Beta-Waffle

Negima Second Period (PS2)

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

This, as you may have guessed from the title, is the second of Konamis PS2 Negima games. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about it - its essentially the same game as their first effort with a few upgrades. The games story isn't directly related to any of the mangas storylines - it does borrow some of the Konoka/Setsuna development from the Kyoto arc (not to mention the female villian making a very brief appearance), and Negi has started his training with Kuu Fei, but the crux of the story centers around the schools forthcoming Sports Festival and another challenge from the dodgeball lot from early on in the manga. So, rather than preparing your students for the forthcoming tests like in the first title, you are trying to prepare your students to kick arse on the track. Whilst this is going on, a throw back to the Nodoka plot in the first game which I hadn't figured was interesting enough to talk about, an evil version of Negi is troubling the dreams of the students on 3-A with his army of dream-residing goth-lolis! The homeroom sections, as I've mentioned, have been moved to the sports grounds rather than the classroom. Regardless, they work the same was as they did in the previous game - you select your target characters and training methods then let rip. The difference is that they've made things a touch more interesting visually - looking at a classroom of students reading books was never the most interesting thing in the world. Here you can watch students doing one of five different activities from a selection of different angles. The animation isn't the greatest in the world for the most part, but its passable enough as far as anime games go. The school wandering sections have been made a bit more difficult. You still have to do all the stuff you had to do in the first game, but in addition to that scattered across the school there are the various posts and stands which are being set up for the sports festival, and these need to be completed for the festival. To get these worked on, you really need to drag students to the ones which are lagging behind. Ideally, you need to identify which two 3-A students are supposed to be leading that section and drag one (or both) of them half way across site to work on it, as just one of them will complete the work at around ten times the rate of a normal student. Assuming they stay put, which they tend not too ^^; Honestly, I have no idea what happens, if anything, if you complete all the jobs - I was around three short (some of them by as little as 1%) at the point I finished the game. Its my own fault, really - if you keep on top of things rather randomly walking around looking for your favourite character (*ahem*) there should be a day or two spare in the end. Unfortunately progress isn't kept for repeated attempts, so you have to start things anew (and since I'd rather like to play Kingdom Hearts 2, that'll not be happening anytime soon). Combat, at first glance, looks more or less the same as the first game. Thankfully, given I hated it there, that isn't entirely true. Negi has been learning kung-fu, and can now use that in battle with simply one button combos (well, you can chain magic as well, but thats not so important). Magic still does way more damage, but in those moments when you are surrounded you can simply smack some people out of the road rather than getting annoyed at not being able to get free from running, or given enough time to cast magic. You can also stun characters, leaving you a bit more time to cast spells. For something what seems so simply, it makes such a huge difference. Once you get out of the training fights at the beginning of the game, the fights take place at night, and will see you pitted against a bunch of goth-lolis as well as a 3-A student or thre manipulated into doing Evil Negis duty. Unlike the first game, where taking out the vampiric students had negative effects, here you can just let rip and fry the goth-lolis without worry - to win the battles you simply need knock out all the goth-lolis and wear down the 3-A students enough for a purification spell to be successful. You don't have to worry with the annoyance of protecting a student here, either, as a purified student is sensible in running away, and will even fight back! If you do knock out a 3-A student you do lose, but thankfully the goth-lolis don't tend to target her. Thats pretty much it for Second Period. My copy of the third Negima game (sub-subtitled Otome no Doki Doki Beach Side) has actually arrived. Its a different kettle of fish once you get into it - it starts with VN-type sections looking very much like those in the previous games (though fast-forward is a lot quicker ^^;), and whilst you still get all the stat building stuff, the game looks rather more like this... Yeah, its a whole bunch of stat-building mini-games, and bikini-clad ones at that. At the beginning you pick one of two groups of characters - Asunas group (Asuna, Setsuna, Konoka and the twins) or Nodokas group (Nodoka, Yue, Haruna, Kuu Fei and Kaede). Through the day you pick one of five activities for one of the group (Stretching, studying, baking, limbo dancing or stress releif), and pick which one Negi is going to watch. With the one you watch you get to play interactively, which involves lots of button hammering or timed pressing. After three iterations you'll get challenged by a bunch of other students and do some other mini-games, which will win you money for use in the store to buy new swimsuits and accessories. I'll probably cover it in more detail at a later date, when I've actually had a chance to play it for a while (I know there are a least a few other mini-games I've not seen yet).

Random Wafflage: Underperforming Edition

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

Slow blog is sllllllooooooooowwwwwwww.

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

I WANT A PADDLE!!!

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

# You can place the script of your game in this file. init: # Declare images below this line, using the image statement. # eg. image eileen happy = "eileen_happy.png" image author 1 = "charas/atan_1.png" image author 2 = "charas/atan_2.png" image author 3 = "charas/atan_3.png" image author 4 = "charas/atan_4.png" image author 5 = "charas/atan_5.png" image author d = "charas/atan_d.png" image author d2 = "charas/a_dango.png" image nouto 1 = "charas/maho_1.png" image nouto 2 = "charas/maho_2.png" image nouto 3 = "charas/maho_3.png" image writer 1 = "charas/wtan_1.png" image writer 2 = "charas/wtan_2.png" image writer 3 = "charas/wtan_3.png" image writer 4 = "charas/wtan_4.png" image loli 1 = "charas/loli1.png" image loli 2 = "charas/loli2.png" image loli 3 = "charas/loli3.png" image dango 1 = "charas/dango_1.png" image dango 2 = "charas/dango_2.png" image dango 3 = "charas/dango_3.png" image dango 4 = "charas/dango_4.png" image coro 1 = "charas/coro.png" image extan 1 = "charas/extan_1.png" image extan 2 = "charas/extan_2.png" image general 1 = "charas/general.png" image bg black = "#000000" image bg room = "BGs/bedroom.png" image bg class1 = "BGs/class.png" image bg class2 = "BGs/class2.png" image bg monster = "CGs/monster.png" image bg nouto = "CGs/nouto2.png" image bg classd = "BGs/classd.png" image bg cafe = "BGs/cafe.png" image bg sniped = "CGs/sniped.png" image bg daijoubu = "BGs/daijoubu.png" image bg loliauth = "CGs/loliauth.png" image bg cry = "CGs/cry.png" image bg draw = "CGs/draw.png" image bg hahaha = "CGs/hahaha.png" image bg hida = "CGs/hida.png" image bg loss = "CGs/loss.png" image bg nooooo = "CGs/noooo.png" image bg reload = "CGs/reload.png" image bg rocket1 = "CGs/rocket_1.png" image bg rocket3 = "CGs/rocket_3.png" image bg vict = "CGs/vict.png" image bg beach = "CGs/beach.png" image bg loss_stamp = "CGs/loss_stamp.png" image bg draw_stamp = "CGs/draw_stamp.png" image bg cry_stamp = "CGs/cry_stamp.png" image bg vict_stamp = "CGs/vict_stamp.png" image bg reload_stamp = "CGs/reload_stamp.png" image bg hida_stamp = "CGs/hida_stamp.png" image bg beach_stamp = "CGs/beach_stamp.png" image bg rocket1_stamp = "CGs/rocket_1_stamp.png" image bg rocket3_stamp = "CGs/rocket_3_stamp.png" # Declare characters used by this game. $ a = Character('Author-tan', color="#8888FF") $ w = Character('Writer-tan', color="#FFFF00") $ g = Character('General Lee Generic', color="#FFFF00") $ d = Character('Dango', color="'#4444FF") $ l = Character('Little Girl', color="#88FF88") $ o = Character('Other Girl', color="#0000FF") $ m = Character('Monster', color="#FF0000") $ who = Character('???', color="#FFFFAA") $ n = Character('Mahou Nouto', color="#AAAAAA") $ e = Character('Exposition-tan', color="#AAAAAA") $ k = Character('King Coronet', color= "#551100") # Position the navigation on the right side of the screen. $ style.gallery_nav_frame.xpos = 800 - 10 $ style.gallery_nav_frame.xanchor = 1.0 $ style.gallery_nav_frame.ypos = 12 # Add the gallery to the main menu. $ config.main_menu.insert(2, ('Extras', "extras", "True")) $ import snipe $ import snipe2 $ import snipe3 $ import sprint $ import maze2 $ import coronet $ import maze # The game starts here. label start: scene bg monster with fade play sound "roar.ogg" m "Raaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh!" with hpunch show loli 1 at left l "Noooo! It's a monster! Who could possibly save us?" l "Who, I ask as if expecting someone to suddenly appear!" l "Who?!" who "Fear not little girl!" hide loli scene bg nouto play sound "explode.ogg" n "Mahou, ummm...." n "Mahoujin Mahou Nouto is here!" scene bg monster show nouto 1 at right show loli 3 at left o "Watch out, Mahou Nouto! it's a trap!" n "A trap?!?" show nouto 2 at right n "Errmmm, could you be a little more specific?" n "I'm not sure if you are referring to me, her or the situation..." show loli 2 at left $ renpy.music.play("beepbeep.ogg", channel=7) l "Beep Beep" n "What, she's actually a time bomb?" l "Beep Beep" show nouto 3 at right n "Ahhhh, what do I do?" l "Beep Beep" l "Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep" l "Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep" $ renpy.music.stop(channel=7) hide loli scene bg room with fade show author 1 at left a "Oh, it's my alarm..." a "That sure was a weird dream sequence it woke me from..." a "I mean, magic girls?" a "Did I have something odd to eat before bed?" a "I wonder why the alarm is going off so early, though..." a "Am I forgetting something from yesterday already..." scene bg classd with fade show general 1 at right g "And remember, tomorrow is the first of your end-of-year examinations." g "You'll be given three examinations to assess whether you have the skills necessary to become a certified sniper." g "Those who fail to display adequate skills will be forced to retake the whole year again." g "The first examination is at 0700 hours sharp tomorrow morning. Don't be late." show author 4 at left a "Okay, just let me take a note of that..." scene bg room show author 2 at left with hpunch play sound "explode.ogg" a "Argh! I don't have time to have a convinient, game-explaining flashback!" with vpunch play sound "explode.ogg" a "I'M LATE!" with hpunch play sound "explode.ogg" a "I'M LATE!!!!" with vpunch play sound "explode.ogg" a "I KNOW IT'S AN ANIME CLICHÉ, BUT I'M LATE!!!!!" with hpunch play sound "explode.ogg" a "AND WHAT AM I DOING SLEEPING FULLY CLOTHED ANYWAY????" with vpunch a "I hope they don't just fail me on the spot for being late!" hide author play sound "run.ogg" a "Waaaaaa........" scene bg class1 with fade play sound "run2.ogg" a "I'M HHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~YYAAAAAAAAAAAAA~~~~~~~~!" with hpunch show author 2 at left show writer 2 at right w "You're late." w "Some of us have better things to do then wait around all day for slackers." w "Really, they should just fail people like you on the spot." show author 2 at left a "Nooooo!" hide writer show general 1 at right show author 1 at left g "She's right, I should just fail you on the spot." show author 2 at left play sound "explode.ogg" a "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" with vpunch g "But luckily for you, that would be clearly overstepping my boundaries as a character who doesn't even have a face." g "Not to mention the fact that it'd be a little unfair to Game Over the player before they've even had a chance to take action." show author 1 at left hide general show writer 1 at right w "WHAT!?!?" show writer 2 at right w "Well, whatever." w "I'm sure you'll fail quite spectacularly as soon as the test actually starts anyway." show author 2 at left a "Nu-uh!" a "I'm sure I'll do much better that you will!" show author 1 at left w "Oooooooo!" w "That sounds like a challenge to me!" show author 2 at left a "W...w...wa... Huh?" show author 1 at left w "How about the one who does the worst automatically fails the exam?" show author 2 at left a "But.... but....!" show author 1 at left w "Yes, that sounds great, doesn't it Mr General." hide writer show general 1 at right g "As a generic character, I have no overwhelming feeling in either direction." hide general show writer 2 at right w "Great, it's decided!" show author 2 at left a "Nooooo..........." hide author hide writer show general 1 at right g "The first test is the static target range!" g "Shoot the targets that appear in the windows to score points!" g "But, if you take too long, you'll miss them!" g "Some targets are worth more points than others, so pay attention soldier!" scene bg black with fade $ renpy.free_memory() $ score_1 = snipe.main() $ round_1 = 0 scene bg class1 with fade if score_1 < 100: show general 1 at right g "%(score_1)d points?!?!" g "That's an atrocious score, Soldier!" hide general show writer 2 at right w "I can't believe I ever considered you my rival..." g "I don't think there's any point in you continuing." g "YOU FAIL!" scene bg cry with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg cry_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return if score_1 >= 100 and score_1 < 300: show general 1 at right show author 2 at left g "%(score_1)d points?" g "That's good enough to achieve a passing grade." show writer 2 at right hide general w "Maybe so, but I scored 300 points!" w "The first round goes to me, Author-tan!" w "I do hope you are looking forward to failing!" show author 2 at left a "Nooooo....." $ round_1 = 0 if score_1 >= 300: show general 1 at right show author 1 at left g "%(score_1)d points!" g "Good job, soldier!" show author 5 at left a "A-hem!" hide general show writer 1 at right play sound "explode.ogg" w "DAMMIT!" with vpunch w "I only scored 299 points!" w "and for some strange reason, I think I'd have scored just point point better if you'd done worse!" w "It's almost as if someone was too lazy to write the dialogue for a draw!" show writer 2 at right w "Tsk, it was nothing but a fluke!" w "I'll beat you next time, I tell you!" a "Oh, sure, just let me take a note of that." show author 4 at left a "Will... Lose... Next... Time..." show author 5 at left a "Okay, done!" show author 2 at left play sound "explode.ogg" a "Wait a minute!" with vpunch $ round_1 = 1 hide writer show author 1 at left show general 1 at right g "Ahem!" g "When you two have finished..." g "The next examination will take place at 1400 tomorrow." g "Don't be late again. Now that the player has actually taken an action, I'm in a position to fail you immediately." show author 4 at left a "1400 tomorrow..." show author 5 at left a "Thus noted!" show black with fade if round_1 == 1: scene bg reload with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg reload_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade else: scene bg hida with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg hida_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade if round_1 == 1: show bg cafe with fade show author 1 at left show extan 1 at right e "So, Author-tan, I've been wondering..." show extan 2 at right e "What precisely made you want to be a sniper, anyway?" show author 5 at left a "It's an epic story from long, long ago..." hide extan hide atan scene bg loliauth with fade a "Once upon a time, I was held hostage by a nasty man..." a "When all attempts at negotiation had failed, the only option left was a legendary sniper..." scene bg cafe show extan 1 at right e "Oh, I know this one!" e "This is where the guy killed you by shooting from three building away, through the other buildings windows..." e "and managing to be accurate enough to smash a pane of bulletproof glass by hammering several bullets into the same place!" show extan 2 at right e "Right?" a "Errrmmm, I think you are thinking of the wrong title..." show extan 1 at right e "Oh it's the one where the sniper accidentally shot you in the eye, blinding you." e "The sense of remorse causes him to leave is position as a highly trained military mage...." show author 3 at left a "Does this look like StrikerS to you?" show author 1 at left a "Anyway, I was saved by that sniper. After that, I decided I needed to..." show extan 2 at right e "Vow to become the greatest Ninja in the village?" show author 3 at left a "No." show author 1 at left e "Find the samurai who smells of Sunflowers?" show author 3 at left a "Nope." show author 1 at left e "Follow the path of the setting sun, that leads to El Dorado, and the Mysterious Cities of Gold?" show author 3 at left a "Erm, that ones a little too obscure..." show author 1 at left e "Collect all the Dragon Balls in order to grant your wish?" a "Well, I guess that's a little better...." show author 5 at left a "But what I actually meant to say was repay him by..." e "Becoming the ultimate Maid Guy?" show author 2 at left a "Errmmm, what makes you say 'Maid Guy'?" show author 1 at left e "Combat Butler, then?" a "I think you've gotten the wrong point there..." e "Robotic housemaid living out the rest of your days in service to his son?" a "You know what, let's just forget it." a "I was just lying anyway." show author 3 at left show extan 1 at right a "I really don't see why I need to have any motivation other than me feeling like it." show author 1 at left a "Yup, there's not greater meaning behind it at all." a "No missing siblings, I've nothing to prove to anyone, this isn't the only way to get money to feed my poor family..." a "I'm not even out for revenge." show extan 2 at right e "Ummm, isn't that a little boring?" show author 3 at left a "Hey, this is just a gag game, what do you expect?" a "It's not like this is going to have some kind of elaborate backstory to it." show author 5 at left a "If it bothers you that much, why don't you come up with something?" scene bg class1 with fade show author 5 at left a "A-ha, I made it with plenty of time today!" show writer 2 at right w "Errrm, there's nothing to be particularly proud about for making it to somewhere for 1400..." show author 2 at left a "Wahh!" with hpunch if round_1 == 1: show author 1 at left w "Anyway, I hope you have remembered that I'm going to be beating you today." show author 5 at left a "Of course I have!" show author 4 at left a "I made a note!" w "I'm glad you understand." show author 2 at left a "Wait just a minute!" play sound "explode.ogg" a "That's not right!" with hpunch else: show author 1 at left w "Anyway, I don't even know why you bothered turning up today." w "It's quite obvious that you are going to lose to me today, and then you'll have to do the whole year over again." w "You may as well have just stayed in bed." show author 2 at left play sound "explode.ogg" a "Noooo! That's not right!" with hpunch hide writer show general 1 at right g "It's good to see that everyone is on time today." g "Todays examination is based on moving targets." g "Just shoot as many of the targets as you can." g "Some targets are worth more than others, though - Bare in mind that Dango are practically worthless!" g "Anyway, good luck!" scene bg black with fade $ renpy.free_memory() $ score_2 = snipe2.main() if score_2 < 80: g "%(score_2)d points?!?!" g "That's an attrocious score, Soldier!" show writer 2 at right w "I can't believe I ever considered you my rival..." g "I don't think there's any point in you continuing." g "YOU FAIL!" scene bg cry with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg cry_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return $ round_2 = 0 if round_1 == 0: if score_2 >= 80 and score_2 < 170: show author 1 at left g "%(score_2)d points?" g "That's good enough to achieve a passing grade in this test." show writer 2 at right w "That might normally, be true, but I think you'll find that I've scored 170 points!" w "That means I've beaten you in two of the three examinations!" w "As much as I'd loooooooove to see you humiliate yourself some more, I'm afraid that means you've already failed." show author 2 at left "Noooo...." scene bg loss with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg loss_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return if score_2 >= 170: show author 1 at left g "%(score_2)d points!" g "Good job, soldier!" show author 3 at left a "A-hem!" show writer 1 at right w "DAMMIT!" show writer 2 at left w "We're level with only one examination to go?" w "It's almost as if it's a badly scripted anime show trying to build up tension for the last episode!" w "Well, you just got lucky this time anyway..." $ round_2 = 1 else: if score_2 >= 80 and score_2 < 170: show author 1 at left g "%(score_2)d points?" g "That's good enough to achieve a passing grade in this test." show writer 2 at right w "Hmmmm, don't get too cocky, Author-tan." w "I think you'll find that I've scored 80 points!" w "That means I've taken this round!" w "I'm make'n a comeback!" if score_2 >= 80: show author 1 at left g "%(score_1)d points!" g "Good job, soldier!" show author 3 at left show writer 1 at right w "Wha... wha.... wha....." play sound "explode.ogg" w "DAMN YOU AUTHOR-TAN!" with hpunch play sound "explode.ogg" w "I can't accept this!" with vpunch show writer 2 at right w "How about this - if I beat you in this final exam, you fail." w "If I you win, I'll not only fail, but I'll buy you a 0.7mm calibur pencil" show author 2 at left a "Wa...wa....I'm not...." w "You're not going to disagree?" w "You hear that, Mr General?" g "Yes. As a generic character, I'm not even going to make the effort to properly validate that statement." a "Noooo......" $ round_2 = 1 hide writer show general at right g "Tomorrows final exam is at 0700 hours. Don't be late!" hide writer hide atan hide general if round_1 == 1 and round_2 == 1: scene bg rocket3 with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg rocket3_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade if round_1 == 1 and round_2 == 0 or round_1 == 0 and round_2 == 1: scene bg draw with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg draw_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade scene bg room with fade show author 4 at left a "0700 hours? I better set my alarm clock an hour earlier this time..." a "And now, to bed!" if round_1 == 1 and round_2 == 1: scene bg sniped with fade w "So you plan to be on time tomorrow, eh?" w "Tsk! I can't afford to lose!" w "Quite literally!" w "Damn me and my big mouth..." w "This should make you sleep for a few hours longer!" w "Just long enough for you to miss the exam!" play sound "shoot.ogg" $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade # wierd dream sequence in here a "Urgh, my head feels weird..." scene bg daijoubu with fade show author d at left a "What is with this crazy place." show dango 1 at right d "Daijoubu desuyo!" a "Hwah?" d "I said, 'it's OK'" a "U-huh." a "That I'm supposed to trust a talking confectionary on that matter?" d "Why not?" a "For one thing, you don't even have a mouth! How do you speak?" show dango 3 at right a "Strangely enough, I've heard that one a lot recently..." show dango 1 at right a "And then there's the fact that you are flying. You have to admit that one is a little odd." d "The thing with that is, if I wasn't, I'd be like this..." show dango 2 at right d "which would be pretty stupid really." show dango 1 at right a "So, have you go any idea what's going on here, then?" d "Well, I'd say you are having some kind of weird, drug-induced dream sequence." show dango 3 at right d "You haven't eaten any old cheese from your fridge recently, have you?" a "I can't say I have..." show dango 4 at right d "Watch out! The Coronets are attacking again!" show dango 1 at right d "Please, Sniper-tan, help defend us!" scene bg black with fade $ renpy.free_memory() $ coro_score = coronet.main() scene bg daijoubu with fade show author d at left show coro 1 at right k "I am King Coronet!" k "How dare you attack my people!" a "Oh, not another taking confectionary..." a "At least the Dangos had eyes. What does this one have, a silly floating crown?" k "You dare mock my Crown!" k "Well, since you like dango so much, how about I turn you into one!" show author d2 at left a "Waaa...waaaaa.....What have you done to me!" k "Did I forget to mention that I'm an evil wizard as well?" k "It does have a tendacy to slip my mind..." k "Oh well. Now to cast you into my terrifying maze, from which no-one has ever escaped!" a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" k "Bwahahahahahahaha!" scene bg black with fade $ renpy.free_memory() $ maze_score = maze.main() scene bg daijoubu with fade show author d2 at left show coro 1 at right k "What! You've escaped from my maze!" a "Ermmm, it wasn't exactly difficult." a "I mean, mazes usually have a few, say, junctions." a "It kind of defeats the point if you can just walk through it without getting lost like that." k "What!" a "Is it really true that no-one has ever escaped from it?" k "Of course it was!" k "Well, technically it was, anyway..." k "You were actually the first person I'd ever banished to it." a "Why aren't I surprised..." show dango 1 at right $ renpy.music.play("beepbeep.ogg", channel=7) d "Beep beep!" a "Huh, what's up with you?" d "Beep beep!" a "You know, this all seems very familiar..." a "As if something very, very similar happen just a couple of days ago..." $ renpy.music.stop(channel=7) scene bg room with fade show author 2 at left play sound "explode.ogg" a "ARGH!" with hpunch a "I'M GOING TO BE LATE AGAIN!" a "THEY REALLY WILL FAIL ME THIS TIME!" a "I'M GOING TO HAVE TO RUN REALLY, REALLY QUICKLY!" with vpunch a "AND I'M SLEEPING FULLY CLOTHED AGAIN!" play sound "run.ogg" show black with fade $ renpy.free_memory() $ sprint_time = sprint.main() if sprint_time > 1200: scene bg class1 with fade show author 2 at left play sound "run2.ogg" a "I'M HERE!!!!" with hpunch show general 1 at right show author 1 at left g "You are late, and I've already given you prior warning for this." g "I'm afraid I have no choice but to fail you on the spot this time." play sound "explode.ogg" a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!" with vpunch hide general 1 show wtan 3 at right w "Oh, that's too bad, Author-tan." w "I guess I win by default, then!" a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!" scene bg cry with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg cry_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return else: scene bg class1 with fade show author 3 at left play sound "run2.ogg" a "SAY-FU!" with hpunch show wtan 1 at right w "DAMMIT!" else: "Beep Beep" "Beep Beep" scene bg room with fade show author 5 at left a "Ah, I'm up with plenty of time today." a "Oh, but whilst I'm thinking..." show author 4 at left a "Must... Change... Clothes... Occasionally..." show author 5 at left a "Right, off I go!" scene bg class1 with fade show author 1 at left show writer 2 at right w "Hmmmm, so you've shown up on time for once..." show writer 3 at right w "I guess you are looking forward to getting your ass handed to you." show author 3 at left play sound "explode.ogg" a "Zavali yebalo!" show author 1 at left show writer 1 at right w "What was that?" show author 5 at left a "Oh, nothing, nothing..." show writer 2 at right w "Well, whatever..." w "I'm going to kick your ass right this second!" hide writer show author 1 at left show general 1 at right g "As you are well aware, this is the final test, and your success will determine you future." g "A series of five targets will appear at intervals. Once one appears, you will only have three seconds to take your shot." g "The number of points you score will be effected by the amount of time you take when making your shot, so be quick." g "Also be aware that the number of points you score is determined by the area of the target you shoot, so bit a little thought into it!" g "Good luck!" $ renpy.free_memory() $ score_3 = snipe3.main() if score_3 < 300: show general 1 at right g "%(score_3)d points?!?!" g "What the hell are you doing!?!" g "That was seriously awful!" g "YOU FAIL!" scene bg cry with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg cry_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return $ round_3 = 0 if score_3 >= 300 and score_3 <= 1000: show general 1 at right g "%(score_3)d points?" g "Normally, that would be a passing grade..." hide general show wtan 2 at right w "But I scored 1001! I win!" $ round_3 = 0 else: show general 1 at right g "%(score_3)d points!" g "Excellend score, Soldier! You pass!" hide general $ round_3 = 1 if round_1 == 1 and round_2 == 1 and round_3 == 1: show author 3 at left a "Heh heh heh heh!" a "Heh heh heh heh heh heh!" show author 5 at left a "HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH!" a "Let me just take a note here..." show author 4 at left a "Kicked... Writer-tans... Ass..." show author 5 at left a "How's that Writer-tan!" show wtan 4 at right w "Waaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" show author 1 at left a "Okay, just cry and make me feel like the badguy here..." a "Come on, cheer, up, it's not that bad." show author 5 at left a "It's not like that contest was an official rule, so it's not like you've actually failed" show wtan 2 at right w "R....really?" w "You'll really ignore that rule I came up with?" w "Really, truely?" show author 3 at left play sound "explode.ogg" a "Hell no." with hpunch show wtan 1 at right play sound "explode.ogg" w "WHAT!?!" with vpunch show wtan 2 at right show author 4 at left a "Well, according to the notes that I've made..." show author 5 at left a "You've been nothing but horrible to me through-out this entire game!" a "Hell, you've even drugged me in an attempt to make me late!" show wtan 1 at right play sound "explode.ogg" w "HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT!" with vpunch show wtan 2 at right show author 3 at left a "Rollback, bitch." a "(not to mention the broken window being a bit of a give away...)" a "Honestly, I'm going to be quite happy to get rid of you." show author 5 at left a "Just remember you owe me a pencil, okay?" show wtan 4 at right play sound "explode.ogg" w "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo........!" with hpunch scene bg vict with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg vict_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return if (round_1 == 0 and round_2 == 1 and round_3 == 1) or (round_1 == 1 and round_2 == 0 and round_3 == 1): show author 1 at left a "Well, it was a close-run contest..." show author 5 at left a "But I guess I've won!" show wtan 1 at right play sound "explode.ogg" w "No!!" with hpunch show wtan 4 at right play sound "explode.ogg" w "Noooo!" with vpunch show wtan 1 at right play sound "explode.ogg" w "NOOOOOOOOOO!" with hpunch show author 1 at left a "Now, now, Writer-tan." a "There's not reason to get all tempermental." show author 4 at left a "It's not like the contests was an official rule, so let's just ignore it, OK?" show wtan 2 at right w "Really? You'd do that." show author 3 at left a "Yeah, yeah, just stop being a bitch, OK?" scene bg rocket1 with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg rocket1_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return if (round_1 == 0 and round_2 == 1 and round_3 == 0) or (round_1 == 1 and round_2 == 0 and round_3 == 0): show wtan 1 at right w "IN YOUR FACE, AUTHOR-TAN!" show author 2 at left play sound "explode.ogg" a "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!" with hpunch play sound "explode.ogg" a "Failing right at the last minute!" with vpunch a "I hope you saved just before the last test started....." scene bg beach with fade $ renpy.pause(2.0) play sound "stamp.ogg" scene bg beach_stamp with vpunch $ renpy.pause(2.0) scene bg black with fade return label extras: menu: "Gallery": jump gallery label gallery: python hide: # Construct a new gallery object. g = Gallery() # Lay out the gallery images on the screen. # These settings lay images out 3 across and 4 down. # They expect button images to be 155x112 in size. g.grid_layout((3, 4), (10, 12), (160, 124)) # Show the background page. g.page("Backgrounds") g.show() return

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

# You can place the script of your game in this file. init: # Declare images below this line, using the image statement. # eg. image eileen happy = "eileen_happy.png" # Declare characters used by this game. $ a = Character('Alice', color="#c8ffc8") $ m = Character('Mylene', color="#cccccc") $ ma = Character('Mari', color="#ffff88") $ n = Character('Nerris', color="#44ff44") $ j = Character('Julie', color="#aaffaa") $ z = Character('Zombies', color="#ff0000") $ q = Character('???', color="#ffffff") $ ex = Character('Exposition-tan', color="#ffff00") $ ld = Character('Lorna', color="#cccccc") $ md = Character('Moreen', color="#00ff00") $ dg = Character('DiGiKerot', color="#ffffff") $ an = Character('Undine', color="#55ff55") $ je = Character('Jessica', color="#6699ff") $ e = Character('Erika', color="#aaaaff") $ man = Character('Mirror Undine', color="#aaffaa") $ atan = Character('Author-tan', color="#555555") # declare images image alice 1 = "charas/alice1.png" image alice 2 = "charas/alice2.png" image alice 3 = "charas/alice3.png" image alice 4 = "charas/alice4.png" image alice 5 = "charas/alice5.png" image alice 6 = "charas/alice6.png" image alice 7 = "charas/alice7.png" image alice 8 = "charas/alice8.png" image alice 9 = "charas/alice9.png" image alice 10 = "charas/alice10.png" image alice 11 = "charas/alice11.png" image alice 12 = "charas/alice12.png" image alice 13 = "charas/alice13.png" image alice 14 = "charas/alice14.png" image alice 15 = "charas/alice15.png" image mylene 1 = "charas/mylene1.png" image mylene 2 = "charas/mylene2.png" image mylene 3 = "charas/mylene3.png" image mylene 4 = "charas/mylene4.png" image mylene 5 = "charas/mylene5.png" image mylene 6 = "charas/mylene6.png" image extan 1 = "charas/extan_1.png" image extan 2 = "charas/extan_2.png" image extan 3 = "charas/extan_3.png" image extan 4 = "charas/extan_4.png" image atan 1 = "charas/atan_1.png" image atan 2 = "charas/atan_2.png" image atan 3 = "charas/atan_3.png" image atan 4 = "charas/atan_4.png" image atan 5 = "charas/atan_5.png" image atan 6 = "charas/atan_6.png" image atan 7 = "charas/atan_7.png" image atan 8 = "charas/atan_8.png" image ndigi 1 = "charas/ndigi_1.png" image ndigi 2 = "charas/ndigi_2.png" image ndigi 3 = "charas/ndigi_3.png" image digi 1 = "charas/digi1.png" image digi 2 = "charas/digi2.png" image digi 3 = "charas/digi3.png" image mari 1 = "charas/mari1.png" image mari 2 = "charas/mari2.png" image mari 3 = "charas/mari3.png" image mari 4 = "charas/mari4.png" image mari 5 = "charas/mari5.png" image mari 6 = "charas/mari6.png" image mari 7 = "charas/mari7.png" image mari 8 = "charas/mari8.png" image nerris 1 = "charas/nerris1.png" image nerris 2 = "charas/nerris2.png" image nerris 3 = "charas/nerris3.png" image nerris 4 = "charas/nerris4.png" image nerris 5 = "charas/nerris5.png" image julie 1 = "charas/julie1.png" image julie 2 = "charas/julie2.png" image julie 3 = "charas/julie3.png" image julie 4 = "charas/julie4.png" image julie 5 = "charas/julie5.png" image julie 6 = "charas/julie5.png" image julie 7 = "charas/julie5.png" image zombie 1 = "charas/zombie.png" image zombie 2 = im.Flip("zombie.png", vertical=True) image undine 1 = "charas/undine1.png" image undine 2 = "charas/undine2.png" image undine 3 = "charas/undine3.png" image moreen 1 = "charas/moreen1.png" image moreen 2 = "charas/moreen2.png" image moreen 3 = "charas/moreen3.png" image moreen 4 = "charas/moreen4.png" image moreen 5 = "charas/moreen5.png" image moreen 6 = "charas/moreen6.png" image moreen 7 = "charas/moreen7.png" image jess 1 = "charas/jess1.png" image jess 2 = "charas/jess2.png" image jess 3 = "charas/jess3.png" image jess 4 = "charas/jess4.png" image jess 5 = "charas/jess5.png" image jess 6 = "charas/jess6.png" image jess 7 = "charas/jess7.png" image erika 1 = "charas/erika1.png" image erika 2 = "charas/erika2.png" image erika 3 = "charas/erika3.png" image erika 4 = "charas/erika4.png" image erika 5 = "charas/erika5.png" image erika 6 = "charas/erika6.png" image erika 7 = "charas/erika7.png" image erika 8 = "charas/erika8.png" image erika 9 = "charas/erika9.png" image erika 10 = "charas/erika10.png" image howto zombies = "howto/zombies.png" image howto boxes = "howto/boxes.png" image howto cart = "howto/cart.png" image howto chase = "howto/chase.png" image howto danmak = "howto/danmak.png" image howto darkmaze = "howto/darkmaze.png" image howto free = "howto/free.png" image howto kart = "howto/kart.png" image howto park = "howto/park.png" image howto rps = "howto/rps.png" image howto water = "howto/water.png" image howto zombierevenge = "howto/zombierevenge.png" image bg street = "bg/bg1.png" image bg corridor = "bg/dark_corridor.png" image bg d_corridor = "bg/v_dark_corridor.png" image bg l_corridor = "bg/v_dark_with_light.png" image bg base = "bg/base.png" image bg nazenani = "bg/naninaze.png" image bg door = "bg/door_end.png" image bg mirrorcorridor = "bg/mirror_corridor.png" image bg black = "bg/black.png" image bg white = "bg/white.png" image bg corridorcandles = "bg/corridor_candles.png" image bg bridge = "bg/bridge.png" image bg erikasroom = "bg/erikas_room.png" image bg vlight = "bg/v_dark_with_light.png" image bg school = "bg/school.png" image bg heart = "bg/heart.png" image bg bloodymari = "bg/bloodymari.png" image bg azombie = "bg/a_zombie.png" image bg acart = "bg/cart_flipped.png" image bg monster = "bg/monster.png" image bg acrushed = "bg/a_crushed.png" image bg stamp = "bg/stamp.png" image bg ohshi = "bg/ohshi.png" image bg breathless = "bg/breathless.png" image bg breathlessdark = "bg/breathlessdark.png" image bg boxes = "bg/boxes.png" image bg frazzled = "bg/frazzled.png" image bg mylene1 = "bg/mylene1.png" image bg mylene2 = "bg/mylene2.png" image bg mylene3 = "bg/mylene3.png" image bg mylene4 = "bg/mylene4.png" image bg park = "bg/park.png" image bg ghost = "bg/ghost.png" image bg julietent = "bg/julietent.png" image bg juliethrow = "bg/juliethrow.png" image bg julietwin = "bg/julietwin.png" image bg alltent = "bg/alltent.png" image bg mirror1 = "bg/alice_mirror.png" image bg mirror2 = "bg/undine_mirror_2.png" image bg mirror3 = "bg/undine_mirror_3.png" image bg mirror4 = "bg/undine_mirror_4.png" image bg crushed = "bg/crushed.png" image bg headless = "bg/headless.png" image bg beamu1 = "bg/beamu1.png" image bg beamu2 = "bg/beamu2.png" image bg boom = "bg/boom.png" image bg lolikit = "bg/lolikit.png" image bg super = "bg/super.png" image bg shopqueue = "bg/shopqueue.png" image bg zombieattack = "bg/zombies.png" image bg yuri1 = "bg/yuri1.png" image bg yuri2 = "bg/yuri2.png" image bg mylenezombie = "bg/mylenezombie.png" image bg erikasleep = "bg/erikasleep.png" image bg mylenestuck = "bg/mylenestuck.png" image bg endingtrans = "bg/endingtrans.png" image bg sportslose = "bg/sports_lose.png" image bg danend = "bg/danend.png" image bg faceoff = "bg/faceoff.png" image bg goodend = "bg/goodend.png" image bg digipoint = "bg/digi_point.png" image bg stuck = "bg/stuck.png" image bg trapdoor = "bg/trapdoor.png" image bg boobietrap = "bg/boobietrap.png" image bg julieend = "bg/julie_end.png" image bg ex1 = "bg/ex1.png" image bg ex2 = "bg/ex2.png" image bg ex3 = "bg/ex3.png" image bg ex4 = "bg/ex4.png" image bg ex5 = "bg/ex5.png" image bg ex6 = "bg/ex6.png" image bg ex7 = "bg/ex7.png" image bg ex8 = "bg/ex8.png" image ed endinga = "endings/ending_a.png" image ed endingb1 = "endings/ending_b1.png" image ed endingb2 = "endings/ending_b2.png" image ed endingc = "endings/ending_c.png" image ed endingd = "endings/ending_d.png" image ed endinge = "endings/ending_e.png" $ import zombies $ import darkmaze $ import rps $ import cart $ import rpg2 $ import park $ import danmak $ import boxes $ import water $ import chase $ import slide $ import kart $ import sports $ import zombieRevenge $ import free $ import rpg3 # Position the navigation on the right side of the screen. $ style.gallery_nav_frame.xpos = 800 - 10 $ style.gallery_nav_frame.xanchor = 1.0 $ style.gallery_nav_frame.ypos = 12 # Add the gallery to the main menu. $ config.main_menu.insert(2, ('Gallery', "gallery", "True")) # The game starts here. label start: scene bg street at Pan((0, 0), (0, 1200), 10.0) m "Aaaah, Halloween!" m "The costumes..." m "The ghost stories..." m "The ghastly atmosphere..." m "The candy..." scene bg street show mylene 1 at right m "I just love it all so much!" show alice 1 at left a "Oh, I quite agree with you." show mylene 2 at right m "Huh?" m "Really?" show alice 12 at left a "Absolutely." show alice 8 at left a "It {b}is{/b} the one night of the year {b}I{/b} get to be the one laughing at people in retarded costumes." m "I guess that's why you aren't wearing a costume tonight, then?" show alice 1 at left a "Indeed. I mean, I {i}am{/i} a magical girl, after all." show alice 14 at left a "I get quite enough of prancing around in embarrsing apparel whilst chasing demons throughout the rest of the year, thank you very much." a "Frankly, I find Halloween a curiously liberating experience." show alice 1 at left show mylene 3 at right m "Hmmm, I don't really get it..." a "Oh, such youthful naivetty!" a "You'll understand when you are older." show alice 5 at left a "No-one bats an eyelid at a young girl running around in a silly costume." a "but at my age... all those girls... laughing...." show alice 13 at left a "All those men... with their letcherous eyes...." a "Urgh..." show mylene 4 at right m "Putting that aside, is it really OK that you aren't wearing a costume tonight?" m "We are going to a Halloween party, you know..." a "It'll be fine. It's Erikas' party, after all." show alice 14 at left a "Do you really expect her to have put in any effort?" show alice 14 at left a "I honestly wouldn't be surprised if she's forgotten about this entirely..." scene bg base with fade show alice 1 at left a "Hi Mari." show alice 7 at left a "That's an... Interesting costume." show mari 1 at right ma "Thank you." show alice 10 at left a "Don't you think that choice is a little, errrrm, 'meta', though?" hide mari show mylene 2 at right m "I don't get what you mean." show alice 13 at left a "I guess you wouldn't." hide mylene show nerris 1 at right n "Wouldn't get what?" show alice 10 at left a "..." hide nerris show julie 1 at right j "What are you lot talking about?" a "Oh, come on!" show alice 14 at left a "*sigh*" show alice 9 at left a "Hey, Mari, has Erika still not got around to taking those Christmas decorations down?" hide julie show mari 7 at right ma "I'm afraid not..." show alice 8 at left a "Doesn't she realise it's bad luck not to have taken down your decorations by the twelfth night?" show alice 13 at left a "I shudder to think of the bad karma she'll have built up by now." show mari 6 at right ma "I'm quite surprised that the Boss thought to decorate in the first place. I suppose expecting her to retain enough interest to remember to take them down would have been optimistic." a "You should know better than anyone around here how much common sense she lacks. You should probably have taken them down for her." show mari 7 at right ma "You're probably right." show alice 1 at left a "And speaking of decorations, I'd have thought things around here would have looked a little more, you know, Halloween-y?" a "Don't tell me Erika completely forgot about this. I thought her organising a party was rather unexpected..." show mari 6 at right ma "Oh, the party isn't being held in here..." scene bg nazenani with dissolve show extan 1 at right ex "Hi there!, I'm Exposition-tan!" ex "You may remember me from such exciting software titles as 'Snipe Me! Author-tan' and..." show extan 2 at right ex "that's it, really." ex "You may, perhaps, be wondering what exactly I'm doing here, popping up and interupting the game mid-discussion." show extan 1 at right ex "Well, the author - by which I mean DiGiKerot, and not anyone else who may go by the moniker of Author - has asked me to ensure everything makes sense." show ndigi 1 at left dg "That's right." ex "By this, I mean rectifying his poor writing by pointing out the things that aren't really obvious." show ndigi 2 at left dg "Oh, thank's for the vote of confidence..." ex "Now, to the case in point, I should probably point out that Mari is a robot." dg "That's right." ex "She was built by Erika Eggbert purely because she felt that any self-proclaimed evil genius requires a robot sidekick." ex "The problem is that the only thing really criminal about Erika is her lack of an attention span." ex "As such, she lost interest in the project before she designed such luxuries as an adequate cooling system or a skeleton that could actually withstand the forces Maris synthetic muscles generate." show ndigi 3 at left dg "It's quite pathetic, really." ex "Indeed. As is, Mari is only marginally more useful than a twelve year-old." ex "Anyway, let's get back to the story..." scene bg school with dissolve ma "The party is in there." scene bg nazenani with dissolve show extan 2 at right show ndigi 1 at left ex "Ermm, Mr. DiGiKerot, I've been thinking this for a while, but..." show extan 1 at right ex "You really can't draw background art, can you?" show ndigi 3 at left dg "Please don't interupt the game only to insult me." show extan 2 at right ex "Eh? I thought that was the whole point in me being here." show ndigi 2 at left dg "You've got the wrong end of the stick I'm afraid." ex "Really? Why else would I be here?" ex "..." show extan 1 at right ex "Ah! I've got it!" ex "This is just a convienient way to pad out the games length by reusing existing assets!" show ndigi 3 at left dg "I couldn't possibly comment on that..." show extan 2 at right ex "But you won't deny your background art sucks." dg "I have to admit, in an ideal world I'd get someone else to do the backgrounds." show extan 4 at right ex "And the character art, the writing..." scene bg school with dissolve ma "The party is in there." a "What the..." a "You mean to tell me that Erika built THAT thing just for a Halloween party?" a "I find it hard to believe that she'd manage to maintain her enthusiasm long enough to complete it..." ma "Well, it's not like I actually saw her building it. She's never let me in this room before..." a "Really? I can't say I've been in here before either..." a "I would say it'd explain why I've not seen her recently, but it's not like that's particularly unusual." ma "I can't really say that she's been acting odd recently, either." ma "No any odder than she usually acts, anyway." a "That's beside the point, I guess. Let's just head in there." ma "Well, it's not quite that simple, I'm afraid." ma "You see, the Boss thought that was a little too boring..." ma "So the party is actually taking place in the deepest part of the building." ma "She's calling it a 'test of courage'" m "'A test of courage'?" ma "That's right. I guess it's really dark and creepy and the like in there." ma "A test of courage usually involves walking to a certain point down a dark path, collect proof that it's been done, and walking back." ma "In this case, it's just a case of getting to the spot the party is being held, I suppose." scene bg base show alice 4 at left a "Seems like an awful lot of effort to go through." show alice 5 at left a "It's almost as if she doesn't want anyone to succeed." a "I'm quite happy to comply with that and just go home." show mylene 5 at right m "But.. but... the party..." show alice 14 at left a "*sigh*" show alice 9 at left a "Look, do you really, really think that this will actually be straight forward?" a "You really don't think that Erikas game and movie-addled mind won't have filled this place full of moronic, cliched obsticles." m "But.. but..." m "But.. *sniff* *sniff*" show alice 14 at left a "*sigh*" show alice 10 at left a "Okay, okay, fine, I'll go." a "I suppose we'll just have to get this over with." hide mylene show alice 10 at left show mari 1 at right ma "Oh, I have a couple more things I have to tell you. Firstly, we all have to go through seperate doors. A few people have already entered, so you people don't have much choice I'm afraid." ma "I'm afraid the Boss has set aside a particular enterance for you, Alice, so you don't get a choice at all." scene bg nazenani with dissolve show extan 2 at right show ndigi 1 at left ex "Ermm, is there really any reason for that other than you {i}not{/i} having to write more branches into the story?" show ndigi 3 at left dg "Is that not reason enough?" ex "Hmmm..." ex "With your writing, you've probably got a point..." scene bg base with dissolve show mari 1 at right show alice 10 at left ma "I'm afraid the Boss has set aside a particular enterance for you, Alice, so you don't get a choice at all." show alice 14 at left a "Oh, charming..." show mari 6 at right ma "Oh, I'm also supposed to tell you that no 'ability supplementation' is allowed." show mari 3 at right ma "The Boss told me that she has some interesting footage of you which will be going straight onto the internet if she sees you cheating." show mari 1 at right show alice 3 at left a "You don't mean..." show alice 15 at left a "transformation footage..." show mari 3 at right ma "I couldn't possibly comment." scene bg nazenani with dissolve show extan 1 at right ex "Okay, let's just get this clear." ex "You've got a game here with two magical girls, but they aren't actually allowed to do anything, well, 'magical girly'." show ndigi 1 at left dg "That's right." show extan 2 at right ex "So, basically, you didn't want to have to draw an extra set of character images for them." dg "I couldn't possibly comment." show extan 1 at right ex "Bingo!" scene bg corridor with dissolve show alice 3 at left a "Well, I guess this place is kind of dark." a "I thought there would at least be some creepy floating candlesticks or something to provide some light." a "But, It's not like this is at all frightening or anything." show alice 6 at left a "It's really more tedious..." a "I guess that kind of explains why I'm talking to myself in this strange, explanitory fashion." show zombie 1 at right z "Urrrrrr!" show alice 12 at left a "Yeah, that's right. I guess I'm really losing it." z "Brains!" show alice 13 at left a "Well, it's less 'Brains', and more my mind that I'm losing." z "Murrr!" show alice 3 at left a "What do you mean, Murrr?" a "..." show alice 15 at left a "ACK! ZOMBIES!" scene bg black with fade label zombie_game: scene bg black scene howto zombies with fade $ renpy.pause(5.0) scene bg black with fade $ renpy.free_memory() $ z_result = zombies.main() if z_result == 1: jump mylene_path else: if z_result == 2: jump undine_path else: if z_result == -10: scene bg nazenani with dissolve show extan 1 at right ex "Oh, it 'looks like you are quitting - are you sure that's right?" menu: "Retry": jump zombie_game "Yup, I'm leaving": return else: scene bg azombie ex "And so, Alice became part of the undead hoard, preying upon the flesh of the living." ex "Although what exactly Erika was doing with zombies in her place is beyond me." ex "Infact, that probably means that they were really robots and not actually Zombies at all." ex "I guess that means Alice didn't actually become a zombie?" ex "Maybe I should try going back over that part again..." menu: "Retry": jump zombie_game "Give up": return jump zombie_game return

Waffley Versitile!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 19:05:01 +0000

Hullo! Is this thing working? Echo...echo....echo..... Evidently, it is (else no-one could possibly at all be reading this, not that I expect anyone actually is reading this at all, at least not within an hour, day, week or probably even month of it actually being posted). Anyway, welcome to Beta-Waffle, which is Waffley Versitile. Actually, that was Birds-eye Potato Waffles, but the tune from the advert is now stuck in my head. What Beta-Waffle actually is is yet another anime blog. Oh yes, how incredibly droll of me. Still, rather than the usual raw or fansub reviews and comments, I'll be largely focusing on commerical releases since it ends up being the vast majority of what I watch. As such, I'd appreciate people not asking where they can get raws or fansubs from. Really, there are so many places you can ask about those things, and many, many people far more knowledgable in that respect (and, of course, that fountain of all knowledge ever, the mighty Google). If you divert your attention to the right, you'll notice a note of my DVD backlog. That isn't everything IIRC - I'm pretty sure I have a couple of volumes of Chobits left to watch, but have no idea which ones at the moment. You'll probably notice at the moment there is quite a bit left in there to watch. What can I say, I rather let my backlog get the best of me over recent weeks, with all of Bandais cheap Gundam re-releases and just generally being far too much of interest to me. Frankly, I'll probably not blog everything, just titles which seem worthwhile to do so with. I'm also not really sure what to do with shows I'm partway, but not entirely, all the way through. We shall see, I guess. As soon as I get around to editing it into the sidebar code, you'll also see a list of what shows I'm collecting at the moment (or at least those which presently spring to mind). Its kind of overwhelming to look at written down, and as you can probably guess from the fact that I'm collecting R2(Japan - I'm actually British, which is also R2) Negima I'm not the most demanding of fanboys. Its a strange fact that I like pretty much everything to a certain degree - there isn't really a particular genre I'm really into more than anything else. If you want some kind of judge of the shows I like, I normally quote Vision of Escaflowne as my all time favorite show, and am currently really digging on My:HiME and Gundam SEED. I also liked Arjuna, which may well be a black mark against my taste... I'm rather massively looking forward to My:Otome and the anime adaption of Fate/Stay Night. I like importing figures as well, so expect comments on that subject too. Thats enough for now. Its about time I actually started watching some anime, rather than talking about it.

Gundam 0083 - Stardust Memories vol 2

DiGiKerot — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 21:54:52 +0000

In the previous volume, we had a die-hard faction of the now fragmented Zeon, lead by 'Nightmare of Solomon' Gato, steal a prototype nuclear-warhead equipped Gundam from a backwater military base. Despite the best efforts of rookie pilot Kou (who borrows the other, and rather weedier looking, prototype Gundam) Gato manages to flee into space. Together with his friend Keith, their tutor Lt. Burning (the most AWESOME name for a hot blooded mecha pilot EVER), a group of letcherous veterans who feel bitter about Kou being assigned the Gundam and hot blonde Gundam designer and obsessive Nina Purpleton, they head off into space in persuit of Gato and the prototype Gundam... Except Gato doesn't really appear, other than to have an overly pretentious discussion with his boss. Enter Cima, Zeon commander so flamboyant she has a zebra skin rug draped over her chair on the bridge (not to mention her bare-chested bridge crew). Yes, its time for one of those plot arcs where the hero goes to hell and back, becoming a considerably better pilot all of a sudden in the process, whilst the villian sits around whilst he could probably have won by further his plans more quickly. Anyway, Kou and Nina get into an arguement over Kous treatment of her beloved Gundam, and Nina says some rather scathing things which upset Kou. When Cima attacks and Kou nearly dies (mercifully saved my the awesome Lt. Burning), wreaking the Gundam in the process, she begins to regret what she said. Meanwhile, Kou realises that he does actually suck, and drowns his tears in booze and gets beaten up by a gang of street thugs before being saved by mysterious junkyard worker Kelly (who would look like a buff Char Aznable if it wasn't for the fact that Char is way too cool to wear trousers which go up to his armpits). After bonding with him (despite discovering that he is planning to re-join Gatos Zeon group with the mobile armour he has been rebuilding in his shed) and spouting the normal nonsense about how they are warriors and can never settle down (despite protestations from cute girlies), Kou gets out of his funk and for his trouble gets a newly rebuilt and pimped-out Gundam and an increasingly flirtatious Nina (who he managed to upset again eventually, of course, because hes about as flakey as a typical harem lead when it comes to dating attempts). When Kelly discovers that Cima was deceiving him, and was planning on giving his mobile armour to another pilot, he takes it himself and goes off to and demands to fight the Gundam... You can probably guess the rest. The one thing which 0083 really makes me appreciate is precisely how awesome Toshihiko Sahashis music for Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny really is. 0083 may have considerably better animation and well directed action scenes, but with its average-to-middling music it simply doesn't build up the same kind of intensity or excitement of SEED (despite the fact that in UC Gundam the heroes never come across as invincable). Even out of battle, it just doesn't have the same sense of drama. Still, its an entertaining show, and its certainly not short on plot with plenty of stuff going on in this volume. The animation is good, and it does have big robots fighting, which is always a plus. The fact that, despite being rather po-faced, some of it seems rather silly does give it good mock-value if you are so inclined too.

My:HiME Game trading figures

DiGiKerot — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 17:13:22 +0000

For such a popular series, the My:HiME figures released thus far have been somewhat a mixed bag. Whilst there are a number of nice looking (and expensive!) diecasts and PVCs coming in the near future, thus far we've only really seen the massively shoddy Bandai HGIF series and CMs so-so TF series (a far nice looking second series of which is forthcoming) on general release, plus show-only Haruka and Shizuru figures (again from CMs, presumably similar to the TF figures). Its with great pleasure that today I received Bandais trading figure series based on the My:HiME PS2 game. What can I say, as far as trading figures go, they're great. I suppose how great they are will depend on what you think of the game designs, which are far softer in style and more like atypical bishojo game designs (which personally I think are nice, if not as good as the TV designs, with the exception of Miyu who looks fantastic in the game). So, I now have rather nice looking Mai, Natsuki, Mikoto, Miyu and (game exclusive character) Sayuka figures standing on my shelf. Which makes me happy.

Sakura Taisen - Su-Mi-Re

DiGiKerot — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 19:57:18 +0000

Sumire finally realises that she actually sucks, and decides to retire. To celebrate, we are inflicted with twenty-odd minutes of fanboyish injokes and mindless tedium. Seriously, I'm a Sakura Taisen fanboy. I've played the games, have ST gashapon standing on top of my TV, bought various CDs and that kind of thing, and even I found Sumire to be a waste of time. There just isn't anything in it to recommend about it, theres just a couple of dull musical scenes and a lot of teary-eyed any incredibly dull dailogue scenes. I'm not even sure I'd recommend it to ST completists unless they happen to be a die-hard Sumire fan (who, I'll admit, was never really my favorite character anyway). I guess some of the music and animation was nice (though most of the music is straight from the games, and there was also plenty of cheap looking animation), but ultimately it just isn't worth wasting the time on.

Dengeki Daioh

DiGiKerot — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 17:13:18 +0000

I got last months Dengeki Daioh magazine today, having gotten this months last week (oh, the joys of international shipping...). For those who don't know, its one of those telephone book sized comic book anthologies, which in the past had ran Azumanga Daioh (hence the Daioh part of the title), and currently runs things like Yotsubato (aka Yotsuba&), Tsukihime, Ichigo Mashimaro, Kamichu! and about a dozen other titles. Anyway, last months DD (the one I got today) came with a cute little Ichigo Mashimaro figure (of who I have no idea, since I don't follow the series). This months came with one as well, actually. I think next months is scheduled to come with another one too...

Marmalade Boy 1-4

DiGiKerot — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 21:09:22 +0000

Schoolgirl Miki has found herself in an unusual situation - whilst on holiday, her parents meet another couple, and both parties decided to get divorced and marry each others partners, and all live together in a big house. Miki, of course, is livid about the whole concept. Unfortunately, her soon to be step-brother Yuu (who is, apparently, like Marmalade, because whilst he is superficially sweet he is actually really bitter) is supportive of the whole idea. Oh, and hes a right bishonen and all that. Miki precedes to ANGST about the whole situation, ANGST Yuu kissing her whilst he thought she was asleep, ANGST about her former crush Ginta (who devistated her by laughing at a love letter she wrote many moons ago, but probably actually likes her) seemingly being jealous, ANGST about almost accidently accepting her family situation, ANGST about being infatiuated with Yuu, ANGST about Yuu having formerly having a cute girlfriend, ANGST about getting lost in a hall of mirrors and, well, you get the idea. Miki tries to keep her home situation under wraps at school, Yuu generally doesn't care. Yuus former girlfriend Arimi turns up whilst Yuu and Miki are out at a theme park. Ginta forces a kiss onto Miki (ANGST!!!!!). Oh, there was some guy making moves towards Yuu in the library, Arimi turns up in front of the school just in time for Miki to use her as an excuse to escape from Ginta (Arimi, of course, still has a thing for Yuu, even though they only went out for three months). I'm sure Mikis best friend Meiko has something for Ginta or Yuu or whoever will cause Miki the most ANGST when its revealed... If you ever catch me saying anything as elitist as stating that old-school anime had much nicer looking animation either stylistically or animation wise please remind me of Marmalade Boy. Shoujo or not, lime-green seifuku and ludicrous power-shoulders definately aren't a good look. Seriously, though, its a fun show. Entirely silly and stupid and overly melodramatic, of course, but surely thats the whole point with this kind of show? I mean, its hard to take anything seriously when the show keeps throwing in comic moments anyway. Anyway, as long as it stays silly and doesn't start trying to get too serious or overly melodramatic I approve wholehearted. Mikis keyring robot microphone recorder thing is just a rubbish version of the thing Sana (from Kodomo no Omocha) uses for her rapping, though.

Sakura Diaries 1-3

DiGiKerot — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 21:19:34 +0000

Typical anime county bumpkin Touma does the typical anime county bumpkin thing and heads off to tokyo in order to try and get a university place as oppossed to taking over his parenets in. When slumming around his hotel room, a cute high school call girl suddenly turns up and offers entertainment. Despite the fact that (a) he didn't call her and (b) it seems rather odd that she seems to not only know his name but also his nickname from his childhood, he seriously considers taking advantage of the situation. Ultimately, though, he ends up throwing her out into the hall (managing to catch a cold off her in the process), which rather seems to upset her. Unfortunately for Touma, having a cold causes him to fail his first two entry exams. Will he succeed in getting into Keio, the university he was only applying for so he could say he had taken the exam? Will he hell. That doesn't stop him from telling Mieko, the hot student he met during the enterance exams (and he had been obsessive over ever since) that he had. Rather than go back to his mundane country life, Touma decides to move in with his uncle in Tokyo, attend a cram school and get into Keio next year, so he can attempt to date Mieko and the like. Toumas uncle, however, never actually seems to be around (probably because its not actually his place. Rather, Toumas hot young cousin Urara seems to be the only one around. Toumas hot young cousin who was the previously mentioned high school call girl. Who isn't actually a call young of course, but has a thing for Touma and was rather upset when he failed to recognise her (even though they only met once). So, Urara likes Touma, and whilst won't tell him is quite happy to prance around their flat half nekkid. Touma likes Mieko. Mieko seems rather promiscuous (as well as dumb, being completely oblivious to the fact that Touma failed the entrance exams, even when he tried to own up) having been spotted by Urara snogging some random guy, and Uraras friend Komi just seems to be incredibly horny and likes any older guy. This has to win the award for the show I most completely forgot about actually owning, having picked it up cheap from someone (unopened at that). Its only some talk about it on the AnimeonDVD forums this week which jogged my memory. Its not really surprising I completely forgot about owning it, though, as its the kind of thing I normally avoid like the plague, and only even picked it up cheap because I picked up good vibes about it from somewhere. Quite surprised, I was then, that its actually pretty good. Sure, its as fanservicy as you can possibly get without crossing over into outright H material (Something tells me I might have been better off with the panty-fied TV version rather than the home video releases), but its quite funny and charming and generally well made. It has cute character designs (though thats about a given for this kind of material, I guess) and its actually half decently written. I'm actually *gasp* looking forward to seeing some more. I feel so dirty ^^;

Infinite Ryvius 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 15:49:01 +0000

The year is 2225. Kouji, typical anime male extrodinare, is heading off to space to try and attain his level 2 license (which it doesn't tell us what means, but I presume its Teh Awesome). Unbeknownest to him, childhood friend Aoi and brother Yuki (with whom he doesn't get along with, but Aoi thinks is a great person) are also heading to space with much the same thing in mind... Cut to space! Sadly for Kouji, his most recent attempt at gaining his level 2 license has failed. Depsite him and his partner Ikumi seemingly doing well to begin with, their attempts are passing are foiled when a unit piloted by other testees interfers with them. The pilot of the other unit? Yup, its Yuki, whos piloting skills seem to be great, but rubs not only Kouji but also his partner and probably most of inhabitants of the space station completely the wrong way. Whilst this is going on, the adult inhabitants of the station are working on the upcoming Dive, in which the station will move towards the space phenomenon known as the Sea of Geduld, an area of high-density matter which will submit the station to high pressure and cut off communications. The dive, however, is sabotaged and the station goes plummeting towards death (during which some mysterious girl speaking cryptical dialogue relating to Koujis situation suddenly appears). Realising something odd is going on, Kouji sends Aoi and her fellow flight attendant trainee friend Izumi off towards safety and heads off with Ikumi to try and save people from high-pressure death. Aoi seems to think Kouji will screw things up entirely and resolves to go after him, when she just happens to bump into Yuki and fills him in on whats going on. Kouji is just about to open some door to save someone when Yuki turns up and tells him its a bad idea what will make the situation worse. Cue cliffhanger ending! I passed up on this series back when it was originally released. Most people were, for some reason I can't quite figure out now, putting it into the same pot as Argento Soma, claiming it to be part of some Sunrise plan to do updated anime shows inspired by various literary classics (in this case, Lord of the Flies). Thanks to a recent, dirt cheap rerelease I decided to pick it up anyway... Wow, what a cracking first episode. Seriously, it good stuff (I wouldn't expect less from Planetes director Goro Taniguchi). Solid character design, great animation in this episode at least, loads of characters and decent setup and good writing. Musically its pretty decent as well, jazzing this up a little with some distinctive hip-hop BGM on occasion. Negative points, well, I suppose Aoi and Izumi could end up getting pretty annoying depending on what happens when everything goes to hell in an episode or two. We shall see, I guess...

Infinite Ryvius 2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 17:22:26 +0000

With contact to the main command centre cute (because their all, like, dead), elite trainee Yuli, coordinating dive related issues trys to take control of the situation. With only fourteen hours left before the station is completely destroyed by the Geduld, Yuli makes the drastic decision to try and prepare the Leibel, a ship which might just have enough power to escape if they can get it ready in time, and attempts to broadcast an evacuation notice to the completely oblivious people on the station. Sadly, its cut off part way through, but they get the idea anyway. Meanwhile, towards the bottom of the station, Ikumi is beating herself up about not having been able to save the person trapped they were arguing about with Yuki at the end of the last episode. Still, thats the least of their problems - with the problems facing the station the whole area is being systematically locked down, and they've got to get out of there fast! Slowed down by picking up the unconsious Faina (presumably looking for the ferret she misplaced earlier), and with some of the few remaining adults sacrificing themselves to slow the stations descent by cutting off the lower sections, will they make it out in time? Its only episode 2, so what do you think? ^^; Much like episode 1, this was rather suprisingly terrific. The animation is still good, and the pacing is spot on for the opening of a show like this. I approve.

Mmmmm, Rin....

DiGiKerot — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 17:35:00 +0000

For those with a PSP who has been silly enough to upgrade to version 2.0 of the firmware, I've retooled the SD Rin wallpaper from the Type-Moon website for PSP use. Plain, yes, but you don't really want anything overly complex with the UI on the PSP. I've also installed a theme-switching plug-in for Wordpress, and an alternate (and hopefully more usable) theme for PSP users accessable from the meta section in the sidebar (you may need to refresh the browser after clicking it, and its not great, but at least its quicker to load and way more readable). Since I'm on the subject of Rin - drooooolll . Alter are doing a rather lovely KOS-MOS figure as well...

Infinite Ryvius 3

DiGiKerot — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 20:59:03 +0000

With the station pretty much decimated, we now have 487 students crammed into the small space of the Liebel. Whilst most of those with useful skills are trying to assist Yulis group Zwei with their launch preparions as much as possible. Yuki, however, is being a bit of a prick as usual. Faina finally wakes up and share a couple of embarrsing moments with Kouji, and Aoi squirms in a fashion which amused me incredibly at the shrillness of Izumis voice. When Kouji goes off to get something to eat (and ends up doing his brothers neglected duties), Faina decides to be odd again and go off looking for her weasel, managing to get held captive by some the group who sabotaged the dive. Using her as a captive they try to convince Zwei to stop the launch (it seems that they are trying to meet up with some group hiding further into the Geduld), but some quick thinking by Ikumi and a group of thuggish looking types lead by Blue save the day... But then the launch doesn't work. It seems that our sabatuers have some kind of device attached to the ship pulling it towards the Geduld. As death approachs, Kouji sees a vision of the mysterious zany girl and the ship suddenly bursts into life... Its a bit of a slowdown for the first half of the episode here, though not really in a negative fashion as it generally felt like it was going somewhere with plenty of character interactions and some setup for future events. Given how break-neck the first couple of episodes were at times, its probably necessary. The second half of the episode picks up speed again right off, though. All good stuff regardless, though I hope they drop some more info on the mysterious girl soon. Is Kouji the only one who can see her, and whats her connection to Ryvius (or, more to the point, what the heck is Ryvius).

Infinite Ryvius 4

DiGiKerot — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 13:23:18 +0000

In the chaos what has resulted from the Liebels sudden launch, Zwei discover a ship - the titular Ryvius (which, at this point, is obviously the target of the sabatuer group) - hidden within the Liebel. Zwei request those residing in the Liebel to move into the Ryvius in groups of four or five, leaving Kouji and Ikumi to team up with the hyperactive Nicks and his partner Akihiro, whilst Aoi, Izumi and some friend whos name I haven't clock have Faina thrust upon them by Kouji (Faina, coincidently, has found her weasel again by this point). Nicks finds something which looks like some kind of giant robot didn't within Ryvius too... Nothing much of massive interest happened this time around. It simply looks like they're setting up the various parties which are going to come into play in the coming episodes - Blues group in particular seem to be positioning themselve against Zwei.

Infinite Ryvius 5

DiGiKerot — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 14:22:56 +0000

Kouji and the other level 2 trainees are roped into helping out with the Ryvius preparations outside the ship, whilst Aoi and friends end up working in the canteen. Aoi and Izumi use the fact that they currently have gravity as an excuse to wear skirts. Zwei posts (much to Yulis disgruntlement) performance scorings for all those involved in the work outside, which annoys Kouji because, unlike the awesome and high-scoring Yuki and Ikumi, he rather sucks. Nick shows off the giant robot room, whilst Yuli assigns Yuki to be part of Koujis group, which Yuki misinterprets as a willing action and Koujis part and proceeds to pound the crap out of Kouji. Meanwhile, Zwei pick up two approching ships on the radar which, despite seeming to be trying to secure the ship from the outside, aren't responding to communications. Just when they are getting very stressed over the situation Mysterious Girl says something mysterious which causes the ship to launch off at high speed and ruin Fainas cake. Back on Earth, the events at the Liebel Delta station are being completely covered up. Oh, any in previous posts I've completely forgotten to mention Yukis psuedo-ex-girlfriend and Yuli taking in Pat, the young son of one of the deceased instructors, who will no doubt become incredibly important at some point good. Another good episode, and rather more uptempo than the previous episode. Some of the scenes towards the end of the episode reminded me a lot of Crest/Banner of the Stars, something which is easily explainable due to the fact that when it doesn't have wacky hip-hop msic Katsuhisa Hattoris music frequently sounds very similar to his work on that show. Given some especially familiar sounding music and BotS-esque visual displays, well, its pretty much a given.

Marmalade Boy 5

DiGiKerot — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 19:55:20 +0000

Ginta meets Miki in front of her house and gets all angry and ANGSTy with her, and in particular her possible relationship with Yuu. When Yuu suddenly pops up to interject (and complain about the noise), Miki uses it as a chance to escape into the house, whilst Ginta just proceeds to get incredibly annoyed at everything Yuu says. Ginta finally finds out that Yuu and Miki are living in the same house, though has absolutely no idea about the circumstances. Despite taking some sage advice from Meiko and asking Ginta to put a hold on any advances until she has time to sort out her feelings about everything, things get increasingly awkward between them. The stop things getting to serious and inject some silliness into the show, Miki and Meiko stop by the store where Yuu is working part time and discuss the medallions they are given when starting their school, and Tencho tells a story of how putting a picture of your crush inside may cause a relationship to blossom between you (which is so obviously about him). Back at school, Miki ropes Yuu into the Tennis club when one of their male doubles team is injured, and Yuu proves that he could hold his own against the cast of Prince of Tennis with his l33t skills. Of course, it turns out his teammate will be Ginta, who is actually willing to swallow the differences between them simply because he mustn't lose against his opponent. Oh, and Yuu spies Meiko and their teacher making out in the library. Errr, its more silly, over-melodramatic shojo fluff which doesn't take itself too seriously. It amuses me greatly, though not nescessarily for the right reasons. Its not a particularly great episode, or a particularly bad one - its simply par for the series.

Marmalade Boy 6

DiGiKerot — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:37:32 +0000

Confusion abound when Arimi turns up to cheer for Yuu at the tennis match. How does she know about it? It turns out the opponents are from Yuus old school. Whats more, one of them, Tsutomu, is someone who Yuu didn't particularly get along with, and who had a very one-sided crush on Arimi. Whats even more is that he is Gintas cousin and arch Lival! "What a small world..." bemoans Miki. Quite. It turns out that Tsutomu knows all about the Miki Letter incident with Ginta, and blabs out loud about it. This causes Miki to get rather angry at Ginta, who sinks into the pit of ANGST! when Miki runs off screaming "I HATE YOU!". This results in Ginta going into a funk and sucking at tennis, until Arimi convinces Miki to return to cheer for him (having informed her that the losing team would have to get their heads shaven as part of a bet! Oh no!). Upon hearing Mikis voice, Ginta becomes Teh Awesometacular King of Tennis and wipes the floor with Tsutomu. Having won the tennis match, things between Yuu and Ginta don't seem quite a tense as they were previously. However, whilst leaving the school, Arimi suddenly makes a move on Ginta! ANGSTY SHOCK! Better than the previous episode, just because it was so insanely silly. Particularly the tennis, where Ginta won the match by jumping ten foot in the air for a smash and other such silliness. Next episode looks like it might be psuedo-serious though (well, try to be anyway - I can't take this show seriously in the slightest, not that I expect you are supposed to) as the gang head to Hokkaido on their school trip when an unexpected guest turns up! (Well, not quite so unexpected if you think about it...)

Sakura Diaries 4

DiGiKerot — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 18:54:37 +0000

Touma goes to a student party with Mieko who officially introduces him as her boyfriend. When a student who is actually on the course Touma has been claiming to be on comes over to talk to them, his cover is almost blown, but he somehow manages to survive the ordeal by pretending to be drunker than he actually is. Mieko gets somewhat drunk though, and and starts fooling around with Touma after they leave, only to be spotted by Urara. Who promptly goes home and makes soup. Whilst Urara sits and watches her soup getting cold, Mieko and Touma end up in a love hotel, but whilst Touma fantascises wildly he gets absolutely nowhere despite them being there all night. The next day Touma somehow comes to the bizzare conclusion that the only way he'll be able to take the inituative is to lose his virginity before his next date with Mieko (hwah?), whilst at the same time Uraras horny friend Komi suggests that the best way for Urara to progress her relationship with Touma would be to partake of some casual screwing. Urara then promptly shows up at Toumas prep school - with her having to apply for university next year, she herself as enrolled there too. Touma suddenly realises that Urara is actually hot, and somehow comes to the conclusion that she is a bit of a slapper, and, well, you can probably guess what he is thinking... You people must be starting to think that I only watch shows I can make fun off. Thats not really the case, its just that Marmalade Boy and Sakura Diaries just make it so easy to do so even when they are trying to be serious (which, admittedly, isn't very often - they are both incredibly silly). Some of the thought processes which go on in this episode simply deny belief. That said, I actually enjoy this show, though this episode was pretty unremarkable.

Sakura Diaries 5

DiGiKerot — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:29:49 +0000

Whilst out shopping for supplies for their cram school class mate mini-party, Touma buys condoms. Family Planning Condoms! Reminds me of that episode of Paranoia Agent. Anyway, I'm getting away from the point. Since Urara continues to make lame excuses as to why her father isn't around, Touma suggests they make things more interesting by playing strip Jankenpo, and with Komis advice in mind she agrees. Meanwhile, Mieko proves shes actually a slutty hag by denying there being anything going on between her and Touma when the guy from the party approaches her, and agrees to go out on a group date with him (admittedly with Touma there, though that was his suggestion!). After making some kind of bizzare love confession on the way home (which seems to go straight over Toumas head), the game of Jankenpo is coming to its climax when Touma decides what he is doing is wrong and goes off to mope in his bedroom. When Urara (mindful of Komis advice) follows, he takes this as proof that she is as slutty as he was thinking and tries to force himself on her, which prompts Urara to realise he thinks nothing of her at all, and after managing to free herself she runs off all upset (not surprising, really). Nope, didn't really like that last scene much, really, really not my thing. The rest of the episode was fun, though. I think I'll just move along quickly...

Sakura Diaries 6

DiGiKerot — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 20:11:41 +0000

Touma realises what a messed up jerk he had been in the previous episode, and despite trying to laugh it off and blame it on the drink he is treated by Urara is the harsh, cold fashion he pretty much deserves (though she has still fixed his shirt which she had ripped the prevous night ¬_¬). When the guidance councillor tell him that his choice of university is far too optimistic is seems like his life is crumbling around him. Komis attempts to extract details of the previous night from Urara don't work other than to cause Urara to wonder why she likes Touma in the first place, at which point she reveals Teh Backstory. I'll not go into it other than the mention that it can't fail to be awesome, featuring Takoyaki and crying bunny rabbits. Back at the cram school, Akimoto, the guy who has failed three consecutive years, tells Touma not to worry about what the guidance councillor has said since he is only interested in his acceptance rates, and that Touma will find his own rut eventually. Really, though, hes just trying to secure an extra member for their forthcoming baseball game of ultimate bonding. On his way home, Touma is accosted by Komi, who proceeds to inform him that he is, in fact, been a bit of a jerk. As if we didn't know. Having been spared any attempted rape scenes this time around, it was much better. Oh, and that amazerfying backstory sequence! Oh my! (Okay, its not really all that interesting, being all Teh Generic and that, but whatever).

Marmalade Boy 7

DiGiKerot — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:59:23 +0000

So, its off to Hokkaido for a school trip, and when Miki gets seperated from her group she ends up bumping into Yuu and Ginta, who suggests Miki joins them for the rest of the day. Just as Miki starts walking away from them (figuring it'd be far too awkward), Arimi suddenly glomps on Ginta! Yup, it turns out that her school is also in Hokkaido, and she takes to oppotunity to abduct Ginta whilst everyone is laughting at Tsutomus new haircut. So, Ginta and Arimi joins forces to form the SUPER MAKE JEALOUS ALLIANCE, aimed at getting Miki all jealous at Arimi and Ginta, and hopefully freeing up Yuu in the process. Meanwhile, Meiko sneaks out of her room at night to make out with the teacher. The next day, Ginta and Arimi start to put their plans into action, which unsurprisingly puts Miki into her usual ANGST mode. For the first five minutes I was kind of worried we weren't going to have any spazzy facial expressions, and I'd have to fall back on the whole array of badly animation vehicles on display here for screengrabs - trains, buses, trams, and none of them particularly well drawn. Animation mockery aside, this was a pretty typical and unsurprising episode, being hugely generic and everything.

Marmalade Boy 8

DiGiKerot — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 19:43:14 +0000

After the trip to Hokkaido, Miki is getting all ANGSTy about the Rabu Rabu Modo Ginta and Arimi were getting into, and decides to spend the whole Sunday in bed. However, Yuu comes and drags her out, since they are having a BBQ for some reason. Just when Miki decides she'll let the matter about the whole bizzare living arrangements drop for just one day, its suggested they all go out and see a movie or something. BAD IDEA! Or at least Miki seems to think so, since she has still been keeping things a secret at school and doesn't want matter leaking out. She runs off in a ANGSTy strop. Whilst out, she bumps into Arimi, and gets all stressed out over the way that Arimi has all kinds of mature hotness (by which, like in most shojo shows, means she wears makeup), whilst she still seems like a frumpy child. Upon returning home, she walks into the middle of her parents having a heated argument, and they agree to break up the living arangements... Except they aren't really - it's all a ruse to get Miki to admit shes actually alright with the whole situation, which she does. She gets rather upset with the way they manipulated, though, until Yuu cheers her up, and the step mother gives her some cosmetics (Marmalade Boy cosmetics aside). Spazzrific argument twist aside (which I could have sworn happened way earlier in the manga - I've only read a few volumes yet recognised what was going on immediately), this episode was way too serious for the first two thirds. I prefer my spazz more evenly spread across the episode. Thankfully, the next one looks entirely stupid...

Marmalade Boy 9

DiGiKerot — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 20:32:56 +0000

Miki stresses out about feeling like a bit of a slapper due to her current mixture of her feelings for Yuu and her jealousy towards Arimi and Ginta in a diary entry to Meiko. Just when shes about to reply, the guy who was making ambiguously gay moves of Yuu many, many episodes ago (and is apparently the student council president) walks into the library and obviously decides hes not gay at all - he puts the moves on Meiko. Of course, Meiko is only interested in her teacher (whose name I've finally managed to remember - Namura, normally referred to as Na-chan), and walks off in a series of spazzy faces. Little does she know that Namura has been grabbed by one of the female teachers and forced to go shopping with her. Meanwhile, Yuu ropes Miki into helping at this part time job since they are having an anniversery sale, and Miki is shocked at the number of female admires Yuu has. When Arimi and Ginta suddenly turn up, closely followed my Tsutomu (who promptly begins talking smack about Ginta in an attempt to make Arimi ashamed to be seen with him), they end up deciding to hold a competition to see who is Marmalade Boys AWESOMEST GUY (seriously, there is no real prize ever mentioned, just bragging rights). When store owner Tencho interjects, the competition suddenly becomes the SUPER HEADSHAVE WORK CHALLENGE, in which they have to flog as many clothes as possible to his customers. Needless to say, Tsutomu loses and has to get his hair cut even shorter. Whilst this is going on, Meiko is still being stalked by Mr. Sexually Ambiguous President Guy when she spots, outside the store where Miki et al are working, Namura and the female teacher talking to Tencho, and seemingly in a rabu-rabu mode. SHO-KU! When Miki and Yuu return home, they are suddenly told that by their parents that they are going on a trip which all four of them had managed to completely forget to tell them about. Mikis going to be alone in the house with Yuu! OH NOES! This episode was fair more silly throughout than the previous, and therefore much more to my taste. I approve.

Marmalade Boy 10

DiGiKerot — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 21:44:15 +0000

With the parents away, a hungry Yuu manages to get Miki to cook him something. Unfortunately, Yuu obvious hasn't seen enough in the way of anime, otherwise he would have known that female leads always suck at cooking. Alas, Miki in no exception. So, after doing some coupletabulous-like things such as going out shopping, Yuu ends up cooking, and he is indeed awesome. Yuu refuses to cook again, though, because its too much effort. Getting rather anxious about spending the night in the house with just Yuu, Miki flicks randomly through various TV channels and bemoans the lack of good viewing. Yuu goes off to get the movie he just happened to have rented... A horror movie! Yup, Yuu rented that classic Elm Street on Friday. I'm sure we are all aware of what taking a chick to see a horror movie tends to imply in US sitcoms ^^; Anyway, if that didn't serve to get Miki all worked up, walking into Yuu in the bathroom does. To make matter worse, when Miki goes in the bath herself she stays in too long and collapses after she gets out, resulting in a dream sequence (which, alas, is rather dull). Meanwhile, a worried Yuu breaks into the bathroom and is ultimately rewarded with a slap across the face for his concern. Nothing really happened to move the story along here. Next episode is Yuus birthday, apparently, and with the promise of Arimi, Ginta and Tsutomu turning up on the doorstep it promises to be spazztastic! Hurrah!

Saber vs The Army of Heck

DiGiKerot — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 18:19:54 +0000

Saber is surrounded! Oh noes! The Disgaea Series 2 trading figures (now Palm Characters rather than Palm Scenery) arrived today. Much, much kudos to Toranoana for the improvements in the packaging - they've increased the size of the little plastic (yes, plastic - none of the crappy cardboard TFs usually come in) cases to be large enough to actually stand the built figures in, not to mention making them nicely stackable and having a circular rim in the base of the case to stand them in. They make a nice display now.

Marmalade Boy 11

DiGiKerot — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:32:21 +0000

Whilst stressing out over having slapped Yuu when all he did was be concerned for her, Miki gets a call from her vacationing parents which makes her forget about that - its Yuus birthday, and the fact that no-one told her as much annoys Miki somewhat. Despite the fact Yuu isn't particularly bothered, Miki insists that they hold a mini, two-person birthday party for him and promptly goes shopping. Whilst out shopping Miki discovers a cake mix apparently "so easy anyone can bake it". Ooooo! Sounds like a challenge! Yes, Miki manages to b0rk baking a simple cake, but thankfully her icing skills turn out to me masterful enough to cover it up somewhat. Meanwhile, Arimi pops into Tenchos place with the intention of wishing Yuu a happy birthday, only to discover he has taken time off work whilst his parents are on holiday, and that Yuu and Miki are living together, and promptly gets on the phone... Back at Mikis place, Miki decides to dress up all pretty like (i.e. she wears makeup!), and just as things are getting all hot and steamy over lunch the doorbell rings - yup, Arimi and Ginta turn up. Whilst Ginta accosts Yuu over the fact that he and Miki are staying there alone, Arimi proceeds to wind up Miki something rotten. Then Tsutomu turns up, having followed Ginta and Arimi all the way there and gets upset that they didn't invite him to what he sees as a party. So, they end up just going off to eat (Yuu claims Miki made far too much to eat anyway). Tsutomu keeps picking faults with the food, which results at everyone staring at him with EVIL LASER VISION! When Miki goes off to her bedroom to look for a pack of cards, Ginta follows her up to her room, and reveals to a shocked Miki that he really isn't dating Miki, but gives her an ultimatum. If Miki doesn't choose him over Yuu then he'll seriously date Arimi! And he wants an answer soon! GASP! Aside from that last twist, it was a pretty disappointing episode actually. Not much of any real interest happened until right at the end, and there wasn't much in the way of silliness to make up for it (strange, given the fact you'd think a birthday episode would have more room for it). Ho-hum.

Marmalade Boy 12

DiGiKerot — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:55:46 +0000

Once again, Miki is trying to completely avoid Ginta due to what happened at Yuus birthday party. Miki is chosen by her teachers to play in the forthcoming return tennis match against Arimis school (its girls singles this time for some reason), and whilst practicsing Ginta confronts her and asks for her decision. Miki asks for him to wait until after the tennis game for her answer... Back at home, Miki is angsting over the situation so much that she manages to overfill her coffee glass (oh, such a cliche...), when suddenly the parents arrive home. Distracted too much over the Ginta situation she decides to retreat to her room to angst some more, but Yuu suggests that she actually goes over to stay Meiko for the night, so she goes over there to ANGST about the whole situation (Meiko, coincidently, appears to be fairly rich having a nice house and, apparently, a maid). The next day, Miki arrives at school to be confronted by Ginta. Mercifully (and to Mikis surprise), he doesn't bring up what they were talking about yesterday. Rather, he offers to be her practice partner for tennis in order to help her be in top form - having won the previous game, Ginta has no desire for their school to lose the return match! Despite her good form, Miki is getting increasingly stressed about the tennis game. Realising this, Yuu drags her out shopping to help her relax (awww, isn't he sweet), and they so looking for a new tennis outfit for Miki (all of which are, apparently, KAAAAWAAAIIII!). Come the tennis match, all the girls from Arimis school are spazzing out over Yuu. Thats not important, though - what is is that Mikis opponent has been hand picked and trained by a vengeful Tsutomu! Miki, however, plays incredibly awesomely. At least until Arimi turns out and starts her usual Ginta glomping, momentarily distracting Miki. Mki manages to focus all her ANGSTy energy into tennis, though, and becomes an undefeatable tennis diva, destroying her opponent completely. She doesn't get to talk to Ginta, though, as Arimi drags him away before they get a chance to speak... This is more like it. This episode was both incredibly silly in places and suitable dramatic, and had a decent amount of character development and story progress. Unfortunately, the next episode preview (or, indeed, the next episodes title) gives way too much away about whats going to happen. In these days of My:HiME-esque uber-vague previews its kind of odd. Of course, if you really want to read into stuff, the OP suggests a whole pile of upcoming events (as did the eyecatches). Not that it bothers me that much, its all fairly predictable anyway.

Ghost Talker's Daydream 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 13:48:42 +0000

Masaki Saiki can see dead people, a skill which she uses to try and eke out a living working for a consultant for a special investigation division investigating supernatural issues. Thats only bt day, though - by night she supplements her meagre earnings working as a dominatrix at an S&M club. When working as a consultant, she works with Souichiro Kadotake, who is altogether far too timid to work in the field, but has awesome mad fisticuff skills. In this episode, Masaki is contracted to look into the spirits of a woman and her daughter whose ghosts are haunting an apartment. When she arrives there, however, she finds the womans highschool student sister being accosted by a man. Whilst they save the girl, the guy gets away (thankfully his escape route was captured on film by Masakis stalker, Mitsuru). The girl, Ai, is convinced that the man - her sisters shady partner - was responsible for her sisters death. When she was visiting her sisters apartment, she found the stuffed bear (Po, which contains a sound recorder - predictable twist HO!) she had given her niece. Seeing the ghost of her niece clinging to her, Masaki offers her help with the situation... Well, that was kind of interesting - half bawdy comedy, half supernatural thriller. Okay, so it is somewhat familiar to the old OAV series Yuugen Kaisha (aka Phantom Quest Corp.), but that was considerably more hammed up and considerably less risque than this is. Being an OAV, it doesn't have to skip on the service (you get boobies within a matter of seconds of the show starting, and not these nippleless ones either). The animation is a little underwhelming for a OAV - there are a lot of better looking and better animated TV shows floating around at the moment - and the character designs are merely servicable rather than particularly great (only Masaki and her costume designs particularly stand out). This doesn't really detract, though, as its not a show which really requires spangly animation Its a fun show, though. The characters are likable and amusing (though Masaki has a habit of either embarrsing herself or everyone around her constantly), and the pacing is spot on for this first episode. The bawdy comedy to other stuff happening ratio is leaning a little too more towards the prior for this episode than I'd perhaps like. The plot was nothing new, but it didn't really drag out or anything, and since there are only the four episodes I doubt it'll overstay its welcome.

Ghost Talker's Daydream 2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 14:06:49 +0000

Masaki bumps into Ai from the previous episode whilst getting on the train. Since the last episode, Ai seems to have become some what more...insane and childish, sitting on the train with a huge stuffed bear (called Popo, presumably because its twice as big as Po!) and spooking out the other passengers with her creepy singing. It turns out that, since the events of the last episode, Ai can now see ghosts like Masaki, and would like to do something to help them. Masaki, however, tells her rather empthatically that it would be a very bad idea and that she absolutely mustn't get messed up with the spirits, and simply leaves her a business card with her number on so she can call her if she gets in trouble. Ai doesn't listen, though, and gets involved way over her head with a spirit she sees looking dejected. Its a good thing that ace stalker Mitsuru is around to she her and warn Masaki that Ai is doing something stupid... I found they got the mixture of tones in this episode much better this time around, and its a much better episode for it (the less banal storyline helps significantly as well). The running joke about Masaki not wearing any panties is rather silly, but its not overly gratuitious and its well balanced out by good amount of rather more sombre Masaki backstory.

Ghost Talker's Daydream 3-4

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 10:49:51 +0000

Masaki goes on holiday to Hakone to investigate hair growth legends (for use, errr, down there). Unfortunately, she is the lead character in a detective-type show, which means any vacation is going to be at least twice as dangerous then their life normally is. This rule, of course, stands true as on a contruction site for a hotel being built the bones of a group of children (along with a pile of marbles) are dug up. Apparently, twelve years ago there were a series of child disappearances in the area which were linked to a woman called Ichinose (*snigger*), and despite the case having been officially discontinued the detective investigating the case still isn't satsified. When a van crashes under mysterious circumstances and Masaki is spotted on the scene talking to no-one in particular, the detective figures out what Masakis occupation is and ropes her, very unwillingly, into the case. Of course, things aren't quite that simple, with the manager of the construction site wanting to get things over with quickly, and the other detective on scene wanting to do everything by the book. Oh, and Kadotake and Ai turn up in episode 4, having found they just can't get things sorted in Tokyo without Masaki, and do nothing of any particular use other than provide comic relief. Oh, and Mitsuru is up to his usual stalking ways. So, we finish the series with a two-parter, apparently a new story for the animation - who exactly wrote it (the anime staff or the original author) I don't really know or care, what is important is that it works way better than the other two episodes of the series. There is way more to the plot, and whilst its not especially original, its way less overly cliched than in the others. Theres a far more consistant and tangible atmosphere to the whole proceedings which just provides a far more satisfying experience. Thats not to say it throws out the fanservice and silly humour of the previous episodes - it is a vacation arc and has the onsen scenes one would expect from such a thing - it just generally comes across as far more satisfying an episode. Coincidently, for anyone getting the US DVD, there is some wallpaper and stuff hidden on the DVD you may not notice if you aren't in the habit of scrutinising the packaging.

Infinite Ryvius 6

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 17:58:54 +0000

The episode starts with a flashback to when Kouji has hospitalised by Yuki when they were younger. Back on Ryvius, not a huge amount has changed with Koujis face showing visable signs of the beating. Aoi hounds Ikumi to tell were how it occured, but she already knew the anser really... Kouji and Akihiro (Nicks rather subdued partner) talk for a while - Akihiro apparently sticks with Nick because it takes all the effort out of his life, and annoys Kouji a little when he suggests he is the same way with Ikumi, though Kouji comes to the conclusion that he finds his own way through life, and its not his fault that people keep butting in. Zwei ropes in the top four Level 2 pilots (including Yuki and Ikumi) after discovering the manual for the Vital Guarder (the giant robot mentioned previously) and deciding the try and get it operational. Ikumi, however, manages to enrage Yuki by asking him to lay off his brother a bit, and they end up fighting. At the same time, Zwei attempts to move the Ryvius out of the Geduld into normal space meets with a barrage of depth charges. Ikumi and Yuki, plus Kouji and Faina who happened to pass them on the way to the bridge, are roped into helping them quickly change course, only for them to discover torpedos coming from the other direction! Oh NOES! Thankfully, Ikumi noticed a gravitational field function whilst working on the bridge, which saves them from the torpedos at the expense of the remains of the Liebel (including the sabatuers who attempted to take over the bridge). The fact that Zwei didn't seem to mount any rescue plan seems to enrage Blue, who is getting info from a Zwei member they've been manipulating... Gosh, rather a lot happened this episode, and I get the feeling some of the small dialogues I didn't bother mentioning are going to end up being rather more relevant than I'd have thought later in the series. The important thing, however, that the show is still maintaining the kind of quality it demonstrated since the start.

Infinite Ryvius 7

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 19:15:02 +0000

Blues group attack the bridge and take control over the Ryvius, angry with Zweis secrecy and their attitude towards the lives of the captives on the Liebel. Yuli is angry, too, as Zweis self-appointed leader Lucson had told her they had been moved to saftey. When Yuki trys to disarm Blue he finds he is no match for him, and is swiftly dispatched. Blues group orders the Ryvius to be brought out of the Geduld, but Kouji suggests another route of action - the current forces within the Geduld will naturally take them into the orbit of Mars, giving them time to complete the computer systems whilst keeping away from their assailants. Blue agrees and orders Kouji and Faina to work on the bridge from now on (which, mindful of Yukis position as a captive, he agrees too). Blue also shows himself as being way more competant than Lucson by realising Yuli is by far the most capable member of Zwei and places her in charge of bridge operations. Blues group announces all the details which Zwei were keeping secret to everyone on the Ryvius, which after temporary confusion causes less chaos than one would think. Meanwhile, the top four have been told to continue their attempts to control the Vital Guarder, but Yukis rebellious nature doesn't go down well with them and Blue beats him up once more. Ikumi ends up dragging him back to his and Kouji room to recover. Yuki and Kouji just get into an argument, of course, and after a few meaningless flashes of the past Yuki accuses Kouji of being spineless, and asks what the hell is going on between him and Faina. Kouji just walks away. Whilst Kouji and Faina are on their way back to the bridge, the ship is shaken by some kind of external force ("Its a squid! A squid!" Lucson cries), and Kouji and Faina embrace. You could see Blues actions in the episode a mile (or at least four or five episodes) away, but it will at least serve to keep things a little more interesting for the run of episodes up until we reach the midway point, when something else is bound to happen to shake things up. Blues far more decisive decision making and aggressive attitude is a rather nice change to some of the flakey and indecisive Zwei members we've been putting up with running the show thus far. How Aoi takes to whats developing between Kouji and Faina might be interesting, and given the way they composed certain visuals in this episode I wonder if she has anything to do with whats going on between Yuki and Kouji...

Infinite Ryvius 8

DiGiKerot — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 19:52:03 +0000

Its three weeks since the last episode, and whilst Kouji has gotten friendly with the rest of those working on the bridge, and the efforts to pilot the Vital Guarder have moved on, the Ryvius is rapidly approaching Mars. Thing are becoming increasingly chaotic on the Ryvius, though, and having been stuck on there for the best part of a month tensions are high and people are becoming selfish and complacent, with most people not bothering to turn up for their scheduled duties. Yulis constantly overt optimism is starting to bug the rather more pessimistic Blue, who tells her to stop wearing that Zwei uniform already since it stands out too much, so she ends up wearing something rather more gaudy instead. After leaving the Geduld what Blue was expecting seems to have come true - there are ships waiting for them. The bridge gets into a heated argument over if its salvation or an ambush, and Blue orders them to prepare to attack much to the frustration of the Yuli. Kouji suggests a compremise - if its really an assualt their opponents are likely to wait until the last minute to attack in order to maximise their chances of success, therefore they should leave it until the last possible moment before countering them. Blue accepts this course of action, and an increasingly crushed Yuli tries to hail for help with no response, and eventually, as the ships near, they are fired upon. Blue orders the unsealing of the weapons systems and the launch of the Vital Guarder, and whilst Yuli disagrees strongly with this type of action, she is powerless to do anything... Okay, they are definately building to something between Yuli and Blue. Other than that, its much the same as any other episode - skipping the three weeks between where they were and Mars was a good idea, as it means we lose those half-dozen episodes of sheer tedium we get in a lot of these shows leading up to the midway point, and instead keeps things interesting. Its hard not to think that the show isn't going to lose momentum sooner or later, though - with their hopes of landing on Mars thrawted, I have to wonder if they'll just end up floating around for a dozen episodes or if they'll change the tone completely and have the Ryvius descend into utter disarray. Oh, and drop us some hints about mystery girl already!

Infinite Ryvius 9

DiGiKerot — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 20:52:21 +0000

The block of the Ryvius containing the Vital Guarder launches, and the Ryvius loses gravity as a result (the gravity control system being installed over there for some reason). Aoi uses a food delivery as an excuse to get to the bridge to find out whats going on, and Faina makes some offhanded comments about whether she is worried about Kouji or Yuki. The Vital Guarder crew manage to fend off a couple of attacks, everybody celebrates (even Mystery Girl does a bizzare little jig), Yukis madskillz impress, and then they lose contact with the Vital Guarder block just when another enemy ship begins to approach... This episode didn't really go anywhere plotwise, concerntrating on the build in tension on the ships bridge and among the Vital Guarder crew (it has something insane like 30 people piloting it!). Its been mentioned previously that Faina is from Jupiter, having previously been cited for the reason she doesn't shower with the other girls, but I think this is the first episode which references her having different religious beliefs to the other main cast members. I suspect they'll probably be going somewhere with that later on though...

Sakura Diaries 7

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:05:33 +0000

Urara and Touma talk, and since Touma was stressing out about the situation all day and, as such, was thinking about Urara all day she decides to forgive him. To thank her for mending his shirt, Urara makes him agree to take her out to an amusement park. She also tells him that if he starts thinking about Mieko ago she'll make bad things happen. So Touma promptly goes off, phones Mieko and agrees to meet her later that day. At cram school, Akimoto tells Touma that a bunch of them are going to Karaoke afterwards, and he is obviously invited. Touma obviously can't go since he is supposed to be meeting Mieko later. Akimoto ends up inviting Urara and Komi (who is still being horny, as per normal) though, as Urara dragged Komi to the cram school to meet Touma since she still thinks they haven't met. Meanwhile, back with Touma, he discovers that Mieko wanted to see him so they could go on a triangle date (as in three of them) with the other student guy I can't remember the name of... To karaoke. The same karaoke place that Touma is at. When Urara spots them (and Touma makes it very obvious to the other two he knows her), Touma fears for what Urara might do to him... I'm not really keen on how quickly Urara seems to have gotten completely over Toumas attempted rape, but this was otherwise a fun episode. I don't think its any better than in previous episodes, but this time around I couldn't help but notice how above average the animation actually is in this show for some reason. Well, above average aside from the fact that being in a swimsuit seems to have doubled Urara and Komis bust sizes...

Sakura Diaries 8

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 22:06:14 +0000

Urara and Komi barge into Toumas room at the karaoke place, and Komi promptly glomps the other guy (now known as Mashu since I've finally caught his name), having met him previously when she and Urara went to Keio a dozen episodes ago, and is the current object of her horny affections. He doesn't remember meeting her until prompted, though (although he is carrying around the card she gave him, along with a pile of others - obviously a bit of a playboy). Thats getting away from the point since its not all that relevant right now - what is is that Urara finally discovers that Touma has been lying about being a Keio student, and obviously has Touma by the balls (not quite literally). Urara, about to declare her love for Touma, suddenly spouts out that shes his sister and does a stroppy runner instead. Touma is rather lucky that Mieko is dumb, and completely fails to pick up on any of the oddities in what Urara has said. Komi and then Touma go off chasing Urara anyway, and Touma eventually catches her... The next day, Urara demands that Touma meets her by some ferris wheel, where they will be all lovey-dovey (Touma has no choice in this), and gives him a strict list of pager codes to ring her with if he is going to be late or can't make it. During the day Touma gets handed a message from Mieko, however, asking him to meet her so they can talk in private. Obviously hoping to score, Touma dails Uraras pager with the "can't make it" code (which I think he actually got right) then runs off to meet Mieko. Alas, all plans of scoring with Mieko are scuppered - it turns out that all along she was already in a long distance relationship, and she wants Touma to forget whats been going on (its all very dramatic, with ligthning and closeups and everything!). At the same time, Urara is happily running towards the ferris wheel, obviously having not gotten Toumas message... I think in future updates I should refer to Mieko as Lady Husserly, for she is indeed a hussy. Komi, by the same measure, should be Queen Horny. Mashu will be Sir Nanpa, Touma is King Flakey and Urara would be Madame Naivety. Well, maybe not. The first half of this episode was a lot of fun, though the second half fell rather flat. It wasn't a bad episode overall I guess.

Sakura Diaries 9

DiGiKerot — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 20:50:09 +0000

Urara is waiting on the Ferris Wheel for Touma to turn up, having completely not getten the cancellation message (as it turns out, he missed a pound/hash key press - "never trust a cram school students memory" Urara later recommends wisely), whilst Touma sits dejected in the rain before wandering home, only to suddenly realise he got the code wrong and Urara would have been expecting him almost an hour ago. Touma runs off to the ferris wheel and finds Urara standing there waiting for him in the rain, seemingly in high spirits. After finally admitting she was actaully really worried he wouldn't turn up, they suddenly kiss... In the second half of the episode, Touma mopes around being depressed and decides to put all his efforts into study, whilst Urara flirts in an attempt to cheer him up (doesn't this girl realise this is EXACTLY why Touma thought she was a slapper. Geez....). Oh, and Touma tells her he was dumped. Muh. This was a seriously mediocre episode - whilst it sounds like progress was made, nothing much really happened, and there wasn't even much in the way of humour to counterbalance the fact (I don't even think Akimoto made his usual masturbation references).

Sakura Diaries 10

DiGiKerot — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 21:51:56 +0000

Urara offers to wash the back of a upset Touma (who still hasn't realised that his uncle does actually live there), and whilst Touma tells Urara all about the Mieko situation, he also gets increasingly horny... Still, he hasn't got too much time to get horny, as he has his mock exams coming up at his cram school, but he is spending more time with bizzare good luck rituals in the hope that it'll improve his chances of getting a good result. Meanwhile, Komi is desperately wishing that Mashu would give her a call. Most of this episode was baout pubic hair. No, seriously. Touma gives Urara one of his pubes and asks for one in return - apparently is a good luck charm between couples to do so (despite the fact that Touma clearly states they aren't a couple). As odd as this sounds, whats strange is that I didn't find it completely bizarre. This would probably because I've heard this before, in (of all places) the Mobile Suit Gundam novels. Mores the shame, unfortunately, as it would have given an otherwise frightfully dull episode at least some entertainment value.

Sakura Diaries 11

DiGiKerot — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 13:58:04 +0000

Touma gets his worst mock grades ever (too many distractions, it seems), Mashu discovers that Touma isn't a registered Keio student and informs Mieko, Toumas old girlfriend turns up with her new boyfriend (who Urara eventually clobbers), Urara gives Touma a love-letter and finally, Uraras father calls from aboard, who isn't aware that Touma wasstill living with Urara! Its the penultimate episode! Lots happened, but not really anything particularly worth going into. By any stretch, it was more interesting than an episode about pubic hair.

Sakura Diaries 12

DiGiKerot — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 14:48:26 +0000

Its the final episode! Not a huge amount to spoil, alas, but it'll go in the extended entry anyway... Well, after the last episode, Touma decides to move out and ends up crashing with Akimoto. Mashu and Mieko talk about Touma a bit at Mashus expensive-looking playboy pad. Thats pretty much it as far as anything resembling plot development actually goes - the episode doesn't really go anywhere. We do get to see some of the various characters are doing, but nothing done in anyway which makes it significant. Mieko - Probably the most interesting - she breaks off her relationship with her long-distance fiancee, claiming that whilst Touma didn't really mean anything to her, he showed her the way she should be living her life. Mashu - Continues to utilise his l33t Nanpa skills. Komi - No idea, but I'd guess she is sitting staring at her pager still. Touma - devotes himself to his studies. Urara - Goes off to visit the place where she and Touma first met. Thats pretty much the lot - we never find out if Touma (or Urara, for that matter) passes his entrance exams, if Komi gets that page from Mashu, or if anything else happens for that matter. I guess its a bit of an uneventful and unsatisfying ending really (the manga continues on from here for a while from what I gather, and if I remember correctly gets nothing but increasingly depressing). I'm not sure I could watch any more of it anyway - the show was fun enough, but as we got into the second half things started to drag as we really didn't see that much development in the story, and it just felt that they were trying to stretch as little material as possible into each episode. It just started to get a bit tedious, really, and with the gradual decrease in the level of humour it didn't really do anything to keep me particularly interested. They'd probably have had to have a major shakeup in the plot at this point to have kept me interested if the show was any longer, but as it is it stands as a diverting but hardly amazing show.

Infinite Ryvius 10

DiGiKerot — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 10:35:55 +0000

The Ryvius is still under attack, and to make matter worse communications to the Vital Guarder are down. With no choice but to try and follow the path in the mines they assume to have been created by the Vital Guarder, tempers on the bridge of the Ryvius come to fore when they get a garbled message from the Vital Guarder - part of an argument over if they should abandon the Ryvius! As Lucson goes to peices and the others debate changes in the course of action, Kouji declares that they should keep going on. And they do. Straight into the path of a Mass Driver preparing to fling huge rocks in their direction! Thankfully, the Vital Guarder turns up just in the nick of time to save them, and Blue gives those who led the rebellion on the VG a swift and comprehensive pounding. Oh, and Nicks joins the elite club of those who have seen Mystery Girl.

Marmalade Boy 13

DiGiKerot — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:23:57 +0000

So, its out with the winter uniforms, and in with the equally fugly summer ones. Miki tells Ginta that he should go out with Arimi (which puts Ginta on the spot somewhat as it was really an empty threat - he has no interest in Arimi, and she has even less interest in him). Miki shows she has a level of decisiveness which would put any bishojo-show lead to fame, however, when she spends the entire episode ANGSTing over it, a situation which is made even worse when she bumps into Arimi who jokes about going to spend the night at Gintas. In the end, Ginta catches Miki in front of her house and reveals the thruth about the situation, much to Mikis releif since it'll allow her to slip back into that happy place in which she can be as indecisive as she wants. Ginta tries to force himself on Miki, but they are interupted by Yuu. Meanwhile, student president guy Satoshi continues to try and use his nanpa skills on Meiko (without much success), whilst her relationship with Namura seems to be in a bit of a rough patch...

Marmalade Boy 14

DiGiKerot — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 21:22:46 +0000

We take a temporary break from the Miki angst for the opening of this episode, and are instead treated to Meiko angst - Namura has been made her homeroom teacher, and doesn't think its a good idea for them to be seen together until after Meiko graduates. Just when I've stopped refering to Satoshi as being ambiguously gay, he tries his nanpa skills on Yuu since he can't find Meiko around the library (he doesn't get very far, though). Back to the Miki-angst, she is ambushed by Arimi whilst leaving the school. Arimi calls she on her indecisiveness, and declares that Miki isn't good enough for Yuu. Miki is so shocked by this statement she drops her tennis racket! IN SLOW MOTION! *gasp* Arimi runs off and finds Yuu, and promptly snogs him. This shocks those watching so much the drop their brooms (not in slow motion, however, so its obviously less shocking than the previous revelation). This soon becomes not only the talk of the student population, but Namura, Tencho and the female teacher I can't remember the name of are talking about it over drinks later as well. Taking courage from Arimis actions, the female teacher resolves to ask Namura up to her room after he walks her home, but Namura blows her off. Back in Meiko-angst-land, Meikos parents are arguing (again, seemingly - things really don't seem to be going remotely well between them), and Meiko has finally had enough and runs off to Namuras apartment... As much as I joke about Mikis school uniforms being ugly, at least it only has one shade of fugly green. Poor Arimi, whose winter uniform looked fine, is now made to wear several in an attractive tartan stylee, with a lovely bright green bowtie to round things off. Its obviously some kind of uniform-karma or something, and by having worn an attractive uniform whilst all around her where wearing those lime green monstrosities she has doomed herself to having to wear something so incredibly fugly for half the year to balance things out somewhat. I'm really having trouble reading Satoshi. I think he is just messing with Yuus head for fun, but I can't be entirely sure...

DiGiCharat 1

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 18:35:11 +0000

Deceptively cute alien DiGiCharat (more commonly known as Dejiko, and less commonly as Chocola) arrives in Akihabara with the diminutive Petite Charat (aka Puchiko) and the flying yellow circle Gema with the intention of becoming a famous star. Unfortunately, she underestimates the housing costs and ends up working in an anime store. Gosh, I can barely remember how long ago its been since I've seen this - it would have been back in the days when online console gaming meant prowling around the forests of Ragol beating Rappys with swords, and almost as long ago as Synch Point released their previous DVD. In any case, its just as stupid, surreal and generally pretty funny show I remember, and after a bunch of mediocre spinoffs like Panyo Panyo DiGiCharat (which, admittedly, I liked enough to buy the R2s of), DiGiCharat Nyo and the movie Hoshi no Tabi, all of which failed to capture the same amusement value of the original series in all but brief flashes, its nice to watch. I do, however, find it hard not to type DiGiKerot every time I write down the name.

DiGiCharat 2

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 18:39:40 +0000

Dejikos lival Rabi-en-Rose (real name Hikaru Usada, but don't call her that) arrives, sending Dejiko flying into the river, so Dejiko frys her with her eye beams. Unfortunately, Rabi-en-Rose also works at Gamers. Also, Dejiko has fanboys. At three minutes an episode, I feel so cheap for blogging each episode seperately. But tough, I'm going to anyway :p

DiGiCharat 3

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 18:51:52 +0000

Minataku (Takuro Minagawa) wants some Iron Leg Johnny trading cards, but he is too afraid to go into Gamers because its one hell of a scary store. The hotness of Rabi-en-Rose lures him in, however... I think I'd be afraid to shop at Gamers too if it was really like that (though if I remember correctly the flagship Akihabara store actually closed). Usada has a ludicrously large chest for 14 year old, even as far as anime goes ^^;

DiGiCharat 4

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:00:41 +0000

Dejiko, Puchiko and Gema head to the mountains for a picnic, but the mountain makes Gema scary, Rabi-en-Rose ruins the food with a helicopter impression, and a bear with four different facial expressions shows up. This episode is more bizzare than all three proceeding it put together, and as a result is very awesome.

DiGiCharat 5

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:13:11 +0000

Bishonen student Murataku (Takuro Kimura) turns up at Gamers-nyo. He is there to complain about Dejikos defilement of the Japanese language-nyo. He becomes infatuated with Puchiko instead-nyo. I've neglected to mention (because it wasn't all that relevant) that various characters in the show end their sentances differently - Dejiko always says "nyo", Puchiko "nyu" and Gema "gema". Back in the days of PSO, it was great fun annoying and completely confusing the other players by doing the same, particularly when there was someone else who knew what you were on about ^^

DiGiCharat 6

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:22:15 +0000

An epic mop battle causes Dejiko to loose her tail, which is then found by the Dejiko fanboys Takeshi and Yoshimi (renamed to Bushimi by Dejiko). On their quest to return it, they accidently manage to fall down a hole into hell. If it hasn't sunk in yet, then yes, this show really is that odd.

DiGiCharat 7

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:29:05 +0000

Gema tells Dejiko off for planning planning to write naughty doujinshi about Minataku and Murataku, so she throws him in the river. Unfortunately for her, he absorbs all the water, becomes huge and tries to crush her as revenge.

DiGiCharat 8

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:39:16 +0000

Puchiko is trying to use her eye lasers, but can't since because she can't get angry enough (unlike the always-angry Dejiko). I can't quite work out if this episode is really cute and sweet, or very very scary. I guess its a mixture of both, then. Anyway, thats the half-way point of the series. The R1 DVD actually has the ED animation inserted in here (they've had the OP in for every episode, which kind of seems like a cheap way to pad the DVD length to me...).

DiGiCharat 9

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:50:25 +0000

Rabi-en-Rose helps Minataku survive stomache problems when he eats some bread he finds on the floor, but drops her dice as a result. When Minataku returns her dice, he asks what the heck the dice are all about. Rabi then tells us her backstory, which is about as bizzare as you would expect and leaves Minataku with pretty much the same expression as the audience.

DiGiCharat 10

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:02:17 +0000

When Minatakus bread is stolen right out of his hands by a car-eared, bell-wearing, nyo-ing shadow Dejiko is accused of that and another bizzare, err, incident. Dejiko, however, pleads innocent and tries to bribe them with candy.

DiGiCharat 11

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:16:37 +0000

Dejiko dreams of warm and fluffy rice. Thats about it. No, seriously.

DiGiCharat 12

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:30:04 +0000

Dejiko wishes something interesting like a monster attack was going on. Then a monster attacks. I think this is probably the best episode of the series up until this point - its just a series of unexpected visual jokes with brilliant timing which made me laugh. A lot. That said, if I'm thinking of the right series of DGC (which I'm probably not ^^;), then what was my favorite episode should still be upcoming...

DiGiCharat 13

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:37:41 +0000

Dejiko won't get out of bed because she is possessed by a clam spirit. Thankfully, Minataku is an expect in exorcising clam spirits. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to exorcise snails. This was the episode I was thinking of. Its now be relagated to second-best, however, by the previous episode. Still, I love this one for how stupid it is (Yes, I realise every episode is stupid, but this one is particularly wonderful with it).

DiGiCharat 14

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:48:11 +0000

Abarenbou ("Hooligan") turns up with the desire to go crazy, but he leaves without actually doing anything in particular (certainly nothing hooligan-ish) which confuses everyone. Nothing particularly interesting about this episode - its just a little odd, but not really in a funny way.

DiGiCharat 15

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:56:26 +0000

Dejiko and friends organise a party at Gamers for their friends and customers. Its a music video, basically, so its not very odd and only somewhat funny, but the song is kind of cute and catchy. It'll probably be stuck in my head all of tomorrow though, and there is a really rather cool sketchy animation bit part way through.

DiGiCharat 16

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:16:01 +0000

Its Christmas, and Dejiko makes the hard-up Rabi-en-Rose a Christmas cake. An exploding Christmas cake. Dejiko starts to have second thoughts about giving her such a deadly Christmas treat, however. Its the last episode, and it literally goes out with a bang. Less literally, for an episode with an exploding cake its not actually that funny. Still, it can't drag down what is generally a rather entertainingly stupid DVD - all these years later and I still like the show just as much as I did originally. Its just a shame that the DiGiCharat shows got increasingly rubbish from this point on. Oh, and the DVD kind of annoys me by only having English language song subtitles on the dub subtitle track - for the Japanese with subs option the subtitles are all in Japanese (even on episode 15). The dub, actually, doesn't seem to be too bad from the couple of episodes I watched that way, though a couple of things don't sound quite right ("laser eye beam!" doesn't flow quite as well as "Mekara beam!" does, for example). Since we are on the subject of Koge Donbo, someone needs to release the Pitaten anime on DVD. Please?

Marmalade Boy 15

DiGiKerot — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 22:22:30 +0000

With the incident between Yuu and Arimi the talk of the school, Miki falls into her normal ANGSTy state. To make matters worse, she hasn't even been able to get in touch with Meiko, and even when she turns up at school she disappears before they have an opportunity to talk. Still, after getting a good laugh at Gintas claims that he is far more awesome than Yuu and is willing to wait for Miki to realise this, and his claims that Mikis legs are getting fatter, Mikis mood is much improved, and infact she sets off for school the next day proclaiming that she is in an awesome mood. Arriving at school, however, she discovers that the Yuu and Arimi incident is no longer the current hot topic - Namura and Meikos thing has become common knowledge and Meiko has been suspended! Miki is rather upset she didn't even have the slightest idea what was going on between Meiko and Namura, and that Meiko hadn't told her. When she goes to Meikos house to talk to her about it, Meiko tells her she didn't tell her because she didn't think she should weigh down her best friend with every little annoying thing whats happening in her life... Aside from Meiko essentially called Miki a whiney little cow (in a very roundabout way, admittedly), this episode was nowhere near as interesting as it sounds or, indeed, should have been. We've been overdue for some Meiko episodes, but I'd have rather they hadn't lumped it all together like this, because such seriousness causes a reduction in entertaining spazziness for the episode. As it stands, we could really use a Tsutomu episode to liven things up around now, or more Arimi, but it looks like that'll be a while in coming.

My:HiME Fan Disk

DiGiKerot — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 13:35:16 +0000

With the last volume of the show having just been released on DVD, and My Otome gearing up to start airing in a week or so, Bandai have released this disk for all us HiME-addicts. The bulk of the disk consists of vast amounts of VA material - well over an hour of it. Aside from that, we have a few music videos using footage from the show set to a couple of character songs, radio show theme Parade and that insert song I can't remember the name of right now, every next episode preview, a re-creation of all the background information pages on the website and a short promo for My Otome. What's curious about the background information pages is that Miroku appears in the Element section. OK, so they had to put it somewhere, but given that the website doesn't call it an element, the animation books don't call it an element, the magazine supplements I've seen don't call it an element and - well, you get the idea - it seems a bit odd for them to have done that given the way that all other material has avoided do so with great effort. The promo movie (which as far as I can remember has already been seen elsewhere) isn't all that interesting. It amuses me for two points - firstly the way Arika draws her magic wand in Gundam-beam-saber stylee and seconds Arikas Dokuro-chan-esque Pipirupirupipirupau. You can't really tell anything about the show from it, though ^^;

Honey & Clover 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 15:38:32 +0000

Art student Takemoto lives in a run-down old apartment building with his seniors Mayama,who seems to constantly be obsessing over his mobile phone, and Morita, whose eccentricity is matched soley by his brilliance and his desire to make money. Takemotos' world is turned upside down when he is introduced to brillant new student Hagu (Hanamoto Hagumi), and 18 year old with the physical and emotional development of someone far younger. Takemoto's a lolicon ^^ Just kidding. In all seriousness, I'm not really planning on covering Honey & Clover. It's been covered by so many other people in such depth that it seems completely fruitless to do so myself - I'd rather spend my time making fun of shows which haven't been covered to death, to be honest. If I was to cover it, it'd likely just develop into an endless string of superlatives which would ultimately become both tedious to write and read, but at the same time its the same reason I'm writing out this entry - the show simply demands to be respected. From the inventive opening animation, the Spitz-tastic montages, wonderful characterisation and animation, the consistantly brilliant voice work, well, the only way I can think to describe the show is as simply sublime. Its what KareKano would have ended up like if Hideaki Anno had a budget and had directed all of it, and I can't really think of to way to praise it more than that. So I won't. (I would, however, welcome recommendations on Spitz albums...)

The Mars Daybreak 1

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 13:37:33 +0000

In a shuttle descending into a rather watery-looking Mars a rather loud teenager is annoying a woman with a silly name and an even sillier haircut. The teenager isn't important right now, the woman is Vestemona Lauren, a former citizen of one of the planets huge city ships (pretty much what the name suggests - a large, floating city) returning as a military officer assigned to tackling The Ship of Aurora, an infamous pirate ship. Gram River is another down-and-out living in the slums of one of the city ships who has once again found himself fired due to the appalling state of the Martian economy, and generally spends too much time hanging around with the requisite mecha anime annoying brats. When Gram turns down a rather dubious jobs from a shady looking fellow looking to break into the military base to steal from the warehouse, one of the annoying brats takes up the job instead. When they are confronted by military patrols, its up to Gram to save him with some rather deft driving skills. Unfortunately, he isn't quite deft enough and finds himself sinking into the sea to his certain death. Well, it would be, if he wasn't wearing the Magical Shonen Show McGuffin (in this case some kind of necklace) and suddenly finding himself inside a top-end Round Buckler (its an aquatic giant robot). After a brief tussle with the military, he finds himself helping the crew of the Ship of Aurora making off with stuff from the military base, and gets a bounty stuck on his head. It was pretty obvious that Gram was going to be Teh Awesome Pilot since he totally has the look of a hot-blooded 70's mecha hero to him. Other than that, there isn't really much of a muchness to say about the first episode having already commented on Vess' haircut. Its an alright opener, but its rather generic about it. The animation and music are at least good. The character designs are completely all over the place - on one hand, theres Gram who looks like even hot-blooded mecha pilot ever, and on the other there is Vestamonas silly haircut - and there isn't really much of a consistant look and feel to them, but ultimately they somehow manage to gel into something consistant. The most odd thing about The Mars Daybreak is that its part of Japanese software developer Alfa Systems bizzare multiverse - a series of seven increasingly sureal alternate universes which also encompass Gunparade March and the Shikigami no Shiro games. This has absolutely no bearing to the show, really, but its an odd enough concept to be worth mentioning.

The Mars Daybreak 2

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 13:59:48 +0000

Aboard the Ship of Aurora, Gram decides to hang around since the pay is good. Before they accept him, though, he has to go through a swordfight with the crazy woman of a captain Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Vess angsts over Grams wanted pictures, obviously having known Gram previously. Elizabeth prepares to sell the desiccant they stole in the last episode to a group claiming they'll re-distrobute it cheaply. Gram, however, recognises the shady fellow he was talking to in the last episode and chases them back to the surface to reclaim the desiccant. Unfortunately for Gram, he is spotted by one of the militaries orbital spy satallites and they find themselves under attack from an increasing number of RBs. They decide to destroy the launchpad on the city ship, but when the guide wire on the torpedo they were using is cut it ends up going towards the area in which Gram used to reside! OH NOES! Gram ends up carrying it to its intended destination, the RBs stop streaming out, and everybody is happy. Apart from Vess, who is still ANGSTing. I mentioned the slightly eclectic character designs for the previous episode, but this episode has a dolphin in a robot suit and a talking cat. The pacing for this episode is rather breathless as well, with plenty enough going on to prevent the viewer from getting particularly bored.

The Mars Daybreak 3

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 14:08:14 +0000

Generic Mecha Episode #6 Junior wants to be an RB pilot badly, and so steals Grams RB and tries to be cool until he gets himself into a situation and Gram needs to save his arse. Ho-hum, at least we got it over with early. Aside from that, we have the cash-centric Gram raking it in as a cook since the ships food sucks, and Vess gets confused when the voice coming from what she had though was (and is) Grams RB isn't Grams, particularly when she went through such a moving and heavy handed speech before hand. Oh, Vess' adopted father is a heavy-hitter back on Earth too. Anyway, its a pretty droll episode. I suppose if you've never, ever seen a giant robot show before it might be an alright episode, but I have, and it wasn't.

The Mars Daybreak 4

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 14:25:08 +0000

After the blow dealt to the military base last episode, all the other pirate ships in the area take their opportunity to attack the city ship. The Ship of Aurora takes this chance to sneak into Adena to get the ship repaired before leaving the area for a while. With them planning to leave, Gram takes the oppotunity to pop back into town the see the annoying brats (who had mercifully been written out of the series up to this point) before leaving. Meanwhile, Vess has a day off to let her hair down (literally), and heads of into town... Guess what happens! Too easy, eh? Yes, Vess bumps into Gram - a Gram who is on the run from the police (he is a wanted man, after all). Vess ends up helping Gram escape (because they obviously had a thing going before Vess left for Earth), but when their escape ends up at The Ship of Aurora Vess ends up pointing her gun at Gram and gives one of her usual heavy-handed speeches. This forces Gram to use the old snog-and-flee routine on her. Whilst all this has been going on, Elizabeth is in a seriously bad mood due to having the newly repaired Ship of Aurora crashed into by a small submarine, and is seriously itching to go deal some piratey justice on those responsible... A rather fun episode which almost makes up for last episodes generic tedium by having a suitable level of silliness to brighten things up. Sure, its not exactly any more original than the last episode, but it does it much better. Also, Vess spent most of this episode with her hair not in that fugly twin-net setup, and looks way hotter for it.

The Mars Daybreak 5

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 15:02:54 +0000

Anna, Adenas government representitive, has a hard time of things. Not only does she have no real power, being pretty much just a spokeswoman delivering rosey messages whilst the Martian economy gets increasingly worse, but she also has radical group leaders interupting her broadcasts to both make fun of her and deliver cryptic messages to the SoA. So, when Enora Taft, the daughter of the president of Earth, gets kidnapped whislt secretly studying at Adena, she resolves to sort out the situation herself in the hope that it'll actually do something for her position. The kidnapping has, of course, been blamed on the SoA due to it being the last ship seen in the area. It was, infact, the submarine which the SoA is currently in pursuit of, and whose bumbling crew have absolutely no idea of who they've actually kidnapped, and even less idea of how to deal with her. Anna attempts to stop the SoA in its tracks by using ice-producing underwater fireworks, and would have worked if Elizabeth wasn't crazy and made an insane manoeuvre to escape. Still, Elizabeth still has a score to settle with a certain hit-and-run submarine... Anna and Enora are really entertaining characters. Sure, Enora may well becoming unbearably annoying at some point (she shouts even more than Vess), but Annas promise to get revenge on the SoA at the end of the episode is like a promise to the viewer - a promise of further wild, zany and downright entertaining antics to come in future episodes. This episode continues the previous episodes upswing in entertainment value, which is a good thing. The next episode promises to give us Poipoider in the awesome dolphin-in-robot-suit action the show has failed to give us thus far. Result!

Shock figure purchase!

DiGiKerot — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 16:45:04 +0000

Well, not really, its just Saber yet again. Click for a bigger image.

My:HiME 26 Directors Cut.

DiGiKerot — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 21:04:51 +0000

Everythings going into the Extended entry - its not like I've covered any other MH material other than the fandisk, and its super-spoilery by its very nature. Anyway... Mikoto dies! Well, not really, theres no changes to the actual episode as far as I can see anyway - its not like they could change anyones opinion of it without completely changing it, and in terms of animation and production it was pretty polished as it is. Its for the best from my point of view, as I wasn't intending to cover any of the episode itself anyway (I liked it just the way it was). The new footage mostly appears over where the ending credits were in the broadcast version, using the full length version of Shining Days and pushing the Nagi/Mashiro doorway scene which was there originally to the second verse. There isn't really anything which adds anything new, but I guess its nice anyway. The first few cuts are really well animated, the later few are pretty much just stills like the DVD omake (if you've seen any of them). Oh, a note to Nao and Alyssa fans - they do turn up in two cuts. Nao is slumming with Mikoto, and Alyssa is with Miyu, but since that would only need two more pictures I decided not to grab them since it'd mean I'd need to find another picture to make a row of three ^^; Takumi and Akira return to Fuuka by the same ferry route from the start of the series (the bridge which Artemis destroyed, coincidently, can still be seen being rebuilt). Akira is wearing a skirt, and they are generally acting very coupley. Shizuru is up to her old tricks, walking into a Natsuki occupied bathroom no doubt with the intention of molesting her again. Mikoto and Reito are out for a walk. I'm sure I should recognise the old guy in the background, but I can't quite place him for some reason... Shiho gets all stroppy because Akane and Kazuya have turned up at the shrine acting all lovey dovey, so she pulls faces and stomps off in a huff. Yukino carries on Harukas' fine tradition of putting up signs she really isn't quite sure about. Meanwhile, Haruka continues her own tradition of playing second fiddle to Shizuru and getting rather upset about it ^^; Tate continues displaying his l33t harem-building skills by participating in a group date (you'd think he'd have learnt his lesson about stringing girls along, wouldn't you?). Unfortunately, in fine anime tradition, Mai just happens to be in the next booth. Yukariko and Mr. Slimey Art Teacher have had a beautiful baby, errr, bear... The Indiana Jones lifestyle obviously doesn't pay very well, as Midori has landed herself right back at Lindenbaum - with a robotic friend ^^; Natsuki is wishing she had bought one of those life-sized Mai pillows (err, you can't see from that picture, but Mai and Mikoto are sleeping in the bed to the left). Thats it, the last of the My:HiME animated material to be produced. Of course, in just a couple of days, it all kicks off again in Japan with the first episode of My Otome. Only one thing is certain - I'm running out of space for merchandise ^^;

Petit Cossette

DiGiKerot — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 20:43:21 +0000

Art student and antiques dealer Eiri comes into possession of a mysterious glass. Through this glass he starts to see visions of Cossette - a beautiful, ethereal and doll-like young girl - which only he can see. These visions becoming increasingly frequent as Eiri becomes increasingly obsessed to Cossette, with it consuming him completely, until he witnesses the horrific moment of Cossettes death, slaughtered by her lover. For Eiri, however, this is only the beginning... Insert fanboyish raving here. When he has the right project, I love Akiyuki Shinbo. I'm not sure he really gets the respect he deserves as a director - whilst the recent Lyrical Nanoha and Tsukiyomi found their market, his wonderfully surreal superhuman action show The Soultaker remains criminally underrated. In many respects Cossette is very much like Soultaker - it has the same kind of high-contrast colour usage, and the same surreal atmosphere pores from every frame. Akiyuki is up to his usual directorial tricks, really, using a lot of unusual camera angles whilst rarely having the camera centered on the subject (who are often even offscreen whilst talking, or way off in the distance). Its beautiful looking, but anyone familiar with his work will probably just recognise it as being cheap. That said, he uses the money saved to produce moments of excessive flamboyance which serve to punctuate important moments brilliantly. Yuki Kajiuras' music takes its cues from the animation about as well as it possibly could, veering between the unfocused and uncomfortable and the bombastic music she is better know for, combining to produce something glorious. Just about the only thing I can think of the mark this down on is that some of the CG animation looks seriously dated. Its a little unfortunate given how wonderful a lot of the 2D work looks, but its not outragously bad or anything (the art style, if anything, serves to lessen the problems with it). Anyway, Cossette is basically great. End of entry.

Marmalade Boy 16

DiGiKerot — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:28:52 +0000

Miki ANGSTs over what Meiko said at the end of the last episode, and we get a whole load of background on Namura by way of a flashback from the female teacher with a thing for him. Namura, much to the disappointment of his students, decides to hand in his resignation note and return to Hiroshima to work for his parents, exiting from Meikos' life so she can live a normal life. Satoshi overhears this then lectures him about being a spineless wuss, but ultimately he doesn't care as it improves the chances of this nanpa skills working on Meiko. Its a pretty dull episode, actually, aside from some unintentionally hilarious shots where people have shocked faces whilst those silly sound effects which normally accompany these things play.

Dengeki Daioh take 2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 12:12:44 +0000

I got the most recent issue of Dengeki Daioh in the mail today, which as with the last few issues comes with an Ichigo Mashimaro figure. Since I still don't follow the series, I have absolutely no idea who it actually is ^^;

More Fate/Stay Night

DiGiKerot — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 12:16:55 +0000

I've just gotten the other Good Smile Company Fate/Stay Night figure reprint in today (the previous one being the Saber figure I posted the other day). This one is Rin making a dynamic leap over Berserker - very cool. Click for a bigger picture.

Marmalade Boy 17

DiGiKerot — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:03:02 +0000

Namura informs Meiko (eventually - Meiko has been confined to her room and refused any communication with the outside world!) that he is leaving and even returns her locket. After talking to Miki in an attempt to bury the hatchet, and telling her about how she met Namura, Meiko decides to run away with Namura and follows him to the train station. Namura refuses to let her go with him, however, and tells her to 'hate him and move on'. Cue melancholic insert song and crying, and Yuu and Miki turning up having realised what was going on. It was another fairly dull and overwrought episode, to be honest. Whilst its fun whilst its being fairly stupid, in terms of being a drama Marmalade Boy hasn't really aged that well. The next episode, mercifully, looks like it may be fairly silly and as such should be more entertaining viewing.

Marmalade Boy 18

DiGiKerot — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:51:25 +0000

Meiko returns to school after her suspension, and seems to be her normal, happy self. In reality, shes still depressed about the whole Namura thing - so depressed, infact, she gets to stand around looking out of windows all teary-eyed whilst melacholic insert songs play. Realising this, Miki and Ginta decide to invite Meiko out of a picnic and go off the Yuus' workplace to inform him, at which point Arimi invites herself along too. So they go off and have a laugh, which Miki attempting to make up for her lack of cooking skills with insane quantities (compared to Arimis' small but awesome lunch), and everything reminding Meiko of things in a generally depressing fashion. When a gust of wind renders Meiko criminally hatless, Mikis' retrieval attempts result in her being under a deadly horse attack! Meiko gets her first good laugh of the day at the expense of Ginta and Arimis' love asperations when, after a display of l33t horse wrestling skills, the scared Miki cries in Yuus' arms. Oh, glorious, over-melodramatic cheese. I was spoilt for choice when it came to screenshots this episode as well, thanks to a copious number of silly SD shots. Overall a good, solid episode despite a fairly slow start.

Marmalade Boy 19

DiGiKerot — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:53:38 +0000

Its six months since Mikis parents divorced, so they are now officially allowed to remarry. This, of course, causes Miki to go into ANGST mode since it means her mother now has a different surname! OH NOES! When Miki strops off, Yuu, of course, forgoes his lavish Italian meal to go cheer Miki up. Afterwards, Miki puts Yuus picture in her magic High School locket thingy! The next day, the schools broadcasting club member Furutachi is secretly monitoring Mikis house, and broadcasts footage across the school showing that Miki and Yuu are living in the same house. This causes the vice-principal (who, in previous episodes, was heavily pushing for Namuras firing! Boo-hiss!) go into super-angry shakey mode and pull Miki and Yuu into the principals office for a bit of a chat. This ultimately results in Miki actually sticking up for her odd family, and Yuu tells ev!l teacher to keep her nose out of their business. Furutachi bursts into the office with their parents to apologise for what he had done earlier, and everyone (other than ev!l teacher) laughs in a fashion not unlike the end of 80s US cartoons about how silly they had been ANGSTing over things like that. Then, in a moment which probably spawned a hundred yoai fan-fics (and, indeed, seems to be the general theme of the next episode O_o), Yuu asks Satoshi (who was lurking in the corridor) if he could go to his place to 'look at books'... Alas, this is actually the last episode of the first MB boxset. Mercifully, the rest of the series is currently in the mail, but it still pains me that I'm going to have a wait a while to see what promises to be the most downright silly episode of the show we've seen in quite some time. As much as I constantly poke fun at it, I do actually like Marmalade Boy. Sure, I do find it unintentionally hilarious quite frequently (to be fair, I do actually laugh at some of the moments its actually trying to be funny) thanks to its old-school trappings (and its not actually as old as I thought it was - its dated pretty badly), but it doesn't detract from the fact that, whilst not exactly Honey & Clover or KareKano, its far from being an awful show, it just doesn't really sit very well next to a lot of the polished shows we get these days. Anyway, it looks like its back to Ryvius for a while ^^ (The only note I made for this episode, by the way, was EVIL HAUNTED PLAYGROUND! - Whilst Miki was stropping around getting visions of her happy former life with a normal family, there was an extended shot of her on one of those spinning climbing frame things I've only ever seen in anime where ghostly visages of her and her parents floated across the screen. I'm sure it was supposed to be serious, but I just could help but laugh...)

Infinite Ryvius 11

DiGiKerot — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:38:13 +0000

With the Ryvius now in Martian orbit, Kouji gets permission to host a party in order to try and relieve tension between the bridge crew and the rest of the ships population, and things end up getting taken to a huge scale - including a beauty content! Blue even orders the completely disinterested Yuli to attend wearing a hot dress (which I'm sure has nothing to do with her having been mysteriously entered in the beauty contest). Meanwhile Faina wanders the ship and bumps into an old friend, which seems to scare her somewhat. Two of the staff who are working outside the ship see two ghosts (which actually appear to be cloaked people attached to the ship with wires) and Kouji and Yuki have a brief chat, which ends when Yuki calls Kouji disgusting for showing an interest in Faina! Still, whilst the party is ongoing, Kouji decides to ditch his organisation work to get all cosy with Faina. However, Aoi hardly has time to ANGST over this when the announcement of the beauty contest winner is interrupted by a TV broadcast from Mars proclaiming the Ryvius to be a dangerous terrorist ship! This episode was a little strange, actually. There was a load of offbeat silliness which kind of goes against the general tone of the series - the was a guy standing on the hull wearing nothing but a towel and a cape, being blown around by a fan! This was a character with actual dialogue as well, not just a throw away background reference! Oddness aside, there was quite a bit of character development going on in this episode, with some hints in regards to the relationship between Yuki and Kouji (in that Yuki seems to have less problem with Kouji when he is actually doing something non-passively), a number of people referencing Mystery Girl (who joins in the party with some typically bizzare dancing) and some Blue and Juli stuff. It'll be back to business as usual next episode, I presume.

Infinite Ryvius 12

DiGiKerot — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 21:00:10 +0000

After the end of the last episode, everybody who has been of importance thus far lock themselve on the bridge to dicuss their options, and ultimately come up with just one - flee from Mars and hope that they can find another planet willing to take them in. Kouji is at odds with Ikumi, however, when its decided they'll have to lie to the people on the ship to convince them its the right action, and they announce that a huge battle fleet is preparing to attack them. Meanwhile, away from the Ryvius, the ships prior actions are analysed and information about the ship covered up. Despite knowing better, one of the commanders who had been attacking the Ryvius lies and claims the black box recording they have of the Ryvius crew asking for help since the entire population are young students is a ruse, and that its really staffed by honest-to-goodness terrorist. Basically, its lies all around. Faina takes Koujis stress over the situation as an opportunity to get all religious on him, and the population of the Ryvius starts to splinter into seperate groups looking out for their own interests... When we first got the guys in business suits talking about the Ryvius's actions I was expecting the worst - a clip show. Mercifully, it was only half retrospective, and half set-up for the rest of the series. It was setting a whole load of wheels in motion in preparation to move into the shows second half, really.

Final Fantasy Unlimited 1

DiGiKerot — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:15:16 +0000

Twelve years after a mysterious black pillar rose out of the ocean, twins Yu and Ai board the Helltrain to the mysterious Wonderland in search of their parents, famous for writing a book on Wonderland. In the process they meet the token large-chested girl in tight clothing Lisa and a badass with a past so mysterious even he doesn't know his name. Oh, and they meet a chocobo and get attacked by a monster which Badass dispatches using a HUGH gun firing soil based bullets. I got the thinpack set for FFU. The packaging is kind of nice - it doesn't take up much shelfspace or anything. There is some nicely animated water in this episode as well, and some nice musical cues taken from the Final Fantasy games. Thats pretty much it in terms of positive things to say about it. Its pretty much the most ludicrously tedious thing I've ever seen. Its really, really hard to believe that this is the same Mahiro Maeda who worked on Gankutsuou or the break-neck Blue 6. Its not that the tedium is the only bad poit either - the character designs are pretty droll and overly simplistic, made worse by the single-tone colouring used throughout. Then there is the truely dreadful CG animation they've mixed in... This will teach me to actually listen to people on occasion, as its been pretty well documented how terrible the show was (at least to begin with - not many stuck with it to see if it improved). Of course, many said similar things about shows like Arjuna, Soultaker and Heat Guy J, so I'm sure you can understand why I take some of these comments with a pinch of salt. At this point, I'm still determined to get through the whole thing, but I'll leave you to guess how far I'll actually get.

Final Fantasy Unlimited 2

DiGiKerot — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 20:27:32 +0000

This time around, we are introduced to the villian - the rather aptly named Tyrant - and his cronies Fungus, Herba and Oscha (with his puppet Crus). Tyrant is rather annoyed that his monster was destroyed by Mystery Badass - now know as Kaze - and sends Fungus out to deal with the situation. Meanwhile, Ai, Yu and Lisa have split up from Kaze (who is also looking from someone, seemingly) and bump into Chocobaba, the old lady who loves Chocobos, and who drops a strange feather when she suddenly vacates. Yu doesn't have enough time to investigate, however, as the are suddenly attacked by a group of strange giant mushrooms. When a swift kick from a nearby chocobo fails to divert the attack, its up to the suddenly reappearing Kaze to shoot them. Once dispatched, Fungus reveals himself and boastfully tells Kaze to bring it on. Little did Fungus expect to be on the receiving end of Kazes BADLY ANIMATED CG CUBE MAGIC SOIL BULLET, which quickly dispatches him. Oh, and Yu can understand Chocobos now. Probably something to do with EQUIP'ing that feather. I had a Jaffa Cake flavoured yoghurt whilst watching this episode. It was tasty. In regards of the less interesting matters - that being the show itself - this was a big improvement on the previous episode. Sure, the character designs and animation are still fugly (every other shot seemed off-model - I have to wonder if it was intentional), but it didn't put me almost entirely to sleep like the first episode did. Its still not great or anything, but at least its more tolerable.

Final Fantasy Unlimited 3

DiGiKerot — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 18:54:23 +0000

Yu, Ai and Lisa ride the train to the next stop in Wonderland, a world made of fruit and inhabited entirely by depressed people wearing long, hooded cloaks. Ai runs off, however, in pursuit of a theif when her bag is stolen by one of the cloak-people (should have known to be careful around hoodie-wearers!). She doesn't manage to retreive her bag, but she does meet Fabula, the mysterious guide who has been narrating over the opening of each episode. Fabula gives Ai Poshepocket, the furball who is both cute AND creepy, before suddenly disappearing. No time to worry about disappearing though! Herba turns up just begging to be shot by Kazes Magun (Kaze, conveniently, has managed to show up without having ridden the train), and utilises some evil plant monsters which, when shot, release spores which drug people up into a crazy state. Seeing Yu and Lisa infected and laughing like crazy, Ai asks Poshepocket for help and receives a magic exploding seed which eliminates the spores, whilst Kaze shoots at Herba and forces her to retreat. Errr, okay, that was kind of completely insane. Its quite probably due to massively decreased expectations (not that they were particular high even before veiwing episode 1), but I almost kind of enjoyed that episode. Almost - it was still frightfully dull except for a couple of moments of silliness. Anything resembling an action scene is the worst - Kaze stands still shooting his normal gun for a few minutes, then spends two or three minutes summoning Magun before wasting more time annoucing todays combination of soil bullets! EXCITEMENT!

Final Fantasy Unlimited 4

DiGiKerot — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 19:51:48 +0000

Our heroes manage to miss the train out of fruit town, but do manage to find last episodes hoodie-theif Fungo (he of the BEST CHARACTER DESIGN EVER), who leads them to the secret village of the Ninja group Comodeen, and their leader Knave who wants to bring order to Wonderland. Of course, Kaze is already there, talking to inventor Cid who was interested in his weaponry. One change of clothes for Ai later they discover that they might have a chance of catching up with the train after all, and Cid decides to tag along. Before they can leave, however, the village is attacked by Makenshi, one of the most powerful of Tyrants cronies, and the man whom Kaze is searching for. Kaze and Makenshi proceed to do battle, but when Magun fails to work at a critical moment Kaze is stuck a major blow! Oh, and there was some random talk about something called Chaos devouring worlds, and Makenshis appearance caused Lisa to have flashbacks to twelve years ago. After Fungo and the silly-looking ninjas in this episode I really have to wonder whats up with the art direction with this show - infact, one really has to wonder whats up with the direction of this show period. What on earth possessed Square to commission a show whats so...different? I have to admit, I'm almost finding myself liking this show despite knowing better - its ugly, badly paced and not remotely interesting, but it is damn unusual...

Final Fantasy Unlimited 5

DiGiKerot — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 19:56:11 +0000

Whilst the Comodeen ninja practice synchronised eating, Lisa, Ai and Yu are preparing to leave on Cids boat Catherine in the hope of catching up the the train via the underwater waterways (but not before Poshepocket devours half of their supplies). On the way to the train, they are attacked by the recently recovered Fungus, who persues them through the tunnels failing to be put off by Catherines seven secret functions, a Chocobo-kick or Cids amazing mega magnectic hammer thingy. In the end, its takes Kaze (suddenly appearing out of nowhere - again - after having been thought dead) to shoot the guy with the Magun, leaving Lisa, Ai and Yu free to board the train, and Cid to return to the Comodeen having very narrowly avoided getting toasted along with Catherine by Kazes blast. Don't worry, though - Fungus still lives, and will no doubt be back in half a dozen episodes once he has grown again. Bet you can't wait! What kind of catchprase is "SOIL is my POWER!" anyway? I can't say it would exactly strike fear into my heart if I was an evil-doer. Laughter, maybe, but fear? Nah. It'd be far too easy to make jokes about him getting stronger if he, errr, messed his pants or something. Given his bullets seem to summon monsters maybe they contain phoenix dung, or the contents of the young Shivas used nappies. Probably not. The show continues to sit somewhere uncomfortably between the usual anime fare and some odd european shows, though. I don't really think its bad anymore, but its certainly very odd and surreal at times. I'm sure that Lisas waist is shrinking and chest is expanding at the same rate with every passing episode...

Infinite Ryvius 13

DiGiKerot — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:38:26 +0000

Since the previous episode, a points structure has been implemented on Ryvius whereby its population are rewarded for the work they do, otherwise they simply starve. Of course, its not an entirely balanced system - bridge staff and the Vital Guarder main pilots get infinite points, whilst losers like Nicks barely scrape together a living. This leads to some bitterness (and people attempting to mug Yuki on a daily basis), but thus far is keeping people generally in line... Aside from this, Faina has moved out of the room in the cargo area she shared with Aoi and Izumi to live in one of the officers quarters (which she would be gald to share with Kouji, although she insists the comment was a joke), Lucson has been ostracized by many of his former Zwei teammates but attempts to earn an honest living anyway, and Izumi and her friend abuse Ikumis infinite points. When Izumi manages to get Ikumi on his own she turns on the flirt and goes in for the kiss, but despite being reciprocated she is disappointed she didn't get a tingly rabu-rabu feeling from it - that, and she finds out her friends were spying on them. Aoi and Kouji also argue somewhat, though whether its over the points system, Aois insistance on not abusing Koujis points or Faina becomes somewhat confused and they end up in a slightly compromising position. Finally, Yuli makes an interesting discovery - with the Ryvius heading towards the autonomous Saturn, she discovers that Blue is actually the son of the areas minister for defense! Her confronting him, however, is cut short by an attack on the ship. The jump from the last episode was a little jarring initially - I thought I'd skipped an episode or something. With some of the setup in this episode and the fact that I've just hit the midway point I'm expecting things to completely go to hell in the next couple of episodes.

Infinite Ryvius 14

DiGiKerot — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 21:24:05 +0000

Mystery girl seems uneasy about the ship approaching the Ryvius, and she has every right to be - its another Vaia class like the Ryvius, and it seems overwhelmingly powerful! Blue goes to supervise the Vital Guarder, whilst Faina and Kouji talk a bit - Koujis attempt to vaguely reference what happened between him and Aoi in the last episode leads to Faina declaring that Kouji is actually her boyfriend, and that she would never forgive him if he happened to cheat on her (like, say, accidently kissing Aoi...). Kouji, of course, was completely oblivious to this fact being an anime lead. It soon becomes obvious that the Ryvius is outmatched by their opponents, and the stress finally gets to Kouji who completely freaks out and collapses, having his whole life flashing before his eyes (though he gets rather annoyed that its selectively choosing just the scenes with Aoi in them). The Vital Guarder is finally launched, but their opponents also have a Vital Guarder. The two mighty mecha clash as Faina tells Kouji she heard him muttering "Aoi" whilst he was delirious. Ooo-er - they've only officially been dating (as far as Kouji knew, anyway) for one episode and he has already landed himself in hot-water. Meanehile, Aoi spends the whole epsode ANGSTing over having accidently kissed Kouji. Its a tense battle episode, or at least it would be. I couldn't help but find the occasional scenes aboard the Blue Impulse (the other Vaia ship) to be a little too super-robotish - their dialogue was a little too silly sounding in the "Ooo! Will will be sure to tear them apart with our Mighty Space Drill! We will show no mercy! Charge!" kind of fashion (OK, thats not an actual quote, but it is very close). Kind of ruins any kind of tension it builds up really. I'd rather not have been shown any of what was going on aboard the BI as it would have added a degree of mysterious menace to them rather than making them come off as campy.

King of Pinkys

DiGiKerot — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:10:43 +0000

Got the King of Fighters Pinky twinpack today. I'm not really a huge KoF fan, with R2 on the NGPC the only game in the series I've had any substantial chance to play. I probably have one of the DC ports somewhere as well, but it'll be sitting around unplayed. Regardless, these are too damn cute for me to resist...

Ick!

DiGiKerot — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 19:15:29 +0000

My 1.5 regular readers my notice a distinct lack of entries occuring this week. This isn't due to a lack of interest or viewing material, but since last week I've been suffering from flu-ish symptoms, which have turned particularly nasty over the last couple of days. Frankly, I don't have the energy to keep up the late nights which I usually rely on to actually watch anime, and watching the stuff (or TV in general) is just making both my head and eyes hurt. So, basically, until I feel like watching stuff I'll probably hold of posting anything actually related to watching anime. Still, I've been taking this chance to catch up on some of the manga I have lying around here. Del-Rey still haven't settled on some sense of consistancy with the Negima manga. I like Negima - I liked the manga version of Love Hina as well, actually (the anime version had its moments, but was mostly a bit rubbish) - but with practically every volume of the US release we've had different translation staff who have ended up handling things in a different fashion (or simply mistranslated things). Its like in volume six where they suddenly decided to leave Evangelines "boya" (in reference to Negi, of course) untranslated, which suddenly seems to have disappeared again in volume seven, and they can't decide on a consistant translation for Nodokas "Honya-chan" nickname (I'd not get started on the whole Southern/Thousand master thing). What I feel is really amusing, though, is that they can't even decide how to credit Trish Ledoux in the credits page - volume six has her full name, whilst seven shortens it to simply T. Ledoux... On the subject of Del-Rey, their notes at the back of Tsubasa six missed the Duklyon cameo out. I only mention it because they've been fairly good at catching cameos when the characters actually talk (I don't expect them listing all the background appearence, like the characters from Angelic Layer in this volume - that would just make me an awkward git). The result of this is nothing more than making me feel all superior and everything despite the fact that I'm actually really rubbish at spotting this kind of thing. I also ended up reading the first couple of volumes Paradise Kiss last night. I've not seen the anime adaption, but I'm a bit disappointed in the response to the Franz Ferdinand ED (its a great track - the album is ace too). I've heard they've mucked things around a bit for the anime version, and to be honest I'm not really all that surprised. Its a fun manga to read, but I do feel its fairly forgettable. Some great design work aside, its nothing really special in terms of writing - its certainly no HachiKuro - and I can't help but feel its a little too one-tracked in its focus (perhaps understandable given its fairly short). Its insanely self-referential too - at one point I was struggling to work out if I was reading an authors comment section or if it was actually the plot (it was the later, as it happens) - and I can't see that really translating particularly well. To be honest, whilst I'm planning on reading the rest of the manga, it didn't really do much to get me interested in the anime version - just not enough meat to it. Maybe my opinion will change reading more, but somehow I doubt it. I don't think I've read anything else worth making a long comment on (I've gone on longer than I'd planned to anyway). Kindaichi 10 and 11 was pretty much more of the same - the twist with having Kindaichi on the run throughout most the book was kind of neat, but I enjoy it enough regardless (I just wish the release schedule wasn't so glacial). Sugar Sugar Rune was kind of amusing, though I'm not a great fan of the art (Chocolats fangs in particular irk me for some reason I can't fathom). The other stuff I've flicked through have just been volumes of the longer running stuff like KareKano and Furuba, which continue to be great.

Marmalade Boy 20

DiGiKerot — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 18:36:38 +0000

The schools pre-summer marathon is coming up, and rumours are circulating about the school latest and hotest couple - Yuu and Satoshi! Obviously, given Satoshis previous and frequent attempts at picking her up, this massively confuses Meiko. One of Mikis friends borrows her magic product placement PDA to use the love-checker and their rating is 100% OH NOES! So Miki and Meiko go spying on them and get all embarrsed about seeing sparklies around them and overhearing ambiguous conversations, and when Satoshi phones Mikis place its the final straw - Miki challenges Satoshi to a race over the male distance of the marathon. If Miki wins, Satoshi has to leave Yuu alone, but Miki forgot to think of the consequences of her actually losing, which means Satoshi can do whatever he wants. Come the day of the marathon she goes all out, which results in Satoshi doing the same (because its fun to mess with the super ANGSTy Miki), and soon both are well out in front and well and truely exhausted. Then Miki walks into a lamp post. So Miki wakes up in the infirmary having been carried back by Satoshi, Yuu suggests a replay of the kiss from back in episode one, Satoshi bumps into Meiko in to corridor and asks her out again (Hwah?) and then promptly drags Yuu off since he technically won the race (and have a discussion about how much fun it is to mess with Miki)... Yes, the rest of Marmalade Boy has arrived, though after this episode I have to wonder if its worth continuing any more - it has to be all downhill from here. This story line is so incredibly stupid (half of my notes simply read SLASH SLASH SLASH SLASH SLASH!), and frankly I was in hysterics thoughout most of this episode as a result - whether wholey intentional or not, this episode was brilliant. The cheesy ambiguous dialogue, the sparklies, the fact that there obviously isn't really anything going on, it was just great.This plot arc is continuing into the next episode too. I approave of more stupidness.

Marmalade Boy 21

DiGiKerot — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:41:34 +0000

The school is on summer vacation, and Yuu is working increasingly long hours, which is making Miki suspicious. Meiko suggests dropping around the shop since she wanted a dress anyway, and they arrive there to find Satoshi with Yuu! So, whilst Yuu helps Miki pick out a dress, Satoshi once again unsheaths his nanpa skills and tries it on with Meiko, who takes the opportunity to drop questions about his immensely ambiguous sexuality. Satoshi denies there is anything going on between him and Yuu (and that anything he tells Miki is merely a wind-up since its entertaining). Yuu, however, dodges any questions from Miki on the subject... Back at home that evening Miki and Yuu are suddenly reminded by their parents that they are going away for the weekend. I say reminded - they forgot to tell them again. Its too short notice for Yuu, but since its Karuizawa they are going to he thinks he can swing it and then goes placing a mysterious phonecall. Suspicious! So, they all arrive at Karuizawa, and they all play tennis, with Yuu and Miki obviously destroying everyone with their tennis m4d skillz and generally having a good time (though we do get some vague comments about a period of ANGST in Yuus past). In the evening, however, Yuu mysteriously disappears. When Miki goes looking for him, she finds him meeting with Satoshi! She promptly loses track of them in the scary woods though, and gets attacked by some drunks. Luckily for her, her parents all look like scary Yakuza members and scare the drunkards off. Back with Yuu and Satoshi, we discover that Yuu was really only interested in seeing Satoshis interestingly shaped villa (he's into architecture, you see, and one of Satoshis relatives is obviously famous), and Satoshi declares his interest in Meiko. When Miki confronts Yuu about the meeting later, though, Yuu tells her rather definitively not to tell anyone about it, and Miki starts ANGSTing again. Whilst it took all of about thirty seconds to make me laugh again, for the most part this episode was a bit of a downer compared to the previous one. It was a bit overwrought and not quite silly enough given the subject matter. It was a fun break for a couple of episodes, particularly after the immensely over-dramatic plot arcs before this, but I suspect they won't manage to get another episode 20 out of this storyline so I hope they just end it soon - it was fun whilst it was being incredibly silly about it, but its just too silly to try and be serious about.

Marmalade Boy 22

DiGiKerot — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 20:47:03 +0000

Whilst Miki is ANGSTing over the end of the last episode, Yuu is wondering if Miki got completely the wrong idea about what he said. Meiko is also continuing miss having Namura around. Satoshi gives Yuu some cinema tickets and tells him to invite Miki and Meiko, and so they all go off to see a movie (which, with character names like Geoff and John, and set in the hills with some dogs, I can't imagine having been that interesting). Pretty much as soon as they enter the cinema, Satoshi grabs Meiko and runs off in the opposite direction, telling Meiko that he thinks it'll be a good idea to give them some room (yeah, right). Curiously, Yuu drags Miki off immediately after the movie without waiting for Satoshi and Meiko - yup, Satoshi asked Yuu to set it up so he can practise his nanpa skills on Meiko alone. Meiko, however, is rather blunt about blowing Satoshi off and tries to run as soon as she figures out whats going on, but Satoshi stops her by promising to tell her about him and Yuu if she spends the day with him... Yuu tells Miki about the real purpose of the cinema outing, and Miki is obviously relieved since it means that Satoshi isn't actually interested in Yuu. Yuu also buys her a music box (one which plays a version of the insert song which plays towards the end of almost every episode when something incredibly melodramatic happens), which is the first gift Yuu has ever bought her. Meanwhile, Meiko is wondering how Satoshi can spout out some of the garbage he does without feeling embarssed, whilst Satoshi just wonders why Meiko can't even try to enjoy herself. Eventually, all Satoshi ends up telling her is that the thing between him and Yuu is about his father, but not before stealing a kiss! Unsurprisingly, when Meiko and Miki see Yuu and Satoshi going out the next day, Meiko gives Satoshi a wide birth (demanding a two metre gap between them). Still, Meiko decides that it would be a good idea to follow them as they might find out whats been going on, and at their destination it all become obvious to her - Satoshis father is a famous architect, and since Yuu is interested in the subject its obvious that he shares the interest with Satoshi (hence why they talk a lot) and wanted to meet his father. Rather than pleasing Miki, however, it just makes her even more ANGSTy as she realises that she doesn't even have a clue about Yuus interests... Okay, so thats pretty much killed the SLASHy arc off, though I'm not really convinced that explains all the stuff between Yuu and Satoshi at all. I can cope with this, however, because any episode with Meiko being spazzy is worthwhile. Miki being spazzy is pretty normal and mundane by now - we get it several times in most episodes - but Meiko is the straight girl who largely acts normally, so its still amusing to me when she gets thrust into those situations where she gets silly facial expressions. So, it was largely a pretty good episode.

Marmalade Boy 23

DiGiKerot — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 22:04:18 +0000

Extended entries for a while, folks - big revealation at the end of this episode. Whilst Miki is ANGSTing over Yuu telling her that his interest in architecture is "none of her concern", Meiko is invited to Izu. Meiko, realising Miki is feeling ANGSTy, invites Miki along. Then Yuu, Ginta and Satoshi end up inviting themselves along, and they all head off for a beach episode. Of course, this is an anime show, so it just so happens that not only Arimi, but also Tsutomu just happen to be at the same beach. So when Arimi glomps Yuu, and Tsutomu gets with the aggro (despite being shoved about by the all-new bishonen-trio that is the Arimi Fan Club), Satoshi takes the logical beach episode path to quiet things down by suggesting a Bravery Test with completely random teams. Meiko sees right through Satoshi, though - of course the teams aren't random, though she expresses a degree of admiration for his manipulation skills. Arimi, paired with Ginta, admits that she has given up on having a relationship with Yuu and only glomped him to wind up Miki, though Ginta confesses that his chances with Miki aren't looking much better. Now that Miki can't avoid Yuu like she has been doing (she is too much too scared to run off at night), the tension finally explodes and they shout a bit. In the end, Yuu apologises, and tells Miki he'll tell her whats going on since he doesn't want to push her away due to keeping secrets. Mr Matsuura isn't his biological father. His biological father is actually Yoshimitsu Miwa - Satoshis father! GASP! SHO-KU! MONOCHROME STILLS! Well, that was kind of unexpected, though I guess it explains all the oddness over the last few episodes (but, ICK, slashy incest?!?). It does completely come across as a feeble excuse to prolong the series, though with Satoshi appearing on and off since the beginning of the series it was probably planned. In more random comments, Tartan trousers? As fugly as I think Mikis uniform is, I'm glad they don't go to Arimis school given how rubbish the male uniform is. I also really have to wonder what Yuu sees in Miki over Arimi - Arimi is not only far cuter, and a better cook, she also doesn't come with the same sackload of ANGST that Miki does. Ah well, the OP gets rid of any tension by making it seem pretty obvious that she ends up with Ginta anyway...

Marmalade Boy 24

DiGiKerot — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 20:28:08 +0000

After last episodes revelation Yuu tells Miki off for ANGSTing too much, because she is totally transparent and makes it far too obvious that she is keeping some kind of secret, and Yuu would rather like to continue keeping the fact that he knows about his past a secret from his parents. The next day, Satoshi spots Miki ANGSTing since she is rather confused about the whole affair, but doesn't want to approach Yuu about it, and ends up filling Miki in on some of the background details (none of which are surprising or interesting enough for me to bother repeating). Ginta and his l33t tennis skills have landed him one game away from the interhigh competition, and Miki tells him that she and Meiko will come cheer for him. Satoshi uses this opening in the conversation to try and chat up Meiko again, who just gets annoyed with him - when Satoshi tell her he likes girls with long hair like hers, she tells him she HATES guys with long hair. So Satoshi goes and gets his cut! Well, not really - he has just tied it back in a ponytail, but its enough to momentarily fool Meiko and make her feel guilty about it. The truth is, however, she is still beat up about Namura, and she tells Satoshi as much. She also tells Satoshi that his flippant attitude annoys her, and that she can never tell if he is serious about anything. Satoshi responds to this by telling her that he is completely serious about her, but leaves the discussion at that for now. Meanwhile, Miki discovers that Yuu is going to meet Satoshis father (who, at this point, is unaware of the fact Yuu is his son), and decides to blow off going to Gintas tennis match as a result - rather upsetting Ginta in the process - as she has finally realised that its Yuu she loves... A so-so episode, really, which only really stands out due to a really silly punchline music used at the end of the last scene before the eyecatch - I think its the first time they've done that in the show, and it seems completely out of place.

Marmalade Boy 25

DiGiKerot — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:16:50 +0000

Miki blows off Ginta to go with Satoshi and Yuu to see Satoshis father, but as it turns out he is, in fact, not Yuus father at all since Yuus mother rejected his advances, and he is pretty genuine about the whole affair. Yuu is left rather shaken by the whole event and wanders off alone for a walk by the beach whilst ANGSTing. Miki follows him. though, and they talk (mostly about the past), confess their love for each other and snog for a while. Okay, so much for that plot line then - I'd expected them to drag it on for a bit longer. I guess this way they can bring it back later when Yuus actual real father (its still not Mr Matsuura) will eventually turn up to wreak his life or something similar. There wasn't really much going on in this episode, really (which is why the summary only lasts a paragraph, and I'm still typing in a failing attempt to pad the entry out a bit), though I suppose given its basically a major milestone in the shows plot its only natural they would prolong it out a bit by sticking in a pile of flashbacks. Next episode sees the introduction of a new girl for Miki to get all ANGSTy about!

Boys Be... 1

DiGiKerot — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:30:49 +0000

Kyoichi is a high-school student and an aspiring artist. He also has no girlfriend. His friends - the butch-looking Kenjo and the wannabe nanpa-master Makoto (who stores details of all the schools hot chicks in his PDA) - are also unattached. Kyoichi, however, has an advantage over them in the form of his childhood friend Chiharu, a member of the schools track team who quite clearly has a thing for him, whom he equally clearly has a thing for. Of course, this being the first episode they are far too dense to notice this so we get an episode of skirting around things with random talk of borrowing CDs, returning cleaned skirts and Chiharu being approached by a manly man in the form of her track-team senior Sorimachi. Oh, and theres some talk about Kyoichis painting of falling cherry blossom which no doubt symbolises something very profound. This is actually a re-watch - I got ahold of this show many, many years ago when R3 DVD label Odex released it dirt-cheap (but entirely legally) in Singapore with English subtitles. This was long before the R1 market got to the present levels of DVD releases, back when I could pick up every single release I was interested in and still have time to play video games and re-watch releases. These days, even at the low, low price I bought it for I probably wouldn't bother giving it a second glance - its not really the kind of show I'd generally go for. Still, whilst reorganising some of my DVD storage the other day I stumbled across the disks, and although I could remember enjoying it I couldn't actually remember anything about what it was actually about. Sitting watching the first episode again I'm reminded that it is, actually, pretty good. Whilst it isn't as old as the original To Heart, it does pre-date the over-saturation of renai and eroge based shows we currently wallow in, as well as the increasingly ante-upping harem shows (it aired around the same time as Love Hina if ANN is to be believed). By modern standards, its actually incredibly reserved - fanservice is practically non-existant, it doesn't blat you over the head with Moe-ness, the character designs, whilst non un-attractive, are pretty plain and there are no underaged girls screaming "oniiiii-chan" in incredibly shrill voices. Which is probably why I still like this show. Its nice, there is no hyperactive comedy, it feels grounded in something near realism (certainly, its most definately not a harem show), and the animation is surprisingly decent for whats an early digital-era show. Sure, some could probably argue that is boring fairly legitimately, but I'd rather think of it as leisurely. I do wonder, however, how much I can watch before I find something which annoys me these days. It has been four years or so since I saw this previously... (p.s. I feel I should mention that, despite the type of shows I seem to be constantly blogging and the fact I consider the best thing about Girls Bravo to be the honesty of its title, I am infact a Manly Man who likes nothing better than seeing angsty and hot-blooded teenagers kick the crap out of eachother in giant robots. Honest).

Boys Be... 2

DiGiKerot — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 20:57:12 +0000

Wannabe nanpa-god Makoto accidently destroys a frying pan whilst working in his parents cafe. On his way back from buying the replacement on his moped, he asks God to help is girlfriendless ass, and thinks his prayer is answered in the form of a girl climbing a roadside bridge at just the right angle for peeking up skirts. Unfortunately, his attempts to do so land him straight in hospital after being hit by a truck (not to mention losing his beloved PDA). At least the nurse is hot, but when Kenjo brings in a holiday guide instead of Makotos prized nanpa-manual, Makoto is forced to listen to the advice of wheelchair bound girl Lisa (who likes younger guys, and is thankfully entirely unannoying). The results aren't exactly what Makoto desired, though, as he just ends getting her in trouble. They proceed to laugh a bit, cry a bit, reveal touching backstory and the usual anime McGubbins until eventually Makoto is discharged without getting any, and Mrs Nurse is inspired to redouble her efforts in becoming a good nurse. Let this episode be a lesson to all anime viewers - wish for too much fanservice and you'll get hit by a truck. Or at least I think that was the moral of this episode. The character designs looked fairly unattractive in this episode anyway (even the hot nurse didn't look particularly hot), but the content was alright, if not as good as the first episode.

Boys Be... 3

DiGiKerot — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 19:54:10 +0000

Kenjo is apparently the obsessive type - he quite frequently undergoes short term infatuations with various wierd and wonderful things and puts insane amounts of effort into following them whilst he is interested. The only really constant is him playing Baseball, but as it happens he isn't actually all that interested, and its only because he was begged to do so (since he is Teh Awesome) that he plays on the school team. During one practice, he hits a particularly awesome shot which ends up flying through the library window at the school building, so he ends up going to the shool to try and retrieve the ball. In the library, however, whilst crawling around on the floor he knocks over a stool with a spiral-haired girl on it, whom he catches, and who promptly kisses him before saying goodbye and running off. Over the next few days, Kenjo stops going to Basebal practice and ends up in the library every day hoping to see the girl again, but when she doesn't show he ends up getting addicted to reading trashy novels, which end up completely distorting the stories of his encounter he tells his friends into completely different incredibly wierd and OTT tales. Confused by this, his friends seek to find out the truth, and eventually discover that the girl, Aya, was born in France and family reasons have caused her to move back, and that because she is wierd and raised aboard she sees kissing as different to them, and probably didn't mean anything by it! OH NOES, POOR KENJO! Kenjo ends up going back to playing Baseball, but now with renewed vigour. Of course, in France we see Aya putting a book away into a bag containing a dusty old baseball. Awwww! Geez, that ending (and most of the episode) was really more than a little cheesy. It was pretty amusing, anyway. We've had a story with all three of the main male characters (well, Kyoichi is the main main character, but you know what I mean), and I honestly can't remember what comes after this...

