Julius

Everyone and their mother has confirmed Messi's transfer to PSG today (Fabrizio Romano, then Balague, then Jorge Messi, then we saw him at the Barcelona airport and Neymar's Instagram update) but finally PSG have put something official out after he arrived in Paris. Medical scheduled for either later today or tomorrow. This is so bizarre. Wonder what number he'll get seeing as he wants to leave Neymar with the 10. His old number 19 is taken by Sarabia if I'm remembering right, so maybe his older number 30 (also, L30 for branding writes itself)? But then I can't remember if that's saved exclusively for goalkeepers in France. His shirt is between Neymar's 10 and Mbappé's 7 in the promo...so maybe 17 if he can't have 30?

Sony have today completed the acquisition of Crunchyroll for $1.175 billion. Full press release here. So the aim is creating a "unified anime subscription", which is good to have confirmed. I just hope this means there's a major rebrand with all shows available on one platform which works as well as the Crunchyroll app/subtitles/everything else, and not the mess that Funimation often is. Think this will prove to be an absolute steal for Sony over the next decade, and hopefully they'll see some more stability outside of gaming because of this. Just make sure it works well and they could close to monopolise the western anime streaming industry. Now if we can please finally see some strings being pulled to secure UK streaming rights for series which are way too big to not be on anything (such as all of the old Dragon Ball stuff) and tear down some of those 'Not available in your country' Funimation error messages, that'd be great!

Well, with the season curtain raiser in England being played yesterday ending in Leicester winning the Community Shield for the first time in 50 years over Manchester City, figured it was time to start the new season thread. In terms of the transfer market, we had the Premier League transfer record broken the other day by Grealish's £100 million move to Manchester City, and there are lots of reports going around that it will soon be broken again, with Chelsea in for Lukaku. And then there was the possibility of it being broken a third time by City going for Kane this window, but quite hilariously, that move seems to have collapsed in on itself. What moves does everyone want to see for their teams, and what are people's expectations for their teams going into this season? I think a Lukaku redemption arc with us would be great to see, especially after Werner's unfortunate showings over the last 12 months -- think he seriously lacks some confidence, but thanks to Tuchel's frequent rotation of the squad, hopefully he'll gain that back sooner rather than later. I'd like to see us challenge for the title for the first time in a good while, and it would be nice if we could start our season off right with a Super Cup win on Wednesday. Abroad, PSG have been busy building a monstrous side, getting Wijnaldum, Ramos, and Donnarumma all on free transfers, as well as bringing in Hakimi from Inter. But the only reason I really bring them up is because Messi's leaving Barcelona, and Paris seems like the only place he'll end up. And on a free. Crazy. For anyone who missed his tearful farewell to Barça: It's hard to not feel something see someone leave a club that they only wanted to stay at. Even if he signed on a €0 contract, Barça's finances are that poor that they'd still be unable to register him. I can't remember a time where I enjoyed football before Messi donned a Barcelona shirt, he's always been there number 10 for me. When I went to Camp Nou nearly a decade ago now, finding so much of the tour at that point - before, when plenty of records he has since broken were still standing - already dedicated to him, his boots, his shirts...it felt special. It's a travesty that he'll be leaving on anything but his own terms, heightened only by the fact that he hasn't had the chance to say a proper goodbye to fans. But life goes on. This next season is almost certainly going to be a strange one.

In case anyone missed it and would be interested: an officially licensed Avatar tabletop RPG, called Avatar Legends, is up on Kickstarter, and set for release in February 2022. As of writing there are 25 days left and it only has two more stretch goals to reach, sitting at over $3.6 million pledged. Think it's safe to say it's doing pretty well! Five different eras (Kyoshi, Roku, the Hundred Year War, Aang, and Korra) and it looks really interesting, even for me, as someone who doesn't really play board games, my interest is piqued. Seems like a great gateway into the world of tabletop RPG's. And I really want that cloth world map and those dice...

