Recipe # 7 – Aldini’s Aigamo Duck Grilled with Spices This dish was made by Takumi Aldini and Isami Aldini for a match against Soma Yukihara and Megumi Takodoro. As the dish that introduced the Aldini brothers in the plot, it is fitting that it has a lot of Italian influence. In fact, this dish is just a variation of the classic Italian dish – Spicy Roast Chicken with Salsa Verde (green sauce).

Manaria Friends 1 – Introducing Grea and Anne with some Game Lore Manaria Friends as said in the title is about the “friendship” between Anne and Grea – the two most iconic characters of the Mysteria faction. (Manaria is the English localization. Please note that I’ll use the original Mysteria for this post). With eight episodes airing and only two more to go, I could state with some confidence that Manaria friends is mostly slice-of-life. If there is any plot, I haven’t seen it yet. That said, I think it is still worth watching for the cute interactions between Anne and Grea (their gayness is oft the chart!) If that is not enough, you can taste the eye candy here because the visuals are gorgeous. And finally, if you played some Cygames product – you might like the anime simply for the lore expansion. While Rage of Bahamut is sadly not available outside of Japan, Mysteria and the characters associated with it had appeared in many other Cygames product. Notably, GranBlue (which is considered the spiritual successor of Rage of Bahamut) and Shadowverse. As a casual Shadowverse player myself, Mysteria is really hard to forget especially with the way they dominated the meta for the past months. ^^ Anyway, on to the show.

1st Half of the Vanguard Finals – Mysterious Cousins and Rare Yakumans Half a year had passed and there are ten chapters of Saki I haven’t read! Reading the chapters in one go, the Vanguard Final is really starting with a bang. They dropped two rare yakuman in one hanchan! It helped my mood that Ritz finally revealed the mysterious cousin’s name as well. So for the first post of the year (yeah I know its March now, my 2019 writing is hideously unproductive), have some bunch of trivia to help you appreciate the Vanguard match.

Semifinals Side-B Vanguard Match Analysis Part 1 – Shenanigan and Some Setting Exploration I’m quite pumped for the finals but it is moving slowly for my taste so I’ve decided to slowly start analyzing the semifinals. Unlike the quarterfinals which can stand on its own, I believe the semifinals and the finals should be taken as one whole, instead of piecemeal. The latest vanguard match just increased my opinion. Thus, while we wait for the finals to end, let’s begin the analysis. (Though, there isn’t much analysis on this post and more setting exploration) East 1 and you already can see some shenanigans going on…