Archive | September, 2018

5 Top Anime Choices

By Sylvia Wicks on September 27, 2018 in Anime, Blog

So, being fan of anime, it is hard to pick out only the top 5. The 5 anime series listed below are the first 5 that popped into my head when asked this question. So, let’s get into it.

5. Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail is being touted as one of the best anime series out there. There is a debate going around among the fans of Fairy Tail, Dragon Ball and Naruto as to which one is the best. So, just like those two series Fairy Tail is pretty exciting and offers incredible visuals, a seemingly unending storyline and fun adventures. Seven spin-off manga series based on Fairy Tail have been released.

Fairy Tail Zero by Mashima

Fairy Tail: Ice Trail by Yūsuke Shirato

Fairy Tail Blue Mistral by Rui Watanabe

Fairy Girls by Boku

Fairy Tail Side Stories, by Kyōta Shibano

Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest storyboarded by Mashima and illustrated by Atsuo Ueda.

Fairy Tail: Happy Adventure by Kenshirō Sakamoto

*On June 27, 2018, Hiro announced another spin-off manga. It is tentatively titled, Fairy Tail City Hero, written and illustrated by Ushio Andō.

4. Pokemon

Even people that have no interest in anime have heard of Pokemon. If there is any anime series that has a unique and exciting touch then that is Pokemon for sure. Pokemon has been entertaining fans for years. Pokemon makes you fall in love with the adventures and devotion of Ash Ketchum and his partner Pikachu. In the anime, Ash and his friends travel across the world to challenge different players and to get the recognition as the Pokemon master.

3. Darling in the FRANXX

Who thought you could find romance in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future? Well, this anime series shows how possible that is. I was sucked in by the mech fights, but the relationships between the child pilots caught my interest. It’s unique and it has a really adorable touch. Fans of the series are really on board with the chemistry of the couple in it. The anime is pretty new and the fan base is growing.

*The series was nominated for Anime of the Year for Anime Trending Awards 2019, and was awarded Best Sci-Fi or Mecha, and Best Action or Adventure from Anime Trending’s Winter 2018 Anime Awards. Zero Two placed first in Favorite Female Character.

2. Dragon Ball

Next in the list is Dragon Ball franchise which has given us different series like Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball. Goku is a character who protects the Earth from the evils who want to destroy it and he along with his friends are on a mission to protect Earth. The series begins with a young monkey-tailed boy named Goku befriending a teenage girl named Bulma. Together they go on a quest to find the seven Dragon Balls. The anime series has a huge fan base and it is still running strong and the fans now love the new adventures shown in the latest series.

1. Naruto & Naruto Shippuden

Naruto is one of the best anime’s out there. It is a journey about an adolescent ninja who wants to become the Hokage of his village. Naruto was an orphan who was disliked and mistreated by almost everyone, but despite this, he was determined to prove everyone who doubted him wrong by sheer willpower and hard work. He is a bit of a troublemaker cursed with the burden of being a human host for a nine tailed fox demon spirit. The storyline is broken into 2 parts one as Naruto as a preteen and the second is his late teenage years.

Part 1

This is the introduction to the world of Naruto and the backstory of the characters. You see characters depending on their intellect to get out of nefarious situations

Part 2 – Shippuden

In part 2, the battles no longer seem focused on being strategic. Battles become basically a matter of strength. Some of the original message of part 1 is lost when it is revealed that Naruto has always been meant to be a super special ninja because of his lineage. The art style and storytelling definitely got a major boost and characters were more fully fleshed out.

My only criticism is that there were no real strong female leads.

*Naruto is the 3^rd best selling manga series in history. It has appeared on USA Today and The New York Times bestseller list on multiple occasions.

God of War – History of Kratos

By Sylvia Wicks on September 26, 2018 in Video Games

One of the earliest scenes in the God of War franchise is of Kratos standing on the edge of a cliff ready to fall to his death. Kratos has always been a complex character, even in the earlier entries of the series, when he was all about ripping and tearing apart Gods. In this article, we’ll be going over the evolution of Kratos to see how he became the stone-faced father that we know him as today.

Where It All Began

We learn most of Kratos’s backstory in the original God of War. Kratos offers his service to the God Ares in exchange for saving his life. That started the entire sequence of events that led to where Kratos is today. After Ares takes him under his wing, he sends Kratos to burn and slaughter several villages. It is during one of these slaughters that Ares puts Kratos under a blood lust rage which leads to Kratos cutting down his wife and child along with yet another village.

