Rook Takes Queen

Sono Reviews: Kamen Rider Fourze Foodroid - Potechokin

2012-01-14T09:56:00.000-08:00

Throwing my hat back into the toy review game with a review of Potechokin (who I more commonly refer to as "Friesmeal") from Kamen Rider Fourze! This review was very fun to do, and I absolutely love this toy!

Gurren Lagann vol. 5

2012-01-14T09:41:00.000-08:00

So I finally bought, and the days later finally got around to reading, volume 5 of the Gurren Lagann manga. It is probably my least favorite volume just because it saddled me with a wide range of negative emotions, though it finished off with a really cute chapter.

This volume brought with it the end of the remaining 3 of the Big Four, which means we lost Adiane. Anyone who's hung around for a while, or knows me and my relation to this series, knows I adore Adiane. I cry every time I re-encounter her death. The whole reason I put off buying volume 5 was because I had once flipped through it in the comic shop, read her death, and cried in the store for about fifteen minutes.

Of course, reading it now, I cried again. In the anime, there is a lot of implied character development that the manga takes and expands on. But since giant robot battles are pretty faced paced, and therefore only take up a small amount of the manga they use the extra space to expand upon implications made in the anime. A significant one to note is the relationship between Adiane and Thymilph. The anime keeps this very vague, because there's no time to cover it. It's really only hinted at by Cytomander very briefly.

The manga really takes this and makes it into something. There is a short bonus chapter after chapter 7 that is about Adiane and Thymilph right before he goes to fight Kamina. Thymilph gives her a flower and tells her to protect the capital while he's away. Adiane demands a better gift, and Thymilph promises to return with Kamina's head for her, and then leaves.

We then get a brief glimpse at a softer Adiane, saying she'll look forward to his return. We see her briefly in chapter 15, as Thymilph and Kamina kill each other, seeing the explosion and realizing something may have happened to him, and then in the beginning of 16, enraged that Thymilph is dead. Skip ahead to chapter 22, when we come to Adiane's own death. She's fired upon by the whole of Dai-Gurren's artillery. As Sayrune is destroyed, we see Adiane reaching for the flower, encased in some sort of crystal, that she brought with her in memory of Thymilph. Thymiph's spirit grabs her hand, she looks back at him, starts to cry, and thanks him as she dies.

Viewed this way, through the manga, with a closer look at her, Adiane's death -- and her life for that matter, but that is a post for another day -- becomes so much more tragic, and completely heartbreaking. I am pretty sure that the manga is what convinced me that Adiane is easily the most tragic character in this whole series.

Of course with Adiane's (and also Cytomander's) death, the story moves forward into fighting Guame. This was significantly different in the anime, but still leads to a village full of girls being trained as servants/whores for the Spiral King. But the manga introduces another abandoned princess, Straea, who escaped death like Nia, but was caught and forced to be the matriarch of the village. She tries to convince Nia to be her successor on threat of killing the rest of Dai-Gurren, but Nia refuses.

Yoko steps in to be Yoko and pretend to play here, giving Nia words of encouragement when she almost gives in, but this is pretty unnecessary because as she's doing this, Simon regains control of Lagann and breaks out with the rest of the group. Then Guame shows up and the battle between him and Dai-Gurren begins, as does another round of me being completely fed up with Yoko and the unnecessary attention she gets.

Guame has seized control of all of Dai-Gurren's ganmen, so Simon can't combine Lagann with Gurren. Oh no. Why the hell isn't the rest of Dai-Gurren going to get them back while Simon holds off Guame? Y'know? Logical thing to do?

Of COURSE it's because Yoko has to seize a ganmen from some beastman so Simon can combine with THAT so that Yoko can give a speech about her "pride as a woman" and a lot of stuff about her feelings due to Kamina's death. This really really bothered me, you guys. More than I know words to express.

Yoko does not deserve to have a monologue like Simon got.

Simon's overcoming of his grief over Kamina is not the same as Yoko's. Disagree if you will. It doesn't much matter to me what your opinion on Yoko is, so long as you have good reasons that are something aside from "But she's really hot!". But I dislike her, and I hate that she was given this moment.

Simon's grief was over the loss of someone who was like a brother to him. Someone who, over may years, had become the only thing even close to family Simon still had. Someone who has supported him for years, and had been the only one to show Simon respect or have any confidence in him. Simon's confidence, his pride in himself, and his ability to fight for a future where he would be happy, all came from Kamina.

Losing that destroyed Simon. He was suddenly without guidance. He had the power to be great on his own, but he didn't know how to use it. Simon suddenly had nothing to fight for because the only person who believed in him up until that point was suddenly gone. The only person who had loved him for the past handful of years of his life had been taken by the very people Kamina had promised they would defeat.

Yoko had known Kamina for about a week. Maybe two? Long enough to form an attachment and become infatuated with him (which is, again, a subject for another post), but not nearly long enough to form the sort of relationship with him that would warrant her being allowed to judge how Simon grieved, or getting to have a similar monologue, as if she had overcome the same grief and pain Simon had.

Straea eventually sacrifices herself to save Nia, and there's a very sad scene between she and Old Coco (who's name is actually Theives?)and it's very sweet. Then she dies, and Nia cuts off her hair and leaves it on Straea's grave. Then there's the Nia and Yoko haircutting scene, over which Simon comments that girls are hard to understand.

The book finishes off with a chapter about Kittan and Kiyal, which was adorable. Kiyal wants a ganmen and Kittan won't let her pilot one. So she tries to form her own team within Dai-Gurren and no one takes her seriously. She then tries to hijack the King Kittan, fails, and then in an argument with Kittan, falls out. Kittan sustains a head injury in saving her.

Kiyal is afraid to face him until Yoko shows her the Ganmen that Kittan has been restoring for her and tells her what Kittan said about why he was afraid to let her pilot it. Kiyal then goes to Kittan and hugs him and apologizes, then says she's going to start piloting it and they have a cute sibling moment.

It was a very cute chapter, and I'd love to see Gainax animate it as an OVA episode, unlikely as that is to happen. This chapter was a good way to end the book, and kept me from leaving the volume enraged about Yoko, and reminded me why I love Kittan and his sisters.

Taking another swing at this blogging thing.

2012-01-14T09:32:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I'm going to take another stab at running this blog. Last time I tried to go back to this was a bad time. I was trying to get out of school and get my life set up, so a blog was a little out of the question. But now I've got a job and I've got some time, I'm watching some anime, so I figure maybe I should get back to this.

As of late I've been getting really into Kamen Rider and Super Sentai. So you can expect posts about Fourze, and about GoBusters when that starts! I'm also going to be doing more toy reviews and get back to reviewing whatever anime and whatever I'm watching. There will also be posts about cosplay, TV, maybe even some books and music. Whatever's going on at the moment!

So I figure I'll get back to this. Most of my watching goes on Monday nights, so updated will probably happen during the week sometime. Enjoy!

Hopefully throwing my hat back into the ring.

2011-05-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

Okay guys I know it's been about two and a half months since I've last posted anything here. I've been busy making my way through my last semester of school and haven't really been able to find time to blog about all of the nerdy things going on in what little free time I've had. But now that I'm graduating, I'm going to try to make time to blog in between whatever job I manage to get and doing comics.

I'm going through my old to-do list for RTQ and chucking things that are no longer relevant and adding things that I've been planning to write about. So I've got plenty waiting in the wings once I find the time to write about it. I'm also going to be putting together a full cosplay from scratch this summer, so I'm sure there will be plenty of posts about that too.

For those who have stuck around, and I know you're out there because this blog is still getting over 300 hits a month somehow, thanks for being patient with me. i'll get myself back on track soon, I promise.

Unpopular But Valid Opinions: I Am Pro-Manga Piracy

2011-02-24T10:07:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing a lot about the manga industry and how piracy is "killing" it. And I think a lot about it. I have no choice but to think about it. It's a big part of the world I'm in. Hell, I'm only writing this blog post because the topic was brought up in my Business of Comics class last night.

I am on the unpopular (as far as the industry is concerned anyway) pro-side of manga being available for free on the internet along with available for purchase. I see it as a weird, skewed, scaled-up version of the free-content model of the webcomics industry.

Let me ramble my way through this and hopefully you will see my point...

Let me first present to you the webcomics business model as I understand/plan to use it. Webcomics GIVE AWAY the main body of their content for absolutely nothing. The actual comic is generally available for free, with no restrictions on viewing, to the entire internet. Essentially, creators are giving their product away to the whole world for free. They then make money off of sales of ad space, merchandise, and often PRINT VERSIONS OF THEIR COMIC.

Oh hey, doesn't that sound kind of familiar? Free content on the internet then being available for purchase in print form? Online scanlations --> Print manga.

Very rarely these days do I stand in a Borders (which, soon, I won't be able to do at all) or a Barnes & Noble, stare at the manga shelf, and buy five or six books. I do not pick up new series on a whim anymore! I cannot afford it! Manga is a bit expensive at $10-$12 a book, and I can't drop $50 to start five series, and end up only wanting to continue one of them. That is a waste of my money.

HOWEVER! I do stand in Borders or Barnes & Noble, stare at the manga shelf, and pick up the first volumes of series I read scanlations of online. Series that I have already invested myself in, know I enjoy, and want to be able to read ANY TIME, not just when I'm at a computer. Prime examples of this are "Bleach" and "Bakuman". Both of these are series I read free scanlations of first. As soon as I began reading scanlations of Bleach, I immediately went and bought hard copies. I wanted to be able to look closely at the artwork, and to be able to plow through pages without having to wait for them to load. But I knew it was already a story I enjoyed, and that buying it wouldn't be a waste of my money.

"Bakuman" is an even more perfect example. I, and by extension several friends, began reading scanlations before Viz decided to license the series and translate it for the US market. When we found out Viz had licensed it, we all marked the release date on our calendars. Within a week of release, several of us were at our local B&N, picking up volume 1, excited about when the next volume would be released for us to buy EVEN THOUGH WE COULD READ IT FREE ONLINE.

Scanlations are great to get into a series, and follow it beyond the current English releases. when you don't want to wait a month or two for the next full volume, you can read a few chapters online. Then, when a more reliable and accurate translation comes out on store shelves, often with extras that you won't get in scanlations (such as the rough draft pages between chapters in "Bakuman"), you can buy them.

Honestly, I'm so dependent on scanlations to "try out" manga at this point, that I worry without scanlations, I'll either miss out on series I would otherwise buy, or get BORED of series I like between releases. Again, I provide as an example "Afterschool Charisma".

"Afterschool Charisma" is a rare example of me picking up a title I know nothing about off a shelf at B&;N. I had seen it, joked about it, and the more I thought about the premise the more I thought maybe it would be interesting. But I didn't pick it up for MONTHS because I couldn't find scanlations online! Eventually, I was with my friend Philip, who works for B&N and offered his discount, so I picked it up.

This series is now my guilty pleasure. I adore it. But there are still no scanlations online. this would be less of a problem if it came out monthly, or even bi-monthly. But VIZ releases one volume of "Afterschool Charisma" once every six months. That is six months of me not reading Afterschool Charisma. Six months of me not psyching myself up for the next volume. In June, will I be as excited for Volume 3 as I was in January when I finished Volume 2? Yes, Viz makes the next volume available to read on their website, but their e-reader is abysmal and impossible to use. So I just don't read it on their site. So who knows if, in five months when Volume 3 is released, I'll remember to go pick it up.

There are also a lot of series that have large followings, but are never localized stateside. (See: "Hoshi no Samidare"/"The Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer") These are series that I would buy in a heartbeat if they were brought to the US, but my only option is to read scanlations.

Manga publishers in the US are really just missing out on the opportunity to capitalize on this model. They need to make better, more accessible e-readers, make content available, and ENCOURAGE people to read their content online. Provide online versions of first volumes that they plan to publish in the future. Maybe even the first two volumes. Give people a chance to get into the story and to WANT to buy the print volumes. They need to pay attention to what's doing well on sites like MangaFox and MangaReader instead of trying to shut them down like they did with OneManga, and then go buy the licenses for those series and provide good translations that will be available at reliable times.

All of these things have been pushed on me as important in the webcomics business model because time has shown that they WORK. Having your content be good, accessible, reliably available is a key to success in the webcomics world. If you provide that, people will read, if they read they might enjoy it, if they enjoy it, they will be willing to support it.

Why can't this free-content model be applied to the manga industry as well?

The numbers show that interest in manga hasn't decreased. Fandoms are still alive, thriving, and growing. Sales have dipped because we're in a recession. We can't buy $50 worth of manga on a whim anymore. We can't risk $10 on something we're not sure if we'll commit to.

I know this is not true for 100% of manga fans. There are always a few people ruining it for everyone. But I am the FIRST to yell at the people who say "I won't buy it, I can just read it online." and the first to tell them to go support series that they love.

The long and short of it, Manga Industry (and book/music publishing industry in general), is that if you let us find what we want, let us commit ourselves to it, we'll still buy it. We just need to know what we want first. Instead of discouraging this, embrace it and find a way to use it to your advantage.

An Open Letter to NJ Transit

2011-02-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

Dear New Jersey Transit,

You need to get your shit together.

I hate to be so blunt and kind of mean about it, but it's what needs to be said. I'm 22, and I've been commuting from Bradley Beach/Asbury Park to New York Penn Station regularly for school for about a year and a half. I am a regular on the North Jersey Coast Line. I've used your trains for years before this, and will probably be stuck using them for years after I graduate to visit friends and do business. This is not a fact that I'm happy about.

Your mission statement, as taken from your website (and a poster in the Asbury Park train station) reads as follows:

Its mission is to provide safe, reliable, convenient and cost-effective transit service with a skilled team of employees, dedicated to our customers' needs and committed to excellence.

This is almost completely contrary to the experiences I've had using your service. Most of your conductors are incredibly nice, friendly, and willing to help customers as best they can. But your service is not reliable, convenient, or cost-effective. Maybe it was at one point, but it certainly isn't right now.

Let's start with "reliable and convenient". NJTransit, when my train gets stuck for more than half an hour twice in three weeks there is a serious problem. When a train has to be over-crowd itself taking on all of the passengers from another train, causing the passengers already on it to be cursed at and rather roughly shoved around instead of providing both sets of passengers with working trains, you cannot call your service "convenient".

When two weeks later, there is a problem with your tracks and passengers are left to wonder WHERE their train is going to go in order for us to get to our destination, you cannot call yourselves "reliable". Nor can you when I check your website and am SURPRISED that my line doesn't have any alerts on it.

Now let's move on to "cost-effective". This is my least favorite part of your mission statement, because I really really do not like being lied to. Your service has LONG since stopped being cost-effective.

Last year you made some changes to your ticket pricing and schedule. . .

How can increasing ticket price and reducing service possibly be cost-effective to your customers? A round-trip ticket from Bradley Beach or Asbury Park to New York Penn Station had previously been $20. This was affordable. Now? A round trip is $30. That's a $10 increase. That's $10 I'm not spending on comics (supporting my industry), art supplies (my job), or food (basic survival). This would be acceptable if there was an increase in trains, or if there was any kind of noticeable improvement to the services already being offered. But I've already made note of the fact that you have decreased the amount of trains running, and your rail system is full of problems causing delays.

I know the economy is in a bad state, and I know this winter was harsh. But you COULD be making a lot of money and are screwing things up for yourselves by making mass transit expensive, unreliable, and an all-around pain in the ass to use.

Get on the ball. Fix this. And do it soon.

Trying to get attention for "Usarin".

2011-02-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

Ohhhhhh man guys. I know it has been... Three months since I last updated this thing. I'm so sorry. I really am. And the worst part is that I can't promise I'll be reliably updating again in the near future. I'm graduating SVA in May, and after that I promise I will make a real effort to get of my ass and make "Rook Takes Queen" a priority again.

for all of you who have stuck around this long, you guys are troopers, and I love you all. I know you're out there, because this blog is still somehow getting like 300 hits a month without me even toughing it. And it's because of those 300 hits a month that I come to you tonight.

I have two very wonderful, insanely talented friends in Japan; Abe and Ruo, and the two of them do a doujinshi that they are publishing online...

"Usarin"

It's a Vocaloid doijinshi about Miku, Rin, and Ren and their day to day lives with Usarin, a tiny version of Rin in a bunny costume. It is incredibly cute, and they have put up pages translated into English!

If you like Vocaloids, I am 100% sure you will enjoy it. Ruo and Abe are both big Vocaloid fans, and they are both mega-talented. If you're unfamiliar with Vocaloids (like me), it is still incredibly cute and totally enjoyable.

It just hit 500 views tonight, and I want to see that number shoot up like a rocket. They deserve all the attention in the world.

Playing Catch-Up: Bakuman Episode 5

2010-11-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

Okay so this is the part where I'm fully caught up with Bakuman. Episode 5, for me, was a good follow to episode 4. It was an entirely different direction, but touched on another of my favorite things in this series -- the relationship between Mashiro and Azuki and the one between Takagi and Kaya. Also in this episode Mashiro and Takagi's bromance just floruishes.

Watching the two of them discuss story ideas is where you can really see it begin. I find it weird that Takagi cries so much, but aybe he actually did that back in the beginning and I just don't remember. He's such a dramatic guy though that I'm completely willing to buy it.

Kaya spends this episode reminding me why she is my goddamn favorite character in the series. Her voice took me a little while to get used to. At first I thought it might be a little too deep, but her energy and emotion is really all there and the more she spoke the more I really felt the voice suited her. Visually, Kaya still feels the most off to me of all of the female characters. Something about her eyes seems really weird, and (as with all of the other girls) I'm still not able to deal with how her hair is drawn. I'm coping with Azuki. Slowly, her anime appearance and her manga appearance are meshing in my head. But Kaya in the anime doesn't seem to suit her at all.

However her acting is great. Even if her appearance seems a little off, her actions are spot on. Her dialog, her reactions, and her vocal inflections are ust completely Miyoshi Kaya, and I can appreciate that even if her apperance feels totally off.

As I mentioned, this episode focuses a lot on the romantic relationships of our to leads. As far as the whole Mashiro and Azuki end of things, it's msotly all in discussion. Mashiro spends time talking with Takagi about the encounter with Miho at the end of episode 4 and how they are on the same "wavelength". Takagi plays with this idea a lot, teasing Mashiro for it at first, but it later comes back and it's hard to tell if he's joking or not.

The beginnings of Takagi and Kaya's relationship (my favorite in the series) is more "active" in episode 5, as Takagi stumbles into it by accident. He had found out about Azuki's dream of voice acting from Kaya, and when Kaya confronts him about talking to Miho about it, he uses the excuse that he just wanted to talk to Kaya. She takes this as a love confession and isn't sure what to do about it. For the rest of the episode, she and Takagi keep passing by and looking back at each other in a more comedic version of Mashiro and Azuki's "wavelength" moment. Takagi mentions it to Mashiro the first time, and Mashiro proceeds to write it off as a joke.

The second half of this episode takes place over summer break and is more focused on Mashiro and Takagi making their first one-shot to submit to Jump. they move into Kawaguchi Taro's old studio to devote themselves entirely to the project. This is where the bromance really blossoms. The first night neither of them can sleep and sit around discussing manga. They talk about Dragonball and then both do the (in)famous Dragonball "fusion dance", which was without a doubt one of the most hillarious things I've ever seen. I was on my semi-daily commute into the city for class when Iw as watching the episode and I was laughing behind my hand in spite of confused looks from other passengers and a conductor.

The truly endearing part of the next two scenes is watching Takagi take care of Mashiro. He's already finished the rough drafts of the story, so there's not as much for him to do. He's watching his friend and partner work constantly and push himself to the point of losing sleep. He watches Mashiro scrap the work he's done on the finished pages to start over entirely. For a while he does his best to just make sure Mashiro is eating and sleeping, and when that's not enough he starts trying to learn how to ink and tone while Mashiro is asleep.

When it comes time to apply screentones to the pages, he asks Mashiro to help and is initially turned down until he states that he was hoping they could "work toward the moment of completion together". When it's all done, the two of them are sleep-deprived and covered in screentone, hoping for the best. The look on their faces was one that I was familiar with after working through big projects.

The episode closes with the Takagi calling Jump to set up an appointment to submit a manuscript. We're about to dive into the really nitty-gritty of the series with the two of them working toward their serialization in Jump. Next week we're being introduced to Hattori, which I'm excited for, and maybe we'll get a little more Eiji? I'd like to be able to form a better opinion of him, but I didn't see him in the preview so I'm not sure if I'll have to wait a while longer to get a better look at him.

Let's all look forward to episode 6!

Playing Catch-Up: Bakuman Episode 4

2010-11-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Bakuman 4 might end up being my favorite episode, you guys. This episode was incredibly special to me for a handful of reasons, but most predominantly in how completely nostalgic it was. I've mentioned here in the past that I'm a Cartooning major, and that drawing comics is how I want to make a living for myself. This episode brought back so many memories of when I first decided that, and when I really commited to learning what went into making comics, what tools I needed, how to use them, and how to make a comic page the best that I could possibly make it.

A big focus of the first half of this episode is on Mashiro and his commitment to learning to use a G-Pen. This is a REAL type of pen nib, and one that anyone in comics and pen+ink drawing will be familiar with. It's a long-time standard for manga-ka, and has recently become a standard for American cartoonists as well.

I have to commend the animation tea for their accuracy in the first half of this episode, and for the little things they included that made the first half of this episode so real to me. When Mashiro wiped the edges of his pen on the side of his ink bottle, I actually had to pause the episode for a moment in shock. I knew that gesture. When I worked with a G-Pen, I had done the exact same thing a hundred times. The way they portrayed the motion was so natural. It was perfect.

Mashiro demonstrated the difference between the Kabura pen line and the G-Pen line to Takagi (also later breifly mentioning Maru pens), and it was such a surreal experience for me, having lived this, knowing what he meant, and feeing the same as he did. He was explaining to Takagi all of the things I've learned over the years. The degree of accuracy in the drawings of the nibs, the gestures made when Mashiro uses them, and the lines they create was just phenominal. I have to commend them on the attention to detail. I guess with this series you have to be accurate or it just seems dumb, but even just slight details of this seires that a causal watcher wouldn't know were accurate or not are perfect. And that makes this seires so much more special for someone like me, who's had to learn these things.

There's also something to be said for the "Kawaguchi Taro School Of Thought", which is Mashiro's uncle's three rules for becoming a successful manga-ka.

This rang true in the manga and it rings true now. You have to believe in what you're doing and put all your effot into it, but a lot of actually getting out there is being in the right place at the right time. You need to know people.

So, in order to get better, Mashiro spends the weekend drawing and learning to use the G-Pen and Takagi sits down and reads as much manga as he can in order to come up with a good story. They show Takagi surrounded by piles of manga, and all of the are actual series that have run in Jump! I'm actually amused by how much "Death Note" (also done by Ohba and Obata) and "Hikaru no Go" (which Obata did the art for) show up in this. There are glimpses of them everywhere, and Takagi keeps making "Death Note" jokes.

The latter half of this episode is about Mashiro and Takagi committing to being manga-ka and planning their futures around it. They make decisions about school and make the decision to try and talk to an editor at Jump. They begin making plans to do a one-shot over their summer break to try and get in to talk to an editor. The first stages of Mashiro and Takagi's fanstastic bromance begin to emerge, especially around the key to the studio that Mashiro gave Takagi.

And then we have a breif encounter between Mashiro and Azuki. This is the whole "on the same wavelength" scene, which, admittedly, Iw as worried wouldn't translate well to the anime. It was a very slow, still scene that was about reactions more than anything else. But it actually came out very well.

And finally, episode 4 gives us our first glimpse at Nizuma Eiji in the last 30 second of the episode, on the phone with his editor about moving to Tokyo todo manga. We onyl get close ups of his mouth and a shot of him from behind, and all he does is make bird noises, but it's a good sign of what's to come.

Man, this one sure was image heavy! But this episode has been my favorite so far and there was just so uch I wanted to cover!! I'll be looking at episode 5 tomorrow, and then I'll finally be caught up!

Playing Catch-Up: Bakuman Episode 3

2010-11-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

So, I finally got my dumb ass caught up with Bakuman.I regret putting it off. I'm going to do separate posts for eahc one and finish off the week with them. I want to start off saying that when I fired up episode 3, and when I hit the end of it, the themes made me start bawling again. I really don't know why that is, butman something about those songs...

Episode 3: Parents And Children was, more than anything, about the drive to make comics. It's about the fact that it's hard work, but even if you can handle that you have to have the heart for it. Reliving Mashiro and Takagi first exploring the studio that would become such a vital location for the rest of the series was such an intense feeling. Though some of the more touching moments came after they'd done their exploring, the first of which being Mashiro calling his father to talk about his Uncle's death. Mashiro's father reminds him of a moment in "Ashita no Joe" (an old manga about boxing), and it clarifies for Mashiro that his uncle didn't kill himself or die due to stress. He just burned himself out on the passion of making comics for someone he loved.

Another moment that just seemed really special to me was when Mashiro and Takagi were reading the last letter to his uncle from Azuki's mom and Takagi was the one who started crying. It's a very Takagi thing to do. Mashiro isn't exactly the emotional one of the pair, but it just seemed a little more speical than normal because this is something that, to Mashiro, would be very personal. Takagi on the otherhand was just stepping into this situation, knowing nothing about it, and felt such emotion for someone he had never met and what his feelings must have been that it brought him to tears.

I'm still bothered by the appearance of all of the girls in this series, and I think I realized part of it during the scene in which Mashiro and Takagi visit Azuki's mother to talk about what happened between her and Mashiro's uncle. The hair on all of them looks somewhat plastic and fake. I think I discussed this before, but it seems like there's not as much detail in the hair int he girls as there is on the guys. It's really starting to bother me.

But the scene itself was wonderful, and also hillarious. The banter between Azuki's mom and Takagi on "nerds vs. bad boys" was one of the more hilarious moments so far. Satoshi Hino voices him spectacularly. I unfortuantely haven't heard the other roles he's played, so I can't compare them, but at least for Takagi, he is brilliant. Both parts are brilliantly played, actually, but Takagi's performance was just exceptional.

This episode reminded me of why I'dbeen so excited about the Bakuman anime. It was nice to relive my first experiences with this seires. Even though I knew everything that would happen, it was all in a way I hadn't seen so it was like living it for the first time all over again! That was a wonderful feeling, and it's what I love about this adaptation.

On to episode 4!

New Sides To Old Stories

2010-10-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a little while since you've heard from me. If you follow me on twitter or any of my other regular internet hangouts you probalby know that for me, the past two weeks have been full of sick cats, stressed moms, half-sinished comics, and pulling 3 water color paintings and a 5-minute presentation out of my ass at the last minute. I've been recovering from all of this since last Thrusday, but things seem to be calming down signifcantly now, so I'm going to try and get caught up on the things I've missed.

The great thing is that right as my schedule has calmed down two of my favorite series have entered new arcs. Chatper 424 of "Bleach" and chapter 57 of "Genshiken" both came out today and have manged to light a bit of a fire under me.

Once again, Kubo sets out to remind me why I love his goddamn manga so much. This week was full of Ichigo, his family, and his riends just hanging out, being weirdos, and implying things to come. In canon, it's been more than a year (17 months, if we're getting specific) since the end of the last arc. Ichigo's sisters are entering middle school and Ichigo is now a senior in high school. Uryu seems to have taken over fighting the hollows in Karakura, Orihime and Chad just kind of continue to exist, Keigo and Mizuiro are still dorks, Tatsuki has become hot, and Rukia hasn't shown her face once since she and Ichigo parted ways, which is to be expected I guess.