Boys Be... 4

DiGiKerot — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 10:47:28 +0000

Aki bumps into her former boyfriend, who is an obsessive camera man I can't seem to remember the name of. Anyway, his passion for photography seems to be on the wane and its reflected in his work, he hangs around with Aki a bit, yadder, yadder, yadder. If it seems like I'm skimming over this episode, its because I am. We've seen this storyline many times before elsewhere, and we've seen it done better, so I don't really see the need to go into any more depth than that. The advantage of Boys Be... being more or less entirely episodic means that it has no bearing on what the next episode will be like, though.

Boys Be... 5

DiGiKerot — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:17:43 +0000

Its summer, so Makoto and Kyoichi head off to the beach to work at the beachside hotel and cafe ran by Chiharus cousins - though not before Kyoichi gets into an argument with Chiharu, who chooses not to go so she can spend the time preparing for an upcoming track event. Poor Kenjo is stuck playing Baseball, despite the fact that he'd much rather be at the beach in that kind of weather. Anyway, Chiharus cousin, Nao, is fairly sickly and as such doesn't spend much time outside, and her brother is so insanely over-protective than poor Makoto can barely get close enough to try his l33t nana skills. Oh, and Chiharus friends Aki and Yumi (who has really bizzare taste in fashion) turn up since they get cheap lodgings there. General comedy insues as Naos brother works Makoto and Kyoichi too hard, and Nao drags the gang off to see something without telling her brother... Thats more or less all there is to this episode, really. Its even more ludicrously generic than the previous episode, but is rendered far more worthwhile than it for a few reasons - the artwork (particularly the characters) looks better than normal here, and the animation in general is quite noticably better. More importantly, the guest character Nao is cute ^^;

Boys Be... 6

DiGiKerot — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 21:01:56 +0000

Whilst the others are away at the beach, Kenjo is stuck at home playing baseball - or at least he would be if he wasn't blowing off practice again. When one of the other team members drags him back to practice he finds himself up against an awesome pitcher, who turns out to be the very female team manager Orika. Orika dreams of playing highschool baseball, but when Kenjo informs her that girls can't play highschool baseball she is somewhat heartbroken. Still, though Orika Kenjo learns how to become truely passionate about something for this first time in his life, whilst Orika keeps making up very vaguely baseball related excuses for them to hang out together (though Kenjo remains completely oblivious to whats going on throughout much of the episode). Orikas lameness at everything baseball related other than pitching is pretty adorable. Other than that, one can't help but think the visual niceness of the previous episode must have been at the expense of this one - the animation is ropey, and the character art is horrifically inconsistant (Orikas bust size in particular fluctuates wildly). It was a generally pleasant episode though, and benefits from being nowhere near as generic as the previous two.

Boys Be... 7

DiGiKerot — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:42:04 +0000

Chiharu is off at a training camp preparing for an upcoming competition, but when she gets lost whilst running she ends up bumping into a guy collecting bugs called Kyuki who tries on his nanpa-skills. After she is put out of action due to hurting her leg during a training session, and after Kyoichi has to cut a phone conversation short she ends up haning out with Kyuki a lot, and ends up spending her last night there talking with him and ultimately snogging him - just in time for Kyoichi to turn up to surprise her and see it occur! OH NOES! Oh, and Aki and Yumi show up part way through, just because they do in every single episode. Cor blimey, what on earth happened here? I know I said the previous episode have some iffy animation, but this episode has serious issues - it just looked plain fugly for the most part. It has horrifically off-model character art for the most part, and despite a couple of really well done shots most the animation is pretty ropey as well. If not for that, it'd have been a pretty good episode.

Boys Be... 8

DiGiKerot — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:32:22 +0000

Sayama Shoko is a typical bored student who would rather listen to music in class than pay attention, but after she gets her MD player taken from her and she starts to BURN WITH GENERIC RAGE, Kyoichi steps in to talk to her. She actually turns out to be a fairly sweet girl, despite the strong and aggressive image she puts out, and they end up hanging out together. Anyway, in her freetime she sings with a band, but she has gotten herself an audition to replace the singer of her favorite group, the up-and-coming band SAIL, since their old singer quit. Later that evening, Kyoichi ends up being roped into breaking into the school at night to steal Sayamas MD player back, and after the exhilaration of a near escape they very nearly kiss, but don't (I should point out at this point that Kyoichi is still ANGSTy about last episodes Chiharu incident, and the two aren't really speaking). The next day, they end up having an arguement (which, amusingly, is for pretty much the same reason he had an arguement with Chiharu three or four episodes ago), but when she calls up to apologise they meet up and she explains that, whilst she puts on a brave face, she is actually pretty shy. They end up kissing, and she admits to Kyoichi that she likes him, but doesn't want to be a mere stand-in for Chiharu. Despite saying that she means more to him than that, its pretty clear he still likes Chiharu, and one cheesey musical montage later Sayama decides to give her music career her all, quits school and is probably never seen again. I really liked the guest character Sayama, its a shame this is probably the only episode she actually appears in. Anyway, after the last couple of episodes the animation has at least settled down to some level of consistancy. Its not as nice as the beach episode was, but its passable at the least. It was a pretty good episode overall, actually, and we even got a different song over the ending credits.

Boys Be... 9

DiGiKerot — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 21:27:00 +0000

Makoto upgrades his nanpamatic from a PDA to a laptop, and plugs all his data into some wonderful new compatibility software, which comes up with his perfect match - Elika (or Erika, but I'll go with the subs spelling). Yumi, Chiharus chubby mate with the odd fashion sense, insists that he isn't her type, but when she accidently smashes his laptop in a combination of rage at being told that she isn't in his data due to "being less than b-grade" and his eroge screen saver, she sets up an chance for him to talk to Elika as compensation. Elika isn't especially keen on him though, given his manner is incredibly forced. After some nagging from Makoto, Yumi agrees to try and set up a date between them if he first takes her out for a day on which she'll pretend to be Elika and grade him by her standards - if he gets a good rating, then she'll set him up. Of course, when Makoto eventually gets set up with Elika, it turns out half of what Yumi told him about her was completely fake - WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?!? Still, Elika doesn't find him completely repulsive, and decides to go out with him again. However, on their second date, she gets a glance at Makotos nanpa diary and when she realises he is following notes from Yumi she decides that its being a bit stupid (its pretty obvious to her that Yumi likes Makoto, and Makoto doesn't entirely hate Yumi) and disappears. End of episode. Its the return of the inconsistant artwork! Hurrah! Or Booo, even! The animation isn't particularly great this episode, and whilst Elika looks pretty cute in the first (entirely static image) we see of her but during the rest of the show she doesn't look especially great. The actual episode content is pretty good, though - Yumis "boo-boo" every time Makoto makes a comment or suggestion she disagrees with during the date is cute, and there is some amusing dialogue.

Boys Be... 10

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 13:08:15 +0000

Kyoichi is feeling lonely, and keeps getting a strange dream in which old WWII bombers are sticking out of the ground like crucifixes. Unfortunately, Makoto and Kenjo claim to be too dumb to have any idea what he is going on about. Luckily for Kyoichi, he suddenly realises that Yokota, the guy he works with at the video store in which he works, just so happens to not only go to the same school, but also happens to be in the same artclub! So they end up hanging out together quite a bit, and when Kyoichi makes some cryptic comments about not feeling lonely anymore, Makoto gets completely the wrong idea and spends the rest of the episode trying to convince people to watch some AV with him in a highly annoying fashion. Really, though, Yokota is just after dating advice - despite being a bit of a pretty boy, he is shy and has absoultely no confidence. He does, however, rather like Aida from one of the other classes, and has painted a rather nice picture of her. So they go out and pimp him up, and he goes off to ask Aida out. In the end he gets rejected, but feels refreshed (in a "more fish in the sea" fashion, there must be many more girls he can paint!), quits school to concerntrate on painting and is no doubt never seen again (and Makoto talks about AV some more). Makotos AV obsession in this episode was intensely annoying. Aside from that, this episode zig-zagged repeated between really well done and painfully cheesey - it probably could have done without Makoto raving about the SLASHy implications of it all. The animation, at least, was pretty good this episode, with some almost Shinbo-esque lighting going on in places (Kyoichis dream was particularly well done). No guest girl this episode, by the way - Aida didn't actually appear apart from some brief glimpses in Yokotas painting.

Boys Be... 11

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 20:51:50 +0000

Its Christmas Eve, and the guys are hanging out. Makoto and Kyoichi are startled at how blockheaded Kenjo is when he loudly ponders exactly why Orika has been calling him a lot recently for no specific reason. Makoto and Kyoichi make their excuses to disappear and tell him that he should call Orika, but whilst whilst he is walking around the streets he is bumped into a loud mouthed and obnoxious girl in a skimpy Santa costume. The girl, as it turns out, is Jyuuna, a well known pop idol who has blown out a photo shoot for some reason, and now that she has started talking with him she DEMANDS that he accompanies her somewhere. Kenjo is completely oblivious to who she is, but eventually ends up going with her anyway once he realises that people won't leave her alone and she has absolutely no idea how to actually get around.They end up at a themepark, and Jyuuna drags him all over whilst looking for something - ultimately this something happens to be her boyfriend, who part of a film crew working at the park that day. When Kenjo asks her why its so important to see him that day, she tells him its just because she wants to, and she doesn't really need to have a reason. So, having learnt an important lesson about girls, Kenjo actually goes to call Orika for no particular reason. Awwww.... Jyuuna was SO DAMN ANNOYING. URRRRRRGGGGHHH! She is exactly like every annoying pop idol character in anime ever! The character design for her wasn't particularly cute either - they've made her look older than the other girls in the series, but to be honest it doesn't quite work. As far as the animation quality goes, there isn't anything particularly spectactular about it, but it is at least consistant looking with little-to-no horribly fluctuating character designs on display. Ulitmately, it would have been quite a cute and well done episode it they'd turned the obnoxious down a few notches.

Boys Be... 12

DiGiKerot — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:34:25 +0000

We are coming up to the end of the year 2000, and whilst Kenjo and Orika, and Makoto and Yumi all seem to be going steady, Kyoichi and Chiharu still aren't really talking other than to make some vague smalltalk. With the end of the millenium looming (surely one year late? I'll forgive them, I guess), everyone is hearing various different legends which will happen when the clock ticks over - Chiharu overhears Kenjo and Orika talking about how couples together at the stroke of midnight will be in love forever, whilst Kyoichi overhears pretty much the exact opposite from Makoto and Yumi. Aki, on the other hand, goes far more extreme and is predicting the end of the world, and starts dressing up all weird and doing tarot readings and stressing out about her photographer boyfriend not being around. So, its New Years Eve, and Kenjo and Orika obviously go out, and Makoto and Yumi resolve to do the opposite (although they end up meeting anyway - it is a bit of a stupid story, after all) and we get an hilariously overdone build up to midnight featuring brief glimpses of the guest girls of previous episodes and a multitude of flashbacks when, at the last moment Chiharu bumps into Kyoichi! Whilst Chiharu is relatively happy about meeting Kyoichi there, Kyoichi has a mindful of Makotos story and runs off! NOOOOOOOOOOO! It was a pretty well done episode, this one. Good animation, decent if hardly groundbreaking writing, minimal annoying cheese... Yup, a good episode. Just one more to go!

Boys Be... 13 (final)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 20:00:41 +0000

Kyoichi ran off.... All the way to Hokkaido! He has head of there in search of the landscape he saw in one of Akis boyfriends photographs so he can do a drawing of it. Unfortunately for him, soon after landing he manages to miss his bus. Considerably less unfortunate is that fact that he missed the bus by bumping into a cute girl. Even better is the fact that she knows where the photo was taken, and she offers to take him there on her motorcycle. So they hang out, and the girl winds Kyoichi up a lot with a combination of stories about her possibly-ex-boyfriend who may or may not be studying in France and may or may not be dead, and some occasional flirting, and Kyoichi gets to do his sketch though the girl complains that its feels cold and nothing like his reaction to it yesterday. Oh, and after half an episode Kyoichi suddenly realises that they haven't been introduced, and the girls name turns out to be Chiharu! What a coincidence! Of Kyoichi stays in her barn for the night, they talk a bit, and in the morning Kyoichi suddenly has a revealation about whats missing in his life and goes home. The end. Well, not quite - if you remember to keep watching until after the ED you get what is one of the most painfully generic almost-conclusions to the relationship between Kyoichi and Chiharu (the original one, not the hot Hokkaido one). So, that was the last episode. It was quite probably the best of the series as well, with one of the better guest characters and decent animation (obviously they suddenly realised they had a boat load of money left after some of those crappy-looking ones). As far as the series goes overall, its pretty enjoyable. As I said back in my entry for the first episode, I like the fact that, compared to most other genre shows, its pretty reserved - no ludicrous fan service, no moe and no being battered over the head with annoying loli characters. Its pretty much just a nice, normal series about teenagers in relationships. Whilst there are a couple of vague, sweeping storylines (predominantly the Kyoichi and Chiharu stuff), its largely episodic nature probably isn't for everyone, but on the other hand it does at make it easy to follow and enjoy in an on-off manner. There are enough shows with these big, sweeping plot arcs that I can forgive shows which do something a bit different. Now that I've got the good out the way, lets move on to the animation. When you have a 50-odd episode series like Kenshin or Naruto you can't really expect consistant quality of animation, or even consistant looking characters throughout the whole lot. Even with shorter series, you don't really expect the last few episodes to look as good as the openers, because by the time you get to that point most of those who are following the show are likely to stick with it regardless. What you don't expect is for a 13 episode series to have absolutely no consistancy in the animation at all. Seriously, if it was just the art direction what was all over the place I could possibly forgive it, but the animation quality varies insanely - the best episodes aren't even the first ones - and you'd be amazed to think that half the episodes even used the same character designs the way that some characters look different between episodes. Really, its a sore point in whats otherwise a pleasant (if unspectactular) show.

Final Fantasy Unlimited 6

DiGiKerot — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:16:05 +0000

Ai, Yu and Lisa end up stuck in a flaming desert world after the enterance to the subway in buried under sand. Herba takes her turn to attack again, and after some flashbacks Lisa ends up using her amazering magic powers to battle off Herbas monsters. Unfortunately, she buggers it up a bit and Ai ends up half-drowned! Surrounded by monsters and with a friend in desperate need of CPR, the situation is looking desperate. Unsurprinsgly, Kaze turns up at this point, shoots his gun (killing the monsters), and Lisa revives Ai. Then the ground collapses, swallowing Ai, Yu, Lisa and Chocobi the Chocobo. HOLY CLIFFHANGER! Just when I thought I was starting to actually like the show, I take a break from it and return to discover that, after all, it still has the uncanny ability to make 25 minutes seem like three hours, even if nothing actually happens. Ais voice completely rubs me the wrong way as well. Still, I don't actually hate the show, there just isn't anything particularly interesting or worthwhile about it.

Yunagi Loop

DiGiKerot — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:56:54 +0000

I got my copy of the new Maaya Sakamoto album Yunagi Loop in the mail today (along with Nana Mizukis Eternal Blaze). I've not actually got around to listening to the album yet, but my copy came with a bonus CD with mpeg versions of a couple of PVs. The Loop PV is, to be honest, pretty dull. The other PV, for Honey Come, is quite astonishingly and hilariously pants. Watch in amazement as Maaya has a drink with a human size, CGI Heart in a world of guady, primary coloured skyscrapers! Gasp in astonishment as she leaps into the sky and flys into space like Superman! Snigger in bemusement as Maaya runs! Or maybe not ^^;

Final Fantasy Unlimited 7

DiGiKerot — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:15:30 +0000

In the thrilling conclusion to last episodes colffhanger, Ai, Yu, Lisa, Chocobi and Kaze land without incident in exactly the place where they want to be, and promptly board the subway train and head out of there. For the first time ever, however, they notice another passenger on the train, a girl called Lou Lupus. After getting talking to her (having started talking to them after laughing at Chocobi trying to eat Ai again), she alludes to having a terrible secret which ultimatly surprises absolutely no-one near the end of the episode. Having found one passenger on the train, they decide to go look around since it could be that their parents have been on the train all this time. No such luck, of course, but they are surprised to discover Cids logo on the trains engine. They have no time to worry about this, however, as the train is attacked by the claw of Omega, the evil and immensely powerful creature that devoured Lous world and caused her to become a lonely wanderer. In an attempt to fend it off, Lou transforms into a Werewolf (I bet you are so surprised about that!), but fails miserably and disappears into the void in a sad death scene. Lisa moans at Kaze for not having done anything to help, and after having a flashback (what, they are suddenly actually trying to give Kaze some character?) involving a girl called Aura with a silly haircut, he picks the soil of the day and summons a monster with his Magun. The monster destroys Omegas claw, Kaze mysteriously disappears, and Lou conveniently turns out not to be dead after all. This isn't, however, the last they'll see of Omega! DUM DUM DUUUUUUUUM! Its a case of seeing my comments for the previous episode, really. Its just more of the same. In addition to those I have to applaud the production staff on making Lous terrible secret so hard to guess - its not like the name or the wolf-ish appearance gave us any clues to this at all! I was soooooo shocked! Errr, I'm not very good at sarcasm, OK. I'm glad they didn't drag that over more than one episode, though.

Megami Deluxe vol 5

DiGiKerot — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:32:14 +0000

I don't normally buy Megami. I've bought a few issues in the past (predominantly whilst they were doing a series of My-HiME posters), but generally speaking I'm not much of a fan of fanservice anime, so pictures of half nekkid anime girls from shows I don't particularly care about doesn't really appeal to me all that much. I happened to notice, however, that this particular issue of Deluxe had a My-HiME and Zeta HiME special. How could I resist? So, this issue basically collects all the images from last years HiME run in Megami and splashes them across a page or two - this is actually smaller than some originally were, as they were pullout posters, but what they have done is removed all the text so we can get a better look at all the HiME goodness. Many of these images were also replicated in the Megami novels, but they were way smaller there (and for anyone wondering, I'm pretty sure none of this stuff made the Destiny Princess mook at all). Fanservice wise, its like the show - its pretty reserved, and there isn't really anything particularly risque (in HiME material anyway). We get about 25 pages of HiME overall (17 HiME images and 2 ZHiME images, but some are over two pages), so thats pretty good. Oh, and there is also a meter tall, double sided poster with Mai on one side and Arika on the other. Other than HiME, there is a small section devoted to Air TV towards the back (about 7 pages worth), and then the rest of the magazine is divided into collections of images fitting various themes - Costum Play (their spelling - characters in maid uniforms and nekomimi and the like), Relax Time (girls lounging in varying states of undress), School Uniforms and Swimware. Other good showing go to Oh! My Goddess (7 images worth), Negima (anime staff, so its a mixed bag, but 5 images pages worth), Mahoraba (4 images), my favorite guilty pleasure He is My Master (4 images worth), Shuffle (which I know nothing and care less about, but gets 5 images), a sole image of Sakura from Tsubasa (which seems really out of place given the rest of the magazine) and a bunch of other shows I care about as much as Shuffle but get few images. Over all, its around 100 pages, with a grand total of about 77 pictures. Its worthwhile for HiME fans if they can track a copy down, milage for fans of the other shows will vary depending on exactly how fannish about them they are, I guess.

Dengeki Daioh take 3

DiGiKerot — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:45:01 +0000

Another month, another issue of Dengeki Daioh, and once again we are supplied with an Ichigo Mashimaro figure, and still I'm not really familiar with the character. Miu,, innit? This months cover is Shana from Shakugan no Shana, who I am informed rather likes Melon pan (I'm waiting for the show to hit R1 before I watch it myself, as it sounds like the kind of thing I'll like). The manga version is running in the magazine (this issue appears to have Shana beating up a teacher and eating bread. How exciting!), though the cover looks to be by the anime staff. There are a couple of pages on the anime version up front, but nothing really interesting. My Japanese isn't really up to giving the rest of the magazine more than a cursory flick through without spending a lot of time on it (I'll save the pleasure of trying to work out whats going on in Yotsubato until later, but really I just wanted the cute toy ^^;), but poor Ciel is having trouble facing offvagainst Akiha in this months Tsukihime - hang in there Ciel!

Loki Ragnarok 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:15:38 +0000

Mystery-obsessed high school girl Mayura decides to skip classes after hearing of a series of ghost sightings in the local area. What she finds, however, is a strange doll which talks and, errr, floats around. Subduing her fear with thoughts of becoming famous using such an odd doll, Mayura takes the doll home, although thats really just an excuse to show the fact that, whilst Mayura has no skill for it whatsoever, her cynical excorist father can see spirits. Shortly after getting the doll home its stolen by a cat, and when out looking for it she stumbles upon a detective agency. Figuring she could do with some professional help, she goes inside to speak the detective - except she mistakes the mild-mannered, mail-order obsessive butler Yamino for the detective. The detective is actually (in true Conan fashion, in more ways than one) Loki, who its not much of a spoiler to reveal is actually the god Loki. Loki refuses to take the case, but goes out and looks into it anyway since he picks up the shadows of an evil presence around Mayura. Ultimately it turns out the doll is possessed by spirit turned evil due to feeling deserted by her previous owner (who had actually died in a fire serveral years earlier), and Loki saves Mayuras ass and excorises the spirit. All is not good for Loki, though, as Mayura decides that she will work at Lokis agency since its likely she'll run into even more exciting mysteries! Its Bluwackys favorite show ever! Well, OK, maybe not ^_^ This first episode doesn't really do much to betray the reasons why the show tends to linger in general apathy - its pretty well made, and certainly a lot better than a lot of shows which are actually popular. The animation isn't great, but its decent enough and has some nice art direction. Its decently paced, and breaks things up with a bit of humour whilst not overstaying its welcome. Generally, its just rather pleasant. Of course, the other thing this episode does really display is precisely how spastic this show can be. Sure, it has moments of amusing stupidity (like Yamino plowing straight into a water main whilst digging for EEEeeEEEEeeEVIIIIILLLL!), but its curiously sedate. I'm pretty sure the show very quickly shows its true face, and its really rather silly. More on that when I get around to watching those episodes Those who have picked up the manga ADV have been releasing and have found themselves completely confuddled by it may want to look into picking this show up - I don't really care about the situation enough to have looked into the reasons for doing so (probably a change in Japanese publisher or something like usual), but what they've released apparently picks up around the end of the anime series (so sorry to Spica fans, shes not in this). The DV D packaging is pretty nice. I'm not really a fan of ADVs packaging design in general - I tend to find their logos a bit overdone and fugly, especially on the artboxes - but this is pretty tasteful and rather nice looking. The inside cover of the DVD box has a rather cute chibi image on it as well. Out of curiousity I spot checked the dub in a couple of places, mainly because I was curious to see what they would do with Mayuras trademark "Fushigi Mysteriiiiii" catchprase - the answer is nothing. Arguably a sensible move (it gets old fast), but on the other hand I suppose its depriving dub viewers of such an essential part of the show! Actually, Kira Vicent-Davis take on Mayura is (perhaps mercifully) considerably less shrill than Yui Hories, and as a result I can't help but think that, in the long run, dub viewers might be a little better off here (or at least driven less insane...).

Loki Ragnarok 2

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:17:44 +0000

A women is mugged in the street at night, but is saved by a highschool student who fells the mugger with his mighty wooden sword before enquiring of the woman if she knows of Loki. When is gets a negative response, he wanders off into the night...with his food cart in tow. The next morning, Mayura is trying to drum up interest in her Mystery Club by having Yamino cook up yakisoba with his awesome cooking skills. Unfortunately, she isn't having much luck, with her freaky sign scaring most off. Still, the stand a couple of stands across is getting a lot of interest. Upon investigation, its being manned by that new transfer student Narugami, who always carries around mighty wooden sword, errr, Mjollnir (which should make it obvious who his is about now). Narugami is cooking Takoyaki, but this isn't about a club - its his part time job, as he is horrifically poor and needs the money to get by. He is also looking for somebody... Speaking of which, whilst they were talking to Narugami, Loki has turned up at Mayuras stand and is getting glomped on by a gaggle of highschool girls. Mayura drags him straight off, though, as she had dragged him there to help her take photographs of the Seven Mysteries of the School. Loki, unsurprisingly, rather quickly rubbishes the first six, but the seventh - a walking suit of armour - has actually started walking around and attacks a student! Long story short, it turns out that the armour was actually trying to attack Loki, having been possesed by an evil sword. It seems that Odin isn't happy enough with simply sealing Loki into the body of a child and banishing him to the human world, he would rather like him dead as well. Luckily, Loki dispatches the armour with a little help from Narugami, who Loki promptly recognises as Thor, the God of Thunder. Narugami wishes Loki no ill, and simply wants to know the way back to heaven. Unfortunately, having been banished, Loki has no idea. Remember I said this show got rather spastic? Well, this episode displays it pretty well. Aside from what they've done to the poor God of Thunder, the wacky cooking skills and the blunt way in which Loki explains away the schools mysteries are fairly amusing, not to mention poor Narugamis massive, heat swollen hand at the end. Still, it was an amusing episode which is rather more representitive of the franchise than the first was, and its still far more entertaining than some of the crap which actually becomes popular.

Loki Ragnarok 3

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:03:01 +0000

A god swears in front of Odin that he will come down to the human world to destroy Loki, and get revenge for his missing right eye. The god is Heimdall, Lokis sworn archenemy. Back at Lokis place, they actually have a client. Tsubasa works at the local zoo, tending to the birds. The birds, however, have suddenly started acting rather violent for no particular reason. Whilst Loki is debating his interest in the case, Mayura decides to take it for him. So, they all meet up a day or two later to head off to the zoo, but Mayuras father isn't particularly impressed and lays into Loki for filling her head with rubbish. Loki quickly realises that he can actually see spirits, despite his insistance to himself that he can't see anything. Loki proceeds to mess with his head, and then decides to summon a frightful beast. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work, and the summoned creature (Ecchan) turns out more cute than scary. Still, the gang leave Mayuras dad gagging on the sidewalk whilst they walk off the the zoo. At the zoo, Mayura promptly starts spazzing out at all the animals, and Narugami turns up wearing an anteater costume as he is working at the zoo at the moment. Whilst he doesn't tell Loki, Narugami knows that Heimdall is behind the incident, but he doesn't consider himself Lokis ally - Loki simply hasn't done anything to make him an enemy yet either. Upon investigating the birds cage they are attacked by a single hawk, which frazzles Mayuras brain momentarily until Loki snaps her out of it That evening, a hypnotised Tsubasa kidnaps Mayura. Heimdall tries to use her to make Loki (who has realised whats going on already) choose between trying to save Mayura or saving himself from plummeting to a watery grave (its Lokis weak point, apparently). That is only if Loki won't return Heimdalls right eye, but Loki doesn't have it. Luckily for Loki, Mayura is saved by Ecchan! Hurrah! Loki dispells the evil aura around Tsubasa, Heimdall disappears and everything is back to normal. Heimdall, however, turns up in front of Lokis place just to let him know it isn't over... Wow, Loki actually gets a case here! Not that there is any actual detective work involved. I do hope he didn't charge her given it was all his fault in the first place. Heimdall almost seems like a vaguely threatening villian here, rather than silly (they'll not keep that up I'm sure). This episode sits between the previous two in terms of silliness - its definately stupider than the first episode, but not to the same level as episode 2.

Loki Ragnarok 4

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:51:11 +0000

Mayura gets into an argument with her father over her going to Lokis all the time, and she is banned from over there in future. Loki, however, zaps them into the world of their memories back to the day when Mayura went missing looking for the mother (who was dead). In the end it turns out that its her fathers fault that Mayura wants to be a detective, and the ban is lifted. The end. Awwwww, its so sad ;_; Its all about Chibi-Mayura being cute - you'll probably either find it mindbloggling cute and charming, or annoying and overdone. I tend towards the former myself. Oh, and Narugami is working in Pizza delivery this episode. You know, it really bugs me sometimes how in photographs of anime characters deceased parents they always cover the face of the dead one some way or another, even if it has absolutely no significance to the rest of the show...

Doki Doki School Hours

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:24:10 +0000

Mika is a 27 year old high school teacher, who just happens to have the physical attributes of a 12 year old. Like most anime high school teachers her homeroom is full of students with varying eccentricities (though by full I mean she only has, like, eight students...). We have the frivolous Kobayashi (who is an awful lot like a far less hyperactive Tomo from Azumanga), dumb jock Suetake, oldman Nakamura (not literally an old man, but he certainly looks and acts like it), the incredibly vain and disturbingly effeminate wannabe ladies man Seki, the pop-star obsessed class president meganeko Lincho, one-joke Suetake-obsessed guy Kudo, two-joke Mika-obsessed Kitagawa (to repeated manipulates Mika into looking cute...), the incredibly blunt (and best character) Tominaga and manga artist Watabe. Wackiness, with the occasional side order of zaniness, ensues. I see zero point in making more than one entry on this show - its pretty much the same thing over and over again. If you have seen Azumanga Daioh, we have a similar kind of thing here - its an anime sketch show, with lots of short gag sequences strung one after the other over a general theme, such as sports day or summer vacation, for the episode. Theres less set-up for the gags then there was in Azumanga, its pretty much just straight into the punchline and onto the next joke. Whilst this means the show does move quickly on from something which doesn't quite work, it does result in the punchlines are considerable less effective. The quick turn around doesn't really help the fact that they are basically repeating the same jokes over and over in different situations - the characters don't really have the same kind of depth as in Azumanga (urgh, too many comparisons! Not good writing! Like I care!), and some characters (Kudo in particular) come off far too much as one-joke characters. I think it speaks volumes of the intended audience that the first episode takes every opportunity to remind the viewer of the characters names - I can't help but think that they expect the viewers to have a pitiful attention span. Thats not to say the show is actually bad - it is actually rather funny - they may be repeating the same jokes a lot, but they are at least mostly funny, its just that it won't take much for it to overstay its welcome. Visually the show is pretty attractive - the character designs are simple at best with little fine detail and large areas of flat colour, but the animation itself is pretty well done and they've carried the rather cute art direction (full of dots, on-screen banners and silly expressions) through with a consistant conviction. The ED is really catchy as well. The packaging is cute - thats the better side of the artbox IMHO (not that I tend to leave the sides of artboxes outwards - its the spines for me). The DVD cover is cute as well. The DVD menus are the usual over-done R1 menus - I really wish they'd take a few lessons from the rather more minimalistic R2 market when it comes to DVD menus. There are a couple of Geneon titles in particular which could really use some work (I'm think of you, Fighting Spirit - making us sit through 10-20 seconds of a fight scene from a volume we are about to watch isn't a good idea! I've bought the bloody DVD, don't go spoiling if for me!).

My:HiME HGIF2

DiGiKerot — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:51:43 +0000

Ah, the dangers of buying gashapons and TFs as randoms - you win some, you lose some, and in this case I lost Nina and Mashiro... Still, Bandai have obviously listened to the complaints about the (frankly pretty awful) first series and have given these DYNAMIC STANDING ACTION(!) thanks to some of the chunkiest stands I've seen on some gashapon.

The Mars Daybreak 6

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:21:43 +0000

The crew finally track down the hit-and-run ship to an abandoned University cityship, and under threats of work the crew head out to beat the cack out of them. Enora ends up taking charge of the defensive, but when the robort they find is defeated she almost plunges to her death (or something similar). Thankfully, Gram turns up in time to save her and she ends up tagging along with the SoA. This episode was crazy spazzy fun, though Poipoider pretty much stole the show. Enoras voice is starting to annoy me a little even though I do like the character - shes naive and childish, but she at least isn't (entirely) stupid - but she is very loud.

The Mars Daybreak 7

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:35:05 +0000

Anna hires pirate Kubernes to retrieve Enora from the SoA, since she still beleives they kidnapped her. The SoA gang head to a local pirate safe haven to do some shopping, where Enora buys what she beleives is a treasure map (though everyone tells her its fake) and Kubernes saves Gram from some local hoodlums who Enora picks a fight with for him. Gram doesn't tell him anything, but he does manage to track them down and almost makes off with Enora. Gram prevents this, though, and Kubernes retreats, but not without making it clear he knows something about Grams magic McGuffin necklace. Its pretty much average fair for the show - it was fun, but nothing particularly awesome or exciting or interesting.

The Mars Daybreak 8

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:45:17 +0000

Pretty much everyone of significance ends up at a party on an ocean liner where the legal duristrictions are such that the Military can't touch them. Naill Poe, the owner of the SoA, wants to see Captian Elizabeth about something, but thats secondary to complete and utter stupidity as Anna wrestles (literally) with Elizabeth whilst Gram is chased around by Kubernes and Vestimonia (in a dress, and another hairdo which is vastly superior to her normal haircut). Oh, and Poe knows something about Grams necklace as well, it seems the only ones who don't are the people who Gram can actually talk to. Insane. Thats pretty much the easiest way to describe this episode, with everyone running around like mad and Kubernes making vague, slashy remarks about Gram and general spazziness. Great.

The Mars Daybreak 9

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:04:06 +0000

Its the one day of the month when there are no spy satellites floating over their area, to the SoA surfaces so the crew can get some use of their...onsen? Unfortunately, their fun (and double-entendres) are distrupted by Generic Plot Device 607 thinking the SoA is its missing mother. GPD607 latches onto the ship and starts draining its power! Thankfully, the hitherto unmentioned token loli Megumi knows whats going on thanks to the SCARY MIND READING POWERS which is what causes her to stay in her room, and wants to help find its mother. Thanks to some coaxing by Junior, she goes off with Gram to find its mother whilst Junior stalls the crew from doing anything too drastic, and the day is saved in a fashion which allows everyone to go about their business and get back to enjoying a nice, warm bath. Oh, and Enora is still going on about that treasure map. For a minute there I thought I was watching an episode of Star Trek. Its no wonder they combined this with an onsen episode - pretty much the only way they could make this episode vaguely interesting was to have the entire cast go through the whole episode in their swimwear, and even that only made it marginally interesting (Ester looks really odd without all the crap she normally wears).

The Mars Daybreak 10

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:19:08 +0000

The gang head off to town obtain a new Magical McGuffin from the Martian Aborigines (decendants of the original emigrants to Mars) on behalf of Poe, but along the way Gram gets saves an old woman from getting ran over by a truck and is promptly ran rugged around town (including a museum theft, though she claims she is only retrieving whats hers). She recognises Grams McGuffin necklace, and is actually the woman that they were going to see on behalf of Poe, but first they have to deal with a local mob-boss who wants to claim the McGuffin for himself since it apparently leads to some amazering treasure. Oh, and Enora is crushed to discover her map is massed produced tourist crap, and the Martian Aborigines actually just sit around playing eroge like normal(?)people these days. Anyway, after fending off the mob, the old woman actually just gives Gram the new Magical McGuffin, and tells him that his necklace is actually the symbol of the Martian Aborigine chief which went missing many years ago, and when the two McGuffins are combined it gives clues to the location of a fabulous treasure. Gram, Elizabeth et al decide it'll be a fun diversion to go treasure hunting (they ARE pirates, after all), and head off for adventure! Its a plot! Well, at least something which resembling one is revealing itself, even if it is Teh Generic. Otherwise, this episode has some really neat fight animation, particularly when Gram takes on two robot construction tools on foot.

Marmalade Boy 26

DiGiKerot — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:32:09 +0000

Miki ANGSTs about being happy (seriously, there is definately something wrong with this girl), and Yuu gets cast in an advert opposite Hot New Girl, and thats about it.

Random Chat...

DiGiKerot — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:19:25 +0000

... or why this weeks show blogging might be light on the ground ^^;. Dragon Quest VIII arrived over the weekend, and its rather good. Its really impressive exactly how well they manage to carry the Akira Toriyama aesthetic across the entire game, from the character designs to the hilly, undulating scenery. I'm not the biggest Akira Toriyama fan (the original Dragonball I really liked, but I'm a bit ambivalent towards what was adapted as DBZ - its alright in moderation). The levelling requirements are rather steep, but it seems like a fun game. Anyhow, since I'm hoping to clock up an hour or two nightly, it cuts down on my anime viewing a little. Not entirely - I did watch the end of Elfen Lied last night (t'was alright, I could have done without a lot of the nudity, which seemed more gratuitous than necessary to the show to me), and I'll probably be watching some GITS:SAC:2G tonight (far too heavy going and popular to bother blogging, but its superb stuff). The Fate/Stay Night Curtain Raiser DVD, the promotion video for the upcoming TV adaption of Type-Moons visual novel, is out in Japan this week. My copy has shipped already, of course, having been preordered since it was announced. I think its reasonable to say that I'm looking forward to the show a lot (thats probably an understatement), though to be honest my expectations are probably unreasonably high for it. Looking at the production staff listed on ANN, the director doesn't particularly inspire confidence from his past work. I suppose I, My, Me wasn't awful as such, just not particular interesting. The only other thing of any real note he has directed was Yamibou, which I suppose at least has the right kind of atmosphere going for it. Still, Kenji Kawai is doing the music! That, at least, is worth raising a smile about. To be perfectly honest, I suspect that Fate/Stay Night will end up being my favorite show of next year regardless of it actually being particularly great or not - unless there is a third HiME show, of course.

Fate/Toy Collection

DiGiKerot — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 19:44:39 +0000

With the Fate/Stay Night Curtain Raiser promo causing literally dozens of rabid would-be Fate fanboys to get all excited, I figured this would be a good time to ~~taunt people~~ post a retrospective on some of the previously released Fate/Stay Night figures. Just so I don't get people mentioning the absence of the GSC Rider figure, I'll point out that this isn't all of them, of course, just the ones I have personally. These are the Battle Combination Trading figures. Its a series of six figures (no chase figures) split into Master/Servant pairs in vaguely more exciting than usual poses. The figures join at the bases to form three pieces are pictured above. The Shiro figure looks kind of odd facially, but the rest are good - the Rin/Archer figure in particular is fantastic, its a great pose as well as being on of the few Rin figures with her in school uniform rather than that red sweater. A warning for anyone who goes looking for a set - there are transparent variants where some of the parts are transparent, mainly the hair. The transparent version of Archer is pretty neat, actually, as its the swords which fade into transparancy as the get towards the points. The Palm Scenery Saber and Shiro twinpack. The Palm Scenery series of figures are probably best known for the classic Disgaea sets of trading figures, though more recently they've somewhat expanded by producing figures for series like To Heart 2 and Genshiken spin-off Kujibiki Unbalance. This twinpack (which is still available at a few Japanese toy sellers) was wonderfully cheap and pretty cute. You get your choice of three weapons for your characters to hold - Sabers sword, a practice sword and a ladel ^^; A series of Fate/Stay Night gashapon (capsule) figures. These are pretty small - they are actually shorter than a typical Bandai HGIF series, for example - though they are pretty well made and has a rare figure appearance by Ilya. Despite the size, these were actually a touch more expensive than most gasha. At the time of writing these Good Smile Company trading figures are (to the best of my knowledge) the most recent series of Fate/Stay Night Trading figures, and quite probably the nicest. Most the characters people would want are represented (sorry Fuji-nee fans), and these are really well made with it. The Ilya figure also has an optional jacket like that from the gashapon series, but its an absolute pain to get attached properly (it looks good when it is, but I removed it for some pictures a while back and never got around to re-attaching it). If I remember correctly, there is also an alternate version of Rider without the mask. Most peoples highlight here is the chase figure, though - Saber in PJs posing in an attempt to make her look tall and busty. So cute ^^ Enough with the dinky things and onto something bigger. These are two rather larger (1/8 scale IIRC) PVC figures produced by Kotobukiya, based on some kits they had released previously. Rin, for those wondering how it stands, is held in place on the stand by two metal screws in her foot. I've had it on display since release and, unlike many similar figures, its yet to have displayed any horrid leaning. Huzzah! Good Smile Company strike again with a pair of awesomely dynamic figures. These two proved popular enough to get a re-release recently (which is actually when I picked them up). What I don't have, however, is the Rider figure GSC also released. This Rin figure is probably my favorite of the ones I got. Easy panty shot aside, the pose is just awesome and it simply looks really awesome. Last but certainly not least are these figures by Clayz. At 1/6th scale these tower above all my other Fate figures (in fact, the only bigger figures I have are the LE figures from Scrapped Princess vols 1 and 2). You pay for the priviledge, of course, but for figure collecting Fate fans they are definately worth it as they both look great. Its certainly my favorite Saber figure, anyway, and they are satisfyingly solid to hold. Thats is for me right now, but with the recent release of Hollow Ataraxia and the forthcoming TV anime there are plenty more Fate figures on the way. Coming up soonish are a lovely looking magical girl version of Rin from Goodsmile, a swimsuit version of Rin and a casual version of Saber, and you just know there are going to be more on their way soon.

Sabers Drill Hall

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 14:15:06 +0000

Some doujin game group I can't quite find the name of have released a trial version (edit - no longer available, I'm afraid) of their upcoming 3D fighting game Soulsaber. Thats not really interesting in itself, but for their trial version they've decided to base it entirely around Saber from Fate/Stay Night. Huzzah! So, the trail version is called Sabers Drill Hall, and you play as Saber, and fight Saber. Its kind of fun, and actually plays reasonably well even if it is kind of mashy. This isn't the first time doujin groups have pulled characters from Fate into fighting games, though none have reached the same quality as Tsukihime-based Melty Blood. The best is probably Lights Fatal/Fake (trial version on the website). It plays pretty well, but since I generally suck at any fighting game with so much as a polygon in site (whether it makes much of a difference to the game or not) I've not really played it much. Group Rapid Fire released 2D fighter Fate/Sword Dance (again, trial on the website), but the last version I played of it had pretty horrific loading times, and the game itself was merely OK - it was passable, but not really great. There was also the ring based fighter Fight/Magical Tag Match, which as the name suggests kind of played like tag team wrestling. Its by a group called K3 from what I remember, but suddenly I can't find their website, and didn't really play it much. This isn't the kind of thing I'm likely to post about on a frequent basis, but with a combination of Dragon Quest and online Mario Kart DS absorbing time, the fact that 90% of this weekends traffic being people gawking at Fate/Stay Night figures and a general lack of updates, I figured this was interesting enough to post.

Marmalade Boy 27

DiGiKerot — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 23:10:04 +0000

Miki continues to ANGST about being too happy. Ginta, however, has found himself able to rather quickly get over Miki now that he believes he definately doesn't have a chance, and during a trip to the 'other' school to once again play Tsutomu at Tennis (No surprise that Ginta wins again) be bumps into Arimi and starts getting a doki-doki feeling! This, of course, is no surprise whatsoever for anyone who has been paying attention to the OP, but Arimi still isn't over Yuu yet. This doesn't prevent Miki from ribbing Ginta over the fact that he is so obviously crushing on Arimi right now. Meanwhile, Yuu is doing a screen test for the advert in which he is going to appear in, only to find himself getting glomped by hot model co-star Suzu Sakuma. Miki is already ANGSTing about how hot Suzu is, and obviously shes going to find out about this and go into ANGST overload. Oh, this episode has some new eyecatches (about time we got some given the others had some characters we haven't seen for eight or nine episodes or so). Very cute ^^; Otherwise, there isn't really anything here which warrants any more effort than blogging-autopilot, being neither particularly dramatic or silly.

Street Fighter Pinkys

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 18:25:10 +0000

From Capcoms Street Fighter game series, this Sakura and Chun-li twinpack are the latest Pinky:Chara (a spin-off from the Pinky:St cute fashion figure line featuring anime and game characters) release. Very cute ^^ Above are all the Pinky:Chara figures I've managed to pick up so far - we have Rei and Asuka from Eva (actually, those are Pinky:Cos figures - remodeled versions of other Pinky figures cosplaying), the Natsume sisters and Isuzu Emi from Tenjo Tenge, Athena and Mai from King of Fighters, this new twinpack, and my obvious favorite - Tsukihimes Arcueid Brunstud. There are a couple of other Pinky:Chara figures available, although available is a term I use very loosely - there was a figure of Henrietta from Gunslinger Girl which was only available via a magazine drawing and as such is very, very limited, and there is a Tohru Honda (of Fruits Basket fame) due soon which is going to be available via much the same method, not to mention differently coloured KoF figures. Due in a couple of weeks is another Oh!Great Pinky, coming with the next volume of the Air Gear manga (which, annoyingly, I've failed to manage to source a retailer for! Grrr!), and next year will see Shinguji Sakura from Sakura Taisen being imortalised in Pinky form. The Street Fighter pinkys, like the Eva and King of Fighter ones, are fairly light weight releases (though the figures themselves are really nice). Its just the two figures in a blister pack. In contrast, the Arcueid and TenTen Pinkys came in some rather wonderful boxes, with a change in costume (Arcueid had PJs, whilst the TenTen figures had school uniforms), colour booklets with design pictures, modelling advice and other artwork, and in the case of the TenTen figures each came with a set of postcards featuring Oh!Great artwork. The fact that the SF pinkys didn't come with a change of clothes doen't mean much if you have a neat collection of other pinkys, Chara or otherwise, since the parts are interchangable. You can switch the heads, obviously, but the tops and bottoms of the body are also swappable, and even the bits of the hair. This brings us onto the next thing of interest - custom pinkys. There is a huge fanbase of non-anime fans who collect pinky figures who like to come up with their own parts. More extremely, some more rabid anime fans make their own customised Pinky figures for their favorite characters. Browsing Yahoo Auctions always turns up some rather wonderful looking figures - in the last couple of weeks I've seen some amazing custom Saber (Fate/Stay Night), Belldandy (A!MG) and Souseiseki (Rozen Maiden) pinkys among others, and there have been custom kits sold at various hobby shows to allow you to fashion your own Ilya or Rider (Fate) among others. If you actually want any of these custom kits (assuming, like me, you suck at modelling) you'll be looking at paying a small fortune for them. But, hey, they are damn cute ^^

Fate/Stay Night Curtain Raiser

DiGiKerot — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 21:27:08 +0000

Its probably not going to come as a surprise to readers given recent posts, but I'm rather fond of Fate/Stay Night, and as such I'm really, really looking forward to the TV adaption which starts airing in Japan next year. I'm not the only one, and recognising there is a quick buck to make from other rabid fans wanting their first glimpse of the all new Fate anime goodness, Geneon have taken the chance to release the shiney new trailer onto DVD. Its a rather nice trailer too. For those who haven't read all the fansites, Fate is set in a small Japanese city where a battle is about to break out between a selected group of Magi - users of Magecraft, a derivitive of magic (though nowhere near as spectacular) - for the Holy Grail, a magic McGuffin which will supposedly grant their wishes. Each of the seven Magi summon a Servant to assist them - a great hero from the past, present or future from one of seven classes - Saber (melee fighters with insane magic resistance, often considered the most powerful), Archer (Bowmen with awesome eyesight), Rider (expert in riding beasts), Berserker (insanely powerful, but also insane - their power comes at the extent of their sanity), Lancer (Spear user, duh), Caster and Assassin. These were, previously to becoming involved in the grail war, real people, and therefore have their their own skills and weapons true to their legends, but also are entirely secretive about who they really are as not to put themselves at a disadvantage to well-read opponents. Fate/Stay Night kicks off at the beginning of a new Grail War, when student Emiya Shiro is saved from death at the hands of the servant Lancer by fellow student (and my favorite character) Tohsaka Rin, a somewhat confident Magi who is partaking in the war as the master of Archer, much to her annoyance (having gone to great lengths to try and summon Saber). Upon returning home, Shiro is once again assaulted by Lancer, only to be saved by beautiful armoured girl, who then utters the immortal words the trailer ends on... "I ask you - Are you my Master?" Its a pretty awesome trailer, at least for Fate fanboys. It pretty much hits all of the right notes, not only containing the classic lines from Rins first meeting with Archer, but it ends on pretty much the only sequence you can end a Fate trailer on - any other scene just wouldn't be right. The character designs are extremely faithful to the original work, and look terrific. The animation is mostly excellent - its not quite up there with recent standard barers like Air, but it looks better than a lot of shows which have aired recently. Aside from the oh-so-trendy fisheye shots and subdued colour pallette there are a couple of things which particularly stand out about it animation wise. Aside from the magic circle around Rins summoning, there is a distinct lack of flashy digital effects, and it looks good for it. Check out the tracking shot when Archer fires of a salvo of arrows at Ilya in the graveyard - every frame of that has been drawn and coloured seperately, without using the CG scaling or modelling a lot of shows would use to make it easy, not to mention the fact that they didn't skip on the tombstones to make it easier! For me, that kind of shot just impresses the heck out of me, and just looks so damn cool. The other interesting thing is the character line work. The advent of anime drawn on computer has tended to result in a lot of shows with very crisp, clean even linework. It looks shiney, but to a certain degree it kind of lacks the character what a lot of the cel-based shows had. The Fate trailer, curiously, has some very rough line work. Lines aren't straight, they aren't an even width, some of the have been partially coloured over, some of them are even a little broken where they shouldn't be. What I mean to say is, it kind of has the feel of a cel-based show. The section after the main part of the trailer with Sakura and Fuji-nee, which gets rid of the dark colouring in exchange for something rather more pastel, definately looks like a cel show. Just look at this headshot of Fuji-nee and see if you agree Frankly, I think it looks much better for it, and I hope the final show looks like that (the fact that some of the sketches in the book clearly show where some lines have been made thicker on purpose, I'm optimistic).This isn't to say the animation is perfect or anything - it comes as close as TV animation tends to come for the most part, until, that is, we see Rider. Alas, some of the shots of Rider herself look pretty rubbish. The character art looks a little off in places, and they use some cheap looking pans as well. Don't get me wrong, that sequence as a whole looks cool (the exploding skeletons look terrific!), but I hope Rider comes out better in the show. Its just a shame given how fluid, well drawn and generally good looking the rest of the trailer is. Music is by Kenji Kawai. His movie music is, frankly, pretty damn awesome. His TV work, however, is very mixed. I'm hopeful about this project though, as the main track played over this is a great piece of music (its an instrumental, but I kind of hope its the OP - it worked for Tsukihime, after all). Onto the packaging - it came in a box which looked like this - When I saw the pictures online, I had thought it was card. It turns out its actually plastic, and flips open across the top. I'd be worried about opening it too much, as I half expect the box to crack along the join at some point. The image on the cover, which I thought looked kind of plain when I saw it online, looks far better when you see it in person desite (or perhaps because) it looks kind of blurred due to being on plastic.Inside the box we have the following - We get a Super Jewel Case containing our DVD, with a lovely image of Rin on it. The DVD is only seven minutes long, featuring just the long trailer and a shorter edit of it. We also get a book. The book contains a couple of colour illustrations, some line art for the main characters and locations, and the storyboards for the trailer. The fact that the book has the whole storyboards for the trail makes me somewhat curious as to whether any of this material will actually make the final show, or if it was all animated specifically for the trailer. It could well be that the final show doesn't carry the wonderful aesthetic the trailer shows, or even worse may have entirely crappy animation. Given the popularity of the franchise (Fate/Hollow Ataraxia sold more in its first month on sale than Air sold in its whole first year!) I'd be disappointed and very surprised if it does, but I'm going to try and restrain myself from getting too excited about it until I see the actual broadcast version.Oh, who am I kidding, I can't bloody wait!

Ghibli Short Films DVD

DiGiKerot — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 22:24:38 +0000

To coincide with the Japanese DVD release of Howls Moving Castle, Ghibli released a DVD compilation of a number of their short films. Running at around 42 minutes in length, it ranges from TV eyecatches and adverts to music videos, without touching much of the ground inbetween. There are only really a few works of any real interest or significance on there (really, there isn't much value in on-off ten second TV advert), but there is still some interesting stuff on here. The highlight for most, and the reason I expect a lot of people will be picking up the DVD other than blind Ghibli fanboyism, is On Your Marks. On Your Marks was a seven minute long music video directed by Hayao Miyazaki and set to music by pop duo Chage and Aska (urr, they did the ED for the live action Street Fighter movie), and was shown alongside the wonderful Whisper of the Heart on its original cinema release. I was actually lucky enough to see On Your Marks alongside Whisper of the Heart about four years ago as part of a series of Ghibli cinema screenings they held over here, which I only mention to show-off ^^; Anyway, being set as a music video we can only really guess at what the plot actually is via the visuals, not to mention the fact that its not strictly linear, occasionally jumping backwards and forwards a bit, as well as saving our heroes from death at one point. From what we can see, it appears that the world (or at least the country in which its set) has been polluted with radiation (or at least the populace believe), and people now live in huge, ugly radiation shielded buildings. Chage and Aska are cops, and they are part of a raid on a building of a religious cult which dress rather like Neo Atlanis from Nadia. In a room full of dead cultists, they discover an angel lying in the corner (surrounded by empty Coca-cola cans). Chage and Aska obviously do the heroic and proper thing by dragging her out of there and giving her something to drink, but a group of radiation suited guys turn up, seal her into a stretcher and cart her off somewhere. This seems to leave a bit of a bad taste in our heroes mouths, and they decide to break into the lab and rescue her. They successfully break in and make off with the girl in a bright yellow construction vehicle, but they get attacked by flying craft which collapse the bridge they are on, causing them to plunge to their deaths - but not, as it replays from the start in fast-forward, but this time they have rocket boosters! So, they escape, drive out of the city and allow the girl to fly back into the sky. The end. On Your Marks is a rather lovely piece of animation. In technical terms, its pretty much on par with any of Miyazakis theatrical movies - it simply looks great, which beautiful background art and some fantastic design work. The attack on the cultist building at the beginning kind of makes me sad that Miyazaki doesn't do anything in the way of action movies - I think he could do a really kick-ass war movie. Musically, its alright. The song is vaguely catchy, but not particularly interesting. Curiously, the DVD also includes the English version. Castles in the Air, which was produced for the Chage and Aska tribute album One Voice. Arguable, its a better mix of the song, and the track isn't full of painful Engrish, but with the arrangement being fairly different to the original the tone doesn't fit quite as well. My favorites of the adverts on the DVD are those for House Foodstuffs. They're just really small slice-of-life clips of days gone by, but the subtle use of CG for the backgrounds is really astonishing well done, with sketchy and watercolour stylings. Its entirely understated, but it looks brilliant. I've got no idea what this is all actually about, but we have a girl with a big guitar walking around, and a world full of bugs. She walks around strumming her guitar and singing, and thats about it. Its cute. Thats the Guitar girl in RL, by the way. Also cute. The song from this video (nothing especially interesting, to be honest) came on a CD alongside ths DVD release. The final and rather pleasant surprise on the disk were these three short films, produced in association with Contemode, which I'm assuming is a music artist or label. Stylistically, its different, somewhat resembling the angular sketches produced by fashion designers. Despite this, the animation itself is rather understated, and there isn't much which really jumps out at the screen at you, but from a technical standpoint is really rather outstanding. Sure, I have no damn idea whats going on, but it sure looks good whilst confusing me, and the girl is cute ^^ There are a few extras on the DVD - the storyboards to On Your Marks (as a video stream in time to what the actual end product was), a couple of making-of or background detail-type things (with the Guitar girl), and short versions of two of the final music video trilogy.

Howls Moving Castle

DiGiKerot — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 21:47:41 +0000

Sophie Hatter is a, err, hatter - that is, she makes hats for a living. She works in the hat shop left to her family by her father, whilst her mother spends her time trying to court rich men and her far prettier sister works in a bakery. One day whilst going shopping, she is accosted by two soldiers who would rather like to get to know her better, but is saved by a handsome young man with a knack for magically flying. Unfortunately, it turns out he is being chased himself, and whilst they escape and go their seperate ways, Sophie finds her hattery visited by the wicked Witch of the Waste. The Witch of the Waste decides to curse Sophie with a curse she can't actually tell anyone else about - she becomes an old woman (although what exactly the curse is is pretty vague here - it seems more like she appears as old as she thinks herself to be, as her apparent ages varies hugely from shot to shot). Running away from home to the mountains, she saves a scarecrow from a hedge, who in exchange leads her to shelter - the huge, walking building known as Howls Moving Castle, owned by the infamous womanising wizard Howl. Howl, of course, turns out to be the handsome young man she had met a day earlier, and despite her different appearance he doesn't seem to have a problem with her inviting herself to stay as his housekeeper. So, Sophie ends up living with Howl, his young assistant Markl, and the fire demon Calcifer. Calcifer, realising that Sophie is under a curse, makes a deal - if she breaks the contract with Howl which is keeping him there, he'll break the curse placed on her. Oh, and there is also some crap about a war and the military wanting to enlist Howls skills. Being a long term Miyazaki fan, I was expecting to have a lot to say about Howls. Unfortunately, I don't. Its an extrordinately pretty movie throughout, and there are some amazingly animated set pieces, and the fairly subdued and unintrusive use of CG is impressive. Howls castle itself, a hotch-potch of sliding, deforming tiles, is a spectacular piece of design and animation, and the background art, whilst often cluttered, is always detailed and beautiful. Unfortunately, all the pretty animation in the world can't save this movie from the fact that it is incredibly tedious. As a fan, the movie is quite simply crushingly disappointeding. There is no real plot or substance to the movie either - it just moves along with a complete lack of focus (or, for that matter, logic). There isn't even much of a sense of humour to liven things up, and the movie is just altogether far too dry. I really don't know what else I can say about it. If you are a sucker for pretty animation it may well be worth you taking a look once, but otherwise its simply a difficult movie to recommend - and I'm devastated about it.

Year++;

DiGiKerot — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 20:09:06 +0000

Its soon to be 2006, and as such the latest batch of anime and manga calanders have been out in Japan for a while. I've just gotten my selection in today after stressfully cutting down my order from seven to four (I really regret dropping the great looking Tsubasa/xxxHolic calander, though). First up, its the Negima manga calander. Its one of those page-a-day desk calander things (it weighs in at about 400 sheets), and is about half the size of your average US Tokyopop/Del Rey manga. Its mostly art taken straight from the manga, though there is some stuff that I don't recognise in there, plus a few panels of things like quizes or trivia. Everyone who counts loves Yue If nothing else, its at least practical. I wouldn't buy more than one of these for a given year, but unlike the other calanders I've only really bought for the art I might actually get some genuine use out of this, and the use of art is more attractive than you'd think, even if it is greyscale.Still, those who crave a full colour Negima fix are saved by an unlikely source - the animation team! The animation staff calander is better than you'd probably think. Sure, the character designs aren't as nice as in the manga, but its big and the art is pretty good. For you money you get six (well, seven including the cover) rather large illustrations of the most popular (in Japan) characters, so whilst it lacks the deadpan awesomeness of Yue you do get Nodoka, Setsuna, Evangeline, Makie, Konoka and Asuna in various states of undress. I'm not so keen on the Konoka illustration, but the others are pretty good. Korobokkuru! Honey & Clover. Beautiful. 'nuff said. Well, okay, its another huge colour calander like the Negima one, and once again its six/seven pages. All the art is great - the one pictured above is probably the worst, and thats only because it looks a little plain.Last up is the obvious one... Fate/Stay Night ^^; More accurately, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, as its all CG from the game, really. Nice think paper and good print quality, though, and the fact that its on a ring binder thing means you don't have to tear the pages off and risk damaging the art if you genuinely want to actually use it. Its also rather smaller than the Negima and H&C calanders, so finding somewhere practical to hang it is actually a reality! Aside from the six pages for the coming year, there is a page for 2007 with some cute SD art. Neat-o.

Marmalade Boy 28

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 23:29:55 +0000

As per normal, the episode starts with Miki in the middle of an ANGSTing session - this time, its because she isn't seeing Yuu much due to his work situation. Whats worse is that Suzu and Yuu get 80% on Mikis amazering match-o-matic machine! Still, Yuu finds the time to go out with Miki at the weekend, and they decide to go on a trip somewhere. To facilitate this, Miki decides to get a part time job to raise money towards in, and starts working in the wonderfully named Bobsons ice-cream store, where to girls are cute and the skirts are short. When Miki goes to get some more icecream from the freezer, she falls off the ladders when a new HOT BISHIE stands in a position where he may or may-not be able to see right up her skirt, and in the process she drops Yuus medallion without noticing... Oh, and Ginta has fallen badly for Arimi, but they spot her out on a date with someone. Poor Ginta - maybe. Maybe I've been reading Moyisms blog posts too much, but there were just so many shots in the episode which could have been taken in completely the wrong way, which did make it rather funny. Otherwise, it wasn't particularly interesting.

Marmalade Boy 29

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 20:54:21 +0000

Miki ANGSTs about having lost Yuus medallion at the end of the last episode. The guy who may-or-may-not have looked up her skirt (and picked up said medallion) is introduced as her co-worker, Kei, who proceeds to try and give Miki the cold treatment before breaking into hysterics and admitting her was only doing it because he finds Miki hilarious. The shooting for the advert Yuu is appearing in is finally about to begin, and he get a look at the script. Yuus mother has been hiding something from him, knowing he would have turned it down if he knew in advance. Whats being hidden? Ah, it would be too easy to tell us now... At school, Miki and Yuu spy on Satoshi and Meiko talking. Yuu reckons that Satoshi actually stands a chance with Meiko, whilst Miki believes that Meiko still loves Namura, and refuses to bet on it because it isn't right. Ain't that sweet of her? Back at Bobsons, Miki and Kei chat a bit. It turns out that Kei is a year younger than Miki, but enigmatically doesn't go to school at the moment. When Miki asks him if he has seen the medallion, he is about to tell her he has it only to stop when Miki blurts out that it belongs to her boyfriend! Continuing the theme from episode 28, I'm finding too much unintentionally hilarious about the show at the moment. I mean, it would be far too easy to write down some stupid comments about the show when it comes up with shots like this... It also made me want to make "Bear is driving! How can this be!" references, but I'm not going to stoop to that level ^_^

Marmalade Boy 30

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 22:30:57 +0000

Whilst Miki is still ANGSTing about the missing medallion, Kei attempts to return it, only to be interupted by some customers. Yuu, on the other hand, is still being suspiciously secretive about the contents of his advert. Whilst out walking, Ginta and Yuu see they guy who they thought was dating Arimi the other day out with a pretty foreign girl, and Ginta, thinking he was two-timing Arimi, goes and gets into a fist fight with the poor guy. Ginta promptly storms off to talk to Arimi, who tells him that he has completely gotten the wrong end of the stick, but she seems rather touched by his concern. Back at Mikis house, one of the mothers comes home with a video of Yuus advert! Yuu starts to panic, but its too late. Why is Yuu so panicked by the advert? It turns out they dressed him as a girl ^^; The advert soon becomes the talk of the school, and people start going on about how hot Suzu is - except Ginta, who kind of prefers the tall blonde ^^; Anyway, Satoshi asks Yuu if he will tutor his cousin for him. Yuu agrees, but wonders what kind of cousin Satoshi has who would ask for him by name. No surprises that it turns out that Satoshis cousin is Suzu, and she turns up at the school for her first lesson (after mistaking Meiko for Miki, and getting disappointed Yuu is dating someone so plain). Suzu, apparently, likes pretty things, and Yuu is awfully pretty... Okay, so I really didn't expect the contents of the advert to be something so spazztastic. I thought it would be something rather more obvious like them kissing or something (certainly, as something which would have supplied them with at least two episodes worth of Miki-ANGST it seemed highly likely). Curse these writers and their ingenuity!

Marmalade Boy 31

DiGiKerot — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 20:13:32 +0000

With a tennis tournament and the school festival coming up, not to mention her part-time job, Miki is getting increasingly overworked. She still, however, finds plentiful time to ANGST about the Suzu situation. Whats worse is that Yuu is over there tutoring her, where is insists on being called Sensei and discovers that Suzus father is actually a famous architect. Suzu also gets rather jealous when she sees Mikis medallion in Yuus posession, and wonders (like those of us watching the show) what exactly Yuu sees in someone as odd and plain as Miki when he is surrounded by hotter chicks like Meiko and Arimi. Speaking of Meiko and Arimi, Meiko is currently writing a short story, much to her embarressement, at the suggestion of Satoshi. At Arimis school, Ginta is hanging around out front looking for her. When he is eventually spotted, he invites her to their school festival and walks off in a happy mood. Meanwhile, Yuu reassures Miki that he has no romantic interest in Suzu at all, which lets Miki relax somewhat. Suzu is still confused why Yuu likes Miki, however, and is hanging out with Satoshi and questioning him on the situation. Satoshi seems to be more interested in the guitar he is strumming, though - apparently he and some friends are going to be playing in a band at the festival, and learning this Suzu suggests that he gets Yuu to sing (because he is pretty, apparently). Satoshi likes the idea, and promptly does so. That night, when Miki gets off work and is wandering around randomly, she spots Kei going into a Jazz bar and follows him in. When Kei notices that Miki is enjoying the music he goes up to the stage and takes over playing the piano, impressing Miki no end (this, of course, was his goal). He promptly hates himself for it, though - apparently he has given up playing the piano ever again, and he was only doing this as a way to impress Miki. When he runs away in an angry mood, Miki takes the chance to conveniently faint. When Kei notices he turns around and embraces her in a fashion Miki would probably find rather embarressing if she was a little more conscious at the time, and unluckily for her it appears that Suzu has seen them! Lots happened in this episode, though it wasn't particularly entertaining with it.

Marmalade Boy 32

DiGiKerot — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 12:46:01 +0000

Miki can't remember much about what went on at the end of the previous episode, which is probably good for her. Suzu, however, remembers everything, and thinks that it is unforgivable! So, cut to the school festival, where Miki is working at her clubs event, Smash Oden (Errr, its an oden bar). Whilst Ginta goes off for SUPER-HAPPY-INSERT-SONG fun when Arimi turns up, Miki hangs around to work. Yuu soon shows up, but shortly afterwards is suddenly glomped on by Suzu, causing a bit of a scene. Thankfully, Kei shows up to break things up a little, but Suzu does give Miki the GLARE 'O DEATH. Later in the evening, they all head off for Yuu and Satoshis concert. There is a dialemma, though - the keyboardist has burnt his finger. Miki suggests that Kei helps out, and after a little convincing he agrees and they all go off to play some cheese-rock (with Keis awesome keyboard skills impressing everyone). Then, just when we thought we would get through a whole episode without Miki having too much to ANGST about, Suzu snogs Yuu infront of the whole school! OH NOES! Errr, yet another episode there isn't really much to say about. I kind of feel I'm just going through the motions whilst watching this show, but now I've started I'm going to finish! Oh, and merry christmas and all that.

Infinite Ryvius 15

DiGiKerot — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 20:56:50 +0000

Following on from Episode 14, its the Vital Guarder vs the Mighty Space Drill! Not only that, but the Mighty Space Drill is winning, which seems to be causing Mystery Girl to cry in pain and spout lots of cryptic nonsense. I guess all that Super Robot silliness spouted by the crew of the Blue Impluse works, as they are still at it here (they even call the Ryvius the Black Ryvius - how super robot villian is that!). The Vital Guarder is thrust into the geduld, and the Ryvius decides to head off alone towards the meteor state of Hyperion, Blues homeland. Meanwhile, on the Vital Guarder, Blue makes much the same decision - abandon the "trash" on the Ryvius and head to Hyperion - enraging Ikumi and Yuki in the process. Unfortunately for Blue, the Mighty Space Drill crushes the Hyperion to pieces, and to add insult to injury uses whats left of it as missiles to hurl towards the Ryvius! Whilst Blue freaks out, Ikumi takes control of the Vital Guarder and uses the cannon Heiger thoughtfully cut off from the Ryvius to destroy the Mighty Space Drill and save the day. Still, back on the Ryvius, everything still isn't quite right on the bridge. A group of the students on the Ryvius decide to revolt and try to storm the bridge, and the fact that Heiger and a few of the other Zwei members seem to be in on it means they actually get there. Faina tells the members of Blues group on the bridge to run, and they get away for the moment, though you have to wonder if she knows more than she is letting on given her mannerisms at the time... More super-robot silliness from the episodes villians and more cryptic silliness from the Mystery Girl are what stand out about this episode. I hope whoever attacks the Ryvius next aren't quite so camp about the whole affair...

Infinite Ryvius 16

DiGiKerot — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 21:12:20 +0000

It turns out that Heiger played a recording of Blue on the Vital Guarder saying they would abandon the Ryvius to the entire ship, which is what incited the revolt at the end of the previous episode. Kouji is pissed at whoever broadcast the message to the ship, but the Zwei lot obviously disagree (as does Faina, for that matter), so he just does as normal and shuts up. Blues lot all get chased down and beaten up, as does Charlie when he tries to stand up for Criff and Michelle, and they all get locked up. Lucson, of all people, leads the revolutionists towards the Lift Ship (the thing which attaches to the Vital Guarder, where the pilots sit around - its the first time I've actually caught what they call it), but Blue beats them all up and runs off, but not before giving Yuki his bandana for no specific reason. Lucson then promptly drops Kouji in it by telling Yuki it must have been him who played the sound clip, but Ikumi tells him thats obviously not the case since Kouji is too spineless to do something that would go against the status quo like that. Later on, Nicks finds the Mystery Girl passed out in the Lift Ship, and leaves her with Aoi and friends. It seems like everyone can all see her, but they only think to comment on her wierd costume. When Kouji turns up, however, Mystery Girl suddenly awakens and starts to wander off randomly. Juli is moping around thinking about Blue, only to be interupted because she has been voted Captian. Juli wants to remove the bridge staffs Infinite Points, but ends up getting moaned at by the bridge - whilst Juli is captian, it seems more like she is just a figurehead and Heiger is really pulling the string. Come up with a new strategy, using message pods to try and find somewhere to take them in. Oh, and they refuse to let Lucson back on the bridge, and makes him clean the toilets. Finally, Juli orders Kouji away from his bridge duties and tells him to work on the Lift Ship as the go-between for the bridge, which obviously doesn't sit well with Yuki, who accuses him of being spineless again. On a rather less pleasent note, it seems that certain people on the ship are using the fact that they have her locked up and they have the pass key for the cells to serial rape Michelle, Blues youngest female cohert. Ick. Thats rather better than the previous episodes. To be honest I find the show rather more interesting and exciting when we see whats going on in the ship unfold rather than them facing threats from the outside, but I suppose they need them to keep the plot going somewhere. I'm guessing Juli isn't going to be in charge for long, as there are already murmurs of frustration regarding, amusingly, the infinite points she wanted to scrap.

Air Gear Pinky #1 - Ringo

DiGiKerot — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:09:37 +0000

As is probably obvious from the fact I'm posting this, I did manage to find somewhere to get an Air Gear Pinky (well, two, actually, but thats another, and not particularly interesting, story). Aside from the fact that its a series by Tenjou Tenge artist Oh Great I know absolutely nothing about Air Gear, having never actually read any of it before, but since it looks cute I figured I'd get one anyway. What you get for your money - or would get if you could still source on - is one set of Ringo legs, two Ringo bodies, a Ringo head (thats the face, front hair and rear hair for anyone who has never dismantled a Pinky), a set of glasses, a set of goggles, a pair of Air Tracks and two sets of wheels for said tracks. There isn't a stand with this one - I guess you are expected to have her standing on her Air Tracks rather than free standing, though if you are concerned that she might roll off your shelf a Pinky stand (they are available for purchase at most of the usual Japanese toy stores) might be advisable rather than making her freestanding, as the balance is sometimes a bit off with the Pinky figures. Out of the box, with her glasses rather than the goggles. Cute. This is the final thing of note, appearing at the bottom of the backing blister. Given that this release is cleared marked as "1" in several places, they are presumably going to do some more Air Gear Pinkys in the future, and I'm guessing that this somehow suggests which character may be coming next. As I've said, I don't know anything about Air Gear, so I have no idea who it might be.

Random New Years Chat

DiGiKerot — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 21:22:56 +0000

First off, Happy New Year y'all. Yeah, I realise I'm a bit late with that, but never mind. Unlike everyone else, I'm not going to post a huge long post on what went on anime wise last year - its way too much effort to be honest. To quickly state my feelings, Honey & Clover won the year, My-HiME was the show I geeked most on, Forever... (Savage Genius, from Elementar Gerad) was the best OP, and Negima was both the most disappointing show of the year and the show which most, errr, "isn't as bad as you've heard" (really, it isn't, particularly towards the end...). Looking forward to next year, Fate/Stay Night will probably rule the year for me, though I'm also looking forward to Ergo Proxy and Disgaea (being a big fan of N1s game output), and Nabeshins Nerima Daikon Bros. looks like it might be fun, though I'm neither a fan of Nabeshin or comedy anime in general. Comiket 69 passed a few days ago in Japan, and as such there has been a lot of interest going on doujin wise. I'm not really interested in doujin manga (H or otherwise), but doujin games are a really big thing for me. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands of Lilian Fourhand, a Contra-esque shooter from circle French Bread featuring characters from MariMite. Theres been a lot of trial versions released over the last couple of weeks for some of the games released at this Comiket, and there are a couple of particularly choice ones - BattleMoonWars 1st Act - the actual games been out for a couple of months already, but they've just released a trial for download. Its a Super Robot Wars-style SRPG featuring characters from Type Moon titles plus a couple of originals. The trial version has Akiha and Shiki (plus one of the originals) facing off against Satsuki and Caster. Its pretty good, and the battle attack animations are pretty cool. Gunners Heart - the new title from Easy Game Station (Elepaper Action), apparently based on the old PS2 game Sky Gunner. That doesn't really matter, I guess, but what does is that its a pretty polished on-rails 3D shooter. I've played through the trial a few times to unlock all the available weapons (the drill makes mince-meat of the boss), and I'm looking forward to getting the full version soon. Typing Lolita - Not very good, actually, but the trial has a Saber costume... I'll probably go into a few of the recent doujin game releases in depth at some point in the near future.

I Rin Again

DiGiKerot — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:23:27 +0000

With the anime adaption of Fate/Stay Night starting its run on Japanese TV at the end of this week, its pretty good timing for the arrival of the latest Rin figure. Based on a costume design from Hollow Ataraxia and produced by Alter, here we have Rin in a rather fetching swimsuit. Lovely. Its 1/6th scale, so its the same size as the previously released Clayz figures. The quality is good, though due to her footing positions she does feel perhaps a little wonky - there are screws in the feet to keep her on the stand, but we'll have to see if any sideways leaning occurs over time. (I'm really, really sorry about the bad pun, by the way...)

Nyaaa?

DiGiKerot — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 14:37:03 +0000

Fresh from My-ZHiME, its the new, improved Mikoto... ...or more accurately, its Mikoto DX! Yes, its better than your average Mikoto! Well, probably. It is a pretty nice plush, anyway, though that bell does work and is kind of annoyingly rattley..

Probable downtime

DiGiKerot — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 14:50:05 +0000

Warning - I'm looking to upgrade my WP installation to 2.0 today, so the chances are the blog will be down for a short while at some point today, and there may be functional oddities for an hour or so afterwards as I update plug-ins and mess around with the theme. -Update- Well, that seemed fairly painless. All my plug-ins are upgraded and things at least appear to be working...

Random Tuesday chatter

DiGiKerot — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:30:01 +0000

With the airing of the first episode of the Fate/Stay Night anime last week, I've seen the number of people finding the blog via Fate/Stay Night related searches go upward. I mean, most of my traffic is Fate-related anyway (aside from all those Ragnarok Waffle searches I get - I assume its an RO thing), but I've seen more than normal these last few days. I'd imagine it'll be dropping off soon enough, as now that the Blogosphere is heavily covering the series I'll probably be forced down googles search results. If anyone is looking for Fate stuff, I've stuck it all in an additional category, but be warned its only really toy chatter and the like. If any is wondering (I kind of doubt it), I'm not really planning on talking about the anime adaption at all unless the DVD release brings something new to the table in regards to content, be it extra footage or shiny neat extras or the like, which doesn't get extensive coverage elsewhere. Really, although I'll be getting both the R2 and R1 releases (overkill? Absolutely!) it falls outside of my normal scope of being old enough to take the piss out of, or ignored completely by everyone else. Personally, I'm going to be looking to Bluwacky to provide an interesting look on the show from someone who hasn't been spoiled to death already, and Garten for his usual quality musings, assuming they both keep up with it. I was watching the first volume of Starship Operators on DVD the other night. It was a blind buy for me, having not seen any of it before, but there seemed to be a good vibe towards it so I figured I may as well give it a look. It seems pretty good. The only things which particularly stand out about it is the slick animation and the catchy OP, otherwise there isn't really anything particularly remarkable about it. The execution was at least above average, but aside from the amusing reality TV spin they put on it there isn't anything particularly new about it (the space submarine episode just made be think of Nadesico, for example). Sanri kind of grates on me as well, though I'm guessing the fact that its basically Mamiko Noto voicing a character exactly the same as the one she plays in Negima has a lot to do with it (I'm not really a Nodoka fan as is). Its nice to see that Fullmetals Roy Mustang obviously got to the top of the military chain of command, though - with those uniforms I'm assuming sexual harrasment doesn't exist in space. Its a good thing only Hot Chixx want to sign up for the military in the future (or maybe they have some kind of screening process...), otherwise it could have taken a rather distrubing turn - now if only they'd do something about some of those hairstyles... The new R1 volume of Fafner has what I think is the first sighting of Geneons Kannazuki no Miko trailer. I only mention this because its just the clean OP, and Resublimity rocks so very, very hard. Of course, I've got the single already (and Glass no Kaze or whatever the Kotoko album it was on was called), but the OP animation is kind of cool even if it does give away the story to the entire series (not that its particularly profound or amazing, or unpredictable, anyway). As for Fafner, I'm guessing this is the point where they had some change in the writing staff, because the shows quality very definately took a huge upswing here, and is getting to be rather interesting to say the least. Looking forward to the next volume. Speaking of Xebec, Fafner and staff changes, I finished watching the R2 release of Negima last week. I seem to be finding myself saying this pretty much constantly, but it really isn't that bad. A lot of the second half of the series is actually rather good, and there are a few episodes in the last half dozen which, contrary to the early episodes, are really, really well animated. Sure, animation improvements (I've not seen the broadcast version, coincidently, but the DVD release doesn't have any awful looking episodes anymore) can't change the fact that they tried to shoe-horn what is essentially a shonen action serial with lots of cute girls into the harem genre, but it does at least have its moments. The Sayo centric episode is absolutely the high-point of the series, but I do have to give them bonus points for the not-entirely-awful total divergance from the manga in the last few episodes. Really, though, they should have just forgot about any sense of closure and spent the first 13 episodes doing the Library Island and Eva arcs, then spent the entire second half of the series on Kyoto. Never mind, I guess. I see that they are apparently doing another series of Genshiken later in the year. Pretty good timing for an announcement, given that the final volume of the first series has been released R1 side. I wonder if they'll do some more KujiAn - I have to admit I feel kind of guilty about always watching the KujiAn episodes on the R1 release before getting to watch Genshiken itself. Hopefully they'll keep the same staff and an R1 release will be forthcoming, anyway, as despite the uneven start much of the later half of the first series of Genshiken was gold. Oh well, I think I've been random enough for one evening. I might actually blog some viewing material at some point this week - the whole reason I really started typing this post was just to drop a few comments relating to things I'm not really intending to talk about to any great degree. I watch a lot I don't feel is worth the effort to blog, so I'll probably do it more in the future.

Galaxy Angel A

DiGiKerot — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:59:22 +0000

The Angel Brigade has spilt up thanks to someone eating all the cakes and not owning up to it, and they aren't even missed. The Galaxy Twin Stars, Kokomo and Melibu Peyrot, are doing a far better job of collecting Lost Technology than they ever did, and as a result poor Vollcot finds himself facing an unaffordable early retirement due to no longer being required. There is nothing else for it, Vollcot has to own up to his horrific crime and reform the Angel Brigade before he faces a future of bankrupcy! Cue more wierd, wacky and generally stupid adventures! Yes, I'm summarising the entire third season (well, half of it technically - it changed to Galaxy Angel AA half way through) in a single post! The fact that its pretty much all the same makes it pretty easy to do so as well. Its much the same as all the other iterations of the series - something stupid happens, which causes more stupid events to happen until the run out of time, at which point they normally end the episode on a random and completely inconclusive note (Normad jokes this is because the production staff have no love for their work). Its not really any better or worse than any of the shows previous iterations, except that it doesn't try to do one of those completely out-of-place serious episodes, and its far, far cheaper to buy ^^;. The problem is that, like most comedy anime, it mistakes being really, really stupid with actually being funny, and most of it just falls flat with me. Still, theres something every few episodes which raises a genuine laugh rather than a bemused smile, making it vaguely worth watching. Some highlights from this series are -

Milfeulle fails to turn up for a meeting, causing the other GAs (and Vollcot) to cover by dressing up as each other
A costume causes Mint to loose all her hair (and her rabbit ears for that matter - I always assumed they were, like, actual ears
Ranpha gets attacks by an angry robot after failing to pay a bill
Mint is told that wearing another costume will kill her, which promptly coincides with everyone giving her odd costumes
Milfeulle gets sentenced to execution for laughing at an ugly kings face
They all become children, so Malibu and Kokomo decide to flush them into space to cover up a mistake on their part
Forte becomes a man, and has to run from an infatuated and stalker-like Ranpha
Mint decides to exercise her leg whilst the rest of the AB are hanging of it, over the edge of a cliff...

I guess that makes eight episodes out of twenty six which have some humour value in them, which I suppose it better than most shows of the style (well, other than the original DiGiCharat). Having seen some Rozen Maiden between seasons of GA I was finding it hard not to think of Shinku everytime the cute-but-EVIL Mint spoke though...

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien 1+2

DiGiKerot — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 22:36:00 +0000

Cute schoolgirl Haruka Suzumiya liiiiiikkkkeeeess typical flakey-male-lead Takayuki Narumi, but is too sweet and shy to act on it. Her hot swim-team best friend Mitsuki Hayase conspires with Takayukis best friend Shinji to get the two alone together, and Haruka manages to work up the nerve to ask Takayuki out, which he accepts. So, the two start dating - kind of - but for Takayuki it just seems like a bit of a drag (it probably doesn't help that Haruka just seems like an incredibly dull person). When Haruka confronts him and asks if he actually like her, Takayuki replies that he really isn't sure the two stop speaking - that is, until Takayuki decides he does actually like her and they end up dating properly. Oh, and despite setting them up, Mitsuki obviously likes Takayuki as well. Regardless, things go increasingly well between Takayuki and Haruka, and then they shag, and then... Haruka gets squished by a car! Hurrah for spoiling the end of episode 2 for the whole two people who haven't seen it already! Hurrah for it all being Mitsukis fault for making Takayuki late! Hurrah for extreme melodrama! Everyone and their dog seems to have seen this, and the vast majority seem to love it. To me, it just seems like a hundred and one other shows I've seen, though admittedly in terms of animation at least its is a lot slicker than most examples of the genre. Unfortunately, having seen many other shows similar to this, I just end up finding the dramatic moments unintentionally amusing, and Haruka seems to fall slap-bang into the middle of that "scary obsessive stalker" character mold that Ai Yori Aoshis Aoi and Midori no Hibis Midori do, which the Japanese seem to find so incredibly moe but I just find rather fightening (and, frankly, rather dull). Still, it seems pretty good, and it'll probably improve after this point. If it wasn't for the fact that I'd heard about the little twist in Episode 2 before the anime adaption was even announced I'd probably be far more interested in what was going on than I actually am. I certainly wouldn't object to seeing more of it, but at the same time I'm not really intending to go out of my way to see more of it. I was watching this via the R3 Taiwanese release, which follows the same release pattern as the Japanese release but at rather a nicer price when you are paying for two episodes. Given its popularity and the fact that its the franchise which propelled Kuribayashi Minami into such major and hard-hitting roles as, errrr, Erstin Ho, I figured it would be worth a watch. I guess I'll try a couple of disks if I order some more stuff from R3-land, but really I can't help but feel if I don't see more of this it'll be no great loss to me. Oh, and Akane is by far the best character. Maybe I'll just skip to Akane Maniax...

Wings of Honneamise - Royal Space Force

DiGiKerot — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:58:39 +0000

Shirotsugh Lhadatt wanted the join the navy so he could fly planes. He was, however, far too dumb for that, and ended up joining his countries joke of a Space Force, staffed almost entirely by equally lazy and apathetic members who only stay there because there is no other work to be had in such a poor country. A chance meeting with Riqunni, a devout religious young girl petitioning people in a red light district, causes Shiro to have a sudden bout of enthusiasm which results in him volunteering to become the pilot of the Space Forces first manned satellite. Shiros increasing infamy combined with an increasingly hostile political situation result in awkward times for the Space Forces plans to launch... Its really hard to believe that this movie is almost twenty years old now. Whilst this is the first time I've actually seen the full version of the movie (the UK release version has one scene cut out to reduce the age restriction, and to be honest its probably better for it), in the ten years since I first saw it I don't think I've seen another anime movie which comes close to matching it visually. Its not just that the actual animation is just about the best you are likely to see in an animation (more impressive when you think they didn't have flashy computer effects to fall back on), but the world design is utterly stunning - you don't see one thing in the course of the whole movie that someone clearly hasn't put hours of thought into. Its really rather staggeringly impressive. Add to this Ryuichi Sakamotos wonderful, if sparingly used and occasionally bizzare, music, and you have a real audio-visual treat. As for the content, its rather glacial in its pacing, but thats not to say its bad - quite the contrary, its really rather splendid. Its kind of hard to believe this written and directed by the same Hiroyuki Yamaga responsible for Mahoromatic, being rather slow, thoughtful and, well, not full of pyschotic busty school teachers (not that I didn't like Mahoromatic). Really, its just about the best piece of theatrical anime ever.

Leave It To Piyoko! 1+2

DiGiKerot — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:23:22 +0000

Pyocola Analogue III (aka Piyoko) is the poor leader of the Black Gema-Gema gang, the poorest gang on the poor Planet Analogue, and she is rather hungry. Unfortunately, her evil henchmen Ky (a Vet) and Ric (a Dentist) are actually far too nice and end up not charging for their services. Fortunately, Coo (a Physician) turns up with some food he just found on the street. Unfortunately, the foods real owner turns up to reclaim it, and since its already been eaten summons a rather bizzare robot to take their house. Homeless, Piyoko goes on a destructive rampage which causes them to flee the planet. In the second episode, the BBG decide to go to earth to kidnap Dejiko to try and raise some money, and scheme accordingly. So, Dejikos eternal rival gets her own series! Unfortunately, DiGiCharats particular brand of entirely spastic humour doesn't really translate well to being more than five minutes long, and her it works worse than in Hoshi no Tabi or some of the early specials. It doesn't really help that Piyokos gang isn't actually very funny, either.

Leave It To Piyoko! 3+4

DiGiKerot — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:34:57 +0000

In Episode 3, the Black Gema-Gema arrive at Akihabara in order to kidnap Dejiko. Essentially, if you've seen the first DGC Summer Special episode, you've pretty much seen this - its exactly the same episode, only from Piyokos point of view, and generally not as good. The most amusing thing about the episode is that, for some odd reason, they weren't allowed to use the original character designs for most of the secondary characters - the stores manager got off lightly with only a goatee being added, but Minatuka and Murataku either appear off-screen or as odd amorphous blobs ^^; In episode 4, the Black Gema-Gema decide to have a picnic at Gamers in order to get out of the heat, and a baby resembling a familiar character (who I suspect they coudn't use either) turns up, and somehow causes all those annoying people who just came to browse the store to buy everything. I can't say it was particularly funny or interesting or anything - I only watched it last night and already can't remember anything which particularly stood out...

DiGiCharat CCG Adverts

DiGiKerot — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:06:50 +0000

Watching Leave It To Piyoko! suddenly reminded me of these adverts on the Japanese Hoshi no Tabi DVD... People wearing large, plastic heads of the characters play the CCG with wacky consequences! Yes, they really are that scary-rubbish, but they do kind of amuse me with their general crappiness ^^;

SR DX Suiseiseki

DiGiKerot — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 19:41:38 +0000

Big hair... ...Really big hair! The figures bigger than I was expecting, actually. I'm a little worried about possible lean over time - her legs do feel fairly chunky and stable, but she does only balance on the front of one of her feet, and she is heavier than one might expect. She kind of fell apart as soon as I opened the box, but after a little (if awkward) fiddling she seems to fairly sturdy now.

Alter KOS-MOS

DiGiKerot — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 19:47:16 +0000

SCHWEET! No further comment ^^

Loki Ragnarok 5

DiGiKerot — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 14:09:16 +0000

The Mysterious Jewel Thief Frey is terrorising the city, and Mayura gets rather upset when Loki shows absolutely no interest in the proceedings. This results in her going off to investigate herself. Frey, of course, is the god Frey, who rides upon his, errr, robotic flying pig Gullinbursti. He bumps into Mayura (who obviously spends too much time dressing up in silly costumes herself she fails to find someone in such a silly costume suspect) and instantly falls in love with her, but he has other issues to deal with - he is working with Heimdall to kill Loki, and is also looking for his missing sister Freya. In fact, the final item he decides to steal is the Brisings necklace which belongs to Freya. Its a this point that Loki (who is obviously actually a pretty rubbish detective) realises that Frey is the god Frey and confronts him. So, Loki trys to stop Frey stealing the Brisings necklace, but Heimdall steps in at the last minute to swipe it. He is obviously up to something... Errr, I kind of forgot to order the DVD, which is why its taken me so long to watch this. I ended up watching most of this episode waiting for Frey to claim he makes the impossible possible! (Err, too much Gundam Seed - he shares his VA with Mu la Flaga), and thats about it.

Loki Ragnarok 6

DiGiKerot — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:53:53 +0000

Heimdall shows off his l33t modelling skills, creating a highly detailed model hotel using just a knife, a ruler and some squared paper. Awesome. More exactly, a girl called Reiya turned up asking for Lokis help. Loki immedately recognises her as an annoying chibified version of the Loki-obsessed norse goddess Freya (who Frey had been searching for), and agrees to help. Unfortunately, its all part of Heimdalls scheme to used the Palace of Glitnir to recharge the Brisings necklace with Lokis magic power or some such nonsense, and whilst Narugami/Thor turns up to save the day, he makes off with Reiya and a recharged Brisings necklace in the end. In this episode, Mayura wears a maid uniform. I do wonder where she gets all these costumes from - she is obviously a cosplay as well as a mystery freak. Its all about Heimdall mad modelling skillz, though.

Lilian Fourhand - Nuclear Soeur Fighters

DiGiKerot — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:32:29 +0000

Lilian Fourhand is an on-foot shooter featuring characters from Maria-sama ga Miteru. Its not a million-miles away from games like Konamis Contra/Probotector series in that you go from left-to-right shooting things, interrupted along the way by an assortment of bosses to take down. In Lilian Fourhand, however, the stages auto-scroll - you can't take things at your own pace as it just keeps moving. Rather than having a default character who picks up an assortment of weapons, you get to choose one of three Soeur pairs with fixed attacks. Each of the pairs have their own attack, but since you control both at once (and they both shoot at once) you don't really need to worry about that other than knowing you'll be firing two attacks at once. Complicating things further is that you get enemies walking along the background taking pot-shots at you, who can't be taken down with regular attacks - you need to lock-on to them (there’s a choice of lock-on methods, but Auto is for wimps) making things rather more tricky than simply having to shoot. You can actually lose one of your characters down a pit. If you lose your main character, you'll reappear with a chunk of your health missing. If you lose your petite soeur they'll disappear for a short while, taking your lock-on skill with them. Eventually they'll float down from the top of the screen and you'll have to make contact with them to bring them back into action - miss them and you'll have to wait a while longer and try again. The game has six stages set in different surrounds you'll recognise if you've seen the anime version of Marimite, and with the exception of level 6 (which is basically a boss-rush stage, pitting you against bosses you've thought previously before throwing you against the final boss) the levels follow the same basic pattern of having two bosses - one half way through the stage, and one end. The bosses, unsurprisingly, are all characters from the series. It'll raise a few smiles from those who are familiar with the series, though not likely as much as a laugh. I really like Lilian Fourhand. Its a really polished, really playable game. It looks about as nice as a game like this can, the music is suitable and pleasant, and the stages are really well done, not simply being wave after wave of the same attacks. The game itself is fairly short, though you'd have to be pretty good to get through the whole game in the "normal" difficulty in one go with only the credits you are given by the game. If you are the obsessive type, the desire to improve your game and score is there in spades. Truthfully, its just incredibly playable a game - the only possible blackmark is that having separate buttons to shoot left and right is a bit awkward, but given you need to shoot in the opposite direction to which you walk fairly often (particularly against bosses) its forgivable, particularly given you get used to it pretty quickly. Its not going to give the upper echelon of the professional genre games much of a head-ache - it falls a little short of the likes of Contra III, though it feels a little fairer a game to me than Metal Slug (that may just be that I suck at that game) - but its definitely worth a look if you a genre obsessive or a MariMite fan boy. Game Mechanics - How to Play Controls Arrow keys - Move N - Shoot Left M - Jump < - Shoot Right > - Dash F5 - Pause I recommend using a joypad if you have one, particularly since you can reconfigure the buttons to something more reasonable, unlike with the keyboard controls. I've had trouble shooting upwards whilst moving left/right using the keyboard as well - in that it doesn't seem to work. It works fine with a joypad, and makes things rather more doable. You can also dash by tapping left or right twice should you wish, as well as dashing mid-air. Its also possible to do a second jump whilst mid-air, though like most of these things it can only be done once. You can also crouch, though it doesn't give you much benefit to do so. There’s two choices of shooting methods selectable from the character select screen. Wimps will go for auto - you just need to hold down the button to send a stream of bullets flying constantly, whilst releasing the button will automatically lock-on to anyone walking across the background. Manual will only fire a short spout of bullets when the fire button is pressed, meaning you have to repeated tap the fire button to shoot. To lock-on in manual mode you need to hold-down the shoot button, and release to shoot. You can't, however, shoot straight upwards. Pressing shoot whilst pressing up will shoot at a diagonal in the direction you press the shoot button in. You can, however, jump on characters heads without taking damage (and its essential to know this if you want to beat some of the later bosses). Watch out for the red birds - they drop power ups. The powerups available are:- "Shot" - Powers up your regular attack for a limited number of shots "Invisible" - Makes you unshootable (or untargetable, at least) for a short while "Recover" - Refills your health "Laser" - Power up to your lock-on attack, giving you extra shots "Bonus" - Gives you a bunch of extra points Anything else which is dropped by anyone else (stars, cake, fruit, etc) are just for extra points. Characters Sachiko and Yumi Attack Power - 3 Attack Range - 5 Lock-on - 8 The game states this as the beginners choice thanks to their long attack range, wide bullet spread and rapid fire. I probably wouldn't go with them period, myself, the other characters simply seems far more effective. Shimako and Noriko Attack Power - 4 Attack Range - 3 Lock-on - 10 The intermediate choice, and my prefered choice. Shimakos boomeranging crucifix fire has a decent range and a good coverage area, whilst Norikos shotrange bomb-like (or is that Jizu bead-like?) shots are really damaging - they may have a lower attack rating than Rei and Yoshino, but its pretty hard to actually see - if anything, you'll probably find yourself sapping bosses energy gauges far more quickly with this pair, particularly with the 'shot' power-up. Rei and Yoshino Attack Power - 5 Attack Range - 2 Lock-on - 12 Expert choice. Reis attacks are really short-range without a 'shot' power-up. To attempt to make up for this they've given Yoshino a homing shot. The homing shot does make them good for picking up those stray enemies if you are going for a decent score, though its not very rapid fire. The high lock-on value seems to come at a cost - their lock-on attack seems weaker than the other characters, some enemies other characters knock-out in a single attack takes two for them. Extras There are a few extras hidden in the game to reward the obsessive gamers. The first thing one might notice is that for every half hour you clock up playing the game you unlock an extra credit, and eventually (after about six hours I think) you will unlock freeplay mode (which will make Hard Mode rather more doable). There are a few less obvious ones, however. Firstly, you want to be looking at completing the game with all three pairs of characters. Its easier than you might think - complete the game with Shimako and Noriko on Easy mode, then simply replay the last stage with the other doing. Doing this will unlock... Yumi and Touko Attack Power - 5 Attack Range - 5 Lock-on - 9 Yumi plays like she does with Sachiko - a wide spread of fairly weak but rapidfire attacks. Touko, unsurprisingly, fires drills attacks which are very damaging, but whilst moderately rapid there is a bit of a delay before they go flying off. They top Shimako and Noriko, however, simply because Toukos drills have a full-screen range as opposed to Norikos short range. Complete the game using Yumi and Touko (again, just the last stage will do) will allow you to do a custom character selection by pressing either up or down on the character select screen - this allows you to use the all-conquering combination of Shimako and Touko. Completing the game as Yumi and Touko should also open up the Special option on the main menu. This gives you a bunch of extra points game modes - Endless - Endless stream of opponents. 1000Junk - Kill 1000 opponents as quickly as possible. 2 Minutes - Kill as many as possible in 2 minutes. 3million pts - Gain 3m points as quickly as possible. The rest are an assortment of vs. boss challenges. The Endless, 1000Junk, 2min and 3m modes are pretty insane with the number of opponents they throw at you!

Disgaea TV promo

DiGiKerot — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 19:34:57 +0000

So, about a month ago, I was browsing Y!AJ looking for Comiket 69 wares, when I discovered someone selling a Disgaea-related DVD for a mere 500Yen, promising it to contain a preview for the anime among other things. With there having already been an announcement for the (proper awesome) promotional DVD at the end of the month, I figured it wasn't particularly likely to be true, but being an N1 fanboy, combined with the low price, I figured what the hell. The DVD in question turned up today, and it turns out they weren't lying. Its a promo DVD for an assortment of N1 products - theres a Disgaea 2 trailer (whats with the stack combos? Freaky) as well as trailers for pretty much every N1 game ever, including some of the clean PS2 H-game ports of other companies games they've published. It also has a 90sec promotional movie for the Disgaea TV anime. Its just some cuts from the show set to some non-descript background music (very much like the games, if not taken directly from), with no voices or anything interesting like that - but, hey, its Disgaea, therefore its very awesome. Really looking forward to the proper promotional DVD released at the end of the month, which will likely be at least twice as awesome.

Battle Moon Wars - First Act

DiGiKerot — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 20:45:03 +0000

Battle Moon Wars is a doujin game by circle Werk. Its an SRPG, presumably roughly inspired by the Super Robot Wars games (I've not played any of them, so can't say for certain). In terms of more main stream titles, if you've any of N1s SRPGs or Final Fantasy Tactics you'll have the rough idea. Similar to how Super Robot Wars mixes characters from an assortment of famous mecha anime and games, Battle Moon Wars combines characters from Type-Moons Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night, mixes in a couple of originals, and throws them into a neat battle game. There isn't really a huge amount more to say about the gameplay. Isometric grid based stage, assortment of badguys (many bizzarely based on Getter Robo from the looks of things), visual novel sections between the battles, the usual kind of thing. You can move around, hit people, use status magic and heal and the like. It plays pretty well - the AI isn't especially the best, but its passable. As with a lot of these games, positioning characters as to lure and trap opponents into a managable situation. When attacked, by default both parties get a chance to attack assuming you both have attacks within range - with the attacker going first. Even if you have an attack in range, you can choose not to attack in exchange for a far increased chance of avoiding damage. When near death, it can be a god send, particularly on those stages where you lose by losing any single character in your party. It's not Arcueid, its Phantismoon!. No, really... You can improve characters stats between levels using the bonus points you get for leveling and defeating opponents. You can choose to improve the characters base stats, add extra skills, or improve the strength of character techniques. You can also equipt items, though the only item actually available here is a healing one (which I guess isn't really so bad). In terms of visuals, the map visuals are servicable - the characters look pretty decent, though functionally small. The backgrounds are a bit bland, but nothing to really complain about - they do their job. The battle animations are, frankly, awesome. OK, so the backgrounds to them aren't the best (lots of layers of parallax scrollings, often at a different rather to which the characters move around), but the character animations are absolutely terrific. You can, if you wish to save time, switch the battle animations off. I chose not to - they are really that cool. The music is pretty good as well - each of the playable characters have their own themetune which plays from when they are involved in combat up until another characters tune overrides it. Whilst his annoyed the hell out of me in Monoliths NamcoXCapcom, the music doesn't flip often enough here to produce the same effect. The music itself is mostly cheesey 70s/80s mecha battle style rawk, but its damn catchy stuff. The game has two completely new characters you can choose from at the start of the game - male Takumi Atsuta, and the female Haruna Mochizuki. Its effectively the easy/hard mode selection - that game recommends that those with no SRPG experience go for Haruna. I ended up going with Takumi being an N1 veteran, and whilst tricky at a couple of places it was managable. Depending on the character you go with, it seems that a couple of the early stages are different (Takumi meets Shiki, for example, whilst Haruna meets Rin, for example) but the two paths meet up shortly afterwards. Being a "first act" of a doujin title, the game itself is unfortunately pretty short, totalling maybe seven or eight stages once you take into account the branching. In terms of time, depending on how good you are I guess we'll be talking three or four hours for your first play through as one character. Given the game isn't the easiest to get ahold of outside Japan (legally, anyway), I guess thats the kicker - its an easy game to recommend, as its a really good title, but its tough to say if its worth the hassle and expense of getting ahold of it. Personally, I have even intention of tracking down 2nd Act once its released, which promises a good half dozen more Type-Moon characters (Ciel! Yay!) on top of what we have already. I guess all I can say is try the trial version Werk released via their website and see what you think about it. Players guide So, you've gotten yourself a copy of the game, or the trial version anyway. Its straight forward to play if you've played one of these games before, but I guess I'll offer some advice. Basic Controls There isn't really much you really need to know. You can quick-skip through the dialogue text by holding down the CTRL button if its of no interest to you. Esc will allow you to exit the game. F4 allows you to switch between full screen or windowed mode. Away from the system controls, everything basically mouse based. Left button selects things, whilst the right button deselects or cancels things. You can scroll the map by holding down the left button and moving the mouse around. Thats basically it - the whole game is menu driven anyway. Menus In combat, there are two menus you need to pay attention to - the character menu (the only which appears when you click over an ununsed player character) and the Turn menu (clicking elsewhere on the field). Lets take a look at an example character menu Different characters may have more or fewer options, depending on what techniques they have, if they've moved or attacked or have items equipt. This one is fairly typical one for a character who has yet to move this turn, aside from the third option down. The options you are likely to see in this menu are (in what I believe is the order they are likely to appear). 移動 - Movement - Move your character around. Note that some characters (typically those with long range attacks) cannot attack and move in the same turn as standard. 攻撃 - Attack - Attack an opponent. This will also usually end your turn (there is an exception, but you'll know it when you see it). 精神 - 'Magic' - Well, technically something like Spiritual Technique. Various techniques which increase stats and the like. アイテム - Item - Use an item you've equipt between stages. 治癒 - Recover - Heal an ally 補給 - EN Recover - its in the online manual, but I don't think I've seen it. 能力 - Status - Look at the characters status screen. 待機 - Standby - end movement. Now, onto the Turn menu If you are still reading a page like this, the only commands you are likely to need are "フェイズ終了" (Phase End - end your turn), and "中断" (Stop game - quits the game and creates a "continue" save you can pick up on later). The other options are all to do with seeing system settings and the like. Now you know this stuff, you should be able to move around and maybe attack things. Lets take a brief look at attacking. Lets have a look at an attack menu Most will look like this at the start of the round (I think there is only one character with three attacks). You'll notice the first attack has white text - as it, its allowed. The secound attack is red - disallowed. This is because the "気力" (hereby Energy) value (in the bottom half of the window) for the character is presently too low. This starts off around 100 and increments as the character is involved in combat, so basically the more things you attack, and the more you are attacked, the quicker you'll be able to use your more powerful attacks. As for the other other fields, the third and forth columns, the attack strength and the attack range, are probably the main ones you are interested in. The bottom half also shows how many EN points are needed out of your current total. When you attack an opponent, or get attacked, you will see a screen like this. This is one for the character getting attacked, which is a better example as it has a few extra options. This thing to pay attention to is that two big percentage numbers at the top, which determine how likely it is that you will land a hit on your opponent and vis-versa. If your percentage is zero when you are under attack, click the middle one of those three pinkish boxes at the bottom - this will put your character into a defensive mode which will drop the chances of you getting hit by half, in exchange of your attempt to counter attack. The left of those button, coincidently, allow you to change the counter attack selected (it'll pick on by default), whilst the right button reverts to the default attack. The bottom two boxes show defensive and offensive backup, which occur when your character is next to another within attack range with a specific skill. These characters will either add an additional attack (if its your attack phase), or block an attack which is going to actually hit. Hitting the "GO" button launches the attack. Oh, and that ON button disables attack animations if you get fed up with them. Aside from the main attacks, there are also the Spirital techniques. I'm not 100% sure on these (didn't really use them), but from the online manual on Werks page, they are: 必中 - Certian Hit - 200% chance to hit for one turn. ひらめき - Not sure about this - I think it makes missing impossible if you are hit. 集中 - 30% on your hit and evade percentages for one turn. 鉄壁 - 1/4 damage received for one turn. 根性 - 30% HP restored. ド根性 - 100% HP restored. 信頼 - 30% Ally HP restored. 加速 - +3 to your characters next move. てかげん - Another I'm not sure on - I think it damages the opponent when you are attacked. 脱力 - Reduces opponents energy by 10. 幸運 - BP earned in combat doubled. 努力 - EXP earned in combat doubled. Thats about all there is to playing the main game - I don't really have the inclination to go into the intermission menus (they are easy enough to work out anyway). Well, OK, maybe the extra status things you can get (there are some extras which certain characters have by default, but we won't worry about them). 底力 - Increases HIT, EVASION, TOUGH and CRITICAL as HPs decrease. カウンター - Increases the possibility of attacked before the opponent when attacked. 援護攻撃 - Allows character to provide attacking support. 援護防御 - Allows character to provide defensive support. 連携攻撃 - Affects the damage taken during defensive support... somehow ^^; 一撃離脱 - Move after attacking. アタッカー - Damage dealt from attacks increments by a factor of 1.2. リベンジ - Counterattack damage incremented by a factor of 1.2. ガード - Adjusts damage taken when attacked by a factor of 0.8 見切り - Adjusts evasion and hit rates... somehow ^^; 魔力節約 - Adjusts EN use by a factor of 0.8. 闘争心 - +5 energy when appearing on the field. 戦意高揚 - +2 energy every turn after the first turn リズム感 - additional +1 energy when attacked or attacking. 対抗心 - +2 energy when damaged in combat. SPアップ - Raises maximum SP according to level. Maybe. SP回復 - Restore 10SP each turn. 集中力 - SP consumption reduced to 80% If anyone can clarify those I'm not sure on, please go ahead (^^), but otherwise thats all you are getting out of me.

My-ZHiME DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:58:55 +0000

Puri, puri, puri, puri, BANG! Errr, so, yeah, the fake trailer amused me, though the general lack of new fotage annoyed me a little. I'm not going to waste my time screencapping it , since I suspect everyone who cares about it has seen it by now. In other news... Yup, they corrected the "materiarise" spelling from Ninas robe activation in Episode 1 for the DVD release. Neat. I can't imagine they've made any other changes, and I haven't actually watched the DVD to check (I jumped straight to that scene to check if they had changed it). I'l update at a later date if I do spot anything different. As for the other stuff what comes with the DVD release, well, there isn't anything intresting in the DVD adverts this time (with HiME you at least tended to get new art for the PS2 game). In terms of leaflets they are advertiving the HiME PSP game, which is due out this month having been repeatedly pushed back (and, yes, I am getting it, even though it'll probably suck, simply because I need something to play on that darn console). First pressing bonus was a 20-ish minute VA interview DVD, similar to that from the first pressing HiME DVD 1. Its kind of interesting if you are into the whole VA thing, I guess. Its kind of amusing to put faces to voices (particularly those like Haruka, whos speaking voice doesn't sound a whole lot like the character, unlike some of the others). That, and the sections where they are actually recording for the show are quite fun.

PS2 Gunslinger Girl

DiGiKerot — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:01:18 +0000

Released a couple of years back as a three volume serial, the Gunslinger Girl PS2 games became somewhat notorious when, bizzarely, the second volume appeared in a list of the "10 Worst Violent Video Games" published by a US parents group. Why, exactly, US parent groups were worried about a game never released outside Japan, yet alone classifying it worse than the like of Manhunt or Mortal Kombat, is anyones guess, but I suppose they did at least win their battle to stop US retailers selling it to poor, easily influenced children rather easily ^^; This is Pia. You fight her. A lot. The games follow Henrietta as she battles rogue Fratello Ernest and Pia across a variety of stages based in largely predictable locations. The game is a basic shooting gallery kind of game, in that you move a pointer around the screen to target things to shoot. Badguys of various kinds pop up from behind walls, you move your pointer over them, and then you shoot, hopefully before they shoot you. Repeat until everything in the area is killed, then your character will move onwards. Well, OK, its slightly more interesting than that. Similar to proper gun game Time Crisis, the game is based around the use of cover. The game puts you behind a wall, around a corner, behind a barrel or whatever, and you have to pop out from behind it to deal damage to your opponents. Basically, you need to hide when it looks dangerous or you need to reload, then pop out when when you want to attack. Further to this, for any point at which you stop to kill off a phase of badguys there may be multiple points you can stand - say, if you are hiding behind a piller you may be able to look out from either side of it, or move around all four sides, and obviously you can only see certain enemies from different points. Of course, standing in a particular positions may make you visable to certain enemies who you can't see from that vantage point. This is actually where things start to become slightly more interesting. The game has a lock system, where you can tap in the direction of a badguy whilst pressing a lock button will automatically move your cursor over them and lock onto them. You can do this for several badguys in a row, and once you press the fire button you'll shoot all of them at once. What makes this interesting is that, if you get the timing between the locks correctly, you get score multipliers on sequential locks. This means that, if you want to get a decent score, you are always making a trade off between killing things quickly and making the area safe, or getting a good score. The later lock-ons also do more damage than the earlier ones, meaning that you can take down the more powerful badguys (worth more points) in one shot rather than several if at the end of a chain. Because not all enemies are always visable at once, there is always the temptation to hang out at a visable point a little longer than you maybe should just to chain things to get you the most points. It gets to be rather fiendishly addictive. A complete set of weapons. There is, unsurprisingly, an assortment of weapons. As standard, for any stage you are allowed to take a single handgun, a secondary handgun (or two) or semi-automatic, and a third weapon from the entire selection (eventually including anti-tank weapons, shotguns and machineguns). Before you can use anything beyond the basic weapons, however, they have to be unlocked. Weapons are unlocked by either finding them in the stage (and some are hard to find), clearing levels, total playtime or, and this is where they hook you in, getting certain scores in the game. If they don't hook you into the points game with the unlocking of basic weapons, then the levelling probably will - by replaying the game and meeting certain points requirement will 'level' up certain weapons. By 'level', I mean it'll award you with more ammo and clips as standard, and in the case of handguns it'll give you a second gun for the twin-pistol fun with becomes the mainstay of the score gamer. Once you start with the levelling, its kind of hard to stop until you have levelled everything, and some of those points totals (particularly the boss ones) are tough... I've already mentioned that the game was released as three volumes, with the save game carrying between each of them. Weapons could only be unlocked in certain volumes, perhaps unsurprisingly. Aside from that, each volume provided provided a few new stages to play. As I've already mentioned, most aren't particularly interesting - theres a hotel, and train station, some basic training areas. The most interesting is probably the second stage of volume two, based around chasing Pia around Venice both on and off speedboats. Visually its so-so - the backgrounds look pretty good, the character models are a mixed bag, but the animation is really stiff and its really lacking in decent spot effects. The music is generally, surprisingly good, though. Theres plenty of voice acting for those who like that kind of thing, but cinema sequences aren't really that common (or spectacular). There are a few additional unlockables - finish all three games, and you can replay selected missions are Rico or Triela, and there are a few different costumes for Henrietta to unlock. Anyone who frequently imports anime games will be aware that they, aside from a few startling exceptions (some of the Naruto games are really good), tend to be really, really dire. Gunslinger Girl was better than most, in that it is actually fairly playable and entertaining. What really made the deal sweet, however, was that for the price of a volume of, say, My-ZHiME you not only got the game, you also got a volume of the anime series. Really, its more a case of the game being an extra with the DVD release of the show (for a long time, this was the only way to get the show), and you are actually getting more episodes per volume than the typical R2. Even better is that they also had the kind of first pressing bonuses R2 importers come to expect, and the oversized 30-odd page artbook from Vol 1 is really in the upper class of FP extras. Now that there is a seperate release of the anime series (not to mention the far cheaper US release), not to mention the cheaper R1 release, its a little hard to recommend these as anything more than diverting. The fact that they've gone out of print and Volume 1 is a little tricky to find (the other two are still in stock at a number of reputable importers) means that me typing this up is, really, pretty much a waste. I guess if you like Gunslinger Girl and can play Japanese games you could probably do a lot worse than actually track them down, otherwise I'd stick to games of the non-anime variety.

Full Metal Alchemist - The Conqueror of Shamballa

DiGiKerot — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:36:23 +0000

Conqueror of Shamballa, the movie follow-up to immensely popular TV anime Full Metal Alchemist, follows pretty much directly on from the end of the TV show. If you've not seen to the end of the TV series yet (be you following it on TV or picking up the DVD release or whatever) you don't want to continue reading. Seriously. If you have seen the end of the TV show, you are probably going to want to see this no matter what anyone says. I'm going to bore you all briefly anyway, but the bottom line is that this is an entirely worthy sequel to an excellent series. As at the end of the series, Edward Elrich is living in "our" world, in 1920s Germany. He is living with Alfons, a 17 year old rocket builder who looks not a little like Alphonse Elrich would at 17, in a small apartment above a shop run by Glacier (as Ed says, its the same as his world - a few different names and places, but a whole lot of familiar faces). Ed was obviously looking into rocket travel as a way to get back to his own world, but has given up with the realisation that it has nothing to do with distance. Ed ends up getting involved with a young gypsy girl called Noah, who had been sold to a suspect militaristic group (Hmmmm) known as the Thule Society (HHHHhhmmmmmm). Noah, apparently, can read peoples "hearts", making her a rather good fortune teller among other things. After another odd encounter with the Thule Society, Ed realises something odd is up, and discovers that Thule are intending to open the "Gate" to "Shamballa" , whatever that may be, to secure their technology for thier own causes... Back in Sham....errr....the Full Metal Universe, the young Alphonse Elrich, striped of his memory of the time he spent in that armour suit and donning a familar red jacket, is searching for a way to reunite himself with his brother when odd things start happening... As I've already said, its unlikely anything I say is likely to sway anyone into watching this or otherwise - if you've seen the show all the way to the end, you'll want to watch this anyway. Its a pretty good thing that the movie is good, then, isn't it? The animation, aside from a little CG, is nice and shiney, the music entirely suitable and the plot is decent enough. The villians are, perhaps, a little weak, and it may be rather a little too wordy for some, but what action scenes the movie provides really, really kick-arse. That, and Mustang is awesome. The story is suitable Full Metal anyway, full of shocks and surprises, and fans will get a kick out of what they've done to some of the characters in "our" world. Seriously, though, I've watched this movie twice in as many days, and still feel like watching it again, and I hardly ever make the time to rewatch stuff as frequently as I should. Its that shiney. Perhaps annoyingly, the Japanese figured out a bit of a trick with this release - they released a nice, affordable regular edition and, at more than twice the price, a multidisk super-shiney special edition. What they then did is put subtitles on just the special edtion so that those outside Japan who want it will end up shelling out the extra. Admittedly, I probably would have bought it anyway, but aside from the awesome packaging, some nice postcards and a booklet, I don't really have an interest in any of the other extras (two whole DVDs worth, though I think one is just the movie with an audio commentry or something). Ho-hum.

ZHiME Tricolle!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:56:36 +0000

The My-ZHiME Tricolle! figures from Bandai. These are little dinky trading figures of size comparable to Toranoanas Palm Characters series. The other four figures. They are pretty nice, and they aren't too expensive, and small enough to line up ontop of my TV. Arika vs. Etna, from the Palm Scenery/Character Disgaea series. Coincidently, I've been messing around with the way I take pictures of TF/Gashapon figures with these, so hopefully these have come out a bit better than normal. I really need a cleaner lightsource, since they are a bit yellow, but I'm not really into photography anyway (hell, the only reason I own a camera is to take toy pictures ^^; ) -edit- Images replaced with slightly cleaner ones.

Loki Ragnarok 7

DiGiKerot — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:25:29 +0000

Heimdall runs off with Reiya, leaving Loki with enough in the way of a clue that he can locate her. This is all part of Heimdalls evil scheme to get rid of Loki, rather obviously, and as such he has restored Reiya to Freya using the Brisings necklace. It transpires that Freya was kicked out of heaven because, being in love with Loki, she tried to plead his case to a rather annoyed Odin. With a little coaxing from Heimdall, Freya tries to kill Loki, but accidental intervention from Frey results in Loki getting the chance to destroy the necklace and turn Freya back into Reiya. So everybody goes off happy, and the viewer complains about the lack of Mayura and the generally too-serious tone of this episode.

Loki Ragnarok 8

DiGiKerot — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:25:49 +0000

Loki gets kidnapped by bank robbers. Instead of trying to free himself, he figures it would be more amusing to play along and let Yamino and Mayura find him. Which they do. Also, Yamino is Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent. Apparently.

ALiBAT v0.5

DiGiKerot — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:26:42 +0000

...Or to give it its full title, Record of Rozen War ALiBAT - Anecdote of Alice Game. Its a doujin game by DreamToysFactory, based on Rozen Maiden. Its a 3D action title - two characters are dumped in a square arena in which a number of doll cases randomly appear. Pick one up, and your character obtains a random projectile weapon - varying massively in power and style, and it appears there are a few which only certain characters can obtain - with which you have to attack your opponent. Deplete their energy bar enough and you win the round. Win two rounds and you move onto the next character. Repeat until finished. Which doesn't take long. The v0.5 probably gives it away, but whilst they sold this at C69 its essentially half a game (and half a game which sold for a lot more than better completed doujin games on Y!AJ post-C69). You get Shinku, Suiseiseki and Suigintou (which, admittedly, are the best characters in the show), and thats pretty much it for now. Its an amusing game for about five minutes, as it plays pretty well and the character models are great, but there just isn't anything to it, and certainly not at the prices it tends to go for. When the full, completed version is released, that might be worth looking at, but this really isn't. Coincidently, I had real problems getting this running for a while. Kind of annoying - I run my Windows pretty much constantly with the default codepage set to Japanese thanks to the fact I play a lot of this kind stuff, but this is the first time I had any headaches with Jp software. In the end I had to run it using SBAppLocale (a command line clone of AppLocale - the proper MS version wouldn't actually work for some bizzare reason...).

Cromartie High - The Movie

DiGiKerot — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 23:12:30 +0000

In its short history, Tokyo Cromartie High School has been destroyed no less than six times. With the start of a new school year, will Cromartie end it in one piece? Kamiyama, a (supposedly) clever student feels a bit out of place at his new school. Having agreed to attend the school with a friend who turned out to be too dumb to even pass the entry exam for a school full of underachievers, he finds himself attending a school full of wannabe street punks and badasses who look more like Yakuza than students. Thats not mentioning a few other the other oddities which lurk in its halls... Smoking is bad, mKay? Still, Kamiyama decides not to let it get him down, and resolves to change the school into something more respectible. Unfortunately, he proves to be just as dumb as the rest of the students, and when new student Hokuto makes up a bizarre story about fighting his evil shadow prime-minister father (in reality, Hokuto thought his father owned the school and he wanted to flex his power, only to discover its a public school), Kamiyama and his friends join to form the Global Defense Force! Time to call.... The Electrician! Thankfully for Hokuto, Kamiyama and the others quickly forget what they were doing and the GDF end up doing rather random things like trying to get drugs off the street and trying to exorcise the devil from mechanical student Mechazawa. After much confusion about what they should be doing, Kamiyama decides that, obviously, they need to protect the Earth from Aliens, and to do that they first need to summon a few. Urusei Yatsura fans may recognise this... Unfortunately they end up summoning Gori, space gorilla scientist, who distrobutes mind control devices to the students, disguised as Badass Kits, which turn the students into his own personal kung-fu army - aside from just 2% of the students. Yes, that 2%... Gori gets his own 60s SF style OP movie. Cromartie High The Movie is, unsurprisingly, based on the same manga which was adapted into a TV anime a couple of years ago. The TV show (and the manga) was simply a series of short skits, lasting at the most the length of one of its 12 minute episodes. The first half of the movie is exactly the same - indeed, if you have seen the TV version you'll have seen most of these gags already. Once they bring in the GDF things branch out into largely new territory and things get rather more amusing (and bizzare) as a result. Cromartie High ended up being far more entertaining a movie than I expected. I was a bit worried through the first half as it wasn't that amusing, though I suspect its largely from having read the manga and seen the TV anime previously it was largely going over the same material I'd seen several times. Things are better in the latter half of the movie when things get far more silly with the GDF and Gori and all the related stupidity which goes on as a result. That said, even the material covered in the TV version is funnier here, simply because Mechazawa and the gorilla suits are so, intentionally, rubbish in a way you can't really replicate in an anime series where everything is artificial anyway. Also, Mechzawa mirroring scenes from The Exorcist whilst swearing in English is damn funny. Ultimately, the Cromartie movie is well worth seeing at least once, particularly if you've never seen the TV version or read the manga. With the movie having already been licensed for R1 (not to mention the R2 being subbed), it shouldn't be hard to track down either.

GSC 1/10 Natsuki Kuga

DiGiKerot — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:10:35 +0000

The onslaught of My-HiME figures begins! That said, most of the upcoming HiME figures are of the heroine Mai, unlike this 1/10 scale Natsuki number from Good Smile Company. Its fairly unspectacular, to be honest. The pose is alright and colouring is well done, but the sculpting on the face looks a little off to me (though its fine otherwise). At 1/10th scale its fairly small, but when it comes to reasonably priced Natsuki figures you can't really be too picky about it. Additional images - 1,2

Negima! First Period (PS2)

DiGiKerot — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:37:42 +0000

I'm sure anyone who is into gaming will know of Konami, the developer of infamous games like the Metal Gear series and the Suikoden RPGs, not to mention all those music and dancing games. What people may not realise is that Konami also do a pretty good trade in that lowest of gaming lows - the anime game. They've done some visual novels based on titles like Mahoromatic and Saikano in the past, and they are also the developers of the slightly more interesting Negima PS2 games. The first of the Negima PS2 games is based roughly two seperate storylines from the manga, combined into one, with a few original elements thrown in to keep things interesting. The general outline that the game follows is the same as the plot of the Library Island story arc - with the exams looming, Negi is told that if his class doesn't do too well in the upcoming exams then he is going to be kicked out of his cushy job! Its just to you as Negi to ensure your girls study in a nice, stress-free enviroment. Unfortunately for Negi, things aren't quite so straight forward, as the school is suffering nightly Vampire attacks as well. I wonder whats going on there... The game basically plays out as a series of days covering the period running up to the exam. Each day typically comprises as an couple visual novel segments, a couple of homeroom sessions, a couple of freetime sections and then a night-time vampire attack section arranged in a set order. Once in the morning, and again in the afternoon, Negi teaches a homeroom session with his class, which is the only point in the game which you can have any real kind of control over your classes grades. The way it works is pretty straight forward - you are given a number of options to select groups of students (Baka Rangers, for example ^^), and a number of options which can effect the students motivation and stress levels. The actual options opened up depends on what has happened during other parts of the game - if you spend a lot of time talking to a particular student, and as such they particularly like you, you'll be able to target them specifically and have a much bigger effect on them. The trick here is basically to try and balance the levels so that your class members make significant gain during the each of these sessions. If students are too tired or too stressed out then they fall asleep or simply do really badly, but if you play things right even Asuna can appear intelligent! Any points gained here permanantly effect your students grades, so you need to make the most of it. Around the classes Negi can wander around a fully polygonised depiction of Mahora talking to students. There are a number of aims here - firstly, the map which displays your students locations roughly with stars will typically display a number of red stars amongst the usual yellow ones, which signify that you can trigger a significant event sequence (visual novel sequences or mini-games) by talking to a character in that area. During your first play of the game, its hard to resist running straight to these events, ignoring everything else, as this is probably what you'll be most interested in. The other thing what you can do during these segments is talk to students. Its during these sections of the game that you can effect things like students stress levels, how much they like you or simply the "trust" levels you need to build up to each effectively. Is one of your students tired out during class? Find them in the school and drag them to a bench to rest. Talking to them will increase their attraction to Negi. Its not just restricted to Negis students, either - the game has a full school of, admittedly generic looking, students with their own stats, and cosying up to them has its own advantages. There is a reason this game has a Cero 18 logo on the front ^^; Of course, being a magic teacher, Negi also has other, less normal techniques he can use to assist in the relief of stress, tiredness and, errr, clothing... Thankfully, things are made slightly easier by the fact that any effect you have on your students can be carried across to your next game - if you fail the first time around, or simply want to get all your students up to the top level, you can repeat all the way through the game as many times as it requires. I've briefly mentioned mini-games. During certain events the game will give you short interactive events. These are mostly pretty similar - you'll have a time limit during which you'll have to perform some kind of action successfully. There are others, but the two pictured above are fairly typical of the kind of thing you'll be doing. In the one on the left Negi is trying to carry Yue to the nurses office, and to do this you need to rotate each of the analogue sticks in opposite directions. With Negi being pretty small its hard for him to walk in a straight line, though, so you need to keep the camera centered on Yue by altering the speed which you rotate the stick which counters the direction you are veering in. In the other example, a trip to the cafe has resulted in Asuna having various foodstuffs spilt on her. With a cloth in each hand (controlled seperately via the left and right analogue sticks) you need to clean the patches of food off Asuna before the time limit runs out. If you manage to complete these events, it obviously results in you scoring big points with the character in question. If you fail, well, you don't ^^; The final significant part of the game is the nighttime sections. Evangeline has been busy, and every night her vampiric minions are trawling the school looking for fresh blood. Negi, of course, is all that stands in their way. In these sections you need to protect the student you find in whatever area to you choose to wander to from the attacking students, whilst trying to disable the attackers. To disable the attacking students you can simply wallop them with attack magics until they collapse. Unfortunately, this doesn't do your trust levels much good, meaning the other elements of the game will be rendered rather more difficult. Instead, you have to wear them down until you can freeze them with a binding spell. This, however, is rendered rather more difficult due to the fact that different students have different tolerance levels - the level of attack needed to stagger one student to the level you can bind them may knock out another student entirely, or not phase them in the slightest. Making this even more difficult is the fact that the clunky interface and camera angles make it rather more difficult than it might be, but even if you are used to the controls the power levels, speed and number of opponents in the later phases of the games make these parts frustratingly difficult to play! Unsurprisingly, the games climax is a confrontation with Evangeline and Chachamaru. Who gets to be Negis partner? Well, you actually get a choice (of who, I admit, I can't actually remember ^^;). Hot Game Chiu is plagued by a scary otaku stalker. Anime Chiu is not. Annoying battle segments aside, the game is actually pretty decent compared to other anime games. A big plus for Negima fans is that the character designs are far, far better than those used in the anime version - significantly, the colour palette used is actually pretty sensible as opposed to the anime versions neon-pink and green hair styles. All the visual novel segments of the game are fully voiced as well, which adds that additional degree of polish which makes things rather more enjoyable. In terms of the rest of the visuals, the 3D is a mixed bag. The classroom scenes look pretty good, with good quality, decently detailed character models. The school enviroments generally aren't wonderful, mostly being plagued by PSOne quality textures and fairly simplistic modelling. Its understandable that this would be the case, though, as in any one area you can be looking at having a good ten or twenty students wandering around - its a necessary evil to give a good representation of what a school would actually be like. In summary, its actually a pretty worthwhile game for Negima fans who can play Japanese PS2 games. Aside from one early event which may cause a looping headache, there isn't anything which is likely to cause problems for those with little or no Japanese skills (like myself ^^;) from progressing through the game, and there is just enough outside of the visual novel segments to keep such people amused. Oh, and theres plenty of fanservice for those into such things. The game was originally released in two versions. The cheaper edition of the game came with a CD single in a sleeve with the games vocal theme on it, whilst the more expensive edition of the game came with an original drama CD in a seperate, nicely illustrated DVD box, kept together with the game box in a neat little slipcase. The game has now hit Konamis budget range, stripped of its extra tat but rather cheaper than the original. They fairly quickly followed up the original game with a second, which I've owned for all of a week but have yet to actually play. Its much the same, however, only based around the school sports festival rather than exams (probably meaning the characters default stats will be flipped from the previous game!). Again, it came in two editions, and is hitting the budget range next month. Speaking of PS2 Negima and next month, thats when Konamis third PS2 Negima title hits. Subtitled "Otome no Doki Doki Beach Side", its looking to be considerably more service filled than the previous games, doing far more to deserve that Cero 18 logo with adorns the cover.

Disgaea Promo Mk.II

DiGiKerot — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:09:53 +0000

As overpriced as these promo DVDs tend to be, I bought it anyway. The packaging is quite nice anyway, coming with a set of postcards and a Prinny sticker, all rather nicely illustrated. The actual animation is really awesome, but I believe most of this is only going to be seen here, and as such the final TV show probably won't look as good as this does. Images and screencaps on the following pages. Well, OK, so most of the art has been seen before, but its nice to have in postcard form anyway (not that I'm ever actually use these of postcards, that'd be a waste!) There is a booklet as well, but there isn't much of real interest there. It has a character relationship chart and thats about the sum of interesting conent. Onto the screencaps! Etna is trying to wake Laharl up... ...But he is a heavy sleeper! Very heavy! Still, she manages to do it eventually, just in time for him to have a spinny CGI battle with Mid-Boss! Posh. Well, the CG sticks out a bit, but given the game is 2D sprites on 3D backdrops I suppose its kind of fitting. Etna, as always, is bossing around her Prinny Squad. Prinnies rule far too much (coincidently, Cospla are releasing a plush Prinny soon - its pricey, but you may wish to check your toy importer of choice for pre-order options). Flonne is probably my favourite character from Disgaea, but she didn't get nearly enough screentime here. Gordon I couldn't really care less about. Thursday doesn't appear, but don't worry - he appears in the character chart in the booklet, so should be present in the final show. Etna and Flonne assure us that this will be the best thing ever! How can you doubt them?

Hagu Construction Kit

DiGiKerot — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 22:33:39 +0000

The first pressing version of R2 Honey & Clover volume 6 came today, supplied with a paper craft Hagu. If you've never seen or heard of this paper craft stuff, go do a google search and you'll get the idea - sheets of paper with images which, when cut, folded and glued with care and skill form a nice three dimensional paper figure of sorts. Unfortunately, I kind of lack the "skill" part of the requirements for these things, particularly for something as horribly complex looking as Hagu (though it pales compared to some of the motorbikes Yamaha do). This didn't stop me trying, though, and I figured I should document the fact before tomorrow when my badly constructed effort will no doubt fall apart ^^; For anyone who gets this and feels like having a go I have a word of advice - make sure you make a decent copy (be it a photocopy, a computer scan or some decent photographs) before you start - once you start cutting things up, you'll have problems trying to figure out what parts are supposed to be glued where as you'll have severed the numbers indicating this from the individual parts. Anyway, if you want to see the hideous results of me spending the best part of five hours messing around with scissors and sticky stuff, well, here goes.... I suck ^^;

Kotobukiya 1/7 Tokiha Mai

DiGiKerot — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 20:41:15 +0000

This 1/7 scale "Scarf of Justice" Mai figure is the first of the oncoming barrage of near-identical Mai figures to reach me (having skipped on the uber-pricey Orchid Seed resin cast swimsuit figure). Its a pretty good start, definately above average. I think its the scarf that makes the figure - without it, I'd reckon the figure would look pretty plain, even though the pose is pretty nice. It just adds a nice focal point to it. The painting on the figure is a gradient/shaded job, which looks good with the possible exception of the hair, which when seen upclose looks too extreme for my liking. It just goes a bit too dark really, though I wouldn't say its bad enough to be a spoiling point. The figure feels relatively solid in construction, and its well balanced enough that I wouldn't expect any leaning to develop any time soon if left standing on a level surface.

Wave Arika Yumemiya

DiGiKerot — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 21:00:16 +0000

AKA Arika Fix Figuration, due to the packaging mimicking that Gundam figure series. The focal point with this one is probably the price, at around 2000yen its pretty cheap. In terms of scale, I don't think there has been anything specific mentioned. Assuming that ZHiME Natsuki is the same height as HiME Natsuki, its a good height match for the GSC 1/10 Natsuki figure released previously. Its a bit plain, I guess, but thats what you get for this scale and price. The paint job on the figure itself is, at least, pretty clean - they even bothered to pick out the Coral gem in a fairly clean fashion. I hadn't actually noticed until I looked at this photo, but it looks like her hair juts straight out the side of her head ^^;. You can't really see this on the actual figure unless you are really looking stupidly close. You may also notice that her jaw looks a little square - this is because the head is on a balljoint, and whilst the up/down motion is limited, the head can be rotated horizontally all the way around (be careful with the hair if you try this, though - I suspect those braids will snap off if you start trying that). Again, the square-ish jaw isn't noticable if you aren't looking for it, and isn't noticable at all from the front of the figure. The final focal point is the stand, based on the Blue Sky Sapphire. The paint isn't as clean here as on the figure, with the gold colouring going over onto the metallic blue (rather, the blue hasn't been applied as widely as it should have). Arikas grip with the stand is a little lax as well - if you start moving her, she has a habit of slipping out of the stand. The pins are on the feet rather than the stand, and I've ended up using a little whitetac in the holes to stop her slipping out so easily.

Marmalade Boy 33

DiGiKerot — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:47:03 +0000

Miki is, unsurprisingly, ANGSTing about Suzu kissing Yuu at the end of the previous episode. Next day at school, Yuu plays the whole situation down. Suzu, however, is wondering how she can play the situation to her advantage during her tutorial session with Yuu. Meanwhile, lady teacher I forget the name of goes out to meet.... Namura! Miki gets annoyed with Yuu when he returns home late from the tutorial session, but he once again plays down the Suzu situation, and arranges with Miki to spend the next day planning their trip. At the same time, Suzu heads to Bobsons hoping to smack-talk Miki, but since she isn't there she moans at Kei instead. Kei throws Suzu out of the place, but in the process he drops Mikis medallion for long enough for Suzu to scope it out and get suspicious - OH NOES! At the next days tutorial session, Suzu decides to reveal to Yuu that she saw Miki and Kei hugging. Yuu doesn't really take it seriously though, but when Yuu goes to pick Miki up, he sees Kei forcing himself onto Miki and declaring her love - and takes it completely the wrong way! YUU ANGST! Oh, and Satoshi tries it on with Meiko. Again. Yes, after a two-month hiatus, its back to good old Marmalade Boy. Will I manage to get through an episode or two every night this week? Who knows! Whilst I've missing typing ANGST these last couple of months, the run of episodes I'm currently into are far too dry and far too overly melodramatic - and not even in a fashion I could at least make fun at. The next episode looks to have Suzu conspiring against Miki at a halloween party, so that should hopefully be a little more fun.

Marmalade Boy 34

DiGiKerot — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 18:08:14 +0000

Miki is ANGSTing over Yuu not turning up to pick her up from work like he promised - of course, he did turn up, but walked off when he saw Miki and Kei. In an unusual display of logic, Miki actually figures this out, and ANGSTs all the more whilst Yuu avoids her. Miki discusses the situation with Meiko, who thinks she should try and make it clear to Kei she isn't interested. Meiko also seems to think she has encountered Kei somewhere before, and it turns out that he is an award winning pianist son of a wealthy business partner of Meikos father. Meikos father returns home from New York, and obviously he is a famous architect Yuu knows all about. Miki, meanwhile, is happy that Kei wasn't at work today, but he is lurking around waiting for her on her way home, and he shares this PAINIST ANGST! (or, rather, the story of why he quit playing the piano). Now that she is feeling all sympathetic about Kei, she ANGSTs even more about trying to push Kei away. So, another day onwards, and Yuu seems to be a bit more friendly towards Miki. Suzu, however, starts scheming again, and uses Miki as bait to get Kei to play the piano at her Halloween party. At the same time, Suzu has obviously invited Satoshi, who has ends up inviting Meiko. Yuu is completely oblivious to the fact that he is going to a Halloween party, but Suzu has seemingly roped her father into helping her keep him there. Finally, Suzu makes her move and invites Miki, telling her all friends will be there... So, Miki ends up going since she has nothing else to do, and despite having her choice of costume ends up dressing herself as a witch. Of course, Suzu promptly uses the chance to play everything off, particularly since Yuu isn't aware Miki is there, and being surrounded by famous people latches onto the first person she knows - Kei! And Yuu notices! OH NOES! Oh, and Namura is still lurking around. Once again, too much ANGST, not enough spazz.

Marmalade Boy 35

DiGiKerot — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:43:49 +0000

Miki ANGSTs over seeing Yuu and Suzu together at the Halloween party, particularly since Yuu hadn't even today her he was going. Yuu is ANGSTing for pretty much the same reason, but is blanking Miki as a result. Meiko is ANGSTing about the book she is trying to write for a contest. So its ANGST all round, then. Nothing new there. Meiko, at least, has Satoshi around to drag her out of ANGST-dom with a trip to the amusement arcade. Ah, ain't it sweet. Really, though, its just to show that everyone else is having nice happy relationships whilst Yuu and Miki are rubbish - Arimi even turns up to see Ginta. Meanwhile, Suzu congratulates herself on her evil scheming, and sticks her oar in even more by telling Yuu that it was Miki who insisted that Kei played piano at her party. Yuu decides to stop over at Bobsons on the way home to talk to Miki, but she has gone already. Kei, however, decides to confront Yuu, and tells him that Mikis (or rather, Yuus that Miki had been keeping) medallion, which he had picked up and kept ahold of many episodes back, was given to him by Miki to throw away! OH NOES! One super happy flashback musical montage later, Yuu barges into Mikis room and demands to know where the medallion is. Whilst he believes that Miki didn't give it to Kei, he accuses Miki of leading him on! They end up having a huge argument, Yuu returns Mikis medallion (as in, Mikis that Yuu was holding onto), and promptly storms off! OH NOES^2!! Once again, too much melodrama, not enough stupidness - and this is inspite of an appearance by Tsutomu! The show still displays the kind of writing that they wouldn't get away with in modern anime, but unfortunately it isn't currently displaying it in a fashion I can at least make fun of. I'm almost tempted to make bad "pianist" related puns just to liven things up a little. Almost.

Marmalade Boy 36

DiGiKerot — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:53:13 +0000

Its a week after last episodes argument, and Yuu and Miki haven't spoken once. In fact, Yuu has even decided to go off on his trip alone, and disappears without a word to Miki. Miki ANGSTs as appropriate. Suzu even turns up at Bobsons just to rub it in, nasty little piece of work she is. When Kei turns up for work, Miki demands that he returns her medallion, which seems to have picked up MAGIC GLOWY POWERS since the last time we saw it. He trys to force himself onto Miki again, though, causing Miki to run off. Meanwhile, Ginta and Arimi are off eating somewhere. Ginta can't get settled - he has a nasty feeling that Tsutomu will just pop out of nowhere. Mentioning this to Arimi just ends up putting her on edge as well, and whilst checking out their surroundings they both spot Miki running down the street outside. Ginta manages to catch up with her, but she just shrugs him off (with hilariously over-dramatic sound effects) and runs off. Ginta ponders whats up, and pretty much hits the nail on the head. Back at school, Meiko has finished her manuscript, and hands it to Satoshi to read (mainly because its a thinly disguised story about her feelings towards Satoshi and Namura). Lady Teacher Person reports this fact to Namura, mainly because she is a manipulative hussy like Suzu ^^; Off in Happy Vacation Land, Yuu is ANGSTing about not having dragged Miki off with her. Satoshi, having finished Meikos book, returns the manuscript to Meiko and, once again, asks if Meiko will go out with him - and this time she agrees! Go Satoshi! After speaking to Ginta on the 'phone, Miki decides the who Yuu situation was her fault afterall, and decides to go to the train station to apologise when another girl - Anju - from Yuus past appears! OH NOES! Maybe. Miki apologises, and Yuu takes back the medallion, but Miki starts ANGSTing over Anju regardles. Which isn't remotely shocking. Nothing worth commenting on here, really.

Marmalade Boy 37

DiGiKerot — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:45:17 +0000

Meiko is happy that Miki and Yuu seem to have made up, an hopes that she kind find happiness too. Meanwhile, back at Mikis place, she is starting to get rather annoyed (or at least ANGSTy) about the fact that Anju seems to be calling every day, but doesn't want to raise it with Yuu through fear of Yuu thinking she is untrusting. Whilst Suzu is rather disappointed that all her hard scheming doesn't seem to have gotten her anywhere, Miki is happy that things seem to be going well with Arimi and Ginta. Ginta manages to turn up late to meet Arimi though, and ends up causing a scene which causes Arimi to run off. Yuu arranges to meet Anju the next day in order to catch up on all times, and whilst he offers to take Miki along with him, she decides against it. Suzu, on the other hand, turns up at Bobsons to get all angry at Kei for not having pounced on Miki whilst she and Yuu weren't talking. At the same time, Arimi is ignoring Ginta, and Satoshi is arragning to meet Meiko - but lady teacher woman gets a message from Namura saying he'll be in town tomorrow! So, Yuu has SUPER HAPPY FLASHBACK lunch with Anju, and Satoshi goes out with Meiko. When walking around, however, Meiko meets one of her classmates who tells her that she had spotted Namura! SHOKU! Meiko starts to run off to see if she can find him, and Satoshi tries to stop her - but she runs off anyway. A rather cold Satoshi ends up just walking away. Meiko runs around like a mad girl trying to find Namura, and starts to get a SUPER INSERT SONG FLASHBACK about not being able to give Namura up when she spots him out with Lady Teacher Woman (Seriously, what is her name?). Namura flatly rejects Meiko, though, returning her medallion and telling her that he is dating Ryouko (oh, thats her name) now, much to Meiko and Ryoukos shock - SUPER ROTATING SHOCK at that. OH NOES! I have to say, I do think Namura is a jerk. And a wiener. Satoshi at least provided us with plentiful entertainment with his comic relief stylings and the wonderful slashy-arc (as well as, you know, being nice and supportive), as opposed to Namura, who brought us ANGST and ran at the first sign of trouble (not to mention that hitting on your students is just kind of wrong). Unfortunately, I already know where this is going as well. Bah.

Ever17

DiGiKerot — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:57:46 +0000

In the middle of the ocean near the coast of Japan lies the theme park LeMU, three floors of underwater aquatic fun. As is somewhat predictable for such an establishment, an accident results in a number of visitors finding themselves trapped in the now half-flooded complex. We have the standard everyman Takeshi, who was separated from his friends upon entrance, the amnesiac boy only know as Kid, the distant, irritable and standoffish Tsugumi, school girl Sara, LeMU part-timer You, permanent staff member Sora and the chipper and shrilly annoying Coco. Discovering that they only have seven days at most before the entire structure collapses, they are faced with either finding a way out or dying a horrible watery death… Ever17 is a visual novel, originally developed by KID (“Kindle Imagine Develop”) and published in English by Hirameki in the tail end of last year. It plays in a fairly standard visual novel style - lots and lots of text to flick through with the occasional choice to make, which ultimately causes the game to branch off into a one of a number of paths around the third day (and to one of the two endings most paths have). The most significant choice the player makes is actually right at the end of prologue section - the game gives you the choice of playing either from the perspective of Takeshi or Kid, and whilst the overall gist of things is the same there are obviously some significant differences in places, such as which girls endings are available or even which of the characters actually make a proper appearance. This whole conservsation is full ofdouble entendres... The writing in Ever17 is a bit of a mixed bag. The Sora plotline is really revoltingly cheesy and groansome, but the others vary between mildly interesting and excellent. One general problem I have with all the scenarios is that I kind of feel the whole thing is stretched out a little too long - they could have trimmed a day of the game period out without suffering too much. There are some odd things about the writing - anyone who has ever been to a theme park will find the fact that the only eatery in the half of LeMU which didn’t flood was a Chicken Sandwich stand - and it does have more than its fair share convoluted elements - in typical VN fashion Takeshi is pretty much the only normal person from the bunch. The characters are OK - the heroes are tolerable enough, and Tsugumi and Sara easily come out top of the female characters. You I found to be initially annoying, but she grew on me as I played more. Sora just disinterests me, though, and Coco I found to be pretty painfully irritating through much of it - I have to admit that I was kind of wishing she’d die an oh-so-tragic painful death early on. Alas, it doesn’t happen, but there is at least a payoff for it - gaining the good endings for the other four girls will open up the final “Coco” scenario, which for the first three hours is glorious, full of revelations which suddenly make everything in the other scenarios make perfect sense in often unexpected ways. It really is brilliant, but then it kind of takes one giant, convoluted step too far and has somewhat of a negative effect on the impact of the rest of the true ending. Its kind of a shame, as it spoils what it otherwise a generally well written and entertaining work. Its not a really that much of a spoiling point, but I can’t help but think they could have come up with a less, well, bizarre conclusion Tsugumi is awesome. Period. The English translation is alright - it reads a bit odd in places, and there are a few typos, grammatical errors and like, but nothing especially revolting. With all dialogue other than the player characters being voiced, its probably merciful that they stuck to the original Japanese voices. The cast is pretty good - Sara is played by current fan favourite Kana Ueda (Fate/Stay Nights Rin), You is Noriko Shimoya (according to the OP, or Noriko Shitaya according to ANN - in any case, she is Sakura in F/SN), and Tsugumi is Yuu Asakawa (errr, Rider in F/SN). The others haven’t done anything I consider particularly notable, but aside from the annoyingly shrill Coco (Hisayo Mochizuki) they do a decent job. Some of the voice recording seems a little iffy, though - when I was playing with headphones, there was a surprising amount background noise occurring during some (but certainly not all) of the dialogue. The noise, of course, disappears as soon as the line of dialogue is finished, so its definitely with the voices. In terms of the other presentation elements, the music is merely OK. The OP theme is pretty catch, but the rest of the music, whilst suitably atmospheric, is pretty forgettable. One minor annoyance is that the music completely cuts out if you take focus away from the game window, and restarts itself from the beginning when you bring focus back to it. There are a reasonable number of CGs in the game, and they are well drawn, but the character art used during the normal dialogue sequences seem somewhat inconsistent. The game is pretty much devoid of FMV, aside from the OP sequence (which is the regular VN style) and a couple of very brief flooding sequences early on. Oh, and for the curious, its completely devoid of H material. For those who play the title to uber-completion, they will find some wallpapers and other artwork unlocked for their trouble. Ultimately, Ever17 is a really good play for anyone who can stomach visual novels, particularly since I feel most people interested in this kind of thing would probably have a far higher tolerance of Coco and the Sora scenario than I did. Even if you don’t play the Sora (and, therefore, not the Coco) scenario, there is a fair chunk of title here - you are looking at in excess of ten hours each for your first play through the Takeshi and Kid perspectives, and whilst you can skip most of it at speed for the shared text, there are a good few hours extra on each path to unlock the other endings. If you want to see everything, there is a good thirty or forty hours worth of content here. If you are the kind of person who is constantly bemoaning the fact they don’t publish enough of this kind of thing in English, you really owe it to yourself to give this a look.

Shin Aoi Tori - Part 1

DiGiKerot — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 13:06:17 +0000

Shin Aoi Tori ("The New Blue Bird") is the fourth Sakura Taisen Super Kayou Show, and, coincidently, the only one I’ve seen (thus far, at least). The Super Kayou Shows (and, indeed, the Shin Kayou Shows prior to the series) are a series of live action stage productions featuring the voice cast of the Sakura Taisen games reprising their roles for a bit of a song and a dance. For those who aren’t familiar with the Sakura Taisen games or anime adaptations, it’s a series set in an alternate 1920s Japan. Ohgami Ichiro, officer in the imperial navy, is ordered to join the ‘Imperial Floral Assault Group’ (Teigeki for short) in the imperial capital Teito. Upon arrival at their base, the grand Imperial Theatre, he discovers that he has actually been transferred to the Imperial Floral Performance Group, and his new job is collect tickets for those attending their performances. OF course, it turns out that they really are an assault group, and they have a bunch of steam powered giant robots in the basement to use in fighting evil. The point is, the crux of the work is that it centers are a group of cute girls who put on stage performances whilst also fighting to save Teito of the evil spirits which threaten it. The Kayou shows (or this one at least) follows the same kind of pattern - the title comes from the play The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck (the ‘New‘ part coming from the fact its spazzed up a little), which the Teigeki are preparing to perform in this show. I say preparing, because out of the shows mammoth 3+ hour running time barely half an hour is devoted to excerpts from the actual play. Around this we get the Teigeki doing what they do on the side - battling evil. As I mentioned, I’ve not seen any of the Kayou shows before. I suppose this is kind of odd - I owe a lot of expenditure to the Sakura Taisen series. It’s the game series that opened my eyes to the joys of import only games. It’s the show which, thanks to Bandais onslaught of gashapon series, got me into figure collecting. It’s the series that taught me that not all character singles suck. Basically, whilst I’m not as obsessive about it as a lot of its fans are, I really, really like the Sakura Taisen series. Whilst I stopped putting any real kind of effort into trying to follow the plot early on (my Japanese, like, sucks), it didn’t really matter - Shin Aoi Tori was an absolute blast. Sure, the amount of cheese involved could probably kill a person not less accustomed to such things, but that just adds to the entertainment value of it all. The music is good, the performances are good, the production is passable enough. Really, its just a massively entertaining watch. Its long, but it really didn’t seem like it. Its absolutely worth a watch for anyone who is into the Sakura Taisen series, and at least worth thinking about looking at for those who aren’t. By the way, a special note just has to be made to the menus on the DVD - they are done in LIPs style like the dialogue choices in the games. It’s a really neat touch. So, onto talking about the actual content. As I said, I stopped trying to follow what was actually going on shortly after the start, so what follows, aside from general production comments, is pretty much completely made up by myself based on what I watching and what I remember about it - take everything I say with a pinch of salt - or seven. I’m also skipping over a lot whilst I’m at it ^^; After a brief introduction talk, we kind into our first music number, which appears to be the introduction to Aoi Tori. It reveals who will be playing our main characters in the stage production, and like in the Sakura Taisen 2 game, we have Iris Chateaubriand (Kumiko Nishihara) as Mytyl, and Reni Michstrasse (Kazue Ikura) as Tytyl. We also have Sakura Shinguji (Chisa Yokoyama) as The Blue Bird. Okay, now is a good time to start poking fun of the obvious thing - Iris is, like 11 or 12 years old. Kumiko Nishihara is, judging from the d.o.b. on ANN, 40 odd - not to mention being taller than most of the rest of the cast. Frankly, I find a forty year old Japanese woman in a tacky blonde wig, talking in a ridiculously high pitched voice, whilst wearing a big frumpy dress and carrying a teddy bear far, far more amusing than I probably should. Anyway, far this sequence, we cut to Ohgami Ichiro (Akio Suyama) going to the pub to have a drink with some colleagues. He seems to get into an argument with one of them - I’m imagining its over the fact that he gets to work with a bunch of hot girls rather than hot sweaty navel officers, but it probably isn’t. Anyway, they go have a song and dance about everything. That’s Ohgami on the far left there. Allow me to point out the fact that he is an utter shortarse - notice the shoes. Yup, he is using high-heeled platform boots and he is still shorter than his buddies! They do this a lot across the show with different characters to try and adjust their heights to more sensible looking levels, but since this is the first time I noticed this and it was a male character I thought it was particularly amusing. Ohgamis footwear varies between platform boots and regular footwear between scenes, so he isn’t always wearing these. Oh, the other thing to note is that Ohgami can’t sing particularly well ^^; After the musical number, we cut to everyones favorite alcoholic former Teigeki boss Yoneda Ikki (Masaru Ikeda), who is doing a bit of gardening with Takeda Peromucho (Takeda Shigehiro) and Nisihmura Yantaro (Nishimura Youichi), members of the Dandy Gang (they appeared in OAV series 2, though they didn’t appear in the games and originated in the Kayou shows). When he gets a visit from Teigekis Kaede Fujieda (Ai Orikasa), they disappear off and Kaede and Yoneda discuss something when we get a surprise visit from… Sumire Kanzaki (Michie Tomizawa)! Its worth pointing out that Michie Tomizawa had previously retired from the series - a point they laboured at length, even producing a rather dire OAV about it - so its kind of neat for her to turn up here. Anyway, she gets in an argument with Kaede and they sing at each over for a while. Cut to Ginza, which everyone loves. Loves so much, infact, they choose to sing about it. The Dandy gang show up, and every loves the Dandy Gang. Well, everyone loves Dandy Boss (Sonooka Shintaro) and Nishimura, but poor Takeda isn’t. Awww. Dandy Boss has a really, really awesome singing voice. Really, hes awesome enough to make up for that silly suit with the musical notes on it. After I watched the first disk, however, I noticed there were actually three different versions on the DVD which change certain scenes, this being one of them. Alternately, there is the Baragumi version, pimping up the role of Teigekis cross dressing support group (from ST2 - a couple of them appear in the show anyway), or the Sannin Musume version, featuring Tsubaki, Kasumi and Yuri for apparently the second time in ST show history. With that pointed out, I'm going to continue covering the Dandy version of the show. The Teigeki are rehearsing the script for Aoi Tori. I take a moment to laugh at Kirishima Kanna (Tanaka Mayumi) for being a shortarse. This is funny because, in the games, Kanna is a man, errr, woman mountain, towering above the rest of the cast. Here, she is barely taller than the rest of the when they are sat down. To take a moment to mention the other two characters I’ve not mentioned yet, second from the left is Soletta Orihime (Okamoto Maya), and on the far right is Maria Tachibana (Takano Urara). Soletta is half-Italian, and speaks with a really, really thick accent. Maria is Russian, and she likes guns. Long term Sakura Taisen fans may be wondering where Ri Kohran (Fuchizaki Yuriko) is… The answer is New York. The other character there is Ohgamis nephew, Taiga Shinjiro, the main character from Sakura Taisen V. Yep, video performance only. It’s a shame for Kohran fans like myself, but never mind. Oh, that light blue wig looks really silly - I’m sure Kohrans hair should be darker than that. So, anyway, they are talking about the play, and Sakura wanders off, then this happens… Please don’t ask. Sumire turns up, much to everyones surprise, and they talk. Iris then goes off with her magic magnifying glass to look for something, presumably something evil. She then meets up with Takeda and some guy I have no idea who is and head off into the sewers under Teito… …and find the villian! Ooooo! Evil! In the tussle with the villains, Takeda is felled by some kind of magic, and Iris is forced to use her AMAZERING POWAS to teleport out of there. A note for those not ST literate - most the cast of the ST games have some kind of spiritual power, but Iris is probably the most powerful. In the games, she actually teleports her whole kobu around in combat rather than walking… Cut to outside, Maria is talking to somebody about something. I only mention this because she brief speaks in English, and rather surprisingly its actually really good! I’ve come not to expect anything approaching understandable English from Japanese voice actresses, so it was something of a shock. Crap Kobu prop. It wobbles left and right a bit. There isn’t actually anything interesting or important about this, though - its probably just in there whilst the cast do something more useful. A couple of scenes later, and back with the Teigeki, Iris is in a stasis tube thingy after teleporting back to the theatre. However, one song later, the villain manages to attack, and the characters all go their separate ways. Underneath Teito, Orihime and two members of the Baragumi are on a boat surrounded by fish - well, people with fish on their backs, anyway. The Baragumi were a support group introduced in Sakura Taisen 2, comprised of cross-dressing oddballs who the regular military didn’t want. I can’t actually remember their names, but that is a guy wearing a skirt there. They are attacked, but they manage to fend off their opponents. It turns out that Takeda and the other guy who was with Iris have been turned into flies ^^; A couple of scenes later and everybody meets up. They all have a cheesily done fight scene. I can’t imagine it was anywhere near any more convincing on stage, but it amused me anyway. The Teigeki get away, anyway. Now this would be the end of the of the first DVD, but before they ended the first half of the show they had… Its money extraction corner! This shows special goods were a drinks glass and a set of ST cards. The drinks glass wasn’t a normal drinks glass, though - cold water made the Shin Aoi Tori logo turn blue! Even better, the Sakura Taisen logo turned pink! WOW! At this point, I suggest we make like the audience and take an intermission - stay tuned for Part 2, coming up soon!

Shin Aoi Tori - Part 2

DiGiKerot — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 19:18:09 +0000

Well, that’s the end of the intermission - admittedly later than I’d planned thanks to my computer crashing and wiping out a post five minutes from completion. Still, I’ll just swallow my annoyance and get on with the show! If you haven’t already done so, please skip back and read the first post on Shin Aoi Tori, else this will make no sense whatsoever. I'm not promising it'll actually make sense even if you have read that, but at least you may be able to stand something of a chance. Our villain is rather upset at the moment. "I’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky kids!", he cries. Well, OK, he doesn’t but its bound to be something very similar. Anyway, he decides he needs some backup for the return match. He summons a demon warrior thingy! With amazing special effects! Well, some guys in black clothes wiggling the pieces around a bit before thrusting them together. Those who have played the original Sakura Taisen will recognise these things, and they made up the bulk of the opponents early on. Nishimura meets with some guy in a box who gives him some kind of note. He promptly takes the note to the bar Tiger, and hands it over to Yoneda who reads it with interest. Sumire then turns up, and finds the contents shocking! Nishimura makes a move to leave, but quickly turns around when Dandy Boss make an appearance. Its seems Yoneda, Sumire and Nishimura don’t want him to know what’s up, so sneak out whilst Dandy Boss is being glomped on by the female workers and dancing about the fact. So, back with the Teigeki, we once more laugh at Kannas short stature, being rather noticably shorter than Sakura here. Anyway, they are discussing what is going on, when fly Takeda and his chum show up. Thinking they are just flys… Kanna swats Takeda out the air and stomps on the poor guy! Thankfully, Iris knows who it really is, and revives him using her powers (what kind of magical chant is "Iris wa kawaii" anyway?). Iris then proceeds to talk to the flies and extracts some information from them. Acting on the information he received, Yoneda goes to confront some military types who are obviously involved in the whole situation. Thankfully, he took Sumire with him, who promptly beat them all up with her umbrella, and makes a recording of their confession. Obviously inspired by Sumires l33t brolly skills, the Teigeki make an umbrella themed entrance and proceed to kick villainous ass. Seeing that his side is losing, the big boss man summons his backup… Oh noes! Ohgami attempts to defeat this monster and fails. Kanna then makes an attempt to do the same, and is defeated and badly hurt in an incredibly unconvincing fashion. With Kanna beaten, its up to Iris to help… Before I show you what Iris actually does, I figure this warrants a big of game explanation. In the battles in the game, where you pilot your big stompy steam powered robots, all the characters have a special attack they can use if their special gauge is full. Most the characters have an attack special, but healing is left to Iris, and in order to heal she summons… Jean-Paul! Jean-Paul is Iris teddy bear which she carries around with her, and her healing technique involves her summoning a giant Jean-Paul. So, whilst everyone on stage tries their best to stop mid-motion in proper uber-special move fashion, Jean-Paul runs onto stage and heals Kanna. This basically opens the stage for other characters to do their specials in an even less convincing fashion. Orihime, for example, lifts her hands above her head and clicks her fingers, causing all around her to collapse (the laser fire from the game is not included ^^;), whilst Maria runs on with a machine gun. Ultimately, the rest of the cast slowly make their way offstage whilst Ohgami and Sakura battle the final villains. They are hard pressed, however, and have to resort to their super-special tag-team attack! Cherry blossoms rain down upon the opponents, presumably blocking all of the monsters air intakes since it puts up no effort to resist as Sakura cuts it down. If possibly worth pointing out that the whole battle against this monster was kind of amusing because, within the first five minutes of the original Sakura Taisen game, Sakura effortless cuts one of these things down with just her sword. Its hard to see this as a threatening opponent after than ^^; Anyhow, Ohgami quickly fells the main boss, and then it’s the usual “Shouri no posu…..kime!” (alas, the camera is too far out to actually take a decent shot, since they are spread out across the whole stage). The boss defeated, Takeda and his chum are restored to their human state. However, during their time as flies, they have learnt the secrets of the Teigeki! Iris has no choice but to wipe their memories of the events of this adventure. Yes, its finally time to get back to Shin Aoi Tori! I’ve not read the whole of The Blue Bird, but from what I gather the plot is about two siblings, Mytyl (Iris) and Tytyl (Reni). The two are poor and feel miserable because they won’t be getting anything for Christmas. At this point, they are approached by a fairy who asks them to seek The Blue Bird (which, apparently, represents happiness), which she wants for its ill child. The fairy bestows upon them some magical McGuffins which allow them to extract the souls from the Cat (Orihime), their Dog (Kanna), Light (Maria), Fire, Water, Bread and Sugar, and go off adventuring for the Blue Bird. I think the song right at the very start of the show is supposed to cover up to this point in the story. Now we are into another song… Kanna stepping on giant turds aside, this the “new” Blue Bird, so they have taken license to mess around with the story. This song sequence covers what I’d imagine is the Graveyard chapter, and the battle in the Forest, but once its over the story appears to jump back to the Palace of the Night. In the palace owned by Night (Kaede), there are many Blue Birds, and they try and catch many of them. When Night walks off, Mytyl follows her to try and catch another. However, the Blue Birds caught in the Palace of the Night die in the presence of Light (presumably something to do with dreams being fleeting or some such nonsense). When Mytyl reappears she is claiming to have caught the Blue Bird in her cage. When Tytyl points out that the cage is, in fact, empty, Mytyl promptly dies (no, really!). Thankfully, Light knows that Water can call forth the Water of Life, which they use to revive Mytyl. At this point, The Blue Bird (Sakura) appears. Apparently, Happiness is something you find close to home and from being with loved ones and the usual sappy nonsense, but you can’t be aware of this without first going on a journey, blah, blah blah. Anyway, that’s the end of Shin Aoi Tori, but not quite the end of the show… For the big finale, they get the whole cast back on stage to sing the infamous, infinitely hummable Gekitei (Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan), the theme song of the Sakura Taisen series. Not really surprising - Sakura Taisen simply wouldn’t be Sakura Taisen without it. Well, that’s the end of Shin Aoi Tori. If you’ve managed to read through both of my entries on the subject, I congratulate your efforts (or at least, your patience).

Alter 1/8 'Plain Clothes' Saber

DiGiKerot — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:55:22 +0000

Alters most recent Fate/Stay Night figure is this Saber effort, produced in 1/8th scale (as opposed to the 1/6th scale used for their Swimsuit Rin figure) and based on a costume from Hollow Ataraxia. Unfortunately, the first thing which strikes the viewer looking at the figure is the rather unfortunate facial sculpt - it just seems off. The problem is that the face seems too narrow, and the chin comes to too sharp a point for Saber. It looks odd. Compare the image above to the character art, or the two following Saber figures (the Kotobukiya 1/8th, and the Good Smile TF PJ Saber), which get it right. Those two simply look more like the character. Its kind of a shame about the facial sculpt, really. The rest of the figure is rather lovely - the sculpt is nicely detailed, the paint job really clean ans the pose is cute. Its generally just a really nice looking figure. But not the face. I'd maybe be happier if the figure was screwed to the base, or had some slightly more statisfying stumps to attach her to the base with, but as it is it just has the two stumps sticking into the one foot. That isn't really a big deal, though. The box the Casual Saber figure comes in is impressively compact - compare it to the box the 1/7 Mai came in! Of course, the Saber figure is nice a streamline, without any touches like the Scarf of Justice (tm) resulting in a larger box being required. Even so, the box ends up being smaller than things like the Arika Yumemiya or Natsuki figures.

Friday Filler

DiGiKerot — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:41:18 +0000

As you have no doubt read in just about every site in the anime blogosphere this week, Moyism is back once again with the interesting sounding premise of less frequent but no doubt fairly exhaustive and amusing posts. Having missed his entertaining take on ZHiME, this is a most welcome return. Speaking of My-ZHiME, the official website kept its usual fortnight schedule and updated today. The big news I hadn’t previously seen elsewhere is a new PS2 game. The PSP My-HiME game is really, really awful. The PS2 My-HiME game seems like a competent visual novel from what little I’ve played (Sayukas VA is kind of annoying though). This new PS2 game is being touted as a “3D arena action” game or similar - I’m guessing its going to be a mediocre Powerstone clone rather than a craptacular 2D fighter, but we shall see. I’ll no doubt end up getting it regardless of how rubbish it turns out to be. I started playing the second Negima PS2 game a couple of evenings ago. No doubt I’ll be posting about it at length once I’ve finished it, but really its more of the same as the first one. Its not exactly the same, of course - the homeroom segments are on the athletics field, and as such look far more interesting, plus they’ve added kung-fu into the combat system. Even during the wandering around segments there is more to do than in the previous game - really, its just like the first but far more developed, resulting in the first game feeling like a beta version of this one. In terms of plot, I haven’t picked up any particular plot threads from the manga other than Negis martial arts training with Kuu Fei and Chamo popping up (at least, I don’t think Chamo was in the first game ^^;). The third PS2 Negima game was actually out last week. My copy is on its way now, but with Suikoden V and Kingdom Hearts 2 either on their way or being released soon I’m not sure when I’ll get around to playing it. Entries on some of the Japanese blogs make it look so very, very wrong though - certainly, it looks rather more deserving of its Cero 18 tag than the previous games have. It Famitsu’d at 8/7/7/7, which is about par with what they scored the first game, so I know what kind of level of game I should expect. In terms of non-blogging anime I’ve been watching recently, it kind of doesn’t amount to that much recently. Princess Tutu and Gankutsuo continue to be awesome, Fafner is getting increasingly entertaining, and I’m feeling Starship Operators more after the second volume (probably because of its general lack of Sanri). Oh, and I did get the first volume of Gundam SEED Destiny. Yes, I know its unpopular, and people love nothing better than to bash it, but I liked it damn it! Speaking of Mitsuo Fukuda, I watched the original series of Cyber Formula recently. I’ve been meaning to post at length about it at some point - I really enjoyed it (I like Dendoh as well - I do actually think Fukuda is a cracking director when he has the proper material) despite, or perhaps because, of the cheese value of some of the episodes. The race direction and the like is really good, particularly towards the end of the series, and manages to actually be fairly exciting. The show does vastly improve in the second half, particularly asthe whole affair with the company trying to steal the Asurada in the first half was pretty stupid. Of course, my real motivation in watching Cyber Formula was so that I could move onto the later series (in other words, the ones with Hisayuki designs) whilst having some idea of what is actually going on. As it happens, I’ve not actually gotten around to doing that yet. I’ll have to be rectified soon, I guess. I’ve been having a look through the stats for my blog. There was a fairly significant increase in traffic a month or two ago, and I attribute this pretty much entirely to the Fate/Stay Night TV anime airing in Japan. Outside of Ragnarok Online released searches, most of the search engine traffic is Fate related, meaning the most popular resource other than my RSS and Atom feeds is the Fate/Stay Night category. The most requested singular post, however, its actually that for the Full Metal Alchemist movie - or it at least appears to be until you realise that traffic for the Battle Moon Wars post is split across three different resources due to it being across multiple pages. Its not surprising given that particular post has been linked on a couple of different web forums (including a foreign language torrent site - not sure about the context, though, as I’d have to have registered to read the post!). ph33r my Rin clock, shown here only to insert a much needed image. The traffic on the Battle Moon Wars post actually bucks the general trend on Beta-waffles traffic, actually - that trend being that the less effort I put into a post, the more traffic it’ll actually get. Seriously, it’s the figure-related posts that end up generating the most interest, which kind of surprises me given that I only post that stuff because I like overpriced chunks of plastic. I kind of see figure posts as a free-ride - I like to try and post an entry every day or two on average, and figure posts are pretty much zero-effort given that I would be taking the pictures for elsewhere anyway. I don’t have to spend time watching anything or put any real effort into thinking about writing anything of any length, they are just straight forward to do. Contrast this to posts for things like those for Lilian Fourhand, which took rather a while and wasn’t really read by very many past the first page. I hope those who do read them actually find something of interest in them anyway, and I’ll continue to bore people at length when I have something to talk about regardless of traffic (since, you know, I don’t actually care that much about it anyway). Ultimately, I can only really think that my taste, and areas of interest within anime fandom, are really, really weird and of no interest to anyone else in the universe ^^; On a related note, if you’ve managed to make it to the end of this long, waffley and generally not actually interesting post, congratulations! A Winner is you!

