Samurai Equine

Hello there, my crowd! Welcome to my Weekly Musings: Red Edition. 

[I ❤ JAPAN] -- [I ❤ THE COLOR RED] -- [I ❤ CELESTIA]

 What a week! Despite the challenges going into it, there ended up being more positive than negatives.

 The biggest, most happiest thing that happened this week was... MY BIRTHDAY!  In some ways, not the best birthday. Because of financial difficulties due to medical bills, I was unable to celebrate how I usually do. In other words, no gifts, at least none on the 11th. There were some early gifts. I may have mentioned the trench coat I got and the Gameboy. However, the trench was purchased sometime before things got tough for either my mother or I. And the Gameboy is still on hold until I am sure no one is coming to claim it. HOWEVER! My friend @Kujamih has been drawing art of my OC as of recently, so that counts! But what made this birthday really nice regardless, was spending time with my family and my friends on this forum.  That, and cake. My mother splurged and got me an awesome chocolate ice cream cake. The frosting was pink and purple. ...And my uncle bought a ton of extra deserts! HELP! My waist line is vanishing all ready! 

 And while I could talk about others who shared this birthday with me, I guess I should talk about some sad news... My grandmother's birthday was the 9th. For those who just started following me, she passed away earlier this year. We've all had our time to grieve and everything, but it's still sad and we still miss her. This is the first Birthday we are celebrating without her. Doesn't get better when we look around. There are members of my family in bad health right now. My grandfather still has a terrible speech impediment that he might never fully recover from. And I learned recently that my aunt has taken a nasty little fall that has left her a little injured. Don't worry, she'll walk it off in time. She just can't take any pain meds or anything. She has a bad liver, and pain meds would not only make things worse, but they could shorten what little life she has left. That's tough news considering my aunt is the youngest among my mother and 2 uncles...

 I have been managing my time this week a little better. I got to see some more stuff like I said I would. I helped my mother clean up (and even paint) the rental property that she owns; that was some HARD work! But she may all ready have a potential customer interested in staying there a while.  I still have not finished with Decade yet because I am writing up my next big blog entry for my LiveJournal account (Go check it out!). I would have watched the last episode of "Kamen Rider Decade" by now, but my Birthday and everything else got in the way. Speaking of Decade, apparently we just hit the big 10 year anniversary of MLP:FiM! What a month it has been. 

 Gotta balance the good news with bad news, right? Eddie Van Halen died recently... Did I mention my aunt is in not-so-great medical health right now? Also, I still have medical expenses to pay. Just one right now, let's hope there won't be another. I think that's it for now.

 I watched a bunch of episodes of "Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". Granted, these are being recorded from one of Nickelodeon's secondary channels, so I'm not seeing the new episodes in chronological order. Pretty sure I'm missing some episodes. But anyways, it's been a while since I last saw this show, so let's get right into it!  The following will just be quick, one-sentence descriptions of each episode I saw... Piebald joined the family. Liar Games was kind of dumb. Tubing was dumb, but at least we got a glimpse of classic angry Raph. Good to see Baxter again; he actually almost succeeded in exposing the Turtles! Splinter relived his glory days, and I guess that’s cool. It’s weird how Splinter is just NOW teaching them how to be Ninjas even though they probably should be have been learning it their entire lives; but they did it, and at least we get the revelation that Splinter and Big Mama use to be a thing once. The Turtles tried to get some of that dark metal but failed, so waste of an episode I guess. Masked wrestler dude is now a mutant ghostbear; I guess he fits in better with the show now. April hangs out with a goo girl I don’t remember, but at least we get to see her doing her reporter thing for a moment; and why are mutants suddenly a secret now? The Turtles learn never to meet their heroes, also how is no one checking in on the mentally unstable sci-fi actor?

 Saber 05: Thunderous Resolve!  Not sure how the story of Aladdin relates to lightning, but what’s most important is two big points. Right away, we learn that Calibur is Espada’s father. Kind of a big reveal to give this early; makes me hope they have plenty more story plots to keep this momentum up. I was afraid to mention it before, but I think I am seeing a pattern. Saber is best matched with red books, Blades is best matched with blue books, Espada is best matched with gold and yellow books, and it looks like we’re about to get a Rider that best matches with green books. Sure, they can all share each other’s books, but I think sticking to their base colors will help these Riders unlock their true powers.

 Kiramager 26: Rutile’s Not Futile!  Interesting. So Yodonna can give all the monsters a power boost, but it’s temporary and costs them their lives. Red faces the same problem if he uses a Granterstone, so he decides to make a power-up that shuts off before it can become fatal. Well, either way, I wanted to see them take her down a peg or two, and they did! But way to go making the foot soldiers a bit more challenging. We usually never see that in Sentai these days, and it’s easy to forget that’s the point; the grunts are supposed to make it harder for our heroes to win, not be something they can mow over easily. Also, Yellow’s got his own character theme after all!

That's it for now, my crowd.  And remember, birthdays are a sacred thing to celebrate.

I know I normally just share a song on the Red Edition, but since it's been my birthday, I'm sharing two!
First, here's the music. When you're a total weeb, but you still want to look cool in front of others... I just LOVE musical crossovers between artists/bands that you NEVER would have imagined happening in a million years. Here's Amy Lee of EVANESCENCE and one of my all-time favorite Japanese bands Wagakki Band, teaming up to make an orchestral/wagakki cover of "Bring Me To Life". I really hope they make a studio version of this~

And here's the bonus video! This was posted on my Birthday, and what a surprise gift to see! At first, I was worried about the slight art-style change, and then they totally justified it with one well-placed line of dialogue. I don't have Hulu, but I swear I will find a way to watch this! Here's the first look at the new Animaniacs cartoon, "Animaniacs Jurassic Park Clip", posted by Hulu.