Sage of the Three Kings (Yu Yu Hakusho)(1992 Anime)

 

Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Keiko and Botan (the Grim Reaper)

Title: Saga of the Three Kings

Series: Yu Yu Hakusho Season 4

Episodes: 95-112

My Thoughts:

In this final story arc of Yu Yu Hakusho, the three kings of Demon world are at war for supreme dominance. At this moment in time, they are all balanced against each other, but one of them is on the brink of death and his death will trigger an all out war, which could spill over into the Human world. Yusuke is chosen by the dying demon king to be his Second, while the other two Kings each pick Kurama (the red pretty boy on the left in the picture above) and Hiei (the short, black haired guy on the left) to be their seconds. War is immanent and the three friends are now on opposing sides. Until Yusuke proposes a tournament where ANY demon can enter and the winner is the king of demon world for 3-4 years and then they repeat. This appeals to practically every demon and thus the demon tournament takes place. Yusuke and Friends know they each aren't strong enough to win, but they strategically play the tournament to tire out the top contenders and in the end, some randomly strong demon wins who doesn't want to invade Human world. Everybody wins. Yusuke returns to Human world to be with Keiko and is fully retired from being a spirit detective. The end.

This went rather fast. There was a lot of setup near the beginning, so the demon tournament ended up being short changed in my opinion. They "overcame" this by having several fights per episode and too contributed to the feeling of just rushing through this. I enjoyed this, but that feeling of being rushed just wouldn't go away. At the same time, I was ready for this to be over.

One of the detractors for these episodes was that Kuwabara (the tall guy with the red haired pompador in the picture above) isn't involved at all. He was the funny straight man in previous story arcs and brought a sense of fun to things, as Yusuke, Kurama and Hiei all are the super serious kind of personality. I missed having him around.

Overall, for the entire anime series, I am still VERY pleased with this. I don't know if I'll ever watch it again, but I'll be hanging onto my discs just in case.

My Week XXVII or The Cheeseburger Edition

 

My goodness, these "My Week" post titles are starting to look like Superbowl titles. The main difference is that I'm not raking in 100's of millions of dollars with this blog. What a shame. But if anyone has a couple of spare million, I'd be happy to take them off your hands. I wouldn't want you to suffer with all that responsibility and I'll gladly help bear it.

I debated about whether to even write this post at all. We had our first heatwave of the season from Sunday-Wednesday (a heatwave here is defined as going over 90F for 3 days in a row) and that always wipes me out, big time. By Wednesday I was toast. Any thoughts I might have had were concentrated on getting through each day, that was it. I didn't write or schedule any posts, I didn't have any ideas for future posts, I just came home, ate dinner, read a little in bed and then fell asleep, usually by 8pm. Thursday was a recovery day and today, well, today was Friday. Not much else to say about that.

My work car is going in for inspection next week and I'm not very optimistic about its chances of passing without sinking some serious money into it. And if it ends up requiring too much money, it'll be better to just buy another one. Rust is what gets cars here. The winters with all the salt on the roads just chews up the undercarriage of the car and in 10 years, your feet are going through the floor boards! But why borrow next week's worries right now, right?

To wrap this post up on a positive note, I'm going to leave you with a picture of my dinner. BEFORE I eat it. (I know some of you would go there, so I headed you off at the proverbial pass)

This is a turkey burger made with swiss cheese, onion and peppers IN the burger itself. I add ketchup and mustard to one half of the bun and sprinkled diced onions into that. I then add dill pickles on top of that. I place the burger on top of that bun. I stick a slice of sharp cheddar on top of the burger. To top it off, I add the other half of the bun that I have put 1000 Island dressing on. That's some serious flavor! Well, I'm off to enjoy my dinner, yum! Hopefully you have had a good dinner too. Or breakfast if it's Saturday morning by the time you read this :-)

Granny Groo (Groo the Wanderer #41) 3.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot, by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Granny Groo
Series: Groo the Wanderer #41
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 25
Words: 2K
Publish: 1988

Netnanny has blocked this review due to wanton and gratuitous violence and nudity.

★★★✬☆

From Bookstooge

Groo remembers his Nanny, who was always spanking him for being a bad boy. He meets her in a gypsy band and she uses him to extort money from the surrounding towns. Until Groo tries to prove that he is not a bad boy and ends up destroying her schemes, as usual.

• All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

Shelf Control: Night Angel Nemesis

Shelf Control is a weekly feature created by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. Since early January 2023, Shelf Control has moved base to Literary Potpourri. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile and write a post about it–what it’s about, when/where you got it, why you want to read it and such.

I have read and re-read the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks as well as his Lighbringer series. I've been a big fan. In his Lightbringer series he did introduce a rather awkward female medical issue that didn't add to the story and even he acknowledged it was a pet thing of his. I think I'm being rather nice by saying it was simply "awkward". I considered dnf'ing the series right then and there. All of that is just to say that Weeks has been known to put stuff into his books that are of interest to him and nobody else.

He began a new Night Angel trilogy about two years ago. This was a sequel series and many fans were looking forward to it, me included. Weeks had a weekly or monthly youtube channel, was very active on social media and kept his website up to date. Soon after the release of Nemesis, he went silent.