My-ZHiME DVD2&3

DiGiKerot — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:42:15 +0000

As with the "fake" movie trailer from DVD1 (which I'm increasingly convinced is actually series canon), I suspect everyone has actually seen the omake features from the second and third DVDs already. Since I'm not actually into fanservice, the only picture from the DVD3 omake you are getting here is a closeup of the oh-so-underused Irina. Errr, wasn't she wearing gloves a minute ago? ^^; Ultimately, the nice thing about these omake featurettes is the fact that they give screentime to all those characters who have really gotten the short straw in the series. Given the crazy-big cast the show has, it was always something which was going to happen, but at least they are giving us fans a little extra here. DVD4, coincidently, is going to be Shiho (maki-maki!). The first pressing bonuses for the DVD release are really unspectacular for these two volumes - volume 2 came with a fridge magnet, and volume 3 came with a card featuring a Hisayuki illustration. As for the actual show itself, as with many recent shows some of the animation has been redone, particularly in episodes three and six. There are a few comparison images below - the broadcast version is on the left, and the DVD version on the right. Whilst some of broadcast images actually look more detailed, the DVD version is far closer to being on model and therefore are more consistant in appearance to the rest of the show. Also, the fact that they got rid of the disturbing crotch bluge in the swimsuit episode is MUCH appreciated. They've tweaked the shading a bit in places in that episode too, with the swimsuits looking rather less shiny in places.

Negima Second Period (PS2)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 13:01:03 +0000

GSC 1/6 Magical Girl Rin

DiGiKerot — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:21:41 +0000

Legendary! I am, of course, refering to the size of the box. Beerman had previously mentioned (and even pictured) the fact that the box could, in fact, swallow an XBox whole. I found it hard to believe anyway - after all, the XBox is a monster of a console - but its entirely true. This is a box with puts the boxes of lesser figures to shame. Mundane words such as "Big", "large" or "immense" simply are not adequate. It requires new words, silly ones like "bigunormous" or "immenstactular". Thats how big this thing is. Thankfully, insane packaging isn't the only thing notable about this figure - the pose, the colouring, the sculpting - pretty much eveything - is all top notch. The only possible oddity is the scale - although its quoted as 1/6, its marginally larger than previous 1/6 Rin figures from Clayz and Alter - but thats hardly something to cause serious worry.

MF 1/6 Tokiha Mai

DiGiKerot — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:39:01 +0000

As with the Kotobukiya Mai figure, here she is once again adorned with the Scarf of Justice. Whilst its larger than the Kotobukiya figure, it lacks the punch of it - it simply doesn't look as good. Whilst the harsh lighting conditions of my picture doesn't put it across very well (yeah, I need to sort out some better picture taking facilities), the colouring is really flat and it just looks dull as a result. Oh, and the stand is crap. It simply feels like its going to topple over really, really easily - I've tacked mine down to keep it steady, and I suggest anyone else who doesn't want to break their figure to do the same. As much as I joked about the insanely large Magical Girl Rin box, this one is pretty much just as big - is arguably a little smaller, but since its wider (but less deep) its hard to judge. Regardless, its a damn big box.

Konami Asuna and Konoka

DiGiKerot — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:30:27 +0000

I may as well do both these at once (I don't really want to spam the AB antenna or anything like that). Anyway, these two figures are the first in Konamis new range of larger scale Negima figures, and they've unsurprisingly went for the first two students we are introduced to, Asuna and Konoka (Evangeline and the inexplicably popular Makie are out next month). I'm going to start with Asuna. There is no specific scale to this figures, coincidently - these two are about the same size (if I was pressed to put a number to it I'd say they are around 1/7), but the pictures I've seen of next months Evangeline seem rather out of whack. Its a pretty nice figure, actually. I particularly like the stand and the fact they've highlighted the edges on the shoes and bag. Its not all entirely positive, though - for some reason the face seems rather off character to me. I think it comes down to the slightly extreme angle the head is at - if you pick up the figure and look at the face head-on it looks alright, but with her looking downwards a little it gives the illusion of her face looking a little, well, fat ^^; In most of the forums I frequent, people seem to be going for the Asuna figure and not bothering with Konoka - certain people even refered to it as too ordinary! Ordinary! Pfffft. Personally, I like this figure far more than the Asuna one, and its far more interesting as well - it has DYNAMIC HAT ACTION! Forwards! Backwards! Even sideways! The possibilites are endless - you can even take it off and have her hold it! Wow! The excitement is unmeasurable! In all seriousness, whilst I'll admit a fair amount of character bias here (Konoka is probably my forth favorite Negima girl), but the costume, pose and the stand I just find to be far more attractive, and I would do regardless of who the actual character is. One negative point is that there are some seams along both ends and one side of the skirt (the other has the proper slit) which are clearly visable up close. The ones of the sleeves aren't too bad - it looks like part of the sweater design until you look up close, but the one on the skirt is fairly harsh. Unless you intend to display the figure sideways on its a fairly minor issue, though. As with the Asuna figure, there is some nice minor detailing, particularly on her boots.

Air Gear Pinky Agito

DiGiKerot — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:45:19 +0000

I guess the arrival of this is pretty well timed given the Air Gear anime adaption starts in Japan this week (or has it already aired?). This is the second of the Air Gear manga + Pinky bundles, and presumably the last given the blister doesn't have the 'NEXT' indicator the Ringo one had. Apparently this is the first male character to be officially Pinkified, though I gather Agito is a little, well, fruity... Aside from the usual new head and leg parts, this one includes two bodies (the dafault one is an orange straight jacket, the alternate a black t-shirt), a change of eye patch, two belt buckles and, like Ringo, a set of Air Tracks. One of the sets of wheels is rather jagged looking - hopefully using them will cause the figure to not roll as much as the Ringo one tends to. I suppose there is always the option to take the air tracks off, but since you get them, I figure I should use them ^^;

Steamboy

DiGiKerot — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 16:36:45 +0000

In 19th Century Manchester, young inventor Ray Steam gets a package from his Grandfather in America containing a mysterious mechanical ball. Shortly (very shortly!) afterwards his Grandfather also turns up to explain that the items is a Steam ball - a ball containing incredibly highly compressed steam created from the purest water in the world, which Rays father had died to create - and that he absolutely has to keep it out of the hands of the O’Hara Foundation and deliver it to Robert Stevenson. Of course, the Foundation are already on the scene, and after a brief tussle they take the Steamball and Ray to London, where it turns out that Rays father isn’t dead after all. On behalf of the O’Hara Foundation Rays father and Grandfather had been developing the Steam Tower, a gargantuan tower of power they had something of a disagreement over the purpose of, and the Steamball is required to complete. Ray obviously gets stuck in the middle of the struggle, and added to the mix is O’Haras plans to invade London to show off their latest weapons, the O’Haras bitchy, arrogant and incredibly spoiled daughter Scarlett (*groan*) and allies who may not be quite what they seem… I first heard about Steamboy back in the mid-nineties when production originally started, and aside from the occasional rant about the problems of merging CG backgrounds with 2D characters news on it very quickly dried up until a couple years ago, when it was announced that they were actually going to release it. Of course, movies with that kind of elongated production schedule rarely turn out well, and Steamboy is a movie with a pretty bad reputation - and by pretty bad, I mean that I couldn’t remember hearing anything good about it beyond the quality of the animation. The fact that the general release version in the UK is the version that’s a good 20minutes shorter than the original edit and I really had to wonder if it really was just as bad as was some people were claiming it to be. Still, I figured I’d watch it anyway, and if I was I may as well splurge on the full length version (hey, the packaging is kind of shiny neat). I like Otomos work - it may be popular to slag off Akira (and many other Ye Olde Popular shows), but like many who got into anime in the 90’s it was pretty much the first thing I’d seen (waaaay back in, like 1992 or 1993) and I still think it’s a good movie, and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read of his manga work as well, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad… It isn’t. It quite probably has a lot to do with having insanely lowered expectations, but I actually rather enjoyed it. I can see why some people aren’t particularly fond of it - there is somewhat of a lack of any kind of significant plot (War is bad, m’kay), and the way the movies climax seems go on and on explains way they saw it fit to chop 20minutes out of it (though it does lead to a couple of amusing moments), but otherwise the pacing seemed pretty good to me. I quite like the odd sense of humour the movie has - it seems like every time a character makes one of those long, self-important speeches anime heroes and villains just love to make, something silly will happen to completely negate the effect. The bickering between Ray and Scarlett is actually more amusing than annoying as well, which was something of a surprise (but, really, what happened to Scarletts poor dog Columbus? He just kind of disappeared half way through…). Oh, and the animation is to die for. Absolutely stunning - even the CG isn’t too obtrusive! The whole visual design is pretty damn incredible as well, so whilst some of the science might generate a “hwah?” it at least looks the part. That said, some scenes are rather a little too dark, and it can be hard to make out whats going on without tweaking your displays brightness settings. So, yeah, its something of a thumbs up from me. At the very least it’s a significantly better movie than Howls Moving Castle, anyway.

The Mars Daybreak 11

DiGiKerot — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:38:11 +0000

Whilst the military are out hunting Ship of Aurora again, Vess discovers that her adoptive father is heading to Mars, and as such is rather eager to get out and do something to impress, resulting in her scrambling her shiny new upgraded RB. Unfortunately, when they turn up in the port the SoA was docked it proves to be empty, and when Vess goes into town the old woman from the previous episode does little but wind her up about the fact she can't find them. This results in Vess being thrown completely off their trail and into a trap - the SoA actually snuck out via some hidden mine tunnels around the town, Vess is too smart to be tricked for too long, though, and figures out whats going on. She manages to lure Gram out and manages to overpower his RB using two new model RBs, but he manages to use his usual resourcefulness (and Vess's own preparations) against her to escape. The military types aren't best pleased at this, and arbitrarily come up with some excuses to lock Vess up and stick her in front of a court marshall. Errr, I honestly hadn't realised it had been five months since I last watched an episode of this - the DVDs have just been stacking up infront of the telly, and I had to read my own entries to remind me what the heck was going on! Honestly, though, I intend to finish watching everything I start blogging at some point (even FFU!) - I just like being Oldtabulous, and, really, does the universe really need another person talking about Nana/Haruhi/SuperShinyNewShowX? I'd probably cause reality to collapse or something. Anyhow, back on subject, I probably didn't need to refresh myself in regards to what was going on - this is a very Vess centric episode, and frightfully dull. This is the kind of episode they insert into a show when they realise they are scheduled for more episodes than they have half-decent material for, and aside from the end there isn't anything here which is in any way plot-forwarding or interesting. Ho-hum.

Boring Easter Warblage

DiGiKerot — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:03:46 +0000

Firstly, no, I haven’t gotten around to playing any more of the third PS2 Negima game yet, so no pictures of underage bikini-clad girls for you here (but, lets face it, I’m sure you all know plenty places you can find that kind of thing if you are so inclined). Now that I’m actually typing, I’m not entirely sure what I was going to actually say. I think I was just going to spout some random crap simply because I haven’t posted since earlier in the week and I’m trying to kill time before the new series of Doctor Who starts (well, I am kind of watching the Sakura Taisen New Year 2006 DVD - there are people prancing around dressed as Bananas at the moment ^^;). I read the translated Boogiepop and Others a week or so ago. ‘And Others is the first in the series of Boogiepop novels (obvious because the name sounds vaguely sensible, until some of the later ones). I’d seen the movie adaptation of Boogiepop a couple of times before, and I’ve seen the anime series Phantom (which is set immediately after Others, but before the second novel), but I can’t say either made a particularly huge amount of sense. Phantom is just pretty bizarre for the most part - the only episode I seem to remember making a huge amount of sense out of was that incredibly creepy episode about the eroge addict - but I’m pretty sure I could make better sense of it now that I’ve read the novel. The movie version of Boogiepop and Others had something of an odd structure which made it a little more difficult to follow than it might have been, skipping chronologically around and shifting character focus without too much concern for the viewer. The novel makes it clear why its structured this way, having been split up into several sections three or four chapters long, each from the POV of a different character, each overlapping over a certain period of time, though some go further off into the future than others. The novel doesn’t have any of the confusion the movie might generate anyway. Boogiepop and Others is actually a pretty good, if fairly light, read. Obviously I was obviously well aware of where the story was actually going, so the way the overlapping stories slowly released information until they gave everything away at the end didn’t concern me much, but the extra time spent on characterisation was well worthwhile - in particular, you get a far better grasp of the Boogiepop character than you do out of the adaptations. Its definitely a cut above the quality of the rest of all those other anime-esque novels being released at the moment anyway - Slayers may be a lot of fun, but Vampire Hunter D’s prose is more than a little fruity, and pretty much everything else I’ve read is forgettable fluff. That said, there are some cracking things due out in the future (I’m really looking forward to seeing how Kino is handled, though the translator is the same as on Boogiepop). No figure arrivals this week, by the way. The postal services are on holiday over here until Tuesday as well, so that’s the earliest I might be getting anything (and probably when Fantastic Children 1 will turn up - I wanted to watch it today, dammit!). Next thing I should be getting is a box of Yujin Fate/Stay Night trading figures. Judging from posts on the animeblogger forums its looking like distribution may be rather more random than usual, and given the tricks I’ve seen Yujin pull before there’ll probably be a few variants and other oddities with the release. Also, Yujin are really fond of those annoying clear figures. In any case, I think Moy got a box of these in today, so I’m interested in seeing what he actually got in comparison Vinn. I’ve been rewatching some old shows recently on DVD recently - though by ‘old’ I mean 2001, so not really that old (not as old as Marmalade Boy anyway ^^;). I guess its probably quite old for a lot of anime fans these days, and a lot of shows from back around then aren’t really all that widely recognised. Anyway, I’ll probably end up posting some needlessly long and waffley posts on some of this stuff in the next few days. Speaking of long, waffley posts, I’ll probably start posting about shows in terms of DVD volumes rather than sporadic single episode posts. Well, except Marmalade Boy, anyway - Too much of a guilty pleasure. I’ll still be covering every episode in pretty much the same way I do now, but I’ll probably do it as a single multipage post. Basically it comes down to the fact that I have absolutely no desire to spam the interweb with overt amounts of content every day, but my aversion to pulling off single episodes from a DVD results in me getting a huge pile of unwatched disks building under the telly. Frankly, I find it far easier to find the time to watch a whole volume in one go (and type it up) than I do a single episode, as bizarre as it actually sounds. I think it comes down to the fact that, given the choice between watching a single episode to blog and a whole DVD I’m not posting about, I’d rather watch the whole DVD instead, and the rate at which I’ve been getting stuff to watch recently (all these cheap re-releases don’t help) means I’ve almost always have something else I could be watching. Anyway, I’ve successfully killed time, finished the first disk of the ST New Years show, and there is just enough time to make a cuppa before The Doctor is on. Result!

Alien Nine (2001)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 10:22:56 +0000

At some point in the future, aliens become entirely normal. Its not like they are randomly walking around the streets or anything (at least, not as far as normal people are aware), but nobody thinks twice about the fact that spacecraft seem to crash land on elementary school premises (and only elementary school premises) on a weekly basis, nor the fact that the schools keep the aliens caught on their grounds on their grounds. Even less seems to be thought about the fact that its down to the students to catch them. Yuri Otani is in her final year of elementary school, and unfortunately for her she has found herself voted by an overwhelming majority to be her classes representative on the Alien Party, the group of students whose job it is to catch the aliens invading the premise. Her colleagues seem to be rather happier than she is about the situation - Kumi Kawamura is happy to take the position, as it means she'll won't have the hassle shes suffered in previous years of having been made class president, whilst Kasumi Tomine - genius girl with a serious brother complex - volunteered simply because it looked like fun. Of course, things aren't quite that simply, even though the girls aren't quite aware of this. Megumi Hisakawa, the teacher in charge of the Alien Team, seems to be managing a lot more in regards to alien attacks than just the girls, and her drill-like hair suggests she might just be an alien herself... The cute, flat-faced, big eared character designs and the twee, plinky-plonky xylophone and pipe music of the show belies how seriously messed up this show actually is. To say Yuri is neurotic is an understatement - she is utterly petrified of aliens, and she spends most of the show crying in terror. The fact that she has to wear a Borg - a symbiotic alien who feeds by licking off their hosts body sweat - on her head doesn't particularly help the situation. The first episode actually seems innocent enough - Yuri is scared, but aside from some freaky dream sequences its not really to any degree a character in any other show wouldn't get over. Its about half way through the second episode, when an hysterical Yuri literally massacres all the aliens the school has been keeping, when it strikes you just how messed up the show actually is, and that Yuri will never get over her extreme xenophobia. Thats a lot of what makes Alien 9 so good - it certainly doesn't look or sound like a show that would have any kind of depth to it, but that just makes the fact that it does even more effective. It manages to be cute and creepy at the same time, particularly in the final of the four episodes. The direction is simply brilliant, doing an amazing job of conveying to the viewer exactly how terrified Yuri is without her coming across as too annoying. If there is anything bad to say about Alien 9, its about the ending - in that it just kind of ends. Whilst the manga does go futher, and they actually drop story hints into the ending credits here (including a glimpse of one of the main characters seemingly dead!), the place where it ends is as good as any. From this point onwards the manga started throwing about plot elements which, whilst changing the landscape of the world in which the series is set, aren't really anything which can ever really be resolved. In reality, whilst she may get marginally better at dealing with aliens (and I mean marginally), Yuri is never going to get away from having to deal with them - her troubles simply follow her, and she is still terrified of them. Forever. There isn't any resolution to Yuris plight, because there isn't likely to ever be one, and any attempts to include one here would simply have come off as forced in the extreme. Oh, and the animation is GREAT - it is an OAV series after all ^^; I really can't recommend this show highly enough.

Arjuna (2001)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 10:33:41 +0000

For all the positive hype fansubs are claimed to generate (and please don't take this as an opportunity to discuss!), they also have a habit of generate a fair amount of negative hype, and often unjustly at that. Satelight get more then their fare share of negative hype, and certainly most of it is unjust - Heat Guy J, probably the most 'normal' title they've produced, was panned by many as having mediocre animation and no plot right up until the DVD release (at which point people realised it was actually a superior example of the genre), but the likes of Aquarion has been slated repeatedly for being, well, spaztastic. The most negatively received Satelight series is undoubtedly Earth Maiden Arjuna. Given I wasn't hearing anything remotely positive back when it was first hitting R1 I was pretty much ready to skip on it until Bluwackys obsessive fanboyism persuaded me it might actually be worth a look. Arjuna gets off to a fairly interesting start, actually. Juna, a would be archer (who sucks, badly) is hanging about with her boyfriend Tokio when she suggests they go off to the sea - the 'proper' sea, not the gunked up one where their city is built. Five minutes later, Juna is dead - the result of a motorcycle accident. During an out-of-body experience, she meets the spiritual form of Chris, who tells her he'll restore her life if she agrees to help him save the earth (a process which involves her being blatted across the head with visuals of mankinds follies). So, obviously agreeing (because, like, being dead sucks), Juna is brought back to life, and joins up with an organisation called SEED (nothing to do with Gundams ^^;), who sticks a magatama on her forehead and call her the Avatar of Time, or more commonly TI-2. From this point onwards, she can clearly see the misdoings of mankind - for example, every time she tries to eat a burger she see nothings but images of the pesticides and the crappy leftover meat what goes into it. Aside from that, Chris introduces her to the Raaja, mysterious wormlike creatures, apparently born from the injured earth, and who will eventually end it. Despite providing Juna with a magic bow, he is incredibly vague about what he actually intends Juna to do about the whole situation... Junas new found situation kind of puts her at odds with Tokio - a thoroughly modern guy who likes to eat nothing more than Meriken Burgers, who starts to find Junas preaching about everything straining. I kind of understand why Arjuna gets panned to a certain degree - the opening episodes are really rather heavy handed, showing you images of dead fish, unnecessary air conditioners, land fills and people wasting food. The worst is probably the fifth episode, where Tokio contracts a potentially fatal illness from eating a burger manufactured with genetically modified crops. From that point onwards, it mellows somewhat and gets more towards modern society being lazy than the heavy handed environmental issues, and this comes across as somewhat less grating. Honestly, I don't really find it all that preachy anyway - whilst some claim the show to be anti-technology, its hard for me to agree with given SEEDs army of helicopters or the huge computer installations they use. The show is less about extremism than it is about moderation - technology is fine, as long as people aren't too lazy about things. Regardless of if you find the show preachy or not, I don't really think people have a right to complain about all anime being generic if they don't give this (or anything else Satelight produces for that matter) a look, and whilst you may disagree with some of the points they are trying to make, the show does at least give you something substantial to get your teeth into in terms of plot. Even if you were to completely disregard any of the messages they try to put forth, there is still quite a bit to get your teeth into here - there aren't that many characters in the show, but those who do get screentime are at least well developed or interesting. The main relationship between Juna and Tokio, arguably the main ongoing plot concern, is definitely well handled. Plot certainly isn't the only thing good about Arjuna. I think after some of the stuff pulled in the recent Aquarion most people agree that director Kawamori has either gone insane or is smoking some pretty strong stuff these days. Arjuna definitely shows some of the kind of spazz that Aquarion does, and whilst the content of the show is more subdued, it doesn't stop him doing zany things like inserting live action adverts for some of the (fictional) products featured in the series in place of the adbreak eyecatches. The fact that Kawamori is a genuinely good director anyway helps a lot as well - the pacing is good, and the action scenes have a good deal of pop to them. The animation in Arjuna is good - really good. Ashura may look like crap, but otherwise the CG work actually looks far more mature than in a lot of more recent shows, and is integrated with the rest of the show really well. Apart from Ashura. The character designs are by Takahiro Kishida, who recently worked on Noein. It has a similar feel to a lot of the designs in Noein - the eyes have a similar look, and the lines are fairly simple but distinctive. In Arjuna they throw the characters around in the same dynamic ashion as Noein, which the same complete lack of intention to stick to model, whenever the need arises. It, kind of surprisingly, works well - the motion comse across as being very kinetic. Oh, and the music is one of Kannos better works - which is really saying something.

Yujin Fate/Stay Night Trading Figures

DiGiKerot — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:31:22 +0000

Yup, yet another series of Fate/Stay Night figures. I'd lowered my expectations of these massively after mediocre writeups from Moy and Vinn, not to mention the fact that I'm not generally a fan of Yujin TFs. Yujin also have some really annoying habits when it comes to distrobution of figures which they keep here, which do little but annoy collectors. The figures themselve I don't think aren't actually as bad as I was expecting, but they aren't without their problems - all the ball joints do mean they have a bit of posability, but they have a habit of coming apart. The stands are, frankly, awful - I had the pin snap on one of them without even having to put any effort into it. Also, Saber looks like a twelve year old - and I mean an anime twelve year old, which is, like, six in real-person appearances. Really, though, these aren't bad figures. The real problem is that they overcharged for them. The insanely complicated one (name omitted for spoiler reasons!) is worth the asking price - its a very well made TF - but the others are really gashapon quality, only a wee bit larger. GSCs Fate figures completely blow these out the water, and the Battle Combo figures look better as well. You can buy a 1/6 scale Fate figure for the price of this set, and really the money is better spent there. I'm going to do this Moy style tonight - that is, one at a time. I'll ruin the surprise by telling you that I got exactly the same figures as Moy got, so I'd guess that there are a couple of set boxes of figures when it comes to distrobution. Oh, and there are possibly some character spoilers if you only know Fate from the TV anime. With that out the way, on with the opening! Okay, so its off to a bad start. This one is the clear version Caster in her mantel. Its Saber running, looking like a twelve year old. If you've noticed the hole in her hands, you'll be wondering why she isn't holding anything - its because she doesn't come with anything to hold. Yup, pretty silly, really. What she does come with, which I forgot to picture, is an extra arm and a dinky Neko-Arc (as in, the cat-like version of Arcueid from Type-Moons Tsukihime). Randomtastic! Also, notice the crappy stand. Bah. Rider, sitting down. Nothing notable to point out with this one - its actually pretty decent. Its Sakura, kneeling down. She actually tends to lean forward a bit too much. She also comes with an extra set of hands, so you can do this... Its Saber again. This time, she comes with two things to hold - her lion, or a practice sword. Yeah, you can use that practice sword with the other figure, but its best to actually take the arms from the other figure and switch it onto this on. Likewise, there are arms which come with this figure which are really designed for the running figure. This is exactly the kind of thing I hate about Yujin TFs - they have a nasty habit of mixing figure parts around like this, so you technically need to get two figures to get one with actually looks right. It makes collecting them really frustrating... Clear Rider. Next! At last - Its Rin! Hurrah! Awful stand aside, I do quite like this figure - there are plenty of changable parts, and you don't need another figure to make it look right. The extra arm is for linking with the running Saber figure, like so. Notice the badly repaired stand, he result of a pin breaking. I hate stands like these, where a structure like that fits on a small pin in the stand. They rarely work well, and they often break like this. I expect batter stands from TFs. He may be the great Lord of Heroes or whatever, but Gilgamesh is also the Lord of Insanely Complicated Trading Figures. This is a pretty horrific build, particularly as there are no instructions. Particularly nasty are the gold pieces of armour around the eblow - they are a pain to get on correctly. The completed figure looks pretty good, however. There are a hell of a lot of balljoints here, so the figure is really posable. Its pretty easy to knock parts off it though. Sakura, her skirt blown up by the wind. A hint for others - in true Yujin fashion, you are meant to be switching the hands which come with her (and the ones she is pictured with here) with the straight arms from the other, kneeling Sakura figure - they are a MUCH better fit for the pose. Finally, its Caster without mantel.

Token Entry!

DiGiKerot — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:48:06 +0000

Apparently "silence is golden". If this statement is true, then this is one of the greatest blogs in the anime-blog'o'spere. Well, maybe not. Its kind of been a busy week for me, which means that I haven't actually watched much in the way of anime, nor received any new toyage. What spare time I have had around the house has been plowed into Kingdom Hearts II (well, what time I had which didn't go into putting together poor quality PSP wallpaper). I think I'm probably almost finished KHII, actually, having pretty much finished plowing through all the worlds for the second time - it just needs one last push and I'll be able to move onto something else - probably Negima! 3 or Suikoden V. I have a couple of other side projects in the planning stages as well, but you'll hear more on that if they ever develop, I'm sure. Pretty much the only thing I have watched in the way of anime this week was the first volume of Fantastic Children. I'm not going to rant about Bandais double-standard packaging at the moment (bundled CD aside, like HiME and unlike GSDestiny and Eureka 7, the packaging is not great - it looks almost bootlegish!) or the slightly odd looking subtitle font, but the actual disk is fine. As for the show, it is, well, fantastic. I'm coming into it fairly clean, so I don't really have any idea where its going, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. I can't say I'm really surprised its good - anything Bluwacky rates normally is in my books - but its nice to see Bandai actually releasing it eventually. Speaking of Bluwacky, hopefully he'll solve his hosting problems soon, and that the forced haitus won't result in him dropping too many shows from his platter. The most exciting anime news of the week is probably Media Blasters licensing of GaoGaiGar. Admittedly, I've only seen a couple of episodes of the show, and its not the step towards the licensing of Dendoh which I'd oh-so-love despite them both being Sunrise robot shows, but that theme tune simply makes me want this! Well, okay, I absolutely adore silly robot shows, and any series in which there is a giant screwdriver which rends spacetime is awesome in my books. Its an interesting license anyway, not least because its the first Sunrise show in a good few years which hasn't gone straight into the hands of Bandai Entertainment (though, with the appearance of Honneamise you have to wonder if they are feeling pressed recently anyway, particularly with the recent pricing patterns and other release oddities). The Negima spring event has occured in Japan, and this had the screening of the first Akiyuki Shinbo directed Negima OAV. Apparently it was a full length OAV as well, rather than the short effort which was expected, based on the manga storyline where they go to the beach resort courtesy of the classrep. Word from various forums is that the animation is simply awesome, and that it'll be bundled on DVD with the LE version of manga volume 15. I know I'll be looking out for it.

d00d

DiGiKerot — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:01:02 +0000

Its a plush prinny! Its kind of large as well. This, coincidently, is the just released Japanese Cospla plush rather than the one available in the US via N1's website. From what I gather its bigger, and the quality looked better to me, though with the N1 one the pouch actually opens - not that I can think of much use for that. -edit- D'oh, I managed to use the same image twice! I should probably also point out that the belt is adjustable, and after taking this picture I hiked it up to a more sensible level.

Leave It To Piyoko! 5-8

DiGiKerot — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 22:12:30 +0000

The Black Gema Gema Gang continue their spastic adventures on Earth in another four episodes. As was mentioned in regards to the previous episodes, DiGiCharat really, really doesn't work with an episode length more than the five minute episodes of the original series, as what could have been a funny joke just ends up being overstretched to the point that it isn't funny anymore. Episode 5 Actually, episode 5 gave me some hope that the volume might actually have been fairly funny. Piyoko and the rest of the BGGG are drawing pictures. Piyoko, of course, really sucks, and Ky, Coo and Rik can't tell who is who on the picture she drew. As it happens, Coo is the one who looks like a potato (and, of course, he sporadically turns into a potato throughout the episode). Ky, who can draw, draws a new flag design for the BGGG, but its rather too manly with is scary, sword-armed, potato skewering Panda. Rik, ever the vet, decides to draw a new mascot, Pyonpo-chan, who is crap. So, with everyone being crap at drawing, Coo decides to teach everyone the Piyoko drawing song, which features too many boogers for Piyokos tastes. Then Dejiko turns up, who is obviously better because she has drawing songs - though Gemas is rather more evil looking than Dejikos. And that's about it. Actually, this whole episode is actually pretty amusing. Whilst it is all about drawing, they don't stick on any one particular point long enough for it to become tired - it could easily have been split into two or three shorter episodes without losing anything. Episode 6 Unfortunately, the show then moves onto episode 6. Coo tells the Gamers crew why he decided to become a doctor, flashing back to the planet Analogue many years ago. When he finishes telling his tale, one of the characters (I think it was Puchiko) says they fell asleep half way through the story. I know how she feels - too much sentimental sap, not enough stoopid. Episode 7 Piyoko goes out to play in the lot before everyone wakes up, and discovers a tent which she believes is a Sweets Room. Really, however, part of the sign is covered, and its a Blue Room - as in, everything inside the room is blue. Upon waking up, Rik, Coo and Ky go off looking for Piyoko, and find a similar tent. This one, however, leads to a Red Room (everything is red!). So, Dejiko et al turn up, and find another tent - a Green Room. They actually read the whole sign though, but this just results in Dejiko being more curious. So, Piyoko is stuck in the blue room, and with it being all blue it makes her really depressed. Rik et al in the Red room are also stuck, and get rather angry. Dejiko and friends are completely unaffected, though, and Puchiko leads them to the exit, picking up Riks group on the way. Puchiko then tells them how to summon Piyoko back, and everyone lives happily ever after. This is one of those episodes which would have been really funny in the original series - something stupid happened and then more stupid things happened. Now, had this had this had been the original series, it would have just ended on a completely random and unresolved note which would have made it all the more amusing. Here, however, they have another ten minutes to fill, so it ends up being stretched far too far and the tack on an unfunny conclusion of sorts. Ho-hum. Episode 8 The BGGG suddenly remember they were supposed to be kidnapping Dejiko and demanding a ransom, so they do. Well, it turns out to not exactly be much of a kidnapping, as they expend too much effort (and all their money) attempting to be good hosts. Meanwhile, Rabi-en-rose figures out that Dejiko has been kidnapped, and leads the Gamers lot on a rescue mission. Dejiko doesn't want to leave the BGGG hideout though, and the episode pretty much ends simply with everyone fighting. I don't really have any strong feelings towards this episode, aside from Rabi-en-rose looking kind of hot in her military clobber ^^;

MoO!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 01 May 2006 20:48:39 +0000

Freaky cowgirls blow my mind. In less cryptic words, I finished watching the last volume of Melody of Oblivion today. It’s a really fantastic show, and definitely well worth seeing, though I’m really not sure what to make of the overt, well, pornification of things. Sure, I’m aware that the show is stock full of horny teens, but surely the, err, milking scene was getting a little excessive… Oh, and how old is Coco meant to be anyway? Honestly, I found it increasingly hard to figure out whether to take these things as hilarious or a little on the uncomfortable side - as the series progressed it verged on the more excessive, and the considerably less metaphorical. I suspect most people will just find it funny, and it certainly livens up the show somewhat, but it sure would be embarrassing to show to someone who isn’t an otaku. It also makes it rather more difficult to actually figure out what is actually important to the proceedings and what isn’t. Of course, as someone who largely watches their anime via legitimate means, the protracted release schedules these things go through don’t really help much anyway. Sometimes I think I’d be better off just waiting for the whole of a show to be released before watching it, meaning I won’t forget things between volumes. The sight of all those volumes building up would probably bug me, though. One thing for sure is that watching things on a weekly, monthly or on a marathon basis completely changes the feel of a show - some shows just work far better watched on a weekly basis, giving the viewer time to stew on things. That said, there are some murmurings from certain studio reps on AoD suggesting that, basically, nothing is being licensed at the moment by anyone. Escalating licensing costs, reduction in retail options and the fact that there isn’t much in production at the moment that would actually appeal to the general market - Zegapain, Disgaea , Air Gear and Fate/Stay Night are just about the only new shows which would fit in with the kind of shows that US companys do reasonable sales on (with Fate being Geneon property already, Air Gear stuck in Toei-hell, and Disgaea sucking) - kind of spells trouble for the market in general, as less stuff being licensed in the US results in less being made in Japan. Its kind of depressing, really, though it does probably mean next year will be cheap for me, and I suppose I’ll be able to actually rewatch some of the things I’ve been meaning to due to the lack of new material (I really need to watch Utena again at some point, at least). Briefly mentioning Fate/Stay Night, it looks like Geneon are trailing the show using the full length version of the Curtain Raiser promo, judging from the trailer on the latest Fighting Spirit DVD. Its not anamorphic, though, but it probably means that the actual Fate/Stay Night DVD release will have it in its full quality glory, which is kind of nice. Speaking of Fighting Spirit, I picked up Victorious Boxers 2:Fighting Spirit for the PS2 yesterday. I’ve not actually played it yet, but I mention it to annoy the US readers following the Fighting Spirit (aka Hajime no Ippo) DVD release who get it trailed to them in the extras for each volume, despite the fact that they seem to have no intention of actually releasing the game over. As such, it amuses me. Thats enough for tonight, methinks.

Transmodel Nirvash Type Zero

DiGiKerot — Tue, 02 May 2006 19:45:03 +0000

Surfing robots kick ass. New(ish) from Bandai is this series of Transmodel Eureka Seven action figures. Being boring, I plumped for Nirvash Zero, the shows central mecha. The figure is pretty cool - its has a decent number of joints, so its pretty posable. The surfboard as a good selection of holes for plugging the feet into, so you can get some cool looking poses out of the figure. The price is pretty cheap, so you don't get the smaller parts jointed - to change the position of the fingers you have to swap out hands, for example. I'm not really all that up on robot figures to be honest, but for me it seems pretty good for the price, not to mention the fact that I'm willing to cut it a lot of slack simply because surfing robots look SO FRICKEN AWESOME! The Transmodel part of things comes in to play because the figure is transformable. Well, kind of anyway - its not what I'd consider a 'clean' transformation. To change it between forms you need to swap out various parts, and there is a seperate surf board with bends for use as the spoiler. Its a really fiddly transform, some of the parts are easy to lose and some bits are really hard to fit together. That, and it doesn't actually look that great. Frankly, whilst the robots do transform like this in the show, I don't really see why anyone would want to transform this away from the surfing robot mode. Just to reiterate, surfing robots are COOL, silly robot cars aren't.

Kannazuki no Miko DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Fri, 05 May 2006 20:20:19 +0000

Himeko is a clumsy, shy and slightly spaced out blonde with an annoying shrill voice who only really stands out for, well, not standing out. Still, she somehow has found herself (unbeknownst to herself) as the focus of rich, popular and generally hot Chikane, which is starting to make her rather more unpopular than she already is. To make matters somewhat worse, her childhood friend Souma, who its rumoured Chikane may be interested in, is also infatuated with Himeko. So, Himeko, who is apparently a wannabe photographer, is taking some pictures for Chikane and is meeting her for lunch secretly in a hidden rose garden, where Himeko acts all timid, completely ignorant of Chikanes obvious interest. Then some weird stuff happens. On Himekos birthday (which just happens to be on the same day as Chikanes), things start exploding. Apparently the demon Orochi is awakening, represented by eight folks wronged by mankind who take to blowing things up for fun and vengeance. Blowing things up in giant robots, in fact. Whats worse is that they seem to be targeting Chikane and Himeko. Whats even worse is that Souma is apparently one of the Orochi. Still, Souma proves himself all awesome and manly and resists the generic urge to go all evil, and swears to protect Himeko and the usual. Awwws. He proceeds to beat the evil nun Orochis giant robot up, whilst Chikane helps herself to a snog from Himeko… Oh, then we get some rubbish about Chikane and Himeko being shrine maidens who must summon some God who’ll put righteous smack down on Orochi. I don’t really get KnM. I find the show really, really funny a lot of the time - the problem is that most of what I find funny is the stuff that isn’t meant to be. The show isn’t without its attempts at humour, but most of them fall flat with me. The real problem with KnM is that its really schizophrenic. Aesthetically it looks like a fairly serious show - it has well drawn, realistically proportioned (as far as anime goes, anyway) characters and a largely fairly downbeat colour palette, and the music seems to suggest that we are meant to be taking things seriously, whilst at the same time it has giant robots and villainous loli-catgirl-nurses. The side effect is that I simply can’t take any element of the show seriously, so when they focus on the between Chikane and Himeko I can’t help but chuckle at how over melodramatic and laboured it is - the show seems to expect us to take it seriously, but it practically comes across as self-parody. When Himeko moves in with Chikane, and they start suggesting that Chikanes chief maid may, infact, habour feelings towards Chikane herself its just one giant step too far with the lesbian cheese. I think the other problem I have with the show is the fact that I practically see the production staff checking off all the fan boyish elements they’ve included from a big list of geeky favourites - its like they went out and bought a pile of issues of Megami, G’s and Compatiq and included everything what looked like it might be popular in a cynical attempt to attract a huge audience. We get panty shots for both our heroines in the first episode, we have the aforementioned loli catgirl nurses and evil nuns, we have giant robots and, or course, we have lesbians. Hey, there are even some bishies for good measure. That isn’t to say I don’t like KnM - I do find it entertaining - its just that I kind of feel I shouldn’t, and that most the reasons I enjoy it aren’t the reasons why I’m supposed to. Still, the OP and ED are fantastic. As far as the DVD release goes, I grabbed the +Box version. The box is pretty nice - the art is good, but personally I think it would have looked better flat shaded rather than coloured as it is. The bonus extra with the box is a SHELL NECKLACE OF PLOT SIGNIFICANCE, which is a bit crap, really. There’s also a pencil board, but that comes with the first press of the DVD only release as well. I do intend to pick up the KnM DVDs to the end, but I don’t think I’ll be commenting any further on it. If anyone is wondering, I do know where the show is going - I mean, its not exactly difficult to work out due to the fact that the whole story is in the OP, but I do know things in a little more depth than that. I suppose I meant be tempted to post again after that event, but probably not.

Eureka Seven DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Fri, 05 May 2006 21:17:41 +0000

Renton Thurston, at the ripe old age of 14, is kind of bored with life.He lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where nothing of interest really happens and the only prospects in life are to either join the military or take over his Grandfathers garage. Renton yearns for escape, but doesn’t particularly strive for it. He fills his days trying to ‘lift’ on his Ref Board - that is, surfing on the invisible trapars now infesting he worlds atmosphere (and which Rentons father apparently saved the world from), idolising his hero Holland, an infamous boarder who leads the rebel group Gekkostate So, so far, so FLCL. Its not an understatement to say that the opening of Eureka Seven is highly reminiscent of Gainaxs infamous OAV series. Rentons complaining about how dull his town is pretty much echoes Naotas sentiments in that shows opening, only with mysterious iron-shaped factories being replaced by the military. The light rock music playing over Rentons introduction cuts in like a Pillows track in the FLCL soundtrack. Then there is the fact that Rentons character design (and dress sense) is pretty similar to Naota from FLCL - in fact, the character design seems to straddle some midpoint between Sadamotos recent work and the art of the Bleach manga. Its not unattractive, anyway. Thats pretty much where the similarity ends, though. Getting back to the story, Rentons life goes from dull to duller when even his board supplier decides to ditch town, quickly followed by the military taking over Rentons favourite lift spot for use in LFO training - that is, training using their giant, trapar-surfing robots. Renton starts to understand why his sister (whose face is ALWAYS obscured) may have skipped town many years ago. Then something happens to shake up Rentons life - an LFO crushes his bedroom. Its not just any LFO, though - it’s the very original, Nirvash Type Zero. Not only that, its piloted by a cute girl, Eureka, whom Renton instantly falls for. Eureka is having some problems with Nirvash, and she’d come to see Rentons grandfather in the hope of getting it fixed. As it turns out, its missing a part which Rentons father left with is Grandfather, and when Eureka has to quickly run from a military attack Renton has to deliver it on his board - opening up the path to adventure, excitement and Gekkostate membership! Well, the latter anyway. It turns out that Gekkostate aren’t that interesting most of the time. Whilst its cool to hang out with his heroes, they don’t actually do much other than pick on Renton to relieve their own boredom, and Renton doesn’t really help things by embarrassing himself at every moment. The problem is that they are skint, therefore can’t actually pay the docking fees which would allow them to do the lifting they are famous for. Their war on the military doesn’t seem to be going anywhere quickly, either. Making things even worse for Renton is that Eureka has three children (not actually hers, of course) preventing him from getting close to her. It’s a pretty standard start for a genre show, then. The first two episodes set up the premise, and the other three episodes on this volume are really just to introduce the characters. It’s a lot of fun, though - the animation is good, particularly in the LFO battles, the music is decent, and most of all the characters are damn good fun. The execution in these episodes at least manages to straddle humour, plot and angst pretty well. The plot isn’t particularly any great shakes - its fairly generic stuff, with a mysterious relationship between Holland and Rentons missing sister, Eurekas mysterious background, Rentons potentially awesome abilities and all those other plot elements which are common in a show like this, but the show executes them in a fashion which just comes across really good fun. Saying that, I hear its pretty uneven up until the midway point. I’m looking forward to seeing if that’s true, though. The DVD packaging is pretty nice, but then it’s a Bandai A series. For a mere $20 more (and that’s at full retail - its less with online discounts) than the royally shafted HiME+box release, you can grab this volume of E7 which not only has more episodes and a much better T-shirt, but also has a far better box, a two-CD E7 OST and the first volume of the manga (which is pretty good as far as anime adaptations go). Even if you aren’t a box whore, in this case its probably worth the extra for the OST alone. Also, giant surfing robots kick so much damn much arse.

Two-ton 'o fun

DiGiKerot — Sat, 06 May 2006 11:43:51 +0000

This is, apparently, my 200th post here. Because of this, I'm going to put off posting interesting things like those new Negima figures which turned up today to do some general rantage! Huzzah! So, the general topic of discussion in the blog'o'sphere is the oversaturation of anime blogs. I have to admit, I do find it kind of amusing that what started as a rant about having read too many posts about the same episode of Haruhi has erupted in a whole bunch of posts about that subject instead, each with a different take on the subject. Which is entirely the point, I guess - everyone has a different take on things. The more people blogging, the more likely it is to find someone who has tastes overlapping with your own. Bulk of opinion is never a particularly a bad thing, and if you are fed up with something then you can always just tune out those posts mentally - theres no reason why you actually have to read all those posts about Haruhi, just scan a few from the blogs you know you are interested in. As someone who spends a fair bit of cash buying shows blind on DVD, I tend to rely on the general opinion of shows generated on the blogs and anime forums waited against how my tastes have overlapped with those posters in the past. Basically, I have no problem with the number of blogs floating around. Most of them will probably be dead in a few months, anyway. Its all very easy to start enthusiastically, but keeping that going is pretty tricky. The discussions on the number of blogs has ended up spreading out onto the subject of how to increase traffic and the need for more niche blogs. Not really caring about traffic - I'd rather have the few interested readers I have than a few thousand people who, well, aren't - I've messed around with posting about doujin games (which I will get back to closer to next Comiket - there isn't really anything interesting going at moment) and only really blog about older shows, and can say that, really, it probably generates far less traffic than yet another post about something airing at the moment (be it Japan or the US). Really, people just aren't all that interested. Figures are another story althogher - theres plenty of interest in that, but thats not really a niche in the blogging arena these days, as there are plenty of places covering figure releases these days. Truthfully, if the person writing the blog is getting something out of it - be it simply amusement value, the use of having somewhere to vent or the inflated ego which comes from generating interest - than I think thats fine. I've completely went off on something I wasn't really intending to talk about, and really, its yet another post on a subject thats already been pounded into the ground - how droll can I get? ^^; I guess I should actually say something about BW, but the only thing which has really stood out in the last 200 posts is the complete and utter lack of consistancy in what and how I post. I think its fun, it keeps the reader guessing and makes things more exciting! Well, no, its really just that I'm actually that inconsistant. I'm sure I'll actually settle down on something of a consistant style of posting eventually. Maybe. In any case, I'm going to stop boring people and get typing up that Negima figure post.

Konami Evangeline and Makie

DiGiKerot — Sat, 06 May 2006 12:19:10 +0000

Last month Konami released Asuna and Konoka from Negima. This month we get Evangeline and Makie. Like the previous figures, there isn't any fixed scale to these, but that isn't really the only inconsistancy here. Since I’m sure everyone is more interested in the Evangeline figure, I’m going to start with Makie. Or at least I will be, but I’ll show you the boxes first. The Makie box is pretty much the same size as the Asuna and Konoka ones, but as you can see the Evangeline one is rather larger, despite the fact that Eva is a bit of a shortarse. So, Makie Sasaki eh? Early on in Negimas run, Makie was actually one of the most popular characters in Japan. I don't really know why to be honest - I can't say I find her particularly interesting, amusing or engaging or anything. I’ll try not to hold the fact they decided to figurize her rather than someone more interesting against the figure, though. Except its kind of hard not to. This is just a boring figure - there is nothing remotely interesting about it. Its simply boring. Its pretty mediocre compared to the other figures in the series as well - the stand is a boring, flat coloured circle opposed to the detailed efforts they gave us with Asuna and Konoka, and it lacks any of the fine detail (painted or sculpted) of those figures - the shoes, for example, are just flat shaded, with none of the lines picked out like with Asuna. Compounding matters is the inconsistencies in the colouring across the series - she is wearing the same uniform as Asuna, but the colours are completely different. If they are doing this to try and vary things a little, they should really have just put her in a different costume or something. Despite complaints, if you are a fan of the character its not a bad looking figure as long as you don’t mind its dullness of it all - it does, at least, actually look like the character. There is on thing though - It might only be my figure, but there are some pretty nasty looking lines down the front and back of the legs where things have been joined together. The front doesn’t look too bad - I didn’t notice until I took pictures of it, but it does stick out to me now - but the backend looks really iffy when you see it in person. The first thing which strikes you about this Evangeline figure, at least when taking it out of the box, is that it kind of stinks - I suspect its probably the plastic used in the cape. The figure itself does look pretty nice, though. There isn't much in the way of fine detail in the sculpt - her feet, for example, are pretty flatly sculpted aside from the big toe having been picked out, which none of the other toes having been detailed in. Still, the way the hair is done is really cool, as is the cape. It’s a significant chuck of plastic, and feels pretty satisfyingly sturdy. I really like the look of this figure, basically, and I think the pose and styling make up for the lack of fine detail. As for negative points, the stand is kind of iffy. The figure fits to the stand using four different sized pins. I kind of get the feeling that, if it wasn’t leaning back against something, it’d probably fall out of the stand pretty easily - the hold on the pins isn’t very tight. Its pretty loose, and fell off when I opened the box. With all that plastic, I have to wonder if it’ll be heavy enough to develop some lean over time as well. A picture of all of the figures, just to show how inconsistant they are ^^;

Starship Operators

DiGiKerot — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:31:56 +0000

Sinon Kouzuki is a cadet with the space force of the independent planet Kibi. Unfortunately for her, on the eve of her graduation her homeworld is conquered by the aggressive military forces of The Kingdom. Angry with their government surrendering without struggle, the students devise a plan to buy their state-of-the-art training ship, the Amaterasu, and fight back against The Kingdom. To fund the purchase, they make a deal with the Galactic News Network to allow the ships plight to be used as a reality TV show. Taking in Kibis previous president and declaring themselves an exiled government, the Amaterasu starts a lonely war against The Kingdom. Having been somewhat reluctantly dragged into the situation, Sinon finds herself playing an important role on the bridge in an increasingly dangerous situation. I have to admit, I have absolutely no overwhelming strong feelings towards the show. I do think it’s a decent show, and its certainly enjoyable enough. The animation is good - whilst not the most fluid ever, the great looking art and clever use of CG makes add a lot. Kenji Kawais music is good. The typically I’ve OP is, well, typical I’ve - its catchy stuff, but sounds like a dozen other tracks I can think of. The naval manoeuvres are really well done. Ultimately, though, I found the show to be strikingly above average, and no better. I think the main problem is that for a show of 13 episodes they simply try and focus on too many characters. Aside from Sinon being the lead, the production staff didn’t seem to know who to concentrate on. The result is that you tend to get focus being shifted onto certain characters for an episode or two only for them to be pretty much forgotten about aside from, at best, a few background appearances for the rest of the series. For me this has a fairly substantial effect on the overall show - whilst the overall plot arc moves along nicely, the shifting character focus resulted in a show which felt like there was no continuity in the minutiae of the series. There are a couple of moments where events which would have been fairly major in another show occur which are pretty much forgotten two episodes later here, which just seems odd. When, at the end of the show, I can barely remember the names of four or five characters, it isn’t really a good sign. Another problem is that the only new element it really brings to the table is the reality TV aspect. Whilst this is admittedly played fairly well, most of the other plotlines have been done before, and most of them have been done better as well. Its really just a bunch of generic SF storylines, to the point where most of them were made fun of in the likes of Nadesico and Tylor. I know there is only a limited amount of material you can do in such a show, but I’d rather than seen the TV gimmick played up more for the sake of originality. The somewhat generic storylines result in a number of plot developments which just seem ludicrously signposted - there are a few moments in the show where it is completely obvious whats about to happen ten minutes or more in advance, but it insists on stretching it out anyway. It gets frustrating sitting there waiting for it to happen as it stretches out things in an increasingly obvious fashion - it wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d got on with it, but there is one scene in particular in a later episode which drags on way too long. I can’t really bring myself to post this and not comment on the character designs (again). They are extremely attractive - too attractive, in fact. Obviously the citizens of Kibi have been genetically modified so that all their female students are extreme hot, or at least only those they let into the military are. Its probably the latter, since it would seem Roy Mustang designed their uniform. Really, with those incredibly short skirts and thigh length leggings, combined with the general girly hotness, I’m surprised any of the male crew can actually concentrate on what they are supposed to be doing! Whilst it sounds silly, it’s actually a genuine complaint for me. I have nothing against attractive character designs, but when a show wants me to take it seriously as a piece of Sci-fi, I expect it to take its own design works seriously, and I don’t think the costume design does. It kind of takes me out of the show as a result. It just seems all the worse when the male uniforms are so loose and baggy - I'm not saying I want to see the male characters in skintight clothing, but the uniform design should at least be consistant. Whats possibly worse are some of the haircuts - am I seriously supposed to believe that officers - even cadets - would be allowed to get away with haircuts like that whilst in service? ^^; So, at the end of the day, Statship Operators is above average.

Saikano - Another Love Song

DiGiKerot — Fri, 12 May 2006 15:06:21 +0000

Lt. Mizuki is a cyborgy death-machiney thingy, who voluntarily underwent modification when injuries obtained on the field would have prevented her from continuing her duties. Mizuki is also kind of crappy, certainly not good enough to save Japan from the assaulting forces of the rest of the world. In order to save Japan the military decides to modify the rather less willing schoolgirl Chise, apparently the only person they’ve found who is suitably compatible with their modification procedure. So, poor Mizuki has to put up with being told she is useless, whilst the poor woman is also tortured by being able to hear Chises thoughts, yadda, yadda, yadda… The original anime Saishu Heiki Kanajo, or She, The Ultimate Weapon as its official English title goes, was TV show from back in 2002, adapted from the manga series of the same title. I really enjoyed the original series, even forking out on the (mercifully subtitled) R2 DVD release. Sure, it practically redefined the term melodramatic, taking the over-done attempts at heart rendering drama to previously unheard of levels, but at the same time I thought it was rather charming. The characters were interesting enough, and it was generally a rather well made serious. It has been a few years since I've seen it, and I'd probably not enjoy it as much now as I did then, but I do think it was a pretty good series. Another Love Song is a two episode OAV series which is supposed to fit between events of the original series. Another Love Song is also crap. Really, the whole thing is just bad on just about every level. Its like a bad piece of fan fiction someone just happened to find the budget to animate - and when I say animate, I mean animated badly - its full of pans with minimal animation, and has plenty of static shows as well. A lot of the scenes where they actually try to do something a little more dynamic with the animation things have a habit of wobbling off model. I remember the days when being an OAV meant you would be getting better-than-TV animation for your money rather than just boobies with nipples. Animation problems aside, there’s just no pop to it at all. It’s just incredibly tedious stuff - I simply wasn’t interested in Mizuki (who I’m surprised didn’t go insane from having to hear Chise rabbiting on all the time), and she was pretty much the only character who got any real level of screen time. Compounding this, the direction and pacing were completely off, and they insisted in sticking in inappropriate moments of humour as Chise keeps tripping over five seconds after appearing on screen. Ultimately, its just a really painful way to spend an hour of your life. Going off subject for a moment here, can I just say how I really hate companies who release anime and manga in English with silly truncated titles? I can understand why fans might truncate a title when they might be typing it a lot, but an official product title should follow suit. I mean, what exactly does Saikano mean? It does mean anything in Japanese or English, nor is it a name in the series. Its just stupid.

The Mars Daybreak 12-14

DiGiKerot — Sun, 14 May 2006 17:02:21 +0000

Volume completion FTW! Episode 12 The crew get together to tell ghost stories, but only wussy boy Aki is actually scared of any of them. Still, very conviently they just happen to be in the area of the seas where a famous ship was apparently sank by a vengeful god... Of course, this leads to all sorts of freaky things happening, and even the Loli is picking up wierd vibes - poor Gram even gets locked in the freezer! It turns out theres a rather more pedestrian cause than ghosts - its all the computers fault. They've been cutting back on the maintainance costs a little too much. Still, when the computer claims to pick up a ship thats too big to even fit in the area its supposed to, nice guy Gram goes out to investigate anyway, and sees the real Ghost Ship... Maybe ^^; Huzzah! Its the return of the Spazz! Yup, this episode is entirely stupid, and its all the more entertaining for it. Sure, nothing of any remote importance happens, but at least its not tedious with it. Episode 13 The SoA pick up an SOS signal from another ship and go and investigate. On the somewhat lavish ship they discover a girl in a wedding dress, who immediately glomps on Aki. Its a case of mistaken identity, of course - she has mistaken Aki for her fiancee who she has been chasing. Aki is immediately smitten anyway, but unfortunately for him it turns out that, like most the female characters in the series, she is a complete and utter psychopath. Charming. Err, what I said for episode 12, basically, but this episode is better simply because it has Ester wearing a moustache ^^; Episode 14 The military has caught up with the SoA, and Vess manages to find a chance to escape from the brig. She immediately steals an RB and heads off FOR REVENGE! Revenge on Gram, of course - she figures if she can beat Gram the military will forgive her. Gram, however, makes short work of her. Unfortunately, he can't make short work of Kubernes, who turns up to steal the Box of Guidance. When Vess turns up in her half destroyed RB, only to get swatted away by Kubernes, an enraged Gram ends up trashing is own RB in an attempt to defeat Kubernes. Gram ends up being dragged away by Yagami before he can help Vess... Vess, however, is picked up by Kubernes! All very wizz-wizz-bang-bang - its pretty much a whole a episode of fighting. Still, it actually managed to forward the story somewhat as well, so alls good. I suppose being the half-way point its not suprising that they need to shake things up somewhat, but I suspect it'll mean we'll shortly be encountering the End of Spazz.

Weekly Wafflage: Noein, Killer Lolis and Negima

DiGiKerot — Sun, 14 May 2006 19:34:42 +0000

I seem to be posting a load of random spiel here every weekend, I suppose I may as well make it a confirmed regular occurance. I suppose the most interesting news coming out this week, for me at least, is the licensing on Noein - not just because its licensed, but because of who licensed it. I had figured that the recent Satelight shows would be every further down in the depths of licensing hell than everything else is at the moment, and certainly I don't really see much of a clamour orgasmic transforming robot action in R1 land, but the fact we are going to be seeing Noein R1 is very, very cool. It does, however, seem rather odd that its Manga who have licensed it. Heck, it would seem odd just to see Manga license anything - they've been anything but prolific in recent years, and TV and OAVs are hardly their normal fare. I suppose that if they want to keep some kind of presence in the market (and, despite their inaction, they do have a suprising amount of clout) they need to release something, and movies and OAVs are hardly forthcoming these days. Their lack of licensing in recents years probably has more than a little to do with the whole Eva movie licensing thing, which must have left them in a pretty crappy situation. Of course, Manga aren't exactly the same company as they used to be, having been bought out by Anchor Bay in recent years. Hopefully this will result in something in a upturn in Mangas fortunes (I say hopefully because any company who licenses stuff like Noein deserves support in my book), or at least an upturn in their DVD quality. Since the anime market turned DVD Manga have found themselves seriously floundering - their DVD output has been marred with minor error after minor error, which has left a pretty bad taste in most fanboys mouths (though I can't remember them having done anything like producing a DVD whose subtitles don't work on some players, unlike certain recent Bandai releases...). Their recent UK releases seem to be something of a turnaround - or, at least, I haven't heard anything negative about them - and if they can apply the same standards to their R1 Noein release I think they'll suprise a lot of people. The recent posts at Lolicontrol reminded my that I picked up Higurashi Daybreak just after C69. At the time I pretty much had no idea what Higurashi was, I just thought it looked like fun and the 3D graphics looked kind of shiny. I never did get around to talking about it, though (I've not got around to talking about Tobi Tsukihime either, but figure theres no interest. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong). I'm not going to go to the effort of going into length on it since others have, but I can't say I've suffered the technical problems mentioned over at LC (though I've probably not played it as much). For me, the reaction time on the moves does come across as being rather close to that of the original Virtual On, but the speed is somewhere inbetween VO and the rather more responsive VOOT. The result is somewhat unmanagable - its just too damn hard to actually play. Hopefully there'll be some significant tweaking before the final version is completed, as I'm kind of looking forward to taking a baseball bat to some overdeveloped, twig-limbed loli-psychos. Final topic of the evening is the confirmation of a new Negima TV series. I can't really say its much of a suprise, as Akamatsu has been hinting at it since the first series ended, but it is nice to know its coming. Hopefully they'll just pretend that the Xebec series doesn't exsist (I figure most Negima fans do now anyway), as the second half pretty much screws up the following plot arcs having made up some Asuna story and having written some reoccuring characters out of the Kyoto arc. I suppose they could, with some significant work, get things back on track but, quite honestly, a 13-episode Kyoto arc is the way to go. Still, even if they are completely unfaithful (and presuming they stick with the OAV character designs, the visuals aren't exactly faithful), at least its likely to be decent. I have great faith in Akiyuki Shinbo to produce something which is, at the least, highly entertaining regardless of its faithfulness (and from what I gather, so do the Japanese - he is getting something of a reputation for blowing the original works out the water with his anime adaptions). I look forward to it.

Final Fantasy Unlimited 8

DiGiKerot — Wed, 17 May 2006 21:12:07 +0000

Having obviously not punished myself enough having watched that Saikano OAV recently, I felt it was about time to once again inflict myself with something only marginally less painful... So, when I last left off all those months ago, our heroes where up to very little of interest. This episode picks up pretty much exactly here it left off. Ai et al find themselves in some kind of bizarre factory where it seems they simply assemble and disasseble the same objects over and over again, a job obviously slightly less tedious than watching the show itself (is that enough hyberbole yet?) Suddenly, however, they stop disassembling the item and complete it - a giant cube - and they all die from lack of work. The giant cube is actually a giant robot, though - How exciting! This time its Oscha who has been sent to attack them. Of course, the giant robot is quickly seen off by Kaze without much trouble (though I did think it was amusing that Oscha actually chose to attempt to attack Kaze during his stock-footage "Soil is Power!" animation). The robot dismantled once more, the workers all get back up and back to work again. The end. Oh, and Lou decides its her mission in life to follow Kaze around, and promptly disappears. Where was a villian who briefly appeared in this episode (for the first time I assume, as I'm sure I'd have made fun of the name if it wasn't) called Pist. I think the name must refer to the state the shows producers where in whilst actually putting together the series, as I can't see how they thought any of it was a good idea otherwise. Maybe the show is more fun in a druken state? I don't see how it could be much worse... (though, since I don't drink, I'm afraid that isn't an option). I know its been a while since I've watched any of the show, but from what I could see they were playing up Lisas' shapely figure even more than usual. I can only assume that by this point they had realised that the show was having problems and decided to focus on the only particularly attractive piece of design on the show, though the way her facial features tended to be drawn (particularly up close) kind of detracts from it. Okay, so thats probably quite enough exaggeration from me for one evening. I'm stubburn in my insistance that I will, one day, see the show until the very end (which isn't much of one, from what I've heard), no matter how tedious it is. So, it'll be back with more tomorrow. Maybe.

Animation Runner Kuromi 2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 20 May 2006 16:23:36 +0000

For those who haven't seen the original Kuromi, it followed the titular character (actually called Mikiko Ogura, but her staff promptly rename her) who, being a fan of old anime series Loius Monde the Third, ended up going to and graduation from an animation school. She ends up working at a small animation studio on the production desk - apparently the most stressful job in anime - where it was her job to make sure the production the anime series Time Journeys went smoothly by persuading the weird and wacky animation staff to actually do their work. So, the second OAV picks up sometime later. Time Journeys was cancelled after the first season, and the owner of the studio has picked up some new work. Unfortunately, the work in question is the production of three different shows at the same time. Poor Kuromi is unsurprisingly facing the biggest dilemma of her short career, and to make matters worse animation director Shihonmatsu has picked this moment to attempt to give up her chain smoking habit... Then, to compound things even further, the president brings in an old-school producer to try and turn the production problems around, but the effect of his timesaving methods (not to mention the old-school sensibilities of the extra staff he brings in) has undesirable effects on the quality of the show, even if they are getting closer to hitting those schedules... For those with slightly more than a passing knowledge of the works of Akitaro Daichi, Kuromi is all going to seem very familiar. It opens with some into the screen cycling... Some rather familiar looking character designs and screen disolves frequently distorting animation And some funny looking octopus things which pop up to make comments (Okay, I should really be comparing this to Kodochas Babbit in terms of usage, but I can't be bothered to get one of the DVDs out of the box). There is even a little re-used animation from the original OAV (admittedly mostly in the opening recap, but there is some usage outside of that). If you are familiar with Daichi, you pretty much know what to expect anyway. Its not like its a particularly bad thing anyway - Daichi is one of the best directors in anime, and when it comes to comedy works he pretty much rules for me as the only director who can consistently make me laugh. I'm sure that by now the level of reuse across some of his works is at injoke level now anyway (see Jubei-chan 2, which features Sanas camera from Kodocha alongside spoken references to the likes of Fruits Basket). Ultimately, its a bit of a laugh. The story this time around is probably a little more interesting than in the first OAV, though its not as funny this time around simply because its not as fresh. Whilst it is a comedy, there is more than likely more than a little truth in the events depicted here, particularly these days when pretty much everything seems to be getting retouched for DVD thanks to mediocre broadcast versions, the kind of time-saving methods seen here are probably more common place than we'd like to think. Not that, thankfully, there are any in Kuromi. Of course, being what is essentially an indie-label OAV they weren't exactly pressed for time in the same way a TV production is, but regardless of its origin it does look pretty good. Whilst not movie-level animation or anything, there isn't really much to complain about, with the animation only looking odd when its supposed to be. くろみかわいいよくろみ! One thing the animators do get a particularly big thumbs up for is, that over the course of this single 45minute OAV, Kuromi goes through more costume changes than many anime characters do in an entire series. No matter what she wears, Kuromi is kind of cute as well, particularly in one particularly amusing scene when she is forced to turn on the moe in an attempt to get her staff to work.... I suspect Daichi doesn't realise the connotations that gesture has in the UK ^^; Anyway, its worth a look, though I'd probably watch the first one first.

Weekly Wafflage: I! Mai! Me! Its the AROCKALYPSE!

DiGiKerot — Sun, 21 May 2006 15:46:32 +0000

This weeks stupid argument which refuses to go away is the title of Bandais release of My-HiME, or should that be Mai-HiME. Well, technically either is valid. The crux of the discussion is that people have seen a review of R1 DVD 1 over at ANN claims that by romanising the title as “My-HiME” they have changed the title of the show, and view the fact that many fannish places still romanise it as “mai” as meaning that is absolutely correct. This, of course, is bollocks. I don’t really want to get into the semantics of the name again, but it essentially relies on the fact that the character used in the title (“舞“ - lit. “Dancing“) is pronounced the same way as the name of the main character (“舞衣”) which is pronounced the same way as the English word My - it’s a pretty crummy pun, and like most puns it relies on things sounding the same, and as soon as you romanise it the way it is spelt no longer really matters as long as it is pronounced correctly. Mai means pretty much sod-all to the average English speaker (the covers helpfully point out that HiME can be taken as an acronym), so it makes sense to use the version which makes most sense in English. It has more meaning to the English viewer, and those who understand enough Japanese to work out what is going on with the title will get it when they see the unchanged logo on the DVD anyway Now, even if we forget that entirely, the Japanese themselves romanise the title as My-HiME the vast majority of the time - for those who don’t recognise it, the logo in the middle is that used at the end of the original promotional trailer - about as old as you can get really. My-HiME is, and always has been, the official romanisation of the title, and by using it Bandai haven’t changed a sodding thing. So there. I mean, really, if Bandai were going to change the name of the show, I’m sure they could come up with something far more interesting and marketable than some bizarro half-English half-Japanese mess of a title. Gettimg completely away from anime (so feel free to stop reading now!), last night saw the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. I realise this probably means nothing to those outside of Europe, so I’ll elaborate. The Eurovision Song Contest is, as the name may suggest, an annual contest where each country in Europe put together something of a pop-ditty and compete against each other to win the votes of the public in each country. Each countries votes are actually compiled separately (its got a lot to do with getting around the fact that each country can’t vote for their own countries song, for obvious reasons) and points are dished out by each country depending on their placement. Here in the UK, we don’t take Eurovision remotely seriously. Many Eurovision entries are horrifically cheesy - more so than most anime OPs - and isn’t helped by the fact that many countries choose to sing in English (frequently with hilarious accents) rather than their native language. Most the rest are either incredibly strange, have really bizarre performances, or are just plain awful. This years entries weren’t too much better. Still, its kind of compulsive, train-wreck viewing thanks to UK commentator Terry Wogan pretty much doing nothing other than taking the piss out of the whole event, and the fact that it consists of lots of this. Yup, plenty of foxy ladies in very little clothing surrounded by hilariously awful dancers! Huzzah! Apparently some parts of Europe do take it entirely seriously - Sweden, for example, were so upset with their poor placing last year that they brought back one of their previous winners. Of course, I should probably point out that Eurovision is also were Swedish super-group Abba broke though, so perhaps its not surprising that they do. The UK obviously didn’t take it seriously, as per usual, because our entry was the pretty dire Teenage Life by Daz Sampson (if you really want to hear it, go look for his website, though I’m sure the whole event will have made Youtube by now), someone whose previous claim to fame was murdering Kung-fu Fighting under the name of Bus Stop. Hell, even getting a bunch of girls to dress up in school uniforms didn’t help to get him a decent placing this year. This years German entry was strangely an American-style country track. There were a lot entries which were pretty much mocking the proceedings this year, though many didn’t get through the semi-finals. I have to admit I rather like the Lithuanian entry, the rather modestly titled “We Are The Winners”, whose lyrics largely consist of things like “We are the winners, of Eurovision!” and “Vote, Vote, Vote for the Winners!”. Lovely. The cake was pretty much taken by the entry from Finland, who produced the most non-typical Eurovision entry ever in the form of Lordi with “Hard Rock Hallelujah”, which apparently they wanted to ban for being blasphemous… What is really, really remarkable is that Lordi actually ended up winning, by a fairly huge margin at that O_o Rocktastic. (For those who have survived to the end of the post, and haven’t figured out the connection between the post title and the image up top, it’s a reference to 2001 anime series I! My! Me! Strawberry Eggs. The show was a rather uninspiring effort, from the director of Fate/Stay Night, about a high-school PE teacher who is forced to pose as a woman to get a job at a local all-girls school. Eye-roll inducing misunderstandings and comic hijacks promptly follow. And, yes, I do have a strange sense of humour)

Negima! Kagai Jugyou (PS2)

DiGiKerot — Sat, 27 May 2006 19:54:19 +0000

The thrid of the Japan-only Negima PS2 games, fully titled something like "Magic teacher Negima! Extracurricular activities - Maidens Heart-pounding Beachside!” (yeah, it’s a long title) is, well, rather different than the previous two PS2 Negima games… I'm going to admit upfront here that I didn't even try to follow the story here - its some rubbish to do with Eva and the science lot coming up with some kind of beachside tournament for some random prize or other - but unlike the previous Negima games its pretty much beside the point here (and, as if the emphasize the fact, the fast-forward feature works much faster this time around). Basically, the aim here was as getting Negima characters in a variety of skimpy swimwear. It starts out much like the other games, all visual novelly and all that - they even reuse a lot of the visual elements, though little things like loading times and improved scene-skip suggests the code is all new anyway. It quickly devolves away from this though, as we move down to the beachside. There, Negi takes charge of one of two groups (eventually expanding to 6 - it adds one every time you complete the game) and puts them through a selection of training exercises designed to increase one of the four key stats - strength, booksmarts, practical knowledge and responsiveness - or manage their health and stress. During this period you get to assist one of your students, which allows a much large increase in stats as well as effecting their affection ratings towards Negi. After three iterations of the training section, you face off against another group at the Battle Party. I say face off, but you aren’t competing directly against an opponent in every event - you don’t even have to win in those where you are. The aim is simply to take enough points (each of the three you enter are worth up to 100) to reach your chosen difficulty levels requirement to progress. Win at four battle parties, and you’ve completed the game. Lose and, well, there isn’t much of a penalty other than having to play the whole day over again (with stat changes in place). ネコミミモード! Your performance at the battle parties don’t just affect your progress towards completion - the more points you score, the more coinage you rake in. Coins are used at the store where you can buy additional swimsuits and accessories for use on your students. The selection isn’t initially particularly great, and its hard to earn enough coins to buy anything without playing on Hard mode (though, thankfully, there is a glitch in the game which makes buying stuff a wee bit easier). More costumes are added to the store by repeatedly completing the game, as well as (apparently) owning the first two Negima games. More frustratingly, some only seem to be unlockable by entering some cheat codes, which is really rather rubbish. Oh, each character has their own unique costume as well. Not particularly surprisingly, some of these costumes are actually a little skimpy, and certainly a little embarrassing. This is where the previously mentioned affection ratings come into things - if the characters don’t like you enough, they aren’t about to wear that bunny costume you want them to… The Ikkitousen swimwear line was really popular this season This game comes off as being rather more polished than either of the previous Negima efforts. For one thing, whilst not exactly stunning, it at least looks like a PS2 game - the character models are really good, the textures are generally pretty high quality and the background look alright. There is a touch of slowdown on some events (bizarrely, the cooking quiz) when using particularly complex characters and costumes, which does kind of result in it breaking into a pixellated mess thanks to some odd resolution mode they seem to be using, but problems are rare. The unlock able Cgs (a pain to find coincidently - it requires using certain characters for certain events and getting certain results) are pretty plain, but that’s minor. The music is passable. In terms of how well it actually plays, its alright. Some of the events are great, some of them are so-so, and some my Japanese isn’t good enough to follow properly. The game is, at least, free of the any annoying control quirks of the other Negima games. What really lets the game down is that the Training events are the most horrifically tedious and annoying ones in the game, but you have to repeatedly do them (the closest thing to skipping one is going for Relax and holding down the speedup button). The only really diverting one is the Limbo Dance, but its tricky to get the hang of - I couldn’t do it successfully until my third play through, but then I am pretty rubbish. By the time you’ve played through all six groups, you’ll probably never want to play the thing again out of frustration of these. Thankfully you can play the proper events from the Gallery at will, but without any stat improvements from the story mode they are rather tougher. Perhaps disappointingly, there is no two player mode. A lot of the games are competitive, and it could have been a fairly diverting party game, but I guess they figured out what most of their audience was after - expecting them to have friends would get in the way of what is pretty much a single player masturbatory experience. Not that this is what I was after of course - I just like the Negima manga, and figured since I enjoyed the previous games I’d enjoy this one. Honest! Anyway, the game is fun while it lasts I guess, but when you get towards the end of finishing it with your final group you’ll probably not be able to face playing it through much more to unlock the rest of the CG. If you manage to charge straight through you can clear the game in around 8-9 hours with all the groups, but the chances are you’ll be playing around twice that (and longer again if you actually read the text!). A more detailed description of the mini-game follow, feel free to stop reading now if you aren’t particularly interested. OK, so I'm actually going to start by listing the different groups, just because I'm curious to see if anyone can spot who is missing ^^ Group A: Asuna Kagurazaki, Konoka Konoe, Setsuna Sakurazaki, Fuka Narutaki, Fumika Narutaki Group B: Nodoka Miyazaki, Yue Ayase, Haruna Saotome, Kaede Nagase, Ku Fei Group C: Yuna Akashi, Ako Izumi, Akira Okochi, Misora Kasuga, Makie Sasaki (Coincidently, if anyone is wondering, Ako does have that scar on her back. Misora wears a crufix as part of her unique costume as well). Group D: Chisame Hasegawa, Kazumi Asakura, Madoka Kugimya, Misa Kakizaki, Sakurako Shiina Group E: Zazie Rainyday, Natsumi Marukami, Ayaka Yukihiro, Mana Tatsumiya, Chizuru Naba Group F: Evangeline AK MacDowell, Chao Lingshen, Satomi Hakase, Chachamau Karakuri (Unsurprisingly, Group F have crazy-mad starting stats to make up for being smaller). Training Events: Okay, there are five of these, and each 'day' of the game you have to select one for each of the characters, and then one which you assist. Each one effects certain character stats. Unsurpisingly you end up focusing each character on a certain event, with the occasional Relaxing session to increase health and reduce stress. Relax Characters build up stress by training and participating in events, whilst at the same time their health decreases. If their health is zero when you reach a battle party you won’t be able to use that character, which would obviously be annoying. To avoid this hassle, you need to make sure your characters are suitably rested, which is what this training task does. So, if you decide to participate in this task, then you are presented with the character lounging around on a sun lounger, and you get to massage them. That’s pretty much it - you move a cursor around and hit the button, and you seem to get a random result (normally a reduction in stress). This is the task you select if you want to quickly get through the training periods - hold down the cross button and the timer will go down quicker, meaning you can finish pretty quickly. There is actually a short Relax-style section after every training event, though the stat changes aren’t so pronounced there. Stretching Promotes Strength. The character does some sit-ups and press-ups. There is a bar along the bottom of the screen with a some black, yellow and red areas. Pressing the cross button causes an indicator to move across the bar, with the aim being to get as close to the red area as possible. Finishing in the yellow or red areas is a success, though finishing in red gets you a more positive stat alteration. Studying Promotes booksmarts. Its Simon, basically. It shows you a serious of button presses (one extra with each successful iteration) and then you have to replicate them in the same order. The quicker you do it, the bigger the stat increase. Cooking Promotes practical knowledge. I hate this one - you have to rotate the analogue stick really quickly. This in itself isn't too bad, but it has a habit of changing the direction it wants you to spin halfway through, completely screwing up your rythm and making it hard to complete. Speed is the key to big stat increases here, though I tend to avoid doing it myself. Limbo Dance Promotes responsiveness. There are two stages to this one - firstly, you have a horizontal bar - which decreases in size with each attempt - with yellow and red areas. The ball at the top of the bar will suddenly drop without warning, and you need to press the button before it drops off the end. The red area will get the biggest stat improvement. The second phase is the tricky part - you have a see-saw, and the digital pad allows you to tilt it left or right. On the see-saw there is a character head which slides around all slippy-like. You need to keep the head on the see-saw to until the counter runs out, and the closer to the middle it is the better. Thats all the training events, onto the battle party! You'll do each of these once in the course of one groups play through, though the order is pretty random. Each one favours a certain core stat, so you can get a little caught out if you only have one character good at each and you run into an awkward selection. You pick one character for each event. Recorder Yes, its the most suggestive musical instrument around, the good, old recorder! Its a bemani game (it IS Konami, after all) - you use the L* and R* keys to play the notes. The timing doesn't particularly matter, you just need to be holding them as they drop off the bottom. The more notes you hit, the better your score! You want practical knowledge for this one. Watermelon smashing You’ve seen a beach episode of any anime show before, right? You know this one - a character is blindfolded, and they need to smash a watermelon with a big stick. You need to shout out orders to her to tell her in which direction to walk and when to swing her stick. Occasionally there will be a danger appearing - be it a ball, banana peel or an ecchi crab (no, really!) - and you’ll have a timer on which to quickly select an appropriate action. The members of the other team will shout out a bunch of invalid options, whilst one of your party will shout out the genuine response. Failing will effect your completion time. The quicker you finish, the more points you get. Responsiveness is what you need for this one - they'll respond more quickly. Waterballon You and your opponent each have a pump, connected to a water balloon above their opponent. By hitting the button a lot you pump increasingly quickly, which inflates the water balloon more faster. Eventually one of the balloons will burst, soaking the opponent. Repeat until someone gets soaked three times. Occasionally some crabs will run by, so you’ll have to stop pumping and jump up on the stand to avoid them. So, it’s a wet t-shirt affair. Strength determines maximum pumping speed. Ass sumo Smash your opponent off the platform with your ass. You have three actions - feint, dodge or smash. The trick is to hit them either whilst they are feinting or if they have mistimed a dodge. You get points for each hit you land, as does your opponent - if you succeed in smashing them off the platform you get the points needed to take the combined point totals up to 100. This event actually has two unique costumes - a fluffy cat and a fluffy rabbit costume ^^; Oh, you want strength here. Sponge battle Very much like ass sumo, except you hit them with a stick instead. Boat Race You race against your opponent on an inflatable boat. The two circles at the bottom of the display rotate, and you need to simultaneously hit the L1 and R1 keys as it reaches the red spot to move. The rotation speed increases as you hit the spots successfully. In addition, if you hit the red area you get a bonus point, five bonus points will get you a boost point up to a maximum of three. Expelling your boost will, well, give you a boost along the course, and the number of boost points you have increases the length of the boost. Having a high responsiveness level will increase the size of the OK area of the circle, making it easier to hit and get boosts. Every time you succeed in completing this you’ll actually get a new type of boat - to being with you only have a shark, but you also get a banana, a chocolate stick, and Chamo-kun. 16-tile puzzle Its a sliding tile puzzle. I HATE SLIDING TILE PUZZLES. Booksmarts = more time. If you manage to complete the image, you get a larger version in the games gallery. Concentration/Mental Guts/Whatever You probably know the basic idea behind this one - you take turns to turn two cards over, with the aim of matching two cards. If you match two you get another turn, etc, etc. The gimmick here is that the characters are suspended by chains attached to flying devices. Every time you match a pair your opponent is lowered into a more precarious position, until ultimately you match five pairs and the chains are released and you win. Booksmarts apparently help here, though I’m not sure what difference they make. General knowledge Quiz Well, "middle school quiz" to be exact - I presume all the questions are aimed at middle school level. Of course, they are almost all in Japanese so its a little hard for me to play this properly, so I rely on the maths questions and the ones involving English words to win ^^; You get ten questions each time, but there are only forty of fifty in total anyway. This game has your characters standing atop of mechanical sharks heads - every time you get an answer correct, your opponents sharks heads opens its jaw a little bit wider… Having high booksmarts really pays off here, as it’ll rule out some of the incorrect answers for you! Its multiple choice, so at worst you have a 1/4 chance of getting it correct anyway. Cooking Quiz Its like the general knowledge quiz, but all the questions are relating to the dish you are cooking. There are only four or five different dishes, and the questions for each one are the same each time, so its quite possible to memorize all the answers. Practical knowledge helps here, but I have absolutely no idea how ^^; Because of the placement of the cooking stands here which have a split screen across the most complex part of the scenery, so you can get slowdown on this event depending on your character choice. Pillow transport Your selected character and another random one from your party have to transport a body pillow along a course by pressing it between each other ^^; The yellow part of the border of the two circles at the bottom of the screen rotate around the circles randomly, and you need to keep the arrows (controlled by each analogue stick) in the yellow area to stop them from losing their balance. Dropping the pillow will incur a time penalty, reducing your completion score. Responsiveness will increase the size of the yellow area, making it rather easier. Costume changing shooting game Your character has to shoot a gun at the red area of a rotating target. If you manage to hit all five of the targets then your character will get changed into a maid-costume based swimsuit (each team has a different colour, and if successful its unlocked for general use). If you miss one, then it’ll be a towel for you (not automagically added to your costume line-up, but you can get one eventually) and you’ll walk away with only the points you earn. High responsiveness will make the red area larger - if you max it out to 999 then a full half of the target will be red, making it pretty easy. And thats the lot!

Weekly Wafflage: Unbalanced news week

DiGiKerot — Sun, 28 May 2006 13:12:22 +0000

My theme for this weeks post was actually going to be how boring this week was in terms of anime news. Oh well, I guess that topics out the window now - its been an interesting last few days. I’m going to go back to earlier in the week first, though, and talk about Genshiken, or rather the (supposed) new Kujibiki Unbalance series. For the two people unfamiliar with it, Genshiken is a manga series about a club of new-media fanatics who get together and read manga, watch anime and play videogames. Genshiken was also animated a couple of years ago with slightly mixed results - it was generally very high quality, but there was some occasionally iffy animation and a couple of episodes were a bit off. In Genshiken, the characters follow a series called Kujibiki Unbalance (KujiAn for short) - a combined parody of bishojo comedies and shonen serials. When they animated Genshiken, the did a three episode series of KujiAn, and a rather random one at that since the episodes they animated were labelled as 1, 13 (the recap episode) and 25 (the pen-ultimate - not final - episode). So, what was previously thought to be a new anime series of Genshiken, which is just wrapping up manga-wise in Japan and still has plenty of unanimated material, now appears to be a new series of KujiAn, set after the end of the OAV series. This met with somewhat mixed opinion, which very quickly turned less mixed - many of those who were excited to hear the news of a full series of KujiAn were rather disappointed by the changes in visual design. The original KujiAn series is rather bright and full of primary colours, with wildly exaggerated character designs. The new series of KujiAn isn’t - its palette is rather more subdued. Well, at least as far as we can tell from the one image we’ve seen. Its not like anime fans to jump to conclusions, is it? If they really have chosen to animate more KujiAn then Genshiken, then I can’t really say I’m all that surprised. KujiAn just seems far easier to merchandise than Genshiken does. Sure, if you go look at figure releases the two shows are actually about level, but two of the Saki figures are actually of her cosplaying as the Chairman. By redoing the character designs they can get away with releasing a whole new batch of Ritsuko Kubel Kettencraft figures, and all those other female characters lend themselves to character good more than the cast of Genhiken. It’s a shame, but that’s just the way the anime market works at the moment. As far as the new character designs go, I actually quite like them. I like pigtails, though - I think the new-look Chairman looks great. The only questionable one for me is the most prominent - that girl glomping on who I presume is Chiharu looks a little too dull and generic. The new look is perhaps sensible. The thing with the OAV KujiAn is that it had to work as an anime series inside an anime series - its highly exaggerated look was a necessity in order for it to still look like a cartoon series when it was being spliced into a cartoon series itself. By removing Genshiken from the equation its free to look rather more subdued. As I say, at the moment I like it, but I’ll reserve final judgement for when we actually get to see more - presuming its not a fake to promote Genshiken. I do think its kind of a shame if a new series of Genshiken doesn’t materialise at all. If they were doing KujiAn as an OAV series again, they would have been free to do something a bit more snazzy with it again. Genshiken has a fair amount of cosplay talk in it, so how about doing KujiAn with Genshiken characters playing all the parts? Sure, it’s a bit Asahina Mikuru no Bouken, but I think it would have been funny, anyway. As far as other news goes this week, it seems that CPM may be going bankrupt. Its kind of sad, though they haven’t released much new in recent years, things like the cheap Slayers sets they released were much appreciated. They have some cracking stuff in their back catalogue it may well be worth tracking down before they disappear forever - shows like Utena, Now and Then, Here and There, Alien Nine and Animation Runner Kuromi really need to be seen, and it’ll be a shame if people are deprived of them in the future. The other big news is that the other US studios are actually licensing some stuff again, although nothing which particularly excites me. Funimation has Full Metal Panic:2nd Raid, which is no doubt entertaining (though, to be entirely frank, I count the previous two series as being the among the most horrifically overrated shows ever) and Beck, whilst ADV has Jinki:Extend, which makes me wonder if they’ll actually finish releasing the manga version which they started. I finally got my hands on a copy of the Xenosaga Episode 3 trial version. I’m a big fan of the previous games, but for some reason I wasn’t really all that excited about this one. Its not really anything to do with Episode 2 - unlike seemingly most people, I had no real problems with it other than some of the music, and actually have, errr, three copies of the game. Having now played the trial version, I have a very similar feeling to what I had after playing the FFXII trial - I have reservations about the gameplay mechanics, but the story trailers have me very, very excited indeed. The trial version is pretty good, anyway. The loading times for battles really impress this time - the are pretty much instant. They obviously took notice of all the complaints they had about episode 2s rubbishy loading times. Unfortunately, the actual combat system is pretty badly messed up. They’ve ditched Ep 2s odd zone/boost combo based system (which, I have to admit, I actually liked), but what they’ve put in place feels seriously stripped down. They’ve ditched even the basic combo system from Ep 1, so now hitting things just deals one blow. They’ve added finishing moves back in, but you need to have boosts stocked to use them (all the ones here require two boost points). I suppose its serviceable, but its not exactly involving - at least you had to pay attention in Episode 2s battles, otherwise you’d die pretty quickly. The stage design here is pretty good - Shion, Miyuki and Canan (story-wise - more are available in combat) break into a Vector facility, and there are plenty of puzzley elements to make it vaguely interesting. The music, well, is it all Kajiura this time? The stage music is a nice, understated jazzy number. The music for the opening scene - an ES battle through the city - sounds a lot like Kajiuras battle music for ZHiME. As I say, though, it’s the story spoilers I’m well psyched for - its just looking so damn cool. Also, Miyuki is awesome.

GunXSword DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Sun, 28 May 2006 17:46:31 +0000

On the planet Endless Illusion (no, really!) theres this wanderer who wear as tux and a hat, whose inability to decide his own name is only matched by his inability to remember other peoples, his bizarre taste in food and his madskills with the odd sword-like weapon he wields. The wanderer finds himself wandering into the town of Evergreen, and whilst attempting to get a free lunch out of the local church he witnesses a young girl getting shot - a young girl carrying an oversized gun and a turtle around her neck which just so happens to have saved her life. The guy is Van, the girl is Wendy Garret - one has a sword, the other has a gun. GunXSword, geddit? Anyway, the town of Evergreen is being terrorized by a group called The Wild Bunch, whose leader Lucky Roulette is obsessed with being, well, lucky. He is after the safe kept inside the fortified mall where the citizens are residing, and he has just been delivered a giant robot to help him smash up the place. Van, however, doesn’t really care, even when Wendy offers to marry him in exchange for her services. He is just looking for some guy with a claw for a hand who seems to have messed up his wedding Kill Bill-stylee. Wendy, however, would kind of like to find her brother, who Lucky kidnapped and is the real owner of her gun. Lucky takes a bit of disliking to Van, though, and tries to kill him. Unfortunately for him, however, Van seems to be immune to bullets, and he decides to kick some arse after all, ultimately summoning his own giant robot with which to pound some sense into him with. So the town is saved. Unfortunately for poor Wendy, Lucky has already passed her brother onto another person - another person with a claw. Yup, its apparently the same guy Van is looking for, and as such Wendy decides to invite herself along on his travels. So, Wendy and Van end up in a town which is basically just a huge bridge - a huge, closed bridge at that. Due to maintenance work, they can’t get across the damn thing. Good thing they bump into an old acquaintance of Van, Carmen99 (the 99 is apparently both her bust size and her number of secrets), who fills them in on the situation somewhat - though, really, she doesn’t get them very far. The guy who runs the town decides to open another route across the bridge, but will only allow 200 women to cross on the first day of opening. As it turns out, its all a lie. The beardy leader guy is actually just trying to build a harem for his moustached minions as they set off to conquer the world on their newly built giant robot (which leads to an amusing scene where the boss throws one of his minions into a furnace for displaying lolicon tendencies!). Van doesn’t much like this, so he summons his big robot and kicks arse again, they find out Mr Claw Hand had passed by recently, and continue on their travels, parting way with Carmen99 (who I’m sure we’ll see again in increasingly dangerous and sexy adventures!). The other two episodes consist of an amusingly over-the-top sentai-show riff, and an episode in which Wendy tries to tend for an ill Van, which only really serve to progress things by having Van remember Wendys name (its an honour, I’m sure) and some random guy appearing at the end who is also looking for Mr Claw Guy. After the first twenty seconds of GunXSword, the chances are you’ll be heavily reminded of Trigun. Shortly afterwards, you’ll probably be thinking of Cowboy Bebop as well (it doesn‘t help that Van looks a lot like Spike - the villain in episode 2 looks kind of like Jet as well). TrigunXBebopXBigO would arguably be a more accurate name for the show. That would be kind of stupid, though. GunXSword is a whole lot of fun, actually. Sure, its pretty darn silly, but that doesn’t make it any the less entertaining. The characters are pretty entertaining, though Van has more than a few character quirks, and Wendy does come across as a bit useless at times (well, at least she tries…). The stories aren’t particularly anything new but are at least done in an imaginative and entertaining fashion - there is a considerable amount of tongue embedded in the productions staffs collective cheeks here. I mean, villains who use their facial hair as a weapon? AWESOME. Speaking of weapons, the action scenes are really well done. I really like the dynamic, almost elastic movements Van makes whilst he is fighting, and at least looks like they’ve put some kind of effort into choreography. The animation is pretty good - character movement is captured really well, but its just a little too far on the side of digital-shiny for my liking - everything is a touch too glossy. The music is pretty good - nothing amazing, but it fits whats going on. The instrumental OP reminds me of some of the battle music from Macross though. Basically, this was a whole crapload of fun, simply a really entertaining way to kill a couple of hours. Will it leave any kind of lasting impression? From this one volume I’d guess probably not, but I am rather looking forward to seeing more. Special mention has to be made to the DVD extra, GunXSword-san, in which a psychotic Wendy hand-puppet shoots her poor turtle a lot in an incredibly bloody fashion, no doubt a play on the fact that Wendy not only never actually shoot her gun in the show, but only actually has one bullet for the thing…

Kamichu! DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Wed, 31 May 2006 21:45:02 +0000

One day, Yurie nonchalantly tells her best friend that she has become a god. A God of what, exactly, she has no idea, but nonetheless a God. With her new found divinity, Yurie finds herself dealing with Typhoons of her own causing, errant shrine gods, missing cats, mass poverty and Martians. Yes, Martians. If I was to use one word to describe Kamichu, it would undoubtedly be “Pleasant” - its overwhelmingly so. Its all very sweet, but not overtly saccharine about it. The key point to the writing seems to be “refreshing” - its all very uplifting. I hear Miyazaki mentioned a lot in relation to the style of the series - I don‘t think that’s a particularly accurate comparison, but Kikis Delivery Service at least is a pretty good touching point. Kamichu has a very similar feel to most elements of it, from the atmosphere to the sense of nostalgia (though not immediately obvious, Kamichu is set in the 80‘s). The characters are all very likable - Yurie is a little on the timid side, but she is at least relatively proactive about her, errr, deityism and doesn’t come across as being entirely useless. There are loads of little details in the writing which just make me smile, like in the second episode when Yurie interrupts a discussion between the Gods of now-obsolete video formats bemoaning their lack-of or fading popularity. The animation for Kamichu really deserves a mention - the background work in particular is stunning, but there isn’t anything to complain about here. Sure, I’ve seen a few shots with slightly more fluid animation, but TV productions which manage to maintain this kind of quality and detail without wobbling off-model or having other unsightly issues I can count on one hand. There is an impressively solid sense of design what comes across when you start paying attention to all the small gods littering the streets. I don’t really have all that much to day about the minutia of Kamichu, to be honest. I’m not planning on posting about any future volumes, and I’m only really posting about this one because I want to talk about the packaging. Unlike certain recent releases from other R1 labels, its really rather nice. The volume 1+box version comes with a really nice box - aside from the suitably sturdy box, there is also a slip-case which encloses the entire box. Its made of thin card coated with a layer of, err, something providing it with a nice, woodlike texture which also making it fairly sturdy in itself. In terms of in box extras, you get three double sided pencil boards and a mini-wallscroll thing… Now, this is what I wanted to mention - exactly how many people buying this are actually doing to do something with that wallscroll? I don’t know about those reading this, but for me that’s gone well past the boundary between moe and the downright creepy. Seriously, I’m the kind of person who has anime figures pretty much everywhere I have standing room for them, but I couldn’t display something like that without people thinking incredibly dodgy things about me. There’s nothing particularly creepy about the show itself - indeed, they seem to avoid anything untoward (lord knows there were plenty of opportunities for sly panty shots) - so why Geneon felt the need to use that particular image is beyond me. So, that’s getting relegated to the bottom of a draw somewhere, never to be seen again.

Alter 1/6 Sakura Matou Swimsuit edition

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 19:21:36 +0000

Coming from Alter, the same company behind the legendary cross-eyed Saber, comes the first completed Sakura PVC outside of the Trading Figure and Gashapon series. Alter have definately scored a hit with this foxy swimsuit number, which nicely goes beside their previously released Rin figure. In comparison to the other girls from Fate/Stay Night, Sakura is rather buxom - I may think the character is kind of boring, but she certainly is pretty hot ^^; Her swimsuit is a little, well, smaller than those worn by the other Fate/Stay Night characters as well... Hiding those curves, no doubt to the distaste of some, is a lovely red towel wrapped around her waist. Of course, anyone who regularly buys figures will probably realise that there is no way in hell they would cover up Sakuras figure like that, and the towel is removable for all those who want to revel in Sakuras hot, curvy goodness. I think the facial sculpt is a good likeness - I'm not really a big enough Sakura fan to particularly care (or to be able to notice), and its not exactly the focal point on this figure anyway. With the Rin figure, for those wanting a comparison. So, time to talk about possible issues. There aren't many, actually. The figure is sturdily attached to the stand with two screws and a small stub, so falling off isn't likely. It feels solid enough and reasonably weighted, so I don't think leaning is going to cause a problem over time. On the minor side, removing and adding the towel has a habit of leaving red marks on the legs, and whilst these are removable it does take a little effort to do so. Slightly more serious, there are some noticable seams along the legs. On mine its more noticable on one side than the other - the side which is mostly covered by the towel when attached, coincidently - but both are noticable up close under certainly lighting conditions. Its not uncommon of figures of this size, and its not a deal breaker for me, but others milage may vary.

Alter 1/8 Takamachi Nanoha

DiGiKerot — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 14:44:20 +0000

Based on the updated battle costume from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's, this Nanoha figure hails from Alter, whose recent record (aside from that Saber figure I feel the need to repeatably bring up) has been excellent. My feelings towards getting thi figure have been somewhat odd - whilst being a huge Akiyuki Shinbo fan, I'm not really all that into Nanoha aside from the awesome pyrotechnics, and then there is the fact that Nanoha is pretty much the most uninteresting character in her own series. Sure, you have to love Nanohas beat-down first, questions later attitude, cool one-liners and general attitude, but that doesn't mean the character has any particular depth to her - when it comes down to it, she is just there as a catalyst for growth in the more interesting characters in the series. I'm digressing too much here - since I starting looking at the pre-release images figures, something has just really struck me as being off about this figure. Now that I've got my hands on it, it looks better than I was expecting. Its pretty nice, though oddly plain for some reason. Casting a purely technically view over it, there isn't anything particularly wrong with it. The pose is good, with some nice, skirt blowing action. There isn't anything wrong with the scuplt of paint quality - all the lines are painted nice and cleanly with a decent level of shading, and the character is as good a likeness as you can expect from a figure. The figure attaches to the stand via two pins in each foot. I'd have preferred to have had one pin in each foot replaced with a screw, but the elevated footing probably would have made that tricky from a manufacturing point of view. The fit is really tight, though, so I don’t think you have to worry about if falling out of the stand once its been set in it (unlike Konamis recent Evangeline figure). Raging/Raising Heart Excelion is well rendered - The gem in the center is nice and shiney. The face is a good likeness for the character. The facial expression is a little on the flat side - it doesn't really match with the pose very well. It would have looked better if she was shouting or had a slightly more aggressive look to her. The Flier Fins have to be attached. The fit into the rest of the boots isn't great - you can see where its jutting out here. I can't get them to fit any better without going in and starting to trim things down. Taking a critical look at the figure, I think I know what gives it the odd vibe I seem to get from it - it’s the hair. The skirt from Nanohas battle costume is blowing around, as if she is subject to a strong wind or rapid downward movement. Now, if something is strong enough to move around that no doubt heavy skirt, surely her pigtails wouldn’t be dangling straight down like that? It looks like her hair is wired down or subject to a different degree of gravity to the rest of the character. Basically, it just looks kind of odd. Other than that and the facial expression, I don't think there is anything wrong with this figure. The weight distribution seems such that leaning probably won’t occur. The most noticeable seems are along the backs of the legs where you probably won’t notice them so clearly. They are slightly visible along the front - on mine, its most noticeable from the front leg hidden under the skirt - its pretty much invisible on the other leg. On closer inspection there are rather less noticeable seems on the arms (you’ll need to look up close to spot them), but the skirt, wear it would be really obvious, is mercifully free from any. Ultimately, I guess it comes down to how big a Nanoha fan you are as to how much value you place on the figure. Its nice enough, but its not really something I’d recommend to those who aren’t Nanoha fan boys.

Weekly Wafflage: Random selection

DiGiKerot — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:00:39 +0000

Did I say last week was a bit of a boring week for anime news? I take it back, this week was even worse. Really, it makes it hard to try and write something of little interested to anyone every week when they insist on not doing anything worth talking about. What makes this even worse is that there seems to have been a complete lack of the usual anime blogging meme-isms going on, so jumping on the bandwagon isn’t an option either. I suppose the closest thing we have had this week is some fallout on this Suzumiya Haruhi thing - after all the hype and people raving about it being the bestest thing in the world ever back at the beginning of the season, some people have finally gotten fed up with the chronological jumping and the like. But that’s only some people, and since I’ve never had much interest in the series in the first place I’m not really is much of a position to moan about that anyway. Ho-hum. I guess you'll have to excuse me for getting a little random today. Actually, I suppose Animenano is worth a mention if you aren’t already aware of it. I’m up there already, so go, register, list your blogs and subscribe to mine just to inflate my ego. Or you could just stick to Animebloggers antenna (though I think the signal:noise ratio is getting a little bad at the moment - there are even what look like a couple of person blogs on there ^^;) or Blogsuki (I don't really use it - the coverage isn't wide enough). Choice is always a good thing, I suppose - Nano is nice because it allows you to customise your own blog list and feed, but conversely that does mean you reduce the chance of stumbling across newer blogs which may be of interest. Rumour has it that, starting in October when Blood+ finishes, we’ll be seeing a new show by the name of Lelouch. What makes this vaguely interesting is that its apparently going to be SUNRISExCLAMPxGoro Taniguchi (you know, director of Planetes, GunxSword and Infinite Ryvius (really must watch the rest of that ^^;)). This isn’t confirmed yet - apparently it’s going to be the big news in this months Newtype JP (due this week). If it turns out to be true, that’s pretty cool news - I like Clamp and Taniguchi, so I should like this. New licensing news amounts to ADV grabbing Comic Party Revolution, which doesn’t excite me in the slightest. I did actually enjoy the original series of Comic Party, but to be perfectly honest this doesn’t really interest me anymore - Genshiken did the whole fan boy thing so much better. Okay, so maybe I’d better move away from talking about anime for the rest of the post - I just don’t have anything to say. All two long term readers may remember way back in the mists of time I talked about the PS2 Gunslinger Girl games. These games, published by Marvellous Entertainment and distributed along with DVDs of the anime series, were developed by Rideon. The Gunslinger Girl games were prime (and unusually playable) examples of Japanese budget game software. Probably the most famous budget game publisher is D3 Publisher, with their Simple 2000 series, though they also did the generally awful early PS2 Sega Ages titles. The Simple 2000 series is rather interesting eclectic, with just about the only common factors being the price (around 2000 yen, duh) and the fact that the titles have the word “THE” at the beginning of the title. Other than that, the series now runs at over 100 titles, ranging from clean ports of PC eroge to generic sports titles to blatant clones of famous games to games which make even that Negima title look kind of clean. Huzzah for feeble excuses for some HiMM screengrabs! Their best known series are the actually good Earth Defence Force series, and a series involving a bikini-clad girl sporting a cowboy hat and a sword battling zombies (why this is popular, I have absolutely no idea…). Generally, though, they tend to be rather crappy. I have no idea if any of this stuff gets published in the US, but there is a budget publisher over here releasing some of the titles. Thus far I’ve resisted buying any of the titles, either import or otherwise, even now that the UK releases are getting uber-cheap. HiMM is so not my usual thing, but I found it hilarious. I guess its mostly Yoshitakas refreshing blatantness. Now, however, I have my first pre-order down for one of them. Getting back to where I started, one of the next lot of Simple games is being developed by Rideon, and it looks like a good one. Going by the name of “THE メイド服と機関銃”, or THE Maid clothes and Machineguns, the general theme is probably rather obvious. Yup - you play a maid, with a machine gun. It kind of reminds me a little of the Hotel stage in the second Gunslinger Girl game, but it’s all looking rather more over the top and fun than that title was. The gameplay does look like it will be rather more complex, so I’m just hoping that they don’t throw out playability along with the simplicity. See, those screengrabs were actually relevant! Who'da thunk it? Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be talking about it again after its release, which is unfortunately still a couple of months off (its series number hasn’t even been decided yet!).

My-ZHiME DVD4&5

DiGiKerot — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 18:27:06 +0000

I’ve only really had a cursory glance through the actual episodes, but I’ve not spotted any obvious differences between the broadcast and DVD versions. As for the omake, I’m sure that, once again, most who care have seen them already. I don’t really have much to say on them - Shiho just makes me laugh, and Maya is just plain awesome. it’s a shame Maya got pretty much sod all screen time in the series - hopefully she’ll turn up in the OAV series as well. The first pressing bonuses aren’t anything particularly spectacular - Vol 4 comes with a sticker set whose art you may recognise as being from the posters hanging in Backstage. Vol 5 comes with a Sky Blue Sapphire ‘phone strap. Lovely.

Battle Moon Wars 2nd Act

DiGiKerot — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 21:08:45 +0000

Doujin circle Werk released the trial version of the second act of their Super Robot Wars inspired, Type Moon themed SRPG Battle Moon Wars earlier in the week.Whilst things play more or less the same, there are a few changes - most noticeably the menus. Rather than the text based menus of the previous game, they’ve switched things to use icons. This makes things a little more friendly for the non-literate, but it does end up making things rather more sluggish to play around. Speaking of making things rather more sluggish, the characters walk cycles are better animated this time around at the expense of speed. As far as the plot goes here, it leans heavily on the Fate/Stay Night side - Shirou, Sakura and Rider are attacked by Shiki from Tsukihime (the evil one, that is). Midway through Shiki summons reinforcements to attack Sakura, and whilst Rider and Karen (from F/HA) turn up in time to save the day, they don’t turn up quickly enough to prevent Shiki from making off with Rider, who had agreed to become Shikis servant in exchange for him not hurting Sakura (like he was really going to keep that promise!) And that’s about it, really. The release of the full version is set for 13/08/06, and I’m looking forward to spending some more time with it. Karen attacks with her scarf (reminds me of Rose from Street Fighter Alpha), though personally I think Sakura probably has the best battle animation (she is also rather, errr, wobbly ^^;)

Weekly Wafflage: Whole lotta nothing

DiGiKerot — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 12:51:24 +0000

As is typical in life, the one week where I actually have something to talk about it the week where circumstances prevent me from actually getting around to putting in the necessary work. Ho-hum, I guess it’ll keep to next week. I mentioned it briefly last week, but as expected Lelouch was confirmed this week. Unsurprisingly it’s the usual CLAMP-style character design work, but I’m actually rather more excited to hear that Overman Kings Gainers Akiman is doing the mechanical design. I’m not expecting anything quite as mad or original as we got there, but its still pretty darn cool. To a certain degree I’m actually more curious about Gonzos plans to remake Dario Argentos movie Suspiria. Admittedly I’ve never actually seen Suspiria, but the brother is an Argento fan and therefore I know of it. Gonzo seem to be going a bit mad with the remakes and reimagining in recents years, with the likes of Samurai 7 and Gankutsuo - hopefully this one will turn out more like the latter. Looking at the directors previous works, I’d give it a moderate chance of being half-decent. Oh well, that’s it for today methinks. I’m off to do more interesting things.

Top wo Nerae! Gunbuster!

DiGiKerot — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:17:44 +0000

I’m not really sure when I first saw Gunbuster - I think it was probably 1995, as by the time I‘d read about Evangelion being in production I was already familiar with Gainax. It seem like eons ago now. Back in those days I was relatively new to all this anime stuff, and if I saw a couple of new episodes of something in a month than I’d have been lucky. In some ways, having to rely on re-watching everything on VHS to death was way more fan boyish than these days, given I treat the stuff in a far more disposable manner given how easy it is to acquire - not that it ultimately makes that much difference, as I still enjoy the stuff as much now as I did back then. Anyway, it was pretty much love at first sight. Well, second sight anyway - the first episode fell kind of flat with me. Looking back, its probably not hard to see why that was the case - being new to anime meant half the point completely went over my head. I pretty much had the whole thing on endless loop for a few days, and rewatched it frequently up until the point where I stopped using my VHS player at the end of the 90’s (god, even that seems so long ago now!). With Top wo Nerae! 2 wrapping up in Japan soon, and the announcement of a 90minute digest movie version to be release alongside a Top!2 digest movie, it seemed like a good time to revisit the show. Looking back, Gunbuster is as good a show as its always been. What Gunbuster is, however, is really, really bizarre. People moan about Top!2 being odd, but I have to wonder how many of those people have rewatched the original recently. I’m sure some have, and have some perfectly valid arguments for not liking the sequel, but that doesn’t stop the fact the original is just as bizarre. Its somewhat rather eclectic in terms to style and mood, starting off modelled around being a parody of 70’s tennis series Ace wo Nerae using mecha in place of tennis, before moving on to more broadly parodying the mecha genre - whilst introducing a genuinely interesting and thoughtful SF plot and keeping things completely deadpan! Genius! I’m now going to gush fan boyishly at length - be warned that after this point I’m going to be spoilerising the hell out of the show, so if you actually intend to watch the show at some point you should proceed at your own risk. I’ll probably touch on Top!2 in a few places as well. You have been warned. Takaya Noriko is proud of her papa. He is a legendary Admiral in the space force, and captain of the Luxion, the space forces flagship. Noriko dreams of becoming a space pilot so she can travel the stars with her father. On December 20th, 2015, Noriko receives the news that her father has died when his ship was attacked by cosmic monsters. Unable to believe he is actually dead, Noriko applies for the Space Force High School in Okinawa in order to become a space pilot and head out to the stars! Cue opening credits! Noriko, coincidently, is from Osaka. Its probably a reference to the fact that animation studio Gainax originally hail from that part of the world. The first scene after the opening credits, a pan across the school yard where the pilots train in their RX Trainers, makes me laugh. Back when I first saw this, it didn’t strike me as odd, but whilst I can vaguely understand the robot pyramid due to the RXs balancing system (though it‘ll be on automatic), I’m really not sure what push and sit-ups will actually achieve in a giant robot - its not as if they have muscles to train or anything. I’m sure that silliness is entirely intentional of course, but it does set the tone for the rest of the episode. Noriko is spending her time sitting staring out the window when her friend Kimiko (who is the same age as Noriko - remember this, its important later!) interrupts her. Noriko is staring with admiration at “One-sama”, the Queen of Roses Amano Kasumi. Amano is the most awesome pilot in the school, respected by everyone. Noriko doubts she’ll ever be as awesome, because after a month of training she still sucks. So, Kimiko and Noriko head out to do some training. Her awesomeness at skipping makes Kimiko question why Noriko sucks so much as a machine pilot - apparently Noriko lacks the coordination required to do more than one thing at once, and all those monitors just confuse her. Noriko is also being picked on by the older students, who believe she is only at the school because of her fathers reputation. Kasumi turns up to smack-talk some respect into them, though. Its possibly hard to appreciate these days, but this scene is the first instance of what was for many years a stock anime term - the Gainax Bounce - Gainax Bounce being the realistic portrayal of bouncing boobs. The term doesn’t tend to be in common usage these days though, probably because the bounce has become so common in anime. Ho-hum. I’m not really sure those are the most appropriate clothes for piloting robots either... Anyway, Noriko and Kasumi have a bit of a chat, with Noriko kind of putting her foot in it when she suggests that Kasumi must be a genius or something (Umm, is anyone reminded of early Stellvia yet, by the way?). Kasumi insists that its all down to hard work, and talks about how much she sucked at first. She also gives Noriko one of the sweatbands she has wrapped around her wrist to tie her hair back with. You can bet we’ll be seeing that again... So, the whole school get together in their RX Trainers to meet the new Coach - amusingly called Koichiro Ota (think about the pronunciation). The coach promptly switches off the balancing unit off on all the machines, causing everyone other than Kasumi to be unstable, and Noriko to almost fall over - Noriko ends up having to do all the exercises on foot! In extreme Gainax fashion, Coach is actually riding around on a moped thing, like Lark from Top!2 or Haruko from FLCL. Whats amusing is in the far pan out of the school ground, you can see Coach in the middle of the teacher lineup perched on his moped ^^; The next day the exhausted Noriko is woken up by a telephone call - apparently she has been chosen as one of the two Japanese candidates for the all new Top Squadron, the most awesome warriors in space! SHOCKU! Also notice the poster on the back wall - more on that later. It doesn’t sit very well with the other students, or Kasumi, who believes that upperclassman Kashiwara would be a better choice. The other students step up their bullying causing Noriko to break down and ask Coach to let her quit, but the Coach informs her of what separates her from the awesome Kasumi - GUTS and PASSION and CHEESY OVERMELODRAMIC MUSIC! How, exactly, running up stairs wearing metal clogs makes you a better mecha pilot is beyond me. The cheese value of this whole scene just makes me laugh ^^; So, Noriko decides to work hard to be awesome, cue a montage! Remember, even Rocky had a montage! You have to respect Coach for taking a job where he gets to watch girls in skimpy clothing jumping up and down. Anyway, after a few minutes of more questionable mecha training exercises, Noriko is showing improvement (and, yes Team America fans, it does fade out at the end...) Kashiwara isn’t impressed, however, and decides to take matters into her own hands and prove her awesomeness by pounding Noriko to a pulp in a mecha battle, which she pretty much does - I particularly like the little bitchslaps she does. In the end, Noriko decides it’s the monitors fault for putting her off, so she switches them off before kicking some arse. Seen any Top!2? Recognise that finishing move? Its actually the same Lightning Kick move Nono uses at the end of the first episode. The comparison to Stellvia I made earlier probably makes rather more sense now as well - Shima is very much in the same ilk as Noriko is. So, the victorious Noriko and Kasumi are off to space! Aim for the Top, Ya’all! After the silliness of the first episode, the second starts on something rather more sober - the last minutes of the Luxion. Coach Ota was actually the last one to evacuate, having been ordered to by Admiral Takaya. The last thing we see is the Admiral watches a video letter of Noriko asking him to come home for her birthday over and over again as the ship suffers another blow... So, post credits we are introduced to Russian pilot Jung Freud, Girl Genius and lival to Kasumi. During their first space training exercise, Jung Freud turns up to challenge Kasumi to a battle. The battle itself turns out to be rather evenly matched, but they end up taking the battle into the construction site of the Exelion, Earths new flagship. A quick note of the pilot costumes - theres a wee change here, in that the sleeves are longer and they now how a collar which is pulled up over the face. Why, exactly? No idea - I suppose it could be some kind of filter, or maybe its just to make them look like some kind of space ninja. Actually, I reckon its just so they can pull it down every time they need to say something particularly dramatic... Yup. After a bunch of silly dialogue (“I can see why they call you the Queen of Roses!“, “Watch out, Roses have thorns!“, etc, etc), the battle ends when they spot the remains of a space monster - Noriko understandably freaks at the site of one of the creatures that killed her father, and they are caught by security and given a firm telling off. You aren’t getting any pictures of the next scene - it’s the somewhat infamous onsen scene, full of nekkidness and Jung Freud complaining that, unlike the low gravity moon, the gravity on the space station causes her boobs to say and give her backaches. This scene was actually cut on the UK VHS release (and the awful Kiseki DVD release) - the dailogue is all there, but they looped some of the video footage over to hide the nudity. Blame compulsory video certification, as it’ll have been done to keep the age rating down to something they could shift the series at. They all make friends anyway, and it turns out that Noriko and Jung Freuds birthday are one and the same (we also get the first hints that something is going on between Kasumi and Coach). When he was younger, Norikos father also came home for her birthday, but obviously he'll not turn up this year... Or will he? An object is spotted moving at high speed, and Noriko and Kasumi are sent to investigate, introducing us to one of the most important elements of the series - Time Dilation. Basically speaking, during warp and high-speed space travel the speed of the passage of time varies - whilst the traveller may only experience an hour of travel, many months may have passed in the outside world. Upon returning from this mission, if all goes to schedule it’ll actually be the day before Norikos birthday! Things don’t go to schedule, though, as it turns out the object is the Luxion! Set face masks to Down! Noriko freaks out and boards the ship, where only two days have passed since her fathers death, and makes her way towards the bridge. Coach is forced to try and stop her in a pimp’n black RX. Things end in a particularly striking moment when Noriko opens up the bridge only to discover its completely gone. Its shows the interesting duality of Gunbuster (and how awesome Hideaki Anno actually is) - it’s a really poignant moment where it finally sinks in that Norikos father is actually dead. Upon returning back to the space station (and just to make sure you get the time dilation thing), the Exelion is actually completed and ready to launch, and Noriko has missed her birthday. Oops. Just in case things where getting too heavy, Episode 3 begins in a really bizarre fashion - it’s a recap of the story so far (apparently the original Japanese release was at two episodes a volume, so this is where it picked up after the first volume), but its not really much of a recap - its actually a text scroll of a fairly complicated physics discussion whilst Coach and Kasumi sing… The episode starts a short while after the launch of the Exelion, with Noriko talking about how space travel isn’t quite as she expected. Whilst in Warp, its apparently popular to tell ghost stories, and since they are supposed to be in lockdown its popular to send people on tests of courage to the pilots hanger. Poor Noriko draws the short straw, and not wanting to be seen as a wuss she goes along with it - she needs to go tie a blue ribbon in front of her RX. She completely freaks when she bumps into a Male student doing much the same, but then both of them are caught by Coach and sentenced to laser lens cleaning! They henceforth start an odd relationship, with the well humoured if unromantic guy hitting on Noriko, who moans at his treatment by stating that she and Kasumi are the Top Group, and an un-partnered pilot like him wouldn’t understand it. Noriko has spoken too soon, though, as she overhears Kasumi telling Coach that Noriko isn’t ready for space combat, and she wants to disband their partnership. Meanwhile, the Admiral of the fleet makes the mistake of being nostalgic over the nearby sun Leaf 64, as it turns out that its been used as a nest of the cosmic monsters! Yup, they’ll be going into battle soon. Upon hearing that Noriko has been dumped by Kasumi, Mr Romantic Interest offers himself as Norikos new partner, and actually introduces himself as Toren Smith. For those who don’t follow the US scene, Toren Smith is actually named after manga translator and founder of Studio Proteus (who translated the likes of Appleseed and GitS for Dark Horse). So, onto the battle and one of the scenes which makes Gunbuster the legend it is. You’ll be expecting excitement and tension, right? Well, you get a whole load of tension, but not much excitement. Its pretty much all seen from the point of view of Noriko in her cockpit, but she isn’t quick enough to respond to any of the attacking monsters, with them all zooming past her as if realising she is no threat at all. When Noriko pulls down her mask, you can tell something serious is happening... Yup, she looses contact with Smith. In the end, Noriko ends up returning to the Excelion without having even fired off a single round, and with Smith nowhere to be seen. Noriko is understandably completely traumatised and incredibly depressed, and tearfully begs Coach for extra training so the same won’t happen in the future. But, what is that in the background? Given that we’ve only known Smith for this one episode it sounds kind of odd to say it, but the end of this episode is really, really heartbreaking. Seriously, the first time I saw the show it left me completely teary eyed and depressed - manly tears of respect for the passing of an awesome bloke of course. Well, maybe not - as cool as Smith was, its really Noriko you are sad for. Its hard to say what makes this scene, really, like the end of episode 2, I guess its just really masterfully done. Moving onto Episode 4, we finally get some suggestion of what the cosmic monsters are - they are the universes immune system, and their target is the eradication of the human race! Meanwhile, a rather melancholic Noriko is blowing off all her friends to secretly take lessons with the Coach, piloting a new model of training machine. Jung gets wind of this, though, and bitter that Noriko seems to have been chosen to pilot their new weapon system, she challenges Noriko to a battle in Space. Noriko can’t go through with it, though - the moment they get through the airlock she panics, unable to get over the trauma of Smiths death in the previous episode. Kasumi slaps Jung for freaking out Noriko, but Jung speaks sense - the next time Noriko goes out into space, she will die, and she decides to tell Coach as much. As if Coach wasn’t dude enough, he has somehow managed to convince them to install a full, Japanese style room to the Excelion, complete with sliding paper door, tatami mats and everything. I suspect this is just so that they can have one of those scenes where the wizened old commander plays Go or some other tile-based game whilst ignoring the advice of their subordinates you get in all those military series. Anyway, when Kasumi brings up the fact that Noriko is getting special training when the new weapon is modelled around her, Coach just tells her that it needs two pilots and he has faith in Noriko. Nearing Earth, the Excelion decides to take radical manoeuvres to avoid show the Cosmic Monsters where earth is, but unfortunately the monsters break the laws of Physics and follow them anyway (as displayed by the destruction of the spot where Smith formally introduced himself of Noriko ;_;). With the location of Earth known, they have to wipe out the largest alien force yet! Noriko ends up being grounded so that Linda, Jungs partner, can use her RX since Lindas is damaged. Poor Linda should have known better than to take a cursed RX, though, as like most of the top squadron she meets a painful death. Faced with the incredibly melancholy of all those familiar landmarks on the Excelion being destroyed, Noriko resolves herself on the BLUE RIBBON OF SMITHNESS to be AWESOME with BURNING PASSION, and scrambles the incomplete super weapon GUNBUSTER and proceeds to kick monster ass. She struggles against the mother ship, though, due to its extreme speed. She concludes the only way to win would be to let it ram her then blast it at point blank range, and Noriko dies in a huge explosion, taking it with her. Only kidding, Noriko still lives to see episode 5, and the Gunbuster is still in one piece(-ish). So, everyone of importance (other than Smith, of course - Linda doesn’t count, as she was never important) returns to Earth safely, and Noriko finally graduates from Highschool. Noriko thinks she is lucky to be graduating at 17, but infact she is now technically 27 since due to the effects of time dilation ten years have passed on Earth! Noriko remarks that she’s old enough to be married with children, just when a woman with child walks past… A woman who is Kimiko! Yup, Kimiko is 27 and has a 3 year old child, Takami (that’s 3 - remember that!) How melancholic, eh? Noriko has only been away for a few months, and the rest of the world has moved on beyond her comprehension. Even former rival Kashiwara has become the new Coach at her old school! It seems that Earth are building a new space craft, the Eltrium, rumoured to be an earth evacuation ship. Due to the low chances of a normal citizen getting a seat aboard, Kimiko asks Noriko if she could possibly pull some strings to get Takami a seat aboard. So, Noriko is lounging around her room (with plenty of boobies) all depressed when she is summoned to see Coach. Remember I pointed out that poster back in Episode 1? This is where it becomes obvious what I was talking about - Noriko is an Otaku, her room decorated with Ghibli and Yamato posters ^^; Its never really specifically mentioned in the show itself, but the SD Science Lesson featurettes (which explain the science behind the show) bring it up when Noriko mentions the scale pictures look like something from Ultraman. Noriko turns up at school to see Coach and Kasumi in the middle of a row. Whats more, the moment Kasumi disappears coach bends over and coughs up blood. In the most hilariously overdone dramatic scene ever (you really need to see it to appreciate how awesome it is) Coach tells Noriko he’ll kill her if he tells Kasumi, before spouting (in an insanely deadpan fashion) how separately Noriko and Kasumi BURN with KICKASSNESS, but together they are an INFERNO OF AWESOMETACULARNESS! Meanwhile, the biggest cosmic monster fleet to date is spotted - over 100 million strong! When all hope seems lost, Coach bursts in in his dressing gown to give his last-ditch plan - use the Excelions engine to create a small Blackhole to suck them in! It seems insane, but it’s the only option. Noriko and Kasumi are, of course, chosen to pilot the Gunbuster (split into Buster Machines 1&2) to escort the Excelion. Noriko decides to tell Kasumi about Coach being ill - Kasumi already knows. It turns out that Coach has radiation sickness, and he may not survive the six months the mission will take! Kasumi is rather distraught, because as previously hinted at she is in love with the Coach. No time for that, though, as the Buster Machines are launched for combat! Kasumi tries to bail at the last minute, though, seeing the days of earth time ticking by in mere seconds. Noriko, however, starts spouting the usual crap about LOVE and COURAGE and how the Gunbuster BURNS with the soul of the Coach! Cue the cheesy music, and its Gattai time! The Gunbuster proceeds to maul the cosmic monsters with an amazing array of awesome if silly weapons, my favourites being the Homing Laser, which change direction mid flight to hit their targtet, and the Buster Shield, a giant cape which reflects laser fire! So, they create their black hole, kill everything and return to Earth, where Coach isn’t quite dead yet. For those who have been watching Top!2, this is the source of the black hole Excelio seen in the fifth episode. One more episode to go! A note about episode 6 - Despite hailing from the late 1980s, they actually animated this whole episode in 16:9 black and white. Apparently it’s a homage to old Japanese war movies, of which Hideaki Anno is famously fond of. Those large, block fonts - also seen in Evangelion - stem from there as well. Anyway, its now 2048, fifteen years after the end of the previous episode. Kasumi stayed on Earth and married the Coach, whilst become the Okinawa schools coach herself. Kimikos daughter, Takami, is one of her students, and is actually 18 now! The Earth, seriously damaged by the after effects of the Excelion black hole, have constructed a new weapon, Buster Machine 3, the Black Hole Bomb - a weapon capable of making a huge black hole powered by a hyper compressed Jupiter! Kasumi has agreed to be the pilot in order to be able to once again meet her. I have to wonder about the costume Kasumi is wearing here - it must surely be based on some old super robot costume? Anyway, the Her she wants to meet is, of course, Noriko. Whilst 15 years may have passed on Earth, its only been six months for Noriko - basically, she is psychically 18 at the oldest - Takami is probably older than her! Noriko now understands the full melancholy what her Father probably felt every time he returned to earth. To rub it in, she gets a letter from the now elderly Kimiko, and a video from Takami (like the one her father had, only holographic!). Coincidently, in the scene where Noriko and Kasumi talk in Norikos room, if you look carefully enough you can see model kit sprues in the background - not to mention the more obvious stacks of manga ^^ So, they prepare for the final battle at the centre of the galaxy, where they plan to destroy all remaining cosmic monsters with the BHB. I find it amusing that, in this situation, Noriko and Jung find it most important to do their nails and hair! I’m glad to see that the protectors of the universe have their priorities straight! Being the final battle, Jung sees it only fit to give Kasumi the key to Buster Machine 2, and Jung takes a Sizzler Black (the crappier production model Gunbuster). Has anyone ever seen that episode of South Park where Kenny buys a PSP, and at the end they only talk about how awesome the unfolding battle is? That’s kind of what this next scene is like - we get little but stills and some, admittedly awesome looking, pencil sketch animations of the battle, finally ending a run down of casualties which ensures you know it’s the most epic battle in all history ever. Its another war movie homage, I’m afraid. When things kick back to normal, they are now in position to use the black hole bomb. The problem is, however, that its taken too much damage and the central mechanism no longer works. Noriko comes up with the only acceptable plan - to use Buster Machine 1s engine in place! This, by the way, is the same plan that Nono rejects at the end of Top!2 episode 5. Kasumi decides to join her, since they’d then have a chance to survive. Jung decides to also join them, despite the fact that the sucky Sizzler can’t take the pressure - she’d rather die then than have to live with the fact that time dilation means she’d probably never see them again, but Noriko suceeds into talking her out of suicide. Reaching the core of Jupiter, Noriko proceeds to rip off the chest of the Gunbuster - and her own shirt. There was a reference to this at the end of Top!2 episode 1. Anyway, she rips out the engine, creates the black hole and tearfully apologizes to Kimiko that she can never see her or Takami again. 12000 years later, Noriko and Kasumi reach Earth in the remains of Gunbuster. Earth is all dark - like everything was for nothing and everyone died anyway - when, suddenly, they see "okarinasai" (Welcome Home - though the 'イ' is backward - Russian touch, I guess) lit up in lights. The Noriko bids farefell to Gunbuster, music swells up, things switch to colour and any viewer with a soul celebrates the ending of one of the most awesome OAV series ever, which amply shows that you really don’t need 13 episodes to tell an awesome story. And that’s the lot. If you’ve read all this I’m rather impressed - it would probably be quicker to actually watch the show ^^;

Fate/Saturation Point

DiGiKerot — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:59:12 +0000

This may shock, even alarm, some readers, but this morning I was relieved of the desire to purchase every single Fate/Stay Night figure, an urge which has been with me for quite some time now... Its not exactly unexpected - its been building slowly for a while, with a multitude of little things building up. The 8,800yen figure Enterbrain are asking for their forthcoming Saber figure pushes the upper limit of what I'd spend on a single figure - I rarely go that high, let alone higher. Spending that much on a figure from the immensely variable Enterbrain figure (see Moc-cos, or tj_hans comments on his Kujian figures) is a definite no-no. Aside from that, we are just seeing far too much replication in regards to what we are getting - do we really need three different Casual Saber figures? What happened this morning is I saw that Clayz are releasing 1/6 swimsuit versions of Rin and Sakura. The thing is, compared to the Alter figures these ones simply look really mediocre. Perhaps overriding even the two previous issues, I'm simply running out of room for figures, display or otherwise. Given that, even discounting anything below 1/8, I have something like ten Fate figures currently on display, its getting a bit insane. That isn't to say I'm not going to buy any more Fate figures - I'll just be getting the ones which actually bring something new to the field. So, my pre-order list has been trimmed down to Alters Black Saber and Karen (its way better than the other version), Clays Swimsuit Saber (only because its the only swimsuit Saber figure), Goodsmiles 1/6 Casual Saber (because cross-eyed Saber doesn't count) and Kotobukiyas Ilya. I think that will do, to be quite honest.

Pinky Shinguji Sakura

DiGiKerot — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 17:10:37 +0000

The more Pinky figures I get, the less I have to say about them - really, in terms of quality they are all much the same (though I'm sure that Renge Murata fans will have a lot to say it that particular Pinky range ever hit's a deadline). Anyway, this one is a P:Chara for Sakura, the main heroine from one of my favourite gaming series Sakura Taisen. She has two costumes - her kimono and her battle costume, and her only proper accessory is a sheathed sword. The stand is a little oversized compared to compared to the other Pinky figures I have, and has a nice floral pattern to it. The fit on the hair is a little loose, and has a habit of falling out if you start playing with it. That’s about it, really. Just have a look at the pictures if you are really curious.

GSC 1/10 Tokiha Mai

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:01:56 +0000

Goodsmile company have just released this figure of Tokiha Mai, in the fairly unusual 1/10 scale. This figure is from the same sculptor as Goodsmiles previous Kuga Natsuki figure, but as it turns out these two don’t really stand too well next to each other... From a distance, and on its own, it actually looks OK. Admittedly, 1/10 is hardly a great scale - whilst its larger than a TF, they aren’t really large enough to contain a huge amount of detail. The overall sculpt looks OK, Its when you start to look more closely at the figure you start seeing issues with the molding. I have to wonder if the number of figures being released at the moment has resulted in some cut-rate practices or cheaper manufacturing facilities to be used recently, as this isn’t the first figure recently to have such problems, and the Natsuki figure doesn’t have many issues. I think the most noticeable problems are around the bust - if you take a look closely to either side, things start looking a bit messy. Basically, as I’ve pointed out above, there are two separate seems along each side of the body, with one going part way across her chest. It looks a lot more messy up close. The fingers haven’t come out very well either - they are a bit sharp and pointy, very claw like. I suppose if it was a Nao figure it would be OK, but here it just looks cheap. Now, that’s just the macro issues, but there is still one I haven’t mentioned which is rather obvious - the paintwork. Sure, the paintwork is clean - the problem is that its too clean. The paintwork is entirely flat - each area is only one colour, without any shading. I know some people like their figures like this, but the result is that it just looks really, really dull. I mean, the Natsuki figure wasn’t the most exciting figure in the world, but at least the paintwork was done pretty well - it wasn’t too excessive, but it still had a nice look to it. It probably looks more obvious using the cameras *gasp* flash Anyway, the end result is that it just looks kind of odd next to the Natsuki figure. The whole figure just seems like something which had a decent base sculpt but ended up going to hell in manufacturing. Ultimately, if you really need a Mai figure, go for Kotobukiyas 1/7 Scarf of Justice version - admittedly, the paintwork is probably on the other extreme to this one, but that figure looks good - not to mention it’s pretty much the same price...

Weekly Wafflage: Easily impressionable

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:40:49 +0000

I’ve been reading The Count of Monte Cristo recently. I’m sure it wouldn’t exactly take a genius to figure to that it’s a move somewhat inspired by watching Mahiro Maedas rather wonderful SF adaptation Gankutsuou. It’s a good read, actually - my tastes in older fiction tend to run rather negatively, so its something of a surprise to me. It does kind of get me wondering about anime affecting outside interests, resulting in the viewer being inspired to pick something up with the intention of trying to get a better understanding of the title or purely out of sheer geekiness. I’m not talking about reading manga, listening to j-pop or playing related video games (I suppose having taken up Guilty Gear after seeing Genshiken kind of counts), as these are things I consider within the sphere of the larger anime market - most shows airing these days are intending to sell merchandise of some kind, and geeking out on these kind of things is exactly what anime fans do as a matter of course. I’m really thinking of the more bizarre things, like taking up Go after watching Hikaru no Go, or watching some movie or reading some book just because its referenced in a series somewhere along the line, or maybe actually trying a couple of those recipes in Yakitate! Japan. Or more recent and specifically, exactly how many of you read (The fall of) Hyperion after it appeared in a certain recent show? ^^; For my part, I must admit to having read some Nietzsche. Nietzsche is the German philosopher whose works were raided to obtain the subtitles to the Xenosaga games. Did I learn anything which forwarded my understanding of Xenosaga? Not really, I just managed to give myself a headache - It was an interesting read, but I guess I’m not really the type to get the kind of thought processes required to understand that kind of thing. I have no doubt that the reasons people do these things are either for completely geekish reasons, or because the show in question makes it at least look interesting. I’m really just curious as to whether anyone has any amusing tales of excessive fanboyism derived from their anime viewing. Any stories of attempts to produce home-made melon pan are particularly welcome ^^ News came out this week that Bandai Japan are going to be releasing a Gear Fighter Dendoh Limited DVD box in November. I want this badly. I’ve been after the show for a while, but at just over 40000yen, its not exactly cheap. It is, however, cheaper than buying all the separates for the show. It kind of has me torn. I could probably afford it, but as to whether or not I should spend that much in one go out of what is largely Hisayuki fanboyism (well, I have to admit I kind of like Mitsuo Fukuda as well - there goes any credibility I might have had!) is rather questionable. I guess it’ll come down to what else is released later in the year. I do really want it though. I suppose I should actually watch some anime at some point - I’ve been a little slow on things recently. Nothing to do with a lack of interest, I just seem to be losing time into nothingness with alarming ease recently. Yeah, I'd definately be easier to justify if I could shake that backlog by then. Maybe I'll actually get around to watching that copy of Grave of the Fireflies I must have had for four years now... Oh, and I feel the need to point out the fact that the plural of anime is anime - animes is not a word!

Rack inspector required - Enquire within

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:34:03 +0000

In what, in hindsight, isn’t an exactly surprising move, venerable anime blogger and toy junkie Bakaboobie has decided to call it a day - not just to the blogging, but to anime itself. Whilst I have to admit I doubt the ability to any long-term fan boy to completely remove themselves from the stuff given how it tends to encroach so much on ones listening and reading habits (can BB really stand not knowing whats going on in Bleach? Only time will tell…), it is somewhat of a sad day for me as he is not only one of my few regular commenters, but also the first person to have linked me oh-so-long ago. Anyway, I wish BB the best of luck in his future endeavours as a regular, non-otaku person. Really, though, I can understand the whole disenchantment thing - theres nothing quite like a crushing disappointment to make you re-evaluate your priorities, and I have to admit that I don’t exactly watch that much anime these days (five episodes a week is good going for me at the moment). On the other hand, I do at least tend to enjoy most of what I do actually get around to watching, and I’m far from done with the whole anime thing - I get far too much amusement out of it. What I will probably be doing is toning down my viewing habits somewhat after my current batch of shows - there are other things I want to achieve with my time, so I really need to cut down on the amount of time I devote to anime and related fandom. Speaking of which updates may be even thinner on the ground here for a couple of weeks depending on how a personal project of mine goes - if I manage to keep interest going past this week, you’ll probably hear more at a later date. Probably.

Weekly Wafflage: Busy, busy, busy

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:49:07 +0000

Unfortunately, its not with anything particularly productive or even particularly anime related. Indeed, I’ve been suckered by Nintendos European release of the DS Lite and ended up buying one (not that I didn’t have a regular DS already), and have thus spent most of the weekend playing that pile of DS and GBA games I’ve had for ages and not actually looked at. I’m not commenting on Wind. Really, despite being far more tolerant of Visual Novels than some, I have little interest in a game I’d only heard of due to Makoto Shinkai having dome some released animation or something. I suppose if it was something I was interested in, I’d probably be more opinionated on the matter (though as the materialistic type, I’d probably veer on the anti-piracy side as long as it didn’t involve breaking things). Given it all seems to have stemmed from some huge misunderstanding, blown out of proportion in typical interweb fashion, its not worth moaning about right now. I will be keeping an eye on where its going, though, as its likely to affect the future of that whole niche of fandom. In the meantime, people should just forget about it and grab a copy of Ever 17 instead - it’d be nice if Hirameki actually broke even on that in the long run, however unlikely that may be, and its probably a far better game anyway. Tripeman scares me. Seriously, the kind of thought process which results in something like that frightens me. I mean, he claims it to be manly but it doesn’t even has a moustache or beard, and those cherry red lips? Lipstick is so girly...

The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru Episode 00 DVD

DiGiKerot — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:18:38 +0000

AKA The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi Episode H11/K1/Y1. Yes, that’s Y1 - for some strange reason, they’ve decided to confuse the continuity even more by having Yuki re-dub the next episode preview (which amounts to about “Next Time. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, Part 1. Watch” - blunt as ever ^^;). Presently its thought that the rest of the DVD release is going to have the episodes in chronological (Haruhi) ordering, but since we’ve already had H11 everything up to episode 12 is shift along one place, hence Yuki-ordering. Confusing, eh? Well, that assumes that they’ll redub the other episode previews in a similar fashion. I don’t think they’ll keep the broadcast ones now that they’ve mucked around with things already, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a different character doing each one, and simply leave out the episode number (I’ll remind you that the “Part 1” was actually part of the episode title, not the numbering). Since everyone and their dog has probably already seen this long, long ago, I’ll forgo actually talking about the show and just talk about the DVD release. I grabbed the LE version rather than the regular one, of course, and I have to wonder about LE cover… Okay, so you have Mikuru in a frog costume, that’s fair enough. I do think its kind of odd that on sleeve of the costume ends in a frog hand whilst the other doesn’t (there’s nothing to suggest it is a glove, either), but what I really want to know it… Whats with the lemon? That just seems completely random. Nope, I don’t gets it at all. The regular edition of the DVD has a different cover - one rather more appropriate for a battle waitress extravaganza - which is only supplied in postcard form for the LE purchaser. As for the rest of the packaging, the LE box is a vertically opening dig pack with a transparent slipcover, inside which we have a couple of advertising leaflets, postcards of the two covers, a booklet containing the storyboards for the ED animation, the DVD containing the episode and a CD (which would appear to be the MIDITASTIC Asahina Mikuru OST, and a few tracks of the voice cast talking about stuff). You also get instructions for the menus. You get these with just about every R2J DVD, and I’ve never quite figured out the point. Its not like they are rocket science or anything… As for the actual DVD contents, aside from the solitary episode of the show (please don’t ask me to judge video quality on THAT), you get clean versions of the OP and ED. The ED is the full frame version used later in the show, rather than the windowed version used in this episode, but given they don’t actually plaster text all over it anyway there isn’t a huge attraction to it. The OP, perhaps unsurprisingly, does have a bit of compression noise during the sequence where Haruhi runs through the field of stars whilst people fly past, but its nowhere near the horrors of the Air DVD release. There’s also a making of feature for those live action Haruhi commercials they aired prior to the show starting (as well as the adverts in question). Compared to what you get on-disk with a lot of R2 DVDs, its relatively generous! At this point, I can’t really says its worth picking up the R2 release unless you are really impatient, given Funimations dealings with Kadokawa and ADVs recent dealings I’d be surprised if we don’t get a licensing announcement surprisingly sharpish.

Top 8 Guilty Pleasures...

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 13:47:35 +0000

...because top 10s are for wimps, or rather I‘ve already spent half the week procrastinating over another two entries (mostly trying to think of one of those creepy fan-targeted shows featuring really young girls being cute, but couldn‘t think of one I‘ve actually particularly liked (and, no, I‘ve not seen Ichigo Mashimaro)).Yes, rather than actually watching something or attempting to come up with something approaching original content, I’m blatantly copying something I saw on Yuribou a few days ago! Yay! I’m going to stop short of claiming to like I! My! Me! Strawberry Eggs, though. 8) Cyber Formula GPX Cyber Formula (the original series, I’ve not seen the OAVs yet) isn’t actually a bad series, though like more recent Fukuda efforts it does suffer from all sorts of plot strands which go absolutely nowhere or don’t actually have any real importance, not to mention introducing characters in some fashion what makes them seem important only to completely forget about them a couple of episode later (or at least until they have some plot reason to reintroduce them). The thing which makes Cyber Formula a guilty pleasure is the fact that I find my enjoyment of it to be directly proportional to how completely irrelevant, stupid and generally, well, fillery the episodes are. My favourite plot arc, therefore, has to be the one where our hero, on the verge of the finals of the championship, agrees to help a cute girl in a cross-country race well know for being fairly fatal. The girls father is one of the rather rich organisers of the race, and likes nothing more than to bet on how many people are going to die in the process, and the girl has made her father promise to cut ties with it if she wins. Its episodes like this were the age of the show really shows through - I mean, even kids shows like this are so much more sophistimacated these days. The whole arc, which only really exists to show that Hayatos old car is working again, just breaks so many of the story rules which have been set up earlier in the series, not to mention there being a whole boatload of continuity issues with it. The part I find really amusing, though, is just how they portray the villains as being rich - they have TV screens to watch the race on every flat surface of their yacht. In particular, I particularly like the fact that even the surface of the swimming pool is used as a TV screen - that’s just stylish. Well, no, not really - its just crap, and I love it. 7)Onegai Twins Apparently its alright to actually like OneTea. Personally, it kind of sits in an awkward void for me. I don’t actually hate it or anything, but I can say I particularly like it either. OneTwi is apparently far less acceptable, though. I’m not sure why, exactly - people point out its silly premise, but its actually pretty mundane compared to OneTea. Twi amuses me far more, though - all its overwrought possibility of twincest I find to be really rather funny, or that episode where they try and prove Maiku isn’t gay, and that’s not to mention that one episode where they kept doing imagination sequences using puppets. Puppets are cool, and frankly I think its perfect acceptable to enjoy any show featuring such things. Oh, and the animation is pretty nice - the background art is so goddamn lush in places. 6) Panyo Panyo DiGiCharat Ah, quite possibly the least popular of all the DiGiCharat series, yet somehow I seem to have the R2s of it. I actually quite enjoy PPDGC - at the very least, I think its better than Leave it to Piyoko, even without any of the spastic humour which tends to go with the DGC series, not to mention the lack of Rabi-en-Rose. It is pretty much a whole series of crap, though I do think that the Christmas episode right at the end of the series, with the disco dancing Santa Claus, makes up for a lot. 5) He is My Master I hate harem shows. Well, kind of - whilst I feel I should be saying something like that, I do actually rather like the manga version of Love Hina. Aoi Yori Aoshi, on the other hand, I hate. Not with a passion or anything - that would require far to much work - but I do hate pretty much everything about it. Yes, that includes those first three episodes everyone seems to think are actually good. Aoi scares me, she has all the qualities of an obsessive stalker. If I was the lead in that show, I run far, far away at a fast pace. Actually, I guess I do hate it with a passion. What does this have to do with liking HiMM? On the surface at least, its pretty much everything I generally hate in a show, but really its all pretty anti-harem in construction. Aside from the fact that I find it amusing how completely blatant Yoshitaka is, I find it amusing that despite his best attempts at actually building a harem it all ends up completely unharem like - the moral of the story is, you can't build an anime harem without a complete lack of effort. I also find it amusing that, for something so heavily built around fan service, it was actually pretty tame compared to a lot of other genre shows. I mean, you had to buy the DVD release before you got all the panty shots in the show, most of them having been shadowed out in broadcast, and even then you only really got nipples in the last episode. Did I mention I have the R2 DVD release? 4) Tenjou Tenge The further I get through this list, the harder I’m finding it to actually make some kind of suggestion as to why I actually like the shows. With TenTen, the animation was pretty bad after the first couple of episodes, the character designs and art bore little resemblance to the wonderful manga and they pretty much dropped all the fan service. Given that the manga is only really worth for its neat fight scenes, utterly gorgeous artwork and copious amounts of fan service (lets face it, the story is hardly entirely coherent, nor does it flow particularly well), and since the anime had little of any of those elements, it wan’t exactly successful as an adaptation. But, I still like TenTen - and I like it a lot more than Ikkitousen. I have little idea why, aside from thinking that the music is pretty damn badass. Everything else about it I admit to being pretty awful, but every time I put an episode on I can’t help but actually enjoy it. It simply confuses me. A lot. 3) Kannazuki no Miko Ah, Kannazuki. I think its awful to the point where I’ve slated it with enough fury to have been accused for trolling before, but for some strange reason I still enjoy the damn thing. Basically, I just love to hate this show. I think the only real amusement I get from it, aside from the awesome Re-sublimity and the nice animation, is from laughing at how horrifically overdone it is most of the time. 2) Negima I love the manga version of Negima. Its probably my favorite manga series which is still currently being serialised in Japan (Nausicaa or early Shirow is still a better read than just about everything ever, and I’m rather enjoying what I’m reading of Deathnote, though I’ve not hit Chapter 58 yet). Its one of those rare titles which I actually find to get stronger as it goes on, rather than feeling overtly stretched out. The anime version of Negima isn’t the Negima I love. Whilst on the surface it’s the same series, it really doesn’t have that much in common with it in style or tone - they overplayed the love comedy element of the series in place of the far more exciting and interesting elements of the series, and they did that pretty badly. Also, Happy Material is terrible. Somehow, despite knowing I disliked the anime version of the series I was somehow suckered into importing the R2’s, and somehow I found myself actually enjoying it. I think the fact that I was spared the woeful broadcast animation, and instead suffered the merely subpar DVD versions, helped slightly. Like TenTen, though, I can’t really put my finger on why I actually like the anime version of Negima - the only really good episode was the Sayo one, and unlike TenTen is doesn’t have good music to help it. Its just, well, crap. The Shaft version is going to be awesome, though. So, my number one guilty pleasure is…. 1) Gundam Seed Destiny Mei-rin FTW!

Weekly Wafflage: AAT news

DiGiKerot — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:25:34 +0000

AnimeExpo is presently running in the US, and as per usual it’s the focal point of the years US licensing. At this point we are only really half way through the proceedings, with Funimation and Bandai Visual (the Honneamise Bandai Visual, who release excessively priced uber-editions of stuff) and about half of ADVs announcements out there - ADV have more to announce tonight, whilst Bandai “ZHiME” Entertainment and Viz having their panels this evening. Given their announcements thus far, one really has to wonder if ADVs localisers realise what they are in for? Their first announcement of the weekend was Nerima Daikon Brothers. Whilst a fairly recent show, it didn’t really register as much as a blip with those in English-speaking fandom who run on JAT. It’s a bit of an odd one, really - its follows a family of radish farmers who seem to think they are The Blues Brothers. The older brother has a serious case of siscon, the younger brother works in what I believe is a gay host club, whilst the sister is addicted to booze and gambling. Oh, they also have a bizarre panda/radish hybrid hanging around. They’d really rather like to be famous (hence rich) performers, but for now they just grow radishes. Most of the show is exactly the kind of thing ADV have previously proven to be pretty good at versioning - It has a rather crass sense of humour, with plenty of gay and penis jokes and the like. The problem comes from the fact that the characters have a distinct habit of bursting into song at random moments about subjects as diverse as alcoholism, withdrawing money and build gay harems - I really wouldn’t be surprised if more than half of the shows dialogue is sang. This isn’t really much of an issue for the subtitled version, but its going to be a nightmare when it comes to dubbing. Not only do they have to translate all the dialogue - they have to make most of it rhyme, whilst trying to do something to maintain the jokes and puns hidden in the lyrics. Beyond that, they also having to find voice actors who can actually sing for the roles. You have to wonder how far they’ll take it as well - if you are dubbing all the songs in the show, are you going to dub the OP and ED as well? You may as well, I guess. Not dubbing it isn’t really an option, I don’t think, if they want to catch the same crowd as Excel Saga (and, really, I don’t see them having licensed this if it wasn’t Nabeshin and they didn’t have Excels sales figures making it look attractive). Its going to be an interesting dub, at least. In a wholly different type of head-ache, ADV have also licensed Pani Poni Dash. jpmeyer has already gone into length on the problem, and looking through some of the entries on the PPD wiki he makes a good point about the sheer frequency of references. With Excel Saga they provided an additional set of subtitles (well, technically two - one for the dubbed version, another for the subs) which popped up notes explaining what was going on, but the frequency there just isn’t the same. Although it’s a technical nightmare given the limitations of DVD subtitles, I suspect that’ll be the way that ADV go on this one, it’ll involve a whole load of pausing - you wouldn‘t really be able to follow it in real time. I guess the best way to handle things would be simply to hive the translation notes off else where as is usual, but with significantly more imagery in there. Idealistically, a printed booklet with images and the whole shebang would be awesome, but I guess some kind of slideshow pointing out every single frame of interest would work. I suppose they could always use a combination of the lot of them. Again, its going to be interesting to see what ADV do with the DVD release. As for general comments on the licensing news thus far - I’ll probably getting Nerima and PPD - PPD is Akiyuki Shinbo after all. Gunbuster is obviously terrific news, and given Bandai Visuals sexy packaging I’ll probably be replacing my Korean set. Hopefully they’ll have the most recent remastering of the video as well, then there are the new Science Classroom and short films created for the original DVD release which I don’t think have ever been translated into English. The other stuff I don’t really care about - I’ve read some of the Paradise Kiss manga and wasn’t particularly interested, as a N1 fanboy I might splurge on Disgaea, but the general opinion is rather offputting, Glass Fleet I’ve only heard of because Bluwacky seems to find it hilariously bad, and the others, well, I have simply no interest in, and never have. Away from anime this week, Xenosaga Episode III hits Japan this week. I have my copy on pre-order, and I have to say I’m rather looking forward to it despite all the issues which have built up around the Xenosaga series as its progressed. I’ve played the trial version already, and the story preview contained within just boils my fan boy blood. Theres also an all-KOSMOS trading figure series (well, theres also a T-ELOS figure in there) coming soon. Personally, I think this is even worse that Saber and Rins dominance over the Fate figure ranges. I demand Shion (Episode 1 version, pls K thx), Momo and Miyuki dammit! (Oh, and whilst I was writing this, it appears that Right Stuf have licensed the second series of Super GALs! HUZZAH! Its not even out on DVD in Japan, so that’s pretty cool. I just hope I won’t have to register with Right Stuf just to buy it direct from them. Too much effort).

Asahina Mikuru Episode 00 Directors Cut?

DiGiKerot — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 18:06:10 +0000

I missed this the other day, but there actually appears to be a few - arguably completely pointless - differences between the broadcast and DVD versions of The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru beyond the redubbed next episode preview. This is the only really substantial addition - its an extra shot of Yuki, added during her introduction and lasting around 10 seconds. What makes this substantial is that there is some new dialogue to go with it - what it says, I have no idea, but it is there. Additional shot during The Happy Home Life of Mikuru and Itsuki, lasting all of around two seconds. There is no new dialogue in the scene. It comes right at the start of the scene, before Mikuru sees Itsuki off to work. Additional shot during Mikuru and Yukis rabu-rabu Battle, during the scene where Mikuru walks into the school. Once again, no addition dialogue or anything. Finally, one additional shot during Yuki and Mikurus battle montage at the end, inserted before the scene with the slide in the playground. No new dialogue. As I say, pretty much completely pointless, but whatever.

Weekly Wafflage: Now in HD!

DiGiKerot — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:54:10 +0000

So, I bought myself one of those new-fangled LCD HDTV thingies, which is rather sexy indeed. Admittedly, the only anime I’ve watched on it thus far is some Eureka Seven, but it was sweet. The only problem is that I can now see those icky video artefacts that weren’t previously visible on my old CRT. Bring on HD-DVD/Blu-ray I guess, when hopefully it shouldn’t be as much of an issue. What this TV purchase is in time for is, of course, the Xenosaga Episode III release. I don’t have my copy yet, but if I’m lucky (and UK Customs don’t show an interest in it) it should turn up in the earlier half of the week. At this point I’m afraid you might have to suffer this becoming a gaming blog for the duration, as I post nightly on my desperately struggle to try and work out what the hell is going on - my Japanese is awful, but since I’ve played the other Xenosaga games through raw I feel the need to keep it going. Speaking of regular updates, I kind of feel I should probably get back to it at some point soon. Generally speaking, my intention with Beta-Waffle is talk about things which fall within my sphere of interest which no-one else is talking about. JAT anime summary and opinion posts are ten a penny within the anime blogosphere, so that’s something you are pretty unlikely to ever see me talking about. Rather, I’d prefer to invest my time talking about AAT related releases are far as pure anime discussion go - stuff which hasn’t been blogged to death, is old or I can make fun of. As far as JAT talk goes, I’m planning to continue in much the same fashion as I currently do and limit it to figures, DVD exclusives, gaming (both doujin and pro where there is a suitable anime crossover) and the occasional live action movie review. Figures I do just because I like to - in the time since I started this blog, there have been a bunch of others popping up doing to whole figure thing (no doubt largely inspired by Riuva) - but its something I’ll stick to. R2 DVD discussion relies on me picking stuff up, which can be sporadic (I should be picking up SHnY vol 1 at least, and given its reported that the episodes are going to be extended for the DVD release I’ll probably be talking about that). Gaming discussion relies on something actually worthwhile being released - half decent, non-shonen, non-visual novel anime games are all too rare, and doujin game activity is centered largely around the two Comiket events. Summer Comiket is next month actually, but I’ve not seen a huge amount of interest other than Higurashi Daybreak and Battle Moon Wars 2. So, its going to be largely AAT talk, then ^^;

Eureka Seven DVD 2

DiGiKerot — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:54:15 +0000

In which those annoying kids get too much screen time. Really, If I had to pick and overwhelming theme for this volume, that would be it. Its starts with an episode in which the kids wind up Renton, has the kids tagging along on just about every excursion throughout the episode, and even the back story involves, yes, the kids. I can see why a lot of people were turned off by the series early on - it’s a lot to bare with. Renton agrees with the audience What comes around the annoyance is pretty good, though. The other overwhelming theme of the volume is Renton puts up with a whole load of crap. As previously mentioned, the first episode centers largely around the fact that Eurekas kids hate Renton, and go to great lengths to my Rentons life a living hell. When one of their pranks goes wrong and puts Gekkostate in danger, however, Renton goes to some length to cover up for them, leading their attitude to go from pure hatred to mild tolerance. Yup, its another case of seen it all before. The volumes second episode is essentially filler material, but it is at least amusing with it. The Gekkostate crew drag Renton out of the brig to play an practical joke on him, sending him off to deliver an item (a bowl of noodles or some such) to somebody of a very vague description. Renton, however, is a sucker and falls for the whole thing, resulting in Moondoggie (awesome, if bizarre, name) getting all annoyed since attention has been diverted from him. The DVD release actually has an audio commentary track for this episode, which some of the Japanese voice cast. It probably tells you a lot about the episode that they don’t actually say anything vaguely serious (or particularly interesting), spending pretty much the whole episode laughing. The final three episodes of the volume start to introduce the backstory - with some echoes of Full Metal Alchemist, Gekkostate find some old woman who is part of a persecuted religion, and after a whole bunch of kafuffles they end up delivering her to her holy land, a town bombed nightly my the military. It turns out that Eureka and Holland have been there before, and as military personnel at that. It turns out that Eureka and Holland were actually the ones who initially decimated the town, massacring the populace as they went… The populace aside from those annoying kids, of course. *Sigh* The volume ends on something of a tantalising note - an oh-so-brief appearance from the rather psychotic looking Anemone, who’ll no doubt be reappearing soon to make the whole show far more interesting. From the next volume onwards. If not, I at least hope we’ll get fewer appearances from the hellspawn. Really, I hope there is some pay-off here, as right now the show would be far more entertaining without them.

Xenosaga Episode III - It begins!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:48:25 +0000

Yes, my copy of Xenosaga Episode III arrived today, which probably means that this blog is going to be taken over by game reports for the next week or so. Hey, at least its vaguely anime-related! I grabbed the official memory card along with the game, which also comes with that sexy metal memory card case (designed to fit two cards - its holding my XSII card as well). The Alle spezelle DVD is a first pressing bonus, containing a collection of artwork, promotional movies and some behind the scenes stuff for all three of the Xenosaga games. It’s a nice extra to have, though I half expect we won’t be seeing it for the US releases. As for the background story to the game, its set a year after Episode II. Shion, finding out that Vector is involved with the Gnosis phenomenon, has left the organisation and has joined Scientia, an underground militia group opposing the establishment. Between the two events, theres a whole load of crap about a realian known as Grimoires Girl - who claims to be called Nephilim (though looks nothing like the Nephilim appearing in the previous games) - and the possibility of realians being Gnosified. All this, unsurprisingly, links back to Shions past… If you have a decent grasp of Japanese and really want to know, there are a series of flash movies on the Japanese Xenosaga site which go into it in length. Anyway, I’m off to play! Later.

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 1

DiGiKerot — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:30:04 +0000

Spoilers ahoy! Lordy, I don’t think I’ve played such a front-heavy RPG since, well, the original Xenosaga. Theres a lot of story going on right at the start, and within the first two hours of play I’ve only actually got control over my characters in two locations. Anyway, the game starts with a flashback to Ziggys homeworld, Mictham, fourteen years prior to the beginning of the game. The planet has overrun with Gnosis, with everything in sight completely destroyed. The only sign of human life is a woman taking her son towards an escape capsule. Placing him in the capsule, the woman proceeds to Gnosify (you know, turn into a Gnosis) before his before, before he is ejected into space. I think its pretty clear that the child in question is the original KOS-MOS designer and Shions former pseudo-boyfriend Kevin - for one thing, the necklace the mother leaves him is the same one we’ve seen Shion wearing (and do frequently here). From this point, it cuts into the material from the Famitsu trial version - Shion, Miyuki, Cannan and new character Doctus (a female pilot, and member of Scientia) infiltrate a Vector base via an enceplaton dive in order to retrieve information on Vectors plans. Miyuki is still working at Vector, by the way, whilst Cannan I believe to be still working with Helma and Yuri Mizrahi. After disconnecting, we see Shion alone in front of her ES - she has been living on a beach in the middle of nowhere, and has been operating her ES during the dive in a bikini (as Miyuki says, “Uwah! SEKUSHII!”). Shion is having some problems with her health, it seems - I’m guessing its something to do with her near Gnosification back in the first game - and is bemoaning the fact that Nephilim hasn’t appeared before her recently. From this point, we are well into the story sequences with the only save points being when the game generously asks us. Unlike the previous XS games where these would all be FMV, here its mostly dialogue boxes (admittedly pretty much wholly voiced). Still, the game does look really, really nice. The information Shion et al retrieved, aside from talking about some Project Zohar, points towards Rennes Le Chateau, which in the XS universe seems to be a huge floating landmass in space. Jr, chaos, Ziggy, MOMO, Jin and the rest of the Elsa crew (including Hakase and Scott, super-robot fans) head off towards Rennes Le Chateau. Unfortunately for them, Ormus also heading that way, and they end up tangling with Margulis (giving us our first ES battle, as well as some awesome FMVs). Margulis ends up retreating, but not before damaging the Elsa. We are reintroduced at this point to Dimitri Yuriev, who is still possessing Gaignun Kookai. Yuriev is working with Ormus member Sellers, and is accompanied by the only surviving female URTV Citrine (who previously appeared in flashback in Episode II). The point at which I’ve presently stopped saw Shion meeting Allen in a hotel on Fifth Jeruselam. We are pretty much re-introduced to all the main characters now, so hopefully the story will kick off properly from this point. I’ll talk about the actual game mechanics in a future post when I’ve actually had a chance to play some more (as I've said, its pretty front heavy storywise), but thus far my opinion is overwhelming positive on this one.

Fate/Stay Night Tricolle!

DiGiKerot — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:21:23 +0000

Bandais latest Tri-colle! Trading figure series features the girls of Fate/Stay Night. I’ve previously talked about the My-HiME/ZHiME set, so how does this one match up? Not too bad, actually. Admittedly, in terms of detailing they don’t really match the typical Palm Character figure in terms of quality, nor do the have the posability of that series. The sculpts are pretty simple, but the manufacturing is good - they are pretty much free of flash, and the paintwork is nice and clean (Ilyas buttons, for example). One annoyance is that, unlike the HiME figures which pinned straight into the stand, these, with the exception of Saber, are held into the base via a stand which goes from the base to the back of the figure. The result is that the figures hover a couple of millimetres above the stand, which looks a little odd up close. There are only six figures in this series - Saber, Rin, Ilya, Sakura, and masked and unmasked Rider (though aside from the head they are the same figure). I got a full set plus additional Rin, Saber, Sakura and Ilya figures from a retail box. Images of the other figures, plus comparisons with the Palm Saber (my Rin hasn’t turned up yet) and ZHiME Mashiro follow.

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 2

DiGiKerot — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:36:24 +0000

Well, day four technically, but since I've been prevented from playing the last couple of days for various reasons, I'm calling it day two. General, spoiler-free game talk is on the second page, whilst all the spoiler content is on the thrid. First, and most pointless, things first – they've toned down the save game files this time around. If you've only played the US version of Xenosaga II you won't know this as they obviously changed the save game code, but on the Japanese version rather than a plain logo for the memory card image you got a cute little SD version of a XS character (the character depending on the slot) who would freak out when you went to delete them. The save game files were insane in size, though – around 300k, as opposed to 30k in the US version! For XSIII the save files are down to just under 100k, with a plain logo like US XSII. Onto the actual game, there are a few things which those who got annoyed by Xenosaga II will be pleased about. Noticeable from early on are the load times – going into combat, these are pretty much non-existent. Its really remarkably speedy. They've also brought back shops and a proper equipment system, for both characters and the E.S. Units. The skills system has been revamped a bit. Its not too far from the XSII system, but rather than all those excessive generic tables of skills, each character has two stylelines. A styleline will have skills divided of a particular type, and the two that each character have will be of different themes (things like “Attack”, “Counter”, “Support” and “Magic Attack”). You have to clear a block of four skills before you can move onto the next block in the line, and each successive block obviously has better skills. I've not had enough skill points yet to play around with it properly, so I'll probably have to come back to this later. After the combo systems of the previous games battles – particularly the acquired taste that was XSIIs break system – XSIII seems a little disappointingly straight forward. As well as the loss of combos, we've also lost the field effects of the previous games. Breaks have been kept, but losing the combos means they don't have a much use for actually boosting as in the previous games. Before I get into that, I suppose I should talk about the basic battle mechanics. The turn system – with a list of the order in which the characters attack – is the same as previous instalments. Instead of combos, we just get a boring, old straight selection attack. Here we have our regular attack, Arts, Ethers, Deathblows, Guard, Switch and Items. Guard, Ethers and Items are probably obvious, whilst Switch lets you switch out a character from the current battle party with a reserve. Arts are special attacks which consume EP, and Deathblows are even more special attacks which consume boost points to use, which serves to limit how often you can use these insanely overpowered attacks. New Arts can be unlocked via your stylelines, but I'm not sure about Deathblows. In additional to all these things, there is also a break gauge now. When a character takes damage the gauge fills up, and when its full they take more damage and are disabled for a couple of rounds. That's pretty much it for combat. Disappointingly for Miyuki and Allen fans, they only count as “extra” characters in combat. They can't be the party leader, and they don't get stylelines or equipment. They do get arts, but since they are only available in combat at certain points I don't know if they can unlock new ones. I'll talk about E.S. Battles (assuming I actually get one) and GeMIX (the all-new mini-game) in a future update. When I left off the other day, the Elsa was damaged at the battle at Rennes le Chateu, which was promptly surrounded by some kind of field preventing anyone from entering. Back at her hotel, Shion gets a message from chaos – the Durandal is in port at Fifth Jerusalem, and he wants her to meet him at a nearby cafe. chaos informs Shion about the Elsa, which has been missing since the previous battle. During their conversation, Shion collapses again (from what will henceforth be referred to as “U-DO” waves, since thats what Shion recognises them as here). Theres a figure, who is talking to Shion, barely visible in the center of the red swirliness. Shion reawakens in her hotel – suddenly remembering she is supposed to be meeting Allen. The two are heading to the Project Zohar building, were the KOS-MOS development team are currently based and there are some interesting activation tests going on... So, we are treated to our first viewing of the power of t-elos, Vectors new anti-gnosis weapon, developed by smug blonde researcher Rote Mantel (*cough*Kevin*cough*).Displaying an arrogance not present in KOS-MOS, t-elos effortlessly decimates dozens of gnosis. Next up, and now dressed up in her new equipment, KOS-MOS doesn't have it quite so easy – some sadistic bastard decides to face her up against Omega – thats the Zohar-powered mecha utilised by that rather evil boss in Episode II! KOS-MOS is doing alright until Omegas pilot starts going berserk, and she gets creamed blocking a laser blast from destroying the observation room. Utterly badass cinema, by the way. Shion meets Yuli Mizrahi on the on the way out of the observation room, and they get talking about this and that. Whilst they are talking, they have a rather familiar looking visitor walk into the room... Yup, its Abel. What's more, he draws an image of Nephilim on the floor before walking off. Juli gives Shion clearance to visit her old Vector chums on site, so she and Allen heads off. Allen even manages to get Shion to agree to go out with him the following night! Alas, things go very bad for Allen from this point onwards. After Shion leaves, Rote Mantel appears and takes great pleasure in informing Allen that the KOS-MOS program has officially been abolished, and KOS-MOS is going to be turned into scrap! To make matters worse, Juli asked him if he can get Shion to meet her on the Durandal the following day – there goes his date. Back at her hotel room, Shion is communicating with Doctus. Doctus brings up the name of an interesting project she has found out about – Program Cannan. Yes, the same Cannan as the realian. Is there any connection? Who knows. Following conversation, Nephilim makes an appearance, and seems to be telling Shion that the universe is collapsing. OH NOES! A few random scenes later, Shion is talking with Doctus (and Miyuki) again. I think by this point Miyuki has already had more dialogue than in the rest of the series put together. When Allen tunes in to pass on Julis message, Shion is once again knocked out by the U-DO waves. When she comes to, a concerned Allen has already turned up. They go out for some fast food, but Allen avoids talking about the KOS-MOS situation. Meanwhile, Doctus approaches Cannan about this whole Program Cannan thing, but he pleads ignorance. Doctus believes him, but leaves him some data before leaving. Shion heads to the Durandal to meet Juli and the rest of the Xenosaga crew. Juli informs Shion that the Elsa is trapped on the other side of the field at Rennes le Chateau, and the only thing which will be able to put a dent in that field would be KOS-MOS and her type-3 equipment. So, with the help of Allen and Miyuki we find ourselves having to sneak into Project Zohar to retrieve KOS-MOS before they trash her. During the conversation, Shion has another attack of the U-DO waves... After battling our way to the Vector block, we get a surprise when the elevation does stop on the floor we expect – it actually goes lower to a block Allen knows nothing of. It turn out to be Omegas hanger, where Abel turns up and tells Shion to follow him (Allen, coincidently, informs us that Abel is actually Omegas pilot). Following Abel, we finally find KOS-MOS. The poor girl has already been put on the scrap head – I guess they can't complain too much about us taking her then. AI AI SAH! So, its goodbye to Miyuki (from the battle party at least), and hello good, old KOS-MOS. Upon attempting to leave, Shion suffers another U-DO reaction. Leaving Project Zohar, the crew head straight to Rennes le Chateu, punch through the field and find the Elsa. To be continued!

