Night Of The Loving Dead: Part 3 (Zombie Land Saga Gaiden: The First Zombie)

Well now. If I was expecting anything from this manga, it certainly wasn't that.

I feel like a bit of a broken record going over it again, but it must be empathized just how much disdain I held for Zombie Land Saga Gaiden: The First Zombie (which I guess we'll just call The First Zombie, hereafter) upon reading about it on that Wiki. Looking back at those words... I'm not sure what I saw on my Wiki dive that made me freak out like that. What made me lose my mind the most was the implication that the bad luck which led to the misfortune of Franchouchou's members perishing was part of the macrocosmic curse of Saga, and me crashing out over lore looming large yet again. That, and just the entire general concept of a cute zombie idol anime show having this secret history involving ancient Chinese necromancy and the battle of a curse vs. prosperity for a sleepy prefecture in southwestern Japan.

Point is, the crashout was legendary and the information I gleamed put me off of this shit. I had vitriol in my veins and hate in my heart for it. We've gone over why that was, what everything around me was doing then, and how I had to detox. Now here I stand, a little older and (hopefully) a little wiser, and I sit down and finally confront the dread beast that is this macrocosmic manga. I fully expected the vitriol to come out, but tempered with a bit of grace. Calmly but firmly declaring that I hate this, it missed the point, and the movie managed to mix the grandiose with the intimate better. The movie. That should have been my first clue, that the movie managed to handle this and make me not hate it. Because here is the honest truth: I did not hate The First Zombie. In fact, I owe The First Zombie a massive apology. I don't know where I got half of the shit I yelled about in the original project's coda from, but it's not in here. What is in here is a story about how hate is always foolish and love is always kind. How that which we initially perceive as a monstrous force to be stopped can be understood, empathized with. How that act both purifies the monstrous into something you can stand side by side with, and purifies you by allowing you to let go of the hate in your heart and accept the power of love, to grow stronger. To grow and change. To prosper.

Coming Soon: Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween

 Hi again, gang! We are once again approaching that time of year, the end of the regular "blog about anything" season here on Frezno's Raving Rants. And we spent the majority of it talking about the Simpsons. Good words, at least! I am hoping to have the rest of the Zombie Land Saga stuff done before October, and I was in fact supposed to start writing about the spinoff manga today. I haven't yet, though I read it twice and took some notes to gather my thoughts. If it does not come out within the next few years, I am engaged in terrible acts of procrastination. Sounds like me to a T. Well, with the advent of fall comes our annual celebration of all things spooky, which lights a fire under my ass and gets me used to writing every other day so I can then adjust to writing every day in November. November plans are going well, so all that remains is October. In two weeks, we will have Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween, and that's where you come in.

I have selected quite a few pieces of spooky media this year, as 2026 was absolutely bustling with intriguing spooky stuff to be watched. To list three off the bat: Backrooms, Obsession, and that Camp Miasma picture from Jane Schoenbrun. And there are way more! I don't have 16 yet, so once again this is where you lot come in with suggestions! I have a few reliable pals who give me some suggestions for bonus selections, and it's the kind of stuff that gets me out of my wheelhouse and trying new things. I love doing it, and so once we post the rules the floor is yours once more. Rule time!

-I think at this point I know my way around the Internet and can get my hands on most cinematic material, but for obscure edge cases keep that in mind. If we know each other I may ask for your help in tracking such things down.

-My only real trigger/phobia, beyond a very specific case, is wrist or throat slashing. If such scenes are signposted in the movie such that it's obvious they're going to happen, I can avert my eyes in time. If there's only one or two such scenes in the movie, it's fine with a warning. If it's something where such things are the main method of murder, that's a hard pass.

-I am open to other media, like brief forays into TV shows or comics or what have you, but it's not my main area of expertise and I'll need a relatively affordable or even cost-free way of access to cover it. This part I may be able to handle on my own, but it's a case-by-case basis and depends on context. Addendum: I have at least one series guaranteed to be covered on the blog this year, and am considering a second if there's time, which leads us to...

-Keep your suggestion to something that I can experience within a few hours: the runtime of a motion picture, or a short read that's about double that. This isn't a precise science, but don't drop a heavy tome on me that will take ages for me to experience and digest. I've got 15 more of these little shits to do on top of your choice, after all.

Alright, got that? Go dig up some good crunchy spooky stuff that speaks to you, which you wish to see speak to me, and in the meantime I'm going to ruminate on this zombie girl manga and get back to you about that in what is hopefully a prompt turnaround. Either way, welcome to spooky season, gang.

Night Of The Loving Dead: Intermission/Revival

Hello once again, gang. As summer begins to wane, as the creeping chill of fall begins to cool things down, and as the spooky season looms... let's engage in a little alchemical necromancy. Let's bring a version of this blog that long since perished back, piercing the veil between worlds of living and dead. Before October hits and I become mega busy, we have to revive this bygone project. Dear friends, as the spell takes hold... it is once again time to talk about Zombie Land Saga. There are things both wonderful and terrible (presumably for the latter, at least, I'll explain momentarily) that we need to talk about, but I want to set the stage and cue the band before I let this shit stride on out to put on a show once more. The metaphor is getting away from me a bit, so let's try and give the briefest of primers on how we got here, why we stopped and let this die, and why we've now brought it back.