Fast-forward two years to now and I began wondering when the next book would come out. He was still dark, so I began looking into other websites to see what might have happened. I stumbled across a Reddit thread that described the book and it appears that Weeks decided to overwrite about Depression and make his main character become truly depressed. It was offputting to all of the commentors and I got the sense that it was as bad as the sex thing in the Lightbringer series.

It has made me wonder if Weeks himself was suffering from depression and couldn't handle the fact that not everybody was enthralled with the subject as himself. It would explain his extended absence as well.

As such, I think I'm going to be passing on Nemesis. I haven't got time for authors who die on me, authors who are too lazy to finish their series OR authors who are human and fail like every other human.

Fifteen Hours (Warhammer 40K: Astra Militarum) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Fifteen Hours
Series: Warhammer 40K: Astra Militarum
Author: Mitchel Scanlon
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 190
Words: 70K
Publish: 2005

Most Warhammer 40,000 books start with a couple of paragraphs about how terrible life is. I’ve included the relevant part for this review:

“To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.”

The first two sentences are most apropos. We follow Larn, a 17 year old who is forcibly recruited from his farmworld planet and is given just enough training to know which end of the laspistol to point at the enemy. He is never going to see his family again. He will never return to his world. Even if he survives the coming decades, he will only be allowed to retire on a new planet that the Empire of Man wants to colonize. Due to a clerical error, Larn and his entire detachments of farmboys crashland on the wrong planet in the middle of a warzone between Humanity and the Orks. Almost every new recruit is killed either in the crash or the resultant attack by the orks. Larn survives, only to find out that the expected life span of a new soldier on Broucheroc is 15 hours, hence the title of the book.

We follow Larn as he survives several ork attacks, shelling by his own side and then he is sent out on a recon mission that night with his little 5man company and some glory hound lieutenant. He is shot but survives to dawn, which means he lasted longer than 15hours. Then he dies.

Interspersed through this are little vignettes from other side characters, from a cook to the cleric who made the initial mistake to the General who is leading the defense of Broucheroc. It becomes obvious to us the reader that every character is in their own personal hell and only death will release them from it.

War is hell and the Imperium of Man is nothing but war, forever until it ceases to exist. This book shows us that in stark detail.

★★★☆☆

From https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/

After four months of basic training and seven weeks of Planetary transportation, seventeen year old Guardsman Arvin Larn of 6th Company, Jumael 14th Volunteers, embarks on his first campaign fighting against a rebel uprising. However, due to an error in communication, Trooper Larn finds himself fighting on the wrong planet in the wrong war zone at the city of Broucheroc; a city contested for over a decade by the small Imperial force of the 902nd Vardan Rifles Regiment against millions of Orks. Unfortunately, Larn is running out of time. The life expectancy of a replacement guardsman at the front lines is calculated at fifteen hours. Larn must rely upon all of his ability, his luck, and his faith in the Emperor to survive against the odds if he wishes to see the next day.

As the book begins, a mortally wounded guardsman in no-man's land questions his fate, wondering if it has been 15 hours and resolving to wait and find out. The scene shifts to Jumael, where a farmers son named Arvin Larn is caught in the imperial draft. During basic training, Larn meets the extremely tough sergeant Ferres. He convinces Larn that the imperial guard is a deadly environment, but he might just make a guardsmen out of him yet. During initial deployment, an administrative error causes Larn's company to land in no-man's land on the wrong planet where they are promptly attacked by Orks. Larn finds himself the only survivor of his company in the besieged city of Broucheroc, now attached to 902nd Vardan Rifles. He learns that the Vardan Rifles have fought on Broucheroc for a decade and that 3 Vardan Regiments were killed in this time. Over several hours of pitched battle, Larn learns several dangers of the front and that his life expectancy is a mere 15 hours. He overcomes several threats including gretchin snipers, artillery bombardment, and the largest massed attack on Broucheroc yet. As night falls Larn's squad is sent on a night recon mission in which they get caught in a firefight. As Larn runs for the trenches, he is hit by a bullet and it is revealed that he is the guardsman from the beginning. As the sun rises Larn dies happy to know he beat the 15 hours.

Hill Giant - MTG 4E

 

I think he's wearing trousers. I HOPE he's wearing trousers! We'll have NO kilt-clad Hill Giants on this blog...

Mr Zip Wants You!

 

Wondering what to do with your pointless, aimless existence? Wonder no more!

Sgt. Zip needs YOU in the Bookstooge Freedom Militia to fight the commy pinkos that are, at this exact second, invading your grocery stores and stealing all the eggs. That is why eggs are so expensive. The threat is real, will you step up and confront it?

You will? Fantastic! Sgt Zip approves of your healthy enthusiasm to keep our country safe from egg stealing commy pinkos. But first things first, time to get you your Official Bookstooge Freedom Militia haircut, provided at no extra charge. Sgt Zip is ready.

There, don't you feel more natural and patriotic? The correct answer is "Sir, yessir, Sgt Sir!!!"

Ok soldier, now you're a fully fledged member of the Bookstooge Freedom Militia. Now get out there and protect our vital assets, those cartons of eggs!

This post has been brought to you by the Bookstooge Loves Eggs Corporation.