledge. So for a very, very, very long time.

Every Pokemon tournament was done via, like, the newest game released, and then you had to get the Pokemon. But, you know, to kind of like even start theory crafting, you have to get the Pokemon, and then you have to breed the correct attribute of which there are like... They're called IVs. Well, IVs is, yeah, but you know, like the, like, the, like, the...

Personality. Because that changes the attack, defense, speed, all these stats. On top of that, then you've got to train IVs. You have to train them. And it's like, it takes a while. And even then, you know. We can't train ivies. You train Evies.

So you train Evie's. Sorry, sorry. So you train Evis. And then, you know, you have to do it a certain way. And it's a very time-consuming process. And a lot of people would like just cheats. But then Pokemon company was like, hey, not cool for you to use cheated Pokemon in the thing. And everyone's like, well, this kind of sucks.

Because now you're basically limiting it to people who can afford to hire someone else to do it. because a lot of people just, you know, a lot of people play competitive of the Pokemon. It's not a, it's not a big money earner. Yeah. So it was a lot of people who had like other shit to do in their life and you can't expect them to like. So there's,

and on top of that, it was a new game every time. So you have to like do this all over again or move over your Pokemon or, you know, and it would change and the moves they could learn and you have to, you know, get that. So, and then maybe you theory crafted a great team and it just doesn't work very well.

So you're like, fuck, I got to go back and change. some things. I've got to re-raise it at the same Pokemon again with different EVs and you know, it's like a, and then you've got to organize it. It's like a met. It was like a full-on job to even begin playing competitive Pokemon.

Yep. So there was a website called Pokemon Showdown that was basically it would just take the P&Gs and would like do all the stats for you. And that was very, very popular because it was basically like you could pick okay, I want Pikachu with Max Evie and Special Attack, Max Defense

Evie and two points in health. I want it this nature, and then you built a team in five minutes. Yeah. The Pokemon World Championships used that, right? No, they used the games. They used to. Oh, they use the games. But now they get that.

So then Pokemon took so long to do this. And it is a, I don't know why they didn't do it sooner. They basically said, look, we'll release a game that is going to be the competitive game only. It's called Pokemon Championship. And it's basically like, it is a Gatsha game. So you, annoyingly, so you can't even get like, the good thing is, is that they have set Pokemon.

So there's all sets every game. couple of months. These 200 or Pokemon are allowed, and they change the, what they're, so then you, you have to pull. But the game, to be honest, is pretty generous, and I've been able to find roughly what I want. I was very annoyed for a while, because I couldn't find the one fucking Pokemon that I wanted. But generally, you can always build a team. And so that's how they make their money off of it.

But the idea is, is that you can also for free transfer Pokemon from your games into it, too. Yeah. It is a fucking hassle, and you have to download a completely separate app. But you play it. And they also put it on phones. So it's sick. So you play it on Switch. And then I pull up my phone and I play it.

And it's awesome because all the games are like five minutes. Right. So it's just super easy to like kill five minutes. And it's also a game where you can talk to someone and be like, yeah, what's like? Okay. Give you a second. Yeah.

All right. Yeah. No. So yeah, I was saying. So it's like, just think Pokemon Stadium if it was extra fucking sweaty. And so this is like going to be how they're going to do all the competitive for Pokemon from now on.

But it's just really fucking sick. And then, you know, when you get the Pokemon, you can use your currency to say, I want these moves for it. I want these EVs. I want this nature. I want to change the ability to this. And it's awesome because you can kind of just like try and theory craft. And I've had a lot of fun where I've been using a really like a team that someone else built. And then I've been kind of changing in Pokemon, seeing how it feels.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of experimentation with that stuff. Yeah, it's really, really fun. And also it's just a gamble as well because like depending on the matchup, like you could have like the most like the most like, like fucking reach your team. But if the matchup is bad, then it doesn't matter how much it is. Because it's just mind reading.

It's literally what the game is. You're like, you're saying like they have these Pokemon, these moves you know they're going to use. Yeah. And now it's up to you if they're going to, you think they're going to try and outplay you need to predict that. But maybe you try to out predict an outplay ends up being the wrong move.

