Favorite YouTube Channels

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Ben: "Ninja Gaiden Black is still a 10 out of 10 game."

And that's why he's my favorite.

[Daikun]

Here's one I really like: Company Man.

He talks about various corporations and their current state in the world. How are they doing financially? Are they doing well today or failing? If it's the latter, what caused their downfall?

He does a pretty job of educating about business without coming off like a dry, pretentious news anchor.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, so, I do like a a lot of SEW's content, but his latest video on what makes a hero feel real was pretty badly written and, as I've noticed in quite a few of his videos, was poorly researched. You can tell that his criticism of traditional comic book superheroes comes from the perspective of someone who's exposure to Western superheroes is 90% from the current string of movies coming out, 9% from some of the animated series, and maybe only 1% from actual comic books. The fact that Watchmen is the only example that he could name of a comic book that explored the nature of heroes and their flaws in-depth is a pretty clear giveaway of how largely clueless he is about the genre at large; and I'm saying this as someone who has barely dabbled in the vastness of the genre myself, but know enough to understand that there's much greater nuance to these characters as they have evolved over the course of dozens upon dozens of writers over the course of several decades. Like, for all of his criticism of Superman I have to wonder if he's ever even touched any of the more in-depth stories about exploring the layers of his character like For The Man Who Has Everything, or Red Son, or All-Star Superman. I also wonder if he's ever read anything else by Alan Moore besides Watchmen, or anything by Neil Gaiman or Grant Morrison or Mark Waid, or if he's only using a comic like Watchmen as a positive example because that's literally all that he really knows about.

Another thing that baffled me was his severe lack of understanding of Goku as a character by ranking him as powerful and virtuous within the context of Dragonball....coming from someone who claims that the Cell arc was his favorite from the franchise, in which Goku's selfish decisions put others in danger and the actual characters themselves criticize his lack of morality for that very reason. I assumed that he actually read all of the manga based on a previous video of his, but he either is only familiar with the dub of DBZ or conveniently shifted Goku's actual characteristics into an alignment that better suited the example that he wanted to make of him for the sake of his argument.

As before, I don't have a problem with SEW's opinions here in and if themselves, even if I mostly disagree with him in this case. I'm just seriously bothered by his lack of research and understanding of the material which he is presenting. Like, he referenced Joseph Campbell's book on The Hero's Journey, yet I seriously doubt he ever actually understands its full content or ever actually even read it beyond looking up a summary of its content on Wikipedia.

What annoys me the most, though, are his blind followers who will buy into any of his opinions as objective facts. I do at least like how one commentor called him out on his BS about classic Greek heroes being portrayed as flawless individuals. I only ever took one class on Greek and Roman Epics and literally the first thing we learned in it was the classical definition of the hero character and how having an intrinsic (and many times tragic) flaw was one of the key characteristics among all of them.

[Dr. Insomniac]

"So if Superman lived on a planet of Supermen, he would no longer be considered powerful in the context of that story."
But he does live on a planet of heroes as strong as him, it just that he stands out because of how he uses that power compared to others like him. And I'm not sure about his chart, suggesting that Batman is less virtuous than Kirito, or that Shinji is more relatable than Saitama.

[Foggle]

Shinji from Evangelion? He's actually pretty relatable IMO, but obviously that's subjective. Kirito, on the other hand, isn't virtuous at all; self-righteous is probably the right word. He only ever does things that benefit others if it directly impacts him in a positive way. Batman has been characterized poorly by many different writers but at his core he's supposed to care about people to the point of acting as a father figure for other orphans, giving criminals a chance for rehabilitation instead of killing them, and donating all the money he makes from his business (that he doesn't spend on crime-fighting stuff) to the poor. You can't even say that Kirito is nicer than him because they both act like assholes and push their friends away half the time. Also Adam West Batman is perhaps the friendliest superhero ever.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Eyepatch Wolf apologized for the video.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, glad to see that he at least acknowledges it's faults. There are some real smug YouTubers out there who could learn a thing or two from his humility.

[Daikun]

GameHut - A channel started by a professional game designer who's been in the industry for nearly 30 years. He shows off coding secrets when his company worked on Genesis/Saturn and PS2 games, and he also shows off prototypes and artwork from his cancelled projects.

[Daikun]

Every Frame a Painting has ended.