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 2, Part 2

DiGiKerot — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 22:14:18 +0000

OMG WTF XSII FTW! Spoilers for the BEST VIDEOGAME FMV EVER follow. Seriously, I promptly reset the game, loaded my save and fought through a boss encounter to watch this again. And then again. Just to quickly cover the story – Having reached the Elsa, Shion and chums head off in the E.S. Units to investigate Rennes le Chateu. Battling their way to the ruins of an old church, we are suddenly faced by the formidable E.S. Unit belonging to Blue Testament, who proceeds to freak Shion out by revealing himself to be Virgil! Following a boss battle, White Testament shows up to take Virgil with him – a shocked Jr immediately recognises the voice as belonging to everyones favorite albino lolicon Albedo. White Testament simply removes the anima vessel from the damaged E.S. and flees. Our heroes, however, find that the location is causing the anima vessels in their own units to freak out, and they have to disembark. So, fighting their way through a fairly cool dungeon (well, not that cool, but the way the paths are made looks cool at least) they finally make their way back up to the surface to find themselves in a rather misty graveyard... You'd be forgiven for not recognising this, but way back in the mists of time, back before the Woglinde was even sunk, this place appeared in a rather foreboding dream Shion had back at the very beginning of Episode I, and Shion recognises this fact. Making their way along the paths, they find a strange, chapel like cave – or rather a tomb. Momo notices that the names on all the graves in here are the same as the E.S. units they pilot, much to our parties surprise. Whats more, Shion recognises it as the site where KOS-MOS was chained up during the encephalon dive they used to prove the Durandals innocence way back in Episode I. Having looked around, our party starts to leave when they find themselves facing T-elos... KOS-MOS decides to take the inituative, summons her cannon and starts firing rounds at T-elos. T-elos, however, suffers no damage. KOS-MOS charges T-elos and engauges in hand-to-hand combat, but T-elos blocks every attack, and eventually kicks her away. KOS-MOS and T-elos take to the air, and once again T-elos comes out on top, slamming KOS-MOS to the ground and twisting her arm until it breaks. The damage to the area caused by the battle in the air causes rocks to fall down from the roof, with one particularly large one falling near T-elos. KOS-MOS charges in again, but T-elos gives the rock a swift boot, causing it to spin and whack KOS-MOS out the way. T-elos then kicks the end of it, sending the rock hurtling towards KOS-MOS... KOS-MOS sees the rock at the last moment, and leaps over it. T-elos is one step ahead, though, and kicks her down to the ground. At this point, Rote Mantel appears, and disolves his disguise and shows himself to be the Red Testament. KOS-MOS and T-elos take to the ceiling, and once again T-elos has the upper hand. She takes out the blade (on the LEFT HAND, rather than the right like KOS-MOS) and destroys KOS-MOS sensor and cuts her face. KOS-MOS manages to get back up and attacking again, and even manages to land a good kick, but T-elos grabs her by the leg and swings her away. T-elos then charges Shion. KOS-MOS blocks her attack, but it causes serious damage to her arm. KOS-MOS summons her cannon and starts firing at T-elos as she leaps away. T-elos, however, brings out her big attacks, encasing KOS-MOS in a ball of plasma. The defeated KOS-MOS crumples to the ground, and T-elos seals the victory by crushing KOS-MOS chest under her foot... Awesome, absolutely and completely awesome.

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 3

DiGiKerot — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:19:49 +0000

Those who were hoping to some kind of quick resolution to the events I talked about last time are out of luck... I left this out last time for dramatic purposes, but as T-elos is about to crush KOS-MOS, Shion seems to see her as a familiar figure, and her necklace starts to glow. The field around Rennes le Chateau begins to wobble, and then we see... The save game request screen. Bah. When we get back to the game, its in flashback mode. We see Shion and Kevin back in the day, and they talk about their respective pasts and their desire to rid the universe of the Gnosis which destroyed their respective home planets. It ends with Kevin giving Shion the necklace his mother left him in the opening sequence. As the scene ends, we see that Shion is talking to U-DO again. U-DO asks Shion if it was a pleasant memory - which, Shion replies, it was. When Shion reawakens she finds herself all alone in a lush green forest, though shortly afterwards she is jumped on by Jr, mistaking her for an enemy. Reunited with the gang, they make their way through the forest, full of UTIC soldiers, when Shion spots an unexpected sight... Its Labyrinthos! But, that means they are on Miltia, right? The Miltia that was destroyed in Episode II? How confuddling! Its going to get worse, though, as a couple of screens onward, we meet... Virgil – pre-skin disorder! He is in bad shape as well. Jin and MOMO patch him up a little and carry him off to find some help, when on the next screen we see Febronia! Febronia, Virgil, Labyrinthos? Shion now knows where they are, and its somewhere familiar to Xeno-fans... Its the Church we saw in the KOS-MOS dive in Episode I. Going inside, the first person they meet is...chibi Shion! There is also what appears to be a younger version of Kevin. Upon seeing Virgil, Febronia wants to help him, though Kevin reminds her that she is actually a UTIC realien and probably shouldn't, but doesn't stop her. Virgil is in really bad shape, though, and to save him Febronia tells Jin to use her internal organs - as she is a new-generation Transgenic realien they should be compatible, and she should be able to survive to get them replaced (I think ^^;). So, as it turns out, Virgil has been part realien all this time. Who would have thunk it? Anyway, Kevin returns and mentions that they have seen a ship landing at a nearby mine, which our party suspects is the Elsa. So, leaving the Church behind, they head off for the mines. At the mines we meet Aizen Magus, an elderly miner. It seems UTIC are making themselves a pain for some reason, and is Granddaugher, Mai, is trying to fight them off with her mecha Leopold. Aizen is a bit worried, though, and would rather she didn't fight, so he asks you to tell her to come home. When we find Mai, she doesn't believe us – she thinks that we are members of UTIC! No choice but to fight, then. Mai is cute ^^; Whats more, her voice is really, really familiar (I'm not going to say who I think it is though, just to save embarrassment if I'm wrong. I'll check the credits when I finish). Mai fights with a Viita-esque rocket powered hammer, and Leopold will probably remind you of Siebzehn from Xenogears (Actually, Mai is rather Maria-esque herself, if a bit older). We defeat Mai, the Aizen shows up, we get the usual sappy talk about how she didn't want UTIC getting there hands on somewhere what reminded her of her father or somesuch, and we get to progress. Sure enough, in the cave Mai was protecting we find the Elsa. The good news is that they managed to recover the E.S. units and KOS-MOS, and KOS-MOS repair system is repairing her damage. The bad news is that KOS-MOS blackbox unit has been destroyed, and since neither Allen nor Shion have any idea what it comprises (having come from back in the Kevin days), it would be impossible to restart KOS-MOS even if all the other damage is repaired... Shion, unsurprisingly, is distraught...

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 3, part 2

DiGiKerot — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 19:03:13 +0000

In which the game throws lots of dialogue I didn't quite get at me, and nothing massively exciting happens. Shion decides to go into the city to investigate, and heads off in the direction of Labyrinthos. On the outskirts of the city, she and Allen come across the wreckage of a UTIC vehicle, when Shions father, Suou Uzuki, turns up (briefly). Shion and Allen take some UTIC uniforms from the wreckage and head off to the hospital where Shion father worked, and her mother was hospitalised. At the hospital, they actually meet Joachim Mizrahi, who is presently experimenting on Anima vessels. During the experiment, Mizrahi asks the pair to go get Kevin Wilcott! Yeah, Kevin was the guy I thought he was earlier. In a lucky turn of events, it seems at this point in his life Kevin was already working on the KOS-MOS designs, and Shion manages to take a sly backup, with which she should be able to fabricate the parts needed to get KOS-MOS working again. Coincidently, Kevin is actually a bit of a jerk. Shion and Allen then go up to Shions mothers room, where it appears that Shions father (who is also a bit of a jerk) is actually experimenting on Shions mother. We leave with Chibi-Shion, who proceeds to show jerk-face Kevin how to water flowers (no, really), whilst we go off back to the Elsa to get KOS-MOS working again. And thats about it.

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 4

DiGiKerot — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:36:31 +0000

She's back! Sorry about the lack of screenshots here – the save points weren't in places conductive to going back for pictures, with a few long, gruelling boss battles in between points. Anyway, having returned to the Elsa with the data for producing KOS-MOS black box components, Hakase and Scott get to work fabricating them, whilst Shion takes a shower (curse the steam!). When completed, KOS-MOS still isn't activating. Hakase sends Allen off to get Shion, but whilst his nose is bleeding an explosion rocks the ship. Cutting back to Scott and Hakase, it seems we have a rather unexpected guest – Black Testament, a.k.a Voyager! Voyager, coincidently, was the serial killer responsible for killing Ziggys wife and son, and the longest serving of the current Testaments. Voyager attempts to walk off with the newly repaired KOS-MOS. All the attacks they throw at the guy have absolutely no effect – even Ziggy leaping in for punch is reflected with ease. Shion walks into the battle midway through, and having not seen Ziggys futile effort attempts to do much the same leaps at Voyager as well. Voyager grabs Shion in a Jedi choke-grip, and starts, well, choking the life out of her. Luckily for Shion, KOS-MOS awakes up, thrusting her hand out of the container and grabbing Voyagers arm. Just to make TJ Han happy, KOS-MOS proceeds to make with the lasers and other cool stuff. The battle seems rather evenly matched, with neither side damaging the other. KOS-MOS, by the way, is now wearing a completely new costume, bringing back the obvious external head sensor from the first game. Anyway, we proceeded to go into what has been by far the hardest boss battle thus far, resulting in me getting ass-raped a few times (particularly annoying since I lost a whole worlds worth of GeMIX progress the first time around). Defeated, Voyager taunts Ziggy a little before leaving. Now that KOS-MOS is working again, the next matter of order is getting functioning E.S. units again – whilst we still have the frames, the Anima vessels disappeared after the odd time-leap Shion-memory world thing kicked off. With Shion and Allen having found out that Mizrahi is investigating the anima vessels earlier, they head off to Labyrinthos to see what they can kind out... Theres a few events happen at Labyrinthos. Momo gets to meet her father Joachim Mizrahi, and contrary to the rumours he actually seems like a rather pleasant, level-headed guy. He talks about the UMN, and how it has existed since the birth of the universe, and being the place were the consciences of the dead congregate. He is looking to save Sakuras soul or some such. We also discover that Kevin was the one responsible for creating the Realiens which murdered Shions mother, and that he and Shions father seem to be working with Ormus and Margulis. Eventually, our heroes find the anima research facility and discover... fully working E.S. units! How neat. They take off in their respective E.S. units, but on the way out of the facility Shion heres an announcement regarding her mother on the radio. Worried about her impending death at the hands of insane Realiens, Shion leaps out of the E.S. and heads towards the hospital. The others are prevented from following her due to a sudden boss encounter. In Labyrinthos, Shion suddenly finds herself faced with Red Testament. Red proceeds to de-mask, revealing what we have known since episode 1 – Red Testament is Kevin. Whilst Shion is reeling in shock at this, she is captured by UTIC...

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 4, part 2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 22:36:38 +0000

You know the drill. There were some annoying gaps between save points here again, so once again there aren't as many images as I'd like. Shion is being questioned by Margulis, Kevin and her father, and she kind of puts her foot in it by revealing she knows more than she possibly should – Margulis is suitably impressed that she knows who he is, but she probably shouldn't have mentioned the name Ormus... Meanwhile, Febronia turns up at the Elsa to inform them that Shion has been captured, and the gang – including Allen – go off to the rescue. Yes, for a short time only, you can have Allen in your battle party. Allen is hilariously awful,utilising a crossbow and not even starting with any Arts (he had learnt one by the time we got to a battle). So, the party make their way up to where Shion is captured. On the way there, we see the attack of the URTVs commencing, and that Kevins EVIL attack type Realiens have been let loose, much to Suou Uzukis dislike. When we are just about to reach the room, we cut to Shion. Shions father actually comes to release her, and asks her if she will go help his daughter, as he want to protect his family. They can't escape the room, however, because Pellegri turns up to stop them. Pellegri reveals that she knows that Suou Uzuki is the one who has been leaking information to the Federation (yeah, it turns out he isn't much of a jerk after all). Still, we turn up in time to kick Pellegris arse, then run off to rescue chibi-Shion. Leaving Labyrinthos, there is some bad stuff going down – The Song of Nephilim has started playing, and the city is in disarray. This is actually where the flashback at the beginning of Episode II cuts in – at one point running back through the city, Jr is almost crushed by the cannon chaos and Cannan had ejected in the opening movie (for which chaos queitly apologizes). Back at the Church, a terrified Shion bursts in on Febronia and Virgil being kind of rabu-rabu. She is being chased by a group of Realiens being driven insane by the Song of Nephilim. Virgil tries to stand up to them, but with his injuries he easily gets beat down. Febronia proceeds to stand between the Realiens and Shion and Virgil, but the insane Realiens beat her up, stabs her through the stomach and then proceed to start, well, eating her. Virgil goes insane and proceeds to beat the crap out of the Realiens. He gives chibi-Shion the key to the cargo entrance to Labyrithos and tells her to get the hell out of there. Shion runs off, whilst Virgil, trying to carry the badly injured Feb, is surrounded by more Realiens. The party turn up to help at this point. After beating down some Realiens, even more burst in. We have to make a run for it, but first Shion gives Virgil the detonation code built into combat type Realiens (you know, like he forces out of her in Episode I). Shion tries to carry Virgil out, but Virgil pushes her out the door, locks it then detonates the Realiens using the code he has just been given. Shion goes back into the church, but Virgil is nowhere to be seen – at least not Ye Olde Virgil, as Blue Testament turns up, laughing at the pathetic scene before him before proceeding to attack us (coincidently, like Black Testament, he pwned me first time around). Having beaten Virgil (eventually), the spirit of Febronia turns up and tells him to stop being a prick just because he couldn't save her (well, thats the shorthand version – its a really touching scene actually, and the music is pitched pretty much perfectly). Virgil and Febronia walk off together into the afterlife. No time to shed a tear, though, as we need to go find chibi-Shion. We find her infront of the cargo entrance being attacked by Realiens, whom we save her from. To be continued! I presume the Past arc is going to be wrapped up pretty soon...

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 5

DiGiKerot — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 15:01:53 +0000

Good lord, this is getting hard to follow. Don't take anything I say as being massively accurate, since I'm referring back to a dictionary every thirty seconds here (and my japanese sucks anyway...). I'm pretty sure this is almost entirely correct, but the game is throwing an increasing amount of odd dialogue at me now. So, we break back into Labyrinthos to take chibi-Shion to her parents, but they are too late. Chibi-Shion sees her father killed by Kevins combat-type Realiens, and hides under her mothers bed. The Realiens proceed to beat her mother into a bloodly pulp, when Elder Shion et al turn up. Having defeated the Realiens, chibi-Shion sees her mutilated mother and goes insane, summoning the Gnosis into the universe! Yes, Shion, not Mizrahi, is the one who brought the Gnosis to Miltia! O_o Elder Shion, unable to believe the scene she is seeing, somehow ends up summoning Abels Ark into the universe. Jin explains that this isn't time travel or anything like that, but the world created from Shions memories, and that this is exactly what had transpired all those years ago and anything that they did would have no effect. At this point, Kevin (Red Testament version) shows up with T-elos to make an attempt to actually explain some of what was going on. Apparently, Shion has the same disease as her mother had, and her father was trying to cure. Shion has some kind of direct link to U-DO, and can communicate with it, with U-DO responding to her wishes (hence how she can summon the Gnosis and Abels Ark). Its slowly killing her, though, and Kevin is trying to cure her. What's more, KOS-MOS is powered by linking to U-DO, and her being around Shion is accelerating her death. KOS-MOS was apparently constructed by Kevin to collect data for the production of T-elos, which he claims will be able to save Shion. Kevin tells Shion to come with him, and Shion wants to. Everyone else kind of thinks it'll be a bad idea and stands in her way. Allen orders KOS-MOS to get Shion the hell out of there, but Kevin commands KOS-MOS to bring Shion to him. KOS-MOS, however, refuses to take Kevins commands – she will respond only to Shion and Allen. She knocks Shion out and escapes though the window, summoning her bike in the process. T-elos gives case, but when she runs into Past chaos and Cannan in their ES she retreats. KOS-MOS gets Shion to the Elsa, and they then go to pick up the rest of the party and flee Miltia (seemingly returning the regular universe in the progress). Joachim Mizrahi, seeing what is happening, chooses to seal Miltia away. When Sellars tries to stop him, Mizrahi shoots him in the legs (hence why he rides a wheelchair thing in modern times). End of disk 1. On the Elsa, Shion is very, very pissed off due to the fact she was prevented going with Kevin, at least until she talks to KOS-MOS and Nephilim. Meeting up with the Durandal, it becomes obvious that Mictham is where everything is heading, and head off in that direction – but so is both Margulis and Dimitri Yuriev. Shion manages to convince everyone she is actually OK and they head of in the Elsa...

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 5, part 2

DiGiKerot — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 22:06:26 +0000

Some big, fairly unexpected events this time. I can't imagine there being much more of the game left, but unfortunately I'm not going to have as much time to play during the week, so expect the next few days posts not to cover as much story. Arriving at Mictam, we see a fierce battle in orbit. We head towards Merkaba, with the intention of beating the crap out of Dimitri Yuriev. Unfortunately, we only find Sellars – we've just missed Yuriev (in Gaignuns body, remember), who has headed off towards the Durandal with Omega. His troops slaughter anyone in their path towards the bridge. Reaching the bridge, Mary and Shelly assume it is Gaignun – that is, until Gaignun fires two rounds into Marys stomache, and demands the release codes for the Zohar Emulators from Shelly. Back at the Merkaba, Sellars at least give us a little information for our troubles. Apparently, Yuriev was the first person to undergo UMN transfer, where he can into contact with U-DO. This terrified him, and started his obsession with destroying U-DO. He also informs him that, as part of this transfer test, he picked up a special skill – mind transfer, and shocks Jr by telling him what is going on with Gaignun... Our heroes rush back to the Durandal, but it isn't a pretty sight - every man, woman and type-100 realien on board has been been slaughtered, with the exceptions of Juli Mizrahi, Cannan, Mary and Shelly. After fighting through female URTV Citrine to reach Yuriev, Yuriev kicks into the most pretentious and hard to follow conversation of the game. I think what he is saying is that, having come into contact with U-DO, the only way he can put to rest his fears is to acquire the same power and do what man has dreamt of since the beginning of time – destroy and become God. I think. As I say, not an esy conversation to follow. Anyway, he releases the Zohar emulators and proceeds to put the Durandal onto a collision course with Abels Ark. Our heroes, unable to divert its course, escapes on the Elsa before watching the Durandal merge with Abels Ark, and the Abel-piloted Omega takes in the true Zohar and transforms into what I expect is a form resembling one from Xenogears... Yuriev seems rather pleased with himself. To Be Continued!

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 6

DiGiKerot — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:03:56 +0000

Unfortunately, at this point, I'd have to summarise the story since my last post as follows - "Realising their current capabilities as being woefully inadequate, Shion sets off on an epic training exercise”. Alas, I’ve been blindsided by a sudden (and significant) increase in difficulty, meaning I haven’t actually been able to progress other than with the slow, levelling process. The fact that the next dungeon is long and has a number of long, gruelling boss encounters really doesn’t help things. I’m getting close to the required level now, so rest assured that I’ll be getting back to the plot ASAP.

Palm Characters Rin and Archer

DiGiKerot — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:16:16 +0000

Yeah, more Fate/Stay Night figures. These are a little disappointing, actually, by the usual standards of the Palm figures series. The moulding around the hands is a bit messy, and the paint work isn't particularly clean either. The Rin figure is completely set in pose – no movable arms like you get with most Palm figures, with only the head being repositionable. The Archer figure at least comes with a set of exchangeable arms, with two different sets of weapons so he can be equipped with either his twin swords or his bow and arrow, and his arms can we re-angled. But, really, these aren't particularly great. The paintwork on Archers back here is pretty messy.

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 7

DiGiKerot — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:29:12 +0000

Finally, back to making some progress! Sorry for the complete lack of images in this evenings post – all the good stuff is on the other side of a pair of really nasty boss battles, and I didn't want to do that all over again... The party heads towards Abels Ark in order to put a stop to Yurievs ambitions. Before they can reach Yuriev, though, they are faced with a fairly involved dungeon... Having progressed through that, we come face to face with Yuriev. He reiterates much of what we have learnt already. Jr says he'll kill the guy, but Yuriev wonders if he really can knowing that Gaignun is sleeping within him. Jr tries to talk to Gaignun, telling him to take back control of his body, but Yuriev tells him it is useless. With Jr stopped in his tracks, Yuriev proceeds to discuss his plans (pretty much as I've talked about already) before attacking our party. We defeat Yuriev, but its too late – his body is becoming increasingly contaminated by U-DO waves. Yuriev proceeds to merge with the mutated Omega and attacks our party once again. After an ES battle, Omega starts to spit Yuriev out. Yuriev still seems confident about his victory, but then out of nowhere appears everyone's favourite albino lolicon Albedo, who proceeds to warp away the Zohar and Abel from the Omega. He then provides an opening for Gaignun to talk to Jr. He tells Jr to kill him, but obviously Jr doesn't want to do so. Albedo then helps Jr in attempting to seal the U-DO waves in Yuriev using that link-ring-technique-thing we've seen in all the flashbacks in the previous games. During this, however, Gaignun uses Yurievs mind-transfer power to move Albedos soul into Jr, and his own soul into Albedos body. Yuriev and Albedos bodies are destroyed in the sealing of the U-DO waves. Before departing, Gaignun shows Jr what he would look like if he could age (we don't see his face, but he is half-nekkid ^^;). Before Albedos spirit goes into an eternal slumber within Jr, he tells him to head to Mictam... On the Dammerung, Wilhelm decides its finally time to take action, and leaves with his ES. Unfortunately for those on the Dammerung (including Miyuki), it seems the whole shops power supply ran off Wilhelms ES, leaving the whole ship immobilised...

The Maths of Tsundere (or: a lousy excuse for a graph post)

DiGiKerot — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 20:11:31 +0000

Tsundere annoys me. It didn't use to annoy me, but it does now. Its been a far, far too overused character model recently. It just seems like lazy and uncreative writing to me - it seems like an easy way of having something approaching character development without actually putting any thought into the whole writing process. Tsundere characters are alright when they are done well, but that is getting to be increasingly infrequent these days despite the huge number of them which are being thrown our way. Still, the recent all-tsundere series Tsuyokiss conveniently provides with with a handy formula for calculating Tsundere - Tsundere = COOL x SWEET. Rearranging this, we see that Tsundere/SWEET = COOL, and Tsundere/COOL = SWEET. Now, I reckon this formula can be extended to none-Tsundere characters, one assumes a perfectly normal, balanced character would have a Tsundere value of, say, 1 (its a whole number, 100%, not a fraction), therefore a perfectly level character would have COOL and SWEET values of 1, as 1 x 1 = 1. Taking Tsundere as a constant of 1, we can ascertain that COOL is oppositely proportional to SWEET - as a graph it would appear as follows. As the value of COOL increases, the level of SWEET will tend towards zero, but will never reach it. For SWEET to be zero, COOL would have to be infinite. What this tells us is that no matter how COOL a character is, they must always have a SWEET side, no matter how infinitesimal. The reverse is also true - even Tohru Honda must have a nasty streak, as small as it is. Maybe she maliciously pulls out blades of grass occasionally or something. I think this formula applies to anime as a whole, actually - Tsuyokiss doesn’t actually specify that this formula applies only to Tsundere. For example, Ichigo Mashimaro or Earth Defense Force Mao-chan are extremely SWEET, but are they COOL? Are they hell. Conversely, with its Samurai and its hippity-hoppity soundtrack, Samurai Champloo is extremely cool, but being devoid of cute lolis and any real romantic plotline, its as far from SWEET as possible. Indeed, to produce a good show, it is necessary to maintain this balance of COOL and SWEET. NOT COOL Of course, I’m assuming that COOL x SWEET is relating to the tsundere level of the character. I could have completely the wrong definition of COOL and SWEET here. Those who have seen Evangelion may remember Asukas explanation of Thermal Expansion, which could be summarised by stating that the less COOL (or more WARM) ones breasts are, the SWEETer the rack. Or, the above could just be complete and utter bollocks written whilst I take a break from XSIII. Make up your own mind!

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 8

DiGiKerot — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 22:59:59 +0000

You can tell I'm nearing the end of the game, as they've started killing off major characters. As always, proceed at ones own risk! As battle continues to rage over Mictam, Margulis consults Ormus boss Heinlein for orders. Heinlein seems rather less interested than usual though, and desides to reveal himself to Margulis... As Wilhelm! Yes, Wilhelm has been pulling Ormus, and hence Margulis, strings all along. Apparently, Ormus was founded 6000years ago after a certain persons death, but Wilhelms Ormus exists to preserve the things which God has left them (whatever that means). Margulis is, unsurprisingly, rather shocked that he was essentially just a pawn, and nothing which he has believed in and worked towards has been real. Meanwhile, our heroes make their way to the surface of Mictam to find the Zohar and Abel. Because of the seriousness of the situation, Jr tells Cannan and Allen to come along as support, though Cannan seems rather uneasy at the prospect. Upon arrival, they are faced with two ES units (which I believe are being piloted by Pilum and Scutum (recurring villians in Episode II). Defeating them, the Anima vessels are removed by a suspect black ES unit... Making their way through the city, we encounter Pelegri in her ES. As Pelegri stands in their way, Jin tries to talk her out of fighting – he doesn't believe they need to fight, and sees no reason to do so. Pelegri, however, states that the very ground they are standing on is the reason – its the birthplace of Ormus (Wilhelm's Ormus, rather than the original, I guess), and the world originally swallowed by them tampering with the Zohar. Pelegri, however, realises that her actions over the years have all been for nothing (I'm not sure if at this point its implied that she has spoken to Margulis or not yet, and there is some dialogue he relating what happened on Mictam to Miltia which I didn't quite get), but still she will battle Jin. Defeating Pelegri, an emotional Jin watches on as she dies as her ES explodes. Once again, a black ES makes off with the Anima vessel, but this time Ziggy recognises it as Voyagers and has some idea as to where it might be going. Arriving at a huge cathedral, we find Voyager is already waiting for us. Apparently, this is the place where Voyager killed Ziggys family. Whats more, Voyager knows what is worrying Cannan – Cannan isn't his original name, he was originally called Lactis. Ziggy recognises the same, from back when he was a police officer – Lactis was the realien assigned to assit with the Voyager case he was investigating! My knowledge of Pied Piper is a little sketchy, but I believe in the end it is revealed that Lactis has been created to search for those with the necessary alignment to become as Testament, and he had determined that Ziggy and Voyager were suitable. Since Ziggy refused, well, Voyager went was chosen. Since his visit from Doctus, Cannan has been regaining these memories from the past, and the guilt is eating at him. I'm not even entirely sure its a deliberate act on Cannans part – he seems to be linked to Wilhelms Compass of Fate. In fact, they have apparently been using Cannan to obtain data on our current party as well... After fighting Voyager and defeating his ES (the Anima vessel disappearing, of course), Ziggy tries to kill Voyager by blasting him at point blank range. When this fails, he leaps from his ES and attempts to tackle him by hand. Voyager, however, easily gets the upper hand and pins Ziggy to the floor. Cannan, however, positions himself between the two. Apologizing to Ziggy, Cannan sacrifices himself by tricking Voyager into linking to the Compass through him, swallowing up both Cannan and Voyager in the process. Thats three Testaments down, one more to go!

Xenosaga Episode III - Day 9

DiGiKerot — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:19:42 +0000

The good news is, as of about 15minutes ago, I finished watching the ending credits. The bad news is that I really have no idea about where to start summarising it. In any case, I’m not starting on it tonight - theres so much to cover (and a final boss to beat again) that I’m probably going to be looking at spending around four or five hours to cover it to the level I want, and I don’t really have the time to start tonight. I really need to chew things over a bit first anyway, get my feelings in order, and try and figure out what some of the dialogue is actually going on about. Anyway, I think I’ll probably split the final two entries over the next two evenings. As for general comments, I’ll probably post a non-spoiler review of the game later in the week as well. In regards to the ending, its pretty good. They do kind of leave it open for another game (which will probably never get made *sigh*), even prompting you to save game after the ending credits have finished. Jerks. In the lead up to the end there are a number of recurring characters of various levels of importance written out of the series in various fashions, but I’ll leave the exact details to the summaries. I will admit shedding a manly tear of respect during the ending, its kind of tear jerking in places. On thing the final stretch of the game really highlights is exactly how fantastic the use of music in this game is. it’s a far cry from Xenosaga Episode I, with its huge expanses of silence and two battle themes. In XSIII, practically every boss encounter has its own, unique music. It does an awful lot to successfully set mood, and some of them are absolutely cracking.

Xenosaga Episode III - The End, part 1

DiGiKerot — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:20:57 +0000

The start of the ending. Major spoilers ahead! Investigating the Cathedral, we discover an Ormus laboratory hidden beneath. Also below waiting for us is Margulis. Aside from the curious revelation that Jin and Pelegri were once lovers, Margulis says he is here to settle things once and for all. Having been betrayed by everything he has believed in, all he has left is his rivalry with Jin. For some odd reason they do for an ES battle, but whatever. Defeating Margulis, he decides that he cannot face being slain by Jins sword, and chooses to impale himself. Once again, the Anima vessel is extracted from the ES by some strange force. Descending further down, we come across an area which reacts to Shions pendant. We eventually reach a dead end, when Shion proceeds to get an U-DO attack. This time, however, she can see its form clearly, and its Abel. U-DO asks Shion what she really wants, to which Shion repeatedly states that she doesn't know. Eventually, she decides that she wants to be with Kevin. When she reawakens, she is faced with Nephilim. She tells Shion that only she can open the path forward, and that she needs to trust in her friends and the like. Shion, however, states that she is no longer doing this for the universe or her friends – she is doing it for herself, to be reunited by Kevin. She then approaches Nephilim and has another vision. She is back at Rennes le Chateau, but this time it is on Lost Jerusalem (i.e. Earth). Making her way to the tomb, she spots choas standing mysteriously next to the crucifix. Chaos asks if she has come to meet her, before pointing at the coffin in front of him before promptly disappearing. Opening the coffin, she reveals a woman who looks rather like KOS-MOS and T-elos. She proceeds to get a number of flashes of her life – standing with chaos in front of Jesus, chaos leaving her, and finally her standing in the middle of a field. Shion embraces her, and re-awakens. Just as she is about to try and explain what is happening, T-elos shows up and states who she saw was Maria. By Maria, T-elos is referring to Mary Magdalene (If Rennes le Chateau isn't a give away, the fact that T-elos handgun is call Magdalene 16 is). As for chaos, well, that's a difficult one to figure out. I've always figured he was probably Jesus, but here he is seen standing in front of him. I guess the Jesus we see is just a stand-in, a front man for chaos to divert too much attention from himself. His implied relationship with Maria implies this to be the case anyway. T-elos further explains things. KOS-MOS and T-elos created as vessels to hold the spirit of Mary Magdalene, and T-elos has come to claim her soul from KOS-MOS. The two battle, with everyone taking potshots at T-elos this time around. Mid way through the battle, KOS-MOS awakens as Maria – her eyes turn blue, and there is a very noticeable difference in the way she speaks. We proceed to kick T-elos's arse, and T-elos is absorbed into KOS-MOS. With Maria having been awoken, the Zarathustra system reacts, and people all over Fifth Jerusalem begin to Gnosify. They hurry onwards to meet Kevin. Kevin explains that Wilhelm informed him of the Universes collapse as a youngster, and that was how he ended up working with him and Mizrahi. Kevin proceeds to explain a bit more of what is going on – whilst they had created KOS-MOS, Shion was needed to retrieve Marias spirit from the UMN. Kevin can now help Shion – she no longer has to fear death being with him. Everyone else kind of thinks that going with Kevin might not be a good idea – Allen in particular. He thinks that Kevin is just using her, and doesn't understand her feelings at all. Kevin simply retorts that he is powerless – can he save Shions life? Would he be happy for her to die? Shion goes over to Kevins side. Its not Jins turn to try and talk to her. Shion tells him that she is tired and can't take things any more, and that Jin et al can't help her. In the end Shion isn't having any of it, so Jin makes an ultimatum – if she isn't going to listen to sense, he'll have to resort to force to stop her. So we fight Kevin and Shion. Shion, curiously, sudden doubles her hit points and gains an item she didn't have previously. Thankfully, she is pretty weak. Kevin is only slightly stronger here as well. Defeating them, Allen leaps back between the two parties to prevent further fighting. He starts off on another big speech – To save the universe, to survive, haven't they already faced certain death? Kevin tells him to shut it – he is just a feeble moron. They can't save the universe nor Shion. Allen retorts that with determination, they can do anything – they've achieved so much already. Kevin tells him that if he is so confident, he'll show him the kind of power Testament has. Fine with Allen, apparently. Kevin proceeds to beat the crap out of Allen, Star Wars-emperor style. Allen proves he has grown a spine, though, and refuses to stay down. Anyway, this goes on for a while, until eventually she manages to talk Shion around – its not right for her to achieve happiness at the expense of everyone else. So, its time to fight Kevin (its a hard battle as well!). Eventually losing, and having lost both Maria and Shion, Kevin is told be Wilhelm to retreat... To Be Continued!

Xenosaga Episode III - The End, part 2 (Final)

DiGiKerot — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:32:22 +0000

Its the final post, folks! Following the path into the next area, we see a huge object like Wilhelms compass, with two ES units floating either side - one is Wilhelms, the other a previously unseen one with Abel floating inside it. Wilhelm informs us that this is the Zarathustra system, and promptly summons our ES units and extracts the remaining Anima vessels, completing the system. Wilhelm seems impressed with Shions willpower. Apparently, he needs Shion, as her power is the key to starting the system. She refuses. Wilhelm asks id she really wants to give up her chance to return to Kevin an foolishly throw away her life? Wilhelm starts to explain things, but I could only catch so much of this - it’s a complicated dialogue. Wilhelm speech indicates that the systems power originates from chaos, and that his goal is the prevention of the collapse of the universe, that U-DO is god and Two Abels to observe the universe (is this supposed to be chaos and Wilhelm, or something else? I‘m not really sure, I‘m afraid). The Gnosis are the true form of those humans who choose to reject the world. No matter what Wilhelm says, Shion still refuses to help, though. Since Shion won’t help, he uses force. Uses his power to suppress the others, but not KOS-MOS (well, Maria). Allen asks KOS-MOS to help Shion, but since its Maria she doesn’t move. Wilhelm says its OK to do nothing, as it’s for the sake of the Universe. Shion pleads with Kevin for help, and Kevin cuts off Wilhelms arm with his Testament power - He won’t allow Wilhelm to harm Shion. Wilhelm suppresses Kevin with his powers, and turns back to Shion. He orders Maria to bring Shion to him, but part way towards Wilhelm she puts Shion down, crushes Shions pendant and proclaims “I am not Maria - I am KOS-MOS!”. Whilst Wilhelm is in shock, Kevin impales him on his hand. Wilhelm asks, with him gone, who is going to bring balance to the universe, to which chaos responds - he will. So, he is going to unseal his powers? Wilhelm thinks this is an interesting choice, but they are too late - the system has activated. Abel goes mad, and tears apart the ES units. Kevin tries to absorb the energy being generated, but can only go so far - its time to fight Zarathustra. One long, but not all that difficult, boss battle later, we have taken down Zarathustra. Wilhelm and Kevin disappear from the universe (but not until after Shion has one last discussion with him). Nephilim turns up to extract Abel from the system. Chaos proceeds to tell people to get the heck out of there - he and Maria will deal with the remains of Zarathustra and the collapse of the universe. Before she leaves, though, chaos tells her that she needs to be looking for Lost Jerusalem Bidding farewell to KOS-MOS and chaos, the gang jump aboard one of the ES units (somehow now working…) to escape. This is where it starts to get really odd. Marias soul is released from KOS-MOS, and chaos from Zarathustra. Chaos rejoins with his body, and Maria with Nephilim. They start operations on the Zohar, the universe being enveloped in white (I think it’s a huge UMN column), and the Gnosis begin to swarm towards chaos. They ask KOS-MOS to deal with things, and she obliges. Jin drops the others off before deciding to take the ES with him - he is going to keep the Gnosis of chaos whilst he works. Jin says he is glad to have such a good sister, and has always regretted not being around more and, well, the usual kind of thing you get in this kind of speech. Telling Allen to look after his sister, he heads off. Meanwhile, the UMN column reaches as far as the Dammerung (now operational - you can’t keep a ship full of expect techies down!). The gang proceed to make their way to the Elsa, taking Gnosis out was they go. The scene gives us great amusement value as Allen saves Shion from a Gnosis by beating the crap out of it with a rifle, whilst everyone else stares in disbelief. Back with chaos, Jin turns up to help KOS-MOS kick some ass. The battle takes a turn for the worse, though , as KOS-MOS loses an arm, and Jin is forced to detonate his ES and resort to taking Gnosis out with his sword. Jin, however, is quickly impaled by a Gnosis sword. Pulling the sword from himself, Jin takes the Gnosis on twin blade style, but whilst he takes out the Gnosis he also gets impaled by the second sword. He lies and tells chaos his is OK, and to proceed with his operations. Having nearly completed his task, chaos turns around to inform Jin, only to see his friend has passed away. Lets take a moment of silence to celebrate the passing of the awesome swords master. Continuing, KOS-MOS is the next to fall, leaping into a Gnosis with her special attack going, and exploding in the process. Having completed their task, chaos, Abel and Maria (or Nephilim) depart from the Universe, and the white space/UMN column begins to disappear, though it does threaten to take out the Elsa with it until the escape by activating the INCREDIBILY STUPID looking hyper booster thing. They end up in deep, dark space with no gravity control and nothing visible outside. Gradually, a female voice becomes more and more audible - its Miyuki and the Dammerung! Hurrah! Jumping forwards a bit, Shion, Jr and Allen are going to head off in the Elsa to find Lost Jerusalem as chaos asked. Momo offers to come along, but Shion tells her it is already - she has done enough now. Jr entrusts Momo and Julis safety to Ziggy, and they depart on the journey we’ll probably never see the end of. The final image, KOS-MOS badly damaged shell floating in space, as she closes her eyes and deactivates. The End.

A Study of the Innate Difficulties of Serialised Documentation of Non-linear Media

DiGiKerot — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:36:36 +0000

If anyone else is thinking of attempting to serial blog an RPG, my advice is to, well, not. Okay, I figured I would give some insight into the processes I used in the attempted blogging over Xenosaga Episode III. By the end, I wouldn't be surprised if I'd put off anyone planning on doing something similar from proceeding with it. Actually, most of the problems I had with blogging the game, aside fro the language barrier, was all those screenshots I wanted to take. I didn't want to resort to stealing shots from other sites, nor danbooru-fu, so I ended up hooking the PS2 up to my TV card. That said, it wasn't something I did on my first play through areas of the game. Playing games via a TV card on a computer monitor, for me, isn't really the ideal way to enjoy a game, not to mention the fact that you really need to have seen a scene once through prior to have a good idea of what you want to take screenshots of. Things blast through quickly, and unlike an anime episode you don't have a progress bar you can skip back and forward to find the scene you want. This leads to a few other complexities. For Xenosaga, I ended up creating somewhere in the region of 70 save game files spread across three memory cards. Thats pretty much one save game for every save point reached, before and after each scene of significance. When I came to blogging a portion of the game, I'd load up the different save files in order to grab shots I wanted (and frequently to take some better notes on the story). The added complexity of the matter them inserting boss battles between all the interesting scenes made things even more headache inducing, particularly has these got harder and longer as the game went along – it'd end up taking an hour or two to take the screenshots for a three to four hour gaming session. There was actually one exception to the above, which was the KOS-MOS/T-elos fight sequence. For that one, I actually vid-captured the whole sequence to the computer, and then used that to take the screen grabs from. It was actually a pretty time consuming exercise to do, but with the speed of that show sequence there wouldn't have been a workable alternative. Screen capping it another way would have resulted in images full of ghosting and interlacing problems. The other problem with RPGs is the non-linear progression of story development. When watching an episode of an anime show, you know that in any one episode you'll have something to talk about. Basically, you just need to sit and watch with no real hurdles involved. In a game, you have those annoying gameplay segments to get in the way of the story. When you sit down to play, you have no idea how easily you'll actually progress. You might get straight through things, you might get completely brick walled. Essentially, you ability to post may be hampered. If its an action game, or a badly designed RPG, you may find it, infact, impossible to ever progress again, completely killing a series of posts midway through. Xenosaga is, admittedly, a pretty extreme example in terms of structure – its wordy and has lots of cutscenes, not to mention the fairly staccato pacing whereby you'll go for ages without anything significant happening only to be whacked with a great load of plot in a short period of time. Its basically like a magnification of the problems you'll have in any game of the genre. You not only hit all the problems, but you get them to a level you probably wouldn't elsewhere. I'll not bother mentioning the language issue – I brought that upon myself, really ^^; In relation to Xenosaga, the “non-linear” part of the posts title is actually a bit of a lie. Xenosaga Episode III is actually one of the most linear RPGs I've played in a while. There isn't a huge amount of sidetracking or areas to wander around – its all story progression. By non-linear, I was actually intending to talk briefly about visual novels. You might think that, in theory, they would be easier to blog than something like Xenosaga. In some cases, its certainly true – they provide you with all sorts of handy features, like being able to save anywhere, fast-forwarding and a text archive to be able to scan backwards through what has been said previously. In reality, they would bring their own share of equally head aching complexities. The branching is the main issue – in better examples of the genre there are numerous endings the game can develop into, so how do you choose what story to cover? Even If you choose to cover all of them, how do you go about detailing those many, many events which play out the same way bar some very minor (but perhaps significant) differences? The thing with visual novels are that a lot of them rely on an identical opening which slowly but surely devolves into its own path. Really, I wouldn't even consider serially blogging a visual novel – something like Ayyos excellent recent post on Gore Screaming Show is definitely the way to go (though eroge – particularly horrifically guro ones – aren't to my taste). Ultimately, I have to say, if I wasn't so incredibly geekish about Xenosaga, I probably would have given up after two or three days. It was a really gruelling process for blog content I'm not actually convinced was particularly interesting to all but a few (maybe if US Xenosaga III was more than a month away I would have felt better about it). In the end, though, I decided I would do it, and so I carried it through - If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have posted anything for the last two weeks. Just don't expect me to do it ever again. Unless we do end up getting Xenosaga IV. I might make an exception for that ^_^;

Anime Isn't Funny

DiGiKerot — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 17:14:59 +0000

One thing which has always mystified by about anime fandom are all the people who insist a certain show is, in fact, actually quite funny. Whilst there are a handful of exceptions, most shows attempts at humour fall rather painfully flat. Actually, I'd originally intended this post to be a collection of moments from anime which I actually laughed at, but having spent the best part of the weekend scratching my head trying to think of a few, I decided against it – the problem being that I couldn't really think of much outside of Honey and Clover and the works of Akitaro Daichi which are, actually, genuinely funny. That isn't to say that comedy anime isn't amusing - there are plenty of shows which I can watch with a smile on my face due to the overwhelming silly atmosphere and attempts at humour, but the fact is that the number of shows which can actually make me physically laugh is pretty minimal. Its hard to figure out exactly why this is. In #animenano TJ Han suggested that Asian humour simply doesn't work with one with such a sophistimicated British sense of humour as myself. Personally, I'm not really sure that is actually the case – the problem being that there are plenty of humorous manga which do bring me much merriment. Whilst I'm wouldn't say there aren't anime titles I simply don't get due to the sense of humour not overlapping with mine – even within the works of Akitaro Daichi, I can say I really get Tsukikage Ran – but the fact that I can find manga funny but not anime rules that out for the majority of titles. Even with adaptations of manga titles which crack me up, many of them don't raise a smile even when I'm watching outside the point in the manga which I'm familiar with. Twister is funny. Always I think repetition has a lot to do with it as well. We have got to the point now where we have had far too many shows which simply repeat the same jokes over and over again. Seriously, how many times can one find some poor guy getting mauled over an accidental panty shot funny? The fact is, there are too many shows which are far too similar. I think the real crux of the problem, however, is that many anime directors simply lack any sense of comic timing. This is what separates Akitaro Daichi from many of his peers – his sense of timing is spot on. I've seen too many shows where gags which sound really funny on paper have been ruined by either inadequate or over-the-top build-up. Whilst there have been a few shows which have managed completely spastic humour quite well (like the early episodes of DiGiCharat), there are too many series which seem to completely lack the ability to successfully build up to a gag, or perpetuate a running joke across the series (Azumanga Daioh manages both pretty well, actually). Nadesico makes one cry MANLY tears of laughter Ultimately, I think my place in life is just to amuse myself with giant robots and action shows, and generally be a miserable sod about everything – not that its a particularly bad thing. Anyway, I got around to installing one of those poll plug-in thingies, so go over there ---> to vote on the subject.

Worst. Podcast. Ever.

DiGiKerot — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 03:55:40 +0000

Well, probably - I haven't actually listened to it yet. Somehow, I found myself filling in for Hinano in this weeks animenano podcast, and doing a woefully inadequate job of doing so. I apologize for any ill-effects anyone has from listening ^^; -update- Actually, its not that bad! Huzzah for Hung and his l33t editing skills!

Anime fans in “jumping to conclusions” shocker!

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:04:28 +0000

Oh, what an amusing day it has been. Reports from the first day of Otakon saw people discovering English flyers for recent fan favourite The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. At some point along the line, this poster got associated with ADV – how, precisely, I have no idea given that it was actually a flyer advertising the Kadokawa Pictures panel. Anyway, this story jumped from certain message boards to the blog community, then from the blog community to other forums, and those other forums to other parts of the blog community, and seemingly at every step along the line the ADV connection was repeated, aside from some sane (but seemingly ignored) people pointing out the fact the poster didn't actually say anything specifically. So, the Funimation panel comes and goes with no Haruhi announcement, the ADV panel comes and goes with no Haruhi announcement, and – surprise surprise – Kadokawa Pictures panel comes and goes with no Haruhi announcement. Yup, Kadokawa did say they'd received a few offers, but they haven't actually licensed it out to anyone yet. So, basically, a whole day of people getting excited over it and people with no knowledge of the R1 anime labels doing the usual “OMG! They'll ruin it!” (i.e. “What, normal people seeing Haruhi? I don't feel special anymore! The show SUXXORS anyway!”) climaxed in a complete non-event. The moral of the story is, don't jump to conclusions based on a poster what could easily be photoshopped. Still, Shadow Warrior Chronicals *snigger*

Fun with Search Strings

DiGiKerot — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 08:35:50 +0000

You can tell a blogger can't think of anything actually interesting to post when they take to making fun of their, admittedly probably accidental, visitors. Unfortunately, I don't get many really bizarre ones, unlike some people. Still, lets have a look at a few. “Xenosaga 3: chaos is not a woman” Actually, one of the twists in Xenosaga 3 I failed to mention is that chaos is, in fact, Noahs wife. Having committed some bizarre immortality ritual (the exact details they don't go into, but I do believe it involves sheep) she was forced into a life of constant child birth in order to repopulate the earth. Eventually, thousands of years later, she got fed up with it and had hot lesbian sechs with Mary Magdalene. “funny little anime ghosts” “comedy funniest anime “ ANIME IS NOT FUNNY. “everybody loves waffles” How very true. “melon pan recipe” I've got a few of these I've collected from various places, actually, though I've yet to find the time to actually try any of them ^^; “nuclear waffle” Just one bite gives you superpowers – Guaranteed! “doujinshi about a guys who goes to and all boys school” Noooo, I'm being invaded by Fat Yaoi Fangirls! “loli pretty boys” Methinks someone doesn't get the concept of loli... “bored with life join the military” I'm really not sure how that one got here ^^; “14-year olds in swimsuits” Eeeewwww, creepy pedo search strings – that Negima game has a lot to answer for. “big chested fantasy” I'd have thought there were a million and one places you'd end up with that before getting here... “really really random stuff” Sorry, I'm only really random, so you'll need to find somewhere else with that extra degree randomness you require. “why does a see-saw go horizontal” Good question! “dress up daz sampson” No. Just, no. “Haruka Suzumiya” Which is actually a character from Kiminozo, so isn't actually remotely interesting. However, not really caring about Kiminozo, before I realised this fact I was thinking about how awesome it would be to synch some footage of Haruka from My-HiME to Haruhi dialogue. Yeah, that would kick ass. Somebody photoshop this armband - Stat! At this point, I got bored, and I need to save something for another quiet week ^^;

Anime Fans are Funny!

DiGiKerot — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:40:52 +0000

Normal people oft say “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”. This handy phrase essentially suggests that if one is caught out by something once, they will be considerably more cautious about things in the future. Obviously, this doesn't apply to anime fans. Its been a really bizarre week, really. Not only did the interweb descend into twelve hours of stupid over the supposed Haruhi licensing, but just a couple of days later we got the same thing happening all over again with the Newtype cover being taken as there being a new season of Haruhi in production. There has been a reappearance of the rumours of a Kara no Kyokai TV anime as well, even though this had prevously been debunked. You'd have thought after the weekend people would be a wee bit more cautious. An entirely silly graph which shows nothing of interest As funny as this may be at times, its actually a bit of a headache as well. Somewhere along the line, people actually started considering anime blogs as reliable sources of news, as my traffic over the last couple of days, as well as where various web forums sources the news stories to, seems to show (yeah, I know that seems really odd, but its true). When one of the most widely read anime blogs around ends up posting two factually incorrect stories in as many days, it kind of hurts the credibility of anyone who is trying to be serious in their blogging practice. Really, if you are going to be posting news stories like this, at least try to confirm the news first. Whilst I can understand the confusion with Newtypes cover (though you should never take Japanese captions containing English at face value), the Otakon flyer could easily have been debunked immediately simply by checking up the panel times. In peoples haste to post news before someone else gets there, they are missing the obvious. Even with the Newtype story, its not something you should really post on the strength of a cover – people should at least have left it until someone who, like, reads Japanese has read the article in question! Also, people should really pay more attention to how they phrase things – people have a habit of not seeing question marks, and “ADV has Haruhi?” can very easily becomes “ADV has Haruhi!”, particularly after its drifted through a half-dozen different blogs and forums. So, in summary, Haruhi hasn't been license (yet), and there isn't a second series of Haruhi (yet).

Crack addiction (or – How much anime do you watch?)

DiGiKerot — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:05:33 +0000

I guess I'll wrap up the last poll first – Do people find anime funny? Well, the overwhelming winner with 82% was “Sometimes”. Not exactly surprising, really, because its true. Running in second place with 12% was “All comedy anime is funny, you silly Brit!”. I'm sure this actually has less to do with people actually laughing at anime, and more to do with insulting me (no matter how mild an insult it is). “No, Never!” got 4% of the votes (that's, err, two of them). One of those was probably me as well... Finally, we got a solitary person who simply couldn't resist going for the token stupid answer. Shame on you! So, this week, I'm wondering how much anime people actually watch. What's sparked off this curiosity is a conversation with tj_han in the animenano IRC channel, in which he comments on one particular day that he had just watched something like his 34th episode of the day, and that he normally watches at least five or six episodes a day. To me, this sounds like a pretty insane amount to watch – I'd probably oversaturate myself in no time if I was doing that day-in day-out. It's not all that unusual for me to go whole days (or even a week) without actually getting around to watching anything, but then on a lot of days when I do watch stuff we would be talking about anywhere between two and twenty episodes. If I was to average things out across a whole year, I suppose it would work out around two episodes per day. I suspect this is probably a low average for the kind of person who reads blogs like this, but I'll let you inform me whether this is true or not ^_^

My-HiME DVD Supertest

DiGiKerot — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:34:52 +0000

One show, three volumes ones - Which one is the best? Lets find out! Well, okay, this is really more of a comparison between the European R2 release and the US R1 version, but since I have the Japanese version as well I figure I may as well throw that in as well. I guess we'll start by looking at the packaging. Front covers first (from left to right, Japan, US, EU). As you can see, all three versions use the cover image. Obviously the US and the EU version use an English version of the logo. Amusingly you might have noticed that all three versions use a different, but very similar, version of the Volume 1 logo in the top corner. The EU version (or at least the UK print) has one of the smallest BBFC logos I've ever seen on the bottom corner (its a 15 certificate by the way – apparently episode 3 “Contains strong images of nudity” - I suspect its because of the Chie and Aoi omake). If we start to get really picky about things, both the US and EU versions have cropped the image on the cover at the bottom and on the right. Its very slight on the US version, but a bit more obvious if you look at Mikotos lunch on the EU version. The EU and US versions show more of the image on the left of the cover, though. In terms of colour replication, the US version is printed darker than the Japanese version, whilst the EU version is printed lighter. There are some fine details, most notably on Natsukis hair, which are only visible on the Japanese version of the cover. Looking at the spines, the US one is pretty boring. The EU release tries to mimic the Japanese version, but uses a slightly different (and smaller) image of Mai. Looking at the back covers, they are all completely different. The EU version looks far better than the US version, though, with the latter looking like an amateur bootleg. Opening up the box and taking a look at the disks, we can see the Japanese version is incredibly boring looking. The EU and US versions go for the same chunk of the front cover, but the printing quality on the EU version is slightly better. The US version of My-HiME doesn't have an insert, which is really kind of cheap of them. The Japanese version comes with a 12 page booklet with artwork and images from the episodes on the volume. The EU version comes with a 16 page booklet as well, though the contents are different to the Japanese ones, containing the kind of content the official My-HiME website had and some episode notes. Its interesting enough stuff, though, and sure beats not having an insert at all. In terms of other physical extras, the first press of the Japan release wins hands down with its bonus DVD featuring a long version of the original promo trailer and about twenty minutes of behind the scenes voice actor content. The US release had the LE option, where laying down some extra cash got you a really awful artbox and a crappy t-shirt. The EU version doesn't have anything else extra. Looking at the on-disk extras, the EU version has everything the US version does – which amounts to a short promo trailer (but not the good one with the weirdo pre-release design). The EU version has the clean OP and ED they were probably leaving for a later US volume a short slideshow containing some production and design art. All versions have the Omake features, though these aren't inserted between episodes on the EU version. In terms of the actual show content, the Japanese Vol 1 only has two episodes, but the other releases have four a piece. The Japanese version obviously only has the Japanese vocal track and no subtitles, but both the EU and US version have English subtitles as well as the same English dub. The subtitles are actually the same between the two versions, but the timing seems to have been redone for the EU release (as well as them using a different subtitle font). The EU version also has German and French dubs (which I'm sure would impress JPM), and some other EU languages as subtitle options. Having only two episodes and one audio track on the DVD results in the Japanese release completely destroying the other two in terms of video and audio quality – it pretty much uses all the bandwidth available to DVD content, and uses uncompressed stereo PCM audio. The US version is probably better in terms of video than the EU version. I actually had problems comparing a little – when I tried to play the videos through MPC the EU version had some horrible frame merging problems. When I extracted the VOB files and had a look at the individual, butchered frames in Virtual Dub, it turns out that isn't actually the case – it looks fine. I guess its something odd about my MPC setting or the way it de-interlaces PAL video. Watching the two on my HDTV through my DVD player, the difference is pretty negligible, but I think I'd have to give the advantage to the US version over the EU one – it simply looked a bit better to me, with fewer compression artefacts. The episode files sizes are about the same, so its probably to do with the extra language and subpicture tracks on the EU version. That said, the US version has the annoying problem that its been encoded with a timestamp. On the small scale, this results in not being able to use the position bar in MPC to jump through the episode, or DVD players bookmarking functions not working correctly. On the larger scale, it prevents subtitles from working at all on some DVD players (even some top end stuff like the some of the new HDDVD players, apparently). There have been a few other problems reported on assorted DVD players over at AoD as well. The DVD works fine with my player, but buying it you are risking the fact that you may have something unusable on future players. No such issues with the EU version, by the way. So, its actually a little tricky to sum up. If you are obsessed with video and audio quality, and are literate in Japanese, the Japanese release is the way to go – its simply the best looking, best sounding version of the show, and particularly with the later volumes it had the coolest extras (that is, if you can track down the FP versions). If you live in Europe, don't bother with the US release – it may look cheaper, but the catalogue including with the release suggests that the EU release is on 6 rather than 7 DVDs, and frankly the EU version just feels like a far more satisfying product than the US version. Now, if you live in the US, its somewhat more difficult a choice. Chances are, even if you have a region free DVD player, you might not be able to play PAL disks. I know that some HDTVs will be happy with it, and that some US DVD players will convert PAL to NTSC (though that will result in a reduction in playback quality), but that's still a minority. Its pretty clear, at least, that the R1 release is presently a subpar product compared to other releases of the show. If it was just the lack of extras and iffy packaging I wouldn't have issues saying that you may as well just buy your local version, but the current authoring issues make it a difficult recommendation. Bandai are currently looking into the issues in the view of correcting them for later volumes, but I guess its your choice as to whether you want a disk which may be no better than a coaster if you update your AV setup...

Fun With Melonpan

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 18:25:55 +0000

Today I've finally gotten around to doing something I've been meaning to do for a while – attempt to bake some melon bread. I suck at baking – I don't think I've done anything approaching proper cookery since High School eight years ago. Still, being able to get full, undisturbed access to the kitchen today I figured I may as well have an attempt. For those who know little about melonpan (or Melon Bread) aside from the fact that Shana eats it a lot, its basically a soft, sweet bread bun with an upper layer of cookie dough. The melon part of the name is reputably derived from the fact that it looks like a Melon, though the cookie dough is often melon flavoured – or so I'm told at least. Not being Japanese, I've even actually had the chance to taste genuine melon bread. I've collected a few of different recipes from the 'net over the years, I decided to go for the second as the process seemed rather more straight forward (well, OK, its the only one where I understood all the measurements ^^;) Actually, the first problem I had was that Melon Extract simply doesn't exist in the UK. I couldn't find Pineapple flavouring either, though I suspect that one does exist. I didn't fancy boring vanilla so I opted for...Orange! Hmmmm, Orapan.... My first attempt didn't turn out particularly well. There were a whole bunch of errors I made. The cookie dough turned out too sticky, due to a combination of using too much buttter and not taking into account the liquid Orange flavouring. If I'd put some more flour in, it would have turned out better. Being too sticky, I couldn't really spread it particularly well over the top of the bread, resulting in an uneven mess. As for the bread part, I think I probably killed the yeast with heat – I think I heated the liquid up too much. The dough didn't expand by much whilst left standing. It did at least rise properly in the oven, though. I did end up eating it anyway – it tasted pretty good, actually. I wasn't sure show the orange flavour would turn out – I thought it might be a touch too strong or odd, but it turns out that it actually works. The second attempt turned out a bit better. I got the cookie dough spot on this time – it was a bit thicker, and was easy to wrap around the bread. I didn't but the criss-cross in the surface deep enough though, so it disappeared when baked. The bread dough expanded properly this time as well. Unfortunately, I don't think I mixed in enough salt, and possibly forgot some of the egg. The cookie dough may have been spread on a little too thick as well. The end result was that the bread didn't rise very well in the oven, and it ended up a bit too flat. Still, it does taste pretty good ^^; Now, if only there was a way to combine both batches into one entirely successful one! Maybe next time...

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 22:41:41 +0000

There's that lemon again. It was on the cover of the Adventures of Asahina Mikuru LE DVD, and its back on the LE cover here again. I still can't explain it, and no-one ventured a guess last time either... As with the Asahina Mikuru Ep 00 DVD, the DVD version of MoSH Episode 1 is full of exciting new cuts, like this one! Wow! Amazing, eh? All silliness aside, there are quite a few new cuts added into the episode. They are, however, large inconsequential, adding a few close-ups during conversations, or footage of people walking around. All pretty silly really, but there are too many (i.e. more than four or five) of them for me to care to list. There are two episodes on this DVD, but I think only episode 1 has some actual new animation. Both episodes, however, have a bunch of corrections to the animation. Take this shot here, for example - See the blackboard behind the teacher? See the writing? That wasn't there in this shot of the broadcast version, although it was in prior shots of that end of the classroom. Want another? In the broadcast version, there were posters on the left behind Haruhi, but since they weren't there in previous cuts they removed them here. Mikurus mole was actually missing in this shot in the broadcast version ^^; Anyway, there are quite a few of these minor animation tweeks across the two episodes. I've bet most people wouldn't even have noticed these are errors in the broadcast version, but obviously someone was paying close attention to continuity. As with the Asahina Mikuru DVD, the next episode previews have been re-dubbed by Yuki. It probably has a lot to do with the episode ordering they've gone with – the next DVD looks like it will kick off with what was broadcast/Kyon episode 5, but since they've gone chronological bar Mikuru Ep 00 it doesn't fit Haruhi or Kyon ordering. The episode previews are just as blunt as the preview Yuki one. The DVD does have the broadcast versions in the extras for the completest, though. For those who are really upset about the lack of the episode mix-up, they can console themselves with the fact that the clean Adventures of Mikuru DVD opening is on this volume, whilst the proper Haruhi opening was on the previous one ^^; The other DVD extra is more Aya Hirano commercial shooting stuff. The physical extras are annoying people with this volume. Basically, with the LE version you get a sticker sheet. The sticker sheet you get, however, is random – I got sticker sheet #3 for example, whilst I believe Moyism got sticker sheet #2. What is really really annoying people, though, is the SP sticker sheets – a small number of copies of the LE DVD release get a second sheet of stickers! It frustrates people who are paying for the LE to know that there is still some random extras they simply probably won't get. The other extras are some postcards and another mini-soundtrack and drama CD.

Best. Podcast. Ever.

DiGiKerot — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 17:30:47 +0000

Well, OK, that's more than a little of an exaggeration, but since somehow I managed to top Google (or the UK variant at least) for “Worst Podcast” I figured I'd see if I can get it to work in reverse. Anyway, I ended up standing in for JP in the Animenano Podcast this week, since JP wasn't around and Hung needed to get it recorded prompt-like. Go and listen, or don't, or whatever. I think Hung would rather you did listen, though. I'm actually quite impressed that Hung managed to get so much material out of what we recorded (to be honest, I was expecting it to run a little short). Oh, and don't forget to think of some questions for JP, Hung and Hinano for next week, I'm sure they'd appreciate someone giving them some ideas about what to talk about ^^;

Alter 1/8 Black Dress Saber

DiGiKerot — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:37:07 +0000

Oh my, this is certainly a nice figure. I'm finding it pretty hard to think of anything particularly negative to say about to be honest – its about as well made a 1/8 scale PVC figure as you are likely to see. The sculpt is nice and there are no obvious manufacturing issues - even on closer inspection, there are no obvious seem issues, and aside from the usual join along the top of the hair the others are not really obvious (for example, at the top of the sleeves). The paintwork is really well done as well – I particularly like the shiny boots and the semi-transparent sword. I suppose they could have picked out the strings on the corset out in a different colour, but that is just nitpicking really. Most of the paintwork is gradient shaded - the corset and some of the bows being the only parts flatly coloured. It looks good. There is plenty of fine detail in the sculpt as well – check out the corset, the ruffles in the skirts inner lining and the hair. As I've mentioned previously, the sword is actually partially transparent – the center is coloured, but as it gets towards the edges the blade becomes transparent. It looks cool. The boots look cool, being shiny. You can take the skirt off on this figure. I found this hard not to notice, because the one failing I have with this figure is how loosely the upper half fits, but given its not something I'm likely to move around all that often, and its only two pieces, its not a huge problem – certainly not something to mark the figure down on. Anyway, the figure doesn't really work without the skirt, as there is an obvious gap between the top and bottom half of the figure. Still, taking this picture does give me the opportunity to point out how detailed even the panties and the top of the leggings are. What you can do, which little better, it remove the inner lining of the skirt, allowing the top of the leggings and a peek of her panties visible.

The Calamari Wrestler

DiGiKerot — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 19:43:53 +0000

Part Wrestler, part squid, all man! Having won the Japanese Pro-Wrestling Championship bout, Koji Taguchi suddenly finds himself under attack from a mysterious, squid-like wrestler, who proceeds to shame him with his l33t wrestling skills. Kojis girlfriend, and several other people, recognise the moves of this aquatic hero as belonging to her former boyfriend, a former wrestler who disappeared having contracted some illness which prevented him from wrestling. Needless to say, it is actually him, and he proceeds to face opposition from the Wrestling league, not to mention other aquatic foes, in his quest to become a true champion wrestler! What is the secret of his powers? What is his agent up to? Will he defeat all comers? ALL WILL BE ANSWERED! As one might be able to guess, The Calamari Wrestler is an odd movie to say the least. It certainly isn't a particularly good movie – the costumes are silly, the story is completely insane and nonsensical, and the acting is pretty dire to say the least – but that doesn't mean it isn't a particularly amusing film. That said, most of the entertainment of the movie is the silliness of seeing a guy dressed as a giant squid doing things like walking around doing his shopping. The wacky writing is rarely particularly inventive or surprising in its twists or story development, largely consisting of things you can see a mile off. But, the costumes are funny ^^;

Poll round-up - How much do you watch?

DiGiKerot — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 19:24:42 +0000

I suppose its about time to wrap up the previous poll and put up a new one. In answer to the previous question on how much anime people watched in a day, two people blatantly lied by claimed they watched more than 30 episodes a day – which whilst humanly possibly, either means they've rewatch a lot of shows over and over or are trying to catch up with One Piece of Sazae-san or something, or misread the question. Regardless, if they really do manage to watch that much, they are obviously no-life NEETs with too much time on their hands. No real surprise with the rest of the results, though – the vast majority of people watch between 1 and 3 episodes a day. I thought that the sub-episode option might have factored in more, but I guess those who read internet blogs are a fairly hardcore bunch who watch a lot anyway. I suppose I need to set a new poll, but since I can't think of anything interesting to poll on, I'm going to go for a poll on polling! Yes, how many of you folks in reader-land actually vote on blog polls? Now there is a biased poll if I've ever seen one :p

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #1

DiGiKerot — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 19:33:55 +0000

Feel free to comment if you actually get this...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2

DiGiKerot — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:36:29 +0000

The Idolm@ster

DiGiKerot — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:53:47 +0000

Insert Credit has an interesting, and highly anecdotal, review of the Namco arcade game The Idolm@ster. I thought it was pretty interesting, particularly given there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of English language material on the game floating around. The Idolm@ster has raised its profile within the Western anime fanboy community with the recent announcement of the Idolm@ster Xenoglossia anime, though truthfully I'm kind of more interested in the forthcoming Xbox 360 port of the game. Admittedly I don't actually own a 360, even less a Japanese one capable of playing the game. I don't really have the inclination to drop so much money on a console for one, probably mediocre game. Maybe I'll just grab a copy of the game anyway and wait for the consoles price to fall to an acceptable level. Really, though, whilst this kind of game isn't exactly kind of shift a huge amount of consoles, its the kind of silly crap which kind of appeals to me more than it probably should. That being said, I don't really see how they can translate the game to the home world without ruining the experience. It seems to me that half the dynamic the game is built on is a certain amount of emotional investment built through hours of queuing to get on a cabinet and ploughing in a small fortune in loose change. Without that kind of investment, the whole “last concert” thing seems kind of meaningless – on the home version, its just a failed game, and you can just start again immediately without too much stress, as its not like its costing you any more to play through again. It'll be interesting to see if they try to expand the game out in any way for the home release in order to make things more interesting. Namco have been pretty good about their home ports in the past, so for a fairly successful game like this you'd at least hope they've got something up their sleeves (even if it is for the 360).

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3

DiGiKerot — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 21:58:07 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4

DiGiKerot — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 06:00:07 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5

DiGiKerot — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 06:52:57 +0000

If you be thinking that I'm not even trying to make a joke here, you'd be right

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #6

DiGiKerot — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:47:24 +0000

frnzra ba svtherf! ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #7

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 20:29:10 +0000

I don't think I've ever seen a gaijin 4-koma I've actually found to be funny, at least not for being a gaijin 4-koma. I think the only ones I laughed at were the first I'd seen, which were all MOC-COS ones back from when Xenosaga Episode II was released - and those I only laughed at because the MOC-COS figure was so god-damn ugly. So, as a gaijin 4-koma, this is inheritantly unfunny. (on another note, I'll definately try post some actual content, rather than stupid, badly drawn comics, tomorrow. Honest!)

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #8

DiGiKerot — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:51:38 +0000

My-ZHiME DVD6&7

DiGiKerot — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:08:28 +0000

Man, the volume 6 omake was soooo wrong... Talk about procrastinating over posting an entry – I've had these DVDs for a few weeks already and not got around to looking at them – volume 8 is even out now. I have to say, no matter what anyone thinks about it, I really do love this show. Its an absolute favourite of mine, and you really don't want to know how much I'm looking forwards to Double Zeta HiME, errr, ZHiME Zwei (and, yes, I do have the actual DVD on pre-order already). Once again, I don't think there is a huge amount of point to talking about the omake on the DVDs, as people probably know all about them already. I do have to admit that the volume 7 omake is actually make me chuckle, though. As for differences between the broadcast and DVD versions of the episodes, I didn't spot much, but that doesn't mean I didn't miss anything. At the very least, there were some sections at the end of episode 20 redrawn for the DVD release. A few examples on the next page. I'll let you try to work out which is the DVD version. I think its worth pointing out that the show actually looks a lot better than a lot of people probably actually think. The background work in particular has a lot of fine detail in things like wooden surfaces showing grain, the textures on stone walls, brick work and carpet patterns which is visible on the DVD version where it wasn't previously. I'm not going to waste my time taking pictures on the DVD extras – they really aren't worth me doing so. The DVD 6 first pressing is a copy of the photograph of Arika, Nina and Erstin you see in the show a few times, whilst the DVD 7 extra is Youko picture of her with her Asward buddies. Both volumes come with the usual ZHiME booklet full of background information. DVD 7 also has the clean version of the second OP on disk. Pretty crappy FP extras, to be quite frank, particularly given we got a figure with My-HiME DVD7.

Negima Spring OAV Digest Movie

DiGiKerot — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 22:30:26 +0000

Okay, so this has been done to death elsewhere already, since I've been waiting for my DVD copy to arrive before watching it, but I'll touch on it briefly anyway. What I won't do is the whole hundred-odd screenshot affair since that has been done in a few other places. Aside from the fact that the digest movie has nowhere near enough Yue in, I'm really looking forward to seeing this being something of a Negima fanboy. It looks good, and I've heard positive things from someone who saw it at the Spring Negima event. I find it amusing that they are playing with a Frisbee rather than a volleyball on the beach, simply because I reckon the only reason they aren't is to distance itself from the Xebec version of Negima ^^; There still seems to be some confusion over what this actually is, particularly given the TV show coming up later in the year. This digest movie is for what is known as the Spring OAV. This OAV was, I believe, originally shown at the Spring Negima event earlier in the year. The full version is currently due to be released on DVD in October, neatly coinciding with the new TV series starting in Japan. What this OAV preview isn't is remotely representative of what Negima!?, the forthcoming TV anime, is going to be like. It is true that both versions share most of the senior staff – most crucially one of my favourite directors Akiyuki Shinbo – but the Negima OAV is targetted pretty specifically at existing Negima fans, and they can get away with doing what they want since it is a direct to DVD release. The TV version of Negima!?, on the other hand, is actually being aired in a proper timeslot. For those who don't pay attention to these things, a lot of the shows which are popular with Western fandom (aside from Bleach and Naruto) air in late night (or early morning, depending on perspective) timeslots, so they get a little leeway in terms of how much service they can provide, though admittedly not as much as the satellite shows. Negima!?, however, is airing at 1730. Its a mainstream kind of timeslot, so you'll certainly not get the kind of service you are seeing in the OAV. Further, the manga version of Negima!?, whilst being drawn by an artist who seems to have done service heavy work in the past, is being run in Comic BonBon, which appears to be a young'uns magazine (though it did run King of Bandits Jing, which wasn't entirely free of service). Anyway, just don't expect the kind of service and animation quality you seen in the OAV digest to manifest itself in the TV shows. Coincidently, director Akiyuki Shinbo seems to have something of a reputation among Japanese fans for improving on original works for his adaptations after his work on Nanoha, Tsukuyomi and Pani Poni Dash! It'll be interesting to see what the reaction to Negima!? will be when it airs given that, in this case, the original work is actually quite strong. Aside from the digest movie and the OP for the OAV, the DVD has a 20 minutes seiyuu interview thing. Whilst the constant fish lens view is pretty annoying, the seiyuus attempts to draw their characters are pretty funny – particularly Setsuna...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #9

DiGiKerot — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:50:48 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #10

DiGiKerot — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:41:38 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #11

DiGiKerot — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:50:58 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #12

DiGiKerot — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 23:00:37 +0000

One year old!

DiGiKerot — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:41:04 +0000

Apparently, this blog is now one year old. Well, actually, this occasion passed yesterday – I was simply too preoccupied to post. As it happens, I had to replace my computer over the weekend, and I still haven't bothered to get this one up to speed with all the software I usually use (like my scanner drivers). Adding to that was the fact that my US copy of Disgaea 2 arrived over the weekend, and I've been clocking up mad hours. I've actually onto my third cycle (i.e. I've seen the ending twice, or at least two endings) already... Anyway, when I registered on Animenano, I entered my blogs description as “Eclectically covering whatever I feel like this week”. This, fundamentally, is true – the intention I had with starting this blog was simply that it generating content for it gave me a reason to watch some of those DVDs I've had lying around for ages without watching, as well as occasionally geeking out over figures. As things have progressed, I've kept up with the figure posts, but there doesn't seem to be anything of any consistency in regards to any of my other posts. I guess I'll probably be keeping it that way for the foreseeable future. I don't really see the point in questioning whether I'll still be watching anime at this time next year – with something like twelve years of fandom behind me, I can't at this point imagine myself stopping at any time soon. Whether or not I'll still be actively updating my blog in another years time is another question entirely. As Lolikit seems to enjoy posting about on a near monthly basis, anime just seems to be a monumental waste of time – it doesn't really feel productive. As things so, after a day at work its so much easier just to stick in an anime DVD for some passive entertainment rather than actually trying to do something. Still, I don't really resent the fact that anime itself sucks away at my time. Honestly speaking, I don't actually spend that much time watching anime itself – what really sucks away the hours in the time spent indulging in anime fandom. The internet is a horrific thing for absorbing time – its even easier than sitting down to watch anime. It just absorbs so much of the time I could be using for more productive seeming things, like playing through my backlog of console RPGs, reading the four or five years worth of reading material I have stocked up, doing some computer programming or, indeed, actually watching some anime! Yeah, that last one is shocking, I know. Really, though, there are things I'd actually like to achieve, and at the moment internet anime fandom lures me away from actually getting on with it. Whilst I don't expect to ever actually remedy this situation, I feel I should at least try and put some effort into it ^^; Anyway, normal service will resume as soon as I can think of something approaching worthwhile to post.

Japanorama 2-1

DiGiKerot — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 23:07:41 +0000

Jonathan Ross's BBCThree show Japanorama started a new series tonight. Yeah, I probably should have mentioned it previously (though, really, I don't think I've got that many UK readers), but its being repeated over the next few days anyway. Anyhoo, Japanorama automatically scores bonus awesome points for including a shot from Gunbuster in its opening credits. For those who haven't seen it before, Japanorama is basically just Jonathan Ross (UK radio DJ, TV chat show host and BBC Film critic, among other things) talking about, well, Japanese stuff. I can't actually remember much of what was talked about in the first series, aside from Hideaki Anno's Love and Pop and him meeting Miyazaki, which I somewhat suspect was the entire purpose of the series. It's probably worth pointing out that Jonathan Ross is the same guy who has been seen wearing a replica of Bruce Lees Game of Death costume, dressing his entire family in Pokemon merchandise to attend the UK premier of a Disney movie, and has been known to show of LE Ghibli DVD merchandise sneakily in the background of the BBCs Film show. This series has them basing each episode rather painfully around a Japanese word – this week was Kakoii, so he talked about an assortment of various apparently cool subjects. These included some Japanese fashion designer who has an insanely large collection of (alas, largely US) toys, the woman who directed Yukis Sentimental Journey music video, Tadanobu Asano, and some guy who designs odd robots. It also featured a cosplayer with bad dental hygiene. Next weeks is probably going to be more interesting to the kind of people who read this blog – the subject is otaku. Mr Ross will apparently “discover why so many young Japanese men can only feel love for manga, anime and model collecting”, as well as visit a maid cafe. I, however, somewhat suspect that the series highlight will be episode 4 (“Owarai”), where Jonathan meets Hard Gay (whilst wearing a replica of the costume). Anyway, I guess it's worth half an hour of your TV viewing time if you live in the UK.

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVD 2

DiGiKerot — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:17:03 +0000

Yes, the lemon is back! However, thanks to pKjds comments on my last entry their purpose has now been explained – its a parody of the covers of The Television, a weekly Japanese TV magazine published by Haruhis publisher Kadokawa. Mystery solved! Still, that's a really evil smile she has there... This time around, I won at buying Haruhi – I actually got one of the super-extra-limited SP sticker sheets in addition to my regular one. Pointless, yes, but I can still sit feeling smug that some poor Japanese otaku is probably crying himself to sleep in the knowledge that his copy didn't come with one. The physical extras here are pretty much the same as the previous volumes, so nothing to particularly report. The on-disk extras are pretty much the same as well, with more Aya Hirano behind-the-scenes footage. Oh, and there is also that “_MIKURU” folder hidden on the DVD which you have probably heard about already... The images are only really in DVD-ish resolution, and since you can capture from the DVD without the copyright notice on these images, its pretty pointless aside from the nerd-value, really. The DVDs continue the insane attention to error fixing found in the previous volume – seriously, I have no idea how people spot this stuff – its like spot the difference! I only really know about these changes as I found some of the timestamps listed on a Japanese site. In addition to the animation tweaks, they've inserted some new footage again. They've added a new scene immediately after Kyon and Yukis chat on the DVDs first episode. The Japanese cover for Hyperion looks cooler than my English copy ^^; They've added some extra footage of Yuki playing that tile game with Mikuru, and extented Koizumis introduction, plus a couple of really minor things. That's pretty much it, really.

Keroro Gunsou – The Movie

DiGiKerot — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:33:47 +0000

Whilst returning home from buying a new Gundam model, Fuyuki and Keroro accidentally unleash an ancient frog-like demon, blah, blah, everyone falls out, blah, blah, extinction of life on the planet, blah, blah, needs to be resealed, blah, blah everyone makes up and kicks arse. Its not exactly the most original movie ever (there's a dozens of anime movies and RPGs with pretty much the same plot), but it is pretty entertaining regardless. Things drag somewhat in the middle when nothing particularly exciting or silly happens, but the ending battle is pretty cool and the whole thing is as well animated as you would expect from a movie. Ultimately, its only an hour long anyway, so when I say that the middle drags a little its not exactly got much time to drag in. And, hey, it even made me laugh a couple of times. There's no point in doing a summary, particularly given how generic it is, but I may as well pick out a few highlights. The movies opening sequence, whilst painfully short, is pretty cool. It has Giroro, Tamama and Dororo facing off against a whole army of anime-referencing opponents in a VR earth-invasion simulator. Its probably the most slickly animated scene in the movie. There is plenty of Gunpla service, of course. There is a short CG clip of a Gundam battling a Zaku which is well done, though its only a few seconds worth of animation. There's some hokum about psychic mind reading powers in the movie, which I'm only mentioning here because the fact that Keroro was trying to bend spoons whilst practising it made me laugh. Unfortunately for you, its kind of a spontaneous unexpected thing which me mentioning here has just spoilt for you ^_^; There are plenty of anime references to spot in the movie as well. For the less old-school fans around, the image on the left is a reference to the classic movie Akira. The characters on the image on the right are the leads from Kaiketsu Zorori. I can't say I know anything about it other than its a series produced by Sunrise which got a theatrical adaptation at the same time as Keroro and that I suspect the two movies would have been shown as a double-bill on some screens (all the Keroro movie trailers on the DVD are joint trailers for the two movies). Apparently some of the Keroro crew make a cameo in the Zorori movie as well. The giant Keroro scene, aside from being somewhat reminiscent of Evangelion, made me laugh simply from the way Keroro carefully walked around trying not to step on or break anything. Someone should really remind him he is meant to be invading the planet at some point... The movie ends with plenty of gratuitous battle fanservice (including Powered Natsumi). I bet Giroro could kick Yodas ass in a lightsaber battle any day. I grabbed the Deluxe edition of the Keroro Gunsou movie DVD, which came with these rather “attractive” watches... Alternatively, it comes with a chain so you can hang one of them from your mobile phone or whatever. Finally, you can also use them as part of a diorama you can make from the box.

Japanorama 2-2

DiGiKerot — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:00:23 +0000

In which JR says “moe” a lot. The second episode of the second series of Japanorama focused on otaku. Unfortunately, half an hour really isn't long enough for an episode of this show, as they skip over a lot of things way more quickly than a lot of viewers would probably like in order to cram a lot of subjects in. A group of Ouran Host Club cosplayers - their description of the series was somewhat lost in translation ^^; Anyway, unsurprisingly it took less than two minutes to get a glimpse of Densha Otoko (which they went into in great depth later on) as well as a Saber figure. They also tried to explain moe (not particularly well, I have to admit), talked briefly about Wonderfest and cosplay, and visited a maid cafe. They also met the self-proclaimed King of Otaku, who claims to have no interest in real women because he is too busy saving up for a Shinku doll ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #13

DiGiKerot — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:08:24 +0000

Made of 90% recycled artwork. Yeah, its a slow week for me ^^;

Kotobukiya 1/8 Illya

DiGiKerot — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:11:20 +0000

Unlike Saber and Rin fans, Illya fans haven't really had much choice when it came to figures – either they had to got for kits (presuming they had the mad skills) or settle for trading and gashapon figures. Thankfully for them, Kotobukiya have now provided them with this 1/8th scale effort. The thing is, this is one of those figures where there isn't really anything much to comment about it – it's a 'nice' figure, in that there is nothing either particularly good or bad to say about it. The worst you can really say about it is that it's a little bland, the best that it's well made and the wood effect on the base is pretty cool. The paintwork is clean, the moulding is fine, the figure fits nice and snugly in its base with, given its posture, pretty much zero risk of horrific distortion. The seams along the hair aren't the most the invisible in the universe, but given pretty much all figures have them it's not exactly something to get really alarmed about. (click for bigness)

Japanorama 2-3

DiGiKerot — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:37:34 +0000

Postal Procrastination FTW! Yeah, I realise the next episode airs in just two days, but to be honest I didn't find this weeks all that interesting.Once again, I think they hit problems with it only being a half hour show, and they tried to cram too much into it. Anyway, this week they looked at tribalism and the Japanese obsession with uniforms. Well, uniforms other than maid ones since they did that last week. I have to admit I groaned a little inside every time he said Lolita Goths (Its Gothloli dammit!). The talk about floppy sock glue (that is, glue to keep those loose socks schoolgirls wear) in place kind of amused me, but the talk about Yakuza fashion in the last seven or eight minutes was the really interesting part of the episode. I think its just that I find the concept of Yakuza fashion magazines hilarious. Really, though, they should have just spent the whole episode talking about that. Oh, just a reminder, its Hard Gay this week. There's actually a video clip of it up on the BBCThree website already, and indeed it looks scary. Oh oh, I should also mention that I've set up a second blog to talk about gamey stuff I don't think it appropriate here. Go read it if you are interested, or don't. As Captain Planet would say - the choice is yours!

Crest of the Stars:Princess of the Empire

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:32:51 +0000

I love the fact that all these US manga publishers are releasing all these Japanese novels in English. Okay, so it does end up resulting in annoying situations like the Slayers novels going web-only, but I guess its better than not getting them in English at all. Anyway, Tokyopop have just released their version of the first volume of Crest of the Stars trilogy, the precursor the the Banner of the Stars series. For those who haven't seen the anime (or manga) adaptations, the series follows Jinto Linn of the planet Martine as it is conquered by the Humankind Empire of Abh. When his father brokers a deal whereby he makes himself the Fapyut (Sovereign) of the system, Jinto finds himself a member of Abh nobility and, therefore, required to go into military service. Jump several years later, Jinto, having finally drilled himself on the Abh language and the most basic rules of Abh society, he is about to be thrust into a society he is more than a little inadequately prepared for. I've been reading a lot of military SF recently as it is, so I'd be pretty much in the right mindset for reading this regardless, but I'm also a big fan of the anime adaptations as well. To say I've been really looking forward to reading this since the English version was announced is really something of an understatement. Now having read it, I can't say I'm particularly disappointed, though that isn't to say its perfect by any margin. Part of the problem is that it's just rather short – it lands at just over 200 pages. In terms of other books, thats shorter than Harry Potter and the , or in military SF terms about the third of the size of one of David Webbers Honor Harrington books. Its hard to do a direct comparison in terms of the quality of the writing for what is essentially an incomplete work – this volume only goes up the to halfway point of Lafiel and Jintos stay at the Febdash estate, ending on a cliffhanger. That said, I do think it holds up better than most other Japanese novels being published in English at the moment. Boogiepop may be cracking, and Slayers is at least entertaining, but most of the others are a pretty mixed bag to say the least (remind me to write a review of the Vampire Hunter D novels some time). Crest is actually a good, well thought out and interestingly written book. It has an underlying tone of sarcastic humour to it which makes it amusing to read, and a lot of the dialogue reads rather well. The book rewriting makes it flow rather well, but by most accounts the translation seems to be rather, well, loose. There hasn't been a particularly through comparison between Tokyopops version and the original published anywhere yet, but mention has been made that perhaps the attempts to remove some redundancy in the text has been a little overzealous in places, resulting in a loss of information on a couple of occasions due to disappearance of a few lines of text here and there. There is a apparently a wee bit of rewriting here and there as well, with a few sentences rearranged or rewritten entirely for the sake of something which reads better in English. To be honest, I'm willing to give the them a bit more leeway in translating novels then when it comes to manga, as when if comes to a medium that requires text to relate the entire flow and content then an entirely literate translation often fails to capture a lot of the tone of the original work. I don't think its anything to be overtly alarmist about anyway (nor is the apparently re-ordering of the chapters in the forthcoming English Kino no Tabi – they have a very good reason for doing it, and it's all episodic anyway). What is a bit out of place is a few of the colloquialisms used in the text – it just seems a bit anachronistic to be comparing the colour of the Crown Princes hair to that of a tasty frozen pudding snack (no, seriously). They really shouldn't be using comparisons in dialogue what seem completely out of place in the world in which it is set. Whilst the the use of colloquialisms isn't all that prevalent, it does seem kind of jarring when it does occur. The thing is, this book is being counted as part of Tokyopops older, not-exactly-successful Manga Novels line, so they are aiming at a younger audience than their forthcoming and probably far better handled PopFiction line, and as such seem to have been told to adapt for that audience. It mostly isn't noticeable, but considering its a genuinely good SF series I have to wonder if it was a bad choice not to hold off to release this as part of the PopFiction line. What does kind of break the flow of the writing somewhat is the use of Baronh, the language of the Abhs. Once we get amongst the Abhs, the text is full of the stuff. Whilst most words are explained in parenthesis the first time they are used, they elected not to do the same with any of the words which appear within actual dialogue simply because it would seem incredibly unnatural, meaning you'll often end up having to consult the dictionary in the back of the book in order to keep up with what is being said. Its not exactly ideal, but then again there isn't really a better way of doing it – I suppose they could have used footnotes, but with a lot of terms frequently reoccurring I can't help but think that would just make things more of a pain, and getting rid of the Baronh would just result in confusion, like in Bandais release of the anime version, thanks to some of the terminology not really having an easy to use English equivalent. Whilst on the subject of Baronh, I should mention that Tokyopop have elected to use the same romanisations as Bandai did for the character names. From what I gather, these are essentially direct romanisations of the katakana (or hiragana or however the names were written in the Japanese version), and apparently vary from the original intent somewhat. Jintos name, for example, is apparently supposed to be Jint in his native Martinese language (which is supposed to be a derivative of British English), whilst in Baronh it would be rendered as Ghintec. They've chosen to render the character names solely in the phonetic fashion used in the anime. It's an understandable move to avoid confusion, I guess, but it does have a lot of fans moaning somewhat about it. Anyway, its a good read. I recommend picking it up, particularly if you like the anime version as you'll get so much more background out of this. I could, however, just be saying this because I want Tokyopop to sell enough copies for it to be worth them licensing Banner...

Japanorama 2-4

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:53:23 +0000

I'm not sure I actually need to write anything about this episode – the picture pretty much speaks for itself... So, this weeks episode dealt with comedy, and, as you can see, JR met up with Hard Gay... This episode felt rather more balanced than the previous ones. They talked a bit about the Tokyo Shock Boys and the chaps behind Vermilion Pleasure Night (focusing largely on Oh! Mikey/The Fuccoons), met a robotic comedy sidekick who wasn't very funny and talked about a few movies. One of the movies they talked about was Cromartie High, but the others I hadn't heard of previously. One movies, which he calls “Cop in a Wig” (though I can't find any details of online anywhere) is about a policeman who, well, uses his wig as weapon in the battle against crime, hurling it at his adversaries. I'd actually quite like to see this one. The other movie seems to be about a prostitute who gets molested by George Bushes severed finger. No, really. Random cosplay shot FTW

Shinku manga Volume 7 pack-in figure

DiGiKerot — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 20:00:23 +0000

Volume 7 of the Rozen Maiden manga has just been released in Japan, and they released a limited edition version packaged together with a figure in a big box. Essentially, the figure costs just over 2000yen when you work out the difference between the volume alone and the LE, and you can see the results of the cost (or lack of) in the results somewhat. For those interested in these kind of things, the figure is about 2/3rds the size of the Yujin Rozen Maiden figures. Its also bigger than the average trading figure by about the same margin. From a distance, it actually looks pretty decent – the face is a little round, and would certainly be off-model for the anime version, but I guess its pretty much acceptable since its bundled with the manga and its modelled after that. The figure does look kind of busy for such a small model – there are a lot of edges and folds in her dress, and there is that wavy hair. I suppose I shouldn't really complain about the level of detail, though, and the hair is rather well rendered. Looking a bit more closely we can see a few problems with it – the paint is a little rough for one (but, hey, at least you aren't paying for eBCrafts Saber to get it), and there is a bit of flash around the hands on mine. I guess its an OK figure, but I probably wouldn't have got it if I wasn't a sucker for LE editions of stuff. I'm not even particularly a Rozen Maiden fan.

My-ZHiME DVD8&9

DiGiKerot — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 23:33:34 +0000

Its the final two volumes! Lets start with the most pointless part – the differences between the broadcast and DVD version of the episodes... Yup, that's the only shot I noticed across the six episodes. I'm convinced that there must be more in there, but they are harder to spot than you might think. Otherwise, the next episode preview for episode 26 is different, with the DVD release having a proper preview rather than the silly one used during the broadcast double bill of 25 and 26. As for extras, volume 8 has a picture card of Mai and Natsukis class at Garderobe, whilst volume 9 has the rather more significant voice cast DVD (similar to the one which came with the first volume). Its pretty nice I guess... Oh, and Arika wants you to buy Zegapain! The omake I suspect everyone has already seen already, so I can't really be bothered to post about. My-ZHiME episode 25 really amuses me simply because it probably has the greatest number of last minute saves per minute of animation ever! I mean, really, lets have a closer look. Natsuki is saved from being shot by Shizuru. Yukino et al are saved by Mikoto and the Black Valley turning up. Natsuki is saved by Arika. Shizuru and Natsuki are saved by Haruka. Arika is saved by Chie. Finally, Arika is saved by Midori. Episode 26 is a bit better, as it only happens a couple of times. It is kind of ludicrous, though – I know the show has a lot of characters, but I'm sure they could have brought them into the final episodes through rather, well, subtler methods... Really, though, I still think ZHiME is a fantastic show, no matter what other people may think. It probably reflects my own lack of taste more than anything else, but I can live with that ^^; So, roll on ZHiME Zwei (or should that be Double Zeta HiME ^^)

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVD 3

DiGiKerot — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 20:17:40 +0000

Its pretty much the same affair as the previous volumes, so I don't see the point in going into length about any of the packaging or anything this time around, except to mention I got SP Sticker set 4 this time around ^^ The time around its broadcast episodes 13 and 14, which was the end of the broadcast run. This, of course, means that the whole series is going to be rather anticlimactic for those who are watching for the first time on DVD. I had thought about doing a game of Haruhi spot-the-difference, but the changes in broadcast 13 aren't particularly subtle, nor are there any really any changes worth pointing out in Episode 14. Episode 13 does have around six new cuts added to it, but its nothing of any real significance.

A Girl and Her Fish

DiGiKerot — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:35:26 +0000

You may be wondering precisely why Impz has linked to an image of a girl with a fish. You may not be - you might have just assumed that it's the kind of kooky thing that Impz would do. If that's the case, then you may as well just be on your merry way. The more observant amongst you may have, infact, noticed that it'd be rather hard for Impz to link to a post that is actually referring back to a post that Impz would have been in the process of writing. If you were a computing device in an old science fiction movie, you would presently be in the process of overheating due to the bizarre twist in logic involved. Otherwise, I just curse your Victorique-esque powers of deduction, having no doubt figured out that this post was amended post fact. *sigh* This is kind of what you'd call something coming back to bite you on the arse. Honestly, I'd thought this post had been long forgotten, but alas, I've been proved wrong. It's a post I've regretted making ever since I actually posted it - not necessarily sentiment, but certainly the amount of hyperbole I imbued the post with. Thinking back, I think I was just really, really annoyed having completed some show people were praising the writing on, only to find it completely underwhelming (I think it may have been Starship Operators, but I'm not certain), and needed to vent about it. Bringing this back up is particularly bad given that I'm in a pretty good place with anime recently, and I think at the moment is pretty much in the best place it's been in a long, long time - there's a lot of good shows floating around these days. Anyway, the body of the original post follows. You can read it if you really want to. Realising how painful I find this to be, I suspect you will. Bah ^^; Original title: Anime Sucks No, this isn't one of those “giving up anime fandom” posts. In this weeks Animenano podcast they answered a question of mine in which I stated that most anime was, in fact, awful. I figured the statement was probably worth some explanation. I do, genuinely, believe that most anime is pretty bad. I think those who don't admit this fact are deluding themselves, and I think those who manage to convince themselves that anime is somehow better that everything which comes out of the Western entertainment industry are pretty much insane. When it comes down to it, most anime shows are really badly written, and most of them get away with it simply because they are anime. Look at things this way – what kind of reaction would your parent or non-fan siblings have to a lot of the shows you watch and enjoy, even the ones you would categorise as “good”? If you were being honest, you'd probably admit they would cause a whole lot of cringing, eye-rolling and laughing at the writing. The fact is that most anime shows get away with things which would cause any western show to get a critical mauling, and sometimes have a complete lack of internal logic. They simply do things they wouldn't even consider doing in any other medium. As means of an example, I was watching some Kaleidostar the other day. Kaleidostar is predominantly set in America, but being a Japanese show everybody – even when no-one Japanese is around – speaks in perfect Japanese. I guess if you wanted to you could take the assumption that whenever you hear anyone speaking Japanese they are actually speaking English, but then you get to the episode where they visit France. Pretty much the first thing which happens is them trying to get a taxi, but in true comic fashion the taxi driver can't understand them, because they don't speak French. I guess you could probably forgive this, though I'd debate the chances of any taxi driver working near a major airport not speaking a word of English. What makes it worse is that everyone else we meet over the course of the episodes in France can communicate with them perfectly – even the drunkard old ex-Trapeze instructor. It just doesn't make any sense at all. That's not really a great example, as its not as if Kaleidostar is a show people would actually take all that seriously, but its the kind of thing all anime is littered with. Us people who watch anime simply accept these things. To a certain degree, I think this kind of thing is part of the reason a lot of us like anime, and part of the reason a lot of anime shows continue to be bad is because they continuing doing things like the shows people watch, which were in turn pretty bad. A lot of fans often seem to find it odd that people outside of fandom seem to rate things like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell so highly when they consider it pretty averaging compared to Super Highschool Comedy X, but really its not that surprising. The fact is, these shows aren't assuming the viewer is a fan, and they aren't written to that audience. They are written with the assumption that normal people might actually watch them. Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of Cowboy Bebop, admitted in an interview once that the reason he got into anime was simply that someone told him that it was easy to become a director. The fact is, he just wanted to direct stuff, and if it wasn't anime he'd be trying to find some other way to direct movies or TV shows. Ultimately, he probably doesn't have enough of an attachment to anime or manga to produce stuff overly pandering to that audience, and its reflected in the final shows – they are things you don't have to be a fan to appreciate. Conversely, most the shows us fans watch are things targeted at anime fans. Aside from those fans who start young enough to not know better or simply never grew out of western cartoons, I think most anime fans go through a progressive change in their acceptance of the conventions they are built on – most fans won't have started watching the otaku shows. They'll have started watching Ghibli or Bebop or Satashi Kon or something else which, by western media standards, is actually a well made show or movie. From there they'll probably find something similar but not quite as good – it'll have some flaws or oddness to it, but nothing they can't accept. After seeing a few shows like that, they'll end up watching something of the next quality tear down, and if they aren't put off at any point then they'll come to expect the kind of things anime throws at you what they wouldn't expect elsewhere. I think the ultimate truth is that the best anime simply isn't as good as the best live action productions – either in or outside of Japan. The fact is that, whilst I'd probably end up watching the anime in preference, anime just doesn't come near the quality of work being produced elsewhere. I don't disagree that 90% of everything is crap, its just that I tend to feel that if I applied the same critical eye I apply to US movies and TV to anime that even 90% of the good shows are crap. That isn't to say there aren't shows which are good – there are, and there tends to be a few shows every year like Paranoia Agent, Bebop or, at a stretch, Haruhi (I'm not going to give you Air, and certainly not Kanon, though), but its a vast minority of shows which don't have what would be considered crippling flaws outside of anime. Not that it particularly bothers me, and anyone who knows my viewing habits know I love pulpy trash like My-ZHiME and Gundam SEED Destiny. GSD in particular gets increasingly awful as it goes along, but that didn't prevent me from enjoying it. Hell, the only reason I tolerate Kannazuki no Miko is simply that its so bad that it makes me laugh. It'd also be hypocritical of me to be condescending to other anime fans given how much of the stuff I watch myself, but I have to admit that even for me there is a whole level of shows I consider as being below me what a lot of people enjoy. There are just some anime conventions I'm not willing to let slide ^^; Coincidently, I think part of the reason that so many movie spinoffs of popular shows end up being unpopular among fans is that they simply try to actually be a decent movie – the producers so often seem to fall into the trap of assuming that they have to do something big or grand what appeals to people other than the existing fanbase, and as a result end up with something which has a completely different tone (or Aura of Crapness) to the original work. This just results in something which neither fans or the general audience can really accept, which is just about the situation most anime movies find themselves in – they aren't good enough to be good, or rubbish enough to be interesting, just tedious. Anyway, this has been a long, rambling post without any real point to it, so I guess I'll just end it here without having made a coherent argument.

Japanorama 2-5/6

DiGiKerot — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:55:00 +0000

In the spirit of “I've started so I'll finish”, I may as well talk about the last two episodes of Japanorama. Episode 5 I didn't seem to think was that interesting when I originally watched it, which is why I hadn't bothered posting about it earlier. On further examination, its not actually that dull. The episode had beetle wrestling scenes interspersed throughout it, and they talked to Chiaki Kuriyama. They also talked to the director of The Calamari Wrestler – or rather, they went to his parents sushi restaurant (which probably explains a lot). It seems that between Calamari and his forthcoming Crab Goalkeeper he directed a movie called Executive Koala, apparently about a Koala who, having accidental killed his wife, is drugged by his boss into believing it hadn't happened. Needless to say, I need to see this movie at some point. The final episode of the series was probably the best episode of this series, even if they did talk about the scourge of many a Funimation DVD (otherwise known as Mr Stain on Junk Alley). They didn't try to do anything as silly as explaining moe, but they did talk to a guy who makes his living singing 60s anime theme tunes. Actually, whilst I'm posting, I may as well mention the other thing what I recorded on the DVDs I used for this, despite it not being anime or even Japan related. The BBC has a new production of Robin Hood, which is absolutely awesome. And by Awesome, I mean hilariously awful. What funny about Robin Hood is that its essentially the BBCs flagship show of the moment (well, aside from Eastenders) – it airs in the key Saturday evening timeslot that Doctor Who presently airs in thirteen weeks of the year. The reinvention of Doctor Who is awesome – its very British and very corny, and despite their best efforts the special effects are never going to match a well produced US show (despite being what the beeb consider high budget, that budget doesn't stretch to them being able to afford the sets to do an alien world – the writers have been told they aren't allowed to do it). The thing is, Doctor Who has fun with it, it has a tongue-in-cheek charm to it, and there are plenty enough in the way of inventive writing. Robin Hood, on the other hand, is trying so hard to be good – but it isn't. It's essentially trying to be medieval Doctor Who, but the humour doesn't really translate, and the setting is too limited to pull off what they did with The Doctor. What you end up with is a show which veers towards cringe worthy humour and hilariously overdone attempts at being dramatic. Basically, it makes me laugh a lot at completely inappropriate moments. I think my favourite scene from the first episode was probably when Robin saves his servant by throwing a sword in such a fashion it clobbered to guards over the head, knocking them away. Its just sooooooo cheesetastic a moment I could help but burst out laughing at the utter ridiculousness of it. The thing is, pretty much the whole series is made up of such moments – its just that bad. Far more interesting looking is the BBCs new Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood. The Torchwood institute made a number of appearances in the last season of Doctor Who, having been funded by Queen Victoria in that episode were they got attacked by the kung-fu Scottish monks and the alien werewolf. Set in the Welsh branch of the organization, commanded by Jack from the first series of Doctor Who, Torchwood protects the British Empire from aliens, whilst claiming their technology for their own for the good of the empire. Unlike The Doctor, Torchwood is airing late night (curiously showing on BBCThree, annoying those who can't receive digital TV, particularly given most of BBC1 and 2's output is dire), meaning they can get away with rather more – the second episode, for example, apparently has aliens who kill by causing orgasms. I'm sure it will be pretty typical British SF tackiness, but I love the stuff, goddammit!

Kino no Tabi Novel 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 15:54:25 +0000

This English edition is presented as a linear narrative. We join with Keiichi Sigsawa in bidding you happy reading. These two, unassuming lines of text appear just before the contents page of the book. I think the key part is the “This English edition” part, as it implies that there is something different between the English and the Japanese versions of the book. And there is. How important this change is will, however, come down to the readers own opinion. Still, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Kino no Tabi ~The Beautiful World~ follows Kino, who travels across the world, visiting various towns, obeying the rule that in any town in which Kino stops, Kino will only stay for three days. Accompanying Kino is Hermes, a talking motorcycle which serves as Kinos mode of transport. Across the book, Kino visits several towns, each of which has something to say about the follies of human civilisation. Now, did you notice I said Kino a lot in that previous paragraph? Well, this seems to be the route of Tokyopops changes to the books structure – the Japanese editions are narrated in a gender ambiguous fashion, the point being that it doesn't really matter if Kino is male or female, nor does Kino particularly care. Sure, people refer to her as both male and female throughout the book, but its still ambiguous. That is, except for the Grownup Country chapter, a chapter I'm sure anyone who has seen the anime version will remember. Unlike the rest of the book, that chapter is actually narrated in the first person, and ultimately leaves no doubt in the readers mind as to what Kinos gender is, and playing around with the gender ambiguity is a lot (but not all) of what the chapter was playing around with. And it originally appeared as the second to last chapter in the book. The thing is, English isn't Japanese – you can't write it as being gender ambiguous. Well, you could, but it would not only be unwieldy to write but would be even worse to read. By shuffling this chapter to the start, they no longer have anything to hide and can use gender pronouns as much as they wish. Which is what they do. Of course, by moving the chapter they have altered the impact the story in question has – by moving it to the start of the book, it does have a rather different and interesting effect, but it is still different from the original work. Saying that, the other option was leaving the chapter were it was, which would have meant that either have had no impact at all, or would have resulted in the book having had to be written in a very frustrating and difficult to read fashion. Personally, I think Tokyopop made a decent choice here, particularly given that the afterword in the original Japanese release (sadly missing here) has the author telling the reader that, as stand-alone stories, the reader is free to read the stories in any order they wish. Not that I don't understand the complaints of those kicking up a fuss about this – that preserving the book in the order the author originally had it published in should be the overriding concern – but personally I'd rather have something which is readable whilst still maintaining some kind of impact to the Grownup Country chapter (not that anyone who has seen the anime doesn't know what's anyway). That said, the choice to move the Coliseum chapter to the end of the book seems a little odd. If I had to guess why they did it, I'd probably say that its because its got a rather better sense of closure than the story which was originally at the end of the book, but that doesn't mean that the choice isn't somewhat odd. As for the content, I think Kino is probably the best of the recent spate of novel translations we have been getting – its an awful lot less juvenile than most of Toykopops previous efforts, has been better handled in terms of localisation that Crest of the Stars (by which I mean there are no frozen yoghurt references), and just has considerably more substance to it than Boogiepop. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed Slayers, Crest, Boogiepop or even the Vampire Hunter D books (though my enjoyment of the latter stems from the immense pleasure I get from pulp trash fiction), but Kino is simply a far better written and more interesting book. Whilst the books subtitle is The Beautiful World, the content largely centers around how mans attempts to attain perfection in life invariably go wrong and, essentially, screws everything up. Really, its a rather sarcastic title, and its rather fitting given the tone which underlies a lot of the book. Whilst the content is the same, I think the tone is a lot of what lifts this above the often (and very deliberately) detached feeling anime version – that, and the book is simply a lot more engaging. Kino no Tabi is the first book in Tokyopops new Popfiction imprint I've managed to get my hands on. Popfiction is essentially Tokyopops attempts to do a genuine teen fiction imprint – something which is stocked with the 'proper' books, rather than mixed in with the manga like their previous attempts at publishing novels. Popfiction, coincidently, is not just an imprint for translated light novels – they do actually have some books from outside Japan being published on the label. What they are doing is trying to separate the imprint line from their usual manga line in order to try and build a market outside the normal anime one. Which makes it kind off odd that they still called it “Kino no Tabi” rather than Kino's Journeys, which would at least have made more sense to someone who isn't an anime fan. It also makes it kind of odd that one of their launch titles is Scrapped Princess, but I'll refrain from commenting too much on that until I get my copy... That's one of the Slayers novels on the left, and Kino on the right There are rather obvious differences in presentation to their manga novels line. Whilst the content in at least some of the books was good, the presentation of the manga novel line has always come across as being fairly poor and, frankly, juvenile. Aside from sharing the tacky looking stock Tokyopop cover style, the books had huge margins and double spacing between lines of text – there was actually a lot less content than the width of the volumes might have suggested. Crest did, at least, get rid of the double line spaces (mainly due to the fact that they were given a strict page limit they had to get under, methinks), but the pages still suffered from a framing style regular publishers would laugh at. Kino, on the other hand, is actually published like a regular book – the text is actually at about the same density as a book from other teen fiction imprints. Admittedly, other Japanese novel imprints have been publishing like this all along, but its nice that Tokyopop, as the most prolific, is finally falling in line with it. The rather abstract cover is a bit odd (and I'm not entirely sure what it's actually meant to be referring to), but I guess that's intended to make it less embarrassing for people who don't care for anime (or don't want to make their like public) to buy and read. The actual inside of the book has the usual scattering of manga-esque illustrations inside. The actual book is, physically, smaller than the manga novels line. The manga novel line is actually inline with a lot of British books aiming at the same market, so I'm not really sure why they've gone for a different size of book, but now they do line up with a lot of my SF books in terms of height. Its not an unusual size for a book, anyway. The print and paper quality is about in line which what I'd usually expect for such a book as well – its probably marginally better than a lot of books which go through my hands (in that I don't end up smudging the ink on every other page). I'm personally fairly enthusiastic about Tokyopops Popfiction line – I'm really looking forward to seeing how Twelve Kingdoms turns out. I'm sure the ordering tweaks in Kino have probably dampened some peoples enthusiasm for the line, but frankly that's their problem, and with this book at least I think they are missing out.

Shana DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:42:19 +0000

Anything which panders to my love of gratuitous magic circles can't be bad. Yuji is dead, apparently. Well, that's what the stroppy girl with the trenchcoat and sword is telling him. Apparently those monsters, or Rinnes, she just killed had devoured his existence, leaving him as a Torch – the remaining dregs of his being, slowly burning until it gets to the point where he'll burn out, leaving the world as if he had never existed in the first place. Well, that is if he wasn't a Mystes, a unique type of Torch which carries a special property, and in Yujis case he happens to have a very unusual and desirable property – his flame replenishes itself on a nightly basis. This leaves him in the rather awkward position of, technically, being dead but kind of not – he's essentially just an after-image. As for nameless girl who as just informed Yuji of his predicament, she's a flame haze. She is apparently contracted to a denizen of the Crimson World, named Alistor (whom appears only as a medallion around her neck), and hunts those from the Crimson World who choose to disrupt the balance of the world to by gorging on people to acquire power. Yuji decides to name her Shana, after the sword which she carries – Shana just tells him to shut up. A lot. For some reason, I seem to remember Shana as being one of those shows which had somewhat mediocre animation outside of the initial episode – I was kind of going into it expecting to be making fun of the animation. As it happens, I was kind of pleasantly surprised. Not that the actual animation is particularly great, but the after effects added to it make it look a lot better than it probably is. To be honest, a lot of them are superfluous, and you have to wonder if the money might have been spent on other things – like better key animation. Animation continuity? Whats that? It seems kind of unfair to pick on Shana for problems in animation continuity, as pretty much every show in existence has them – even Haruhi (though in that case most of them have been corrected for the DVD release). The thing is, the Shana ones seem rather less subtle than the ones in most shows – most the stuff in Haruhi you really wouldn't notice unless you were really looking out for them. Some of the ones in Shana you'll spot even if you are just watching passively. There are people in the animation chain who are supposed to spot this stuff before it goes off to the inbetweeners, though, and they've obviously missed a few here. That's not to there aren't other problems with the shows animation – by the time we hit the forth and last episode on this volume, the action sequences have kind of started to descend into the sliding-pan style of animation. It's started to get kind of cheap looking, really. Then you have to wonder who on earth thought Majorie Daw's super special form should look like a big, purple bear which looks even less threatening than Gloomy Bear has kind of questionable judgement. That, and for someone who is supposed to be some kind of buxom blonde bombshell, Majorie doesn't actually have a particularly attractive character design. On the subject of character design, it's interesting the kind of thing you pick up with a bit of hindsight. Despite the fact that she only has something like two or three lines across the course of these episodes, its obvious that Yoshida is going to become a significant character simply because she actually has a character design – the rest of her classmates are kind of nondescript, simplified and all have really muted hair colours. Yoshida, on the other hand, pops up in the background of just about every other classroom shot and sticks out like a sore thumb. It kind of makes you appreciate shows like shows like My-HiME more, where all the members of Mai's class actually look like they've had some thought put into their character design. It makes it less obvious who is going to be of interest. You really have to wonder if the production staff on a lot of anime shows actually realise how much they give away early, intentional or otherwise. OPs are particularly bad – in this case, there are a whole bunch of characters in there who I have no idea who actually are. I was also watching some GunXSword earlier, and I rather liked the approach they took there by having the characters who haven't actually appeared in the show yet only appearing as silhouettes until they do. Not that going that way allows especially dynamic animation, but there is always the My-HiME method of actually throwing you a few red herrings (or in that case, fat girls) at the viewer. As for the actual show (given that I've really gone completely off the point here), I like it. It does have its problems – I think the primary one is probably that it doesn't seem to able to decide if it wants to be a supernatural action adventure, or if it wants to be loli-service. It wouldn't be so bad if the loli service didn't seem so gratuitous at times, as it seems too at odds with everything else they are trying to do with the show. Sure, have Shana being stroppy for comic effect and all that (though I worry that the constant shouts of “Urusai!” might replace actual character development), but the service what goes with it just feels obtrusive to me. Well, there's that and the fact that the show is simply better when its not going down that path (and it doesn't really help that I'm not much of a service person). The premise and setting are good, at least. Other than that, Yuji is kind of whiny, but given he has just been told he is dead I can probably forgive that as long as he doesn't stick at it for too long. Majorie is immensely annoy, but Marcus, Majories talking book thing, makes me laugh just because his speech patterns are so ludicrously over the top and exaggerated. The pacing is pretty decent – they do spend too much time early on going into Yujis plight over and over (which is more than a little repetitive, to be quite honest), but after that it moves at a reasonable pace. I was kind of surprised that Geneons LE version of Shana doesn't come with a proper artbox – I just kind of expect it from them, so when it turned out it didn't I was a little disappointed. The LE version just comes in a nondescript plastic slip-case serving little purpose other than to keep it attached to the OST it comes with. As for the OST, I don't think I'll be listening to it much – the shows music isn't anything special, and the OP and ED are just the TV length versions.

Goodsmile 1/6 Casual Saber

DiGiKerot — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 20:59:35 +0000

Yes, its yet another Saber figure, and not really one I have a huge amount to say about. At the very least, this one at least isn't cross-eyed. The pose is rather boring, though. As for the production quality, Saber is at least fastened to the base by a pair of sturdy looking screws which should prevent her ankles from bending at least. The moulding is nice and sharp – the hair in particular is nice and pointy, with none of the rounded edges you get on a lot of figures. The legs do have the usual seems down the legs were the parts are joined, which are clearly visible under harsh direct light. The paintwork is largely OK, but were the clothing is rimmed around the edges there is an area of paint which looks rather flat and out-of-place. There are also some blush markings on the face which look a little odd. Sabers skirt can be removed – in fact, you have to remove it due to it shipping with a plastic liner around it. The thing is, removing it kind of leaves paint marks on her legs and pristine white panties. Its something I recommend doing with great care if you choose to do so... One thing about this figure is that its a lot bigger than you might think, even compared to other 1/6 scale figures – its taller than it should be compared to my other Fate figures at least, by a good inch. (and, yes, that is my back garden – I couldn't be bothered to set up my usual lighting system, and the weather was being uncharacteristically unbritish. Suffice to say, its raining now ^^;)

Negima!? Spring Special OAV

DiGiKerot — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:37:04 +0000

Akiyuki Shinbo can't do a stain-glass window shot without totally reminding me of The Soultaker (or Petit Cossette for that matter) – particularly one with sliding panels! The Soultaker, coincidently, is uber-pwnage. Really. Totally underrated show. This OAV is based around the story from Volume 7 of the manga where they head out to the class rep's private beach resort. There's a bit of trimming, and the addition of a Chupacabra hunt, but it's pretty much exactly the same story. Well, its Akiyuki Shinbo – there isn't really a huge amount to say about it than that. Its too short to have any real substance of its own, so its really just 25 minutes of occasionally referential porn for people who get off on funny camera angles and off-center characteres. Like me, I guess. There's probably a whole bunch of references in this bunch of inflatables Asuna is blowing up – Mesousa is obvious, and there also appears to be a star from Mario, and that one with the eye at the top kind of reminds me of the Eye of Vulgar from Giant Robo (well, aside from the colour). The rest are anyones guess... As is this castle. If anyone has any ideas, I'm open to them. Its bound to be a reference to something, though. Konoka seems to have turned into Ichijo from Pani Poni in this, at least sporadically. Poor Setsuna spends pretty much the whole OAV getting all flustered over exactly how revealing Konokas swimsuit actually is... There is obviously something going on with the patterns on these sunloungers. My first thoughts (having played too much Sakura Taisen) is that they might be based on a set of Hanafuda cards, though I'm quite probably wrong. They've inked Evangeline in dark grey rather than black for this OAV. It gives her a weird, ethereal and completely out-of-place look. Not that it's anything to complain about – she is a vampire after all – but it did take me a while to figure out exactly why she looked kind of odd. They never find their Chupacabra by the way – they only find bunny girl Chiu ^^; Wait until after the ending credits if you want to see one, though. Actually, there is one hidden in the DVD packaging though. The packaging is quite nice actually – its a digipak in which is encased on a clear plastic slipcover. The slipcover has the logo painted on the front, and a duplicate of the text on the back of the digipak on the back of it – well, I say a duplicate of the text, but whilst the layout is the same it actually has different text and screenshots on it. The packaging has english text scattered pretty much randomly in which the Japanese, and whilst its not technically wrong, I can't help but laugh at lines like “NEGIMA!? Spring Special!? Everyone very lovely <3”. The OAV does seem to have picked up an additional '?' which wasn't there previously (and, indeed, is absent from the actual OAV). You may notice a second disk there – its footage predominantly from the Spring Negima show this film was originally shown during. There's a few live vocals songs on the disk (Happy Material, the ED from this OAV and a track I think it probably from one of the PS2 games), a brief appearance by Ken Akamatsu and the new VA for Chao (her previous one retired), but that's about all of interest really.

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVD 4

DiGiKerot — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:23:08 +0000

Phail Or, rather, I didn't get any SP stickers this time around, just the regular sticker sheet 19. Bah. The cover this time around is bit character Kimidori – still no Yuki or Tsuruya yet, which seems kind of weird - particularly because Mikuru has had two covers thus far. I suppose one of the Mikuru covers was episode zero, and there are still three volumes to go. I'd guess at Tsuruya, Yuki and bunny-suit Haruhi for the last three covers myself... Anyway, it's time for a game of Haruhi spot-the-difference! The broadcast version is on the left, DVD on the right. Yeah, like anyone noticed those continuity issues during the broadcast run – its not as if the things they fixed were actually the main focus of the shot (unlike, say, those I pointed out in Shana). The second episode on the disk – the one where the weird SOS-Dan logo causes the computer guy to disappear – has a couple of extra cuts added for the DVD. There isn't really anything exciting, unless a prolonged shot of Mikuru dozing sounds appealing. Remember how the second DVD had a hidden Mikuru folder on there? Well, this one has a Yuki folder (and thanks to Moyism for pointing that out – I'd have never actually thought to check). There aren't many images on there, though, and like previously you can get better clips from screen capping the DVD thanks to the copyright notices plastered on there.

GASP An Update!

DiGiKerot — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 20:31:07 +0000

Eeep, it's been almost two weeks since I've actually posted something. I suppose I should at least say something, but the question is exactly what to say. You see, there hasn't actually been anything going on I consider worth posting about. I've not bought any new figure releases, I've not got any new DVDs (worth talking about, anyway), I've not played any new anime related games and, frankly, there has been no news worth reporting on (I'm certainly not a big enough Haruhi fan to start raving on about vague comments regarding a further season). So, really, what else would there to be to write about? I've pretty much concluded that episode summaries sooooo aren't for me. To be honest, I don't really read them (aside from at a few places where they are funny and ideally short), so I don't really feel the need to inflict more of them onto the world. The only real use I get out of episode summaries are if I watch something raw and I want to check my understanding, or if I want to know what episode something happens in without checking the episodes myself. Really, by the time translated version of an episode appears (via whichever delivery mechanism you prefer) I largely consider episode summaries pretty pointless. Individually blogging single episodes kind of seems like a fruitless task to me, as most of the time it doesn't really achieve much, and in the grand scheme of things singular episodes rarely make or break a show. Now, comments based on the first few episodes of a show, or a review once something is finished, that's kind of interesting to me – it helps me decide if something is worth my time and/or money, but mid-series reviews I rarely read because, unless I'm actually watching the show, its just spoiler territory. And, honestly, a post on bizarre inaccuracies is far more interesting than another summary of Kanon episode, well, whatever episode has just aired. I don't really get the obsession some people have with having to post every day. I do totally respect those who manage to do so whilst actually putting some effort into it, but when the cost of posting every day so often ends up being thousands of episode summaries ending in “I don't really have anything new to say about this episode” then I wonder if its really worth it. Seriously, if you don't have something new to add about an episode, why bother blogging it? You don't have to talk about every episode of a series, just pick out the ones which are good or bad or interesting enough for there to be something worth commenting about. I guess it's not really my place to complain about these things though - its not as if I've never done the same myself, and if people actually enjoy doing it then good for them. It just kind of seems like a monumental waste of effort to me at the moment. Sorry for that diversion, but as I was saying, I've just not had anything to talk about these last two weeks. When there is a subject I actually have something to say about (probably next weekend when I'll hopefully have the no-doubt awful My-ZHiME PS2 game to play, or when I've read these novels I have here) then I'll post. Until then, I'll probably be going back to the nobler pursuits (I have to admit, certain time leeches don't help with the anime watching). So, I guess this is a declaration of me being in slow-burn mode for a while. It's not really a hiatus, just don't expect to be seeing a post every single week.

Unfunny Interweb Momo Comics #1

DiGiKerot — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:11:06 +0000

Otherwise know as Unfunny Internet Meme Comics Season 2 #1! Yes, it's back with another series of probably around 13 comics predominantly poking "fun" a sequels and spin-offs. Expect even worse art and even more obscure "jokes" than ever before, and rejoice! Or don't. It's up to you...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-2

DiGiKerot — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:14:53 +0000

Okay, so I'm about two seasons too early to reference Sunrise adding mecha to completely, well, un-mecha-esque videogame adaptations. If you are really wondering what I'm going on about, go look up Idolm@ster Xenoglossia...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-3

DiGiKerot — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 06:32:16 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-4

DiGiKerot — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 21:47:42 +0000

Okay, so there's not even anything approaching an attempt to make a joke today. I was just thinking about how they totally need to ditch all the sword swinging games for the Wii and just have a game where you smack people over the head with a harisen. That would pwn soooo much. Of course, I completely forgot to pre-order a Wii anyway, so it wouldn't do me a huge amount of good ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-5

DiGiKerot — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:58:12 +0000

For reference. As decent a show as it is, I can't say I really think Negima!? has unusual and bold camera angles given that Shinbo isn't really doing anything he didn't do in The Soultaker many, many years ago. Still, I kind Shinbo, so it's not as if the fact that every he directs ends up looking very similar particularly bothers me (I just wish he directed more Petit Cossettes and Soultakers and fewer fanboi shows).

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-6

DiGiKerot — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 08:28:31 +0000

Not really much of anything attempting a joke here.... Yet ^_^ (Oooo, cryptic!)

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-7

DiGiKerot — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 11:48:52 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-8

DiGiKerot — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 15:05:30 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-9

DiGiKerot — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 17:50:37 +0000

The forth and final post of the day. You may wish to view this for reference for the last four posts... Don't think too hard about it ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-10

DiGiKerot — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:04:25 +0000

Sorry for the lack of a proper punchline here again, but this is really setup for the rest of the week. I suppose you could say that I'm either trying too hard or not trying hard enough here ^^; (Coincidently, anyone who actually got the ones from over the weekend, particularly before I posted all four of them, probably deserves a cookie or something). On a completely unrelated note - I realise I'm probably well out of date here, but WHAT THE HELL is with Star Wars Transformers? They're like, Star Wars vehicles which transform into robotic versions of the characters who look nothing like the original (except Darth and Boba, but they look a little robotic to begin with). The biscuit has to be taken by Han Solo and Chewie, who 'combine' to form the Millenium Falcon - it might just be me, but the concept of combining Han and Chewie sounds like some kind of sick yaoi fetish to me ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-10 Directors Cut (or #2-11)

DiGiKerot — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:07:42 +0000

At the current rate, I'll probably be wrapping up series two on Friday, mainly because I've run out of ideas again. If anyone wants to make any requests, I'm open to them ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-12

DiGiKerot — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:40:27 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-13

DiGiKerot — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:53:50 +0000

For some reason I doubt that many people reading this has seen Zeta Gundam, but oh well...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-14

DiGiKerot — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 18:31:33 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #2-15

DiGiKerot — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 21:02:19 +0000

Negima!? Summer Special OAV

DiGiKerot — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:53:36 +0000

After the Spring OAV, I was kind of disappointed with this one. The fact this one has considerably more Yue than the previous is good, but unfortunately Yue comes with baggage. Baggage called Nodoka. I'm sooooo not a Mamiko Noto fan at the best of times, but the Nodoka character annoys me even without the voiceacting (as in, when I'm reading the manga). NotoXNodoka is kind of painful for me. Unfortunately, this is a very Nodoka centric OAV. Typical SHAFT-esque random shots of Meso-usa and Tama Thats not to say that this isn't a fairly entertaining episode anyway, but there were a few distracting issues even when Nodoka wasn't on screen. To be quite honest, this isn't really the kind of animation quality I'd expect from an OAV, particularly after the Spring OAV looked so nice. A lot of the linework seems fairly thick (even by Shinbo/SHAFT standards), and the whole image is really soft – it almost looks as if they have upscaled it from a far lower resolution. It's simply really distracting. Its not just that though, there are a lot of shots what seem really wobbly too. Even the OP is just made up of images from the manga's covers. Basically, this OAV has been made on the cheap. The inbetweens between the keys in this shot aren't really all that well done, particularly after the skydiving sequence from the Spring OAV Otherwise, it's just really an excuse to take the service up to a level they couldn't get away with on the TV show. It's OK if you just take it that way, but nothing gobsmackingly amazing or anything. There's one of those stained glass windows again... Packaging et al is pretty much the same as with the first OAV, with some footage from the Summer live show on the second DVD. Argh! It be Pop-up Pirate, mateys!

My-ZHiME Zwei 1

DiGiKerot — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 16:01:05 +0000

I could make this review really short – essentially, if you liked the TV show to the end, you'll like this. If you didn't like the TV show to the end, you won't like this. If you didn't see the TV show at all, why the hell are you reading this? Really, it's just more of the same. I, personally, loved every single minute of both HiME and ZHiME, so for me having more ZHiME to watch is a wonderful, wonderful thing – the show simply panders to my love of silly pulp serials in a way that no other show since the TV ended has. Basically, they'd have to have tried really hard to produce something which I wouldn't have enjoyed massively, and they certainly didn't do anything to disappoint me here. It was simply massively enjoyable. Arika has....grown a bit in the year since the end of the TV show. I wonder if thats a side effect of having inhaled Erstin sparkles... Which isn't to say I wasn't disappointed with some of the superficial elements of the OAV. The animation is kind of disappointing for an OAV – it's in 16:9, which is always nice, but other than that and a few CG spot effects the animation isn't really any better than an episode of the TV show. There are actually a few spots where the animation actually looks a little worse, but nothing alarmingly bad, and it was a good looking TV show anyway. Irina actually got quite a bit of screentime! Have her ears always been that pointy, though? More disappointing is the lack of any new BGM. Hopefully this will be corrected by the new OAV, though the wait for it is far too long. I wonder if Headmaster is really just a position to get useless Meisters out the road - its not like any of the Pillars ever get to use their robe for more than five minutes before their opponents take out the pillar system... I can't really be bothered to take pictures of the packaging I'm afraid. Although I bought the LE version, the extras aren't really that amazing – we got a CD, a booklet with artwork I've got/seen elsewhere and a tiny little figure of cat Mikoto. It's not really worth me getting my camera out for. This action scene is pretty cool. Also, Mai actually gets to make a significant appearance! I don't think the next episoded is out until February, so it's quite a long wait ;_; I wonder if we'll actually get to SEE some Scythe action this time around. I'm still kind of bitter about HiME ^^;

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVD 5

DiGiKerot — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:44:10 +0000

SP sticker GET! I finally decided I'd procrastinated over posting about this volume enough (not really helped by console releases and a rather alarming influx of R1 DVDs this week). DVD plant-adding action! This volumes lemon-tastic LE cover is Loli-Kyon. Speaking of which, she is also the subject of this volumes hidden image directory (though there are only the ten images – sorry for you sis-con types). There isn't actually all that much to say about this volume – there is absolutely no new footage, and there is probably less in the way of animation changes than previous volumes. There are a handful of changes, but nothing really radical. Oh well, the next volume is Live-A-Live, which is going to have a Tsuruya cover. I guess that means Yuki will be on the seventh and final volume.

Moyism Defined

DiGiKerot — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:46:42 +0000

Okay, so I'm not usually the type to do big OMG! LOOK WHAT I GOT posts (well, aside from figures), but the wonders of erratic international shipping (it goes mad at this time of year), hectic x-mas release schedules and the like this little lot is all stuff I've gotten in the last, oooo, seven days. Actually, most of it was just yesterday and today ^^; Thankfully all the DVDs are R1s – I dread to think how much this would cost at R2 prices... For those curious as to what they are looking at... Sakura Taisen Complete Song Box 2002-2006 Negima! 3rd Period (the forth PS2 Negima game) Blue Dragon (Japanese version for 360) Gundam Seed Destiny OMNI vs ZAFT II Plus(or Rengou vs ZAFT, they don't seem to be able to decide on the name. I got the first press booklet too) Eureka Seven 3 + Box + Manga + T-shirt Eureka Seven 4 Eureka Seven 5 + Box + Manga + T-shirt Fate/Stay Night 1 + Box Zipang 1 + box Tsukuyomi 1 + box GaoGaiGar 1 + box GaoGaiGar 2 Full Metal Panic 2nd Raid 1 + box Hellsing Ultimate LE Noein 1 Kamichu 3 Pani Poni Dash 1 My HiME 5 Gundam SEED Destiny 5 Fantastic Children 4 Fantastic Children 5 Fighting Spirit/Hajime no Ippo 14 Shana 2 GunXSword 4 Kaleidostar 12 (well, 6 of the second season) This Ugly yet Beautiful World 3 This, of course, isn't counting the Wii and games and stuff I got over the weekend as well ^^;

Of Tea and Type-Moon

DiGiKerot — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:59:05 +0000

Going at it Han-style... Pyramid teabags are automagically superior. Truth: It is true that pyramid teabags do generally produce a decently brewed cup of tea in a shorter period of time, at least when brewed in a pot (it doesn't make a huge amount of difference if, like most people these days, you brew it straight in your mug). A fussy drinker like Rin should be well aware, however, that the contents of the bag make a far bigger difference to the quality of the resulting beverage than the shape of the bag. Most of the general tea blends available in the UK at the moment which are supplied in pyramid bags are the ones which, personally, I consider to be somewhat averaging at best. Sure, they are drinkable, but hardly an amazing cuppa char. Now, looking at DiGiKerots preferred choices in teabag, we see... Yorkshire Gold – DiGi's teabag of choice - Rectangular bag Whittard 1886 blend – The backup – Round bag Twinings Darjeeling - Nothing like sipping some delicious Darjeeling tea...and watching you getting your clock cleaned – Rectangular bag. So, you see, you don't need a fancy teabag to get a superior brew. In other news, Haruhi has been licensed, yadda yadda and yet more DVDs arrived (five more – which is slightly more than I managed to watch over the weekend).

From the people that brought us Hescafe...

DiGiKerot — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:27:19 +0000

I present the Yonkie bar! The above is a screencap from the forth episode of Noein, where we see one of the characters wielding a mighty chocotastic snack. The snack in question, however, is a bit of a surprise. Oi! Nanoha – IT'S NOT FOR GIRLS! You see, the Yonkie bar is obviously based upon the Yorkie. Originally produced by Rowntrees of York (hence in name) in the 70s, and now by Nestle, the Yorkie is a common sight in all places in the UK that sell candy snacks. Which got me thinking, are Yorkies actually available in Japan? A quick glance at the Japanese Nestle website suggests that, in fact, you can't. Indeed, its not listed on the US Nestle website. Yup, the Yorkie is one of the Nestle brands which is unique to the UK. This kind of makes its appearance in Noein rather bizarre. Are we to believe the space-time has been distorted in such a fashion that the Yorkie is now available in Japan? Does an addicted Kazuki Akane import them from the UK? Did some bored animator purposely look up obscure candy? Did someone think the “DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS!” slogan on the bottom was funny in a show with a character called Karasu? Ultimately, who knows? Still, it provided some unexpected amusement value for a while. The last time I remember a British chocolate bar in anime was in Master Keaton when Keaton defused a bomb armed only with a few bars of Dairy Milk (no, really!), but that episode was actually set over here.

The Surreality of Suzumiya Haruhi

DiGiKerot — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:10:21 +0000

Man, all this Haruhi news this week is being done in a really surreal fashion, which admittedly makes things a lot more fun. Anyway, the haruhi.tv site, which has had a bunch of weird 404 pages this week, as updated with a new link at the bottom. This launches a fake xterm window with a Javascript program which types out the following. YUKI.N> これをあなたが読んでいる時、わたしはわたしではないだろう。 YUKI.N> このメッセージが表示されたということは、そこにはあなた、わたし、涼宮ハルヒ、朝比奈みくる、古泉一樹が存在しているはずである。 YUKI.N> それが鍵。あなたは解答を見つけ出した。 YUKI.N> これは緊急脱出プログラムである。起動させる場合はエンターキーを、そうでない場合はそれ以外のキーを選択せよ。起動させた場合、あなたは時空修正の機会を得る。ただし成功は保障できない。また帰還の保障もできない。 YUKI.N> このプログラムが起動するのは一度きりである。実行ののち、消去される。非実行が選択された場合は起動せずに消去される。Ready? Not that this means anything particularly interesting – it's just dialogue from the forth novel. I assume this just means they'll be using material from that book for the not-yet-officially-announced second season. -edit- Oh, and the source for the asosbridgade.com site has been updated to contain 北米計画が発効した in a hidden comment in the source - as in, "The North America Plan has come into effect" or somesuch.

BANDAI!?!?

DiGiKerot — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 08:19:22 +0000

Has Haruhi? Damn, that was unexpected!

An Unfunny Christmas Carol

DiGiKerot — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 00:34:45 +0000

Merry Christmas, y'all. Well, assuming you are of a region or country which does something to celebrate Christmas, anyway. Otherwise, feel quite welcome to remain miserable. Before you continue onwards, be aware that you won't get the minutes/seconds of your life spent perusing the following pages back – they will be lost forever. By continuing you are admitting you are fine with this fact and won't moan at me about it (at least not to an excessive degree) at some point in the future. Just be glad you aren't getting the original version of this comic, which had been thrown together in about a quarter of the time and was even worse than what I'm posting (believe me, as surprising as it sounds, it IS possible). Even I couldn't bring myself to post that version, which is why I spent most of this evening redrawing the damn this (even though it still isn't funny). Anyway, have a pleasant day, and continue onwards if you really must. Just don't expect things to make a whole lot of sense.

Pani Poni Dash DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 23:42:17 +0000

There was plenty speculation as to how well ADV would handle this release, though perhaps not as much as Nerima Daikon Brothers (which I'll talk about another day). So, how well have they handled it? Pretty well, actually. It probably helps that they kind of impressed me before I'd even got the disk in the player. They've chosen to include a booklet (not a pamphlet – a booklet) with a nice character overview for one thing. They've also printed the first four of the 4koma strips used in the next episode previews in English on the reverse side of the cover – given they are a wee bit tricky to catch at the same time as reading the dialogue subtitles, this is a nice thing. Admittedly, this volume actually has five episodes, meaning there's one missed off here, but I presume they're going to catch up at some point along the release. As far as the subtitles go, there are multiple tracks for both the dub and sub versions. I've not watched the dubbed version, so I'm not going to give comment on that. The subtitled version gives you a couple of settings – subtitles and minimal captions, and subtitles with full captions. The minimal captions is just that – it only really translates what is important rather than filling the screen with clutter. The full captions, on the other hand, translates all the blackboard text and things like that. Its a bit of a mess, really. This release also sees the return of ADV vid-notes (though they are on the Nerima Daikon DVD as well), those little pop up messages explaining the references and providing cultural notes and the like. To say the screen gets cluttered with them on is something of an understatement – I really don't recommend watching the show like that the first time through, particularly given I subscribe to the theory that if you need something explained to you it isn't actually funny. I did, for curiosity's sake, compare ADVs notes to those for the DVD version of the episode one on GGs wiki. They're much of a sameness, really. I mean, I'd be kind of surprised if ADV hadn't read them anyway, but as far as things go there are a couple of things in the GG note which aren't mention on the DVD, and there are also a few things mentioned in the DVD which aren't in the GG notes. One thing I'll say about ADVs notes are that they are a little tongue-in-cheek in places – they aren't always entirely serious. It doesn't really detract from anything, but it does mean they don't read as flat. The only other thing worth mentioning is that, despite all the on-screen text, the only thing approaching an overlay here is the credit scroll over the end. They've not even messed around with the opening credits – not even with the usual ADV fade from Japanese logo to their English one (they've settled with a soft-sub). Probably wise given that the credits are animated and all. It must have been a real nightmare to time all of those subtitles, particularly given the somewhat inflexible nature of DVD subs, but I'm glad they did it. Oh, and Mesousas' inability to hold anything is still the funniest running joke ever.

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVD 6

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 11:39:11 +0000

Well, the good news is that I once again got a set of SP stickers. The bad news is that they are the same ones I got in Volume 5. Bah, stupid random extras. Anyway, this volume has the School Festival and the videogame episodes on it. The school festival episode, by my reckoning, has about 30 seconds of new footage. Its all fairly pointless stuff – Itsukis performance in the play is a few seconds longer, they've extended a couple of Kyon monologues and they've added completely worthwhile footage like this. Oh, and there isn't any dialogue in that scene. The only change I noticed in the concert was them altering the music stand ^^; There were a couple of other animation corrections during the episode, but as per usual nothing really outstanding. Kyons teacup disappeared in the broadcast version. The videogame episode is devoid of any new animation, though there are the usual pointless animation fixes. As with the other LE disks, we got a CD with this one. This CD includes the TV versions of God Knows and Lost My Music. I have to admit to not having the single versions, so I don't really know what the difference is – I assume that God Knows is longer (this version only being around 2 minutes), but Lost My Music is 4 four minutes here. Oh, and the hidden image directory this time around is for Tsuruya. At the time of writing, the cover for DVD 7 hasn't been put on the official website. It can't really be anyone other than Yuki though. There is also an insert advertising the manga Vol. 4 + figure bundle being released.

Nerima Daikon Brothers DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 22:34:23 +0000

ADVs licensing of Nerima Daikon Brothers earlier in the year generated a huge, collective Hwuah? from much of western anime fandom, mainly because it completely went under the radar of, well, pretty much everyone at time of broadcast. Well, not everyone, there were a few people who caught a few of the early episodes, but largely no-one really saw much of it. Anyway, the real question for anyone who did actually know anything about it was what on earth they were going to do with the English version, given that they have a tendency to burst out into song every few minutes. The answer is...they dubbed them. All of them. Not that the DVD doesn't have a nice, faithful subtitled Japanese version as well, but that isn't quite so interesting to talk about, though. The broadcast version used one of those placeholder OPs made mostly of in-show footage for much of its run. The DVD version has a proper OP Anyway, they dubbed every single song in the series, including the OP and ED. Song dubs are kind of interesting, because its adds several degrees of complication into the mix. Aside from trying to get the meaning of the dialogue across and attempting to match lip flaps, they've got to get the whole damn thing to rhyme and scan as well. Some of the musical numbers are kind of disturbing... ADV have actually done an admirable job here. Sure, the translation is generally a little looser than you would usually expect, but I can't really imagine it being possible to handle things any better then they did whilst staying watchable. Everything gets across the meaning its supposed to anyway, only they've inserted a few rather more english language jokes into there. Well, I suppose there is the ED - The lyrics for the ED have pretty much no relation to the original. The ED lyrics are just incredibly stupid, really. Strangely enough, thats not what they were singing about in Japanese... I'm not really a dub watcher, to be honest. I only started watching this dubbed because I was curious how it would work. It was really pleasantly surprising in that it's actually really well done. The fact that the show is entirely spastic probably helps, in that they don't have to be particularly dramatic or anything. The show basically calls the for the cast to be stupid and be able to sing whilst doing so. The English cast can do both of these things. Really, its one of those rare cases where the only thing seperating the Japanese and the English versions is personal preferences and purist tendencies (which means, yes, I prefer to watch it in Japanese). As for the show itself, its Nabeshin, therefore its entirely insane and crass (and the DVD version is even crasser than the broadcast version). The four episodes on this volume are actually a whole lot of fun. I mean, I watched them in Japanese, then I watched then in English, then I watched the audio commentary, then I watched it again in Japanese with the Vidnotes on. Given I rarely watch anything more than once these days, it probably says a lot about how entertaining I found it. The probably is that, even with these episodes, its a huge case of diminished returns with each passing episode. The first episode is utter genius, but then they spent two months planning it. After the first couple of episodes the production time went right down and, whilst it doesn't show in the animation, other than the stock footage used for certain songs, things just don't flow as well. The fact that they only had twenty-ish backing tracks across the series also means that after the first episode you are really only getting one entirely new song per episode, with the others being lyrical variations of tracks used in other episodes. There's a nice selection of subtitles, actually. Aside from the vidnotes and 'proper' subtitles, theres a song subtitle track for the dub, and optional romaji subs for the Japanese track. Still, its a fun show, and its not like there are any other anime musicals out there to be watching...

The Winter Season and Beyond!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:28:43 +0000

As you may have noticed, I don't exactly tend to be on the cutting edge of JAT when it comes to anime blogging. Still, never one to pass up an easy post (particularly given I'm too lazy to hunt down some pictures), I figure that I may as well browse a bunch of websites for the sake of getting some quick content up here. Hey, everyone else is doing it! Anyway, lets start with the Winter stuff. Saint October The first episode of this show is called something like “A Loli is Born! Super Goth-Loli Girl!”. I can kind of respect a show which is honest enough not to hide what fetish its aiming for, but this sooo isn't for me. Interest Rating * Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora Hang on a moment, didn't I see this show about three years ago? Ah, no, that was Kannazuki no Miko. Really, though, those character designs and that logo look similar enough to be really taking the piss. Anyway, given that I only watched Kannazuki no Miko to laugh at how bad I thought it was (much the same reason I survived the BBCs recent production of Robin Hood – the Sakura Taisen-esque victory pose at the end of the last episode was hilarious for all the wrong reasons) my interest in this is pretty much none existant. Interest Rating * Koi suru Tenshi Angelique ~ Kagayaki no Ashita ~ Sequel to some reverse-harem show I've never seen and know nothing about. Ho-hum. Interest Rating * Deltora Quest Wikipedia says this is series of Australian children's books. It sounds like generic swords and sorcery fantasy – whilst I'm a serious RPG gamer, that just means that I've seen pretty much everything the genre has to offer many times over. I'm also at a loss to think of the last time I saw this kind of material actually work well in anime. I guess it might be OK, but I'm not holding my breath. Interest Rating ** Himawari!! Another sequel to a show I've never seen and know nothing about. Interest Rating * Les Miserables Being something of an uneducated fellow, my main knowledge of Les Mis extends about as far as knowing Maaya Sakamoto played Eponine in a stage production of the show, and the doujin fighting game Arm Joe. Anyway, this is a return to the World Masterpiece Theatre productions of old, and whilst I've not actually seen any of them, my tolerance to Oldtastic anime is higher than most. This sounds right up my alley, actually. Interest Rating **** Shuffle! Memories So, this is some kind directors cut of that show from last year with some new bits shoehorned into it? Once again, I've not seen the original nor do I particularly know much about it. The character art does look quite nice (though I find those pointy elf ears rather off-putting), and it does seem to have something of a following, but this is pretty much outside of my usual sphere of anime interest. Interest Rating * Manabi Straight! So, this is some kind of highschool slice 'o life comedy set in the future? The promo material I've seen for this seems to be all over the place tone wise – no surprise that this is from ufotable then. Maybe if Coyote Ragtime Show hadn't happened I'd be more open with this, but frankly I find the cutesy character designs a little too offputting. Interest Rating ** Master of Epic If I'd just seen the art I might have mistaken this for a new Tales game. As it is, I know better and know it isn't Tales – it is, however, apparently based on an MMORPG. I guess what I said for Deltora Quest counts here, only doubly so. Interest Rating * Nodame Cantabile I've been reading and love the manga, though I haven't taken a look at the LA series. Still, I think my usual stance with manga adaptations will end up applying here – I've read the manga already, so I already know exactly what happens unless they veer off radically. Since its not an action series (therefore won't have kickass action scenes scattered across it), it probably won't have a huge amount to hold my interest. Still might be worth a look though. Interest Rating *** Hidamari Sketch Argh, so cute! Anyhow, it looks to be yet another slice 'o life school comedy. I'm not really sure I need yet another of those (seriously, there seems to be three or four of these a year these days), though the fact that Akiyuki Shinbo is attached to the project in some fashion bumps up the interest rating. I really do with AS would go and do another Petit Cossette or Soultaker, though. He's wasting his talent on this stuff. Interest Rating *** Venus verus Virus More goth lolis with guns, but it at least looks and sounds to be a touch darker than Saint October. The production staff does particularly sway me either way, but it does at least look like it might be decent. If really going to depend on how the animation quality holds up and what it delivers in the way of demon-busting pyrotechnics. Interest Rating *** Getsumen To Heiki Mina Everybody loves Densha Otoko, and I have to admit I'm more than a little curious to see what they make of this if nothing else. The only problem is that, inevitably, previous attempts at taking a fictional show and making it into a real one haven't really been all that successful – the Kujibiki Unbalance OAV series was alright, but then you have things like Space Travellers... Interest Rating *** GR -GIANT ROBO- I'm really torn over this one – the old OAV series is a classic, but that pulled elements from all of Mitsuteru Yokoyamas work and mashed them all together in a fast-paced whirlwind of brilliance. This one looks rather more like a straight reworking of the original, without the awesome heroes and even more awesome villians. The director for this series hasn't really done anything to sway my opinion, though it is being written by Chiki J. Konoka. Interest Rating *** Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho Tou Errr, I actually kind of liked the anime version of Tenjou Tenge, and I get serious TenTen vibes from the website. Also, those scythe-like flicks of hair amuse me. Like VVV, though, interest is going to depend on how the animation for the action sequences holds out. Interest Rating **** Rocket Girls Hmmm, I'm getting Stratos 4 vibes from this. In any case, I can't help but think that this is just an excuse to have cute girls in ludicrously tight-fitting flight suits, and I can tell I'd hate Akane without even having to watch a single episode. Interest Rating * Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny I watched the original series, but I kind of found it to be little more than a guilty pleasure, where the “guilty” part should be weighted heavily, and “pleasure” rather lightly. If I ever find myself really struggling to find something to watch I might give it a look, but thats pretty unlikely. Interest Rating ** Well, I think thats about it for the Winter season. Its looking kind of like slim pickings for me, but thankfully there is a whole bunch of stuff coming in Spring and slightly beyond... Idolmaster Xenoglossia I'm pretty sure this has been confirmed for April now. Its Sunrise going all ZHiME again, but rather than taking characters from a bunch of their own previous shows, they are transplanting the cast of an Idol management arcade game into a post-apocalyptic mecha show. I'm, errr, getting kind of obsessive about the videogame version, having an import 360 and a copy of the game on preorder, having been downloading all the HD trailers of marketplace, importing assorted CDs and the like. Unsurprisingly, I'm rather looking forward to this show now, and the trailer from Comiket has done nothing but rasie my interest. Sure, I'm really not sure why they make odd design choices like changing the colour of Ioris' hair, but I can cope. Interest Rating ***** Nanoha StrikerS Just when I thought I could watch this without feeling all pedo, they go and introduce a whole bunch of new lolis to make up for them having aged the original cast. I have a few worries about this one, actually – the rapidly expanding cast might end up being unwieldy, and with the current artwork pushing the returnings into the background I have to worry a little about the possibility of them marginalising their roles. Still, which this some looking to be rather more on the TSAB side of things it should hopefully have less of the moe-moe school days side of things and considerable more of the super-robot-with-mahou-shojo side of things which actually makes Nanoha worth watching. Interest Rating **** Baccano! The website for the TV series exists somewhere, but I don't think we've actually been given an ETA on this yet. The fact that a website exists make me hopeful for Spring, though. Andrew Cunningham, the translator for Tokyopops release of Kino no Tabi, and Seven Seas release of Boogiepop, raved about the novel (I hate his website, by the way - it just makes me wish I read Japanese well enough to read all these novels, as they sound an awful lot more like the stuff I'd enjoy then the stuff I end up reading in English). This, along with the wonderfully odd premise, inspires me with confidence that this one will be worth a look. Interest Rating ***** Seirei no Moribito Fantasy series which differentiates itself from the shows I dismissed previously by being of a rather more eastern styling (whilst, mercifully, being nothing like Fushigi Yuugi). The trailers look great, and the production staff working on this instill me with a great degree of confidence. This is going to be epic. Interest Rating ***** Anyhow, that's just about everything on my radar at the moment. Spring is looking to be a frankly epic season as far as new shows go.

The True Cutting Edge of Anime CG

DiGiKerot — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:25:09 +0000

Wind swept fields? Seen that. The rolling waves of the Ocean? Per-leese Spaceships? Lensman did that in, like, 1984 Mecha? Thats soooo passe. You want to know what the real cutting edge use of CG in anime is? Keyboards. These are shots from one of the closing episodes of Fantastic Children. I really have to wonder what kind of mindset thinks that its a great idea to do their keyboards as CG object. I mean, CG in anime is generally used for (and is best at) producing complicated but relatively flat surfaced objects which require a lot of rotation or transformation, or are required to move in and out of the screen a lot. A keyboard, however, is kind of boring - it doesn't exactly transform turn into a giant robot and wreak havoc – it just kind of sits there, and occasionally has some buttons pressed on it. This one does, at least, have some buttons on it pressed. They go down then up again in silky-smooth CG glory. Of course, a crappy, undetailed hand drawn image probably would have worked better – it'd have been less obtrusive for one, and they did seem to be typing in some weird alien language rather than English. But, man, I love pointless crap like this. Fantastic Children is a good show, coincidently. Sure, the chins could give Toei Kanon a run for its money, and it is pretty much completely out of touch with what is popular in modern anime fandom, but its got a decent story and some neat twists (which, if not entirely unpredictable, are well handled). The ending does leave you with a bit of an odd, lingering feeling though – its not a bad ending by any means, but something about it just doesn't quite sit right with me for some reason I can't approach attempting to explain without giving away the whole series.

The Wonderful World of DVD pack-ins

DiGiKerot — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 16:08:56 +0000

With all the complaining about Odex being rubbish recently (random Odex facts – 1. I actually own a set of Odex Boys Be... DVDs from back around 2001, which probably means I own more Odex DVDs than most of the SG bloggers. 2. Odex have actually been responsible for the production on a couple of recent Bandai Ent. R1 releases, notably Fantastic Children) I figured I'd take a look at some of the wonderful DVD pack-ins from the supposedly 'superior' regions releases. And by “wonderful” I actually mean “stupid”. Seriously, this post is the first use I've gotten out of these things. Thats not to say all pack-ins are crappy and useless – I quite like the GunxSword keyring, the Tsukuyomi art cards and folder (of which I somehow got an additional duplicate of one of the cards, no doubt meaning that some poor otaku who cares far more about these things has been forever denied the ability to complete their card collection) or those paper vanships from the Last Exile release (not that I've dared to put them together – their even more complicated than Hagu). Anyway, first up is the Tenjou Tenge jigsaw. This one at least makes some kind of sense, having been inspired by the ED animation sequence. It came sealed in a tin, which for geekish reasons I've neven been able to bring myself to open. Well, I say geekish reasons, but I've always harbored suspicions that it might actually contain some kind of poisonous gas (no, not the kind which likes pizza and looks good in tight clothing) designed to cull those who actually enjoyed the TenTen anime from the gene pool. Kind of disappointingly, it turns out it was actually a jigsaw, which probably explains why I've actually got around to posting this for you all to read (it'd be rather difficult if I was dead, after all). Actually, this at least amused me for twenty minutes as I attempted to put it together. Its not like there are many pieces, but because the jigsaw is double sided it adds the complication of having to figure out which side you want to for the current image. Just a shame its all anime rather than manga art. I wanted to talk about the Samurai Champloo bandanna, but I couldn't find it. This explains why there is a picture of the Gad Guard woolly hat instead. The lead character in Gad Guard does actually wear a hat kind of like this (other than, you know, having Gad Guard written across it), making it rather more logical than the SC bandanna. Seriously, though, I don't get the logic in the bandanna – I can't remember anyone in the show wearing one, and only about 0.5% of the population can actually get away with wearing one without looking completely stupid - not to mention even that small part of the population would have problems wearing a bright yellow one. Speaking of headwear, I've got a Kiddy Grade cap somewhere as well ^^; Legend says that any girl who should wear this necklace will be subjected to a vicious fluting within hours. Well, either that or its some crappy seashell necklace thing that Geneon decided to bundle in with the Kannazuki no Miko DVD release. Of course, this means I've just admitted to, like, owning the KnM DVD release despite the fact that I've said several times in several different places that I think the show is garbage. I really don't know what Bandai Entertainment were thinking when they were putting the early volumes of their My-HiME release together. There was the crappy box, the DVDs which don't actually work properly on some DVD players, and then there's that t-shirt... Lets just get a close-up on that logo. Seriously, did anyone from Bandai actually, you know, look at this t-shirt? With, like, their eyes? It's not like I wear many pack-in t-shirts as it is, but FUKA ACADEMY? I don't even think I have to attempt to make a bad joke about that one. Still, the finest extra I've ever had has not come from the R1 world, but rather Japan. Its the most elaborate, complicated and detailed figure I've ever owned, sculpted by legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki himself. Yes, that really is a figure of an onigiri.

Geneon subtly reveal new license

DiGiKerot — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:38:17 +0000

Where by subtle, I mean its fairly obviously a show which will appeal to all fans of box fort wars. Still, they are running a contest about it over at ANN - Can you spot all references in Geneons latest podcast? I certainly can't, but that probably has more to do with the fact that the podcast download is chugging something horrifically, so I've not actually heard it yet. Still, its kind of a stark contrast to what is happening in Singapore at the moment, given that those with the best chance of winning are, you know, those that have seen Rozen Maiden before (Oops, did I give the answer away?), not to mention the fact that they have actually announced they've licensed something. Anyway, those US types can have fun entering - I don't live in the US, I so I can't enter and I certainly won't help you lot out. Personally, I'm kind of looking forward to grabbing the DVDs though - Geneon generally do a good job, and I was just thinking about grabbing the rest of the R3 Taiwan release to go along with my Vol 1. Given the R3 video quality isn't quite as spectacular as one would hope (strange, given the tendancy for R3 releases to use the R2 video stream), an R1 alternative is good (not to mention subtitled).

IDOLM@STER Xenoglossia site goes live

DiGiKerot — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:32:34 +0000

The presite has been around for a while now, but the proper website for Sunrises re-imagining of the videogame THE iDOLM@STER is now live. Unfortunately, it seems kind of breaky in Firefox. The basic plot seems to revolve around the moon having been splintered approximately 100 years ago, causing all sorts of problems on Earth. In order to prevent the falling meteorites from causing damage the world over, giant robots know as IDOLs are used to destroy the ones which fall out of orbit. Of course, the only ones who can pilot the IDOLs are the chosen few known as “IDOLMASTERS”, which operate under the control of the Mondenkind organisation. The character pages also mention that there is an organisation working in opposition to Mondenkind, to which Chihaya (who is COOL and HOT, apparently) and Riffa (the gothloli) belong. That is about all they say at the moment. I'm kind of curious as to what the Xenoglossia part of the title is meant to refer to. The term Xenoglossia refers the spontaneous use (and presumably understanding) of a language that one has not previously had any exposure to. Its quite possible that it is being used to imply reincarnation, but in that case are they simply referring to the re-imagining of the franchise or if it has any baring on the actual content of the show. Still, I'm kind of surprised that, aside from the alterations in character designs, the whole voice cast has changed since the game version. Miki, the character who has been added for the Xbox360 version of the game (due out in just over a fortnight) is also somewhat conspicuous in her absence. What are the chances of her turning up in some roll or other halfway through? Pretty good, I'd think. The game art is on the left. Of course, all the anime designs are rather more pointed in design, but the difference is most apparent with Iori Anyway, go have a look at the pretty artwork and stuff. I'm looking forward to the show, personally, but then I've been looking forward to the 360 game for a while now. The new character designs look good to me, with the possible exception of Iori whose more pointed features and darkened hair combine to make her the most significant deviation from my perspective – the others simply look like the age-adjusted versions that they are. Admittedly, Ioris' new look does rather more fit the abrasive character traits they seem to be emphasising in the anime series, but there is just something what looks kind of odd about it to me. Honestly, I think her forehead is actually a touch too small (particularly given its supposed to be her charm point!) and she looks a little deformed as a result. If, unlike me, you didn't save the pre-site this morning in anticipation of the proper site today, by refreshing the character page you can see smaller versions of the splash images from the pre-site

Battling Seizure Robots

DiGiKerot — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:21:59 +0000

The Battling Seizure Robots was a throwaway joke in an episode of The Simpsons set in Japan, referencing an episode of Pokemon which caused hundreds of children Japan-wide to vomit wildly, as well as causing a spate of epileptic fits (not to mention being the origin of those “well-lit room” messages what appear at the start of anime shows these days). If Battling Seizure Robots was actually a real show, however, it would definitely just be an alternate name for GaoGaiGar. Seriously, that show takes every opportunity possible to include insane flashing light effects – every time the Zonder I fear for my life despite not suffering from epilepsy. What, you mean logical like a robot drinking from a metal Fast Food cup? Still, GaoGaiGar is awesome, because it has dialogue about how GUTS is the most important deciding factor in everything, and has a control room full of people who turn around to rely important information. Its also incredibly toyetic, and I just love toyetic shows. I mean, come on, a giant pencil what fires nets! How can you NOT love something like that? Still, the DrillGao is kind of rubbish, it's like they couldn't think of a proper vehicle to form the legs so they So, anyway, vote for Gai in SaiGAR when his turn comes up. Well, until he finds himself up against Char (IF he finds himself against Char, given the fact Char votes will probably be split between Char and Quattro).

WTF DOES GENUFLECT MEAN ANYWAY?!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:10:51 +0000

Genuflect (verb) – To bend the knee in reverence. I realise I'm probably well behind on things here, but I got around to taking a look at OMGWTFOTL last night, and it made me giggle like a sleep-deprived person playing visual novels at stupid-late hours when they should be sleeping instead. I think most of this is probably due simply to the word Genuflect – to be honest, I kind of thought that they'd made the word up. It's not as if it's a word which comes up in normal, everyday speech, and frankly it was such a badass and Gar sounding word I figured it simply couldn't be real. Consulting a dictionary put paid to that illusion. Still, my initial disappointment was quickly gotten over, when I realised that this was an actual, real word I could randomly drop into conversations and confuse people whilst still being valid, actual English! So I've spent all day trying to randomly drop the word Genuflect into conversations, much to the bemusement of those around me. Who says you don't learn anything from this hobby? Anyway, OMGWTFOTL is probably worth a look, given that it'll only cost you around half an hour of your life to explore the whole thing. It is pretty much entirely inexplicable, but that's all part of the charm. Certainly, I think it highlights a definite need for more GARtastic visual novels in English.

Poll: Time for a new theme?

DiGiKerot — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:11:18 +0000

Before I get onto the main point, I suppose I should really wrap up the last poll given that its been up there for five months already. Anyway, I posed to you, the readers, the question of whether you vote in polls on these blog-thingies or not. Unsurprisingly, a third of you thought you'd be cute and go for the “Never” or “Always, except for this one” options. I hope you are happy with your hilarious hijinks, you wacky japesters. Anyway, pretty much half of you when for the “sometimes” option, which is pretty much in-line with what I do. Yup, nothing really shocking there, then. Anyway, although anyone who glances at the traffic figures wouldn't guess it (seriously, It's a good thing I'm not obsessive about these things), this blog has been floating around for over a year now. In that time, the blog has looked pretty much the same, with only some really minor tweaks occuring. Over time, depending on how people have found this blog, I suspect I'm thought of as one of the following (honestly, this is probably a poll in itself ^^) -

The guy with the fruity-looking blog.
The British guy with the fruity-looking blog.
The retard with the fruity looking blog who can't write and has an inexplicable sense of humour.
All of the above.

Still, I'm thinking its quite possibly time I thought about coming up with a new theme for the blog. The thing is, though, that I kind of like having a ghetto-looking blog – it kind of suits the quality of the writing and the general randomness which seems to permeate this place. I mean, I'm not really the type to go with excessive banners or anything like that – honestly, I don't really like utilising random art, be in fan-art or official stuff, for things like that (which is why I'd rather post an article imageless rather than resort to Danbooru-fu, which in turn probably explains the traffic levels ^^;). Rather than distress the loyal following of, errr, two readers I have, I figured I'd put the future of this blogs appearance in the hands of the masses! Yes, you can help shape the future appearance of this blog. Yes, I'll follow through with whatever the outcome of the vote is, even if it is against my taste (well, within reason I guess - It's never going to end up being a sea of pink...). I'll leave the poll up until sometime on Saturday morning UK time, the exact time depending exactly on when I can manage to drag myself out of bed. Feel free to leave any other suggestions in the comments, everything will be taken into consideration (then promptly ignored ^_^).

Negima!? 3rd Period (PS2)

DiGiKerot — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:50:22 +0000

It may be called third period, but this is actually the forth Konami Negima game for the PS2. Rather than being another lolitastic beachside game, its continuing the numbering from the previous games – despite adding that ? to the title. Unfortunately, with that ? comes a whole lot of rubbishness. Most of the character art is recycled, though there is some new stuff Its not like this is rubbish because its been retooled to be like the Shaft version, as the only real reference to that is the use of the Spring Special OP (which, technically, was made before the ? was added to the title anyway) – the game actually mostly recycles most of its character art from the previous PS2 games. No, its simply the fact that this is the most lazy of anime game adaptation types – the scrolling beat-em-up. The general premise of the game is that the school festival coming up, and Negis class has to decide what to do for it. You are presented with five choices (including the haunted house they actually do in the manga and a maid cafe), and depending on your choice you go down a different route. For some reason I got too fed up with to actually follow properly, some monsters appear to disrupt things, meaning you have to fight them. What this means is that you repeatedly play what is usually the same area (for that route anyway) with slightly different badguy arrangement. A lot. Each route has one or two unique monsters, including such exciting things as walking suits of armour and flying cardboard boxes (no, really – they are quite tough, too!), but generally you'll be fighting the same generic walking... blog-thingy which puts up absolutely no resistance. Even if they did put up a resistance, its not as if the combat system is actually particularly interesting. You'll either end up using the normal punch against the blob things, or the one spell with actually does any damage against anything tougher. You can also charge your attacks up by holding down the attack button for a while, but its not often you'll need to use this other than with magic. To try and spice things up, each route has a costume change. Whilst I could definitely have done without playing as Negi running around in a short-skirted French maid costume, even worse was the fact that the costume changes tend to do nothing but add additional frustrations to the player. One costume change disables everything other than the magic attack, and there is a bunny costume which makes Negi run at an alarmingly slow speed. At the end of the game, you fight the same two headed dragon boss. Unfortunately, the directional movement is incredibly broken against any of the bosses you fight, making it very hard to actually move in the direction you want to. Its an incredibly frustrating experience. Honestly, at least they could have let you play as some of the girls instead of Negi – it would have gone a long way towards at least making it entertaining. Instead, you can merely choose them as either your first or second partner. The first partner generally gives you some kind of special move (which frequently involves their portrait sliding across the screen, and your opponents taking some small amount damage), whilst the second partner affects your stats in a positive fashion in varying fashion. Your partner characters also earn affection points, and assuming you beat the dragon at the end (you can still complete the route without beating the dragon - or most the other battles for that matter!) you get the ending image for the character with the highest rating. Honestly, I was going to finish all five routes at least once before posting about the game, but ultimately I've gotten to the point where I really don't want to waste the hour it'd take to finish off the last path playing this (and that is an hour of fast-forwarding the text!). I mean, it isn't as if the previous games were amazing or anything, but at least they felt like they were TRYING to be half decent. First and Second period, for their technical crudeness, had a certain charm to them – it was vaguely entertaining to wander freely around the school talking to people whilst hunting for the event sequences. This doesn't have any of that – its just crap. It doesn't even have fanservice, not being an 18-rated game like the previous ones (not that they had pr0n content or anything, of course). This is the ending image for Setsuna, which is probably the best thing about the game...