AvatarNews have dropped details on the cast for Team Avatar (and, uh, Zuko) for Netflix's adaptation of Season 1: Think they've kind of nailed the look of all of them, especially in the faces (like seriously Sokka's face shape is pretty much spot on). Still have my reservations about the Netflix adaptation, and obviously looking like the characters doesn't necessarily mean that they'll play their parts well, but I think it's off to a promising start, especially seeing that this is the first time the show will ever be adapted to live-action. Ahem. AvatarNews also shared that filming runs from 16th November 2021 through to 17th May 2022, with a potential release slated for December 2022. Now I think the bigger question marks hang around the other characters that will be in this first season adaptation. Characters like Iroh, Yue, Zhao, and Suki are all a given, but on the Fire Nation side of things, will they cast Ozai only to keep his face covered until we get to the third season like they did in the animated show, or will he have a more prominent role in the flashbacks / visions than we saw previously? Similarly, will they cast Azula for her one line at the end of the season and the flashback to Zuko's Agni Kai, will they not bother and keep her hidden and show her at the start of a potential second season, or could she also have a more prominent role? Either way, now we're starting to see castings, I'm definitely a bit more interested than before, maybe even more so simply because of the fact that we have Avatar Studios getting ready to pump some more Avatar into our lives too. Wonder if the Netflix adaptation hits in late 2022 if they'll play it smart and aim for the movie to release Q2 2023, potentially a month or two after the first season of the Netflix adaptation ends?

Another great episode this week. Roll on next week's episode!

Barcelona have said that Messi will leave the club. What. The. Heck. This comes hours after Marca reported it completely out of the blue. They've been trying to sort this out for a few months now, but what with La Liga pushing hard on the wage cap with little leniency over the last month, seems like Tebas has made an egregious mistake. There were rumours of him getting a five year contract which might have him play a few more years for Barça before going to America and being paid a lot in an ambassador role before potentially returning for a final game at Barça, but La Liga were against this too. Barça haven't been able to offload any of their overpaid first team players so far this window as planned, and even players like Aguero (who was joining to play with Messi, and it was seen as a move to smooth things over after the failures over Suarez and Neymar in recent years) and Depay haven't been able to officially sign on to the team due to the wage cap issue. And Messi's contract has been up since the end of the season, so he's also been waiting amidst protracted contract talks, but things looked up in recent weeks, especially after he won the Copa America. This was all expected to be smoothed over as part of CVC Capital offering $3.2 billion for a slice of the La Liga pie a few days ago, which would allow for wage cap restrictions to be eased somewhat, but bigger clubs like Real and Barça have been against it, as it's a short term outlook which may hinder the league's progress in years to come and provide more direct relief for smaller teams for now, with the bigger teams standing to lose the most immediately but everyone in for a potential loss in the long run. But this was just a poorly timed coincidence which wouldn't have in actuality had any impact on Messi staying. Because even with this it would have been impossible to sign Messi: he could have signed on a €0 per year contract and Barça STILL would have been in the red and needed to offload players. You've got Griezmann somehow on a reported €800,000 per week contract, De Jong on €375,000 per week...and so on. It's embarrassing how poorly one of the biggest clubs in the world has been run, and I want to say over the last 5 years because it had been worse under Bartomeu, but it goes back way further than that. It has been a commonly known fact that Barça have been in the red for a very long time, so much so that from first game experience, when I visited the Camp Nou in 2013 on a tour bus, the guide shared that the club was believed to already be more than €300 million in debt. They deserve the mess that they're in now, and there are even reports that after Messi agreed a 50% pay cut, the club may have even pushed for more. They knew full well they likely wouldn't be able to keep him, but leaving it this close to the start of the season is absurd. It's got to be PSG or Man City next for him, surely? Either partnering up with Neymar again as they've both dreamed of for a while (Messi providing passes to Neymar and Mbappé sounds disgusting) or we'll see City drop their efforts to pick up Kane, hanging him out to dry so we can finally see if Messi can do it on a cold, rainy Tuesday night in...well not Stoke, maybe Burnley? Do wonder if a move to PSG might make the path to Madrid for Mbappé an easier one, can't see why he'd want to leave this summer if Messi did hypothetically join, though. I could see him staying this year with a great chance at the Champions League if they do get Messi with a very stacked attack (but admittedly lean midfield) and then if he did leave for Madrid next summer, I could see PSG moving for Ronaldo (whose contract I also believe is up next summer, whose time has so far been seemingly wasted in Italy with Juve's poor transfer strategy and messy managerial situation, and let's be honest, he seems like a guy who would suit Paris) as a big name move -- I think this could be our best chance at seeing Messi and Ronaldo on the same team. Shame it's ended this way, but both Barça last year and now La Liga this year have brought this upon themselves -- if this wasn't coming from an official Barça statement, I'd think it was a move to pressure La Liga. How you can let the greatest player to grace your league just walk away like this - and on a free no less - is beyond me. Just over 4 years to the day since Neymar left for PSG, too.