And he just went for the simplest option that's going to maybe let him win. Yeah. But you would have outplay. So there's these really fun mind games that I've been really enjoying with it. My friend who's really into competitive Pokemon was like, think of it as the world's most complicated game of junkin. Yeah, yeah, basically. It's like, you have to think being like,

is he going to pull out rock or scissors or paper? But what if I double down and do scissors? It's literally that at the end of the day. So it's a very simple game to get into, but it's very deep when it comes to like the complexity of it that goes on behind the scenes. I'm surprised you got into it. Well, because I did a Pokemon Championship streamer tournament.

Right. On Wolfie E. Collects Channel. Yeah. It's like the goat of Pokemon. competitive. Yeah. And I got built this team and I was playing a bunch of showdown while I was getting ready. He said, didn't have the team on champions.

And I just, I just had so much fun. Yeah. And I really enjoyed it. And then I really liked the quick nature of the games. Did you win? No, no, I, I know. I, unfortunately, I trolled in the, in my first game that cost me my, my ticket out of the groups.

Damn. Okay. But I think I was kind of happy with my performance given I was really busy prior. But I got really into this and it's kind of become my new addiction right now. I'm sure by the time this episode is out. I'm either cripplingly addicted or I'm out. I already feel it waning a little bit because I'm like, I don't know if I want to really get sunk into this.

Because the problem with it being five-minute games is there's always one more. Yeah. That's how they get you, man. There's always LG. Yeah. So is there like a meta in it? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Definitely. Okay. Depending on what Pokemon gets released. Because every time a new game comes out, there's a new set of Pokemon with different movesets, different IVs. But they also update the rule sets every couple of months in this. Yeah. Right.

So, yeah, it completely changes. Okay. Which is nice because I think it's... I think Garchomp is the matter right now, right? No, it's like fucking paliper, swamper. Really? Because paliper does drizzle when you... Pelopa?

Palper does drizzle. And he's pretty good. He's fast. Damn, yeah, but it's got four times the lightning. Yeah, but you can like it, okay, this is... Because then you can have like a right shoe with lightning rod, which absorbs the attack. So if they go to the...

Oh, true. You know they're going to go for the electric attack. So you switch out. You swap out one of the other guys, and then they get a boost. You see what I mean? There's like loads of... Yeah.

It's basically, it is literally just... And it's beautiful, because you get to bring six Pokemon each, but only four get to... You have to pick four. And you see the other person six. You're like, okay, I need to think what they're going to think,

and you don't get to see what they brought. So you don't see the first two. And then you need to think what the other two might be. And you see their attacks? No. No, you... So you have to be like... You have to not only be aware of your own Pokemon,

but the opponent... Unfortunately, it's like league a little bit where you've got to learn the champs. Yeah. They do. You need to know this is the move they're going to do. And unfortunately, you just got to, you just got to lose to a bunch of cringe things. You're like, I didn't know that.

I didn't know what the fuck. I didn't know that Pokemon had armor tail. Yeah. You know, like, I didn't know Ferrarograph is a terrorist. I didn't know that. So those things are fun. But I've been having a lot of fun. You know, it's a good distraction when you need five minutes to kill.

Yeah. And at the airport, it was like the best time waster. ever had. It's awesome. So how many hours you put in? I don't know. Maybe like, maybe like 10 or 15 so far. That's not so bad. Yeah, but it's been like, it's been very engaging 10.15.

And it's been, I could see it. I can see the seeds that's planted in me. I don't know if I like it. No, I don't know. But yeah, but it's been really fun. Can you joke on your phone actually? How much, how much time you put into it? Well, I've been also playing on the switch. Oh. Because it's nice, because sometimes I, I don't know.

I like playing on the phone, but sometimes I don't like playing on the phone. Yeah. So I'm always curious whenever Whenever someone says like yeah I put this many hours into it Well that's like I don't know Yeah How do I see my time in a game?

