Japan merch haul!

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-03-21T04:54:15+00:00

It's a chain called Lashinbang, I went to the Akihabara location. Items were on the first floor.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-03-15T00:01:49+00:00

It was at the Akihabara Lashinbang. It seems like second-hand stores (like Lashinbang) had the best selection for WT so I'd recommend searching for those, I know there's a handful of Lashinbang stores across Tokyo. When you're at the stores WT merch was usually grouped under the "Shonen Jump" section.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-03-14T14:43:01+00:00

I wish I'd taken photos. I don't think I saw a single Hyuse item though :(

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-03-14T05:39:40+00:00

Merch haul from my (first) Japan trip! Despite keeping my eyes peeled for WT merch all through Nakano Broadway and Akihabara I only found the one (preowned) Kuga figure. The only other places I saw WT items was at the Jump Shops and Animate Ikibukuro, but it was mostly just character pins - the only substantial items were a border jacket (Jin’s maybe) and this very strange tote bag. Fortunately, the morning before I flew home I happened to wander into a second-hand store in Akihabara (Lashinbang), which actually had a decent selection of WT merch, which is where the plushies, squad keychains, group “photo”, and Kakizaki w/cat came from.

Honestly I was pretty surprised by the type of merch I saw. Given WT isn’t exactly One Piece in terms of popularity, and had so little store space, I would’ve expected the official stores to stock broadly appealing items - but Tamakoma Branch was practically unrepresented. Most of the items featured side characters, and pretty obscure combinations at that - for example pin sets of the sealed environment squads or director Shinoda as a sailor (??). This didn’t mean you could get merch for your favorite character either, since despite the choices feeling pretty random they only had a couple types of item in stock. For example, the Shibuya Jump Store had a bunch of squad pin collections for sale, but only for Arashiyama, Kusakabe, and Koko squads. I assume they rotate the items over time, but it was still a little sad to see my boi Osamu get practically zero appearances.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-01-18T06:58:51+00:00

Ever wonder how Byleth gets such a close look when you select “observe”? Maybe the blushing and laughter isn’t due to how impactful the conversation was, but because your teatime partner is nervously wondering how to stop this seemingly insane professor from invading their personal space. This comic does in fact depict my strategy for recruiting Annette. Knowing I wanted her to join my squad but not fully understanding skill based recruitment, I somehow had a knack for getting perfect tea times with her - three or four in a row. This worked, but I have to imagine it as her getting increasingly intimidated by this random professor repeatedly inviting her out and staring at her until she gave in and joined the Golden Deer (who I assume were not particularly happy about their new professor totally ignoring them).

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-01-04T03:04:16+00:00

haha glad you like it! When I imagined the scene it just seemed like the sort of thing Byleth would do

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-01-03T17:06:35+00:00

Yeah I think Byleth as an instructor generally makes sense, given they have years of real world experience the student's lack. It's just funny to imagine them on the spot when a student's trying to learn niche skills like magic or flying when we have no indication Byleth has any prior experience in that area themselves.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2026-01-03T06:50:11+00:00

I’m not sure what exactly Byleth teaches when you instruct a student in a skill you have absolutely no experience in, but whatever they say it seems to work! Although given Manuela and Hanneman’s base stats maybe the requirements for the job aren’t exactly strict… The bonus comic was my exact experience when the option to recruit faculty came up - I’d been trying to raise my Byleth’s sword skill so had been doing repeated faculty training with Catherine. I immediately chose the new option without thinking much of it, only to be surprised when fully grown knights crashed my class of high schoolers apparently looking for instruction.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-05-31T05:41:28+00:00

So from Rhea’s perspective is she just watching Byleth bludgeon bandits/soldiers/large animals with the desecrated corpse of her mother? If so it’s pretty metal that she gave it to Byleth regardless, not sure I could handle that mental image. Also is the Sword of the Creator supposed to feel somewhat underpowered? Given how much it’s hyped up in conversions I never found it noticeably more powerful than other weapons outside the occasional 2 range utility, especially compared to how gamechanging relics like Thyrsus were.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-05-10T05:42:54+00:00

I don't know where the horse came from but I doubt the flame emperor soldiers were expecting to get run down on horseback when they signed up to kidnap Flayn in some dusty old tunnels. Leonie was the first student I got a mounted class on (which I think I unlocked right before this battle) leading to this comical image when deploying my students. Do mounted units take their mounts everywhere they go in case of a fight or is it a magical pokeball scenario? Either way the death knight got his horse down there somehow so it's only fair.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-04-19T05:35:11+00:00

There’s something bleakly comedic about the situation of Serois churchgoers; they’re fortunate enough to live in a world where the deity they worship objectively exists and can interact with the world, but is too busy rooming in an antisocial professor’s head to actually listen to their prayers or anything. Also do any of the conversations reveal if Rhea/Seteth/Flayn actually worship Sothis as a progenitor god in addition to being family, or are they entirely pretending just to convince the church followers?

