World End Economica is a 3-part visual novel available on Steam.

Episode 1

The story takes place a few decades in the future on the 25-year old Lunar City, the first and so far only city on the moon. Old enough that our teenage hero Hal was born there and has lived all his life. Lunar City is a place with very light government and no financial laws so that buying, selling, investing stocks is what people do to get rich and that's what Hal does.

Becoming an investment wizard is Hal's obsession but to win an elite contest he has to team up with Hagana, teen mathematician who was brought to the Moon to be a slave but escaped and kind of hates all men. They combine her mathematical skills and Hal's knowledge to create a program (well don't do the coding themselves) that can analyze and predict the stock market, at least well enough to give Hal and edge. As success looms the two get closer but Hal is planning on leaving after the contest and he's not really considering taking Hagana with him...

Episode 2

After the disaster of four years ago a crippled Hal is recruited by Eleanor, a minor nobility on Earth who owns an investment fund in Lunar City and wants Hal to join her team. But she has a secret dream to take down Avalon, the hot new energy company whose rapid rise included cause her family's business to go bankrupt and be bought out by Avalon...

Episode 3

After the Avalon business Hal has been hailed as the Hero of the Lunar Surface and still works for Eleanor, who moved back to Earth. The hot new financial product is ABS which is investing in loans and more specifically mostly home loans. Since there is little land in Lunar City and a growing population home prices have always gone up rapidly so people are willing to take out ruinous loans to buy a home since they can sell it for more later. It makes ABS a mathematically can't miss investment which Hal thinks is too good to be true...


Each episode is about 10 hours and feels like a novella-sized story. The main plot elements are all financial and what I like is that they go over financial concepts throughout. Episode 1 focuses on the stock market and investing in company stocks. I forgot what Episode 2 focused on -- maybe the peril when a company owns both the product (electricity generation) and the market platform (a system where buyers bid for electricity). Episode 3 is about how you can create these synthetic financial products and there's a similarity to housing market bubbles and crashes.

Other than the financial aspects the story is not that great. It's mostly dialog so it moves slowly. In 10 hours I can read a 288-page BattleTech paperback. Here it feels more like a novella (60-90 pages) so three episodes may be 200 pages total. It does have a lot of static art though for the most part you could have only a few pieces of art and do almost as well. There is also background music is actually fairly varied and not bad. From the main menu you can go to the songs and play the music tracks by themselves, electronica and synth.

The novel is $35 on Steam. I got it on Humble Bundle as part of an $18 Sekai Project bundle. Although ultimately an interesting story it wasn't really engrossing so only worth buying as part of a bundle. Not only that, even it were free is it worth spending 30 hours reading this and it's probably yes but barely. Maybe part of the problem is that other than Hal none of the other characters are detailed at all (and even Hal not really all that much as he's not introspective), so it's hard to care for one outcome or the other in each episode.

Arrival (2016) [/] I think this is my third watching Arrival. And even after listening to Ty & That Guy's episode doing a deep dive the movie is still a little confusing. I read a bit more of the Wikipedia entry and I guess if you come in knowing that the "flashbacks" are actually "flashforwards" it should make more sense but it is something I keep forgetting until right at the end of the movie. Anyway, I think when I first watched Arrival it was a [+] but repeated watchings doesn't make it better.

Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table OVA (2026) [-] On Netflix this is a new 90-minute "12th" episode. In game 44 Yuki (Suzie Yeung) and other players are put on a deserted island with an unknown objective though it quickly becomes apparent that one player is a killer committing one murder a night... The art for this one is often done like watercolors which makes it a bit surreal. I was confused about some characters as Yuki has met them before (and they also talk about old characters). As I think about it the series is rather confusing as many things are not told to viewers directly. Reading the Wikipedia episode summaries helps a lot. Anyway, watching this OVA a few months after the series I found it fairly confusing.

Furistas Cat Cafe+ (2024) [/] Just what it says: you run a cat cafe. Aquire cats with different personalities. When customers come in try to assign the appropriate cat to them. Customers might also buy treats and toys. Purchase furniture, cat stuff, and decorative items and place them in your cafe to make a pleasing environment. It's a fairly relaxed game with no apparent challenge.

Whole Foods Fruit Tart [/] 9-inch Tart for $30. I haven't had it for at least a couple of years and maybe because of that it's not quite as delicious as I remember. I loved the vanilla pudding base and the really hard pie crust. The fruit part still seems the same but the bottom a little less good -- the crust is still thick but not as solid as I remember. Still good but no longer the sole reason I'd go to Whole Foods (I also wanted dried split peas but apparently they don't sell that anymore).

Sold Out on You is a South Korean comedic romance series running 12 hour-long episodes.

Dam Ye-jin (Chae Woo-bin) is the star host at a home shopping television network. To secure a lucrative luxury cosmetics contract with L'Étoile she has to convince irascible cosmetics supplier Matthew Lee (Ahn Hyo-seop) to sell his special white mushrooms to L'Étoile. And to do that she's willing to become friends with everyone in Lee's village so that they'll help her convince him. Although at first Matthew sees Ye-jin as a rude, mercenary type he comes to see her kindness and generosity which opens the door to attraction...

Complications:

Eric Seo (Kim Bum, supporting role in Tale of the Nine Tailed, 2020), Executive Director of L'Étoile is really using this opportunity to get closer to Ye-jin because they met once before and he immediately fell in love with her. But she stood him up because of an emergency which cratered her career for a few years occurred.

Song Myeong-hwa (Woo Hee-jin, who played the mom/mom-type of the female lead in Doom at Your Service, 2021, and My Demon, 2023) is a famous actress who had to retire after she and Ye-jin did a shopping show that sold what turned out to be dangerously defective cosmetics. She's also Ye-jin's mom but it's a secret kept from the rest of the world and Myeong-hwa treats her daughter rather coldly, causing Ye-jin a lot of stress.

It's a nice and typical romantic series with light drama. Not deep but I was engrossed and powered through it watching the last four episodes one night instead of sleeping.