Feeling betrayed by Ares, Kratos sets out to exact revenge upon the cause of his family’s death. By the end of the first game, Kratos accomplishes just that. He not only slays Ares, but a fair number of Greek Gods that stand in his way and becomes the new God of War; but his story is far from over.

The Destruction of The Greek Gods

God of War 2 and God of War 3 are more closely related to each other than they are to the original title. As the next part of Kratos’s story kicks off we find that he has become a ruthless god that guides his Spartan army to take down city after city to the displeasure of the other gods.

This leads to Zeus tricking Kratos into relinquishing his power and confines him to Hades for all eternity. Luckily, he is saved by Gaia the mother of Titans. She wants his help to seek revenge upon the gods that rebelled against the Titans years ago. This leads to a massive confrontation of the Titans accompanied by Kratos against the Gods. While his first attempt at taking Zeus’s head failed, he did find out that he was a son of Zeus.

Kratos is unmoved by the knowledge that Zeus is his father. Kratos not only considers it something trivial but also readies the Titans for another attack against the gods. God of War 3 starts off right at the end of God of War 2 and acts as the final part of the original trilogy. Kratos not only kills Zeus but also ends up killing what’s left of the remaining Greek Gods and along the way ends up unraveling the mystery of the Pandora’s box.

Inside Pandora’s Box, Kratos discovers what leads him to become the somewhat calm and caring person we see in God of War 2018 – Hope. Kratos uses Hope to end his Father Zeus for good and shares the gift of Hope with humanity, thus ending his journey and suffering for a short period of time.

God of War 2018

Using his newfound hope at the end of the last part of the original God of War trilogy, he sets out to start a new life. He is in a new land with a new family. Once you take a better look at it, you realize just how marvelously his evolution as a character made him into the man he has become.

Kratos began his journey as a Spartan demi-God with some serious anger issues but since then he has come a very long way to being a stoned face father that not only has to keep himself in check but also make sure his own kid doesn’t walk the same path Kratos still finds himself on every now and then.

The making of an Entrepreneur… Part 2

By Sylvia Wicks on September 24, 2018 in Blog

One of the biggest issues people run into with being an entrepreneur is that they are not good at time management. Setting your own hours can be a great perk of starting your own company, but without discipline, you will find yourself feeling like a hamster on a wheel; moving a lot and going nowhere. You have to work your business just like you would work a job. You must have set hours and give yourself deadlines. It is extremely easy to get distracted when you are working from home: chores need to be done, you haven’t caught up on your favorite show that’s been on your DVR for weeks, Netflix just released a new series that you’re excited to watch, Facebook notifications keep popping up on your phone. Here are a couple of ideas to eliminate distractions and boost your productivity.

Set up specific break times. There are some people who can just sit down, focus and knock out a project in a few hours (I envy these people). For the rest of us, we need break
1. Break times can be at specific times during the day, you may need to schedule a break every 2 hours.
2. Break times can also be set around the tasks you have to do for the day, once you finish a specific number of tasks then you can take a break.
Have a home office
1. Designate an area of your home solely for working. Only use that space for working and do not work from any other area in the house
2. Create an actual office environment. Multiple monitors if you need them, your printer, a comfortable chair, office supplies etc… You should never have to leave your home office to do things related to work.
3. Ensure that others in the home understand that is your personal are. No one should use that space to check their Instagram account.
4. Having a home office allows you to claim a home office tax deduction as long as you use the space exclusively for business.
Make a daily or weekly to-do list
1. Having a list written out in from of you makes it easier to remember everything that needs to be done and to stay focused on those tasks.
2. Some may prefer using something like a dry erase board. Either way it is something that will allow you to stay focused on tasks at hand.

The making of an Entrepreneur… Part 1

By Sylvia Wicks on September 23, 2018 in Blog

When you first dream of owning your own online business you are filled with a sense of empowerment and freedom. You imagine how you will build it, how quickly it will flourish, how you will be able to enjoy more time with the family, take more vacations, etc… Then you start the process and you quickly realize that you work more hours than you did at your traditional job, you have even less free time, and it’s not becoming profitable as quickly as you thought it would.

This is where many would-be entrepreneurs lose their resolve and throw in the towel. If you are able to get past that hump, you come to realize that there was never a guarantee of becoming a millionaire overnight, and that every successful venture starts with determination, resolve, and lots and lots of hard work. Once you can approach the venture with a more positive mindset, patience and discipline, you will be happy to put in those additional hours, because you realize you are no longer working toward someone else’s dream, you are working this hard to make your dreams come true.