Honey and Clover Live Action Movie

DiGiKerot — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:44:11 +0000

Whilst browsing assorted websites looking for a DVD release date for the first Death Note movie last week (I think the first out the door is the HK release next month, which is at least subtitled), I noticed that the Honey and Clover movie was out on DVD in Japan last week, and had English subtitles to boot. Whilst I was aware that Garten wasn't massively impressed by it, I figured it'd at least be worth a look anyway - after all, the fact that I would be going into the movie with reduced expectations would probably mean I'd enjoy it more. As far as it goes, it was actually enjoyable enough. The thing is that you really need to do some expectation management before you go into it – basically, don't expect the anime version. I do have to kind of wonder if the scriptwriters for the movie were massively familiar with the individual work, as the way the movie has turned out is almost as if the writers were given a very board overview of the story and the characters and have written the story around that. There aren't really all that many scenes which have been taken straight out of the original work – there are some sequences which are similar, and a couple which are the same, but generally the movie is, well, different. Some of the scenes end up feeling really odd due to the change of context – there is a sequence where Takemoto and Yamada look for a four leaf clover, for example, but the way in which it is handled means it completely lacks any of the poignancy of the anime. Worse still is Takemotos cycle-trip towards the end of the movie – the context here is that he is running away from the Hagu situation rather than his lack of direction (indeed, in the movie it makes sure that you are well aware that Takemoto is fascinated with old architecture, and thats where his destiny lies). Those scenes simply end up feeling like padding, a largely unnecessary way to give Takemoto something to do in the ending. Takemoto has Gunpla ^_^ Whilst broadly still the same, there are quite a few changes in the characters as well, arguably in order to make them more real. Hagu is still childlike, but only really retains the most emo elements of that. Morita is still mad, but is more psycho-mad (seriously, he comes off as very intimidating and kind of scary at times) rather than wacky-mad. Mayama is still Rika-obsessive, but now is going to the lengths of stalking her, to the point where he keeps items she has discarded in sealing and timestamped bags on his wall (and, to be honest, be comes across as being really dorky as well). Yamada is still in love with Mayama, but she has taken to stalking him on occasion. Takemoto doesn't really show the same uncertainty about his future as he does in the anime – I think they mention it in a single line of dialogue, but at the same time they make it very obvious what he is going to end up doing right from the start. Hagu wears awesome looking old school headphones The oddest thing about the movie is that the characters don't actually seem to be friends, merely acquaintances. Takemoto, Mayama and Morita don't really show much familiarity with each other throughout most of the movie, with it being a rare occasion that anyone seems to talk to Mayama. Mayama is Rika obsessed to the point of utter exclusion of everything else – he barely even acknowledges Yamada a lot of the time, let alone display the same level as protectiveness towards her as he does in the anime. Given that a lot of the original work comes across as a rather wistful and melancholic story about the passing of youth and how people slowly drift apart, it does really drift from the original somewhat. The tone and feel of the movie is kind of odd. Its very, very melancholic, mostly due to a Yoko Kanno soundtrack full of slow, simple piano and string pieces with lots of sustained notes. The movie really doesn't have many highpoint to it – even the ending doesn't really have anything really positive to it. The use of humour is really odd – there isn't much of it, so when it does crop up it kind of comes out of nowhere, and even then its usage is odd. The only real recurring joke is Mayama imagining himself being interrogated over his stalker tendencies. Given the way they've made most of the characters more realistic, the appearance of unrealistically camp art dealers Mario and Luigi is really, really odd. Honestly, they may as well have done away with any attempt at humour entirely. I'm afraid this isn't Morita OR Lomeyer I can't really say much about the direction or the acting here, because there isn't really anything worth saying about it. The direction is serviceable, but there isn't anything particularly interesting or bad about it. The acting is much the same – no-one really stands out as being particularly good, but at the same time none of the performances are bad either. Mario and Luigi seem totally out of place in this movie Ultimately, its an alright movie. It held my attention for the whole of its two hour duration, anyway, but it is a little hard for me to separate how much of that was down to it being a good movie and how much was down to me mentally comparing everything with the anime. This is what kind of makes it hard to figure out exactly who should be watching this movie. People who have seen the anime, and probably those who have read the manga, will largely be disappointed with the treatment it has been given. Simultaneously, I'm not really sure its got enough to it in its own regard to hold the attention of someone who isn't familiar with Honey and Clover already. Regardless, whilst it was pretty enjoyable, I can't say I particularly think its worth buying, particularly to those most obsessive about H&C, as they will ultimately be those most disappointed by it.

New Geneon R1 Solicitations

DiGiKerot — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:08:46 +0000

Swiped from AoDs front page, these are Geneons newly announced R1 DVD releases -

Gate Keepers/Gate Keepers 21 Complete Set - 780 minutes - $79.98 - 03/27/2007

See that one I've highlighted? Thats one of tj_hans favouritest shows ever, that is. The thing is, it isn't actually all that good. Being one of Gonzos early efforts from back in 2000, I suppose I'll let him off for nostalgia reasons, but if you want to have a good laugh at him thats a pretty good price for the whole series. Actually, to be entirely fair, the show isn't actually that bad as such, and GK21 is actually rather good, but its hardly an A-grade show. That's all I really wanted to mention these releases for - personally the only one of these I'm getting is Gun Sword #7. That is a pretty good price for Stellvia, though, but I picked up the singles back when they were originally released. As for Ai Yori Aoshi, I think the price says it all. I made the unfortunate mistake of buying the whole original series in one go, that being back when there wasn't enough in the way of releases for me to have to be particularly choosy about things. I watched the whole series, but each and every episode was a painful, painful experience I can these days remember little of.

Poll Results – Theme Change

DiGiKerot — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:30:16 +0000

Hmmm, okay, so it wasn't exactly a burning topic of interest, gathering a mere 27 votes. Now, the winner was the “What, this blog is a design classic!” option, with seven votes. This put it an entire vote ahead of the “Fruitier than ever!” option. Third was “Something Readable, like white?”, gathering four votes. The thing is, the vote which pushed the winning option into, well, winning was the one I stuck in there to make sure the poll was working. This kind of makes me feel guilty, so I figured I should at least put some effort into doing something (and besides, it means I can protract this out a bit more and get another post out of it!). To this end, I've thrown up a new theme, which you can see in action on this temporary test blog. I've tried to take on suggestions and at least attempted to make it fruiter-looking, and honestly I personally think it looks a lot better than the site currently does. However, I don't actually spend an awful lot of time re-reading my own old entries, so I'm going to put this up for voting again. This time I'm only going to leave it up for 24 hours, though, so I'll act on the results of the poll at this time tomorrow. Anyway, I've been distracted by this long enough today. I'm off to look for pudding references in A Modest War.

Crest of the Stars – A Modest War

DiGiKerot — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:42:03 +0000

“Jinto, we're within identification range of Sord Sufagnaum,” Lafiel announced. “Sweet.” You know, at some points during Tokyopops English release of the second Crest of the Stars novel, I had to wonder if maybe Jarluk Dreu Haider was channelling Eric Cartman. Thankfully, this is less frequent an occurrence as it was in Princess of the Empire. Better yet, this time around they didn't have any references to frozen pudding snacks (tasty or otherwise). There is still a general feeling that the dialogue is being written towards what some Tokyopop editor feels is what a twelve year-old would consider with-it. I suppose that Jinto isn't really all that old, but given that the series is set in the far-flung future I'd have thought that some of the speech found here would be antiquated rather than still in common use. Still, whenever I think that they might be writing things down for a younger audience in the English version, I remember this: Oh, that wacky horse! I'm kind of just repeating what I said in my review of the first novel here, though, so if you haven't read that I suggest going and doing do. This book is pretty much just more of the same anyway, though this time around they do start to bring in more of the supporting characters who'll become significant in the later instalments of the series.The next book, the third and final book of the Crest trilogy, which resolves the cliffhanger in this volume, is due out in May according to Amazon. I guess the question really is if they'll have done well enough to justify them releasing the Banner novels. I kind of get the feeling some of the vocal fan annoyance over certain aspects of the handling of these English versions will have resulted in sales too lackluster for it to be worth their while. We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose, but I personally hope they continue to release the series. Oh, and I really do have to reiterate exactly how deeply sarcastic the dialogue in this series is – it really is all very funny.

Shana Awesomeness Powered Up!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:03:26 +0000

Examine this image from episode nine of Shana whilst listening to this audio sample. Does this, perchance, remind you of something? I've said it before, and I'll say it again – I love pointless crap like this. This takes Shana from being averaging to AWESOMETASTIC, at least for the duration of that one episode.

SHOCK! Funimation licenses something I want!

DiGiKerot — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:58:23 +0000

So, Funimation are doing this whole week of announcements thing this week. Honestly, I was just expecting it to be a collection of random news, like release dates for things we already knew they had. The fact that thus far every new update has been a new license has been kind of cool. That said, the first days announcement was Ragnarok Online - a show I've neither seen any of nor have any interest in what-so-ever. The second days license was Suzuka, which from what I've heard about it falls into pretty much the same category. Todays annoucement, however, is Aquarion! Yeah, not exactly massively popular a show I know, but I'm all for spazzy robots shows with orgasmic transformation sequences! Its a shame we've got a long wait for this one, but it has been penciled in on my list of this to buy (or at least it would if I actually had one). I am now curious as to what they are going to be announcing the last two days of the week - Mushishi seems likely for an assortment of reasons, but I have no real idea what the last one will be. Ouran would be cool (and seems to be what most of AoD are hoping for), but I don't really think thats all that likely - not that Aquarion seemed particularly likely either, and honestly I can't think of a huge amount of obvious license bait at the moment. I'd have maybe have said Zegapain if it wasn't a Sunrise title. I suppose it could be something like Shuffle! or another of those shows I care nothing for.

Funimation Licensing Update

DiGiKerot — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:06:01 +0000

Wouldn't you bloody know it - it turns out that Funi has, indeed, licensed Shuffle!. I wasn't being entirely serious you know. Oh, apparently they are going to release the Akamatsu Santa thingy as well. Ho-hum.

Plunging into the depths of obscurity...

DiGiKerot — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 20:48:23 +0000

I'm currently in the middle of an operation which consists largely of moving all my stuff from one room in the house to another. My room isn't actually all that large, but its kind of deceptive – I have a hell of a lot of crap. The good thing about this is that I'm finding a few things of neatness lying around – like that copy of Phoenix Wright I thought I'd lost (thankfully I'd already finished it by that point), and the subject of this post. For those who are too young to remember these things, this is a VHS cassette. Its kind of like a DVD, except they take up loads of space, the video looks fugly, you don't have language selection and the extra features are kind of non-existent. Also, you have to WAIT for it to rewind if you want to watch something again. VHS tapes aren't really that rare – we had videos for years before we moved onto the shiny disks, and it was pretty much the only way to watch things other than broadcast TV. This one, however, is a genuine old UK anime release – and I mean old. Any UK citizens may have noticed the lack of BBFC certificates on here. This is because this particular tape pre-dates all UK video releases having to go through the BBFC! Oldtabulous! Anyway, this is the 1982 movie Techno Police 21c. The movie itself isn't all that interesting or great (alas, I don't actually have a VHS player any more, so the only picture you are getting is the one on the box) – it centers around a country bumpkin highway cop who gets a promotion to work in Sentinel City, where the police get robot partners! Along with the token female and the guy built like a tank (whose robots are suitable girly and tankesque respectively) they end up chasing a hijacked supertank in an attempt to stop it getting into the wrong hands! Then, halfway through the movie, Token Girl gets trapped in the tank whilst it goes off in Zany Autopilot Mode! OH NOES! This is one of those things I saw when I was really, really young as a rental – this tape copy is something I picked up many, many years later from a junk sale for pure nostalgia reasons. I suppose its true that you really, really shouldn't revisit things you remember fondly from your youth, as they really do tend to suck. Still, I guess this vague amused me last time I watched it. Speaking of amusement, I rather like the quote on the back of the box. The animation, coincidently, is pretty crappy. The “superb synthesizer based score”, however, was actually by none other than Ghibli-music legend Joe Hisaishi!Wow, such humble and crappy beginnings. On a similar note, I think Shoji Kawamori was actually involved in this as well, though he probably wants to forget about that. I suspect this movie isn't available anywhere in the world any more. This is probably a good thing, as I really need to reiterate that it isn't actually very good. Still, having seen old shit like this does at least give me the well-earned right to point and laugh at people who think anime is getting worse, secure with the knowledge that they are stupid.

A Rather Large Box (or, I bought the iMAS SE)

DiGiKerot — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:19:38 +0000

For comparison, that's the first Code Geass DVD next to the box I picked up from the postage depot today. Its a rather large box, isn't it? Inside that box, well... There is another box ^^; Inside the second box, however, was the rather large and shiny iDOLM@STER Special Edition. Yes, once again I'm taking great pleasure in depriving the rabid Japanese iMAS fans of valuable stock. Notice how it dwarves lesser limited editions with its sheer mass – that Sakura Taisen LE box managed to squeeze a PS2 controller, a t-shirt, booklet and mousemat into that box, and is still petite in comparison. Inside that box you get Trading Figure size figures of all eleven girls, a stage to assemble and stand them on (plus assembly guide), a faceplate (as seen on my 360 here), a 20 page booklet (with art like this in it), a DVD with two hours of iMAS related footage on it (in other words, I've not watched it yet and as such don't know exactly what is on there), and, strangely enough, a copy of the game. Unfortunately, I've not actually had the chance to play the game yet, let alone set up the stage and take pictures. I'll save that for another evening, I guess.

Code Geass DVD1

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 19:30:27 +0000

Bluwacky recently described this show as being “So modern Sunrise it almost hurts”. Honestly, that is pretty much why I like the show – its massively pulpy and certainly kind of silly at times, but at the same time its exciting and actually worth talking about, unlike other shows where its so obvious from the outset where its going to go. Anyway, I've now gotten the first of the Code Geass DVDs. Its only one episode, but I guess that explains why the first pressing at least is fairly stacked. The coolest thing about it, for me at least, is that the DVD version is in 16:9 rather than that odd broadcast aspect it has. I mean, its not even just that they've lifted off some cropping, but it just looks so much better. Admittedly, most of the show is composed to have most the action in an square somewhere on screen, but it comes off better than in a lot of other shows which have had this done. It probably helps that there have been a lot of scenes which have had the animation retouched. They've applied texturing to the truck. Note the difference in the trucks position, and the redrawn buildings. They've recoloured the characters and repositioned the background here. Anyway, there are quite a few changes of the like throughout the episode, some subtle (they've added drops of liquid to CC in some shots immediately after being removed from the capsule), and some more obvious (they've added some graffiti back into the background in one sequence where it disappears between shots). As always, its nice that they do this stuff. Other than that, there is the picture drama, a CD with cast talk, an audio commentary, two booklets and a nice set of postcards featuring the ED art. One of the booklets contains some of Clamps original character sketches, which kind of amuse me – whilst the noodleman look of the characters makes them look like they've come straight from Tsubasa, the Clamp art actually has the characters looking rather more beefy, and certainly not all that noodley. I guess its the animation designers hand that resulted in their Tsubasa-like appearance.

Celebrity Cos-Play

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 22:08:05 +0000

Its not a very good picture, but that's Kelly Osbourne.... Dressed as Lacus Clyne... Not, really, it is. Its a quick picture from some TV show which just aired over here where she's gone to Japan and is forced into taking assorted jobs. The Lacus Clyne thing is actually part of next weeks show – this week she had to work in a maid cafe, and on the service desk at a love hotel. The show was awful, but simultaneously utterly hilarious, if only because she sounds so utterly disgusted at everyone and everything – especially at dressing up as Lacus.

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi DVD 7

DiGiKerot — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:25:27 +0000

Finally, it's the Yuki cover. Given that the only episode on this DVD is Someday in the Rain, I guess it's somewhat apt. Saying that, watching this makes me realise I've not seen the broadcast version of the episode, so I can't do my normal comparison shots of the absolutely pointless things they've changed. This, of course, leaves me at somewhat of a loss as to what the actually talk about – the only other thing I consider to be of note about this DVD is that full length dance video thing which everyone in the known universe saw two weeks ago. There isn't even a hidden image directory on this DVD! Still, since I've been neglecting blogging duties due to Idolmaster addiction, not to mention the fact that I've commented on every other volume of the DVD release, I suppose I should really start finding some barrel bottoms to scrape. I suppose, being the last volume, I could take stock of my sticker sheet haul across the series. Whilst I didn't get SP stickers with every volume, I think I've probably done a lot better than most have (certainly, I seem to compared to a lot of people who read the same forums I do). DVD 0: I don't think there were any stickers with this one, period. DVD 1: Sticker sheet 3, no SP DVD 2: Sticker sheet 6, SP 3 DVD 3: Sticker sheet 14, SP 4 DVD 4: Sticker sheet 19, no SP DVD 5: Sticker sheet 24, SP 6 DVD 6: Sticker sheet 27, SP 6 (Yes, again) DVD 7: Sticker sheet 34, SP 7 So, two volumes short of getting SP sheets with all of them. They are advertising more figures this time around. The Haruhi one I've mentioned as being with the fourth manga volume before. The Mikuru figure I think was a mail-in with the February volume of Shonen Ace, which at this point is no doubt near impossible to find now (the March issue, coincidently, seems to be shipping with a Tohsaka Rin bust). The Yuki figure was the same for some magazine call The Sneaker, that I haven't previously heard of. Ho-hum.

I'm not dead (yet)

DiGiKerot — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:43:12 +0000

Gak! It's been almost two weeks since I've actually posted something on here. That's actually kind of odd, since I've not actually been at work these last two weeks, but I've kind of neglected to keep up with my posting obligations. I guess this is really due to the fact that, frankly, I've not really had any thoughts regarding anything that I thought was worth padding out into something worth posting about – not that this normally stops me, but I figure I should at least attempt to be interesting to someone. The kind of things I get up to when not at work aren't really interesting at all. So, I guess I'll just post a bunch of random comments I've been playing iDOLM@STER – well, for about five days solidly anyway. Yes, I've managed to score an S rank with the best ending. No, I haven't bought the school uniform (yet). Yes, the game is crack. I haven't managed to get anywhere near those top scores on the online ranking, though – they really are insane. I imagine those getting those kinds of scores are resetting their 360s a lot, and are getting insane luck with journalists and the like. Oh, and they've probably wasted money buying the mail addresses off Marketplace... I watched Super GALS! Season 2 – of course, Season 2 is really US terminology – technically its cour 3 and 4 of the show. It's totally retarded, but it's retarded AWESOME. The show makes me laugh, which I've mentioned before is a pretty rare occurrence with anime. I really don't get all the Kasumi hate, though – aside from the fact that the character was actually pretty funny, they would have had huge problems padding out half of the episodes if they hadn't introduced her. Anyway, props to Right Stuf for actually releasing this. What is it with people suddenly realising how awesome Overman King Gainer is? - Not that I disagree, its a great show – I just hope that no-one expects it to make a huge amount of sense particularly quickly. It's one of the shows made whilst Tomino was starting all his work in media res (in fact, a lot of individual episodes of Gainer start like that, not just the actually series), but at least in this case the show was actually entertaining enough to make up for it. Basically, its not Brain Powerd – I've seen that whole series and I still don't have a clue what on earth was actually going on. I listened to the iMAS Go My Way single - *sigh* this should have been such a good CD, but the vocal selection for Go My Way was well screwed up – having Haruka on there is fine, but Iori and Yayoi so aren't right for this song. As a result, its kind of ruined by some annoying shrill singing. I'd probably argue that the CD version is about a minute too long as well. Omoide wo Arigato should have been far better, but they've went and needlessly boosted up the percussion and added a whole bunch of silly laser noises into the background. Honestly, the game classes the track as a “Vocal image” song – being so overproduced kind of defeats the point. Oh well, it isn't really that bad a CD, but it should have been better. Its Relations and My Best Friend on the next single. The voice line-up looks a lot better on that one, but I don't like either song half as much as the two on this CD ¬_¬ I turned 27 – getting old is depressing. The fact is, I'm, like, twice the age of the modern anime protagonist! Geez. That, and I keep on wanting to say things like “It's Lazer Time, Boyz!” in IRC. I really shouldn't make references that (a) no-ones going to get, and (b) reveal how old I actually am ^^; I've actually finished FFXII – Finally. Now I never want to see the damn thing again. You'll not have to put up with me moaning about grinding for LP again, at least. I've attempted to catch up on watching my DVD backlog – I've not really been all that successful, but I've at least managed to make a dent in it. I've still got a few complete series to watch, not to mention a bunch of random volumes of a whole bunch of other shows lying around. I at least managed to get around to watching to the end of Kamichu (nice show), but otherwise its just been the usual hotch potch of random volumes. Of course, I've added new stuff into the pile as well (the new R1 Gunbuster set and some G Gundam in the last couple of days), and the HK release of the first Death Note movie should turn up soon. I should probably get around to watching 08th Mobile Team before watching G Gundam given that I'm repeated told how awesome it is... And that's about all I can be bothered to type at the moment.

Geneon license Karin

DiGiKerot — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:34:47 +0000

Yes, that's Karin, not Chibi Vampire like Tokyopop insist on calling it. Not that Karin actually falls within my sphere of interest - I've not seen the show, I've not read the manga, and honestly I don't really have any inclination to rectify any of that - but I figured we could all have a good laugh at the Chibi Vampire thing again. Oh, and the first volume of Rozen Maiden is out in May, apparently. I actually want that one.

Death Note (Movie)

DiGiKerot — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:40:39 +0000

Fed up with normal, boring books which lets you down in heavy rain? Well, you need new Death Note! 100% Guaranteed to repel water! Now you can have a book which not only kills people, but also doubles up as an effective umbrella! *ahem* I was seriously impressed by the Death Note movie. Really, its a good working of the series. Its far from being an entirely faithful adaptation of the manga, but nothing that they've added really deviates from the Death Note we all know and love. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, really. When writing the script for the movie, the writers would have known exactly where the story was building to. As a result, they've managed to give the movie version a far more natural feel than the manga had – things just flow together far better in the way they build up. In the movie, by the time Misa makes an actual appearance towards the end, its already established who she actually is – there have been subtle (and in the case of things like the bus, not so subtle) things going on in the background that mean that, by the time we see her, we know that she's a famous star. In the manga, she's just kind of dumped on us all of a sudden. Not that Misa makes much of an appearance in this movie, that's just the obvious build up for the sequel. One of the more obvious things they do which the manga didn't was the whole plot line they added to do with Light having a girl friend – I think the only point they had Light show any particular interest in girls early on in the manga is when he takes a girl out on a date in order to trap the FBI agent tailing him. In the movie, that still occurs, but the girl he takes out has been appearing all throughout the movie as his girlfriend, debating with him at several points the morality behind Kira. For most of the movie, I was really wondering where it was going – I mean, was it some kind of silly attempt to humanise Light? Thankfully, in the end, it all becomes clear, and the payoff is awesome. If I hadn't read the manga, I would probably have assumed that it was actually part of the original work rather than something they've added. The Ryuk CG is actually a lot better than I was expecting. It's not something that's going to cause ILM or Wega sleepless nights – he's a bit floaty at times, and I suspect they probably recorded his dialogue after the he was animated rather then before hand, given that the lip-synch is out on occasion. I did kind of think Ryuks voice might have been a little deeper, but its nothing I couldn't get used to. Maybe if I'd seen the anime, but since I've not seen the anime version I don't know how its been handled there either. To be negative for a moment, whilst Kenichi Matsuyama IS L, Tatsuya Fujiwara isn't a very good Light. He spends most the movie sounding like he is trying to catch his breath, and often comes across a little nervous and twitchy. He simply doesn't exude the smug arrogance of his manga counterpart. The rest of the main cast are generally fine, though I can't help but feel a lot of the bit parters share the same hammy quality a lot of actors in the more light-hearted Japanese TV dramas have. It's a little jarring at times, but nothing too bad. I guess the most positive thing I can really say about the movie is that, despite having read the manga previously, the movie actually managed to hold my attention for the duration. For me, that's the sign of a well handled adaptation. I'm looking forward to the sequel. It isn't something I'd recommend over the manga, but it's definitely something that is worth watching. For those wondering, I picked up the (legit) R3 HK DVD release the movie – it's hard to complain given how little HK DVDs cost. The English blurb on the back of the box is horrendous, but thankfully the subtitles on the DVD itself are actually pretty good.

Enough with the silly announcements already!

DiGiKerot — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:30:54 +0000

For those who don't recognise the above image, its a rearrangement of an image that has sneaked into the background of AnimeonDVD the last few days. Unsurprisingly, it resulted in a lot of confused people wondering what on earth it was about before most people decided that it was probably something to do with Mushishi. Eventually, intrepid poster Tempy pointed out that some of the bugs were simply silhouettes of official art for The Third, which it ultimately turns out is what the announcement is for. Notice that this is another show being released in the US via Kadokawa and... a mystery partner. I guess they are just keen to try and duplicate the success they've had with their Haruhi marketing campaign. The problem is that, well, The Third isn't Haruhi. Heck, The Third isn't even Rozen Maiden or Keroro Gunsou – this kind of marketing works for those shows, because they are popular enough already for the mental fans to go crazy over these odd stunts, repeating every news item ad nauseam, thus providing free advertising for them. The Third, however, simply isn't a particularly popular show with the kind of people who, well, watch these things before they are licensed. I can't really see doing licensing announcements like this for every little show they choose to release in the US being a particularly good move in the long run. I mean, in this case, the fact that everyone seemed to think it was Mushishi proves that it kind of backfired on them anyway, but if they continue doing this all they are going to do is bore people with it. When, in the future, they have another show where this kind of approach might actually work, they'll have bored people so much with the approach that it'll probably be met with indifference. The novelty factor of it all is wearing off, really. The fact that I think Matthew has the only other blog post I've seen on this news, despite the news breaking last night, really proves exactly how successful this has been for them this time around ^^; As for the actual show, I'll probably end up buying it. It's not something I've actually seen, but it sounds like the kind of show I normally enjoy.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics Z

DiGiKerot — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:54:51 +0000

Some things just aren't worth the effort... Okay, so I've commented on this already, but whatever - I was kind of bored anyway. I couldn't really decide what to do with the last panel, let alone think of a show whats generally considered bad enough for someone not to argue the point on (and, honestly, I can't really be bothered to argue back on the point). In any case, just imagine what the card says is something, well, completely unworthy of being licensed. (Oh, and the 'Z' is there because this comic is between seasons. Don't expect another one any time soon ^^;)

Tokyopop to release Full Metal Panic novels

DiGiKerot — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:28:39 +0000

In the SutePri vol 2 review he posted yesterday (which reminds me I have vol 1 still unread), Hung said he thought 2007 was going to be the year of the Light Novel. It certainly seems most of the titles one would expect to find on a on big fanboyish wishlist are being snapped up a quite a rate. So, at the New York ComicCon, Tokyopop announced they have licensed the Full Metal Panic novels, which tends to feature prominently in lists of those novels most wanted in English. Let's just hope that it turns out to be part of Tokyopops well handled novel line, rather than the other one. Now, if someone just needs to license Haruhi, Zero no Tsukima and MariMite and that'll most of the fan favorites taken account of.

Haruhi R1 DVD release details revealed

DiGiKerot — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:49:40 +0000

To coincide with the Haruhi panel at ComicCon, the fifth instalment of The Adventures of the ASOS Brigade was uploaded last night. The effect on some of the forums I've read hasn't really been all the pretty for a number of reasons. This episode is actually pretty funny, so I recommend actually watching it, but to sum up the news revealed... This monstrous thing is the box bundled with Volume 1. For $64.98 you get yourself the Volume 1 DVD (I'm not sure what cover its coming with – possibly two different Lemon-tastic ones?), the Hare Hare Yukai single, a pencil board, a Haruhi hair ribbon and an iron-one Haruhi-ism transfer-thingy. The volume 2 LE will come with a Haruhi armband, the Bouken Desho Desho single, a pencil board and an iron-on of some form. The volume 3 LE will come with the Haruhi character CD, a pillow case, a pencil board and another iron-on. The volume 4 LE will come with the Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsumeawase CD (that's the one with God Knows and Lost My Music on it), another pillow case, a pencil board and yet another iron-on. LE editions 2-4 are going to set you back $59.98. The regular editions are a standard $29.99. The LE pricing has a lot of people feeling really rather aghast, given that they seem rather expensive. They seem reasonably priced to me, given what you get, but I can see why someone who has been importing the CDs as they have been released in Japan might get a little annoyed. Quite a lot of that tat does seem pretty useless as well, but since when have anime fans been particularly opposed to collecting random tat? Ultimately, its not like they are going to be forcing you to buy the excessive editions – you can just buy the regular editions if you just want the show. Random tat doesn't come cheaply, particularly at the kind of low-volume production runs they'll be doing with these, so if you want the stuff you'll have to pay what it's worth. What I've not mentioned so far, which some fans are seeing as being forced to buy the LE releases, is that the LE releases of volumes 2 through 4 are each coming with a second, Japanese with subtitles-only DVD with the show in Broadcast order. As this suggests, the regular DVD release is going to be in the same chronological order as the Japanese DVD release. Needless to say, the fact that they'll have to buy the LE releases if they want to watch the show in the original broadcast order without juggling DVDs around is angering a lot of fans, not to mention dub-watchers being annoyed that they don't have even that option. Bandai industry rep Lord Richard posted over at the AoD forums that the episode ordering was mandated from the Japanese side, and that even the extra disks were something that they had trouble convincing the Japanese to let them do. Oh, I guess I should mention that the box is actually sized to hold six CDs in the pull-out draw thingy, rather than just the four you'd get buying the Limited Editions. The reason for this is that they are going to be releasing a number of CDs (I guess the character singles) separately at a $10 price point. I can't really say that I'm planning on buying the R1 release personally – I'm quite happy with my R2 disks, and I'm not a stickler for viewing order with the show. I might pick it up a few years from now when its re-released as a cheap bundle or something, but since I'm not actually that big a fan of the show anyway I don't really feel the need to pick up the show again, or all that bonus tat.

My-ZHiME Zwei 2

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:09:12 +0000

In which Arika doesn't actually do anything. At the point where the first episode ended, Mashiro was missing. Arika decides to go and look for her, and lands herself straight into a hostage situation in Aries. Of course, being Aries, it's not long before Haruka turns up and disrupts the whole situation by loud. Loud with hard work and guts. So, with Arika pretty much out of the road for most of the episode, we get an episode which is low on plot development, but chock-full of those characters who really didn't get enough screen time in the original series. Pretty much any Haruka moment is golden, so an OAV in which she is practically the main character is, well, an OAV made of GOOD and WIN. It's just plain entertaining. Really, I'm not sure what those complaining about the lack of plot in these OAVs were actually expecting. Aside from the fact that it's only four episodes and they've so many characters they have to juggle, the HiME series has pretty much always been Sunrise's equivalent of a Saturday-matinee serial – for all suggestion of depth they try to make in the earlier episodes, the shows aren't really anything big or clever. Its never really about where or how the series begins or ends, its all about the insanity which goes on in the duration, be it the humour or the dramatic twists and cliffhangers the series supplies us with. It's not something which is ever going to win any awards for good writing, but it's just so damn entertaining. When I look to a HiME show, I look to be entertained. This episode was very entertaining. It isn't as if they set-up an especially complex plot line for Zwei anyway – something mysterious appears to threaten the peace. The only place they actually need to go to is this mysterious entity being destroyed. They don't really need to spend more than one episode to wrap up what is going on here. They've let us ascertain that whatever the shadow is, it's purpose seems to involve taking samples from the strongest of otome – it didn't even move until Sara materialised. By giving us a better glimpse of the shadow and taking out the human tank that is Haruka, the episode has served its purpose. Honestly, I'm far happier to get an episode full of spazz like this than a plot-heavy but tedious affair which we might otherwise have gotten. As for the superficials, we still have no new music outside of the ED. The animation, at least, is a lot more consistent than than it was in the first episode. It still isn't really any better than a well animated TV episode, but it is at least entirely as well animated as a decently made TV episode. You know what is funny about this episode? Nina only gets one line of dialogue, but she still gets second billing in the ending credits ^^; I got the first pressing of the DVD, which came with the a TF sized figure of Arika. It's not all that great a figure – the legs in particular are made of a really soft, flexible plastic which would probably result in an unsupported Arika finding herself in a face-plant situation within a matter of days. What makes things worse is that the provided support is one of those generic, CM's trading figure stands, which just leave you trying to figure out some random way to suitably support the figure rather that it actually fitting it in some useful fashion. Sorry about the craptacular pictures – it's been a while since I've taken any figure pictures, and being that it isn't really anything worth showing off I really couldn't be bothered to put any actual effort into it ^^;

Ouran anime is licensed by....someone

DiGiKerot — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:37:59 +0000

Apparently. It's pretty much the vaguest news story you'll read this week, which is probably why no-one has bothered talking about it. Anyway, apparently Bandai mentioned at NYCC that they'd attempted to license the anime version of Ouran only to be told that somebody has already licensed it. All thoughts of Viz, the US publisher of the manga version, having it were quickly quashed when they said much the same thing. So, errr, yeah - Ouran has been licensed by Not Bandai and Not Viz. The smart money is probably on Funimation, since they seem to be licensing everything at the moment.

Here we go again...

DiGiKerot — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:35:40 +0000

After the Rozen Maiden podcast competition, Geneon have another licensing contest going on over at ANN. I'm going to assume this is something other that Karin, given that pretty much everyone who would care already knows they have that. Could Geneon be the mysterious licensor of Ouran? Probably not, since that is now a known quantity it'd make it a wee bit too easier. This time around, they are going to release clues across the course of the weekend. Despite my distaste for licensing announcements, I'll probably still at least take amuse myself by trying to guess what it is (not that I'm in a region that can actually enter the contest). Still, any 'merkin readers may wish to try and win themselves some Last Exile merchandise. I'm not sure I'd want to make any kind of pre-guess on a Geneon license. It's obviously going to be something which has aired in Japan already, as it'd be hard to run a contest like this for a show no-one knows anything about. Beyond that I really have no idea - there are plenty of Geneon Japan-label releases which they could pick-up (which would typically be the first place you look - I'd like MariMite myself, but I don't think that one is likely), but it's just as possible they could completely side-swipe us with something like Lyrical Nanoha - that one would certainly make them popular amongst certain parts of fandom. Really, though, it's anyones guess. Oh, and I will try to actually post something other than AAT news at some point this weekend ^^;

Originality? Pffft – Spring ramblings

DiGiKerot — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:16:35 +0000

Yeah, I realise that just about everyone else in the blogosphere has already given their small monetary denomination of choice about the upcoming Sping '07 anime debuts, but I'm going to ramble on about the subject regardless - “ramble” being the keyword here, as I'm not really intending to give anything like some hot picks nor am I going to go through the full list (go read Bluwackys' entry if you want one of those) – I'm just going to spout on about what comes to mind for a while. Idolmaster Xenoglossia hasn't, perhaps unsurprisingly, been particularly highly rated in a lot of peoples lists. I'd imagine this has a lot to do with the game license – whilst this is something which would elevate interest in the series significantly in Japan, there isn't really all that much interest or knowledge of the game elsewhere in the world. Its kind of a shame, given that the the game has pretty much sod all baring on what the show is going to get up like. For better or for worse, this show is going to totally be modern Sunrise – if you like My-HiME or ZHiME, or to a lesser degree Code Geass, you'll probably end up liking this. Expect an oft-light hearted tale of friendship and wacky school hijinks interspersed with saving the world, with things inevitably going to hell in the second half. I'm sure we'll get all the usual plot twists which make you wonder if they actually planned the show properly or are just randomly pulling plot ideas out of their arses. Really, my only real concern is that they might not do enough to actually differentiate this from all the other shows they've done in the last few years – Sunrise have essentially become the masters of the pulp serial, but that's pretty much all they have done for the last few years. This is just another iteration of the same thing all over again. Still, I like my anime shallow, full of silly plot twists and explosions and things which are generally shiny, and I like Sunrise shows, dammit! I liked HiME, I liked ZHiME, and, hell, I liked Gundam Seed Destiny even after the writing went to hell. All I really expect out of a show like this is to be entertained. Which is pretty much where I am with Nanoha StrikerS as well – I'm only really looking to be entertained, and insane pyrotechnics are sweet. I just want something with a suitably twisty story and lots and lots of fighting. I have a whole boatload of concerns about this one, like whether they can successfully string things out for twenty six episodes, that the ballooning cast might result in things being stretched a little too thinly, and that the newly introduced youthful cast members means a continuation of the creepy loli-service which makes me feel awkward for watching it (not to mention potentially shifting focus from the good things like explosions and fighting and all). Nagasarete Airantou pretty much immediately gets stuck on the “epic fail” pile for me. The only thing the show is particularly notable for is generating a completely inexplicable meme in #animeblogger. I really didn't like Noir. Sure, it had nice music, but the characters simply weren't interesting and the plot was all over the place. Madlax, on the other hand, I thought was a wonderful series – it was like Noir with someone who could actually write involved in it. El Cazador de la Bruja doesn't have the writing staff from Noir or Madlax, and as such I really don't know what to think about it. At the very least, its got a Yuki Kajiura soundtrack. Given that, personally, I think Madlax was the last really good Kajiura OST, I'm hoping that she can pull out the good again for another Mashimo guns 'n girls show. I used to read Super Manga Blast back in the day, and as such I've read quite a bit of Narutaru. Its kind of a shame that US publication of the series has stalled completely. Morita Kitohs more recent series, Bokurano, is being animated - by Gonzo. I wish I didn't have to write that second part, as it's pretty hard to build up any enthusiasm when you don't know what the animation quality is going to be like from episode to episode. Its kind of a shame, because the premise seems suitably interesting. I'd probably be really excited about this one if it was by from Bones or Kyoani or, god forbid, Sunrise, but the Gonzo-effect is simply one of excitement dampening. I'm not really sure where I am with Romeo x Juliet. I mean, the trailer did look kind of nice, but the cynical side of me thinks that Gonzo are just trying to do Gankutsuou all over again. The thing is, it doesn't have Gankutsuous staff. I guess I'm concerned that, as a rehash, it'll just end up having a really awkward, schizophrenic tone to it. Whilst Gankutsuou may have been given SF trappings, they did at least manage to capture the tone of the era in which the original work was set. RxJ doesn't really look to be doing the same. I've been reading the manga version of Kami-chama Karin – or, rather, I've been trying to read the manga version of Kami-chama Karin - as it's released in the US. I seem to have an alarming problem with randomly skipping volumes by mistake. Aside from the fact that it kind of suggests its a little on the forgettable side, it does mean I've got a somewhat fractured view of the series and its story. I dunno – I liked the Pita-Ten manga, and I obviously like DiGiCharat (hell, I've got the R2 release of Panyo Panyo!), but I've never really been able to get into Karin. I mean, it could just be because I've skipped around the story a bit, but I'm not really convinced its a particularly great read. Heroic Age has Tow Ubukata writing. He's the one who wrote the second half of Fafner, pretty much saving the series from being the sub-par Evangelion-a-like it was so quickly heading towards in it's first half. I guess that's enough to at least make it interesting. Seeing that The Skullman is being animated by Bones reminds me that I'd bought the first volume of the 90s continuation five years ago – it was part of Tokyopops initial batch of “100% Authentic” releases (that being the name that TP originally gave their unflopped, low-cost line which eventually ended up being mimicked by every US manga label). I also remembered that I hadn't actually got around to reading it. I somehow managed to go gather enough motivation to dig it out (my manga is currently all packed away into a bunch of large boxes ^^;) and gave it a read. It falls into the “it's alright” category. The quality of the anime version is really going to come down to how Bones want to handle things – it could be extremely cheesy, but on the other hand it could be chock-full of epic awesomeness. Speaking of Bones and epic awesomeness – Darker than BLACK. I really don't have anything more to say on that one. I think that's a suitable note to leave things on.

Amazon JP kills cheap international shipping

DiGiKerot — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:52:21 +0000

As of today, Amazons Japanese store has killed off their (untraceable) International Economy shipping method, leaving just the choice of DHL or, well, nothing. Its not really all that surprising – towards the end of last year they started upgrading all existing from Economy to Express at the point of shipping for free, which kind of suggested something was up. I'm guessing they were having problems with items disappearing or turning up wreaked (though that later point often comes down to how badly packed Amazon JP packages are). This is kind of a pain for anyone who imports DVDs or CDs from Japan, as Amazon typically have the best discounts over RRP. DHL shipping has a rather more expensive base cost, making it rather too expensive to be practical for ordering single disks or books. With DHL being couriered delivery, it also requires someone to sign for it upon delivery. For someone who works during delivery hours, this is pretty much a no-go for me, as it's pretty much impossible for me to ensure that someone will be around to sign for things. Aside from that, the UK customs charges for DHL on Amazon packages are killer. Part of this comes from the way that they calculate the freight costs part of the customs charges (its always way too high, because Amazon tend not to clearly declare shipping costs, they make it up), but even then their handling fees can be pretty crazy. Given that pretty much any DVD you'd be buying from Japan would be over the £17 UK customs limit, a charge will be given. At least with the old economy shipping there was a fair chance you'd get away without being charged – with couriered deliveries, they'll always charge you for it. The thing is, Amazon gets really big stock allocations, so if you are late on ordering something and really want that first pressing bonus, Amazon is almost always a safe bet compared to other stores. Anyway, all this means is that I'm unlikely to be using Amazon JP again. I've been using other online stores for my import orders since the new year anyway, but it does end up working out a wee bit more expensive regardless.

Geneon announce licensing of Shonen Onmyoji

DiGiKerot — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:54:19 +0000

Well, “announce” is a strong word – it turned up in their latest batch of release dates along with the first volume of When They Cry (aka Higurashi). The first volume is out in July (Shonen Onmyoji, that is - Higurashi is June). Still, what was nice about this is that there was no fuss and no silly viral marketing. Its kind of nice to have an indication that Geneon knows where to call it quits – unlike Kadokawa who had that odd announcement for The Third, which isn't exactly a show with a rabid following, Geneon just dropped this one nice and quietly. The Rozen Maiden and Higurashi announcements were one thing, given that those shows have their own following. Shonen Onmyoji, on the other hand, well.... I don't even know what it is ^^; Seriously, was it any good?

Idolmaster Xenoglossia Explained

DiGiKerot — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:28:27 +0000

Okay, I'm still seeing people who think that Idolmaster Xenoglossia is going to be a pop idol anime. As such, I've decided to do a pictorial guide to what Xenoglossia will actually be like. Hopefully after this people will get the idea.

Kissing the Floor

DiGiKerot — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 20:53:41 +0000

This is really something of a follow-up to the My-ZHiME Zwei DVD 2 entry, when I mentioned that the LE Arika figures' legs were made of such soft plastic that she'd be kissing the floor within days. Well, she isn't quite kissing the floor, but she isn't far off... Yeah, it was pretty bad manufacturing - standing the figure up straight reveals that it's leaning right over to the side. I would say something along the lines of “what would you expect from a DVD FP extra”, but the figure which were shipped with the later My-HiME DVDs were, frankly, far, far better. Anyway, back into the box it goes. I only really left it out to prove a point anyway. This is why I always try to mention the leg construction when talking about figures. A figure can look great, but if they are going to go all weak at the, err, ankles then it's pretty useless as a display piece. Thankfully, these days most figures legs are made of far higher quality material than they were a few years ago, and most of those figures which have particularly adventurous poses tend to be screwed into their bases (giving their ankles additional support). I've got a few weirdly posed figures which, thankfully, have maintained their posture. Still, the quality of the material used legs and the weight distribution aren't the only things you need to look at. PVC figures are constructed by sticking several pieces together, and you really need to watch for the ones where the feet (or, usually, the shoes) and the legs are separate parts. There was an old figure of Ryomou Shinmei from Ikkitousen which quite a few people bought (thanks largely to a cheap US re-release) but most people were finding would very quickly start bending forwards. Upon receiving mine, I took a good look at it and discovered that the join between the legs and her boots was incredibly wonky, and unsurprisingly the plastic where the join occurs was cut in such a way that the figure would lean with the weight a little too far forward, which would worsen over time. I've seen this particular figure leaning at a 45 degree angle, its that bad. Thankfully, I heard about this pretty quickly, and ended up bastardising a CM's trading figure stand into a makeshift support. This provided just enough support for it not to develop the lean other figures have, despite having been on display for a couple of year already.

Revenge of the Spring Rambling

DiGiKerot — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 22:27:33 +0000

Miki Hoshi was recently voted the best girl on the xbox 360 by Japanese gamers. Admittedly, this poll was suspiciously missing any other characters from iMAS, but I still maintain hope that her obvious popularity will result in Miki eventually making an appearance in Xenoglossia. I mean, it's not like they tend to tell us who all the characters are upfront for these shows, as it just spoils the excitement later on. No doubt they willl end up crushing my hopes and dreams, though. When I look at Hayate the Combat Butler, I see one thing – gag anime. I realise I keep going on about it, but to reiterate – for me, gag anime are practically assured to get filed as an instant lose. I suppose I should really give things like this a chance, and I did at least intend to try the first volume of the manga, but unfortunately they didn't have the first volume in at any of the local comic stores. Given I didn't want to start on volume three, I gave it a miss. In any case, its safe to say that my interest level is presently low for this one. What I did end up reading some of was Claymore, though I should really know better than to start on manga series which may end up being axed before they get a chance to finish (thanks to Monthly Shonen Jump ceasing publication). I'm really not sure about it – I've read the first three volumes, and two and a half volumes of that went pretty much nowhere. It wasted a lot of time doing little other than establishing the rules of the world, but didn't really do it in a particularly interesting fashion - it simply feels like the story in these early chapters is written around teaching the reader about these plot elements. I can't really see why they couldn't have jumped headlong into a proper story and dropped this information at suitable points during that, as there are plenty of other series which do. The last few chapters of the third volume, which begins to establish how the series heroine got herself into the position she is now in, are rather more interesting, but it doesn't really hint at anything like the epic backstory that the vaguely similar Berserk had. Given Claymores popularity, I can only really assume that they start on some kind of huge, elaborate plot arc after the origin story is done with. From my experience with the manga, though, I can't help but think that the first half-dozen episodes of this show will end up being mind-numbingly tedious. There is lots of excitement being generated around Lucky Star simply because it's being animated by KyoAni. Pffffft I say, Pffffffffffffffffffffffft. KyoAni are about due for an epic fail I reckon, and adapting a four-panel gag manga into an anime show might well prove to be it. Now that I've said that, however, it'll probably end up being brilliant. If that does end up being the case, I'm simply going to play the “anime isn't funny” card and hate on it anyway ^^ From what I can gather (which isn't much), Denno Coil is about a family moving into a town which has a lot of old buildings. Starkly contrasting with this, however, is the high level of connectivity the town apparently has, and the children of the town have taken to running around wearing internet-enabled glasses which overlay often surreal imagery over their surroundings. Sounds odd, and the few bits of promotional art I've seen certainly look strange, but they are also very, very beautiful. I guess it's going to be one of those slow, character driven shows about friendship and growing up. The concept certainly has me curious enough to give it a try, anyway. Sola is a show which has been devised by a bunch of people who worked on a bunch of stuff I don't really care about. Any attempt put this to one side and build up some interest in the show is quickly diffused by some of the most generic looking character design I've seen in recent years. As such, I've actually got no idea what it's actually about. It's likely to stay that way as well, since it's outside of my usual scope of interest. I've got the first volume of the English version of To Terra sitting here, but since I've not read it yet, I'm going to save that one for a later update. Sorry for thrusting so much of my own craptacular art on you recently. Well, okay, I'm not really all that sorry, as I get amusement from making you all suffer. I guess I should point out that I have a policy of not using random pieces of fanart I find on one of the many anime related image boards. The same thing goes for magazine scans, to be honest.

MS(Paint) INAction #1

DiGiKerot — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:22:15 +0000

Bored much? You betcha!

Yotsuba& Returns?

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 13:03:03 +0000

It would seem that Amazon.ca have suddenly decided to list the fourth and fifth volumes of the ADV published Yotsuba& manga, apparently scheduled for the 27th of June and the 10th of October respectively. Is this Hung bating, or merely jumping at shadows? Who knows, but given they actually have a description for the forth volume I presume they must of gotten a solicitation from somewhere. ADVs manga section are typically silent about everything, though, so I wouldn't expect confirmation either way until, like, the 26th of June...

MS(Paint) INAction #2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 21:58:05 +0000

In other news, my copy of the first Twelve Kingdoms book turned up today. I've not had a chance to start reading it yet, but expect a review in the next day or so.

Public service announcement for the UK peeps

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:02:55 +0000

From the 2nd April, Royal Mail are increasing their handling charge for packages with customs charges to £8, from the previous value of £4. This means that for packages coming from aboard of over £18 in value handled by RM in this country (that would be most Air Mail options) will cost you a whole £4 extra, as well as being liable to the usual V.A.T, and not to mention RMs usual habit of burying it in a big pile for two or three weeks. This probably won't make a huge difference for people like me who tend to order disks in batches of six or more (what's £4 more when you are spending that much?), but for people who just grab a couple of disks, or maybe a thinpack, at a time it's worth factoring this in. Admittedly, as it stands, about half the time RM lets things slip through without sticking extra charges on them, but you should always play it safe cash-wise and assume they will catch you. For certain orders, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the couriers might work out cheaper now - you'll always get customs whacked on the order, but a few of them charge less for handling than RM do now. A random doodle I'm posting now since I don't have anything iMAS related to post in the next few days.

UK TV heads-up

DiGiKerot — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:22:42 +0000

The beeb aren't really advertising it this time around, to the point where the webpages for it haven't been updated yet (aside from a single video clip available from the BBC3 frontpage), but what appears to be a BRAND NEW series of Jonathan Ross's Japanorama starts on BBC3 tonight at 2300. The previous two seasons have been entertaining, so it's probably worth a watch for all budding weeaboos.

MS(Paint) INAction #3

DiGiKerot — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 19:44:49 +0000

Shana won some silly lolibattle poll thing this week, apparently. I can't say I'm particularly into this whole loli thing - infact, it tends to make me run a mile. Give me overly angsty emo-teens anyday. Honestly, Shana really wasn't a particularly great show - it wasn't awful or anything, and it certainly panders well to my love of gratuitous magic circles, but the animation was pretty shoddy and Shana herself is, quite frankly, pretty annoying. I'm still going to give the novel a chance when its released, and I'm still, err, buying the DVDs, but its just one of those shows I really don't get the popularity of. This is the pencil sketch I did to base this on. I didn't have any reference material to hand whilst drawing it, so I got the hair a bit wrong. Heads kinda wonky too... ^^;

The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:23:14 +0000

Yoko Nakajima is a high school student, remarkable only for her unusual naturally red hair. Other than this, Yokos' quiet, unconfrontational (some would say spineless) attitude towards everyone means she just blends in without being particularly popular or memorable. Her quiet school life changes, however, when a mysterious man, Keiki, shows up at her school and demands that she comes with him. Separated from Keiki after being attacked by demons, Yoko finds herself alone in a strange world where the only thing she understands is, bizarrely, the language. Wielding only a sword and a an unusual gemstone, she sets off in search of a way home... Reading this book made me kind of envious of those who have yet to see the anime version of The Twelve Kingdoms. The problem with this particular volume of the series is that, well, it's 450pages of world building – its essentially providing you with the vocabulary you'll need for the rest of the series. If you've not seen the anime before, it'll be a wonderful voyage of discovery – it's really worth you reading this book. Now, the problem is that, if you have seen the anime version then, well, you know everything this book is going to tell you. The story for this part of the series is relatively straightforward as well – its mostly about Yoko wandering all alone though the world looking for Keiki, a way home, or both, whilst being introduced to the concepts of the world along the way. Notice I say “alone” - In the anime, Yoko found herself initially with two classmates, Asano and Sugimoto. In the book, Sugimoto only really appears in the opening chapter, at Yokos' schoo.l Asano doesn't exist at all – in fact, it's clearly mentioned that Yoko is attending an all-girls school. They were added, apparently, because the series producers thought it'd be boring to have dozens of episodes of nothing but Yoko wandering around with nothing but her own thoughts – they needed people to echo what Yoko was thinking other than herself. The thing is, the way they added these characters into the story resulted in us knowing more about that was going on in the grand scheme of things than we get to learn in the book – as a result, the book comes across as being more focused, but at the same time more straightforward, than the anime was at this point of the story. That's not to say its a bad book by any means – its certainly isn't. It's just that it kind of drags through the middle-third of the book if you are already familiar with the series. As I say, I can't imagine those who are unfamiliar with the series having this problem. I can't really imagine the later books in the series really having the same problem – even in the anime, things didn't get really interesting until after the events of this book anyway. As I say, it's just a little on the tedious side if you are already familiar with this material. Having not read (nor having the Japanese skills to read) the Japanese version, I can't really comment on exactly how accurate the translation is. For what it's worth, it's part of Tokyopops Pop Fiction line, and unlike a number of titles in their manga novels line, I've not heard anything to suggest it's anything less than extremely faithful. As for how it reads in English, it reads very well – as well as a lot of native English fantasy books I've read, anyway. Its nice to note a complete lack of any of the anachronistic speech what found its way into Crest of the Stars. This would have been woefully inappropriate given how the author apparently went out of her way to avoid anything out-of-place. As I've mentioned it's part of Tokyopops Pop Fiction line, which they are aiming to separate from their other book lines – its basically supposed to be a “proper” book imprint. The presentation is in line with their other Pop Fiction books – the cover is a similarly flatshaded illustration (this time of Yoko in seifuku wielding her sword). It's attractive, but not anything flashy that you'd be too embarrassed to read in public. The current edition of Twelve Kingdoms is actually a hardback, so the cover is actually a slipcover – removing it reveals a very minimalist red book with silver writing. The print quality on the inside is fine, and there are a few illustrations scattered throughout. The other thing about Twelve Kingdoms which resembles a regular book is the release schedule – at the time of writing, it's looking like we'll be getting one book a year. It sounds bad, but there are a couple of sound reasons for this. For one thing, its reputedly a far harder translate than most than most the novels we are seeing at the moment – its full of obscure and made-up words, and the prose is apparently a little on the dense side. Add this to the fact that it's twice as long as the other novels we are getting (there's nothing “light” about this one), and it just makes it a lot more work. More significant, however, is the fact that Fuyumi Ono simply isn't a quick writer. The anime version ended in the place it did because, well, they'd pretty much ran out of stuff to animate. The last Twelve Kingdoms book was published in 2001, and before that it was 1997. In the interview that ANN posted over the weekend Ono mentioned that she intends to write more, but she also mentioned that she's “currently rewriting a girls' horror series I wrote a long time ago”, which probably means she is revisiting the Akuryo novels from which Ghost Hunt was spawned (they've strangely been long out of print, despite the recent anime and manga versions). There's quite a few of those, so that'll probably take a while. Who knows when the next Twelve Kingdoms book? Well, at least this way we have six or seven years before we catch up with the Japanese release for more to be published. I'd rather live with the slow but steady release schedule (I do for Western novels already) than having a bunch of novels published in quick succession only for us to suffer a several years of waiting once we've caught up. Anyway, it's a nice book. Despite the fact that I thought it was slow in places (for the previously mentioned reasons), I still enjoyed it and I'm certainly looking forward to the next book, which I thoroughly expect to be far more interesting. I really can't recommend it highly enough for those who haven't been exposed to Twelve Kingdoms previously – Fuyumi Ono has created an elaborate and utterly fascinating world with these books. Mileage will vary for everyone else.

MS(Paint) INAction #4

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 19:52:29 +0000

The weather around my part of the world has been really surreal today - it's swerved wildly between blazing sunshine and hails of snow. It's kind of like the town couldn't decide if it wanted to be in Air or Kanon ^^; My internet connection is well screwed up today. I'm attempting to post this in a rare moment when it seems to be working, but who knows if I've managed it? The answer - you if you are reading this ^^; Oh well, I did buy, like, fifteen volumes of manga today, so it's not like I don't have some reading to get on with ^____^

Scrapped Princess: A Tale of Destiny

DiGiKerot — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:24:35 +0000

Tokyopop, in their continued (and largely appreciated) efforts to publish a whole crapload of Japanese novels in the US, have committed themselves to publishing the thirteen volume Scrapped Princess series, upon which the anime was based, in English. This is the first volume. Honestly, its a pretty uninspiring start. The book has been released as part of Tokyopops PopFiction line, though you wouldn't think it to look inside. The internals share the same slightly cringe worthy styling as Tokyopops older Manga Novels line. Seriously, it always strikes me as being kind of embarrassing to read a book which insists on having its name plastered in huge letters across the top of every page, taking up about a sixth of the page. The footer, which just has the page number, also takes up around an eighth of the page. On top of this, they've used a fairly large typeface and rather generous line spacing. It not only makes the book look pretty juvenile, but it means that each page only has around a third of the content a page of, say, Kino no Tabi had. The book itself is 200 pages exactly. The thing is, the story doesn't start until page five. The last page of the actual story is on page 186 (the next fourteen being devoted to a random chapter from the next book). Deduct the pages used on illustrations and you only really have around 175 pages of large, generously spaced text. Basically, its actually a really, really short book. As for the actual content, three quarters of it is set prior to where the anime version started, so at least its mostly brand new content. The thing is, the slightly juvenile presentation is reflected in the actual writing. Its hard to know how much of this can be attributed to the source material (lets face it, the anime was hardly serious a lot of the time), or how much of it is down to the English adaptation – its hard not to think that they've applied the same kind of 'hip'-filter to this that they've applied to Crest of the Stars. I'm not going to start moaning about anachronistic speech patterns or anything – I think its fair knowing what I do about the setting, but its not exactly a book what will dazzle you with its eloquent prose or anything. I suppose it's alright – I'm inclined to give Tokyopop the benefit of the doubt and assume the Japanese book was written in a similar fashion, based on what I know from the anime version. It's just that I can't help but think that the anime version was really a case of an adaptation rising above and beyond the source material. Speaking of the anime version, there's a few places where I think the terminology or names differ from those used the official Bandai release of the anime version. It's kind of annoying, really – its an issue that's plagued some of Tokyopops other novel releases, notably the .hack novels, but whilst I'm willing to give them a bit of leeway with something as jargontastic as .hack, there isn't really much excuse here. It just kind of smacks of laziness. Then there is the fact that, mostly, the book is just kind of boring. It really consists of about 160 pages of prose telling us how great Raquel and Shannon are. Really, it gets kind of dull. The thing is, its content like that which, ultimately, causes me to make comparisons to Slayers. Unfavourable comparisons to Slayers. I suppose its not that surprising, given they both originate from the same magazine in Japan, but its really easy to draw comparisons between the two. There are a lot of similarities in the writing, with the sarcastic humour, the uber-powerful heroes, and the lengthy spell descriptions. The thing is, the only thing Scrapped Princess has over Slayers is that it has an actual plot. Slayers, one the other hand, simply takes things far further – its even more sarcastic, the characters are more likeable (or, rather, the lead character isn't a useless and massively annoying brat), and, generally, the actual world comes across as being a lot more interesting that in Scrapped Princess. It's not like they spend any less time in Slayers describing how awesome the lead characters are at everything, but they manage to do it in a way which seems far more fun. A lot of the attempts at humour kind of fall flat in SutePri. It's not that Scrapped Princess is a particularly bad book, its just that it's exactly what a generic light novel really is – that is, incredibly lightweight. This book is just a very small volume of very, very light reading material. Maybe if there was more of it to read I'd have a better opinion of it – to be honest, I kind of feel I'm being unfair to it, largely because I don't feel I've actually read enough to form a valid opinion. I do, at least, intend to read the next two books. I suppose I'll report back when I have, but at the moment, I'm not really impressed.

Rapture removed from Skys' EPG

DiGiKerot — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:35:28 +0000

As part of an ongoing dispute over the cost UK Satellite TV provider Sky charges for a place in its electronic program guide, Rapture have had their number removed. This, essentially, means that Rapture no longer exists as far as most people are concerned. This probably kind of sucks for those who have been watching Excel Saga on Rapture, or are waiting to see if they air something new once they are done with it (they have, after all, previously aired the likes of Full Metal Alchemist and Wolfs Rain). Thankfully, Rapture are still actually broadcasting in a fashion that can be received via your Sky box, it just takes a little effort to retune things. I've lifted these instructions straight from the Rapture website - I've not actually bothered to try thing myself since I've already got Excel Saga on DVD, but if you do want to continue to watch Rapture I guess it's nice to be able to. Anyway, those instructions. 1) Press Services on your Sky remote. 2) Press 4 for System Setup, then 4 for Add Channels. 3) Enter the details below: Frequency: 11.344 (use number buttons) Polarization: H (use left/right buttons) Symbol Rate: No need to change FEC: No need to change 4) Scroll down to Find Channels and press Select. 5) After a couple of seconds a list of channels should appear. Highlight "Rapture TV" and press the Yellow button to store it, then press Select twice and you're done! Rapture will now be stored - when you want to watch us, just press Services, go to Other Channels and choose Rapture TV. Simple!

Rozen Maiden – Gebetgarten (PS2)

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:54:27 +0000

Gebetgarten (or “Prayer Garden” for those too lazy to Babelfish it) is Taitos' second PS2 Rozen Maiden game. The first, Duell Walzer, I've not played, but from what I gather it appears to be a fairly straight AVG/Visual Novel kind of thing based around the first season of the anime – nothing particularly exciting, really. So it follows that Gebetgarten would be an AVG based around Traumend, right? Well, you'd be mostly right, but around that they've thrown in a basic fighting game engine, resulting in four or five battles spread out across the game. The actual engine for the fighting game is actually retooling of Taitos old Psychic Force series of games – anyone who has played any of those games will be immediately at home here. Plonked into a cubic area of space, you fly around throwing projectiles at your opponent until they die. You have full movement in two dimensions, but you can't move into or out of the screen. The thing is, it plays a pretty bad version of Psychic Force. It's horrifically sluggish and your characters only have a handful of moves. I think the fact that they've essentially gotten rid of the combo melee attacks results in the game being about little more than getting a hit in against your opponent at a range where the computers AI is too dumb to avoid it then spamming the weak attack until they die. Oh, and it looks like a PSOne game aside from the resolution, It does, however, play a significantly better game than the PS2 My-ZHiME game. Good god that one was awful. Also, the fact that the announcer speaks in German makes everything seem infinitely more exciting than it actually is. All that being said, I guess the fighting is only really meant to be a diversion rather than the main game – it doesn't even give you the versus mode until you've finished it. Of course, with the main game being the visual novel part, its decidedly unexciting. Oh well, its not like I expect any more from an anime game. I should really stop buying them... Finishing the game unlocks a bunch of random extras. The most AWESOMETACTULAR of which is the Detective Kun-Kun OAV that was previously on Duell Walzer. I guess, being recycled, it doesn't sound that awesome, but what I've neglected to mention is that it is now DUBBED IN GERMAN! It's strangely appropriate, really. I've no idea if this dub is sourced from Tokyopops german release of Rozen Maiden or not (it's not listed on Tokyopops German website for the DVD contents as far as I can see). Of the other extras, only the fact that it gives you a battle mode particularly stands out, though I can't really see that ever getting any use. I invested a wee bit extra in buying this and grabbed the limited edition version. It came with this attractive Suigintou watch (no 11038, apparently). I think the Duell Walzer LE game with a similar Shinkuu watch.

The new Harry Potter covers sucks

DiGiKerot — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:17:15 +0000

Oh, man, the UK cover for the final Harry Potter book really, really sucks. After years of laughing at US fans over how awful their covers are, its like they've final gotten their revenge - the new US cover is actually kind of cool. Really, what on earth is up with the Kung-fu pose Harry has going on there? Anyway, I figured I could probably do better using just MS Paint... Okay, so maybe not. Lets try something a bit different then... Hmmm, maybe this one is a little too on the Yaoi side. Lets try that again. Shonen version - It doesn't matter if they aren't the main character, the chick gets to be front and center. Maybe they should have just secretly recoloured some ZnT artwork. Okay, one last try... Unfunny style! Okay, I'm bored with this now.

DiGiKerot Ventures Out

DiGiKerot — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:37:41 +0000

If I was a character from Genshiken, I guess I'd end up being Kugayama. Sure, I don't have the mad artistic skills, but I guess my attitude is much the same toward a lot of things. Of course, I wish I could be a blatantly uber as Madarame, but that's never likely to happen. So, when the alarmingly chipper cashier at the bookstore I popped into to stock up on manga yesterday lunchtime asked me “if I was going along tonight”, I mumbled something about working late, bookending it with weak laughter. Of course, I knew what she was going on about – it was hard not to. After all, the store was decked out with an over-abundance of Tokyopop display hoardings which weren't there last week, and then there were leaflets which were getting in the road of me looking for manga. Oh, then there was the guy in the Tokyopop t-shirt moaning about not having enough room to set up his Nintendo pod. Yes, this store was holding a Tokyopop roadshow event that evening. In hindsight, I suspect they had probably be advertising this for a while, but honestly this was the first point at which I grokked that his event was occurring. It's not like I was particularly lying to the casier or anything either – I wouldn't be home from work until after the event kicked off. Still, figuring that they might stack up on a bunch of extra stock I figured I might pop back along and, well, buy some more stuff. After all, it probably wasn't going to be all that busy. If nothing else it'd give me something else to moan about here... Now, I should probably point out that I'm not a very social person. I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm downright anti-social or anything – I'm a thoroughly pleasant person generally(though, admittedly, one with a very odd sense of humour) – but I certainly don't go out of my way to talk to people, even other nerds. It probably doesn't help that I'm a good few years older than the usual age demographic over here (not to mention looking even older than that). Yes, I'm the kind of person who tends to go to events only to find a quiet corner to stand in until its over. So, when, much to my surprise, it did turn out to be fairly busy, I promptly found a quiet corner in the manga section in which to pretend to be browsing the same stock I was looking at earlier in the day, whilst trying simultaneously not to look too much like Satou from NHK. In hindsight, wearing my long coat probably didn't do me any favours in that regard, though forgetting my camera was possibly a good choice (or, at least, reduced the chances of me getting arrested). Anyway, as I said, the turn-out was pretty surprising. I know that there are enough fans in the UK to support conventions, and that all these stores which would sell manga wouldn't if no-one was buying it, but it always surprises me to see just how popular the stuff is over here. Given that I rarely ever see other people browsing the manga in the bookstores when I'm buying stuff, not to mention the fact that stock seems to remain much the same from week to week, a significant turnout to a badly advertised event comes as something to shock to the system for me. Of those who turned up, I guess that the majority would be classed as Narutards. I say this because Naruto cosplay a lot of them had turned up in has a bit of a give-a-way – apparently there had been a cosplay contest earlier in the day. There were a few other people in costume wandering around – there was a Sailor Moon character, what I think was Miaka from Fishy Yoghurt, errr, Fushigi Yuugi and, bizarrely, Tokyo Mew Mew (I bizarre because, not only is it crap, but not even the US hatchet job aired over here). There were a few game characters here and there as well. A lot of the other attendees I presume were yaoi fangirls – mainly because there was constantly a crowd emitting a giggling sound around the shelf on which all the yaoi stuff was stacked. That said, I guess a lot of yaoi fangirls don't flash the cash, as it was pretty much the only section not raped of books post-event (the 3 for 2 sale ongoing at the stores manga section caused a lot of stuff to shifty pretty quickly). Oh, and I didn't really grok the weight of any other them, so I have no idea if these actual yaoi fangirls were, well, FYGs' or not. The organisation on Tokyopops side was a little shambolic, to be quite honest. The poor Tokyopop rep was running around trying, and failing, to get peoples attention at a number of points over the evening, not to mention that his later attempts to talk over his speaker system actually resulted in him being quieter than most of the people who he was trying to talking to. And, ultimately, I did end up buying more manga – but nothing published by Tokyopop. Honestly, they aren't publishing that much of interest outside of their novel lines at the moment. I think most of the stuff other people there were buying were Viz Shonen Jump or shojo titles too – it seems like Tokyopop just increased their competitors sales ^^; Oh, and here's a “treat” for those who managed to read through me going on about nothing in particular. I realise that I should be saving “killer material” like this for Season 3, but whatever (by which I mean I couldn't be bother to ink or colour them or anything) ^^;

And One Last Time – Spring Ramblings

DiGiKerot — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 17:12:46 +0000

Yeah, I realise I've already made two whole posts of nothing but rambling about the upcoming Spring shows, but I did say I wanted to talk about To Terra... once I'd gotten around to reading the first volume of the manga - Its just that it took me a bit longer to get around to reading it that I originally planned. That said, now I'm kind of glad it took me so long to get around to reading it. That isn't, however, because it sucks – it's because it means there's a shorter wait until the release of the next volume. To Terra... is utterly, utterly wonderful. Really, those who can buy US manga easily should really go out and buy it. That's not to say it doesn't show its age. Like a lot of older manga, it's frequently about as subtle as the facial expression of an English girls whose just learnt her lesbian crush has been murdered – all the ESP thought bubbles which pop up kind of just reinforce things a little. It is refreshing not to have something which, like so many modern shows, batters you across the head with “endearing” character traits designed to make you worship the characters and, therefore, buy all their playsets and toys. The story is suitably interesting and well set-up, though there are a few unsignposted timejumps, which combined with a shift of character emphasis can be a little on the confusing side at times. It just adds to the charm, I guess, and it all eventually makes sense in the context to the whole work. As for how the animated adaptation will work out, I think a lot of the issues people have with it being old will be ironed out in the process, and changes to the pacing will probably make it flow a bit better. As an Escaflowne fan, the character designs look good to me. The thing is, I pretty much expect this one to end up going the path of things like the wonderful Fantastic Children in that it'll end up being one of the best shows of the season (though I realise thats saying a lot in a season with this many potentially LEGENDARY EPIC shows), only it'll not be watched by anyone because it lacks a lot of the traits of modern anime. I got around to reading the first couple of volumes of the Hayate the Combat Butler manga last week. Honestly? The first volume was one of the most tedious things I've read in a while. It's not that it was bad or anything, it's just that, well, I've read pretty much exactly the same kind of thing more times than I care to remember, and a whole book of jokes you remember from elsewhere isn't exactly entertaining. The second volume was an improvement as it started to carve its own niche out a bit, but it was still largely a case of same-old same-old. I think it just cements the fact that this really isn't a show what is going to appeal to me. Having read a bit more of it, my thoughts on Claymore are more-or-less static. Basically, they really need to hurry through the first three volumes of material because, frankly, they are boring. Like Berserk and Gungrave, for the anime version they really need to consider only spending the first episode (or two at the most) setting up the “current” situation before jumping straight into far more elaborate and interesting backstory they started fleshing out at the end of the third volume of the manga. If they don't, well, I wonder how many people will have the patience to stick it out for more than a few episodes. If they do animate the manga pretty much page-for-page, take this as a prior warning that it does get better. Hmmm, I think that's just about everything I want to talk about at any length, not to mention the fact that most of these shows actually start tomorrow. To wrap up, let's arbitrarily categorise the shows into random, nonsensical categories! Huzzah! Most likely to be a trainwreck RomeoXJuliet Idolmaster Xenoglossia Most likely to be unexpectedly awesometacular Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Best shows no-one will watch To Terra... The Skullman Most likely to turn up on the “It'll probably be good but it's sooo not my thing” list Sola Hayate the Combat Bulter Lucky Star Mostly likely to be craptacular Nagasarete Airantou Most likely to generate annoying memes Lucky Star The Skullman Most likely to be the most popular show of the season regardless of how good it actually turns out to be Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS Show DiGiKerot is most likely to love for no good reason no matter how bad it turns out to be Idolmaster Xenoglossia Shows which actually stand a chance of me considering them half-decent Idolmaster Xenoglossia Darker than Black To Terra... The Skullman Heroic Age Seirei no Moribito Bokurano El Cazador de la Bruja Most likely to be the best Summer '07 show regardless of all those which haven't yet been announced Baccano! Oh well, enjoy your viewing over the next three months. Me, well, I'm going to be too busy trying to catch up on my enormous backlog of DVDs to actually have time to keep up with JAT ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-1

DiGiKerot — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:50:01 +0000

With the new anime season kicking off in Japan, it seemed to me to be a good time to kick off with a new series of Meme Comics. I can hear the squeals of delight already - or are those screams of agony? Who knows!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-2

DiGiKerot — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:45:10 +0000

I wonder if anyone found the comic I hid in that Harry Potter post the other day. Not that it was, you know, actually worth finding or anything...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-3

DiGiKerot — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 06:41:42 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-4

DiGiKerot — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 06:16:30 +0000

Fate/Tiger Colosseum

DiGiKerot — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:16:24 +0000

I'm always a bit concerned about posting news like this in the wake of Internet Lies day, but Zepy is reporting that Capcom are apparently going to be publishing an SD Fate/Stay Night fighting game for the PSP. The news looks to have been sourced from Famitsu, and the scans I've seen of the announcement look authentic. The only thing is that the game is being developed by Cavia, whose past record is all over the place. Ho-hum, I suppose I'll be buying it regardless of quality...

Faust in English?

DiGiKerot — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:08:26 +0000

Andrew Cunningham has mentioned over at the AnimeonDVD forums that Kondansha Japan have, via some mailer or other, announced, in what must surely be the both the most WTF! and awesome piece of news this year, that there is going to be an US release of their literary periodical Faust. The bad news is that it isn't coming until next year. Other than that, they've not really mentioned any specifics, like who will be releasing it or exactly what content they'll be sticking in the thing. The only thing I know is that I'll be buying it when it does eventually turn up. Honestly, the more Japanese novels which have nothing to do with anime that published in the US, the better (and certain people rave on about NisiOisin so much that I'm more than a little curious...).

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-5

DiGiKerot — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 08:11:11 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-6

DiGiKerot — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 07:09:35 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-7

DiGiKerot — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 07:30:00 +0000

I bought a new alarm clock a couple of days ago. You may be thinking this isn't particularly exciting, and largely you'd be right - it isn't especially exciting to look at, and it was definitely on the cheap side. It does have one neat feature, though - you can upload MP3s to it for use as an alarm. So, at the moment, I'm being working up by the joyous tones of, errr, Go My Way! (from iDOLM@STER). I really need to find something nice and exciting and anime-esque to use - and by "nice and exciting", I don't mean some girl from Kanon droning on about breakfast in a retarded voice...

Bandai grabs Zegapain

DiGiKerot — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 09:00:46 +0000

That's Bandai Entertainment, not Bandai "$50 for a volume of Galaxy Angel Rune!?!?!?!?!?" Visual. Anyway, it's Sakuracon in the US this weekend, and in a not particularly surprising move Bandai Entertainment have announced that they've picked up Zegapain. With Zegapain being a Sunrise mecha show, I bet you are thinking I've been all over this title from day one. As it happens, it pretty much seemed to completely pass me by - maybe it's because, you know, people actually think Zegapain is good. Errr, anyway, I guess I'll probably end up actually buying this regardless. In other news, Funi apparently have Jigoku Shojo - first volume out October '07.

Death Note - The Last Name (Movie)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 10:41:26 +0000

Must.... Resist... Lowering... Tone... Ability... to... resist... diminishing... Or maybe not. For some reason I was under the impression that there were actually going to be three Death Note movies, with this one ending at the point where Near and Mellow were introduced in the manga. I suppose that is still kind of the case, but the ending of this movie is about as definitive as you are going to get. With this being a sequel, I'm going to assume that those reading this have either seen the first movie, or have read/seen a comparative amount of the manga and/or anime version of Death Note. If you aren't sure you have, you may want to stop reading here. So, this movie picks up where the first Death Note movie ends, with Light joining Ls' special task force, with Light now trying to work out Ls' name in order to get rid of the only person he considers a risk to himself. Matters are complicated, however, when a second Kira starts killing off criminals and, indeed, anyone who dares criticize Kira in public - in a statement of intent in regards to following the manga, they even kill off Mogi within the first twenty minutes. Anyway, the second Kira turns out to be minor celebrity Misa Amane, who promptly attaches herself to Light, and almost as quickly comes under Ls' suspicion. Still, with Misa having "The Eyes", Light is faced with an opportunity to discover Ls' real name - if he can stop Misa from completely blowing their cover... As I've already mentioned them having killed of Mogi, they've been pretty liberal with the adaptation here. Most of the content can be traced in some way or other to the manga, but much of it is heavily reworked to fit within the running time of a movie. When Rem hands the Death Note to another party, for example, it isn't to the same people, errr, he(?) did in the manga. The resolution to that whole plot arc remains the same, but in effect they've trimmed a lot of what could only really be considered padding material in the manga. Admittedly, they've trimmed some nice character development in the process, but a movie can only be so long. Which brings us to the main problem with the movie - it's too long. It isn't as if it's particularly boring or anything - the changes from the manga mean it's still an entertaining movie even if you've read it already - but at over two hours long it does start to drag a little in the middle. It's hard not to think that, if they've been a little less generous in editing, they'd have been able to shave a good twenty minutes off the running time without it being to the detriment of the movie. As for the ending, well, I suspect it's going to divide people. If nothing else, it does at least end at the point which most people tend to agree the manga really should have ended. The thing is, it doesn't quite work out the same way in the end - for a moment I thought it was some kind of weirdo dream sequence. It just completely side-swiped me with its' unexpectedness. Admittedly, part of this was me expecting there to be another movie after this one, but personally I thought it was brilliantly handled. Mileage, however, is going to vary massively - I can really see this being the one point about this movie which really, really divides fans of the original. Those who haven't followed Death Note before probably won't care about it, with it just being another crazy twist. As for everything else, it's much like in the first movie. Tatsuya Fujiwara and Kenichi Matsuyamas performances as Light and L are good, but the much of the rest of the cast kind of fall into that cheesy overacting pot that many J-dramas suffer from. I suppose Erika Toda can be excepted a little - not that her performance as Misa isn't a little on the overdone side, but rather she is at least cute whilst doing it ^^; For some reason I'd always imagined Rem as being a little more effeminate than he(?) is portrayed here, so the decidedly masculine voice was a little jarring initially. As with the previous movie, the special effects were perfectly serviceable. I ended up getting the Korean Death Note Collectors Edition, rather than going HK like I did for the first. It was about twice the price, but given it's actually a bundled of both movies (plus an extras disk, which I've not bothered looking at since it'll all be in foreign) its a pretty good deal - even twice the price of an HK DVD is only, like, £20. The packaging is pretty sexy - it comes in a nice, hard box which can be flipped over via the sidepanel (which is held in place via magnets). Inside the DVDs are held in three individual Super-Jewel cases, plus there is a booklet (in Korean, of course) and a pack of character cards. Having already seen the first movie, I've not checked the quality of the English subtitles on that one, but for The Last Name they are fine. In any case, if you've not got either of the movies and can play R3 DVDs this is a pretty good way to get them.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-8

DiGiKerot — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:22:47 +0000

100% free of Lucky Star dorama! This marks the point where I've ran out of the stuff I'd thrown together a fortnight ago, which means I should really get off my lazy ass and finish up the couple I've got lying around on paper. I suppose after that I might actually have to try and think of some more bad jokes... As per tj hans' list of things to do now he's an adult, I've been playing Suikoden V this week. Whilst mere mortal words can't describe how much better than Suikoden IV it is, it still isn't a particularly great game or anything. Still, at least you can liven things up for yourself by giving your character, army and castle silly names...

Grasshoppa!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:45:40 +0000

The original Grasshoppa! DVDs were a series of four short film collections released way back in 2002. Having been released back in 2002, availability is now somewhat spotty, as I recently discovered when I went ahead and ordered a bunch of them and only ended up with the third. As far as these things go, the third volume is probably the best to own if you only have one of them - aside from it having what is probably the best of the Studio 4c short film series Sweat Punch, it also has a short live action film of truly epic proportions directed by a little known guest director. A guest director whose fans can probably identify just from the font he uses. I'll come back to that later. Well, the obvious side effect of getting just the third volume is that, well, the serial films are really hard to follow - the Madhouse-produced Trava: Fist Planet may be visually striking, but its incredibly surreal at the best of times, Hal and Bones just seems to be a pair of CGI dogs prattling on about nothing in particular (though I'm not sure having seen the rest would make that any more interesting), whilst Frog River just left me lost. That said, I'm not really convinced I'm missing anything. Trava: Fist Planet Hal and Bones Getting back to the stuff what was actually worth watching on here, this volume had the third of Sweat Punch short movies, known as "Comedy". Being of only 11 minutes of length (and that's including the ending credits), the story isn't particularly epic or anything - during Ireland's War of Independence, a young girl seeks to enlist the aid of an eccentric swordsman who only accepts books of a particular genre as payment. Comedy What makes Comedy worth watching is that, well, it's Studio 4c - not that they actually produce much that is particularly popular amongst the wider anime community, given their short film focus. Whilst they have produced a few movies (including the wonderful Magnetic Rose segment for Memories), and a few of the Animatrix shorts, the only TV anime they've done was Mahou Shojo Tai. In any case, as with much of 4c's output, the animation here is simply gorgeous, and the atmosphere is palpable. It's a really beautiful piece. As for the other thing worth watching, well, that one is a whole lot odder. Ryusei-kacho is a short live action piece directed by Hideaki Anno of all people. On Japans busy public transport network, this film informs us, there are two kinds of people - those winners who manage to get a seat, and the losers who have to stand. To avoid being a loser, commuters go to such extreme lengths as flinging their young children into place, or waggling their sexy asses. Legend tells of a mythical middle manager who, in his whole life, has never once had to go without a seat. Ryusei-Kacho is about brilliant as it is utterly, utterly weird. The viewer is subjected to a barrage of hilariously bad special effects as our hero faces off against the sexy Maria in a challenge to secure the last seat on the busy, late night train - our hero backflips, flys and, errr, pile drivers his opponents from orbit. Crazy it may be, but it's epic in it's hilarity value.

Boogiepop Never Smiles, apparently

DiGiKerot — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 21:23:09 +0000

The publication of the first three books in the Boogiepop series has been a bit of a frustrating experience for me – well, getting the second and third volumes were, I randomly stumbled onto the first without any real effort. With the later volumes, I had problems tracking them down within a reasonable time frame. The fact that they were limited to Borders stores for a few months before going on general sale didn't really help things, nor did the fact that most bookstores didn't seem to want to order them in. Thankfully, I finally managed to get a hold of the third book over the weekend – and it was good. Most anime fans, if they are aware of Boogiepop, are only really familiar with the TV anime, Boogiepop Phantom, whilst a few may have also seen the live action movie. Phantom, however, really, really isn't a very good place to start – it's not only very strange, but it jumps all over the place in a seemingly disjointed, episodic fashion. By the end, things do at least start to feel rather more connected, but it's still rather hard to get your head around. The problem is that, really, Phantom expects you to be familiar with the story already, as its an original story following directly on from the end of the first book or movie (indeed, it uses the ED from the movie for its OP). If you haven't read the book, you'll still end up being in the dark about certain elements. The movie isn't really that great a substitute either – its a half-decent movie as far as things go, and the, admittedly sparse, Kajiura soundtrack is nice, but you loose a lot information in the process. The fashion in which things jump around can be kind of confusing as well. Upon reading the first book, things are given a bit more context. The structure of the movie, and Phantom, starts to make a bit more sense anyway. Rather than telling the story in a straight, linear fashion, each chapter in Boogiepop and Others follows a different character. Whilst each of the chapters are intertwined, requiring all of them to be read to fully comprehend what is going on, they certainly aren't linear – some of the chapters even end after what would be considered the books actual conclusion. It's a clever book in how it all ends up panning out. Honestly, it's not really all that surprising that the movie version ended up as something of a disjointed mess. The follow up to Boogiepop and Other is the oddly titled two-part Boogiepop Returns – Vs Imaginator. Structurally, its rather less ambitious than it's predecessor, being essentially linear. Whilst the jumping PoV is still present, its a little less rigid about things – there are a few places where (if I'm remembering things correctly, anyway) it switches mid-chapter, and repeats characters rather than telling each characters story all in one go. This doesn't mean it's any less interesting a book – it has a larger cast and a more complicated story, and sheds a lot more light on the world in which Boogiepop is set. Basically, the story it is trying to tell demands it to be told in this fashion, otherwise you'd just end up getting too many spoilers. For what it's worth, I actually prefer Vs Imaginator to Others. It's quite possible that this is due to having already seen the LA movie a few times – it was just me retreading the same material again. That isn't to say that having seen the movie made Others a dull book, as it certainly wasn't, it's just that I found the story being told Vs Imaginator was more interesting. The scale was much larger, the characters more interesting (admittedly, the fact that it had most of the characters from Others as well helped things) and the more linear narrative meant things had a nice build-up towards the end. That said, the difficulty I had getting the second volume of Vs Imaginator kind of spoilt things a little for me. The Japanese release timeline in the back of the book shows that both volumes were released in Japan in the same month, whereas I had a good few months gap between reading the two. With all the characters and the jumping around, things started to get a bit confused, and initially I had a little trouble remembering which character was which. I suppose this isn't really an issue now, but I recommend anyone purchasing these grabs both volumes of Vs Imaginator at the same it – it'll save you a lot of stress. Seven Seas puts across a very good impression with their release of Boogiepop – the books are nice. As well as all of the black and white images scattered throughout the book, there are a selection of colour pages at the start of the book. They've retained honorifics, which will probably please a lot of people. The translation is by Andrew Cunningham, whose english writing reads well. It makes me massively optimistic for Seven Seas mass of upcoming novels. Really, I couldn't recommend the Boogiepop novels highly enough – they make excellent reading.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-9

DiGiKerot — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:32:40 +0000

Any similarities to any show actually called Darker than BLACK is purely coincidently, but frankly would be freakishly hilarious.

Misinformation FTW

DiGiKerot — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:37:53 +0000

I was amused yesterday when someone posted a picture of one side of the R1 Higurashi artbox (as in, the thing which comes with the volume 1 LE in which you can store the whole series) on AnimeonDVDs coverart forum. I say amused, because it looked like this - For those who don't recognise the image, it's the cover from the limited edition version of the sixth R2J DVD. Given the black curve visible on the left side, I'm assuming that the spine is going to be the image of Rena in the Angel Mort uniform from another cover, and the other side will be the twincest one. It's probably going to look something like this - Honestly speaking, the Satoko and Rika image is a little too pedolicious to be something I'd want to keep on my shelves - infact, the whole thing smacks of pr0n. Seriously, with whose images and the title "When They Cry", what would you think seeing that box on the shelves? The cover for the individual R1 DVD volume 1 is going to be based on the R2 Rental DVD cover - it has this weirdo negative effect going on. Not great, but at least it doesn't really misinform the store browser about the content.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-10

DiGiKerot — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:39 +0000

So I guess the joke is that there isn't actually a joke? Meh, I don't know. I did kind of think that KyoAni missed a good chance to get some Geass-esque product placement in there - after all, if they can get a bunch of grown otaku to dance around like prats then changing their snacking habits can't surely be that difficult. Then it dawned on me - these dance sequences aren't KyoAni trying to be cute and moe or anything, rather it's KyoAni being concerned about the spiralling levels of otaku obesity. Just think about it - how much exercise do you think most of these people got before starting to mimic the Haruhi dance? Yup, you've got to hand it to KyoAni for not only producing superior animation, but considering the welfare of the viewer whilst they at it.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-11

DiGiKerot — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:44:11 +0000

In celebration of some of the odd decisions which have been going on in R1 land recently. Well, OK, its pretty much entirely in honour of Geneons bizarre choice of Higurashi cover art and Bandai Visuals awesome pricing structure, with a sideswipe at ADVs renaming of "Makasete Iruka!" (Seriously, "Grrl Power!"? What kind of retarded name was that, anyway?). I suppose it's kind of unfair to bash Geneon for the Higurashi release given that all they have used were official materials - the cover art was using in Japan, and When They Cry has always been used by 07th Expansion from what I gather. Still, it's the combination of the two, and the fact that it's being put out that way onto a US market which probably isn't quite sure what to expect, which really bemuses me. As I've said previously, it just makes it look like porn to me ^^; Errr, this wasn't actually the comic I was going to post today, but I changed my mind this morning just before posting. That's why it's taken so long for me to get around to posting this today, since I've had to draw it rather than using something I'd already done. Shame there still isn't an actual joke ^^; Omake section! Oh well, since I drew this stuff at a higher resolution than I normally do, I figured it'd be a shame for it all to remain stamp sized (not that any of it is, you know, drawn particularly well or anything), so I threw together a PSP background for those who have a suitably recent firmware (i.e. those not sticking with 1.50, for whatever reason they'd want to do that). Don't have a PSP? Here's a 1280x800 desktop - why that resolution? Because that's what I use, and it's not as if I expect anyone in the universe to actually use this. I'm just being odd.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-12

DiGiKerot — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:43:18 +0000

Continuing to get increasingly random, I am. Nigel was a normal, middle class, rap-obsessive white boy until, one day, he met one mean mother-fucking snake from beyond time and space. Given a magic device and asked to assist with collecting magical artefacts scattered Earth-wide, Nigel transforms into the magical white-rapper Man o'War (after his internet alias) and opens a moderately-sized can of kick-ass on the universe... Urrr, yeah, I came up with a horrifically bad back story for this. I toyed with the idea of writing it as some kind of serial novel (like, a chapter a month or something) until I realised that it'd be an exercise on how thinly I could stretch the same bad jokes. This, of course, made it sound like an even better idea. Unfortunately, I'm altogether too lazy, and frankly it sounds like far too much hard work, so it'll never happen. Ho-hum.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-13

DiGiKerot — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:31:33 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-14

DiGiKerot — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:46:35 +0000

Errr, I was watching some Kiminozo earlier in the week. I guess that's about all the explanation there is for this one... There was a discussion on the Cardcaptor Sakura OPs themes in #ab about a week ago, which reminded me that I hadn't got around to sticking my Clampazar CDs onto my MP3 player yet. Having gotten around to doing so, I was listening through it last night. I have to say, Kiss Kiss from Tokyo Babylon is still hilariously bad ("Do like Toffee and Lemonadeee, they used to taste soooo gooooooood handmaaddeeeeeeee"). As I drifted into a state of semi-sleep, I was awoken by the peculiar sounds of Pastel Pure. I say peculiar because, well, I know I don't have any MariMite stuff on my MP3 player. As it turns out, it was actually an old Ali Project track from the radio version of Wish called "yume no ato ni -apres un reve-". Seriously, though, it is Pastel Pure, even more so than every other Ali Project track sounds the same.

30minutes Night Flight

DiGiKerot — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:39:43 +0000

So, I've finally gotten a hold of and listened to the new Maaya Sakamoto album, 30minutes Night Flight. It's an alright album, but I think I'm probably just going to echo what everyone else has already said about it here - the eponymous track is really wonderful, the rest of the album is kind of a blur of pleasant monotony. It's not like any of it is bad - listened to in one go it's a nice album - but there's not really anything that I'd ever really consider listening to outside of the context of the album. As I suspect most people who bought the album did, I went for the LE version of the album. The accompanying DVD has the video for Universe on it - the song itself is really kind of tedious, but the video is really, really beautiful stuff, like a childrens story book except that it's moving. Of course, with just about everyone who bought this album purchasing the LE version, I had to do something to prove myself better (read: sadder, nerdier and less sensible with money) than all those other people buying the album. To this end, I also grabbed Special Box. What's in the special box? A set of Maaya Sakamoto stamps, a few envelopes, some writing paper and a towel. Chances of this stuff every getting taken out of the box ever again? Very, very slim. Seriously, aside from the fact that the kind of nerds who buy this kind of thing aren't that likely to have anyone to actually write to (though I suppose the towel could be useful for wiping down their fat, sweaty bodies), it's not like anyone ever uses these things when they are even usable. The should have just done a nice picture book or something. Oh well, it's just another item to add to the pile of useless tat I've collected over the years. At least it'll provide me with a sense of nerdish superiority over other Maaya Sakamoto fanboys.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-15

DiGiKerot — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:21:46 +0000

Everyone go laugh at Moyism for having changed his wallpaper, no matter how briefly (seriously, though, it was a joke, in the unfunny Lucky Star sense of the term, and whilst it amuses me greatly that someone actually used it for 30 seconds, just don't do it!). I mentioned Clamp yesterday, but forgot to mention that the Clover anime short was out on DVD next month. For the princely sum of 1500 yen you too can own the staggering total of six minutes of animation! Woooo! Honestly, they should have plonked it on Clampazar when they released that, but I guess one obscure piece of Clamp-based animation was deemed sufficient to sell it. Lord knows I'll probably end up buying Clover myself ^^; Not sure if there'll be a comic tomorrow. I've reached the point where I'm struggling a bit to think of anything to write around. I do so hate to end this run on something that isn't a multiple of 12 or 13, though - it just feels cosmically wrong. I shall continue to think of the matter.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-16

DiGiKerot — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 05:48:59 +0000

For some reason, I thought the point in cell phones was that they were supposed to be portable. Whilst I understand that her having some kind of bizarro penguin fetish is supposed to be an oh-so-charming moe point, I really have to wonder how practical that oversized stuffed penguin thing Haruka uses actually is. Also, Prinnies are awesome. dOOd. Speaking of Xenoglossia, the first DVD is scheduled in for July. They are very much taking the same route as My-ZHiME with the DVDs - aside from the covers being similar, the first pressing extra is going to be another seiyuu DVD. They are doing another animated short for the DVD as well, and given that the *HiME ones tended to be full of the kind of service the show itself didn't have, penguin pantsu may or may not eventually feature...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-17

DiGiKerot — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:49:39 +0000

I can't say I've seen Rocket Girls - indeed, looking through the blog aggregators it doesn't look like anyone has seen Rocket Girls, so for all I know they could have inserted a few scenes of the above description just to make me look silly. Not that that is hard to do. Heck, I'm not even sure if the tasty iced snack known as a Rocket (it's an ice lolly made up of three different flavours in differing stages) is known outside of the UK, but whatever. Go look it up on the internet or something, it'll kill a few minutes of your day. People often ask me how many banners I have on this site - whereby "often", I mean "never". In fact, I think Hung is the only person ever to make reference to them. I was adding a couple of new ones for the first time in a while yesterday when I discovered that, when I switched my theme over, I'd completely forgotten to redo half of the banners. This isn't something I'd done deliberately, as those which I'd neglected to do were some of the better looking ones (and I realise that "better" is a tenuous term to use here), I guess I just decided to leave them for another day and then promptly forgot. Anyway, to answer the question that I never get asked, I'm presently up to 38, and, yes, it is completely random as to which one you'll see. Now that I've brought attention to the fact, can I please ask that anyone who starts randomly refreshing their browsers does so on a image light entry - a little bandwidth preservation goes a long way ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-18

DiGiKerot — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 06:38:39 +0000

This is me referring way back to some of my previous instalments, so newcomers may wish to refer back to this and this. Ah, these things took so much less time back then ^^;

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien Revisited

DiGiKerot — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 19:05:34 +0000

Quite some time ago, I watched the first couple of episodes of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien via the Taiwanese DVD release, and was pretty ambivalent about it at the time – I thought it was alright, but nothing really spectacular. With the Funimation R1 release now complete, I've finally got around to actually watching the DVDs I've just been stacking on the shelves unwatched. Honestly, I'm still ambivalent towards the show. The thing is, I'm really not sure that it is entirely the shows own fault. That isn't to say that the show is perfect or anything. I'll admit that the show isn't anywhere near as generic, nor is Haruka anywhere near as scary-stalkerish, as I'd originally thought, but it does have a few issues. I think the main thing which kind of irked me a bit was Ayu and Mayu – not that they weren't funny or anything, but their designs looked like they belonged in a completely different series, not to mention that the scenes that they were involved in followed suit (I suppose the same thing could be said about Amakawa). Saying that, most anime shows are fairly schizophrenic in terms of tone, it's not like it isn't something I'm not used to nor can't easily overlook. No, I think my main problem with Kiminozo is that I knew what was going to happen. Understand that this was in no way intentional – I'd not gone looking for spoilers, I've not read summaries of the show and I've certainly not played the game. The fact is that it's just information I picked up completely by accident. The problem is simply that the show is popular among the online groups in which I move to the point that it has essentially become the anime equivalent of Luke Skywalkers parentage or the ending of The Sixth Sense – people assume that either you've already seen it, or it's already been spoiled for you. It's the subject of constant reference, jokes and character flamewars. Basically, people don't really make an effort to avoid spoilers any more. It's the same situation with Kanon, really – I've not seen either version of the show, and I didn't read any of the episode summaries on a regular basis outside of the first couple of episodes (I make a point not to bother reading episode summary posts for shows I don't actively follow – why spoil things I might watch later?). Somehow, though, I seem to know how each of the characters stories end. Again, this isn't intentional either. With Kiminozo being a melodramatic soap-opera, knowing what's going to happen ahead of time kind of spoils things. It's really hard for the dramatic tension to get to you when you know how the show is going to end. I watched it and recognised it as being a well-produced show, and enjoyed it for that, but at the same time I just couldn't get into it to the degree I felt I really should. Ultimately, all this means is that I really feel that I'm in no position to fairly judge the show. It also probably means that I should have watched the show way, way earlier. Well, either that or just not visit any of the anime-related corners of the internet. As a final note, whilst it's nice that Funimation released this R1 side (it can't have been a cheap license, particularly for something which isn't likely to sell all that greatly), they score negative points for not bothering to subtitle the storybook under the last episodes ending credits. I ended up having to look up the translation elsewhere, and frankly I really shouldn't have had to given the conent.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-19

DiGiKerot — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:37:41 +0000

Flight suits in anime are always stupid, mainly because more often than not they are used as an easy way to provide a bit of service to the viewer. I particularly like the snazzy jacket, t-shirt and shorts combo used in Xenoglossia, even though it does look more like something you'd wear whilst cycling or to a track meet than you really should wearing for smashing orbital meteorites in a giant robot. Also, Prinnies are awesome. dOOd.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-20

DiGiKerot — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 06:12:00 +0000

Geneon license Zero no Tsukaima

DiGiKerot — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:25:50 +0000

Well, that's about all the exciting news that has thus far come out of Anime Boston. Well, I think ADV have licensed Innocent Venus as well. Back to ZnT, earlier in the week it actually turned up in list of upcoming releases in one of Diamonds catalogues. Geneon were quick to rubbish the news, claiming it was from an earlier schedule based around licenses they had hoped to acquire. I guess ZnT has pulled through, then, but unfortunately there has been no further mention of the MariMite boxset which turned up in the same list. Oh, apparently they are calling it "Familiar of Zero". It's a perfectly valid translation, but you have to wonder why they didn't go with something which flows off the tongue a little better, like, maybe, "Zero's Familiar"? I don't suppose the shows name actually matters or anything, though.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-21

DiGiKerot — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 10:08:28 +0000

Because, no matter how complicated a giant robots controls actually look, all the best moves can be performed only by shouting. If you've not seen me floating around my usual online haunts all that much this week, its because my internet connection is totally screwed at the moment. Seriously, I'm talking dial-up levels of suckiness. Being on the internet is, frankly, rather painful. Of course, this has done wonders for actually sitting down and watching DVDs and stuff (I even managed to finish Suikoden V yesterday!), but it's not half frustrating.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-22

DiGiKerot — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:41:26 +0000

The last dungeon in Suikoden V is retarded. Basically, what happens is that the game presents you with three paths, and as such makes you create three parties so you can explore these paths simultaneously. You'd think that this is the set-up for some nice character-switching puzzle stuff, and indeed that's what the game makes you think with the appearance of the party-switching option. In reality, it's just a cruel way to make life difficult for those players who hadn't varied their party enough during the game to have 18 serviceable characters, as progress through it largely comes down to making one party run along until they reach a wall (pressing the switches it's pretty much impossible to avoid in the process), then switching to the next party and doing the same, until all three parties reach the end (assuming your characters are strong enough to beat some nasty bosses despite all the 2nd stringers you put in there to pad the parties out). The thing is, it's only a "dungeon" in the RPG design sense - the whole thing is outdoors. The barriers which prevent you from carrying on may take up the whole width of the path, but the wall around the path barely comes up to the characters shins. Why they don't just hop over the wall and walk through the snow to the other side of the barrier is beyond me. I presume it must just be because of the lack of suitable footwear.

Some things never change...

DiGiKerot — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:52:13 +0000

and by “some things”, I mean lesbians, random panty shots and reverse traps. So, for the first time in about 11 years, I watched Project A-ko yesterday. A-ko, released back in 1986, is certainly an odd movie. It was originally going to be a soft-porn OAV produced by a bunch of ex-Urusei Yatsura staff looking to blow-off steam by doing something completely nuts, only for it to loose the “porn” and “OAV” parts along the way. What it didn't loose, however, was the “nuts”. This is a chick. No, really! The plot seems deceptively simple – the athletic A-ko is best friends with the hyperactively shrill C-ko. When they start their new school, however, they encounter B-ko, who immediately becomes infatuated with C-ko. The twist, however, is that A-ko has the kind of strength which could only come from being the off-spring of Superman and Wonder Woman (no, seriously). B-ko, on the other hand, is the super-genius daughter of a billionaire. As for C-ko, well, she might just be the long lost alien princess being tracked down by an alcoholic alien starship captain who seems to be channelling Captain Harlock. Mari is basically Kenshiro from FotNS, but in a dress. What's funnier is her voice - her speaking voice is really high-pitched, but otherwise it's all very deep, blokish grunting... They were talking about KFC in #ab earlier, so I figured I'd post a picture of The Colonel... So, seeing that A-ko is in her way, B-ko decides to get rid of her by attacking her every day with an increasingly elaborate series of mecha, escalating until B-ko finally comes up with a suit of powered armour (well, armour is a bit of a stretch...) which allows her to face off against A-ko on even terms. At which point the aliens invade – not that A-ko and B-ko notice, as they are causing considerably more collateral damage themselves... a drinks can missile, and a random panty shot. I guess it isn't really a surprise to learn that the director went on to do Aika and Najica... As I mentioned previously, Project A-ko is pretty much just completely nuts. It's also kind of surprising that, content wise, it hasn't actually dated all that badly. Sure, the animation betrays most of it's staffs UY origins, and the less said about the cheesey 80s (English) pop-music OST the better, but in terms of actual content the humour isn't really that far off what we get in the really nerdy shows these days. Well, that's excusing the kind of shows they reference – rather than Evangelion, its UY, Macross, Fist of the Northstar and Harlock it riffs on, often to copyright-infringing levels of accuracy. It does so proper nerd-style as well – for example, it not only has Macross-style missile swarms, it even has the drinks cans mixed up in there. Things get increasingly excessive (and better animated) as it goes along - though the transformation scene for that mecha is actually about ten times as long as the actual battle is... So, err, yeah. As per usual, I'm not quite sure what my point actually it. I guess its either that old anime is just as retarded as new anime is, despite what some people want you to believe, or that what was nerdish in 80s anime fandom is still pretty much what is nerdish today. Exactly HOW this costume gives B-ko superhuman strength is beyond me...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-23

DiGiKerot — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:21:45 +0000

Continuing on from yesterday in a fashion which probably needs no explanation.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-24

DiGiKerot — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 05:47:12 +0000

I'm not sure why Yuuno isn't in StrikerS, but I'm sure Fate had something to do with it. Well, either that or he ended up on the business end of a Divine Buster after being stupid enough to ask for Raising Heart back. In any case, I'm one of those silly people who actually liked Yuuno, so I do consider his absence a bit of a shame.

Trinity Blood 1 (novel)

DiGiKerot — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:01:39 +0000

Being released as part of Tokyopops Pop Fiction line, Trinity Blood is the novel series which inspired the anime series of the same name, following a Vatican-sanctioned vampire hunter called Abel Nightroad. Trinity Blood is generic in the extreme. Have you ever come across any other anime or manga series featuring vampires? Well, it's likely to have a pretty similar set-up in regards to how it handles it's vampire hunters – Trinity Bloods AX agents are pretty much the same as Hellsings Vatican-based Iscariot, or Tsukihimes Burial Agency, in that it's full of freaks tolerated because of their vampire-arse-kicking skills. Abel is pretty much in the competent-bumbler mould of Triguns Vash the Stampede. Not of the other characters are established anime stereotypes as well. Still, the first Trinity Blood novel elevates itself slightly above mediocre simply because of the rather breathless pacing – it skips quickly from scene to scene, with very little exposition inbetween. Any other writer might have been tempted to pad out the material in this novel to the extent that they could have filled three or four books (and, honestly, it probably wouldn't have been that hard). What it results in is a book which feels a lot longer than it actually is, but is ultimately incredibly shallow and lightweight. It's entertaining as a light bit of reading, particularly if the gratuitous violence is a turn on (the body count in pretty insane), but it is pretty much instantly forgettable, or at least is likely to get merged in your memories with a half-dozen other titles. It's certainly not the worst thing in Tokyopops Pop Fiction range (it's better than the first Scrapped Princess novel, at least), but it's only really worth reading if you absolutely have to have more translated light-novels to read.

Chain Mail (novel)

DiGiKerot — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:28:08 +0000

The thing with Tokyopops novel range is that, well, most of the novels published are those with strong anime or manga connections – they've focused heavily on things like Scrapped Princess, Full Metal Panic and Twelve Kingdoms, where there is a well-known anime spin-off to sell the book on the back of. On the rare occasion that they release a novel which hasn't been animated at some point, they have a habit of slipping out without much noise. Which was the case with Chain Mail – I hadn't even realised it was due for release until I saw it in Hungs review pile last month. Chain Mail is a mystery novel of sorts set in contemporary Japan. School girl Sawako receives a strange e-mail on her cellphone one day, pointing her to a strange website where the mysterious Yukari has invited her to take part in writing a story – a story about a stalker obsessed with a schoolgirl. The plan is to write the story from the viewpoint of four characters – the stalker (being written by Yukari), the schoolgirl, plus the schoolgirls boyfriend and detective investigating the case – with the story being moved forward in the fashion determined by whoever writes the next entry. Being a somewhat despondent loner, Sawako jumps at the chance to write a nice piece of escapist fiction, and signs herself up as the schoolgirl before forwarding the mail to as many other people as possible. Ultimately, the other two characters end up being written by two other schoolgirls who also feel somewhat unsatisfied with their current position in life, and the narrative jumps between being written from the point of view of all the writers other than Yukari. From there the book progresses in pretty much the fashion you'd expect – initially they enjoy writing and the process of doing so find themselves coming to terms with their lives, but ultimately they start getting paranoid as they start to see parallels between the story and their actual lives... Chain Mail isn't a bad book. It gets off to a slightly shaky start, but through most of it it starts build up quite a bit of momentum as the story and characters get increasingly interesting. The problem comes when it comes to the end – it's sudden, and it's definitely more of a whimper than a bang. It's like the author ran out of ideas and really couldn't decide how to end it, so just slapped something on there. It's a shame, and considerably dampened a lot of the enthusiasm I'd had for the title whilst actually reading it. Still, as a early foray into more original light-novel translations, it's at least interesting. Tokyopop do have some more interesting titles on the horizon, though, as do Seven Seas with things like Vamp. Basically, Chain Mail certainly isn't an awful book or anything – for the most part it's pretty good – just don't expect it to end particularly well.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-25

DiGiKerot — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:02:03 +0000

Because robots are people too. Apparently. The first R1 volume of My-ZHiME has been solicited for July. Those who feel like springing twice as much for the artbox edition (which, at least, is a nice box like that from the last HiME volume, instead of paper like the one with the first HiME volume) will also get a cellphone strap for their trouble, apparently. No idea if it's the same as the one which came with one of the R2s, but it's a kind of lame extra if you ask me.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-26

DiGiKerot — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 05:40:46 +0000

This wasn't the comic I was originally going to post today (I normally end up writing three or four at once and, since I'm trying to stretch this series out as long as possible, hope I think of some more ideas before I run out), but the Gurren Lagann thing made me laugh. I figured it was worth interrupting the schedule, and fits in nicely with tomorrows continuity-wise anyway. Free bonus comic! So, I was looking through my images directory, looking at all the random doodles I have lying around and wondering if there was something productive I could use them for (I'm all about the easy-wins when it comes to blog-content). Anyway, I found this lying around. The file was labelled as comic #15, though the image originally had comic #7 in it. I remember drawing it, but I don't really remember the various reasons I had for not posting it. Well, here it is for your reading pleasure, but it should be treated as an AU story ^^;

ADV licenses Air

DiGiKerot — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:35:26 +0000

And that's both the TV and the movie versions. Wow, that's rather surprising - given the cost I'd always associated with this kind of thing, I figured it'd never happen. I suppose now is the right time to do so, though - coming out of Kanon, and coming into the DVD release of Haruhi and the upcoming Clannad TV version, they'll be coming into a period with a lot of Key and KyoAni love, even among the strictly AAT-types. I'm guessing that Funimations release of Kiminozo might have sold better than expected too, which may have prompted ADV to test the waters with this kind of thing. The Japanese DVD release of Air was utterly atrocious - the video was encode had horrific amounts of marcoblocking, presumably the result on unjustifiably low bitrates (given that there were only a couple of episodes a volume). Unless the materials they are given are really awful, the R1 release can't fail to be better. Of course, they've got it on Blu-ray in Japan now, but since everything but the new OP is upscaled from broadcast resolution a well-encoded DVD version shouldn't look much worse. The TV version will be spread across four volumes, the first of which is due in August. The movie is due before the end of the year. I already have the movie twice, so I probably won't buy it again, but I'll definitely be picking up the TV disks.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-27 & #3-28

DiGiKerot — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 12:17:39 +0000

Two for the price of one! Well, that's mainly because they're both on the same subject and I couldn't decide which one to post, mainly because they are both based around equally awful jokes. Anyway, as with yesterday, this wasn't actually the comic(s) I was going to post, but whatever, it'll keep until tomorrow.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-29

DiGiKerot — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:55:46 +0000

It's one of those unwritten rules of anime that, if someone has a hightech security system, they'll find themselves having to fight it at some point. Probably. Anyway, this is the comic I was originally going to post two days ago. Not worth the wait, was it? :P

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-30

DiGiKerot — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:29:27 +0000

If anyone is wondering what is going on in that third panel (it isn't exactly clear), it's the plummeting mecha from a few days ago landing atop the security robot. Anyway, anyone who has seen the last two episodes of ZHiME knows that Arika is always saved right at the last minute. Always.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-31

DiGiKerot — Tue, 01 May 2007 06:39:28 +0000

Not that I'm really being replaced - I just figured the best way to work myself out of the current situation would be to make reference to the recent Lucky Star news in such a way that I'd be able to take things off on a completely random tangent... In case anyone is wondering about the "P" thing, it's in reference to the 4-koma posted on the iDOLM@STER game website, where the producer (i.e. the player character) is a non-descript guy with, yes, a big yellow P for a face.

Shin Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-32

DiGiKerot — Wed, 02 May 2007 17:15:53 +0000

Shin Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-33

DiGiKerot — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:44:30 +0000

Geez, those special moves really do take a long time to charge, don't they?

Shin Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-34

DiGiKerot — Fri, 04 May 2007 16:37:39 +0000

Okay, so TheBigN (Big N! Biiiiiig N! Big N!" guessed it'd be going this way a couple of days ago, but, hey, I've never claimed to be unpredictable or anything. Anyway, I might actually get around to do something radical and posting something other than comics over the weekend, even if it is just a review of the first Shana novel for the sole purpose of annoying RK.

Shin Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-35

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 May 2007 07:53:29 +0000

Hmmmm, nope, nothing interesting to say today. Guess I'll got play more iDOLM@STER or something...

Shakugan no Shana: The Girl With Fire In Her Eyes

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:37:48 +0000

I'm really not sure if I really need introduce this book. Maybe if I had a readership outside of the regular blogging circles, there would be a need for it. I think, however, that among those which actually visit this site, Shakugan no Shana is already a well know title thanks to the 2005 TV anime version. Still, for completeness sake, I suppose I should at least outline the plot. Shakugan no Shana follows Yuji Sakai, a young chap who has found himself in the unfortunately position of having died. Having had his very existence shallowed by some kind of monstrous creature resembling the mascot of a well-known brand of Mayonnaise, he finds himself left as only the last dregs of his former self, a "torch" which will eventually burn out into nothingness. To make matters worse, he has found himself being tailed by a superhuman, sword-wielding and insanely bipolar young girl who, being nameless, he dubs Shana, after the sword she wields. Still, given that he is apparently a Mistes - a particularly desirable torch that the master of the aforementioned Mayonnaise-monster would rather like to acquire - it maybe isn't so bad having the girl hanging around after all - not to mention she's pretty cute... Coincidently, it's Kewpie-brand mayonnaise - google it if you've seen the anime version, you'll probably chuckle. Reading the Shana novel, I actually found it to be something of a pleasant surprise. Whilst I like the anime version, I wouldn't say I'm a big fan of it - it's a reasonable enough way to pass time, but for the most part it's average in every way. The novel, as it turns out, was a lot of fun - I wouldn't place it in that upper tier of translated novels that Twelve Kingdoms, Boogiepop, Crest of the Stars and Kino currently make up, but at the same time it's definitely a better read than most of the other stuff that is out there at the moment. What makes it a good read for me, to be honest, is what is different to the anime version more than what it shares with it. The thing is, you see, reading this novel actually reveals that the anime version is something of a rearrangement of the novel series. From a certain point of view, you could say that the novel covers up to episode six of the anime, but that isn't entirely accurate - Marjorie, who was introduced in the TV anime in Episode three, doesn't even turn up in this novel. Whilst the second episode of the anime version felt like it was simply repeating itself needlessly, it turns out that it largely consists of material which wasn't actually in the book - Yukari Hirai merely disappears between other events in the novel, only mentioned when Shana turns up in class unexpectedly, rather than being used as a needless way to batter you over the head with the melancholy fate of a torch. Basically, the anime added these events, no doubt as an attempt to clarify things which may not have come across particularly well in animation. In text form, there isn't really all that much room for confusion, and as such it doesn't need to go to such excessive lengths. As a result, the story really does flow better in book form than it did in the anime - it has a much more assured and enjoyable pace, and it doesn't dwell on anything to the point of tedium like the anime did in places. Another side effect is that Yuji ends up coming across as a far less annoying character - in the early episodes of the anime, he whined way too much at Shana about things (and, honestly, I can't really blame her for telling him to shut up so frequently). Here, he doesn't, and he is a better character for it. As it happens, Shana comes across as being a little less bipolar than she was at this point in the anime. That isn't to say she isn't massively tsundere, but at the same time she isn't really given as much of an opportunity to bite Yujis head-off for moaning on at her, and as a result it doesn't really shine through as much. Another thing which is kind of surprising is that Shanas snack-consumption isn't strictly restricted to melon-pan like it seems to be in the anime version. Sure, she still eats the stuff on several occasions, but she also eats a variety of other snack-foods. Indeed, her impromptu counter-attack to Yoshidas bentou was a box of Pocky as opposed to a crispy bread snack. Maybe they start to emphasize or single-track these things a little more in the later volumes than they in this one, but I wouldn't put it past the animation staff to decide the focus on these things in an attempt to make our heroine more "moe". I should probably point out that the difference in content isn't a one way flow - there are a few additional events in here in the novel which you won't have seen previously in the anime version, and a few other events you think you might recognise pan out in a fashion different to what you might expect. The usual caveat of not having read the book in Japanese, therefore not being able to say how accurate the novel translation is, applies here - novel translation is far from being an exact science as it is anyway. Viz's English rendition is eminently readable at least, and I really don't have anything to complain about in terms of how it's been written. What there is to complain about, however, are the images scattered throughout the book - or the lack of them. From the discussions I've had, it transpires that they've dropped two fan service-heavy images (one of Shana in nothing but her panties, and another of her half-nekkid in bed), as well as cropping one of the colour illustrations (which they at least went to the expense of including, I guess). It's disappointing, I suppose. The events in question are still described in the body of the text, at least, so I guess they were just getting a little jumpy over having pictures of largely-nude young girls in a book they are probably aiming at young teens. It doesn't really bother me in the slightest, to be honest (I'm not a lolicon ^^;), but I guess the principal of this kind of thing bugs a lot of people. Anyway, nice book, and I'm looking forward to the next one whenever they get around to releasing it.

Crest of the Stars: Return to a Strange World

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:54:29 +0000

Return to a Strange World is the third book in the Crest of the Stars trilogy, following on from Princess of the Empire and A Modest War. From what I gather, it's also the last volume of Stars that Tokyopop currently have lined up for English publication. If Tokyopop indeed release no more Stars books, it'll be a shame, because with this one it finally feels like they've hit their stride. Really, I feel that with this one they've reached a good point with their English writing - at the very least, I didn't feel like it was condescending like the previous books in the series. It's a much more comfortable read, really - well, it would be if it wasn't for the fact that, by this point, the amount of Baronh in the dialogue is pretty crazy in places. You'll probably find yourself referring to the dictionary in the back of the book a lot with this one, particularly if, like me, you've been buying and reading the books in as they have been released (as opposed to reading them in one go). It's a shame, then, that for some of the Baronh terms there are differences in the romanization between the dictionary and the actual story text. Sure, most of them aren't big differences - maybe one will be written with an "l" instead of an "r", or the number of vowels will be different (i.e. "i" instead of "ii") - but with the number of similar terms with subtle differences, it can be confusing. Aside from that, well, this book has plenty of Spoor. I love Spoor, she's a great character who makes me laugh. By including her, this book is elevated to higher state than the previous volumes. To be serious, like the previous books, it's a great read. Of particular interest to fans of the anime version are a couple of chapters at the end which were unrepresented in the anime version of the series, and a few events which unfold in a slightly (but not really significantly) different fashion. Even if there were no real difference, the series is interesting enough that this would make great reading anyway, but the extra material really is the oh-so-tasty topping to a particularly scrumptious frozen-yoghurt treat. Definitely recommended.

Shin Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-36

DiGiKerot — Sun, 06 May 2007 09:05:48 +0000

Only kidding, I just thought it'd be funny to make people think that I was going to go through the whole charge-up thing again. Well, that and I'm not even attempting an actual joke in the actual comic. I just needed to insert a transitional comic, really. I just hope people click on the extended entry... Anyway, here's the actual comic. It's recyclerific!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-37

DiGiKerot — Mon, 07 May 2007 10:18:14 +0000

Normal service - whatever "normal service" is - is resumed, I guess. My site traffic hit what is probably an all-time high - I say probably, because I don't really have records from the "ZOMG! Jesus" incident. What caused this, you ask? Someone over at 2-ch decided to point out that some weirdo-foreigners own copies of the iDOLM@STER LE. Well, that and people laughing at my high-quality art ^^; Seriously, though, it's kind of nice that, finally, the most viewed page on the site is that Xenoglossia entry, as opposed to the Battle Moon Wars guide that's been linked from 1001 torrent sites. In other news, there's rumours abound that Media Blasters may have licensed Simoun. Until there's an official announcement, add pinches of salt according to taste.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-38

DiGiKerot — Tue, 08 May 2007 06:45:56 +0000

And everything returns to normal. I mentioned the possibility of Simoun being licensed yesterday. Whilst there hasn't been any official news on this yet, Media Blasters big cheese John Sirabella made something of a curious comment in a looooonnnnngggg discussion on the AnimeonDVD forums about the realities of the R1 anime market. To quote - "...and therefore sometimes do not get too many Voltrons as it would be too much for us. We need the Simouns and Strawberry Panics and such." So, can we take this as confirmation that they have Simoun? Has he accidentally revealed that they have licensed Strawberry Panic as well? Remember that salt from yesterday? Well, I hope you have some left, as these comments should certainly be taken with more than a little additional seasoning...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-39

DiGiKerot — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:47:20 +0000

Lessons learnt - always check your reference materials before drawing a character for the first time. I ended up spending way too long re-drawing hair and uniforms in order to correct problems with my original sketches ^^; In other news, I AM TEH iDOLM@STER! Well, technically, I'm actually a rank above Idolmaster now - I've finally got around to maxing my P-level to 10! That's worth a whole 100 Gamerpoints! Huzzah! My last unit, GACK!, are actually currently placed at 21 on the online Unit Ranking chart. This would be a lot more impressive if, well, groups didn't get weeded off after a while. Seriously, I was only at 27 a few days ago ^^; GACK! in hat-tastic action!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-40

DiGiKerot — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:58:29 +0000

Excessive coffee consumption is pretty scary, not to mention not being especially healthy. I actually drink decaff. these days, meaning that I do actually get some sleep at nights on occasion, but it does mean I find it a little harder to get going in the mornings ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-41

DiGiKerot — Fri, 11 May 2007 17:08:16 +0000

Somewhat strangely, Imber has won the Most Popular Character poll on the Japanese Xenoglossia website. To be honest, I kind of suspect foul play somewhere (certainly, it wouldn't be the first time that has happened in a Sunrise character poll), as it wasn't looking that way back when I voted (for Ritsuko), but it's still kind of amusing in any case. In other news, UK online store Play.com have curiously listed a boxed-set for the classic 80s Japan-France co-production The Mysterious Cities of Gold. Given that the English masters for the series were thought to be long-lost, and no-one seemed to be able to track down who owned the rights outside Japan, it's something which was never expected to be seen again. It's quite possible it never will given that it's only a holding page, but it'd be cool if it did.

ADV Licenses Stuff

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 May 2007 08:08:50 +0000

So, ADV have picked up Red Garden, Welcome to the N.H.K., Pumpkin Scissors and Magikano. I'm not really sure that any of this is interesting news in itself - I guess N.H.K. is nice enough, but I don't really care about any of the others - but there is a few curious things surrounding the announcement. For one thing, three of those are Gonzo prouductions. It's been quite a while since ADV have picked up anything from Gonzo, with the lions share of their recently titles having been heading towards Funimation. To be honest, I kind of figured that pattern would be continuing for a while, at least as far was Pumpkin Scissor and N.H.K. were concerned. The other thing interesting about this is that, well, they all have release dates already. One of the big complaints which has been levelled at ADV over the years is that they had something of a habit of licensing craploads of titles, then seemingly sitting on them for extended periods of time - Kurau is near legendary now (I've not got around to watching Vol. 1 yet, come to think of it), but there are plenty of other examples. With all of their recent announcements they've actually given us dates and release plans. It's kind of refreshing to know all of these details upfront these days - we may be looking at six months for all of these, but at least we KNOW it's six months. Apparently ADV have more titles to announce in the coming weeks as well... In other news, I've seen a couple of comments saying that Geneon mentioned during the opening ceremonies that they have no announcements this weekend due to having their knuckles rapped by the JP licensors for pre-emptive domain name registration. Interesting if true (which it may not be, but I have no reason to doubt the posters in question), but I was kind of hoping to know if they really do have MariMite and Nanoha...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-42

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 May 2007 08:27:48 +0000

Apparently Haruka has her own blog now. I guess there is no longer any point in other blogs existing...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-43

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 May 2007 06:09:02 +0000

So, it turns out that Geneon really didn't have anything to announce at ACEN. Ho-hum.

Media Blasters license Simoun

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:00:53 +0000

Okay, so I've already mentioned the rumours regarding this a couple of times over the last week, but it looks like Media Blasters used the Yuri Panel at ACEN to confirm it. I can't really say I have any feelings in any direction regarding this. I'm told that the show gets good after a fairly woeful opening episode. With no real attachment to it, however, I think I'll only be getting it if there isn't much else being released at the time, or once it goes cheap.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-44

DiGiKerot — Mon, 14 May 2007 05:27:52 +0000

Go on - tell me you haven't thought it as well... Methinks it's about time I was wrapping up Season 3, which I had been intending to do about 20 days ago anyway. Aside from the fact that it's getting increasingly difficult to think of stuff to do, it takes up way too much time I could be spending doing more productive things like, errr, watching anime. This is particularly true when, like last night, Photoshop decides to crash just when I'd finished colouring things. Twice ¬_¬ Well, I'll suppose I'll stretch things out until around the 50-52 mark, just to make it a proper, anime-esque total to finish things on.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-45

DiGiKerot — Tue, 15 May 2007 05:21:28 +0000

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-46

DiGiKerot — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:53:17 +0000

Whereby "research material", she obviously means she's been watching Gurren Lagann... In other news, ADV have licensed The Wallflower, commonly known around those parts of fandom who don't browse English manga in stores as Yamato Nadesico Shichihenge. Well, I say commonly, but other than the fact that it was directed by Nabeshin I really can't remember hearing much about it back when it was airing...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-47

DiGiKerot — Thu, 17 May 2007 17:14:23 +0000

I'm sure this news will result in you, the readers, breaking down in tears (whether those tears are of joy or sorrow is questionable), but the current season of UIMC will be concluding with episode 50. After this point, I'll be able to happily reclaim hours of my afternoon time and actually watch some anime. I'm guessing my post count will drop back down to an entry a week or some such lazy schedule as a side effect, though ^^; In other news, I managed to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress without it breaking anything. Hurrah!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-48

DiGiKerot — Fri, 18 May 2007 05:27:42 +0000

If I had a nickel for every time I'd seen such a plot device used to start off a doujin series, I'd be all, like, "dude, why do I have these nickels? They aren't even currency over here! I knew I should have asked for pounds...". After that, I'd probably realise that, in fact, I only had two or three of them anyway, therefore it wasn't really worth moaning about in the first place.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-49

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 May 2007 08:17:46 +0000

Oh, the old ones are the best... Or maybe not. I was referred to as a comic genius yesterday. This amuses me as, being on another website, it means I can quote it out of context to promote myself movie-poster style! Huzzah!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #3-50 (Final)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 20 May 2007 07:23:07 +0000

This is the end. The end of Meme Comics.

Doujin under fire?

DiGiKerot — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:26:52 +0000

Zepy over at Canned Dogs is reporting that there is a movement to allow the Japanese police to pursue copyright infringements based on their own judgement, as opposed to only doing so at rightholders request. I'm presuming this has a lot to do with making it easier to deal with piracy, the digital kind in particular, but it does have some potentially nasty side effects - and by "nasty side effects", I mean it potentially scuppering the whole doujin market. Basically, it's one thing for a company to turn a blind eye to minor acts of of infringement - particularly when it's your hardcore audience fanboying obsessively which is at the route of it - but it would be quite a different for a law enforcement agency to start applying such double standards to things. I mean, if they go around clamping down on unauthorised Pokemon beanie caps, for example, they can't really go around allowing the likes of Toranoana to stock and sell doujin manga and games based on popular franchises. A bigger headache, however, would be something like Comiket or Wonderfest - you can't really organise an event large enough to required a police presence when it mostly revolves around selling unauthorised works when they are the ones charged with maintaining copyright. With the number of different titles which inspire doujin work, it's not like companies can really give blanket permission for their titles to be used for these events - the police can't be expected to be up-to-date on everything, and all it'd take would be for one particularly sensitive company to withhold rights for the entire thing to collapse. Ultimately, it's the kind of law I kind of hope doesn't end up getting pushed through - if sounds awfully stifling for the whole industry - if nothing else, I'd start to worry about where the next generation of figure sculptors would get the chance to cut their teeth as it were, not to mention the fact that the only good anime based games so often end up being the doujin ones...

I heart iMAS

DiGiKerot — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:26:44 +0000

I'm sure that if it was more like Gurren Lagann, more people would share my love. As it stands, it's hard to think of two mecha shows which have less in common - well, OK, it isn't really THAT hard, but the point is really that they are just very different. Whilst one is all about crazy, psychotically paced, GAR-laced action, the other has an approach about as, errr, "deliberately paced" as possible. Then there is the fact that one of the shows levels up its mecha with GUTS and PASSION, whilst the other attempts it with, errr, stripping... Of course, I should probably point out that most of my love for iMAS comes from the game - in the four months since I've gotten the 360 version, I've played quite a bit of the game. Even now, I still tend to play at least a couple of hours a week, if not a day like I have been in the last fortnight. Exactly why iMAS is so addictive is really hard to quantify - it's not exactly a very in-depth game, but ultimately I guess that's part of why I end up playing it so often. Basically, it's a low effort game, something I can have a bit of fun with without getting too annoyed or involved. Essentially, it's something I can play whilst lurking in IRC and still follow both the game and the conversation to a reasonable degree. That's not to say that I don't try hard on iMAS - indeed, I'm pretty obsessive when it comes to improving my game. My most recent play through landed me at a pretty good 2.83 million fans - it's still short of the 3.7 million currently topping the Total Rankings online, but it was good enough to place me in the top 15. Annoyingly, your group drops off as soon as you play online with another, so that particular unit has disappeared into nothingness now. Next time, however, I'm determined to break that 3 million line! By the way, Ritsuko is probably my favourite iMAS character in all it's iterations. She's cute and has glasses, which I think is more than enough to quantify liking her. I think she's probably the only character to have a breast-reduction during the jump to TV-anime as well ^^; Ritsuko is what you'd probably refer to a low-character character in the game - she has killer starting stats, but she leaks Tension quite rapidly, Tension being something of a performance-multiplier in game representing the relationship between the player and the character. Essentially, it means that you get a idol with awesome stats who is horrifically difficult to manage. Thankfully, she doesn't lose Tension quite as rapidly as Iori or, god forbid, Chihaya - Chihaya loses Tension constantly, and only tends to regain it after the best of performances. There's a reason why they made her the badguy in Xenoglossia ^^; Being one of the few Western iMAS players is kind of fun. I mean, it's not particularly notable or anything, especially given that most players online seem to avoid auditions against other players, and even then there isn't really much direct interaction between players anyway. Still, I do occasionally get amusing text messages like the one above ^__^

Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars

DiGiKerot — Sat, 26 May 2007 20:33:49 +0000

Giant monsters are attacking Earth, a bunch of aliens seem to be hiding in town and the student council seems to be full of psychic-powered martial artists - but more importantly, they need to decide who's going to be team leader for the Sports Festival... That pretty much describes Shingu in a nutshell - it's an immensely peculiar show to say the least. I guess that explains why I didn't really have much of a grasp regarding what the show actually was prior to actually seeing it. I suppose the fact that it hails from way back in 2001 probably has a lot to do with it as well, given that people did see everything single thing coming out of Japan back then - essentially, the only people who were talking about this show were those who picked it up on DVD, most of whom were incredibly enthusiastic but equally at a loss to explain it. The story centers around the mind-numbingly normal middle school student Hajime Murata, who ends up witnessing a psychic battle between the mysterious-soon-to-be-best-friend-blazing-transfer-student Muryou Subaru and one of the student council members. Having witnessed such a display, Hajime soon has it revealed to him that the town in which he resides, Tenmo, is something of a focal point for human-alien relations. What's more, the student council are in charge of combating alien invasion by using their powers to summon the might giant Shingu. The Shingus design is pretty fugly, but the show is generally well animated. As far as I can tell it's actually all cel animation and pre-CG special effects, which always looks nice when done well. The show, however, treats much of this as being entirely inconsequential. As it happens, Shingu is just the US title - in Japan it was called Gakuen Senki Muryou (Or, Record of the School Wars Muryou). The thing with the original title is that, well, Muryou certainly isn't the main character - he is kind of of just there, being enigmatic and acting when need be. Indeed, aside from the way the show opens Muryou himself isn't really particularly pivotal to the way the story develops - or at least not in any aspect of the story we actually see. You see, as the Japanese title kind of suggests, anything relating to the actual stellar war is really just the backdrop to the series - at one point shortly after witnessing the aforementioned psychic battle, Hajime visits Muryous house, and when ask if he has any questions answered he forgoes asking about what he just witnessed, as frankly he is far more interested in knowing why he is living at the Sanemori house when his family name is Subaru. The whole show is pretty much like that. Whilst the set-up is, essentially, classic post-Evangelion fodder, what would usually be considered epic is treated as being, well, normal, whereas what would normally be considered normal is seen as life-or-death. Which is why we spend half the series watching the characters argue over student council matters. Hell, whilst half the student council have superpowers, they are actually pretty much useless for the situations they are in and, more often than not, are used for completely inane matters. Hajime has a habit of talking to the camera. Hajimes sister has a habit of pointing out the fact that he is weird for doing so... The shows director was Tatsuo Sato, which thinking about it makes a whole lot of sense. I guess it comes somewhere between Stellvia and Nadesico in terms of tone - It's less serious (and whiny) than Stellvia, and whilst it's certainly less insane that Nadesico, it does remind me a lot of those episodes of the show where nothing really happens to progress the actual story forward. In any case, it does totally feel like a Tatsuo Sato show. I'm not really sure how to actually rate Shingu - personally, I thought it was a great show - it's the kind of thing I immediately feel like sitting down to watch through again - but on the other hand, it tickles my particular brand of mirth and I like the characters. If you don't get the humour, then this is going to end up being an immensely frustrating experience when it constantly goes off on odd tangents rather than exploring any of the storylines which might be considered interesting. Personally, I thought the show did a pretty good job of juggling three or so plot strands at once, but mileage really is going to vary depending on what you are actually interested in. The female lead is the typically twin-tailed tsunderekko Nayuta. She is, at least, highly amusing with it, and is the butt of several running jokes. Anyway, the show is out in handy Thin-Pack form now - you can get it for as little as $35 dollars if you shop around online. It's hardly bank-breaking, and if you are looking for something a bit peculiar to watch then it's certainly worth a look.

Kamikaze Girls

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 May 2007 11:09:25 +0000

"A True Lolita must nurture a Rococo spirit and live a Rococo lifestyle" I don't think I've seen the word Rococo used as many times in my whole life as it is used in the opening chapter of Kamikaze Girls. The thing with the term Rococo is that, rather than it evoking the image of 18th Century French art, it just reminds me of poor Takemoto attempting to make a Rococo-styled wardrobe for Hagu... Putting that aside, Kamikaze Girls tells the saga of a conceited, self-centered girl obsessed with frilly clothing who lives deep in rural Japan with her Yakuza-reject father. When she attempts to sell some of her fathers excess bootleg clothing via an ads paper, she ends up meeting a Yanki on a souped-up, errr, moped. They then proceed through a series of humorously offbeat friendship-building adventures. There isn't really much else to say about Kamikaze Girls, to be honest, other than the fact that it's a whole lot of fun. It's not particularly big or clever or anything, but the dialogue is all very funny and bitingly sarcastic. It's all told from the perspective of the heroine in a very chatty fashion - and a pretty hyperactive one at that, with lots of long sentences, which takes a little while to get used to. Ultimately, though, it just adds to the charm. Anyway, the US release is via Viz. It's only out in Hardback at the moment, so I guess it's a probably little pricey for most - I picked it up during a 3-for-2 sale at a local bookstore, which made it not so bad. Apparently Viz have also released a manga version, as well as a live-action movie, but I can't say I've seen either. The movie does have a pretty good reputation though. So, in summary, ff the cover price isn't too much for you to stomach, it's definitely something I recommend reading.

Best. Stage. EVER!

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 May 2007 15:28:58 +0000

The first of the unlockable extra stages in Osu! Tatake! Ouendan 2 reaches legendary levels for two very good reasons. The first, lesser reason is the inclusion of the legendary Mikan ("みかん", or Orange) box. It's a recurring meme in anime shows, but it's also something that a lot of people don't seem to immediately, if ever, pick up on, quite possibly because a lot of people don't have the kana reading skills to immediately recognise it. Basically, watch the boxes in the backgrounds of anime shows and there is a good chance that, a lot of the time, they'll say みかん. What this obsession with oranges is, I have no idea, but its one of these things that, once you are aware of it, you'll start to spot all over the place, chuckle to yourself about it, then immediately forget about. The most famous Mikan box is probably the one in the Genshiken clubroom, nestling atop the fridge - and when I say "more famous", I mean it's the only one I could immediately remember the location of. I'm sure, for example, I saw at least one watching Shingu, but frankly I can't remember exactly where it actually was. Anyway, liven up your future anime watching by looking out for these boxes yourself. Oh, and back to Ouendan 2, the second reason that the first extra stage is legendary is the music. I guess you either have to be Japanese or British to fully appreciate the pure awesomeness of Monkey - I mean, could you see the BBC dubbing a Japanese adaptation of Saiyuki for a reasonably scheduled TV broadcast these days? I thought not. Oh, and Monkey was all kinds of awesome.

Notes on Nymphet

DiGiKerot — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:01:02 +0000

In general, I tend to avoid posting on anything which has been covered excessively elsewhere, which has certainly been the case with the whole Nymphet saga. Still, I figured I'd clarify a couple of issue (such as the name), and drafted out an epic piece of speculation regarding what actually happened in regards to the release. Of course, in the meantime, Seven Seas have released another statement, which at least partially confirms what I expected. Still, I already had a picture to post, so I figured I may as well continue with that. As for Seven Seas second statement, I'm not really all that convinced about them not having read past the first volume - I think the stuff which comes before that is rather more telling. Whilst the likes of RightStuf and Amazon will take anything, it's the B&M stores which manga publishers really look for when it comes to sales. If the larger bookstore chains aren't going to take the book, then you'd be hard pushed to break even on it. Basically, even if they'd got the first book out they'd probably still end up having to cancel the series due to excessive costs. Given that's the case, they may as well take the route which isn't going to cause them grief with retailers. Frankly, at this point, if they'd actually gone ahead and released the book, the company would probably be screwed - they'd have made retailers very cautious about picking up their future releases, and probably would have ended up getting an awful lot of negative press. By not releasing it at all, they anger a lot of fans. The thing is, half the people getting really irate about it probably wouldn't have bought it anyway, and of the remaining a lot of them will probably just shrug it off - if not now, then certainly within six months. As for the rest, well, they are well within their rights to boycott the company - if anyone feels that strongly about it and wants to do so, then I respect them for it - but given how niche a lot of Seven Seas books are at the moment there probably wouldn't be that much overlap anyway. Personally, I'm too interested in Seven Seas novel line to get all indignant about this (though I wasn't really interested in the title anyway). Well, that and I totally understand why Seven Seas would choose to pull the plug on the matter, as frustrating a situation as it might be for some - I don't really expect someone to destroy their company over something like this.

Scrapped Princess: Requiem for the Infidels (Book 3)

DiGiKerot — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:50:57 +0000

Can someone please tell me why, exactly, this book has a picture of Full Metal Alchemists Alex Louis Armstrong on the cover? Really, given I don't really like the Japanese art for the novels (external or internal), I don't mind them mucking around with the covers, but they should at least make them make sense. Anyway, it turns out that I've forgotten to actually review the second book. If I'd realised this earlier, maybe I'd not have ended up procrastinating over this post for a whole week after reading the book trying to think of another way to say the same thing. Which is, basically, "it's crap, but not AS crap as the last book". Essentially, there is a steady but very noticeable improvement as the series is progressing. The first book was pretty much at the level of bad fan-fiction. The second book had its moments, but a lot of it still had a fairly fanfiction-y taste to it. This one, well, it manages to shed pretty much all of that taste, leaving it as simply being a fairly mediocre fantasy novel. There's nothing really bad about it as such, but there's nothing interesting or remarkable about it either - it's not interesting because its bad, and it's not interesting because it's good. In fact, the only thing which makes it remotely interesting is comparing it to the anime version (which, as with previous volumes, significantly improved on the material in my opinion). For those who have seen the anime version, this book covers the story where our heroes, along with the rather unusual Mauser Inquisitor Berkins (who I'd have thought would be the guy on the cover if he didn't look exactly like his anime counterpart in the internal images) stumble across a hidden religious group worshipping a fake Scrapped Princess. Ultimately, the book ends on pretty much the same note as the anime version does, but the progression on the way there is somewhat different. The only thing I really feel like noting about it is that Raquel, who was pretty much cast to the side after a few episodes, actually gets to be useful in the novel. I guess if the books continue improving at the rate they are previously, they might actually turn into a good read somewhere around the fifth book. I fear, however, there'll probably be a relapse before that point.

My-ZHiME Zwei 3

DiGiKerot — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:45:51 +0000

I don't really have all that much to actually say about this episode - I'm sure that a torrent of varied and far more in-depth opinions on the episode will follow shortly in other parts of the blogosphere. Largely, I'm just throwing this out there because (a) I've blogged every other volume of the ZHiME DVD release, and (b) R8 pretty much challenged me to actually get the LE figure to stand upright... Still, I guess since I'm posting I should at least say something about the actual episode first. Well, the service-heavy first part of the episode feels really, really out of place. I guess if you are doing an OAV series based on a popular otaku series full of female characters it's the kind of thing you probably feel obliged to do, particularly given that the actual TV series is really rather restrained in that regard, but that doesn't stop it from coming across as slightly too heavy-handed filler material. Not that ZHiME has ever taken itself THAT seriously - it's always been a fun and silly series - this just feels slightly too excessive and really, really at odds with the tone of the rest of the episode. Other than that, the rest of the episode is really good stuff. Nao is, as always in ZHiME, awesome. Onto the figure. Well, it's not really worth talking about as a figure - its cheap and tatty, made of nasty, rubbery plastic. I guess the sculpt is OK - it'd probably make a nice figure if it was made of higher-grade material and actually had a decent paint job, but as it is it is pretty rubbish. At least the plastic isn't quite as rubbery as the previous volumes figure... Still, it's one of those figures which has been sculpted with absolutely no regard for how the owner is actually meant to stand it upright - it comes with a generic CMs-style trading figure stand, but the figures pose is such that it's not really suitable for getting it to stand. None-the-less, I've managed it - badly - but since it's been standing that way for almost 24-hours now with no issue I guess it'll stay stood that way. What I've ended up doing is running the straight pole between Arikas cape and arm, with her front foot resting upon the smallest latch (with the heel hooked over the top). That keeps it upright and takes the weight. It should stay in that pose assuming the weight isn't enough to push the latch down the poll. They are advertising some other random tat in the leaflets accompanying the DVD. For all the junk that we see from browsing assorted news and merchandise sites, a cursory glance through the listing on Yahoo! Auctions tends to reveal a whole layer of additional merchandise you probably would otherwise never know existed. An awful lot of this stuff is advertised on leaflets bundled into DVD releases - like this attractive Orgel (is it bad that I only know that word due to Shana? ^^;) and Blue Sky Sapphire set. Hmmm, lovely. The Penguin commands you to buy Xenoglossia

Not quite the Nanoha car...

DiGiKerot — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:38:18 +0000

If you've never heard of the Nanoha car, I'm kind of surprised you are reading a site like this. Really. In any case, if you really haven't heard of the Nanoha car, go google it or something. Anyway, now that we've gotten that out the way, I think you'd agree that it's something most of us could only dream of ever owning or driving, not least because it'd be rather embarrassing to be seen driving it. Still, this last week Microsoft has released their latest 360 racing game, Forza 2, which among a whole batch of really anal tuning and upgrade options, has a nice paintwork editor. Unusually for a 360 game of the genre, Forza was released in Japan first. Of course, Japan promptly got to producing cars based on all the usual subjects. Well, okay, iDOLM@STER is probably the most represented series, but given that ALL Japanese 360 owners are iMAS fans (lets face it, there's not much other reason for them to have bought a 360), it's not all that surprising. The Lucky Star, Haruhi, Rozen Maiden and Gurren Lagann cars were fairly hot on their heels, though. One thing I should point out, though - those images aren't just bitmap images pulled off the web and uploaded into the game. Any decal used has to be assembled out of the basic shapes available in the games livery editor. These images are assembled by piling up to a thousand of these shapes atop of each other. Whilst the game does provide you things like basic character sets and some weird-but-useful shapes like flames and other car pimping standards, complicated images like those are essentially assembled using just the basic shapes shown above. So, anyway, seeing what the Japanese have been churning out, I couldn't help but grab myself a copy of the game and have a go at it. Curious how it turns out? Read on! Of course, the first thing to is is decide what to actually put on the car. Not many of those images you see are entirely new - most of them are based on existing images. My original intention for my car was to use an image of Rin from Fate/Stay Night, red and white silhouette-style. However, when browsing the images on Omnis Gurren Lagann 10 post, I decided I'd plump for the picture of Nia from the eyecatch. Image stolen from Omni ^^; Anyway, first things first, I had to clean up the image a bit and extend it off the top and left hand sides so I had something clean to work with. Then came the hard part. Well, I say, hard, but it's really just time consuming, and when I say time consuming, I mean six to seven hours of time consuming. Still, six to seven hours later, and I had a nice decal to apply to my cars in the future. For the record, the image of Nia alone consists of just over 350 layers, with everything other than Nia being extra on top of that. The only shapes I used were the ones pictured on the previous page - all those black borders were produced by layering objects of different sizes, shapes and colours on top of each other. Yes, it was a bit of a headache. Anyway, the end result looks pretty good. It looks nicer than a lot of the other custom jobs out there, anyway. I still have around 500 layers to play with on each side of the car, and the top and bonnet I still have around 800 layers free on, so I can add some additional touches at a later date if I really feel like it. I suppose at some point I should actually get around to, you know, actually racing the car or something... Anyway, one last shot of that decal. (And if you are wondering why I didn't do a Yoko car, there's been so many of the things done already that I figured I'd do something else)

RunningKid wants this car...

DiGiKerot — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 23:10:21 +0000

Or, Token Entry! Yeah, I've not posted for a whole week. Frankly, there hasn't really been anything going on I've particularly felt has been worth talking about. Admittedly, I've not really been very proactive about things - I've been losing inordinate amounts of time to the timesink known as Forzas decal editor, and just about the only anime I've actually watched this week was a couple of R2 Code Geass DVDs yesterday - but it would have been nice if there was at least some news which was actually, you know, interesting or worthwhile (or not a hoax). Still, I've had a pretty productive day today, so whilst I still have a pile of notes I need to write up before hand, I have a few random (but not really interesting) subjects to actually talk about this week. Huzzah! Or maybe not.

All the fun of the Fair

DiGiKerot — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:23:13 +0000

These hilariously crap Pika-things were spotted yesterday at the local towns Summer Fair. I'm sure to all those who don't live in Rural England, this will probably sound all quaint and exciting, conjuring up all sorts of images of jam-making contests and oversized vegetables. The reality isn't quite so interesting - it's really just a bad excuse for some over-priced junkfood and crappy carnival games stuffed full of bad, bootleg prizes. I suppose, now that I think of it, to a certain degree it's pretty similar to all those random festivals we get in anime shows, only in exchange for lots of cute girls dancing around in yukatas, we get random charities trying to flog random jumble. For some strange reason, I feel ripped off. Anyway, I should probably point out that those Yellow Rats were about the most authentic thing on that stand - for hooking one, you apparently won a prize. The stand was decorated with PS2, PS3 and 360 games, but oddly enough no-one was winning any of them. Well, I say oddly, but anyone who spends any amount of time around videogames would easily have spotted the fact that the boxes were all badly-made mock-ups. In any case, yeah, these events are really kind of lame. Aside from the chance to take some pictures of some really old British cars first hand (this'll prove invaluable as reference material if I ever get around to restarting my visual novel), the only reason I ever really attend these events is to, well, look at bootleg toys (they're funny ^^;) and to browse the jumble stands for items of proto-fandom - that is, anime related items from prior to when anime "became" anime (which, in UK terms, is about 1992). It's at such events in previous years that I picked up my copy of Techno Police and the Once Upon a Time hatchet-job of Windaria - which, even edited, was not only a great movie but still horrifically inappropriate for children. Unfortunately, it was slimpickings on the later this year - we've finally gotten to the point were there are enough used DVDs to sell that they only tend to bring VHS cassettes of things which might actually sell, rather than just the random crap they have in previous years. Pretty disappointing, really.

Sunrise: The Boardgame

DiGiKerot — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:30:08 +0000

You know, back when I wrote my explanation of the concept of Idolmaster Xenoglossia, I was largely being tongue-in-cheek about how much Sunrise has been recycling plot elements in recent years. I mean, I love their shows and everything, but even they must realise by now that it's getting to be a bit of a joke. Anyway, when I was browsing through Omni's episode summary for this weeks episode this morning, as I tend to do on a Tuesday, I couldn't help but shake my head a little at what it revealed. In any case, we can cross out point 10 of my Xenoglossia guide as having being done now. This got me thinking about all the clichés in present recent Sunrise shows, and I have distilled the very essence of Sunrise down into board game form. Grab yourself a D6 and a few friends (oh, and find something to use as tokens) and you too can go on your very own magical Sunrise journey. Heck, drop the friends and just take a note of what tiles you fall on and you too can outline the plot to your very own Sunrise adventure serial!

More fun with Melonpan!

DiGiKerot — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:02:24 +0000

Hmmmmm, chocolate melonpan..... Now with a creamy orange filling ^______^ Since my previously documented attempt at baking melonpan, I've been messing around with and combining assorted recipes found on the interweb in an attempt to formulate one which actually works. I'm getting closer to snacktacular perfection with each attempt. It's mostly down to improving my inadequate technique now, methinks. Anyway, I'll try and get around to posting my recipe over the weekend when I've had time to write it up, so those with superior culinary talents can try their hand at it.

I'll Be Your Handkerchief

DiGiKerot — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:02:18 +0000

I think I've probably watched more anime in the last two days than I have in the last two months. This isn't really a lack of interest, more a culmination of other things. Things like work eating up an awful lot of time, videogames, stuff I want to watch on TV (Doctor Who was awesome this weekend) and other commitments result in me not really setting aside all the much time for watching anime. Then there have been supply issues with certain Geneon releases at my favorite crack, errr, DVD retailer (and I am one of those weird people who watch the vast majority of their anime on DVD) means that I've not yet gotten any of my releases from the last two months yet - and that's a good 20 or so disks at my normal purchasing rates. Thankfully, most of that stuff has now shipped, but it'll still be a week or two before I see most of it. That isn't to say that I haven't got anything else I can be watching - even just looking at DVDs, I've got hundreds (well, OK, that's probably thousands) of disks I could, and would like to, sit and rewatch at some point. The thing is, I'd feel kind of guilty about delving into that pile whilst I still have the dreaded Backlog. Now, the thing about The Backlog is that, well, it's all things I'm procrastinating over viewing for one reason or another. The last couple of days, however, I've been trying to force myself to watch some of this stuff. As I've mentioned, there's a few reasons why I end up procrastinating over watching titles. I mean, one of them is simply that I've gotten to the point where I can't prioritize things anymore. It's not that any of this stuff isn't good, but it results in me staring at things for so long that, well, it gets to the point that it clashes with something else I need to do timewise. Sounds stupid, but it happens quite frequently. Often I just give up early and find something entirely different to do. So, I've made some motions to actually break this deadlock. Today, I watched Ghiblis Ocean Waves. Movies always, always sit around for ages. I mean, I have a six year old copy of Grave of the Fireflies which I've been putting off because, well, I hear its really depressing, and I don't really feel like putting myself in that kind of mood. Generally, though, it's just a time thing. I mean, I look at the box and it'll say something like 90 minutes (or, more frequently, 120). It's not like a TV show or an OAV where I only need thirty minutes to watch an episode, that's a long period of time to set aside in one go. Still, Ocean Waves is only actually 72 minutes long, so that's not too bad. It's a thoroughly pleasant movie, actually. There isn't a huge amount going on, but it's nicely animated and all that. It's worth watching for all those who like the whole slice-o-life thing, anyway. Then there was Kannazuki no Miko, or at least the last volume of it. I'd never previously seen the last episode. To be honest, given how people talk about it, I was kind of worried that I might have liked it, and felt that, somehow, it might have invalidated all the time I'd spent stressing the fact that it's only worth watching for comedy value - predominantly due to how ludicrously over-melodramatic and schizophrenic the show is. Ultimately, I didn't really need to be worried about it. I spent pretty much the whole thing in hysterics over the dialogue. I'm sure it should have been all dramatic and moving and all that, but, really, I found it all so overdone and the dialogue so cheesy that, well, I couldn't help but laugh. My favourite line, coincidently, had to be Himeko telling Chikane that she'd "be her handkerchief", which aside from going someway to explaining the title of this post, I still can't help laughing at. The final volume of Hajime no Ippo was, however, was something I knew I'd enjoy. All the previous volumes had been top priority, watched as soon as they landed, as it's such a great show. Being a movie length TV special I guess puts it into the same category as Ocean Waves, but that's only part of it - the closing instalments of long series of such quality always hang around for ages. I guess it's just a case of finding it really, really depressing knowing that there isn't any more of it to follow, and so I want to put off watching the end of it (come to think of it, didn't Akito same much the same in Nadesico?). It's even worse with Ippo, knowing that there's so much more manga out there, and as such it'd be something of an anti-climatic ending. It's just depressing to think about watching it. But, still, I forced myself to get it over with, and, indeed, it was fantastic. Alas, however, that's it over and done with. Then there was Infinite Ryvius. This was one of those shows I started watching back when I amused myself by posting episode reviews of really, really old shows (infact, this blog started as an excuse to watch some of the stuff I'd had backlogged for years - needing something to talk about forced me to watch them). Most of those shows have been stuck in viewing limbo since I stopped doing that, as I try and figure out if I want to say anything more about it, or if I should just go ahead and delete those old posts, or just forget about them entirely. In the end, it was just a case of saying "sod it", and watching those closing ten episodes in one go. Not talking at length about them isn't going to kill me or anything. I have to say, there's something refreshingly contrary about a show which, basically , takes a bunch of kind-of likeable characters only to systematically make you hate every single one of them. It's not really the done thing these days, given that the character goods market relies on having characters you can actually sell goods for. It's a pretty fun show regardless of how much you hate the characters - you spend your time wondering if Spineless Guy will be able to do something about Control Freak, or if Religious Nut is going to get any more psychotic. Really, it's like watching a train wreck where you keep watching just to see if things get even worse, and it the characters do something to make you hate them more. And that makes it awesome. Still, that's only a very small chunk of my backlog taken care of. I suppose I should find something else to watch from the backlog before the impending deluge of new releases...

ADV License 5cm Per Second

DiGiKerot — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:59:08 +0000

It's not remotely surprising given ADVs history with Shinkais previous works, but Anime on DVD are confirming that ADV have grabbed his latest too, with some kind of theatrical release coming prior to DVD release in December. I have to admit, I really wasn't a fan of Voices of a Distant Star - I kind of just saw it as someone who'd rewatched Gunbuster one too many times putting some basically animated characters and clunky CG robots over some beautifully drawn backgrounds. The Place Promised, however, totally won me over - I thought it was an absolutely outstanding (and utterly gorgeous) movie which I really, really need to rewatch now that I've upgraded my AV equipment. So, I'm pretty excited about 5cm Per Second. I have to admit, I've not watched any of the content that they released online, figuring I'd rather watch it all in one go, so I've not had my enthusiasm dampened as a lot of people seem to have, but as long as it's pretty I'm be happy.

You can see it in her eyes...

DiGiKerot — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:42:26 +0000

The image above is taken the ending credits of Top wo Nerae 2! What precisely is interesting about it you may ask? Well, I suppose it shows that I've been watching Top 2!, via Bandai Visuals R1 DVD release. Yes, it is ludicrously expensive, but some shows are worth it, and frankly I like their comparatively petite subtitles. Combined with the fantastic video quality, well, it's a pretty orgasmic experience on a decent AV set-up. It's just a shame that only my first disk has actually turned up thus far. But that isn't really why I'm mentioning this - the real reason is because I've not had a post for a few days. Well, OK, that isn't really why I'm mentioning it either (though I'd be lying if I said it wasn't at least part of the reason) - what actually piqued my interest was her eyes. You see, anyone who has seen Top 2! will know that, usually, Nonos eyes look like this The more observant among you have probably been waiting for me to make the obvious point since that first question mark, but for those who aren't paying attention I'll point it out anyway - Nono has Nia eyes, only two and a half years before they were Nia eyes. This, I think you'll agree, isn't interesting in the slightest. Yes, it has been a slow week.

Super Summer Preview 2007, Hyper Tedium

DiGiKerot — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:53:16 +0000

It's that time of year again, when the weather starts to get warmer, and the Akiba-dwellers thoughts turn more towards loli than ever. It's also that time of year that, once again, I get to churn out an easy post consisting of little but inaccuracies, crazy genre-biased opinions and information pulled almost exclusively from other anime blogs. Yes, it's time to take a quick look through the Summer anime line-up! Traditionally chock-full of love comedies, harem shows and lolis, is this year going to be any different? Not really. Here in the UK, we have a thing we know as Trainspotters. Rather than what certain movies may have you believe, the life of a trainspotter isn't about Obi Wan Kenobi on crack, rather they are regarded in the same kind of derogatory tones as, well, Star Trek or anime nerds. That's because, well, they spend their free time standing around looking for trains. Tetsuko no Tabi is apparently about some guy who has travelled to every train station in Japan, which doesn't quite make him a trainspotter, but it doesn't really make him much better. The show follows him as he drags a manga artist around with him on his station-hopping "adventures" - quotation marks intentional, as I'm really not sure how long they'd be able to sustain interesting stories around the theme. I suppose the fact that Densha Otoko already took one of the more obvious ones doesn't do much to help it. It might be a fun series if it's fairly short, but I can imagine it'll get dull fairly quickly. Nanatsuiro Drops follows some guy who, thanks to a mysterious beverage, afflicts himself with a strange ailment which turns him into a stuffed ram at night. I'm not entirely sure how he is supposed to cure himself of this affliction, but being based on an eroge I'd imagine it has a lot to do with, errr, ramming under-age girls in uncomfortable positions. Really, just for once I'd like to see one of these buggers poison themselves. That'd teach them for drinking random things. As it is, it's sending out the wrong message to otaku everywhere - drink everything you can get your hands on and, one day, you too might get to pork a loli! Maybe it's really all part of some nefarious government scheme to filter out the undesirables in society? More seriously, Nanatsuiro Drops looks to be the kind of show which is targeted at a very narrow, specific audience - one which doesn't include me. I kind of feel there isn't any real point in listening to (or reading) anything I have to say on the matter since, well, I'm entirely biased against it. If I was at least to try saying something level-headed about it, I'd say that the crazy story strikes me as trying just a little too hard. I mean, I realise that there are an awfully large number of eroge released on a weekly basis, and that anything not from the likes of Key, Age or Type-Moon needs to go to great lengths to differentiate themselves, but Noiji Ito character designs and a crazy-stupid plot? I have to wonder if they are covering for substandard content. Not that I intend to tune in to find out. E could stand for Excitement, or it could stand for Excellent, or could be Effing-awesome. Unfortunately in the case of Code-E, it seems to stand for Electromagnetic, thanks to the heroine emitting electronics-disturbing waves whenever her emotions run high. Wasn't there a character in Aquarion like that? I can't say it looks particularly interesting - it's another love-comedy, presumably of the slightly wacky variety. It's been more than a little overdone in recent years, and the "comedy" part rarely, if ever, works for me. Moetan apparently makes Japes feel stabby, or at least those which bought into it do. This probably isn't good news for me since, indeed, I do own a copy of the original Moetan book. In my own defence, it wasn't purchased in order to improve my vocabulary, or to look at all the "moe" pictures, but rather to laugh at faux-RPG battle menus offering such enticing options as "go berserk with wet pants" - and it WAS a funny book for someone natively versed in English. A show stuffed full of engrish is potentially utterly hilarious - for one episode at least. The thing is that, well, the book was funny because of how crazy a lot of the example sentences actually were. I can't see us getting the same quality of humour from within the refines of an actual show where you'd think the opportunity to make thinly disguised references to Dragonball and Doraemon will be considerable hampered. I've been mentioning Bacanno! in pretty much every seasonal preview since it was announced over year ago, and now it's finally upon us. It's this seasons best chance for a good adventure show where the main male character isn't some vessel meant to make otaku feel like they have a chance to get some loli-sausaging action, yet still has vaguely attractive character designs. For me, that counts for a lot. Anyway, how can a show set primarily in 30's New York about immortal alchemists in a Highlander-esque cannibalism situation be bad? The books are reportedly terrific as well (hopefully if Seven Seas release of Vamp!, by the same author, sells well they'll pick them up). Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei interests largely because of Akiyuki Shinbos involvement (speaking of which, I need to get around to watching the last episode of Tsukuyomi once I've finished this entry). From what I've read about it, though, I can't imagine it being a whole lot of fun for someone like me - whilst the offbeat humour certainly appeals, the headache-inducing punnery would probably be too much for me to take. I'm curious to see how many Shinbo-isms make it into this show, though - it could either make something with a far broader appeal, or totally ruin it. Others have already mentioned the unusual number of sequels we have been seeing recently. I don't really see the point in talking at length about any of them, though I will mention that I fail to see any real point in Higurashis character design tweaks. They aren't, at least, as painfully generic as those from the PS2 version of the games, but fattening what seems to have occurred does make them rather less interesting - Rena's arms may have looked like they'd break in half if she tried to actually use that blade in anger, but at least they were distinctive. That's not to mention it's about the eight-bazillionth set of character designs Higurashi has seen. Nothing else is really registering as something that seems worth commenting on to me at the moment, and I've warbled on randomly for long enough as it is. I'll come back to the others later if I can think of something to say about them, but right now I have anime to be watching ^__^ Oh, and apparently ADV have licensed Tokyo Majin Kenpucho, including the second season starting in the summer. Given ADV have been throwing around licenses thick and fast the last couple of weeks, you have to wonder what they're saving for AnimeExpo...

A Random note about Xenoglossia

DiGiKerot — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:30:54 +0000

I was browsing some of the screencaps from the most recent episode of Xenoglossia when this one jumped out at me, or rather the writing on the coffee machine on the right did. For the katakana impared, it reads "ユメミヤコーヒー", or Yumemiya Coffee - presumably a reference to ZHiMEs heroine. It's not like this is the first reference to HiME/ZHiME the show has made - aside from Erstin, a few of the supporting cast members have their names borrowed from the shows spiritual forbearer - it's just not something I'd likely pick up on whilst actually watching the show when there's things like subtitles and dialogue to divert my attention. Something being waved right in front of your face is one thing, but this ones a bit more subtle. Still, I love this kind of pointless stuff ^^; The Japanese, coincidently, picked this up after episode 9, which in hindsight was a far more blatant appearance... Coincidently, is there any way short of having her wear a Turiavita t-shirt could they make it any more obvious that Yukiho is a double-agent?

It Shore is Purty

DiGiKerot — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:14:04 +0000

Thanks must go out to Ender - not for reminding me that Ateleir Iris 3 was out - Jeff did that a couple of weeks ago - but for reminding me that I needed to order Grim Grimoire. It kind of amuses me that both Jeff and Ender picked up AI3 in the place other other games (particularly given that they were both distro'd via Atlus). I'm kind of slacking when it comes to keeping up with the release schedules at the moment ^^; I have a horrid habit of buying RPGs just to stick in the pile of games I'll probably never get around to playing (or at least finishing). It kind of goes back to the PSOne days, I guess, where I was late in getting a PSOne which could play US games, and wasn't wealthy enough to pick up everything I wanted immediately. I missed out on a few games I'd have really liked, and payed through the nose to get some of the others. These days, I have a habit of buying pretty much everything remotely interesting (which is about 90% of all RPG output for me) immediately in case something I really want goes out-of-print before I pick it up. I still miss a few things now and again (US GBA SRW:OG, for example), but honestly I've probably got more games than I'm likely to ever get around to finishing given I'm backlogged with other forms of entertainment as well (it may surprise people, but I do actually read a lot as well). Coincidently, my game of the year thus far has been THE iDOLM@STER - I've clocked up crazy-hours on that game. I guess that goes some way to explaining my interest level in Xenoglossia being a lot higher than a lot of the rest of anime fandom. Oh, and if anyone is wondering about that Negima game in the pile, I'll get around to reviewing it eventually. From the hour I have played, though, I can tell you that it's a not particularly great SRPG affair. Anyway, one game which arrived yesterday and ended up jumping straight to the top of my backlog, and into my 360, is Trusty Bell ~Chopin no Yume~ (Chopins' Dream), which is going to be released in the US as Eternal Sonata. I think you'd probably have to play the full game, with it's cut scenes and more expansive environments, to really appreciate it, but this really is the most downright beautiful game I've ever played. It's not just from a technical standpoint, though it certainly is impressive enough in that regard, it's that it has the visual design to match it. Absolutely everything looks beautiful, to the point where I've found myself stopping on several occasions just to admire things. It really needs to be seen in it's full, HD glory. The actual story to the game is kind of odd. I mean, I'm playing it in Japanese, and my minimal (at best) grasp of the language doesn't really help me, nor does the fact that the opening (which is probably one of the most cut-scene intensive ones I've seen outside of Xenosaga) has a habit of jumping around a lot, but even setting those aside it's still odd. Basically, the game starts three hours before the death of Chopin - not a fictional character, but the actual composer Frederic Chopin. He's bedridden with tuberculosis, and the game makes sure to point out the fact that he is 39 years old, just to ensure it's clear that he's about to die. Anyway, on his deathbed, he starts dreaming of the fantasy world in which the game is actually set. Of course, if playing a game in which you know one of the playable characters is going to die before the end (yes, Chopin is controllable in battle - he's a melee fighter using a sword-sized conductors baton to beat his foes) wasn't melancholic enough, the games opening movie actually starts with the games 14 year-old, Aya Hirano-voiced heroine Polka committing suicide by throwing herself off a cliff. I can't wait see the actual context for that scene... If that wasn't depressing enough, Polka is something of an outcast - she can use magic, and given that in the world it's set it's a side effect of incurable illnesses which are rumoured to be contagious, people aren't really keen to go anywhere near her. Still, upon meeting Chopin, she sets out along with the other characters she meets to spend the rest of her days doing what she can. Even if you completely set aside the staggering visual quality, Trusty Bell is still a really great game. It has a distinctive story (come on, you can't call that generic) and an unusual combat system which kind of melds turn-based with Tales-series styled action elements. For those with US and EU 360s, it's definitely worth a look when it comes out in English. And, yes, it is better than Blue Dragon.

Seven Seas license Zero no Tsukaima...something

DiGiKerot — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 21:44:40 +0000

The news story on the front page of AoD is unspecific, and ANNs AnimeExpo page for Seven Seas seems to be broken, but apparently Seven Seas have licensed something related to ZnT. I'm going to err on the optimistic side and assume it's the novels rather that the manga adaptation. Which is cool and everything. I assume someone who is actually at AX will post far more accurate information later, but since I get insanely pumped about light novel translations I felt the need for some release. All the other AX news has been decidedly uninteresting, though. -edit- Oh, Animeonline is saying it's the novels which are licensed. Cool beans and all that. Well, assuming you aren't still boycotting SS over Kodomo no Jikan. -further edit- Not worth an entirely new post, but ANN has their Seven Seas report up now, and it mentions that Seven Seas are also going to publish the next three Boogiepop novels (thats four through six), which is certainly good news.