Screen time here we go What does this mean? Okay this week Only 24 this week Last week I had four hours We before I had four hours Okay But again you gotta think like

It's five minutes per game Yeah. But that's a lot of games. Yeah. Yeah. The only cringe thing I don't like is that some people play like hell of stalling teams. And you're like, brother, you're wasting my time and your time. Oh, where they just keep flipping around.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I picked a team that like literally wins or loses in the first two moves. So I'm like, okay, I can move on or go forward. You know, I'll make the call. So is this, are you in ranked or are you playing casual? Ranked, ranked, right? Yeah, that's fun.

Okay. It's good. The rank's really good too. And again, it's good, it's good fun. Awesome. And yeah. Are you high ranked now? I got to Masterball Tier in the first season,

and now I'm washed. I'm trying to get back there. But it reset. Okay, okay. It's like seasons. But yeah, it's been fun. What about you guys before? Anything else?

Yeah, I've been a natural gamer and getting into a Holo Night. Oh, dude, I saw. Oh, yeah. I saw you streaming that. Yeah, I don't know. I just randomly was just like... I'm scared to play that game.

Why? Because I played it one time. before I, when I was a YouTuber. Yeah. And this is like right when it came out. Yeah. I played it. I did not like the backtracking.

I only played like three hours. Yeah, but that's all Metroidvania. Yeah. Okay. I hate this argument so much, dude. Because I, Metroidvania fans are insufferable with this because they say like, oh my God,

complaining about backtracking, Metroidvania. It's like, no, the way I see it is like, if you're driving in a driving game is shit. Yeah. It's not like,

Guy doesn't like driving in a drive. It's like, no, you did that fucking bad driving. and you should know that you did bad driving. Because, look, when I played Ari of Sorrow on Metroidvania, it's beautiful. The game beautifully guides you,

and you go from room to room, and then the itch to backtrack comes up. It's not a need. You keep going. And the way that they laid it out is beautiful. It guides you on this path, but you constantly keep thinking, what about that one room where I saw that ledge?

And then, you know, but it doesn't make you go back there. It doesn't force you to. It keeps allowing you to go fill out this map. There's no barriers until you get like a power up in a room. And you're like, oh, I wonder if it's for that ledge. But at this point, they've been like, hey, buddy, teleporter on us. Going to us from this room to this room.

Yeah, it's a little bit of a track, a little bit annoying. It's way quicker than going all the way back. And you know, you kind of get like this beautiful synergy of discovering these teleporter rooms when you start needing them. And then you kind of get guided and you go through it. And it's like, if I have to actually just backtrack for three hours, because you wanted to make me do that, I don't enjoy that.

Yeah, but Hall and I also has a fast travel option. Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah, I know. But you have to unlock it. And yeah, I think just for the first couple of hours when I, again, and at this point, I will. No, no, no, no. I completely get it because I, as much as I love

Metro Ravini games, I also hate backtracking, especially when it's unnecessary and it's just a time sync. Like, you need to make it so that it makes sense. Yes, 100%. It is an aspect of the game that is really well thought out and is fun. And not just because you like everything else

and you're willing to, like, let it go. You know, because for me, you know, we have less free time now. We're getting older. Do you think it's like the equivalent of like complaining about Souls games where no matter what, it's just like, oh, that's just part of the Souls experience? Yeah, Source fans do it too. Dying 500 times is part of the experience. Yeah, source fans do it too, right?

They complain about certain things that like, look, you just got to understand that some people aren't going to like the fucking send you back to the start mechanic and twist your balls. You know what I mean? Like, you just have to be okay. like you, I know you're cool with that. But you can't be mad at other people for complaining about it.

All right, 100%. Do you think you should be able to pause in a Souls game? Mid-fight? Just pause any, anytime. Um, I think, like, there are so many occasions outside, like,

because I am so rarely ever pausing in a boss fight. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I'm rarely doing it to gain some kind of edge. I'm mostly pausing when I need. when I need to go to the piss, when I need to go do something,

when I'm tapped out. Like, I just think you should be able to pause because it's like, there's nothing worse than being like, I guess I'll just sit in this corner and I'll have the menu up and I hope that no one fucking kills me and then they kill you.

And you're like, this is so dumb. Like, I'm getting punished for something where I wasn't even there, you know? Because how many times are you trying to pause mid-fight? Honestly. I mean, the thing that's most annoying is when you kind of just, when it's not during the boss fight.

