Chitchat Let's Rant About Our Hyperfixations Together 💕

[Hani]

The title is self-explanatory!
Let me start this off with a small rant about a webcomic called Who Can Define Popularity?

So I have this app on my phone called Manta Comics (one of many webcomic apps on my phone kkkk), and on this app I discovered Who Can Define Popularity? which I love so much!!
Without spoiling too much about the series in case there are people here who haven't read and/or finished it yet, it's a webcomic about these two insanely handsome and smart college boys. One of them sees the other as competition at first, while the other narcissist is smitten. The comic goes over many things about self-acceptance, struggles in a relationship, ups and downs about how you change your body, things like that.
I definitely recommend giving it a read .w.

That was a much shorter hyperfixation rant than usual on my end, but yeah, please feel free to rant about your interests and/or hyperfixations below!

 

[Hani]

Upcoming rant about every live concert that's ever taken place from Vocaloid woo!

 

[Gravedigger]

Shellshocker map designs. Within a month I already made 3 maps, and 2 got accepted into the official game.

I could go into how the design makes me just g u s h, but that would be boring for you





HNNNNNGGGHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHH

 

[Asterial]

Oh my god, addicted to webcomic too. I have so many to read, I feel like I won’t sleep for a year.

But one i highly recommend is: Marry my husband.

It is really good, and talk about deep stuff. I felt it to the heart

 

[MxKit]

Oh my gosh, where do I even start. My brain keeps careening wildly between 2-3 hyperfixation focuses like an overcharged pinball machine.

Keroro Gunso, aka Sgt. Frog? An anime that was at least somewhat popular back in the 2000s through around 2011, but has almost no fandom now that it's been over a decade since the anime ended and the manga just stopped getting translated? Absolutely failboat alien invaders that look kinda like little frog-people come to invade Earth and wind up basically adopted by/becoming BFFs with human teenagers, and the entire series is just slapstick wild chaotic gag stuff... with the occasional dip into suddenly tense dangerous plot that ends as soon as it began. Where nearly everything is played for humor including childhood trauma and revelations of exactly how nightmarish the military society the aliens come from is, where mood whiplash is just kind of a feature rather than a bug, where the power of slapstick and the power of friendship take turns saving the day... It is intensely heterosexual but also very gay somehow. There's an episode where they battle with giant toilet robots, an episode where the sweet zen ninja character is confronted with a fight to the death by his former assassin teacher, an episode that's one big Death Note parody, multiple bodyswap episodes, and a movie where they're all transformed into dragons. Their human disguises look like this. They have so many songs where the characters sing in-character and some of them are immensely cute and catchy while most of them are absolute madness. It has 358 episodes and most of those episodes have two half-episodes in them; it has 5 movies; it has a 32-volume manga series that is still ongoing somehow but the last like 12 volumes of it are totally inaccessible in English. I love it and am in constant agony.

Or maybe, alternately, the Vocaloid songs by the artist GHOST/Ghost and Pals? They've been making original Vocaloid music mostly in English for over a decade now, and their stuff is incredible. Absolutely grabs me by the brain, throttles and won't let go. So much of their stuff is HEAVY, like, thematically, but it feels so good anyway, in almost a cleansing way to me. Like, just for some of my faves on their current channel (they remade at one point): "Appetite of a People-Pleaser" talks about the urge to take on personality traits from the people around you and to try to be what they expect/want rather than feeling like you have a full-fledged and worthy identity of your own, and does so using the metaphor of binge-eating. "Star of the Show" is a vent song about audiences putting them on a pedestal and focusing on them as a person rather than the art they create and having unreasonable expectations. "The Distortionist" is a song about a narcissistic abuser attempting DARVO on the person who has escaped them, from the POV of the villain. "Those Who Carried On" is a song about a fictional world in which a disease suddenly arrives which causes people to decompose alive and start falling apart, and they develop robotic prosthetics that allow people to carry on even afterwards anyway. "SCAPEG♾AT" is a song from the POV of multiple victims of an abuser who got away from them and are venting anger over how they'd been treated as they come to terms with things. "DEATHBODY" is from the POV of someone with Cotard's delusion who is certain she's already sort of died and is rotting, but can't completely die.

And then, as part of Team 6x111, that group is making the Qualia Automata series: "Reckless Battery Burns" is from the POV of an android that was created to be a therapist but also basically just a computer, but became traumatized by his treatment and when he was declared faulty and replaced, left to try to find something better; "End-World Normopathy" is (mostly) from the POV of the second android created to replace the first, who was purposefully emotionally dulled, but when trying to figure out why the original left and what he's doing, became compelled to try to find him and found out that he wanted to travel to another dimension to find a reality in which their creator loved them like a mother; "Lamentations" is from the POV of their creator/"mother," having a breakdown after both androids have left, explaining how her need for control drove her husband to leave her, and she proceeded to try even harder for control over these androids and to not care too much about them, and now is realizing that this is why they left as well; there's going to be one more song to end the series and I CAN'T WAIT.