Hell Freezes Over...

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:45:20 +0000

It's coming was foretold in the days of yore. Many believed it would never come. Others still watched as it's brethren fell to the great hiatus, whilst others switched their allegiance. After the passing of many moons, it was forgotten to all but a few worshippers, eagerly await it's arrival. And then it came, and the apocalypse must surely be upon us. Yes, ADV have actually published another volume of Yotsuba&. Oh, and Gunslinger Girl as well, but no-one really cares about that. In any case, it's a fun volume - there isn't really much to say about it other than the fact that, well, it's actually out there now, almost two years since the last volume, and that the fifth book is currently scheduled for October. People can stop moaning about ADV sitting on it now, and move on to moaning about something else (though Kurau isn't an option now, either).

Geneon license Lyrical Nanoha

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:54:19 +0000

Taken fresh from AoDs forums (posted by Chris B, so I'm assuming its true), Geneon have finally confirmed that they have licensed Lyrical Nanoha. It's not unexpected, really, given there's already been hints recently in the form of domain name registrations and the like. That said, Chris phrased things nice and ambiguously by saying that they'd licensed "both series". I don't know about you, but to me I'd take "both" as meaning "two", meaning they've licensed the original series and A's, but not the presently airing StrikerS, and other comments from those there seem to be suggesting the same. If I hear confirmation either way I'll update this post, but for now I'm off to watch the Doctor Who season finale... Oh, and they have the Shana OAV as well. -edit- Yeah, no StrikerS for now, at least. -edit 2- AnimeDiet is liveblogging some of the panels, it's probably worth keeping an eye on for news.. ADVs panel should be starting around now. Will they announce Kanon? Will it be the KyoAni or Toei version? Who knows?!

ADV license Gurren Lagann

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 18:27:27 +0000

Oooooooooohhhhhhh yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh! It's sure to annoy certain parts of anime fandom, but screw them, I'm stoked. Also - lol KyoSora. -edit- Unrelated, but not really worth a completely new post - RightStuf have Victorian Romance Emma. Kind of an odd choice, but then that's what Rightstuf are all about.

Sea Slugs interview Hung

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:02:24 +0000

In the first of what looks to be an interesting series of features, the good chaps at Sea Slugs! anime blog have interviewed Hung, the author of BasuGasuBakuhatsu, the creator of Animenano, and the guy who sent me a killer L mii. In any case, go give it a read. It's fun stuff. Of course, I'm only really mentioning this because Hung says nice things about me in that interview. Well, he says "things" about me anyway - I'm going to choose to take them as being nice. In any case, it gives me a good excuse to come up with a new promotional poster! Huzzah! For those who haven't seen the previous effort, you can see it here. Also, I really do have an inflatable Fate/Stay Night sword. Really.

Funimation license Negima!?, Darker Than BLACK

DiGiKerot — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:40:31 +0000

Fresh from lurking for forum updates again, the Funimation AX panel is underway and they've announced a few things. I guess Negima!? (thats the SHAFT/Shinbo version) isn't too surprising, but Darker Than BLACK wasn't really one I was expecting. They've made a bunch of other, relatively unexciting announcements as well - xxxHolic TV, the second season of Tsubasa, Jyu Oh Sei and they've grabbed Love Hina now that Bandai Ents license has expired.

FMP broke my brain

DiGiKerot — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:39:55 +0000

If there's one thing about anime you really should try to avoid thinking too hard about, it's the use of language - or, rather, the fact that in most shows everyone talks in nothing but Japanese no matter how illogical that seems. Just look at Code Geass, where all the British characters speak in Japanese, even when there are no Japanese people around - indeed, Lulu apparently speaks Japanese well enough that none of the 11's knew he was British until it was pointed out to them. It's completely illogical that they'd do that, of course - I mean, if it was a British LA show about the Japanese invading the UK, the Japanese people would probably speaking Japanese with English subtitles. Generally, though, that isn't done all that often in anime, and because they rarely bring your attention to language it's something I can largely ignore - I just assume they are speaking in their native language and that the Japanese is just for the sake of the lazy audience. Of course, matters end up getting considerably more complicated when you start mixing nationalities. I was watching the opening episodes of Black Lagoon yesterday, and I can't honestly say I can think of any situation in which a brow-beaten Japanese middle-management type would be able to converse so effortlessly with a rag-tag band of multi-ethnic pirates - the chances of every single character he happens to encounter in those episodes being able to follow Japanese perfectly are, well, near enough zilch. But that's nothing compared to the last few episodes of Full Metal Panic:TSR. For one thing, everyone at Mithril speaks in Japanese, despite the fact that the only Japanese member of Mithril of importance seems to be Sousuke, who spent most of his youth in middle eastern warzones, meaning that Japanese probably isn't even his first language. So, we could assume they are all speaking, say, English or something - but then none of them having any problems talking to Chidori, and there's never been any indication that she is fluent in any language other than Japanese. There's nothing unusual about all that, in the grand anime scheme anyway - at least not until you factor in the fact that all the Hong Kong natives speak in (what I assume is) Cantonese, suggesting that everyone at Mithril really does speak in Japanese. Which wouldn't really make sense. Having that very, very small number of utterly insignificant characters speak in their native tongue really brings attention to how odd the rest of the dialogue is. Then, to confuse matters even more, Gauron leaves all his clues for leading Sousuke to him in English - not, say, Cantonese as per the setting, nor Arabic as would fit their history, nor even Japanese. Of course, when they actually meet up, they are back to speaking to Japanese again, just to confuse us. Amalgam, obviously, all speak in Japanese as well. So, errr, yeah. You really shouldn't think too hard about language in these things. The Tessa OAV was great, coincidently. Sure, the fact that Clouseau subscribes to Newtype USA despite his obviously perfect grasp of Japanese reminds me of my language headaches, but I like Yukana and it's pretty much just a half-hour of her going through her whole range. What I really don't see is the reason why Funimation saw the need to bury it in the Extras menu. I rarely, if ever, bother looking at the extras on anime DVDs. I'd completely forgotten the OAV had even existed, to be honest, so if I hadn't decided to have a look to see what trailers were on the DVD I'd have probably missed it entirely. Even then, it's hidden under a fairly understated option - "bonus OVA". That's fine for us fanboys who know what an OVA is, but I have to think that some casuals will have picked this up and remain completely oblivious to what it actually is. It's pretty stupid not to have put it in the normal running order, with it starting up automagically after episode 13. As it is, they didn't even include it in the running time on the back of the box. There isn't really much to make it obvious that there is an entire extra episode hidden in there. That's even crazier than the last R1 volume of My-HiME, where Bandai Ent put the broadcast version of last the episode in with the regular running order, and the Directors Cut in the extras. Given how bare-bones the HiME DVDs were, by that point a lot of people wouldn't have bothered looking in there. With the Directors Cut essentially being an improved version of the final episode, they should really have swapped them over (as was the case in the Japanese release) - if you were to watch only one of them, would you really want to watch the broadcast version over the DC?

News you won't be reading here today...

DiGiKerot — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:59:32 +0000

I wish to report that I shall not be reporting that another series of Suzumiya Haruhi is reputedly on the cards. Arse. Seriously, though, with half the entries on the anime blog aggregators today being pretty much minor variations of exactly the same post, I figure I need to do the same just to be all trendy and bandwagon-jumpy and all that. On that note, I should probably insert a "Lordy, they aren't making another series of that crap are they? I want more FMP!", just to ensure I jump on the inevitable Haruhi-backlash bandwagon that'll start kicking up a mighty fuss any minute now (no doubt largely consisting of people who were raving over Haruhi twelve months ago). Maybe I should add a "ZOMG! Chidori killed Haruhi!" prediction as well, just in case Kyoani announce a third/forth series of FMP for after Haruhi. But, err, yeah, more Haruhi. Cool beans and all that. I'd probably be happier if someone announced printed English versions of the books (I can't really read at length on a computer screen), but I'll take what I can get. Haruhi has never particularly been my favourite show ever or anything, but it's entertaining enough for me to have bought the R2s. In other over-reported news, I'm kind of looking forward to the LA Negima. No, really - it'll either be surprisingly good, or hilariously awful. That, and despite the fact that he works are completely outside my normal areas of interest, I'm a bit of a Kentaku ^^;

"Chibi Vampire" novel 1

DiGiKerot — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 18:18:59 +0000

Please just hang on a moment whilst I laugh at Tokyopops renaming of Karin again... That's better. Anyway, I think anyone who reads this site on a regular basis knows I don't really get along with gag anime given that I tend to mention the fact that pretty much every viable opportunity (like I'm doing here). I don't really have the same issue with gag manga though - I quite like the stuff. I buy Keroro as soon as a new English volume hits, and I'd say the same about Yotsuba& if there was actually a consistent release schedule. Karin, on the other hand, I started reading because I had this book to read. I do actually kind of like Karin now, though. It is genuinely true that I picked up the first two volumes of the manga just so I'd have the background necessary to give a fair impression of this book, but I have bought more since. That isn't to say it's particularly great - if nothing else, the artwork is weaker than you'd generally expect from a series like this, but it is kind of fun. Which is pretty much what I'd say about the novel. You'd be fairly silly if you were going into a manga spin-off manga like this expecting anything of any substantial quality, but Karin does manage to be better than you would expect. A lot of that is probably down to the fact that it manages to capture the humour of the series about as well as you could in text form - it's a fun read. Nothing big, certainly nothing clever, but fun. What it isn't, however, is something you'd want to read without being familiar with the manga already. This is definitely one for those who are already following the manga and want to supplement their reading a little. Aside from the fact that it only makes minor considerations for those who aren't familiar with the characters, the book does fit fairly snugly continuity wise between events in the second volume of the manga. Whilst the events of the novel are only really mentioned in passing in the manga, it is essentially series canon - anyone who gets really anal about knowing everything about a given series will probably want to read this. As for other features worth commenting on, the art is done by Yuna Kagesaki, the original author of the Karin manga. The art isn't particularly great - some of it is OK, whilst some of it is pretty awful. So, in summary, it's at least worth a look if you are an existing Karin fan. If not, you can feel content knowing you aren't missing anything by not reading it.

Temporary kind-of Hiatus

DiGiKerot — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:27:32 +0000

Well, not so much a hiatus, more me noticing that I haven't posted anything in over a week, and feel the need to mention that I'm not likely to post anything until next weekend at the earliest. This is partially because, well, I've not watched much anime this week, and because nothing interesting enough (to me) to comment on in the last week. There was all the nerding over E3 conferences and the like going on mid-week as well. Then, well, I've started on the nerdish endeavour that is re-reading of all the Harry Potter books prior to the release of The Deathly Hallows this weekend. Unfortunately, in my lethargy, I've kind of left it a bit late to start on this, having only started mid-way through yesterday. After squeezing in a trip to see the Transformers movie today (the next opportunity would have been the general previews next weekend, which wasn't going to happen, since the actual general UK release isn't for a couple of weeks yet), I'm a little stretched for time if I want to get through the lot of them - I'm only just about to start on Goblet of Fire, and whilst the print is less dense on the later books, they certainly are long. Which, basically, means I'll not really be online for extended periods of time between now and finishing Deathly Hallows at some point early Saturday morning (yeah, I'll probably do the midnight opening thing - I'm looking to avoid spoilers ^^;). Yup, pretty much all my free time between now and then is likely to be consumed by, well, me reading Potter. Nerdish? Yup, but whatever. Coincidently, I did see the Order of the Phoenix movie earlier in the week. It's pretty good as a movie, but if I'd read the book immediately beforehand I'd probably be a bit more down on it. It's not a particularly great adaptation, really. It probably doesn't help that they've turned the longest book in the series into the shortest film - the HP movies have always been disjointed, and this one is just as bad. The problem is that some of the stuff they left out is the kind of stuff that, well, if hasn't been brought up in the later books certainly will be in Deathly Hallows. Transformers, on the other hand, was big, dumb, loud, explodey. It was also pretty awesome. I'm not sure the second half of the movie lived up the promise of the first half - it kind of went from dumb to dumber right after the rest of the Autobots turned up. Still utterly badass as an action movie - though shaky-cam needs to die a quick and painful death - but it's not exactly something I can see myself still thinking was an amazing movie in a years time. Anyway, that's it for now. I'll probably be back next weekend to discuss whatever news comes out of Otakon. Until then, have fun!

Bandai Entertainment license Code Geass

DiGiKerot — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:33:32 +0000

Excuse me if I don't seem shocked, given that Bandai Ent. seem to have been subtly hinting about it for a while now. Bandai picking up My-ZHiME Zwei isn't exactly shocking, either. As for other Otakon news thus far, Funimation picking up Ouran has been a long time coming, I'm kind of surprised that ADV have picked up the Jing OAVs after all this time, but since I kind-of-liked the TV show then that's OK, and Towards the Terra was a little unexpected. Everything else I can't really bring myself to be interested it. Any, yes, I have read the Deathly Hallows.

More-Otome?

DiGiKerot — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:39:29 +0000

Reports abound that the promotional posters for My-ZHiME Zwei Volume 4 have been seen out in the wild, and is footered by a line of text seemingly pronouncing a "My-ZHiME 0 anime" as the next step of the HiME Project. More ZHiME is perfectly welcome in my book, but others mileage will vary, I guess. Anyway, there's no other news on it than that. Given the title I presume it'll be a prequel, but the timeframe is a huge question mark. Will it be Natsuki, Mai, Shizuru and Harukas school days, or perhaps back to Renas days as an otome, or perhaps even earlier than that? I suppose it'll depend on the format they go for, but they could do anything with it, really. In any case, this announcement at least means I'll be spending more money in the future...

Maggies First Word...

DiGiKerot — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:29:29 +0000

I went to see The Simpsons Movie this evening. To momentarily ground this post in the fandom in which this blog generally revolves, I shall mention that I sat and read Volume 20 of Bleach whilst sitting in the cinema waiting for the movie to start. I really can't remember who most of these characters are anymore, nor why I should particularly care. Those characters I do remember only seem to be getting, at best, a panel or two per volume. Lame. Anyway, to get back to The Simpsons Movie, and to spoil the WHOLE MOVIE (or a minor point which you need to sit halfway through the ending credits to get to, which is kind of worth doing for the Springfield Town Anthem), Maggies first word is.... "Sequel". How... unexciting. I'm really not sure what to say about The Simpsons Movie. One the one hand, I can't remember having seen a more consistently funny movie. I mean, the fact that I laughed more than twice - and not at unintentionally funny moments - makes it significantly more hilarious than pretty much any gag anime in existence, but pretty much every single line of dialogue in the movie is funny. Seriously, I laughed pretty much constantly. The thing is, coming out of the movie, I can't really remember much of what I actually laughed at. The humour, and pretty much the whole movie, is entirely disposable. It's cinematic junk-food, really - in the rush to cram as many jokes as possible into the movie, they've kind of neglected to give it anything else of any other real merit. The plot is disappointingly single-tracked compared to a decent episode of the TV show - there's too much of The Simpsons as an actually family unit, whereas I'd have rather seen more clearly defined subplots for the characters drawing in more of the criminally underutilised supporting cast. Which, as someone who tends to watch at least one episode of The Simpsons every day, is kind of disappointing for me to have to say. It's still worth seeing, particularly for the long term fans who'll get all the injokes and references and will probably get a kick out of spotting random, one-off characters hidden away in the crowd scenes, but it's nowhere near as successful a jump to the big screen as South Park managed.

Pizza Hut Really do Support the Rebellion...

DiGiKerot — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:10:57 +0000

But only at lunchtime, it would seem. This advert was pulled from a UK tabloid newspaper on Friday. I have to admit that I almost sprayed my cola drink (or was it Doctor Pepper? Not that it really matters...) across the page upon seeing it. I do have to wonder if Pizza Hut UK have any inkling of amusement value this could cause a very small percentage of the population (I suppose they probably would have used "Rebellion" rather than "Revolution" if they had). I almost hate reminding people about Code Geass giving all the screaming about the ending of Episode 25 ^^;

Momentary Lapse of Concentration...

DiGiKerot — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:43:06 +0000

I could have sworn I said I wasn't going to order the "+Artbox" version of R1 Higurashi Volume 1 - indeed, I said it was "a little too pedolicious to be something I’d want to keep on my shelves". It seems when placing my orders for that month I completely forgot about it and ordered the artbox anyway. Force of habit, I guess - I'd actually forgotten what it looked like until it turned up today. Me ordering something by accident doesn't make a very interesting entry, I admit. There is actually more to the story, but that doesn't really make things much more interesting, but will be told anyway. You see, my DVD retailer of choice actually had more than a few details getting it into stock, resulting in a few other things I had one order being delayed (and annoying situations like having Rozen Maiden vol. 2 before vol. 1). It also made the shipping box large enough to attract the attention of UK customs resulting in additional customs charges - not to mention the mere act of Customs stamping a box with a charge somehow, magically, added about two weeks to the shipping time. More than that, though, this appears to be the first import package I've ever had that has actually been opened by Customs - or, at least, there was an unusual label slapped on it and the original tape appears to have been cut. Great, of all the things they could have opened. I can just see me having been placed on some kind of super-secret government pedo-watchlist ^^; Of course, I'm now still left with the problem of having somewhere to hide the damn thing. Throwing it out would be a waste, but it's all very pink and eye-catching. Leaving it on display is, well, going to get me even funnier looks than all the DVDs and figures get me already...

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:49:18 +0000

Ah, Xenoglossia, that show that's fated to be remembered as that thing Sunrise produced between seasons of Code Geass. Well, that's making the assumption that somebody (other than myself) actually remembers it - I've not seen the TV ratings, but I have been following the Oricon Anime DVD sales charts since last week. Xenoglossia landed at no. 14 on day of release, before plummeting well and truly out of sight (which, admittedly, is only 20 places). Code Geass volume 7 (which I also bought), released on the same day, hit no. 1 on the day of release, lingered around the upper echelons for a whole week until another spate of releases came out this week. Even then, that only pushed Geass into the lower half of the charts. There doesn't really seem to be many followers in the English-speaking world either. Please note - it's Turiavita. TURIAVITA dammit. Please get it right in future, kthnx Still, enough of talk of lack of taste - either other peoples, or, far more likely, my own - and get on with talking about the DVD release. This first DVD collects the first two episodes of the show at a slightly-cheaper-than-the-rest price, as is pretty usual with Sunrise releases. Infact, it's pretty much the same release pattern as the My-HiME and My-ZHiME DVD releases, down to the extras - the FP is another seiyuu disk, whilst the other extras are a background information booklet and an on-disk omake. That's Nubiums eye next to Yukiho, by the way. Kind of makes her role in the series REALLY obvious when combined with her other in-show actions... The actual episodes of the show are exactly the same as you would have seen at broadcast. Xenoglossia is generally a pretty well animated show anyway, particularly in these two episodes, so it's not really like it needed any retouch or anything - it looks great on DVD as is. Sure, it's not exactly Kyoani or anything, but a lot of the background art is fantastic, and that's the kind of area DVD tends to shine over off-air encodes. Coincidently, like the broadcast version, the OP on episode 2 doesn't have the retarded sound effects they stuck in later episodes. Actually, something which immediately stuck me as odd is that the DVD menu was missing the "information" option you normally find on BV's R2 DVDs - that is, the video clip they have plugging show merchandise and trailering other DVD releases. It turns out that it is on the disk, but they neglected to put the option on the menus - playing through to the end of the second episode brings it up, though. Not that it's particularly interesting - it has the same clip of Haruka and Yayoi trying to sell out My-ZHiME Zwei as is on Code Geass 7 (Sunrise have a habit of doing this - they previously have ZHiMEs' Arika trying to sell Zegapain). Other than that, it's just Sola and Keroro Gunsou. The omake feature is a tour of the boarding house hosted by Haruka and Yukiho. It's mostly just stills - when Haruka and Yukiho actually appear, it's just as heads on sticks (not the decapitated kind of head, either. Lots of recycled footage from episodes of the show, too, but it is at least a good five minutes long. It also has a bathroom scene, but since I'm a jerk I'm not posting any screencaps of that (there're plenty of them in the show as it is). Just in case you are interested in the layout of the place. Where exactly Ioris' bed collapses into is anyones guess. Also note that Yukiho is on the first floor - perfect for, you know, sneaking out... The first pressing bonus is a seiyuu disk, featuring 40 minutes of seiyuu interviews and behind-the-scenes recording footage. Kind of amusingly, Makoto is listed under Turiavita, though I guess that's not exactly a spoiler for anyone following broadcast. Yukiho is listed under Mondenkind, as is Mami (who's only had, like, two lines of dialogue in the whole series - not that she isn't going to magically reappear sooner rather than later...). I've not actually watched the seiyuu disk, though - it's not like I'm likely to grok most of what they are talking about anyway. That said, Yukana is wearing a hat. Wooo! Dramatic hat action! Well, that's pretty much all there is to say about this volume. The first press with volume 2 seems to be a magnet of the school badge, and the omake feature is about iDOLs.

Mikan Watch #1: Shana-tan

DiGiKerot — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 16:35:39 +0000

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, and probably done a comic on it (twice, actually), but the random appearances "Mikan" boxes (that is, the shipping packages for tangerines) in anime shows is one of my favorite anime memes. In my infinite nerdishness (or, rather, the quest for easy content), I have decided that I feel the need to post every time I actually notice one in an anime show. That said, I have to say that I'm starting to think that they are far less prevalent than I'd somehow gotten it into my head that they were, or at least better hidden. Shakugan no Shana-tan, however, makes absolutely no attempt to hide them - they stick them front and centre, nice and obvious. Since I'm on the subject of Shana and memes, I have to admit that the robot being numbered "28" amused me. As someone who watched Gigantor in their youth, I am, of course, of the opinion that 28 is the only robotic serial number worth knowing - particularly if the robot in question is blue.

Mikan Watch #2: Pani Poni Dash

DiGiKerot — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:13:56 +0000

Well, to be fair, it'd be more surprising if PPD didn't have a Mikan box, given the show is essentially Unlimited Meme Works (hell, it even created a few of it's own in the process). As it goes, it actually gives the Mikan box actually significant in the show, if admittedly in something of a McGuffin fashion. I am disappointed that ADVs Vidnotes didn't seem to pick up on it, at least in these episodes.

May Contain Traces of Incest

DiGiKerot — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:56:41 +0000

The British among you will know of the British Board of Film Certification, more commonly referred to simply as the BBFC. For those outside of the UK, basically every piece of video entertainment released in theatres or for the home retail market (with a few exceptions) has to be passed through the BBFC, whom judge its appropriateness and award it an age rating, before release. The BBFC refusing to give a title a certificate effectively means it's banned, though more commonly it results in the title being edited until it makes an appropriate age rating. This happened to a few anime titles back in the 90's - from what I remember, one of the Urotsukidoji sequels had a couple of episode banned outright for having girls who looked just a little too young. What's fun about the BBFC is that they publish their results on their website. If this was just the certificates, it wouldn't be particularly interesting, but they also list "consumer advice", brief notes as to why it gained whatever certificate the title was released as. For example, I've always kind of liked the entry for horror movie Wishmaster, which describes its' violence as "Frequent", "Gory" and "Fantastic", mainly because I choose to take "Fantastic" the wrong way... As for the anime note resulting in my posting this, I'm kind of amused that a couple of episodes of My-HiME got tagged for incest - presumably why those particular episodes registered at a 15 rating (that is, unsuitable for anyone under the age of 15). Of course, that episode doesn't actually contain any actual incest - referential or otherwise - but I guess we can blame Shiho and her "Oni-chan"'s for that. Someone who hasn't actually been paying attention since the first episode probably won't realise that Shiho isn't actually Tates sister. Putting the reputed incest aside, there isn't really anything in the 24th episode of the show which is particularly bad compared to titles with lower certificates (is that episode of My-HiME really any worse than the recent Transformers movie?) Anyway, it's kind of funny to see how people take something which seems to innocuous to people who actually regularly watch anime. There's probably far more amusing entries hidden within the depths of the BBFC website, but it's more effort than I can be bothered with to actually look ^^;

Unfunny Xenoglossia Comic Clearance Special!

DiGiKerot — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 23:01:24 +0000

I should probably be saving this material for the forth season of the Unfunny Meme Comics, but since I've neither got the time nor the inclination to kick that off at the moment, I may as well post these whilst they are still current. Expect spoilers Xenoglossia spoilers and all that, not that people particularly care :P Anyway, Have Fun! Next And More... Yup, keep going... Almost there... And finally...

Further Notes on Shingu

DiGiKerot — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:18:58 +0000

It's nice to see that more people are watching Shingu now that it's nice and cheap. Of course, I myself waited for the thin-pack before giving it a look, so I can't really act all smug about it, but it's nice to see a show which generally generates comments like "WTF is Shingu?!" getting some recognition rather than just becoming another of those post-VHS, pre-digisub shows which disappear into a fog of disinterest. Anyway, my main reason for posting is that, well, certain bloggers have comments disabled. Really, I kind of understand why he'd want to remain anonymous, but disabling comments? Sure, it results in people like me who want to comment having to write entries on their own blogs, which in turn probably gives him a traffic increase, but without those readers being able to directly comment I'm not sure what the advantage of that is. But, to get to the points which I actually wanted to comment on: 1) The OP. Go watch it yourself. Really, it's just tedious. Admittedly, much of the show itself is pretty placid, but the OP itself is a notch or two slower than that. Given so much of the show essentially revolves around the mundane being far more interesting than abnormality, I don't really expect epic space battles and explosions, but at the same time I don't really expect to spend twenty seconds staring at empty sky. If nothing else, it'd have been nice to see some of the actual characters other than Muryou and Hajime. I guess DVD players do at least have chapter skip for these things (just a shame it doesn't work with the ED). Ultimately, part of an OPs job is to make people interested in the show, and given that Shingus bores me to tears, I have to say it fails in that regard. 2) "Nayuta is not a Tsundere". In my previous post on the show I called Nayuta a "typically twin-tailed tsunderekko". In the classic sense of the term, she isn't. As those who follow Lucky Star have probably have had reiterated to them recently, that originally a tsunderekko was a character who started abrasive but ultimately turned all mushy, usually with a fairly clear defining point marking the change. By that definition, Nayuta certainly isn't tsundere. Of course, the term has evolved to encompass characters who are internally deredere even if they are, more often than not, are externally tsuntsun. By that definition, I certainly would class Nayuta as being a tsunderekko. I don't really see how being "proud and shy and traumatized" excludes her from being tsundere - it simply explains why she is tsuntsun. Heck, being Proud is pretty much a defining element of most tsundere characters. Sure, its a stereotype, but, in the end, so is the fact that she wears her hair in twin-tails whilst carrying an oft-combative attitude. Tsundere is just a useful term for getting the general gist of a character across without having to type a lot, and given it's about as general as describing a manga as being "shonen" I don't really see a problem with levelling it at Nayuta. 3) Aoi Yori Aoshi You know, I didn't even enjoy those opening episodes. I sat through the whole original series, simply because I bought it in one go, but Aoi fucking terrifies me. If she were male, or maybe just ugly, she'd probably be flagged as a stalker. In any case, her frightening devotion to someone she'd previously met once (I think?) utterly scares me. The same goes for characters like Midori in Midori no Hibi, by the way - I just don't see the appeal in that kind of character. Frankly, in AYA, I was kind of glad to have the harem distracting from Aoi.

A Look at Higurashi on R1 DVD

DiGiKerot — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:49:57 +0000

I've been meaning to post about this for weeks now, but, honestly, I really, really don't know if such a random collection of observations about a DVD release is actually something of interest to anyone. To get to the point, though, the R1 DVD release of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni is a little on the odd side. For a while I kind of wondered if Geneon had outsourced this to maybe Odex or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case. More likely they decided to cut a few corners on the production of something they are really unsure about selling well. This is what the cover looks like "on the shelves"... I've already talked about the pedorific artbox on a number of occasions, and see no need to go back over that again. The actual initial external appearance of the individual DVD volumes is really at odds with the artbox, though. For those unaware, in Japan Higurashi was released in both retail and rental forms, each with different covers. For the R1 release, they've chosen to use the Japanese rental covers, which sport a negative, often cropped, version of the retail covers splattered with blood. A positive spin on it would be that they are dark and malevolent. A less positive one would be that they are kind of garbled and confused. An honest comment would be that they are fugly. ...and this is the other side of the cover. Upon opening the DVD, the transparent keepcase shows us that, in fact, the cover mercifully has the retail cover on the other side. This isn't really anything new - I remember tj_hans favourite Gatekeepers getting similar treatment way back when - but it's rare to have such a disparate tone between the two version of the cover. I presume that they feel that the rental cover is more likely to illicit interest in those randomly browsing retail space (after all, the cover doesn't really mean much for online sales), but I really have to wonder if it's likely to generate $30 worth of interest. I have my doubts, particularly when it's likely to be shelved next to that artbox for the foreseeable future. Geneon have probably shot themselves in the foot there. The main menu. Sticking the DVD in the player and forwarding to the title screen, what we get is pretty plain. Nothing really problematic with that - I'm not really a fan of silly interfaces or loud noises of DVD menus - but even Geneons pathetically selling release of Hajime no Ippo (wonderful, wonderful show, coincidently) had animated menus. Further curious things to note is that they have seperated the "Setup" and "Extras" menus - a lot of recent Geneon titles have merged the two - and the "Credits" option. The credits option really is just the credits for the show. There's another reason why they are here, but I'll get to that later. Having them accessible from the menu is actually probably more useful than having to go into the show to look at them anyway. For comparisons sake, other recent Geneon releases Fate/Stay Night and Rozen Maiden. The exciting "Extras" menu. The "Extras" menu, as it turns out, is utterly, utterly redundant, as it only has the "previews" option - that is, trailers for other Geneon DVD release, and only three of them too. It seems silly to get the viewer excited for extras (not that I tend to ever watch them) only to have nothing but trailers. They really should have just chopped that redundant menu out for this volume (I'm presuming they might, you know, have a clean OP and ED in future volumes). Getting into the actual show, one can't help but notice that the video is untouched from the Japanese version - that is, no overlays during the actual show (all softsubs), and they haven't replaced the staff credits in either the OP and ED as Geneon normally would. No biggie, really, but its just something else which is kind of unusual on Geneon releases. This, of course, explains why the credits have been plonked into the menu system - it was probably less effort than replacing them in the OP and ED. I suppose it could have been that they didn't actually receive a clean OP/ED for the show, but that seems fairly unlikely. The main menu. The subtitles have honorifics. Prior experience with Geneon releases is that, normally, they don't - unlike Funimation, they don't have a general policy regarding leaving them in. I don't really fall down on either honorifics in subtitles argument, so it doesn't really bother me. They aren't used in the dub, if you are curious (though Renas' repetition at the end of her sentences is really, really odd in English). That's about it, really. There's nothing actually wrong with the DVD - the video is actually really clean, and I didn't notice any jarring encode issues. There's five whole episodes, too.

Unfunny Xenoglossia Comic Clearance Special 2!

DiGiKerot — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:34:19 +0000

Back by popular demand! Well, Runningkid demanded more anyway, so that's at least some demand. Vague spoilers up to episode 19 are contained within. If you've noticed that this one is even wonkier than my normal efforts, it's because I drew if entirely using my graphics tablet rather than on paper. It was just me attempting to be lazy, really... Yes, I realise that this is completely random, but, hey, if I had to be a Master I'd much rather have Saber than some stupid giant robot.

Shortest Anime DVD Ever?

DiGiKerot — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 15:54:44 +0000

No, not really - that award would probably go to something like Fate/Curtain Raiser or one of those other disks designed to sell promotional material to hapless otaku - but at only seven minutes and no forthcoming series to plug it's definitely remarkable in it's lack of length. Of course, that seven minutes includes a minute of so of pretty dead content - that is, production credits and a fairly lingering title card. Still, it's a good thing they packed out the disk with all sorts of exciting extras like a Code Geass trailer and, errr, actually, that's the lot. The whole DVDs contents would fit snugly onto a CD-R without any messing around with re-encoding and the like. It does include two different types of main menu, though! Anyway, Clover was a manga by CLAMP from back in the mid-to-late-90s'. It was published in English by Tokyopop back in the days when they still flopped things, and is long out of print now. I didn't buy so much manga back then (mainly because I was still a student, wasn't working and, well, these things were more expensive back then), so it's not actually something I've read. I'm probably better off that way, as it's one of those works which, along with the likes of X, joins the list of manga that CLAMP have never actually got around to finishing. Anyway, back in 1999 Madhouse produced this short film to be shown with the first CardCaptor Sakura movie, and aside from a not-exactly-clean copy floating around on the 'net a couple of years back it hasn't been seen since. Well, until a couple of months ago when it was released on DVD in Japan. Not that it's particularly exciting, just very pretty (at least when it feels like being animated). It's pretty much just an exercise in combining cel and CG animation, and it holds up pretty well in both regards. Also, Maaya Sakamoto.

DiGiKerot Catalogues his Manga

DiGiKerot — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:18:44 +0000

I can't say it's the most exciting way I've ever spent a bank holiday, but I've finally got around to cataloguing my manga. I wish I could say it had been a comprehensive exercise, but I seem to have missed a box somewhere (if nothing else, I know I've got most of Shirows backlog somewhere). Still, it had to be done. Unlike my methodical approach to keeping up with the DVD release schedule, my manga purchasing is pretty slap-dash - I just go to the store and buy anything it looks like I need to buy. I frequently end up buying random volume 1s which I never actually read if I feel I've not bought enough in a particular trip, I've got quite a few duplicate volumes of things I wasn't sure if I've bought yet or not, and I keep managing to miss volumes of things completely (be it due to never seeing it in stock, or me assuming I've got it already). I've got quite a few mid-series holes here and there, anyway. Which was pretty much what the problem was - I kept forgetting which point I had gotten up to in certain series. I've been meaning to catch up on some Berserk and One Piece for the longest time now, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd gotten up to (in the case of One Piece, I could have sworn I'd read up to volume four or five, but as it turns out I only had up to two). In the middle of last week, having discovered one of the "local" (OK, it's not that local, but I do live in the middle of nowhere) bookstores was having a 3-for-2 on manga, I figured I'd catch up with Kekkaishi whilst it was cheap, but having not read the volumes I actually lready had I managed to miss out the next volume I needed (but bought the seven after that ^^;), which was pretty much the signal for me to finally get this done. That said, it didn't quite work - despite having written down the volumes of certain series I needed, and where I was up to in the other significants, I still managed to miss a few volumes when I popped out shopping for manga earlier. That, and they didn't have the volumes of Keroro Gunsou I wanted anyway. Bastards. (Oh, and for the curious - 542).

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 2

DiGiKerot — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:05:35 +0000

It's the second volume. It's pretty much the same as the first, so I don't have a huge amount to say this time around - all comments regarding the general packaging and the DVD production are pretty much the same this time around. It is kind of interesting to go back and watch episode 5, though - you'll see a lot of Yukihos dialogue and mannerisms in that episode in an entirely different light now. It's nice to see a Sunrise show which actually looks like its been properly planned out. The omake featurette this time around features Haruka and Iori talking about iDOLs. Again, it's mostly stock footage with a few stills (mainly diagrams) thrown in, though it is bookended with Haruka and Iori in the shower (although you don't see much, despite the fact that this video was supposedly produced by pedo-extraordinarie Imber). It's lots and lots of random technobabble, and an equal amount of Haruka being really confused. From what I could gather of the dialogue, there's nothing especially interesting, though it does clearly show the word "iDOL" as standing for "Immortal Defender of Legatee" - something I've never been able to clearly make out in the OP (honestly, I kind of thought it it looked like "Immoral Defender of Legotec" or something along those lines). The first pressing extra this time around was a fridge magnet with the Schools logo on it. Shame I don't have a metallically fronted fridge to attach it to. Ho-hum.

My-ZHiME Zwei 4

DiGiKerot — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:57:34 +0000

Well, that was certainly kind of retarded. It was a lot of fun, certainly, but entirely stupid. Not that I was particularly expecting much else at this point. The kind of formula Sunrise typically use in their shows really doesn't scale back to four episodes - more-so due to the number characters the show throws around, which is probably why they didn't even attempt it and just produced something fun. Sure, it's pretty frustrating for anyone expecting any more, but the Haruka-heavy second episode made it all worth while for me. Ultimately, though, this final episode episode is pretty much exactly like the final episodes of the original series - that is, throw enough flashbang and the audience and hope they don't care about it being silly beyond belief. I would say that this series needed way, way more Midori, but that could be said of most characters, such as... Irina, who was criminally underused in both the TV series and the OAVs. I really liked the character as well. I laughed at Mayas' maraca-Child summoning skill. I guess they are really running out of ideas for new weapons and powers. I'd worry about S.ifl, but there is likely to be quite a bit of Robe recycling there. The dolphin sequence was retarded beyond belief. I mean, really, all they had to do was get Arika across a stretch of water. I'm sure they could have come up with a less, well, stupid way of doing so, even if it was just her randomly finding a boat. I'm not a big fan of Ninas Zwei robe. It's more the way they've coloured it than any other aspect of the design - it looks almost as much of a mess as Arikas stage-one robe. Maybe if they'd gotten rid of the blue patches on the legs it'd look a bit better, and maybe some other simplifications in the colouring. To be honest, though, I'm not a big fan of the Nina-contracting-with-Mashiro thing - it's an awfully convenient way of inserting some Nina-service, but it really doesn't make sense in any long-term fashion. It puts both Nina and Mashiro in a very awkward position. There's something deeply strange about watching Mai fighting Kagatsuchi... It's nice to see them reusing some under-utilized designs from way back in HiME, though it doesn't really get much use here either. Under-utilized character number 3 - Miyu. I love Miyu. So the Black Mages are reincarnated Slave summoners, or something equally silly. Of course, the My-ZHiME S.ifl (although that probably should be Sifr, Arabic for Zero) is arguably far more interesting than the actual episode. Apparently Hisayuki is actually directing this time as well... Smith as a young'un. The people Smith et al are chasing. The girl is almost certainly Ninas mother, the former Queen of Windbloom, so I guess the guy carrying her is some kind of bad-ass bodyguard (uber-straw-clutching-guess - Arikas' father?). Of course, the Queen is pretty young here, so it's probably unknown as to whether she is a member of Windbloom royalty at this point or not. I'd guess not - S.ifl will probably cover she and Rena meeting for the first time here. Mayo and Shion from the My-HiME Destiny novels. Hisayuki isn't the type to let good character designs go to waste. How much of a role they'll play will probably depend on how long a work S.ifl ends up being (I'll take a TV series, please, Sunrise). Presumably the previous headmistress of Garderobe, talking to a younger Maria. We can see who I'm presuming to be the headmistress in the background there, wearing the Bewitching Smile Amethyst (the GEM which became Shizurus). We can see the Ice Silver Crystal (Natsukis GEM) and the Galacticamarine (Saras GEM) too, plus a new design. Pretty safe bet that these are the pillars then, and for some reason the trailer is suggesting they are up against... Rena Sayers. There's whom I'm assuming to be Ninas mother in the background again, too. The limited edition items with the DVD release this time around were a CD with the 2007 version of Otome wa Do My Best Desho? and a My-HiME Destiny audio drama, plus the figures of Nina and Ribbon-chan posted about. The figures are the same slightly rubbery TF sized things as before, but this time they actually gave some consideration as to how you actually stand it up - there's a hole in the back for inserting the "L" shaped plastic rod, holding Nina in place hovering slightly above the ground. Huzzah! And, yes, I do need to dust more often.

A Token Look at Autumn '07

DiGiKerot — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:32:43 +0000

Once again it's time for Japans TV anime schedules to be overhauled. Traditionally the Fall season tends to be pretty strong, though I have to admit that, comparatively, this year is looking pretty weak as far as shows I like go. It probably has a lot to do with the new Sunrise title being another Gundam reinvention rather than a Geass or an Otome or something else a little fresher. Anyway, as usual I'm not going to go with any real format here, I'll just type spiel until I get bored. Dragonaut - The Resonance looks, well, spectacularly awful. Those CGI dragons in the trailer alone are pretty much enough for me to write it off, but I can't really say there's much else attracting me towards it. Individually, the female character designs look OK, but slammed together there really doesn't feel like there is any consistency to it. That goes doubly for the male characters. I don't even want to know what kind of crazy retarded plot they've thrown together to tie the super powers, gunslingers, lolis and CGI dragons into one series, and I'm a Sunrise fanboy! I've not actually seen the OAVs yet, but Genshiken 2 is more Genshiken. I can't really see how that could be anything but a good thing. Sure, I've read the manga already, but it does mark the return of one of animes most infamous mikan boxes, and that has to be worth watching it for. Quite honestly, I'm pretty fed up of hearing about Kodomo no Jikan. I can't really say I'm particularly interested in finding out if the content is as bad as some people (or at least Seven Seas) say, and, as I repeatedly state, I'm not really one for gag shows anyway. I can't say I'd like to be a 4-koma based slice-o-lifey series coming in the season immediately following Lucky Star, but that appears to be exactly what Sketch Book ~full color's~ is. Seriously, though, whilst the character designs are nice and suggest something a little more sedate, this show is going to have to pretty good to shake off the comparisons to LS and Hidamari Sketch (it's set in an art school, which rapidly appears to be becoming anime cliche) it's inevitably going to be facing. CLANNAD is, well, KyoAni doing another Key adaptation. I would say that after Air and Kanon most will probably have a pretty good idea of whether or not they are interested, but honestly I thought Air and Kanon had a pretty different feel to them. I suppose it's still a no-brainer for those liked both of them, but it's still probably at least worth a peak for those who didn't. In either case, I'm sure it'll be extraordinarily pretty. You can clock me up as one of those people who thought that the first series of Shakugan no Shana wasn't exactly the greatest thing ever. It was a diverting and moderately entertaining show, which pandered to my love of elaborate magic circles whilst having fairly attractive character designs, but largely the writing was mediocre and the animation was, at best, average. The new series promises to be more of the same, but I'd at least hope that it's ongoing popularity would warrant a higher budget this time around. I kind of wonder where there is left for the story to go, though, which won't just be retreading what has gone before. As one of the few people in the universe who actually kind-of liked Gundam SEED Destiny, I'll probably not like Gundam 00. Well, OK, I probably will like it, but I realise it's not really the proper thing to do to like any of these AU Gundam shows (at least in public), and to be fair some of the mobile suit designs have looked a little iffy. The staff Sunrise have enlisted for this at least suggests that they are trying to make break from the last few Gundam shows, though. It could be good, anyway, and Kenji Kawai is doing the music is a good thing (though if there was one area in which SEED and SEED Destiny really shone, it was the music). GHOST HOUND threatens to be the best thing this season. I'm a huge fan of Masamune Shirow, particularly his earlier work. His writing kind of started to go to hell around the first Ghost in the Shell, but his conceptual work is always utterly amazing regardless of what he ends up doing with it. Mercifully, the occasionally awful but frequently awesome Chiaki Konaka seems to have the actual writing duties, and this is the kind of thing he tends to do well. Topping it off we have Kino and Lain director Ryutaro Nakamura doing the kind of show he tends to direct well. It's going to take a spectacular cock-up for this show to be anything less than wonderful. That's about all I find comment worthy at the moment, but I've not really had a chance to go through all the websites and info yet. I'll save further comments for a future post.

Beta-Waffle is 2!

DiGiKerot — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 20:07:02 +0000

Inspired by Akitaro Daichi Anyway, Beta-Waffles second birthday passed this week, and I somehow managed to forget to post about it. I've known fine well it's been coming up for a while now - I've spent a great deal of time over the last couple of months trying to decide what to post on the day (time which, frankly, would have been better spent actually posting something on the blog more regularly). Unfortunately most of my ideas succumbed to my usual problems - I get carried away with things and the scope becomes far too large, typically to the point where either I'll never finish it on time, or I completely loose motivation to progress it. Or, more often than not, both. I'm not really sure what else to say, really. I guess I should throw out some thanks to my readers and, of course, Sunrise, for without them I probably wouldn't have half as much to post about (let's face it, 90% of my content is Sunrise derived). As for the future, well, I guess you'll be getting pretty much exactly the same mix of relatively random content and crappy artwork as I've provided in the past. I'm not done with anime yet, at least. A collection of all the images from the random headers, collected here for the first time. Click for bigness if you really want it. I would challenge you readers to name all the characters, but it isn't really all that hard (you can do it anyway if want to, I guess). I really need to get around to doing some new ones. In lieu of any actual new content, a collection of random images I found on my HDD, most of which were drawn for various unfunny comics

Trinity Blood: Reborn on the Mars 1

DiGiKerot — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:59:39 +0000

Just to confuse people like myself who don't bother looking into the background, it turns out that Trinity Blood novels fall into two streams covering different time periods. The previous book I'd reviewed is the first volume of "Rage Against the Moons", the series which takes place earlier in the Trinity Blood timeline. This new volume, also labelled "1" in order to confuddle me, is the first volume of "Reborn on the Mars", which apparently takes place later - not that it really matters much as far as this book goes. In any case, with the first Rage Against the Moons book, I said that it elevated itself above mediocre thanks to breathless pacing, and that other authors might have stretched the content out into three or four books. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the first Reborn on the Mars book is - rather than taking RatM scattershot approach to storytelling, jumping between different characters and stories as quickly as most books jump chapters, it focuses entirely on the one tale. As a result, it comes across a whole lot like a less interesting Vampire Hunter D novel. That isn't to say it's particularly bad, it's just horrifically generic Japanese vampire fiction. It's diverting for an hour or so, but it's nothing you are likely to remember or particularly care about an hour later (in fact, I'm struggling to remember enough of the specifics to write a summary, having read it a week ago). Any one of the Vampire Hunter D novels (except, maybe, the not-so-good Raiser of Gales) gives you are far more fleshed out and better written iteration of exactly the same thing, making this a hard book to recommend to anyone but Trinity Blood aficionados.

Calling You

DiGiKerot — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:35:34 +0000

Calling You is a collection of three short stories by (award winning author) Otsu-Ichi, with the emphasis on the short part, with the loose connection of all three of them having fairly antisocial protagonists. It's hard to figure out precisely what else to say, to be honest, as you can probably gather quite a bit about the novel just from that. The three stories are pleasant and well written enough (though the third carries on for one unnecessary twist too many), but are too short for you to build any real interest in the characters - it's pretty much just a case of running very quickly from the character introduction, to the set-up then to the twist (and, yeah, they do all have a twist). Which, ultimately, leaves me in the same position as I seem to be at the end of most of my light novel reviews - it's nice pleasant way to spend an hour, but it's hardly earth-shattering or anything you'll particularly remember after the fact. If nothing else, none of the stories are quite as clever or memorable as any given chapter in Kino no Tabi. One odd presentation note with this novel is that there are a few half-page illustrations in this book - that is, half-page illustrations running vertically, with the text crammed into the space left next to it. The limited space makes things a little awkward to read - it really don't work with English as well as it would in Japanese (particularly when that was probably written vertically). Otherwise, it's the standard Tokyopop Popfiction fare. Apparently Otsu-Ichi's later works are great, and this doesn't look to be the last thing from him we'll be seeing in English. Certain translators have mentioned on certain internet forums that they've translated an unnamed Otsu-Ichi work for an unnamed publisher (it wouldn't surprise me if it was GOTH, though). Oh, and I should probably point out that Tokyopop has also released a manga version of Calling You, but I'd imagine the novel is more worthwhile (particularly as the manga is missing the third story).

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-1

DiGiKerot — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:05:46 +0000

It returns! I should probably point out that the last panel pretty much reflects my situation here - alternate versions of the text were "..." and "Just as retarded as ever...", but I couldn't quite figure out a really suitable line to put in there. Not a great start, really. Anyway, I'm suffering from serious writers block when it comes to generating blog content at the moment - it's nothing to do with a lack of willpower, it's more to do with simply not having anything I feel is worth writing about. Therefore, I'm kicking off a fourth season of Unfunny comics - not that I particularly have any real idea where I'm going to take it beyond the first half dozen or so, but it's easier coming up with some lame gags that it is to find something more substantial to write about. This time around I'll almost certainly not be posting them on a daily basis - it was kind of stressful and overly time consuming last time. This time around, I'll probably be looking at three times a week (probably a Tuesday, a Thursday and at some point over the weekend). No projected length to this series - it'll keep going until I either run out of ideas or I can't be bothered to continue things. Oh, and regarding Karmaburn's comments on Vandread since he has comments disabled - I very much doubt you'll see a significantly better looking version of Vandread. The show was simply mastered at that resolution, and any higher definition release will just be an upscaling of that. Unfortunately it's the case with most of Gonzos early widescreen titles - Saishu Heiki Kanojo is the same, regardless of whether you are looking at the R2s or the R1s or whatever. There is no better looking version of the show. Yes, it does kind of suck. Unfortunately, until recently, pretty much all digitally animated TV anime were only produced at broadcast or DVD resolution, and any HD format release will only really benefit from the extra bandwidth. To a lesser extent, a lot of later cel animation shows where they used CG after effects have similar problems in places - the effects for a lot of them were added after they hit tape, and are only part of the video at broadcast resolution. Of course, if you are a fan of old anime, HD is great for those shows where decent film masters still exist.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-2

DiGiKerot — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:16:23 +0000

Okay, so I'm breaking my publishing schedule already. Let's face it, though, I can I have a series called "Unfunny Internet Meme Comics" and not pass comment on it. Honestly, I had problems deciding on what to do with the third panel. I'm sure we've all heard the official story in regards to why the final episode of School Days was actually pulled by now - they thought it was in bad taste to show after a sixteen year-old girl killed her father with an axe. I'm actually quite surprised that they were worried about a late night show being fairly tenuously inappropriate. Still, it's not the kind of thing anybody should be making light of. The important thing was to get a "nice boat" in there anyway. Given that they'd already went and recoloured all of the blood black - hardly a last minute change - they were surely expecting trouble with it airing regardless of any real-world problems. I do have to wonder if it'd air regardless. The whole situation kind of reminds me of that episode of Moe-tan a few weeks ago, which they'd decided was just a little too pedorific to actually air on TV. Given that, by the sounds of things, it was going to be edited for broadcast anyway, I really does strike me as yet another way to try and get people to invest in the home release. I should probably point out that I've seen any of School Days. Maybe I would have if I'd thought they'd animate on of the violent episode. In any case, unfamiliarity with the show (and even what the characters look like) prevented me from writing a more specifically targeted comic. I did kind of think about making an obscure Simpsons reference (at this point, I would have inserted a Youtube link, but it's only up there in German)... Hey, Knightboat sounds kind of like Nice Boat, thank you ^^; There's probably only a one character difference if they were written in Katakana. That said, whilst I've not seen School Days, I still highly doubt that any of the characters would actually say "Stabby Stabby". I guess that's what drafts are for. Oh, and for those who haven't seen that episode of The Simpsons, Knightboat was a Knight Rider parody. Whilst watching it, Bart and Lisa bemoan the fact that's theres always a handy canal. Or Inlet. Or Fjord. Actually, posting this comic today has disrupted those I was going to post for the next couple, largely because they were about generating content for a further season. It doesn't really seem right to post them after posting something like this, so I'll just stick them below. They are pretty much non-jokes anyway, so it's probably better this way. Saying that, it might have been amusing to stick up nothing but a picture of a boat the day after the second one, given that it implies excessive violence to come, but for something like Nice Boat I really felt the need to jump on it quickly. Let's face it, it's already be worn really, really thin. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to move onto some completely different content for the next comic. I've got some notes for the next seven or eight anyway, I just need to actually draw them. I suppose I'll just throw the publishing schedule out of the window and post stuff when I feel like it after today, though ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-3

DiGiKerot — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:25:52 +0000

Mahou Shoujo Miracle Zesty... Hajimarimasu! Okay, so this is me making silly magical girl jokes. Still, where do magical girls go to transform now? I mean, just about everyone carries a camera these days. In the old days, they may have ended up momentarily flashing someone whilst transforming, but it's unlikely anyone around there would have the opportunity to preserve the moment forever. Can we, therefore, just assume that all magical girls are exhibitionists? Actually, as far as magical girl transformations actually go, there's a theory going around that most of them are actually near instantaneous - certainly, that seems to be the case with Lyrical Nanoha. The elaborate transformation sequences that we see are actually in super-slow motion for the benefit of the audience to perv over (on that note, the Moe-tan DVD advert is quite funny), rather than being the actual speed at which they occur. Ultimately, if you really wanted to take a picture of a magical girl transforming, you'd need a camera with a really, really short exposure time. The Miracle Zesty stuff probably needs some further explanation. Several months ago, I had the idea of applying my retarded sense of humour to a short Beta-Waffle visual novel. To this end, I got myself a notebook and spent some time planning out storylines and making notes of any silly jokes I ended up thinking of. The outline for the game ended up being fairly similar to Kagetsu Tohya, only rather shorter. Basically, actions performed in one play through would have some effect the next time you played though, which was fine given the game was going to be so short in length - pretty much every option resulted in either nothing interesting happening, an over-the-top instant death or being arrested for paedophilia. Ultimately, I only really got as far was writing the opening, which mostly consisted of a disclaimer along the lines of "All characters depicted in this game are over 18, except for those who aren't. Oh, and if you could mentally replace any occurrence of the word 'School' with 'College' it'd be a great help. This game contains hot H scenes, and is not suitable for those under the age of 18. It's also entirely retarded, and not suitable for those over the age of 18. If you are exactly 18, good for you!". The hot H scenes, coincidently, largely revolved around a bowl of overheated alphabet spaghetti and being crushed to death by part of the sign of a burning hotel. Yeah, you really aren't missing much. The reason I ended up not writing that much of the main scenario is that on of the things I wanted to do was have a very short story consisting of what was basically highly exaggerated versions of generic ren-ai and high-school comedy cliches. It turned out that I found writing material for that far, far easier than the main scenario, and it pretty much ended up being the actual game. Quickly a series of plots were formulated involving alien invasions, a Haruhi-a-like forming a Nazi-esque club to alleviate her boredom, mecha warfare and a girl obsessed with trying to make you drink almost-certainly toxic soft drinks at every turn. Now, the result of being forced to drink one of these was going to be a dream sequence in which the characters were going to be recast into a magical girl setting, which was ultimately an excuse to run through page after page of inane banter between characters. This actually proved really, really easy to write, and I'd actually finished a second draft of the script, sketched out a lot of the character art (I even have some of it coloured) and completed a CG or two. Anyway, after that, the project pretty much stalled. It's partially due to laziness, partially due to having too much else going on, and partially down to the scale of the project escalating to the point that I'd probably never end up finishing it anyway. So, now I'm cannibalising the script I had completed for comic content. Unfortunately, due to having being written for a visual novel, it's all very, very wordy and not entirely suitable for the format ^^; Most of the characters are simplified versions of those I was going to use in the Beta-Waffle VN (as far as I could draw from memory, as I haven't looked back through my old design sketches recently), though I'll be adding some new ones where appropriate. I've also changed the heroines sidekick character. In the original, it was was really retardedly drawn version of another character (which, until I actually started writing this entry, was in the comic). In the games main story, the characters personality was entirely dependant on how she was wearing her hair at the time, and because of all the different hairstyles would have had three or four times the number of character graphics as every other character. In the magical girl story, she only had the one, really, really retarded looking one (which I think probably also had dog ears and a dog tail in the original). It was basically a bad gag that only I would actually get. Since the original work isn't like to see the light of day - at least not before this series of comics is finished - I figured I'd replace her with a Gema-esque flying orange. It kind of fits in with the whole Zesty thing, after all - not to mention that it opens the door to stupid Code Geass references... Anyway, this is almost getting to be as bad as Penny Arcade in regards to needing a whole page of text to actually explain the comic. More tomorrow. Maybe.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-4

DiGiKerot — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:38:49 +0000

Continuing on from the previous comic, even if you kind find a private place to transform it's not necessarily suitable. Remembering that most magical girl transformations actually take place at a far higher speed than we see on-screen, and combining that with all the spinning and twirling usually involved, what do you think will happen when you put it in a confined space? Well, whatever happens, I'm sure it's not going to be good for the girls health... I guess, therefore, that along with the rapid pace, most magical girl transformations must involve the girl being transported from regular space to some mysterious dimension with ample room to manoeuvre, where they can transform in relative safety before returning to where they started. It's the only safe way, really. I guess it'd get around the problems of flashing their girly bits to all around, too. The only reason I really used a phone booth in the comic was the Superman connotations it brings to it. Realistically, with the increasing prevalence of mobile phones, phone booths are becoming increasingly rare in many countries - I know they've removed a lot of them locally, at least. In reality, unless these magical girl transformations really do occur in some kind of alternate dimension, most secluded locations are kind of limiting space-wise, and I could have just as easily used a narrow alleyway or a public restroom or something. Given that a monster appearing out in the middle of nowhere, away from the public, pretty much defeats the point of it, I guess most magical girls have no choice but to transform out in wide, open spaces where they are likely to be spotted. The lesson to be learnt is, if you are going to be a magical girl, make sure you can activate your powers in a limited space, or without a costume change. As for Creamy Goodness, I thought it was an amusing sounding and almost-plausible magical girl name. If I remember correctly it was also the name of a news reporter in an episode of South Park - I guess it just stuck in my head. Speaking of magical girl transformations, I kind of had a few problems deciding what to do with Miracle Zestys' costume. I mean, if there's one thing I'm not, it's an artist. If there's a second thing I'm not, however, it's a costume designer. It gives me serious headaches. General dress, well, it's not really much of a problem - I can just stick the character is some kind of garishly coloured seifuku or something, but something like a magical girl costume is just a pain to come up with. Unfortunately, I hadn't actually come up with anything I was actually happy with for the visual novel version. I had something I was actually going to move forward with, but I didn't actually like it. So, when starting on the comic format version, I sat around and ended up doing a whole pile of sketches trying to decide what her costume should look like again. I'm not really sure why - by the time you squeeze them into a 250 by 200 pixel panel it's not like you can see any real detail, but I persisted with it anyway. Unfortunately, most my sketches ended up looking like those above - nothing I was particularly happy with, anyway. I kind of like the one in the middle, where I was basically just trying to go overkill on the bows, but that was a pain to draw and would look a mess drawn smaller. I almost went with the one on the right, since it was simple to draw and you'd only be seeing it from the waste-up 90% of the time - indeed, I even have inked comic art in that costume, but I still kind of thought it was fugly. Eventually, I ended up taking a different approach to trying to design the costume. Unlike most magical girls, Zesty is somewhere in the region of 17-19 years of age, having probably started magical girling when she was 8 or so. I kind of figured I'd think of something that would have looked OK with the figure of an 8 year old, but would just end up being kind of embarrassing with a more adult shape. I seem to remember them playing a similar gag in Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo, though in that case Agnes Bells costume simply hadn't grown as she'd got older, so given her womanly curves it didn't really cover much at all. I didn't really want to take that approach, rather I wanted to draw attention to the areas that would be, errr, padded out when older without being too overt. Anyway, I ended up sticking a couple of bows on her chest. On the young version, even if she had a bust the bows would cover it up. On the older version, though, they just draw attention to her boobs. I figured I'd draw the costume in a fashion that'd end up showing a lot of cleavage too. The seam down the middle and the split in the dress at the crotch is a deliberate attempt to draw attention down there too. I'm actually pretty happy with this design, so in the two or three panels that costumed Zesty actually appears I'll probably be going with that one. I just need to decide on colouring now. The other option was just to go with something completely silly and restricting ^^; Actually, talking of limiting designs in magical girl shows, it always amuses me how practical the costumes are - not necessarily in terms of being suitable for fighting, but more in regards to how easy it'd be to dress in. I guess thats the point, given that it opens up certain merchandising streams, but given it's a magic costume that the owner doesn't have to manually dress in (obviously I'm putting manual changers like CCS to the side here), you'd think they'd occasionally do something a bit more crazy that you couldn't possibly dress yourself in. As it is, about the worst we get are some crazy boots which, whilst time-consuming to put on, certainly wouldn't be impossible.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-5

DiGiKerot — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 10:22:06 +0000

Huzzah for random bouts of non-sequitur "humour". Enter the villains, I guess. Not that I've actually decided on their names, so let's just call her "The Boss" for the moment. Yup, that'll do for now. As for the comics actual content, I just find the concept of the villains having image issues amusing. I mean, I figure if you have an evil genius attempting to take over the world, with all the scheming and the development of giant ants, robots and ill-tempered mutant sea-bass, you can't really expect them to have good marketing sense as well. I figure marketing is probably important for an organisation aiming for full world domination, rather than merely manipulating things from behind the scenes. If nothing else, it'd probably make their job a whole lot easier if the populace were cowering in fear at the mere sight of their emblem. Which, clearly, won't be happening here ^^; It actually seems like this is my 500th post. I guess that's some kind of landmark or something. I had thought about writing about the whole Geneon USA situation last night, but aside from the fact that it seemed like a far too depressing subject for my 500th post, there really isn't enough information about anything to draw any real conclusions. In any case, I've got a Full Metal Panic! novel to read...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-6

DiGiKerot — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:50:36 +0000

So inappropriate, in fact, that I changed the last panel a few times. The first iteration, well, I'll let you guess what was on the paper (it's really not hard). Second time through, I stuck the head completely over the paper, which kind of made it pointless, so I had to go for something I felt was somewhat, well, less offensive ^^; The forbidden fifth panel - SINK INTO DESPAIR! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hey, I actually made a specific, anime-related joke! That seems to be getting increasingly rare these days ^^; Well, I can't be bothered with the text overload today, so that's your lot.

Full Metal Panic! Novel 1 - Fighting Boy Meets Girl

DiGiKerot — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:39:21 +0000

I'm not actually that big a fan of Full Metal Panic. I mean, TSR was magnificent, and Fumoffu was good for what it is, but the Gonzo series was mediocre at best. Knowing that KyoAni had performed a fair amount of rewriting to get TSR as polished as it was, I had to wonder exactly where the novels would fall in terms of quality. Regardless of what I think of the series, FMP!s is still one of the larger properties when it comes to the US anime market, and it kind of shows with Tokyopops release of the first novel. Most of their Pop Fiction line tends to try and cover it's anime roots somewhat with their odd, pop-art covers and more minimalist Tokyopop livery, supposedly to try and attract a market outside of us anime types. The Full Metal Panic novel, however, proudly displays a replica of the Japanese cover art and a replication of the logo used on the original FMP and TSR R1 DVD releases (though, if you look closely, you'll notice that all three are slightly different). The artwork is inside is replicated full page, though what I assume must have been colour illustrations before the story originally are in black and white where. I presume there aren't any illustrations missing (at least not from the novel publication - I have a feeling the serialised run might have additional images not in the novels), it not being something Tokyopop tends to be called on, but I don't have the original to check, so I can't be sure. Unfortunately, the rest of the insides more closely resemble one of Tokyopops otaku-centric Manga Novels line. I'm sure I've complained about the internal presentation of Tokyopops novels before, not least because it's so horribly inconsistent, but Full Metal Panic is easily the worst. There's absolutely no need for those kind of printing gimmicks on the inside - it looks ugly, it's really distracting and, ultimately, it's actually kind of embarrassing. If Tokyopop really are aiming for a wider audience with these books, they really, really need to show a bit more restraint with their books internals. If nothing else, kill those bullet-hole page numbers. Its a good thing, then, that the content is good. In the books afterword, Shouji Gatou professes that the series is his attempt at doing a B-grade action movie, and that's pretty much what it is. I'm not going to say that it's not "big or clever" or call it dumb, because it's clear even from this point that he'd carefully laid down the framework for those stories which follow (and, much to my surprise, gives vaguely plausible reasons for most of the main characters being able to speak Japanese), but ultimately it does wear it's heart on its sleeve. There isn't an awful lot in the way of elaborate characterisation and growth, and eventually much of what there is gives way for plot convenience and the need for lots of things to explode. Which is fine, really, because it's an awful lot of fun regardless. It's a little longer than a lot of the light novels published in the US, but it reads in such a fashion that it doesn't really feel like it. It doesn't linger on the unnecessary for any longer than it needs to make it point, and those scenes we do get are either amusing or exciting in exactly the kind of trashy way Gatou was aiming for. Really, it's all just great fun. In all, Full Metal Panic is probably one of the better novel series put out by the manga publishers. Whilst it lacks the elaborate world of Twelve Kingdoms or Crest of the Stars, or the charactisation or ideas of Boogiepop, it makes up for the loss with sheer trashy fun. It also has the benefit of there not being any really noticeable issues with the English adaptation - it reads pretty well, although there is one silly error on one of the images proceeding the story - unlike with, say, CotS. It manages to feel, to me at least, more substantial a read than Trinity Blood, though I have no real reason why that's so. In any case, it's well worth a read, regardless of how much of an FMP fan you are. As for comparing it to the anime version, well, it's been more than a few years since I've seen it, and as such can't really fairly compare the two. From what I can remember of it, the anime is fairly faithful as far as this particular book goes. There's a little extra material here and there in the book, but that's to be expected, and none of it is particularly earth shattering.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-7

DiGiKerot — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:07:51 +0000

DiGiKerot presents...yet another non-joke. Well, I do call these things unfunny for a reason. Really, though, I do wonder exactly why people would choose to work for some kind of evil genius. I mean, they are evil, so what makes them think that they particularly care about their welfare? Although in this case, it's kind of going against The Bosses moaning about image. Actually, in the original work - non-hallucinogenic setting - The Underling (yeah, still not decided on the names) was a robot. Or was that a girl pretending to be a robot. Or maybe a robot pretending to be a girl pretending to be a robot. Or maybe a girl pretending to be a robot pretending to be a girl pretending to be a robot... Essentially, it was all very confusing. Still, as a robot (maybe), I guess she has no option other to obey. If you noticed the colour illustration the other day, you may have noticed that Zestys' magic wand was basically just an orange on a stick. I went with that because it looked kind of violent, in that it'd probably do excessive amounts of brain damage if you were clonked over the head with it. There was an alternative I'd come up with, though, which was basically a juice bottle whose handle looked like flowing juice. The benefit of this one is that it had a "cool" (well, existent) summoning sequence. 1) Crosses arms, wrapping them around her body. When she starts to pull them back around, a juice bottle has suddenly appeared in her left hand. 2) Uncrossed her arms. Whilst she is doing this, the she runs the cap from the juice bottle along the inner of her right arm, resulting in... 3) The cap on the bottle spins at excessive speed, initially in place before flying off at high speed. 4) She tosses the bottle up into the air (in a higher arc that the images really suggest). 5) The bottle stalls momentarily at the top of it's arc, at which point juice spurts out of the bottle quicker than Diet Cola laden with Mentos. If this wasn't a family blog, the juice would probably also perform the clothes-dissolving part of the transformation. If you're a perv, I'm afraid you'll have to imagine that the rest of this is naked yourself ^^; 6) The spray dies down, but before it stops entirely it hardens into a rod of sorts. 7) The bottle proceeds with the downwards part of the arc, is caught in her right hand, and twirled around as she swings it inwards. 8) Ta-daa! One magical wand thingy! Though at this point, I guess she'd still actually be naked, and would proceed with the silly twirling required for costume generation.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-8

DiGiKerot — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:05:55 +0000

Taking a break from magical girl stupidity, TGS was going on in Japan over the last few days. Like most Japanese events of any level of geekery, there was cosplay, and therefore there were online galleries of the aforementioned cosplayers. The thing with cosplay images is that, no matter how good the cosplay actually is, I have a habit of paying far more attention to the people on the fringe of the images, and trying to work out what characters (or at least series) they are from a few pixels of costume. There was one particularly nice cosplay image I saw of the cast of Persona 3 (though whoever was playing [insert name here] (I know there's a canon name in the manga, but I can never remember it - he's called Yumemiya Kamina in my game ^^;) didn't have the Audio Technica headphones nor the Sony MP3 player to complete the costume) where there was just a small glimpse of seifuku visable at the edge. The red skirt with the white double stripe somehow automatically registered to me as being from To Heart, though on further reflection Lucky Star is presently more likely. In any case, the ability to pick something like that up so quickly kind of scares me - I have no strong feelings in any direction regarding To Heart, and I try hard not to let myself get too nerdish (my efforts don't really succeed, though). There's been quite a bit of moaning going on about the last episode of the second season of Zero no Tsukaima being a little on the not great side of things. I only really have passing familiarity with the show - Although I seem to have managed to pick up a whole bunch of novel spoilers, I was waiting for the DVD release from Geneon which now may or may not happen given what's presently going on - but I seem to remember the reaction to the ending of the first series wasn't all that positive either. Anyway, Kabitzin thinks the ending would have been better if it'd turned into Zombie no Tsukaima. I wish to point out that giving the show such a name would, in fact, make Louise the zombie rather than Saito. Knowing fandom, I'm sure a few people would still want to hit that regardless...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-9

DiGiKerot — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:46:54 +0000

Inspired by my thoughts watching ADVs trailer for Air. I just found it kind of amusing that they started the trailer for an anime adaptation of a visual novel with the line "We don't choose which path to take" followed by "The path is chosen for us". Yeah, way to rub in the fact that the anime version is strictly linear ^^; Oh, and the "We keep searching for the answers" line just made me think "Google is your friend" - I mean, I'm sure there's walkthroughs out there somewhere. Don't even get me started on "Is she the one?", as that would be one hell of a red herring if she wasn't... Errr, yeah. Random note of the day - Avatar mentions over at his blog that he's "Just been awarded the Nanoha and Zero (no Tsukaima) contracts". If I remember correctly, Avatar does subtitle work - not translation, but other aspects like timing and the like. That's not really important anyway, what is important is the fact that, regardless of the mess that is the whole Geneon situation at the moment, work is still actually progressing towards ZnT and, more importantly, Nanoha seeing the light day day R1 side. iDOLMASTER Xenoglossia finished in Japan this week. I'm waiting for the third R2 DVD to turn up in the mail, along with the final volume of Code Geass.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-10

DiGiKerot — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:12:55 +0000

In the mythical original script, they consulted the website for the game they are actually appearing in for information of their adversaries, which I guess is a little on the Spaceballs side of things. In this case, I figured it'd be more amusing for them to check one of the social networking sites. The concept just amuses me, really - I mean, you hear all these stories of people being outed doing or saying things they shouldn't on these sites (just this week in the UK there were a couple of young Tennis players suspended over their MySpace antics, then there was the whole Gainax/Gurren Mixi Lagann thing), so I find the idea of a magical girl being outed by such a method kind of funny. I'm probably the only one ^^; The screengrabs from Pani Poni Dash, episode 20. It aired on the 14th of November 2005 according to the ANN entry for the show. As ADVs vidnotes point out, Becky has the Hyperion series of novels on her desk. Anime fans are more likely to remember Hyperion as being the book that Yuki gave to Kyon in the anime version of Haruhi, in an episode which aired something like six months after Pani Poni Dash. This begs the question - was Hyperion (or Fall of Hyperion, or whichever specific book it was) specifically mentioned in the original Haruhi novels, is it particularly popular in Japan, or is it just randomly popular among animators? Oh, and for those curious, no, I haven't read the copy I bought yet.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-11

DiGiKerot — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:54:38 +0000

Ooooh, low jab. Overly sensationalist, too - the fact is, there's little known about what going to happen to Geneon USA in the future at this point other than that they've closed their own distribution channels and are (in their own words) "downsizing operations". There's not been any mention of them closing up operations entirely, nor precisely what will happen to the half-finished shows and unreleased licenses like Nanoha. It's really a wait-and-see game at the moment, and we aren't likely to hear all that much more until towards the end of next month. No use in getting worked up about it at the moment. Well, there's no use in getting worked up about it, period, since getting stressed out about things won't solve anything, but whatever. just to be clear on things, I'm not being overly nasty or laughing at R1 collectors or blind buyers here. I've partway through the Higurashi DVD release myself, and haven't seen the whole show previously either. I've got Black Lagoon, Rozen Maiden, Hellsing Ultimate and probably a few others ongoing too, and was rather looking forward to seeing the DVD versions of Nanoha and Nanoha A's. The uncertainty is lame, but we may as well make light out of a bad situation. This is technically Fridays post, but I figured I'd stick this up whilst the irons hot, so to speak. Don't expect another comic tomorrow if you are in one of the parts of the world in which it's not Friday already, unless you are in the US and I decide to post immediately after of midnight (UK time) as I have the last few days. I really need to get around to finishing some of the strips I've got lying around in note form this weekend. I got the Korean (R3) DVD release of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time today. The main feature has English subs, which is nice. The price was good too. I've not watched the DVD yet, though, so I have no idea how the actual subtitles have faired.

Unfunny School Days 12 Comic

DiGiKerot — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:56:33 +0000

Just because Hinano had complained. Truth be told, I've not actually seen a single minute of School Days, so instead of attempting to actually do some bad drawings of characters I don't actually know, I've just stolen some screengrabs from Kurogane and plonked some retarded speech bubbles on them. All I know about the show is that it'd about a love triangle that devolves into the stabby-stabby seen in this last episode. I should really have tried to think of an actual joke, but whatever. Maybe I'll come up with something at a later date. Alternate panel one and two, though the blood recolouring prevented carrying that through the whole strip. Apparently the original version of the episode does have the red blood, as well, as even more excessive violence...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-12

DiGiKerot — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:15:22 +0000

This is one of those things that has always bugged about these hero shows - why, if they are defeated time and time again by the same hero, do they always try and start their world domination plans in exactly the same place (except, of course, when they just happen to start in the same place the hero is on vacation at)? It's always down to the hero to go to the villain to stop their plans, rather than the other way around, so surely starting from the furthest point from their base of operations as possible would make far more sense. I mean, particularly in these shows with young heroines, it seems eminently bizarre. Sure, the Teenage Mutant Turtles had a van or a blimp and whatever to assist them in chasing down remote evil (though even that it's particularly quick), but what precisely is a nine year old schoolgirl going to do? Pedal cycle? Use her bus pass? Hitch-hike? By the time they do actually manage to catch up to the villain, they'd have probably levelled up enough to defeat them. I guess there probably is the issue of each area having their own, local heroes and heroines. Still, there's nothing to stop the villain moving areas until they do manage to defeat one. Think about it, the heroes only ever power up by frequent encounters with the villains. Likewise, the villains manage to up their game with every defeat. By only giving one particular adversary one encounter out of every, say, five or six the villain performs, they ensure that their Powers of Villainy level-up at a higher rate. MOST OBVIOUS GAG EVAR! I guess that makes it entirely suitable material for me ^^;

Mikan Watch #3: Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo

DiGiKerot — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 11:27:42 +0000

In the science classroom where Makoto finds the "Time Walnut". I'm sure I saw another Mikan box in another show in the last week, but I've completely forgotten exactly what ^^; It kind of pains me that I don't really have something which isn't retarded to say about such a wonderful movie, but others have already put things far more eloquently than I could ever be bothered to. I was watching the movie via the recent Korean R3 DVD release. It's a pretty nice set, spread across three disks. Of course, if you want to watch anything other than the movie you'll have to go for Korean subtitles or raw, but at least the movie itself had English subtitles. Actually, the third disk is just the movie again playing with storyboards visible. I've not bothered looking at the second disk. The packaging is nice given how cheap the set is. The box has transparent blue slipcase in which Makoko has been silhouetted out in white. Removing the slip case reveals one side to show Makoto standing at the train crossing which features prominently in the movie, and the other side has that iconic shot of Makoto leaping. The digipack cases for the three disks each have a wraparound of three of the significant background locations featured in the movie. Lovely. There's also a booklet with background art, sketches, and staff interviews and the like. The staff interviews and all that are, obviously, printed in Korean rather than Japanese, though. Oh, there was also a clipping of 32mm film from a print of the movie. Pretty random extra, really. Mine has Makoko with a baseball bat slung over her shoulder, from around 27 minutes into the film methinks.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-13

DiGiKerot — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 11:42:55 +0000

Contrary to what other posts today might have you believe, this was actually drawn two weeks ago. Unfortunately, it's also the last of the comics I drew two weeks ago that I haven't actually posted yet, which means I've got to get off my arse and finish all the stuff I've got sketched out if I want something to post tomorrow. If anyone has any requests, now is the time to ask. Errr, anyway, I just wanted a mikan box in here somewhere, and this seemed like a suitably stupid way to do it. There wasn't really any more to it than that. Errrr, so I watched TokiKake on DVD last night. I have to admit that I have probably seeing anime school girls with blue duffel bags without thinking of that. I really need to stop drawing images relating to shows I have absolutely no actual interest in ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-14

DiGiKerot — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:44:25 +0000

The fall anime season kicks off in Japan this week. I'm kind of in two minds about it. On one hand, there's lots of stuff there that you simply know will be great - I'm sure Clannad will set new benchmarks in exactly how beautiful a TV anime can look, Shana will set new benchmarks in how often a girl can tell someone to shut-up in one episode and Genshiken will simply be a great laugh. On the other hand, this season is pretty much just a My-HiME series away from being the most generic anime season in history. That's not to say there aren't original shows - Ghost Hound in particular looks like it could be great - but most of what would be considered heavy-hitters are either sequels or highly evocative of other shows in relatively recent history. Many of the also-rans, whilst not specifically similar to any one show, sound merely generic. All of the fresh sounding stuff occupies what I'd consider the middle-ground production wise, in that there's been little hype (a sure sign that not a lot of money is being spent on production) or not having any staff members I've seen anything good by. Still, it could be interesting. Inevitably there'll be a couple of sleeper hits which come out of nowhere and surprise us with their awesomeness. Probably not Dragonaut, though. That just looks lame ^^; I found this sketch of Yukiho from Xenoglossia (as a dog) among a stack of paper over the weekend. I guess I must have drawn it a couple of months ago. In light of having nothing better to post here today, and the fact that Xenoglossia finished in Japan a week today, I figured I'd just dump this out here.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-15

DiGiKerot — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:11:09 +0000

Scienmatifically determined to be the greatest, most popularest and awesomest series in the history of anime and everything else in the history of mankind ever. I bet this is exactly how they came up with Dragonaut, too. Okay, that's probably enough with the Dragonaut panning until, you know, it's actually aired and proven to actually suck, rather than it just looking like a horrific mess of a show. There does seem to be an increasing tendency in anime of throwing together two cliched, overdone genres into one in an attempt to produce something which seems a little fresher, so it wouldn't surprise me if, eventually, we do actually see a show something like this... I went to watch the last volume of Noein last night. It was with great excitement that I put the disk in the DVD player and started to watch. It was with great disappointment that, about thirty seconds in, I suddenly realised that I'd managed to forget to buy the previous volume of the series. Oops. It's not like it's the first time recently that's happened to me recently, either. I guess I'm just getting senile. In any case, I ended up watching some GaoGaiGar instead, so all is good. Random doodle of the day. Meh, Shana is one of those characters who I can never quite remember what she actually looks like, so I end up just making something vaguely correct up. This then results in me spending too long redrawing stuff on computer, and ending up with something which looks like ass. Not that I can actually draw anyway ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-16

DiGiKerot — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:26:50 +0000

Having the villain hire a PR guy to assist with the spreading of the knowledge of their evil deeds is the kind of silly thing which amuses me. There's really nothing more to this comic than that and the generic evil that is stealing candy from a baby. I never really got the appeal of doing that, to be honest - I guess it's just an easy way for an aspiring villain to make themselves feel a little better about themselves. After a few days of inactivity, the Anime on DVD forums are finally back online. I've been denied my anime inane anime forum chatter, which has left me sitting around in front of the internet with little to do once I'd been through the blogs. Details of the My-ZHiME S.ifr release has hit Bandai Visuals website recently (how recently, I'm not really sure). The first OAV is going to be 30 minutes long, and hits the stores in February next year. It's a long wait... Also being released in January are ZHiME and ZHiME Zwei compilation movies. Both are presently listed as being 100 minutes long, which is fine for Zwei (that'll cover pretty much everything other than the EDs), but cramming the 26 TV episodes down into 100 minutes seems pretty crazy. In any case, these two movies are being released separately, as well as in a combined "Dream Box" featuring an additional ZHiME Fandisk. Hopefully there won't be any unique extras for the separates of the movies over those in the Dream Box, since I'll be R2'ing both S.ifr and the compilation movies. I really don't want to have to buy the movies twice just for completions sake - their milking the series quite enough as it is. Da Capo II was among the new shows which started airing in Japan which aired last night. For me, it falls into the "not seen the previous series, don't care for genre, don't have any interest at all" pot. Probably a good thing - it's not exactly getting the greatest reviews ever. Still, I think the reviews of this show have probably shown me that I've been spending too much time reading anime blogs recently - I couldn't help but look at the pictures on JP's entry on the show and mentally register gutter-level jokes... ^^; Anyway, I'm off to watch the end of Fate/Stay Night, hopefully cleansing my mind a little in the process.

Cherrypicking the Geneon Catalogue, Part 1

DiGiKerot — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:34:07 +0000

With all the issues going on with Geneon USA at the moment, it's kind of hard to figure out exactly what is going to happen with their ongoing series. What we can say is that much of their back-catalogue - the less popular in particular - is pretty likely to go out of print. Essentially, for a lot of their titles, it's probably going to be a case of buying them now or, well, finding they're not available later. So, it seemed to me like it's a good time to go through the Geneon back-catalogue and pick out a few of my favourites from the less popular titles - that is, the titles I think are worth watching out of those most probably haven't seen. That means I'll be skipping over the Vandreads, the GunxSwords, the Tenchi Muyos and the Paranoia Agents, since everyones seen them already. Anyway, in alphabetical order, since that's how I'm going through the list. I'll Youtube the OPs if I can find them, otherwise I'm too lazy to upload them myself. Black Heaven Of course, the OP for this one has little in common with the actual content of the show - despite what it may look like, it's actually a strange comedy about a bored salary man who is convinced to reform his old rock band after he's contacted by an alien race whose super weapon is powered by his mad guitar skills. No, really. The early-era digital animation doesn't particularly impress, but it's worth watching for it's unusual atmosphere and off-kilter humour. If nothing else, the scene where the band discuss the death of their former keyboard player - or, rather, the truth behind his death - is hilarious. The Daichis - Earth Defence Family Aliens are invading, and for no good reason The Daichis have found themselves suddenly endowed with access to the technology to fight them. Lured by the incentive of being paid for taking them out, they take to this task with aplomb, only to later find out that they actually have to pay for the use of their more powerful equipment. Finding themselves deep in debt, they have to keep on fighting the aliens whether they want to or not. Compounding the issue is that the parents were on the verge of divorce even before all this kicked off... Much of this show was written by Shoji Kawamori, who was firmly in this weird mode throughout. The families young'un, Dai, grates a bit throughout, and the series does drag in places, but there are a lot of fun episodes too.. It's one of those shows which has some interesting ideas and concepts which it doesn't quite pull off, but it makes a damn good try of it, and does at least fall into the category of being refreshingly different. El Hazard Okay, so not exactly all that obscure, but it's certainly pretty old - dating back to 1995 - and has always played second fiddle to Tenchi Muyo, though I've always preferred it myself. Much of my affection towards the show is, admittedly, rose-tinted glasses - it was one of the titles what was getting magazine coverage in the UK press magazines back when I was first getting into anime (I'm thinking AnimeUK here, prior to the UK release), and I became immediately infatuated with it once it did hit VHS here in the UK. That said, I still think it holds up pretty well. To a certain degree, it seems like a pretty pedestrian world-displacement comedy, but it does have a far more amusing cast of characters than most, including an alcoholic PE teacher who gains super-human strength, but only when he's sober, a loli-lesbian, and completely over-the-top megalomaniac villain with an army of bugs and a death-wish towards the hero (whom his younger sister crushes on). Speaking of the main character, he spends pretty much the entire series in drag, disguised as a missing princess in a plot line which builds up to an unexpected and hilarious twist. There's only one caveat with El Hazard - the sequels and spin-offs. It hails back from that era when AIC would sequel anything with an iota of success, and if they could sequel it they'd reimagine it instead. Just look at Tenchi Muyo - you have the original OAV series and it's sequels, two different Tenchi remakes for TV, the Pretty Sammy OAV series, the Pretty Sammy TV show, the recent Magical Girl Club (or whatever it was called) TV series, GXP and a bunch of movies. El Hazard isn't quite as bad, but OAVs directly following the original series is entirely extraneous, and the TV seasons aren't really worth bothering with. The original OAV series wraps itself up nicely, anyway. Fighting Spirit AKA Hajime no Ippo. If any show is to blame for sinking Geneon USA, this is probably it - it's a long show which sold pathetically, but Geneon persisted in releasing it - and dubbing it - regardless. It lost them a crapton of money as a result. Why did they continuing releasing it? Because it's great. It's an epic tale of GUTS, MANLINESS and pOnOs jokes. Unfortunately, it's an epic tale of GUTS, MANLINESS and pOnOs jokes centering around boxing. If being a sports anime wasn't bad enough, it's a sports anime in which the men make the cast of Dragonball Z look underdeveloped, and the design of the girls tends to fall into the categories of "unattractive" or "plain fugly" (in fact, it makes plenty of jokes about the later). It's a real shame it didn't do better - of all the shows released R1 side in recent years, this one ranks among my favourites despite not really being a fan of sporting shows. Among the last releases coming out of Geneon USAs door before that November cut-off date is a pair of cheap Fighting Spirit collection boxes - it's certainly worth trying to pick them up. Gad Guard It has a funky OP. I'm not really sure I have all that much to say about this one - whilst the story ultimately doesn't actually go all that far, the design is fairly distinctive and the characters are pretty pleasant. There's a few nice stories thrown in during it's run, though it's rarely spectacular. Ultimately, it's one of those shows which doesn't pretty much everything in an above average fashion, and does nothing particularly badly, but doesn't quite manage to pull everything together in order to be fantastic. It's still worth a look, though. Gatekeepers I only really mention this because it's tj_hans favourite - I'm not really all that big a fan of it. jpmeyer wrote about the show, so go read his entry. I'm actually more of a fan of the OAV sequel, Gatekeepers 21, which takes the camp setting and stirs in a wedge of emo for good measure. Anyway, Gatekeepers and Gatekeepers 21 were recently re-released as a cheap set, so there isn't really all that much to loose from it. Heat Guy J With this show, Escaflowne director Kazuki Akane set out to direct a show about manliness, so he obviously made one of the main male leads a robot. It's probably the most polished thing to have come out of Satelight - it lacks the weirdo and/or craptacular animation of shows like Noein or Kamichama Karin, nor does it have the oft pretentious writing of the likes of Arjuna. Really, it's just a fun, well made, pulpy adventure story - and it's cheap. Anyway, that's enough to be chewing on for one day. I'll go through the rest of the list tomorrow.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-17

DiGiKerot — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:06:23 +0000

Continuing on from yesterday. Nothing to explain really. There's a postal strike kicking off here in the UK, going on until the middle of next week. This means no new post until Wednesday, and as someone with quite a few packages in the postal system, I find this to be quite a pain. I mean, what on earth am I going to do without an influx of new anime DVDs? Watch the unwatched stuff I have, you say? Don't be crazy! Anyway, there were, thankfully, a few packages in the mail for me today to tide me over... For one thing, I got the final R2 volume of Code Geass. I was kind of surprised to find the box it was shipped in was rather large. It turns out this was because it had a CLAMP illustrated artbox (that image above is a sloppy attempt and linking together the wrap-around - click for bigness). I was kind of surprised, to be honest - other recent Sunrise releases through Bandai Visual in Japan, like HiME and ZHiME, didn't have artboxes. I also got the LE of Fate/TC. The game is pretty mediocre, but the LE pack-ins are quite nice. I'll probably milk this for a full post over the weekend, though ^^; Anyway, I was going to continue going through the Geneon back catalogue this evening, but I now find myself with more interesting things to do. I'll continue that post tomorrow, then.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-18

DiGiKerot — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:25:15 +0000

Ah, the future career questionnaire, a common staple for gag and general high-school anime. Typically the result will either be a character putting down a job completely different to what people perceive their personality to be (most frequently the strong, silent type actually wanting to be a vet), or they'll be completely bizarre, or they'll be bizarre appropriate. I was originally going to go for the later, featuring characters from Shana or something similar. Then I remembered that, aside from the fact I'd forgotten what Yuji looked like (lets face it, it's not really hard), I'm supposed to be making fun of that kind of generic content. Therefore, I just made my selections too boring to make a punchline out of. I still do think that Shana would make a good librarian, though... This post is up a bit late today. Aside from the fact that I changed what I was going to post a few times - I had a Zesty strip ready to go, but I consider that filler material for when I can't think of something else - a discussion on xxxHolic in #animeblogger made me decide to go out to the bookstore to buy the most recent volume, as well as pick up some other recent releases... Which leads me back to Shana, books and this Runningkid Service Announcement Yeah, the second English volume of the novel series (and the manga) are making their way into stores now. This is the first and only copy I've seen thus far, so I'm afraid you'll have to hunt down your own copy this time RK. If you do want to do me a favour and count the number of images in the Japanese release of the book, though, it'd be appreciated ^^; The bookstore I bought these from is (still) running a 3-for-2 sale on manga, so I picked up a few other things. I ended up standing around for ages whilst one of the books wouldn't scan through their system. Typically, this was also one of the books they had the most copies of lying around, and were pimping on their badly photocopied recommended releases flyer they had taped around the manga section. It was also a copy of He Is My Master volume 2. Really, I could have down without the clerk waving the book around and flicking through it in front of a bunch of people just because it wouldn't scan - it's not exactly the kind of thing which casts a positive of oneself. A least he didn't shout across the store for the price or something, that would have been really embarrassing... I wouldn't care, as it's totally not the kind of manga I usually read - I just have an odd liking for it, inspite of my self. Next time, however, I think I'll be ordering it online.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-19

DiGiKerot — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:51:58 +0000

Nothing much to say about it, really. Anyway, I've just gotten around to upgrading my Wordpress installation to 2.3 this morning. It went relatively smoothly - my theme doesn't do anything clever, and I only run four plug-ins, so it's not like there's much to break. It did seem to mess up my .htaccess in the process of the upgrade, though, resulting in the blog being offline for ten minutes or so whilst I was trying to figure out what was up with it.

Cherrypicking the Geneon Catalogue, Part 2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 13:58:25 +0000

Delving once more into the Geneon USA backcatalogue, I pull out a few more shows worth watching you possibly haven't seen. Master Keaton The tale of an insurance investigator who is also an archaeologist who is also a former SAS instructor. It's based on a manga series by Naoki Urasawa, but those going into it expecting the elaborate plotting of the likes of Monster or 20th Century Boys will be disappointed - aside from a few two parters, it's pretty much wholly episodic. Which isn't to say it isn't worth watching - it's all very engaging, charming and intelligent. It also has an episode in which Keaton defuses a bomb using only a bar of Dairy Milk. Most of the senior staff went on to work on the well-received adaptation of Monster, which looks to have fallen into the void as far as R1 goes. I guess Keaton didn't sell too well ^^; Sherlock Hound It's Sherlock Holmes, with dogs. Yeah, really. I mention this, but in actual fact it's only really worth getting the first two volumes for the Miyazaki directed episodes - after that, the show devolves quickly into repetitive tedium. The Soul Taker Okay, so it's not obscure in the slightest - particularly given that Komugi went through a random period of popularity a couple of years back - but this is Akiyuki Shinbo before he became popular with Nanoha and Tsukuyomi, then unpopular due to repeating the same gags into tedium, then popular again thanks to Zetsubou Sensei. Really, though, it's worth seeing The Soul Taker (and Petite Cossette, for that matter) just to see Shinbo apply his trademark visual style to something other than gag anime, not to mention that The Soul Taker looks a good deal better than most of his following works. It's a damn beautiful show, and one I'd be happy to hang practically any cut from on my wall as art. Of course, there isn't actually any real depth to The Soul Taker - behind the mask of pretension and unusual visuals it's really just a stereotypical, dumb-ass superhero show. This isn't really a bad thing, the show being an awful lot of fun in a really overly melodramatic fashion, but it is true that you probably want to deactivate your brain at the moment you press Play. Also - Jam Project OP. Rocktabulous, though most the imagery on display has absolutely nothing to do with the actual series... Also Also - it has an episode in which a mutant surgeon sings folk music about hospitals and IV feeds. How can that be anything LESS than awesome. Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar This show probably has more occurrences of the word "Waffle" than any other show in history. How can I not mention such a thing? Anyway, I guess this would be categorized as "healing anime", though it probably came before the term was coined. Koge Dondo character desgins and lovely mock-European scenery make this worth a look, though truth be told not a lot actually happens in it's duration. Sometimes that's not a bad thing, though. Just sit back and watch the cute fairies eat waffles, OK? I! My! Me! Strawberry Eggs! FROM THE DIRECTOR OF FATE/STAY NIGHT! Errr, Okay, that one isn't actually worth watching - it's about a guy who ends up disguising himself as a woman in order to get a job teaching PE at the local school, which is run by militant man haters who won't hire male teachers. Things go from bad to worse when, despite being loved in his female guise, his male form is branded as the local pervert. It's... different. I'm having problems coming up with something which I can classify as quite the same level as stupid - one of the plot points in an early episode revolves around the female students having completely impractical PE wear due to the staff believing that bloomers are too distracting to the male students. If you think that sounds stupid, well, that's only scratching the surface - it's simply me not remembering anything more specific that is stopping me reiterating more...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-20

DiGiKerot — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:20:21 +0000

I have to wonder if certain Japanese TV networks have been watching a different version of Higurashi to the rest of the world, as otherwise it's apparent cancellation seems a little silly to me. It's not like it's an American action movie which glamorises violence with crazy stunts and snappy one-liners, nor is it like a shlock horror movie where it reveals in the delight of increasingly elaborate and crazy death sequences. Unless there's some kind of significant change in Kai (I have to admit, I've been following the show on R1 - guess I'm in for a wait to see the rest ^^;), the violence in Higurashi is always shown as being shocking and horrific. It's not really shown as being cool or a valid way to solve ones problems. It's kind of the antithesis of the kind of show I would have thought would have inspired violence in youg'uns. Meh, I'm feeling really lousy today. I'm not sure what my posting schedule for the coming week will be as a result - if I persist in feeling unwell, I'll probably not feel like throwing anything together, and I've not really got anything backlogged to post at the moment.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-21

DiGiKerot — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:11:17 +0000

Remember me saying that I was feeling lousy? Well, yeah, that lousy feeling quickly turned into a rather nasty, strength-draining bout of cold (or maybe it was Super Cold, it's kind of hard to tell the difference), which is why I've not posted something for the last week. I'm still feeling kind of lousy, to be honest, but I figure I need to get on with things at some point. I just wish I had some better material to "get on with". Bah. Come on, anime fandom! It's been a whole week and there's been nothing worth poking fun at! Really, I'm disappointed in you lot. Anyway, random comments from happenings in the last week : 1) NCSX have opened pre-orders on the LE of the PSP Haruhi game. What is vaguely interesting about this, aside from it being where I end up getting most of my games these days, is that they are saying that supply of the figure isn't necessarily guaranteed even with pre-orders. I hadn't known about the figure, to be honest, but the fact that it sounds like they've effectively created two separate layers collectors edition probably means that the main box is going to be in plentiful supply. 2) Those episodes of Black Lagoon where they are chased around by the maid are sooooo goddamn awesome. Hopefully Geneon will find some mechanism to get the rest of Black Lagoon out there - it's far too entertaining a show to fall into licensing limbo. 3) I need to get around to posting about Fate/Tiger Colosseum, iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD3 and the second English Shana novel. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few other things I wanted to post about too... 4) Wings of Honneamise looks amazing on Blu-ray. It's nice to finally see a release of that movie which, visually, does it justice - all the DVD versions have been kind of lame. It's just a shame it costs so damn much. I need to buy more anime on Blu-ray, but the price is kind of off-putting. 5) The back-catalogue Geneon stuff I'd ordered once it became clear most of it is likely to go OOP has started to turn up (with £111 worth of customs charge notices to boot -_-). Most of it's just old, 90's OAV stuff which I'd been putting off buying for years due to having previously owned them on VHS, but there's a few things in there I'm really not sure why I actually ordered. I mean, do I really have any desire to watch Ikki-tousen or Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, or did I just order them for the heck of it? Given that it's clearly the later, I should probably be glad that the likes Girls Bravo weren't it stock at the retailer I use at the time. It'll allow me to pretend that I at least have some standards. Regardless of that, I've now got a good five or six full TV shows added into my back catalogue. 6) I finally got around to watching the last few episodes of Planetes. I've no idea why it's taken me so long to get around to it. Great show. 7) The English version of the NHK novel is floating around in retail now. I've yet to secure a copy, though. I'll post a review as soon as I track down a copy and read it. 8) Apparently, once Seven Seas get around to recommencing their novel publishing, they are going to be switching to a smaller book size similar to that of the Japanese originals, as opposed to the standard US-manga size they are presently in. Whilst the space saving implications are welcomed, it vaguely annoys me that I'll probably end up rebuying the first three Boogiepop novels just so they all match up. 9) I acquired that volume of Noein I'd forgotten to order, and therefore have now watched through to the end of the series. I'm impressed with how effectively they turned Atori into an awesome character. The creativeness in the action sequences and the animation totally blew me away. 10) I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole bunch of things I wanted to talk about, but I figure I've waffled on more than long enough at this point.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-22

DiGiKerot — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:25:38 +0000

On the internet, no-one takes you seriously. Ever. I started playing Godhand on the PS2 over the weekend - mostly yesterday, when after turning the PS2 on for twenty minutes between TV shows, I ended up switching it off six hours later. I've had the game for quite some time, but I've only just gotten around to playing it, having heard about the ending credits. Utterly legendary. Of course, that'd have probably counted for more credit in the legendary stakes ending stakes if it'd hadn't been for Portal this last week. Suppose I should check if my 360's still running and grab myself a copy of Orange Box at some point... But, yeah, Godhand. It's either incredibly stupid, or stupidly incredible. I'm not entirely sure it makes much difference - ultimately, it's as brilliant as it is retarded.

Mikan Watch #4: Eureka Seven

DiGiKerot — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:18:39 +0000

This is from episode 38. Be amazed at the versatility being displayed here - previously we've seen a mikan box used for storage, one used as a platform and, now, one used as a makeshift sleeping quarter. Astonishing. Or maybe not, but, hey, the later episodes of Eureka Seven are really, really good. I mean, the show starts to improve dramatically shortly into it's run, but the show just keeps on improving as it goes along. Good stuff.

Shakugan no Shana: Fight Day

DiGiKerot — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:27:40 +0000

This is the second Shakugan no Shana novel - I've reviewed the first book previously. As such, I don't really have all that much to say about this one - it's not like Shana is exactly an unknown property among anime fans, and those who aren't familiar with it would serve themselves better by getting the first book anyway. As such, I'm just going to cover what I feel are the pertinant points here. This book covers the plot arc regarding Marjorie Dawes pursuit of Lamines. In the TV anime version of Shana, all this content had been merged together with the Friagne arc from the first novel to form a single plot arc, and having now read this book, I can see why they did this. To be quite blunt, I think this is one of the areas in which the anime version of the show improved on things - with the first novel, I kind of liked the more focused narrative, but that's because the content of that book is good enough to carry it. Whilst this book retains the assured flow of the first book, the material here just isn't quite interesting enough to carry the book. It's not that it's awful - it's still relatively entertaining - it's just a little too simplistic. I can't really say the book gives you anything over the anime version this time around either. I'm not entirely sure if that's the problem or not - having seen the anime version previously, it's hard to separate myself from it and judge this book entirely on it's own terms. Certainly, it's true that the differences in the first novel and what it became in the TV anime were more pronounced and certainly made things more interesting for me. For what it's worth, whilst I'm sure there'd be at least some more interest - or at least surprise - value in this from having not seen the anime, I still don't think it'd be enough to raise this book above the purely average rating I'd give it. As for the English publication, I have to say that Viz really have their presentation on these novels spot on. I love the covers they've been using for the Shana novels (and manga, for that matter) - they're simple and striking whilst not really going to silly, Tokyopop-esque lengths to hide their origins. The internals have the colour images from the Japanese books actually printed in colour, and the text pages are printed without any annoying Full Metal Panic! style gimmicks. The text itself is in a nice, readable font too. It's not like Viz are the only ones doing this right - Seven Seas got things spot-on with Boogiepop too - but after reading dozens of inconsistently, yet mostly shoddily, presented Tokyopop books, it's simply really pleasant to read. To get back onto the images, it looks like they've kept everything this time around. The images seem to match up with what RunningKid told me was in his Japanese copy, anyway, and none of the images look to be cropped. That said, the most risqué this volume gets is an image of Shana curled up in the bath, which isn't explicit in the slightest anyway. In regards to the adaptation of the first novel, I said "Viz’s English rendition is eminently readable at least, and I really don’t have anything to complain about in terms of how it’s been written". I guess the first part of that still stands true - I don't have any real problems in how the book flows, anyway. I do have a few moans with the English writing though - it's frequently overtly terse (with an abundance of short sentences), and things are kept rather basic and, frankly, a little dull. The prior probably reflects how the books were written in Japanese, but the later is likely more a result of the English adaptation. I don't really expect them to start on the same kind of overly flowery prose the Vampire Hunter D novels flaunt, but they could really do with at least buying a thesaurus and varying things up a bit - translating a novel doesn't necessarily mean you have to completely throw out any attempt at creative writing, and a little creativity would probably improve things a lot here. As it stands, it's just a little dry. It's quite probable the first novel suffers from the same issues, but after reading two volumes of the series, it's becoming more obvious. Ultimately, it's an OK read. It doesn't really hold interest like the first book in the series does, but it is at least diverting. I'll be looking for the series to improve from this point onwards, though - whilst I'm too pigheaded to drop reading the series, my regard for it will only drop if it delivers a further volume like this one. I'll be looking for a bit more movement towards a larger plot and a little more complexity in it's story at least, but something a little more multi-threaded would be appreciated.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-23

DiGiKerot — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:42:36 +0000

Almost true story. The name "Beta-Waffle" actually came from a Ye Olde-style Captcha, which pretty much just threw out random words, on some website I was registering on circa 2000, and for some reason it just stuck. What can I say, I kind of like the name. I'm thinking of doing NaNoWriMo this year. I'm really not sure my grasp of the English language is actually up to it, but I figure if I can throw up a 1000-word blog post in an evening without too much effort, I can push myself a little more and get 50,000 words done within a month. 50,000 GOOD words? No way, but 50,000 bad ones I might be able to make. This might have an impact on the regularity of my blog updates for the time period in which I'm deluding myself into thinking I'll be able to pull it off, though - guess I'll try to prepare a few weeks worth of comic posts in advance of something. All this rests on being able to decide on something to actually write about. I have a few ideas - I'm currently mentally toying with an concept I am referring to as "Real Men Drink Milk" - but nothing at a point which I can either pad out to a necessary length or trim down. I'll probably just artificially bloat something by adding vampires. Vampires are cool.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-24

DiGiKerot — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:18:07 +0000

I'm starting to wonder if they've actually run out of remotely sensible names for anime characters. I mean, as awesome as it is, what kind of thought process went on to come up with a name like Jacuzzi Splot? Likewise, Gundam 00 has some pretty silly names like Hallelujah and Lockon. I can only really presume that they either just looked up random words in an English dictionary, or just used the first thing which popped into their heads, regardless of how silly it actually sounded. In this case, I went for the later, going for something which was just wildly impractical ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-25

DiGiKerot — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:00:23 +0000

These matters need to be considered when naming characters. Hmmm, I thought my English copy of the NHK novel would have turned up in the mail today. Alas, it has not. Ho-hum, guess I'll find something else to do tonight.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-26

DiGiKerot — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:09:59 +0000

I have something of a love-hate relationship with katakana, and it's largely the later to be quite honest. I like that fact that it does assist someone nihongo-challenged like myself progress through Japanese videogames, but on the other hand it's breaks words something horrifically. There's nothing more annoying that trying to work out what a particularly complicated looking word is only to discover, after ten minutes of mouthing it to yourself in a bemused fashion, that it's something completely obvious that you really should have known. I can only pity those people Japanese people who actually have to figure out how to write the stuff on a regular basis. I have to admit, I'd be more than a little tempted to just simplify everything (which is basically how the term "anime" came about). Coincidently, if anyone actually wants to try write Antidisestablishmentarianism in katakana, be my guest ^^; Meh, stupid postal strikes and their long-lasting effect on the UK postal service. My copy of the NHK novel, which by most usual standards would have arrived already, still hasn't. Hopefully it will tomorrow. Still, I went out and grabbed me a copy of Orange Box today. I've been told that getting the 360 version (or is that just owning a 360 itself?) will result in me getting banished to the super-special tenth circle of hell. I dispute that fact, pointing out that, in fact, it's less a circle, more a three-quarter ring. Oh, and Hinano, if you really do want to guest-art on a comic can you dig my e-mail address out of one of my comments on your blog and give me a shout? I should have used a valid address. I can't say I've got any ideas yet, but I'm sure I can come up with something... ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-27

DiGiKerot — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:07:47 +0000

Groan. I played through Portal yesterday. Didn't take all that long (maybe two and a half hours), but now I am feeling the need to go out and buy some cake for some strange reason...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-28

DiGiKerot — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:34:07 +0000

I know that Wing is supposed to be a dirty word when talking about Gundam 00, but anyone who claims not to have immediately thought of Relena and her, errr, "animal troubling" as soon as Wang Liu Mei turned up in that safari costume is either lying or hasn't seen Wing. Either way, they lose. For all the flak it tends to get, Wing is actually a pretty entertaining show. The animation is pretty good, too. It's be nice to see an HD release at some point - given that it's probably on film somewhere we'd probably actually see an advantage from it. Speaking of HD releases, it looks like that Japanese Blu-ray release of Utawarerumono (almost typed Underwater Ray Romano there, just to save myself having to look up exactly how to write that) is going to have some of the ADV assets on there - namely, the dub and the subtitles. Given I've not got Utawarerumono in any format already (nor have I seen it), this set has suddenly become very tempting. Admittedly, at around 50,000 in yennage it's not exactly a cheap release, but it is actually native HD. In other good news, apparently MVM here in the UK have a full sublicense for Black Lagoon - that is, both the first series and Second Barrage. Should no release of the later Second Barrage disks come through in the US, I should at least be able to see to the end of the series. Huzzah! (Oh, and it anyone is wondering, I had some Carrot Cake yesterday. It was both delicious and moist).

Mikan Watch #5: Linda Linda Linda!

DiGiKerot — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:29:07 +0000

You thought that this meme was confined to anime? No way! The above image is from the movie Linda Linda Linda, in which a few such things actually appear. Linda Linda Linda is a movie in which, three days prior to a performance at their schools cultural festival, find themselves with an injured member and without a lead vocalist. Cue one of their members retasking and the addition of a new member, a korean exchange student who spends an awful lot of time friendless or reading manga with young girls. Coincidently, the name comes from the fact that the group ends up doing Blue Hearts covers, and is taken from the song Linda Linda. Those who have played the Ouendan games on the DS will probably be familiar with the song, as it was used in first game. If you can spot familiarities between this movies plot and that of a well known episode of a certain popular TV anime of recent years, you wouldn't be the only one. It's clear that KyoAni were aware of the similarities between the two as well. The set-up for the concerts at the end of both are pretty much the same - pouring rain forces pretty much all those attending the festival to decamp to the gym where the band happen to be about to perform, and eventually go out with a series of shots of the rain-soaked school grounds. There are a number of very obvious visual references, too. Haruhi wields the same axe as the guitarist in Linda Linda Linda, for example, and whilst the majority of the concert sequence in Haruhi is original, there's a few cuts which are clearly intended to mimic the movie - the way the elated Haruhi turns to her bandmembers after God Knows is remarkably similar to the what Son does in Linda Linda Linda after their first song. Before anyone cries "rip-off" or anything, Linda Linda Linda came first, and there's way, way too much unique content in Haruhi (like, most of the scene in question) for it, like the Phoenix Wright stuff in Lone Island Syndrome, to be counted as anything other than a loving tribute. It's simply the kind of thing that's amusing to note. The movie is out on R1 from Viz if anyone particularly wants to see it. It is pretty much just a two-hour movie where nothing really happens, but it is relatively entertaining, and there are a few particularly amusing scenes. It's probably worth watching for Haruhi nerds just for the sake of it, though I'd imagine at least part of the concert scene will be up on Youtube if you really want to look for it.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-29

DiGiKerot — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:07:53 +0000

Given that in most of these anime shows the heroines cooking is either miraculous or, more often than not, inedible, I kind of figured a characters cooking being entirely unremarkable would be more amusing. Apparently, the new Katamari game has a stage with funky iMAS (game) music. I've not bought a Katamari game since the second PS2 one, since by that point I'd already thought it was getting a bit old, but I'm getting kind of tempted to buy this one now. It doesn't look like there's an EU release on the horizon, but given I own an Asian 360 anyway it doesn't really effect me. UK postal system is still sucking post-postal strikes, therefore I still don't have my copy of Welcome to the NHK. Bah. Unless I have a sudden change of plans, tomorrows comic is going to be made of win and awesome.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-30: Super Guest Special

DiGiKerot — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:44:47 +0000

Super special thanks to Hinano for offering to do this - can you guess which panel she provided? ^^; I could have sworn there was something else I was going to mention today - well, aside from fist waving at the UK postal service not delivering my NHK novel again - but I can't for the life of me think exactly what it was. Oh well, no doubt I'll remember in about an hours time, then promptly forget again by the time I come to do tomorrows post...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-31

DiGiKerot — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:01:25 +0000

THE CAKE IS A LIE! etc, etc. Errr, so, yeah, the Cake in Portal is just a big rick-roll. I guess if you've not played Portal, I've just spoilt the midway point for you, though frankly it's pretty obvious - indeed, it's have probably been more amusing if there actually was some cake... I almost forgot to actually post this, having gotten myself preoccupied with something else ^^; Oh, and my copy of the NHK novel did actually turn up today, as, oddly enough, did the first volume of the anime version.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-32

DiGiKerot — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:11:18 +0000

If you've never heard of Will It Blend?, it's a video series about, well, blending things. Things like Cochiken, Chuck Norris and Glow Sticks. In Blenders. Yeah. This is also vaguely influenced by the Bacanno OP, or that shot of Dallas at the end. It kind of looks like he's drowning - being all mafia themed and all, I'm assuming that he's sleeping with the fishes with concrete shoes. Being immortal obviously means that he can't die no matter how often he drowns. That clearly can't be pleasant, though I'd imagine that being shredded repeatedly would be even less pleasant.

iDOLM@STER: Live for You

DiGiKerot — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:35:52 +0000

The latest issue of Famitsu has an announcement for a new 360 iMAS game, Live for You. From what has been said, it's sounding like an uber-stripped down version of iMAS - that is, it has the actual game part removed, leaving just the dress up and performance parts of the game. I'm guessing that DLC sales for the first iMAS game have slowed down to the point where they feel that it's more profitable to make a whole new release out of a bunch of them. Then sell some more download content for that one. Given the popularity of the performance part of the game in Japan, I guess it's not surprising that they'd do a full game out of just that part. It'll be interesting to see what the remixed music it's promising is - songs in the original iMAS have a strict time limitation due to the fact that they all have to run exactly the same length to facilitate the online auditions. Remove the auditions, and you remove that requirement. At this point I'm pretty much expecting the remixed music to be the "M@STER" versions of the songs from the Masterpiece and Masterwork CDs, though some new tracks would be nice as well. Some random iMAS themed mini-games would be cool, too, but that would be being overtly optimistic. Whilst I'll be buying it anyway, I have to admit that this isn't quite the iMAS game I was hoping for. The game I was hoping for was a strict, arcade-rules iMAS game. The thing with the 360 version is that the game part is actually rather broken, which is probably why they've removed the game part and produced Live For You. There's a few issues with the 360 version which ultimately makes getting a good score more about patience than anything else. For those who haven't played iMAS on the 360, the game is ultimately about getting the highest number of fans in the 52 weeks the game spans. The arcade version, from what I gather, is different in that the period isn't fixed - it'll kick you if you under perform - and you don't have quite as much free scope for choosing your actions. The gain fans, you have to pass auditions for TV appearances against other groups of idols, and to improve your chances at auditioning you need to raise your statistics through lessons, choices of costumes and song selection. To be able to enter into the higher rated auditions for the most popular shows, you need to have met certain fan and level limits. Basically, the idea is that you go from having no fans to working your way through the various levels of TV appearances to being a top idol, mixing different types of activities though each of the 52 turns out get. If you actually play it that way, it's a pretty challenging game to get a good rating in. The thing is, no-one does play it this way outside their first game or two. Once you've unlocked enough decent costume parts, which are unlocked randomly at the end of each week (or bought online), to get a reasonable boost from the offset, things become pretty pointless. If you are competing to get into the online ranking tables, there's pretty much no option than to play in a broken fashion. (I'd recommend not reading on unless you are really, really interested in iMAS game mechanics, or want to know how to get those table-topping scores some of the Japanese players have gained). Ultimately, there's only actually three real issues that actually break the 360 game, but for something which started life as an arcade game stressing its competitive, online play they are all kind of retarded, and from what I gather none of them affect the arcade version. In all three cases, I find it astonishing that they hadn't realised the effect they would have on the game. The first is the inclusion of one, specific audition type, called "Make Dog" - actually an online-only audition, which kind of makes it worse given it's effect on the rankings. Make Dog is an audition which is intended as a leg-up to those who are performing badly at the game - you can only take it if your success rate at auditions is particularly low (as in below 20%), and you can only do it once (assuming you succeed). It sounds fine in theory, but the implementation doesn't really work. The thing is, your success rate at the start of the game, before you take any other auditions, is at 0% - this means you meet the criteria for participating in that audition as soon as you start the game. The audition gives three of the five competing acts a TV appearance, making it fairly easy to win for even a starting group given a decent costume, and the value of the audition is actually rather high - it'll jump you straight into the middle of E rank. You'll get a stat boost from winning a "difficult" audition, since your opposition will likely all be a higher level than you (particularly true if you yank your network connection as soon as you join, meaning you'll be competing only against CPU opponents). You'll only need to clear one more audition from the online only section - most of which have fairly lax joining restrictions - to reach D rank, which will allow you access to the games highest-valued auditions, though you'd find them rather tougher to pass at a beginners level. Not that this will concern you much, as getting such a significant chunk of fans off the bat simply has it's advantages in the weekly automatic fan increase - you actually get an increase in your fanbase without doing anything, admittedly a small one. The more fans you already have, the larger this increase will actually be. Getting a good score off the bat means that, well, you'll reap bigger benefits than you would have doing a comparable audition later in the game. Now, having gotten off to a good start, you need to increase your stats to such a point you can compete in the harder auditions. This isn't an issue thanks to the fact that there is no penalisation for doing nothing but lessons. I'm led to believe that one of the things that'll kick you from the game in the arcade is not passing an audition within a certain number of weeks - first you'll start seeing stat degradation, then the management decide the group is underperforming and disband them. There's no such penalisation in the 360 version - you get stat degradation for keeping a single for too long (first at around 10-12 weeks), but nothing for doing nothing but lessons. Essentially, there's nothing to stop you doing ten weeks of lessons off the trot. If you are sensible you'll manage to keep your Tension (a gauge representing your relationship with your characters) high enough not to cause problems whilst using lessons effectively (PROTIP - you get the biggest stat boost for lessons for the characters whose level for that area is already high - i.e. Chihaya for Vocal lessons and Iori for Pose and Image ones). Ten weeks of lessons is enough to get you in a good position to pass pretty much anything with a bit of luck, so after that you can spend the rest of the game doing nothing but auditions. You'll only need one more to reach D rank, which you'll pass easily, then you can spend the rest of the time doing that one Idol Vision audition worth 75000 fans. You'll get around 3million fans in the end, no problem - well, aside from having to wait for that audition to actually show in the list, but that's just a matter of time. The difference between this score and those topping the leaderboards online is simply the knowledge of how to correctly use appeals during performances. Failing auditions, coincidently, isn't a problem due to the third issue with the game - there's no significant reset penalisation (or penalisation at all). If something doesn't go your way, you can just reset it and try as many times as you want. Really, this is the uber-gamebreaker. All they would have had to do was make the game autosave when you select audition or another activity for that week, then save again after it's been performed. If you try and restart the game using a save from before completing the week, it should allow you to finish the game, but disqualify you from the online rankings. It'd probably annoy people on occasion due to accident resets or power cuts, but frankly it'd be better than breaking the entire online rankings. I mean, do badly at a lesson? Reset. Audition doesn't go your way? Reset. Make bad choices during a dialogue? Reset. There isn't even a server-side check to make you that online auditions you've just performed in haven't been erased from your units record... Totally breaks the game. That isn't to say that there isn't any fun to be had with the game - I've probably played it more than anything else this year, after all. The dialogues are fun (even if some are a little on the creepy side), as is the music and the performances and playing the game fairly. There just isn't much point in that when others don't feel like playing along. So to conclude, to fix the game they need to get around the reset problem, remove the Make Dog audition and give you serious stat-degradation or fan-loss for not winning auditions on a regular basis. Bandai Namco, if you ever release this game on another home format, please do the above. Thank you.

Tokyopop Planning Live-Action Ikki-tousen?

DiGiKerot — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:38:46 +0000

Or Battle Vixons as they call it. I have to say, I'm really not sure anything good can actually come of this. That isn't to say that all attempts to adapt anime and manga into film in the US are doomed to be awful - I'm sure if the live-action Witch Hunter Robin project had come to fruition it'd have been half-decent, but Ikki-tousen is another kettle of fish altogether. I mean, Ikki-tousen is essentially as show focusing largely around heroes from Three Kingdoms era China reincarnated as buxom schoolgirls in exploding clothes who fight a lot. Instantly, you have the conflicts between the words "schoolgirl" and both "buxom" and "exploding clothes". It looks like they are sidestepping this by moving the action to college, but it still seems odd, and the exploding clothes are, unfortunately, probably not all that likely. This big issue, I think, is probably the Three Kingdoms thing. It's not like most US citizens are massively familiar with Three Kingdoms - I tried reading RotTK once, and only got around a third of the way through - and removing that aspect kind of makes the whole thing even more generic a school fighting series. At the very least, it means actually relating it back to Ikki-tousen is pretty stupid. Of course, you could take the whole reincarnation thing are re-imagine to have a more American twist to it. That said, I can't imagine many Americans would be too happy to have George Washington re-imagined as a dim-witted, top-heavy fight-maniac. This begs the question - what kind of famous American war-monger can they have reincarnated as a dim-witted fight maniac? My Battle Vixons movie pitch. A Hundred years from now, Georgina W Bushe, along with her well-meaning but ultimately kind of useless friend Anthony Blyr, start at their new college. Unfortunately for them, it's a college where it's students rather like the fisticuffs, and the strongest student group is acknowledged to be that led by the despotic Sandra Whosane. Will Georgina be able to defeat Sandra and claim the title of strongest on campus? Who knows! See, it's a perfect match! Or maybe not ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-33

DiGiKerot — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:58:15 +0000

Did you really think I'd blend her? Well, yeah, OK, I nearly did. I figured it'd be funny to have one end in "If I wasn't immortal, I'd ask you to kill me" or something, but then decided that it'd be a little too sick for my liking. This amuses me much more, anyway. Million Monkeys Month kicks off next week, so expect a bunch of posts over the weekend whilst I clear the decks of the stuff I should have done weeks ago. Don't expect any of them to be particularly interesting, though.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-34

DiGiKerot — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 11:51:36 +0000

Special thanks again to Hinano for the last panel, and for having gone through with such a moronic comic double-parter. It probably speaks volumes about the way my mind works that, when Hinano offered to do this, and I got comments saying they were looking forward to seeing what we'd come up with, I was kind of drawn to the idea of doing something like this. My comment to Hinano was something along the lines of "nothing says guest artist like an amorphous blob with eyes that anyone could draw", though the fact that she rendered them so beautifully (way better than I would have done, anyway) made it way funnier to me. Basically, I thought it'd be funny to frustrate the reader by producing something retarded, though in the end reaction to that strip was actually relatively positive (well, from the few that actually commented on it). Still, I figured at the time it'd have been amusing to follow up with an apology to the readership for comic, which is why this strip has materialised ^^; Speaking of Clannad and Dangos, look - it's a block drop puzzle game with dango! I'm not really feeling inclined, nor have the time, to actually finish (or, indeed, do any more work) on it right now, so it'll never actually get into a releasable state. Sorry about flashing the bait and all that. Maybe I'll get back around to finishing it when I have a bit more time to do so.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-35

DiGiKerot — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:21:34 +0000

[insert witty banter here] Or maybe not - in either case, I don't really have anything to say today. There are claims that the latest volume of Haruhi has a Lucky Star trailer hidden on it floating around some of the legit anime sites. Whilst the subtitles do look convincingly DVDish, I've yet to see confirmation from any source I'd actually trust, and as such I'd recommend taking this with an entire oceans worth of salt for the time being. The DVD hits retail properly in the next few days, so the truth behind this will be shortly unveiled.

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 3

DiGiKerot — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:56:20 +0000

I'm going to be quick and lazy regarding this volume, largely because I was supposed to do this post weeks ago, and volume 4 has shipped already. I've not actually had time to watch the episodes on this volume yet, either (six through eight). Anyway, as with the previous volume, the first pressing this time around was another magnet - this one being the Mondenkind corporate rather than school logo. The omake feature this time around is Yukiho and Makoto discussing the swimwear of displayed in the beach episode, which essentially consists of a series of fanservice shots, mercifully ending just before Joseph when Makoto starts fawning over Yayoi in her crab suit. Basically, it's lots of this: That's pretty much all there is to say about this volume.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-36

DiGiKerot — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:23:40 +0000

Ph33r my mad pixel-art skills! Or maybe not. To be honest, I just had it in my mind to do a sprite comic after a recent SBEmail over at Homestar Runner, and couldn't really think of a good punchline to it. I suppose I could have just MSPaint'ed my way to a non-punchline as suggested by Strongbad, but instead I just ripped a panel from an old comic and changed the dialogue. Huzzah for lazy comicing! But, yeah, actually drawing new sprites does somewhat defeat the point of a sprite comic, which is largely to make random, retarded video game jokes with minimal artistic outlay.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-37

DiGiKerot — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:35:16 +0000

Useless mascot is useless. Let's face it, most magical girl mascots aren't very useful in the long run - sure, at the start they offer all kinds of invaluable advice, but ultimately they end up becoming dead weight, not being of any physical use. So, err, yeah, Filler material! ^^; Okay, so I didn't have time to throw up anything new, and as a resulted I ended up recycling a bunch of artwork. I should probably get around to continuing this storyline on a bit anyway. Anyway, go way back to here for reference. I've ended up doing a bit more work on my Dango game. It's actually in a fairly workable state, except for the fact that I've yet to manage to get it running on a PC other than my own. If I manage to figure out what's wrong, then maybe I'll do a 0.5 release or something.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-38: Dead Kero Day

DiGiKerot — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:52:25 +0000

You know, I had a whole Halloween comic special planned out - and by "planned out", I woke up this morning and thought "you know, I should do a Halloween comic". Unfortunately, various things transpired which resulted in me having absolutely no time whatsoever to actually throw the thing together. Maybe I'll do it belatedly over the weekend if I have time. Maybe I'll decided it would be too much effort and, well, not. So, anyway, I may as well borrow from Megatokyo and do a Dead Kero Day - I guess that's a meme in itself, but if I was really putting some effort into it I'd have drawn myself as a zombie or something. Instead, you are getting this sketch of what the last panel of the Halloween comic would probably have looked like. Stare at it, and be glad I didn't get around to putting the whole thing together. Oh, and since it's Halloween, I'll post Zombie no Tsukaima again. Just for giggles and all.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-39

DiGiKerot — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:01:39 +0000

Weee, this is an uber-rush job thrown together when I suddenly realised what time it was. I was working on the Halloween strip I was going to post yesterday, but nine images (about thirty panels) in I realised that there was no way I'd be finished with it tonight. Unfortunately, as a side effect, I'm 1000 words behind on my NaNoWriMo target for Real Men Drink Milk as well, having only completed the first 800 words. I'll need to make up that difference tomorrow as well as trying to finish the Halloween comic (which, to be honest, I really don't think is working...). Bah, I'm just rambling now, it's late and I'm tired. Hopefully I'll have something better to post tomorrow, though ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-40: Belated Halloween "Spectacular"

DiGiKerot — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:24:31 +0000

Next Page In the spirit of "I've started, so I'll finish", here is the completed version of the Halloween special I'd had sketched out. Unfortunately, it actual quality is in no way representative of the amount of effort which actually went into producing the damn thing. In these times of increasing competition, some of which occasionally have actual jokes, I'm starting to wonder if I should hang up my stylus ^^; Anyway, have fun - although to do that, I'd recommend getting away from this site as quickly as possible... Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Next Page Congratulations on reaching the end!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-41

DiGiKerot — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:26:55 +0000

Something a bit less time consuming after yesterdays Halloween Comic of Hell. Seriously, that thing was an utter pain in the arse, which is why the art was all over the place - the quality of any given panel was dependant on precisely how pissed off with it I was feeling whilst drawing it. Anyway, I saw a trailer for the movie Good Luck Chuck on TV last night. Looks pretty bad, and I guess you are probably wondering why I'm mentioning it on this anime-centric blog. Why, exactly? Two words - penguin pantsu. I've been working on my NaNoWriMo effort, Real Men Drink Milk. I've passed the 5,500 word mark, which pretty much puts me on schedule. It's all crap, though.

Baccano! DVD 1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 21:15:01 +0000

I can't say I'm likely to make posts about every volume of the R2 Baccano! DVD release, simply because there isn't likely to be much of any real interest about it until the last volume with the DVD-only episodes, but I figured I'd at least go through the motions for this first volume. The DVD release of Baccano is coming in Super Jewel Cases. I have to admit, I'm not really a fan of the things over the standard plastic DVD case in terms of likely durability, but since I take care of my stuff it's not so much of an issue. The standard release, I'm presuming, will just have a single sheet insert for the cover, as the 12-page booklet which provides the cover on my copy is listed as one of the first press bonuses for this release. It has, among other things, the storyboards for the OP sequence, which are kind of cool to see. The other first press bonus is simultaneously kind of cool, and also completely useless to me - it's the first part of a new Baccano! novel, Baccano! 193X, which looks like it is being split across the whole of the DVD release. Probably really awesome if your Japanese is up to reading the thing, though. The on-DVD extras consist of a 10-minute long behind the scenes featurette, and the promotional trailer they released for the show. The behind the scenes feature is alright, but it's really too short for the amount it has to cover (most of the main voice actors have a few words, and given how many characters there are in the show, that takes up a good chunk of it). I'd kind of liked to have seen a longer feature on the fact-finding New York trip, or a longer series of cast interviews. As for the usual checks for re-animated sequences, the really obvious ones are the alterations to various period articles - they've changed the newspaper the Vice-Director was reading (though in a later, distant shot it appears to revert back to the broadcast version), and the dollar bills Firo is carrying. Then there are the framing changes - there are an awful lot of cuts where they've not necessarily re-animated anything, but they've repositioned all the elements - tweaking character and background positions, on occasion by surprisingly small amounts. There was at least one spot where I noticed that they'd actually redrawn Miria though. This probably means that there's a bunch I've missed... Just to be clear, both of those images are from exactly the same frame - the background position has been changed slightly, and as well as being re-drawn Miria actually sits lower down in the frame on the DVD version, presumably to correct the high difference between her and Isaac. As for the actual quality of the DVD, the video is a little softer than I'd like, but otherwise it's fine.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-42

DiGiKerot — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:04:33 +0000

I've had the sketches for today's comic sitting on a piece of paper for weeks now - probably for long enough for people to forget me making reference to the problems magical girls have transforming in the age of high-tech cameras. Work on "Real Men Drink Milk" is still progressing at a good pace - I hit 8700 words today. A thousand of those words, admittedly, consisted of a conversation between the heroine and five would-be kidnappers, in which they tried to convince her to remove her hat so they could properly determine if she was actually the person they wanted to kidnap or not. Yes, it really is the most retarded story ever written.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-43

DiGiKerot — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:35:29 +0000

When the R1 licensing news for Lucky Star broke, someone over at the AoD forums did actually suggest that Bandai should do a star-shaped box. He was, of course, quickly, and justifiably, laughed at. However, I do have to admit that I'm kind of worried about him giving Bandai ideas. A few years back Bandai started doing slightly fruity boxes, with things like their .hack//SIGN hexagon, before mercifully going back to the standard chipboard slipcase. They have recently, however, started to regress back into the realms of slightly fruity boxes. The Zegapain box, for example, has this weird fold-out design I can't really be bothered to explain, but does make it something more of a pain to actually get at the disks. Then there was that completely OTT Haruhi series box. I kind of hope that Bandai stop with the silly boxes. I guess they're kind nice for those who don't buy many disks - it gives them something nice and flashy to show off, and probably incites purchasing urges in some - but they are entirely impractical for power buyers short on shelf-space who happen to like series boxes to file their disks away in... Meh, my word-count for Real Men Drink Milk hasn't been going so well today, only netting my 600 words thus far today. I need to get try and get a bit more done before sleeping, but on the grand scale of things I am still running ahead of schedule at the moment. I think my self-imposed restriction of not allowing any one character to appear in consecutive chapters might have to be dropped soon in favour of making things a little easier to progress.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-44

DiGiKerot — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:47:58 +0000

I figured I'd do my part towards the continuance of the dead horse flogging ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-45

DiGiKerot — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:07:12 +0000

Flog! Flog that dead dango! Flog it some more! Flog it like nothing has ever been flogged before! FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG! Anyway, it's post and dash time tonight. I want to break 12000 words on RMDM this evening, and maybe get in a little PSP Disgaea afterwards.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-47

DiGiKerot — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:12:51 +0000

The MegaDaijoubu comic I'm referencing. DS is doing strange and peculiar things with horizontal comics - things that involve three or five panels instead of four. The innovation displayed in such an act both boggles my mind and terrifies me...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-48

DiGiKerot — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:55:42 +0000

For the record, no, my head doesn't explode when trying to figure out how to do it :P I've spent way too much time today playing PSP Disgaea (amusing point: The first random monster I attacked was called Waffle - no, really!), and not enough time working on RMDM, which wouldn't be too bad if I hadn't made too very little progress last night as well. I mean, technically I wrote my word quota yesterday, and I was slightly ahead of schedule, but the words I ended up writing yesterday was a complete re-write of a chapter I really, really hadn't been happy with, meaning the overall length only really went up by around 500 words ^^; In random news, in a "I really shouldn't have said that" moment, Media Blasters boss John Sirabella accidentally let it slip that they've licensed Doujin Works and Genshiken 2 in a post of the AnimeonDVD forums yesterday. No official announcement yet, though, and there probably won't be for a while.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-49

DiGiKerot — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:52:07 +0000

Meh, spent most of the day trying to catch up on progress on Real Men Drink Milk. I'd hit a major block on one particular chapter, and kind of neglected to write anything yesterday. After having spent Friday rewriting, and Yesterday doing nothing, I'm still running about 1800 words behind schedule. This is why It's taken me until almost UK midnight to get a comic post up. That, and I couldn't think of a comic post to do which didn't involve comas, that idea having popped into my head since reading MegaDaijoubu this morning (and, therefore, had me not wanting to repeat it). In the end I gave in and just posted one anyway ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-50

DiGiKerot — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:56:28 +0000

Hmmm, I was actually thinking about putting the comic on hiatus for a week or so. I mean, I've hit 50 already anyway, so it should really be a good place to finish the season anyway, but I'm going to try and stick with it for a while longer. It's just that, between trying to write RMDM, the comic, work and Disgaea, I've barely managed to squeeze in two episode of anime in the last week. This has the knock-on effect of making it harder to come up with comic material ^^; Anyway, back to writing...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-51

DiGiKerot — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:39:19 +0000

So, I've got the comic posted and I've already written my daily quota on RMDM (I've broken 20000 words!). I might actually let myself watch some anime tonight!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-52

DiGiKerot — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:57:47 +0000

Jumping the shark? Some would say that happen long, long ago...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-53 - Dead Kero Day 2

DiGiKerot — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 08:02:30 +0000

I'm arbitrarily deciding I don't have the time (or I can't be bothered) to throw up a comic today, so in it's place you can this piece of Real Men Drink Milk related artwork. Who, precisely, Verity is going to murder is something that you'll probably never find out ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-54

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:40:46 +0000

This was supposed to be up hours ago, but I got pulled off to do something else and therefore didn't have time to post it ^^; Meh, I've been kind of neglecting both this omake section on the comics posts (which, personally, I always thought was the only part worth looking at) and making other posts on this blog. It's got a lot to do with being pretty busy at the moment, but it's something that I should probably try to rectify...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-55

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:42:03 +0000

Crikey, if todays referrals are anything to go by, Hinano gets Teh Mad Traffic ^^; Or maybe it's just people spawning about six windows in one go. Who knows? Anyway, have you got a PS3? Have you installed firmware version 2.0? If so, wow, there's probably only one of you, so you can sit there and feel all special about it. Once you've finished doing that, you can download an install the all-new, spectacular Beta-Waffle Theme for PS3! Oh, you can hardly contain your excitement, can you? Well, I say "theme" and "all-new", but it's really just the icon set (I did throw up a desktop image, but removed it since even I moved to replace it after immediately installing the theme), and it recycles a lot of art. But, hey, it's actually relatively restrained in it's stupidness, so if you are sick of the regular PS3 icon set, feel free to give it a look. Or don't. The options yours, you know. If you do choose to give this a try, you need some form of removable media to copy it across to the console (Memory Stick, SD card or something which counts as a USB mass storage device, like a PSP, external HDD, one of those flash memory stick things, or non-Apple MP3 player). On this device, you'll need a /PS3/THEME/ directory, into which you need to place the .p3t file. Attach the device to the PS3, switch thing thing on and go to the theme option under settings. Select the Theme option here, go to the install option, select the external device you've connected and grab the Beta-Waffle theme from there. You'll now be able to apply this from the theme menu. Then promptly change things back ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-56

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:15:56 +0000

I've spent much of today trying to catch-up on Real Men Drink Milk, having let myself fall behind a bit over the last week. I've skipped a couple of chapters I couldn't quite decide on how to write at the moment, but I have caught up a day or two in all. I'm still a couple of days behind, though - I should really be breaking the 30,000 word mark today, but I've still got another 3000 or so to go. Played some Mario Galaxy yesterday. Damn fine game. I've not actually managed to get any anime watched thus far this weekend, and with there being TV I want to watch tonight I'm guessing that going to be how I end the weekend too. My backlog really is getting silly at the moment...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-57

DiGiKerot — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:38:58 +0000

It almost as if I can't go to Animenano without seeing someone complaining about Shana II these days. I have to say, the first season of Shana wasn't a particularly good show either. The thing with Shana, like a lot of recent shows, that's far more focused on endearing the central character onto the audience than it is on actually telling a good story. It's not like the two are mutually exclusive or anything, but in Shana the story rarely feels like anything more than an excuse to dress Shana up in different clothes, or put her through a different range of emotions. Hell, the series is even named after her! The problem is that, in the years since the first season of Shana aired, we've had the likes of Zero no Tsukaima and Hayate and a bunch of other shows with characters whose personalities overlap Shanas, and as a result her value as a character has deflated. The show can no longer be carried simply on the value of that one character. This wouldn't be so bad, but the rest of the cast of Shana are depressingly shallow and one-tone. There simply isn't enough else of interest to make the show worth watching.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-58

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:43:39 +0000

After weeks of procrastination, the epic battle comes to it's spectacular conclusion! Errr, yeah. It seemed funny when I thought of it... Also, as per popular, errr, one request ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-59

DiGiKerot — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:19:32 +0000

I wonder if anyone can remember far enough back into this comics to recall that abomination of a logo ^^; Anyway, I'm actually going to try and post something other than this comic on the blog today. I'd kind of hate to become known exclusively for that, but the post history for recent times doesn't do much to dispel that image. I noticed my comments total was getting near 1000. Well, when I say near, I mean it's floating around the 950. I'd kind of thought about taking a sheet out of Hinano and SeaSlugs book and offering to do an amazering illustration for the 1000th commenter, but at the kind of pace I get comments that'd probably land on Christmas, when I'll be totally sick of drawing after some kind of attempt to produce another Christmas comic special. So, here's what I'm thinking - leave a comment here suggesting something you'd want to see drawn in a DiGi-esque fashion (i.e. badly ^^;). Once I've actually hit the 1000 comment mark, I'll pick, say, the five suggestions I like best (read: are the least hassle to draw) and do something with them. The only rules are no mecha, as they are a pain to draw, no pornerific suggestions, just because, and no dangos, because that's been flogged to death. Anyway, suggest away! Or don't! It's your choice!

Fate/Tiger Colosseum (PSP)

DiGiKerot — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:44:08 +0000

Fate/Tiger Colosseum was released on 13/09/07. Even you figure in shipment times and the time I'd need to invest into playing it enough to formulate something like a valid opinion on it, I should really really have been posting about this almost two months ago. So, this post is pretty old news by this point. Actually, now that I sit down to think about actually writing about the game, I'm not really sure there's much to say about it. In game terms, it's a fairly light-weight Powerstone-esque arena based fighting game - up to four fighters shoved into an arena, energy bars which deplete when attacked, some collectables for healing and temporary power-ups, an item allowing a one-off special attack and a few gimmicks spread across the stage. The attacks aren't particularly special - there are two attack buttons, but they are basically independent - there's the main attack button you'll end up hammering, and a guard-break you'll never touch. There's an attack you can use clear opponents from around you if surrounded, and most characters have a couple of Noble Phantasm attacks, which do Massive Damage, which can be used assuming you have enough mana stocked up and are holding the Tiger Ball item. Based on the attack styles, there's basically two types of characters - the melee types like Saber, Archer and Shirou, and the ranged types like Rin and Kirei. The later type are a pain to play as, as you pretty much spend all your time running away, shooting, running away some more, shooting some more, etc, etc. The stage based gimmicks aren't really very exciting - there's nothing really elaborate like in Powerstone. Mostly, it's teleport-like features, allowing you to jump from one part of the stage to another. One stage has a tall building, up which you can't do a really big jump, allowing you to take battle to the air for a while, but that's about it. the actual stages are based around sites familiar with Fate fans - Shirous courtyard, Illyas mansion, the stairs leading up to the shrine and the like. The individual stage design is reasonable enough for the most part, although there's a few which are a little flat, and all of them could be improved with a little interactivity. As far as the power-ups go, there's nothing exciting like weapons or anything, it's all temporary stat-boosts for you attacking, speed and jumping abilities, healing items for your health and mana, plus the aforementioned Tiger Ball. Where the game differs a little from other games of the style are the victory conditions. Whilst the game does have the standard last-man-standing style games, plus a capture-the-flag style mode where winning is based upon holding on for the Tiger Ball for longer than the opponents, most of the time you'll find the story mode throws out points based victory conditions. Each playable character in the game as a number of points associated with them - the stronger characters like Gilgamesh are worth more than the weaker one like Sakura. Berserker is worth way more than any other character, not because he's strong (he's comparatively weak), but in lieu of a Noble Phantasm attack he has to be killed twelve times to score from him. Shinji, coincidently, is worth a just a single point, simply because it's funny - infact, Shinjis whole story-mode campaign is based around the Capture-the-flag type stages, meaning you spend the whole thing running away. Getting back to how the points come into play, most of the games story modes are made up of stages where either you have to score more points than your opponents team within a timelimit, or race to get a fixed number of points before one of your opponents do. It doesn't really make much difference which of those two you have, and to be honest the traditional, last-man-standing games tend to be a little more interesting to play, as you either end up with way more points than your opponent and wait around bored, or you just mash and hope you kill more of them then they kill of you. At least with the last-man-standing stuff you have to be a little careful. Ultimately, as an actual game to play, it's hard to recommend when theres a much better Powerstone-esque title on the system - it's called Powerstone. That said, if your Japanese is up to it, the story mode is just about enough to make the game worthwhile. Each of the playable characters (and there's quite a few, though many need unlocked) have their own, very tongue-in-cheek story game to play through. Sure, it's just text boxes and small portraits, with a CG at the end, but it is fully voiced. My Japanese isn't really up to the task, but what I could gather of it was pretty amusing. Also, the SD art is cute. I give this game 7 out of 10(*) I, of course, bought the LE version of the game. It came in a big box with the bunch of tat shown below. I actually use the PSP case - it's quite nice. It has a couple of small pockets for memory sticks, a net pouch into which you can squeeze around three UMD disks and a little flap on the side you can pull down to get access to the recharging socket without removing the console. It's decorated in an attractive yet subtle Fate style with the image of Shirous command seal on one side, and a little Tiger pouch on the other. The CD is a drama CD. I can't say I've listened to it. The two posters are, well, clear posters - those things printed on transparent plastic which don't look quite right without being placed onto a white background, and feature Rin, Saber and Sakura in the new costumes designed for this game. The book is nice - it's a hardback, about fifty pages long and features the usual mix of colour art, design sketches, a short manga and, best of all, a flip-book animation printed on the bottom of the pages. The LE extras are almost worth picking the LE version of the game up for if you need a decent PSP pouch and can find interest in at least one of the other items - there's still stock of the LE floating around thanks to there being an Asian version of the LE as well as the original Japanese release, so it's not like its unobtainable. (*) I'm making reference to gaming radio show/podcast One Life Left, where they always score games as 7/10. From what I gather, it's the least incendiary grade you can give a game in a review - it's low enough to look like a bad game, but high enough not to annoy publishers.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-60

DiGiKerot — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 08:15:45 +0000

It's the not-really-long awaited nor expected reappearance of Creamy Goodness, last seen back when these things still had jokes ^^; I'm still soliciting art suggestions, despite the amazing reaction. Well, okay, I got one comment. I know there are at least two more people than that reading on a regular basis ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-61

DiGiKerot — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 20:38:44 +0000

Okay, so I'm about two months too late to make jokes about secondary character magical girls bleeding to death ^^; Anyway, I'm still soliciting art requests, and will continue to harp on about it until I reach the 1000 comment mark. I've still got some ways to go (I'm up to 953 at the time of writing), but I'm determined to reach that mile stone by the end of the year! So, if those 100~200 people who visit daily but have yet to speak up want me to shut up about it, then make a random suggestion. Or just post a random comment to bloat my comment count. Personally, I'd prefer the random suggestions though. Thus far, I've had four. Let us review them. Hinano >> I wanna see a tension coming involving Naruto and Sakura and Sasuke and some fat yaoi fangirls. This one is a lock, mainly because I sat and drew it last night, so you'll be seeing that one eventually (probably next year at the present rate ^^;) DS >> A dango magical girl.. no wait, no dangos. How about a melonpan magical girl, or a taiyaki magical girl! Ignoring the rule-breaking dango comment, my first thought when I read that was "does he mean a melonpan who is a magical girl, or a melonpan-themed magical girl? In either case, that wasn't actually his proper request (else I wouldn't have been posting that image now). DS >> OK, a serious suggestion: something Higurashi related, along the lines of that “a head” strip you did a while back. So, Higurashi characters and excessive gore topped up with a bad pun? I can probably do something with that. This one is rating highly likely. TheBigN >> Then, how about some Creamy Goodness cheesecake for art? I’ll leave you to interpret how that should be taken. :P Flatteringly Beta-Waffle-esque, though from his wording I suspect he would be expecting me to do something really, really silly like a Creamy Goodness-branded cheesecake or something. Less retarded drawings aside, this one rates a "maybe". If something more interesting comes up, it'll be dropped. If nothing else does, my hand will be forced on the matter. Di Gi Kazune >> Hadaka apr0n stick figures yuri/yaoi orgy. Okay, so stick figures who are naked except for aprons? The mind boggles, largely because I have no idea how I'd actually render such a thing (it's not like I'm the master of stick figure comics or anything). Besides, the orgy part of it breaks the no-porn rule ^^; In other news, DarkMirage has more Maaya Sakamoto CDs than me. I feel like a failure as both a man and a fanboy, or at least I would if I hadn't stopped buying her singles after Loop. I don't have that picture essay thingy DM has either, though I do have a bar towel and some stamps, and that's got to count for something, right? I've got the DVD for the short movie, 03+, Maaya was in as well, actually. Very, very odd movie. I should probably do a post about it at some point.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-62

DiGiKerot — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:54:50 +0000

Errr, quite ^^; Yadda Yadda, comment hoaring, yadda yadda yadda. Just to reiterate yet again, I'm in the middle of a push to get up to 1000 comments. To celebrate this occasion, I'm offering the chance for you, the reader, to request a high-quality piece of original DiGiKerot art. Hot dang, eh? The only rules are that I'm not accepting mecha, porn or dango-related requests, otherwise there's no limitations - it doesn't have to be humorous or anything. If you want me to draw a picture of Shana or something equally boring, then go ahead and ask. Once I've hit the 1000 comment mark, I'll draw up five of the requests, picked through whichever selection method takes my fancy that day, and post them up here. If you have something you want to see, just post a comment.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-63

DiGiKerot — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:52:56 +0000

If you've got no idea what I'm going on about, go look up the Super Mario Galaxy/UR MR GAY thingy. I spent a good chunk of yesterday playing Galaxy, actually. It's a whole lot of fun. Yadda yadda comment hoaring go read yesterdays entry if you didn't yesterday.

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 4

DiGiKerot — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:47:07 +0000

It would appear that, once again, I've left this until after the fifth DVD has actually been released. That said, my copy has been held up from shipping due to having been ordered with Baccano! volume 2, though now will probably be held up thanks to some bastard having somehow stolen my credit card details ^^; Ho-hum. Anyway, the first pressing bonus was yet another magnet, this one only subtly different from the last. From what I gather, DVD 5 has a Turiavita magnet. How exciting! There's the usual Sunrise booklet with some sketches and the like, carrying on the volumes Ritsuko theme. The omake feature this time is Ritsuko centric. She talks about her past and stuff a bit, but it's nothing massively exciting beyond what you can see in the pictures. I don't really have anything to actually say about it ^^; And that's it.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-64: Anime is Worthless Edition

DiGiKerot — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:38:10 +0000

Because, you know, anime has absolutely no value whatsoever. There's been an awful lot said about the state of the anime industry over the last few days, largely incited by comments from Gonzo and Justins piece over at ANN. There's been a lot of good reactionary pieces to it, such as Jeff's entry at Hop Step Jump! and tj_hans at Riuva. It's a lot easier to feel sympathetic for the US companies than it is the Japanese. The recent spate of outbursts about the evils of fansubs coming from Japan is really a case of too little too late after years and years of practically ignoring the issue. They've missed the boat by at least five years if they wanted to quash fansubs - they needed to be sending out C&Ds years ago if they actually wanted to make an impact. As far as it goes, it was only really Media Factory who took such action, and whilst it didn't stop fansubs of their works appearing, it did at least impact the visibility of them. For the American distributors part, they've know for a long time that something needs to change in the market. Some hold to their guns anyway, some attempted to make moves with varying degrees of success - the infamous ADV over-extension in regards to licensing was a result of them attempting to gain enough content to start up Anime Network, and Funimation have taken moves with the Funimation Channel and content on iTunes and XBL to get product out there by other means. None of this is particularly ideal, of course - it's all very America-centric for one (and as a Brit, not much use to me), and it's still years behind Japanese broadcast, but at least it's a start. If nothing else, it presents the start of the creation of the kind of infostructure required to get digital content out, even if it is way too DRMy for most peoples liking right now. Largely, though, the ball is very much in the Japanese court. I'm sure the American distros would absolutely love to get their hands to titles quicker, but even with those shows where America offered significant funding up front (like Kino no Tabi or Fate/Stay Night), it's not something given to them due to Japans paranoia regarding reverse importation, something completely outdated thanks to the advent of things like cheap DVD recorders, and HDRs which allow them to capture DVD (or better in the case of HD shows) quality Ultimately, its kind of hard to be sympathetic to Japan complaining about the state of the foreign markets when their own internal market is so messed up. The publishers really, really need to get out of the collectors release mentality the have. For those who don't pay attention to these things, anime DVDs effectively do 90% of their business on the day of release. Most of these shows will only ever get released that one time as well, never seeing the light of day again on DVD or, indeed, any other medium. Those DVD releases are also, with the odd exception, insanely expensive - I don't just mean in relation to US DVDs either, but also compared to other mediums in Japan. It's not uncommon for a two or three episode anime DVD to cost the same as a PS2 game - which do you suppose presents better value? The thing is that, after the first day of sales, Japanese anime DVDs are worthless. The first print run of anime DVDs in Japan tend to come with some kind of extra incentive - usually a collectable like a figure, magnets, CDs, badges or just nicer packaging. Once those have sold out, buying the release will just get you the DVD, which are very often bare-bones (this is why ADV R1 releases tend to have so much dub-centric extra content - the only way to get extras for the DVD is to create their own). Effectively, the show actually becomes more expensive to buy as time goes on, as you get less for your money - pretty much the opposite of the foreign markets where, once the initial sales have died down, they go for the secondary market with cheaper re-releases. If you want an example of how retarded the Japanese market is, you just need to look at something like Genshiken. There's a sequel series running in Japan at the moment. If a Japanese fan planning to watch the TV broadcast wanted to re-watch the first series - which, remember, is three years old now - before the sequel, unless he already owned the DVDs his options come down to buying it new at a cost that works out around $25 an episode, hunting for it used, or pirating the thing via far less traceable methods than those typically used in Western fandom. Which option do you think sounds more attractive? It's not like this is an isolated case, either - it's the same situation for Shana. The original series of either show are probably not shifting many copies - if any - by this point either. Seriously, the Japanese publishers could learn a lot about correctly milking at title from the likes of ADV, but as it is they really aren't making the most of their intellectual property. Also, the onslaught of mediocre-to-shit content doesn't help, nor does the saturation of DVD bootlegs on the likes of eBay. In the case of eBay, at least, the US publishers should really be doing more about it - it really couldn't be that hard to spend an hour a day checking through listing for their titles and reporting on the bootlegs. But, whatever. As much as us fans like to moan about the market, it's not like we can actually effect any change in the market. As far as it goes, I buy DVDs - it's not really to do with supporting the industry or anything silly like that, but rather I buy R2s mainly, if I'm entirely honestly, to collect, and R1s simply because I like watching anime that way. I prefer the experience I get from DVDs in many regards, and I do blind buy an awful lot of shows. The thing is that, aside from the fact that I've probably got more disposable income than most fans, I'm also from the generation for whom anime actually had a cost associated to it - my youth was spent scraping together cash for anime cassettes, and balancing the appeal of buying an episode of Macross Plus on VHS against Warhammer 40k miniatures or video-games. It's kind of engraved the fact that anime has an associated cost to it into my being. Of course, what buying anime actually seems to get you is nothing but problems, given that yesterday I got a call from the bank telling me that they'd picked up some possibly fraudulent transactions on my credit card, all of which were fraudulent. That credit card I only actually keep for buying anime, manga and games online - I don't even know the pin for the thing, so it's not like I can actually use it in the shops over here these days. I'll skip the art request moaning today, given that I've typed way more than I was intending today already ^^; I'm not even going to bother proofreading this, so it's probably full of errors, typos and half-sentences... -edit- Well, that was certainly annoying - for some odd reason, my host stopped serving pages from the directory the blog was installed in - and only the directory the blog was installed in. I'm not just talking PHP files either - .txt, .html or image files were equally afflicted. This happened suddenly as well, when I just happened to be browsing through the settings in order to turn off pingbacks (I'm gotten way too many dodgy pingbacks recently - I got four on this post within a period of a half-hour!). Annoyingly, I don't have access to the server logs, so I have no idea why exactly. I've ended up re-uploading a Wordpress installation to another directory, copying across my config file and renaming the directories, and oddly it's now working. WTF is up with that I have no idea.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-65

DiGiKerot — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:50:16 +0000

With all the talk of fansubs and the like yesterday, I was half-surprised not to see reference to the anti-piracy advert from the I.T. Crowd. Consider this matter corrected. Meh, can't be bothered to type any more today. -edit- Oh, on the subject of The IT Crowd, or rather shows featuring Richard Ayoade, I hear that the utterly brilliant Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is airing on Fridays on Cartoon Network in the US at the moment. If you get the channel and have the chance to, you should check it out.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-66

DiGiKerot — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:50:59 +0000

Another epic battle begins! Maybe. For those keeping count on the 1000 comment push (probably just Hinano wondering when she'll get her Naruto image ^^;), there's 26 comments left to go. That's still plenty of time for anyone wishing to make request of me to get one in - other than that Naruto image and the Higurashi one requested by DS, all the others are still under consideration. It's not anime, but I did watch the first of the Futurama specials, Benders Big Score, today. I'm not really sure what I made of it - it was entertaining, but it was a little underwhelming at the same time. It felt a lot like some of the early episodes of the series, before it really found it's feet. It had its moments, I guess, but it suffered from being a little too fanservicey in terms of trying to cram as many as the TV characters as possible into it (the inclusion of Santa seemed really tenuous), and for a piece titled Benders Big Score there really wasn't enough Bender focus, not to mention the fact that he spend so much of it partially neutered by that virus. Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, work is still continuing on Real Men Drink Milk, but I've pretty much given up any hope of completing it before the end of November now. I will hopefully finish the thing by the end of December, though.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-67: Dead Kero Day #3

DiGiKerot — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:53:36 +0000

Whoops. I've been working on something for another days post, and it's ended up being more time consuming than I'd imagined. I've not really left myself with enough time to finish up the comic for today (it's not very good anyway, as you'll no doubt find out tomorrow ^^;), so I'm fobbing you off with a hasty scan of a sketch which wasn't working well enough to use for anything else. Back tomorrow with the usual and all that.

Super 976-Comment Celebratory Art Extravaganza!

DiGiKerot — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:38:12 +0000

Okay, enough is enough - I'm giving up on my constant comment hoaring attempts and just getting this out of the way today in lieu of the comic post. For the last couple of weeks, I've been attempting to push the blogs comments up to the 1000 mark, in the hope that I'd manage to get there by the end of the calender year. Unfortunately, the lure of the chance to request that I produce a piece of art based upon your suggestions didn't prove to be much of an incentive for the blogs lurkers to come out of the woodwork and leave some suggestions. Jerks :P Anyway, I've drawn up a few things from the six or seven or eight suggestions made over the last few days, and these are presented for your viewing "pleasure" over the next few pages. Just click on the thumbnails below, or the page numbers if you really want to. Enjoy! Good ol' Hinano was nice and prompt with her request, getting in a day before anyone else (and before I had to re-iterate the offer). As such, I've had it done for a while now. Her request was "I wanna see a tension coming involving Naruto and Sakura and Sasuke and some fat yaoi fangirls". I have to admit, I've not followed Naruto since well before the time skip, and even then I was *cough*kind of a Hinata fan*cough*. So, yeah, I'm firmly rooted in Ye Olde Naruto. Anyway, I figured if there was trouble with Fat Yaoi Fangirls going on, it'd more likely to be Sasuke involved than Naruto ^^; This one came from Dango-obsessive blogger DS, who requested "something Higurashi related, along the lines of that “a head” strip you did a while back". Actually, he first asked for a Dango or Melon-pan based magical girl before dismissing those as a joke (besides, the Dango part broke my suggestion rules). I actually did Melon-pan one as part of the comic omake a while back. Once I got past that, I took this request as meaning something excessively and needlessly violent and/or gory with a really bad pun somehow involved. You can click this one for a bigger version if you so wish. Not the biggest version, as the actual resolution it was produced in was crazy (big enough that you can actually make out Yukiho in the background, at least ^^;) Anyway, this was kind of an amalgamation of two different requests - Andrew F. suggested an image comprising of the best/worst memes of the last year, whilst Di Gi Kazune suggested having Dejiko mekara beam-ing the previous year. So, I started sticking a bunch of characters and memes from the last year into one image, only to then realise that (a) I couldn't really think of many anime memes from the last year aside from Nice Boat and general KyoAni stuff and (b) it was going to be horrifically time consuming, so I just compiled the stuff I had ready. Really needs more Gurren Lagann - I was going to add Yoko with her top popping off, covered up by the girl from Kodomo no Jikan holding a sign with a "の" over the crucial part, but I didn't get around to it ^^; Di Gi Kazune actually provided a few other suggestions - the last of which was an image of Touka from Touka Gettan, which I've not seen and I'm not doing. Initially suggested was "Hadaka apr0n stick figures yuri/yaoi orgy", which aside from (kind of) breaking my no-porn rule, I had no real idea how to actually draw. Still, I hastily threw up a related 4-koma earlier, so "enjoy" this as a bit of omake. This one came in from Galen, who actually gave me the whole script for a 4-koma. Unfortunately, it was a 4-koma featuring characters from Minami-ke, which I've not seen/read, dressing up as characters from Aria, which I've also not seen/read. Due to that, this has been thrown together based on images from around the interweb. I apologize if I've gotten anything horrifically wrong or drawn anything incredibly out-of-character ^^; Last up, TheBigN asked for some "Creamy Goodness cheesecake for art?". I think he was just taking pity on me with that suggestion ^^; I hadn't actually wanted to do it, but at this point I've run out of things to draw, so I've thrown something together just to get up to the promised five image count.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-68

DiGiKerot — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 15:22:24 +0000

During the production of todays entry, the postman showed up with my copies of R2 Xenoglossia #5 and Baccano #2 - not that these are going to be watched immediately, as I've got plenty backlogged and I'm going to jump on Mario Galaxy as soon as I've posted this, but it was a distraction and gave me something relevant to the production of what is a fairly dull comic to say. I was intending to be pretty much done with the whole art request thing, hastily sweeping it under the carpet and all that (in the words of Homer Simpson - "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried"), but hiero_yo amused me with the comment on the art post suggesting "Makoto from Tokikake doing her trademark leap - drawn Akagi style". This is probably starting to become something of a catchphrase for me, but I've not seen Akagi. From what I gather, it's another series from the author of the presently airing Kaiji (which I've also not seen ^^;), but about Mah-jong. Not that the fact that it's about Mah-jong is particularly relevant here. The fact that, from what I've been able to gather anyway, there doesn't seem to be a single female character - let alone a high schooler - in either show is rather more significant, as a lame artist like me likes to have a decent basis to work from. As such, the result is a little funky...

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 5

DiGiKerot — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:35:48 +0000

Hey, I'm being relatively prompt this time! Huzzah! Anyway, this volume covers episodes twelve through fourteen. For any other 26-episode Sunrise show, this would be the volume where the brown stuff hits the twirly thing. For Xenoglossia, it's the series of episodes that consistently make you think something really dramatic is just about to happen but, ultimately, doesn't really. What is typical Sunrise, though, is that the first episode is the conclusion to the usual two-part "stranded with the enemy" episode, though I do rather like the fact that Xenoglossia concludes it with Chihaya hating Haruka even more than previously. It kind of reflects the slightly subversive trends running throughout the series. I mean, it's just like a Sunrise series, but the usual events have a tendency to so the other way - hard work doesn't pay off, enemies don't gain any sense of understanding the heroes and traitors don't feel particularly regretful about it. Speaking of traitors, it still surprises me that people were, well, surprised with Yukihos actions in the later half of the series. Episode 13 has a prime reason why no-one should really have been shocked. Who is this super-spy? Sarge? No. Rosemary, the telephone operator? No. Henry, the mild mannered Janitor? Could be! Seriously, though, the hairline is a dead give away, and combined with some of her ambiguous dialogue and unexplained actions from previous episodes, I really do find it surprising that people hadn't figured out what was going to happen by this point. This is compounded by the fact that Yukiho is, essentially, Erstin from ZHiME, with her seemingly passive personality and humongous norks and all that. The first pressing extra with the DVD was another magnet. This one is slightly more useful that the previous ones, though. All I need to do is find a nice, metallic surface, and every time I can't remember how to spell Tribeat...errrr... Turiavita, it'll be there as a handy reminder. Awesome! The omake featurette this time around is Makoto-centric, appropriate given the episodes on this volume (and the fact that she's on the cover). Actually, with the last two omake features following the DVD covers in focus, the next volumes will probably center on Yayoi, volume 7 will be the Twins, and volume 8 Azusa. Anyway, this one takes the form of a series of static images displayed over a few dialogues between Azusa and Makoto around about the time that Haruka and Yukiho joined Mondenkind. It doesn't really add anything beyond what you learn in the series - it re-emphasizes the fact that Makoto moes over crabs, before going back over a lot of what is talked about in episode 13 when Azusa drops making lunch due to Makoto mentioning work (depressing Makoto as a result), ultimately ending up where Xenoglossia so often seems to - the bath ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-69: Ultimate Survivor Keiichi

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:10:49 +0000

Random idea I had whilst doing that TokiKake image yesterday. Actually, I started doing an image of all the main characters from Higurashi playing cards in a Kaiji-esque fashion - it kind of seemed both incredibly appropriate and incredibly inappropriate to a similar degree. I ended up giving up part way through, because aside from it really not working out very well (I really need to some proper sketches and stuff to get layout right before trying to commit this stuff to digital paper), it was looking pretty damn terrifying... Uhhhh, yeah, exactly. ADV have solicited the first volume of Gurren Lagann in the last day or so - it's due in February. Nice Birthday present for me, I guess. I can't say it's a surprise that they are announcing a release date now, given they've just released shiney boxes for their back-catalogue Gainax titles (Abenobashi, Nadia and, of course, Evangelion, not that many people don't have that last one already). Anyway, I made a huge dint on my DVD backlog today by watching, urrr, one DVD. I went for the first volume of Zegapain. Good show, though it's a shame they haven't released it in HD (was it animated that way, or just upscaled for broadcast? I can't remember). Maybe I'll watch something else tonight, but not yet since Top Gear is on, and after that I'll probably just end up spending so long procrastinating over what to watch from my massive backlog that it'll be time to sleep before I decide ^^; Oh, and 986 comments! Woooo! Only 14 more to go until the big 1000!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-70

DiGiKerot — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:38:44 +0000

This seems to be frequently true about magical girl shows to me - pretty much everything they do right up until they unleash that final, spectacular, stock-footage-tacular special ultimate attack is pretty much useless. Why they don't just cut to the chase and save all that time is beyond me. I think I actually drew all the sketches for todays comic over a month ago - I had to redraw the hairlines on most of the Zesty images since they were all off in that regard. Actually, the sheet of paper with the drawings on had an old, unused design for Creamy Goodness' mahou shojo costume on the back ^^; I had another go at Ultimate Survivor Keiichi. Marginally better than the last attempt. 990 comments! Nearly there! Wooooo!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-71

DiGiKerot — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:40:51 +0000

I've decided that I'm ending this series of Meme Comics at around #80. There's three Zesty strips left after this (already sitting on my HD), and the rest will be random stuff. After that, I'll be spending my time working on getting the X-mas special, Antidisestablishmentarianism Honeycomb Saves Christmas, done, and then taking a break from the comic grind for a while. I'm still working on a script for the X-mas comic, but presently it's perhaps a little over ambitious ^^; Of course, this is assuming that the blog is still up in the coming days - I'm acutely aware that my replacement credit card hasn't turned up yet, and I have hosting fees to pay, errr, tomorrow. I don't know, these interweb credit card fraudsters have absolutely no sense of timing. I guess I should do an export of the blogs databases just to be on the safe side... Seeing this post at Daijoubu made me start up my copy of Forza Motorsport 2 for the first time in a while and delve back into the painting mode. Long-term readers may remember me having thrown together a horrifically complicated Nia (Gurren Lagann) paint job (coincidently, I did add the eye-lashes and brows in later), and a rather less complicated Shana-mobile. This time I started replicating DS' Dango-mobile, but then stopped when I got bored of it.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-72

DiGiKerot — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:13:30 +0000

Huzzah for anti-climaxes! I started working on the X-mas special today. I've very roughly sketched out about ten pages of the 50-60 the current script demands (urrr, yeah, I think I'll be cutting down that a bit - that's going to take an ungodly amount of time to complete). I envisage scanning and porting the stuff into Sai for tracing, but I've not decided what to do about colour yet. At the current rate, it's probably going to take me all the way up until X-mas to actually complete it... Got some additional character designs to do before I can make much more in the way of progress, though. I've figured out about three of the five additional characters required, but the others I'm not yet too sure about. Ho-hum.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-73

DiGiKerot — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:07:18 +0000

Been working on the X-mas special, it's very time consuming. Nothing else to say tonight ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-74

DiGiKerot — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:11:01 +0000

It's seem like Galen was getting ahead of me with this one ^^; You know what is awesome? The new trailer for the new Speed Racer movie. That said, I'm really not sure I could sit and watch an entire movie of that, it might be just a little too much cheese, but I guess if I can survive (and love) Hideaki Annos Cutey Honey LA movie, I should be able to get through this.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-75

DiGiKerot — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 15:56:08 +0000

Inspired by that Hatsune Miku manga Aka posted about earlier. You never find out what's actually written on the box that Miku was abandoned in, but if it doesn't say mikan, I don't want to know. Del Rey yesterday announced that they've licensed the Another xxxHolic novel, and at least the first of the Zaregoto novels, both by NISIOISIN (also the author of the forthcoming Death Note novel from Viz, and some stuff from Faust, coming to English from Del Rey). I've linked to novel translator Andrew Cunninghams website twice there, and for those interested in these things he has mentioned over at AoD that he's translating the xxxHolic novel, but unfortunately not Zaregoto. Looking forward to Zaregoto a lot, though, as there seems to be a lot of praise for NISIOISIN going around, and Zaregoto seems to be his seminal work. With Seven Seas deal with Tor hopefully kick-starting their publication of the novel releases they've been promising for months, 2008 is shaping up to be a good year for fans of light novel translations.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-76: Dead Kero Day #4

DiGiKerot — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:31:40 +0000

Me having spent seven hours of the day working on the Christmas Special results in Me not really having the motivation to do another comic for today. There's only going to be two or three comics left this season anyway, after which I'll really not be able to spare the time whilst still completing the Christmas comic. Why go to all this effort, you might ask? Because last years special was awful and I really don't want a repeat of that. Admittedly, this years isn't going to be particularly great or anything, but it's just a little less reliant on non-sequitur humour than my usual stuff. But only a little ^^; The above image is a panel from the Christmas comic, by the way, though I've changed to caption. Speculate as you wish regarding what it tells you about the actual content... Can't remember why I drew this. It's been sitting in my image directory, and I don't think I've used it in a post or anything, so I may as well just dump it here.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-77

DiGiKerot — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:02:40 +0000

Note to self - Art packages let you rename layers for a reason. Spending a couple of seconds giving layers meaningful names will save you lots of time when you realise you have a mistake to correct across several images ^^; Hmmm, looks like I've been linked to in a Hatsune Miku related thread over at 2ch. Odd ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-78

DiGiKerot — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:39:55 +0000

It seems that Hatsune Miku comic I posted the other day got picked up by a Japanese blog, presumably from the 2ch link I mentioned yesterday. It always strikes me as odd when retarded posts end up generating traffic like that... Jeff is doing his year-in-review thing at the moment - today he is talking about Xenoglossia. Most regular visitors probably realise that I have an abnormal amount of time for that show (if not, you probably missed me talking about the DVD release and making fun of it on a regular basis), as well as having a lot of time for the game. I guess I'm in the advantageous position of not having played the game until after the anime was announced, so I'm not inclined to get bitchy about all the changes like many game fans are (though I am really, really curious to see how the Live For You OAV will turn out - it has animated MIKI!). Anyway, Jeff speaks much truth, so go read what he has to say about the show, and then maybe give it another look if you have time and are so inclined.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #4-79 (Final)

DiGiKerot — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:31:15 +0000

Yes, you read that title correctly - at long, long last, it's the end of series 4. That's it, I'm done! You can now look forward to days of silence, interrupted maybe once or twice a week for some random post or other. Well, OK, I'll be back a week on Friday for the first instalment of this years Holiday season epic. I'd like to thank Hinano for being awesome enough to do those guest art comics, DS for being consistently funnier than me despite his dango obsession and his refusal to stick the proper number of panels, everyone who commented - no matter how inane - and finally everyone who visited on a daily basis despite the fact that most of this most recent series has been filler quality at best... And for anyone keeping count, my comment count is up to 998. Anyone who wants to grab that elusive 1000th comment is advised to jump now, not that there's anything particularly great about doing so. Remember that Hatsune Miku traffic I'd mentioned over the last couple of days? Well, it migrated from the blog I mentioned yesterday to another, seemingly more popular Hatsune Miku link blog, and as a result I've had about three times my usual number of uniques today. Clearly Miku is crazy popular. To celebrate the crazy traffic, I've drawn a picture of Miku. Anyway, that's me out of here for now. Have fun, y'all.