I'm wondering if Karin will end up as a shinigami or something given that it was pointed out how much stronger her abilites have become since Ichigo lost his. I'm also excited to find out what is going to go on with Ichigo's deputy shinigami badge. I was fairly certain I was the only one who even remembered he had the damned thing, and all of a sudden it's a plot point. I'm curious about this new villain, who seems to have inherited Aizen's evil mullet.

I'm hoping that next week that Urahara/Yoruichi or the Vizard start poking their heads back into the story. I doubt Ichigo is going to give much thought to his missing badge, but I anticipate one/all of them sticking their noses in and forcing him to go get it back for whatever reason. Still also anticipating Urahara injecting Ichigo with reishi and being "LOL YOU'RE A SHINIGAMI AGAIN!". Seem slike his kind of thing.

As I mentioned, this week also brought the long awaited return of "Genshiken". I think it was my sophomore or junior year of college when I sat down and read all nine volumes of "Genshiken" straight through. It is one of two (the other being "Gurren Lagann") that lived up to the hype I'd heard about it from friends before getting into it. Rumors circulated about it for a little while, and then a few months ago the first chapter leaked. This week brought us further in and I am looking forward to the things to come.

Old favorites Ohno and Ogiue are running the Genshiken now, Kuchiki still hanging around and being a creeper, the American transfer Sue still being totally insane and amazing, and a few new members coming in to give new life to the group we all know and love. Familair faces like Sasahara, Saki, and Madarame are also popping up as needed and I'm excited to see how they'll play as now-supporting members of the cast.

In a very out of character turn for me, I've already got a crush on the new member Hato. Hato is a cross-dresser. He goes to school as a boy, but whenever he goes to the Genshiken he changes clothes and makes himself up as a girl. He also seems to avoid the other members during regular school hours and wantes them to see him as boy as little as possible. A few other members are uncomfortable about it, but Ohno and Ogiue, from their past experiences, are already used to this sort of thing and make Madarame give them a key to his apartment so Hato can change clothes there after school instead of having to do it in a bathroom at the school.

There's somethign that I find very endearing about Hato, and I'm interested about all of the new interactions that the members of the Genshiken, new and old, will have. Sue seems to have taken over Madarame's place, even if Ogiue is the chairman, often proclaiming meetings to be the Nth meeting on whatever topic.

I'm still two or three weeks behind on the anime episodes for "Bakuman", but I promise I'll get caught up with those as soon as possible and blog about them. I have caught up with the manga though, and I'm really excited about the direction it's taking. I love Shiratori and I'm looking forward to seeing how Mashiro and Takagi will do working on seires spearate from each other while also still doing Perfect Crime Club. Kaya also continus to just be my favorite character in the damn series.

I'm headed to New England Webcomics Weekend, so I'll be sure to write a post about that as well when I get back!

Pleading My Case for Alcyone

2010-10-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This blog post contains a metric fuck-ton of spoilers for CLAMP's "Magic Knight Rayearth". This series is 15 years old, so I don't feel bad spoiling it, but I figure a warning is only fair.

So, a while ago I found out that there's going to be a Dark Horse re-release of the Magic Knight Rayearth manga this December. Being a long time fan of the series, I was excited to hear this. I have their omnibus for CLAMP's "Clover" and it's nice to hear they've gotten another of CLAMP's titles from the declining TokyoPop. In honor of this, I've decided to write another opinion piece, regardless of how unpopular this opinion may be.

It's time for an article about my love of Alcyone.

About ten or twelve years ago my cousin bought the fourth VHS tape in the MKR series. It took me a little while to get into, but then I fell head over heels for it. I still own the entire series on VHS, and own both of the original memorial box sets, then followed up in getting the manga and making my way into the fandom. There were a handful of fan-sites and a small but active community on FanFiction.net that I'm proud to have been a part of since back then it actually meant something.

But back then, Alcyone was not a well liked character. Even the fan-sites that praised the rest of the antagonist cast showed a strong distaste for her. I don't know if this has changed, since in the middle of my high school career I sort of fell away from being active in fandoms to deal with my own life. But back then she was sort of the black sheep of the Rayearth cast. I liked her, but even in fandoms there was peer pressuer and I never really expressed it. I had started a fanfiction about her early life that was going to go up until she began fighting for Zagato, but I never finished it or made any of it public. This isprobably for the best since, at age 12, I was a terrible writer.

Honstly, the only other Alcyone fans I've ever met are the Super Cosplay Kazoku group when I ran into them at Otakon '10. This is really hard for me to understand, since I think Alcyone is one of the most sympathetic, tragic, and amazing characters in the series. She does things and has ideals that are't far off from lead heros and heroines in other series. But for some reason, coming from her, these traits are bad. I see her modern equvalant to be, hoenstly, Adiane the Elegant from "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann" and even she is looked on more favorably than Alcyone.

So here me out on this one, and let me plead my case for one of my favorite characters of all time.

I want to start with the fact that not only does Alcyone have the best intentions, she is also more honest with the Magic Knights than any other character in this series. I can (and probably will) write an entirely separate post on how Clef spent this whole seires lying through his teeth to everyone and he's supposed to be the mentor/guide/all-around good helpful guy. Emeraude also ies to the girls about what she needs them for, and Zagato never really explains to them what's going on when they fight him. Mokona obviously knows but doesn't try to alert them. Even the mashin, who must have known what purpose they were created for, didn't bother to tell the Magic Knights that they were on a fantastic epic journey to commit a murder.

Of course, Alcyone doesn't fill them in on this either, but she doesn't need to. Any time the Magic Knights ask her a question she answers them honestly. Why is she fighting them when they are "saving" her world? Because she loves Zagato and he wants them dead. She is blindly fighting in the honor of the man she loves. Shonen and shojo protagonists do this all the time. Hell, the second half of Gurren Lagann awas about Simon disregarding the laws of time and space to save his girlfriend who was trying to end the world at the time. So why, coming from Alcyone, is this trait viewed so negatively?

Can we stop for a second and break down exactly what Alcyone is doing? Because I think when you strip it down to bare bones it says a lot for her character.

Emeraude is, essentially, trying to kill herself by summoning the Magic Knights because she can't be in love with Zagato and also support Cephiro. Zagato is trying to kill the Magic Knights because he loves Emeraude and he doesn't think it's fair that she has to sacrifice herself jsut because she wants to love someone. Alcyone, because she loves Zagato, threw away her ties to Clef and her career as an Ile (a magic user) for the royal family and attendant to Emeraude, to serve the man she loved knowing that he loved someone else. Okay lets strip this down. Alcyone is fighting for the man show loves who is fighting for the woman he loves.

Alcyone is fighting to protect the woman who took the man she loves.

She loves Zagato so much that she will fight for what he wants, even if it means she'll be unhappy in the end. She wants his happiness above all else, even her own life and the lives of every single other person in the world. Guys, that is a beautiful beautiful thing. I don't know many people, real or fictional, who have it in themselves to make that choice. Certainly no one else in the cast has that level of devotion.

Another thing about Alcyone that I think made her unpopular is the fact that she fails multiple times and then begs Zagato to let her try again. On the count of her failings, let me point out that no one the girls fought actually succeeded against them and got no closer to it than Alcyone did. She had the girls on he ropes several times before they would power up and defeat her, just like any of the others Zagato sent after the Magic Knights.

As for her going back to Zagato begging for another chance... I find that far more appealing than Ascot and Caldina turning tail and defecting to the other side. Lafarga is an exception in that he was brainwashed. This also says nothing of Inouva (who is an anime-only character) who died when he fought the Magic Knights and therfore didn't get to choose what he did after he failed. But getting back to the point, Alcyone stuck to her cause. She devoted herself to Zagato and fighting for his happiness. Even if she knew he wouldn't love her, she still hoped to earn his respect.

In the manga she goes, literally, crawling back to him after her second fight to ask for his forgiveness. A lot of people might look down on her for this, even though she lost her life (to Zagato) trying to earn his respect. This is, I guess, another problem people have with her. First of all, she was set on fire and then nearly drowned in quick successon. I'd love to see anyone else walk around unscathed after that.

In the anime, Alcyone survives into the second season where she's corrupted by Debonair and, for a while, goes completely bat-shit mother fucking insane. Pardon my language, but that's really the only proper way to describe it. The female cast briefly sits and discusses her in a group-bath segment though they don't discuss more than her chest size. Otherwise she spends the maority of the season trying to kill everyone and mistaking Lantis for Zagato.

But in the last episode, Slcyone makes the choice to sacrifice her own life in order to try and help the Magic Knights locate Debonair. She does not claim she made the wrong decisions (which earns her my admiration in even THEN sticking by her ideals and her love for Zagato), but does express regret that she had to hurt people for those choices. She repents, and suffers what seems like a very painful death while trying to give Umi, Fuu, and Presea's sister the information they need. Again, how many would do that without hesitation instead of having to hide, consider it, and then maybe sacrifice themselves?

I know this was a long one to get through, but I hope that if you had a low opinion of Alcyone I've managed to raise it a bit. And if you didn't have an opinion yet, I hope that when Dark Horse's release of "Magic Knight Rayearth" is released you'll read it and take what I've said into consideration when judging Alcyone.

Old 97's: "The Grand Theatre"

2010-10-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

So I spend most of my time here at RTQ talking about anime and manga, occasionally about something else involving cartoons and comics. But today I'm deviating slightly from my normal model to talk about music. As far as music goes, I have a very eclectic taste that cecenters in the realm of Rock and Country. I grew up on, primarily, what my parents listened to. I am lucky in that both of my parents have amazing taste in music.

When I was in middle school, my mother discovered the Old 97's. This discovery was passed on to me, and both of us have been huge fans ever since. I have an oddly distinct memory of sitting in my middle school cafeteria humming "Jagged" while I waited for the rest of my table to come off the lunch line. Mom and I have seen the Old 97's, and Rhett Miller solo, several times when they've been in New Jersey or NYC and have loved every show we went to. We still reflect fondly at the absolutely stellar show they did at Styuvesant High School in June 2006.

Recently, the Old 97's released "The Grand Theatre: Volume One". A friend of my mom's gave it to her, she brought it home, I burned it onto my laptop, and listened to it on one of my train rides up into the city for class. Since the Old 97's are so near and dear to my heart, I thought I'd cover this newest album here and hopefully spread word of them a little further out.

The Old 97's started as an Alt. Country band out of Texas and have gotten progressivly more "Rock" over the years, thus their appeal to me. The opening track, "The Grand Theatre", really reflects how much Rock has infused into them over the years. But even as soon as track 3 and 4, "The Magician", there's a bit of a throwback to the rock-infused-country energy from earlier albums, and track 4, "You Were Born To Be In Battle", and track 6, "Let The Whiskey Take The Reigns", hold a lot of their old country spirit that proves that they haven't thrown away their roots but have simply grown from them. They even pay a bit of tribute to their Texas roots with "A State of Texas".

Favorite tracks include "The Magician" and "Champaign, Illinois", which both seem to echo a bit of what I loved about earlier albums. Least favorites include "You Smoke Too Much" and "Love Is What You Are". They're both still great songs, but they'd drop to the bottom if I were to rank the tracks from favorite to least favorite.

Over all, "The Grand Theater" is a good album. Not my favorite, but still very enjoyable from start to finish. If you're already a fan, it's a great album to add to your collection, and if you haven't heard them yet it's a good place to start.

Samurai Girls and Detective Girls

2010-10-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

So, I spend several days a week at the apartment of my good friend Downtown Otaku, since my class hours are kind of ridiculous and he's the kind of awesome dude that will let me crash at his place if I need to. We've taken to watching a few episodes of anime every week as a break from our homework and there are two series that just started that we're really getting into.

-- Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls --
I'm not going to lie. We came to Samruai Girls for the fan service (And there is a LOT of it. Constantly.), but we're staying for the plot. the first episode was actually aired weeks ago as a leaked preview of the series, and we watched it then and picked up with episode 2 this week.

The series has something to do with a school full of samurai women, and some guy arriving to meet with the student president or something like that. He runs into a couple students getting changed, and they bicker about that before ending up getting into a bit of trouble with the student council and being pursued by a ninja-maid, before our real lead female arrives, falling out of the sky. This girl is apparently some kind of "master samurai", and in certain situations is incredibly powerful and fairly terrifying, but out of battle is weak, air-headed, and kind of ridiculous. So far we're not sure what triggers this change in personality.

The thing that really kept me attracted to Samurai Girls was the visuals. If, like me, you played and loved the visuals in the Capcom/Clover game "Okami", you'll be sucked in by the visual style of Samurai Girls. While the characters themselves are done in a fairly traditional style (though they have some weighty linework), the backgrounds and settings are very artistic, graphic, and stylized. Espeically in episode 2, theya re very reminicent of the feeling brought by the settings in Okami.

-- Tantei Opera Milky Holmes --
Another friend and I have frequent discussions about how the anime market is currently over-satruated with "moe" lolicon series that are all cute girls and no sustance. It sells, and right now with the world economy the way it is, studios are just making whatever they can market to large audiences.
At first glance, Mily Holmes might seem like one of these series. But underneath there seems to be more substance to it than that. The entire time we were watching, DTO and I kept asking each other "Is this really episode 1? Are we sure there's not more story before this?" And, upon research, there is a PSP game and a TCG that probably have the backstory, but in subsequent episodes, I have faith that I'll learn everything I need to know.

Milky Holmes is set in "the age of great detectives and gentleman theives", and focuses on a school full of budding detectives. It centers around four girls who make up the team known as "Milky Holmes", four girls (all named after great detectives) who were taught by a famous detective and are said to be the best in the school. There adversary is a female theif (who is undercover in the school as the student president) and her three henchman (who disguise themselves as personell and students at the school).

In order to "be a detective" you have to have and be able to control a magic/psychic ability called a "Toy". In the first episode, the girls lose the ability to use their Toys and thus lose all of their privileges at the school such as special meals, private luxury rooms, and being allowed to skip classes.

So far, the four girls of Milky Holmes sort of blend into each other a bit (in the way that a group of girls in a "moe" series tend to), but they do all have very distinct personalites, and the mosre I watch I'm sure the more i'll be able to pull them apart from one another. In contrast, the four antagonists of the series are all strikingly different from one another, and play off of each other and Milky Holmes in ways that are quirky, hilarious, and incredibly fun. The antagonists quickly and easily became my favorites and I can't wait to see how they use the lack of Milky Holmes' toys further to their advantage.

The Hub: Bringing Back The Classics

2010-10-13T07:39:00.000-07:00

All over NYC, I've been seeing ads for a new children's/family station called "HUB" that went on the air on October 10th. I didn't think much of it. From the ads, it seemed like it was all just new rehashings of old franchises. New Transformers and Strawberry Shortcake, plus some original things that just didn't interest me at all.

On the 10th, I was at Downtown Otaku's, and we were channel surfing in the middle of the night. I was half asleep when he came across Hub, and spent several seconds staring at the television before I blurted out "Is that the old Men In Black cartoon?!"

It was.

We scrolled ahead through the lineup and saw a million things from our childhoods lined up. Men in Black the Animated Series, Atomic Betty, Batman Beyond... Not just rehashings, but the old cartoons and shows we had grown up with and loved. I saw Fraggle Rock on the line up and nearly cried.

In an age when children's programming is heavy-handed, all Nickelodean airs in "Spongebob Squarepants", Cartoon Network is starting to rely on live-action, and Disney Television has lost every entertaining bone in it's body, it's good to see that someone is still here keeping entertainment alive.

I've been watching Hub for a few days now, and those following me on twitter will have seen me proclaim multiple times that it is the best network ever. In the late morning I can watch Fraggle Rock, in the afternoon I can watch Men In Black and Batman Beyond, and in the evening I can watch Laverne & Shirley and old live-action Adam West Bataman.

This channel really has something for everyone. Kids who want Strawberry Shortcake or Transformers, parents who want Doogie Howser M.D. and Laverne & Shirley, twenty-somethings in between who want the cartoons they grew up with in the 90's. When Hub says they're a network for "Kids and their families", they are not lying. Anyone could find a good hour or two worth of programming to watch on Hub.

So, Hub, I'm sorry for doubting you. You're keeping good television alive, and I give you points for that. I hope you've got the chops to keep up as you are right now.

Bakuman EP 2 - Keeping the momentum.

2010-10-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

Right off the bat, I've got to say, I love the opening song and ending song more and more every time I hear them. I maybe the only Bakuman fan I know that lie the opening, but this week even more than last week it really felt appropriate. Same with the ending. when I heard it start, it only emphasized the energy of the situation and pulled me into being eager for next week and watching episode 3.

I really kept my ear to the ground this week and tried to actively listen for the background music in episode 2 so that I could comment on it. In doing so, I noticed that in many scenes they don't use any background music at all. Even in scenes that are just conversation, the ambient background is often very quiet until some great revelation is point of thought is made. These choices on when to start and stop the background music are brilliant. It brings importance to certain mmoments that might not have come through as well if there had been a musical underscore the whole time.

The music itself is stunning. The tracks I most noticed were the slower, more sentimental ones, but in the final scene, during Mashiro's running montage there is a more upbeat, lively song that I also found to be absolutely wonderful. As soon as I can, I want to get my hands on the soundtrack and just listen to it straight, without having the anime along with it to distract me.

Right now, we are still in the fledgling stages of Bakuman, so it's really hard to comment on it as I would the manga right now. We haven't gotten to any manga creation, the comradere and rivalry in Jump, the first appearance of Niizuma Eiji, or even all of Takagi's lady troubles. However, Takagi's lady troubles WERE beautifuly foreshadowed in episode two in his conversation with Iwase about the exams they were about to take, punctuated by Kaya passing by telling Miho how she didn't study at all.

I'm still very iffy on the visuals in Bakuman. It's not Mashiro and Takagi that bother me, as I said last week. It's the girls. Iwase, now that she's come in, feels as equally off as Miho and Kaya. I don't know why, but Miho and Iwase have been given brown and purple hair respectively, when in the manga both of them had black hair. That is throwing me significantly.

Mashiro's blue isn't bothering me, mostly because his hair is blue in all of the color spots, and I'm accustomed to it, but even in the color spots, Miho and Iwase's hair is dark and near-black. It may have a tint of the colors they were given in the anime, but it's not nearly as blatant. Kaya's hair is also more red in the color illustrations than it is the light brown in the anime. Also her hair seems to have a lot more texture in the manga than the anime. I don't know why it was simplifed, or if I'm just imagining it, but it really pulls me out of her character.

One thing about the episode that was incredibly strange to me was how every time that Mashiro flashed back to his conversation with Miho in the previous episode, he flashed back to the moment he aske dher to marry him, and only up to her runing away afterward. The flashback never includes where she agrees and the terms that go with it, even if they are acknowledged in conversation. Also he never looks back on it and smiles.

I understand that he's feeling determined and wants to prove himself to Miho, but isn't that something to smile about? If he can accomplish his dream, he'll be with the girl he loves. Instead he looks very somber and serious, as if he's been rejected and the only way to redeem himself to her is to become an accomplished manga-ka, which isn't the case at all.

Next week looks like we're getting into the history between Mashiro's uncle and Miho's mom, and the parallels to Mashiro and Miho they draw. Hopefully we'll also start leading into Takagi and Kaya, since I'd obviously love to see more of them given that they're my favorites in the series. After that we'll likely start getting into Niizuma Eiji and the nitty-gritty manga side of Bakuman.

Bleach 423 - The End Of An Era

2010-10-08T19:08:00.000-07:00

So, this week in "Bleach" the conflict with Aizen finally, after four or five years, came to a close. I promised myself that when this happened I'd blog about it since it's a pretty big turning point in the nerd world. Even if you're not into "Bleach", if you hang out even marginally in the anime/manga fandom circles you're bound to be at least aware of how long this has been going on.

And anyone who follows me on twitter, or talks to me on LiveJournal or on instant messengers or even knows me offline, knows how frustrated I've been for a while now because all of this constant random fighting just bores me to tears. Especially since they just go on forever, happen simultaneously, and make it damn near impossible to figure out how much time has passed.

But this week has reminded me why I love this series and why I keep reading it. Because there was no fighting this week. this week was the whole cast being dorks.

I love "Bleach" for it's characters. It's story is decent even if it's sometimes poorly handled, but it's characters are what make it shine and why I believe it's so popular. It's cast is larger than it has to be, but no one member of the cast is just like any other. "Bleach" presents a vast range of characters with an equally vast range of personalities and motivations. This, unfortunately, gets lost in the grunting shouting man fights that occupy about 75% of this series.

But that other 25% that is comprised of characters hanging out together being sarcastic and witty and weird and showcasing their crazy personalities. We really only get this between arcs, which means right now we're in for it for a little while and I can enjoy this series like I used to.

I think my favorite part about this chapter was how Aizen was handled. Last week Ichigo tried to sympathize with Aizen. He theorized that Aizen was doing all of this because he was "lonely" because no one could match him, or some shit along those lines. Me and several of my friends got very annoyed by this. There has never been anything "sympathetic" about Aizen. The dude is just batshit. I don't care how "lonely" he is, it isn't an excuse for multi-planal genocide.

But this week Aizen decided to remind us that he's not sympathetic. He takes his sentencing, and laughs in the face of those condeming him.

Does anyone remember my post on Bleach running on the DBZ principal? Because this week it was finally proven by Rukia.

His hair was getting longer because he had more power. Now that he's lost his power, it got short again.

This lead into Rukia and Ichigo parting ways again. I've read this chapter about three times since it went up, and I cry every time. These kind of goodbyes always get me. However, I know this isn't the end. I've heard that we're getting two more arcs (one 6-8 months long, one 2-3 years long). And even if I didn't know that for sure, Ichigo and Rukia have had to part ways twice before and look where that got us? She'll be back.

Given the state Ichigo's in, I'm curious as to how things will pick up again. Kubo Tite has once against it up so that I have to come back in two weeks when Bleach's hiatus is up to see where this story goes.

I'm still predicting that Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi is going to be the next big bad, since he's still running around in Hueco Mundo when he gets bored, and he was making some threats at Ichigo before he left Hueco. I'm also wondering if, in this new arc, Grimmjow and Nel will make their way out of the plot-sink they were sucked into, since we're still involving Hueco and all.

So, in two weeks, Bleach will come back and we'll start whatever new story Kubo's going to string us along into. Once we're into that, I'll do my best to let you all know what I think. Because my opinion on this is clearly incredibly valuable to you all.

"Bakuman" episode 1: Starting strong right out of the gate!

2010-10-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

Ah you guys!!! I just got through watching the first episode of the "Bakuman" anime! I've been excited about this for months, and the last few weeks my friends and I have really been building up to it. This morning I watched raws of the opening and ending sequences, and a little bit of the episode, then decided to wait for fansubs to watch the rest!

I was confused when I started and got the opening for "Super Hero Legend", in my mind I recognized what it was but I kept wondering if I was watching the wrong thing by mistake. But when it faded to a young Mashiro reading the manga for "Super Hero Legend", I laughed.

Then the real opening sequence began...

I instantly fell in love. Especially given the context of the early story, which focuses mostly on Mashiro and Miho, I felt that this opening was really appropriate. It focuses mostly on Mashiro and Miho, with a backtone of Takagi and Kaya. It really sets the tone for the start of the story, and I am just in love with the song, "Blue Bird" by Kobukuro.

So far it's pretty faithful to the manga. The "Death Note" joke was retained, and that was great for me. As of episode one, I have no complaints about how the anime is following the manga. Still, this is episode one so it's a little hard to tell just what direction the anime will roll in.

As for the visuals, I'm about 75%. I like the way Mashiro and Takagi are presented. They feel very natural and they look like themselves. Takagi pulled out some really great expressions, though as of now some of the comedic faces don't seem to have come through in the anime. I'm not sure how many really showed up this early on, so I'm hoping that they just haven't gotten a chance to really make those expressions yet and will pull through on it in the future.

But the girls... The girls are my sticking point right now. Kaya doesn't feel like herself to me at all. Of course we've seen almost nothing of her, so it's hard to really say what the problem is. But as for Miho, it's her eyes. In the manga, and even in Mashiro's drawings of her in the anime, Miho's eyes are very wide, bright, and expressive of the fact that she's a very hopeful, dreamy character. In the anime, her eyes don't always express that, and it's a little disappointing to me. I hope that as the anime progresses I lose this feeling and Miho's eyes begin to feel more natural to her character for me, because I really love Miho and those qualities about her.

The voice acting completely wins my support. My favorite is Takagi, who is being voiced by Hino Satoshi. I'm not familiar with any of his previous roles, even though he's had some major ones. But he really gives Takagi the energy, cunning, and personality that the manga always made me believe he has.

I'm really excited about some of the other voices (which are all listed on one of Wikipedia's "Bakuman" articles) for supporting characters who haven't appeared yet. Fukuda is going to be voiced by Suwabe Junichi, who voiced Grimmjow in "Bleach", and I feel like this is a perfect fit.

The background music is hard for me to comment on, as I tend to lose track of it while watching. But I suppose that is a good thing. It makes me comfortable watching the things going on and doesn't jar me or pull me out of the story at all. It feels natural to the events occurring while it plays.

As for the ending sequence, I'm just as in love with it as the opening.

Here we get to see a lot more of the backbone of what "Bakuman" is and will be. We get to see our supporting cast done up in manga panels, showcasing their personalities. The song is "Bakurock: Outline the Future" by Ya-kyim. The song has some drawing puns in it, which I think is fantastic, and the tone of the song just really fits the overall tone of "Bakuman".

Out of the gate, "Bakuman" gets a solid "A" from me, and I'm really really looking forward to episode 2 next week! I'll do my best to follow through with reviews on each episode if I have time and remember to!

Getting started with Pokemon: Best Wishes

2010-09-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

So, I sat and watched the first two episodes of "Pokemon: Best Wishes" just now as a break from my nearly-completed homework. I have to say, it's following the model pokemon has set for itself pretty closely so far.

I watched it entirely for Araragi, but I might stick around for Iris and Dent. (Dent hasn't shown up yet but I'm looking forward to it.) Araragi seemed pretty standard fare for professors who aren't Prof. Oak. She didn't get much of a personality, but I'm hoping this will change in the future. She got excited over Pikachu since he's not from Isshu, but otherwise didn't come across as anything special, which is a shame.

Iris on the other hand is adorable. She does a lot of making fun of Ash, but I think my favorite thing about her is that her Kibago lives/rides in her hair. I'm looking forward to what she brings to the series since she seems very different to Ash's previous 3 female side-kicks. she's is excitable and not as egotistical or vain as the past three.

I am less impressed with Shooti, who seems to be the basic douche-canoe rival, this time with the "exciting" twist of obsessively taking pictures of everything. His only redeeming quality is that he chose Tsutarja as his starter pokemon. Though, I really don't blame him for being kind of a jerk to Ash. Shooti was trying to pick his starter and get his journey started, and Ash was kind of up in his space and being a pain in the ass.

Shooti and Ash had a battle in the first episode which Ash lost because Zekrom broke Pikachu's electrical abilities... And then... fixed them? I'm really confused by this event. I'd heard about it before I watched the episodes, but it sounded like it was something that was going to go on for a while. But it was cleared up in like five minutes. And while it was hilarious to watch Ash tell Pikachu to use all of his electrical attacks on him, I'm bothered by this. Unless it's going to be something that happens regularly (which may just get annoying), it is a really unnecessary plot hiccup.