Etrian Odyssey And The Magic Of Roleplay, Headcanon, And Exploration

Hi, gang! Last time we spoke I had a long wistful talk about Final Fantasy, specifically number 10 but also with a nice long-winded nostalgic memory from 25 years ago in which I first encountered number 6 in Grand Bank, Newfoundland. Since then, I actually got to return there for a summer holiday! 9 days of rest, relaxation, fun festivals, and exploring damn near everywhere that part of my island had to offer. Oh, and in my downtime over there I picked up another RPG and played a bunch of it. I'm still playing it, in fact, but there are things about it which sparked my imagination and motivated me to sit down in front of the computer on a Sunday morning and bang out some words. So let's be terribly insightful, as I sometimes am, and talk about Etrian Odyssey for a bit.

25 Years Of Laughing Through It (Some Thoughts On Final Fantasy X)

(Spoilers for Final Fantasy X abound. You've had 25 years, gang. Go play it.)

It's funny how synchronicity and coincidence works sometimes. What you've done before, what you're doing now, and what you're planning to do all coalesce into this reflective mirror of timelessness. Is it future, or is it past? Yes. That particular swirl of synchronicity, this time at least, has led me to write these words. Right now it's July 19th, 2026. 25 years ago to this day, Final Fantasy X came out for the PS2. Last week, I beat that game for the first time and had a lot of thoughts about it, which I intended to write down when I gave things a moment to settle. The moment is now because of even more of those synchronicities. Yesterday afternoon, I finalized tentative plans for a summer vacation to be taken near the end of the month, to a little town in Newfoundland called Grand Bank. I may have mentioned it on the blog before, or to you if we've spoken before, but suffice it to say that Grand Bank means a lot to me. It's the town my grandparents as well as aunts and uncles lived in, and I consider it a second home. I try to get there once a year, a pilgrimage of sorts to soothe my soul and refresh my energies. Let me tell you about how these two things, Final Fantasy and Grand Bank, came together in a wonderful coincidence that changed my life forever.

This is my story.

The Golden Age Was Actually A Vibrant Yellow (The Simpsons) [Seasons 8-9]

 (All screencaps courtesy of Frinkiac. Any accompanying texts are direct quotes from the episode.) 

(Continued from Part 3)

If there's any era of The Simpsons which has become analyzed to death from a forensic perspective, it's this stretch right here. Countless Simpsons fans have tried to perform the critical equivalent of an autopsy, struggling to confirm the exact moment that the so-called Golden Age ended and the show slid into supposed mediocrity. It's fragile ground and we must tread carefully in our own analysis. Hell, I'm not even sure if this is where things go from bad to worse! Maybe it happens in Season 10, or 11, or maybe the consensus is wrong and those have their own charms. Perhaps someday I'll revisit them and find out, but like I said last time: I want to write about other shit, so let's put a capstone on seven months of Simpsons coverage and talk about these last few seasons. Despite their oversignificance, there's some fascinating things going on here.

The Golden Age Was Actually A Vibrant Yellow (The Simpsons) [Seasons 6-7]

(All screencaps courtesy of Frinkiac. Any accompanying texts are direct quotes from the episode.) 

(Continued from Part 2)

Before we get into the words I wrote about this, I have come to a decision regarding this project. I originally wanted to be honest with my memories of watching old Simpsons in syndication, and not just stop at the end of the so-called golden age. I wanted to make it to Season 12, and to then talk about a handful of other things in the future. Maybe we will go back and do those one day, but I have decided that for now this project will stop at Season 9 instead. I want to be clear that I have not chosen this because of any consensus agreement that the show "stopped being good" at that point (though we'll discuss any inherent quality drop next time). Rather, I'm just kind of burned out committing to one thing on this blog for so dang long. I started watching The Simpsons again in January. It's been half a year, and I have already dragged my feet in trying to get words out about anything past Season 5. The longer I drag my feet in writing, the further ahead I would get in watching the show. I haven't watched any Simpsons in over a month because of that, and the only reward for finishing that is another three weeks of binging four episodes a day, plus the extras I had planned. 

That's entirely too much for me. I need to put The Simpsons down, and I don't want this to feel like an obligation. I have other things I might want to discuss on the blog before we hit the fall and my busy season, and if The Simpsons feels like an albatross around my neck, I won't be able to do that. So, new stopping point. Today you get words on Seasons 6 and 7. At some point I'll discuss the remaining two, and then I'll hopefully come back before the fall to talk about some new and exciting shit. Maybe someday I will revive this and do Seasons 10-12 plus the bonus content, but right now I need a fucking break from Homer Simpson. If you were particularly looking forward to that latter content, my apologies. I just need the breather. With that all sorted... 

Welcome back! We're once again going to talk about vintage Simpsons, and this chunk of vintage Simpsons might just be the most fascinating and dense yet. You know that old saying "the night is darkest before the dawn"? I want to flip it on its head. The window of my living room faces the west, so whenever it becomes close to sunset (especially here in the summer) the entire room gets blasted with the final radiance of the sun for the day. This is what seasons 6 through 8 of The Simpsons are: the greatest and most powerful cosmic rays before that brilliant light dips behind the horizon. The metaphor might have gotten away from me a little here, but when have I ever not gone on a needless tangent to try and make a point? I've been doing that shit since 1998 at the lunch table in high school, and the fact that we've almost caught up with the contemporary Simpsons I would have watched the Sunday before doing that is a little sobering. Fuck, I'm old. Let's go back to talking about The Simpsons. Here, then, is the shift to the Golden Age's final form.