[Rynnec]

I've recently discovered Studio Chojin. It's an anime channel that mostly deals with old-school anime, be it older or newer installments, kind of like Bennet the Sage if Bennet actually had taste and knew what the fuck he was talking about. His channel doesn't have much videos yet, but the videos he does have have an incredibly cool presentation to them, and he really knows his stuff. He has an undeniable passion for the things he reviews and articulates his points really well, his two-part Ninja Scroll series, for instance, gave me a newfound appreciation for the classic that I had initially viewed as a fun, but ultimately shallow film. Even the things I disagree with him on like his Attack On Titan video he still makes some pretty good and interesting points without coming off as an obnoxious douche about it. He also manages to get his points across without rambling on for too long, with his longest non-rebuttal video's clocking at roughly 20 minutes. Easily a channel worth looking into.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just watched his Grave of the Fireflies video which is dedicated to criticizing and debunking Sage's review on it, and I watched his Street Fighter II review which dedicated a significant portion to once again bashing Sage.

Sage is one of the most obnoxious, misinformed, and outright irritating Internet personalities that I've ever been exposed to. That alone makes Chojin a winner in my book.

[Daikun]

Failures in Speedrunning - Exactly what you think it means. Hilarious clips of streamers trying to speedrun video games on Twitch.

[Mustang]

Mdesilva - Another Guilty Gear channel that showcases high level tournament play or long exihibition type matches or just a character player spotlight (character specialist)

CherryBerryMango - Tekken 7 Jin player. Well, I think he plays most of the roster, but I mainly see him play the Mishima's and characters that are considered highly technical (Hwoarang, Steve, etc), but his Jin is a treat to watch.

MadDogJin - Another Tekken 7 player that I recently found out about that mainly plays Hwoarang. Anyone that plays a character that I main and they mainly stream that character I'm there. Too bad I cannot find a high level Steve player. I know of Bohee but he don't have a Youtube channel.

Knee (TekkenKnee) - A legend that showcases majority of the cast. Not only is he playing high level players but there are times where he trolls and have fun, but I mainly go to CBM and MDJ since they use my characters the most.

Maximilian - I know I've said that I don't care for him or a lot of his videos, because he comes off like a fraud, but I do respect his passion for fighting games and he's earned his spot back as a favorite. I'd actually like to throw down against the guy some day, but he's mostly a PC player these days.

Sajam - When it comes to analyzing fighting games he's pretty much the only guy to go to now and he breaks it down to where beginners can understand it as well. It also helps that he's not bias to Capcom games. So far I've seen him break down GG, IJ2, T7 and SF5.

UltrachenTV although I've been down on them lately because they tend to not update their YT channel for weeks to months and everything they talk about these days I can get up to date by either going to Eventhubs or Sajam. Only reason I stick with them these days is because they have a podcast that last a couple hours.

Speaking of podcasts, anyone know of any videogame podcasts worth looking into? I still listen to Easy Allies and I'm aware of Beyond Gaming, but other than that I don't know anyone else, especially lasting longer than an hour (try to kill time at work listening to podcasts). I'm also interested in wrestling, nba, nfl, and trying to get into comics incase people want to throw out some other stuff for podcasts.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Seeing Mother's Basement and YMS defend that WatchPeopleDie subreddit is confusing. YMS mentions how it's actually saved lives and taught people the value in their own life, and I'm like "Dude, it's modern day snuff films." It's not a life-affirming subreddit, it's just something for edgy gorehounds. Where a guy dies, it's recorded on video, and against their loved one's wishes, their death is being shared on a popular website. I don't see how it's wrong to think Reddit would dislike being associated with that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Kind of ironic that just a few weeks ago MB released a video admonishing the horrible things that other creators have supported or even done themselves. As for Adam....I'm already pretty used to him being somewhat of a nut-case.

On the subject of reviewers, though, I really can't stand the level of snobbery among most anime reviewers on YouTube these days. It's a trend I tend to notice of channels which start out small and in which their authors are pretty humble and level-headed, but after growing in popularity rapidly end up developing massive egos and an incredibly off-putting superiority complex.

Even more than that, though, I just hate the whole emphasis on intellectual-dick-measuring that plagues a lot of communities on the Internet these days. People seem to be more concerned with seeming intelligent over being decent people and having friendly debates with others over any disagreements they may have.

You should see some of the nasty comments that James Gunn got for his tweet defending superhero movies from Jodie Foster's slam against them, in which he was clearly being respectful of her opinion, but there were loads of commenters immediately scorning him for even daring to defend spectacle film as possessing any sort of inherent value. Some comments were so vile it actually made me wonder if the people posting them were even thinking of the things that they were saying or implying.