Though, so far, I think my favorite part is Mijumaru...

Don't be fooled by his cute face. This little guy is the craziest stalker. He was disappointed that Shooti didn't pick him as his starter, and I guess decided to follow Ash around. He saves them all from Team Rocket, who surprisingly would have finally gotten away with stealing Pikachu (and Kibago) if Mijumaru hadn't stepped in. I'm sure eventually Ash will catch him officially, but for now he's just following them around, akin to that crazy old stalker Jigglypuff.

So, I'll keep watching to see where it goes, but for now it seems like Best Wishes is following the set-up that the previous seasons have created. I'm hoping that Best Wishes will break out of it a bit in the near future. We'll have to see.

Clone High: The Manga

2010-09-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

Ages ago, Suri and I were in our local B&;N and we found a manga called "Afterschool Charisma". The cover featured a fairly standard teenage boy alongside teenage... historical figures. On the front was Marie Curie, on the back was Sigmund Freud, Napolean Bonaparte, and Florence Nightingale. Flipping through, it seemed to be about this boy going to a high school full of cloned historical figures.

I turned to Suri and said, "I just found Clone High: The Manga".

Last Friday I went out with my friends Hillary and Philip (or Letao. I'm not sure what he prefers to be called at this point) to finally see Scott Pilgrim. I guess that should have it's own write-up, but it probably won't since you've likely all seen it already. That's what I get for being late to the party.

But after lunch and before the movie we stopped at the big-ass B&N in Union Square. Now, I've made jokes about this manga to everyone I've been in a B&N with since I first found it. But this time I actually worked up the nerve to buy it.

As anticipated, it's so bad that it's spectacular. It's pretty ridiculous, but if you're willing to not take it seriously and ignore the fact that it is basically kicking history in the balls it is a pretty entertaining read. Basically, if you have an opinion on "Axis Powers Hetalia", you pretty much already have an opinion on "Afterschool Charisma", because you are going to think the same things. You're going to enjoy it because it's ridiculous (though AC is not a straight comedy like Hetalia), or you're going to hate it for being dumb about history.

Like I've said, the basic stripped down plot is basically the same as Clone High. Various historical figures have been cloned and are in high school. There is also Shiro, the son of the man who cloned all of the historical figures, attending high school with them. Many of the clones have a bias against him since he is not a clone like them, but he's still managed to amass a group of friends, so really it's just like normal high school except he calls his friends "Queen Elizabeth" and "Joan of Arc" or by their full or last names, which is really kind of weird if you think about it.

He was apparently pretty close with Marie Curie, but she's out of the picture before the first volume even starts, her departure setting up some of the conflict within the story. Mostly with Mozart, who is mostly a complete tool for all of the time we spend with him. He has his reasons for this, but still he comes across as a total jerk.

There's also the fact that the first clone, of JFK, is assassinated when he announces he's going to run for president, leading into a plot involving a mysterious group planning to kill all of the clones. On top of that, a few of the clones have formed some kind of cult worshiping Dolly, the first successfully cloned mammal. This hasn't amounted to much yet, but I'm hoping something interesting will come of it.

My favorite characters so far are Joan of Arc, Sigmund Freud, Napolean Boneparte, and (as tasteless as it may sound) Adolf Hitler.

I know, I know. It's Hitler. Hitler is bad and everything he did is bad and heaven knows I will never try and argue that. But that is exactly what makes Clone-Hitler so interesting in this manga. No one likes him. Well, Shiro does, but only because they had a conversation about everyone hating both of them based on their circumstances. (Hitler being Hitler and Shiro being not a clone.) Hitler is willing to accept not having any of the clones as his friends and being alone most of the time, and claims it is "punishment for his sins".

As Hitler puts it, they are the "clone and non-clone odd-men-out". I find this to be incredibly interesting. If he's handled well as a character he could make for some very very interesting storytelling. I like the potential that he has, and that they just outright acknowledge that "Hitler = As bad as it gets". It makes Clone!Hitler sympathetic without making Real!Hitler sympathetic. (Because he's not.)

When Suri and I first found the manga and flipped through it, we founds a scene with Hitler and Joan Of Arc arguing (after reading it, I learned they were arguing over whether or not Shiro can understand their feelings as clones since he is not one) and declared that I shipped Joan/Hitler. After reading it, I still kind of do. Joan unfortunately gets minimal face-time in the first volume, but is shown to have some really interesting insecurities involving being a clone.

But Joan of Arc makes the cover of volume 2, so I'm hoping that means that in vol 2, we get to see a lot more of her and that the whole "Dolly Cult" (which is run by Rasputin and some girl who was unnamed) will be further explored.

Unfortunately it seems that Volume 2 isn't hitting stores until mid-January, and I can't find it online anywhere. So I'm left hanging for the next four months until it finally comes out.

As a warning, there are some nude boobs in "Afterschool Charisma". It s a manga, so really you shouldn't be surprised. I was more shocked that I missed it when I was flipping through with Suri than the fact that it was actually there. It only happens in two brief scenes, and both end in hilarity.

So if you're a mature reader who can handle that sort of thing without getting OMGOFFENDEDATBOOBS and are willing to laugh at historical inaccuracy, definitely pick up the first volume, enjoy it, and wait with me until January when we can read more!

Generation V Commences!

2010-09-16T16:03:00.000-07:00

So, due to pre-orders being sent out early a the flood-gates have opened and all of the new info on Black/White has just come pouring in. It was still forthcoming when I left for class at 2pm today, and when I got home about half an hour ago, apparently the entire new pokedex has been revealed.

Bulbapedia seems to be down but Serebii.net has a full timeline of leaked info. I have to say, from what I can see of the new Elite Four, I love them. I'm not 100% on all of the pokemon, but there's enough that I like in order for me to build a good team, and the rest I don't need to worry about.

From what it looks like, this game is just as good as expectations lead us to believe, and I am looking forward to picking up my copy in the spring. Until then, I just need to keep training my SoulSilver team. Which reminds me, I should do that tonight since I"m meeting up with friends tomorrow and we've decided to have a battle or two!

Anime Workshop - Week 1 Response

2010-09-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

Last week I started my Anime Workshop class at school. Each week I am required to write a one paragraph response to the assigned readings we're given. This week we were asked to read chapter's one and two of Susan Napier's "Anime From Akira to Howl's Moving Castle" and chapters two and three of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" (which I have read a hundred times before). I ended up writing a multi-paragraph essay which I thought might be interesting to post here as well.

The first chapter of Susan Napier's book raises some interesting points about anime as a cultural phenomina and how it has managed to stretch to places that it may not have been expected to. I agree that anime's popularity outside of Japan has lead to a revival and expansion of the American animation industry, but the fact that every time Napier mentions of American animation seem to call it “predictable”, only point out it's flaws and seems to look down on it bothers me. This book is not so old that it can ignore American animated shows like “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, “My Life As A Teenage Robot”, “Samurai Jack”, and even “Futurama” and “The Venture Bros.”.

Yes, these shows were very obviously anime influenced, but they are not anime, and deserve credit for what they are – Attempts to increase the audience of American animation. Especially shows like “Futurama” and “the Venture Bros.” which draw minimally on anime and are more influenced by other sources. The same goes for her treatment of American animated films, which have made incredible advancements in catering to older audiences. It is because of these things, which are influenced by anime, that Western Animation is truly capable of advancing, and looking down on it is only making her seem elitist and difficult to read.

Her talk about the “modes” of anime also bothers me quite a bit. Yes these things exist, but I do not think that different anime fall into one or the other, or even switch between them within a series as she seems to imply. I firmly believe that all three, as well as other “modes” (which I would prefer to apply the term 'emotion' to, since 'mode' implies that only one at a time can happen) can not only exist simultaneously, but happen simultaneously more often than they do individually. To try and break things down into one piece at a time can strongly devalue how the other pieces play into a specific moment. Specific examples of my point can be found in episodes 9 through 11 of “Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann”, the first two “Pokemon” films, and throughout the anime series “Baccano!” and "Magic Knight Rayearth. (I have offered to write a second essay elaborating on this point. We'll see if that happens.)

McCloud, much more tolerably, acknowledges comics as a whole and simply points out differences between western comics and manga, and their influences on one another (Not just one side to the other!) without devaluing either side. He focuses not only on America and Japan and how they have seeped into other cultures, but on the fact that other cultures have their own comics and sequential illustrations and that those have also influenced America and Japan. In fact, he gives much credit for the birth of comics to Europe.

Though I suppose since McCloud's book is on comics as a whole and Napir is focusing specifically on anime (and by association, manga), I guess it is to be expected that she is not going on about Europe in the 1700's. Still, I feel that Napir is over-analyzing anime and manga and putting it above other forms of comics and animation, while McCloud is simply taking the things we all know about comics, making it easier to understand and talk about, and then expanding on it.

I'm going to hopefully keep posting my weekly class responses here, but it really depends on if I find my responses interesting enough. Hopefully my teacher will want me to write the essay I offered on elaborating points about the "modes" Napier mentions, because I can basically rip that to shreds and that might be interesting.

The Penguin > Aquaman? ...What? Seriously?

2010-09-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned my buddy McLovin in the past. If he does as I tell him, maybe in the near future he'll have a blog of his own I can link to so you can read all of his crazy toy ramblings. Yell at him in the comments of this post about how he should start a blog so you can read it. I'll link him to it and prove I was right. Dude has good opinions about toys.

But that's not why I'm here today.

Today I am here to talk about those super cute DC Universe plushes that Funko is producing that I've seen at Toys-R-Us and a few other stores. They are, seriously, the cutest thing I've ever seen. There's also Alice In Wonderland ones I think, but I'm not as interested in those because I do not care about that movie at all.

Wave 1 consisted of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash.

Okay that is all pretty standard fare. But, because I am me, I wanted an Aquaman. The idea of an Aquaman plush in this style filled me with delight. I ranted to McLovin and Suri that Aquaman was cooler than The Flash and should have taken his place in that set. But, y'know, Flash is generally a good comedic figure and anyone who watched the old Justice League shows remember him fondly. I know I do. So I could accept it.

Now, I just found out there is a second wave of these plushes. Another set of four coming out sometime this October. (From what I've heard, October is going to be a huge month for releases this year.) Do you want to know who is in this set? I'm going to tell you either way, so you might as well say yes.

That's right. Wonder Woman, Catwoman, The Joker, and The Penguin.

The. Fucking. Penguin.

They are all still super cute, but how the hell did The Penguin get a plush over Aquaman? No one gives a damn about The Penguin, do they?! Please correct me if I'm wrong but I haven't seen The Penguin do anything worthwhile in a long time, while Aquaman has ended up being a pretty popular character lately thanks to "Batman: The Brave & The Bold".

I can understand Wonder Woman and The Joker being chosen above Aquaman. Most people are not me and tend to prefer those two. I can even kind of understand Catwoman, just for the sake of throwing more chicks into the mix since were all into the gender diversity shit. But THE GODDAMN PENGUIN? Seriously? C'mon, Funko. Get your shit together.

There had better be a third wave consisting of Aquaman, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, and... Hell, I don't know. The Question? He might not be as cute since he has no face and therefore can't have the cute button eyes. But he sure would have a cute little hat.

What DC characters would you like to see Funko put into this line, guys? Any favorites? I would love to hear who you guys would like to see among this line! My vote is still straight up for Aquaman, but I love DC's cast so much and I'd like to see more of these.

Almost to the release date!!!

2010-09-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, so we've gotten our last big leak of info before Pokemon: Black/White hits it's release in like 5 days. It revealed some information on characters and a big handful of new pokemon. Unfortunately for me, the information on Darumakka has been minimal since he first showed up. But I guess that just means I get to be surprised.

So let's start with the new pokemon and my terrible opinions on them. Prep for a ridiculously long post...

Let's start with these three. Right now we don't have 100% confirmation, but these three, along with their third-stage forms, were leaked a week or so ago, and then showed up again in the CoroCoro scans, though we're not sure if they've been faked. But since everywhere is reporting on them, I'm going to weigh in as if they're legit.

Up top is Janoby, our stage two for Tsutarja, the grass type, then there's Chaobu, Pokabu the fire type's stage two, and finally Futachimaru, Mijumaru the water type's stage two. They all seem fairly standard for stage two pokemon. The same basic pokemon, just a little bigger and stronger. I think Futachimaru is my favorite of the second stages, even though I'm probably still going to pick Tsutarja to start. The only reason I might give in and go to Mijumaru is what I'm going to discuss next...

The monkey trio (from left to right), Baoppu the fire monkey, Yanappu the grass monkey who we have seen from previous leaks, and Hiyappu the water monkey. These three belong to the leaders of the first gym (seen with them above), Poddo, Dento, and Kon respectively. While I had initially assumed that you fought a triple battle against these three, I was apparently wrong.

I assumed this because when rumors of the monkey trio first began to surface it was said that they were created to help demonstrate triple battles (much like how Plusle and Minun came as a double-battle pair). But in the case of the first gym, you do not get a triple battle against three awesome waiters. You get to fight the one that has a type advantage against you. Which I personally find stupid. It removes a lot of strategy from picking your first pokemon, and also ignores a perfect opportunity for us to see the new battle mechanic played out. It also means I have to fight Poddo instead of Dento if I pick Tsutarja. And I have developed a huge crush on Dento.

The monkey trio themselves I am on the fence on. I'm not fond of Baoppu just because he seems to be a rehashed Chimchar. Not to mention we have Hihidaruma, the fire-baboon, to cover our fire-monkey needs already. The other two I am willing to give a little more leeway since they're something we haven't already seen. But I guess if you have two, you need the third, yes?

On the left, from top to bottom, we have Buffalon, Dangoro, and Mebukijika. Buffalon is obviously a buffalo, though Suri insists on calling it "Afro-Tauros", which is also pretty funny. I'm not a big fan of Dangoro just because what the hell is it? It's like a rock-Oddish except less cute. I am not impressed. I do like Mebukijika though. It's enough to make me train a Shikijika so it will evolve into CRAZY PLANT-ANTLERS DEER. He looks like an ass-kicker.

Down the right we have Tabunne, Monmen (exclusive to Black), Churine (exclusive to White), and Tamagetake. Tabunne seems to be our replacement Chansey, which I am okay with. It is pretty cute and if it evolves, I bet it's evolution is really pretty. I'm iffy on Monmen, but I really like Churine. It disappoints me that I want to get Black (because I like Reshiram better than Zekrom) but then have to get Monmen instead of Churine, which I like much better. I just find Tamagetake to be dumb. I could see it being implemented interestingly on the overworld map, but I just don't like it's giant pokeball mushroom thing.

So again, down the left we have the two versions of Basurao (which are different between the two games), Yorterri, and Choroneko. The only one here that I'm really digging is Yorterri. I'm not a big fan of Yorkshire Terriers (because Suri's is a huge bitch), but it is super super cute, and again I'm picturing it having an awesome evolution. Basurao is okay but we've had piranha before, haven't we? I do like that it's different between games though. I think that is pretty cool. Choroneko just seems to be a rehashed Glameow to me. I like it more than Glameow, but I mean... our past three cat pokemon (Meowth/Persian, Skitty/Delcatty, and Glameow/Purugly) have all been vastly different from each other and I'm a little disappointed that Gen V didn't seem to follow suit.

On the right are Desukan, Ononokusu, Denchura, and Doryuzu. I do not like Desukan. It is interesting, but I don't think it really fits in the context of what we've always had for ghost-type pokemon. It is something very solid and I'm bothered by that for some reason. I like Ononokusu's design, but not quite it's color scheme. Puke-yellow doesn't look good on anything, Nintendo. Denchura is an interesting type combo (Bug/Electric) but it looks too much like a recolored Ariados for me to really get into it. But I've always been picky with my bug-types. Doryuzu is just terrifying, even if I do see him pulling off some cool drill moves. There is just something about serrated blades that makes me uneasy.

We also got a look at our evil organization leader. Leading Team Plasma is Geechisu (left) and his enormous skirt. Definitely space-knights. Given that they have similar motives and that they look similar, I'm putting it out there right now that Geechisu and N are related soemhow. Father and son would be the most typical, but I'm also willing to accept uncle/nephew or ridiculous clone. N apparently also has a choroneko, which solidifies his place as the game's token asshole.

And finally we got some new information on the Dream World...

The Dream World is accessed via PC, and you play mini-games there. If you do well at them, you can bring the Dream World's Pokemon back to BW with you. Aerodactyl, Lotad and Magikarp are pictured as examples of terrain-specific Pokemon in the Dream World, as the latter two are in ponds while Aerodactyl is in the sky. Also, it turns out that you don't need to catch Munna to access the Dream World - Makomo lends you her own.

- Via Psypokes

It also had some cute new art of Makomo. Though I am getting kind of jealous that Makomo seems to get way more face-time than Araragi. Especially since you get your starter pokemon as a gift from your parents instead of from Araragi. But I assume she still at least gives you the pokedex and explains ho to be a pokemon trainer.

But Araragi is at least recognized as the Regional Professor, which makes her cooler. And I'm hoping that SHE is the one to visit me when I beat the pokemon league.

Perfect Ending Get!

2010-09-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

So, the final chapter of "The Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer" (aka "Hoshi no Samidare") just came out. My friends and I have been waiting about a month for it, and I told myself that once it was done I'd give a blog post about it. We all just immediately fell in love with this series, and it's conclusion seemed like a good time to write about it.

The ending of this story was perfect. It was everything I had hoped for and more. Loyalties to certain characters were rewarded, and brilliant surprises were not in short supply. But I think before I can really explain how wonderful the ending was to me (while avoiding as many spoilers as I can), I need to explain how and why I fell in love with the series in the first place.

Most of my friends (with a few exceptions) had started reading this before me. If you recall, Suri actually cosplayed the male lead for Otakon this year. I had only started reading it a few weeks before that, so the story was most of the way along by the time I'd gotten started.

It all really started when one of my friends found an out of context panel, and we had to know what it was from.

They managed to track the series down and eventually we were all reading it and discussing it when we got together. Early on, I fell very quickly in love with the character of Shinonome Hangetsu, and the relationship between he and Samidare's older sister, Asahina Hisame. My love of these two has carried over throughout the entire series, in spite of... "adversity", shall we say. And the last chapter rewarded me for that.

But the greatest thing about this series is that it's really hard not to get attached to all of the characters, both good guys and bad guys. The conflicts are intense, the relationships are intricate, and there is always something being pulled out of left field to keep you on your toes. You get lost in the story, forming attachments before you even know what happened. I cried multiple times through out this story from beginning to end.

The last chapter, set 10 years after the rest of the story, is very much an epilogue. It's meant to let us know what became of all of the characters we loved after the epic struggle of the previous 64 chapters. Everyone is covered. We learn things we hadn't known before, little mysteries are solved, and resolutions are given. And all that is presented to us is amazing. I could not have hoped for more than getting to see the characters I loved so happy after fighting so hard. Even Hangetsu and Hisame, in a round-about way, manage to get themselves a happy ending together.

Chapters 1-64 are up on MangaReader, and since I don't know when 65 will get there, you can find that over at Otakami.org, who have been translating the whole thing, and did a spectacular job of it.

We're all hoping that Gainax will pick it up as an anime since there are multiple references to songs by The Pillows, and for the drama CD Yuuhi has the same voice actor as Simon in Gurren Lagann. It is a bit unlikely that it will ever happen, but my friends and I, and the series' fandom in general, as holding out hope.

If you're looking for a manga to read, I cannot recommend this one enough. It has more than secured itself a place as one of my favorite manga ever.

Just checking in at the moment.

2010-09-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

So, the newest Pokemon games, "Black Version" and "White Version" come out in Japan in less than two weeks. The influx of leaked info has been minimal lately and mostly confined to info about the new anime arc, "Best Wishes". I am debating actually watching it because I have developed a huge crush on Dento and I want to see more of Araragi.

While new info is slow now, I'm expecting it to explode in two weeks when the games finally get released. I'll do my best to keep up, but since I'm heading back for my final two semesters at SVA on the 7th, and will therefore have classwork to keep up with, I don't know how much info I'll be able to give.

On the upside, my first Senior Series class is "Anime Workshop". This is a class on exploring different types of anime and it's influences. So we'll be watching a lot of classic anime films ("Akira", "Naussica", ect.), and I'll have those to write about while I'm in the class. The whole "Aizen is a total psycho" arc of Bleach also seems to be hitting it's final stretch, so once that ends I am sure I will have a long and meaningless post to write about that. I'm predicting I'll have some things to say about Bakuman again in the near future as well.

So stick around. We've got lots coming.

Opinions: Sometimes I Have Them.

2010-08-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know how this line of thought crossed my mind... I probably shouldn't think so much while I'm in the shower. But I was thinking a lot about the anime "Baccano!". If you haven't watched it yet, stop what you're doing and go watch it right now. You have no excuse for having not watched this series. It's fantastic beyond belief. Especially if your into mafia stories and crazy antics. It has a very non-linear storytelling process and bounces around between several timelines (and sometimes time periods) to tell the story. And honestly, I don't think it would be as good if it had been done any other way.

I spent a long time thinking on this and realized my thoughts would be more coherent if I wrote them down. And then I remembered I had this blog. So, time for my first ever opinion piece for Rook Takes Queen on the subject of the main character of "Baccano!"

"Baccano!", for a story with so many characters, is largely plot driven. Then again, when you have that many characters, using the plot to drive things is probably a good idea lest you end up like "Bleach". "Baccano!" can be divided by and large into two main segments; the segment in 1930 that takes place in lower Manhattan, and the segment in 1931 that takes place aboard the trans-continental train, "The Flying Pussyfoot". The driving force in the former is the creation and various thefts of the "Grand Panacea", an immortality elixer, and the latter is driven by the cast's need to survive the trip, and/or kill other passengers on the train.

There is also the segment in 1932, which consists entirely of Eve Genoard trying to find her brother Dallas. I don't consider this one of the main segments of the story, since all it really does is wrap up Dallas's involvement in the 1930 segment.

The series opens with Carol and the Vice President of the Daily Days discussing the overall story and who the main character is. Since it's one of the first things brought up, I spent the first few episodes asking the question myself, "Who here is the main character?" In their discussion, Caorl and the Vice-President cover several of the characters who appear in the story, but -- interestingly enough to me (and the title card of the first episode points out one of these) -- they do not mention two of the characters that I feel are main characters in the story.

They do mention Isaac and Miria, who I believe are the main characters of the overall series, just because they are the only one involved in all of the storylines (including Eve's, though only very early on). But they do not have the one qualification I believe all main characters should have -- They need to develop/change in some way.

In all honesty, most of the characters in the series do not fall into that category. Like I said, this is plot driven. The story drives the characters actions, not the other way around. Therefore the characters do not need to change in order to be good characters. They just have to have realistic reactions to the world around them, and boy do they ever. But in the 1930 and 1931 segments there are characters who develop and change.

1930 -- Ennis
Ennis is an incredibly interesting character in that she is the only cast member who is not, in any way, human. Ennis is a homunculus. We first see her at what is essentially the end of the story, with Firo, Maiza, and the Gandors as they greet Isaac and Miria when they get off the train. We also, early on, hear a letter from Ennis to Isaac and Miria about how she misses them and thinks of them as "the older siblings she never got to meet".

But as we work our way back, Ennis is presented to us initally as just an emotionless tool of her somewhat abusive creator. But the more she runs into Isaac, Miria, and Firo the more she begins to develop a personality and feelings. Early on, in her first encouter with Isaac and Miria she hits them with her car and thinks nothing of it. But, as I mentioned, at the end of the series she greets them both very cheerfully when they arrive at Grand Central station, and in one of the Epiloge OVAs, she's seen setting up dominos and enjoying herself.

The true showing of Ennis's growth and change is when she turns on her creator's orders to kill Isaac and Miria in order to try and kill him instead to save them knowing full well she will probably die. She's saved by Isaac and Miria, and then by Firo, but it doesn't change the fact that she was willing to sacrifice herself for people she'd only really known for a few days at most.

1931 -- Jacuzzi Splot
The man with the crazy tattoo, the crazier name, and the best voice I've ever heard. Jacuzzi Splot, along with Nice Hollystone, is my favorite character in "Baccano!" Jacuzzi is the leader of a gang in Chicago that bootlegs liquor. (Remember, this is prohibition-era.) Jacuzzi's girlfriend, Nice, also makes bombs. Can you see why these are my favorite characters? Jacuzzi is pretty timid, but he's got a big heart and a bit of a stubborn streak that sometimes manifests as misguided bravery.

Jacuzzi starts off as a very jumpy character, and his whole set of actions are sparked to life by Isaac telling him the story of the "Railtracer", but forgot the ending of how to save everyone from it. Someone brings up that the younger of the train's two conductors knew the story and probably knew the ending. Nice even comments that it's just the way he is. We watch Jacuzzi cry his way through the entire Flying Pussyfoot arc of the story, and we learn in bits and pieces why he acts that way.

But the further things go, the more he realizes that he can't just take his gang and run. There are so many innocent people on the train being threatened by so many different bad guys that he has to step up and do something or he's going to lose his friends. It takes a few pep-talks from Isaac and Miria, but Jacuzzi really pulls it together and goes out of his way to risk his life to protect not only his friend, but people had had only just met on the train. He doesn't cry through the fight, he doesn't try to talk his way out of it. He just faces it head on.

So I still believe that Isaac and Miria are the main characters over all (since they are the only ones tied to every aspect of the plot), but when you break it down I think Ennis and Jacuzzi are the main characters of their respective plot segments.

Man this entry took me a lot longer to write than I thought it would...

Bad News Tues.

2010-08-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

So I've officially declared yesterday "Bad News Tues." because that's pretty much all we got yesterday -- Bad news.

First came the news that Satoshi Kon had passed away at age 47. He was the director of "Perfect Blue", "Tokyo Godfathers", "Paprika", several other films, and the anime "Paranoia Agent". Several of his works weren't to my taste (to this day, I very much dislike "Perfect Blue"), and several I have yet to see, but I will not deny in the slightest that he was absolutely brilliant.

Image by Aaron Webb via Flickr

I found out via Twitter, though if you check any of your regular anime news sites, everywhere has something written up by now. From what I've read, he'd had cancer. It's really tragic that someone that brilliant was taken away so young. He was in the middle of a project, and I don't know the fate of it at this time. I'm not sure if that information has been released.

And then the day got worse. Word was passed to me through the grapevine that Studio Ghibli may shut down, all depending on the success of their next feature. Everyone knows Ghibli, whether they realize it or not. They brought us "Princess Mononoke", "My Neightbor Totoro", and "Kiki's Delivery Service". Things we all knew in our younger days. More recently there was "Spirited Away" and "Howl's Moving Castle". And on top of those there are tons of others that are all wonderful and charming and beautiful in more ways than I can count.

Of the two ends of the spectrum for brilliant anime films, we've lost for good the slightly-twisted, deep, sometimes dark, and always wonderful work of Satoshi Kon, and we're on the verge of losing the whimsical, thoughtful, also deep (but in a different way), and always lovely work of Studio Ghibli. "Paprika" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" have always been two of my favorite animated films, and to know that more in the same kind isn't in store for the future is tragic.

Blogging about everything today.

2010-08-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Yeahhh.... I've been slacking off this week guys. Sorry. I've been out doing things pretty much every other day, so it's understandable right? But while I've been at ti I've watched more K-On, some clips from Hetalia, listening to the soundtrack from "The Road to El Dorado", and started reading "Yankee-kun to Megane-chan", which is absolutely hilarious. I'm still a long way from caught up, but it's fantastic, so far so I'd recommend taking a look at it if you've got some time to kill. I also went to a family reunion in there somewhere.