The Year In Review - Part One

DiGiKerot — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:16:46 +0000

Well, it seems about the time of year to do it, so I figured I may as well look back through the last years worth of trends in anime and anime blogging. It's not like I've got anything else to post at the moment. Anything which retains any kind of prolonged period of popularity will, inevitably, find itself on the receiving end of some kind of backlash. Anime certainly isn't any different - you just need to witness the all the Naruto, Bleach and Dragonball panning that goes on within the anime community. That isn't to say that none of it is justified - some of the criticism some of these shows receive is perfectly valid - but many come from people with people who haven't even seen the title in question, and would rather come across as being non-conformist. I don't really care about those, though. I think the more significant thing is that a prolonged period of popularly due to consistant quality makes one hypersensitive to any kind of blip in that standard. So, when fan-favourites Kyoto Animation announced that their next work was to be a 4-koma based gag anime, the news was met with something of a mixed reaction. Many, myself included, expected there to be, in not necessarily a drop in quality, than something of a backlash against the studio. So, when Lucky Star finally aired, it wasn't all that surprising to get posts panning the hell out of it. These posts were quickly followed by a series of posts varying between the overwhelming positive and the decidedly neutral. Then, about two weeks later, we were only left with the positive. Were the negative posters just being over dramatic? Did the quality improve? Did the change in production staff shortly into the show improve things? Did they simply stop having fifteen minute long conversations about eating confectionery? Well, the later three certainly hold some weight, but largely I'd imagine that those who didn't like it simply elected to shut up about the matter. This is fairly unusual in itself, but stranger things have happened. Once Clannad hit six months later, business pretty much returned to normal, and KyoAni is pretty much back in everyones good books again - at least until the second season of Haruhi ends up not being the combination of The Second Coming, the Superbowl and the X-Factor finale people will no doubt build it up to be. When that happens, I'm sure all hell will break loose - or, at least, a thousand otaku will take to moaning on internet forums and blogs worldwide. Nothing new there, then. One thing I've really got to give KyoAni credit for, regardless of if you like any particular show or not, is their eye for and their ability to create meme-worthy material. Choco-Coronets, Timotei, Balsamic Vinegar and all those silly dances, not to mention the all the Dango material that's been spewing forth... To be fair, we started seeing the first moves into the republishing of the more otaku-centric Japanese novels (that is, not the kind of thing Vertical typically publishes, or the Murakami titles we've been seeing for ages now) in the US a few years ago with the likes of the Onegai Teacher novel (if you want to see a really, really badly handled novel release, go read it - there's literally dozens of typos and grammatical errors on every single page) and Tokyopops first few novel releases. This year has seen significant expansion in the number of publishers and titles released, though, as well as the those novels being released actually being things people have wanted to read - by which I mean the original works that many popular shows are based on (like Full Metal Panic, NHK and Shana), rather than mediocre tie-ins to popular works like a lot of the books we were getting previously. We've even gotten a few completely original works with no anime connection what-so-ever. Precisely why we are getting this sudden surge in books is hard to gauge - is it partially because there's demand? (what you tend to hear about sales figures suggests not), a gap in the market? (Maybe, but clearly not that big), Increased difficulty in finding new, license-worthy manga? (Very likely) or perhaps they are feeling the squeeze due to manga scanlations? (not all that likely given they've been long available and far more download-friendly than anime). This move is largely a good thing, though it's not been without it's teething problems. We've had books which have turned out to suck (Scrapped Princess), series which have found themselves stalled either due to contractual issues (Kino no Tabi) or because the sales were mediocre (Scrapped Princess), odd versioning decisions (Crest of the Stars) and even odder presentation choices (Full Metal Panic). Not really the best of starts. Still, Twelve Kingdoms was good, wasn't it? Moving into 2008, hopefully these publishers will have learnt a few lessons. It's shaping up to be a good year for light novel fans in 2008 anyway, with Seven Seas are finally getting their act together, with their first wave of new releases (in a smaller format mimicking the Japanese releases, apparently) due to hit in March, Del Ray getting serious about the market with Faust and Zaregoto, and some of the real big names of the Japanese light novel market finally making in-roads to the US with Ryohgo Naritas Vamp! from Seven Seas and NISIOISIN titles from both Del Ray and Viz. Good stuff, I just hope the sales are good enough to support the market. As Hinano pointed out a while back, there have been an awful lot of comic posts in the last year - or, rather, the last couple of months. Even since Hinano made that post, it's expanded with tj_han randomly posting those Tsuruya strips (which I'm not linking in protest of not making that rather huge blogroll his frontpage is now sporting ^^;) . I'm not really sure I'd clump Mistakes of Youth within that lot, though - aside from enormous gap, nay, canyon in quality, between his work and everyone else, I'm under the impression that his blog really span out from the comic, rather than the other way around. Putting that to one side, though, I'm really not sure what to make of this recent development, nor have much idea why it actually started. I mean, it my case it's largely a case of being easy content I can at least do some work on whilst away from a computer, and from what I gather BRStick has similar origins, but I can't imagine what made DS go down this route. As a net result of all these comics, however, I've now lost yet another of my blogs uniquifiers. The value of my comics posts has rather dramatically dropped (really, I'm by far the least popular out of the lot of them ^^;). I may well take this as being a good opportunity to kill the feature off after the Christmas comic. We shall see. Within the last year, there has been a major downturn in the number of figure-review posts within the English blogging community. Over the course of 2006, we were seeing several figure review posts a month, if not a week, by a dozen or so blogs. In the last year, it's somewhat dwindled down to a handful of posts largely from the same four or five sources. It's a fairly significant downturn. This doesn't really have anything to do with the number or quality of figures being released - more than ever, people are spoilt for choice, and the number of notable figures turning out to be duff is going down - but is no doubt a result of a number of issues. Speaking from personal experience, I simply don't have the room to store new figure purchases any more - I'm literally at critical mass when if comes to anime-related storage. In the case of others, I can only really speculate, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the quality that some of these posts were reaching, and people not wanting (or having the ability to) put in the time and effort to come anywhere close to them. Efforts like Super Rats are somewhat beyond the ability of most, whilst I can't imagine many otaku having the bottle to follow tj_hans outdoor approach - certainly, I'm not the kind who is going to go out and take photographs of loli figures in public places ^^;

Unfunny Christmas Special 2007 (1/5)

DiGiKerot — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:56:20 +0000

Next It's the moment that literally no-one has been waiting for, and, yes, you read that title correctly. Well, I'm assuming you've read it correctly, by which I mean you understand that this is part one of five. If you read that in some other fashion then you've actually read that incorrectly, and I've gotten off to a very bad start here. But, yeah, this years special runs over a hand-cramp inducing (for me, that is) five parts, running daily from now until the last part is published on Christmas Day. I would claim that this was to make up for the, frankly, awful 2006 Christmas special, and the marginally better Halloween comic, both of which were horrendous rush-jobs, but the amount of time spent on this really isn't reflected in the actual quality. Anyway, I feel I should apologize in advance for this being terribly inconsistent - it's been thrown together over the course of the last three weeks, and not necessarily drawn in order. Add this to my complete and utter lack of actual artistic skill and things constantly wobble all over the place. Maybe it adds to the charm, or maybe it's just annoying - in either case, it's free, so don't complain too much about it. Personally, I just hope I've caught all the really retarded errors - whilst I was resizing the images for todays post last night I suddenly realised I'd given one of the characters an extra finger in one panel, for example ^^; I should probably apologize more for the fact that there aren't really any actual jokes up until the fourth chapter ^^; So, read away and try to eke out some entertainment from it. Personally, I've still got the fifth chapter to actually finish (and finish compiling the rest - the art is done for 2-4, but it's not been thrown together properly in comic-form yet). Until tomorrow, Later! Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next

I'M IN DESPAIR!

DiGiKerot — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:31:27 +0000

Bloomin' typical, isn't it? Spend the best part of a month planning a series of posts, then an hour after the first is posted the AC Adaptor on your laptop goes pop, leaving one without a particularly usable computer - I'm posting this from a laptop with a broken monitor hinge, hooked up to my HDTV for display and with a horrible £3 USB keyboard hooked into it just so I can type ^^; Oh well, the show must go on, and I'm really just venting. I mean, this is pretty much the worst time for something like this to happen - anywhere I could perceivably get a replacement power supply from online aren't shipping until after New Year now (even then, I'm unsure if I can source one that would work), and I've failed to source something suitable through local stores. An earlier attempt to purchase a new laptop (yes, I really would rather drop a grand than face a Christmas period without decent internet access) ended in failure when, due to being Christmas, they'd sold out of anything I'd consider to have a reasonable spec. Bah. Anyway, tomorrows post is already complete, and I at least had the good sense to copy my working files to an external HDD whilst my battery still has charge left in it. Not sure what I'll after that point - I still have a little work to complete for the Sunday and Monday posts, and an awful lot of work to complete for the Tuesday one. I'm not sure if I want to attempt to finish things on my current ramshackle set-up, but I'm not sure I want to spend whats likely to be one of the busiest shopping days of the year hunting for new hardware either. In any case, something will be done, if only for my own mental health ^^;

Unfunny Christmas Special 2007 (2/5)

DiGiKerot — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:25:13 +0000

Next Now with 100% more imaginary box. Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next

Unfunny Christmas Special 2007 (3/5)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 09:56:44 +0000

Next Muuuuuh, Vista is a pain in the arse... Next Next Next Next Next Next Next

Unfunny Christmas Special 2007 (4/5)

DiGiKerot — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:37:17 +0000

Next In which things take a random turn for the Shaft-y, and I make more random references to Des'rees Life just because I feel like it. Next Next Next Next Next Next Next

Unfunny Christmas Special 2007 (5/5)

DiGiKerot — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 11:04:50 +0000

Next It's the final installment! Huzzah! I do hope you've all obtained at least some sense of entertainment from it... Anyway, all what's left to do is wish you lot a Merry Christmas. Later. Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next Next

A Right Pair of Mugs

DiGiKerot — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:29:20 +0000

Fate/Tiger Colosseum ones! Look, it's Rin and Saber! Squeee! *sigh* I kind of hate to do a "look, I've bought stuff! Laugh at how much of a weeaboo I am!" post, but in these post comicking times I don't actually have all that much to write about. This is something that can largely be chalked down to a combination of me being determined to finally actually finish Persona 3 (I should hopefully be able to clear the thing tomorrow) and basking in the pleasures of the one week of the year when the British TV channels actually spend some money on their schedule (Aroduc has talked about Doctor Who, there's a double-bill of the beebs hilariously awful Robin Hood tomorrow, and their adaptation of Phillip Pullmans Shadow in the North on Sunday, alongside other Random Programs of Interest (The Weakest Link with Puppets? How can I NOT watch that!). I'd have been lapping up Channel 4s Miyazaki screenings too if I didn't have them all on DVD already, but catching the end of Castle of Cagliostro this morning did at least cause me to dig my copy out) resulting in me not actually watching any anime. Really, I'm so far behind on the stuff at the moment it's really not funny. Still, I've got all of next week clear to try and catch up on stuff ^^; Anyway, I guess I'll chalk this post up to celebrating the first parcel arrival of the, errrr, damn, it's not actually 2008 yet, is it? I guess that means the first parcel of the New Year will either be the next volumes of Xenoglossia and Baccano, a bunch of random R1s or the Haruhi PSP game. That's next week and beyond, though, so I'll not get ahead of myself. Aside from the mugs, I also grabbed myself a copy of the My-HiME/ZHiME My Collections book - which is a pretty typical and unspectacular mook - and a Denno Coil t-shirt (bought because, well, it's not overtly geeky and anime looking - it's stealth otaku fashion ^^;)

Golden Dango Winner 2007

DiGiKerot — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:46:15 +0000

Tenuous excuse for a post? You betcha! Apparently I've flogged the dead horse that is The Dango Joke more than any other blogger than DS this year. Dubious claim to fame it may be, but I'll take it ^^; For anyone who read yesterdays post, it looks like the first arrival of the New Year will be the Haruhi game, unless I happen to order something more locally, like, tomorrow. This is because the other two packages I had in shipping turned up today - three days for regular shipping from Japan for a couple of DVDs is quick, twenty one days for shipping from the States isn't ^^; I was going to say how timely the arrival of the R1 Gunslinger Girl set was (note: a whole series in the space of one DVD case is A Good Thing), but then realised that I was once more completely forgetting that I got the R2s with the PS2 games ages ago (wow, I remember the days when this blog had actual content ^^;). I don't think I've ever actually gotten around to watching those DVDs, though. Actually, I read the sixth volume of the manga today as well, but I don't really have much comment reading that. Anyway, back to Persona, I guess.

The Least Interesting Seasonal Preview Ever

DiGiKerot — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:36:55 +0000

See, there's not even a picture on this one! Now that everyone else (or at least Omni) has posted on the subject, I can crib off them and save myself to effort of browsing dozens of Japanese websites in order make my usual blanket judgements on the forthcoming anime season. So let's get on with it. GUNSLINGER GIRL -IL TEATRINO- is a continuation of the earlier Gunslinger Girl series - those who've seen the previous series will have a good idea of what to expect, those who haven't seen it need not apply. ARIA The ORIGINATION is a continuation of the earlier Aria series - those who've seen the previous series will have a good idea of what to expect, those who haven't seen it need not apply. Sisters of Wellber Zwei is a continuation of the earlier Sisters of Wellber series - those who've seen the previous series will have a good idea of what to expect, those who haven't need not apply. Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a continuation of the earlier Zetsubou Sensei series - those who've seen the previous series will have a good idea of what to expect, those who haven't need not apply. Well, you get the joke already. Even forgetting all the direct sequels and remakes, there's an awful lot of same-old-same-old going on this season. To be fair to Minamike ~okawari~ it is at least sporting a completely different production staff, though given how well received the first season was it's debatable whether or not this is actually a good thing. In the case of Gunslinger Girl, seeing the show going from the usually reliable hands of Madhouse to the largely untested Artland would be something I would be concerned about if I had actually gotten around to watching the first series (it's on my to-do list for this week, but I have at least been keeping up with ADVs release of the manga (Yes, ADV still release manga. Occasionally)). With all of these rehashes, it means that there isn't really all that much to say about half the shows - you'll either already have a judgement on the matter, or you'll not really be in a position to care about them. As for the other shows, Porfy no Nagai Tabi is a World Masterpiece series, so it's pretty much a known quantity - it'll probably interest those who watched Les Mis, but it probably isn't the kind of thing that most otaku (or at least the blog-dwelling ones) would be interested in. The promo art for Rosario to Vampire has a girl wearing a witches hat, which does tick one of my few moe boxes, but otherwise it just looks like an excuse for some poor schmuck to get a face full of Vampire-panty (damn, those skirts are SHORT) whilst fighting whatever monster-of-the-week the show throws up (though, with it being Gonzo, they'll probably end up rewriting the second half of the series entirely, avoiding the overly formulaic pattern Omni is worried about but ultimately falling into the jaws of something even worse...). True Tears is sounding pretty formulaic (what is it with anime characters wanting to become picture book authors anyway? I can't say it's a plot device I see all that often in other media), and I can't help be think that H20, rather than rocking ones soul as the trailer promised, more sounds like an excuse to have the lead accidentally groping girls with really large hair (that is, the girls have large hair - those fringes look huuuuuuuuge - rather than our optically challenged hero having the kind of prehensile quiff that'd make the show rather more interesting) than anything more substantial, although that is no doubt being hugely unfair towards it. It doesn't really pique my interest regardless. As for Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de, I only really find it notable because, on browsing the website, I did a double-take due to misreading one characters name (those who read katakana will realise what ベニス looks very, very similar to ^^;). Otherwise, it may as well be called the Mighty Morphing Moe Rangers - not because they'll be battling evil in robotic dinosaurs, unfortunately, but rather because the cast seems to cover pretty much the whole range of the moe-spectrum in the same way the Power Rangers had ethnically diverse backgrounds. Really, a busty, elder-sister-esque maid and a twin-tailed girl who looks highly tsun? Man, I've never seen that before... *sigh* It'll probably find it's fans, but I would expect it to have anything you haven't seen before, or anything which hasn't been done far more amusingly in Hayate. All this pretty much leaves Persona - trinity soul-. The game's central plot was actually pretty thinly spread - not that much actually happens, and not all that much of it is particularly interesting or original - rather it relied more on the multitude of subplots surrounding the heroes daily life and those he interacted with. The framework of a typical anime series doesn't really have the scope for that, so it'll be interesting to see what they manage to do to make a full storyline out of a basic premise that isn't all that different to the original game. At the very least, a ten-year time leap and a lack of returning characters in the initial cast should, at least, make this watchable for those who haven't slogged through what is a pretty long game. The games, errr, "fruity" music will be missed, however. Ookami to Koushinryou, the (as I believe Andrew Cunningham described it) "moenomics" show, looks like it'll be interesting as well. That's about it, really. It's not exactly the most exciting season ever, even by Winter standards, but I guess that just means people will have some time to catch-up on stuff they've missed ^^;

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 6

DiGiKerot — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:13:13 +0000

The hypocrisy involved in me posting about this show the day after I complained about how by-the-numbers the Winter anime season looks is not lost on me. Not that I'm going to let that stop me. Anyway, this volume has episodes fifteen through seventeen, which are those episodes in which Haruka does her Idol thing, and they bat you around the head with the forthcoming Yukiho "twist" without actually reaching it - they're saving that one for the next volume. The DVD has the usual on-disk omake featurette as an extra. This time around it's set around the time period of the episodes on the DVD, and features a discussion between Yayoi and Haruka. Yayoi fans will probably feel shortchanged with this one, as unlike the previous omake featurettes, this one is relatively service free. Unless you count Yayoi in a chick costume. Haruka doing vocal warm-ups is pretty cute too - if I had a vaguely modern mobile phone I could totally see me using that as a text alert ^^; As for the content of their discussion, it starts off with Haruka bemoaning the amount of effort idoling (in the not-piloting fashion) takes, whilst Yayoi wonders if her school activities combined with her after-school work is proving too much for her. This results in Yayoi once again getting the wrong idea and deciding to storm the school in an attempt to have a few choice words with That Guy who is giving Haruka problems. But the school is all locked up that day. With this crisis averted, Haruka and Yayoi head off to do their radio show, and that's pretty much it. The first pressing extra this time is, at least, something other than another magnet. That isn't to say it's particularly great, though - it's a fairly cheap desk calender, with this volume having cards covering the first four months of the year. I can guess what will be coming with DVDs 7 and 8. The holder for the cards is cheap and flimsy plastic, which I guess is at least better than the folded card one which came with the My-HiME DVDs many, many moons ago, though the cards with the HiME disks had rather more effort put into them (to the point where the calendar section had so many character-specific details scribbled in that it was unusable if you wanted to actually use it as a calendar). I suppose if I wanted to actually use the calendar I could use the rather more stable holder that came with the He His My Master first press R2s way back, but it's not like I'm actually going to do that. Why would I defile my first-press extras? Coincidently, Bandai Visuals online catalogue has the last DVD, due in March, as apparently coming with an artbox, something which the My-HiME and My-ZHiME DVD releases have been deprived of. More importantly, the on-disk extra is being reported as being an original epilogue to the series, something the show could really do with. Whether or not this will be animated or just static shots like the other omake is anyones guess, but it'll be nice to have, I guess. There's a Xenoglossia mook due at the end of the month (well, the end of next month, but it'll be this month for some of those reading this, and it'll already be out of someone reads this way in the future) as well. At A4 size, I'm tempted to get it, but I'm undecided as of yet. Perhaps more important is that Live For You is due on 360 in February, with it's Miki-rific game based OAV. Apparently there's going to be some iMAS content in some Namco-based Warioware clone due to hit Japanese DS's in March too...

It's 2008!

DiGiKerot — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:01:22 +0000

Or so my clock leads me to believe, and I have no reason to doubt it. This makes me acutely aware that, as seems to be the in thing for bloggers, I should have wished you a happy New Year two days ago before proceeding to lay out some kind of statement regarding my blogging plans for the next year. Well, I'll wish you a belated Happy New Years, at least. As for blogging plans, I'm really not sure what the following year will bring at this point. I'm probably done with the comics, for the foreseeable future at least. I'm feeling a little tapped out on content (a large part of which probably comes down to not have actually watched too much anime due to having spent too much time throwing together crap comics. I'm sure there's some irony in there somewhere), and in any case I tend to find that my motivation to produce any particular kind of blog content wanes once it takes off with others - I stopped posting about figures on a regular basis as other bloggers started putting more effort into it than I could be bothered to, and at this point I'm happy to leave the comicking to others. My drawing hand will probably be happy with the news, anyway. I guess I need to come up with some new kind of blogging paradigm for the next year or something. Not that I really have any ideas right now... Aside from that, I'll probably be getting back to the novel reviews shortly - I purposely skipped NHK since others had covered it before I got my hands on a copy, and I didn't really have anything to add on the matter, but I've got plenty of books to read backlogged. My copy of Tokyopops release of the first of Gakuto Codas Missing series turned up in the mail today, and chances are I'll read the first couple of chapters this evening. I still need to track down a copy of The Good Witch of the West, though, and I've still not built up the courage to finally make a start on the gargantuan Brave Story (nor have I watched the DVD of the movie I bought months ago ^^;). On non-blog related matters, I actually got around to finishing Persona 3 a couple of days ago. That last stretch ended up taking a lot longer than I expected - I spent some 80 hours with the game overall, and there's no doubt quite a bit more to see (I didn't do too well at maxing out the S.Links for one thing), but I'm not really likely to spend any more time with the game unless English FES materializes. It's time to move on gaming wise, methinks. To what, I don't really know - I suppose I should take a look at Soul Nomad at some point. The rest of my free time is presently being spent catching up on some of my DVDs and manga - I got around to watching the end of Ergo Proxy last night (I think I liked it, though I won't pretend I followed much of that last episode), and watched some Eureka Seven, GaoGaiGar and *cough*GSD*cough* this morning. I figure I'll either be watching the first season of Gunslinger Girl, or the first Simoun DVD, this evening. Exactly which I've yet to decide. Anyway, that's all for now.

Missing: Spirited Away (Novel 1)

DiGiKerot — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:49:24 +0000

Kyoichi Utsume has a reputation for being a bit unusual. He's intelligent, charismatic, arrogant, highly knowledgeable about the occult, and he always, always dresses in black, earning himself the moniker of The Dark Prince. Given he's someone who even goes so far as to explain love away as merely being a boring delusion caused by possessive desires, you can imagine the surprise of his Literature Club colleagues when he introduces them to his new girlfriend, Ayame. Even more shocking than that, however, is when two of his friends witness his disappearance. Putting the events of the last day together, Utsumes friends start wondering if Ayame was actually a kami-kakushi - a kind of spirit known for causing peoples disappearance. Not that they can find Utsume or Ayame to question about the affair... I've been struggling for the last hour or so to decide exactly what to say about this book for a number of reasons. It's ostensibly a mystery novel, so I'm very consciously trying to avoid saying anything that could potentially give anything away, yet at the same time it's so obviously the first book in a series (of thirteen). Whilst there is a self-contained story of sorts within this book, it reads very much like the opening episodes of an anime series - its a super-quick introduction the characters and the setting to the series, a taster that shows you the kind of thing you are going to be able to expect in later volumes without really getting all that involved in it all. It's essentially the rule book to the series, laying down the foundations upon which the rest of the series will be built. Of course, saying too much about these rules at this point would give too much away about the actual mystery explored in this book, and saying too much about what I'd like to see, or I'm interested in seeing the handling of, in the following books would give away far too much about the way that this volume ends. Which is frustrating to say the least. What I will say is that I don't really think that this book on it's own is enough to give any real kind of judgement on the series - aside from the fact that the stories central character is out of action for pretty much the whole duration, too much of this book is spent explaining spirits and how they effect the world (and re-iterating it, just incase you didn't follow the first time), and as such it's a little hard to really form a valid opinion of it as an actual mystery novel. That makes this a very half-arsed review as a result. If I have to draw a conclusion at this point, I can only really say that it's a fairly interesting, and clearly well-researched, read, but as an opening to a mystery series it isn't really as successful as Boogiepop was, failing to weave quite as substantial a story as I'd like. We've not really spent enough time with any of characters to form any real impression of any of them either, but they at least seem to be a likeable bunch, albeit falling into the over-achiever, overly intelligent mould that the characters in these teen mystery novels tend to. Taken as a single book, it's still a pretty good read, and certainly not the worst book we've seen come across - I'd rate it upper-mid-class. It's better than most, but not as good as others. Really, though, it's going to come down to the second book, where hopefully we'll see the multitude of interesting ideas thrown around in this book put to better use, to judge how successful the series is likely to be as a whole. As for Tokyopops release of the book, it's a typical Popfiction release. The cover is them being in weirdo-mode, with a photograph of someones face with the eyes obscure by the books title, rather than the lovely manga-esque illustration from the Japanese release (presumably due to a combination of this not being related to a popular anime or manga, and being something they figure could garner a wider audience). The translation is by Andrew Cunningham, which is quickly becoming light-novel code for "nothing to complain about", and does a good job of putting across the atmosphere during the number of genuinely creepy scenes scattered through to book. I did spot at least one typo (I think it was a "they" instead of a "the"), but there's nothing major to complain about in that regard. The internal presentation is, unfortunately, Tokyopop in their OTT mode - it doesn't quite reach Full Metal Panic levels of distraction, but it does encroach on just as much of the page. The books main content runs around 200 pages, and is followed by a twenty page sample of the second book and a few pages from the manga version also being published by Tokyopop. Anyway, the second novel is due out in March. I guess I'll be back with a more solid opinion around then...

On The Subject of SaiGAR '08

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:21:44 +0000

In light of all the comments regarding this years SaiGAR selections, I have one thing to say:- "Baccano!" is spelt with only one "n". *Ahem* Anyway, everyone vote for Joseph Shingetsu. Joseph was badass. (And, yes, this post was just a bad excuse for a Dango picture. I'm very sorry).

Of Gunslinger Girl, the Panty Shot Button and Il Teatrino

DiGiKerot — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:55:10 +0000

So, I actually got around to watching the first series of Gunslinger Girl over the weekend. Surprisingly good show. There's been a lot of talk about it being kind of squicky and overly exploitative, which certainly isn't entirely untrue, but it's largely the point I guess. I was actually quite impressed with how tastefully Madhouse handled the material - the little things like them not having lingered on shots of the girls in the maid costumes in that episode with the hit in the hotel, or just the lack of service in general, make it a lot more tolerable than it could have been in other hands. Essentially, any feeling of squickiness felt during the viewing of said show came from the characters dialogue and actions in the show, not from the way the show was animated. This I had no problem with. I'm not really sure that would be the case in other hands, which is why Il Teatrino kind of worries me. To go on a tangent for a moment, I've talked about the PS2 games before. In the games, once you've cleared a particular area of mobsters, you get to move to the next area. On those occasions when you cover a large distance between points (a largely automated process - you just choose the direction you want from the selection given to you), the game may prompt you for an optional action that will cause Henrietta to dive for cover. I should point out that, whilst Henrietta is running between cover points, it was pretty rare that Henrietta was being shot at or anything, and even if she was diving made little difference - from an actual gameplay point of view, the action is actually completely useless. What it did occasionally do, however, was provide the players with a nice look up Henriettas skirt. Basically, it was the Panty Shot Button. I look at the character designs on the Il Teatrino sit, and they kind of fill me with dread. This isn't just because of the hugely simplified designs they are going with, though that does raise a few questions, but because they've been rather... bishojoufied? I worry about the staff hitting the Panty Shot button. This isn't to say that the designs in the Madhouse version were unattractive, but they were kind of undefined, angular and stumpy with rather, well, cubelike heads. They were, you know, kids. Just look at the difference in Claes figure between the Madhouse season (left) and Il Teatrino (right, and sorry for the dinky image - I've got the Official File book from the PS2 game to scan Claes from, but the Il Teatrino site only has teeny, tiny pictures). She's rather more shapely and attractive. I'm not really sure I like that direction, and I'm really, really not sure I could watch another series of Gunslinger Girl with character designs like those given the subject material - it'd feel like it would have crossed a little too far over the exploitation line. Am I just being unfoundedly unfair to Il Teatrino? Should I be concerned about overly sexualised character designs? Am I just scraping for posts since I don't have anything to say about my G-Gundam marathon yesterday? Probably that last one. I guess we'll sharp find out, anyway (it should have aired whilst I've been typing this, after all. I wonder how many people take this for a post actually about Il Teatrino...) Coincidently, the R2 DVD release for Il Teatrino is totally going the other way to the Madhouse season - the Madhouse one was pretty reasonably priced (by R2 standards), being split over three volumes, each of which was bundled with a PS2 game and a good first pressing extra for around the same price as any other late-night anime show. Il Teatrino is being released over hefty SEVEN volumes - and that's not including the eighth OAV disk. The first pressing extras for the TV disks aren't sounding all that exciting - there's some bromides and an extras DVD (which is sounding mostly like video footage of the crews trips to Italy) - but the OAV is coming with a B4-sized book which, if anything like the one from the first series release, will probably be neat.

Random Wafflage: 13/01/08 edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:27:39 +0000

I was thinking of starting this post by outlining it's point in Limerick form, which would have come out along the lines of: There once was a blogger from Britain, Who realised he had nothing written, It had been near a week, Since his stats were at peak, So he filled a post full of porn references in the hope that Google would pick it up. Of course, this doesn't really work, largely because of my inability to think of a closing line that actually scans, as well as the fact that the last line which I ended up using is really just me being amused at the amount of Pantyshot related Google hits that last post generated. In reality, this post doesn't really have much in way of the porn talk. This thought process did, however, start me along a potentially scary and dangerous conceptual path - attempting to summarize anime shows and episodes in limerick form... There once was a man named Gintoki, Whose finances were a touch rocky, He worked here and there, The pay wasn't fair, So he fed himself mostly with Pocky. There was a young girl called Arika, Who could serve to be a bit meeker, Eager to impress, Despite lack of dress, She ran across school like a Streaker. There was a young lady called Nina, Who on tables could not be much keener, Although when she came, it left a big stain, Which rather alarmed the school cleaner. At this point, I came to the conclusion that my unwillingness to be overtly smutty resulted in my limericks being reputation-upholdingly unfunny. Should anyone else wish to run with this concept, feel free to go ahead, but before that I feel I must get one more out of the way... There once was a bright orange Dango, Who wanted to learn how to tango, He quickly was beat, As he had no feet, And the class was ran by a mango. There can't be many more words that rhyme with Dango, so that'll probably stop DS from posting an effort ^^; Getting back to the original intention of the post, the ending of the comic has had its usual result - that being me not really having anything to actually post about. It probably doesn't help that the Christmas and New Year season completely messed up my sleeping patterns, meaning that I've been favouring sleep over watching anime on an evening. I did momentarily consider posting about certain crazy release decisions, though I suspect I'd just get really, really irate over the subject and, as such, I don't really want to start on it. I don't really think there's been anything else going on in either AAT or JAT that has really warranted me talking about, or I could even spin into something I felt was substantial enough a post. I really must try to do better. Looking forward for the rest of the month, I'm not really sure what I'm likely to want to post about. The big release for me this month is probably the My-ZHiME and ZHiME Zwei movie re-edits (though it's the Utawarerumono blu-ray box that is going to prove finance raping). I'll probably have at least something to say on that subject, but precisely what is likely to depend on what those who get there before me have to say on it (if anything). Other than that, I don't really know - after a surprisingly quiet holiday season, there are an awfully large number of game releases in the next month or so that interest me, with Disgaea 3 hitting Japan in a couple of weeks (I figure I've played enough N1 games by this point to play though the moonspeak version, and the OP sequence is awesome, though I do wonder what Marone is doing there...), and Live For You hitting 360 next month, I'm likely to find my time rather occupied, and that's not even mentioning things like Apollo Justice, Professor Layton, DMC4 and No More Heroes... *Sigh* So much stuff, so little time. Anyway, enjoy your week - it'll probably take that long for me to think of something else to post about...

Random Wafflage: Vaguely Bored Edition

DiGiKerot — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:38:28 +0000

Since I was vaguely bored, and it seemed like a relatively interesting thing to attempt, I've thrown together the other Hayate/Gurren Lagann eyecatch in matching resolution (available until I discover it's devoured too much bandwidth). The colours could probably use some work, but at this point I've lost interest in the endeavour ^^; -update 15/01/08- Okay, so I've gone back and tweaked some of the colours after all. Speaking of Jason, did Xenoglossia really have bad art? I can accept that there were some animation issues, at least as far them using the old static character/flapping mouth techniques during a lot of the dialogue sequences, but generally the animation was pretty decent elsewhere, and the actual art didn't have any real issues. I don't know, I just kind of object to Xenoglossia being put not on the same level as that cabbage show, but actually below that. Now, if he had said Xenosaga, he'd have had a point, though by now I think people have just stopped expecting good (or any) animation in late night Toei shows. Also, those sports references soooo don't work for anyone outside the US ^^; On a final note, the US to UK postage system has been pretty bad over the X-mas period, meaning that the Haruhi game only reached me today. The PSP is presently charging, so I guess I'll play it tomorrow.

Fun With Broken Comment Forms

DiGiKerot — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:59:33 +0000

So, Lupus collared me in #ab earlier today to tell me that posting comments hasn't been working. I had been wondering if something odd was going on - not because I have comment-free recent posts, but rather because I've not been getting my spam report e-mails. You can't have spam without working comment forms, after all. Bizarrely, it looks like the permissions on the file server for php file used in the posting for comments had it's permissions changed to be unreadable. I have no idea how this happened, but I took this to be a good opportunity to apply that Wordpress update I've been too lazy to look at. I guess I'll monitor the situation... Since I'm on the subject of site-related issues, Lupus also mentioned that I should really have a contact e-mail address on here somewhere. I don't disagree, but at the same time I'm not really keen on opening up one of the few spam-free mail accounts I have to the harvesters. If anyone has any recommendations for relatively spam-proof methods of throwing contact details up here, I'd appreciate the advice. And finally, it's a bizarre coincidence that Lupus was trying to post on my FMP novel review, since the second book turned up in the post today ^^; -edit- Okay, so then my HTACCESS started playing funny buggers. Ho-hum. Anyway, mystery solved in terms of why those file permissions had been changed - the host had altered them due to excessive server load caused by excessive spam. Wonderful. I've done a few hacks and the like in at attempt to reduce overhead to acceptable levels, so we'll see what happens.

The Good Witch of the West (Novel 1)

DiGiKerot — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:53:48 +0000

For a book with the word "Witch" in the title, this book had disappointingly few actual witches in it. This, alas, means that we don't get any nice pictures of girls wearing oversized, floppy pointed hats within it's pages. I realise others may not share my obsession with such cranial apparel, but I feel I must outline my upset up front. What we do get with this book is the story of Firiel. the daughter of an eccentric, hermit-like professor who, along with his assistant Rune, keeps himself sealed in his tower in the most far flung corner of the fantasy kingdom of Graal. As the story kicks off, it's the Queens Birthday, and having come of age Firiel is getting herself incredibly worked up over the prospect of her first visit to Amberpointe to attend the Counts Ball. Little does she know that this would only be the start of a series of shocking revelations and even more shocking events that turn her life upside down, dumping her into the vipers nest that is the political world of the nobility. So far, so classic girls literature. If you are looking for lovable sword wielding rogues battling against the odds or something rather more gritty and hard-boiled from your fantasy, you are looking at the wrong series. This is all very, very much in the commoner trust into high society mould of fantasy, at least for the duration of this novel. There are a few mentions of things like Dragons and sea-creatures to set it apart from period works, but other than a Princess with a love of writing yaoi fiction (no, really) there is little of originality here. Which isn't to say this is a bad novel. Whilst I recognise the trappings of girls literature, I'm very much a man, and as such haven't actually read much of it. This, of course, means that the book is largely fresh for me, and can report that from my point of view it was a highly enjoyable read. The pacing seems about right and it manages to keep the tone from being too light or weighty for it's own good. It's certainly not something you could consider hard fantasy, but the text is full of the little touches (and yaoi writing princesses) that make the world seem just that bit more real. Good Witch was animated back in 2006. I've not seen the anime adaptation, so I can't really do a fair comparison - the only thing I remember about it was Bluwacky being rather disappointed with the way it dissolved into illogical nonsense as it proceeded towards the end. Whether the novels will end up progressing down the same path is something hard to guess at the moment, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that this novel amounted to a whole two episodes of the anime series. The whole series was only thirteen episodes long, and whilst I have no idea if they adapted all five of the books, if they did that would mean that they'd have, at most, three episodes of adapt a whole book. You can't, realistically, expect to cram a book of this size into around an hour of animation and expect it all to actually make sense. Tokyopops release is in their usual Pop Fiction attire, though this is one of the increasing number books with they've chosen to grace with a manga-esque cover. This is actually unfortunate in this case, as there's a rather more beautiful Japanese cover depicting the Hermits Tower that I'd have rather liked to see. Otherwise, there's less to complain about here than in some other Pop Fiction books. The internals are rather more restrained than some other Pop Fiction releases, with more of the page being devoted to text than most of the rest of the range. Whilst the book is physically smaller than a lot of Tokyopops other books, with the main story text comprising of about 200 pages, it's actually one of the longer books they've put out - the text is smaller and the line-spacing less generous that most of their other books. It's a longer than a Full Metal Panic book, anyway, despite what appearances may have you believe. There's not much to complain about in terms of the English adaptation - there's a couple of minor typos and there was at least one line where there appeared to be a word missing, but otherwise its a nice, literate read - better than a lot of these novel translations, anyway. Images are all in place, but to be honest I don't really find the flowery, early nineties manga art all that appropriate a fit for the content. There's also a chapter from the second book, due in May, at the back for those who want to spoil themselves on it. So, it conclusion, it's a good book.

Random Wafflage: Falling Sky Edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:08:44 +0000

There is lots of doom and gloom floating around the AAT sites this week. It can't really say it's all that surprising given some of the events of the last week - ADV nixing Newtype, ADV killing off their club-freebies program, ADV closing their linear-broadcast Anime Network and, errr, ADV re-organising their UK distribution. Not that I'd personally consider any of these as anything like a death knell for ADV. It is very much a sign that the R1 market is struggling, but this is just a likely a case of ADV streamlining to cope rather than them struggling to survive. I mean, Newtype USA was an expensive, niche magazine full of content that people have found out via the internet months earlier. If it was Megami or another poster magazine I'd see more of the value of purchasing it - and this is coming from someone who subscribed to Newtype USA for a couple of years. I liked some of the features, but most of the content I just scanned. If I wanted pretty picture spreads, it was just as cheap to import the Japanese Newtype, get them months earlier and probably get some better extra tat in the deal. The ADV ADVocates thing was just an advertising exercise, shipping free DVDs to clubs who were probably showing mostly fansubs anyway. The linear broadcast probably wasn't doing much business, and from what I gather the UK distribution situation is something that we probably wouldn't even have noticed if they hadn't mentioned it (and, let's face it, there isn't much money to be made over here - most of us buy anime import the R1s anyway. We will, apparently, be getting the second series of Black Lagoon at some point, though...). Ultimately, nothing for R1 buyers to get alarmist about, regardless of what some may have you think. If nothing else, I doubt ADV would immediately launch another magazine if they were hurting for cash, rather they death of Geneon must have opened a huge hole in their advertising revenue. With that new trailer for Code Geass R2 surfacing a few days ago, I was struck with a sudden inclination to watch the last few episodes of the first season again. It's easy to forget precisely how frustrating an ending that show had, and I've obviously just went and agitated myself again by watching it again. Bah. One point of continued amusement is just how well animated Kaguya was during her brief appearance during Episode 23, given that the show cuts quite a few corners in it's none critical dialogue sequences, presumably so they can concentrate on animating the mecha-porn parts. I'd think it's either just a case of her being really popular with the production staff, or more likely it's just because it's her only significant dialogue in the whole series. That Chinese guy from the Code Geass R2 trailer appears briefly during Zeros speech in Episode 23. Was this his only appearance in the first series? Oh, and DS is continuing onwards with his MegaDaijoubu comics. The most recent comic, with Hinano guest art, made me laugh, though I do wonder if certain similarities with that last panel was intentional or coincidental...

Notes On Tokyo Majin

DiGiKerot — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:24:44 +0000

I'm starting to think that I need to follow the suit of some of the other blogs out there and post about random aspects of the things I've been watching, which is why I'm making this post about Tokyo Majin (Gakuen Kenpucho), a show which I don't have much to say about, at least in regards to things that are sensible. Maybe it's coming out of watching several episodes of Air yesterday, or perhaps the fact that Yue has long been my favourite character in Negima (little to do with the hat on her Pactio card, I assure you), but I can't help but find my attention drawn to juice boxes in anime shows these days. Maybe I should start a Juice Watch feature, given that the old Mikan Watch tag hasn't seen much use recently (I've spotted a few in some of the manga I've been reading, but not having been watching much anime recently I've not picked up on any there). In any case, I noticed that, in the course of the five DVD episodes, Hiyu drank from not one, but two different Strawberry flavoured juice boxes. What, precisely, this tells us about the character is anyones guess. Heck, I'm not even sure if that character is actually Hiyu - I found character names unusually difficult to grok in that show for some reason, not to mention the shows habit of jumping along it's own timeline without prior warning making it's continuity not exactly easy to follow either. One other thing that registered with me about Tokyo Majin isn't really anything to do with the show, but rather it's release - I hadn't actually noticed that ADV had stopped putting inserts in with all their DVDs. On further inspection, it appears to be the same with Air, Kanon and NHK as well, at least. Not that this particularly bothers me - it's not like I really need a list of chapter breaks in a particular show (which is what these things tended to amount to), and Bandai Ent. stopped doing these a while back either - but I was kind of surprised I hadn't noticed earlier. At least I was until I realised that I haven't been buying all that many ADV releases as of late, and of those which I have been buying have been of the low priority, bottom-of-the-backlog variety. Scanning through some of the ADV releases from the last year I have picked up, and it looks like they've only been ditching them when they don't have anything that would constitute as an extra - Kurau looks to have some booklets with staff interviews, as does Chevalier. This, coincidently, is in sharp contrast to a lot of R2 DVDs, where even something like Clover, which was an astonishing seven minutes long, comes with a little black and white paper slip detailing the menu structure and DVD details (in the case of Clover, in addition to a colour leaflet with the lyrics for the feature). The amount of paper shrapnel R2s tend to ship with is pretty crazy...

Kicking Reason (or Budgets) To The Curb

DiGiKerot — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:13:14 +0000

The value of the contents of the box pictured above, once the customs charge was factored in, comes alarmingly close to Jeff's annual DVD budget - heck, it's probably nearing half of what I normally spend on DVDs in a year. This can only mean one thing - yes, I've been buying R2s again... I have to admit, with the expert wrapping skills displayed here, I was rather hesitant to actually wrap things. I mean, it all looks so wonderfully tidy aside from that one I'd already unwrapped just to check it was what I thought it was. Still, blog posts don't get made (and DVDs don't get watched) without cracking a few eggs (or, in this case, wrinkling some wrapping paper). So, let's reveal the goods. Not much, is it (although there is was a Maaya Sakamoto single which isn't pictured). The Baccano! and Xenoglossia disks I imagine are self explanatory. The ZHiME set I'll post about at length in a few days, but it's basically a 105min movie re-edit of the TV show, a 79min re-edit of Zwei (I say re-edit, but that pretty much just means the EDs have been cropped from the sound of things) and a 95min Fandisk (mainly VA stuff, I guess). There's a new S.ift trailer on the Zwei disk, but I think that's been floating around for a few days now. The cost of that lot, however, is pretty small compared to that Utawarerumono Blu-ray box. To put things in perspective, you could buy at least a pile of R1s the size of that above (but probably not those disks, given they're mostly Geneon and recent ADV titles ^^;) at retail cost for the price of that one boxset. When you think about it, that's pretty nuts. As for what you get for your insane amount of cash, what you are guaranteed to get is the whole series spanned across three disks (with the ADV releases dub and subtitles included), the omake features from the DVD release (alas without ADVs dub and subtitles), some other random on-disk extras I've not checked yet, a nice full colour booklet with cast and crew interviews and some design art and a set of postcards. It's possibly worth noting that, unless I'm mistaken, this is pretty much the first proper HD release of an anime TV show. Air TV might have been released on DVD already, but aside from the extended opening sequence that was upscaled from broadcast resolution - if the R2s of Air hadn't sucked, you'd have gotten very little over what a good upscaling DVD player would get you. The Uta release is in 1080i from an actual HD source, and whilst it doesn't give that noticeable advantage in the character art department over a really decent upscale, I can say that from the quick scan I've had through the first episode that the clarity of the background art is pretty astonishing - way better than you could ever hope to see from DVD. I'm really rather looking forward to getting around to watching the show (which I've not actually seen before) over the weekend. If you are wondering about that small Uta related box pictured, well, that's a box of stick posters. Supply of these doesn't even appear to be on First Pressing levels - it seems to depend entirely on luck and retailer purchased from. Those at AoD who have purchased through Amazon, for example, didn't get them. Given the cost of the set, that's a pretty crappy situation (but, then, it's nothing unusual for the R2 market). At least I was lucky enough to get them, not that I presently have any use for them. Anyway, that's enough for tonight - Torchwood is on the telly, and whilst its generally rather awful, I kind of enjoy it anyway...

Random Wafflage: Furry Edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:24:37 +0000

Sunday is upon us once again. Well, actually, it's almost past here, but whatever. I guess I'll make this "random stuff not worth it's own post" post a weekly thing for the time being. Which leads us to Utawarerumono. I can't really say that I made many mental note whilst watching the series - just about the only ones I made about the actual show was "Damn, for someone with the mental age of a twelve year old, Camus has insanely oversized babs" (I should really insert an image here, but being Blu-Ray I can't capture it and I can't be bothered to scan the relevant postcard right now), and wondering why a country which supposedly had ten times the military might only appeared to have three Hero units. Other than that, my main thoughts were "Dang, that background art looks good in HD" and "They should make all remotes Bluetooth" - that later one inspired by the fact that I can control the PS3s blu-ray playback without having to remove my arms from the bedsheets in order to point the damn thing at it. This is in sharp contrast to my TV remote, which is the most unreliable and unresponsive remote I've ever had the misfortune to use (a shame, as otherwise it's a really nice set). Anyway, back to Utawarerumono. Great first half, but the second half, well, let's just say I spotted a hammerhead, a great white, a basking and many, many other kinds of shark being deftly leaped over. This isn't to say it's bad, as such, but even for someone who likes his entertainment pulpy it all gets just a little too random and bizarre and not at all like the first part of the series. Still, it's a fun show. You don't see many shows with battles on that kind of scale which actually have some degree of animation, even if they have used some occasionally slightly flaky CG to achieve it. There's some nicely dynamic animation running through the series up until the end as well. I'm willing to overlook some of the slightly ropey storytelling due to the general amusement value of it all. It ADV ever picks the license back up, it's probably worth waiting for a thin-pack release - I'm not really sure it's worth the single prices though. Almost certainly not worth the Blu-Ray prices. I'm planning on making a longer post on the subject once I've watched the My-ZHiME Zwei movie, but having watched the TV series movie I have to wonder who exactly it's supposed to be aimed at. It's not a very good as a recap of the TV series, and it's too insanely disjointed to watch on its own. Given they've mixed the audio in 5.1 for this release, they should really have just left the action sequences in their entirety - or at least those last two episodes - and let the fans enjoy it with better audio. Need to go through and check some of the animation against the TV series disks - I don't think there's anything new of any significance, but there were a couple of cuts which I was a little unsure of. At this point, I note that I don't really have anything else to talk about (I thought about posting at length about the ADV situation several times during the week, only to come to the conclusion that we actually know sod all about what's actually going on, so it'd be largely pointless), and that I probably churned enough words out in the subject of Underwater Ray Romano for it to have been worth a post on it's own. Oh well.

Random Wafflage: Nothing of Interest Edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:18:09 +0000

Yes, once again it's that time of the week where I realise that I've not posted anything for days and should probably break silence. The problem with this, of course, is that I've not posted anything all week because I don't actually have anything to interesting to say. I realise that this doesn't normally stop me, but I've not had anything uninteresting to say, either. Well, I suppose I could have written about some of the novels I've read but not posted about, but I've been struggling to think of more than a handful of words regarding any of those. Maybe I'll just do an amalgamated summary post regarding them. In any case, I should probably say something about Vampire Hunter D at some point... Anyway, this weekend, rather than watching anime, I've mostly been playing Devil May Cry 4, which I guess is tangentially anime related thanks to the TV show last year. There isn't really much to say about that, though, other than the fact that it's, well, a Devil May Cry game. If you've played one before, you know what to expect. If you've not played one before, it's probably not of interest to you anyway. For those who are curious, I went for the PS3 version over the 360 - that mandatory installation procedure wasn't quite as painfully long as other have been saying - it was more fifteen minutes than twenty two for me. That doesn't particularly make a mandatory five gig installation more acceptable when the 360 version runs off disk, but I just sat and read a volume of Yakitate! Japan whilst I was waiting. On a more anime related matter, I had thought to pass comment on a statement at the end of SDBs review of Yucie, that being that "Like Sugar, a little Snow Fairy, this series was targeted at kids but is good enough to be well worth watching by adults". I'm not sure about Yucie, but I could swear that Sugar originally aired late night - the implication being that, despite appearances, it was aimed at otaku rather than children. The problem with making statements like that is that, whilst it's easy to find out what day a particular episode aired out in the past, finding out the exact times for a show that old isn't straight forward. The closest I've found is mention on the official site that the two specials aired at 2500 (as in, the weirdo Japanese listings time for 0100) on 21/08/03 and 28/08/03 - no mention of the original TV run. Of course, whether the show was originally intended to be marketed to otaku, or whether this is just indicative of the fact that nothing that isn't Shonen Jump, Pretty Cure or incredibly long-running will get shown at a sensible time slot is debatable. Well, I'm going back off to tackle the legions of hell once again. Maybe I'll do something crazy like watch some Naruto or something later...

Funimation License Announcement Incoming...

DiGiKerot — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:05:59 +0000

Amidst all the doom and gloom overcoming the R1 world at the moment, it's increasingly seeming like it's more likely for a show to suddenly find itself unlicensed rather than studios actually picking up anything new. Well, except for Funimation, who seem to be doing quite well for themselves (and, apparently, are even improving their DVD encodes recently - though I don't fancy having to buy Shuffle to see the evidence). Anyway, Funimation look to be making what is quite probably the first licensing announcement of the year anime wise, but they won't be announcing it for a day or two yet. They've got a holding page up though - some of the fonts used are making me think D.Gray Man, but as for what it actually is, well, that's anyones guess. The top page on Funimations forums further adds "And what will it be? A movie? A series? An OVA? An action-adventure-supernatural-romance-comedy about magical vampires?", which makes me wonder if either are either making fun of generic anime set-ups or making a thinly disguised suggestion that it's that Rosario thing that's airing in Japan at the moment. Probably the former.

Shameless Cross-Promotional Post

DiGiKerot — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:06:12 +0000

Whilst I'm presently holding off on doing anything comic related here, some may have noticed that I've thrown together a couple of things for DS, which you'll no doubt be seeing the second of in a day or so. Whilst "Master of 4-koma" seems like a bit of an overstatement to me, you should all still go and leave a comment just to stroke my ego (or, at least, make it not the least popular post in the history of Daijoubu - I'm assuming that if negative comment counts aren't possible, my influence will somehow cause it to be a reality anyway). Anyway, back to Disgaea 3...

And that Funimation license is...

DiGiKerot — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:04:46 +0000

Claymore. They have some video up making the announcement that I've yet to watch, and there's a link to the their official site for the show (which, at the time of writing, isn't actually up yet - presumably uploading it now rather than previously to avoid giving the game away). This isn't exactly a surprise - most of the speculation was heading towards either that, D-Greyman or something completely at odds with the holding pages visual design. I guess I'll probably sink some cash into the show - I've read some of the manga, but never got around to taking a look at the anime previously. I hear that it kind of devolves in a craptacular fashion towards the end...

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 7

DiGiKerot — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:04:11 +0000

This is very much one of those posts I'm doing simply because I've posted about every other volume, and the next disk is due soon (along with the far more exciting first episode of S.ifr). The omake - a discussion between the twins - isn't really all that interesting, nor does it have any images worth capturing - there only three or four new images (not all entirely static - one's an elevator shot). It really isn't worth expending the effort required to re-watch carefully enough to accurately talk about. The FP bonus is a continuation of that from the previous volume. It's probably just as well that the actual episodes on the DVD are 18 through 20, the shit-meet-fan episodes. Kudos to Sunrise for not putting them on the cour boundary with this show like they normally do, though they did end up frustrating a lot of viewers as a result. Screencap taken purely because it reminded me of Hinanos post the other day. Her parfait lacked the cake and pocky, though, which is probably just as well. The ads on the DVD has the advert for the Kodomo no Jikan DVDs, which, yes, does make a big issue of the whole "no" removal thing ^^; Oh, and only two weeks until Live For You! Yay! There was a new trailer with a couple of short clips of the OAV out a couple of days ago if you've not seen it yet.

Random Wafflage: Power-leveling Edition

DiGiKerot — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:30:00 +0000

Disgaea 3 has quite a few mikan boxes in it - they are used for your characters desks for those generated with a low aptitude, and they are used as a platform for your character whilst they're trying to pass proposals. The thing is that, whilst they are clearly for storing oranges, none of them actually have Mikan written on them - well, not at least as far as I can see (even in HD, it takes a lot of squinting at the screen to try and make out what's written on the things). Can I actually count these as Mikan boxes, or not? In any case, much of this weekend has been blowing playing Disgaea rather than watching anime - this weeks anime viewing for me amounts to little more than a couple of dozen old episodes of Naruto on DVD, on which I have nothing to say. I've actually made alarming good progress though Disgaea - I'm about half way through Chapter 7 (or 8), and most of my party is well over levelled and over equipped (indeed, cash is of no shortage). I've barely crossed over the 20 hour mark too - I'll probably have the actual game finished tomorrow, though I'll then have to start the long grind up to the 1000's level wise if I so much as want to take on any of the cameo characters. No solid anime news worth talking about this week - there's tales of Geneon USA being close to signing a distribution deal which will see some of the rest of their output on the shelves, but it's nothing definitive. Episode 1 of S.ifr is out on DVD in Japan mid-week, but I have some Baccano in with that, and that doesn't hit until a week later. It's all very exciting, though. Come to think of it, this volume of Baccano has the first of the OAV episodes on it too. Good stuff. Also, someone needs to prod DS into posting the next 4-koma...

A Brief Look at Spring '08

DiGiKerot — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:37:35 +0000

Yes, it's once again that time where I take a break from drawing highly unpopular guest comics (c'mon, how is a giant dango Captain Planet anything less than awesome?) to cast an eye over the forthcoming anime season, instantly discounting the vast majority of it as being "not my thing" and making wildly unjustified statements as to why the rest will suck (only to quietly watch them later). Although, this upcoming season, it's kind of hard for me to see past Code Geass R2. If I was Jason Miao, I'd probably make some kind of clever sporting comparison that only the American readers would actually understand, but it would at least be made clear that Code Geass hold far more interesting than everything else (except I suspect Jason wouldn't share such feelings regarding Geass anyway). As it is, however, I'm a fat, lazy British Northerner, who doesn't have so much as an interest in Football (that's proper football, like Soccer), let alone any of these weird American sports, so I'll refrain from doing that. The show is all very exciting and everything, though, and I've been trying my best to avoid any of the spoilers. There are, however, questions that must be answered - will the more mainstream timeslot result in compromises, and, more importantly, will Pizza Hut continue to support the rebellion? We shall see! Looking through the rest of the list, I'm really not all that sure what to look forward to. Allison & Lilia at least looks kind of interesting, being based on the pulp adventure light novels by Kino no Tabis author Keiichi Sigsawa. The books are apparently pretty good, though the animes character designs are a little disappointing in comparison to the novels art. The most interesting the staff gets is it sharing a writer with Lucky Star, but with it being Madhouse producing for NHK, decent production values are practically assured. I'm a sucker for pulp adventure too... Blassreiter should probably ring the normal Gonzo alarm bells, but I'd like to think that being written by Gen Urobuchi might save it from Boobnaut levels of quality. That, and it is Ichiro Itano (of Macross missile-circus fame) directing, which may at least lend it a certain amount of visual flair. Speaking of Macross, I guess that, errr, Macross F is at least interesting. Reaction to the preview episode was largely positive, Nyan-nyan Nyan-nyan Nihao-nyan and all that. Otherwise, Real Drive, Kure-nai and Library Wars look interesting on a purely staff-based level, but largely I'm likely to follow my usual method of waiting to what peoples actual reactions to most of these shows are, rather than wasting time, money and effort chasing finding out myself. There are an awful lot of show this season which are treading the fine line between sounding good and dreadful... Regardless, it's all an whole lot more interesting that Winter looked. (Completely unrelated note - I did finish the main game on Disgaea 3 on Monday. The last boss only lasted two turns. Clocked up less than 25 hours, mainly due to finding a nice levelling/cash increasing exploit. Yay!)

Random Wafflage: Under the Weather Edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:26:20 +0000

Muuuh, I'm feeling kind of frazzled this weekend, and as such have spent far too much time sleeping, and nowhere near enough time doing productive things like, err, watching anime or making a start on Lost Odyssey. Which is why I'll be keeping this short today... One thing I'm not going to be talking too much about is the guest comics over at Daijoubu, also known as "massively-annoy-Hinano-gate". I have to admit, I really did think DS was killing off the whole Dango thing, particular since all the banners had been changed. I guess I should really have known better... Speaking of banners, I've actually made a few additions to my banner folder for the first time since I added the Mikan box about three months ago. How exciting! Well, okay, not really. So, what else is there to talk about... New season of Ikki-tousen? Nah, I've not seen Dragon Destiny, and have shown no interest in cracking open the thinpack of the original series I bought. Alter releasing a Vita figure (probably NSFW - I've not check all those images), however, well, that's all kind of badass. Also, Nendoroid Itoshiki Nozomu? Man, that should be a good one. Might get Goodsmiles Miki (from iMAS) as well. Speaking of Miki from iMAS, Live For You and that OAV are out at the tail end of the week, as is the next Baccano DVD, which has the first of the OAV episodes. Neat-o.

My-ZHiME and Zwei Movie Edits

DiGiKerot — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:28:38 +0000

I'm quite sure that there are worse ways to spend your time then watching the My-ZHiME movie edit. For example, you could watch the original version of Gundam Seed Destinys final episode through four times in a row. You could, perhaps, pay someone to stand there and kick you in the crotch for an hour and a half. You could also sit and stare at a wall for a while, although if it has recently received a fresh lick of paint it may actually prove itself to be more worthwhile. Really, though, it's pretty much what you'd expect from a twenty-six episode series sliced down into a mere hundred minute feature - it's simply an incoherent mess. The whole of the shows first episode fits into just over three minutes, whilst the next five episodes take up the about the same amount of time (and most of that is taken up with tentacle shots from the poolside episode). The rest, whilst less compressed, proves just as hard to follow, jumping illogically from cut to cut. Given that the above makes it pretty much a pointless experience for new comers, I really have to wonder who they expected this to appeal to. Existing fans are likely to find this even more frustrating an experience - the audio has received a nice, new 5.1 remix, but it's wasted on scenes where it's practically pointless. Pretty much all of the scenes where it'd make a discernible difference - things like the fight scene between Nina and Arika in the third episode, or the last two episodes, are cut so short that it's entirely wasted. There's no new content to speak of, aside from a mix of Otome wa DO MY BEST Desho? I can't remember having heard previously being used over the ending credits. The My-ZHiME Zwei movie rehash fairs far better, which isn't exactly surprising given the difference in running lengths isn't so massively disparate. You do lose content from most episodes, with the second and third episodes proving the worst hit (with about a third of each dropped - including Tomoes cameo from the second, and most of the bathing scenes from the third), but with a lot of the chaff removed those who didn't like the full OAVs may find this a little more palatable, though I guess as a work which exists pretty much solely as series fanservice, it'll kind of render it pointless for others. As some who enjoyed Zwei, and enjoyed this movie, I'm not really in much of a position to guess how other's will take it. They've actually added around four minutes of new footage to the end, with ribbon-loli taking to Natsuki (who is attempting to play golf, and is doing so badly). It's quite amusing, particularly because Nao turns up to wind Natsuki up. I bought the Dream Box thingy, rather than the movies separately, so I also got the ZHiME Fandisk, but I've not actually looked at that ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics OAV-1

DiGiKerot — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:37:57 +0000

Errrm, is this a little too high level? I guess I need to explain this for those who don't get it (the vast majority reading this, I'd imagine). I think that anyone into Science Fiction and/or British comedy would be aware of the body of work known as The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. Now, aside from the novel version, this was a rather multimedia work, initially being derived from a series of radio dramas, as well as spawning a TV adaptation and, a few years ago, a feature film. Now, the Radio and TV versions of the show used an audio track by The Eagles, called Journey of the Sorcerer, as it's OP sequence (the track is also in the movie at one point). It's a pretty recognisable track. Imagine, then, the sense of mirth that overwhelms me seeing this sequence from S.ifr... In any case, for those who haven't heard/seen/read H2G2, the thing that makes the The Hitchhikers Guide more popular than other books coming out of the publishing houses of Alpha Centauri is that (a) It's marginally cheaper, and (b) it has DON'T PANIC! written on it in large, friendly letters. Further, one of the most important pieces of advice given in the book is that you should always know where your towel is. Yeah, it's not really very funny, is it. By the way, this comic is an OAV instalment, meaning that I can't really be bothered to kick off another full season of Meme Comics at the moment. I'm thinking of starting off the next series to coincide with the April anime season, but that's dependant largely on me being able to think of some actual content for it...

Bandai Visual Licence Sola

DiGiKerot — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:16:04 +0000

At least, they appear to have given they now have a place holder site up (thanks to AoD forums for the link). A combination of the fact that the show falls outside my usual sphere of interest, the limited availability of BV titles at retail (at least for those like me who'd be looking to import to the UK) and the price likely to be associated with it pretty much kills my interest for the time being, though I have to admit I'd have been inclined to at least pick up the first disk if I could actually source it somewhere (I know you were screwed over with the Geneon thing, but please sort out your distrobution BV!). Others will likely be happy at the chance to buy it on DVD, or annoyed that it's not gone to someone who'd put it out at a lower price.

Baccano! Episode 14

DiGiKerot — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:30:05 +0000

What's this? DiGiKerot is actually ahead of the curve for once? Your eye deceive you not! My copy of the fifth Baccano! DVD actually turned up in the mail today (thanks CDJapan), a day before it's supposed to hit Japan. What's nice about this volume is that it has the first of the three OAV episodes - "The Love and Peace of Graham Spector" - on it. It's a pretty good episode - it's pretty much more of the same multi-linear, multi-character stuff we've already had. There's some screen caps and a little discussion after the jump - I'd rather talk about anime than spell out the entire content of something, so don't expect the comments to be particularly enlightening or anything. It's just a taste of what you've got to look forward to, basically. I have to say, thought this was some kind of iPod initially - it's about the right size, and we did last see Isaac and Miria in present day New York... It turns out that it's a Domino though, and one of an awfully large number of them - there's a few people helping the lovable idiots set them up, including Ennis, Maiza and, bizarrely... the Demon who provided them with the Immortality elixir in the first place (not Luck, who he looks awfully similar to). This girl appears in the background of several cuts here - I think she's the girl who survived Szilards attack on the ship waaaaaaay back in that 1700s episode. I could be wrong, though. On another note, I'll mention that the dominoes totally play to my love of gratuitous yet subtle use of CG in anime. Good job! The titular Graham Spector - he's every bit as much of a nutcase as Ladd Russo... Albeit one who can catch bullets with his wrench. Just as well, really, as three years prior he actually fought Ladd (in the episodes token action sequence). It's kind of weird seeing Ladd in a black suit. Pretty good fight, by the way. Ladd was typically nuts. Claire (the Rail Tracer) visits Huey (Chanes father) in Prison. Speaking of Chane... -edit- D'oh, someone has just pointed out to me that this is actually Elmer, rather than Claire ^^; Whoops. That's definately Claire in the next episode preview, though. I'm getting confused due to the way it's framed against characters leaving The Flying Pussyfoot immediately prior to this. Silly me. -edit 2- Lord, now that I rewatch it, it's SO DAMN OBVIOUS. You know, aside from the characters looking different (cut me some slack - there's so many characters, and this is the first episode I've watched in months, despite having imported all the DVDs, and Elmer only appeared in one episode), but if I'd actually been paying more attention to the dialogue then it should have been clear *sigh* Oh well, I'm sure someone will do a far more competent job of this in a few hours anyway. Serves me right for doing a half-arsed job ^^; We get to see the 1922 version as well. She still can't actually speak, though she does have a discussion with her father through their weird psychic bond. Czes seems to be living with Ennis now. Not pictured is Czes meeting with Racheal (from the Daily Days), who aside from being surprised he's still alive has been sent to see him by her boss. The next episode looks to be Jacuzzi-heavy. Episode 14 ended with Graham deciding he wants to go after Jacuzzi (who does have a large bounty on his head), and to facilitate their meeting he kidnaps Eve Genoard (at least according to the English note in the preview I had to squint to read). It also looks to have more Claire and Chane. Unfortunately, it's not out for another two months, as it's on DVD 7 rather than DVD 6. Ho-hum. Anyway, that touches on pretty much everything in Episode 14 without actually spoiling anything. I will point out that this episode runs for 28 minutes, rather than the 24-25 you'd expect from the average TV episode.

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 8

DiGiKerot — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:11:29 +0000

Those who were hoping that the DVD with Azusa on the cover might actually have an Azusa themed omake will be sorely disappointed with this latest DVD. Those, like myself, who were disappointed with the craptacular Futami twins omake on the last disk will no doubt take a great amount of solace in the fact that this disks Chihaya and Yukiho centric featurette quite possibly has more cuts than all the previous omake put together (including some actual animation!) - a number of which break the decency levels I hold this blog to. I'll give you this one, though. Yes, that really is Yukiho licking Chihaya. Actually, things don't really get any more risqué than that - there's a few shots of naked Chihaya in which the usual parts are either out of camera or obscured, but that's it for the service shots. The actual content is Chihaya and Yukiho reminiscing about old times, shortly after Yukiho arrived back at Turiavita. Shockingly, Chihaya is actually nice to Yukiho throughout, rather than being quite as crazy as she was towards the end of the series. The episodes on the DVD are all actually pretty good ones - the last one, episode 23, is the one where Turiavita nuke most of Tokyo. Good stuff. The next, and final, DVD volume should be all good stuff, not to mention that epilogue we are supposed to be getting. On a related note, Live For You and the game-styled OAV should be surfacing in the next couple of days. I also got the Shiny Smile CD single in with todays order ^_^

My-ZHiME S.ifr #1

DiGiKerot — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:56:42 +0000

You know what I'd really, really like? A new *-HiME franchise TV show. Exactly what they cover I don't really care, but as nice as these OAVs are (and S.ifr was very, very nice), waiting three months between episodes, of which we only get three of with this series, is pretty killer. Anyway, there's no sense in duplicating what others have done at length by summarising this, particularly when most reading this have probably seen the OAV already, but my notes for the episode follow the jump. As for what I thought of it, it's probably one, if not the, single strongest episode of franchise thus far. Whilst I personally enjoyed Zwei (and think the Haruka-centric second episode in particular was pure gold), I'm imagining a lot of people are either seeing this as a return to form, or an over achiever, depending on how they felt about the TV series. What I'll mention straight off is that the booklet which comes with the R2 DVD has different romanizations for a lot of the character names than those which are being used among fandom. I'll mention these as I go along. Bruce is the single best male character to thus far appear in the franchise, not that he has much competition. The booklet has his name romanised as Bruce Wallece, rather than the Wallace which is commonly used at present. I'm pretty sure everyone recognises this move Rena is using as that Nina used against Mashiros guards in the first episode of the TV show, and again against Arika in the third episode. There's lots of odd things in this episode which kind of feel like them retconning, or at least confusing, which of the TV characters these are the parents of. Her name is romanized in the booklet as Lena Sayers - this isn't exactly a surprise, given that they'd romanized her name that way in the newspaper clipping in the first episode of Zwei, and with her GEM reading L.S., I guess they are being consistent in preferring Lena over Rena. I'm kind of hesitant to change now that I've been using Rena for so long now, though. The big guy pictured in the image below is Branquin. That's only really of note due to the fact that it breaks from the TV shows pattern of naming Aswards Cyborgs after units of measurement. The ending credits also list a Ranbos (ランボス) and a Cattsue (カッツェー) (katakana provided as I'm not sure on the romanizations) along with his name, whom I am assuming are his colleague who appear later. It's really, really bizarre that Fumis master was a dead ringer for Mashiro. It kind of raises a few questions - was Fumi serving the royal family of Windbloom? I'd kind of thought that was the suggestion previously. It might suggest why Mashiro being raised as Princess was questioned even more than it was, though despite all the pictures of Fumi seen in the TV show I don't think any of them had her master in them. It also makes me think of that episode of ZHiME where Mashiro asks Miyu is she knows anything about her - I'd have thought that kind of resemblance wouldn't have slipped past her. Oh, the joys of retconning... I'm kind of amused that elements of Sifr Frans hair is partially a combination of Arikas and Ninas, though the long bang on Arikas hair goes down the other side of her face, and Ninas braids go behind her ears. Yes, they do look a lot like Chie and Shiho. On the left is Sister Zion (as the booklet says) - her surname isn't romanized, but the small text (and the writing in the next episode preview) has her full name down as Zion Margaret (not Marguerite, like Tomoe, or Hermana Shion as some sites presently do). The Shiho look-alike is Raquel Major, rather than the Mayol I'm presuming is derived from her Destiny name (likewise for the Zion/Shion thing). Eliot Chandler, token series blatant lesbian (as opposed to just heavily suggested). Nothing really exciting to say - I don't really like the half mask on her Meister Robe compared to Saras in the other series. Nina the cat. Kind of retarded. I've seen some suggestion of this being where Nina from the TV series got her name from, but this really, really doesn't make any sense what-so-ever. The royal family named their child Mashiro, so assuming the don't back-peddle on Nina being princess that would have been her name at birth. Given she was sent away from the castle as a child and picked up by a gang, the name Nina must have either been given to her either by them or by Sergay. In either case, it's just a bizarre coincidence. Actually, on the subject of names, Rena initially introduces herself to Sifr as Rena Yumemiya, although later it's revealed that she is known as Rena Sayers. I'm presuming at this point that Yumemiya must have been her mothers maiden name or similar, given that Rena presumably hasn't changed her name due to being married (being an Otome). I also wonder if Arika was actually the name Rena gave her (presumably transmitted to her own mother via Miyu), or if she was named by her grandmother. Note that the Headmistress Una Shamrock doesn't have a Fumi statuette on her desk - I guess that's a Natsuki touch. That's the same jacket you see Mashiro wearing in a number of times in the other series. I've noticed that a few of Sunrises shows use CG textures for complicated background patterns, normally visible due the repetition apparent in things like wood panels. In this case, its really obvious on the carpet due to the excessive anti-aliasing (I'm guessing that texture is way too low resolution to be seen that close). That, and the fact that... the pattern completely disappears a few panels later when the floor collapses ^^; This one is really peculiar - Rena pulls off her maid costume, which comes off with a single yank despite the fact that there are at least two layers, the cuffs were separate, she was wearing stockings (and possibly a garter belt) and had laced boots. More bizarre is the fact that, in this single motion, she's managed to reappear with her hair tied differently, different shoes and wearing a dress that couldn't possibly have been under the maid costume - even if you assume those sleeves were rolled up in the shoulders of her maid costume or something, how she suddenly sprouts the white leggings is beyond me. Houdini would be proud. I do have to wonder what the point of the exercise is, though - it's not as if we haven't seen Otome Materialise from informal attire before. There's that L.S. I guess Bruce Bran de Windbloom is named after one of his ancestors. I think Rena must be one of the only Otome I can remember with adequate support in the chest area. Maybe that's the secret to her power? "Comedy" break. Rena is kind of excessively overpowered - I mean, she can walk on water, whip things with her Robe, can do DBZ-esque split moves (not to mention moving like a DBZ character), and she has a Bow for an element as well as the magic slicey power she uses. I guess that makes her better than Jesus! She does loose her chest support, mind you, so maybe she isn't. Kind of funny that she will have a completely different ability set next episode given that her GEM cracked. I was going to moan about them reusing Gakutenou here, but the ending credits have a credit for Bakutenou, so I guess that's alright (and, yeah, the design is a bit different anyway). Bruce and Sifrs eyes changing colour when M-9 was activated really, really through me for a while. I mean, I've long been assuming that Arikas Alyssa descendancy was through Rena, but this opens up a few questions. Is this reaction down to that relation, and could Bruce possibly be Arikas father? Does this mean that Arika might not be Renas daughter after all, or are Arika and Nina actually sisters? Is all this actually leading to somewhere else entirely? Lord only knows... The fight between Rena and M-9 was pretty sweet, particularly compared to the dash'n'slash stuff the other series instalments devolved into. There's lots of names and terms thrown around in the ending credits, many of which I have no idea how to romanized. There's lots of names and terms we've already had from this episode, but there's a few new ones, including Harmonium, Iruma Van De Beld (イルマ・バン・デ・ベルド), Ray Jagger Naut (レイ・ジャガー・ノート), Shiro, Hazakura Sakura, Kyoko Shimabuki, Reito (presumably the one who became Rad), Eal Church/religious organisation and lots of Kanji terms I don't really want to try and get into figuring out (I'm pretty sure most of them are GEM names anyway, and probably mostly refer to the Pillars). By the way, this DVD has a blue keepcase, rather than white like every other HiME release. Not sure if that's cool or annoying. That's all I've got to say on this episode. Now to get annoyed waiting for the next instalment.

Random Wafflage: Maid Clothes, No Machineguns, edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:54:11 +0000

I've had ZHiME on the mind this week, though that's pretty usual anytime there's a new release in the franchise. The funny thing is that, despite my unhealthy obsession with it, it's not something I'd place toward the upper end of my list of favourite shows - traditionally I place Vision of Escaflowne, something which, to my mind, is the ultimate realisation of Sunrise pulpy goodness, as my favourite show ever, but it's been a few years since I've last watched it. I really need to schedule in another rewatch at some point, just to see if it stands up. Speaking of maid clothes, the new iMAS game, Live For You, was out this last week. No, I've not got my copy yet, and I've not seen the OAV yet either (please don't spoil it for me, k' thanks). General reaction is that, well, it's one of Namcos Taiko games with prettier visuals and a whole lot of dancing. It's not really what a lot of the games Western fans wanted, and a few are bitching about the fact that they can grab all one thousand Gamerpoints in an evening, as opposed to the weeks and weeks it took to claim those from the original game. It doesn't really bother me, though - I'm not really looking for anything long lasting, just something to kill a few hours with some catchy music. That said, as far as catchy music goes, it's kind of annoying that Shiny Smile isn't going to be available to download until the end of the month, despite pre-orders shipping with a pre-paid purchase card for it. All the other download content is the same kind of cash rape which went on with the original game - things like the Maid costume from the first catalogue update cost 1000points (or around £9 in a proper currency), and even the "free" costume is only actually available for those with a Japanese Gold account, which strikes me as a good way to lock out those foreign players. The song remix prices seem rather more reasonable (whether this will stretch to the new songs coming later this year is anyones guess), being around 300points each. Of course, you then realise that there's presently 10 of the things available, with more to come, you notice that the cost starts up mount alarmingly. I do, however, think the Relations B-mix, which is getting panned else where, is all kinds of genius. I might actually grab that one, though I'll probably be buying the CDs anyway. Coincidently, looking at the iMAS entries on Japanese Live Marketplace, it looks like you have to download all the DLC content regardless of which of it you've actually paid for - the catalogue file, downloaded when you make your first purchase or if you want to browse things in-game, is a whopping 600mb. Presumably it already contains things like the Shiny Smile files, as having the backing audio plus all the vocal overlays for the additional tracks would explain the file bloat, despite the fact that you can't buy them yet. Future online purchases will consist of nothing more than setting a flag, I guess. Anyone who follows R1 news might have noticed that something called Joe vs. Joe, a relative of classic boxing series Ashita no Joe, has been licensed by a company called AnimeWho - a question that more than a few may be asking themselves. As it turns out, it appears to be a "clean" sister label to H publisher JapanAnime. I'm not sure if I find this particularly surprising or not - it seems odd given the state of the market at the moment, but on the other hand the H side of things seems to be fairing even worse. JapanAnimes release schedule looks bare, and by most reports PinkPineapple and a few of the other R2 publishers are no longer willing to license their titles to the US. It's not a surprise, really, given that all what happens is that unmosaiced versions of all their releases appear through download channels, resulting in something that most would see as superior to the versions they can actually buy. It's similar to the situation with Western fans and HD downloads vs DVD, I guess, except in reverse and the fact it's been going on for even longer. Anyway, I'm going back to playing Lost Odyssey, and hoping that my internet connection decides to actually sort itself out so I can download that Catalogue file in advance of my game turning up.

Right Stuf license MariMite

DiGiKerot — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:06:15 +0000

No, really, they have. Both the TV seasons and the OAVs too (though isn't there a forth series in production?). I'm not even going to pretend to be embarrassed about it - I'm so buying the lot. Decent prices, too ($50 each for the TV seasons, $40 for the OAVs, no doubt will be cheaper elsewhere). Looks to be sub-only, but whatever. Oh, and if anyone was following the teasing Right Stuf was doing, this license only relates to the first of their four comments - they actually still have another three announcements forthcoming at some point.

Random Wafflage: Image-free Edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:20:08 +0000

Thanks to a lack of inspiration, and the fact I can't really be bothered, I'm refraining from cracking out the stylus this week. I'm sure it's not something that is particularly going to bother anyone. In any case, it's been another week that's been light on the anime, heavy on the video games. I'm not really sure why this is - part of it is no doubt simply that there's been a lot of games I've been wanting to play recently, but I think more significant is perhaps the amount of the stuff I've got queued up to watch. I can't really decide what to watch out of what I've got piled up, which ultimately results in me finding something else to do rather than actually make that decision. I kind of just top-skim off the best of what comes in and the Volume 1s and leave the rest piling up. Some of this stuff has been sitting around long enough that I'll need to go back to the start of the series and rewatch the whole thing through in order to actually be able to follow them. I should really just pick up a disk an evening or something. I'm sure I could squeeze something in most nights. Ho-hum. Author posts about Twelve Kingdoms, and how he can't remember the last show he found so disappointing after being so highly recommended (this coming a week after his post about never following recommendations). I like Twelve Kingdoms, but I'm largely with him in regards to those episodes he's talking about. I had problems getting into the show until towards the end of the first story arc, which in terms of the R1 release is, what, three volumes into it? Once Youko stops whining about things, and they write out the other characters who make the jump with her, things picked up significantly for me. I do think it's an awful lot to expect people to sit through if they don't gel with the opening episode, though, particularly given the show ultimately just fizzles out thanks to the lack of material to adapt. Come to think of it, the US Hardbacked print of the second book should be hitting the bookshelves in the next couple of days. I need to order the thing, I guess. Actually, speaking of novels, I got the Viz release of the Death Note novel yesterday. I've not read the thing yet (need to finish off the last chapter of the most recent D novel first), but I have to say that Viz presentation, as usual, impresses. Their novel releases simply look a lot nicer than all their competitors. As for what games I've been playing this week, it's not been Live For You. I guess Customs have gotten their mitts on the thing. Still, it's given me a chance to plunge a bit more time into Lost Odyssey (I'm about half way through disk 3, I guess), and I've been playing a bit of Prof. Layton on the DS. I've also been playing a whole lot of Trigger Heart Exelica on 360, which is one of those shooters where you have to negotiate screens consisting mostly of bullets with your tiny little ship whilst blowing things up. In this case, though, you replace "ship" with a girl with lots of machinery strapped over what's essentially a sukumizu (it's very Powered Natsume), and instead of actually shooting things you spend most your time using your grappling hook to hurl enemies into each other. It's fun, but as with all these games, I suck at it. Actually, I'm starting to feel the urge to code my own stuff rising again, but I'm sure this will only last up until the point that I remember how much work is actually involved in it. That, or I'll get the basic thing working, then decide I can't be bothered to do any more of it (which is exactly what happened to my last two projects). I should probably start, now that I think of it - I'll probably catch up on all those anime DVDs as an excuse for not working on it ^^;

iDOLM@STER: Live For You

DiGiKerot — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:13:27 +0000

This is mostly going to be about the OAV, since there really isn't much to say about the game. It's kind of fun, though there really isn't all that much to it - it is a pretty easy 1000 gamer points, though the amount of travel in the 360 pads face buttons makes the higher difficulty settings a little harder than they should be. I really need to go back through and play all the tracks whilst wearing headphones in order to properly judge the remix tracks, but they are a real mixed bag. Some of them really, really don't work - they've tried to turn My Best Friend into a trash metal track for it's A-mix, and the disconnect between the backing track and the vocal is horrendous (the unreleased chip-tune-tastic B-mix at least sounds better) - whilst some of the others are great. My favourite is probably the A-mix of Aoi Tori, which is dropping in so much gothic malice that it really wouldn't sound out of place in a Vampire movie. Anyway, onto the OAV... Point of Vague Amusement - this is the scrub office you have when you start playing iMAS for the first time. As you increase you producer rank through repeated play, you move to increasingly better offices. In actual L4U, I think you are actually in one of the mid-range ones. In any case, you aren't in the office block so ghetto that your company name is plastered onto the window with masking tape ^^; Time for the roll call. Game Yukiho - scared of everything. Especially boys. Game Ritsuko - the best character, and I'm not just saying that because she's the only legal character who doesn't annoy me. I'm saying it because she wear glasses. In the game, if you actually select eyewear as one of your accessories (say, a pair of sunglasses), unlike the other characters she'll wear them pushed up over her head. Game Iori - She's an excessively wealthy tsundere. Cookies will not be awarded to anyone guessing her seiyuu. Game Azusa - somehow manages to mix all the parts I hate in Hayate's Izumi and Kanons Akiko into a character I, errr, rather dislike. I guess that's not really surprising... Miki - Doesn't need the game prefix since she didn't make Xenoglossia. I think she's still bitter about it. Game Haruka - her trademark is her ribbons, and she falls over a lot (which I guess explains the OP to Xenoglossia, as there wasn't really anything in the show to suggest a lack of coordination). Game Chihaya - not insane. Kind of boring, I guess. Game Makoto - Not a bitch. Game Yayoi - She's poor, but she works hard (well, according to that song from Beautiful Katamari, anyway). Game Ami and Mami - has a horribly disfigured hand. Anyway, The girls all split up in order to get a good nights sleep before the Fan Appreciation Concert they are holding following day, but mysteriously Miki walks home with Haruka despite not living in that direction. No doubt she's planning on killing her due to resentment over the whole Xenoglossia affair. Chihaya, however, interrupts her plans, as her own dissatisfaction at her level of preparation causes her to head back to the office, dragging Haruka (and Miki) along with her. Ringo watch? Alas, it's an Apple rather than an Orange box. Curious nerdy gaming point - this is the dance studio where your idols dance lessons take place in the game. In the OAV it's in your office, which seems kind of odd given the size (and the fact that you continue to use the same studio in the game even when you move). Actually, the fact that Chihaya seems to feel the need to practice her dancing seems kind off odd too, given that her base dance stat is pretty moderate, and the fact that she's only really into the singing part of the whole idol thing... Several hours later, the girls accidentally find themselves at a train station in the middle of nowhere. Oops. Then their taxi breaks. Haruka forgets that they'd already done the Cellphone-with-no-signal thing to death in Xenoglossia. Either that, or she just wants to give Miki one less reason to kill her. Coincidently, the girl on her cellphone is from the old Namco game Legend of Valkyrie - the individual parts of her armour were among the first pieces of DLC for the first iMAS game on 360 (they're a present with another DLC item in L4U, from what I gather). Miki sees the Watch Out For Pedobear sign and freaks out. Thankfully, there's a house near by. If they are lucky, it won't turn out like Kagetsu Tohyas Imogirisou. If the audience is lucky, it will. Less than four minutes in and they've already got a bathing scene - I don't think even Xenoglossia managed it that quickly (by the way, Miki is actually the youngest girl there, despite being larger, err, upfront). Miki thinks the people who own the house are strange, so wakes everyone up. Gotta love Chihayas expression here. Anyway, it looks like they're Yakuza, as they've got a bag of money, have tied up the taxi driver and have stolen the girls phones. Oh noes! Not sure if I'm supposed to recognise the characters on the phone chains here or not - I recognise the mouse in a cop suit from some iMAS artwork, and the guy with the glasses is Bravoman (a game kind of famous in retro-game fandom for it's Engrish). No idea on the other one, though. So, the girls run away, but they only have twelve hours before the concert! DOUBLE OH NOES! They try to catch a lift in a nearby truck. I wonder if Japanese truckers really do wear those things around their waists. Speaking of which, exactly what is that thing around his waist anyway? He refuses, so they sneak into the back anyway. But as soon as that truck leaves, a suspiciously iMAS decored one turns up. Hmmm... With six hours to go, they find themselves thrown out of the truck even further out in the middle of nowhere. Whoops. The fact confuses Miki, who reveals that this was all supposed to be a rigged series of disasters for a TV special, and that the drinks she'd given them earlier had been laced with sleeping drugs. Personally, I think she's either been taking lessons from Britneys management, or she's been luring them out into the middle of nowhere, where nobody will ever discover the shallow graves in which their corpse will lie. Do it now, Miki! DO IT NOW! "HAHAHAHA! SCREW YOUR CRAPPY, NO RANGE XENOGLOSSIA PHONES! I'VE GOT A WORKING ONE!" Xevious? That pixel art kind of annoys me given it cheats with a couple of fine lines separating the ships body from the wings. If you are doing pixel art, you should only be using statically sized pixels! Apparently, if they run, they might juuuuust catch the train in time to get back for the concert. But, of course, they don't. Haruka is determined to make it anyway. Miki wishes there was a giant robot around to whisk them away to the concert. See, what have I been telling you, she's still bitter about Xenoglossia. Better watch out, Haruka, it's not like there'd be many witnesses out there if Miki was to suddenly turn stabby. "Imber?" Nope, it's the Sanzen, errr, Minase SPs to the rescue. And they make it back on time, but not before Haruka falls over. The End. I actually had a look for the costume variant used here in the game, though I couldn't see it. Its one of the generic three costumes from the original game (anything else you had to buy - L4U at least provides your casuals, sukumizu, swimwear and a Marching Band uniform for free), but the colour/texture variant is either DLC-only or new for the OAV. If it's not DLC yet, I'm sure it will be in a future catalogue update, since they've left themselves plenty of room to expand with L4U. Anyway, that's it. It was fun, but I think the eighteen minutes here is quite enough. As much as I like iMAS, I really don't think I could stomach an entire series of the stuff - I just don't think there's enough mileage in it. I'm kind of curious how they've pulled it off in some of the manga adaptations, actually. Maybe I should pick up a couple of volumes from Japan and have a look. In any case, as nice a diversion this is, I'm quite happy with what we got with Xenoglossia, even if half the rest of iMAS fandom isn't...

Random Wafflage: Top Rated Edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:00:52 +0000

Not on Live For You, mind you - I still suck at that one. Rather, this weekend I have mostly been playing No More Heroes. I'm not really sure I can think of any way to describe that game other than to call it eccentric. Well, I guess I could call it absolutely bat-shit insane, but I'm too polite to use the swears. I have to say, the scene where the games protagonist Travis Touchdown, a guy who states on multiple occasions that he lives to kill, presses himself up against his Pure White Lover Bizzare Jelly poster, turns to face camera and proclaims "Moe!" (in a game with purely English dialogue, might I add) is perhaps the most deeply sinister thing I've ever seen in a video game. It is a really bizarre game, though. Not just in the storyline and characters, though they are rather on the fruity side, but in the actual game design, which repeatedly breaks what would normally be considered good design practice in a video game - on purpose. There's this one particular stage which is essentially designed to be the most tedious thing ever. That's not too bad, given that it's a game with a heavy focus on insane boss battles, but most of the other boss stages at least try to do something interesting. This one doesn't, and as such you breath a sigh of relief when you finally spot the exit way, way in the distance. When you finally get there, you are, of course, itching to get into the boss battle. Of course, before you can, it makes you sit through a five minute long cutscene of the boss preparing to attack. That isn't so bad, I guess - it throws you into a nice, epic looking vista, with a pretty cool looking boss. Then, just at the moment when you expect the game to switch control to you, some other guy turns and kills him in one shot. This, of course, results in another two minutes of the characters duelling verbally. This isn't so bad - I mean, he's just taken out one awesome looking boss, so this must surely be an even more fight, right? Not really - someone else turns up and stops the fight completely. The net result is that you've just been through the most boring stage ever, you didn't even get a boss fight to make up for it. On one hand, it's utterly brilliant. On the other hand, you really have to wonder if such absurdly avant garde game design will really find an audience a platform like the Wii, which has been positioning itself as a non-gamers platform. It's got so much that's likely to infuriate the non-gamer. It keeps it up to the end, too, with a wonderfully self referential finale ("Hey, it's it a bit late in the game to be revealing things like this?!?", "Come on, You and the Gamer should have been expecting a twist like this!"). Anyway, to briefly get back to iDOLM@STER, this is all kinds of genius. I mean, I don't know about you, but I definitely think the major thing iMAS was previously missing was songs about Pac-man. Not sure if it's five whole CD releases worth of genius, mind you, but I'm certainly getting at least the first of them. To get back onto blog-topic before I leave for the day, I went out book shopping today. Not surprisingly, the Seven Seas novels haven't made the UK yet (though I can't say I'm really all that interested in Strawberry Panic anyhow), but I did score a few newer Tokyopop releases. I have to say that, after a years wait, I'm a little disappointed that the second Twelve Kingdoms book looks to be barely half the length of the first. I guess I should be glad that it would at least manage to get into the triple page count without taking whole pages for the chapter titles, unlike FLCL. Seriously, that's less a novel than it is a pamphlet. Finally, a service announcement for all boxes watchers. There have been an increasing number of reports of the pretender to the Box Crown appearing in recent anime and manga releases - the Ringo Box. There was one in a recent chapter of the Negima manga, there was one in Live For You and, just this week, there was apparently one in Clannad. Do not be fool - instead of being full of Zesty Goodness, like the traditional Mikan box, these new pretenders are chock-full of sour apples. You have been warned!

On Anime and Directors

DiGiKerot — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:54:01 +0000

Earlier in the week both JP and Author made comments regarding the fact that they find it hard to remember the names of TV anime directors. Initially, at least, I was totally with them - trying to think of anime directors, most of those who jumped immediately to mind where movie directors - Miyazaki, Takahata, Kon, Otomo and Oshii sprang to mind immediately. I'm not really sure if this really strikes me as odd or not. I mean, how many people actually pay attention to directors in Western TV shows? I know some of the writers involved in my favourite shows, but none of the directorial staff. It fairs no better than anime, really. Adding to that, the lines between staff members are far more blurred when it comes to TV anime production roles than with Western productions. Whilst we generally see the Series Director as being in charge of the general development of the show, it's not uncommon for the animation director to have just as much, if not more, active a role in production. Then there's all the episode directors getting involve, different storyboard artists and even different key animators, all of whom an have an effect on the style of a show. I'd imagine that, with far more protracted production periods for shorter running times, it's far more likely for a movie director to have complete control over their works. I suppose it explains why most fans (in the English speaking community, at least) tend to discuss shows in terms of studios rather than their production staff - as in Code Geass being a typical Sunrise. With the studio being the same, much of the lower end of the production staff being shared between them. With, as JP said, most directors being nondescript (I mean, would anyone really guess that Strawberry Eggs and Fate/Stay Night shared directors?), it's not really surprising that most shows are seen as being tainted with the flavour of a studio. There's the language disconnect between the anime production staff and English fandom. There's not really all that much in the way of English publications with a window to the production staff now, whilst in Japan there are a multitude of magazines cover both the popular and the more niche series, not to mention things like DVD audio commentaries and interviews. Japanese fans hear from shows production staff far, far more often than the English speaking world. When I sit and think about it, though, I can actually think of quite a few TV directors, most of whom either define an entire studios output, or are identifiable enough for their stylistic touch to transcend studios. Akitaro Daichis shows very much have the same feel regardless of it being his studio or his indie work. All of Bee-Trains titles feel pretty much the same thanks of the stylings of Koichi Mashimo. SHAFT are now pretty much defined by the peculiar style of Akiyuki Shinbo, although that is something that's been honed prior to his work there with the likes of The Soultaker, Petit Cossette, the first series of Nanoha and even some old ero OAVs (not that his actual name is on those). If you were to show someone all of the Gainax shows in a row, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to pick the Hideaki Anno ones out from the rest of them. Goro Taniguchi and Tatsuo Satos directorials still clearly display the same kind of offbeat humour and atmosphere regardless of where they are produced. I'm not even sure if I need to mention the likes of Nabeshin... Honestly, I don't really have a point here, and I'm just waffling. To be honest, I'm not really sure if the general unfamiliarity with directorial staff amongst the vocal English fandom largely down to disinterest - outside of posts about how clever the first episode of Haruhi was, or the occasional post at Cinnamon Ass, you rarely see much talk of the production side of things outside of whether the animation is good or bad. To be honest, it's probably indicative of the vocal part of fandom becoming increasingly character, rather than content, centric - there are a lot of shows floating around with, frankly, awful writing and production which are popular simply because of individual characters in the show. I bet most those reading this can probably name more character designers or seiyuu than they can directors.

The Anime Blog Awards

DiGiKerot — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:18:08 +0000

It looks like someone has kicked off some Anime Blog Awards this year. There has been some talk of doing something along these lines in #ab previously, but it's never previously amounted to anything. Anyway, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that my blog has been mentioned a few times in the Best Blog-Related Comic category, largely because it's a category with very few actual options. Whilst I won't say it isn't flattering to get a mention anyway, I do have to admit I find it rather embarrassing - aside from the fact that I've not posted anything comic-related for a while now, much of the stuff I have posted really hasn't been all that amusing (hence the "Unfunny" moniker). It's all really been rather self-indulgent, and occasionally way too high-level to make much sense. Really, you all need to go vote for Mistakes of Youth or DS or the stickman comics or something else where there's an actual joke to it.

Death Note: Another Note (Novel)

DiGiKerot — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:44:03 +0000

Backyard Bottomslash! No, this isn't an expletive, rather it's actually a character name. Yes, really, it is. This novel tie in to the Death Note manga was penned by Nisioisin. He's not someone who has really done anything to bring attention to himself among English fandom - I don't think he's done anything that's been animated - but he's one of the more prolific authors working in the light novel market. This fact is perhaps ironed out by the fact that, in coming months, we'll also be seeing his xxxHolic novel, as well as the first books in his Zaregoto series and some of his work for the Faust anthologies from Del Rey. Anyway, he's a pretty popular author, and whilst not the greatest book in the world, his spin-off from Death Note shows enough flashes of brilliance to suggest why he is so popular. The actual set-up of the book is pretty odd. The book is narrated by Mellow, outlining details of one of Ls previous, and most complicated, cases. What makes this set-up odd is that the story is actually told by Mellow from the perspective of Naomi Misora, the ex-FBI agent whom Light kills early on in the manga (though her role was big-upped in the movies, from what I remember). It's actually two people removed from the person the book is about. The book is set-up as a fairly straight forward detective novel, with L contacting Misora to assist with the investigation into a series of odd murders taking place around Los Angeles. Misora soon finds herself assisted by an eccentric private eye going by the name of Ryuzaki, with whom she investigates the scenes of the crimes, where she discovers a series of clues so blatant that they are clearly meant as a challenge to L. In that sense it's a similar set-up to the Death Note manga, with two massively intelligent people played against each other in a battle of wits, but obviously it's on a much smaller scale and without the supernatural elements, nor does it have the close quarters mental manoeuvring seen in Light and Ls battle of wits - it's essentially more of a straight forward detective novel which just happens to be set in the Death Note universe. That said, the really clever thing about the book is how it manages to do this whilst also managing to be a book which absolutely demands knowledge of the original work - it's not a retread of Death Note, it's not bad fanfiction, but it's literally pointless to read it if you aren't familiar with the series already. It also impresses by doing things with the series which would be, quite literally, impossible to actual do with the property in any of the other mediums it has been adapted to. So, it's worth a read if you are a fan of Death Note. If you aren't, well, steer clear. I know that should be obvious, but I know there's a few people (myself included) who tend to pick up these novel releases regardless of whether they are a fan, or are even familiar with, the original work. Most of the time you can get away with it, but that isn't the case here. Some of the odd character names are a little counter to the tone, but it's nothing to get too riled up about. Viz continues to impress with the presentation of their novel line. This book is presently only out in hardback form, presented with an understated Death Note-esque black cover, contrasting sharply with an odd, white, three-quarter height wrap-around dust-cover. Internally, it has one colour plate for it's title page, and a few black-and-white drawings for it's chapter titles. It's a little pricey being a hard back, but it's a far cry from the often embarrassing books put out by Tokyopop. Actually (getting completely away from the review here, but I've written everything I have to say about the book), it'll be interesting to see the first of the Seven Seas books, which are now floating around. The format is the smaller book size used in Japanese books, apparently an attempt to get away from the Western-novel sized books that other publishers are trying to put out. These are light novels, they reason, and there simply isn't enough text in them to be able to put them in a book that size without making them look infantile due to the excessively large typefaces, line spacing and white space required to make the book look a decent size. It'll be curious to see if it has any effect on the sales - apparently it's actually costing them more to print the books that way...

Code Geass R2 Pre-Licensed?

DiGiKerot — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:45:00 +0000

Not really news, as it's unsurprising beyond belief (if I was feeling less lazy, I'd have some kind of really funny analogy here. Feel free to imagine that I did, if it makes you feel better), but I'm seeing reports from Anime Bostons Code Geass panel mentioning that Bandai Entertainment mentioned that they've got the forthcoming (in just a few weeks) Code Geass R2 all singed up as well. Good for them, though with DVDs of the first season not due until late Summer/Fall, I can't imagine it'll do much to deter the oversaturation of fansubs such a high profile title tends to generate. This does mean I'll probably wait for the R1 release before picking up R2, though - the first seasons pin badges really didn't do much for me. In other news, apparently Bandai Ent. have licensed Rocket Girls. It's not a show I know much about - Author has quite a few posts regarding it, but I've not seen much mention of it elsewhere. All other reports from Anime Boston seem to center around it's horrific hell-queues...

Random Wafflage - Late Edition

DiGiKerot — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:11:04 +0000

For some strange reason, it feels like a Rin kind of week this week. I've kind of been feeling inclined to actually learn how to play Hanafuda so I can actually play that PSP game I got with PS2 F/SN a while back. You'd have thought that after all of those Sakura Taisen games the rules would have rubbed off on me a little, but alas that hasn't proven to be the case. Anyway, it's Easter and all that. I was going to post a more Easter-themed image, but it wasn't working out. More importantly, it means it's a long, bank holiday weekend here in the UK. This means that, aside from having more time to doss around, I can't pick up the box of DVDs presently being held at the post office awaiting payment of customs (it's got the first Blood+ and Aquarion sets in it, amongst other things). Not to worry, it's not as if I don't have anything else to watch, though that's it's own problem - I spent quite a while today trying to decide what to watch. Ultimately I elected to watch that volume of Eureka Seven I've been putting off for weeks, being one of those DVDs from that batch of dodgy pressings Bandai Ent. had a couple of months ago. As it turns out, it doesn't seem like there wasn't anything wrong with my copy - it ran right through fine. I guess I needed have put it off. The same thing can't be said about the volume of Gundam SEED Destiny I tried to watch afterwards, but the episode which doesn't work - the final broadcast episode - isn't a great loss given I'll be grabbing Final+ anyway. Following that, I elected to watch, of all things, some Ikkitousen. Yeah, it's one of those things I picked up back when Geneon went under. I should probably make a longer post about it at some point (no shortage of things to comment on, kind of bizarrely), but mostly it just makes me wish that the treatment of the US release of the Tenjou Tenge manga wasn't so abhorrent for me to swear off buying it. I actually wasted much of yesterday trawling bookstores for copies of the new Seven Seas novel releases, having gotten a little annoyed at the fact that Amazon UK are only listing everything other than Pita-Ten as marketplace items only. That was something of a bust - none of the local comic or bookstores have had them in yet - though it wasn't a complete waste since I managed to pick up the first Blood+ novel (which actually seems to be two of the Japanese books slapped together) and the second Dirty Pair book. Not exactly amazing titles, but whatever. In the end, I've had to source those Seven Seas books elsewhere, and they should turn up in a couple of days alongside the second volume of Missing. Good times. Also due this week is the final volume of Xenoglossia. It probably would have shipped already - CDJapan appear to have stock already - but it's waiting on the first Famison CD coming into stock. Hopefully that won't take too long, as it'd be nice to see that by the end of the week - not that anyone else in the blogosphere is really likely to be interested in the DVDs contents anyway. I could have sworn there was something else I'd wanted to talk about, but I can't for the life of me remember exactly what now. Oh well, can't be important.

Namco-Bandai reimagine iDOLM@STER again?

DiGiKerot — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:17:50 +0000

Well, at least it's a game this time... Except this time they've, errr, turned it into a shooter? For PSP? That's odd to say the least. First Stage? LuLz... It looks to be something of a Contra clone (or, at least, it looks very, very similar). The plot appears to center around some kind of evil alien menace lead by the nefarious Prolif Alo, who wishes to rid the universe of all things good and idol-y. In retaliation, our heroines clearly decide to attack aggressively. The presently released screen shots only show the two characters - Haruka, and perhaps curiously, Yayoi, both of whom seem to be using different weapons. Presumably we'll be seeing the full roster of characters, each with their own equipment, but one has to wonder if it'll get rather dull being limited to only one weapon per character. Maybe that gauge in the top corner might have something to do with weapon modification - presumable the Sp. bar has something to do with the characters special attack, but what the other two gauges are for is anyones guess. Most likely they've just added some really nonsensical systems in order to keep the HUD kind of similar to that used in the 360 version of iMAS. Mecha Kotori? Apparently the game will have the usual slew of PSP features - there's going to be support for ad-hoc (local) multiplayer co-op mode, some kind of online ranking tables (how this will work when none of the images actually have a score on them is anyones guess). There's also some kind of hidden features, plus some unlockable characters (methinks only on of Ami or Mami will be selectable initially, though one wonders if there'll be any difference beyond their hair. Maybe they'll stick short-haired Miki in there too, assuming that Miki makes the PSP game). No release date as of yet. Clearly the graphics need a good bit of work before releases - it's not like BN to release what are so blatantly work in progress shots of a game, though it could be that they acknowledge that all iMAS fans are suckers and that they really don't need to try any more. What I really wonder is how they are going to get DLC into this one, as it's not iMAS if they don't try to rape the wallets of it's players on a monthly basis... (Oh, and if you've read all the way down here and haven't figured it out yet - yes, this is my really bad idea of an April Fools joke. Ho-hum. Oh, and look forward to Meme Comics restarting imminently. Would have been tonight, but I've spent too long sitting doodling pixel art).

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-1

DiGiKerot — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:06:45 +0000

It's not really meme or internet related, but it's certainly unfunny and a comic. Yes, starting right were it left off, and is likely to continue, it's the return Beta-Waffles most renowned (or is that feared?) feature! Huzzah? Anyway, I'm not really sure what the plan is this time - I'm not sure if it'll consistently be daily for one thing (I've got about 6 stocked up, and some more to finish). I've not really been keeping up to date with memes recently either, so chances are I'll just be random and poke fun at whatever I've been watching recently. We shall see. By the way, if anyone has been trying to post a comment over the last couple of days, I've just realised I'd borked something during the upgrade to WP 2.5. It's all fixed now, though, so feel free to comment away (or not - the choice is yours). The image that I was going to post at the weekend, but didn't get around to. Well, one of two options - I'll probably post the other one tomorrow. For those wondering, yes, I have seen the DVD version of the last episode of Xenoglossia. I'll get around to posting about it soon - honest!

iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia DVD 9

DiGiKerot — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:57:14 +0000

Final volume? Indeed it is! As I've no doubt previously mentioned, this volume has foregone the previous volumes omake featurettes, and instead the extras section has hidden in it a special version of Episode 26, featuring around an additional two minutes of actual animated footage between the ending credits and the "The End" card shown at the end of the show. I can't imagine anyone else has enough interest to talk about the show at this point, let alone bothering to watch the epilogue version of 26, so I guess I'll give a quick overview. Mondenkind, stripped of all their neat-o iDOL-y stuff, now have a space program. Probably not rocket-porn-y enough for Author. Inside, there's a press conference going on... ...where the pilots are revealed as being Iori and Makoto. Makoto is still wearing Azusas moon necklace, by the way. One of the attendees reveals that, thanks to her cute forehead, the odeko-chan nickname has spread into use among the general public. Iori, unsurprisingly, isn't best pleased ("Wait! What kind of jerk is saying that? I may be cute but...") The compère interjects in order to introduce their boss - Hibiki Saku! Booo! Gotta love Iori and Makotos intense look of disinterest here. It cuts away part way through Sakus explanation of what the whole project is about, so I have no idea what this rocket is supposed to be achieving. Meanwhile, the old mechanic crew, no longer working for Mondenkind, are watching the press conference on TV. They're all working for Chikako now (or, at least, all the uniforms and the sign outside reads "Minamoto", and she has to remind Hotaru that she's the boss now). None of them really say anything more interesting sounding than "They look the same as always". This is outside the same building, so presumably Naze is working for Chikako as well. Sorewa is leaving, moving on to her next project (because she's a genius and all that). Naze asks her what on Earth has happened to Naraba... Apparently he's went off to sea, and gone insane. Ho-hum. Ami and Mami continuing on with the whole idol (of the singing and dancing variety) thing. Yukiho, dressed rather smartly, is laying flowers on top of the hilltop gravestone we've been seeing since the first episode. Joseph appears behind her. Yukiho instinctively refers to him as chief, but he clarifys that he's merely a old coffee-shop guy these days. At this point it just cuts back to Haruka leaving her apartment, as at the end of the broadcast version of the episode. That's the lot, both for this disk and the series. It's been a fun ride - it's a much better show than most give it credit for, marred more by a sense of over familiarity than it has any real problems with the actual show. That, and the fact that the game connection caused a lot of people just to dismiss it off-hand. I had a lot of fun with it, anyway, particularly with all the waiting for Yukiho to come out, as it were, with all the references to not being Erstin that it entailed. Ah, it was such an easy to show make jokes out of... Anyway, the material extras for this volume included that artbox pictured up at the top of the post. It's a nice looking box, but I have to admit being a little disappointed that they've just used the same three images they've been using for the show since the place holder website went up many, many moons ago. The other extra is a little neater - it's a little folder with nine postcard sized illustration cards. The art on the cards is actually from the exclusive versions of the Xenoglossia DVDs sold via Bandais dot-anime online store, which used variant covers featuring the same characters and poses but with the girls in swimwear. I have to wonder if the dot-anime exclusive version of this last volume comes with cards of the regular DVD art, as if they don't then I'd imagine those who invested in those releases (no doubt at a greater expense to the regular editions) will be feeling pretty gypped right now. Well, that's it. I've pretty much ran out of things to say about the show at this point. Thankfully the existence of Cluster Edge and SEED Destiny prevents Xenoglossia from being the most maligned Sunrise show of recent years, but there probably isn't much in it.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-2

DiGiKerot — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:43:31 +0000

I actually drew this comic last week, which makes it rather unfortunate that DS posted a Caramelldansen comic in the meantime. Because of this, I toyed with the idea of posting a different comic today, but since it was already done I figured I'd just slap it up anyway. Anyway, I don't really have anything else to say today, so I'll just leave you with some more Iori. Later.

Missing: Letter of Misfortune (Novel 2)

DiGiKerot — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:18:59 +0000

It's another day in the lives of the members of the Overly Intelligent Literature Club, though it's a little tough to figure out if it's a normal one or not - after all, this is the club which saw recently saw one of it's members spirited away by a kami-kakushi, not to mention the assorted weirdos they spoke to when trying to resolve that particular incident. So, when Aki is approached by one of these aforementioned weirdos, an infamous figure around the school most commonly referred to as The Witch, and is cautioned to be wary of dogs of the invisible variety, she finds it a little hard to decide whether to take this fruitcakes words seriously or not. When she starts receiving a mysterious chain letter via her fax machine, however, she and her friends start to get a little more concerned - particularly when the weird stuff starts to happen. Thankfully, however, Kyoichi Utsume is actually around to be useful this time... Some might remember that I was a little apprehensive after reading the first book - it was pretty good, but I felt the repetition contained within some of the books long exposition sequences made it a little monotonous in places. With all that groundwork layed down by the previous volume, however, this second book is able to dispense with that and build upon it - and it's damn good for it. Curiously, the book actually lays down a lot of it's cards right from that start, allowing the reader to actually be fairly informed about what's going on rather than kept in the dark and illuminating us through reams of exposition - not that the book doesn't have a lot of the stuff, but it doesn't really devolve to the point of being needless, nor feel like it's pulling stuff out of nowhere just for the sake of trying to seem clever. It's a pretty confident move on behalf of the author, really, as it means the book has to stand on the quality of it's writing and storytelling rather than it pulling trying to blind side the reader with clever twists. Gakuto Coda pulls it off as well - it's a damn creepy book, and perfect late night reading. It's definitely a highly recommended read. In terms of presentation, it's identical to the first book, so there isn't really anything further to add there. There's a sample chapter from the third book, due out in September, in the back, but since I'll be buying that I've not bothered to read it - no sense in making the wait for the third book any more painful...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-3

DiGiKerot — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:29:59 +0000

I hear that Higurashi author Ryuukishi07 is involved in the new Key game Rewrite. This could be interesting development in a number of ways, to say the least. I don't really follow Visual Novel scene all that closely outside of what Type-Moon are doing, but I've heard mixed things about the writing in Little Busters. Plenty of people loved it, but there does seem to be quite a few people who thought that everything that wasn't directly written by Jun Maeda was a little mediocre, and were worried about what this implied for Keys future works. In either case, I doubt anyone will be complaining much about the writing talent assembled for this new game. I'm sure the inevitable animation version a few years from now will be great. On a completely unrelated note, I've been listening to the first Famison(g) iDOLM@STER CD a lot the last week. I was a bit worried that the aggressive release schedule (the second CD being out yesterday, though I'll not see it until the end of the month) might imply they might be a little slapdash, but this CD at least is damn fine. Admittedly, if you don't like chiptune or old video game music there isn't much for you here - you might like the new tracks (which only use samples from Pac-Man and Libble Rabble, rather than music ripped straight from the game), or the acid remix of Agent Yoru Wo Iku - but for me every single audio track on here is utterly brilliant. Also, the instrumental version of Positive! (done entirely on the NES sound chip) has part of it which sounds like two Clangers having a conversation, and that can't be anything but amazing.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-4

DiGiKerot — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:29:44 +0000

Apparently Bandai Ent. USA are having to negotiate with Pizza Hut in order to gain permission to retain the advertising in the show. I can imagine those meeting being rather... interesting.

Ballad of a Shinigami #1 (Novel)

DiGiKerot — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:03:02 +0000

Momo is a Shinigami, albeit an unusual one. Together with her cat-like familiar Daniel, she collects the souls of the those on the verge of death. That's about it, really. Demian seriously mauled this book, calling it "a cliche-filled romp into overly sentimental melodrama". Whilst I went in with suitably adjusted expectations, and I'm loathe to be too negative about it, he certainly does have a point. The thing is that nothing specifically bad about this book, it's just mind-numbingly average. It's neither good enough to be gripping, nor bad enough to count as trashy fun. It's just entirely unexciting. Really, the whole book has the same kind of feel as anime filler episodes - the set-ups are all very generic, the characters aren't really all that interesting, and by the time you get to the end of it you get the feeling that you've gone absolutely nowhere. I really can't think of a better way to describe it. It's entirely forgettable, and worse is the fact that the individual short stories are so overly familiar that, aside from the slightly squicky final story, you'll probably guess the endings within a few pages of them starting. Pretty disappointing all round, then, and not really something I can recommend. It's a shame, as out of the first three titles in Seven Seas Light Novel line up it was the one I was most interested. Whilst I liked Pita-Ten in it's other incarnations, I can't really imagine it working as a prose novel, and Strawberry Panic really isn't my kind of thing. I do wonder why they started with their B-titles rather than going straight into something like Zero no Tsukaima that might actually sell. The book itself is pretty dinky - whilst it's about as thick as one of Seven Seas original Boogiepop releases, the other dimensions are maybe only three quarters the size of a standard US manga volume. It was a little odd to begin with, but I got used to it. It's marginally disappointing that this means the artwork is printed smaller, but overall I don't mind my books in this format. In other presentational terms, Seven Seas do everything else right here - nice cover, colour images intact (though they do tend to be rather spoilery), afterword by the author included, and purists will be happy with the decision to include honorifics. They don't play any of Tokyopops dumb internal presentation tricks, with the pages being nice and clean. The internal black-and-white artwork isn't particularly exciting mind you. So, the presentation gets a thumbs-up from me, but the content merely generates a disinterested shrug. It'll probably be worse for those who've seen the anime too.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-5

DiGiKerot — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:09:00 +0000

Hmmm, they've updated the forums software over at AoD, meaning I'm now having to adjust my browsing practice to accommodate. Yeah, I've got nothing to say today.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-6

DiGiKerot — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:01:01 +0000

I've been messing around with RenPy this weekend, and have got as close to completing my epic game, Hikikomori Quest, as I'm ever likely to get. I don't really have the bandwidth to space to post a 17mb game here, but if anyone wants to suffer it I've stuck it up on Rapidshare (there's also a x86 Linux version if you want to try and get it working). It's pretty awful, though, and I make no assurances about it actually being free of bugs or anything. Have, errr, "fun". -update 11/04/08- Oh lordy, someone has actually posted about this on the RenPy forums. This is tremendously embarrassing given that this was basically a hastily thrown together joke. Oh, well, I've updated the links to point to slightly updated release package - it should remove a bug, as well as all the photoshop files I'd left lying around in the working directory. The filesize is down to a much less remarkable 5mb now...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-7

DiGiKerot — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:29:50 +0000

I kind of doubt many, if any, readers will have the correct mixture of age and Britishness required in order to get what is, frankly, an incredibly obscure reference. Then there's the fact that Rollo blatantly isn't actually Lulus brother. I guess that this comic doesn't really work on any level. I'm afraid in my attempts to come up with a Code Geass related joke for today I couldn't force myself mentally past the similarities in the names. Speaking of Code Geass, they've just solicited a Blu Ray release for the first season in Japan. I'll be skipping - I've already got the R2 DVDs, and whilst I'll probably end up with the R1s as well, I'm not inclined to blow that much more money on it. Maybe if they'd been subbed - there's a good few months before the first volume hits, so the US translation will undoubted be fully done by that point. If they solicit R2 for Blu Ray rather than just DVD in R2 land then I'd probably end up grabbing those, though otherwise I'm just waiting for the R1s on it. -update- Oh! Geass R2 is hitting Blu-Ray at the same time as the DVDs (and the first season Blu-Rays). Terrific! Though I guess I shouldn't really say R1 given it doesn't apply to Blu-Ray.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-8

DiGiKerot — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:54:58 +0000

I watched the first season of Ikki-Tousen on DVD a couple of weeks ago. I was almost inclined to do a full post on the subject, but I started to question how much mileage I could get from talking about how the completely random and gratuitous shot of an ice-cream sundae at the beginning of the shows OP amuses me. Aside from that, all I really had to talk about regarding this was how the whole Three Kingdoms thing ends up doing little more than reducing characterisation to three basic forms - those who decide just to follow their destiny, those who decide to go against it, and those who forget all about it and just shout "Grrr! Boobies! Grrr! Rape!". Well, that's being slightly unfair, but it's not like anyone really watches a show like that for the plot anyway. Actually, what is kind curious is the fact that the show is a total sausage-fest. This might sound like an odd thing to say about a show which focus so much on female characters and fanservice, but the near complete lack of incidental female characters is pretty striking. Even if you just look at the backgrounds, the vast majority to the people seen will be male, with the occasional female student if in a school situation, or a disgruntled looking girlfriend starting at her boobie-ogling boyfriend elsewhere. Odd.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-9

DiGiKerot — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:27:10 +0000

Hmmm, I don't really have anything to say tonight. I've got stuff to be doing, anyway.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-10

DiGiKerot — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:48:30 +0000

Yeah, it's kind of random today. Something I've been forgetting to mention repeatedly this week is that Tokyopop have put out the first volume of the goth-loli detective novel series Gosick this week. I've not grabbed my copy yet, but, hey, that sounds like fun. As per usual, I could have sworn that there was something that I was going to talk about today, but I've left it a little late, and I can't for the life of me remember what it was now. Undoubtedly it'll come to me tomorrow, but I'll have forgotten again by the time I get around to posting again. I also really need to get around to doing that Mikan Watch post I've been sitting on for over a week now, but since I can't play R1's on this laptop at the moment, that'd mean I'd have to crack out the other laptop to take the screencaps. This is, of course, not actually all that much effort, but for some reason I can't bring myself to do it ^^; -update- Oh, I remember one of the things I was going to say. In response to one of Hungs comments, Yes, there is a good ending to Hikikomori Quest. The clue is in the title - do the hikikomori-esque things. It's not really all that much fun, though. I drew this for something elsewhere, but since I figured it was cute I'll dump it up here too. undoubtedly makes absolutely no sense out of context.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-11

DiGiKerot — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:14:34 +0000

It's a Charmander - or, rather, a CHAR-mander. *Sigh* Well, it made me laugh, which is the important thing. I'm making this post in the morning rather than the afternoon like I usually do. No real reason for this, but it does mean I've nothing else to talk about today. Well, unless you want to hear about me accidentally smashing the handle off my favourite mug (not much more to that story than you've already read). Anyway, I'll leave you with another image, one that is sure to shock and terrify DS - let's face it, after his most recent post, he deserves it!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-12

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:47:11 +0000

I'm pretty sure all the Space Hooker gags have been made already, particular given that preview version months ago. I'm also pretty sure that isn't enough to stop me from posting another one. Actually, I was going to make a comment regarding Rankas whole Nyan-Nyan dance thing. I got a weird disconnect with that one, largely because her floppy hair looks kind of like floppy doggie ears. Yeah, I have posted an image almost exactly like that before (Yukiho from Xenoglossia, from what I remember), but that one was just a pencil sketch. Anyway, I'll stop here, because Doctor Who is literally on in a few seconds.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-13

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:18:41 +0000

I don't think I can see a spiral in anime these days without thinking of the Konoha symbol.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comcis #5-14

DiGiKerot — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:04:16 +0000

Anyone remember Ouran? Hescafe? Anyone? Yeah, I really don't know what I'm doing with this one. Nothing new there, I suppose, but this one is feeling a little too obtuse. Do you know what I think is hilarious, where by hilarious I actually mean really, really, really embarrassing? Someone went and listed Hikikomori Quest on the official Ren'Py games listing. The scary thing is that the screen grab suggests that someone actually invested some time into playing the thing. It truly boggles the mind that anyone would choose to list such a bizarre, in-jokey hack-job of a game thrown together mostly as a bad joke... Actually, what makes it almost even worse is that it's listed as game 100. Isn't that some kind of landmarky-type thing? ^^; *sigh* Oh, well. I guess this kind of pressures me into making something not-awful. I'd hate to that to be the only thing attached to my name.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-15

DiGiKerot — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:01:56 +0000

DS has been bugging me to do something Doctor Who related. Personally, I don't think the poor Doctor, despite being Sci-Fi legend that he is, would stand much of a chance against the typical anime alien. More Doctor Huh? tomorrow. Sorry. You know who to blame, though... Finally got around to licensing Sai, largely because my trial runs out on this computer tomorrow, and aside from Windows, my mail client and my web browser, it's probably the piece of software I use the most. Worth it, I guess. You'd have probably lost those rare, almost-decently-drawn comics if I hadn't licensed it, anyway. TheBigN mentioned in the comments of an earlier post that he couldn't find all the bad ends in Hikikomori Quest. I can kind of guess which endings he hadn't got, given that a couple are a little bizarre, and there was a bug in the version I originally posted that prevented you from getting a certain ending if you did things in the wrong order. There isn't actually any reward for getting all the endings, but for anyone who wants to see them all I'll list them all below. I recommend either clearing your save folder, or grabbing the fixed version (in new, smaller file since I realised it packaged a bunch of temporary image files I left in the dev. folder) before starting. Good Ending The clue is in the games title - do the Hikikimori-esque things to get this ending. Check The Computer -> Check Your E-mail -> Slam The Door Closed. You can do the online shipping thing for the second stage if you want, but unless you've updated then you'll find it impossible to get one of the badends afterwards. Bad Endings 1. Venture Outside (if you've been shopping on the internet in a previous game, choose to go outside without the sunglasses - this option was borked in the first version, so if you didn't do this first you probably missed it) 2. Take a Shower. 3. Check The Computer -> Check Torrent Sites -> Pot Noodle 4. Check The Computer -> Do Some Shopping (+sunglasses) -> Alphabetti Spagetti 5. Pray (You need to have died a number of times previously before this option opens up) 6. Venture Outside -> Put Sunglasses On 7. Check The Computer -> Check You E-mail -> Pot Noodle -> Invite Her In For Tea 8. Check The Computer -> Check You E-mail -> Pot Noodle -> Buy Some Cookies 9. Check The Computer -> Check You E-mail -> Pot Noodle -> I'm a Sick Bastard, so... 10. Check The Computer -> Check You E-mail -> Pot Noodle -> Check The Disclaimer Screen 11. Check The Computer -> Check You E-mail -> The Lump Of Blue Cheese in the Fridge Now, if you've died from eating the cheese in your previous attempt, then your next play through the game will be, err, different. If you've been using saves to positioned at the choices, you'll have probably missed the last two endings due to not starting a new game. Regardless of whether you started a new game each time or not, you'll have probably missed one of these endings anyway... 12. Room 2 -> Room 3 -> Room 1 -> Room 4 13. Visit the rooms in any order other than that listed above. There you go, that's Hikikomori Quest finished.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-16

DiGiKerot — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:50:25 +0000

Speaks for itself, I guess.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-17

DiGiKerot — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:27:34 +0000

That's quite enough of that, methinks. I've not got anything done for tomorrow yet, so I might take a break from the comic posting and skip a day.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-18

DiGiKerot — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:19:28 +0000

A day early and 75% recycled artwork? Yup, but whilst I was deciding on what to draw in panels 1-3, DS went and posted a comic using similar elements, so I figured I'd dump it up within minutes of his rather than have it appearing to be a blatant rip-off tomorrow ^^; Anyway, vaguely topical joke. I wanted to do something relating to the Geass leak, but I couldn't think of anything to do other than a Leek pun. There'll be no comic post tomorrow, since you are getting this today. I might get around to doing the Mikan Watch post I was going to do two weeks ago, though.

Mikan Watch 6: Blood+

DiGiKerot — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:48:36 +0000

This is from Episode 14 of Blood+. It doesn't actually say mikan, and, on closer inspection, I'm not actually entirely sure if it's an orange or a apple, but I'm claiming it. There's no Mikan boxes in this shot from the first episode, however. What we do have is something of a rarity - a Pineapple box. That's not nearly quite as cool, though. The first half of the R1 DVD release via Sony is dubtitled, which is rather disappointing. Hopefully this is something that they'll correct by the time they release the second box, but I'm not overly optimistic. As far as dubtitles go, it's not the worst I've ever seen, but there are a few obvious differences between the dialogue and subtitles for the shorter sentences. Rather more oddly, there are also short pauses in the video around every chapter break. I don't really get that. Oh, and there's no chapter break at the start of the OP either, which is mildly annoying. I have to wonder how long some Sony employee had to look to find a picture of Saya so horribly off-model for the second DVD case...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-19

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:34:06 +0000

Seriously, there's surely no way that Type-Moon could possibly drop the Satsuki route this time, right? RIGHT? A lot of the Bandai Entertainment news from NYCC was really surprising. Not just the Gurren Lagann thing, as astonishing at that was, but the talk of their release patterns. Whilst being sub-only (and I know a lot of the dub community are rather disappointed about the now completely-scrapped ADV dub of the show), I'm really rather appreciative of Bandai working to the release schedule that they are for Gurren, and that despite the delay it'll be out there for the sub-viewer just as quickly as the ADV release would have if they kept the schedule. I also love the price, of course, and I really hope the sales are good enough to work for them. This is really not only Bandai, but the Japanese licensor, going out on a limb to get a fast, cheap release out on the market. It's precisely the kind of thing that a lot of people have been asking for for a long, long time, for a show which has a significant fanbase. It really deserves some support. The Code Geass release looks pretty decent as well. I'm in two minds about actually buying it, though - for one thing, I have the entire show on R2 already, and then there is the fact that it (and R2) are both hitting Blu-Ray in Japan. I kind of want to get the R2 Blu-Ray disks, too... Gundam 00 wasn't surprising in the slightest, though.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-20

DiGiKerot — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:09:07 +0000

It strikes me that I'm actually making fun of myself here, but there does seem to be a distinct tendency among figure buyers to buy figures of characters they actually know little about. I do kind of wonder how many people who bought that lovely yet hellishly expensive, Triggerheart Exelica figure a few weeks ago had actually played the game. I mean, it was a late Dreamcast release, and I figure they'd have had to pre-order before the XBLA release.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-21

DiGiKerot — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:57:04 +0000

I should really stop making fun of myself, but I guess I'm an easy target. There is a general obsession among certain parts of anime fandom to purchase limited goods just for the sake of them being limited, and I've probably been as guilty as others in the past - and despite fully realising that owning a Maaya Sakamoto bar towel doesn't really enrich my life to any significant degree, I'll no doubt buy something equally excessive and pointless in the future. Ho-hum.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-22

DiGiKerot — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:33:44 +0000

Note to fandom: Japanese isn't English. Peppering your speech with Japanese isn't big or clever, it's just moronic, particularly when you have absolutely no idea how to actually pronounce things properly. Also, don't pronounce what are clearly English words in series titles as they are written in katakana - it just makes you look like a prat. In other news, the new Bacanno DVD, with the second of the OAV episodes, should be floating around now - my copy shipped yesterday, at least.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comcis #5-23

DiGiKerot — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:55:08 +0000

A bit of cosplay is a fine thing. Well, okay, maybe its not fine if we are talking about Man-Faye, but generally it's pretty cool. Just bare in mind that cosplaying outside of an anime event is likely to get out some very, very odd reactions...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-24

DiGiKerot — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:06:15 +0000

Is there anything worse than finding your favourite series becoming popular among the Narutards? Well, yeah, there is, obviously, given that it's not really a bad thing. Anime fandom does seem to be full of elitists who rag on anything that becomes too popular, though. In the case of Naruto, it's undoubtedly largely deserved once the anime version got out of the Chuunin Exam arc and into Filler County (up to that point, it's a really fun show), but it's not always justifiable. Also, there's nothing funnier than listening to those clueless fanboys who whine after something is licensed... By the way, I notice that Wordpress 2.5 removed the count of published comments from the front page of the dashboard, and doesn't seem to display that information anywhere now. I can always take a peek at the database, I guess, but it is a slightly annoying alteration.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-25

DiGiKerot — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:43:05 +0000

His favourite ghetto show no longer being ghetto, the Elitist moves onto something new - until that becomes popular anyway. I originally had something different on the poster in the background, but I read tj_hans post about Code Geass ratings whilst compiling the images, as was reminded of his tendency go on about Gintama being awesome even though no-one watches it. Seemed more amusing to go with that.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-26

DiGiKerot — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:06:05 +0000

I've seen it suggested that Yuri fans can find subtext in nothing more than a breeze block. Well, actually, it was a cinder block, but from what I gather it's more or less the same thing. In other news, I finally managed to track down a copy of Zone of the Enders: 2nd Runner for PS2, which I've not really been desperately searching for, but I have tried to find every time I've been into a games store for the past two or three years. Unfortunately, with it being the UK/PAL version, it means I'll actually have to hook my PS2 up in order to play it, rather than using the PS3. Oh well. I need to get around to posting some reviews of the light novels I've been reading recently. If nothing else, I do think that everyone who has any tolerance for the format really owes it to themselves to pick up a copy of Gosick #1, as it's really, really great.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-27

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:05:39 +0000

Thankfully, I don't have first hand experience of the Yaoi Paddle, but given the look rather large and wooden I can't imagine it's any more pleasant that getting hit by, say, a cricket bat. Honestly, I find it a little surprising that they haven't been banned from a lot of the cons yet - I mean, there's no cosplay implications for them, they don't really have any use other than to smack people with. Kind of dangerous, really. I'm sure most wielders are probably perfectly sensible with their paddle'n, but all it takes is a couple of nutters to cause some serious damage. Speaking of Yaoi, I was kind of amused to discover that my local bookstore had reorganised their manga section, meaning that the yaoi is now placed exactly where the Naruto and other Jump manga were. That's certainly an interesting move ^^; Bandai-Namco posted details of this weeks iM@S L4U catalogue update this week, which appears to include a new song. Nice.

Mikan Watch #7: Buso Renkin

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:38:45 +0000

From episode four, this is how Kazuki had assumed Tokiko had been living. I'm not quite sure why Tokiko is so annoyed - surely it's better than living in a plain box? Oh, well, at least they weren't ambiguous about it here. I don't really have much else to say about the series. There's nothing notably wrong with the Viz release of the show, though I guess the pretty reasonable price ($50/13 episodes RRP, obviously way cheaper online). The show itself is merely entertaining - it manages to make itself seem marginally less trashy and shallow than the manga version, but aside from that really not being a remotely difficult task, from what I gather that impression is unlikely to last.

Gosick Vol.1 (Novel)

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:01:35 +0000

As the third son of an Imperial Soldier, Kazuya Kujo has spent most of his life struggling with living in his highly successful siblings shadows. In a bid to strike out on his own path, Kujo eschewed his life in Japan to study aboard at the Saint Marguerite Academy, in the (presumably fictional) European country Sauville. Unfortunately, his appearance, combined with the student bodies love of ghost stories, has resulted in Kujo being something of a figure of terror among his classmates. Of course, the few who actually know him know that this is complete rubbish - infact, he's pretty skittish, often recoiling in terror at his friend Avrils ghastly tales. This, alas, hasn't stopped his teacher deciding that he's the best person to use as a go-between for the classes other problem student, Victorique. Well, 'problem' probably isn't fair, as there's a limit to how many problems she can cause when she doesn't even turn up to class - Indeed, having never seen her, most of the students have assumed she's a guy. Instead, Victorique spends her days sitting in the secret conservatory hidden high above the schools huge, labyrinthine library, where she is making her way though every book in the library (several volumes at once) and complaining about the fact that the boredom is, quite literally, painful. As you may have guessed, Victorique is insanely clever. So clever, infact, that she is frequently consulted by the pointy-haired Detective Grevil De Blois. Well, I say consulted, but he outright refuses to actually talk to her directly for some reason or another. When one of these consultations leads to Grevil landing a yacht as a gift from a murder-victims family, Kujos righteous indignation over Grevil taking all the credit results in Kujo and Victorique being invited on Grevils yachting trip. Of course, things don't quite work out like that, and something alarming similar to one of Avrils ghost stories starts to unfold... Set in 1920's Europe, I guess if you wanted to sum the book up in one handy term it'd be "Gothloli Detective". Its pretty atypical for a Light Novel - for one thing, it's a mystery novel, as it would seem almost half of Japans light novel output, and whilst it's got it's fair share of twists it's not exactly the most difficult of mystery novels to figure out ahead of time. Whilst I'm loathe to use the term tsundere to describe Victorique (it's a gross over-simplification of her character, although you could probably argue it at a stretch), she isn't portrayed as being being the easiest person to get along with, echoing better known heroines like Shana, ZnTs Louise or FMP!s Kaname. But Victorique is better than all of them. I think the thing that really separates this book from most of the other Light Novels we've seen published in English is just how well the character are written. Pretty much every exchange in the book is a delight to read, but the Victorique scenes really shine. It's absolutely dripping in humour and sarcasm. You know what it's kind of like - it's kind of like taking Shinku and Jun from Rozen Maiden and actually casting them as the leads in Detective Kun-Kun. It doesn't really hold up that well from the Jun/Kujo side of things, but you can definitely draw comparisons between Victorique and Shinku, with the way that she toys with Kujo for her own amusement, and just with the way she carries herself. Sure, Victorique is a few leagues more intelligent than Shinku, but she does have those occasional embarrassing toilet-seat-as-a-table moments as well. I like Victorique more as a character, though. Seriously, if they ever animate this, she'll be huge. As for the actual story, it does a pretty good job of continuing to build up the tension even once you've figured out what is actually going on. I don't want to be too negative about the story - it does throw a number of good ideas around, and it does manage to avoid being too obtuse, meaning it doesn't end with Victorique explaining a whole bunch of things you couldn't possibly be expected to figure out in a Deus Ex Machina manner as so many of these novels do. Ultimately, though, it's just a massively fun and oddly gripping book that I really can't recommend enough to anyone who enjoys these light novels. It's not anything bigger or grander than any of these other novels are, but it's an exemplary example of what these books are all about. Tokyopops presentation of the book is decent enough. It's yet another book translated by Andrew Cunningham, but I don't see that as anything approaching a problem (and, really, I'd rather see someone like Andrew who actively reads and enjoys these books as a hobby translating these things). They do manage to spell his name wrong in the credits, though. They do have the margin decorations that Tokyopop seems to love so much, but they aren't anything like as overbearing as Full Metal Panics. There's no colour plates here, though the images are replicated in black and white. Unfortunately, the quality of the images up front is atrocious - it looks like they've been scanned and upscaled from one of the Japanese books, and are really blurred and murky. Funny thing is that the image of Victorique on the cover is an enlarged crop from one of those images, yet looks fine. I do wonder if someone sat and traced the thing. The usual incidental black and white images scattered throughout the book display no such issues, though, being nice, clear and crisp looking. So, yeah, this gets a big thumbs up from me.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comcs #5-28

DiGiKerot — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:20:05 +0000

Pocky and Dango in one? A dangerous combination! Well, not really - you'd need very small dango to actually skewer on a Pocky, and even then you'd probably smash your pocky to pieces in the process unless you pre-holed your Dango. So, really, it's actually pretty retarded. I would tell you not to worry, and that I'm going somewhere with this, but where I'm going isn't particularly funny either ^^; Blogger voting has kicked off on the Anime Blog Awards. I'm actually doing marginally better than I expected right now, by which I mean that I'm not last at the moment. I figured that BRStick might have been doing better, but I'm sure they will once the reader polling kicks off. I'm pretty glad that Mistakes of Youth is leading the pack by a clear margin, though (sorry DS ^^;) I've been watching the recent UK DVD release of the old Japanese/French co-production The Mysterious Cities of Gold over the last couple of days. It's nice to see it after all these years, particularly given that it has long assumed to be lost in licensing hell, but that's probably going to be worth it's own post at some point in the future. What I did find awesome was what was on the advertising leaflet, which advertises another rescue from licensing hell - Star Fleet. It's not anime, but it's pretty close - it's actually a Gerry Anderson-style marionette show, except it was (a) produced in Japan, (b) was devised by Go Nagai and (c) has spaceships which combine into a huge kick-ass robot. Awesome. Queen guitarist Brian May also, bizarrely, did a cover of the English versions ED...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-29

DiGiKerot — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:42:03 +0000

Can too many dango be bad for your health? Quite probably ^^;

(ABA) Vote for Me!

DiGiKerot — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:04:38 +0000

Having been told off for not actually wanting to win, I'm making a post outlining the reasons why I clearly should be winning the Best Blog-related Comic category at the Anime Blog Awards 2008. Other than me being awesome, obviously. Point 1: Dango Comics. DS is widely known as the King of Dangos. Well, maybe not widely known by that title as such, but his blog is certainly chock-full of dangoy goodness. Were you aware, however, that as far back as October 2007 this very blog played host to a number of dango comics? They were, however, quickly put to rest. Point 2: Guest Comics. Not those on this blog, but those elsewhere. Yes, I've proven my ability to drag the quality of even other peoples comics to my level, as proven by my involvement in the least popular comics in MegaDaijoubu history. Whoops, sorry about that DS! Point 3: Epic, Multi-part, Multi-page Seasonal Specials. Just a shame that they are full of jokes that no-one other than I would actually get. I really need to get around to finishing and posting the Miracle Zesty character guide I was working on for the X-mas special. Point 4: Epic Reach. Well, not really, but I do wonder how many of the other comics have ever (a) been linked from any Japanese blogs and (b) have had one of their comics used on some random Russian wiki (I wish I could remember the URL, but it's the Nice Boat one, on an entry on, well, Nice Boat). Point 5: Pineapples and Ketchup. Hmmmmmm, Ketchup. Watch for the bottles, though, they are mighty tricky buggers. Point 6: Bad Puns. I love a bad pun, particularly if they are kind of violent. Point 7: Xenoglossia Comics. Because nothing gains readership like page after page after page after page of jokes about a show that only three people have seen. Particular when half of them where the same joke. Point 8: Continuity. Well, kind of. Makes absolutely no real sense, though... Point 9: Seamen of Figures. No, really. Point 10: French Irony. I've been meaning to make a T-shirt of this one for ages... Point 11: Yaranaika?. Man, it's hard to believe that the art on these things was even worse back then. It's less than two years ago! Point 12: We've yet to Jump the Shark. Oh, hang on a minute... Anyway, that lot should prove more than enough evidence to not vot-errrmm-to vote for me! So hop to it!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-30

DiGiKerot — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:26:53 +0000

Lazy comic is Lazy. I'm sure I'm probably repeating myself as well, but with 30 comics in 30 days you really can't expect more than, say, one of them to actually be good.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-31

DiGiKerot — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:34:34 +0000

Nothing to say about the comic, really. Those who follow R1 licensing news may or may not be aware that Right Stuf are doing another of those timed license announcement things, due to be revealed today. Well, it was supposed to be, anyway - apparently they slipped up and for a short while last night the page was redirecting to aria.rightstuf.com. There's nothing there at the moment, but I guess that they've licensed, well, Aria. Oh, and at time of writing, I appear to have pulled even with MegaDaijoubu on the ABA Best Comic voting. Go me!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-32

DiGiKerot — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:58:46 +0000

Not really an obscure reference in anime fandom in general, but I guess it might be for readers of this particular blog. I notice that DS have pulled a vote ahead of me in the ABA Best Comic poll today. I guess posting a comic based almost entirely around recycled art isn't the best way to inspire others to go and vote for me, but I may have been spending most of the day working on The Top Secret Project That'll Never Get Finished Nor Mentioned Again today. And, no, it's not Hikikomori Quest 2. That'll never, ever happen.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-33

DiGiKerot — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:06:40 +0000

Bonus points for anyone who gets the reference. These bonus points don't actually have any real value, beyond allowing you to be smug in the knowledge that you are one of the few who understood this one. Anyway, I'm off to watch the second Baccano OAV, my DVD having only just turned up this month due to being intercepted by UK customs. Oh, and I'm back even with DS on the ABA Comic stakes today!

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-34

DiGiKerot — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:13:16 +0000

No bonus points for todays reference, as it's rather more obvious (in that the show in question swings about as far in the other direction in popularity:quality ratio terms to yesterdays). I got around to watching Appleseed: Ex Machina yesterday. It was a really weird experience for me for a number of reasons. The obvious one was that a lot of the storyline, including the final setpiece, was practically lifted from the first Patlabor movie, only with a little pop philosophy tacked onto in order to make it feel a little more Appleseedy. Then there was the fact that, outside of a few long-shots of Olympus, the visuals don't really look that far beyond what we are seeing in real-time games at the moment made the whole affair feel like a video game cutscene, a feeling amplified by a number of sequences towards the end being highly evocative of Xenosagas Realien riots (something not helped by the parallels between Appleseeds Bioroids and realiens). But, mostly, it was just really odd how familiar yet unfamiliar everything was. I'm a big fan of the Appleseed manga, and indeed much of Shirows work through to the first volume of Ghost in the Shell (the second book, alas, was pretty dire). Yes, even the frequently non-nonsensical Orion, which gets a pass for (a) looking fantastic and (b) being hilarious. Anyway, back to Appleseed, well, being pretty familiar with the original work just means that everything they've done here which is slightly different really, really jarring. Every time I think a piece of knowledge I've retained from the manga is relevant, they throw a curve ball that invalidates it. It mostly comes into play with the characters - they are all familiar, but they might have changed their jobs, or tweaked their personality (well, beyond the removal of the sense of humour with goes with most Shirow adaptations). Still, the movie does get bonus points for making the John Woo doves an actual plot point. That made me laugh. Oddly, I didn't really get that feeling from the first movie, though this second movie isn't even consistent with the design from the first. Understandable in some respects, giving that technology has moved on since then, but I do wonder about the need to redesign so much of Olympus. Those solar panelled arcs towering over the city has always been an image I've found striking - removing all of them in favour of just the one of Tartarus seems like an odd decision. Oh, well, the major effect of the movie is that it's really made me want to re-read the manga. I'm not really sure where I've put them, though, so I might end up having to rebuy them all. I need to grab Hypernotes anyway - SMB! was getting hard to find over here at the point which it was being serialised in it, so I've only read parts of it. Actually, they should really do an Appleseed TV anime - not the wholly CG one which is supposedly in production, but rather a straight, 2D adaptation of the original manga. It's dated astonishingly well for something written in the 1980s. I'm starting to think I should have just did a post about Ex Machina for all this rambling. Oh well.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-35

DiGiKerot — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:32:01 +0000

Inspired by Hinanos' post about the 2008 Sakura Matsuri. Apparently there were a lot of westerners incorrectly wearing cheap, yet overpriced, yukata, who no doubt attracted a lot of attention - not for the dress, but rather how they were wearing them (not least because it was cold, and being summer dress yukata really aren't all that thick, it probably, errr, "showed").

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-36

DiGiKerot — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:51:35 +0000

Hmmm, I might be forced to take a break on the comics for a few days, largely because I'm pretty much tapped for things to comic about. The anime industry is being way too boring at the moment. Also, I've been playing GTAIV, but I'm awful at it - really, really awful at it. It's really showing that I've not played a GTA game since the original (and by original, I mean the top-down stuff, not GTAIII). Still, the radio is pretty funny, and I did manage to waste a good twenty minutes watching the games in-game TV.

Speed Racer

DiGiKerot — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:19:27 +0000

The Wachowski Brothers movie adaptation of Speed Racer opened in the UK and US today, and as such I ventured down to the cinema to check it out. Of course, with the original series being pretty much unknown over here (I don't think it's ever even aired over here, though the terrible New Adventures of Speed Racer did for a while), and most of the reviews being fairly dire (one UK radio critic said it was basically a big-budget version of Lazy Town), I was one of the few who did - there were fewer than ten people in the screening I attended, which is pretty dreadful for a movie on it's opening night. I guess most people are still filing in to see Iron Man, and with Indy hitting in a couple of weeks I can't imagine many people over here seeing this. I'm not sure if this is a shame, or if it's just as well. I thoroughly expect that the vast majority of people who see this movie will really, really hate it. Screw them, though - I loved this crazy flick. That's not to say it's particularly a good movie, at least not if you are looking for something with any kind of depth - there's pretty much nothing in the way of a story. There's more ham involved in this movie than you'd be able to exact from a small nations worth of pigs as well, and despite being intentional it'll probably grate on at least half the audience. It's really going to come down to the visuals as to whether you'd like this movie or not, ultimately, because it's very, very odd. I've compared the trailers to Hideaki Annos live-action Cutie Honey before, which is pretty fair given that they pull off a lot of the same kind of weird visual techniques here - and then some. Really, they have just tried to make an anime feature with actual people in place of the characters. The CG stands out about as much as much as it does in most of the CG heavy anime shows, but it's so obvious, stylised and plasticy it can't be anything but an intentional choice. What's really funny, though, is the use of the kind of 2D effects used in anime - cut and pasted crowd scenes, static background characters and cut-outs of people and buildings are slid and zoomed around the screen. There's even a few places where they've used what appear to be matte paintings for the backgrounds. Combined with the bright and over-saturated colours, it's all rather, well, bonkers. Brilliant, but bonkers. If you can stomach the visual mix, then the movie really is a whole lot of fun - fun enough that I'll probably try and catch it again whilst it's still in theatres, anyway. Even the comedy monkey manages not to be intensely annoying, which really has to go down as a major achievement.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-37

DiGiKerot — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:16:39 +0000

This is pretty much what I've been struggling with over the last few days. I think the problem is that, if you think you have no ideas for a comic, you'll not be able to come up with anything. Once I manage to get over that hurdle, ideas start flowing back in. That's not to say that the ideas are particularly great, though (but I will be putting you through a series of Dango no Naku Koro Ni comics over the coming days, just to give you fair notice). Anyway, I've been working on other things over the weekend. Nothing I want to announce yet, but maybe eventually.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-38

DiGiKerot — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:35:05 +0000

On the subject of Dango, I notice that after several days of no movement, DS has suddenly jumped a good few votes ahead of me in the Anime Blog Awards Best Comic poll. BR Stick is closing in as well. I don't have anything else to actually say about that, I just figured I'd mention it.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-39

DiGiKerot — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:23:10 +0000

I'm not sure if my readers are getting really astute, or if I'm just getting really predictable. It's undoubtedly a combination of both. Anyway, the content of this comic was figured out in advance ^^; BRStick continues to close in on me in the Anime Blog Awards stakes. Good for them. I should really find something else to say here, but I've been kind of busy the last few days...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-40

DiGiKerot — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:50:19 +0000

Nothing to say today, really. More tomorrow, I'm afraid.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-41

DiGiKerot — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:08:07 +0000

Artistically Lazy Comic is Artistically Lazy? Pretty much, but it is kind of time consuming to do these things, even when the joke is rubbish (like they usually are ^^;). I really need to get some anime watched over the weekend - I've had the 5cm/s DVD for a few weeks already and haven't found time to watch it, and I've had Paprika on Blu-ray even longer than that. There's something about movies which makes me feel less inclined to actually watch them, even though watching TV stuff I rarely watch less than four or five episodes in one go. It's odd.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-42

DiGiKerot — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:00:56 +0000

I can hear the groans already. I'm starting to see the signs that I'm getting older. All those recent posts about Lucky Star and whether or not it's actually any good had me wondering if I'd completely forgot to order the DVD. In the end, it turned out that I've had is sitting around for a week or so now, but the fact was either forgotten or simply hadn't registered at all. Whoops. Still, I do think that opening episode is frankly epic degrees of being not really all that funny, and the first few following that pretty follow the same pattern. I don't really know how to quantify why - I guess the long scenes which build up to a complete lack of a punchline don't really do it for me, and most of the shorter gags aren't really all that funny. On a random note that probably isn't all that interesting to most of the people reading, there was a new build of RenPy released a couple of days back - known as 6.6.2, aka "But I Get Up Again" (Tubthumping reference? How odd...). It mostly looks like tweaks that most won't notice, though being able to use an imagemap for the main menu is a pretty nice addition (and one I'm kind of surprised wasn't in there already). One a tangential note, I've been messing around with Python, or more specifically PyGame, today. It's kind of hilarious how resource-intensive rendering fonts in PyGame is - removing a couple text labels from one application increased the frame rate from 40-odd to over 100 on one of my test programs, and using a bitmap-based FPS counter instead of the text one boosted it even more. Unfortunately, on the older laptop I tried it on it only went from 18 fps to around 22, and given that that particular application did nothing other than clear the screen, blit a 50x50 box into the middle and display the framerate, I don't think that'll be running many games written in the stuff any time soon. The funny thing is that one of the programs with some actually game logic in it only ran barely slower - I wonder if it's just the really crappy video hardware in it? Maybe. The problem is that I don't have any working hardware in between the two to check the performance on - the slow machine is five or six years old now, and my other working laptop is only barely slower than this one I'm using now. Oh well, it's not like I'll ever get around to doing anything releasable.

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-43

DiGiKerot — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:20:10 +0000

Surely you didn't expect anything else, did you? Ender did a post asking people to help him decide which game from his backlog he should play next. I thought about doing something similar, then I noticed that my backlog was starting to look like this... Which isn't everything, as I've filtered out all the games that have actually touched a console (even if just for five minutes), of which there were quite a few more, plus a stack of DS games for which the cases are in storage. Basically, I'm not even sure where to start whittling it down. I mean, there's things like all the US released Gust games other than the first Iris game, which I guess should really be played in release order (AI2, AI3, AT and MK), and the Shadow Hearts sequels obviously need to be played in order, but otherwise, I've no idea. There's no really sensible order in which to pick off the SMT-related titles for example (though FES is off the agenda for now since it's not that long since I finished regular P3). Oh well, I guess I'll just end up playing nothing, as per usual. That's how I got the backlog in the first place ^^; At least they aren't all RPGs - only most of them ^^;

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-44

DiGiKerot — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:28:00 +0000

At this point, I think I've ground this exact same joke further into the ground than random Dango references...

Unfunny Internet Meme Comics #5-45: Dead Kero Day #5

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:27:05 +0000

I've spent half the evening procrastinating over whether to actually bother posting anything this evening - on one hand, I couldn't really think of anything to comic about today (not that this normally stops me, as the previous week attests), but I didn't really want to not post anything this evening either. As it works out, I'm actually, what, ten minutes too late to have posted something on the 20/05/08 anyway. D'oh. I guess I should have just done that Mikan Watch post I've been sitting on for a few days now, or actually write about one of the novels I've read recently (but, really, I have absolutely no idea where to start talking about Strawberry Panic, because I'm really not in that books core audience). Or I guess I could have posted that Lolikit fanart here. Or maybe not ^^; I do find it kind of amusing that my completely arbitrary choice of colouring seems to have stuck though. I hadn't realised that the first of the UFO Table Kara no Kyokai movies was out on DVD this week. This is annoying, as I'd just placed an order for some R2 stuff last night. This is also annoying because it's not on Blu-Ray, as I'm willing to pay the extra, at least for theatrical stuff. I ended up ordering the LE anyway, and will probably get the other five(?) of them assuming I can find something order alongside them (which probably won't be much of a challenge - there's always at least a couple of iMAS CDs I can be buying each month).

Author-tan?!?!

DiGiKerot — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:36:22 +0000

I do hope you realise that I'm going to end up using this as the basis for a post, right? And probably a very odd one at that... That's a quote from an e-mail I sent in reply to an e-mail from Author over a week ago now. Little did I know precisely how odd this was going to end up being... Obviously, I neglected to inform him of exactly what I was doing (although he did say "Be my guest"...) I guess I should go back to the start, which would be the last UIMC post I made here. In the text of that post, I made reference to the Lolikit fanart I'd thrown up - to be exact, I mentioned that I "find it kind of amusing that my completely arbitrary choice of colouring seems to have stuck though." I was pretty surprised to wake up the next morning to find some e-mail in my inbox. Well, e-mail other than comments, anyway - my BW address isn't actually published anywhere, so it's only people I've e-mailed from that account, or those whose blogs I've commented on, that would be able to find that address out. Anyway, that mail consisted of a quick couple of lines about Lolikits mascot (which, I must clarify, I only did a fanart of and was merely amused that others following suit stuck with the same colour scheme, given that LKs original art was in B&W). But, it did end with the line... How much do I have to pay you to launch a better image than TJ Han hoisted upon me? I didn't actually know what he was talking about - I though he was going on about Tripeman for a while, until he clarified that he was referring to his image as a sniper. I wasn't actually all that aware of it, myself - I seem to remember DS having done a comic about it, but that was about it. Honestly, though, give his old, anonymous, comment-free ways, it isn't really a stretch to see what tj_han was thinking with that one. Anyway, it's kind of dangerous to get that kind of thought into my head. This lead me to thinking. Thinking and pondering. I mean, what kind of image do most anime bloggers have? The only ones I can remember who have attempted, or had foist upon them, some kind of image would be Impz (trap), Lolikit (possible trap) and Xebek (Xeby-chan) - all of which are kind of girly. I guess that fits the typical Japanese mould - after all, they do turn things like Windows and Airplanes into girls. The path was becoming, if not obvious, then blatantly engraved on my mind - there had to be an Author-tan. With this in mind, I started to think about what an Author-tan would entail. The list I came up with was along the lines of: - Russian Hat. - A Blue "ア", because that's his icon on Animenano. - Flat-chested for possible trapiness. - Mechanical Pencil - Shoulder-length hair (just because it means I don't have to draw in ears ^^;). I did think about making it grey, given Author is, comparatively, older than most anime bloggers, but it looked a little weird, so I went for a slightly blacker tinge. - Gradient-shaded hair (it's the whole Manabi-thing). And that was about all I could come up with at the time. So, I took all of that, shoved it in the mental blender, and thrust it from the end of a 0.5mm mechanical pencil onto paper (and, later, onto the computer), and out popped this. Urrr, yeah. I'm expecting that no-one is enough of a pencil otaku to notice the deliberate error (are there even pencil otaku?). The pencil itself is a Pentel A300 series, and has been used as (a) I had one to hand whilst drawing, and (b) I kind of like them. The thing is, this is a 0.3mm pencil. Although I knew it was a different colour (my 0.5mm one is Black), it wasn't until later I discovered that the 0.7mm pencil (which, apparently, is Authors choice of pencil lead size) was blue. Oh well. Personally, I tend to use 0.5mm lead for most things. Anyway, before I continue, have another picture. Right, now, I guess this isn't really all that odd, and two images certainly wouldn't go to explain why I've gone for over a week without a word on the UIMC front (or even any other post). Well, unfortunately for Author, at this point my mind started to drift back to the whole sniping thing. Which lead me to doodling more. Which lead me to think about doing a shooting gallery. This, of course, isn't something what would take too long - I'd already been messing around with Pygame, and throwing together a few blogosphere references into a crappy little game isn't something that should take more than an evening, right? Well, it wouldn't, but the fact that this is a whole week later probably makes it clear that I complicated the matter, largely by introducing RenPy into the mix. So, after far too much work, I ended up with this... Errr, yeah, quite. At this point, it's pretty much got nothing to do with Author at all, having completely gotten away from the original point. Ooops. At this point, I'm just kind of fed-up with the whole affair - it's ended up eating whole days of my time, for something what's really not all that interesting, nor all that complete (at the very least, it could use some music ^^;). So, I'm just posting this up now. It's Rapidshare'd, I'm afraid (it's about 30mb, and that's with me not having left a bunch of .psd files in the game directory this time), and I can't say I've tried it on anything other than two Windows boxes (neither of which are particularly old), so I can't guarantee it's performance, or even if it'll run, on other systems, but whatever. You are probably better off it doesn't. I have had a quick run through every path, and it was working last I checked, but I won't pretend I wasn't fixing a few typos and images whilst I was going, and as such might have broken something in the process ^^; Anyway, for anyone who wants to take a look at the thing... Windows Linux x86 Mac RenPy packages everything for you, so that's why there's Linux and Mac versions, but I have no idea if they'll actually work. Anyway, that's quite enough of all this. I'm off to bed.

Mikan Watch #8: 5cm Per Second

DiGiKerot — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:37:05 +0000

It's little hard to make out in that image, but it's the box on the left. I've been procrastinating over watch 5cm for a little while now, but it ended up working out for the best - I had the opportunity to watch it on a 50" screen instead of my usual 32". It's definitely the way to watch it - on as big and high quality a screen as possible. The animation is pretty outstanding, particularly the use of light and shadow which has pretty much become Shinkais trademark. It's hard not to be impressed when they throw around so many of the kind of light effects that you don't see much of in anime due to difficulty in achieving it. That said, I wasn't really all that enamoured with the content. Sure, I was impressed by the candid realism of the ending, but otherwise it was only really the second of the three segments which I found particularly endearing - the first segment, essentially an extended monologue, started to grate on me after a while, whilst the musical montage the third built up to did nothing for me (it probably didn't help that I didn't really like the song). Ultimately, The Place Promised is the only Shinkai work that I've really loved thus far. I really need to get around to re-watching that...

Author-tan walkthrough

DiGiKerot — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:45:12 +0000

*edit* I need to start this post with some ASCII art, apparently...

                                                     
                             _---__---_
                     _______/ / /  \ \ \________
                    /  _____------------_______ \
                   |  |                        | |
                   |  |                        | | 
                  |  |                          | |
                  |  |          ________        | |
                  |  |          ______ /        | |
                  |  |            || //         | |
                 |  |            ||              | |
                 |              ||                 |
                 |______--------------------_______|
                /..#################################\
               /  ..........#########################\
              |   |         ----------------------|###|
              |   |     |   .....|........|........|##|
             |  .|.....|.....====|=========|=======|###|
             |...|@====|@=======| |========|=======|###|
             |@@|@====|@========| |=========|=======|##|
             |@@----------------- -------------------##|
             |@###|   |_---              ---_|    |####|
             |@###|                               |####|
             |@####|                             |#####|
             |@####|   \_-----_       _-----_/   |####|
              |@###|   |/ |o|| \     / |o|| \|   |####|
              |@####|  | | || |       | || | |  |#####|
              |@###_| |  | || |       | || |  | |_####|
              |@##| |    | ||O|       | ||O|    | |###|
               |@#|/    --____         ____--    \|##|
               |@#|                               |##|
               |@#|  //////                \\\\\\ |##|
               |@##\            -_  _-           / ##|
                |@##---_____              ____---###|
                 \@###|#####------__------#########/
                  \_#_|\_ _____|       |_____/\_-_/
                    -    - \   \       /   /
                           __\   \   /   /__
                     __----   \   \ /   /   ----__
                    /           \  |  /           \
                   /             | | |             \

From the comments on the Author-tan post: Ender: Where’s the walkthrough for this? I'm not sure if he's being serious or not, but should anyone want to know how to unlock everything, then here you go. I think that's about right ^^; Coincidently, I notice that there's been another game inserted into the lower numbers on the RenPy wikis gamelist. I don't know what the game is, but it does mean that Hikki Quest has been pushed up to game 101 (Snipe Me is listed at 107, by the way).

Random Wafflage - Snake Edition

DiGiKerot — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:02:02 +0000

The silence has been deafening around here this week, hasn't it? There is, of course, a reason for this. Not a particularly good one, but a reason none-the-less - I couldn't be bothered. Actually, that's only partially true - mostly I've just been in an increasing state of Spoiler Blackout Mode in anticipation of Metal Gear Solid 4, which ultimately resulted in a significantly reduced degree of internet usage prompted by the first reports of broken release dates and spoiler-laden strategy guides. I kind of wanted the whole experience to hark back to the days before heavy internet usage, when things like that twist in MGS2 was a genuine surprise. This, thankfully, I managed, and having not even really followed the largely spoiler-free material coming out of Konami I got to enjoy the game as it was meant to be enjoyed - and enjoyed it I did, although my sentiments regarding the content is a little mixed. I do doubt that I'll enjoy another game quite so much this year, but it is true that it's just a touch too FMV heavy towards the end, and many of the boss encounters aren't really all that great, and, worse, completely superfluous to the games actual plot. They're just there so that there are boss encounters. The boss characters in the other MGS games at least feel like they have a reason for being there, even if their purpose is largely the same, and otherwise the battles are almost always amusing enough that you don't really care. After the unusual and imaginative battles in Snake Eater, there's only really a couple in this game that cut the mustard. The gameplay around the boss encounters kind of makes up for it, though - the MGS series has almost always felt like a series of transition areas you have to trawl through to get to the movie sequences, set-pieces and boss encounters that make up the meat of the game. This is probably the first game in the series where what would be considered the main meat of most games is actually as entertaining as the rest of it, which is good. I'm not going to spoil any of the plot events for anyone, but the plot is really just a whole mess of retconning and fan-wankery of the highest order, and as such I was giddy with delight all the way through. Of course, it does mean that anyone who hasn't played at least the Solid games really, really shouldn't play this game, as it will make absolutely no sense, and frankly they'll really not appreciate the awesomeness of some of it (particularly some of the bizarre, fourth-wall breaking humour that's been injected into the game). For me, though, it was a gripping enough experience that I, once I started in earnest, I could only really put down once the game itself informed me that, yes, it really was 03:00am and that, for the sake of my own health, I should go get some sleep. First time I've done that since MGS 2 (in that case, I was so sleep-deprived I was starting to have problems beating the bosses. Same happened with MGS now that I think about it - I had to switch the game off at 0500 due to being unable to beat the Helicopter boss. Aced it first time once I got some sleep). It's entirely retarded, of course, but awesome none the less. But, I've warbled on about Metal Gear too long for an anime blog. Not that I've got much to say about anime related matters today, either. Really, I'm just feeling kind of frazzled today (I'm getting too old for late night gaming sessions, I guess), and I'm having trouble thinking in a consistent fashion. I need some sleep, I guess.

Kara no Kyoukai Novels in English?

DiGiKerot — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:44:19 +0000

Something of a shock piece of news this, but according to a post on the AoD forums, the first chapter of The Garden of Sinners is in the advance copies of the English version of the Faust anthology, with two full volumes of follow next year. I was kind of surprised that we hadn't heard anything regarding DDD, the title Nasu has been writing for Faust, appearing in the English version of the magazine, but I guess this goes some way to explaining it. This adds yet another reason to grab Faust the second it hits, and with Tokyopop looks to be ditching a huge chunk of their novel output (I cry for Gosick) suggesting that novels really aren't working out, I guess they could do with all the sales they can muster. Speaking of Kara no Kyoukai, I note that the second movie hits DVD R2J side next week. I'm buying (LE, of course), but since it's been ordered with the third movie, I'm in for a wait.

Gurren Lagann R1s Shipping

DiGiKerot — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:09:23 +0000

I am informed that some retailers have started shipping out their copies of the first R1 Gurren Lagann release - and by "informed", I mean I've got my shipping notice today. Usually, this wouldn't be something I'd consider post worthy. It's pretty unusual for an anime DVD not to ship before it's intended release date - unlike with a lot of the US stuff being released, most of the online retailers really don't give a damn about sticking to anime release dates, and will just ship things as soon as they get their stock in. I realise, however, that I've not posted much this week, nor do I have anything in particular to post about in coming days - there's a bunch of novels I've read recently that I could be writing about, but given the future of most of those series is presently in question, I've kind of lost all motivation to do so. Combined with the fact that this is, well, GURREN LAGANN and I figured I may as well post something about it. Frankly, I've seen less used as an excuse to post blog entries before ^^;

Mikan Watch #9: Kanon '06

DiGiKerot — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:59:35 +0000

From Episode 11 of the Kyoani version of Kanon, this one is rather hard not to see given it covers pretty much the entire screen. Still, you have to be impressed with the versatility the Mikan Box displays here. It may have been mutilated, but it's proven it's worth as a quick and easy solution for basic school repairs. Mikan box, we salute you!

Quick Comments on R1 Gurren Lagann

DiGiKerot — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:09:13 +0000

My copy of the first R1 Gurren Lagann release landed today, covering the first nine episodes of the show (which anyone who has seen the show may agree is kind of an odd place to stop). This is the quick, sub-only release, with the nicer, dual language release following at some point in the future. Anyway, I've managed to get the whole thing watched today. I don't really have anything to say about the content - most discussion on the show has been done to death already, and whilst I had thought about making some structural comparisons of Gunbuster - a few of which are very valid - most of them would be very tenuous. I figured I'd make a few comments regarding the release, though. It's fine, really, given it's a cheap and quick release, unless you want to get really nitpicky. The absence of subtitles during the OP and ED sequences stand out as being particularly cheap, but the value of those depends entirely on how much attention you tend to pay to them (in my case, it's usually very little). As far as the subtitles in the actual show go, there's nothing that strikes me as being wildly horrific, but some of Kaminas dialogue does read a little flat. I do think they would have benefited from someone who was a little more familiar with Gurren Lagann fandom having taken a quick gander through the script - despite it being referenced right at the start of the text on the back of the DVD case, there's no "Kicking reason to the curb", rather preferring the rather less bad-ass sounding act of "Rejecting common sense". It's not inaccurate or anything, but, as I say, it does read a little flat. Otherwise, aside from a couple of minor typos I've heard reported, the only odd thing is the occasional tendency to devolve into needless name substitution - things like "Don't believe in yourself, believe in the Kamina who believes in you", which will undoubtedly annoy those who pay enough attention to pick up the fact that he didn't actually say Kamina. I kind of figured that the "Don't believe in yourself, believe in the me who believes in you" sounds a bit closer to the kind of random, almost nonsensical bullshit Kamina comes up with. I probably wouldn't have raised it if it wasn't for the fact that they were being inconsistent with with, as well as the fact that they seem to fluctuate between using "Bro" and "Kamina" as a translation for Simon referring to Kamina as "Aniki". Given that this is supposed to be a fair fan-orientated quick release, it seems kind of strange, really. That's pretty much all I can fault, though. They do a better job with Nias more formal speech in the one episode in which she appears that with Kaminas dailogue, but as I say, this is all nit-picking to the extreme. It's, ultimately, a pretty good, pretty cheap release of Gurren Lagann on DVD, and I'm just picking fault for the sake of having something to write. Should you want Gurren Lagann on DVD, and don't want to dub, it's fine.

