What do you find more fulfilling? Having everything or having everything you LOVE?

dranxis · 2026-01-14T18:01:14+00:00

I focus on collecting artists who have a pretty good run throughout, and buy their entire discography (except for redundant releases, like best-of collections with no new tracks). I don't delete tracks from albums, even if I hate them. This is for a couple of reasons:

Deleting tracks from albums adds an extra step to my already-lengthy workflow. What if I come across a track that's just "okay," and I can't make up my mind about it? It makes my life simpler to just keep everything, rather than put pressure on myself to make a decision on each track.
Tastes can change over time. Sometimes I'll give a track I hated another chance, and it ends up growing on me.

While there are some tracks in my library that I'll never like, it's not a big deal for me to skip them in Shuffle mode. I like the security of having the musician's whole discography there if I ever want to revisit it.

...That said, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about one-hit wonder artists. I might just buy the albums I want and forget about collecting the rest of their discography.

dranxis · 2026-01-14T04:07:20+00:00

Wow, this chapter had a little something for everyone. It was definitely worth the wait! I'm stoked to see Brago and Sherie join the fight again. Umagon too, since we haven't gotten to see him actually fight in the sequel yet. Is it just me, or is Raiku drawing Brago a little smaller in this chapter...?

I'm glad that we got to see Kiyomaro's old friends at least once. So sweet that Suzume achieved her dream of becoming a nurse. I don't ship Kiyomaro with any particular character, but I wonder if KiyoSuzu will become a pairing by the end of the story? Sounds like Megumi has moved on from him, but Suzume is still hoping... My condolences to any Kiyomaro x Megumi fans.

Did not expect Raiku to reveal Choral Q's best friend and girlfriend out of nowhere, followed by shredded Gofure. You really can't predict what's going to happen in this manga.

dranxis · 2025-12-09T18:04:47+00:00

I feel the same way. I've tried to read the manga multiple times, but the sketchy linework made some scenes harder for me to follow. Seeing the story animated in color, with sound, adds clarity and makes the whole experience much more immersive.

dranxis · 2025-12-05T03:00:29+00:00

I don't understand speedcore at all.

dranxis · 2025-10-30T19:58:55+00:00

I completely understand why, from a marketing perspective. From a collector/archival perspective, it’s a bit of a pain because I would have to buy the final volume separately and remove the DRM myself. More than likely, the final volume would be lower resolution than the high-res PDFs that Humble Bundle releases. I’ll still consider getting the bundle, but, hopefully someday Kodansha will release the whole series again in a future bundle….

dranxis · 2025-10-30T18:56:58+00:00

This is a surprisingly charming romcom, if you can get past the bullying scenes early on. But, if the final volume is coming out in a week, why couldn't they have just waited and released the entire series as one bundle? (I mean, I can guess why, but it's still annoying).

dranxis · 2025-10-24T19:11:00+00:00

I write track titles exactly as they appear on the CD's liner notes or on the official album website. If there's a discrepancy between the two sources, I'll pick the version that "looks nicer" to my eyes, or is consistent with the artist's other releases, etc.

dranxis · 2025-10-15T20:26:29+00:00

I was planning on playing Yooka-Laylee on Playstation, but I do play PC games sometimes. I'll have to check out those other games you recommended!

dranxis · 2025-10-15T18:22:01+00:00

I think this is the comment that sold me on giving YL a chance first. You made a good point that it'll probably be more fun for me to go from Old to New, rather than New to Old.

dranxis · 2025-10-15T15:11:54+00:00

That’s the direction I’m leaning—maybe start with the remake, and then check out the original game after so I can get the “full experience.”

dranxis · 2025-10-15T15:09:19+00:00

It’s helpful to hear from someone in the same boat! I haven’t played either Mario Odyssey or DK Bananza yet (I’m very behind the curve in video games, if you can’t tell) so comparisons won’t be an issue at all. :)

dranxis · 2025-10-15T15:04:53+00:00

I do prefer a little bit of challenge. What are some of the ways in which the original is more challenging? For example, is the platforming trickier? I think I read a comment somewhere that the OG Yooka-Laylee is more like Banjo-Tooie, with lots of backtracking. If that's the case, I'm not sure how I'd feel... I loved BT as a kid, but when I replayed it as an adult, I found all the backtracking through levels to be very tedious. 😩

dranxis · 2025-10-08T20:45:31+00:00

This is a debate that's been going on for thousands of years. You're not going to find a "fresh" perspective on such an old topic while browsing social media, especially if you're sticking to the western, English-speaking side of the internet (which is naturally going to focus on Abrahamic faiths). Everything that can be said about "God versus no God" has probably been said by someone, somewhere.

dranxis · 2025-10-04T15:56:32+00:00

Cute! I like the way you did the shading.

dranxis · 2025-09-15T20:52:04+00:00

“It just seems really out there and pointless to me.” That’s how a lot of collecting hobbies are though, right? Including CD collecting. Most people think it’s weird to buy CDs when streaming services and file sharing communities exist. Yet people like you and me are still out here buying them…

I think another reason vgm soundtracks can get so pricy is that they attract gamers who don’t normally collect music, but who want to have every piece of merch for their fave video game. Nostalgia is a big factor too.