In pokemon news, we got another new pokemon revealed -- Yanappu.

A grass-type monkey is a weird combination to me, and I'm not totally sold on the broccoli growing out of his head, but I suppose he could be an interesting grass-type to work with if you're into that sort of thing. However, he's probably not going to be on my B/W team.

This pokemon isn't actually a reveal so much as a confirmation. We got a picture of a figure of this pokemon back in July, but up until now it wasn't confirmed as an actual pokemon in the games.

I've been playing SoulSilver again, finishing up some things that I've left hanging, such as chasing down roaming legendaries and doing the spiky-eared Pichu event. Suri's been helping me shuffle pokemon over from my copies of Platinum and Diamond to help me finish my pokedex. I also got a Japanese Wigglytuff over the GTS that has pokerus, so I've been infecting my pokemon with that slowly but surely. This is the first time I've ever had pokemon with it, so that's kind of exciting for me.

On a complete shift of subject, this week's "Bakuman" reminded me just who the team working on this was -- The pair who did "Death Note".

Mashiro and Takagi are currently planning a five-chapter story are in "Perfect Crime Party" that involves a rival trying to expose the club. Listening to them plan it out, it sounded a lot like the rivalry between Light and L, but with a lot less murder. Not that this is a bad thing. "Death Note" was written very well, even though I never finished it. I'm really excited to see how the next chapters play out and if "Perfect Crime Party" can beat Iwase and Eiji's crossover between "Crow" and "+Natural".

Image via Wikipedia

If you're not reading Bakuman yet, now is the perfect time to start. VIZ's translation has just hit stores, so the first volume is available. Go pick it up, and then catch up to the scans. then in November we can all go out an pick up volume 2. Especially if you're into the process of making comics, the physical volumes are worth picking up because VIZ has thrown in a little something extra for us -- Ohba and Obata's thumbnails for some of the pages! Getting that little something extra between chapters really sealed the deal for me. With how important the thumbnails are for Mashiro and Takagi within the story, getting to see Ohba and Obata's made it all the better.

Ahaha, I guess I managed to write a decent blog entry after all. I'm pretty impressed, since I didn't intend to. I'll try and do another update soon. It will probably be about Scott Pilgrim since I need to finish reading that and go see the movie.

"Tuesday's Anime Sampler" or "Thanks For 1,000 Hits!"

2010-08-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

Back home from my two week stay at Downtown Otaku's. It was a great trip and I was glad to hear that he had a nice time and got there and back okay. He bought me a figure of Rukia with Shirayuki, even though I already had it. so now I have one, and a special one from Chile. He also bought me GOALSBOT, which is probably the coolest robot I now own.

The one he got me is red and blue and has a 7 on it's uniform, but I couldn't find a picture of it, and I'm too tired to get up and actually take one. This is why I should not blog right after waking up.

"Rook Takes Queen" has also hit the milestone of 1,000 page views. For a blog that's only been consistently updating for two and a half months (which is the period of time I've been tracking visitors) I think that's a pretty impressive number, and I want to thank you all for coming by here 1,000 times. I hope in the next two and a half months, you'll all come by 1,000 more times.

To celebrate, let's take another look at my ridiculous visitor map.

Spent yesterday with McLovin and Kristin, once again in Kristin's basement watching anime. This is usually the only time I get a chance to watch new things, because on my own I am generally just too busy and impatient to sit and watch series. And I miss out on a lot because of this. But it's been fun sitting around with friends and watching things together and I'd rather see things with friends than alone anyway. While usually we pick one thing to watch and marathon, this time we watched a little bit of several things...

Gurren Lagann: Parallel Works 2

In all honesty ParaWorks 2 deserves it's own post, so I think i'm going to hold off saying too much and write about it in full later. Like most people, "Kittan Zero" is my favorite but I also adored "Kiyal's Magical Time". It was humorous and sweet, and I think I described it as "If Gurren Lagann and Di Gi Charat were the same thing." Over all, I liked Parallel Works 1 better, but 2 had some really great stuff.

Hetalia: Axis Powers

I've always been pretty against Hetalia because portions of the fandom drive me insane. (Sorry guys, but it's true.) But at Otakon, I went to the Voice Actor Q&As for the voices of Vino and Firo from "Baccano!", who happen to be doing Russia and Italy. They did a bit of the voices, and there was so much crazy accents that I thought I'd give the dub a shot just for that.

We watched the four episodes that are up on Funimation's website, and while I'm not suddenly going to throw aside everything else I'm doing to dive into this fandom, I did think it was pretty funny and cute. I have also developed a huge crush on Italy. Italy and Germany are amusing to me, but so far i'm not that into anyone else. We'll have to see where things go as I watch more.

K-On

McLovin once described K-On to me as "If the cast of Lucky Star was in a band." and I have to admit that's pretty spot on. The story isn't quite as scattered and moment-to-moment as Lucky Star, but it's got a lot of the same feel. The characters are very cute, and the show is a little mindless (at least as far as I've watched into it), but I think after watching things that are a little heavier, like "Baccano!" and "Durarara!!" (which are both still hilarious at points, but are not straight comedies), there's nothing wrong with something that's just silly and cute.

I'm loving all of the character interactions in K-On a lot, and their reactions to the world around them. it's a very sweet little series and if you just want to laugh and enjoy something fluffy and silly, I'd recommend it.

I'm still waiting on the last chapter of "The Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer" before I can blog about that, and Kristin just sent me a link to "Yankee-kun to Megane-chan" for me to start reading, so I'll have those to blog about in the near future. I'm also planning my next cosplay; Marlone from "Atelier Marie". I've got lists of everything I need, and my best friend, Cass, has offered to help me make it. Suri's possibly going to do Kreis so we'll be a matching pair. So I'll have updates on that as things happen too.

Thanks again for coming by guys! It's been great blogging for you all and I hope to bring you more great things to read about in the future!

My Recent Nerdy Purchases

2010-08-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

So I felt the need to finally update again. It's been a few days, and I haven't really been doing anything nerdy since I've been apartment-sitting. But I did buy a few things last Sunday when McLovin, Suri, and a few others came up to visit so we could run around for McLovin's birthday. So I can talk about all that I guess.

But first, man guys... Look at my visitor map...

I hope all of my international visitors, who probably came looking for something else, at least found something they could enjoy for a few minutes while they were here. From what I can tell form looking at my stats, a lot of people have ended up here recently searching for pictures of Alcyone cosplays and finding our picture we took of Super Cosplay Kazoku's Alcyone and Lantis. (Which, again, were just stunning.) While I'm on the subject, drop by and give them a look if you're into cosplay. They're really fantastic, and I hope to see them again at future conventions.

Okay so onto the stuff I bought on Sunday. At one point we ended up at Forbidden Planet, a great NYC comic store (one of several) and went upstairs to their manga section. I was surprised to see that VIZ had released a translation of the Bleach "Official Bootleg" book. A while ago, Downtown Otaku had bought me a japanese copy, and I've always been curious as to what all of the little bonus comics were about.

It's probably just been released in the past few weeks (it was on FP's new releases shelf) but if you've got a decent manga section at your local Borders, B&N, or other bookstore you shouldn't have a hard time getting it. And if you can't find it there, it's already up on Amazon.com. If you're a bleach fan, and you're like me and can't be bothered keeping up with all of the communities that translate supplementary material like this (and therefore haven't read it yet) it's definitely a worthwhile addition to your collection. The color comics are pretty hilarious and there's some other good general info included in the book.

The other book I bought was Let's find Pokemon! Crystal, which is basically "Where's Waldo" but with pokemon. It's all Gen II art, and is apparently the third in a line of "Let's Find Pokemon!" books.

I've already sat down and found all of the pokemon I was supposed to find, but it's also fun sitting down and seeing what other pokemon are in the scenes, and I love the Gen II artwork. When McLovin showed it to me I just took it from him and was pretty much set on buying it. It wasn't much of a question. Because I love me some Gen II pokemon stuff.

So I've still got a few more days before I go back to New Jersey. Hopefully I'll manage one more post before I head home and get back to my usual nerdings. Take care, ya'll!

More New Pokemon Black & White Info

2010-08-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

So it's time for more leaks and new information on pokemon and characters from the new Black and White games. This news came to me a little suddenly, and surprisingly via a commented on DeviantART.

As you all may remember, I got excited about Hihidaruma entirely because of the prospect of a little rolly fire-breathing daruma doll as a possible pre-evolution. Those who keep tabs on me elsewhere may even remember me drawing up "Daruhi", a made-up 'this is what I hope we get'.

In several palces I declared that I would totally give up on fire types if there wasn't a little daruma for me to love and cuddle and burn things with. I was do dead set on this pokemon happening, that I was almost completely convinced that it wouldn't. Because that's the kind of luck I have.

Well, this morning, I woke up and checked my messages on DA, to find a comment left with a link to this:

This is Darumakka. A little rolly fire-breathing daruma doll.

Thank you, Nintendo.

It's not quite Daruhi, but my design was based a lot on Hihidaruma. Darumakka seems to be a lot more red, and to have ignored the idea of appendages entirely. Which I am okay with. I think Daruhi is a little cuter, but Darumakka is still adorable and I will be catching one as quickly as I possibly can and never letting it evolve.

I guess while I'm here, I should talk about some of the other new information too shouldn't I? Okay, but only because I love you guys so much.

Emonga is that flying squirrel on the top left. Typing is, obviously, electric/flying. Which seems contradictory. It's ability is static, which is always handy. My first thought was "Oh look a flying pikachu." It seems to be following in the tradition of Plusle/Minun and Pachirisu. Unnecessary, but cute.

Below that is Gigaiasu, the high pressure pokemon. I'm not sold on this one really. It seems like Heatran and those "chromastone" aliens from Ben 10 had a love child. I'm sure some people will like it, but it's not a pokemon I'd have on my team. nice to see a rock type that isn't brown/grey for once though.

Then there's Victini who I have already covered in the past, but since we have a little more information I thought I should take another look at Butt-Wings here. It's official typing is Psychic/Fire, which just seems weird to me, it is the "Victory Pokemon", and it's ability is "Victory Star". Clearly this is why it is made of V's. It does not, however, explain the butt-wings.

To the right of Victini is Shikijika, who doesn't have a species type yet, but it's elemental typing is normal/grass, and it has the ability "chlorophyll". Apparently, in different weather or climate or something, Shikijika will change colors. It reminds me a little too much of Shaymin for me to be totally okay with it. I'd be more okay if Shaymin wasn't a legendary, but I want to believe that, for some reason, Shaymin is a rare mutation of Shikijika that further somehow mutated a sky forme and flew off to Sinnoh or some reason.

On the bottom are a still unnamed swan and caterpillar pokemon. The caterpillar seems to be yet another poor-man's Caterpie, but I'm hoping it will turn into something that is not just another poor man's Buttefree. I am a little excited about the swan, just because I can name it "SodeNoShirayuki". I'm hoping it's got an Ice typing instead of just water, but I find that doubtful. However, it is very pretty, and I could see it having a gorgeous evolution or a super cute pre-evolution. (Maybe even both? Eh, Nintendo? Wink wink, nudge nudge?)

And of course there were some new human characters released...

Aloe is one of the new gym leaders. I'm sorry guys but the first thing I thought of was Aunt Jemima. I am praying to god that no one takes that the wrong way, because I love that brand of products. And I'm sure Aloe is a great lady. But... I mean... C'mon. You see it too, don't you guys?

Then there is Dento. Dento doesn't seem to be a gym leader. there's how Bulbanews describes his anime counterpart (who, I assume, plays the same role in the games)...

"With an abundance of knowledge and experience, Dento is a "Pokémon Sommelier", who checks ("diagnoses") the compatibility between a trainer and their Pokémon, gives them advice on how to become better friends. Is the actual condition what is expected?"

Honestly, that sounds pretty awesome. And he walks around dressed like a waiter? C'mon, Nintendo. Are you trying to win my heart? Because it's working. "Pokemon Sommelier" is my new favorite job right after "Treasure Hunter" in this series.

And then we got the grunts for our new pile of bad guys, Team Plasma, who look like they are trying a little too hard to be medieval knights in outer space. I'd be far more receptive of this outfit if it didn't have the ridiculous hood, but guys that just totally killed it for me. I will never be able to take these guys seriously. I hope their executives and boss at least don't have hoods like that. Then maybe they'll be a little threatening.

So, more and more, this game is looking pretty great. I'm still not excited for it like I was with HeartGold and SoulSilver, but it looks like it's going to have some great stuff. And I cannot get over Darumakka and how much I want it forever.

Rambling about a personal project.

2010-08-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned here and there, I'm a cartoonist by trade. Or getting there are least. I've got one more year at the School of Visual Arts before I'm out in the big bad world, trying to do this for a living. I'm in no way under the impression that this is going to be easy, but it's my only marketable skill, and it's what I love to do.

I'm very lucky in that my family is in full support of my choice in career, and I have a fantastic network of friends helping me along. Not to mention that guy I'm dating, who is far more patient with me than he probably should be. So I've got all of the backing I could ever hope for, and I am so grateful for that.

I'm not sure how often I'll post about my own projects, just since I'm not really sure how much anyone cares. But I figured I would lay all of my cards on the table now so that way later I could make posts about them if I actually ever do them and you'd all be slightly less confused about what I was rambling about.

Since it's the focus of my two week stay in Downtown Otaku's apartment, and it's still pretty nerdy, I guess I'll talk a little about the project I'm currently diving headfirst into.

Originally, "Waiting For Neveah" was part of an alternate-reality segment of another story idea I had, so it has some or the same characters, but I ended up getting so interested in the story that I started working on it separately. It takes place on a much smaller scale than my other idea, so wrapping my head around it has been much easier.

I took the standard idea of people trying to break out of a government or system they didn't like and flipped it. So the basic premise of the story is a small group trying to establish order in an otherwise chaotic world that has fallen apart. This is an idea I posed to Suri when we first started dating and it's always stuck as something we wanted to play with.

At it's core, "Waiting For Neveah" is about priorities, following through, and taking risks with no promise for reward. I'm still fiddling around with exactly

I had written a script for the prolouge in my Junior year for a script writing class I took with Jack Harris (a former writer and editor with DC comics!). Since it's such a straightforward story (going from point A to point B) and I'm already used to drawing all of the important characters it's going to be an easy project to move forward with. I've got thumbnails and pencils started and I'm planning to do it as my portfolio project for my Senior year. Hopefully I'll be able to make the project public next summer when I graduate.

I post a lot of sketches and misc. work over in my sketchblog, Watermelon Bees, so if you're interested in seeing more stuff related to this, or just other artwork of mine, you can head over there and sort through those entries.

In the hopes that one day I can play Atelier Marie.

2010-08-03T07:56:00.000-07:00

Before I get started, I want to thank whoever linked my Saturday report for Otakon on facebook. It drew in a lot of traffic. I also want to welcome the new followers. It warms my heart to know people are actually reading this thing and it's not just me shouting into the dark.

Today I want to talk about something very near and dear to my heart. It is a game that I have fallen in love with, even though I haven't gotten to play it -- Atelier Marie.

For what it is, Atelier Marie doesn't get the credit it deserves in the western market. This is most likely because up until recently the Atelier franchise was struggling stateside. All we had was Atelier Iris, which iv'e heard is a bit different from the traditional games, and Mana Khemia, which is a spin-off of the Atelier series. More recently we've gotten Atelier Annie for the DS, which I have played multiple times and adore (and have covered here once), and are coming to Atelier Rorona for the PS3 (I'm not sure if this has hit the US market yet. I need to check my release dates.)

But a lot of modern RPGs owe their thanks to Atelier in one way or another, and Atelier all started with the one and only Atelier Marie. I've been completely in love with the artwork from this game for years now It's heavily influenced by Alphonse Mucha, who is one of my favorite artists. Some images are even reworkings of his illustrations.

Even with how Atelier has slowly been crawling into the western market, we still have not, and most likely will not, see any of the games from the original Zarlberg (Salberg?) continuity that started with Atelier Marie. Even if the franchise does finally become popular here, I doubt NiS (who is localizing the games) will go back and bring us Marie, Elie, Lilie, Violet, and Judie.

The closest we've come was Tokyopop localizing 4 out of 5 volumes of the manga "Atelier Marie and Elie: Zarlburg Alchemists". However, they dropped volume 5 when the going got tough. I have Japanese scans of all 5 manga, and have gotten the basic idea of what goes on in volume 5 (the ending is very clear from the visuals, and is fantastic.) but I'd love to actually get to read it.

Finding merchandise for what is, essentially, a dead fandom in the west has been a challenge, but I've managed to get some doujinshi, a guide book, a poster from the re-release of Atelier Marie And Elie, and matching figures of Marie and Elie. They're basically the stars of my collection of things, and I'm glad I was able to find anything at all. But it doesn't bring me any closer to playing the game.

However, there is still some hope for that. There is an Atelier Marie translation project that some fans are working on to make a playable rom of the game for English language fans. I've been following the project for a while now, both on the blog and on an Ar Tonelico forum and just quietly offering support.

But now I guess I'm going to make a little bit of a rallying cry? If there's anyone who has the time and ability to help with translating or coding, please drop these guys a line. If not, spread the word and see if there's anyone who can. I'd love to see this project completed and get to play Atelier Marie one day.

Otakon 2010 - Saturday

2010-07-31T19:44:00.000-07:00

Day two of Otakon 2010 was a good time. It consisted mostly with trips around the dealer's room and artist's alley, and one long trip outside. Suri and I went around watching cosplayers until we met up with my friend Amber. She gave me things to give to Downtown Otaku, and gave me a cat-earred hat that she made for me (complete with a hole in the back for my ponytail!) and a pink collar with a green bell that she got for me at another convention.

Once we separated from Amber, we planned to go to the AMV Contest. Of course, that was when fire alarms started going off and everyone was told to leave the building. 30,000 nerds were suddenly sent out onto the streets of Baltimore, not knowing what to do. The area around the convention center probably sent the regular residents into a panic. We were out there for maybe an hour before they let us back in.

While we were out there I found a Prof. Birch and asked if I could take a picture with him. He let me and then offered Suri and I pokemon cards of Mudkip, Torchik, and Treeko. I laughed and picked mudkip, and Suri picked torchik.

Once regularity had resumed, Suri and I went back in and took a spin around the artist's alley. I picked up a few things for Cass. I also got a cute poster of Kamina, Simon, and Nia, a Raichu postcard, and my friend Kyle bought me a bookmark with Italy from "Axis Powers Hetalia" on it. I also hung out with the dudes from Studio Painted Blade for a while. They are really cool dudes, so you should totally check them out. I think they have a webcomic going, and they just generally have fantastic work from what I have seen.

When we were done there we went back down to the dealer's room. There wasn't much for me there. I bought a few more of those Bleach cookies, a DBZ blind box for Downtown Otaku, and a little Hetalia figure since I'm apparently going to be watching that due to my love of ridiculous accents. We then went with Kyle to the Dr. Who photoshoot, and while they were busy with that I found a trio of unexpected Magic Knight Rayearth cosplayers...

I found Lantis, Alcyone, and Caldina. I spotted Caldina's cape and then noticed Alcyone next to her and needed a photo. Alcyone is, and has always been, one of my favorite Magic Knight Rayearth characters and I have never seen anyone cosplay her before. I expressed my excitement to the woman cosplaying and then we went back to the Dr. Who shoot.

After that, Cass came and picked us up. Dinner consisted of nachos and ice cream, and we watched some of our favorite episodes of "Avatar: The Last Airbender". I have no plans to go back Sunday. I'm out of money and there are no panels I want to go see.

As I said yesterday, all of the pictures from this weekend are up in their own album on Photobucket, and there were some absolutely stellar ones, so you should definitely check it out. This was a fantastic convention, and I'm so glad I got the chance to go for another year.

Thanks so much to all of the attendees for being such great company, and an extra special thanks to the con staff for putting on such a great event and for handling a small emergency like total champions. It was a great year and I cannot wait for Otakon 2011!

Otakon 2010 - Thursday/Friday

2010-07-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

So we didn't do anything Otakon related on Thursday, but it was a good day, so I'm going to shove it in with Friday's activities.

So Cass picked me up around 1, we grabbed Suri, and headed down to Baltimore. We stopped at a rest stop for lunch, and then headed down to UMBC, where we're staying in Cass's apartment on campus. We got ourselves settled in, and then headed over to the local Safeway to pick up some food/snacks for the weekend.

I made steak sautéed in olive oil (I am the most Italian), a box of white cheddar & broccoli Pasta-Roni, and a bag of frozen broccoli for dinner. Cass made a box of cupcakes for dessert. It was the most delicious. For those of you who didn't know, I absolutely love to cook. So getting to cook dinner for my friends (while wearing an awesome blue apron!) was great.

Suri played some Twilight Princess, I played some Cate West: The Velvet Keys, and we made a lot of jokes about mangos being 100 cents, Death Note's "Take this potato chip... AND EAT IT!!!", and various other things we all found funny over the course of the day. Just being out of the house is nice, and I enjoyed hanging around and just being kind of nerdy and awesome with two of the most important people in my life.

Friday rolled around and Cass dropped Suri and I off at the convention center. We picked up our badges and began heading around the convention. We met up with friends and took pictures of cosplayers until it was around time for a Q&A panel with Jerry Jewel, who voices Vino/Claire from "Baccano!".

The previous Q&A for Todd Haberkorn was still going on, so we sat in in the end of it and figured out that he voiced Firo from "Baccano!", which was pretty cool also. They are hilarious men, and will also be voicing Italy and Russia (respectively) in the dub of "Axis Powers Hetalia" with crazy accents. I've never been too into Hetalia, but I do love crazy accents so I may watch it just for that.

After that, Suri and I made a few round in the dealer's room and artist's alley to scout out things we might want to buy and what booths had the best prices. While doing that, we also found some of my favorite cosplayers of the day.

Once we'd made a few rounds, we went back and started buying things. I didn't figure there would be much I wanted, but I managed to find a good handful of Nia figures to buy, plus a few other little Bleach things that I couldn't resist.

The "cookies" are actually zipper-pulls/keychains. They are really really cute. The "decorated" cookies are of Abarai Renji and Hitsugaya Toshiro, the two square cookies are of Kuchiki Byakuya and Hirako Shinji, and the chocolate cookies is just squares. I don't really know what it is. If I can find the booth again, I may buy a few more tomorrow and see what else I can get.

I also found this poster in the artist's alley. While making my rounds, there wasn't really a whole lot that I wanted. There were things at the tables of friends that I'd planned to pick up (and will go back for tomorrow since I didn't get to today), but there wasn't much I wanted to buy. Then I saw this Bakuman poster by Rikyo (of Studio Painted Blade), and just stopped dead in my tracks. He asked if I saw anything I liked, I pointed at it, and said "That." I paid the $10 for the poster and we had a brief conversation about how great Bakuman is.

After that we caught up with Cass and headed back to the apartment. I made chicken, corn, and chicken-flavored rice-a-roni for dinner, and now we're all hanging around unwinding after a full, very eventful day. Tomorrow we plan to take another spin around the dealer's room and the artist's alley and then see what happens.

All of our pictures from this weekend can be found in this album on Photobucket. It is full of fantastic cosplayers, so do go take a look!

Brb. Time for Otakon!

2010-07-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

So, in about an hour, my wonderful best friend Cass will be picking me up for the trip down to Baltimore for Otakon 2010. I'll be down there until Sunday, getting my nerd on. If you're going to be there, just look for Professor Araragi (Pokemon Black/White) and Amamiya Yuuhi (The Lucifer And The Biscuit Hammer) walking around together. That'll be Suri and I.

It's gonna be a hell of a time, and I'm looking forward to getting to have some real downtime. Hopefully I'll have the energy to draft posts Friday and Saturday so that I can post them once I'm back and up in NYC at Downtown Otaku's place.

Slightly behind on poke-news again.

2010-07-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

So I've fallen a little behind again on presenting the forthcoming news on Pokemon Black/White. I'm here to rectify that today and get myself all caught up before I head to Baltimore this weekend for Otakon 2010 (which you can expect a full report on when I get back). So strap in kids, this one's going to be a little long...

So let's start with what's fresh, shall we?

This is Victini. It's the third legendary pokemon for Black/White that's been revealed so far, and has #000 as it's Isshu pokedex number, which is a first. Otherwise there's nothing we really know about it.

Except that it has butt-wings.

God just look at those things. How does it expect to fly with those? Upside down?

I'm not really sure how I feel about Victini at the moment. As far as being the "cute" legendary, I think it falls short of what Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, and Shaymin have been. It reminds me more of Rotom, since it's very pointy. And I really wasn't a big fan of Rotom for some reason...

Still, if I ever end up with one, his name will be "Butt-wings". I'm a jerk like that.

Okay, we're gonna go left->right/top->bottom with these.

Gochiruzeru - The Celestial Body Pokemon
More like the Apathetic Pokemon, judging by that face. I'm not really 100% on it, since I can't tell much about it, but it would make a super cute gijinka. I don't know why most psychic pokemon have to have this serious, unplayful design like their whole lives are such serious business. Of course there re exceptions... Though Gochiruzeru really looks like it should have some dark in it's typing, and it bothers me that it doesn't.

Kibago - The Tusk Pokemon
Kibago seems to suffer from "Gen III" syndrome, as I call it, where some of the pokemon just seem like they're taking the place and being the "poor man's" version of a pokemon from another generation. Kibago seems to be the poor man's Larvitar. Of course this could easily be rectified by having it not end up as something that looks like Tyrannitar. We'll have to see.

Rankurusu - The Amplification Pokemon
One of the exceptions to the "serious business psychics" is Rankurusu. This thing honestly looks like the biggest bundle of fun in the world, and depending on what comes of it, it may be my new default psychic. Seriosuly, it looks like a huge bean bag chair that I want to cuddle forever.

Koromori - The Bat Pokemon
This is right up there with Giaru for me. We really didn't need a "poor man's Zubat". Zubat was frustrating enough. And I'm just not sold on the design. Hopefully it will evolve into something totally kick-ass to make up for it.

Wargle - The Valor Pokemon
The kick ass pokemon with the silly name. Warrrrgle. I could say that forever. I want to catch one and name it "Uncle Sam". I'm glad to see an eagle-like pokemon finally instead of a bunch of falcons. Variation is good, folks. Wargle with "brave bird" on it would probably just make my life.

Minezumi - The Lookout Pokemon
Minezumi looks like it's taking the place of Rattata and Bidoof, which is a shame I guess? But he's got a very classic "pokemon" look to him. I just wish he wasn't apparently so bipedal. I think he's kind of like Bidoof and Hoot-Hoot got genetically spliced.

Musharna - The Trance Pokemon
Okay, so I said I was on the fence about Munna, but it evolves into this thing which is super cute. Not to mention you need to have one of these pokemon in order to use certain cool new features in the game like the Global Link and the Dream World, and I refuse to miss out on features like that.

The Global link allows players to either battle on line or have access to the Dream World. The Dream World, from what I can tell seems to expand on what the Pokewalker did for HeartGold/SoulSilver.

There is a 'Dream World' where Pokémon have their own rooms to play in, and are able to play mini-games with other Pokémon. If a Pokémon is befriended in the dream world, it is able to be taken back to the player's game. Hence, this allows Pokémon not native to the Isshu region to be obtained. To send a Pokémon (the Pokémon must be placed in in the PC box) to the world of dreams, the Game Sync feature (part of the C Gear) is used.