Finished Book Four of Legend of Korra up yesterday. Yeah, it's definitely got quite a few issues (I think it might have some of the worst pacing of any Book in Avatar so far? Maybe alongside LoK Book Two?) and I think it's definitely a step down from Book Three, but the core narrative and the ideas are there for something special -- they just aren't fleshed out and fully realised, which unfortunately is a thread which runs through the entirety of the show. And while I really like the final scene, you know that Nickelodeon had a massive hand in how it played out. The framing of the final shot is set up to parallel the final shot of ATLA, but I can't help but feel the vision for how things played out was reined in a bit. It's a shame, I think Legend of Korra was just a year or two too early in some of its progressive aspects (alongside Adventure Time), whereas these days companies are tripping over themselves to include gender and racially diverse casts, unfortunately often just for the sake of PR and marketing. Zero doubt in my mind that Zuckerman is going to kill the soundtracks he works on fire Avatar Studios, even more so after returning to LoK. It's not that I thought it was weak before, I think it's just given me an even greater appreciation of his work.

Picked up where I left off last year with my Legend of Korra re-watch, starting Book Three earlier this week, and have just seen the end of it again. I think the show on the whole has a host of issues, and they're highlighted especially when compared with The Last Airbender, but it's villains really aren't one of them, and Zaheer is no exception. And man did they knock it out of the park with the last few episodes of Book Three, the setpieces and music are just as great as some in The Last Airbender, and I don't understand how you aren't meant to tear up when it all ends. I can't remember Book Four being quite as strong, so I'll have to wait and see if this is true when I finish that up again, but right now, towards the end of Book Three feels the closest that they got to recapturing some of the magic of The Last Airbender. There's not too much comedy, respect for the characters and their growth, great music, very good fight choreography (especially the fight Tenzin is involved in), and real stakes. It reminds me of the Star Wars prequels quite a bit to be honest. They've both got their own unique issues, but where I think both fell wasn't the aim of the story, but rather the execution of that story. Again, I don't think it quite hits the heights of The Last Airbender, but being unable to put down the last few episodes of Book Three has only given me further confidence that with the right backing, there's still some awesome stuff to come from Bryke and Avatar Studios. Speaking of which, there was some news about a month ago I forgot to post here. Just some really short snippets I thought were worth highlighting from the official podcast: Hard to not get excited at the possibilities! The multi-tiered plan sounds a little cinematic universe-esque, which I think we've rarely seen done well outside of Marvel, so I'm hoping it's more along the lines of Star Wars, where it doesn't do something where it leans heavily into the fact that things are related and just has connective tissue instead, like in Legend of Korra. Could definitely see the same threat covered across multiple books by different Avatars, or heck even an anthology type thing where each book handles different characters from different corners of the world and they all come together for a final season. Guess the big question is going to be how this all reaches those of us outside of the US, seeing as I haven't read anything yet about plans to make Paramount+ something available worldwide. And there's also some more good news from last week... ...Jeremy Zuckerman will unfortunately not be working on Netflix's live-action adaptation of The Last Airbender, but will be working with Avatar Studios! He's pretty much exactly what John Williams is for Star Wars but for Avatar, I've loved his work with the series so far (who hasn't?) and can't wait to hear what he's got cooking up! Lastly, with Avatar Studios' first project - their film - starting production towards the end of this year, I can't help but wonder if we'll get a title and maybe even see a poster before 2021 is up?