Maybe someone calls you mid-fight. Yeah, or it's, I mean, this, this, this happened on stream. I'm not pissed when it happens in a boss fight, but I remember I was mid-boss fight and I, an earthquake happened. And Sydney was calling for me. And there's this moment where I'm just like, ah, ah, ah. Okay, but here's my thoughts on that. You lost that run, presumably. Yeah. To the earthquake, right? Yeah. If you are good enough, you could do it again. Yeah. If you were only ever meant to be to beat that boss one time. Yeah.

You weren't, it wasn't earned. Yeah. You need to be able to beat that boss a second time, a third time. That is like the point of a soul's game. Would you say that if you were facing Redan though? Yeah. I'd be pissed. Look, I'd be pissed, but I'd also be happy at the great clip I have done.

But not everyone is a streamer, Connor. Imagine you one shot away from like, he's thinking content brain. No, but I also think this is going to be a great story. Like I, I, I, I, I, I, my, my, the life, your life's currency is stories, you know, being able to tell a funny story

is worth more than any victory in a video, to be honest to me. And you don't realize that until, you know, you get older and you start running out of stories. And you realize, fair enough. Damn, all we have are good fucking stories to share with each other. Yeah. But anyway, did you like all that?

I mean, I'm very, very early into where, but, um, maybe, Maybe this, maybe I'm viewing it wrong or maybe I've, maybe I'm just goaded. I don't know. I thought it would be harder. Oh. People were telling me that Holo Night is a hard game. I think it's a pretty hard game is the one that's quite difficult. Is it Silk Song?

Silk Song is definitely harder. Okay. Yeah, but some of the, especially the optional boss fights in Holo Night, I remember, I struggled quite a bit. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's like the DLC one that's crazy. Yeah, I haven't even touched that. This is my age very poorly. As I get further and further into the game. The last boss fucked me up with all the night. Yeah. But, yeah, I was expecting, I had this level of expectations where people are just like,

oh, it's, it's in the Metroidvania, but, you know, there's a big difficulty spike at X and Y and, you know, you're playing 2D souls or something like that. I mean, it might also just be people not used to platformies. You're a bit of a masochist. Why? What do you mean? You're like really difficult challenges. Yeah.

I don't like difficult challenges. Yes, you do. I hear from fucking Dark Soul straight and stuff. Hollow Night? You want a challenge, buddy. No, I was, I was, I was, Rose completed life, so he needs something. I just, I heard, like, one thing that is like, that, that is truly standing out is,

the vibes in Hollenite are fucking immaculate. So good. And I had to search this because I was like, going through some areas, I was like, oh, this music really feels like Kevin-esque, Kevin Pinkin-esque, because, like, it really felt like I was, like, going through, like, a maiden abyss area or something like that. It gave me that kind of like wondrous vibe. And it really like the like I get about the backtracking because I kind of agree.

I kind of like feel like it's just a chore to back. It doesn't mean the game is bad. Yeah. It just means it's not a good aspect of the game. Yeah. But I will say the feeling of being able to explore a new area, just getting that feeling of like childlike wonder as you one, as you discover a new area and you like you don't know what you're going to, you don't know what you can. find around the next corner. I feel like few games can like achieve that so well. And I think

even though I'm very, very early into Hollandites, it's it, man, it's scratching an edge. It's like, it's getting to that point where I'm like, I just, I just want to play it again. I just want to continue playing it. That's how I know, like, when you're streaming a lot, it's when you found something. Yeah. You're like, all right, guys, I'll do an anime React next week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you're streaming a lot, I'm like, oh, he's found something. Yeah. He's hooked. I was just, I was just like, fuck. I, I, I, I, I was just like, I I only had like three hours like to stream after we did our stream. And I'm like, I just don't even play a whole night.

I just want to continue playing it. It's, it's a suboptimal stream because it's like, I can only play this for three hours, but I cannot stop myself like, yeah. It's a fast three hours. And now I'm thinking it's like, what is around the next corner? What is around that corner? What am I to discover?

Yeah, every time you go into a new, completely new area, you're just like, oh shit. Yeah, right? And I don't know so much about the law. I've never been a law guy. so much if I, I want, I'm a lazy gamer. I like it drip fed to me. Sure.