- From Bulbanews's article on the Coro Coro leaks.

I can see myself wasting SO MUCH TIME on this. It sounds insanely fun, and I think it's a clever way to bring in pokemon from other regions without having to do massive amounts of trading from other games.

Plenty of other new features have been announced too, and on the whole they sound totally fantastic. A feature called "Passing By" allows players to "seamlessly and instantaneously connect with nearby players", though I'm not entirely sure what what would consist of. "Live Caster" allows players to video chat, though I could see this feature turning ugly pretty quickly. And then there is "Feeling Check" which measures "Compatibility between players". There's some mini-games involved and it just seems like a cute idea.

And then of course there is the new feature of Triple Battling. I'm on the fence with this. Bulbanews has a great article from their "Looking Forward" column on the subject of triple battles, and I find myself agreeing pretty solidly with it. It could be an amazing new feature, it could be a mess. Right now we haven't really seen it in action so we'll just have to wait and hope for the best.

And now, finally, we come to my favorite part... New characters!

On the left is Cheren, your responsible, dependable dude friend who wants to be the new Champion. On the right is Bel, your excitable derp of a gal pal who's going out into the world against her father's wishes. These are your two best friends. From what I can tell, they seem to play the same role as Barry in D/P/Pt, except now you get two of them. Bel, on the whole seem to just be a female Barry.

Then we have "N", playing the role of the antagonist, much like Silver in the Gen II games/remakes.

He regularly challenges the player in order to confirm his ideas of justice. He calls Pokémon "friends", but one of the screen shots shows him saying that he wants to split humans and Pokémon and divide them to create a black and white world. He has the unique idea to set Pokémon free from people, and looks for the power to bring his idea to reality.

- Again, from Bulbanews's article on the Coro Coro leaks.

This leads me to believe he's kind of like Cyrus from Gen IV, and therefore is totally out of his mind. I am hoping that I get to beat him up and tell him he's an idiot at some point in the game, because the female player character totally looks like she could kick some ass.

And then there is my favorite new addition to the cast...

Mokomo, the other Isshu professor.

That's right. This region is full of lady professors, running around and doing crazy pokemon science. This game is amazing. I want a game just about Araragi and Momoko, the pokescience-pals.

Professor Mokomo seems to play a role similar to Mr. Pokemon from Gen II. She's a friend of Professor Araragi's and eventually gives you the "C Gear", which is Gen V's pokemon trainer multi-tool, after you do her some kind of favor. A favor which I hope includes Araragi somehow. These two look like they would be the most ADORABLE best friends. I could see them growing up together and following around pokemon and studying them.

So that's things as they stand currently. Right now this game is looking like it is going to pack more awesome than I can handle. There's apparently going to be big differences between the two versions, so I'm going to have to play both. This bothers me a bit because it will take forever.

So let's look forward to it all together!

1960's Aquaman had some of the best writers ever.

2010-07-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

Gonna start out by saying that I'm going to be testing out the new "Zemanta Assistant" that Blogger is offering in this post. See how I like it. I'm curious about how not having to look for images and things on my own. So lets give it a test run while i do a bit of nerding, shall we?

As a young kid, I had two fictional crushes that I have never been able to get over. One is Lt. Surge from Pokemon, and the other is Aquaman. Judging by my track record on this blog, the obvious choice to blog about would be Lt. Surge, but instead I'm going to talk a bit about Aquaman.

Image via Wikipedia

I watched Cartoon Network pretty consistently as a kid, and back in the old days, they aired a hell of a lot of super friends. And, for some reason I took a quick liking to Aquaman. But those who know me always know I'm a big fan of the underdogs. Sure he didn't seem really powerful, but doing a lot with a little appeals to me way more than doing a little with a lot. So, Aquaman doing the impossible while primarily telling fish what to do seemed pretty cool to me. Not to mention I'm a shore girl, born and bred. So It just kind of clicked.

Well, recently I came into owning the first volume of "DC Showcase Presents: Aquaman". 49 comics. Mid-1959 to the end of 1962. I'm currently about 1/3 of the way in, at a comic from March 1960. I think Suri tried to warn me, but god damn silver-age writing... That is some seriously, seriously crazy shit. From the looks of things, logic was at an all time low in 1960.

Let's check out my top 5 moments from what I've read so far. Again, I apologize for the crappy quality of these images. My only camera is my cell phone and this book doesn't fit on my scanner properly.

5) Giant Ball of Kryptonite
This thing was in two issues, and at the end of each Aquaman just shoves it deeper and deeper into the ocean. Because god forbid Superman should ever want to have a nice beach day, right? It's one of those things where I just wonder why in the hell he didn't have a whale or a hammerhead destroy it. Unless he's saving it in case Supes tries to make fun of his fish powers again.

4) Cheating On Tests Is A-Okay!
So Aqualad wants to go to school. That's a good lesson for kids, right? Sure it is. So Aqualad spends about two weeks in class, getting used to school, and then they test him to see what grade he should be in since he's had no formal education before. But on the way to his test, Aqualad gets hit in the head with a boat and catches some mild amnesia. Somehow he's not late to the test and is still forced to take it.

So, Aquaman, deciding to try and help, has all of his fish do things that will alert Aqualad to the answers to his test. Because that's not cheating at all. Of course it isn't. If you forget the answers, getting them from somewhere is not cheating in the slightest. Why didn't you ever come help me pass my Physics tests this way, Aquaman?

3) What Else Could Possibly Try To Kill Us?
Four kids steal a boat, not having any idea how to use it. Aquaman's called to bring them back so the owners of the boat can punish them. Aquaman decides that getting beaten up by angry fishermen isn't enough to scare them away from doing something like this again, even though that would be enough to terrify most grown men. so he decides to pull a bunch of dangerous pranks on the kids instead.

The really tragic part of all this is that Aquaman was totally right. While after the first prank or two, two of the kids have probably pissed themselves, the other two keep believing that sooner or later the ocean will stop trying to kill them. Much like Aquaman, I kept going "Seriously, guys?! The giant sea serpents weren't enough to scare you off the water?"

2) Lois Lane: The Worst At Ideas
So Lois got in some kind of accident and some doctors made her into a mermaid to save her. What, medical science? You know you can't do that. Especially not in the 1960's. Lois tries to live happily with Aquaman and somehow gains telepathic control of fish like he has, even though it makes no sense. But she can't forget about good ol' Supes. Eventually, Aquaman gets hurt protecting her from something, and Lois has to get Superman's attention to come help them out.

Of all the things she could have done to get Superman's attention... Using electric eels to spell out an S.O.S., have a bunch of whales or dolphins start flailing around, hell she could have just yelled at him. With his super hearing he'd have noticed. But no. Of all these things, she chooses instead to set off a volcano. thank god she didn't accidentally get anyone killed. Good job, Lois.

1) Superman Becomes Every Single Kind Of Doctor
So, as mentioned in #2, Lois got stuck as a mermaid. But apparently Aquaman isn't good enough for her even though he saved her ass (He did way better later when he picked up Mera.) so she wants to go back to being human. Well this is a complicated medical procedure and if they mess it up, she's totally screwed. But never fear! Super man just read every medical textbook there is. So he is awarded every single doctorate, and can perform the operation!

....Seriously, what?

Great stuff. I wish I had whatever the 1960's DC writers were on. I've read some 2003 Aquaman, and I need to go back and look at some of the stuff from the 90's during the period in which Aquaman was a total goddamn badass. I know he made a few Justice League appearances back then. And of course there is the current "Batman: The Brave And The Bold" version of Aquaman, who's made everyone else think Aquaman's as cool as I've always believed he was.

So there's plenty of Aquaman left for me to cover in the future. You can definitely expect another post on him eventually.

Another win for animation with "Despicable Me".

2010-07-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

So, when I was visiting Downtown Otaku last week, we and our friend Aura decided to see "Despicable Me". Totally and competely worth the money. We didn't see it in 3D, so I can't really comment on that. Though, for some readon 3D effects rarely work for me anyway.

We saw it on a wednesday night (arond 8 or 9 o'clock) so the theater was pretty void of children, but the theater was still pretty crowded. I guess late on a weeknight is a good time for animation fans to go if they don't want to deal with potentially rambunctious children during a movie like this.

First and foremost, I want to give Universal Pictures total props on the way they went about advertising this movie. They've been promoting it a long time now, first with short 15 second or so spots, moving onto slightly longer trailers as time went on.

For the longest time, I really had no idea what "Despicable Me" was about beyond just some guy who hated the world and wasn't particlarly the nicest guy Fun. I like anti-heroes a lot. Then it seemed to be super villain vs. super villain. Awesome. Two guys fighting and getting in hilarious antics trying to out-do each other in taking over the world.

Then the three orphans (Margo, Edith, and Agnes) were introduced as part of the plot and for a while I really tought Universal had lost me. But I kept watching trailers, and the more I watched the more I needed to figure out how Gru, our anti-hero protagnist, ended up with these three orphan girls. Because it was incredibly vague in the trailers. I was given just enough information to get me curious, but not enough that I could figure it all out on my own. Brilliant move, Universal. Briliant.

Once again I went into a movie, totally underestimating it. "Despicable Me" was not just entertaining, it was fun. The ending is incredibly obvious. It's a kids movie. But even so, the movie never lost my interest. It was funny without being ridiculous and relying on pop culture and nonsense to make older viewers laugh. The characters and their behaviours, motvations, and relationships drove the movie and the humor.

Even the minons, who we described s "Corn Pops with goggles", were handeled fantastically. I was worried that, since they were a comic relief element in the story, the minons with be used heavy-handedly. But they only served to accent and enhance the humor already being presented.

And even with how predictable the ending was, it was handled wonderfully. Gru both changed and didn't change as a character, and he didn't turn into a typical, cheezy "saves the day" hero-type.

All in all, It was a very sweet, funny, entertaining movie. Definitely worth the money spent to see it. I'd like to see Universal keep working on animated features like this and contend with Pixar and Dreamworks. It would be nice to have a third "super power" in the CG Animation game.

Short Post: State Of Affairs

2010-07-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

So, apparently the Adiane figure in my last post, the one I am still so desperate to own, is a garage kit and is fairly hard to find. I'm certainly having a time of it via the internet. I'm going to try a few other means and see if I can't get my hands on it somehow.

In other news, Otakon 2010 is next weekend. Suri and I will both be wandering around. I'll be dressed as Professor Araragi from Pokemon B/W, and he'll be cosplaying Yuuhi from The Lucifer And the Biscuit Hammer. If you're going to be around, feel free to look for us and say hi!

I know I've got things to catch up on. It's just been way too hot lately, and things have been kind of hectic for me. I've barely been able to think straight. But I promise I will get back to proper blogging soon enough. I've got a whole lost of things to write about.

I will punch babies until I own this.

2010-07-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

So this morning I wake up and check through the shit that happened on Twitter while I was asleep. I see that McLovin tweeted "This is for @SonoYourFace:"

Right now I know nothing about this figure. I don't know who makes it, the scale, the price, when it'll be released, or where I can get it. All I know is that I need this figure.

I've been whining for ages about how there needs to be figures of the antagonist cast and some of the characters less represented in the merchandise. And the top of my list has always been Adiane The Elegant. She has become my favorite female character in Gurren Lagann (just barely squeaking by Nia) and I've lamented the fact that there have been no figures of her to occupy my shelves.

In fact, just yesterday Armaina and I had been tweeting back and forth about Gurren Lagann figures and I had mentioned how much I wished there was an Adiane. Looks like someone decided to grant my wish.

McLovin is probably at work now, but as soon as I can I'll be grilling him for all the information on this figure. When I have it, I'll update here with all of the information.

Until then I will be squealing like a little girl.

Avatar: The Legend Of Korra set for 2011

2010-07-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

I was a huge fan of Nick's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" in the years it ran. I watched it from day one right up to the finale. I feel it took a great stride toward making western animation into something more than just wacky brightly colored 11 minute jokes for kids (not that this is always a bad thing).

Time constraints and not actually getting Nick in mt dorm room for some reason caused me to miss a lot of season 3 when it first aired, but I marathoned what I hadn't seen with my best friend Cass leading up to the finale. I was incredibly satisfied with the ending of the series. There had always been rumors of a sequel that would explore things in the world's future, but I wasn't sure if it would ever come about.

But it's finally been announced.

"The Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender and follows the adventures of the Avatar after Aang – a passionate, rebellious, and fearless teenaged girl from the Southern Water Tribe named Korra. With three of the four elements under her belt (Earth, Water, and Fire), Korra seeks to master the final element, Air. Her quest leads her to the epicenter of the modern “Avatar” world, Republic City – a metropolis that is fueled by steampunk technology. It is a virtual melting pot where benders and non-benders from all nations live and thrive. However, Korra discovers that Republic City is plagued by crime as well as a growing anti-bending revolution that threatens to rip it apart. Under the tutelage of Aang’s son, Tenzin, Korra begins her airbending training while dealing with the dangers at large."
- From ToonZone's article announcing the news.

I think the thing that I'm most psyched about is the fact that the central hero of the story is a girl this time. Though both Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of the series, are big Hayao Miyazaki fans, and he puts females as his central heroes very very frequently. But it's something uncommon in the west, and I'm really glad to see it. I also like that they're tying things in with "Last Airbender" by bringing in Aang's son. I'm just hoping there's a sweet-ass Earth Bender that I can get excited over, since the Earth Kindgom and it's citizens were always my favorite.

"Avatar: The Legend of Korra" (which is still a working title) is set to start airing in 2011, and I am eagerly looking forward to it. I'm hoping that it's going to start airing in the summer or late spring so that I'm done with school when it airs so that I can follow it.

I'm going to talk about my cat today.

2010-07-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

Augh, I'm sorry guys. I have not been doing a whole lot of nerding lately. I need to write posts about Despicable Me and those Kung Zhu battle hamster things and about my Araragi cosplay. But shit has just been so ridiculous for me lately that I just haven't had it in me to do so.

See, for the past several weeks my princess, my baby, my sweet little girl has been having some crazy issues. Now I want to make it clear that I'm talking about my cat before I get into any more detail...

Her name is Silver. She is 10 years old. She has been with me for all but the first two weeks of those ten years. I love this cat as if she were my child, since aside from the whole "giving birth to her" part she might as well be.

Our old vet (as in we went to him until this mess started) was clearly a retard who can't spay a cat properly. Apparently from her spay (which was 10 years ago) some ovarian tissue was left behind, and all of a sudden it's causing her to act like she's in heat.

We've been giving her medicine to lessen the symptoms and make her more comfortable. She was originally scheduled for surgery weeks ago, but my mom canceled it since Silver seemed to be doing better. then it all started up again and we rescheduled. then last week when I was in NYC, mom canceled it again behind my back, again because silver stopped showing symptoms. The same night, it started up again.

So I gave mom the business when I got home last Thursday, and Silver goes in for her surgery tomorrow. McLovin is taking me to pick her up when he gets off of work. So, hopefully, by this time tomorrow my life will be back to normal and I can bore you all to death with my usual nerdy ramblings.

Get To Know Your Blogger

2010-07-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. Before I do anything else, I want to thank the awesome folks at Ramenbox.com for passing around links to the reviews I wrote about them. I ended up with 105 hits that day, as opposed to my usual... 8-ish. Thanks guys! Stay awesome!

Sorry I kind of vanished from the internet there for a while. It's been a rough however long it's been, and then I was out of town for a few days visiting Downtown Otaku and just living my life. I read straight through "The Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer" up to current, and I'll blog about that once my life settles down again.

Speaking of life, how about we talk about we all get to know each other a bit? I've been posting a lot without letting ya'll get to know me and that's probably a mistake when blogging. And lord only know that little bio thing over on the side will only go so far.

So hi. I'm Sono.

I wear wigs sometimes. Not because I don't like my hair. I just really like wearing wigs. Also because I'm really into dressing up as people that aren't me due to anxiety issues. This mostly takes the form of dressing up as anime/comics/video game characters. Though sometimes I just walk around in wigs because it's awesome.

I'm also an art student, majoring in cartooning at the School of Visual Arts.

This means, pretty much, that I draw comics. I'm looking to make a career out of it. I am improving constantly (as seen above) through ass-loads of work. I'm hoping, by this time next year, to have one of my projects live, finally. Next summer is also when I graduate and have to be an adult. Suckkkk. I'm so nervous about it. But I'm looking forward to trying to make a name for myself in the field.

I don't know how many of you remember the... one time Suri wrote for this blog before I removed him as an author because he never posted. But we're still dating. It's been over four years now. Shit's rough sometimes, but we always come out the other end spouting nonsense and being crazy. We're kind of ridiculous like that. He's supportive of all my nonsense and he puts up with shit from me that I wouldn't even put up with. He's basically a saint.

I am, as I have made obvious, a huge nerd. I love pokemon, cartoons, some video games, music, and food. I will ramble about these things until daybreak if you let me. Thus why I started this blog. It's a good outlet for all of my rambling and hopefully some if it is useful to you all.

If there's anything specific ya'll want me to talk about or check out just let me know and I'll do my best to get around to it. Otherwise I'm just going to keep rambling about things that no one cares about except for me.

I hope this was some kind of interesting for you all and that you now know me a little better.

I Have Eaten A Lot Of Ramen Lately

2010-07-07T18:02:00.001-07:00

So I'm most of the way through my 40 slot Ramenbox. As anticipated, it did not disappoint. I've tried 11 of the 14 kinds of ramen I ordered, and there are only two kinds I wouldnt order again (and they are both basically the same thing). I've divided the varieties in my box up into three categories...

Will Order Again
Pretty straight forward, this is ramen that I loved. Stuff I would eat on a regular basis without hesitation.

Sapporo Ichiban Chowmein -- This was my favorite variety hands down. It has a very different preparation than all of the other varieties, is still simple (and, in my opinion, rather fun) to prepare, and is absolutely delicious. If you've ever had one of Nissin's microwave Chowmein bowls, it is a lot like that, only better. I could, really, roder a whole box of this and be happy.

Indomie Fried Noodles -- These are delicious, and taste similar to Sapporo Ichiban's chowmein, though are prepared in a more traditional style for ramen. But it's a good, sweet ramen.

Paldo Bibim Men -- I regret not buying two or three of this. It was super-spicy but it was sweet and really really good.

Indomie BBQ Chicken -- A good chicken ramen. A whole lot of flavor. If you just want soem standard chicken ramen that's still pretty damn delicious this is a good way to go.

Sapporo Ichiban Beef -- Another pretty standard ramen that just packs in a lot of flavor. I'm a big fan of beef ramens so I got a few of these and I'm already mostly through them.

Might Order Again
This is stuff that I might only order one of next time, or forego ordering again if I see something new I'd like to try. It wasn't bad, and I would gladly eat it again, but I just liked the other stuff better.

Indomie Chicken Curry -- This was good, but curry and curry flavored things are something I can only eat so often without it making me kind of ill.

Mama Pork Ramen -- This was delicious, but it's definitely a "cold weather" ramen, so I might nor order any again until the summer is over.

NongShim Spicy Chicken Ramen -- This is one I've had before, and every now and then I just crave it, but god damn it's really spicy. I'm also not a big fan of dried-and-rehydreated vegetables, and not having the option to not put them in here is kind of a downside for me.

Indomie Spicy Beef -- I just liked the other varieties of beef ramen that I've bought better than this one. My one real problem with Indomie's ramen options are that their seasoning/oil packets are all conected. This makes oil packets kind of hard/gross to open and pour out, especially inc ases when there are three packets connected to each other and not two.

Won't Order Again
There were two varieties that fell into this category. I just didn't like them. I do, however, know people who have really enjoyed them. So maybe it's just my taste.

NongShim Chapghetti and Paldo Jja Jang Men were a little too bitter for my taste. Though I've always been more into sweet-savory varieties like some of the ones mentioned above. Thankfully I only ordered one Paldo Jja Jang Men, but I still have two packages of NongShim Chapghetti, which I'm passing off to Suri and McLovin.

Still left to try I have the Kung Fu Beef ramen, VeWong Peppered Beef ramen, and WuMu Garlic Sesame Oil ramen. I'm really looking forward to these. In the future, I may review these here, as well as other varieties I haven't tried yet.

All-in-all the box has been overwhelmingly great. If you want a great variety of quick and easy ramen-based meals, you really need to browse through Ramenbox.com's great selection. I can't wait to finish off my first box so I can order another one.

What's More American Than New Jersey?

2010-07-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, for the fourth of July, Cartoon Network aired a marathon of the anime "Naruto". Suri and I were fully perplexed, because there is nothing American about "Naruto". We then, simultaniously, declared that Cartoon Network should have marathoned the series "Megas XLR" because, to quote us both...

"What's more American than New Jersey?"

So, to celebrate Independance Day this year,I'm going to write up a post about what is possibly one of the greatest Giant Robot cartoons of all time. Unfortunately, Megas XLR was canceled in April of 2005, just shy of 1 full year after it began airing.

As I briefly mentioned, Megas XLR took place in New Jersey, which automatically made it a hit with me since I'm from the Garden State myself. Now it was set in Jersey City, which is a good deal north of where I live (I'm down by Asbury Park.), but the New Jersey spirit is still the same. They mention a lot of real location in New Jersey (Such as Hoboken.) and the attitude of Coop, Jamie, and all of the other locals are just spot on.

Megas parodied every giant robot series and iconic 90's anime and sci-fi that it could get it's hands on. And they did it with class. The show was, undboutedly a comedy. But what made it funny was how every teenage boy (and me) watching was saying "Yeah that's how I'd handle it too." Because no teenager, if given a giant robot, would take things seriously. They'd just runa round and wreck things with it and maybe accidentally beat a couple of bad guys in the process -- Which is exactly how Coop did things.

I wish I'd had time to rewatch "Megas XLR" before writing this, but the 4th just snuck up on me and I didn't think to do this until the 3rd. But if you want a little good old American fun, check out Megas. It does not disappoint.

Happy 4th of July to all of our American stoppers-by!

A great summer movie about the summer.

2010-07-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

So, I spent another afternoon/evening in the company of my dear boy Suri, and my good friends Mclovin and Kristin. One day I should really just write a post to act as an introduction to all of my crazy friends, since they are equally, if not more, nerdy than I am. But I'm quickly veering off topic so I'd better get myself back on track.

This week, we watched the movie "Summer Wars".

On the way home, Mclovin asked what I thought on a scale of 1 to 10. My answer was "14". This movie did everything right, and (to quote Suri) when it didn't do something awsome that the viewer was hoping for, it was only because it was doing something better.

Basically, it's another one of those movies where the whole world relies on technology and things go wrong and everything plumets into chaos and some kids have to play hero. I've been told that it's basically "Digimon: The Movie except better", but I've never seen Digimon: The Movie, so I really wouldn't know.

Anyway, I fell in love with pretty much the whole cast right away, but one member of the cast just quickly blew me away... Sakae Jinnouchi.

This old lady is clearly the most badass fictional person in history. When things go bad, she just starts making phone calls to every important figure in Japan to make sure shit is covered. When her adopted son does something unforgivably retarded, she grabs a goddamn spear and attacks him. All without the slightest bit of hesitation.

She's a central figure in the movie, especially the first half, though later on the movie has reasons for shifting it's focus away from her. Other fantastic characters include Kazuma (and his avatar King Kazuma), and the two lead characters, Kenji Koiso and Natsuki Jinnouchi. I was drawn to Natsuki pretty quckly because she was just clever and amusing straight off the bat. I think my exact words upon her appearance were "She knows how to play the game." Almost all of the rest of the cast are Natsuki's relatives.

Kenji's whole schtick is that he's a math prodigy, but is pretty socially inept. His crazy math skills come up a couple times as main plot drivers of the movie and the scenes of Kenji doing math are completely hilarious. I made a lot of jokes about the moral being "everyone should go to art school" since I haven't taken math in my five years in college and none of the problems in the story would have occured if people didn't do so much math.

And then there is our villain, a terroristic hacking A.I. that goes by the name "Love Machine".

Love Machine is a fabulous villain. A fabulous, terrifying villain. Certainly not the kind you empathize with, since he isn't human. He doesn't talk at all and goes on a rampant, destructive spree that causes mass total chaos and nearly wipes out Japan. And then when that doesn't work he settles for trying to kill the Jinnouchi family instead, for no other reason than they are getting in the way of his hacking. His fights with King Kazuma (who is the avatar of Natsuki's fairly androgynous cousin, Kazuma) are beautifully orchestrated are visually engaging. Then again, just about everything in this movie is.

I'm not sure who was in charge of designing the digital avatars in "summer Wars", but whoever it is totally deserves a medal.

All of the characters in the movie have a representation in the digital world known as "Oz", even if they only shoe up very briefly in the background of some things, like the final battle of the movie. Though this is less of a battle in the sense that it is a physical fight (As the previous battles in the movie have been.) and actually a game played between Love Machine and Natsuki -- a game of Koi-Koi. Koi-Koi is played through out the movie, as all members of the family know how to play (and were taught by Sakae). I wasn't surprised when the climax of the movie turned out to be an epic game of Koi-Koi, but man it was fantastic to watch, even though none of us understood how it was played.

Natsuki and Love Machine play, wagering control of the accounts on Oz. Natsuki is wagering her family's accounts and Love Machine is wagering the accounts that he has hacked and stolen. Of course, when the going gets rough, determination turns the tides and unhacked members offer their accounts for Natsuki to wager, and then the mods give her a special item causing her Avatar to be powered up.

Suri had apparently ordered a figure of King Kazuma, and McLovin was waiting for pre-orders to open on a figure of Love Machine. I believe both are being released by Figma. When asked if I'd want either, I said I might want King Kazuma, but the only figure that I would but in a heartbeat would be Natsuki's final form. If Figma gave her to us, I'd jump on it so long as I wasn't broke.

All in all, I'm another person giving "Summer Wars" two thumbs way up. It was heartwarming and funny and very sweet. IF you want to kill a few hours and really enjoy yourself, give it a shot.

It's like watching myself on Youtube.

2010-06-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

A brief post, but I wanted to share this. It's my blog and I'll do whatever I want.

So a while ago, I posted about the Chozokei Damashii Gurren Lagann blind box figures and how completely amazing they are. I know I've also mentioned in the past that my friend McLovin is a writer for the awesome toy site, Tomopop.

Well today on twitter, he pointed me toward a video of his editor-in-chief opening up some of the boxes. It was basically exactly the same as my experience, and I thought I'd share because it was pretty fun for me to watch.

It's refreshing to see someone who reacts to Yoko the same way I do.

Good job on "Toy Story 3", Pixar.

2010-06-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

So me and a handful of my friends went to see Toy Story 3 on Friday. I should preface this with the fact that when I heard about Toy Story 3, I was kind of annoyed with Pixar about it. I didn't see why a third Toy Story was needed, especially this long after the first two, when Pixar was putting out so many other wonderful films. It was frustrating for me, since I'm not a fan of animated sequels, and especally part three's, since they are notorious for being terrible.

But, guys, this time I was wrong.

Toy Story 3 was not only entertaining and funny, but heartwarming. This was a movie made for all of the kids who had grown up watching Toy Story and Toy Story 2. For all the kids who had been eight or nine or ten when Toy Stoy came out and are now in their twenties. For us, who may have forgotten the things we loved as a kid. It was nostalgic, and sweet, and I commend Pixar on carrying this franchise gracefully from part one to part three.

One really fun thing about going to see a Pixar film is the animated short shown before each feature. Some of my favorite things to come from Pixar are their animated shorts. I recently found a DVD full of these and plan to buy it in the near future but that is a blog post for another day. Back to the tpoic at hand.

