Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections – Character Wishlist

It’s been a while since I did a wishlist for a game but with the new trailer and website promotions for the next Ultimate Ninja Storm game out I figured it only made sense to make another wishlist for it considering I made one for the last two Storm games.

Now it’s important to note that this is going to be like Generations and Revolution rather than the numbered games. Why is this relevant to a wishlist? Well in those games while they did tend to add characters from the newer arcs they also caught up on a bunch of characters the previous games didn’t bother making fully playable. So it only makes sense to start this wishlist with…

The Kage (Boruto era)

I’ve wanted these characters to be playable back when they were the bodyguards for the previous kage. Darui is already playable so he can just get given a costume but Kurotsuchi and Chojuro are long overdue a playable appearance in this series. It’d be nice for them to have costume slots for their Shippuden designs too. Since Generations and Revolution both added a bunch of kage I think these might be a safe guess this time around.

The Seven Swordsmen of the Mist

Another set of characters that were in my previous wishlists. They really should have been playable back in Storm 3 but I can understand putting more resources into having all the Jinchuriki. But now that they’re promoting the choice to make characters from the distant past playable with Ashura and Indra completing this set would make a lot of sense. They could even give Fuguki Samehada to effectively represent what he was like while he was alive.

Ino-Shika-Cho (Boruto)

I don’t know if we’ll get all of Boruto’s classmates in this game or even all of the children of the Konoha 11 but at the very least these three should be playable. And on a similar note…

Ino-Shika-Cho (Original)

It’d be great to have three generations of Ino-Shika-Cho in this game. Plus the game is called Connections, they fit the name pretty well.

Karui and Omoi

I don’t expect them but they’ve been in both my previous wishlists and it would be nice to play as Karui, Choji and Chocho as a team. If we only get one of these two I’d say Karui is the most relevant being Chocho’s mother but Omoi is the one we’ve seen more from in combat.

Young Madara and Hashirama

Another repeat entry. I think they could fit in with whatever their plan for Ashura and Indra is.

Baryon Mode Naruto

They always add a new version of Naruto and I think it should be this form.

Kawaki and a new Boruto

As the new protagonist I suspect moving forwards Boruto will the the one getting new character slots to represent his progress, he already has three of them. Kawaki also feels like the most important Boruto character to include in preparation for a potential Storm 5.

Zetsu

Still the only Akatsuki member that isn’t playable.

Boruto antagonists

I’ll admit I’ve not been following the Boruto series properly so I don’t really know which characters should be higher priorities than others but at least some of the antagonists should be present.

Bring Back Lars

I know he was a guest character but Bandai Namco publish these games, there shouldn’t be an issue getting the rights to use him again. Plus it would allow Tekken 8 to bring back this costume and maybe even add a Naruto character as a guest.

A character made for this game

Storm Revolution introduced Mecha-Naruto, a character who did reappear in anime filler eventually but was made for this game series. We know there will be an original story featuring Boruto so it would be neat if that story featured an original antagonist.

Hagoromo Otsutsuki

His sons are going to be playable and while it might be nice to see his brother Hamura too if we only get one of these two brothers it has to be the sage of six paths.

Hiashi and Hizashi Hyuga

With Boruto as the protagonist now it would be nice to have his grandfather and great uncle. They’d probably play similarly enough that they could make one a clone of the other but if they only add one then it should be Hiashi since he’s still alive.

Himawari Uzumaki

She’s not really had much combat experience but the Storm games have managed to incorporate other traits of a character into full movesets before and I think they could make Himawari a fun character. I’d say there’s certainly more to work with than Hanabi had when they added her.

Shion

I want the non-canon movies to be represented in the Storm games. There are some Road to Ninja costumes (which I hope get brought back, for some reason they got left out of Storm 4) but it would be neat to have some characters from these movies. Plus looking forward at a potential Storm 5 if they don’t have enough Boruto content for a full game they could throw in all the movies. If they only add one movie ally I think Shion makes the most sense as she’s one of the more popular movie characters.

Menma

And for movie villains the obvious choice has to be Menma, the evil version of Naruto. He’s been on my wishlist before and I guess if they wanted they could just copy Naruto’s moveset and recolour his attacks.

Upgrade the rest of the support only characters

And let’s end this list with a call back to the way it started. Storm 4 got rid of support only characters as it changed the way support characters worked but that left a bunch of characters that never got upgraded. I already talked about Kurotsuchi and Chojuro at the start of this list but while I think they’re the support only characters with the best chance of getting upgraded I’d love to see all of them get upgraded. If it can’t be all of them then outside of the two kage Kurenai, Shizune and Anko are the characters that deserve upgrades the most.