Another solid episode. A whole lot of fan service too, which I won't complain about A couple more to go, but it's been a fun watch so far. So long as they don't drop the ball now, I think it's safe to say it will have had the best opening season of any Lucasfilm Animation project to date across the board, and considering I don't think they really show off their great character writing and explorations until later seasons usually, we could be in for a real treat. Half expecting the final episode to have a post-credits 'Season 2 is coming in 2022' tease as we've seen in the final episodes of some other Disney+ shows so far.

Yeah, unfortunately I haven't caught as much as the Olympics as I would have like this year either. I've caught some of the highlights through BBC Sport's YouTube channel - the swimming, which we've been fantastic at; some of the football; and Tom Daley's gold in diving - but a combination of the time of the events and the fact that the BBC don't have full rights anymore in the UK (I think Discovery outbid them?) just makes it more hassle than it's worth for me to catch it live. Which is a shame, because I've loved the Olympics every time I've watched them growing up, and I think it's an excellent showcase not just of the amazing talent and commitment of people from all over the world, but also a great way to get people into more hobbies and trying new things out. For me when I was younger it was getting more into swimming and tennis, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear if others have had similar experiences. The Philippines landing a gold medal definitely gave me a sense of pride, though I wasn't surprised at all to hear about how Hidilyn had to put up with some idiotic politicians - as the country is unfortunately corrupt to its core right now and has been for a long while - but it's the determination of the human spirit on show which is what the Olympics is all about for me. I'm honestly gutted for the competitors, to be honest, because it feels like this only went ahead and wasn't delayed because of the IOC (I get FIFA vibes from them these days) - I seriously doubt that Japan wanted to go ahead with these games in the middle of an ongoing pandemic. We've seen with the Euro's just how much having crowds in attendance sends a lightning strike through the souls of competitive people and supercharges them after a year without crowds, and while I think the event highlights I've seen still shows them being professional and getting on with it at these Olympics - as you'd expect - it's just not quite the same.

shockedpikachu.jpg Think we all knew it was coming, but definitely makes the decision to show it off nearly two months ago a strange one. Yet another one though where I'd rather the company or studio involved (Sony/Guerrilla) share this with us than Schreier.

Honestly I feel like Q1 2022 becomes even more of a minefield if Elden Ring does get delayed, because it aiming for January gives it plenty of space to be delayed into the rest of the quarter if needs be (and I struggle to think of what could delay it out of the quarter, but this is game development we're talking about). At least it releasing one week ahead of Pokémon would keep the focus on those two games to only a handful of weeks. It might well get delayed, but then again, From Software kept quiet for so long for a reason, and I struggle to see why they of all studios would put a date out there if they didn't need to. They have nothing to prove critically or commercially with that game, and it's not an exclusive, so I don't think there's the same pressure on that game getting a release date as those who have deals with a big publisher (such as for this game). They could have easily played it safe and given the window of 'Early 2022' or gone the Breath of the Wild sequel route of just saying '2022', but either way, if it does get delayed, I don't think it's that big a deal. Guess we'll have to wait and see. I'm fully serious, the trailer at the top of the page is the same one from the PS5 reveal event last June, and that trailer was never updated. Linked the time from last June's event below: I've got a hunch that you might be referring to October because of the dates that were at the end of PlayStation's CES trailer in January, which were always either placeholder or internal target dates, but either way certainly weren't supposed to be shared with the public and were rightly taken down.