The short shown before Toy Story 3 was called "Day & Night", and it blew me completely out of the water.

"Day & Night" blended 3D CGI animation with tradtional 2D style animation for a product that just stopped me dead in my tracks. Watching these two characters bounce back and forth, originally disliking each other and trying to claim superiority to learning to accept each other and enjoy what made them different. It was absolutely stunning.

As I mentioned, I originally met this film with a lot of hostility. After I began seeing trailers and was given a good idea of the plot I was a lot more recpetive to Toy Story 3, but I kept a heavy dose of skepticism about the whole thing. It looked good, but I wasn't ready to get myself over-excited just to be let down with the final product.

But Toy Story 3 met my challenge head on and did not disappoint. It held up to the quality of humor, story, and emotion that we have come to expect from Pixar. Some of the funniest moments, as usual came from Mr. Potato Head. I'm fairly certain "GET THE TORTILLA!" will be my social circle's rallying cry for years to come.

Surprisingly this movie also had it's fair share of nightmare fuel, present in "Big Baby" and "The Monkey". More so in the monkey, since we all screamed any time that thing showed up. That thing was completely horrifying, and all of us are likely to have nightmares about it for the rest of our lives. Ironically, I've never felt more like a little kid than I did during some of the scarier parts of this movie. And yes, there are some really terrifying moments in Toy Story 3. Now I'm not saying this isn't a kids movie. It clearly is. If you've got kids, show them the first two and then take them to this. They will love it. But expect some screams of terror, not just from them but also from yourself.

All of the plot twists in this movie are, really, incredibly obvious. Looking back on them, it's really easy to see everything coming. But when you're watching Toy Story 3, it's so easy to get caught up in the suspense of it all that you end up watching with blinders on. Even some of the most obvious things just come completely out of left field. You will spend the latter half of this movie on the edge of your seat.

And once that all passes, and you reach the last ten minutes or so of the movie, it becomes very apparent who this movie was actually made for...

This movie wasn't made for today's kids. They will all enjoy this movie thoroughly, but this is for all the 18 to 20-somethings who are Andy's age now. Who were kids when Toy Story first came out, many of whom have now had to part with beloved childhood toys. For young adults in tha age group that my friends and I populate. It was just a little something to remind us of when we were young, and of the things we loved.

All four of us; Suri, McLovin, Kyle, and myself, cried through the end of this movie. Now, we are all big toy nerds, so in the beginning we were all like "Why doesn't Andy just bring ALL of his toys to college?" since that's what we do. But I guess logically people that aren't total dorks like we are might want to not do that. The way Pixar chose to end Toy Story 3 was heartwarming, bittersweet, and wonderful. Even now, writing about it two days later, it is hard for me not to start crying again just thinking about it.

If you grew up watching Toy Story and Toy Story 2, go and give Toy Story 3 a shot. If you're nervous about being an adult in a children's movie, find a friend with younger siblings and go with them. But really, you shouldn't worry about appearances. You won't be the only non-kid there. There are plenty of people like me and my friends who will be there too.

The DBZ Principal Is In Effect

2010-06-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

Okay guys. I haven't really rambled about this here at Rook takes Queen yet, so I'd better get the score settled on something.I am fully, 100% convinced that the real villain in Bleach is Aizen's mullet, and that this manga is actually all about hair. Kind of like "Bobobobobobobobobobobobobobobo" or whatever the hell you want to call that, except with less of a chance of stabbing yourself while reading it. I mean just look at Aizen, for each stage of his villany, he's gotten a progressivly smarmier mullet.

This week I just about had a heart attack because it seems to have gotten longer, which only means the evil destructive force of his mullet is becoming more powerful. But then my freind Gonsai pointed something out that I'm just going to laugh about forever...

Evil demon overlord by day, fabulous male supermodel by night. It all makes sense now. He is using his undercover work as Fabio to win public appeal so no one will care when he takes over the world and kills them all. Aizen, you clever bastard. Even Gin seems concerned lately. Fortunately we have a means to combat Aizen's diabolical mullet in the form of Shinji's bowl cut and Ichigo's rocker mullet.

The point is, it seems like every time a major character has a dramatic shift in power, their ridiculous haircut changes to an entirely different ridiculous haircut. I wouldn't be surprised if Rukia came home from Hueco Mundo with bankai and longer hair.

It's like being the nerdiest fashion designer.

2010-06-24T11:09:00.000-07:00

As you can see from RTQ's header, gijinka pokemon are sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. I totally fell in love with the idea of designing a look based on the endlessly different pokemon designs, though it wasn't until last halloween that I actually took a swing at it.

I'd had to throw a costume together at the last minute and found a pair of long white gloves that I didn't know I owned. That's when it hit me -- Gijinka Lugia. I had a white sweater, pants, scarf, and a blue tanktop. So I threw it all together, made some blue bows for Lugia's back and tail and got my blue wig from my Simon cosplay and put it all together.

It came out pretty nicely I think, and I enjoy running around pretending to be a Lugia since it's one of my favorite pokemon. I had told a friend about the costume, but didn't have pictures at the time, so I drew a picture for him. And then I ended up drawing a couple more just for fun... And then she sort of developed a life of her own.

I began planning a comic based around the plot of the second Pokemon movie, except more Lugia-centric. For a movie originally titled "Revelation Lugia", that movie did not have a whole lot of Lugia actually in it. But the longer I've kept her around, the more I've thought about her "storyline" from beginning to end and I think there's the potential for something more than that in there, specifically with the possible relationship between Lugia and Ho-Oh.

So I've been kind of working out plot and I think if I do a pokemon gijinka comic, I'd focus it post-movie and around the "feud" and estrangement between she and Ho-Oh. that way I could also include the other legendary birds AND the legendary dogs. Becuase they would all be incredibly fun to do designs for.

While Lugia and Ho-Oh are my favorites, I have taken a swing at Absol and Raichu.

Suri and I have a bit of an ongoing story about my Raichu and Absol, Amphy and Marsche, and they are kind of an item. Because it's cute. Marsche ended up looking kind of "90's Bishonen", but it only serves to emphasize the fact that he is a total dork. I've since hatched their egg, and need to come up with a good name for their Pichu, but what I'm really glad about is that I only had to draw Amphy pregnant once. That was way more difficult than I'd assumed it would be.

I'm part of The Gijinka Club (Which accpets gijinkas for all things, not just pokemon!) and Pokemon Gijinkas on DeviantART, and I've had fun submitting to both of those since I started this. Pokemon Gijinkas is still very small, so I've enjoyed that club a bit more, but both have been great to be a part of.

So if you're an artistically inclined pokemon fan, give it a shot. Even if you're not into pokemon, maybe try applying the concept to something else you're into. It's a fun way to stretch your creative muscles a bit. Especially since there's not really any rules.

You can take liberties and still give your gijinkas wings, tails, or animal ears if you want, or if you'd rather not you can find some other way around it. I like keeping my gijinkas as human as possible and turning their other apendages into articls of clothing or part of their hairstyle, or anything else I might be able to think of. (Like Lugia's scarf-tail, or Amphy's rat-tail haircut!)

So take a swing at it if you're so inclined. You might find you like it.

I Am A Woman Of Science

2010-06-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

So this summer I've made the decision to put together a cosplay for Professor Araragi. It's a simple costume and I could get it togehter pretty cheaply. And it is a hell of a lot of fun. I now have all of the pieces, though I still need to actually assemble a few things and figure out how to get my wig to sit right.

We ordered the skirt off of eBay and I was really worried it wasn't going to work out, but it is actually totally perfect. It is EXACTLY the right green and it fits me really well. It's a little big, but it came with a little belt that I can wear that will make it sit right.

We got an inexpensive white t-shirt from K-mart, and some simple slip-on shoes from payless. then we hit up A.C. Moore to get things to alter the shoes and make the earrings. My ears aren't pierced so I have to get bases for clip-on earrings. I bought magnets but unfortunately it isn't working. I'd planned to just buy clip on bases but they didn't have any. But we'll see what happens.

The thing we're really trying to figure out right now is the wig. It didn't hold up very well over the course of the day. A wig cap should solve some of the problem (the only one I have is blue, so it's not useful for this wig), but there's still hte matter of getting her up-do right. Mom bought those Goody "Spin Pins" so she's going to let me try them, and if it works she's going to buy me a set so that I can use those.

The biggest truggle right now is actually playing the part of Araragi. Since she is new and the information we have on her is minimal, her personality is still a very elusive factor. I was sort of making it up, playing off personality details inferred from the one image we have of her and how I think a woman in her profession might act.

All of the photos from the shoot are available here. It was an incredibly fun time and I' like to give it another test run sometime in July before Otakon to make sure I've got things down right before I hit up Otakon with a costume that isn't ready.

Arrival of the RamenBox!

2010-06-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

So, a week ago my mom and I placed an order from RamenBox.com. We put together a big 40-slot ramen box, placed the order, and waited. It arrived today just as I finished making some pasta for lunch, since for all the good comedic timing I tend to have, my practical timing is generally terrible. None the less, I was totally excited to have my big box of ramen finally in hand. After eating, I tore it open and this is what I found:

37 glorious packages of ramen (I had a few 2-slot items), 14 different types, all packed into two boxes. It's a truly beautiful thing. My lineup consists of the following:

- 3 Indomie Spicy Beef Ramen
- 3 KungFu Beef Ramen
- 4 Sappolo Ichiban Beef Ramen
- 4 Mama Pork Ramen
- 3 Indomie BBQ Chicken Ramen
- 2 Indomie chicken Curry Ramen
- 2 NongShim Spicy Chicken Ramen
- 4 Sapporo Ichiban Chowmein
- 3 NongShim Chapghetti
- 1 Paldo Bibim Men
- 1 Paldo Jja Jang Men
- 2 Vewong Peppered Beef Ramen
- 2 WuMu Garlic Sesame Oil Ramen
- 3 Indomie Fried Noodles

I've had a few of these before (like the Sapporo Ichiban beef and the NongShim Spicy chicken) since I have apretty diverse super market in my area, but I'm excited to try a bunch of new things. Especially some of the vegetarian options that I ordered.

Because the guys over at RamenBox.com are so cool, they also threw in a few sets of chopsticks, some chili sauce, and a pack of Tung-I Beef Flavored Instant Rice Noodles. These little extras and free noodles totally won me over, because I'm a sucker for extras. Way to snag yourselves a repeat customer guys.

So since I got a hold of something a little unexpected with my order, and I'm hungry, I'm going to write more about the Tung-I Beef Flavored Rice Noodles. I've never really done a food review so bear with me on this one.

So, prep on this is pretty standard fare. You've got your noodles, a pack of seasoning, and an oil packet. Three minutes in boiling water, and then add in the seasoning and eat. The rice noodles didn't absorb the seasoning very well, but they had a pretty nice texture to them. Even though the noodles didn't absorb it very well, the broth had a lot of flavor and held up to the texture of the noodles pretty well.

I'd definitely have it again, though next time I'd change a few things. I'd add the seasoning in at the beginning so the noodles could absorb it straight on, and I'd use a bit less water. I'dS also add that leftover steak in the fridge. Yum. Meat is always a good addition.

So all in all, if you like ramen, Ramenbox is a good deal! It'd probably cost you more to buy them all inidivitually, even if you factor in shipping. And it is run by some fantastic, friendly people, and when you order you might even get a little something extra! There's also their free slots program, where you can earn slots and eventually get a free box of ramen! So drop by and check it out. You most likely will not be disappointed. I know I wasn't.

On Cartoon Network airing live-action shows.

2010-06-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

So I've watched the first episode of Cartoon Network's new show "Unnatural History" about 3 times, since it's all they've been showing since Sunday. I like the premise for this show and I think it's really interesting. I'm glad they're finally airing some programs geared towards teens and young adults. But "Unnatural History" is part fo a growing trend of shows that I don't think should be on this channel -- Live-Action shows.

Now don't get me wrong. I have nothing against live-action shows. Some of my favorite programs are live-action; NCIS, Castle, Law & Order, Dancing With The Stars, the entire lineup on the Food Network... But I think when you call your channel "Cartoon Network", you should focus on... you know.. cartoons. I don't know why "Unnatural History" isn't animated. Cartoon Network is obviously aware that teens and young adults are watching their network, otherwise they wouldn't be airing this show at all.

But if teens and young adults are watching "Cartoon Network", aren't they looking for... cartoons? Now it's not that Cartoon Network isn't airing cartoons geared toward this demographic. "Ben 10" has grown and matured along with it's audience, and they've begun airing "Generator Rex" (which will get a write-up all it's own once I get caught up with it) and "Adventure Time", and there's the "Total Drama" series along with "Chowder" and "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack". The last two are still kind of kid-oriented, but there is a lot of stuff for the older scene there too.

So why does Cartoon Network feel the need to air live action shows? I understand why shows like "Dude, What Would Happen?" and "Destroy Build Destroy" are live-action (though I question why Cartoon Network needs these shows at all). But "Unnatural History" doesn't need to be live action. If they got a good animation team (like the one that worked on Nick's "Avatar: The Last Airbender", which certainly didn't end up being "child-oriented") it could easily be done as an animated show.

My friend Armaina has recently started a blog that takes a closer look at animation . She's an incredibly intelligent lady, and she really knows what she's talking about. She mentioned in her first post on her blog that animation is looked down upon in the states and is regarded as a medium "for kids". while I do think this is starting to change a bit, I do agree that it hasn't changed enough, especially if Cartoon Network needs to air things that aren't even cartoons to try and net a bigger young adult audience.

They're planning to air another show that sounds.. almost exactly the same as "Unnatural History" in the near future. I'm hoping that these shows only last a season or two and then Cartoon Network will realize it's mistake. If they want to attract audiences my age, 20-somethigns who are interested in cartoons, they'll have to do it with cartoons.

Comics About Making Comics

2010-06-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

So, a while ago, after reading a blog post about it by my friend Hilary, I started reading a manga currently running in Jump by the pair who brough us "Death Note", Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi -- I have been reading "Bakuman".

I'm not sure if I've brought this up, but I am a senior at SVA in Manhattan and my major is Cartooning. Drawing comics is pretty much a way of life for me. As such, I absolutly love comics about comics, and "Bakuman" is far and away my new favorite. To sum it up quickly, it's about two kids, Mashiro Moritaka and Takagi Akito who want to (and do!) write for Weekly Jump.

I am completely fascinated by this, by the ideas for stories that the characters come up with, and how they learn what they're good at, what they're not, and a look into how things work in Weekly Jump. They face problems like threats of cancelation, rivalries from other mangaka, and doing work they don't enjoy. But, like any heroes in shonen manga, they solve their problems with perserverance and manly determination. As they should.

And, like any shonen manga, there are the romantic interests, Azuki Miho and Kyoshi Kaya. These two are probably my favorite part of "Bakuman", even if the romantic plots play second fiddle to the main event of "OMG LETS MAKE MANGA!".

Miho has a dream of becoming a voice actor, and she and Mashiro have agreed that when Mashiro's manga is popular enough to get an anime, Miho will voice the lead female, and then they'll get married. They've also agreed not to see each other until then and only communicate by email. They've had to come in contact a few times, but the way they email back and forth is compeltely adorable.

And then there is Kaya and Takagi, who are my favorite thing about this series. Their relationship is vastly different from that of Miho and Mashiro. Kaya keeps herself around the boys all the time, wanting to have an active part in their dream. She and Takagi get togther somewhat by accident, but they form a close, absolutely hilarious and wonderful relatoionship.

One great, and simultaniousy disappointing thing is that I'll never get to read all of the series within "Bakuman". I would honestly love to read every single one of them. I honestly feel like I would read "Perfect Crime Club" and "Otters 11" forever if I was given the chance, and I could see myself having been very disappointed over the cancelation of "Detective Trap". And I can totally see "Crow" being a guilty pleasure of mine. Hopefully when we get the anime, maybe we'll get a "Kujibiki Unbalance"-esque spin off of one of them? If we did, I would hope it was for "Perfect Crime Club". Though I don't think we get a close enough look at any of the series-within-the-series to warrent a spin off.

One can only imagine how many incidents in the manga are based in some way on Ohba and Obata's own experiences, and how many characters are based on other mangaka they know. "Bakuman" updates weekly, and has started running in the english Shonen Jump magazine. Though if you don't have a subscription to that, you can find it as OneManga, MangaFox, and probably on other similar sites.

The anime, set to run 25 episodes, is starting this fall, so I'll probably take a swing at talking about that once it starts running. Though I'm really worried about a 25 episode run and what it will do as far as condensing the series. But it's a "wait and see" situation so that's what I'll have to do -- Wait and see.

Catching up on Pokemon news.

2010-06-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, so while I let this blog idle, more and more new information about the two new versions of pokemon, Black and White, have been surfacing. I wasn't really interested at first, since it was all about the new mechanics and changes to the basic structure of the game. I didn't really care about any of that. Pokemon is pokemon is pokemon, y'know? But with some of the recent reveals, I've gotten a little more excited about the upcoming 5th generation of the franchise. So I'm going to start with the newer information and work my way back, beginning with what I am most excited about...

FEMALE REGIONAL PROFESSOR!!!

I am pretty psyched by this. This is the first time we've had a female professor, and she's pretty young, and she is GORGEOUS. The name that's been released is Professor Araragi. Who knows what we'll get in the way of a tree-themed American name for her. But she looks like she's energetic and ridiculous, and that her wackyness can be chalked up to being into CRAAAAZY SCIENCE instead of being old.

There's also been a handful of fresh new Gen V pokemon released and I have a variety of opinions on them all...

So first is "chiramii", the chinchilla pokemon. A normal type. It. Is. Adorable. I've loved chinchillas for a long time, since my best friend has raised several, and I'm glad to finally see a chinchilla pokemon in the lineup. If it eveolves, I hope it stays adorable.

To the right is "shimama", which is some kind of electric zebra. Awesome. Awesome. I hope it evolves into an even more badass electric zebra. If my party wasn't already electric saturated, I'd probably take him in. I may raise one anyway if he's common enough. Especially if he evolves into something awesome. i'm thinking kind of an electric Rapidash since he's rather ponyta-like.

And on the bottom is "meguroko", a dark-ground gator pokemon. He's also adorable. I'll lprobably catch one and just have it sit around since I don't keep ground types around, but he's still pretty cute. He's classified as a "desert crocodile", so I'm wondering what sort of area you'll end up having to go to in order to find him. That should be some fun news.

Now onto the group that I'm on the fence about...

First is "hihidaruma", the "blaze pokemon", obviously a fire type. I am assuming that since 'daruma' is in his name, and by his eyes, that he is based on daruma dolls. I adore darumas. And he looks like he'd be a second stage pokemon, which makes me hope that he evolves from a little rolly fire-breathign daruma. Because if he does, I will bring that thing into my party and never let it evolve because oh god that would be so cute. I have such a soft spot for darumas.

To the right is "munna", a psychic type... pig... thing. If it evolves into something kind of pretty, I can legitimize this, but otherwise I'm just not really into it. It's a pretty bland design and there's nothing really interesting or special about it. It's jsut a pink pig-shaped thing with some flowers on it's butt. I guess we'll see.

And then there is "mamepato", the baby pidgeon pokemon. It's your standard normal-flying type that we get every gen to replace pidgey. It's pretty cute even though It's basically a slightly altered starly. But he serves his purpose and maybe he'll have some cool variations in his evolutions.

And then there was this...

"Giaru". The gear pokemon. Steel type. The poor man's alt-type magnimite. and as it is, I hate magnimite. Though aside from diglett, I've never been fond of any of the "clump" pokemon. Let's sut move on before I get frustrated...

So here we have Reishiram (left) and Zekrom (right), Black and White's legendary pair. They're both dragon types, with Reishirom's secondary beign fire, and Zekrom's secondary being elecrtic. I'm glad to see the "big" legendaries (the version mascots, and larger bodied ones) going back to looking more organic. The past couple of generations, they've been looking a little robotic or mechanized for my taste. Not to say there weren't some I liked, but it's a direction that I'm glad this version took.

I'm a bit more partial to Reishiram, since I think he looks like (as I once described it) "Lugia after getting stuck inside a pillow", but I also do like Zekrom, and I think they're an interesting and very balanced pair. Though that should come as no surprise since they are the Yin and Yan pokemon.

Now it's time for me to get into stuff you already know about...

Like the Gen V starters. Tsutarja, the grass type, Pokabu, the fire type, and Mijumaru, the water type. I'm pretty okay with all of them, but like most people my preference is Tsutarja, or as the itnernet has come to call him, "Smugleaf". And if Nintendo doens't name him that officially, we will all be sorely disappointed, and will all just nickname him that anyway. It's how the fandom works. They should know that by now.

My real problem with Pokabu is that I could see his evolutions being HIDEOUS and that just doesn't fly with me, especially for a fire-type starter. Fire starters are supposed to be badass. Water starters are supposed to end up hideous.Grass types kind of come and go in whatever direction they want in their final stages. But I predict Tsutaraja turning into a badass.

Mijumaru is cute, and he'll probably turn into something pretty neat looking, but Tsutarja just has the best look, so he kind of turned me away from the little beaver-otter or whatever it is. It's still cute though. I don't care what anyone says.

And then we have the new player characters, Black, the male, and White, the female. I'm pretty indifferent to Black, since I'm a chick and rarely use them (though I used him in SoulSilver, but I covered my reasons for that already). But I am in love with White. It looks like the 80's threw up all over her. Which is kind of hilarious and great. Black seems fairly standard as far as the male protagonists go, but I'm curious to see how he fares in the way of personality.

Our player characters are a bit older this time, though I'm not sure by how much. And we have a new, once again wrist-mounted trainer tool, which I like. Even the pokedex got a hefty redesign:

Nintendo has said that Black and White are going to take the series in a very new direction, and a lot of the information that's surfaced has really pointed in that direction. I'm eagar to see where this new direction takes the franchise, and I hope it's somewhere good.

Nerds and Ramen Are Inseparable

2010-06-11T12:18:00.001-07:00

Ramen is kind of a staple of my household. I like being able to make quick, easy meals for myself at any time of day since I have a ridiculously erratic eating schedule. I keep a couple boxes of pot-stickers and microwave rice pouches and things around, but there's nothing quite like a good bowl of ramen.

But as I'm sure many of you know, a girl can only eat so much Nissin Top Ramen before things start getting a little stale. Then one day, a friend of mine on LiveJournal mentioned something that caught my eye...

RAMENBOX.COM

I made myself an account and kept the link sitting around in my favorites until I could get money to order a Ramenbox of my own. In the meantime my mom kept picking up packs of Nissin chicken flavor Top Ramen, which I've eaten maybe three bows of and wishing it was something more interesting.

The other day, on a grocery run, I mentioned Ramenbox to mom, and today I pulled up the site so she could check it out. I'd planned to go for a regular 20 slot box, but mom decided we should go for the large 40 slot box! I put one together and we ordered it this afternoon!

They ship via FedEx ground (Which I like, because we're a FedEx loyal family, due to my dad being a courier!) so it'll be here on Monday or Tuesday most likely and we are looking forward to the super cool ramen that we've ordered.

Ramenbox also has the friendliest people in the world on staff. They keep in touch with their customers via their twitter account, and from what I've seen if you have any kind of problem regarding your order they will do what they can to help you out.

Once my box gets here I'll be sure to do another post on all of the great things I packed it with, but in the meantime take a browse around the Ramenbox site. Setting up a box is easy, and is actually a whole lot of fun. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Chozokei Damashii Gurren Lagann Figures

2010-06-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

So this week my Chozokei Damashii Gurren Lagann figures came. I essentially bought a 10 pc. case of blind boxes, so there was no real guarantee I'd get the full set. Fortunately, I got very very lucky:

For those curious about my 10th box, it was an extra "Yomako-sensei", which I may end up selling unless I can find someone to trade her with for an extra Simon, since I'd love to have him doing both poses.

I'm going to start this with manliness, and work my way through, so let's take a good look at these, because I am completely enamored with these figures. So let's kick it off with the Kaminas...

I'm not sure why Kamina wasn't just given alternate arms like Simon, or there wasn't two Simons like there are two Kaminas. They are essentially the same sculpt, just given a different left arm -- one to hold his sword, and one to point dramatically at Simon. The pointing-Kamina has no sword.

His face is a little strange to me, but I am glad for a couple more Kamina figures for my collection. I still need to go back and get the one from the first blind box set. I do love pointing-Kamina though, because they specifically advertised being able to do this:

And this is exactly how they will be posed on my shelf forever, because the reuniting of Bros in the Multiverse Labrynth was the most amazing thing ever, especially in Lagann-hen. But that's a story for another blog post. But since we're here, let's segue into looking at Simon.

It's about time we got a figure of adult Simon. I could be mistaken, but i'm fairly certain this is the first one, and I'm really not sure why. In fact I think Yoko might be the only one who had post-skip adult fugures until now. Oh wait, there was the Figumate sets. We did have some adult Simon and Nia in those. Though this is still the first Gar-Simon, if memory serves.

BUT I DIGRESS.

I totally forgot to photograph his alternate pose, but it's just him standing with both arms down. So, uh, not that exciting? But he is a good looking figure. He's got a lot of nice detail and there's some really good shine on his coat, which I like. Unfortunately, as you can see they all have little plastic things to help them stand instead of being given actual bases (except Anti-Spiral Nia, who really needed it, and Nia who didn't need it at all.) They work pretty well for msot of the figures, except Simon. His fits a little awkwardly and even with it, he has a bad habit of falling over backward. thankfully, my shelf space is a little cramped, so he can lean on Anti-Spiral Nia a bit so that he doesn't fall.

I guess I'll stick the Yokos in the middle. As you all probably know, I'm not really a fan of Yoko. I kind of wish they'd stop stickig her in every single set. There are characters much more deserving of figures than her. Like Viral, or Adiane, or Rossiu. You know, people who actually contriubuted to the plot. But fan-service is fan-service and there's not much I can do about it.

For some reason, I couldn't get a good picture of Yoko in her teacher get-up. The camera consistantly decided to focus on something other than Yoko. Not that I really blame it. This is, I think, the second Yomako we've gotten, which isn't a high number if you take a look at all of the Yoko figures available. She's pretty okay, looking. It's a nice sculpt and a nice paint, and I guess she's not looking like a total skank in comparison to some of her other figures. Funny story about this one though...

When I was setting these up, my mom was in the room helping since she finds my nerdings amusing. So I pick it up and whine a bit about how there are too many Yoko figures, and my mom leans over to take a look, pauses, and then loudly proclaims "WHORE!" I start laughing and direct her to Space-Yoko...

Mom and I had a good laugh about how Yoko's kind of a skank and about how guns should not work in space. Space-Yoko's cleavage kind of bothers me, since it seems to be pushed up kind of awkwardly, but over all, again it's a nice sculpt and a nice paint. The one problem Ir eally have with her is that her rifle doesn't like staying in palce and if you move her at all it kind of slides around everywhere. I feel like her plastic "Base" should have extended out a little to have a slot to put the end of the rifle in to in order to prevent this.

I really enjoy the Laganns in this set. I'd totally forgotten about him since when AmiAmi finally got the preordrs in stock, he wasn't on the product image. So when I found the regular Lagann in my set, I got excited. Then I came across metalic Lagann and had a fit of giggles because I had no idea this was in the set. They both look fantastic, but metalic Lagann just has this extra charm of the metalic shine that makes him seem a little more real.