So I understand when people, when, you know, when you're playing Elder Ring or Souls game, people can like fully get into like the law of it. But I'm like, damn, that requires so much effort. To be like, so. And for me, when I think about getting into law, I like, I love like the Mass Effect law because they literally have a fucking encyclopedia.

Where they will literally like have a narrator tell you the law. of this one place. I'm like, that's perfect. I can just sit down and just listen to it, like a fucking podcast. It's an audio book. Yeah, but if I have to just, yeah, but if I have to scroll through every item and just read the item description, I'm like, can someone just tell me? I'm just going to watch a law video on YouTube of something explaining to me. I'm already trying not to die. I don't want to piece these puzzle pieces together. You get like, I've always thought of it, actually I've played a lot of these games now on stream and, you know, I've played games that are insanely cryptic and tell you nothing.

And I've played games that tell you a lot. And personally, what I've found to be like a really satisfying mix for like a lot of people is like the main story that is communicated to the player in a way that is like, not like handholdy or not like exposition, just the story that you will always pick up on is great. And then every little like document or every little piece adds like a layer to the world that isn't necessary to enjoy it or appreciate the game,

but as a fan will make you really happy that you read that. It's like, I'm trying to think of an example that does it well. I think like Bioshock 1 does this pretty well

where you kind of, everything you kind of pick up or learn outside of what is happening in cut scenes is really, really interesting. Yeah. And not because it's story relevant, although it is.

It's just because you learn so much. It builds upon it. Yeah. And because once they've sold you on the world, it's just it's like gravy it's like oh i like this yeah that's and that's when it's done well but when it's like the story is told to the fucking scroll number 17 on the ground in a like miscellaneous cavern you're like and then the next one you pick up is scroll number 19 you're like fuck now i'm gonna find scroll number 18 because it's also like you're like you know you never know how long

the player's been playing for and unfortunately when it comes to just straight reading you know you kind of lose people uh even if it's like super story impactful if i'm on out of I might be a little gassed, like mentally about reading a game. But maybe I'm just enjoying the distraction, the repetitiveness of the gameplay, you know, that kind of input, output. So yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. And it's like, I can appreciate like the law that goes into a game like Eldon Ring and

Holland and stuff like that. But, you know, personally, as a gamer, I'm not playing them for the story. You know, I'm playing them for the fantastic exploration and gameplay. And to me, like the law, which, I'm going to like get through osmosis through a fucking YouTube video. That's like a nice cherry on top, you know, but it's not the main reason I play the game. And maybe Holo Night might, you know, change my mind because I've not really put that many hours into it right now. I'm still like very, very early days into it.

But right now I'm just really, really enjoying the exploration and the battle mechanics. And, you know, I don't play a lot of Metroidvania's. but to me I'm a big fan of Mega Man and it's just scratch that itch for me you have like it's like Mega Man but with like the more more of the exploration

which you get with Metroidvania's that's satisfying itch of like barely making it through a bunch of enemies. Yeah yeah yeah yeah it's just kind of fun yeah and like mechanically intensive it's great it's good fun yeah exactly you've been playing anything Joey uh not really I've been playing the new

fucking rhythm heaven game. That game looks fun though. That game is fun as fuck. Seems hard. Yeah, it can be. I mean, because I grew up playing the original one on the DS and that was such a fucking good game. And it's the newest one in 15 years

I think. So, playing it now on like a big TV screen instead of the small DS, very different. And it's quite challenging because I feel like they kind of up the difficulty and the preciseness of it. It's not like a rhythm game where like you have a little margin of error or anything like that.

It's, you've got to be pretty perfect with them. So it gets, it gets tough. Very fun. Yeah. Just nice, chill,

like, you know, just kind of pick up, play a couple of games put down kind of vibe. So, yeah, no, I'm a gamer.

A lot of snow down below of you is what you've been playing or watching. What do you want us to try and play or watch? It'd be fun to know. Look at all these patrons, look at all these gamers right here. Proper gamers right here. But hey, if you want to join this list of proper gamers, you can do so by going over to Patreon.com slash trash taste, where all of you joining us over there right now can check

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