Funny thing is, as things are currently scheduled, Elden Ring probably isn't even going to be the biggest game of that quarter, as there's also Pokémon Legends: Arceus releasing just a week after that! It's a stacked start to 2022. For Stray, I think to be safe it just needs to either sneak in ahead of them before the middle of January, or wait until sometime after mid-February. I don't even think it's really in competition with either of those - especially depending on its price - but it'll definitely be borderline impossible to get eyes on your game if it's releasing in the same three week period as a From Software game and Game Freak's first real attempt at open world Pokémon. I'd want to say it's common sense to distance your games from bigger titles, but I mean, just look at how Square Enix sent Dragon Quest XI out to die in the West the same week that Spider-Man came out. As my grandmother always used to say, the funny thing about common sense is that it's not so common Game looks good though, I've got half an eye on it. Don't think I've played a game from Annapurna that I haven't enjoyed yet, so I have faith in them backing this one too. *watches trailer at top of page* Pretty sure it just said 2021 a delay either way though, which is never fun to see! Definitely got the sense it was coming though, just looking back at how quiet it's been since it was first announced.

So, after it somehow managed to sneak out on Monday completely under the radar for digital purchase over here in the UK, I can now finally say that I have watched Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train. Outside of spoilers, I just loved how you could see on the screen how much effort, money, and time had been poured into this. Something I thought the first season did well was manage its animation budget and smartly make use of 3D, but it was still very obvious when it was doing so. Here I can barely remember seeing it used outside of backgrounds, for the train, and certain fight animations / assets, and most if not all of the "normal" scenes where you might expect to see 3D animation step in to just help manage the budget was taken up by 2D work instead, and I loved it for it. After seeing this, I'm happy that I made the decision to go anime-only and just be patient. As much as I want to see the rest of it play out - and obviously the biggest concern I have is not having it spoiled choosing to wait on the anime - for me the fight animation quality from ufotable and the score from Go Shiina is so integral to my enjoyment of Demon Slayer that I am more than happy to wait, even at the risk of being spoiled before it all comes to an end. I think it was a big decision, and maybe an even bigger risk, for this movie to continue the story of the first season rather than do what every pretty much other giant franchise in the industry seems to do, which is make a hype-focused but totally inconsequential film in the context of the franchise that is either not canon at all or is in some weird pseudo-canon limbo. This film was rightly rewarded for taking this risk by becoming the highest-grossing anime movie to date worldwide and the biggest film in Japanese cinema too, and so long as the quality is sustained, I struggle to see why the next Demon Slayer movie couldn't outperform this one. I'm actually really curious now to see if the anime adaptation will end on a film. I'd have to imagine that's the plan, because unless there's a massive downturn in popularity before we reach that point, it would do bonkers numbers. Loved the film, it was well worth the wait! If for whatever reason you haven't checked out Demon Slayer, do yourself a favour and go watch Season 1 (it's available to stream as part of a subscription on Netflix, Funimation, and Crunchyroll) then check this film out. For me, I think it's head and shoulders above the other more typical modern shonen giant we have at the moment - sorry My Hero - and is well worth your time!

Free update dropping August 4th! New areas and more Pokémon, from the little I heard about the game following it's launch, I got the sense that's what people were looking for, so this could be cool! Haven't picked it up myself yet, but it does seem to have a summer game vibe to it...

The PS5 hit 10 million units sold on July 18th, per GamesIndustry.biz. It managed this feat a few weeks earlier than the PS4 did, which is pretty amazing considering the issues with supply at the moment. Their report also gives some sales figures for first-party titles, so well worth a read: Elsewhere, the M.2 SSD storage expansion update seems to be on the horizon now as it is coming as part of the next update for beta users. There's a full blog post on it here, but I'll throw the requirements in below: This news follows an article by Finder on Seagate confirming that the first SSD to be compatible with the PS5 from them will be the FireCuda 530, with prices and SSD sizes from NAS Compares being: • 500GB - US$140 • 1TB - US$240 • 2TB - US$490 • 4TB - US$950 Nice to finally see some news slipping out about this, hopefully it won't be too long before the update is rolled out for those waiting on it. For me, just considering there aren't many next-gen titles at the moment that I plan to keep on my PS5 long-term anyways and I'm fairly prudent with deleting games once I complete them, I think I'm happy just using my 2TB HDD for PS4 games for the foreseeable future.

