Vibe Check #8 (March 2024)

Welcome to the 8th edition of our Vibe Check, where we talk about everything and anything dealing with Japanese culture, anime and manga, or anything that's on the top our heads. Hope you'll have a happy reading~

Check #1: Ohtani's Gambling Controversy

I was surprised about the whole Shohei Octane's gambling controversy with his interpreter, Mizuhara Ippei when it first presented into the public. For people that don't know what's going on, Shohei Ohtani (one of the best baseball players in the world from Japan) has been on the sports headlines for a while in America because he have to fire Mizuhara from his money wiring for gambling that costs around $4.5 million dollars. AKA Mizuhara stole that much money to gamble it out.

The controversy is mainly a lot bigger in Japan since Ohtani is basically an S-class celebrity in Japan, so everyone was surprised about that. Some people even thought Shohei fired the interpreter to cover his tracks that he did or something like that.

To me, seeing professional athletes gamble while playing professional sports is a strange thing to see. I am not saying it's completely wrong (although it's weird that millionaire athletes are betting to make more money), but it's odd mainly because nowadays sports gambling can be a controversial thing about sports and sports fan. 

So for the whole Shohei situation, I won't be that surprised by some scenarios: Mizuhara admitting it, Shohei covering his tracks, etc. I wanted to know who would literally gamble $4.5 million in total.

Check #2: Hit and Miss of Anime

My journey to watching at least 50 anime series by the end of the year has their hits and misses of really good anime and anime series that made me question what made it interesting in the first place.

The first hit was Lycoris Recoil. I heard about that show from a YouTube video of Chisato Nishikigi being interested in a red Lexus LFA (I'm a JDM lover so I knew the make and model of the car almost immediately), and someone from Forza Horizon 5 created an Itasha car with Chisato on it. So, I got interested in the show and watched it.

The show was really nice (even though I watched it dubbed and it was on Toonami) and it has their cool action from Chisato and Takina Inoue shooting guns and doing mixed martial arts. I can understand that it would be better if it was subbed since I wanted to learn Japanese as much as I can, but doing it dubbed seems to have a nice break from it.

The first miss was The Dreaming Boy is the Realist. I mainly heard about the show because there was a YouTube video (again) about a girl rejecting the dude and was surprised that he actually moved on. There were people from the comment section saying that it was a worst anime they watched in a long time. 

I thought to myself "It can't be that bad that people are saying horrible things about the show," but boy... I really overestimate the show. I heard people do a three-episode limit to see if the show starts to get interesting. Not gonna lie,... the first three episodes are basically the most boring three episodes I've watched all year.

It was that bad that I even try to fight my sleep so I can at least finish an episode and continue to it. After I finished, it wasn't a "that was a really nice anime" type of feeling. It was more of a "FINALLY I'M FINISHED" type of feeling. Would I watch it again? Of course not!

Hopefully for the month of April I can finally get the chance to watch and catch up on popular anime series such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy X Family, Classroom of the Elite, and even underrated ones such as No Game No Life and Scum's Wish. Of course I can finally get started on watching the second season of BLUE LOCK!

Check #3: Gaming Radar

I haven't got the chance to play a ton of video games since I was busy with the store and work, so mostly I would be playing either Fortnite or Forza Horizon 5, however; there were some games that are on my radar that I want to try out.

Tekken 8 looked really cool to watch because the 3D version of fighting looked interested to watch. I do like the Street Fighter and the Super Smash Bros series, but Tekken 8 does have a nice approach to it and I want to be interested in the story of all the characters. The fighting style would take a lot longer than usual to learn, understand, adapt, and master, but it's never hurt to try out.

PalWorld is Pokemon finally learning how to shoot guns. It was shocking they have something that awesome to play and even grew that large that quickly. Was I surprised that it faced backlash from the Pokemon Company? Not really no. It's not really a matter of if they get a backlash from it, it's when they'll get caught. The one thing that's interesting is to creating your very own "Poke Ball" similar to creating a house from the Fortnite Lego game. However, most definitely I would need to upgrade my gaming to either an Xbox Series X or a PS5 to get the chance to play it.

I know April is going to start tomorrow, but there are plenty of games I want to try that's coming out sometime this year.

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That's it for this month's Vibe Check for March. Tune in later on in the month of April for the next Vibe Check. Happy reading everyone and Happy Easter!