The Start of the Spooky Season

Welcome to “Siliconera Speaks Up,” our new newsletter for the site! This’ll be a summary of the past week’s anime or gaming news, as well as a little reminder of things to come. Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Top 10 Stories From the Past Week

1. Singer-Songwriter Sayuri Dead at Age 28

2. Kingdom Hearts Wedding Rings Bear the Series’ Iconography

3. G-Cores Industries Releases Elden Ring Apparel

4. Review: Shashingo: Learn Japanese With Photography Is More Fun Than Flashcards

5. Stellar Blade Update Involves Summer Event, Favorite Equipment

6. Kotobukiya Shows Off New and Returning Armored Core Kits

7. It’s Time for World of Warcraft to Come to Xbox and Game Pass

8. Like a Dragon: Yakuza Key Visual Shows Actor for Majima

9. Monster Hunter Puma Shoes and Apparel Appear in Japan

10. Persona 5 Royal AirAsia Plane Full Reveal Lands Next Month

Notable Mentions

1. Dynasty Warriors Origins Playable Companion Characters Shown

2. Inazuma Eleven Remake Announced for 2026

3. New California Law Will Force Digital Storefronts to Admit You’re Licensing, Not Owning, Content

4. Pokemon Pikachu Headset With Ears Designed for Switch

5. LOZ: Tears of the Kingdom Won Japan Game Awards 2024

Speak Up Sesh

Is it just me, or did the week pass by unbelievably fast? I can’t believe it’s already Friday! I hope the week was nice and spooktacular for everyone as we enter the Halloween season.

Next week will be the first in a deluge of widely-discussed games: Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, Silent Hill 2, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. The demo for Metaphor came out too, letting people experience what the game is like. Have you played it? If you’re on the PC, then this fix can really help with performance issues. I’m not really sure how or why it does, but hey, as long as it works, right? Hopefully Atlus will release a patch of some kind to help with the graphical issues after the official release.

It’s actually October 3 as I write this so I’d like to take this opportunity to bring up Fullmetal Alchemist. For starters, it’s fascinating that the English fandom has really latched onto this date, since the Japanese fandom seems to only view it as the anniversary of the original anime. For reference, that aired on October 4, 2003 and ran for, impressively, almost exactly a year. Unfortunately, Brotherhood did not choose Fullmetal Alchemist Day to start. For those who don’t know, October 3 is an important day not only in the Mean Girls fandom, but also in the Fullmetal Alchemist fandom, as the date of October 3, 1911 was engraved into protagonist Edward’s pocket watch as the date he and his brother Alphonse committed the sin of human transmutation. It was a pretty emotional moment in the series, and the popularity of both the manga and the anime (both adaptations) likely led to the rise of celebrating fans.

What is there to say about Fullmetal Alchemist that hasn’t already been said since the series started so many years ago? It’s an amazing story, with fantastic characters and themes, and a very neat and satisfying ending. That’s really more than a lot of series can say these days, for any number of reasons. I believe it’s such an easy series to get into even if you’re not into anime that you can show it to, say, a non-weeb parent or a normie and they can still enjoy it.

In more newsletter news, we’ve decided to try implementing some interactive elements like polls or surveys. We’d love to hear from you! Keep in mind that this is still rather experimental, though. For the first week, it’s nice to keep things rather simple, so let’s start with an easy interest check into which upcoming game our readers are most interested in!

Until next time!

Upcoming Releases

• Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC) - October 8

• Silent Hill 2 (PS5, PC) - October 8

• Metaphor: ReFantazio (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, PC) - October 11

• Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero (PS5, Xbox Series X, PC) - October 11

• Neva (PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch, PC) - October 15

• Super Mario Party Jamboree (Switch) - October 17

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Switch, PC) - October 18