While I always think it's best to let a game cook as long as necessary and not rush it out - and in Kena's case it is Ember Labs' first game, so I'd probably be a bit more understanding in this instance than if it were another more experienced team - I think any delay just some four weeks out is good reason for a bit of justified concern, especially considering it was supposed to come out earlier this year initially, so this is the second time we've seen such a letter from them. Obviously it's been impacted by COVID, as countless other games have, but even at the time the game was first announced we were in the thick of it, so it was always going to be the case that it would be a factor. Again, it's their first game so I think it's a bit easier to understand them not quite getting things right in terms of their development timeline, especially with everything going on, but I can't help but wonder why a game like this has been delayed twice publicly now, when other indie games shown for the first time at the same event don't even have a release window yet. Maybe they were just riding the high of the reactions and wanted to capitalise on that, but for me, I always think it's best to be vague until you're more than confident of hitting a date. Guess we'll have to wait and see, but I think it'll be a bit of a red flag for nothing more than their management if we see it delayed again. Horizon is such a weird one, because considering the size of the team and the project, it's funny that we've never had anything more than a vague "we're aiming for Holiday 2021" from them, and heck, we first heard about them aiming for this year in a post-State of Play interview with the director. As far as I can recall, they've never put that release window as a screen in their trailers or State of Play either, so that potential delay letter is going to be a bit weird for some who haven't been following the game - "wait, this was supposed to be coming out this year?!" Honestly, I respect them for being open like that since the start and making the conscious decision to not stick a release window in when first announcing the game, especially given the size of the event (ahem, God of War). Everyone knows what's going on in the world, not to mention that game development already has more than enough hurdles to overcome before you account for COVID. And let's be honest, there's potentially some goodwill from the higher-ups, because having a success under your belt is always huge, and to be frank, it probably doesn't hurt that their former managing director is now the head of Worldwide Studios either. Not a delay I want to see but I do agree that a delay for Forbidden West does seem inevitable, so I'm curious to see what, if anything, they'd have up their sleeves to replace it in their slate, though it's probably just leaning on third parties in the holiday season. I think that's where the big difference for me is between PlayStation and Nintendo for example, I can always expect Nintendo to make good if a game gets delayed as something else might be announced as a surprise and take up its place or something could get bumped up, whereas PlayStation - especially since the launch of the PS5 and probably due to COVID - seem to have played most of their cards already. Either way, not like I still haven't got plenty of other games to play, so it's always hard to complain!

Delayed until September 21st. Makes sense that we didn't see anything from it during the most recent State of Play with that in mind, as I thought it was a lock for that presentation considering it was due for release at the end of next month before. Still looking forward to it, but I do hope this is the last delay we see for it, otherwise I think we'll have a good reason to start sweating. Fingers crossed!

A nearly half hour interview from IGN with Gabe Newell on the Steam Deck, well worth a watch:

Started watching the first one and thought it looked really nice - the music does sound lovely - and then that font came in. Really hope they change it for if/when this comes to consoles, because like with the Dragon Quest I - III versions on Switch, I just find it really distracting how the font isn't suitable for these games and takes up such little screen space.

I don't think I'll ever bring myself to play it, but Alex Moukala's coverage of Genshin Impact has put it's OST firmly back on my radar. Azhdaha's Battle Theme, which he covers in the first video, is S-tier. The entire introduction in first phase is this menacing build-up and the second phase - that freaking erhu followed by the electric guitar! - is absolutely awesome. Time to give down the rabbit hole and see what the rest of Yu-Peng Chen's work on the game is like!

