Scanline Talks

When Scanline Media started, we wanted to focus on games. But over the years, from doing weekly anime podcasts and where our general interests as a site went, anime and manga became so much of our coverage. Here are the anime and manga that stood out to us as some of the best of the year. The Nominees Are: Gunbuster Tenchi Universe Trigun Record of Lodoss War Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (manga)...

In our longest category, we decided to let 2023 sing it's heart out. These tracks, be them anime OP or standalone songs, struck a chord with us. The Nominees Are: Iron Lotus (Library of Ruina) Anger's Remorse (Alan Wake II) Yoton Yo (Alan Wake II) Dark Ocean Summoning (Alan Wake II) This Road (Alan Wake II) Herald of Darkness (Alan Wake II) Togenkyo Alien (Gintama) Mukanjyo (Vinland Saga) Paradox...

Instrumental tracks have often gotten the short end of the stick in our Gimmick Awards, and it's high time we changed that. These tracks backed some unforgettable moments or created an unmistakable atmosphere in 2023, and the following stood out to us. The Nominees Are: H.T. (Trigun) It's Pizza Time! (Pizza Tower) Theme of Kai (Gravity Circuit) Mystery Labyrinth (Master Detective Archives: Rain Co...

Every year, we fight over fighting games. We're enthusiastic about the genre (that's an understatement) and it's a delight to see the new ideas and spins on characters that surface as new games and DLC release. Sometimes, it's the little things that make all the difference: a few tweaks to a classic character to reinvent them. Sometimes it's an entirely new concept. Let's talk about the candidates...

Most fictional writing runs on characters, and it is to these characters that fandoms attach themselves. It's these personalities, and often their visual designs as well, that people find so magnetic. Well, we're not looking for the most magnetic person here: some of these folks are not exactly easy to stan! That's fine. We're here for broken people. We just wanna pick the character we find the mo...

I am open to other perspectives, but a lot of the love of games to me is down to how it feels to hit a button. When the jump feels bad, the game is bad. When the jump feels good, the game is good. That's oversimplifying, intentionally. But so many games ARE just a collection of button presses, and how good they feel to hit. Platformers, action games, shooters, MOBAs, all of these are represented o...

While we have catagories for entire games and shows, it's important to hightlight the moments too. Sometimes the entire work isn't a winner, but that's what can make a moment more remarkable. These moments from games, shows, and real life stood out in 2023. The Nominees Are: "We Sing" (Alan Wake II) The volume slider/"Always remember me" (Paranormasight) Battle an Unruly Princess (Void Stranger) D...

I don't mean to shock anyone, but I, Six, am a bit of a jaded exhausted 30-something. Depending on who you are, you might consider that a redundant descriptor. Regardless, a lot of my experience these days is seeing a game or anime release, and knowing pretty quickly whether or not I will care. And, frankly, usually being right! Not that this is an achievement, a lot of us feel this way. The media...

2023 was... listen. We're here to celebrate. To have fun. But it wasn't a great year, all in all. There was a lot of dark shit. And when talking about it, even in a fun "year end podcast" situation, it's easy to get grim and depressed about everything. It's not that that's wrong . It's worth dwelling on the world's ills. But the Gimmick Awards aren't about that, and we didn't want to have a bunch...

Ok. So we know what characters we're looking for from the gacha. We know what characters we can't get from the gacha. And we know about some truly spectacular dresses, though that's not particularly helpful. There's nothing left but to roll the gacha. Again. And again. And again. ...Hey Kyrie did we want to set like a MAX, or- This is the latest in the "Numbers" podcast series, where we use math t...

Granblue Fantasy hits its tenth anniversary this year. For the mega-popular gacha game, what better celebration than a bunch of other products to hook in those who aren't into the gacha? This has inspired Granblue the Animation, the action RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink, and yes, Granblue Fantasy Versus, and its sequel Rising. As you might expect, these games shine a spotlight on some of the most po...

Scott Pilgrim, huh? I dunno what anyone sees in this guy. Regardless this new Netflix anime follows a new story in the Scott Pilgrim series, commenting on the series impact on culture, reflections on the characters, and a lot of video game and anime references. We bring on Jackie of Ultimate Despair Reprise to gush about this new anime. Spoilers ahead, we watched the whole series for this episode!...