My post is too long so I'm gonna stop here. But know that I am just listening to several of the above songs on repeat while thinking about frog aliens and their human BFFs. Yes.

 

[ThreeFive]

Keroro Gunso

Oh man, I used to love Keroro Gunso back in the early 2000s. It was before the anime was widely available in the US, so I just read the manga. I never got too far in the series because of the limited availability of even that in my area, and my mom wasn't terribly pleased with some of its content. I think I had maybe 7 or 8 of the books?

Years later, I have checked out some of the anime episodes and get a chuckle out of them. I love military comedies and the absurdity of this one is endearing. And you're right, the songs are the best! I really enjoy some of the opening/ending themes, especially "Kimi ni Juice wo Katte Ageru" and "Afro Gunso."

Do you have a favorite character? I always liked Giroro and Kururu best.

 

[MxKit]

Oh man, I used to love Keroro Gunso back in the early 2000s. It was before the anime was widely available in the US, so I just read the manga. I never got too far in the series because of the limited availability of even that in my area, and my mom wasn't terribly pleased with some of its content. I think I had maybe 7 or 8 of the books?

Years later, I have checked out some of the anime episodes and get a chuckle out of them. I love military comedies and the absurdity of this one is endearing. And you're right, the songs are the best! I really enjoy some of the opening/ending themes, especially "Kimi ni Juice wo Katte Ageru" and "Afro Gunso."

Do you have a favorite character? I always liked Giroro and Kururu best.

Oh wow, I totally missed this comment somehow!! I was so psyched to come back here and see it

Yeah, the anime is definitely questionable in some ways itself and the manga was a lot worse... I still collected it back then, too, and looked up so many fansubs of the anime! I own nearly every volume that was released over here before they stopped translating the manga, like the first nineteen volumes... I wish it hadn't gotten dropped!

The anime was always my favorite version, it's just got such odd humor that really hits for me a lot of the time, especially since it really does also lean into the whole power of friendship and family stuff. My favorite episode is probably 229, and I love "Bokura no Aikotoba" probably the most out of all of the songs, but I'm also a huge fan of "Kokoro no Mondai," "Kekkekkeroro no Daisakusen," and "Kurutto Mawatte Ikkaiten." Something about the actual ending sequence for that last one is just my favorite thing legit.

Kururu was always one of my favorites too! My top three faves are probably Kururu, Saburo Mutsumi, and Dororo. Azumaya Koyuki is way up there, too. Just basically those two sets of characters I got really attached to way back then and it hasn't let go, haha.

If you haven't seen any of the movies yet, I highly recommend at least 3 and 4. It's been too long since I saw the first and second one, and I never actually watched the fifth one (I need to remedy that ASAP!), but Keroro vs. Keroro Great Sky Duel was epic and I loved so much about Gekishin Dragon Warriors.

 

[ThreeFive]

The anime was always my favorite version, it's just got such odd humor that really hits for me a lot of the time, especially since it really does also lean into the whole power of friendship and family stuff. My favorite episode is probably 229, and I love "Bokura no Aikotoba" probably the most out of all of the songs, but I'm also a huge fan of "Kokoro no Mondai," "Kekkekkeroro no Daisakusen," and "Kurutto Mawatte Ikkaiten." Something about the actual ending sequence for that last one is just my favorite thing legit.

Oh yeah, the ending sequence for Kurutto Mawatte Ikkaiten is absolutely adorable. While I never got to the season that actually had that ending theme, I ended up watching all the openings/endings back when I was watching the anime. I love how baby Kururu just gets bored and leaves after a while in that ending sequence! That's part of why he is my favorite. He's just so irreverent.

Kururu was always one of my favorites too! My top three faves are probably Kururu, Saburo Mutsumi, and Dororo. Azumaya Koyuki is way up there, too. Just basically those two sets of characters I got really attached to way back then and it hasn't let go, haha.

Dororo added a fun dynamic to the series. I found it amusing that all the characters forgot about him constantly or just flat out ignored him because he was the typical "loner ninja" type and they were all tired of him. That was a unique spin on the character.

If you haven't seen any of the movies yet, I highly recommend at least 3 and 4. It's been too long since I saw the first and second one, and I never actually watched the fifth one (I need to remedy that ASAP!), but Keroro vs. Keroro Great Sky Duel was epic and I loved so much about Gekishin Dragon Warriors.

I have not seen any of the movies in their entirety yet, as I never got terribly far into the anime. At the time I was really into the show, I had a really terrible Internet connection. I did watch sequences from the second movie because I really liked some of the music from it, particularly these two songs. Maybe I should go back and re-watch the anime again and finish the series. Would I need to be up-to-date on the series to watch the two movies you recommended?