Funimation to Publish Select Geneon Titles

DiGiKerot — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:03:54 +0000

Apparently, its looking like ADV are having license problems again, but that's not really important* What is important is that Funimation have signed a deal to distribute selected Geneon titles. Why is this important, you ask? Nanoha, and being Funi there's a good chance that it'll be in reasonably priced season boxes. That, and it'll also be nice to see the rest of Black Lagoon (my brother keeps bugging me about it, if nothing else) and Higurashi. The rest of Geneons back catalogue I've already plundered for worthwhile titles. I do wonder what the status of future episodes of Hellsing Ultimate, though (particularly with the recent change in studio, a shame given Satelight were doing such a good job of it). *(Well, OK, it does mean I'll probably not get to see the end of Kanon any time soon).

Remember those ADV titles on Hiatus?

DiGiKerot — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:29:31 +0000

Funimation has them. Funimation has ALL OF THEM. This basically makes Funimation practically the entire R1 anime industry right now. I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing - if they are going to be re-authoring them, I'm willing to bet their releases of the likes of Pani Poni and Nerima Daikon won't be a patch on ADVs versions, not to mention that it took a good couple of years for Funimation to fix issues with their video encoding, despite constant fan-ranting about it. Theres been nothing wrong with the quality of their most recent disks, but watching Moon Phase was pretty painful at times. They've been doing some good work in regards to boxsets and the like as well recently, so we shall see. I guess I'll be seeing the end of Kanon at some point, at least.

Thoughts on Anime Expo News

DiGiKerot — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:47:32 +0000

Apparently, it's been decided that I'm now the blogospheres (or at least Authors) secretary now. This is news to me, but I guess I can at least make an attempt point out what seems to be the important parts of this weekends news. The things most people are talking about are, of course, the news of Funimation picking up a stack of former Geneon and ADV for distribution, though the reality of these two deals is pretty different. For one thing, they technically haven't 'picked up' the Geneon titles - Geneon retains the licenses, and, indeed, Geneon are still doing all the production work (or, in fact, have probably done it all already). Funimation do everything else. Basically, it's pretty much the same deal as Geneon had announced they'd made with ADV at the time they'd pulled their own manufacturing, marketing and distribution wing in the first place. That deal collapsed, of course, and I'm willing to bet that Funimation are going into this with considerably better terms than ADV were going to. As for why this is important, well, since Geneon continued production, and probably still have a stack of disks lying around (Gen Fukunaga said as much), it does mean that we will be getting things pretty quickly (like Hellsing Ultimate - probably the fourth instalment, given it was played at the con - as early as next month). It also means the disks are likely to Geneon branded, and produced in a 'Geneon-stlye', as opposed to having the look, feel and honorific-tastic subtitles of a Funimation release. It also, perhaps most importantly, means that Geneon are likely to have the last say on the release formats. Whilst I have no doubt that Funimation are probably pushing for straight-to-boxset releases of titles like Nanoha, I wouldn't hold your breath - Geneon are likely to favour singles for anything they've not already put out. The bigger question, perhaps, is what the future holds for Geneon. It's hard not to see this as simply them scraping that last bit of profit from what licenses they have before they expire - which is what I presume has happened to those titles which have not been mentioned as part of this deal. Funimation has a vested interest in keeping Tenchi Muyo in print, given they have a number of its sequels and spin-offs in both their back and forthcoming catalogues. Basically, I wouldn't hold your breath for any re-issues of the other Geneon back-catalogue titles. As for the potential of Geneon actually licensing new titles, that's an interesting one. At the moment, it's not even entirely clear what they own in regards to future Hellsing Ultimate releases (particularly with the studio change from Satelight to Madhouse) - that show was being partially funded by Geneon USA in the first place, and one has to wonder if the change in studio is partially down to this funding being pulled. The Hayate no Gotoku license by Bandai is pretty telling as well - it's a Geneon title in Japan, and whilst, even back in the day, Geneons US branch has to bid on these things like everyone else, they'd have never let a title like that pass them by. Of course, who knows what will happen once they start getting some money flowing back into the company, but for the time being, I'm not expecting much to come from it. The whole Sojitz/ADV/Funimation situation, well, that's a rather more complicated beast. I've been following the forum discussions on the matter, and they've been interesting to say the least - you've got things like former Newtype employees coming out and basically stating that what they said in regards to the cancellation of the magazine was an outright lie (the truth being that ADV attempted to re-negotiate a contract that was very, very unfavourable to themselves early, and incurred the wraith of the licensor as a result). You also have some very, very wild statements which I really wouldn't want to reiterate here, not least because there was nothing to back them up. Still, with everything what's been going on with ADV since the beginning of the year, and particularly the recent antics they've been playing with retailers and their claims of 'replicator issues', it's very, very hard to take anything ADV is saying at the moment at face value. There are a few things that we can determine based on a combination of what ADV and Funimation have been saying. Gen Fukunaga mentioned in one of his interviews that it was Sojitz/ARM who approached them in relation to picking up the titles earlier in the year - presumably back when ADV originally pulled those titles from their catalogue. We can only speculate as to why - ADVs claims that they simply didn't get along probably warrants some credence here, but it's just as likely that the titles simply weren't performing as well as they'd hoped at ADV. With Funimation being the biggest player in the R1 field even before this weekends news, approaching them probably seemed like a good idea. It would appear that ADV managed to convince them to continue working with them at that time - given ADVs slightly aggressive release schedule, I'd have to think that they were perhaps given six months to turn things around, but failing to do so, Sojitz pulled the titles again. One does have to wonder exactly how fresh the ink of the Funimation deal is, though - given that a number of NHK 5 disks actually made retail (and I heard that a couple of online retailers did receive stock of Kanon 6, though were unable to sell it), it could well be that this was finalised as recently as last week. This would raise a few questions in regards to ADV courting another investor, as they've claimed. Perhaps not the claims that they've been looking at 23 potential licenses, but who knows. I suspect the next couple of months will be very telling. Funimation are claiming that we should see releases restarted by the end of the year, depending on how negotiations with ADV go - the hope being that they can sub-contract them to complete production work. I do wonder precisely how much production work they are looking to sub-contract them for. ADV are pretty much the only R1 studio in the industry who do everything in-house - most of the publishers contract out at least the dub, whilst Bandai Entertainment outsource pretty much everything (as did Geneon when they were still actively producing stuff). Whilst Funimation have been doing most, if not all, of their encoding and DVD mastering work in-house for a couple of years now (which lead to some awful video encodes until relatively recently), I do have to wonder if they'll try and contract ADV to do everything right up to the actual fully-mastered disks in order to retain some degree of consistency. The feel of Funimation DVDs is very different to ADV ones, and things would stick out like a sore thumb. (Actually, I have to wonder if ADV have more of a future as a dubbing and DVD production studio than a publishing studio - they could probably make a sound business plan around video-game and anime dub work and outsourcing production for the likes of Bandai). There's also some question about who precisely owns the IP in regards to the work ADV has already done in respect to translations and dubs. Whilst you may think that ADV actually owns these, that's not necessarily the case. It has been known for licensors to retain the rights to a shows dub once a shows license has expired - from what I gather Mangas release of Tactics used the materials ADV had produced before they had problems with Mag Garden and had their licenses revoked (I'm starting to spot a pattern with ADV here ^^;). We really can't tell what the case it here, given we aren't privy to the deal ADV made with Sojitz, but I have to wonder if the fact that the Japanese Utawarerumono Blu-Ray set contains both the dub and the subtitles from the ADV DVD release is indicative of anything, and that what Funimation are really negotiating with ADV for is not the translation work they've done (bar those few titles they've not completed yet), but rather the rest of the materials ADV used for their DVD releases - there's little sense in redoing perfectly serviceable DVD materials if you don't have to. There's not really much else to say on the matter. Like Geneon, I do wonder what Sojitz will be doing going forward - after what's been happening with ADV, I'd hope that Funi are very, very wary of trying to get new titles through them, and continue to license things themselves directly. It may well be that Sojitz are looking to exit the market entirely, and are simply making sure they get maximum profit from what titles they already have control of. Time will tell, I guess, but I doubt Funimation would have been willing to get into bed with such a heavy competitor when it comes to licensing (as I say, I've be wary of allowing Sojitz to handle all of that side). Why bid against yourself? I guess the same could be said of Geneon, really. As for other news, the lack of license announcements isn't really all that surprising - the studios are increasingly considering conventions as being less relevant as a place to announce new titles. Heck, Media Blasters tend to prefer simply dropping them into random threads over at the AoD forums. I do have to admit that Bandai licensing as long a gag anime as Hayate surprised me a little, then I remembered that they've released god-knows how much Galaxy Angel already. I'll be buying it, though. The Kadokawa titles, well, all they've really announced thus far is that they intend to release them. They don't actually have a production and distribution deal for them yet, at least not that they can announce. Given that, thus far, we've seen them publish through Funimation, Bandai and RightStuf for their titles previously, they are probably still courting all the R1 studios. Who knows, maybe they'll throw ADV a bone... Tokyopop announcing a bunch of new manga licenses will undoubtedly really annoy all those who have just suffered Tokyopop canning all of their favourite ongoing series, but at least Twelve Kingdoms looks to be safe for the time being. Wish I could say that about the rest of their novel line, but that's still up in the air. The news of Persona 4 being released in December has basically planned my Christmas vacation for me. I actually got around to starting The Answer part of Persona 3 yesterday. I should probably have replayed the FES version of the main game to see the new content first, but whatever. I'm starting to blank on other things I was going to comment on - there was A Lot Of Sense spoken in the Fansub panel, but nothing specifically I want to comment on. JP has an interesting dissection of the Crunchy Roll keynote which is worth a look as well. I wish Circus the best of luck with their online visual-novel store, but whilst some of the titles are hilarious, it's all a little too porntastic for me. Get that My-HiME game you did up on there and we'll talk. Not really all that interested in Gakuen Alice at the moment, but knowing me I'll probably end up buying it just because the heroine is called Mikan. I'll probably grab the Towards the Terra movie, though. And that's it. This post is long and waffley enough as it is, and since I'm not going to bother proofreading it, it's undoubtedly been full of typos, grammatical errors and complete inaccuracies. Business as usual, really ^^;

Sayoko the Combat Maid

DiGiKerot — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:36:37 +0000

There's no actual sense to this post, rather I was just struck with the fact that Geass has hyper-competent house servant working for a master who is adverse to physical activities - that's aside from the obvious Meister Otome references that everyones making at the moment. Entirely random a thought but, well, Sayoko is awesome. I would wonder if Sayoko would make Jasons Maid Pantheon, but it's, you know, Sunrise, and that's probably a huge mark against her there.

About Three Months Worth of Novel Reviews

DiGiKerot — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:31:44 +0000

I've been meaning to do this after pretty much novel I've finished reading in the last month, but seeing Lupus' post over that THAT has finally prompted me to stop procrastinating about it. The thing is, it's kind of hard to work up any kind of enthusiasm about these novel releases when everything I actually like seems to get canned after a single volume. Ho-hum. Whilst we are on the subject of the Lupus post and canned novels I liked, I figure I should probably address his comments regarding Gosick. I have no problem with the sentiment of my review - I really did really love that book - and it's not like I have a problem with anyone ever disagreeing with me on something (although Lupus isn't exactly disagreeing to any huge degree anyway), but it does always lead to a certain degree of disappointment when someone doesn't enjoy something you so enthusiastically recommend. In this case, though, I can't help but think that it's been my enthusiasm for the book that's resulted in Lupus not enjoying it as much as I did, having had his expectations built to levels that the book simply couldn't match. This inevitably lead to spending much of my day pondering what set of circumstances lead to me enjoying the book as much as I did. Discarding my high tolerance for bad fiction, my frequently weird taste, and the fact that I'm far more interested in amusing dialogue and characters than I am in things like plot and story, it probably leads back to the same thing as Lupus disappointed - expectations. One of the bad things about not being bilingual is that it really, really limits your choice when it comes to light novels, a matter made worse by the fact that the lot of the stuff being released in English isn't really the cream of the crop - much of it is pretty damn mediocre, even by light novel standards. Regardless, I buy and read almost everything that isn't BL (I say 'almost', because a few tend to slip out when I'm not paying attention) - this is partially to support what is a tiny, tiny market that really isn't doing all that well, and partially so that I have something to talk about here. Because of that latter point, I tend to read my light novels before I dip into my big pile of 'proper' fiction, which inevitably leads to me going for weeks reading nothing but really crummy books. Back when Gosick was released, it was right in the middle of a spell of particularly uninspiring releases, at least a few of which had pretty good receptions elsewhere. Amidst much disappointment, my expectations regarding the quality of any given light novel were, well, pretty low regardless of what other people were saying (I mean, a lot of people really, really love those Scrapped Princess novels Tokyopop put out, which I thought were pretty dire). It's hard not to get enthusiastic when you read a good book amongst all that material - it kind of magnifies the awesomeness of the whole experience. Read amidst titles like Spice and Wolf and Full Metal Panic, Gosick probably isn't anywhere near as impressive. This is all sounding rather more apologetic that I had intended - I don't really feel I have anything to apologise regarding that review of Gosick. It was my honest feelings immediately after reading it, and I stand by what I said about it. I just figure it's important that people realise where I'm standing when I talk about these import novels - whether intentional or not, my feelings regarding them are generally weighted in comparison to other import novels in regards to quality by virtue of the fact that I read a lot of the stuff. Compared to most the stuff we've been seeing in English, Gosick is gold. People who read foreign editions (like TPs German releases, the Chinese releases or the original Japanese books) may find their mileage varying. Anyway, with that out of the way, onto some quick thoughts on what I've been reading over the last couple of months, in no particular order. The Good Witch of the West #2 This volume is a boarding school story. The motivations behind things may be a little different to most, but aside from the yaoi-slash-fiction, it's pretty similar to every other boarding school story ever written (like, you know, Harry Potter or something). Basically, it has the same issues with over-familiarity as the first book, but it's still an awful lot of fun (the yaoi-slash-fiction side of things raises a few smiles, at least). It's hard to get particularly worked up about it, though, given that, whilst not yet confirmed, I can't help but feel it's likely to suffer from Tokyopops recent release culling activities once the third volume gets out there. Dragon Sword and Wind Child A girl from a remote village finds herself thrust into the middle of the war between the forces of light and dark when the immortal Prince of Light proposes to her, only for her to find that things aren't exactly what they seem, and that fate has a very different role for her to play... This is a reprint of an older book by West Witch author Noriko Ogiwara, having originally been published in English back in the 90's. It's not actually a light novel, either - it's a single, full length novel in a rather lovely looking hardback format. To be honest, my sentiments regarding the book are very, very similar those regarding West Witch, not least because the opening two acts practically read like a shorthand version of her more recent series - the second act, for in particular, where the heroine enters into the service to royalty (rather than attending a boarding school as in West Witch), followes the general arc and themes of the act follow the second book of West Witch surprisingly closely. The thing is that it's spends less time on it than we get with the second West Witch book, with less time to develop things here, we don't get to know the characters quite as well, somewhat to the books detriment. This is more-so true of the books first act. I know it sounds like I'm being harsh here, but basically, it's well written, but ultimately rather derivative, fantasy. It's hard to recommend to people who read this kind of book as they'll have read pretty much most it has to before elsewhere, but it's not like it's actually a bad book. Full Metal Panic #3 For those who have seen the anime, this is the one where Gauron takes over the Tuatha de Danaan. It's pulpy-action-adventure at it's pulpy-action-adventure best, really. Shoji Gatoh quite clearly has a good sense of how to write this kind of material. I really hope that this one makes it through Tokyopops cull unscathed - not just because it's so wonderfully entertaining, but if they can't can't sell a title with as large a fanbase as FMP, I doubt they can sell anything, which wouldn't bode well. Pita-ten #1 Four short stories delving into the background of the series characters. It's not something that's quite as excruciating to read as you might think - except for Mishas speech patterns-suuu - but it is all painfully generic. I'm not sure if this is anime or manga continuity, though I don't think that it matters with the material here. I have to wonder what the point of them releasing this in English is, though - and bare in mind that this coming from someone actually bought the Pita-ten character singles (and, you know, has read the manga and stuff). It's not all that interesting, and it doesn't really add anything worthwhile to your Pita-ten experience. There's some cute Koge-Dongo artwork, but that's about all it's got going for it. I have to presume that the manga must have sold surprisingly well in the US, as otherwise I find it completely inexplicable that Seven Seas would choose this as one of the launch titles for their novel line when they count books like Zero no Tsukaima amongst their licenses. Heck, even Kanokon would probably have made more sense, given that it'd at least be timed to tie in with the anime series running in Japan (I kind of think they've probably missed their window of interest on that title now, if it ever makes it out at all). Given that poor sales of their launch titles has pretty much caused Seven Seas to re-evaluate their novel line already, with most of their forthcoming books dropped off their release schedule, it's frustrating to say the least. Seven Seas presentation is at least pretty damn good, assuming if you don't mind the small page format they've been using. It's actually got colour pages! Wow! Strawberry Panic! #1 The Yuri-tastic adventures of the students at not one, not two but THREE adjacent boarding schools! This is the third title from Seven Seas launch line-up (the other being Ballad of a Shinigami). I laughed all the way through this book - not because it's particularly amusing, but rather out of disbelief that I was actually reading this. I'm not really sure that it's fair for me to judge this book, largely because it's really, really far outside of my sphere of interest. Out of all of recent Seven Seas books (ignoring their old Boogiepop releases), it is probably the best, and I'm certain that it's something that fans of the genre would really enjoy, but I really can't look at this with any kind of critical sense. Twelve Kingdoms #2 This is the story of the Kirin of Tai, as he comes to terms with the fact that he sucks at being a Kirin, and has to choose a new Emperor. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first book, mostly because it spent a lot less time on the world-building I felt to be redundant having seen the anime, and more time on the characters and story. Then, there's also the fact that I repeatedly confused the story in this book with one of the other plot-arcs from the anime, meaning that there was at least some degree of surprise in the events as the unfolded. That said, I was kind of eager to get back to the Yoko-centric stories of the original book. Yes, I do realise that this is kind of contrary, but whatever. Tokyopop have already said that they are continuing to publish the series, at least for now, though with a whole year between volumes, it's pretty slow going. FLCL #1 IT'S ALL ABOUT PUBERTY! For those who didn't get that from the FLCL anime, this text adaptation of the first two episodes makes it pretty damn clear. That's pretty much what book does - it'll clarify a lot of things from the anime version. That adaptation actually works better as a book than you'd expect of a show that's so reliant on visual humour, hyper-kinetic action and it's synergy with its music, but it's a little hard to figure out what the point of it all is. I guess if you are some kind of uber-fan of the series you might like some of the additional details, but I don't really see what value it adds to it - I think the anime benefits from some degree of ambiguity, which this largely shatters. Also, this books is really, really short - like, it's more of a pamphlet than an actual book. It makes it rather hard to justify it's expense. Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit Balsa is a travelling spear-woman who, upon saving a young prince from drowning, is hired to flee the palace with the aforementioned royal in an attempt to foil an attempt on his life approved by his own father. Briskly-paced fantasy with a little perspective switching. It's a good read, moving along at a nice, solid pace - if anything, I'd have kind of liked them to slow things down a little in places in order to provide a little more background on the world and concepts. Otherwise, there's good characters and a decent story going on - little to complain about, really. Probably the only title of it's ilk we are likely to see from Scholastic, It's a pretty attractively put together hardback volume, with really good print and paper quality too. No idea if any of the sequels are lined up for release, but this volume does leave one wanting more. The Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair It's 70's pulp SF told from the point of view of an airhead with a taste for boys and violence. Along with her partner (who's only marginally less airheaded, boy-crazy and violent), she works as a Trouble Consultant for the WWWA. Unfortunately, her only skills are some degree of psychic powers (something she can only operate in conjunction with her partner), and an almost equally-supernatural ability to cause mass destruction in her wake. The only DP anime I've seen is Project Eden, so I don't really have much of a comparison point for that, but this volume is merely OK. It's actually a lot drier and slightly harder in it's SF-tinge than I'd been expecting from having read those old Adam Warren comics, and I found it a bit of a chore to read in places as a result. There is some amusement value in waiting to find out precisely how they are going to screw over the planet they are supposed to be saving in the end, but otherwise it's all a little too straight-forward. I've got the second Dirty Pair volume in my 'in-pile' already, but it's not really something I'm prioritizing. That probably speaks volumes about it. I think that's about it for the moment, at least as far as I can remember. Next up for me is probably going to be Maid Machinegun, once I've finished with the tenth Vampire Hunter D book (apparently the only one of these import books that actually sells pretty well - I should really get around to reviewing them some day).

Sayoko the Combat Maid #2

DiGiKerot — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:11:14 +0000

Back by ~~popular~~ a request, and not making a huge amount more sense.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #3

DiGiKerot — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:00:54 +0000

Could this be the final instalment of this increasingly random and off-point feature before I completely loose interest in it? Quite probably.

Mikan Watch #10: Genshiken

DiGiKerot — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:41:08 +0000

You know, it almost feels like cheating for me to do a Mikan Watch post for Genshiken, not least because I've mentioned it before. That wasn't in a Mikan Watch post, though, so I'm doing it anyway. In actuality, this is all really just a cover so that I can post a screen-grab from Kujibiki Unbalance TV without this actually looking like a Kujibiki Unbalance TV post. Capped for truth. I realise that this statement will probably destroy any meagre thread of credibility my opinion my hold, but you know what, I really don't think Kujibiki Unbalance TV is that bad - I'm not really sure I get why it gets so much hate. It's actually kind of fun, and I find the fact that most of the fanservice is provided in the form of Kamishakujii panty-flashes - something which only ever appears to happen at the most dramatically inappropriate moments - oddly amusing. I guess it's trying to say something clever and satirical about fanservice in anime, but honestly the shows just a mix of tedious clichés, hyper-exaggerated clichés and the hyper-retarded. Nowhere near as insane, retarded or exaggerated as the OAVs mind you, aside from Kamishakujiis tsuntsuntsuntsunderederederedere-ness, but it still ticks those boxes. Still, I probably wouldn't be grabbing the DVDs if I didn't want the included Genshiken OAVs. That's what I'm going to claim at least...

Mikan Watch #11: Sekirei

DiGiKerot — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:00:06 +0000

I've not actually seen the show myself, but Totali bugged me about this one on IRC ("come on man...its not an apple this time!" he cried), so I figured I'd post it. This means, however, that I don't actually have anything to say on the subject of the show, so go read the post the grab was stolen from if you are really interested in the matter.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #4

DiGiKerot — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:32:14 +0000

Yes, one more. Don't make any more sense, though. Anyone who can reverse-engineer the thought process behind me casting Kaguya as Hayates Wataru should feel free to rewards themselves with some kind of imaginary cookie or muffin.

I Planned My Evening Around Strike Witches...

DiGiKerot — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:15:40 +0000

That's rather embarrassing to admit, really. When Gonzo streamed Duraga over Youtube, the videos were available all the time - they're still up there in entirity, aside from those later episodes that they gimped in an attempt to get people to buy them from BOST or Crunchy. With Strike Witches, however, the free streams of the videos are only being made available via BOST and Crunch for eight hours, between 1400 and 2400PST. For those of you in the States, this is probably fine - it's a reasonable length of time in the afternoon. For those of us on the other side of the Atlantic, however, it's not so great. Once you've time shifted things into BST, it's available from 2200 to 0800. Being the working type, rather than a slacker or a student or someone else who may have a more nocturnal lifestyle, more than half of that is taken up with me sleeping, and the rest of the morning portion is consumed with me getting ready to head out to work. This, basically, leaves me with about a two hour window in the evening in which I can watch the thing. Of course, of that two hours, I do have other things to do - there's shows on broadcast TV I watch among other things - which brings the period of time I have to watch the free stream down even more. Which is pretty lame, really. Other's have already posted at length about how the English market for anime doesn't consist entirely of the US, which makes the available hours surprisingly exclusive - by my reckoning the shows only going to be available during work/school hours in the likes of Singapore, which constitutes a third of Crunchys traffic! It seems like a really odd choice to me. I realise that leaving something up permanently would probably have an effect on sales of any eventual physical release, or of the more long-term viewing options at BOST or Crunchy, but I can't imagine what harm there'd be in leaving it up for a whole 24-hours or so in order to give the whole English-speaking market the chance to decide if it's worth blowing cash on. But, anyway, I missed Strike Witches last week, but with all the talk it seems to have managed to generate I figured I should probably try any catch this weeks episode. This basically meant that I had to plan my entire evening around making the time available to watch the show this evening, something I'm not exactly likely to do on a regular basis I have to admit. I realise there's the option of actually buying it via Crunchy or BOST, but given I only really wanted to watch it for lulz, I didn't figure it to be worth it. BOST, in particular, seems to use some kind of annoying points system. I've got a 360 and a Wii, so I know what those points systems are like - they're an excuse to try and get you to waste your points on things you don't actually want. There's not enough on BOST I'd consider worth spending those points on for me to consider investing - not least Strike Witches - therefore I'm not presently jumping. Also, as a sucker for physical media, getting me to part with cash for digital downloads is difficult - I'm not made of HDD space! There's also the principal of the matter - if they are going to have some kind of preview mechanism for the show, I'm damn well going to use if to decide if it's worth investing my money in it. Exclude me from that and I'm afraid I'm just not going to show much interest in your product. As for the actual show, the Witches are pretty lucky the Neuroi aren't tentacle aliens, I'm sure there'll be doujin of that before long, though ^^; Seriously, though, despite it playing up the twin awesomes of elaborate magical circles and people turning around to report important information, and Saeko Chiba being great, I can't say I'm likely to make an effort to watch it next week. It didn't really do anything for me. The funny thing is, I really can't figure out why. Whilst I'm sure skipping the first episode probably has something to do with it, I really can't pinpoint anything wrong with it. I would fall back on the old "it's just not my thing" excuse, but, silly costume designs aside, this does actually have a lot of overlap with the kind of shows I usually like. I have great affection for shows which treat such stupid concepts as SERIOUS BUSINESS. Heck, it's even well animated. Yet, for some reason it failed to hold my attention, and even a re-watch didn't really clarify matters for me. Odd, that. Almost makes me want to BOST it so I can watch it on a decent AV set-up, but given the points things and that I'm unlikely to ever going to watch past this one episode, I'm not going to do that. On another note, maybe it's the fact that the videos only up there for a few hours, but it's really not straight forward finding Stirke Witches on Youtube - you'd think searching for Strike Witches during the airing period would find it, but in the end I had to take a really convoluted route to track it down (I looked up Duraga, clicked through to the uploaders info and followed the subscription links from there). There was obviously the option to watch the free feed on Crunchy, where its location was nice and obvious, but if they were going to the trouble of airing it on Youtube you'd think they'd make it easier to find than the illegitimate uploads of the show.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #5

DiGiKerot — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:03:04 +0000

Yaranaika?

Sayoko the Combat Maid #6

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:40:11 +0000

Isn't that the narrator?

Random CG Effects #1: Kanon

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:32:18 +0000

By this point, I think it's been made pretty clear that I get far too amused by the most pointless things in anime, as undoubtedly evidenced by the fact that I once made a whole post about a Yorkie bar appearing in Noein, not to mention all those Mikan Watch posts. One of the other things that amuses me in anime is the use of CG effects. I'm not talking about the obvious things we see, such as commonly re-occurring backgrounds or objects being done that way to assist with maintaining consistency and reducing costs. That's sensible, and even manga artists are using those tricks these days (thats how they get chapters of Negima out so frequently whilst still looking good - most of the backgrounds are CG renders with some manual touch-up). What amuses me are those things which not only appear for only a few seconds, but also seem largely pointless in their existence - that there's either no real reason for them to be there, or no obvious advantage to them being CG'd over a frame or two of manual animation. I think my amusement value is largely derived by the fact that clearly someone sat there and made a conscious decision that it'd be a good idea to CG the thing in the fact of established logic. Which is why the plastic duck pictured above, from episode 20 of KyoAni Kanon, made me laugh. I mean, it appears only in two cuts, totalling what must be only around three seconds, and it doesn't really add anything to that scene. I don't anyone would think any less of the production if the duck wasn't there, either. I can just imagine, however, someone at KyoAni sitting there, adding it just to taunt other animation studios. It's almost as if the duck exists just to rub it in that they don't have the same kind of production values KyoAni tend to lavish on their titles. (I don't, however, think the duck is as good as Fantastic Childrens keyboard. The CG water in the background to this scene, however, I found to be really, really jarring and distracting. On a related note, this post my make you realise that I did something kind of silly - I watched Volume 5 of ADVs Kanon release. The reason this is silly is because I've not seen Kanon before, the DVD ends on Episode 20 and, with recent activities in the R1 market, it's not too likely that we'll see the rest of the episodes any time in the few months. For those who have seen Kanon before, Episode 20 is the one which involves Ayu and trees that may or may not have been cut down. If you can remember how that particular episode ends, it's probably not hard to imagine that being stuck there for an indeterminate amount of time kind of sucks. I guess that's what I get for figuring I may as well just finish of the Shiori arc, and neglecting to pop the disk after episode 18...

Snakes on a Plane

DiGiKerot — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:31:46 +0000

I'm very, very sorry. Blame this guy for putting SonP and Strike Witches in my head at the same time.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #7

DiGiKerot — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:05:56 +0000

That's Not Quite It, C.C.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #8

DiGiKerot — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:37:21 +0000

Isn't that kind of cheating, Sayoko?

AoD Integrates with Mania, Mess Ensues

DiGiKerot — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:20:03 +0000

The title says it all, really - Anime on DVD was bought by Mania.com a while back, but the AoD content has finally been merged into Mania over the last few hours. The result isn't pleasant, to say the least - AoDs design may have been simple, but it was extremely usable, and being able to see the whole the news entries off the front page, rather than just a header, was rather nice. The new site is pretty dire looking, particularly since you only get part of the news stories header for anything after the first few news entries. The sole saving grace is the fact that forums are saying as is - this is good, because honestly, I didn't visit AoDs main page very often. It was nice for summaries of convention news and for checking the release schedule, but most my news I just got from reading the forums. Still, it is a shame to see what is one of the bastions of AAT anime fandom suffering such a fate. It's probably usable once you get used to it, but ANNs news pages are looking far more usable right now.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #9

DiGiKerot — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:19:50 +0000

Somehow, that last point seems key...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #10

DiGiKerot — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:28:40 +0000

Enter the Student Council Trio... Is Rivalz in a girls uniform?!

Maid Machinegun

DiGiKerot — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:31:46 +0000

Released in English by Del Rey, Maid Machinegun follows Akihabara cafe maid Aaliyah Kominami as she deals with her workmates, yaoi fans, Comiket, dwindling patronage and sub-machine-guns in her quest for Maidly Enlightenment. Told as a series of elongated blog entries (occasionally complete with comments), it's told in a chatty, hyperactive, first-person fashion - in which lies both it's strength and it's weakness. Maid Machinegun is a very funny book - there's a couple of moments where, reading the book at work, I had to put the volume down for a few minutes whilst I regained my composure - but it's not really that the text is especially witty or clever, more that it's really relentless. It's a constant barrage of bizarre, humorous and exaggerated statements where it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between what's a result of Aaliyahs hyperactive imagination, and what's supposed to be based on reality (if, indeed, and of it is - Aaliyah isn't the most reliable of narrators). The accumulation of mirth can become infectious. The problem is that, as with Viz release of Kamikaze Girls, you'll either find Aaliyahs almost weeaboo-esque obsession with the maidly ways incredibly infectious, or horrifically grating. It's hard to see there being any middle ground with the book, to be honest - it's something you'll either like or hate almost instantaneously. Basically, go read the excerpt on Del Reys website, and if you can stomach that, you'll probably enjoy the book. If that drives you nuts, stay well clear. The books ending is a little disappointing - it's a really forced attempt to manufacture a climax. I'm not really sure if I'd call it unnecessary - they pretty much had to do something of the ilk towards the end - but it's a little too convoluted and didn't really work for me. It sours the book a little for me - if I gave these reviews numerical ratings, it'd probably be enough for me to knock a mark or so off, but not so much to ruin the whole thing. The books presentation is pretty good. Whilst I've got a few other text volumes that Del Rey have put out, I think this is the first I've actually read. The colour plates are inplace, and the back of the book has a two page manga (confusingly unflopped, though presented in western page order). There's an index of some of the more obscure terms in the back (it's not quite so excessive as to discuss things like Kamen no Maid Guy, even though it's referenced several times), so you can at least understand all the jokes you would only get if you were actually Japanese. The paper the text pages are printed on is a little rougher than we tend to have seen in light novels from other publishers, but it's about par for a paperback book from most publishers.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #11

DiGiKerot — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:58:35 +0000

I guess that makes her Isumi ^^;

Sayoko the Combat Maid #12

DiGiKerot — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:07:18 +0000

Are zombie maids moe?

Hiroyuki Yoshinos Panties

DiGiKerot — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:01:44 +0000

In his post about Macross Frontier Episode 8, BluWacky commented that "it’s the best Hiroyuki Yoshino ridiculous-pants-based episode yet". It's a pretty telling comment. For those who haven't seen that particular episode, much of it's second half focuses on Sheryl as she runs around the school trying to retrieve her underwear from a little goblin thing which has swiped them, whilst simultaneously trying to keep the rest of the student body from doing much the same. Macross Frontier Episode 8... Wait, hang on a minute.... Now, Hiroyuki Yoshino is in charge of series composition on Macross Frontier, a role he also held on My-HiME and My-ZHiME, as well as assisting in the task on Code Geass. From these shows, I can only think of one other Hiroyuki Yoshino underwear episode - so, basically, BluWacky is saying is that it's a better episode than My-HiME Episode 4, where a little goblin thing is swiping underwear. Actually, other than the underwear theft, it's not really all that similar an episode - there's no chase sequence for one thing. It is, however, pretty much the same episode as the sixth episode of Code Geass R1 - the one where, where we substitute goblins and underwear for Arthur and the Zero mask. You can draw plenty of comparisons to the recent episode in R2 where everyone is trying to steal Lulouches hat, or the second episode of My-ZHiME, where Arika runs around the school dressed in nothing but a sheet whilst being pursued by the rest of the student body. It's just one of the recurring episode patterns which persist throughout a lot of the shows Yoshino works on (which I've made fun of on previous occasions). Which basically brings me to my point - Macross Frontier is, ultimately, a Sunrise show in shiny, CG-laden Satelight clothing. Sure, with it being Macross, everything has to kowtow to Kawamoris eccentricities, but at the same time it's still hitting many of the familiar notes. I'm sure that, between it's super-rookies and mysterious songs, someone could make some pretty extensive and valid comparisons between My-ZHiME and Frontier thus far should they feel so inclined. Not that any of this is particularly bad, though - I obsess over Hiroyuki Yoshino regardless of monotony - but I do wonder how long it'll take some parts of the internet to start crying trainwreck on it. On a slightly related note, I do wonder if the fact that he's working on Frontier has something to do with the fact that R2 isn't quite as well received as the first season of Code Geass was, or the fact that he didn't fill the series composition role Xenoglossia has anything to do with the fact that the show subverts so many of these tropes.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #13

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:20:00 +0000

Or maybe it's just that I'm running out of characters? ^^;

Today In Purchasing...

DiGiKerot — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:15:23 +0000

I normally try to shy away from doing too many "look what I got" posts unless I have something to say about what I've actually bought, largely because I tend to feel that they fall somewhere between needless blog filler posts and needless showing off. Sure, I'm certainly not beyond showing off if I get something particularly excessive, rare or awesome, but I'm not really going to post every time I get some CDs, DVDs or a stack of manga, particularly given that I buy manga pretty much constantly. Today's acquisitions are the kind of things I normally wouldn't post about, but there's something odd beside the stack of old Ive Sound CDs. Can you spot what it is? No, it's not that I forgot to order the Sheryl Nome single (though I did. Whoops). No, it's not the fact that Seven Seas actually published something new, and the fact that I was actually able to buy it. No, it's not the fact that I bought those aforementioned Seven Seas books despite not actually liking the previous volumes. No, it's not the fact that CDJapan knocked 10-30% of the price of half of those CDs mere hours after I'd ordered them (though they did). It is the fact that I somehow managed to buy a second copy of Maid Machinegun, despite the fact that I was reading the thing at the point when I placed the order. Whoops - I really need to pay more attention. So, yeah, this is a largely pointless filler post. I guess I should really be thinking about throwing together another Sayoko strip for tomorrow, or perhaps throwing something together with some actual substance to it. Oh, well, I guess I'll get started on transferring these CDs over to my Generic MP3 Player...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #14

DiGiKerot — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:37:24 +0000

That's an odd looking Tiger you've got there, Lulu...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #15

DiGiKerot — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:22:38 +0000

The Sound of Barrel Bottoms Being Scraped.

Funimation license Baccano!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:42:36 +0000

Funimation continue to be pretty much the entirety of the R1 anime industry today with the announcement of them having licensed Baccano!, a show which I personally think it rather fantastic (and own the R2's of already, so I'll probably end up skipping the R1 release of). You can actually watch the first episode sub-only via their website at the moment, assuming you know what the password is (it might just be "Flying Pussyfoot", but who knows?). It doesn't seem to be region-locked, either. That said, it seems like kind of an odd movie - the first episode of Baccano is rather a disjointed, non-linear mess that I can't help but think will put more people off that show than it would attract, and that they would probably have been better off using the second episode. In other news, I'm hearing that the R1 DVD Code Geass release is looking to be free of Pizza Hut logos, which isn't exactly a surprise given they weren't in the CN broadcast. No news on Cheese-kun as of yet, but I'm under the impression that he was in the CN broadcast, so he should still be in place. He'd be rather difficult to edit out, after all...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #16

DiGiKerot — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:15:35 +0000

My Viletta need some work, methinks.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #17

DiGiKerot — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:42:59 +0000

Nothing to say here ^^;

iM@S for PSP!

DiGiKerot — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:47:09 +0000

Yes, I've heard the news that iDOLM@STER is coming to PSP by the end of the year - or more accurately, coming to PSP three times by the end of the year. I can't say I'm particularly surprised that they are doing three separate releases due to the amount of audio data in the game - aside from all the spoken dialogue, there's obviously all the song data, stored multiple times for each character. Hopefully we'll get the 360 and Live For You songs as a trade off for the missing characters, but there's not been anything said about the song selection yet. Anyway, in a move that probably isn't a surprise to anyone reading, I'm presently planning to buy all three versions. For those who haven't been following the news, or hasn't heard everything yet, I'll sum up what I presently know about these releases... Three Versions As I've already mentioned, they've split this release into three versions, each with different characters. The character split looks to have largely been made with character-type in mind, perhaps reducing the need for duplicate purchases (like most fans aren't going to buy them all anyway...). Wandering Star is the Loli edition, featuring the twins, Yukiho and the atypical Rie Kugimiya character Iori. I am kind of surprised it isn't Yayoi rather than Yukiho. Whilst Chihayas age may imply differently, her personality pretty much cements Missing Moon as the Mature edition, pairing her with Ritsuko and Azusa. Perfect Sun has the left overs - Haruka, Yayoi and Makoto. If you only buy one, I'd probably recommend Missing Moon as having my favourite line-up between Ritsuko and Chihaya - it's just a shame that Azusa is my least favourite character. Wandering Stars Iori is quite tempting, but Perfect Suns line-up is comparatively a little blah. That might explain why Yayoi is on that edition, actually - it makes it marginally less skippable as a release. No Miki Miki Hoshii, the new character added for the 360 version of the game, is curiously missing from the line-up. They do mention the matter in the news article floating around - apparently her fate is a secret, and something we'll hear about later. I guess that probably means she'll be available via DLC or similar at some point in the future. I suppose including her in one of the disk releases would have resulted in one of the titles having four characters, promoting sales of one particular edition above the others. It might have made Perfect Sun a little more interesting, though. No Groups The PSP version is going to be limited to having only Solo units. I can't really say it's a surprise - the audio mixing would probably be a headache, it not technically impossible at a decent quality. I'm kind of suspecting that they are going store the music tracks fully mixed with the vocals (i.e. storing three versions of each track on the disk with different vocals) rather than storing the music as a backing track and overlaying the vocals over them line-by-line as appropriate as in the other versions of the game. A result of memory issues, I suspect. It's not the 360 version... In terms of gameflow, I mean. They are changing things up a little, presumably because they realise that they might actually have to have a game for the PSP version, rather than relying on the Japanese obsession with concert videos that keeps the otherwise broken 360 version afloat. They are introducing a different fanmail system to the 360 version, and have replaced the 360 versions one-week, one-task scheduling system with a system that allows you to perform up to three tasks in one day! Wooo! It's likely to open up a few new play options when developing your idol, such as the player being able to choose to split things between having multiple lessons in different subjects in one day, or longer lessons in the one subject with higher gains. It should, at least, promote a move away from the fixed time-usage patterns that most 360 players have worked out can achieve them the maximum score. Arcade-style Expression Lessons Mentioned solely because, unlike the 360 versions maze-affair, this one actually requires some Japanese knowledge ^^; Anyway, more news when I hear something I hear something worth mentioning, else when I have the actual game in my mitts later in the year.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #18

DiGiKerot — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:14:23 +0000

How I've managed to stretch this out to 18 entries is beyond me ^^;

Sayoko the Combat Maid #19

DiGiKerot — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:22:21 +0000

Be Careful - Schneizel is a CHAR! In hindisght, Nina should really be Bright-Slapping the guy. Oh well.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #20

DiGiKerot — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:21:44 +0000

Nina puts her glasses back on, after they, err, magically disappeared part way through yesterdays comic ^^;

Strawberry Panic Novel #2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:10:09 +0000

The further Yuri-tastic adventures of the schools of Astraea Hill. Whilst, as with the previous volume, I laughed most of the way through this book, I really don't think I'm mentally equipped to adequately review this. I don't tend to go out of my way to read or watch yuri material, so I didn't really have any kind of base to judge this against. As a result, I really wasn't sure how I was supposed to take material presented within - it's all very blatant, and as with Strike Witches and it's constant panty shots, I really couldn't help laughing at the excess of it all, rather than actually being amused with the actual material presented. I couldn't even really bring myself to hate the characters I should have found repulsive (sexual harassment isn't cool, kids), as it was such an outlandish display of pandering to the market I couldn't help but find it hilarious. It got to the point where I was wondering if yuri fans weren't actually insulted by all of this. I read through the review Erica Friedman posted last night, as well as her review review of the Japanese volume, and she seems to think it should be taken as parody. That would makes sense - it certainly has the kind of excess the genre tends to revel in - but I don't really have the genre grounding to be able to pick up on it beyond picking up a few passing similarities of MariMite. It's qualities as a parody are largely lost on me. So, yeah, I'll probably end up reading the third book, if it ever gets published, simply to laugh at it (Erica makes it sound hilarious), but I expect my opinion of it will be exactly the same as with the volume.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #21

DiGiKerot — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:26:26 +0000

Oh, Xenoglossia, how I loved you more than the rest of the internet combined...

BURNING with iM@S NERD RAGE!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:00:47 +0000

So, apparently, Miki was rather upset with Producer-san, feeling that he wasn't paying her enough attention. As a result, in a SHOKKU! move, she's jumped ship from 765 Pro to join Project Fairy, the idol unit put together by rival production studio 961 Pro. So, yeah, they've come out and explained the reasoning behind Miki not being in the character roster for the PSP iM@S games - she's going to be your idols rival in the Missing Moon version of the game (whilst the other two have new-but-not-really-new characters). I guess it cements Missing Moon as the best version of the game to get, but I'm really not sure how I feel about Miki not being a playable character. I'm imagining that this "rival" feature is something they've put in to balance out the lack of online modes in the game, and as an idea it seems pretty good, but I just kind of wish it wasn't, well, Miki. It kind of fills me with a righteous sense of fanboy rage. It'd be nice to think that she'd be an unlockable, but, well, I'm not counting on it. It'll be curious to see how they work all this into the larger iM@S canon with the drama and vocal CDs. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Missing Moon edition doesn't end with some kind of reconciliation with Miki, as unless they are writing her out, it doesn't really make sense to separate her from the rest of 765 Pro for too long - whilst I'm sure we'll get a bunch of Project Fairy CDs, it seems to me that it'll limit their CD options in the long run. Plus, you know, Evil Miki is kind of lame.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #22

DiGiKerot — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:41:02 +0000

Mmmmm, bloody.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #23

DiGiKerot — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:17:23 +0000

No further comments required.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #24

DiGiKerot — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:14:12 +0000

Poor Tamaki, or poor Kaguya?

Zaregoto Book 1 - The Kubikiri Cycle

DiGiKerot — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:02:24 +0000

An apathetic teenager referred to only as "Ii-chan" is dragged to the lavish island resort of the wealthy-but-exiled Akagami Iria by his genius-engineer friend Kunagisa Tomo. Whilst Kunagisa is happy to spend all her time in her room with her computers, Ii-chan, remarkable only in the extremity of both his apathy and his bad memory, finds himself with only a a smattering of other geniuses (and some cute maids) for company. His boredom is shattered, however, when someone mysteriously loses their head. Yup, it's a murder mystery. Actually, this first instalment of the Zaregoto does an awful lot right. As far as mystery central to the story goes, it's not really all that difficult to figure out much of the bigger picture, even if some of the minutiae aren't so obvious. I'd rather like to think that was the point - it's all "locked door" type situations, but with most of the cast being of the excessively intelligent variety, they spend an awful lot of time over-thinking things that should, perhaps, of been obvious round in circles. It's part of the fun of the book, really. At this point in time, mystery novels are all very trite and cliched, so Nisioisin has wisely chosen to focus things back onto the characters. Speaking of characters, can I just say how refreshing it is to have a book where the heroine is personable without being tsundere? Anyway, what's tends to be more engaging than them sitting around figuring out who the murderer is, is the characters sitting around trying to figure out exactly what Ii-chan ticks. We're dribbled information about his past, but are given little concrete about him and what has led to someone who is clearly quite intelligent in his own right to be so passive and nonchalant about everything. Everyone in the cast seems to have their own opinions on him(some of them bordering on the slightly extreme side), but Ii-chan seems quite happy to agree with often conflicting opinions. Precisely what's driving the curiously co-dependant relationship between Kunagisa and Ii-chan is possibly the most interesting mystery of the novel (and something I suspect the series will be revisiting a lot in future volumes). Otherwise, it's all the same kind of humorous exchanges we tend to get in all these light novels. The dialogue doesn't quite sparkle as much as in books like Gosick, but it's mostly pretty good. The characters are just the right degree of quirky without reaching the point of annoyance, so that's all good. There are a few nitpicks, though - Demian picked up on the biggest one - the dialogue frequently doesn't attribute speech to the speaker. Every line of dialogue starts on a new line, but there's no indication as to whether it's the same speaker or someone else. It can be infuriating at times. Ultimately, you just have to accept that it probably doesn't matter all that much - it's literally impossible to figure it out on some occasions. If that's going to drive you nuts, you'd better stay away. I presume that in the original Japanese text much have made it more obvious, through either it's formatting or through the use of gender specific pronouns or something, but that's not really the case hear. Otherwise, the prose is occasionally a bit on the clunky side. The books written entirely in the first-person, narrated by Ii-chan, and as with any first-person book I expect the narration to be a little rambling at times. I'm willing to cut these things a lot of slack for that reason. The thing is, some of this book I just found a little too difficult to parse, resulting in me having the re-read chunks of text in order to get my head around them. The lack of any credit for an editor on the book, combined with the slightly clunky prose and dialogue issues, makes me wonder if an editor even looked at the book before publication. I don't doubt the accuracy of the translation, but a little bit of polish would have went a long way here. All that said, none of that is so bad as too effect my enjoyment of the book too dramatically - it's the kind of thing that, if I scored these reviews, might cause me to drop half a point rather than a full one. I should qualify that, regardless of any issue I might have with the English adaptation, I did find this a difficult book to put down - entertaining enough that I allowed it to eat into the time that I'd allotted to doing other things (like watching anime). It's a good deal longer that a lot of these light novel releases as well. Ultimately, despite the niggles, it's recommended reading, and my pre-order for the second book is in already.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #25

DiGiKerot — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:15:28 +0000

Justifying the features name?

Sayoko the Combat Maid #26

DiGiKerot — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:02:46 +0000

Or maybe you've just missed the festival altogether? (You know, the more I think about it, the more I think this is more depressing than it is humorous ^^;) (Oh, and to whoever added me to the blogroll at Yukan!, yes, I do use a Wacom tablet, though I'll point out that the degree of wonkiness in my *cough*art*cough* tends to be inversely proportionate to to degree which I've sketched things on paper first)

Hinano Releases RenAi Blogger Game

DiGiKerot — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:17:29 +0000

As you are no doubt really fed up of hearing about by now, Hinano has released her long-awaited Blogger-themed visual novel RenAi Blogger. I figured I'd post about it anyway, though - I know from experience that you really can't underestimate the amount of work that goes into even a short game, particularly when you are writing and doing all the art assets yourself. The fact that she has managed to maintain enough interest in the project to complete over a period of somewhere in the region of four months is something that deserves kudos. Also, I'm probably the only one who's done their own art for their post ^^; As for thoughts on the game, well, you've probably played it already. It's a fun way to kill and hour or two. the Natsuko path was probably the one which amused me the most, simply because I find lolicon gags in these games way, way, way more amusing than I probably should. The Hinano path of full of lulz too. As for negatives, well, Jen kind of looks a bit odd in some of her profile shots. This probably wouldn't be something I'd notice if it wasn't for the fact that she seems to be missing half her skull on the title screen ^^; I realise that she isn't actually missing part of her skull, and that it's just part of the images layout, but it just kind of looks strange to me there. Oh, and if I was really nitpicking things, there's some minor inconsistencies in the costumes between the CGs and the in-game slates (merely mentioned because I started to get really confused when trying to check some of the costume elements ^^;). Crap, the negative paragraph now looks longer than my other comments, which really wasn't the intention here ^^; By the way, can anyone enlighten me as to what those letters along the base of the text window are for? I have absolutely no idea myself ^^;

Sayoko the Combat Maid #27

DiGiKerot — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:22:56 +0000

The Secret of Lulus Tactical Genius Revealed?

Sayoko the Combat Maid #28

DiGiKerot — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:00:09 +0000

Karen must have a really, really big bladder...

Gurren Lagann Volume 2

DiGiKerot — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:24:29 +0000

Author asks "isn’t tomorrow the street date for v.2?". Well, that's today now, and indeed it is. That said, the online retailers were shipping it out around a week ago, thus explaining how my copy turned up here in good ol' Blighty yesterday. I've only had the chance to check out the first of the two disks thus far, but the first thing that struck me was that they've subbed the OP (and some insert songs) on this volume. What's kind of odd about it, as is evidenced by the screengrab at the top of the post, is that they've subbed all the songs entirely in lower case. Not really a problem, but it's kind of strange. Stranger, perhaps, is the fact that they neglected to subtitle the ED as well. There's little else to say about it, really. It's Gurren Lagann, on DVD.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #29

DiGiKerot — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:05:28 +0000

Lazy Comic is Lazy?

Sayoko the Combat Maid #30

DiGiKerot — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:22:23 +0000

Look behind you, perhaps? Though I do wonder how she got up all those stairs...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #31

DiGiKerot — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:09:07 +0000

Errr, yeah, the Zombie probably has a better idea about raising the dead...

Random CG Effects #2: Maria-sama ga Miteru

DiGiKerot — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:00:40 +0000

I bet you were thinking I was going to pick on the CG rosarios in the OP sequence - well, think again. The first season of MariMite has something that definitely trumps Kanons rubber ducky - a CG card. Yes, it's a red rectangle, which rotates around a little. How exciting! All joking aside, I really like MariMite. I mean, I know it's pretty much a whole series of non-events, but it's all so, well, lovely and pleasant, not to mention surprisingly funny (if unintentionally on occasion). As for what prompted this post, well, I received the first R1 set a few days ago - the same day as the second volume of Gurren Lagann, amusing as they are pretty much as different as you could get. in terms of content, though both are presently receiving low-cost, subtitle-only releases. Actually, there's a couple of points worth making about the MariMite release. Curiously, there's two different subtitle tracks - the standard one, and a second "with honorifics" version. The differences are marginally larger than just honorifics - it reverts some of the name flipping in the regular subtitle track, and things like "Onee-sama" are kept as is rather than attempting an English variant. A little weeabooish, maybe, but nice of them to do it (and it was the track I ended up defaulting to). Also kind of curious, but very much appreciated, is the fact that they spread the thirteen episodes over four DVDs. They are only single layer DVD5s, but when you are only dealing with three or four episodes, one audio track and only around five minutes of bonus material on the first, it's more than generous enough. It just strikes me as a little odd when other studios seems to be trying to minimize the size of cheap sets, presumably as in order to reduce the transport and storage costs associated. As a contrast, Funimations release of the second half of Aquarion (a show which sports Kawamori at his most crack-tastic - it's hilariously brilliant and utterly trashy simultaneously) split it's thirteen episodes across two dual-layer DVDs, as opposed to the first set being spread across the three. Given there's more extras (forty-odd minutes according the the box) and two audio tracks on the DVDs, as well as loosing two gigs worth of storage space compared to MariMite, it does suffer on the technical side as a result, but it's half the size and half the weight of the MariMite release. Must surely be cheaper to ship out to retailers, not to mention having a smaller in-store footprint. Not that I really have much of a point here, I'm just surprised they didn't try to stick MariMite on three disks instead of four. Not that I'm complaining about the fact that we got a higher quality release, it just seems to be contrary to the way the industry has been going R1 side recently. On a lighter note, Yoshino is definitely my favourite character in MariMite. It's not really like me, but I was kind of tempted just to make this entire post screengrabs of her - I consider her character design to be pretty much the most lovely and perfect character design in all of animedom ever. By the way, the first season of MariMite also contains, between it's last two episodes, what I consider to be one of the most brilliant cliffhangers (and resolutions) ever to be committed to film - yes, even better than that episode of Macross 7 where Mylene almost fell off a ladder before the adbreak. I guess that makes this following series of images something of a spoiler, in so-much as you can actually spoil MariMite (which, given how uneventful the first season is, isn't really an easy thing to do - there's very little to spoil). It's short-handed just the tiniest bit, but that's pretty much how it transpires - it literally happens in the last second of episode twelve, and is resolved before the OP sequence of the thirteenth. Genius. And just a little more Yoshino, from one of the omake featurettes, before closing this post.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #32

DiGiKerot — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:29:42 +0000

You just know he does...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #33

DiGiKerot — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:17:28 +0000

Oh, Shirley... Of course, certain recent Geass-universe events may make this feature hard to sustain in future...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #34

DiGiKerot — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:56:29 +0000

More useful than a flightsuit?

My-ZHiME Sifr #2

DiGiKerot — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:59:16 +0000

Despite the popularity and the generally positive reception of the first episode, I've not actually seen all that much written about this second episode of the latest My-* franchise instalment. I can't particularly say that it really surprises me - a large part of it has to come down to the rather protracted release schedule. It's taken practically six months since the previous episode for this volume to find it's way into my hands. Whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that they've lost the interest of the audience, I do know a few people who simple won't watch any of it until the last episode is out because of this. Those kind of waits are pretty painful for good shows, after all. That said, I think the big problem that this episode just doesn't give anyone much to write about, which is precisely the problem I'm facing here. That isn't to say that it's actually bad, it's just that after the first episodes heady mix of action, combat maids and musical plagiarism, it's all a little unspectacular. Much of the episode is really spent filling the characters on things that we, the audience, are already aware of, and there isn't really all that much advancement in plot - Rena meets the Shirow, who is presumably Arikas father (making Rayte - Sunrises new fangled romanisation for Reito - her Uncle), the Columns make their move, Miyu shows up and Rena gets her new GEM. It's all done with the same wit and charm as the first OAV, to the level which the series hasn't really seen since the first quarter of ZHiME TV, but it simply lacks the slickly animated pyrotechnics you'd expect from such a short OAV series - it's not like you can build much of a story in three episodes, after all. Still, in the last five minutes it starts to come together, as we get get Elliot and Miyu trying on a upgraded M-9. It's the same kind of super-powered fisticuffs we saw towards the end of the first episode, and infinitely better done than anything in ZHiME TV outside of the first few episodes, but the fight scene itself is a little too on the short side. When all is said and done, all this episode ends up doing is setting things up for what will, hopefully, be a pretty spectacular finale. There's nothing really worth saying about the DVD release, other than one point of amusement - it's not S.ifr related, but the advert their sticking on Sunrise DVDs for Xenoglossia is pretty hilarious, being naught but a constant bombardment of service-shots.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #35

DiGiKerot — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:11:52 +0000

With the way Lulu was flailing his hands, you'd think he really had been playing a rhythm game whilst piloting his Knightmare...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #36

DiGiKerot — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:41:48 +0000

What? Making a Hayate reference for once? Who'da thunk it?

Sayoko the Combat Maid #37

DiGiKerot — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:58:31 +0000

Oh, Lulu, you're so useless... (Okay, I've got NO idea why this post suddenly had all it's content disappear...)

A Look at the Code Geass R1s

DiGiKerot — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:19:38 +0000

By which I mean Code Geass on R1 DVD, as in America (and Canada), as opposed to the first season of Code Geass. Though these DVDs are of the first season, so I guess the title is kind of true in both cases. I guess this is going to get confusing, but unless I specifically say otherwise, any mention of R1 and R2 within is purely in reference to the DVD regions, not the shows seasons. Just so it's clear, y'know ^^; Anyway, my LE version of the first two R1 volumes of Code Geass turned up a few days ago. It's a double-dip, given I've already got the R2s, but that seems about par for the course for me with any Sunrise title these days, and, frankly, I love this show far, far too much. The LE's something like $35 more than the bundle of the first two DVDs you can buy (or $25 more than buying them individually), but whilst the regular releases come with nothing which isn't on the disks, the LE does come with a bunch of tat. It's half-decent tat this time as well. I mean, I've skipped the other recent Bandai uber-excessive releases - I'm not a big enough fan of Haruhi to have double-dipped on the US release of the show, but I have no need for a ribbon or a Haruhi-ism iron on, and coronet screen-wipe and seifuku T-shirt from Lucky Star seemed kind of worthless. The Geass pack-ins are less about being usual worthless tat, and more about the actual show, which is rather a nice change of pace. Anyway, the artbox everything is crammed into is a nice sturdy affair. It doesn't sport the same kind of excesses as Haruhi or even Lucky Star - there's only proper artwork on the two sides of the box (and an image of Zero that no-one will ever see inside), there's no compartment for your CDs like with Haruhi, and there's only the one "door" on it, held in place by being a near-fit, rather than with any magnetic jiggery-pokery. That's fine, though - it holds my DVDs, it's not too fiddly to get into, doesn't take up too much extra shelf space, and it's not like you can look at more than one side of it at once. Inside the box you get the two DVD volumes (the first nine episodes), translations of the booklets which came with the first three R2 volumes (though, in terms of actual episode counts, this release covers most of R2 volume 4 as well), the CLAMP character sketches book that came with R2 volume 1 (curiously recoloured Blue for no reason I can ascertain - other than the fact that they've translated the comments, the content is otherwise identical to it's Japanese counterpart), the first volume of the manga (different, and probably the least interesting thing here - I hear their switching to Knightmare of Nunnally for the third release, though), the first OST and the first Sound Stage CD. The Sound Stage CD is likely to be the most dividing aspect of this release, but it does make it evident that Bandai have put a lot of effort into this release. Technically, it's the content from the first two Japanese Sound Stage CDs, but they've been stripped of the character songs and, more significantly they've re-recorded it in English. I can tell you that I've listened through it a few times, that it's rather well done, it's pretty funny (well, aside from the young Suzaku stuff, which is more depressing) and whoever is playing Tamaki in English is awesome, but that doesn't really give it any more value to those who have absolutely no interest in watching the show in anything other than Japanese. Well, I don't really have any interest in watching the show dubbed, though not so much that I don't mind listening to the CD dubbed, but this is likely to be completely useless to a portion of those who'd be looking to buy this release. Probably a shame, as some of the content is pretty interesting, and not really covered in the anime to any great length. It is kind of spoilerish for those who haven't seen the series already, though, as it does go up to around episode 15 in terms of content. The booklets are pretty sweet. Aside from a couple of sketches in the first booklet that have, bizarrely, lost their colour for the R1 booklet, the content is identical to what was in the R2 booklets. There's a mixture of the usual design sketches, some episode summaries and comments, staff interviews with the likes of writers Ichirou Ohkouchi and Hiroyuki Yoshino, some brief lessons on the history of the shows universe and, best of all, the epic Sayokos Journal, in which everybody's favourite Combat Maid displays a surprising lack of common sense as she gets completely the wrong idea about Lelouche. The booklets are only around a dozen pages each, but they add infinitely more value to the release than any number of T-shirts. It's kind of a shame to think that this kind of thing is fairly par for the course for R2 Sunrise releases - they aren't quite as extensive content-wise, but the R2 releases of My-HiME, My-ZHiME and Xenoglossia all came with similar booklets as well. It's a shame that we have to consider this as having been an extra effort R1 side, but then Japan do tend to pay an awful lot more. That's the R1 booklet up top, and the R2 one below. Where's the colour gone? There's not really much to say about the OST - it's the OST. It'd cost you something like $25 to import separately from Japan, which makes this set seem like a little better value. The manga I've not bothered to read yet, so I've only just quickly scanned though it. It's one of those similar-yet-different manga adaptations. I guess it's more interesting than reading a straight conversion, but it's not out-there enough for it to be something I feel is worth reading. They have, at least, kept the colour pages. They are releasing the manga volumes independently to the DVDs as well, though. As for the on-disk DVD extras (as in the extras you'd get to see if you didn't splurge on the LEs), it's marginally better than most R1 releases. You get the picture-book shorts from the first three R2 releases here, and they've also included the audio commentaries from the Japanese DVDs. They only had audio commentaries for one episode a volume R2-side, but with the way the episodes have landed on the R1 disks you actually get four of them here. The audio commentaries are, well, entertaining I guess. I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying they are particularly interesting, as they are pretty rambling and unfocused, but there is at least a nice spread of production staff and voice cast across the episodes. Honestly, I'd rather have more from the production staff than the voice cast - which is pretty much the opposite to the way the conversation ends up skewing - but it's better than nothing. There's two disappointments with this release. Firstly, they didn't use the great CC cover from the second R2 volume. They did use it on the cover of the slipcase for the non-LE volume 1 and 2 bundle, but for the standard DVD covers they used the Lulu one from R2#1 and the Suzaku one from R2#2. I guess they figured they'd be shifting the most units of the 1+2 bundle, and as such gave that one the most attractive cover. It's not like you can see the individual DVD cases inside of the artbox... The other disappointment is a bit more significant - that is, the second disk is kind of breaky. Well, I've heard a couple of complaints about the first disk as well, but those are rather less widespread. It's hard to tell how widespread the issues with the second disk are - whether it's just a case of those with working copies being rather less vocal about the matter - but many of those who have the release have been reporting the same, consistent problems pointing towards some corrupted data on the disk. There's some suggestion that it's a result some kind of copy protection gone awry, but it's not been confirmed. In any case, the degree to which you see the issues is dependant largely on how your DVD player copes with corrupted data. Less resilient players are likely to crash entirely. In my case, there were about a half-dozen points in the disk where the video broke out into macroblocking for a few frames, coupled with a slight jump in audio, plus two slightly longer pauses which caused jumps in the video elsewhere on the disk. The two pauses seem to be fairly consistent across just about every report I've heard, at the exact same moments at which I've suffered them. The disk does, at least, run all the way though for me. (Oh, and it's not really a disappointment as such, but the masters used for the R1 release are a variant of the cleaned-up R2 DVD masters without the Pizza Hut logos, though Cheese-kun is still there). It's a shame for an otherwise solid release to be suffering such problems, really. Not much use for me, being a foreigner who isn't supposed to be buying the US release anyway, but I do believe Bandai have a replacement program running already. It's a bit early for anyone to have received their replacements, so it's unknown as to whether those are, indeed, corrected, or if they display the same issues. As for the actual show, going back and rewatching early episodes of Geass is an experience somewhat akin to going back and re-watching early episodes of The Simpsons - the writing is a little more solid, true, but things are just slightly off enough to feel odd. The voices haven't quite settled in for one thing, but the thing I couldn't help but find kind of distracting is precisely how much softer the character art looks in these episodes - and I don't just mean in comparison to the shows second season. It was funny going through the R2 disks of the first season again, and watching the character art getting increasingly pointier (and, frankly, better looking), and more consistent, as the show went along. Episodes 24 and 25, the finale double-bill, look pretty much the same as the show does in the second series. It's almost the opposite of a lot of anime productions in that things improved visually as the show went along.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #38

DiGiKerot — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:59:01 +0000

Not-not-Undead, perhaps, or is that too double-negative-tastic? Reasonable suggestions are welcomed....

Sayoko the Combat Maid #39

DiGiKerot — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:23:09 +0000

Why else would he be there? I should really kill this feature off around now, or at least cull the frequency a bit. I never really intended to do more than five of them in the first place, and I kind of feel that it's preventing me from searching for more paradigms to envelope, or whatever the saying is.

Fall 2008 Comments

DiGiKerot — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:09:47 +0000

THAT posted their typically epic Fall 2008 preview yesterday. It's pretty long, but worth a scan at least. I do wish they'd have included ANN as well as the official website links where appropriate - it would have saved me a few minutes per series checking the production staff - but that's just me being lazy. Anyway, I figured I'd chime in with some assorted comments where I felt it was appropriate, but it's starting to get a little difficult to do so without posting something which, ultimately, just sounds like every other season preview I've posted, only with the series names switched. For one thing, about a third of the list consists of sequels - is it really, really worth anything something about the likes of Gundam 00 or Ef? If you liked the previous seasons, than you'll probably at least want to try the follow ups. If you've not seen the originals, then there's little point in it. But you didn't really need me to tell you that. Then you have those shows that sound, if not exactly like shows we've seen before, the at least highly derivative. JC Staffs output this upcoming season seems particularly bad - I realise, based on comments I've heard relating to the novels, that I'm probably doing Magical Index a great disservice, and ToraDora doesn't having anything of the arcane in it, but I'll be damned if their upcoming titles don't sound exactly like the same shows they've been making for the last four or five years. Not that I'm saying that this is particularly bad - the prospect of ToraDora has met with some enthusiasm over that THAT, I've heard good things about Magical Index in text form, and you'd at least think that JCS would get increasingly competent given that there's a certain amount of retread. I'm sure that when I actually see the shows I'll probably enjoy them to at least some degree. Whilst I don't think that JCS has made anything spectacular outside of their late-night jousei in recent years, I do think that their output tends to at least be floating slightly above the average, and these are likely to at least be "good". The fact is, though, it's just really hard for me to build up any degree of enthusiasm for the shows. If I'd read ToraDora or Magical Index it'd probably be a different matter, but just reading what others have been saying about them, they just don't sound like anything I should be particularly excited about, nor is there anything particularly interesting to say about them. They'll just probably be serviceable shows. The biggest dark horse of the upcoming season is probably Kannagi. From the series details in the THAT post, you'd be forgiven for wondering why I'm saying that - A1 Pictures, a fairly new studio, haven't exactly set the world alight with any of their previous works, and the series description, whilst the kind of thing that pretty much automatically gains at least some kind of fanbase, sounds like at least a good half-dozen other shows spanning not just recent years, but decades. The thing that they didn't really highlight at THAT, however, is the shows senior staff. The series director for this one is Yutaka Yamamoto, who, unfortunately for him, is probably best known as the guy who directed the unfunny episodes of Lucky Star (This is not a discussion on the point - I don't entirely agree with it, though I do think that first episode of Lucky Star is pretty dire). He's also the guy who put together the dance-tastic Lucky Star OP and Haruhi ED, as well as scripting and doing episode direction on a number of Haruhis better received episodes. He's clearly a guy with a keen eye for the kind of meme generation that went a great way towards thrusting Haruhi and Lucky Star to their stratospheric levels of popularity, and after what happened with Lucky Star he probably has a point to prove. Perhaps more significantly, though, you have Hideyuki Kurata scripting the show. His previous work, sporting the likes of RoD, Kamichu!, N&TH&T and GunXSword, has been pretty spectacular by my tastes, which makes it a really hard show for me to ignore despite what the fact that premise makes it sound like the kind of thing I'd normally give a wide berth. I played the game version of Tales of the Abyss a couple of months ago. The story was pretty badly paced and not really all that interesting beyond some well-signposted twists, though some of the characters were fun. It's pretty hard to see it making a particular good anime series without re-writing great chunks of thing, though - the Tales games get away with mediocre writing by having some of the best dungeon design in the genre, and the writing in Abyss frequently felt like nothing more than a long winded excuse to get you into those dungeons. If they really, really strip-down the narrative, they may well be left with a solid core for an adventure series, but I'm not really holding my breath - twenty-six episodes sounds like a stretch. As for the other shows airing, there's some interesting titles among them, but there's little you can really say about those beyond who's producing them - Linebarrel looks like a Gonzo show, Kurozuka looks like a Madhouse show, Michiko to Hatchin looks like a Mangalobe show in as much as you really can't tell what it'll be like until you actually see it, and likewise for Shikabane Hime and Gainax. I don't think I've read the manga for any of the other manga adaptations (I simply don't have the time or energy to read as much as some people seem to). I'm sure I'm doing all these shows a disservice by being so flippant about it, and that there'll be at least one great show among them, but I really have absolutely nothing to say about them that you wouldn't be able to ascertain from looking at the pictures on their websites for a few seconds.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #40

DiGiKerot — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:41:57 +0000

ZOMG! Continuity?

Nanoha Finally Solicited for R1

DiGiKerot — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:53:59 +0000

As spotted in a news update over at ~~AoD~~ Mania, the Geneon/Funimation distribution deal has finally seen the first season of Nanoha solicited for the R1 market, released as a complete set coming on the 11th of November for a not-really-all-that-bad price of $60. I'd kind of expected the series to come out as single volumes first, having been unreleased previously, not to mention that I'm pretty sure it's been dubbed as well, but I guess someone at Funimation managed to persuade Geneon that it wasn't such a good idea. I guess As' will follow suit early next year. Oh, and the first season of Zero no Tsukaima hits a week earlier, with pretty much the same deal, but obviously not half as awesome. There's finally a release date for Darker Than Black as well, though that's getting the singles treatment first.

Mikan Watch #12: Magical Girl Pretty Sammy

DiGiKerot — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:18:29 +0000

Proving that this Mikan box thing isn't new, this one is going back a bit - to 1996 for the first TV adaptation of Pretty Sammy, released in the US as Magical Project S (and no doubt now really hard to find), as opposed to the earlier OAV series or the more recent Magical Girls Club thing that Funimation are releasing pretty soon. Yup, this one goes back to those mythical days where shows were drawn on things called cels, coloured with something called paint, and had OP sequences which ended up looking like horribly grainy VHS transfers when they were re-released on DVD. I'm not much of a fan of Tenchi Muyo, actually. I tried the old OAVs back in the mid-nineties when they were new, and whilst they were enjoyable, I never really got the enthusiasm that a lot of the anime press of the time held for the series. I guess a lot of it came down to it being very different to a lot of the things we got in the UK back then (though we did get some really, really bizarre and niche things back then if you cared to look), but as far as old, milked to death AIC series of the 90s go, I've always been more of a El Hazard fan. As far as Pretty Sammy went, back in the day I only saw the first of the OAVs - it was alright, but the embarrassment generated by having a VHS cassette with Pretty Sammy emblazoned along the side on my shelf was a little more than my sixteen year-old self could take at the time, and I purchased no more. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that Pretty Sammy is actually surprisingly good, as far as monster-of-the-week shows go. I wouldn't go so far as to call it subversive, but it's all a very, very tongue-in-cheek take on the Magical Girl genre, and long-time readers will realise that I'm all over that stuff. After a few episodes, I actually paid attention to those credits in the OP sequence, I did notice something that went some way to explaining it's surprising quality - notice that second name under Series Structure? It's Hideyuki Kurata, who I actually mentioned the other day in relation to the forthcoming Kannagi, which he's scripting. I think it's the only Tenchi series he's worked on, so that may explain why it's the one I'm most favourable towards. Yousuke Kuroda is still working today as well, coincidently - he's still even working with Kurata on Hellsing Ultimate. His back-catalogue is rather less consistent than Kurata (Ground Defense Force Mao-chan isn't that great), but the good outweighs the bad overall. All that said, the show is very, very 90s. At worst, some of the voice acting verges on ear-bleedingly shrill, but generally it's show just feels a little messy. It's not really hard to watch, but it's more than a little odd to watch going back from the rather more slickly composed modern efforts. The character designs take a while to get readjusted to from modern designs as well. On another note, unrelated to Pretty Sammy and Mikan boxes as such, but related to spotting random visual memes in anime, I noticed this in an episode of xxxHolic the other day. Author was talking about how it was strangely common to see people using knives with break-off blades in anime in IRC the other day (I missed the start of the discussion, but I presume it was related to his later post on Hidamari), though the only example we could really think of at the time was Noein. When I saw this blade, I couldn't help but immediately think "Oh, I've got to screen cap that!", and have just been waiting for a suitable excuse to post it. My worry here is that this is yet another thing that'll end up distracting me whilst watching anime - I already end up pausing and rewinding shows every time I think I see mikan box (which, more often than not, I haven't), and tend to pay too much attention to what juice-boxes people are drinking in shows (strawberry flavour is surprisingly common when they aren't making jokes about particular flavours, as with the Peach Sludge in Air, or Yues crazy selections in Negima). Now I'm going to be distracted ever time I see someone wield a small blade in anime, and am going to be pulled out of the show as a result. Thanks, Author :P (Coincidently, if you are wondering why I was watching Pretty Sammy, it's part of my backlog of old Geneon releases I picked up back then they closed their operations a while back. I've got pretty much the whole Tenchi back-catalogue there, but I went with Pretty Sammy because I actually though it was the show in my in-pile with the highest choice of having a Mikan box in it. No, really).

Sayoko the Combat Maid #41

DiGiKerot — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:08:29 +0000

I hear that Nina is the only who really killed Aeris. Really. (Sorry if anyone was expecting something a little more relevant to more recent Geass-verse events, but I'm not even sure where to start with that...)

Product Usage in Yugen Kaisha

DiGiKerot — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:18:19 +0000

Through lack of having any significant quantity of more interesting content to watch, I've been continuing to go back through all of those old 90s Pioneer series I've got lying around. Last night it was the turn of Yugen Kaisha (Phantom Quest Corp. R1 side, though I'm using the weeaboo-esque title since I think it sounds a little doofy), a 1994 OAV series about an alcoholic karaoke addict who battles demons with a tube of lipstick (which, admittedly, turns into a lightsabre). There no real over-arching plot to it or anything, but it really is shocking good. I'd seen a couple of episodes ten years or so ago, but I'd completely forgotten just how good the animation was. I'd say it was worth tracking down and all that, but I suspect that's probably not a trivial task these days. What really surprised me, coming from modern shows where, aside from Pizza Hut, it's rare to see actual product names used in shows is exactly how many brand names are actually seen spread throughout the show. Given that modern shows are likely to rename something subtly (or not-so-subtly, in the case of "Starjackass Coffee"), seeing something rendered in literally flashing lights was somewhat peculiar. This wasn't a isolated case, either, with there being a few other brand names being thrown around as well. The lead characters also drive remarkably well rendered (and animated) renditions of the classic Mini and VW Beetle. That said, there is a "Poloroid" camera in there ^^; Still, it is all rather strange. I can't imagine there having been and advertisement deals or the like being made in relation to it (it was an OAV series - they may have sold better in 1994, but it still wasn't exactly a prime advertising venue), so I guess they were just rather more flippant about it back then. On a completely unrelated note, by the way, I was kind of amused to see this as one of the omake featurettes for the Pretty Sammy TV show (baring in mind we are talking about a 1996-97 vintage here). Bizarre coincidence, I'm sure, but I do wonder if there's a common touch point somewhere.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #42

DiGiKerot — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:47:37 +0000

The alternate version ended with M. Night Shyamalan proclaiming "What A Twist!"

Mikan Watch #13:Kujibiki Unbalance

DiGiKerot — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:45:25 +0000

Just when I didn't think I'd find time nor reason to make a post today, I was saved by the most unreliable of features. I'd been watching some El-Hazard this morning (which was prompted by slightly more than my current inclination to watch old anime, but that's a subject for another post at some point) when I was suddenly stricken with an urge to go see Hellboy II (Not bad - probably the second best movie I've seen this year behind Speed Racer, but I've not been to see much this year). On arrival home afterwards, I found a couple of boxes had arrived, so after checking to see if Author had made a post about MariMite as he suggested he was about to, I ended up delving into those rather than returning to 90s OAV goodness. From the new arrivals, there's not much to say about Black Lagoon other than it been awesome, despite it being one of the first of Geneons titles to hit from the Funimation deal (largely because the disks have clearly been sitting around in a storage facility for the last year). I'm undecided as to whether its worth saying anything about the new Negima OAV (sorry, OAD). I did get the last volume of Simoun, which Jeff has been writing about again, but I've not yet cracked open the first disk of the show. That's a project for the upcoming weekend, I guess. So I, errr, ended up watching the last volume of Kujibiki Unbalance - the TV version, rather than the old OAVs, of course. I get the feeling I'm repeating myself here, but whilst the show clearly isn't the greatest thing in the history of anime (and I probably wouldn't have bothered ever seeing it if I hadn't wanted Genshiken), it's got a really bad rep that it really doesn't deserve. I suspect it's mostly a result of the first episode having repulsed people by neither being the show people wanted or expected coming out of the old OAVs, eschewing the over-the-top parody of shonen and harem series tropes in favour of something, if no less of a parody, then rather more sedate. Having gone in aware of the fact, I found the whole thing pretty enjoyable. Not great, not really worth making any huge effort to track down, but certainly not something I regret sinking any time into. There's other, similar shows with far bigger fanbases which are certainly worse, at the very least, but I'm not going to pretend to understand how anime fandom works. Oh, and if you hadn't realised, it's actually the same box as appears ontop of the fridge in the Genshiken clubroom.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #43

DiGiKerot — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:02:13 +0000

We all hate you, Racist-tan. Well, maybe not - it may well just be some of the forums I frequent, but even prior to the Great Table Culling, Nina was just about the only universally disliked character in Geass in the parts of the 'net I frequent.

Sayoko the Combat Maid #44

DiGiKerot — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:19:25 +0000

It's probably about time Nina branched out - I don't think there are many tables left, anyway.

Faust #1

DiGiKerot — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:56:59 +0000

It's been some time in coming, but a couple of weeks ago, Del Rey released the first volume of the English version of Kodanshas literary anthology Faust. Featuring a hotch-potch of short prose stories, shorter prose stories and short stories in manga form, this English edition pulls content from a number of prolific authors from across not only the Japanese volumes of Faust, but also from other Kodansha published titles. The volume starts off, somewhat unfortunately, with something of an unexpected misstep from Zaregoto author Nisioisin, in the form of a chapter from his xxxHolic tie-in novel (to be published in full in October). It's not a bad story, per se, but I think it suffers from the fact that I actually read xxxHolic. As a story, it's not sufficiently removed in style or content from the originating manga - it's the same kind of tale that anyone who reads xxxHolic will be familiar with already. When the time comes for the book to spend some ten pages explaining indepth what has transpired, those familiar with the source will undoubtedly just be groaning as what has been plainly obvious to them for a while is laid out in excruciating detail. I rather suspect that those with no prior experience with xxxHolic will get more out of it - there's enough explanation of the series set-up for them not to be completely lost - but at the same time I wonder if any of them would bother reading it. For those who are familiar, it just doesn't add anything to the whole xxxHolic experience, neither being an interesting story or, being a tie-in novel, bringing anything of any importance to the continuity. Nisioisin does, however, manage to redeem himself at the other end of the volume, having penned the story for a short manga illustrated by Loveless author and Gundam 00 character designer Yun Kouga. After School: 7th Class is the story of weapons developer who has become disenchanted with the futility of his work, who is suddenly made the warden of the ludicrously named source of his disenchantment - Snowdrop Buck Pinpointmind. Bound and incarcerated in a prison of her own design under charges of treason, her previous eleven wardens were driven to suicide when they realised that no matter what they came up with, Snowdrop had probably already surpassed it. It's basically just thirty pages of people talking, but it's a riveting thirty pages as it's really not clear as to whether this latest warden will join the other eleven in death, or somehow come through it all. Getting back to the prose stories, the second of the book is Outlandos D'Amour, by Boogiepop author Kouhei Kadono. It's the story of Koryo Kunio, a man who was found in a construction site as a child and possesses not only the ability to sense the "fractures" on people, but also the alarming tendency to inadvertently cause strange things to happen under dangerous circumstances. Except it's really about the fact that he gets married to a girl he falls in love with a first sight, only for him to find himself unsure how to handle her social ineptness. It's not anything you'd consider humorous - don't confuse the set-up for any kind of rom-com - yet it proves itself unexpectedly charming despite it's tone, and the content is interesting. The only real issue with the story is that it basically ends at the point where it's making the transition from being merely interesting, to being really interesting, but I'm under the impression (from the dialogue in this story and the titles of other short stories he's written) that Kadono wrote further related tales (beyond the fact that, somehow or other, this probably all ties back into Boogiepop) that we'll no doubt see assuming we get further volumes of Faust. Following on from Outlandos is Drill Hole in My Brain by Otaro Maijo, a story perhaps best described as "challenging" - in that the act of reading it made me feel like a moron. Drill Hole focuses on the delusions of a teenager who is, I'd assume, slowly dying from having a screwdriver embedded in his head by his mothers spurned lover. Delusions including Gorillas climbing out of young girls, errrm, underbits. Yeah. Whilst I wouldn't say it's not an enjoyable read, it's violence coupled with it's frequent, and often bizarre, erotic imagery does make it something of an uncomfortable read at times. the pre-amble to the title describes it as being "avant garde", and I spent much of the story wondering whether I was, moronically, missing some key point that would make everything going on suddenly make far more sense, or if it was all just being weird for the sake of being weird (and it is very, very weird). I eventually decided it was somewhere in between, and whilst the story never really fully clicked, it's hard not to respect the creativity and imagination the story is positively dripping in. Coincidently, Drill Hole is probably single-handedly responsible for the "16+" tag on the back of the book. The forth of the longer prose titles is probably my personal favourite of the volume - F-Sensei's Pocket, by Calling You and GOTH author Otsuichi. It's a story focusing on the juxtaposition of a real-life High School story and common manga tropes as two girls stumble upon Doraemons fourth-dimensional pocket. To begin with, the pair enjoy messing around with the assorted gadgets kept within, but then one of them goes off the rails and enacts a scheme straight out of a seventies comic book... Written in a first person style that's chatty and humorous without ever reaching the perhaps grating and overly rambling levels of the likes of Maid Machinegun, it's funny and devastatingly charming with just a hint of melancholy. Rounding up the main bulk of the prose titles is the first chapter of The Garden of Sinners (aka Kara no Kyoukai), by Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night author Kinoko Nasu. Its spends far more time banding around high-level concepts and meandering through the characters - neither of which may not hold up to any real scrutiny - then it does with actual events, but that's fine. I'm not entirely sure that isn't the point - people are always spouting illogical crap, so why should characters in novels? What they are saying speaks volumes about the characters, and Nasus work predominantly relies on strong character writing more than they do particularly good stories. Also, given that the core of Fate/Stay Night is basically the fact that Emiya is a muppet who spouts a whole load of nonsensical theories and ideals, I'm not convinced that Nasu didn't know what he was doing. That said, I think having seen the first of the Garden of Sinners movies, which was adapted from the chapter presented here, probably saved the prose version for me. Partially this is because I was listening to the OST whilst reading it, which certainly helped to set the right mood, but largely because it's all a little muddled. I don't think the fact that the story unfolds in a non-linear fashion would have caused me any real problems, but despite the fact that there's a awful lot of additional exposition provided here compared to what the movie version presented, there's a few key points to the proceedings that really aren't adequately conveyed. If I hadn't seen the movie, there's at least one thing of importance in terms of character motivation that I probably wouldn't have realised had occurred from what is said in the novel. Regardless, Garden of Sinners is an entertaining read, and a fairly positive way to round out the main portion of the books content. In addition to the chapter of the novel, there's also an interview with Kinoko Nasu and GoS/Tsukihime/FS/N artist Takashi Takeuchi on the subject of Garden of Sinners, the anime adaptations and book being released in English, which is a fairly interesting read. Following the main prose are a few shorter pieces of five or so pages. They're too short to be really worth going into here - the most ambitious is probably Yabai de Show, not because it's interesting, but because it's a story based entirely around puns which, despite the translators best efforts, was never likely to work regardless of how much effort was expended attempting to successfully render it in English. From the backend of the book, there are a number of short manga. I've already mentioned the most substantial of these - After School: 7th Class - but there are a few other running at around a half-dozen pages each. A word of warning about these, though - in my copy of Faust, everything other than After School is printed on colour pages, and are indeed really beautiful. They are also, however, duplicated on black-and-white pages, which suggests to me that they'll be dropping the colour plates after the first print run of the book. I can't say there would be any appeal to these pages if they weren't replicated in colour (being too short to be considered stories, the pretty art is the whole draw), so be cautious about waiting too long to purchase the book if you are interested. And that's it, Faust Volume 1. It's an uneven book, to be sure, but at the same time, it's an utterly fascinating, and far more substantial (in both size and content) than most of what we having been seeing published novel-wise in English. It's a bold move by Del Rey, and something that I can't help but applaud, and certainly one I hope to see continue.

Mikan Watch #14: Disgaea 3

DiGiKerot — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:58:19 +0000

I was unsure about it back when I played it in Japanese earlier in the year, but upon closer examination I've decided I can claim this one - it's small and upside-down, but it definitely has mikan in Hiragana in that block of text somewhere. Anyway, as you may have gathered from the fact that I'm posting about Disgaea 3, the arrival of the US release in the mail yesterday afternoon killed off any intentions I may have held to watch the second half of GaoGaiGar, all of Simoun or, indeed, partake of any activity which doesn't equate to watching the numbers popping up above the heads of little cartoon people getting progressively larger (by which I mean, playing Disgaea). Which is what I'm about to get back to doing. Before I go, a tip for the first-timers - Bows. Bows are ludicrously overpowered in this game. The second you hit The Strongest Crossroad in the first chapter, you want to be grinding a healer and a warrior of your preferred gender up to level 15 and getting yourself a couple of Archers.

NECO-CHARURU

DiGiKerot — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:15:17 +0000

BURURURURURURURURURU! It's taken me all day to figure out what Charles lunge reminded me of...

Beta-Waffle Third Anniversary

DiGiKerot — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:33:18 +0000

Next Page Yes, today marks the third anniversary of me making my first post in this little part of the interweb, over which time this blog has gone from an excuse to talk about figures and watch all those DVDs I bought and had no intention of ever watching, to an excuse to buy DVDs I would have never bought otherwise, to an excuse to (poorly) work out the creative frustrations I have no other release for, much to the misfortune of you, the readers. It's also kind of depressing that, after all this time, I still haven't decided what on Earth I'm going to do with the root of this domain. Ho-hum. Anyway, thanks (and commiserations) to all those who have stuck with my eclectic and inconstant blogging, which will undoubtedly continue in much the same fashion for the foreseeable future. Next Page Next Page Next Page

I've got "ZA POWA"!

DiGiKerot — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:45:50 +0000

I spent much of the latter half of last week watching through the second half of GaoGaiGar, an experience which proved equal parts awesome and painful - painful largely thanks to a particularly odd subtitling choice... I'm really not sure what to make of it - I had thought that maybe it was an odd mandate from Sunrise or something (stranger things have happened), but then the show has eye-catch cards like this... So I have to think that Media Blasters thought that "The Power" sounded kind of doofy for a phrase used so regularly throughout the last few episodes, and as such elected for the cute, weeaboo-esque alternative. Which I found really, really annoying. On a related note, I do wonder if ZA POWA had anything to do with Wakamotos interest in Jupiter in Code Geass...

Sayoko the Combat Maid #45

DiGiKerot — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:11:53 +0000

The curse of continuity strikes once again...

Random Wafflage: Sayoko and Other Stuff Edition

DiGiKerot — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:34:32 +0000

So, posts have been a little thinner on the ground this last week or so than they have been in other recent weeks, mostly due to the stalling on Sayoko. There's a couple of reasons for that stall. One is that I've just been really busy with other stuff - much of last week, as I've already mentioned, was spent watching the later half of GaoGaiGar and throwing together the 3rd Anniversary Comic, then there was playing Disgaea the weekend prior (cleared the story mode in about 17 hours), and I've been playing Psychonauts over the last couple of days. There's been a few IRL events that have gotten in the way as well, but I won't go into those. The other reason is that, well, Code Geass has kind of been hard for me to make fun of recently. I know that sounds like an odd statement, but the more ridiculous something gets, the hard it becomes for me - kind of an overwhelming sense of not really being able to top what the show is doing itself. Code Geass is doing a particularly spectacular job of putting me in that position at the moment. To be honest, I'm kind of itching to do something else with that time as well. I'm starting to get the urge to start on another RenPy project of some kind, for one thing. I'm not really sure what I'd do, exactly - I've thought about doing that magical girl game several times, but every time I draft something up, it gets to the point where it stops being parody and starts being, well, a generic magical girl story. That's no fun, really, and not the kind of thing I'd want to do. I've got a few ideas I could use for it, but I might save that for this years NaNoWriMo attempt. I had thought about Hikikomori Quest 2, but there was an RPG maker game that, by most reports, was pretty decent released pretty recently called Hikikomori Quest, and I'm quite happy to let them keep the name and never touch the thing again. Present thoughts are tending to something with weeaboos maybe... I guess I shouldn't ponder out loud, lest this turn into Hinano/RenAi Blogger-esque scenario whereby it becomes a chore-like obligation rather than fun. I don't really want to get in the position where people expect something out of me. But, yeah, Sayoko - it's difficult for me to find the time or the content for it recently. I guess just going incredibly random is an option for the later point, but largely I think this whole Sayoko thing has run it's course, anyway. If I think of anything and have the time I might still post something, but the time issue, with my big stack of backlogged games and DVDs (and Yakuza 2 being out in the US this week), is something I always find pressing ^^; Or I could just start back on the general purpose Meme comics... Right, enough of that, and on to other matters! God, Haruka was cute. Indeed, though as far as Xenoglossia goes, I'm an Iori fanboy. I wish I could say Ritsuko and go for the Game/Xenoglossia double-favourite thing, but she didn't get anywhere near enough screentime in Xenoglossia. I'm still kind of disappointed that the show never really took off among English fandom - it's a pretty sound example of a Sunrise show which didn't spectacularly trainwreck itself towards the end. It did have a lot stacked up against it, though - there was the whole game thing which caused a lot of people not to know what they were getting, and others to be repulsed at the changes, there was a certain degree of animosity from Code Geass fans bitter that Sunrise weren't producing it rather than going straight into Geass second season, and then there was a certain degree of "J.C. Staff Syndrome" - that is, it seemed a little too derivative of the other shows they'd been making at the time. Omni dropping his blog coverage was pretty much the last nail in it's coffin, and much of anime fandom fell into disinterest soon afterwards. I guess I should be thankful that it isn't the least popular Sunrise show of recent years - that award probably goes to Guy-HiME attempt Cluster Edge. I know it's not really as good as, say, Zegapain or My-HiME, but it's still a pretty damn decent show. I realise that me saying this isn't going to cause a bunch of people to out and watch the thing, but I'm entitled to a good moan every once in a while, surely? And, dammit, I really, really liked that show. Oh, and Author, Saber Lion is from Fate/Tiger Colosseum. I think they've just released a new version of that game, actually...

Funimation Invites Single Buyers Annoyance

DiGiKerot — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:40:33 +0000

In a move that has surprised absolutely no-one, its been confirmed that the just-released R1 boxset of the first season of Shana is including the OAV. For those wondering about the significance of this, the OAV wasn't part of Geneons original release of Shana - they'd announced they'd picked it up part-way through Shanas R1 release, and had announced that it would be released alongside an artbox for the storage of the other volumes (a trick they'd previously pulled with both Mahoromatics and Sugars specials). The intended release date ended up being just the other side of the date on which Geneon closed their distribution arm, meaning it never actually saw the light of day. But that doesn't mean that they hasn't finished mastering the disk, nor that they hadn't printed any copies of it. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if this release is actually using the artbox they'd been intending to put out in the first place. This move has, of course, frustrated a lot of those who had supported the initial release, being that the only way for them to now get a legal, R1 version of the OAV for them to spend $70 rebuying the rest of the series. I can't say it bothers me too much personally. It's essentially saved me from buying a disk I'd only really buy for completions sake and never actually watch - and given that there's no indication that there'll be an R1 release of the second season, it wouldn't really be complete anyway. Ultimately, it's been over a year since I've seen any Shana, a show which I considered pretty averaging already, and I'm pretty much over any interest I had in the series. This is probably why they aren't releasing this episode as a separate release now - it questionable how many people actually care enough about the series to actually buy that one episode now. It's even more questionable how much sense there would be for them to release a single episode at a premium price in a package that takes up seven DVDs worth of shelfspace, which is intended to house DVDs which haven't been in print for over a year. I can't really imagine many B&M stores even ordering a single copy in. They can get seven volumes of Gurren Lagann in that space. That said, this is just the latest in a series of actions from Funimation that has seen resentment towards the R1 behemoth grow among their core customer base, even if the decision on Shana probably originated at Geneon. They recently announced that they would be releasing Pumpkin Scissors as two half-series boxsets - this being a show that was previously seeing a release from ADV and was just one volume from completion. There's now a certain expectation that Red Garden and Welcome to the NHK will follow suit. Not that I expect any of this to result in anyone boycotting Funimation releases outright, but it is another nail in the coffin for the traditional single-disk release pattern, as there's very little confidence in it right now. With the last year having having seen companies shutting down mid-release, losing licenses (in the case of some studios and shows, twice during its run), the loss of dubs midway through a release and cheap re-releases coming not-too-long after some series have finished their release, there's more frustration involved in it than there is benefit these days. With Funimation already being fairly vocal about releasing things straight to box, you'd assume that they probably don't care, but they are still relying on singles sales to make bigger licenses like Darker than Black and Claymore profitable, not to mention the fact that many of the Geneon titles are being continued as singles. I would have thought that it would be in their best interests not to piss too many people off, even if it did result in taking a hit on a couple of volumes (I have to wonder if this is why Kanon is still seeing it's final volume being released separately - I can only imagine how much anger that one would have evoked had the single volume not have been released), but I guess they have spreadsheets to prove they are making the wisest choice here ^^;

Gurren Lagann Volume 3

DiGiKerot — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:52:18 +0000

Once again, any inclination I had to start watching those Simoun DVDs was cast aside yesterday as the final episodes of Gurren Lagann arrived, and were promptly watched. There isn't really anything I can say about it which hasn't been said at length, many, many times, and frequently more eloquently than I could manage, so I'm not going to expend any significant effort on that front. It was amazing, though. Still, I can talk about Bandai release a little. Remember how I said volume 1 had no song subtitles, and that volume 2 had OP and insert song subtitles, but entirely in lower case as with no ED subs? Well, Volume 3 uses those same OP subtitles, but in addition now has subtitles for the ED (though it is a different song to much of the previous volumes episodes), and these ones are all correctly capitalised. Not particularly interesting, I know, but it is a little odd. I'll also say that I managed to play both disks of this volume without any issues. Since the release of the somewhat problematic Code Geass disks not so long back, I've seen accusations of faulty disks levelled at pretty much every Bandai release from Lucky Star to Zegapain (the last volume of that played fine for me as well, coincidently). Whilst I'm not about to say that any of these people are lying - there's a few people who have reported issues who really aren't prone to exaggeration, and I think it's pretty clear by this point that Bandai have been having replicator issues recently, and the first disk of this release does cause my player to spin-up pretty quickly in places - I don't think it's anywhere near as widespread an issue as it is with Code Geass. It's not the first time Bandai have had duplication issues in recent months, though - the final episode of Gundam Seed Destiny refuses to play on my DVDs (I'm sure most would consider that a mercy, anyway), and there were issues with some Eureka 7 and ZHiME disks at some point as well. It has been said that Bandai is presently in the process of switching replicators, so hopefully this will become less of an issue in the future...

Legend of Galactic Heroes PC Game Demo

DiGiKerot — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:21:36 +0000

It probably won't do much for my otaku credentials (not that it's particularly a bad thing), but I have to admit that I've never seen a single episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Still, Insert Credit mentioned today that a demo of the new PC game has been released. I have to admit, the novelty of a non-doujin, non-porn PC game coming out of Japan was enough to tempt me into at least taking a look. It's an RTS and you move your little ships (well, your unit) around the map and shoot things. That's about all I can think of to say about it. The music is all nice and grandiose, but it's all a little slow going for me. It's not too difficult to get your head around if you don't read any Japanese - the icons pretty much do what they look like they would, and a little playing around should clear up the rest - but you may need to mess around with your Windows region settings to get the thing to run properly. You may also get more entertainment from it if you pretend you are playing Day of Sagittarius or whatever that game was in Haruhi or something. Or if you don't suck at RTS games.

Random Wafflage: When Did I Buy That? Edition

DiGiKerot — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:24:05 +0000

Four days since my last post? I guess it's time to warble on for a while as filler, then. There's not been much anime watching going on this week for me, really - I watched some Toward the Terra in the early half of the week, but I can't really think of anything to say about it. The US release of Yakuza for PS2 landed on my doorstep earlier in the week, so I've been playing that. It's fun, in so much that I've spent much of the day playing the host-club stuff rather than actually progressing the story. My copy of Vesperia has landed as well, me having learnt that the US version will play quite happily on my Asian 360. Guess that's a good-sized chunk of gaming for me to be getting on with (not that I really have a problem with that...) As a result, I've still not got around to watching Simoun yet. What a surprise that is, eh? I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Anyway, I've also started re-ripping all my CDs, a process which is proving to be alaramingly time consuming. The reason for this is that I've gone and ordered myself a new-model iPod Touch. The over-arching reason for this is that the battery in my present portable media device has degraded to the point where I'm only just getting a whole work day out of a full charge, which I'm taking as a sign that it's time to upgrade. As for why I'm getting a Touch opposed to, say, an equivalent (and probably more capable) Archos player is a combination of the physical size and, well, the fact that Touch plays games. Admittedly, most the games on the Touch look to be awful, and the touch-screen/accelerometer combination is woefully inadequate as a user interface for most games. I'm kind of curious to see how people tackle the issue of designing games around the interface, though I suspect that the answer is "they didn't", and they'll all be horrific. If I had a Mac, I'd probably have a go myself (I've got a few Touch-appropriate game ideas, at least, and could probably manage the coding involved), but I guess that'll not be happening any time soon - I stop short of buying a Macbook just to writing a few crappy touch/iPhone games. But, the fact that people are actually developing and releasing games for the thing essentially means I need to own one. Coincidently, after Author mentioned that there was some J-pop on iTunes the other day, I figured I'd have a quick browse through the offerings in the UK store. Can't say I was expecting the UK store to fair as well as the US one, but I was rather shocked to discover practically all of KOTOKOs Geneon-published releases are up on the UK store (though not the US one, from the looks of things) - Uzumaki is missing, but not much else. I'm not really much of a fan of the whole download thing, versus owning physical copies of content, particularly DRM'd content which is tied to one particular brand of device - this is part of the reason I've not bought into (the admittedly DRM-free(?)) BOST yet, though the content available is a larger part of that (I'll BOST Linebarrel if it hits the service, though). The thing is, it cost's, what, £7-ish to import a Japanese single once you take the shipping costs into account. Conversely, it costs £0.79 to download a track on iTunes - so given that most of these singles tend to have only two actual tracks on them, that's only £1.58. That kind of takes tracks like Special Life, which I hadn't really considered worth the cash required to buy the single of (partly because huge chunks of it sounds just like the second Hayate OP), into the range where I don't really mind the DRM as it's priced cheaply enough for me to consider it disposable. Not that it'll replace buying the physical albums or the particularly good singles (and, well, I own most of those KOTOKO CDs already) for me, but, hey, it's astonishing the option is even there. If we see more of the Geneon-labelled I've stuff on the service in the future (there's already some Mami Kawada and MELL on there as well, though less complete than the KOTOKO listing), I'll probably give it some more use. Anyway, I'm digressing. I've been ripping all my CDs again in order to get better, and most consistant, encodes of all of them since I'm going to have a bit more storage to play around with. I don't actually have that many CDs compared to what I imagine someone like Moyism has based on his blog entries, but it's still a good maybe 300 or so. I do have a habit of forgetting what I have and haven't bought at times as well. Infact, I've been getting a weird sense that I'd been missing CDs here and there, which I largely ended up putting down to me thinking I've bought CDs that I actually didn't get around to. Eventually, however, I came to notice that I was missing one of the My-HiME character albums, and I'm well aware of the fact that I have pretty much every HiME tie-in CD (though only most the ZHiME ones - there's two or three I don't own). This prompted me to spend a few hours trawling the house for missing CDs, something which was proving futile until, in an act of desperation, I dug deep into a pile of boxes, buried behind another pile of boxes at the back of a cupboard I wouldn't have expected to find anything in. Amongst said boxes, I, of course, discovered that there was actually a whole box worth of other CDs I hadn't even realised was there. This immediately prompted the rather disheartening realisation that, rather than being a third of the way through re-ripping all of my CDs, it was actually only really less than a quarter of the way through. Still, it wasn't that bad - I did find my Lilian Fourhand disk sitting atop the containers contents, and promptly lost a couple of hours to re-unlocking everything in the game. Sometimes, Doujin games are actually on CDs Doujin games aside, there where a few "Huwah?" moments when going through the box, such as me owning the Simoun OP single (I guess I just completely forgot that the song was used in Simoun - I'm sure I've already mentioned several times that I've yet to actually watch any of the show). I also really can't remember having bought a Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou drama CD. I suspect I at least know the why and how of that last one, though - back when JungleSCS had shipping options other than EMS (this being in the pre-Beta-Waffle days), I often used them to grab complete sets of gashapon figures. This would usually come in at under the UK customs limits, so I'd browse their used CD listings for something cheap that might be half decent since I was paying the shipping costs already. I picked up most of my Fire Bomber CDs in the same fashion, and a crapload of random character singles (this is why I have a complete set of Pita-Ten character CDs, since they cost me sod all). I guess I must have been rewatching the first YKK OAV series at the time and figured that it'd be worth the 500yen or whatever it probably set me back. Not sure if I've ever actually listened to it, though. Perhaps a little less random, though more amusing, was this El Hazard OST. It came with the UK LE VHS release of the first volume of the second El Hazard OAV series. What's amusing about it is that it not only includes the Japanese songs (which, given Pioneer only really did dubbed VHS releases in the UK, no-one who bought the LE was likely to have heard), it included the dubbed songs Pioneer was producing as standard for all their English-language release back then. I have to admit, it's kind of disturbing that all these years later I can still remember all the words to the English version of the first El Hazard ED. I guess I watched that series far too many times for my own good back then, but it's not like anime was nearly anywhere near as easily available as it is these days. Also kind of amusing is the fact that it has the lyrics for said songs in about four or five different European languages printed in the booklet. That's about it for this week, really. Oh, I've been reading Boogiepop at Dawn as well, which is, well, a Boogiepop novel. It goes back to cover why Nagi is the way she is, as well as a bit of early Boogiepop, but, true to series usual non-linear perspective jumping nature, some of it is actually set after Vs Imaginator as well, though it being a couple of years since I've read those books it took me a while to realise the fact...

Yakk! Deculture!

DiGiKerot — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:21:43 +0000

I got this oddly shaped box in the mail yesterday. It's kind of long and fairly thin, and reminds me a lot of the boxes AmoTokyo used to ship stuff in on those occasions where they randomly gave you a few posters. I wasn't really sure what it was, as it was rather unexpected - I wasn't really expecting anything other than my iPod and my Blu-Ray copy of Speed Racer in the mail any time soon, the former having arrived an hour or so earlier, and the later of which, alas, still hasn't shown. It turns out that it was from CDJapan, something of a surprise given that I only got the shipment confirmation for it on Monday. It contained my Blu-Ray copies of the first volumes of Macross Frontier and Code Geass R2, delayed in shipping from last month due to some iMAS CD releases having been pushed back a month. As things stand, the second volumes of both are due to ship any day now. It's going to be an expensive month, that's for sure. The problem with talking about Blu-Ray disks is that, well, I don't have a blu-ray drive amongst my multitudes of computer hardware (HD-DVD, yes, but that's pretty much useless). This, of course, makes taking screencaps something of an impossibility. I guess this just really saves me the time-consuming process of checking to see if there's anything different between the broadcast and DVD release versions as I'm usually in the habit of doing - I can't take any images to illustrate the matter, after all. Still, the fact that they are actual HD productions on Blu-Ray does make the show look rather better than you'd usually see from any off-air captures - it's not so much purely the resolution, but a combination of generous video bandwidth, the fact that many HD broadcasts are really just upscales (even when a HD-master exists, moronically) and a reduction in things like visible colour banding that's been brought on as a result of crappy broadcast bitrates, sloppy encodes or noise filters applied to the video. Really, the video on these things just looks gorgeous. I was pretty impressed whilst watching the utawarerumono release earlier in the year, but Macross Plus in particularly looks incredibly. It just results in me being really, really frustrated with the fact that BR isn't, and likely never will be, widespread enough a format for everything to be released that way - I mean, seriously, why on earth isn't something as beautiful as Soul Eater getting an HD release in Japan? No wonder there's so much piracy in the industry when off-air captures (either download, TVR or the Blu-Ray recorders that are becoming increasingly prevalent amongst anime fans in Japan) are so much better than the products they are trying to sell us. It's even worse a situation for the US market. Sure, DVD has been a cracked format for years, and I assume getting ahold of multi-region or US players in Japan isn't that difficult, but at least there was some semblance of region encoding. Blu-Ray has region coding, but some bright person put Japan and the US in the same region - great if you like buying Japanese disks, but it pretty much kills the chances of ever seeing reasonably priced US HD releases within a reasonable time-frame from the Japanese releases thanks to Japanese fears of reverse importation. Anyway, I digress. To get back onto point, there are actually differences between the release and broadcast versions of Frontier - not so much animation tweaks from what I'm aware (they've not corrected that one frame in the OP where the badge on Rankas sleeve changes colour, at least), but in terms of the actual content. The release version is labelled the "Yakk! Deculture!" edition - not just because the episode starts off with a voice over proclaiming those very words. This particular edit of the episode runs to around twenty-seven minutes as opposed to the twenty-four-ish minutes of the broadcast release, featuring footage from both the internet broadcast Deculture edit and the regular broadcast version of the episode. I can't actually remember what all those differences are, but be assured that this is both the most complete and coherent version of the episode in existence. This is a Japanese volume one release, though, and whilst it's certainly a good episode, it's also the only one on the disk unless you count the fact that it also has the other two edits on there for pure completions sake. The first press extra is just a set of stickers featuring frames from the NyanNyan commercial, and the only significant on-disk extra is the audio commentary. That oversized pencil board thing on the left seems to be some kind of random promo item CDJapan just threw in there, rather than a standard pack in. In comparison, the Code Geass release is a rather more stacked. I wonder if it's a case of them figuring they have to bundle a lot of stuff to shift it, or them knowing that they'll be able to sell enough for them to make their money back? The sales were supposed to be pretty good, regardless. Maybe more recent volumes won't sell quite as well given the reaction to recent episodes? I have to admit, whilst I probably wouldn't have thought twice about ordering this if I was doing so now, I suspect quite a few others may be dropping it from their purchasing schedules. I can't really say I'm interested in a discussion about content right now, but it's an entertaining show, and that's all I ask for. As for the actual extras, the on-disk stuff is the usual picture drama and audio commentry that the first season enjoyed, alongside a featurette on the premier screening of the first episode. I would say that it's around an hour long, but it somewhat cheats - about half of it is taken up with a repeat of the actual episode. I've not watched the version of the episode hidden in the feature, but I suspect there'll be some minor differences, or at least some unfinished art - the OP, at least, is made up of footage from the shows first season rather than the completed article we saw when it broadcast. As for the off-disk extras, there's another CLAMP illustration booklet (like those seen in the first series, and the R1 release), a set of postcards containing the ED illustrations for the first half of the series (which are mostly beautiful) and some kind of CD I've not listened. There's also a non-FP booklet, though it disappointingly lacks the Sayoko Dairy feature that proved to be the highlight of the first seasons booklets. The only other things in that order were a stack of iMAS CDs - including the most recent Masters Box and the Radio-show boxset, which includes some frankly horrific covers of Chobits OP Let Me Be With You and RahXephon movie theme Tune the Rainbow. Seriously, they're really, really painful. I did get another order in today with the Sheryl Nome single I forgot to buy last month, the Lion single and the Gurren Lagann Parallel Works DVD, but that's for another post that I'll inevitably forget to make.

ADV, AoD and a Healthy Dose of Scepticism

DiGiKerot — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 06:32:54 +0000

There's been two posts over on the AoD/Mania forums reporting that, at some panel only attended by about twenty people at some minor convention this weekend, ADV boss Matt Greenfield announced that they had licensed Clannad. Perhaps understandably, this news was met on the forums with not so much excitement, but rather much scepticism, as pretty much any news out of ADV is met with these days. It's probably the best way to treat such news at the moment, really - I'd consider this as "developing news" rather than anything concrete until we see a press release or reports on the usual news sites. Still, it's interesting if true.

Sayoko the Combat Maid: Final

DiGiKerot — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:14:13 +0000

I couldn't decide what to put in that speech bubble. First thoughts were along the lines of "This isn't what I meant when I called him a Melon Farmer". Second thoughts were "The drama CDs better have a damn good explanation for this...". Third thoughts were to just leave it blank, being unable to come up with anything amusing to actually put in there. I, clearly, went with the last one. Feel free to suggest something amusing if you wish - I'm sure you are all far more hilarious than I am. Still, I figured I should probably do a final Sayoko post with Code Geass having finished over the weekend, even if it is just adding yet another Geass-related post to the barrage that has been appearing on the aggregators over the past couple of days. Following on from Anyas fate, I figured that rather than doing anything remotely sensible, I'd just come up with some completely arbitrary and unfounded character resolutions...

Random Wafflage: Cart-riding Edition

DiGiKerot — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:38:21 +0000

The shocking truth behind Geass final scene! Look forward to Code Rivalz: The Quest for Relevance! The list of "topics not worth a full post" I've been keeping on my iPod is starting to get fairly long, which means that, once again, it's time for making my excuses for not having gotten around to watching Simoun again this last week. Which, coincidently, is the first thing to cross off my list - "Token Simoun Reference". The rest, alas, probably aren't as interesting. To first get the random anime news out of the road, Funimations solicitations for the end of year appear to be out, and it's confirming what a lot of people were expecting - Red Garden and Welcome to the NHK, two former ADV releases that were just a single volume from a complete release, are not getting their final volumes released seperately. Instead, they are each being re-released as two half-series chunks, effectively meaning that anyone with an incomplete set of ADV disks is going to have spend $60 to complete their collections. Kanon, coincidently, is still getting a seperate volume for it's closing episodes - indeed, AoD/Manias Chris B. already has his review copy of the final disk. I'm not entirely certain what to ascertain from this. At first glance, you'd assume that (a) NHK and Red Garden weren't selling very well, and (b) that Kanon was selling better than most might expect. There's probably a lot of truth in that, not least because the general reaction towards the animated version of NHK was, at best, mixed, whilst Red Garden largely seemed to meet with indifference. Kanon, on the other hand, was by-and-large very well received - it's a popular and well-thought of show amongst internet fandom. Still, nothing in this industry ever seems to be that simple. With Kanon and the other KeyAni shows being so popular in Japan, you have to wonder if the contract for the R1 release of the show stipulates that they can't release it below a certain price point until some point further into the future. Gonzo, on the other hand, were probably a bit more desperate for those royalty payments from NHK and Red Garden given their recent financial situation. Then there's the whole publicity angle - fandom actually cares about Kanon. Whilst the NHK and Red Garden situation has raised some complaints, if the same thing had happened to Kanon I suspect large portions of the vocal parts of fandom would have gone rather more apocalyptic, which would have done nothing to keep buyers confidence with Funimation. I don't think anyone would boycott future Funimation releases over the NHK and Red Garden releases - I could with Kanon. I can't imagine enough copies of Kanon Volume 5, which Funi aren't re-printing, actually made the stores for the prospects of it's final volume selling well to actually be that high, but Funimation still have Claymore and Darker than Black to sell a multi-volume release over the next year. They really need a token gesture like this to at least retain some confidence that they won't shaft all their customers with all their releases. This brings us to ADV and Clannad, which is an interesting situation to say the least. With Clannads Japanese popularity, and the promotional aspect of Clannad After Story starting up there pretty soon, Bandai are probably getting away with going straight to box with Sola and True Tears because they are no longer relevant to wider fandom anywhere in the world, but I really can't imagine ADV being allowed to release Clannad as fewer than six volumes. Even if you forget the general movement towards cheaper 13-episode boxes in the industry, confidence in ADV seem to be pretty much non-existent at this point. Most the comments I've seen from the kind of people I'd have been expecting to pick up the release are along the lines of "I'll wait until all the volumes are out", because at this point, no-one seems to be expecting ADV to remain solvent for long enough to actually release an entire series, and in the event that ADV don't get the lot out, there's the general expectation that they'll get screwed over for the rest of the series if they are ever offered the chance to buy it. Honestly, I have to think that, unless they have the working capital to get a few shows out in their entirety before the sales come in, ADV are probably pretty screwed regardless of how good the shows they license are. In other news, apparently Yen Press have licensed the Spice and Wolf novels, which is a good thing. My Speed Racer Blu-Ray turned up towards the end of last week, which I dutifully watched. It's still probably my favourite movie of the entire year (and, yes, I did see The Dark Knight), and whilst I appreciate having liquefied candy injected directly into your retina is not for everyone, it's really disappointing that the movie didn't do better than it did. It's just so much fun. I really do hope it finds it's audience as a home release - it's worth a rental at least. As for the really time consuming things from the last week, I got around to finishing Yakuza 2 this weekend. It was surprisingly long - I was expecting to clock in at most 20 hours, but it seems that's closer to the minimum investment required to clearing the game. In the end, I put in around 34 hours, though even that was far than "complete" in terms of seeing everything the game has to offer. It was all good fun, though. Unlike the first Yakuza game, which was re-recorded with the voices of the likes of Micheal Madsen and Mark Hamill for it's English-language releases, Yakuza 2 was released with it's Japanese language track intact. With a good couple of years between their releases, I'm not going to complain about it being jarring - the English voices didn't cross my mind - but I am going to express my surprise that Rie Kugimiya was providing the voice of Haruka. Admittedly, she didn't appear much in this second game, but I honestly hadn't clocked that until the ending credits rolled. Whilst I'm not particularly a Shana or ZnT fan, it's not like I haven't seen a lot of shows in which she's played a major roll, so I guess I really should have picked up on it. Maybe it's because Haruka hasn't the slightest hint of tsundere about her? After that, I moved onto Tales of Vesperia on the 360. It's, well, a Tales game. What did surprise me, having played Tales of the Abyss a few months ago (anime coming soon from Sunrise), is that they've actually dubbed the skits on this one. Whilst I dutifully watched every one I had the opportunity to in Abyss, sitting through those silent sequence where you can't forward through the dialogue quickly was more often tedious than amusing. The voices really do make all the difference. I've also been playing the Sonic and his Shitty Friends RPG on DS, but I'm going to finish this post here ^^;

Legal Linebarrels Options

DiGiKerot — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:43:25 +0000

Well, at present it's more like "option" - as Gia pointed out, it's going to be up on Crunchyroll in about, oooo, an hour for both streaming and purchase. Talk about last minute announcements! Still, this did prompt me to look around a bit - a bit of digging revealed that Gonzo does have a Linebarrels channel on Youtube already, promising the show this month. There's no indication as to if or when the show will actually turn up, but what is up there is a promotional trailer for the show. A promotional trailer dubbed into English... Dubbed, seemingly, in Japan. Not that there's much dialogue in there, but is that Mamiko Noto reprising her role in English? Kurogane seems to think so. It's probably merciful we are unlikely to see the full show that way, though. Anyway, there's nothing up on BOST yet, which would really be my preferred option as far as purchasing goes. That said, the Youtube page says they'll be carrying it (though that may just be copy'n'paste from the Strike Witches of Druaga pages), and they have supposedly claimed that they'll be announcing that they're carrying something new this week. We shall see, I guess. -edit- Author points out a post on the BOST forums - I had actually read that forum post before I made this post, but I wasn't aware of the authors position within BOST.

Random Wafflage: Iron Edition

DiGiKerot — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:15:11 +0000

It's once again time for me to break my relative silence in order to justify having this webspace during a period when I'm not actually watching all that much anime, for reason which are more or less the same as there were last week, being that I'm playing Tales of Vesperia. I've been playing a bit of the Sonic RPG on the DS as well, though my copy of Rhapsody turned up today (and DSgaea, but I've played that on PS2 and PSP already). This weeks rejected idea for a random feature in order to generate content at least once a week was Kurogane no Nine-Panel, in which I would attempt to put across the key-points of each weeks episode of Kurogane no Linebarrel in nine panels. Just to put some context to the thought process which lead to this, I'd actually been considering episode blogging Linebarrel - I mean, it's easy to get ahold of legally within a decent timeframe of it still being relevent. This fact also makes the exercise entirely pointless unless you have something interesting to say about it. I neither think Linebarrel is deep enough for that, nor am I eloquent enough to write something worth reading. Which makes me fall back on my usual stick - doing something really doofy. That said, the idea of Kurogane no Nine-Panel was quickly put to death for a number of reasons. Aside from the fact that it's really way too much work, nine panels is really far, far too generous. It's far too many panels to actually be amusing, and I actually struggled to hit nine points worth mentioning anyway. Rather, I thought maybe I'd go for five panels, but then I lose the pun in the title. Then there's also the fact that I really can't draw robots. Not that this stops Gonzo, of course - they tend to use nasty, plasticy CG in place of hand-drawn mecha themselves - but it's a bit of a stumbling block for a mecha show. Ultimately, though, the first episode of Linebarrel was actually pretty mediocre. It's a mess of overplayed tropes and cliches - none of which are done with enough charm or style to be worth overlooking - wrapped up in disappointingly averaging production values. It's just didn't really strike me as worth the effort unless it seriously ups the ante in it's first few episodes. Basically, I'm not even sure I can be arsed to continue watching it, despite being the kind of show I tend to like. Although if I was to do the first episode, it'd look something like the following... I sorted out my R1 DVD orders for up until the end of next month last night. There's a lot of releases - at first I thought it was the usual pre-season rush, but then I remembered that it's anime rather than videogames, and generally we see a pretty even stream throughout the year. In reality, it's more the case of all those Geneon titles, and a few ADV re-releases, than Funimation have picked up recently suddenly flooding the market a little. That said, looking through the releases, it's hard to determine what's actually worth buying. Particularly among the Geneon titles, whilst something like Nanoha is a no-brainer, being essentially stand-alone, it's hard to say the same about the likes of Zero no Tsukaima or Higurashi. Higurashi, by most reports, is validated by it's second season, whilst ZnT is up to it's third series in Japan now, and given that Funimation has enough on it's plate to last a year or two now, the chances of seeing those sequels licensed seems rather minimal in the short term. Is it really worth buying into something so incomplete? Well, I have to admit I am picking up the remaining Higurashi volumes (I've got half the first season already), and for all it's reputed crappiness, I am getting ZnT merely because it's so cheap. As for the rest of the end-of-year releases, there's some good looking stuff. Funimation are finally starting to release Ouran for one thing, and there's the second season of MariMite, both of which are striking me as essential purchases. Ghost Hunt wasn't the most widely watched show whilst it was airing, but it was well received amongst those who did follow it, and I like the manga iteration well enough. Rocket Girls I'm picking up just because Author posted a lot about it - I'm don't really have any expectations of it being great or anything, but it's cheap enough for me not to feel it's too much of a waste. My orders ended up being pretty sizeable, and I don't really expect to find time to watch any of that stuff any time soon. Alternately, I'm skipping Claymore and really hesitating DtB - I've been reading the manga of the former sporadically, and whilst I like it, it's nothing I enjoy so much as for it to be worth the price. Infact, in the case of both, for someone as space-constricted as I am now, they're neither really attractive in terms of their space requirements nor their price points with so many cheap thinpack boxsets floating around. Speaking of not having time to watch much, I've still not got around to Simoun. I'm actually going to be away from home for a few days next week, so maybe I'll just rip the DVDs to my laptops HDD and try and watch it then. I should have internet access whilst I'm away, though, so I might just end up being distracted as usual despite the lack of my usual distractions...

The End of the Rebellion?

DiGiKerot — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:42:45 +0000

In a pretty random move, the UK arm of Pizza Hut, formerly known to support the rebellion, are rebranding themselves Pasta Hut. Except they aren't really - it's pretty much looks to be a short-term marketing move intended to draw attention to the fact that they don't just sell pizza, although it didn't stop most of the UK newspapers (and not just the tabloids) reporting it as fact. At the least, C.C. doesn't have to hang herself just yet (not that she can actually die, of course). Pasta Hut is presently winning the vote over whether they should change their name or not, though...

Linebarrels of Iron 2

DiGiKerot — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:17:56 +0000

Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to do this, but I was bored and don't really have anything else to post about right now. As for the actual episode of Linebarrels of Iron, it pretty much continued to be depressingly mediocre. Normally this wouldn't bother me too much, the character art is pretty bad at times here. I'm not going to level this at the character designer as some have been, because other shows have made Hirai designs work - Gundam SEED didn't look this bad, Ryvius didn't look this bad and Fafner didn't look this bad. The base designs weren't really any better or worse in those shows (indeed, most of them were very similar), so really it's just Gonzo being cheap on the animation here. I'm not really sure what to make of the OP - I kind of like it, but at the same time it's pretty similar to most of Ali Projects output, so it's hard to decide if it's really just a case of being comfortably familiar with it.

Linebarrels of Iron 3

DiGiKerot — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:28:10 +0000

Linebarrels continues to be something of a disappointment, such that I don't actually feel like writing anything about the actual episode at this point. Oh, well.

Simoun

DiGiKerot — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:08:55 +0000

I'm really not sure if watching Simoun over a short period of time did the show any favours or not. The thing with Simoun is that, really, there isn't any kind of real story to it. Events only really happen in this show in order to force the characters into particular situations for the sake of inter-character drama - it's a show which revolves entirely around it's ensemble cast interacting rather than trying to build any kind of real narrative. Any suggestion that there might actually be story to it is generally typically forgotten or quickly pushed to the side without actually going anywhere. The best evidence of this actually comes from the first episode, which is narrated by a soldier from the side which the shows heroines are fighting against, and does a good job of painting our heroines side of not being entirely in the right. This point is only ever brought back into play for one other episode later in the series, which even then isn't taken any further than that. Which would be fine if it was consistent in it's character development, but it really isn't. The problem is that, whilst it's focusing on a particular character, it mostly does an excellent job of it, but during that period a lot of the other characters are relegated to being little but convenient outlets for what dialogue needs to be put across - their presence doesn't seem to matter beyond the fact that they are forwarding what is going on in that particular episode. Which, again, wouldn't be too much of a problem if you could rely on any of this to stick, but that's not necessarily the case. There are what you'd think would be significant character events that occur which they don't really follow-up on at all, and in one case is simply discarded with a single "Oh, I guess it's not significant after all" line. Other events are often not revisited until several episodes after the fact. Some logical lines of development are never really resolved. This is why I say I'm not sure if watching the show over a short period of time was a sensible thing or not. On one hand, I'm sure that I'd have been infuriated if I'd been watching the show weekly when a episode didn't necessarily follow up on the previous weeks events. On the other, watching it this way just made the shows staccato nature all the more obvious. The pacing of the whole show just seemed off. Ultimately, I just think I'm a little frustrated that, having watched a show that is generally well known for it's characterisation, kind of forgets that the key to an ensemble show is that you actually need to successfully juggle things between the characters. Simoun frequently feels like it's only juggling with one ball. I guess I was expecting more than what I got, and it fell short of expectations. I don't really think it helped that I was sporadically re-watching episodes of Shingu around watching Simoun, and whilst they are very different shows, Shingu just manages to do so many things right that most shows pale into comparison - in this case, it really does do a far better job of managing it's cast than Simoun does. The last episode of Simoun is actually kind of interesting. It jumps between following the events of the previous episode, and what happens to some of the characters several years into the future. It doesn't actually resolve anything - what happens to certain characters remains a mystery, whilst it seems to go out of it's way to make sure you know that some of the others still have problems. It kind of encapsulates the nature (and the themes) of the whole series within a single episode, which is probably one of the reasons why I don't really have a problem with it's lack of a real conclusion - it's kind of fitting, really. So, in the end, Simoun is a good show, but not really a great one. I'm just really not sure exactly why so many people seem to be really enamoured with it...

ICv2 Interviews John Ledford

DiGiKerot — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 06:45:22 +0000

ADV have broken radio silence with an interview at ICv2, explaining what they mean by having a "new partner". For all intents and purposes, they look to have reinvented themselves as a production label rather than an entirely independent licensor - whilst they've finally confirmed Clannad in a more public space, they don't actually hold the license for it, rather they are working to publish it on behalf of it's actual licensor (presumably in a similar fashion to Bandai and Funi releasing Kadokawa titles, though one step removed from the series Japanese owner). Of course, whilst I say reinvented, I'm struggling to see how this differs from what their relationship with Sojitz eventually turned out to be. I wonder what measures ADV have taken, if any, to prevent all their licenses being yanked out from under them again. I guess they are at least being honest about where they stand on the licensing stake now. I'm not really sure if the re-emergence of Mahoromatic and Tsukihime surprise me. I've been expecting some of the older, expired Geneon licenses to re-surface sooner rather than later, but I had been expecting Funimation to announce having grabbed some of the older Tenchi Muyo stuff (because they have other franchise titles on their books, it would seem to be in their best interests if they intend to consider selling them). That said, whilst I'm sure they exist, I'm can't really think of better shows from Geneons catalogue to re-release that Funimation don't have already - there's Paranoia Agent or Haibane Renmei, I guess.

Linebarrels of Iron 4

DiGiKerot — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:48:27 +0000

Obvious death flags aside (seriously, after Macross Frontier, I'm astonished they'd fly one so blatantly), this weeks episode of Linebarrels was a definite improvement over previous weeks. The fact that I actually had a little trouble summarising things in five panels this time show that, although none of the content is particularly amazing or original this episode, they've at least thrown in enough key points to distract you from wondering why exactly you are wasting your time with the show. That said, the art continues to be, if not necessarily bad, then alarmingly inconsistent. The wildly fluctuating bust sizes are the worst - I know some of the characters have large norks, but... Thats a serious case of Thermal Expansion! Seriously, that's starting to border on Divergence Eve levels of chestal swell...

Random Wafflage: Not Halloween Edition

DiGiKerot — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:38:38 +0000

Of course, it is actually Halloween, which would go some way to explaining why this blog has hastily been recoloured red (unless, of course, you are reading this at some point a few days later, by which point I've remembered to switch the theme back around). This isn't, however, my Halloween post. Following tradition (or at least what ended up happening last year), I've shot way over schedule and the actual Beta-Waffle Halloween Special isn't likely to appear until Sunday or so. Ho-hum. I've not actually got a huge amount else to say right now, though I'm acutely aware that I've not posted anything for a few days. I've been too busy to get much done - I'm not quite finished Vesperia yet (probably just an hour or so left, though). I did pick up Valkryia Chronicles for PS3 today, but I've not looked at it yet. Finished reading Tokyopops print of GOTH, the novel by Otsu-ichi, which is excellent and deserving of a full review at some point. I've also been meaning to post about the Bandai Ent. release of My-ZHiME Zwei - not because of the actual content, but because of the unusual box. But these things will come later. For now, I'm going back to working on my Halloween post.

Linebarrels of Iron 5

DiGiKerot — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:57:38 +0000

This week on Linebarrel - knob jokes, and our hero being marginally less of a jerk.

Linebarrels of Iron 6

DiGiKerot — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:16:12 +0000

Last week I complained about the knob jokes. The bright side about the sixth episode is that there weren't any. Unfortunately, what they did stuff the episode full of was even more painful. I'm really not sure how much more of this I'm going to be able to take...

Linebarrels of Iron 7

DiGiKerot — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:35:16 +0000

Now that any expectation of it being a good show has been thrown out of the window, Linebarrels has picked up a certain degree of entertainment value just for it's randomness. This weeks highlight has to be the fact that the series main villain not only walks straight into JUDA seemingly unchallenged - despite the fact that they know who he is - but he also does so with a briefcase full of spongecake, which is used (in a pretty deadpan fashion) in a discussion about characters motivation. It's hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Conversely, they seem to be writing Emi with a completely different personality every single week. I'm almost convinced that by the last episode she'll have someone transitioned into a car-eyed-loli-meganekko-robot or something. Also, Dojima looks so much like Yajima with dyed, messed-up hair that it's hard for me to really see him as anything beyond a replacement Token Male Friend at this point.

Beta-Waffle Belated Halloween “Spectacular” 2008

DiGiKerot — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:43:56 +0000

Last year, for a variety of reasons, I was two days late for my Halloween post. This year, it's four weeks. At least I've outdone myself in at least one fashion - the fine art of procrastination. Anyway, I've been back at the RenPy again. I'm making no claims that my output is actually anything other than "existent" - it's pretty much as non-nonsensical as everything else I've ever thrown together randomly for this blog... Still, the most significant thing about this post is that, with me no longer having it's completion to procrastinate over, normal blogging service will continue tomorrow (probably involving me playing catch-up on last weeks Linebarrels, plus there's todays episode to look at as well now). Anyway, the download links (Alas, Sendspace'd to conserve bandwidth. If you can't grab it and really want to, you'll have to bug me through other channels regarding it). All comments (and bug reports) welcome - if, god forbid, I ever feel insane enough to do this yet again I'll take all feedback on-board. Windows Linux x86 Mac Things I've noticed in my weeks of relative silence:- - It took me until about two days ago to regain my mediocre level of artistic ability. I should probably decide what I'm doing for Christmas before I lose it again. - I should probably decide what I'm doing for Christmas before it's January. - I don't think I've seen an opinion curve drop as rapidly as that for Index since Coyote Ragtime Show. - My DVD backlog doesn't half grow quickly when I'm not watching stuff all that regularly. - I'm really not sure why I bought Zero no Tsukaima. - I guess I can shift my blogs theme back to regular tomorrow now. - Jesus Christ there's been a lot of video game releases these last few weeks. Almost as big as my anime backlog. - I don't think I've seen an opinion curve rise as rapidly as that for Toradora since Lucky Star. - I've got a couple of Lucky Star DVDs in my recent backlog, come to think of it. - I wonder how long it'll take for someone to spot this and post on the RenPy boards. I'd do it myself, but that takes the fun out of it. - Has anyone actually blogged the last episode of S.ift yet? I sure will be tomorrow, but I don't think even Omni has covered it yet... Anyway, that's all for now. Later.

Linebarrels of Iron 8

DiGiKerot — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:11:51 +0000

Having left this to do for a week made this rather more difficult to do, not least because I had little to no desire to sit through the whole episode again. I guess I should try and get episode 9 done in the next couple of days. In any case, I think the real key points were just the introduction of a bunch of random badguys who'll probably be criminally underused (bar maybe Jack Smith, because he cuts planes in half with a sword), Cowboy-guy creating some kind of magical spinny-dome which, unfortunately for Linebarrels, does little but evoke memories of the far, far superior RahXephon and Zegapain, and Emi and Miu randomly stripping at the end. Honestly, at this point, I think I'm just watching to see how ludicrous the attempts at humour are going to be...

Linebarrels of Iron 9

DiGiKerot — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:24:31 +0000

The funny thing is that the reaction from Rachel really was along those lines. Anyway, in the wake of the whole Strike-Witches-Breaks-Newtype-Server thing from earlier in the week, it is a little difficult to see this episode as anything other than an attempt to get viewers to buy the DVD release for some de-misted nipple action. Otherwise, it's a pretty pointless episode, it's main other point merely being to portray Moritsugu as being a jerk - something which has already been battered into it at length. The final reveal of the guy whose name I can't remember standing in a flightsuit infront of an ARMA wasn't exactly the most surprising thing in the world, either.

My-ZHiME S.ifr #3

DiGiKerot — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:50:50 +0000

I was kind of fearing the worst about the last episode of S.ifr - the first two episodes were generally well received, but this third instalment seems to have met with a wall of, well, silence. Made me wonder if everyone hated it so much they decided just to keep quiet about it. As it turns out, I needn't have worried. In reality, I guess the fact that's there's been something like four months between episodes hasn't done much to help people sustain their interest in the series, nor did the slightly pedestrian second episode. Sakura - a waste of a cute design. Still, now that it's over, I have to say that Sifr is one of the stronger titles to come out of the HiME franchise, and it definitely has the best final episode of the lot - there's no messing around with bad jokes and resets like HiME, there's no relying on constant character reappearances and last minute saves to build tension as with ZHiME and, thank goodness, no Dolphins as per Zwei. Instead, we are treated to a couple of pretty well choreographed action sequences - not really something I generally expect from the series. Sure, HiME had it's moments, as did many of the early episodes of ZHiME, but ultimately as the power levels escalated things kind of devolved down to people flying past each other at high speed. M-9's rocket powered grope - indeed a formidable technique That's not to say they've fallen back from the ludicrous power levels Rena displayed from the first episode of S.ifr - she's still insanely powerful, with seemingly more techniques at her disposal than the entire cast of ZHiME TV - but at least in M-9 she's given an opponent that can't be taken down in a matter of seconds. There's enough back-and-forth for long enough for it to actually be entertaining. Lot's of DBZ-esque after-image/duplication techniques in display, plus Rena summons a huge-ass sword-wielding version of herself. That said, there isn't really much story here - Sifr's used to power a laser-firing satellite (evoking images of Artemis from HiME, I guess), people team up to save her from both her captors and from the Columns of Garderobe who are still looking to assassinate her. Still, with only three episodes, you don't really want anything beyond an excuse for some pretty pyrotechnics. They still do manage to leave things with a few annoying loose ends - they don't really do anything with the girl mysteriously wrapped in bandages who hangs around with Smith, and Sakura doesn't seem to have any point other than to watch from a distance with what appears to be one of Nagis ancestors (though, yes, I do realise it's only really a tie-in for those novels starring her daughter). Whilst it probably won't ever materialise, it still feels as if there should really be something between this instalment and ZHiME TV. Elliot proves she has uses beyond Yuri gags. Yes, there's yet another Robe variation in display before the end. Which kind of begs the question - what next for the franchise? Probably nothing more than yet more novels and a few manga volumes, unfortunately. It'd be nice to think that another series announcement was just around the corner, but whilst S.ifr was nice, I've had enough of the OAVs and I'm not really sure I'd be up for anything short of another TV series at this point. Meanwhile, Sunrise seem somewhat intent on plugging the forthcoming Sora Kake Girl as something of a spiritual successor - it's promotion in the DVDs product placement run is placed right at the end of the section usually reserved for products directly related to the title you are watching. Indeed, it's plugged before the ZHiME TV and Zwei DVDs. Of course, Sora Kake Girl does share it's director with all the HiME productions through to Zwei, but without Hisayuki on character design, nor Hiroyuki Yoshino writing, it's questionable how much of HiMEs entertainment value it'll maintain. Personally, I'll point to the involvement of Jukki Hanada, writer on my beloved Xenoglossia, as a shining beacon of hope for the series potential. Back to the DVD, the extras consisted of the usual booklet, in addition to at little plasticy poster thingy (it's not a pencil board, anyway).

Flippantly Previewing Winter '08

DiGiKerot — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:12:59 +0000

It's the time to once again cast a quick glance over the upcoming anime series, as signalled by the fact that THAT has posted their seasonal preview. Infact, I'm going to point you in that direction if you really want to know what all these shows are actually about - I see no need to duplicate their effort, I don't really find most of the stuff worth commenting on, and it's worth reading through their post anyway. Not that I particularly agree with everything they say. In particular, Sora o Kakeru Shoujo (or Sora Kake Girl) piques my interest more than anything for exactly the same reasons that most of those at THAT are slating it - it's an original Sunrise production. Sunrise aren't exactly making it a secret that the series is being helmed by Masakazu Obara, director on My-HiME (Great!), My-ZHiME (Great!) and My-ZHiME Zwei (Existent!). Still, there's key parts of HiMEs success which are missing - for one, there's no Kajiura doing the music. Hiroyuki Yoshino, who scripted pretty much all of HiME and ZHiME through to Zwei, and most recently worked on Macross Frontier, is also missing. Of course, S.ifr turned out just fine without either of them, so it's not too much of a worry, particularly given the involvement of Jukki Hanada - writer on the anime versions of Rozen Maiden, Sola and, of course, Xenoglossia (a show which I maintain was great). More obviously missing from the HiME formula, though, is character designer Hirokazu Hisayuki - I have to admit I do find the designs on Sora Kake to be a little plasticy looking and uninspired (there's a couple I could swear have been lifted straight out of something I've already seen), but not so much as to find it offputting. Speaking of things Hisayuki isn't working, he isn't directly involved in Queen's Blade either, though he was the original designer of some of the characers, including series poster child Reina. That said, it's unconfirmed as to whether this is starting in Winter or not, so isn't really worth going into. Akikan! is a series that just begs the question - is Banana a trap? Probably not, I'd guess - Banana isn't exactly the most juicable of fruit, after all. Cucumber, perhaps? Actually, I have to say, for a show with a main character called Melon, I'd have expected the character design to be a little more, well, Divergence Eve. Rather, it seems that there's rather a lot of DFC on display. Not Akikans character design Seriously, though, I really, really don't know what to think of the shows concept. If nothing else, do we really, really need another magical girlfriend show around now? The timing seems rather unfortunate -with it comign so close to the shows end, I can imagine a lot of people watching it just to complain about the fact that it isn't Kannagi. Because, you know, it's a show about DRINK CAN GIRLFRIENDS. It'll either have to be really good, or pushing Kanokon-levels of of fanservice to register much of an interest, and frankly I'm doubting both. Viper's Creed is directed by Shinji Aramaki, whom I seem to remember from way back - by which I mean I was unfortunate enough to have sat through Megazone 23 part 3. More recently, I did like the first Appleseed movie, though the sequel, Ex Machina, turned out to be pretty bad. I guess that makes me somewhat indifferent towards it. There's precious little hard SF made these days, and not to mention shows with adult protagonists, so I feel kind of bad being too hard on it. Hetalia Axis Powers reminds me of one of those doujin loli-wargames, except instead of dubious loli-content, it's full of chibi-bishonen. Beyond that, not worth commenting on. Is Akiyuki Shinbo the hardest working man in anime? Quite possibly - he's listed as Director on Maria Holic, though Yukihiro Miyamoto is also listed as the series director over at ANN. This is something which makes one wonder exactly what job falls down to what person. In any case, it's SHAFT, it's a comedy, it has a trap, and being set in a school it'll probably have blackboards full of random comments. It'll probably be fun, but as I say every time Shinbo is involved in another comedy show, what I really want to see from him is another Soul Taker or Petit Cossette. Ride Back - Neat robot-bike thing. And, at this point, I'm starting to run out of things that seem worth commenting on (not to mention interest in this post) - Kemono no Souja Erin could be good, but its also really long, and I have a habit of losing patience with shows of the length. Kurokami could be good, if only because it sounds like it'll make computer programmers seem badass (I work in IT - believe me when I say it's rarely the case). Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou sounds like a bunch of other shows I wasn't particularly interested in. As for the sequels (which seem to make up much of this season), there's a couple of good shows. Whilst I have absolutely no interest in sport, I freaking loved the previous series of Hajime no Ippo (aka the series which sank Geneon USA, though I do have all the DVDs they released). I also adore MariMite. The rest, I don't think I saw the previous seasons of.

Linebarrels of Iron 10

DiGiKerot — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:37:40 +0000

Alternate caption for the last panel - PIGS.... IN..... SPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! So, I guess Doumyoji isn't necessarily a badguy after all, rather a member of the JSDF. We shall see, I guess. Otherwise, yeah, it's an episode of Linebarrels. Nothing much else to be said about it, really.

Obnoxious Artboxes

DiGiKerot — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:16:10 +0000

Is it just me, or are R1 artboxes starting to get really obnoxious again? The point in question - the recently released LE My-ZHiME Zwei release from Bandai. It probably doesn't look like anything interesting, but in order to actually get at the disk, you have to pull that part which, err, says 'pull'. What happens then is that the compartment containing the disk emerges in the opposite direction to which the chunk you've pulled (actually a compartment containing a T-shirt and some pencil boards). I guess it's kind of clever, but at the same time it just makes the disk awkward to get to, not to mention potential durability issues. I say things are getting obnoxious again because we went through a whole phase of this a number of years back, heralded by things like the monstrosity above - the .hack-xigon. Probably the first ludicrously stacked R1 LE release, it shipped with the first DVD, a t-shirt, a plush Grunty, a demo of the first PS2 game and a copy of .hack//SIGN Original Sound and Sound Track 1. It's also a really awkward shape that's difficult to stack with the rest of your DVDs. At the time, most of Bandais re-releases were being released in needlessly flashy and awkwardly shaped packages. Then, mercifully, they stopped in favour of being cheap. They've started getting weird again over the last year or so. I don't so much mind the Code Geass box - it has a hinged door thing, but other than that it's about the same size as a more usual box. Disk access isn't too much of a problem either. The My-ZHiME (and the second HiME box, the original being an awful papery-thing) box isn't too bad either - you need to remove a lid to get at the disks, but it's not like there's any moving parts to break. The only things are that the box has this funky transparent image thing - which results in it taking up a whole DVD-case worth of additional shelf space - and the fact that it looks odd if stacked vertically as you would usually store these things. Zegapain is rather more annoying, though - it's larger in all dimensions than a usual box, making it an ill fit with other DVD releases - plus to get access to the disks you need to first remove a lid, then fold down the sides of the box. Then there's the boxes that Gundam Seed Destiny was released in. Held flimsily together by magnets, it folds out, and out, and out, and out to something like a meter and a half long A pain in the arse, really. Not that Bandai are the only offenders, of course - this whole thing can probably be traced back to Media Blasters. It used to be that they did a lot of weird things which some of the packaging - like the way that first first volume of Magic Users Club (or Mahou Tsukai Tai) had a transparent cover (only for them to ditch the idea for the second when they realised how expensive it was to prin)t. They really started going crazy with the release of the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth, though. The box for the first season was infamously crappy, so they went all-out of the second - it's glossy and made of really thick card, mostly double-layered. I loved it at the time, but now that I'm rather suffering from a lack of storage space, the additional space requirements and awkward access annoy me (not that I'm really inclined to re-watch Rayearth these days). They then moved onto Berserk. The cards fairly thin (albeit suitably sturdy), so it doesn't really take up too much space, but it does have to be folded outwards to gain access to the disks. Skipping the Giant Robo box I don't have (it's a replica of the Eye of Vulgar!), Media Blasters more recently put out this faux-book thing for Tweeny Witches. It looks pretty nice. Access to the disks is gained by removing a section from the top of the box, allowing disks to be slid out from there. That said, removing disks from a box vertical is rather more awkward than removing them in a horizontal fashion. It's a little too tall vertically as well. Speaking of faux-books, it's probably a good time to talk about some of the releases Geneon put out. For the TV version of ROD, they obviously went for another faux-book effort, but they took things a step further by having the disks stored on a series of plastic pages, with disk-holders on each side (and enough room for the Manga Ent. release of the OAV). It's nice and compact, but what makes it obnoxious is that it expects you to throw away the cases which came with your individual volumes of the later disks. Seriously, I wonder how many people who bought the LE box ended up doing what I did - that is, just keeping the later volumes in the original boxes. LE purchasers don't strike me as the kind of people who would throw away completionism. Geneons release of Stellvia was in much the same style - it was a metal tin containing three double-disk thinpaks, again expecting the disposal of the later volumes disks. It's not really annoying, but I'm going to mention the Kamichu! box anyway. See that faux-wood effect on the box? It's not actually faux-wood, it's a thin layer of actual wood applied to the slipcover. Although now that I think about it, putting a slipcover over an entire artbox does make it kind of annoying to use... Funimation aren't entirely innocent either - their Tsubasa box for the first season is too tall to fit onto some of my DVD shelves. It's a fold-out affair, but the area the disks sit in is a good half-centimetre smaller than the outside edge of the box. The second season, coincidently, reverted back to a more traditional style of box. Then there was the Full Metal Alchemist release - a series of tins which look nice, but are obviously an odd shape which don't sit well with other DVDs on the shelf. So, yeah, let's stop with the silly packaging. I'm struggling for space as is without having to find room for anything awkward (and, no, not buying the LEs isn't an option, thanks).

Random Wafflage: Release Candidate 2

DiGiKerot — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:21:35 +0000

Uber-quick post since I'm supposed to be getting ready for work rather than doing things like, you know, upgrading to Wordpress 2.7. Which is precisely what I've been doing. Anyway, I figured that, along with the upgrade, I may as well do my first theme switch in quite some time. It's rather less "distinctive" (read:Eye-cripplingly bright) than the themes of old, but I thought it was time for a bit of a change. In reality it's mostly just CSS changes to the old theme, but I did get around to fixing a few of the things I've been lazy about (like blockquotes in comments), re-did the comments section that was annoying everyone (plus removed the Maths plugin for the moment - the 20second delay requirement is still there though), and removed the poll I've not updated for well over a year. Still need to find time/motivation to update my blogroll, though. As for issues relating to the upgrade, I'm glad I ran a test blog on RC1 for a few days to sort out a couple of the issues. My main annoyance is that I seemed to be getting some kind of infinite-redirect loop for some reason I'm uncertain of. I've got the Disable Canonical URL Redirection plug-in running for now, which stops the blog from failing to ever appear, but I suppose I should take a proper look at my Wordpress settings at some point to try and figure out what's up with it. Anyway, that's all I've got time to say this morning. Hopefully I won't get home to find that I've actually missed something and this damn blog hasn't been working properly all day...

Linebarrels of Iron 11

DiGiKerot — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:15:24 +0000

I've mentioned previously that I'm no good at drawing robots, and since this episode predominantly featured robots doing stuff, I went off on a tangent instead. There's nothing really, really significant of interest in this weeks episode anyway.

Random Wafflage: Stricken by Plague Edition

DiGiKerot — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:22:00 +0000

It's been an annoying week for me. Well, I say annoying, it's more that I've spent the entire week in bed with the 'flu. This isn't the particularly horrendous type for 'flu that knocks you more-or-less completely unconscious, unfortunately, rather that altogether more frustrating kind that leaves you too lethargic to do anything, whilst simultaneously causing enough discomfort to prevent such niceties as sleep. As such, from around some point halfway through Monday until this morning I've spent the week delirious from lack of slumber whilst also high of 'flu medication. So, yeah, that's why I've failed to actually post anything on what's been the first week in ages to actually have some comment-worthy news. Adding to the annoyance is that the future of this blog is in jeopardy! My present host goes Bye-Bye at the end of January, and their suggested migration path has enough truly atrocious feedback for me to discount it entirely. I have to admit, there is some temptation to go the JP/Hinano route of complete severance of prior content to do something a touch different on a rather, well, free-er and stress-free environment, or to perhaps offer my services to the team-blogs of the world... But, for now, the search is on the another host. I can't say I have particularly demanding requirements - I do less than 2gb a month of traffic as is - but despite all those hosting services out there finding one which hasn't reviewed badly is hard. I remember Hinano bitching hard about Dreamhost in the past, and whatever their most recent host was, so I guess I'll avoid those. If anyone has any suggestions I'm open to hearing them. Oh, and just because annoyances come in three, the power supply on my laptop started going wonky last weekend. It's been replaced already, but it was expensive, dammit! And speaking of expensive, that exchange rate is really, really painful at the moment. It's about 25% more expensive to import from the US, and around 33% more expensive to import from Japan, than it was just a month or two ago. Those US prices aren't particularly crippling, but R2 DVD prices for the stuff I've been buying recently is now topping £50 a volume. I'll probably try and struggle my way through to the end of Macross Frontier, Code Geass and Kara no Kyoukai unless there's a really, really dramatic degradation in the exchange rate, but after that only new HiME-related material will be enough to tempt me into sending cash Japan-ward. Even I have my spending limits. I should really get around to getting myself a Twitter account - not that I'd ever expect to tweet with any regular basis (I spend too much of my weekdays away from the internet), but it seems that half of the interesting content being thrown out on the blogs, as well as far too many IRC discussion points, originates from web-like myriad of ani-blogger Twitter streams, and following them is a pain in the arse unless you are on there yourself. There's not really anything else to say about the Funimation licenses - I was mostly expecting further seasons of things that Geneon are now putting out through Funimation. Instead, we are getting some of those old Geneon licenses that have lapsed and which ADV have picked-up already. I bought most of these shows first time through, so it's not really of much interest to me. The Kurokami license is more interesting. This isn't really because of the broadcast arrangements, given that it's pretty much a useless gesture for the sake of marketing back home in Japan by the sounds of things, but that fact that the US is looking likely be getting the DVDs whilst the show is still airing in Japan sounds rather more significant to me. Earlier in the week Hinano posted about how the gap between season broadcasts resulted in a complete loss of interest in Haruhi, but those kind of delays are pretty usual between a shows Japanese broadcast and an appearance in the US. Except for those few shows where there always seems to be something regarding it brewing - things like Nanoha, Zero no Tsukaima and, to a lesser extent, Shana - by the time most of these shows roll onto US release interest in them has waned significantly, not just among those who watch new titles, but also amongst those who look to those people to see what's 'hot' as it were. I mean, I completely lost interest in seeing Darker than BLACK somewhere between everyone saying it was awesome, and the DVD release actually commencing just recently. With Kurokami is would seem that the printed-media release of the show (by which I'm assuming to mean DVD-release only R1 side - I wouldn't be surprised to see it on Blu-Ray in Japan, though) is actually going to be released whilst the show is still, for want of a better word, "relevant". It'll be interesting to see what that does for the sales.

Linebarrels of Iron 12

DiGiKerot — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:52:36 +0000

More than one panel seemed like overkill for this weeks episode ^^;

Seasonal Salutations!

DiGiKerot — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 09:57:40 +0000

Hey, it's that time of year again. Of course, it's usually the time of year that I post some completely nonsensical, vaguely-X-mas themed comic of sorts, but I was also ill this year, so tough. So, basically, I'm just going to wish all my readers all the best for this festive season. Which I just have, so I guess that's this post done.

Linebarrels of Iron 13

DiGiKerot — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:15:31 +0000

This week on Linebarrels, things start off in what has become it's usual pattern of being rather, well, moronic (including the token buy-the-DVD's steam-laden shower scene), only for a not-so-shocking betrayal to completely ruin the atmosphere by forcing a jump into serious mode. Oh noes! Oh, and Emi is apparently all Factor-y and able of pilot Linebarrel. That's probably actually far more significant than the betrayal of a character that no-one liked, didn't actually appear all that often and will probably be dying in a few episodes time.

Japan: Raping My Childhood, or Improving It?

DiGiKerot — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:46:07 +0000

It would seem that it was something of a quintessential part of childhood for any British male who was a child of the 80s to be at least passingly familiar with those old Fighting Fantasy game books. Certainly, I've read more than my fair share of them, including that cool one with the giant robot fighting a dinosaur on the cover. How could that not be awesome? For those unaware, these books are kind of the progenitors of modern visual novels - you'd read a couple of passages of text, at the end of which you'd get a branch between different page numbers you could jump between based on either your own personal choice or having hit some kind of in-text flag such as having read a passage in which you collect an important item and or similar. Occasionally you were expected to do some dice-rolling fight-action, but I don't know anyone who actually did that part. It kind of got in the way of the robots and dinosaurs and other assorted awesomeness. Anyway, one of the best known or most popular books in the series was Deathtrap Dungeon, in which the player (always referred to as the entirely ambiguous YOU) had to traverse a, well, dungeon full of deadly traps in order to win some contest or other. The author of this particular title was Ian Livingstone, one of the founders of Games Workshop, and was in very much the same kind of grimy, D&D-esque style. But with a ninja. In line with the style and tone of the work, the original book looked like this:- Ugly, but fitting. Of course, the book was then released in Japan, and it looked... Well, exactly the same by the looks of things. Even the internal images look to be the same. This post would be incredibly anti-climatic, if it weren't for somebody over at the (now badly mangled) AoD forums pointing out that a couple of the FF books are now being republished in Japan, starting with Deathtrap Dungeon - which now looks like this: *Facepalms* Oh, Japan, you're so wacky with your putting tits on everything. It sounds like there's been some minor re-writing to make the lead an actual character too (or, at least, the HJ page suggests she has a name now). Actually, that covers kind of cute, but it just seems sooooo wrong to me... On a vaguely related note, I spent a couple of hours playing Otomedius on 360 the other day. It's 80s shooter Gradius with character designs by Keroro Gunsou artist Yoshizaki Mine. It's kind of a bad game - not because they added boobage to a game that didn't really need it, but because the hitboxes for the characters are way, way too vague for the kind of bullet patterns they are expecting you to avoid at times. That, and the fact that there's usually at least a couple of far better made shooters every Comiket, which is kind of embarrassing for a game from a long-standing publisher like Konami.

Speaking of Wrong: MariMite 4th Series

DiGiKerot — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:58:54 +0000

From Aroduc:- Okay, so they did yell "Onee-sama!" almost start to finish, but I wasn’t really paying attention anyway. There are evil shadows in my TV that need killing. I figured some would be curious about the OP though, so have at you! Persona 4 references aside, I did watch the OP with mild interest and I have to admit, it raised an eyebrow. I mean, tempo in my MariMite opening? After two TV seasons of Pastel Pure variations, it just seems so inappropriate. Also, running? I thought walking slowly was preferred here? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh, well, it doesn't quite weird me out as much as the I''ve sound EDs for the OAV episodes, which just seem entirely out of place rather than just odd (though I admit, I did buy those CDs). Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my season 2 DVDs to turn up. Le Sigh.

Mikan Watch #15: Persona 4

DiGiKerot — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:10:21 +0000

Yes, I realise the last couple of Mikan Watch posts have both been game related, but I've not fallen to the gaming Borg or anything (at least not any more than usual) - it's just that anime has been failing me in this regard recently. Anyway, that picture above is from the Dojima residence, though the two boxes on display in the room are underneath the cameras usual location when you are in the living area, so they aren't typically entirely visible. I did notice them fairly early on in the game, but I've been waiting to get a decent shot of them before I took a picture. As for where I am in the game, those playing will be able to ascertain that from the image above. I'm actually about a half-month ahead of that now, and things seem to be approaching the end game. Not sure I'll get much of the game played through the next week, but I'll probably be able to get the game finished off next weekend. Good game.

About the Funimation Licenses...

DiGiKerot — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:13:19 +0000

About CJ's comments (via Author):- Since some of the shows were older and had already been fully released, it’s safe to assume that anyone who cared about those shows had already picked them up. Okay, there's a few things to bare in mind here. Firstly, none of those shows, to the best of my knowledge, have received what the current market would consider a "cheap" release. Ikki Tousens cheapest release was around $50, which isn't too bad, but Last Exile and Vandread never hit the market for less than $100 (well, $99.99), whilst Gad Guard, GunGrave and Monte Christo were closer to $150 at their cheapest (I don't know what Samurai Champloo was priced at as a boxset, but I imagine it was in the $150 range). Those shows have all essentially missed a whole cycle of releases (heck, if they were ADV shows, they'd still have another four or five variants waiting to be released, given they claim that simply re-releasing things in new packaging does actually work). I'm quite sure that there's quite a few people who would likely find reason to buy them when they suddenly hit the shelves for somewhere in the region of a third of the price. Secondly, Gun Grave and Samurai Champloo are still being put out as Geneon titles with Funimation distribution. It wouldn't be shocking if Geneon still have some existing stock of those titles in existence, and most of the copies that end up on shelves will may just be repackagings of those. Even if that isn't the case, there's likely no additional licensing fees or mastering costs involved, so it's not like it's going to cost them a huge amount to put the titles back on the market. Thirdly, Samurai Champloo is a pretty damn popular show outside of the regular anime fandom. It got an airing on TV, back when people still watched this stuff of Cartoon Network, and it comes up frequently as recommended viewing on forums where anime is far from the main focus. There's still life in that show, particularly if they get it out cheaper than they have done previously. Forth, four of those shows are Gonzo. Their current financial status is well known as being fairly dire, sales of Strike Witches DVDs aside. Those re-licensed shows have pretty much zero value in Japan now - they were never the most heavily merchandised shows, and have gone years without any kind of media release to keep interest in them built (and it's not like Japanese DVDs particularly sell after the first two weeks anyway). Given they've also been released in the US previously, and that they don't have to worry too much about reverse importation (as no-one will be buying them in Japan at this point anyway), I wouldn't be too shocked if Funimation got the licenses to these shows really, really cheap, with Gonzo hoping the royalties from the individual volume sales will at least generate them some kind of cash flow so they can keep cranking out Strike Witches material in hope they can stay afloat. Or they might invest that money in porn. Fifth, I have no idea what's going on with Ikki Tousen. I guess it must have had surprisingly good sales under Geneon, or else the manga sells well (remember when Tokyopop said they were going to make a movie out of it? Had to be some reason for them to think the idea would float), or else was cheap, or else they figure they may see a resurgence in sales if they release it cheap enough around the time that Media Blasters finally get around to releasing the later seasons. Finally, those license rescues are all actually pretty good shows. Well, maybe Ikki Tousen is borderline (it's certainly entertaining, but not necessarily for being a good show), but the rest are good shows. To be honest, the only thing which really surprises me with all these old Geneon titles being re-released is that Funi didn't grab any of the older Tenchi Muyo stuff. Yeah, I know that the shows really old and has been milked to death already with multiple releases and TV airings, but given Funi already has the rest of the franchise (what, the third OAV series, GXP, and that Sasamis Magical Girl Club thingy) you'd have thought they'd have had some vested interest in keeping at least the canon OAV installments on the market.

The Oneechanbara

DiGiKerot — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:00:44 +0000

Last night I watched two videogame based Zombie movies from Japan. One was Resident Evil Degeneration, the CGI movie based on (and, unlike the live action movies, set in the universe of) the highly popular series of Capcom games. It's not really interesting enough to talk about. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen, but I'm not even sure it's something I'd particularly recommend to even RE fans like myself - it's kind of sad that the footage from the upcoming Resident Evil 5 game looks considerably better not just in terms of content, but also in terms of visuals, than the pre-rendered Degeneration. The other movie I watched was based on a rather less popular series of games. The Oneechanbara started life as part of D3 Publishers Simple 2000 series of games on the PS2. The Simple 2000 series is range of budget titles which share basically only their price (2000 yen) and the fact that they all have the word "The" (in English) in their titles. In terms of content, it's a pretty mixed bunch - there's quite a few really basic puzzle and board-game like titles, a lot of knock-offs of popular games of the time, and a few ports of PC Visual Novel titles. There's also a lot of cheesy, B-movie-esque exploitation titles - quality games like Zombie vs Ambulance, where you drive an ambulance around a zombie-invested city in a sort of bloody, tediously-slow version of Crazy Taxi, and Maid Clothes and Machinegun, where you play a robotic maid sent back in time to save her master from another robotic maid, with bonus points awarded for sweeping up during dangerous situations! (and, yes, I do own both of those...) Most of these games are pretty terrible - the one Simple 2000 series which was generally known for actually being good was Earth Defence Force, which actually hit the US in it's non-budget Xbox 360 form (though a lot of these S2000 titles have actually hit Europe). That series was developed by Sandlot, who tend to specialise in games featuring huge, destructible cities - their previous titles included Robot Alchemic Drive and a game based on classic robot anime Tetsujin 28-Go (Gigantor), which were unusual in having the PS2 controller mirror the remote control system for the robot (so walking required alternating between the "foot foward" functions mapped to the trigger buttons, and you had to swing the analogue sticks to punch). EDF continues their speciality by having you, as a footsoldier in the EDF, defend a city from swarms of invading aliens straight out of a 60s B-movie, including the old genre mainstay of the giant ant. Having now rambled on for far too long, I'll get to the point - they made a movie out of the other popular (yet typically less than great) Simple 2000 sub-series, The Oneechanbara. In the Oneechanbara games, you play a sword-wielding girl who goes up against a countless zombies in a horrifically bloody fashion. Whilst wearing a bikini and a cowboy hat, a fact which they made sure to duplicate in the movie. The plot goes that, in the future, Zombies have infested an Earth which seems to consist of little other than a derelict factory and a field. The Zombies were the work of this scientist guy, who seems to have had no particular reason for actually creating them (or at least not one that's explained in the course of the movie). He does look rather dapper in that hat, though. That said, he is clearly quite mad - a fact which is clear thanks to his, admittedly stylish, fur-covered operating table. I guess this insanity is maybe a good enough reason. Anyway, Aya, the aforementioned sword-wielding, bikini-clad zombie hunter is searching for her fathers killer, who happens to also be her half-sister Saki. Ticking another box on the old fetish list, Saki is a sword-wielding school girl. Why, precisely, she is still wearing her school uniform whilst the rest of the world is in ruins is anyones guess, as is how, exactly, she's kept it in such pristine condition, but then the whole bikini thing isn't exactly logical either. Aya is joined in her quest by a comedy fat-guy whose name I forget, and later Reiko, a biker-chick wielding a gun which seemingly never needs reloaded, nor ever runs out of ammunition. How convenient. Reiko is looking for get revenge for the death of her beloved daughter, and is the one who informs Aya of the fact that Saki is working with the mad scientist guy (a fact which should have been entirely obvious given the rest of the movies dialogue, not to mention the various flashbacks the movie provides). Comedy fat-guy, on the other hand, is searching for his younger sister, who was apparently kidnapped by Saki. I'm sure that'll work out for him in the end. Or maybe not. Unsurprisingly, The Oneechanbara is really a terrible movie. It's full of visual effects and wire-work that many amateur tokusatsu productions would be embarrassed to sport, the writing is pretty awful (in so-much as there is writing - Aya doesn't exactly say much) and movies pacing is terrible, devoting too much screen-time delving into levels of angst which seem wholly out of place. The real crime, though, is that for a movie with such patently ludicrous premise, it takes itself far, far too seriously - even the comedy fat-guy rarely actually provides any comedy value outside of the movies opening and ending. It would have been very easy to make this movie far more entertaining with a few knowing nods to the audience about exactly how silly and predictable the whole affair is - I mean, it was obvious that as soon as the fatguy mentioned his sister that they'd have to fight her at some point, it was obvious that the young couple silly enough to boink in a zombie-infested wasteland would find themselves part of that same infestation soon afterwards, and it was entirely obvious that the young girl they picked up on their journey would suffer a very similar fate. The movie should have been revelling in the sheer stupidity of these moments, but instead it plods through in po-faced fashion. Oh, and for such a trashy movie, Aya spends far too much time wearing a cloak over her battle-dress. That said, it is hard not to find amusement in the movie for all the exactly same reasons - again, the effects are so terrible that it's really hard not to burst out laughing during another awful, awful fight scene. The script and acting is so hammy it's even harder not to laugh whilst the movies trying to be dramatic. Its fabulous at MST3K material, if nothing else, and from that point of view it's actually a strangely watchable movie - I gleaned more entertainment from it that Resident Evil, at least. That probably says more about Degeneration than The Oneechanbara, though. Mercifully, the movie was only about £7 from Hong Kong, so at least it wasn't too much of a waste. Coincidently, the 360 Oneechanbara game is hitting the US next month, alongside it's Wii incarnation. Not that I'm recommending you buy them, but I did manage to at least sustain enough interest in the 360 game to actually finish it.

Damn it! Car chase!

DiGiKerot — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:41:08 +0000

Erm, you are standing on the beach of a tropical island, and Natsumi has just been kidnapped by a robotic crab. Is it really the time to be worrying about car chases, Giroro? Having heard that a decent, subbed release of the Evangelion 1.01 movie had been released in Hong Kong (legally, of course), I ended up heading over to Yes Asia to grab a copy. The thing with HK DVDs, though, is that the releases of Asian movies tend to be pretty cheap (£6-7-ish), and as a result the intention to order just one DVD ends up escalating to more like a dozen, though it is a shame it's pretty slim pickings when it comes to anime. This probably goes some way to explaining exactly why I have a copy of obviously terrible The Oneechanbara, and is also why I picked up the ended up picking up the first three Keroro Gunsou movies (even though I already have the first on R2). Anyway, the English subtitles on those HK releases that sport them are a bit of a crap-shoot in terms of quality - those on the Evangelion movie, aside from few minor typos, are pretty good. The same can be said of the subtitles to the first Keroro movie - there's nothing overwhelming wrong with them. The same can't really be said of the second Keroro movie. I'm inclined to think that whoever wrote the subtitle script at least had a grasp of the Japanese language (or maybe Cantonese?), but it's almost like they based the translation on just the audio without any idea of the context given by the visuals - aside from a few points where they've clearly misheard the audio, there's a lot of lines which would make sense given different circumstances. It just a shame that the movie they were probably imagining was likely more exciting than the one I watched, though at least the subtitles added some additional humour value...