Now it's time to move on to why I was really excited about this set. I've saved the best for last. It's time for Nia and Anti-Spiral Nia.

If you remember the post I made back in February, I was excited over this set because this is the first time we've gotten an Anti-Spiral Nia figure, even though we were promised a Revoltech one years ago that never happened, much to my disappointment. But now we at least have this, and my friends can stop listening to me complain about how Anti-Spiral Nia has been completely ignored.

She is absolutely gorgeous. She has all of her markings, and is positioned to "float" just as she always did in the series. (Because gravity is for suckers.) The way her hair floats around her is a little unsettling for me, since it never actually separated up like that, but I can deal with it since it's painted so well and we finally have this figure at all. I also wish the pole that held her up was clear plastic like the bases instead of blue so it was a little less conspicuous. It was also kind of hard to get around her waist. But that's okay since it means it will hold her stably now that I've gotten it on her.

Regular Nia, even though she's kind of naked, is also fantastic.

This is probably the only really "adult" figure I have, due to Nia being naked. But even so, she's covering herself pretty well. I don't think my mom (who is the one who attached Nia's hair for me since I couldn't get it) even noticed she was naked. Or if she did, she at least didn't comment on it at all. Though given her reaction to Yoko, she probably would have. None the less, she's painted wonderfully, and it's nice to have something a little Simon/Nia related, even if it is pretty blatant fan service.

So I am really pleased with how these figures turned out and I'm glad to finally have them on my shelf to enjoy up close, instead of staring at pictures on the internet and waiting for them to arrive. If you're a TTGL fan and like collecting figures, I'd definitely recommend this set. AmiAmi has plenty in stock right now. Though if you get registered SAL shipping, your total is going to come out to around $75. Just thought I'd give you fair warning.

But guys, it's totally worth it.

This post is about 75% inappropriate. But that's never stopped me before.

2010-06-08T21:02:00.001-07:00

So, the BP Oil Spill has been going on for over a month now. It's one of the most terrible natural disasters of all time. It's something that's going to take years, if not decades, to set right.

BP has been downplaying the incident as much as possible, trying to make themselves look good and keep their cash-flow going. They've made plenty of idiotic statements on the subject and enacted measures that haven't done a thing. Worst of all, they refused to take responsibility for the problem.

But this all could have been prevented by a single action two years ago.

If only we had elected this man president, the whole disaster int he Gulf Coast could have been avoided.

After all, who knows drills better than him? He wouldn't allow for unsafe drilling practices, and he'd probably head up all drilling endeavors himself. I headed up his campaign back in 2008, using drilling as his platform. Unfortunately, he didn't make it into the White House.

And look what came from it.

If he was in office, it's entirely likely this wouldn't have happened. But if it had, he would have solved it by now by doing the following to the oil spill:

And then after that he'd probably do it to the BP executives. And manliness would solve everything, as it rightly should.

But sadly, this is impossible since he has no legislative power. But that doesn't mean manly spirit won't be effective. But since Simon isn't around to lead us, we have to right this on our own.

There's some great do's and don'ts as to how you can help. If you look around there are plenty of places to donate in order to help out. The National Wildlife Federation is helping affected wildlife, and the Environmental Defense Fund also needs help. Or you could buy a "BP Cares" t-shirt to give a helping hand to the Gulf Restoration Network.

And if you can't afford to donate (because, let's face it, some of us are pretty broke) there are plenty of protests to get involved with to show that you want this fixed and for BP to take responsibility.

So make up for not electing the one man who could have prevented this, and help get the problem solved.

My new hobby is stepping on girls' cell phones.

2010-06-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

"Durarara!!" was a series that I had pretty much no interest in until about a week ago. One of my friends came back from college and she, Mclovin, Suri, and I decided to go hang out. We hit a few bookstores and comic shops before grabbing some food and heading back to her place. And then she and McLovin started talking about "Durarara!!" and decided we should watch some of it when we got back.

Now, my friends know me. Explaining the plot of a series is not a good way to get me interested in something. In fact, it often makes me care less. That's what happened with Haruhi and Soul Eater. They have learned the trick of picking one or two things about the series that might interest me, and telling me about those. And as far as this went, theypicked the two best examples they could -- a headless woman on a motorcycle and a guy in a bartender's uniform.

And let me tell you, Celty and Shizuo quickly became two of my favorite characters in this series.

But to be honest, and this rarely happens, I am in love with every single member of this cast without exception. (Some much more than others. Celty and shinra are my favorites. But we all know I'm a total sap.) All of the characters are quirky and strange and really well thought out. The way one segment of plot moves into the next is great, and I love how even incidental characters always come back. Because we all know how much I love incidental characters. Other favorites are Walker and Erika, the ridiculous otaku pair (who refference other series frequently, and sometimes break the 4th wall), Simon the crazy black russian guy, and of course Izaya. Everyone loves a good villain after all.

The first arc of plot is my favorite, probably because it had a lot of Celty, but I also just absolutely adored the way it ended. I was still watching with my friends at that point and the four of us just errupted in excited noises and laughter and it was just beautiful. I was alone watching most of the second plot arc, but it was really just as awesome. I'm not quie as fond of how things are progressing right now but I'm hoping it will turn around again.

"Durarara!!" is this amazing blend of serious, dark, hilarious, and lighthearted, and it comes together in a way that I wasn't totally sure was possible. though all of us stand by the fact that this series is, essentially, "4chan: The Anime", but really that only makes it better.

It's got a 24 episode run, so we've only got a few left before it's over. I'm tempted to postpone watching 21, wait for the last few episodes, and then marathon the whole series.

Getting A Semi-Fresh Start

2010-06-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

Well the blog's gotten itself a new name and a fresh coat of paint. I'm rather liking it as it is now, so it'll likely stick. For those curious, the pair up on the header are the gijinka Ho-Oh and Lugia that have taken over my sketchbook lately. They're pretty much the nerdy-est thing I've ever done so I figured it was appropriate.

I've written up a post on "Bakuman", and I'm going to try and get some others written up ASAP so I can get back to posting regularly here. In the mean time, I saw this (blogging related) today and thought it was cute. I've been listening to it over and over. I don't know the source song because I detest Miley Cyrus, but I like the vocalist he got to sing it and it's just a really funny, cute video.

Playing Catch-Up

2010-06-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

Soooo it's been about three months since I've updated. Again. And I'm sorry. I'll try to get better about that. In fact, today I will put together a list of crap that needs blogging about here. And some things to do to this blog because it needs a little spring cleaning.

First I want to mention that this blog is no longer a joint venture between Suri and myself. He never posted here anyway so he's split off and now has his own nerd-blog that he never updates. As such, I'm making plans to change the name of this blog, and make a new header. I'll try and get on that as soon as possible. Not sure what I want to put up there yet.

Okay okay... Time for a list of blog topics, not in any real order.

- Finish my series on "Atelier Annie".
- "Atelier Marie".
- "Pokemon SoulSilver".
- "Ace Attorney: Investigations".
- "Durarara!!" because this isn't a video game blog.
- "TTGL: Lagann-hen".
- Gen V "Pokemon" news.
- Chozokei Damashii Gurren Lagann figures whenever they finally arrive.
- "Generator Rex"
- "Aquaman"
- "Otaku no Musume-san"
- The end of this arc of "Bleach" once we hit that.
- "Doujin Work"
- "Bakuman"

I think that's enough to cover us for a while. I'll try and get on writing these as soon as possible. Things have been a little wacky for me recently but I'll try and stop being such a flake about this soon. If there are ant other things you guys want em to maybe take a look at, just let me know and I'll do my best with it!

SoulSilver Is Where It's At, Kids.

2010-03-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

It's pokemon time kids.

It seems that regardless of getting it the day it came out and playing obsessively for three days, I've fallen behind everyone else since I had to take a break to go to class. I'm currently training my party up to level 25 (they're at 22 right now) in order to get my fourth gym badge. I have friends who are already fighting the Elite Four for the first time. Hopefully devoting my weekend to pokemon will catch me up.

But guys, this game is just as glorious as I anticipated.

Suri and I preordered. I got SoulSilver because it is the best and I have a massive crush on Lugia (and have since I was little) and Suri got HeartGold because it's required of us to have opposite versions. I kind of expected him to buy both, but I guess not. Either way, I really had to fight him on this because SoulSilver is where all the fun is and Ho-Oh is a jerk. Tru fax.

Pre-ordering came with a spectaaaacular bonus -- Lugia and Ho-Oh figures, depending on which version you bought. The only reason I bothered pre-ordering is because this Lugia figure is SO GLORIOUS.

The Ho-Oh? not quite so much. Lugia is doing this magnificent "rising from he sea" kind of thing. He's got water flying everywhere, dripping off the spines on his back, generally being a total badass. Ho-Oh is in a fairly typical pose for him, with some fire around his butt. Not that impressive. It would be disappointing if it was any other set of legendaries and I thought of them on equal terms, but I've never been that into Ho-Oh so I don't really care.

Playing has been a lot of fun. I've loved having one of my pokemon trailing along behind me at all times. Turning around to talk to them produces ADORABLE results, except in pokemon centers when they just get really lazy.

It's amazing how attached a person can get to some programmed pixels. My quilava (named Rayearth because I am a dork) got angry at me for trying to take an item from it and just kept making angry faces at me every time I talked to it. It was fairly upsetting.

The pokewalker has also been a lot of fun. Simple little battles, item finding... I like earning new routes and connecting with friends. I haven't done a whole lot of it but it's been a pretty good time so far.

For the record, I decided to play as a male trainer.

I could claim it was for the sake of nostalgia, since because I never played Crystal I never played a female trainer in Gen II. But really, it's because I didn't want to play as Strawberry Shortcake.

I don't really like her hat, even if the overalls are adorable. And the male trainer has a black and yellow hat, and that's enough to sell me. Either way, I'm playing as a dude, and I am loving it.

The one thing that I do truly miss is Sinnoh's Underground.

The Underground was my favorite part of Gen IV. I loved this place. It was my favorite thing to do. Item hunting became a passion of mine. It's how I made all of my money. It was my favorite thing about Gen IV and made up for the HORRIBLE FAILURE that is the battle frontier. I wish there was some way to include it in SoulSilver, but i suppose I understand why it wasn't.

So I guess I'll makee another post on the subject once I've played more. Take care, kids.

Atelier Annie - Part 1

2010-03-10T11:02:00.000-08:00

So it's been... a month since my last post? But I have a (not very) good reason for my absence... I've been playing Atelier Annie pretty much non-stop since February 14th.

You maybe unaware, but I am completely obsessed with the Atelier series of video games. Specifically, Atelier Marie. Tragically, this franchise has been mostly doomed in the US and has seen minimal release over here. (Which has been slowly changing, thank god.) It's something I whine about to anyone who will listen on a regular basis.

But on Valentines Day, my boyfriend and I were at the mall and dropped into gamestop because I was in the hopes of wandering across a used copy of Katamari Damacy. Not finding it, we decided to stare at the DS games and talk about pokemon and complain about how expensive the Bleach games are for a while.

That was when Suri looked up at the top shelf and spotted a game I would have completely missed due to being a shorty -- Atelier Annie.

I bought it on the spot and have been playing it obsessively for the past month. I've beaten it three times since the day I bought it and am midway through my 4th playthrough. Now, I haven't been playing constantly, even if I have been playing a lot. (After all, I've had school to deal with too.) This game is pretty quick. Personally, I wish it was a bit longer, but I suppose I should expect as much from a DS game in comparison to a console game. I can get through the whole of Atelier Annie in about three days if I play a little when ever I have a spare half an hour or so.

But as quick to play through as it is, this game is fun and incredibly challenging. As I said, I've beaten the game three times and have not been able to meet the highest objective. I've only gotten two different endings, and man on my third playthrough I seriously hauled ass to try and make Meister. But no go.

I guess I should probably tell you all about the game before I continue rambling on and on about how much I love it and you, your mom, and everyone you know, should rush out and buy it and get them to bring more Atelier state-side. I'm going to swipe a quote from TVTropes that sums up Atelier more accurately than I could ever do.

"Okay, you know how every RPG has the grand heroes chosen by fate to become wonderful friends and stand up to the evil sorcerer/empire/corporation/monster and keep it from destroying the world?

This game is not about them.

You know how in almost every RPG, buried about halfway down the final dungeon, sitting next to the second to last save point in the game there's a shopkeeper who has every healing item in the game and every weapon or bit of armor that doesn't require an epic quest? The one who leaves you wondering: "Just how in blazes did she get down here? I'm the ridiculously powerful chosen one and it's almost impossible for me to do it so how did a lowly shopkeeper pull it off"?

This game is about her."

-Anonymous Internet poster, succinctly summing up the spirit of the entire franchise.

This is one of the things I love most about Atelier. Your primary means of driving the plot is not roaming the land kicking ass and crawling dungeons. It's sitting in your workshop for days on end making the best fucking items you can make and selling them to people that need them. Of course you do go out and stuff happens and you fight monsters, but it's a vastly different progression than, say, Final Fantasy.

The plot of Annie is a little ridiculous, but therein lies the charm. You play Annie, a young girl from a family of well known alchemists. Annie herself has no desire to do all the work involved in being an alchemist and just wants to "marry up" so she won't have to worry about any of that.

Annie's parent,s sick of her just laying around, go to Betner, her grandfather (I have no idea if he's maternal or paternal.), and complain. So, in his infinite crazy-old-man wisdom, he kidnaps her in her sleep and has her move across an ocean to Sera Island, where a resort is being set up.

Annie wakes up in the company of a fairy named Pepe who Betner asked to be your alchemy teacher. He gived you a letter from Betner that explains the situation, which Annie realizes is ridiculous (and maybe a little illegal). He's soon joined by Hans, a young member of the committee at the head of the restoration.

Hans explains about the resort development and the contest between all of the alchemists involved, all competing to make Sera Island a popular resort over the next three years.

Now I need to step in and warn you not to be afraid of the phrase "three years". This is (obviously) not in real time. It is not a long period of time to get through. it is actually notoriously short. Especially when some higher level items take nearly a week to make, not including any time you need to make the items it takes to create them. Not to mention anywhere from one to three or four days to travel from your workshop to your resort facilities or places to gather items (and time spent there). The time adds up really quick, guys.

But back to the plot...

Hans takes you to the opening ceremony of the development project and, for some ridiculous reason (this is Atelier after all), the king puts up the right to marry one of his children as a prize for the alchemy contest. Marrying a hot prince? Hey isn't that Annie's goal in life? Nothing lights a fire under a girl's ass quite like the prospect of not having to do actual work ever again.

So he has you do a quick assignment (Making a sign for your shop.) and then he explains a bit more about how playing works. then you're given your second assignment, get some access to gathering points (to get ingredients for alchemy) and then you're off and running.

Year 1 is mostly about getting your alchemy skills up and building resort facilities (like a theme park or a spa) and getting to know the game's NPCs. It's not until year two that plots start cropping up.

So next time I'll cover the things that go on in year 2, all of the NPCs you hang out with, and the developing plot. Though a post on Ace Attorney Investigations may come before that since I'm midway through playing that, and Suri's currently got my copy of Annie so he can enjoy the fun that is Atelier.

More Pokemon Gen V News -- New Pokemon!

2010-02-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

Two posts in one day? That's right kids. Because we've got BREAKING NEWS.

Three days ago we had a bout of nerd rage when someone posted a fake evolution for Lucario done in the silhouette of the new Gen 5 pokemon. Well today we've gotten the actual image of this pokemon.

Zoroark (left), the "monster fox" pokemon is the silhouette that appeared on Pokemon Sunday. It evolves from Zorua (right), the "evil fox" pokemon. Zoroark is going to be the central figure of the next Pokemon movie.

Both Bulbanews and Serebii.net have info on these new pokemon so, this time, they are totally legit.

I'm still pretty surprised Gen V came around so quickly. We just barely got done with Gen IV. Even going by Japanese releases, it'll be a year-ish? Let's just take a look at the time between generations. (Last game of gen to first game of next gen. Not counting side games.)

Gen I (Sept '98) --> Gen II (Nov '99) - Okay a little over a year. That's not too bad.

Gen II (Dec '00) --> Gen III (Nov '02) - Two years. Getting some time here.

Gen III (Sept '04) --> Gen IV (Sept '06) - Again, two years.
(Dates from Bulbapedia's list of release dates.)

But god, Gen III went on for a full 2 years when the previous 2 only went on for a year. Though Gen III also introduced the remakes, so it would make sense it went on longer. Though it's got nothing on Gen IV's three year span.

But the last game of Gen IV (HG/SS) came out in Sept '09, and Gen V is predicted to come out toward the end of 2010, and if that's the case, we'll have dropped back to a year between generations.

Gen V in general was announced a few weeks ago and I got the news, as I often do, from Bulbanews on January 29th. It's supposed to be a "rebirth" of the series, and they seem to be planning to do their damnedest to go above and beyond the previous games. So I am eager to see what they do with it.

Ichiban KUJI Premium - Genome Figure

2010-02-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

So about a week ago, while talking about upcoming Gurren Lagann figures, I mentioned that I had ordered Banpresto's Genome figure. This morning, eight days later, he arrived in all of his glory. What I hadn't realized about this figure is that he is HUGE.

This is him next to my iBook G4, for comparison. The screen comes up to his shoulders. If you'd like another comparison, here he is with Uplark's Nia figure.

Dude is ENORMOUS. But he is also totally amazing to look at. Genome is an enormous, bulky, hairy guy and that is reflected so beautifully in this figure.

Everything about him is so wonderfully defined that I can see a lot of his details from the other side of my crappily lit room. Banpresto went above and beyond here. His chest hair/foot hair is amazing.

They have gone into such detail on him. He's an Ichiban Kuji premium, so I'm not that surprised. But Just got damn. Look at him. Even his BACK is ridiculously defined. (Though I guess if you're going to do it, do it all the way, right?)

Yet another purchase I don't regret in the slightest.

Nerd Rage: Pokemon Edition

2010-02-07T17:46:00.000-08:00

For those unaware, the 5th generation of pokemon games has been announced, and is supposed to be released in Japan by the end of 2010. It is supposed to be an "inventive rebirth" of the franchise. I am pretty stoked.

On Pokemon Sunday, the first Gen V pokemon was shown in silhouette. It will be revealed in full on the episode of Pokemon Sunday on the 21st.

Then my friend McLovin sent me this:

There's a decent chance it's fake. I mean looking at the silhouette, it really looks like that lump is the end of a ponytail and not an actual tail. IT IS NOT CONNECTED TO THE BUTT. Plus Mclovin is not the most reliable of sources. Plus, it's not that clean of an image and is not colored very well...

But just in case, I AM NERD RAGING ANYWAY. Because I like to be prepared.

DO WE REALLY FUCKING NEED AN EVOLUTION OF LUCARIO?! REALLY?!

It's not as though Lucario didn't have a metric fuck-ton of undeserved attention anyway. =____= Let's just shove more attention on him by giving him a new evolution for Gen V. SURE WHY NOT.

More Things That Will One Day Line My Shelves

2010-02-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned last time, my friend ~~Anthony~~Mclovin is a pretty big toy nerd. He has a bad habit of dropping things in my path that I either don't care about or would rather not see. But he also knows what I like, and if he sees something that I'd be interested in, he's always quick to bring it to my attention. Because of this, I tolerate everything else.

This morning he passed the following along to me...

Click here for a slightly larger version of this image.

...and I just about died. He has been listening to me complain for AGES that I wanted someone to make an Anti-Spiral Nia figure. (Not to mention just some older Nia figures in general.) And here she is. I want both of those Nias, since they both look gorgeous.

I'm not that interested in the Yokos (since my interest in Yoko herself is nil) but I'd probably buy them all as a set and just leave her standing around the back of the collection. but Id would display Simon and Kamina reenacting the end of Simon's anti-spiral dream for all time. Because the fact that they've enabled that is FANTASTIC.

He's also told me there's supposed to be a second wave of figures featuring villains and minor characters. My mind instantly jumped to one person -- Adiane the Elegant. If this came to pass, I'd probably die of joy. Adiane is probably my favorite female character in the series (only barely surpassing Nia) and the idea of any merchandise at all of her sets my heart a flutter.

These aren't coming out until May, but preorders are open. As soon as I drop some money in the bank i'm taking a swing at them.

I also just now purchased this handsome fellow for my collection:

I saw this ages ago and never thought I'd have the chance to buy him, but I spotted him on eBay and knew I'd regret it if I didn't jump at the chance. So expect a post featuring his exploits in the future.

There are actually, finally, quite a few Nia figures out these days, and I eventually plan to start gathering them up for my shelves. Though the rest of the cast is still dwarfed by the sheer volume of Yoko available. I shouldn't be surprised since Yoko exists entirely for fan service, but I wish we had more figures of everyone else instead of a couple dozen of her showing off her boobs.

But oh well. No one's making me buy them, so I'll just glare angrily at them in the stores I go to and then come home and enjoy the figures I've bought.

Expect a post about Lagann-hen soon, guys! I need to rewatch it and take notes and screencaps so I can write a decent post! But I have watched it through once and can say that it was SPECTACULAR.

Figures - Viral & Nia by Uplark

2010-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things is collecting figures. I'm not even really sure how I got into it, but it became a complete addiction of mine. I've sunken ridiculous amounts of money on my collection. I swear, being a nerd is a lot like being a drug addict, except it's not illegal. But that aside, I'm here today to show off the two newest additions to my collection -- Uplark's Viral and Nia figures.

Suri and I went half and half on Uplark's Kamina figure last Christmas. Since I'm the one who doesn't have a hyper-destructive younger sibling, the expensive figure lives with me. So having basked in Kamina's glory for a year, I know Uplark puts out quality products.

A good friend of mine who writes for Tomopop keeps a pretty close eye on the toy scene, and alerted me that Hobby Link Japan had these two figures on sale shortly after Christmas. A brilliant move on their part since I was no longer broke and yearning for something new for my shelves. It still cost me a pretty penny -- $130-ish for the two of them and shipping. But honestly, since on their own they're normally about $100 each, it was a bargain.

I picked Viral and Nia up from the post office this morning and when I took them out, I was not disappointed.

I pulled Nia out first since her box was smaller, and I instantly fell in love with her. She's got a certain rather lovely elegance about her that I noted right away when I got her on her base and set her on the table to get a good look. And her face is just so charmingly "Nia".

She comes with an alternate head that you can change out of her later pre-skip look after her hair had been cut. But for some reason I can't look at her with short hair if she's not wearing her adorable pink Gurren-dan hoodie, so that head has been left in the box.

I think my favorite thing about this pose is her feet.

I love how one foot is just about off the ground. It's a nice little detail. I also love the bend in the strap on the back of her shoes. Being female, and having a mother with a million-and-five shoes, I don't think that the one on her weight-bearing foot should be bent out so much, but still it's nice that they at least acknowledged the way womens' shoes actually work instead of just painting a red stripe down the back of her foot and calling it a day.

I also love the lace detail on the back of her skirt.

I have to admit, this was pretty much the last thing I noticed about Nia's outfit when I watched Gurren Lagann, bit I always thought it was rather charming and I love the way it's handled here.

Now let's cross the spectrum from cute to completely badass and take a look at Viral, shall we?

Viral is absolutely glorious. I've seen this figure in person before (though it was in it's box) so I knew it would be, but being able to get up close to him was fantastic.

He has a great, classically "crazy Viral" face going on, though unless you're looking at him from a certain angle, it's really hard to see it. He's a figure that definitely needs to be displayed on a shelf above eye level. Otherwise you just totally lose some of his charm. But even so, it's impossible to miss the great details on this figure.

The best is his weapon. Uplark, you get a gold star for this. It's all knicked and worn and scratched, as if he's been slicing up bitches left and right! And you know he has been. It's Viral for christ's sake. You don't have to get up close to really notice it but it is something you'd have to be really looking at him to notice.

But the one thing about this figure that can't go beyond notice? Viral's hands are enormous.

Now my hands are really tiny, but I've NEVER had a figure with a hand much larger than the end of my thumb. I can only say that because of Kamina. The rest of them are roughly the size of my thumbnail. But I can fit an entire finger in Viral's huge cat-hand. I'm pretty sure it's for dynamic effect, but I'm certain Viral's hands aren't normally that ridiculously huge. None the less, huge hands mean I can make him hold smaller things...

The best I had on hand was Ririn from the "Bleach: The Styling" set, who will probably be a snack for Viral until he figures out that she's a stuffed animals and not a bird.

All in all, there is no way I regret spending the money on these two. They are absolutely gorgeous. Judging by a slip of paper that came in Nia's box, Uplark also has a Darry figure out (or on the way) so I hope to get her, and pray they eventually do a Simon to round out the collection.

The Little Prince

2010-01-03T16:49:00.000-08:00

Last year, I spent six months of my life adapting Antoine De Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" into a 16 page comic. I dove into the project head first and never looked back. And since then I've seen references to it surface time and time again. I now own four different copies of the book (paperback, hardcover, paperback in French, and a pop-up book) and have been enjoying pick out references to it in other media.

After I finished the project, I took a trip out into the city with Suri. This was when Union Square's huge Virgin Megastore was closing, so everything was ridiculous levels of cheap. So, while looking around in the children's section, to my surprise and wonderment I found a box set of the entire 26-episode animated series from the 1980's.

I've had it for months now but just haven't gotten around to watching it. But tonight I decided to pop in the first disc and take a swing at it. The first few episodes were separate from the story in the book and was primarily Prince going around to various countries and saving lives or something. He went up in a hot air balloon, got trapped on a grounded ship, went looking for gold, and nursed an injured seagull back to health. All wonderful little stories with wonderful little morals for little 1980's children. And children today. I should raise some kids on this shit.

Then I hit episodes 5 and 6, and they were ones more closely derived from the book. Episode 5 focused on the Prince and the Pilot and was really adorable and was a nice adaptation from the book into the context of the series. The Pilot is also the narrator for the whole series, so we'd heard him talk before and he was incredibly, hilariously French (though it's pretty appropriate, given the book).

But episode six was focused on the Prince and the Rose. Aside from Swifty, who is some kind of space-bird, who kept telling Prince to go travel the galaxy, it actually stuck pretty closely to the story in the book. The whole thing was half an hour of deja-vu for me really, because it matched fairly closely (though was highly expanded upon) to what I'd done for my project. It was a little hard to watch sometimes! But in a good way!

I'm really eager to make my way through the next three discs. I don't get to see the Fox until late disc 3, but the 80's handled this series very beautifully and gracefully and I am so excited to watch the rest.

Meet "Team Awesome".

2009-12-23T16:30:00.000-08:00

Out of the gate, I want to apologize for the bad quality of the photos in this entry. My only camera is my cell phone and it's really not the best one in the world, especially since my living room is poorly lit.

So I hung out with Suri for a while today and he gave me my Christmas gifts early. He gave me the entire first series of the "Warriors" saga by a group of authors collectively known as Erin Hunter. I'm a huge fan of these books and the related comics that Tokyopop is publishing. The box set of books served as a base for most of these pictures!

He also got me an Iron Fist figure and gave me a gundam (lovingly named "Bro-Gundam") that I always play with when I go to his house. I don't think either of us know which series this Gundam is from, but I love this little dude.

I've wanted to get an Iron Fist for a while to take pictures of him with my Yotsuba figure (which Suri gave me around Halloween), and that's most of the reason Suri got him for me. (Though there's also the fact that Danny is one of my favorite Marvel characters.) He's not nearly to proper scale with Yotsuba but I still think it's hilarious and adorable to have the two of them next to each other.