As the holiday season ramps up, we here at Scanline are prepared for a yearly ritual: playing all the games that we feel like we should have an opinion on before we record the Gimmick Awards, our yearly Game of the Year (and more than game) awards. That makes this the last stop of us just chatting normal games before we dizzy ourselves with our obligations as critics. To that end, Jen has been mou...

The Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1, and Saturn were a pivotal moments for video games. 3D video games had arrived in full force, and the industry has never turned back. But Jennifer, Kyrie, and Six turned back the clock to dive into nearly 50 games that defined the generation, and we decided to sort the best of the best.

Fighting game tournaments are great, and a LOT of work to run. Shoutouts to the tournament organizers, the streamers, the casters, and more that make these tournaments run. But think about this for a moment: if a King of Fighters XV tournament is hard to run, how difficult is it in-universe to get these lunatics with magic powers and demonic possession and GUN ARMS to not only play nice to run a f...

Around here, Bethesda's games are pretty divisive. We can all agree they're deeply flawed games, but to what extent their unique charms prevail against those weaknesses varies person to person. Jen still holds some affection for Skyrim, Six can't stand it, and neither have anything but disdain for Fallout 4. So what's the vibe with Starfield, their latest and most ambitious work? It's... charming....

Life moves pretty fast. Despite that, we all found times for a few games that we weren't playing for other podcasts this month, and time enough to sit down to talk about them. This year has seen Jen finally coming to appreciate baseball, and by extension baseball video games in MLB The Show 23 . Kyrie has fallen for familiar comforts under friendly names by plugging her friends into Etrian Odyssey...

They really did get our trust back only to throw it away, huh? After a messy first cours, G-Witch came back strong with the first three episodes of cours 2, and our early check-in was quite positive. It continued strong for a while, but of course, the same production troubles were bubbling beneath the surface, and that strong start began to collapse under the weight of all its problems. Now we com...

It's Not E3! Barring some stupid revival, it will never be E3 again! And yet game companies are still rushing to show us the Reason for the Season. Summer Games Fest, Future Games Show, PC Gaming Show, Wholesome Direct, Ubisoft Forward, Xbox Games Showcase, PlayStation Showcase, the list goes on... and on... and what does it all mean? Jen, Kyrie and Six sat down to talk about the announcements, th...

SPOILER WARNING for early- to mid-game of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Six years have passed since the release of Breath of the Wild. Six years, then, since our podcast about Breath of the Wild, which was the first time we had Kyrie on a pod. And hey, also, my name is Six! Dang, this is starting to feel pretty important. I guess we should podcast about Tears of the Kingdom, the seque...

I have never much liked theaters, even from a young age. So it takes a lot to get me to go see a movie in theater. Adding extra hurdles like it being a limited release, during a pandemic, only makes it less likely. But when it finally hit home streaming, I, Allen, and Harri were eager to check out the Kaguya-sama: Love Is War movie, The First Kiss That Never Ends. Well, I think Harri was mostly ea...

At the end of the last cour, Allen and I (Six) talked about whether we wanted to come back and cover the second cour episode by episode, like we did the first. Our conclusion was "probably not, but who knows?" Now that we're decently into it, we're here to say... no. Definitely not. But, we felt the need to make that official, and we might as well discuss the first three eps while we're here, righ...

You know with all the podcasts we put out, it's amazing we find time to do much else. But luckily we find time to relax occasionally. Six took some time with Resident Evil 4 Remake while on travel, finding the experience a little lacking. Meanwhile Jennifer paddled her raft to the middle of a spooky lake, finding herself charmed by the world Dredge thrust her into. Lastly, Kyrie continues her revi...

Belts, as you know, are the most important meal of the day. You get up every morning, and say, "I love my pants, but I just wish I had control over how tight they were!" This is because you are naive, innocent of the world. Guilty Gear is here to tell you, belts for pants? Sure, I guess. But what about belts for gloves. For sleeves! For tightening around the base of your arm to make your bicep loo...

It's a new season of Racing Line, and the gang is back at it with our look at the latest season of Drive to Survive! Allen, Rose, and Danny hash it out- trying their best to keep it together through Max Verstappen's Discord rants, Guenther's vacation in North Carolina, and the future of F1. You can find Allen at Chatz: A Television Podcast with great coverage of television, Rose at the The Safe Ro...