I was talking about the release specifically but you're right that there's going to be stuff beyond that like signing-on fees, add-ons, agent fees, and his weekly salary to add on top of that. Raiola's a twit but he's great at his job and getting his players what they want. Still, compared to some of the other fees we've seen, unless Haaland gets seriously injured or ends up massively underperforming this season, he'd be worth every penny. Still think it'd be in Madrid's best interest to make sure they've got the rest of the team up to par for that too, though. Honestly, it's probably in Mbappé's best interests to hold out until he can leave on a free and potentially become the highest paid footballer in the world if/when he goes to Madrid next summer, thanks to the amount they'd be saving on his transfer fee (probably some €150 million right now with a year left on his contract). It's funny because until the last five years or so, outside of outliers like Lewandowski's move to Bayern, I didn't feel like you really saw many players, agents, or teams planning around and winding down contracts to get the best deals for all involved and making full use of the Bosman rule. Now it seems like it's being considered for a lot of moves and as a result you get players on contracts that they were never going to be worthy of (such as Aaron Ramsey at Juve).

It's been kicking around the last few weeks (and let's be honest, it's been a rumoured transfer since before he even went to Madrid), but Varane is finally going to United for the massive sum of...£34 million (rising to £42 million with add-ons). They've just got one of the best defenders of the last decade on the cheap, and he's only 28. I know there was word about him pushing for a move and wanting to experience the Premier League, especially after Zidane and then Ramos left, but that's an insanely good piece of business. Finally a United signing I'm genuinely envious and frightened of. Florentino Perez is an idiot (is this any surprise?). Letting Ramos go on a free and disrespecting him as he has other Real legends in the past (Casillas, Navas, et al), clearly not putting up any real fight to keep Varane (who, fair play to him, wanted as clean a break as possible), replacing Ramos with Alaba who isn't the same defender he once was, not really supporting Zidane who somehow got the performances out of a second string team to take them to competing for La Liga until the last day of the season and the semi-finals of the Champions League. This isn't even mentioning the mess of the last 5 years, such as keeping Bale and letting Ronaldo go. I'm getting serious 2007/08 vibes from Madrid now. Perez is hell-bent on getting Mbappé on a free next year (if not this year, though I don't see PSG allowing that) - and potentially Haaland too, who will then be available at €75 million if I'm remembering right thanks to his release clause - and seems happy to effectively nuke the squad for this coming season to free up the money to do so. Expect Madrid to go on a spending spree that'll make your nose bleed next summer in yet another Galacticos overhaul a la 2009, because the defence will need strengthening, their attack needs quality bench options, and their midfield, while still in control and very experienced, needs to slowly see some more new faces introduced beyond Valverde and a potential Odegaard return.

So I finished Great Pretender the other day, and I've kind of been sitting on my thoughts with it. I think the first two thirds of this show, the first three cases, are pretty electric. It's high energy, doesn't take itself too seriously, has excellent animation (it's Wit with Netflix's backing, so no surprise there), an awesome jazzy musical backdrop to the heist hijinks, and a ridiculously colourful artstyle, which it balances with some fun and interesting - if archetypal - characters. Also does one of my favourite things in globetrotting adventures WHERE PEOPLE ACTUALLY SPEAK THEIR NATIVE TONGUE IN THEIR COUNTRY and subtitles are thrown in, even for the English dub (which was actually really good). Imagine Lupin III meets Baccano, that's probably the most relatable way to convey its energy and vibe. Unfortunately, the final case - the final third of the show - just kind of threw it all out of the window. It was over-the-top in the worst ways, character development kind of got kicked to the curb, and it just felt like it spent too long hanging up on some moments and going out of its way to explain things. The last episode was genuinely infuriating in very predictable ways. It was almost as if they realised at the start of the last case that maybe there could be a second season, and so all consequence they'd been building up to with the final case just didn't come to pass. Such a shame. It started off for a large part being nearly flawless, but as the last case dragged on there was a chink in that armour, and then all of a sudden in the final episode it slipped further yet. On the whole I think it's a great show, but that speaks to the strength of the first three cases and not the poor pacing and annoyingly predictable final case. They just didn't stick the landing, which sucks, because this really could have been something special. One of only a few ED's I would consider unskippable, though. Seriously, who the heck is going to skip Freddie Mercury's voice covering a Platters song used for an anime ED? It's almost cheating!