Playing with them all this evening was a lot of fun. Most of my figures are still packed up in my basement from after my move back from college last May, so I haven't had many out or taken any pictures with them in months. And these three, Danny especially, have so much articulation that I could really try a couple different things.

I don't have too many articulated figures. I have nothing against it, it's mostly just because there are so few that I've really wanted. But they make for some really fun pictures when you can mess around with poses and positions and accessories. Danny's got some hand-flames and Bro-Gundam has a small variety of weapons. Yotsuba also has a few accessories, but they're in her box and I didn't pull them out for these picutres.

I'd love a better camera. Hopefully I'll have some money to pick one up eventually so I can take pictures that aren't crazy blurry. They all stand up pretty well though. My mother's moved the coffee table that they're all standing on a few times and no one's fallen.

I'm looking forward to new figures in the future and setting up some amusing scenarios to take pictures of!

Potential Cosplay - Sode no Shirayuki

2009-12-21T15:45:00.000-08:00

So, as of late I've been thinking more and more about doing a new cosplay. Now, all of my past cosplays (photos of which are available on my Cosplay.com profile) have had one thing in common -- They've all been male characters.

I am really good at cosplaying young boys.

Now don't get me wrong. I have nothing against girls cosplay girls. Really, I think that girls are the only ones who should cosplay girls. I have never once seen a male-as-female crossplayer that hasn't traumatized me. but I've never found a female character that I've really wanted to cosplay. Until now that is...

In the past here, I've mentioned my fondness for Sode no Shirayuki. Well I've decided to take a stab (ahaha sword pun) at cosplaying her. I've spent the evening looking at wigs, and I've found a few that look pretty good. Suri apparently found a costume so I'm gonna take a look at that next time I talk to him. I also found one on Cosplay Magic, but it's a lot more expensive and I don't really like the look of it.

So I'll keep ya'll posted on this as more comes of it. Right now it's sort of just in the planning stages.

Another post about video games.

2009-12-20T15:49:00.000-08:00

So. I've played a little more Wind Waker, and I have one question.

When will this game start being fun?

I'm on the Rito's island now, trying to get up to the crazy dragon so it will stop rampaging. Except I am charged with the impossible task of throwing a bomb halfway across a pool of lava into a jar. I spent about three hours on this task last night and continued to fail.

This frustration aside, I've realized that the Rito aren't really all that bright. Several of the Rito people spoke of how their spring dried up. So, I blew up the rock that was clogging it. And then... All of them still talked about it being dried up. Including one standing on a balcony overlooking the spring. I've taken a coding class. I know it's not hard to have dialog changed after an event. I'd be satisfied with even a "HO'SHIT THERE'S WATER AGAIN!"

Then again, if this spring, which is being filled with ash, thanks to being inside of a volcano, is their primary source of water, I suppose I can understand why they are not really that bright. And also jerks.

The better part of today has belonged to Pokemon Trozei. Suri passed it off to me a while ago because he didn't want it. When I took it, I didn't know what I was getting into. You see, I have a problem. When I play a puzzle game, I get pretty hooked on it. I will play it for hours straight, weeks at a time. I don't LIKE playing puzzle games. They frustrate me because they are pretty high maintenance. If you lose focus for just a second you're totally screwed.

I made it through the first round of the adventure mode and am currently on some kind of secret hard mode. I am impressed that there's some kind of logical reason for rescuing a bunch of pokemon to be in the form of a puzzle game. That was pretty clever, even though I can't remember what it is.

The Bleach filler seems to be winding down. We've gotten to the big boss and the evil plan and all that nonsense. I've got a lot to say about it, so when it's done I guess I'll marathon it and write a post about it.

I'm getting a new laptop in the near future, so with wireless internet in my grasp again, I'll be slightly more mobile in my otakudom. I'm gonna go back and look over some things I've checked out recently and hopefully get posts for them up soon.

Late To The Party - Wind Waker Edition

2009-12-14T17:30:00.000-08:00

So, a million years after everyone else, I am finally playing Wind Waker on Gamcube. Not that I bought a game cube more than like a year ago. >__> I just never bothered. But I was sick today, and broke out the copy of Wind Waker I borrowed from Suri two months ago and decided to play a little.

I haven't gotten far. I'm in the stupid bird fortress, getting arrested left and right by pigs and being unable to properly swing from lamps. I'm also not having fun with the camera controls because they are a right pain in the ass and do not always do what I want. All the while, Tetra is screaming at me through a magic rock and it is really not helpful. It's like a less annoying but not nearly as useful Navi.

But I've been having fun running around under barrels, enjoying the visuals of the game, and anticipating everyones Wind Waker jokes finally making sense.

Pokemon - Old Memories & New Excitement

2009-12-12T17:17:00.000-08:00

I was in fifth grade when Pokemon first came out. I saved up for weeks for the $25-ish that the game cost. (I didn't get an allowance as a kid. I have no idea how I did this.) I got Pokemon Blue at first. I started with Charmander I think, because I wanted to be a badass and Charmander was supposedly the hardest to start with. None the less, I was hooked right away.

I was part of the in crowd as far as pokemon went, back when it was at the very height of it's popularity. I had Blue, Red, and Yellow (again, with a lack of an allowance, I don't have the slightest idea how this happened), had Pokemon Pinball, and Stadium, played the TCG, watched the anime religiously, and even had one of those pocket pikachu things.

I would kill to have one of these again.

And just like any other pokemon fan at the time, I was totally stoked over the release of Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver. My dad got me both for christmas that year, because he's pretty much the greatest dad ever. I pretty much abandoned Gold in favor of Silver, because I had (and still have) a crush on Lugia.

After that, I stopped buying the games. I ended up being a little bit of a purist and was a little frustrated by the Generation 3 pokemon for some reason I really can't explain. Pokemon took a back seat to other interests until 2007 when I heard news of a Mew giveaway to celebrate the American release of the 9th or so movie, "Lucario & The Mystery of Mew". It was only available to the Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald versions. Suri offered me a copy of one of his, and thus I ended up with my own copy of Pokemon Ruby.

Let me say, I was not impressed. I mean yeah, graphics and all had vastly improved, but it just was nothing compared to Gold and Silver. I still have the game somewhere, with like 5 totally legitimate Mews on it, but I can't find the thing for the life of me.

I picked up Pokemon Diamond when it came out, and got Pokemon Pearl for Suri. A year later, when Platinum came out, Suri got it for me for my birthday. They were all fun, even if Platinum didn't have nearly as much nuclear winter as anticipated, but still, I missed Gold and Silver.

But then the rumors started to fly. Generation 4 would have remakes of Generation 2, just like Generation 3 did for Generation 1. Nothing was ever confirmed, so I just ignored it and was annoyed that they even tried to get my hopes up.

Then back in December '08, it was confirmed. HeartGold and SoulSilver were happening. I was stoked. I've been watching release information like a hawk, marveling at the updated graphics, the additions and restorations. I made the happiest noise imaginable at the prospect of my beloved raichu, Amphy, being able to follow me on my journey. I've proclaimed more than once that these games will likely be perfect and they will never need to make another one.

It's a Christmas miracle.

And just yesterday we got a North American release date. March 14, 2010, just five days after my birthday, HG/SS is going to arrive in the states. I've been keeping myself excited by raising my team in Platinum and looking at Lugia merchandise that I can't afford because at the moment I'm broke.

But hopefully I won't have to scrimp and save every penny like I did back when I bought Blue Version back in the fifth grade. Oh the advantages of have a boyfriend and a release date close to my birthday.

So as it turns out, I'm madly in love with a sword.

2009-08-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm here today, continuing my coverage of the Zanpakuto filler arc of the Bleach anime. I'm gonna kick this off with yet another comparison shot because I forgot to cover this last week.

We already learned in Magic Knight Rayearth that Debonair is a GREAT mommy.

Am I the only one who thinks Muramasa is the bastard son of Debonair from "Magic Knight Rayearth"? The white skin, the color scheme, the obscenely long fingernails? How the hell does this guy even hold a sword?! and so far he's done next to nothing except for blathering on and on about how Shinigami suck. He is either the worst, or the greatest villain ever. I think it's too early to tell.

This week was mostly a "Let's recap what we know and remind you all that this shit is bad news." episode. Also there were a lot of things in this episode that really didn't make sense to me.

But the first five minutes of this episode were just a dream~ to watch. As it turns out, I am apparently madly in love with Sode no Shirayuki. Rukia pretty much falls out of the sky in Karakura and Ichigo finds her, trying to figure out why she's hurt. and then Sode no Shirayuki turns up.

Don't be fooled by the pretty face. She will wreck your shit.

Ichigo quickly decides she's not a hollow, but still has no idea who she is. This was the first thing that made no sense to me. Sode no Shirayuki should, in theory, have the exact same reiatsu as Rukia. I know Ichigo isn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box, but he should be able to at least be able to figure out she has the same Reiatsu as Rukia. And once she starts using Rukia's abilities, maybe you'd think something would click?

Sode no Shirayuki using her second ability, Hakuren.

Another thing that bothered me was the opposite. Sode no Shirayuki not recognizing Ichigo. After all, Rukia's power was transfered too Ichigo via Shirayuki. But when they fought, she was curious to who he was, and then figured out as they fought that he was "the substitute shinigami". She did some adorable blowing snow in his face thing, and then just sort of got bored and left.

Again, because of her connection to Ichigo, you'd think Sode no Shirayuki (who I assume is far more intelligent than Ichigo), would recognize him immediately and, due to context, probably react like "OH. YOU'RER THAT GUY WHO TOOK ALL MY POWER THAT ONE TIME. 8D HAVE SOME STABBINGS!". I also feel this might have made a little bit more sense, than her just randomly fighting. But the fact that Shirayuki is even acting against Rukia at all has me a bit perplexed.

There's a reason she's got the title of the "Most Beautiful Zanpakuto In Soul Society".

Ichigo then took her back to Urahara's and got everyone together to fix up Rukia and figure out the situation. Rukia wakes up and explains what's going on and we flash back to some more of the fighting between the zanpkauto and their masters. This whole segment just made me want to slap the shinigami.

You have all just lost your main source of power. But go right ahead and attack said source of power with your useless swords and no plan at all. That truly is the most brilliant of ideas.

No wonder you are getting your asses kicked. Geez. And these are supposed to be Captains and Lieutenants. You would think after everything that they have dealt with they would not make such stupid mistakes. Though Iw as really hoping to see Hianeko attack Rangiku so there could be some more sassy banter.

I think she was hoping it would be more of a challenge.

The worst off, supposedly, is Byakuya, who disappeared while fighting off Senbonzakura so that Rukia and Renji could escape. By all logic, he should be dead, but we all know that's not true because this is Bleach and the only one who ever really dies is Ulquiorra.

When Rukia finds out that Byakuya is the only one who wasn't found and taken care of, she apparently runs off when no one is looking to go back to Soul Society and find him. Everyone gets concerned and Ichigo and Yoruichi decide to head to Soul Society to find her.

All I'm really sure of is that I am heavily anticipating next week so I can find out the context behind Sode no Shirayuki making this face that she made in the preview:

Oh shit. We are all going to die.

So when 232 is fansubbed and available, I suppose I'll be continuing my coverage. Until then!

Clover Pt. 1 - "I wish for happiness. I seek happiness." (Volumes 1 & 2)

2009-07-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

-- Warning: There's some spoilers here. That's why this blog is named what it is. --

So recently I picked up CLAMP's "Clover". I have wanted to read "Clover" for ages, but before I ever got a chance to pick it up, it went out of print. But the wonderful people at the manga division of Dark Horse put out an omnibus edition of all four volumes and couldn't resist grabbing it last time I was in the Borders in our local mall.

It seems like that borders is where all of the Monmouth County otaku work, because everyone in there will talk to me about what I'm buying. the woman I spoke with that day was very excited that I was picking up "Clover" and warned me that it was probably the saddest thing that I would ever read. I laughed it off and replied "I've been reading CLAMP for years. I can handle it."

I should have listened to her warning.

When I finally decided to read it, I read it all in one go. It's a four volume series, but today I'm only going to cover the first two since they make up the main story.

I'd expected this, because I hate to leave a manga unfinished. It was slow to get started. They introduced a lot of things right off that I did not really understand, and it kept me from getting absorbed into the world at first. But I trust CLAMP to deliver, so I pushed on.

The first two volumes focus on the story of Sue and Kazuhiko. The retired government agent who lost his right hand, Kazuhiko, must transport the mysterious young Sue to a location that only she knows. Along the way is the repeated theme of a song about seeking happiness. This song is sung by Kazuhiko's deceased girlfriend, Ora.

They receive help from Gingetsu, Kazuhiko's former C.O., and Ran, a boy as mysterious as Sue who is living with him. They run into trouble along the way in the form of people trying to capture Sue, as she is something called a "Four Leaf Clover". The biggest adversary is some guy named Bols, who knows Kazuhiko -- but for the life of me I have never figured out how.

Bols seems to be the leader of another country/group/something's army. He's the one who cut off Kazuhiko's hand on his last mission, but there's no more about that that's ever discussed. The relationship between Bols (who really seems like he wants to molest/do bad things to Kazuhiko) and Kazuhiko, and the mission that lead to Kazuhiko losing his hand is the only thing in this story that they never really go into. You'd think since Kazuhiko is the focus of the story, they'd discuss it but apparently not.

As we go on, they arrive at the destination that Sue wanted to be taken to, a defunct amusement park called "Fairy Park". (Readers of Tsubasa may recall Fairy Park from the end of the "Oto" saga. ;D)

It is then that we learn about the "clovers". They are children sorcerers who were taken by the government to be isolated and controlled. They were labeled from one to four "Leaves" by how powerful they were. Ran is a three leaf, one of two still alive. Sue is the only Four Leaf Clover.

We also learn about the song, titled "Clover", that Sue has been listening and singing along to over the course of the manga. It was actually written by both she and Ora, and is sung by both of them. She and Ora knew each other, and Ora told her all about singing and Kazuhiko.

Sue confesses her love for Kazuhiko just before they are attacked, apparently by the people who originally locked Sue away. Sue uses her power to save Kazuhiko as they are attacked by Bols again. Gingetsu stops Bols as Sue destroys Fairy Park and herself. Ran is sad, but seems glad that Sue managed to free herself from the life she'd been living, even if it meant her death.

Kazuhiko realizes that this had been Sue's intention all along. It's easy to see on his face that he's sad, but we don't spend enough time with him to learn if he's really heartbroken about it and loved her as well.

This first part of the story was tragic, and very sad, but in the next two volumes we get into the background of "Clover" and that is where my heart really broke.

Its like one of those "Breaking News" stories, except no one but me really cares.

2009-07-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

THIS HAD BETTER NOT SUCK. IF THIS SUCKS, I'M GONNA GRAB MY SHIRAYUKI AND STAB A BITCH. IT WILL BE IRONIC.

- Me to Suri about 5 minutes before watching episode 230 of Bleach.

-----------------------------------------------------

This is something that I never thought I would be talking about here -- the Bleach anime.

As much as I love the manga, I declared the anime dead to me months ago after the "replacement captain/lieutenant" filler arc in which Sora form Kindgom Hearts was the new Captain of the 3rd division (It was a fucking keyblade, goddamnit.) and his lieutenant was the bastard offspring of Sosuke Aizen and Szayel Apollo Grantz. no matter how untrue that statement may or may not be, that's how I feel about it and I lost all desire to ever go anywhere near the anime ever again.

Aizen is the daddy and Szayel is the mommy, and together they spawned this horrible abomination against God.

I'm not a big fan of Bleach's filler arcs. The Bount arc didn't do much for me, but it did bring about the line "Everything it touches turns to snakes!", which has lead to some great moments hanging out with my friends in which we've randomly shouted that out in public. But the latest filler (Which, according to what I've heard, will only be four or five episodes?) is focusing on one of my favorite aspects of Bleach -- Zanpakuto.

For those not familiar with Bleach's cosmology, Zanpakuto are sentient swords belonging to the shinigami. They are spirits born from their master's soul and are the force of power behind all of the sword's abilities. There are a few other things that were brought up in the second movie that I think are bullshit because Hitsufag likes to make up his own rules, so we won't go into that.

But I've loved this concept from the beginning. I've been absolutely fascinated by the idea of learning what the appearances of everyone's swords were. And as soon as we came out of the Soul Society arc and were shown Sode No Shirayuki, Rukia's Zanpakuto, in action for the first time, I fell head over heels in love.

So when it was announced that the Zanpakuto would be the focus of the new filler, I became intrigued. I still had no real plan to watch, but I was curious, and a little excited to see what might become of it. The idea that the zanpakuto were rebelling against their masters interested me. And the nest part was that we would get to see them, even if they were all forced into humanoid forms. But there was one thing I was worried about...

I've always had a very clear mental image of what I believed her to look like. Anyone who's read the short CLAMP manga "Shirahime-Syo" may remember the story "Hiyoku no Tori" and the Heron woman in them. That woman has always been my image for Sode No Shirayuki. Would this arc, shatter my perception of her?

Left: Heron ("Shirahime-Syo") // Right: Sode no Shirayuki ("Bleach")

Surprisingly, no! Sode no Shorayuki is presented here actually very similar to how I pictured her to be. This helped a lot in getting me to want to keep watching. I was very worried about this, because I am resistant to change and didn't want to have to rethink my entire perception of her as a character.

So I torrented the episode, sat down, and watched...

My opinion so far is pretty neutral to the story as a whole, but as for the characters, my head is racing around trying to keep all of my perceptions of them in line.

Haineko was the most hilarious little bitch in the world. I loved when she shoved Rangiku aside and told her to get out of the way. I'd love to see her also have a more kindhearted side to match Rangiku's but I think she is perfect. and oh my god those pants. Wut.

I like Suzumebachi's appearance (especially that she's so fucking tiny), but I can't say I'm too thrilled with her personality. She is way too bubbly, happy, and excitable. Even before Soi Fon was an angst bucket, she did not act like that. Zanpakuto are meant to share many of their master's personality aspects and Suzumebachi doesn't act like Soi Fon at all.

Kazeshini... I have never liked Kazeshini. Ever since his shikai was revealed and it was shown that he was a dual wield, I've hated him. It was established in the Soul Society arc that the only dual-bladed shikai were Katen Kyokotsu (Kyoraku Shunsui) and Sogyo no Kotowari (Ukitake Juushiro). I refuse to believe his shikai was a secret, since he's a lieutenant. It's possible Kubo hadn't thought it up yet, but for the love of god, Kubo, stick to your rules.

Anyway, the zanpakuto arc has proved that Kazeshini is a dick. this was hilarious to me because I just dislike him so much and how his personality just fell into me continuing not to like him. I'm not a fan of Hiyorinmaru either (gay Chrsitmas trees, wut?) for various reasons, but all he's done so far is stand around and stare at people so I can't really judge him yet.

But oh man the opening and ending? Hot shit, yo. I actually watched the opening twice before I started the episode because Iw as just so fascinated by Orihime and Rukia dancing. I want to dance with them so bad. XD Also everyone was just hanging out and being really hot. What the hell? SDid everyone suddenly realize how sexy they are?

The ending was fantastic. I'm completely addicted to "Mad Surfer" now. that's the kind of song I will hang out alone in my house and dance to in my underwear. I liked the kind of retro feel to the visuals and how it really depicted the personality aspects of all of the zanpakuto.

My big worry about this arc? That it's going to end up focusing on Hitsugaya and Hiyorinmaru. With the way they were introduced in the first episode of the arc, they seem to be getting special attention, and I'm really worried this is going to be another one of those instances of undeserved attention for them.

So I guess there will be followups to this as the arc progresses, because I anticipate having very strong feelings on this. We'll see where it goes.

Otakon 2009

2009-07-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Suri and I, along with several other friends, made the long trip down from central New Jersey to Balimore, Maryland for Otakon 2009. It's our one big convention of the year and we're usually pretty psyched to rock it out. It was great this year, as always.

General reports for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday can be found via their respective entries in my LiveJournal.

But overall, it was a great con. This was my second year cosplaying Simon form Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and this year I got to be accompanied by Suri and my best friend Cass as my Kamina and Nia. We all hit up the Saturday photoshoot which was a lot of fun. Cosplay is about 50% of the reason I do Otakon, and it was really great to get to see other cosplayers and join in on photos and things.

We are the bitch-sassiest pair of Simons ever.

In an amusing twist, a friend of mine form high school who writes for Japanator ended up writing a short entry about when the Gurren Lagann shoot and the Super Smash Bros. shoot decided to wage war against each other. I ended up in a few of the photos he posted and we had a laugh a little later about what a small internet it is.

The better part of the weekend was spent in the Artist's Alley and the Dealer's Room, which is the other 50% I do Otakon. I got to see a lot of good friends in the Alley. These are people that I only really get to see once or twice a year at Otakon and NYAF, so it was really great to see them and catch up for a while. I also bought a few posters and prints, and a comic from the amazingly talented Hilary Florido, who is maybe one of the coolest people I know.

The Dealer's Room was fantastic this year. I bought two figures (Urahara Kisuke and Kuchikir Rukia) and an old Magic Knight Rayearth doll (Hikaru. I already have Fuu. Now I'm on the hunt for Umi.), and a really fantastic Sailor Moon pencil case.

I also got myself a few doujinshi, though I was only really satisfied with one of them -- an Ukitake/Unohana bleach doujinshi that looks like it's really cute. I may have to eventually try to translate it. I somehow ended up with another Ukitake/Kyoraku doujinshi, but while sitting outside of one of the panels we were waiting to go to, I decided to narrate it with hilarious dialog for my friend Jess and it turned out to be the best purchase ever.

"Blah blah blah I have cancer."

"No you don't. You have lupus."

"Well shit..."

I really don't have the slightest idea what was going on through the whole thing other than that Ukitake and Kyoraku kept fighting and bitch-slapping each other, but it made for an amusing little tale. I also got another Bleach doujin about Kon and some members of the female cast, and a FullMetal Alchemist Roy/Havoc doujin that also includes Riza somehow. Again, I need to learn to read Japanese so I can know what the hell is going on.

But the real prize for the weekend was buying a replica of Sode no Shirayuki, Kuchiki Rukia's sword, for $25. Anyone who knows me as a member of the Bleach fandom knows the crush I have on Shirayuki. So when I found it, I was sure it was really expensive and made Suri lead me away. But then he kept suggesting going back to ask how much it was, so we went and found out it was cheap enough for me to buy!

The unfortunate part is that she'll probably remain in her box until the spring when I either move back down to central NJ for good, or move in with my good friend Boomer over at Downtown Otaku. Then she will be proudly displayed on my wall where I can admire her.

So over all, it was a great con. I may switch up my cosplay next year, or I may not, but either way I'm looking forward to it.

Suri's Intro & King of Bandit Jing

2009-07-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

Well. I'm not quite sure how to start this off properly, so I'm just going to talk until something coherent comes out. I'll be posting for this as often as I feel the need to (Read: Whenever Sono threatens me bodily harm for not posting) and will likely discuss many different things.

I am very tempted to simply give angry reviews of things, like my other blog. But honestly, I'd rather not. I try to think of things in a positive light and thus, will likely be more cheerful. So, I really doubt I'll talk about stuff I don't like... that is, unless I dislike it so much that I NEED to vent the rage. But I don't normally watch anything that makes me rage like that long enough to really care. So, let's talk about something. What, you ask? One of the first anime I saw after I had really started to get into it, King of Bandit Jing.

When I say "really started to get into it," I mean actively seeking it out as opposed to just what was on Toonami at the time. Don't get me wrong, Toonami had tons of great stuff. Dragonball Z was mindblowing for me when I first started watching, Yuyu Hakusho is still one of my favorite series ever and I LOVED Outlaw Star, even if the ending confused the hell out of me. I probably would've watched Sailor Moon when it was on, but I usually watched Dragonball Z with friends and therefore we could not watch Sailor Moon because they were MEN and anything even remotely girly was GAY. Truly, they were enlightened beings far beyond the scope of anything humankind could ever- they were idiots. But they were also the only people within walking distance who would spend time with me.

But anyway, when I first started to seek out anime, the best I could usually manage was a DVD every month or so. And then, I tended to go with Yuyu Hakusho because Cartoon Network had stopped airing it immediately before the final round of the Dark Tournament, which had been going on for something like 30 episodes already. I didn't really start to get a broader view of anime until we got a digital cable box. The On Demand service had... Anime Network on Demand! I was intrigued and thus, started watching. I watched episodes daily on it daily, even if I had already seen them. I checked again and again for new episodes, since each series usually had no more than 2-3 episodes available at at time. There are a number of series I was introduced to like this that still stick with me. Sure, I didn't like everything I watched (Gravitation still haunts me. ;___; ) but it did help me learn what exactly to look for. GetBackers is still one of my favorite series ever, for example. And another example, which I have taken so long to get to, is King of Bandit Jing.

King of Bandit Jing (or the less Engrishy title, Jing: King of Bandits), is short. 13 episodes (with a 3-episode OVA, but I'll get to that another time) and that made it somewhat ideal for me and the Anime Network on Demand. Because it was short, it didn't take very long for me to see all 13 episodes. Longer series, like GetBackers, had 3-4 episodes up at a time, but would frequently revert back to episode 1 and 2 after getting far enough into the series, ranging anywhere from episode 12 to 28. And some series only went a few episodes before they were replaced with another show. Usually something I didn't care about, like Mezzo.

Jing is great though. If I had to pick a word to describe it, it would be "Breezy". It's lighthearted, colorful, whimsical and weird. It also has the single greatest opening scene in anything ever. It's a slow panning shot of a rising sun. A skeletal figure in a carriage drawn by a skeletal dinosaur. It slowly zooms on his face. "I..." you hear. It zooms closer. "I..." again. It zooms right to his glowing red eye. "I...". You get a shot from the side as he loudly shouts "I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS STORY!" he then laughs as he is knocked aside by a GIANT DESERT WHALE BOAT, while screaming "FAREWELL". And he is never seen again.

This is when I knew I had found something great. In fact, I recently showed the first episode to a friend of mine. After this, his jaw dropped. He grabbed the remote, paused it and demanded I give him every DVD of this series I own immediately. This is also the best possible way to frame how odd the world Jing takes place in is.

So, what is the series about? It's about Jing and his bird, Gilbert Go... I mean Kir. Jing, as one can surmise from the title, is the Bandit King. He can steal anything and everything, from the stars in the sky to the heart of a woman. And he does that a lot. Every story has a Jing girl, that he usually wins the affection of. Think of them as Bond Girls, except Jing is like 15 so he's not screwing them left and right. He's too classy for that, anyway.

Every Jing story is self-contained and usually revolves around the theft of a single object. There are only 3 recurring characters. Jing, Kir and Postino. Postino shows up once per story on a Motorcycle for about 20 seconds, says something cryptic to Jing that will inevitably help Jing with the theft and then rides off. He's awesome and is never explained, like most things in this weird, weird world.

Oh, there is one more recurring thing in Jing. The Porvora. That pink thing on the first image up there is a Porvora. They're adorable. Also, highly volatile. If jarred too much, they will explode like a cluster of mines held together with C4 around a jellied napalm center. They appear in two of the stories, if I recall correctly.

I could go into detail of the plot, but... like I said, the show is episodic. Each story (each of which spans 1-3 episodes) has its own plot. It's not intensive watching, but it's enjoyable to watch and quite memorable. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

*phew* I'll try and make my posts shorter from now on. Anyone reading this, I hope you continue to do so.

-Suri