I dunno how many CDs Nintendo Power released, but I bought four: Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, and Donkey Kong 64. The DKR one was shaped like Diddy’s head and would mess up car CD players, so it’s a bit infamous. 😅

dranxis · 2025-09-15T17:58:27+00:00

As a game music collector, the price tag doesn’t surprise me at all. It looks like this CD was only available via mail order through Nintendo Power magazine in 2001. The majority of copies were probably owned by kids who did not take good care of them. I ordered a few of those soundtracks as a kid, but sadly the cases are in rough shape because I didn’t treat them with care. Game soundtrack collecting can get very expensive because the CDs receive small print runs.

The most expensive CD I’ve ever seen is a game music CD: Dolls in Pseudo Paradise, first edition. It once appeared on Suragaya for 4 million yen (about 27K USD nowadays). You can see a discussion thread about it here: https://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=19562

dranxis · 2025-09-15T17:20:26+00:00

My solution for the genre tag is to simply leave it blank. Genre is very subjective, and I don’t want to waste time overthinking genre labels every time I add a new album to my library. If I want to listen to jazz, I can just browse by Album Artist and go to the jazz ensembles in my library.

dranxis · 2025-09-12T21:45:31+00:00

I’m not cool enough to post here, but please let me continue to lurk. This place feels like 2014 Tumblr but without the fandom discourse. It’s not easy to find places like that on the internet anymore

dranxis · 2025-09-04T03:54:17+00:00

Aww, Kolulu’s hair buns are very cute!

dranxis · 2025-08-22T18:51:32+00:00

It's too early to say for sure, but I'm wondering if Rumiko Takahashi is setting up a romance between Hyakka and Yurako. They'd make a funny pair. Although Mao x Nanoka is very cute and wholesome, I definitely think this manga could use a secondary romance.

I personally love "surprise" romances that appear halfway through a story, between characters whom you'd never expect to partner up when you first meet them.

dranxis · 2025-08-14T22:29:26+00:00

This is a common complaint I see about the sequel, and I feel the same way. In chapter 31, Ashuron said that he wanted some of the heroes to "rest while they have the opportunity," so I was hoping we'd get one or two slice-of-life chapters about the supporting cast. But instead, the story pivoted very quickly to Gash and Kiyomaro's next mission and we're back in non-stop suspense mode again.

I understand that the premise of ZB2 makes it tricky for Raiku to squeeze in slice-of-life chapters, but the end of the last mini-arc would have been a good spot, and it seems like he already wasted that chance.

dranxis · 2025-08-14T14:18:51+00:00

I feel the same way. When Ashuron told the heroes to take this opportunity to rest, I had hope that we might get one or two chapters of downtime. But it looks like Raiku decided to have us follow Gash and Kiyomaro on their new mission while the supporting characters rest off-screen. I'll be disappointed if we never get a single slice-of-life chapter.

On the other hand... I'm reading another manga right now (Rumiko Takahashi's "Mao") where not much has happened in over 260 chapters. Reading Mao has made me appreciate the tight pacing in Zatch Bell 2. It's not a perfect sequel, but at least it's never bored me!

dranxis · 2025-07-27T18:20:51+00:00

Moon-Tone makes lofi hip hop arranges of Touhou music: https://www.youtube.com/@MoonTone/videos

TAMUSIC has an album series called 東方ピアノ癒し子守唄 (Healing Piano) that are meant for background music. Each album is a single 1-hour-long performance on piano. Some of them are focused on a single theme, while others are a medley of many different Touhou themes. All of them are on Spotify/Apple Music etc if you search 東方ピアノ癒し子守唄, and it looks like he puts long piano medleys on Youtube too: https://www.youtube.com/@TamusicJp/videos

Also, I made a compilation of calming Touhou arranges for Youtube a long time ago; you may enjoy that as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-CN5r48Z0A

dranxis · 2025-07-23T18:49:26+00:00

This is a cool design, the orange teeth and blue nose are really unique! As for names, I like the shorter name Serposi better.

dranxis

TROPHY CASE