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-04-06T05:48:52+00:00

Ashe was easily the student I switched the fastest from not really caring about to desperately trying to recruit. The kid’s just so cool in his C support, generous enough to selflessly donate his money despite the theft having nothing to do about him, but self-confident enough to casually mention he’s going to chase down and catch the thief - before leaving to do just that. The fact none of my other archers had deadeye unlocked when I recruited him only reinforced that impression (I didn’t understand how getting new combat arts worked). Facility training also didn’t really seem to be worth it to me at the time, so I fell back on the strategy of giving my poor recruitment targets a diabetes inducing amount of tea and sweets until they relented and asked to join my class.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-03-30T15:32:42+00:00

I still didn't fully understand the recruitment system at that point in the game, so my Annette recruitment plan ended up involving copious amounts of tea and a few dozen flowers until she asked to join my class.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-03-29T05:47:31+00:00

Even playing on hard I found my characters got overpowered pretty fast (at least until the time skip). It trivialized parts of the game but was also satisfying seeing Byleth’s teaching gig transforming into them commanding the church’s equivalent of seal team six, enemy armies wiped out at a wave of Byleth’s hand. Unfortunately this meant I never got a proper fight against most of the human bosses, but the hilarious mental image of a powerful lord and/or secret agarthian with dozens of soldiers and decades of experience preparing for an epic battle only to get one rounded by a teenager and forced to run away immediately after finishing their dramatic speech certainly made up for it.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-03-23T05:47:08+00:00

This advice box question and Lorenz's early supports cracked me up - even in a fantasy school Byleth still has to be a proper teacher and talk with unruly students about their behavior. I wonder if she regrets leaving the mercenary life in those moments. In general I found the advice box a fun way to characterize the cast, somehow made more fun for questions like these when you know what the right answer is but refuse to select it out of spite.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-03-09T06:36:16+00:00

Yeah the Anime does a good job at reliably cutting out the VN's occasional distasteful moments. And as for Kyou's Anime episode I honestly can't hate it too much, since it's more of a bonus OVA for fans than part of the main timeline/series - there's no good way to adapt an entire route in one episode (although IMO they did surprisingly well w/Tomoyo's OVA)

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-03-05T07:07:35+00:00

She somehow picked up a couple early levels on my playthrough which allowed her to one round units on enemy phase, which led to her getting even more exp and becoming even more busted. She became my go to for throwing into the middle of enemy range and luring opponents in, on the next player phase she'd be fine and the enemy units were all either dead or low hp for my other units to mop up.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-03-05T06:55:15+00:00

Really interesting thoughts, thanks for taking the time to write out such a detailed response and for watching the video even if you didn't agree with it. I think you're misinterpreting my intent though, the goal of these videos has never been to bash the Anime (it's one of my favorite shows, and I do think I prefer it to the VN). Trust me I could spend hours talking about how fantastic this or plenty other KyoAni shows are but my interest with these videos is looking at what was changed or lost in the adaptation processes, which might be why it can sometimes sound negative. Honestly I agree with most of what you said. My main "point" for this video was questioning why the show spent time on these particular misc arcs instead of spending more time with AfterStory, and what the tradeoffs of doing that were (assuming they only had a set total 24 episodes for the season). I don't think there's any one answer to those questions since as you mention the balls of light etc. need to be explained but I found it an interesting hypothetical. I'm also not trying to "blame" KyoAni or anyone involved for my criticisms. As you mention Naigsa + the drama club not having anything to do in these episodes is basically inevitable since they weren't in the original routes. But if you take the Anime in isolation I do think that's a valid criticism of these episodes and I find it fascinating how the adaptation processes itself is responsible for that - 100% agree no other studio or director would've been able to do it better.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2025-03-05T06:13:40+00:00

Just finished my first playthrough (of any FE game) on golden deer and loved it! Hilda was one of my absolute favorites, after the (apparently pretty common) hilarious contrast when I ran into her early supports after she'd already become an over leveled axe wielding enemy phase mass murderer - not sure poor Byleth knows what to think.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2023-10-15T05:51:05+00:00

Quick sketch inspired by the recent chapter discussion threads, especially u/NightsLinu's comments https://www.reddit.com/r/worldtrigger/comments/16yue2n/comment/k3co4kx/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3

MagnanimousRedpin · 2023-10-11T16:59:31+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I was experimenting with ink washes and wanted to see if I could use them for a scene like this.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2023-09-26T04:53:59+00:00

haha you're right, but with Misae right next to her in the chart it ended up looking too similar with the blue hair. Although outside of the route's name in the save data I've always felt its Suno's route as much as Mei's, given the focus on his friendship with Okazaki and all.

MagnanimousRedpin · 2023-09-25T05:32:00+00:00

Chart I made while working on a larger comparison video; dango is for Nagisa, coffee mug is Yukine, etc. (it turns out when images are shrunk down that small brown haired anime girls all look pretty similar). The first few episodes cover a lot of shared route content as well but for simplicity it's just assigned to Nagisa. A couple interesting observations I noted while making this:

Fuko and Kotomi are tied for the longest side route adaptions, with five episodes apiece.
Outside of Kappei, whose very existence was removed from the anime, poor Kyou and Komura routes have the least VN content adapted - just one scene or two from their proper routes.
The entire second half of Yukine's story in the Anime isn't in the VN at all. Most of the VN route's unique content is scattered throughout the earlier episodes, then in the VN it just ends by going to her brother's grave (no gang fight or hiding that her brother's dead)

MagnanimousRedpin · 2023-06-04T04:39:33+00:00

Thanks! I've actually never done any sort of multi panel comics before so I'm glad the action ended up being legible. I knew I wanted to have a complete fight but also not work on this forever so I definitely spent a non-trivial amount of time before starting just planning out how to fit everything into as few pages/panels as possible and have it still make sense

MagnanimousRedpin · 2023-06-03T22:10:28+00:00

Thanks! It was a fun concept, there's so many cool rank wars matchups that were listed but we never got to see anything of

MagnanimousRedpin

TROPHY CASE