Narumi's long winded reviews

The one that started it all. For an incredibly popular series, Lyrical Toy Box received scant coverage and documentation in the English community. Being a fan of Nanoha and craving more Nanoha content in anticipation for the 15th anniversary, I took it upon myself to go through Lyrical Toy Box. Unlike my other articles, this retrospective will serve three purposes: A review, A summary and A comparison to the spin-off series, Lyrical Nanoha. Indeed, reading through several fan wikis only provided the bare minimum information, occasionally wrong information (such as the nature of Chrono and Lindy’s relationship), so this article will hopefully make a mark in the English-speaking community. I had only very recently got into the Nanoha series as a consequence of being a fan of Symphogear. Prior to this I only know Nanoha as “that one yuri series where two girls have a daughter”. Nanoha being a mahou shoujo anime spinoff of an eroge isn’t too surprising (it’s perhaps the most famous...

It should come as no surprise to the people who know me that I’m a big fan of JRPGs, for its ability to intertwine long complicated storyline and character-driven arcs with a satisfying exploration system and at the very least, a passable combat system that is generally simple to pick up despite seeming complex and easy to brute force through with enough overlevelling. In the past decade though, with the rise of HD consoles, these types of experiences dwindled down with the rise in online play and action-driven gameplay with RPG-elements tackled on the surface level, i.e. a leveling system and skill trees but without what made RPGs truly unique. As much as I like the exploration of say, Dark Souls, its stressful combat never allowed me to truly relax in the moment. To add, not many “traditional” JRPGs came out during this decade. FFXIII lacked a lot of key exploration aspects for instance, and it wouldn’t be until 2016 until a new Persona game were to come out. In the midst of this dr...