A quick month

I can't believe we're already at the end of May.  I decided to spend May on doing the other things I didn't get to do in April: reading books, watching anime, and finishing some games.  There were so many things I wanted to talk about throughout the month, but I was always constantly doing something that I never felt like I had the time to reflect on them.

I managed to finally finish reading the first volume of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, yet I still have 3 more to go before I fully complete the story.  I got around to watching all of Little Witch Academia so I could finally start playing the game.  I loved the anime so much.  It was magical, moving, and such a joy to watch.  I've started on the game, but it feels very slow and tedious.  I also decided to watch all that I could of the Sakura Wars franchise since I was curious about what the original story was about.  As I played the newest Sakura Wars game, I couldn't help but wonder if the older games were as cheesy and contrived as the newest one.  I watched playthroughs of the original and compared them with the anime adaptation and thought the anime did an incredible job capturing most of the important parts of the game.  I absolutely adored the original anime as it far surpasses my expectations of what I wanted out of the franchise: exciting warfare combat, a sense of camaraderie, and those "moments" of romance, drama, and fighting spirit.  I also finished playing the newest Sakura Wars and was disappointed with the game since I felt it had all the right tools for a great game but didn't get it right during execution.  Still, I'm glad I got to play the game.  With that, I only finished two anime shows and I watched the two OVAs for Is the Order a Rabbit?.  In terms of games, I had finished Streets of Rage 4, Trials of Mana remake, Oninaki, The Evil Within 2, and Team Sonic Racing aside from a handful of smaller games.  I wanted to talk about a lot of these games, but I feel like I don't really have time to.

This month may have felt fast, but it wasn't all fine and dandy.  Seanna, our last silkie chicken, passed away on the night of May 19th.  Over that past weekend, my dad had already mentioned that she was dying and she wasn't looking too well.  Looking at her, I knew it to be true.  I was anxious and stressed that whole weekend knowing it was going to happen sometime soon.  We had already sat down for dinner and as soon as I was about to take a bite to eat, we saw Seanna flapping frantically.  We knew it was coming, but it was still hard.  I tried not to get attached to Seanna after losing Powderpuff two years ago, and although it didn't affect me nearly as much this time, it still hurt.  More than anything, I was worried about my dad.  He didn't eat solid food for a week and is still barely eating solid food now after a week and a half.  I stayed off of voice chat with my friends and tried to stay quiet throughout the week to give him some peace and quiet.

With the rest of the world, the lockdown has finally taken its toll.  People are protesting, some states are opening back up which has caused another surge of covid-19 cases in certain states, people are losing jobs, unemployment rates and suicide rates have gone up, businesses are closing down, tension between China and Hong Kong/China and USA continue to rise, and a recent case where a black man was killed during an arrest because the officer negligently (or perhaps purposely) applied so much pressure on the man's neck that he suffocated has caused such a stir in the country that every state has protesters yelling for justice.  Even worse, it seems that an officer of Minnesota (where the case happened) instigated a riot mentality by going into a Target, destroying things there and stealing merchandise so that others would do it too.  With so many people angry and not knowing what to do about it, they followed suit and took their anger out by doing the same.  Buildings have been burned, shops are being looted, and chaos spread.  Whether it was the instigator's attempt at diverting the media and public's attention away from the case or a way to get everyone riled up so that the police can justify any method of suppressing the riots, it just made a bad situation worse.

I'm just trying to enjoy life right now as best as I can in the situation we're in.  I think I might start working again on Monday with the beginning of June.  It's hard to believe we're already nearing June.  Despite so many events being canceled, the amount of online events taking its place is going to be very interesting for the next three months.  Instead of 3 days of E3, there will be announcements from various publishers all throughout the summer.  Instead of 3 days of EVO, there will be 5 weekends of competitions, exhibitions, and announcements.  I haven't gotten much work done this year, but I'd like to enjoy this year's Summer as well if I can.

Oh yeah, and Phantasy Star Online 2 finally released on PC for North America 2 days ago.  After 8 years of waiting, I'm finally playing the game!

Jam Packed Month

I'm going to keep this short.  This past month blasted by so quickly as opposed to March where it felt like a crawl for some reason.  I decided to take a break from audio work in April to focus on other things.  I organized computer files, cleaned my room, did some drawing, played some games, setup stepmania so I can get some cardio, and I just finished working on a remix I started yesterday.  Just with videogames, this week has been crazy.  Trials of Mana remake released last Friday, Zooey became available on Granblue Fantasy Versus on Monday, the newest Sakura Wars released on Tuesday (which I still haven't had the chance to play yet), and Streets of Rage 4 released today.  I don't know if I'm going to be getting back into audio work in May, but I'd like to relax a bit more and do other things some more first.....like reading.

Quarantine is still happening, more people are losing their minds, and things don't seem to be getting better.....

Audio work from end of March and the three things I uploaded today: