Thoughts on the end of “Date A Live V”

©2023 橘公司・つなこ/KADOKAWA/「デート・ア・ライブⅤ」製作委員会

After 11 years, the Date A Live anime has finally reached it’s conclusion. When finishing the last episode, I honestly couldn’t really organize my thoughts.

It is true that the animation from GeekToys had it’s highs and lows, but they truly did go all out for the adaptation of the finale here.

While I think it would’ve been nice to have the final three volumes adapted as well, personally I think this is a good stopping point. Unfortunately some plot points are now left to be unresolved, I am grateful that seasons three, four and five happened at all, since the original plan was to stop after the movie.

I urge everyone who has not done it to give Date A Live a try. I know a lot of people are put off by the outside appearance of a simple ecchi-harem-comedy, but the story is truly incredible and you will not regret sticking with it until the end.

And if you have seen Date A Live, but haven’t read the Light Novel, give that a try as well. There are many details and entire story elements, the anime has omitted. For example, one of my favorite volumes (Volume 12 “Itsuka Disaster”) had it’s story entirely removed in the anime. This volume served as an important point of setting up the eventual appearance of The Spirit of Origin and was a truly enjoyable story. There are many other examples like it.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed anything to making this anime a reality. It has been a rocky 11 years, but thanks to you it is a reality. And because of you, this is truly my favorite anime of all time.

New in: Byleth (2023)

She finally came home…

In these little blog updates I have been lamenting over the fact that the Byleth figure for Good Smile Company and Nintendo’s Fire Emblem series I ordered hasn’t really made it here yet. After suffering multiple times, she finally made it here today on this fourth reshipment (yes, I had to pay the shipping fee four times).

I was able to get the issues resolved through sheer luck, as GSC reshipped the figure through UPS this time, where I was able to pay the customs fee online. The fee was more than 70 euros and it got more expensive with every reshipment. Not sure exactly how that works, but since I have the figure on my shelf now, I don’t really care to be honest.

Since Fire Emblem: Three Houses is my second favorite game of all-time, I knew I had to have this figure, as soon as I saw it on GSC’s newsletter.

I have two more figures already with me and will post pictures of them in the coming days.

New in: Super Sonico – White Swimsuit Style (2023)

Another order from Figuya that arrived today. Of course, every figure collection has to have Super Sonico at some point. I reserved this one shortly after the announcement, because when I saw it, I just had to get it.

Unfortunately, I actually had to re-order my shelf quite a bit, since she didn’t fit on the level I had for my figures so far. I ended up moving my PlayStation games up to my Switch games and the figures down. I also moved most of the boxes I still had on the shelf to my closet. I would like to get a class cabinet one day, but I don’t think that is an option in my current apartment.

I have another two figures from Figuya currently in transit and will post about them soon. I’m also still trying to get the Byleth figure from Good Smile Company. It was sent back to them a third time and I sent another request for re-shipment. I hope this time I will actually get it. I’ve already considered asking for a refund, which is something GSC offered, but it already looks like the Byleth figure is shaping up to be quite rare and I really want it.

New in: Nendoroid Mikasa Ackerman

Last month I went to the Japan-Tag event in Düsseldorf and came across the Figuya stand. While looking through the items, I saw that they still had one of the Mikasa Ackerman Nendoroids (#365) that released last year, so I decided to take it with me.

I was a bit short on time these past few weeks, so I only now had the chance to post the pictures for it. I currently have some more online orders from Figuya coming in and plan to post the pictures soon.

New in: Rental-Girlfriend Vol. 1 & 2 and Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei

I picked these up last month. Rental-Girlfriend Vol. 1 was an online order I got a bit before the rest. I was interested in it, since I just caught up with the anime and got really interested in.

Vol. 2 and Prisma Illya 2wei were purchases I made when I was in Essen for “The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie”. I checked the stores before watching the movie and went home with those two.

There were a lot of other anime on the shelf I was interested in, but I could realistically only take home one and this one was one of the few that was actually a Blu-ray, not a DVD.

New in: POP UP PARADE Bernadetta von Varley

Today, my first POP UP PARADE figurine arrived. Bernadetta von Varley is one of my favorite characters from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which is not only my favorite Fire Emblem game, but my second favorite game of all-time (right after Persona 5).

POP UP PARADE is Good Smile Company’s brand of affordable figures. This one in particular has a list price of 49,90 €. Since I reserved it and redeemed it early on, I got a discount of 5 €. Despite the low price, POP UP PARADE figures still have very high quality and are a good option for low budget collections, in my opinion.

I got this figurine from Figuya instead of Good Smile directly. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I am going to buy from Figuya almost exclusively going forward. Receiving orders from a trusted reseller like them who is based in the same country as me is much easier and I won’t have to bother with international shipping and customs fees anymore.

This actually wouldn’t have been my first Fire Emblem figure. I recently had a problem receiving my Byleth figurine from Good Smile as there were problems with the shipping. The figurine actually ended up being sent back to Japan, which means I will have to contact Good Smile’s support to see what they can do about it. I was really looking forward to receiving that figurine and posting about it, because it looks really cool. If it gets here, I will of course post an update.

New in: Fire Emblem Engage, Corrin Amiibo (Female), Sephiroth Amiibo

I actually picked these up in January but forgot to post about it, lol

I bought Fire Emblem Engage at the store a day after release. Originally, I wanted to pick it up on release day but that day didn’t quite work out for me. If I’m honest, I haven’t really played much of it yet…

The Corrin amiibo was a very lucky pick-up for me. This has notoriously been one of the hardest amiibo to pick up and may easily cost you upwards of 100€. Luckily, I found an online store that had stocked up on some of the older Fire Emblem amiibo for the release of Fire Emblem Engage and I ordered it immediately for a very good price.

The Sephiroth Amiibo was pre-ordered and got to me on release day, as well.

Debugging “Temporary failure in name resolution” in Docker containers

I was encountering DNS issues with Docker containers orchestrated by DDEV earlier. Some hosts failed to resolve only within the container for some reason.

To fix it, I changed the following options in the `/etc/default/docker` file:

DOCKER_OPTS="--dns 8.8.8.8 --dns 8.8.4.4"

This helps override the DNS options for Docker containers. Afterwards restart the Docker service:

sudo service docker restart

This solved the problem for me. I found the solution on Stackoverflow.