Well, as stressful as this month has been, it hasn't been all bad. Like I said, Christmas ended up being fairly okay. In spite of all that's been going on, I also carried out my own personal December traditions of watching The Phantom of the Opera and Kamen Rider Kuuga. I also rewatched Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, mainly because it had been more than a year since I had watched the series last. Next time around I should watch G-Witch and Revolutionary Girl Utena back-to-back. It might be fun to do a side-by-side comparison of those shows.
This month also saw the release of the paid DLC for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Playing through that DLC has really helped me cope with a lot of the stress during this month, particularly during the day of my little odyssey. The one thing I don't like about this DLC that its story kind of torpedoed a lot of the stuff I had in mind for a Pokémon fanfic I had been trying to develop off and on. It's no big deal though since that story wasn't anywhere close to getting off the ground. For one thing, I had no clue who the villain for the story should be.
Another good thing to happen this month was the announcement that a somewhat old manga I like will be getting a new anime adaptation in the coming year. Below is a link to the news story about this on ANN.
Toshiaki Iwashiro's Psyren Manga Gets TV Anime in 2026
If anyone reading this post is unfamiliar with Psyren, I'm sadly not surprised. The manga was published in Shonen Jump from 2007 to 2010, which was apparently a period when the magazine had an overabundance of manga titles to choose from. In other words, Psyren kind of got lost in all the noise. It's a real shame though, because Psyren is a really good series. For one thing, it's definitely one of the better time travel stories I've seen.
The characters in Psyren are also pretty good of course, and then there's the compelling mystery in the story of how the world became a post-apocalyptic wasteland crawling with monsters in the future. Also, the battles in this story are fought using psychic power, which is a concept that's always fascinated me. Finally, without getting into spoilers, the story's final villain is very Lovecraftian in nature. The only really big issue I have with Psyren is that some of its plot lines were resolved a little too abruptly, but that's apparently because Toshiaki Iwashiro was forced to end the series earlier than intended due to Shonen Jump deciding to cancel it. And of course the reason Psyren was canceled was because it just wasn't getting enough readers, and that happened mainly because there were too many other manga titles running in SJ at the time.
So I'm pretty stoked that Psyren is getting an anime adaptation, and I have high hopes for the show's quality. For one thing, the director was involved with both Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's and Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V (for now, let's not think about ARC-V's rage-inducing ending), as well as two seasons of the Symphogear anime. It is kind of nuts though that it's taken about fifteen years for Psyren to get an anime adaptation. Then again, we're only now just getting a new Madoka Magica movie. On that note, here's the latest trailer for said film.
Now we don't really know anything about the movie other than what we already knew before. It's still set to come out in February, but we still don't have a specific date. Plus this theatrical release is only in Japan. There's no telling when those of us here in the U.S or other parts of the world will get to see it. I imagine that Crunchyroll will probably stream the movie at some point. Plus this is still an Aniplex title, so it's likely that the movie will get a grossly overpriced blu-ray release before the next year is out.