And that’s the end of the list. Maybe after we hear more about the game I could do a costume wishlist, the Storm games do tend to add a decent amount of costumes.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – Review

First 2023 film I’ve seen this year. When this came out it sparked one of those discussions about Rotten Tomatoes ratings where people who liked it weren’t happy with the critic score and started praising the easily review bombed audience score (which is really just a Rotten Tomatoes members score). My stance is that considering the way their scores work a score close to 50% shouldn’t be considered a low score, it just means there’s more variety between positive and negative opinions. They shouldn’t give it the label Rotten though, that doesn’t exactly help avoid these arguments.

As for my opinion of the movie itself I thought it was pretty good, I liked it the most out of the three Ant-Man movies. Seeing this character who was introduced in a heist movie who has mainly played a supportive role in Avengers fights going up against a threat on a similar level to Thanos without the rest of the team is a fun setup and a great way of hyping up Kang for his role in future movies for those who might not have watched Loki. I should note sadly Luis isn’t in this but it’s at least understandable given how quickly the cast are brought into the quantum realm.

Something I’ve been looking forward to eventually seeing with the Ant-Man movies even before the MCU started frequently introducing different Young Avengers characters was seeing Cassie Lang become Stinger (or her original identity of Stature but Stinger fits the insect theme better). Since Ant-Man and the Wasp Cassie has been recast twice and while it would have been nice to see Abby Ryder Fortson or Emma Fuhrmann suit up as Stinger I think Kathryn Newton does a great job.

And of course the big highlight of the film, even for people who didn’t like it, is Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror. A character setup at the end of Loki who we know will be the focus on an upcoming Avengers movie. Majors does a great job making each version of this character we’ve met so far intimidating in a different way. It’s also clear to me why this movie isn’t for everyone, Kang talks about a lot of comic lore that will make people who know what he’s talking about excited for the future Kang appearances but without that these are just a bunch of words that will only mean something in hindsight looking back. There’s also another villain of note but for him I’d like to bring up an image I’ve been working on.

I’ve been taking note of times the MCU has a character that’s based on multiple characters rather than just one, a great example would be how Ms. Marvel’s powers in her show as based on the X-Men character Armor (which is why I’m fine with her being a Mutant in this universe, she’s partially based on one). This image most likely is missing some examples and I’ll admit Taskmaster is probably a bit of a stretch but this has been a topic I’ll often think about while watching a new Marvel show or movie. Anyway the reason I’m bringing it up in this review is M.O.D.O.K. is one of these characters and he’s pretty much exactly what I an MCU version of M.O.D.O.K. should be like, certainly a better take on the character than the Avengers game. Anyway on to the image I normally put at the end of an MCU review.

If you’re a fan of the MCU in general you probably already saw this before I wrote this. If you’re only interested in specific parts of the universe this will be worth watching for the upcoming Avengers storyline and season 2 of Loki but if you’re not that fussed about Ant-Man you can wait for the Disney+ release.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish – Review

As an animation fan my Twitter feed has had a lot of tweets from Americans talking about this movie and how great it is, which certainly increased my hype for seeing it but also made avoiding spoilers tricky because it took a couple more months for it to come out over here.

This is really good, easily one of last year’s best movies (which makes having to wait until this year to see it more annoying). Even with all the praise I’d been seeing for it and the great quality of the animation in the trailers and clips I was not prepared for just how good this would end up being. This is the best Puss has been in the entire Shrek franchise, he’s always been a fan favourite but here in a solo movie at the most recent point in the timeline he’s actually able to grow as a character.

Another part of what makes this film great is it’s antagonists, there’s three different types of enemies Puss has to deal with on his quest who are each entertaining is their own ways. You have the more sympathetic antagonist in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a hilariously evil irredeemable villain in Jack Horner and of course the wolf. If you haven’t heard what the wolf’s role in the story is yet just know that his role in the story is a big part of what makes it so great and out of the three antagonists he’s the one whose fights are the most exciting to watch.

The other major part of the film that I want to highlight is the first thing that stood out about the trailers; the art direction and animation. You can see the ways this film was influenced by Into the Spider-Verse and this new visual style really captures the charm of the fairy tales these characters come from, this feels like storybook illustrations brought to life. The Shrek movies were fun parodies of fairy tales and while some of that humour is still in this you can also see a lot more love for those stories this time around. And since I brought up the Shrek movies it’s time for the first ranking image of the year…

I think this image highlights just how surprised I was by how good this was, I was sure I would like it going in but I did not expect I’d end up liking it more than the first two Shrek movies. Before this movie I wasn’t sure what to think of the possibility of a return of the Shrek franchise sparked by all the memes but now I can see the potential.