Status

Officially, I'm out of High school. Last day of classes was last Thursday and Prom was last Friday. After-prom lasted 3 days...

I'm hoping I can assume that it's a legitimate excuse to as to why I didn't post. I just got back yesterday night and wasn't really expecting for after-prom to last so long. I don't think any of the other seniors did either. Regardless, I now have a system that I think I can follow.

For those of you who care, whenever I post at exactly 12:00 PM (GMT -5), you can expect that to be an automated one, any other time, you can assume I wrote it that day. (Well, technically, I wrote all of them, but only certain one's I've scheduled.)


I'm going out on a limb here. Personally, I'm running out of ideas. Rather, I still have a large load of ideas, but I continually reject them (a handful being on the grounds of "too old"). You can either click my avatar, or email me at
zerreth@gmail.com for any requests. I know I don't have a large enough viewer base for this to work, but I'm trying.

Say Goodbye to G1, Hello to G2

I've spoken about Mabinogi before, and earlier, I mentioned about how it was still in it's early stages. I can't say that anymore.
Mabinogi is separated into "seasons" that the company/game refers to as "Generations." Each generation has a certain amount of content as well as a very well made storyline. I'm not sure if International Ragnarok Online has started, but KRO had a similar thing where there were special sets of quests that would be mainstream and affect the game and one's perception of it very greatly.

Think of it this way. Everything you've been doing are the like the side-quests. The Generation quests are the storyline quests. It requires for you to have paid for a premium service to access the mainstream quests, but you don't to pay monthly. Only during the times you want, so technically you can just "pay" during each new season. It's probably not the most effective way possible, but it is possible.
And so, I'll leave you with two videos. One that is reminiscent of the first generation, and the second celebrating the start of a new one.
(Yes, yes. Once more you'll get a slew of ambient music bothering you until I post more later)

School Rumble - Review

I can't believe I never mentioned this show before. School Rumble is by far one of the best anime I have ever seen....ever. I'll get to the reasons in a moment. Right now, I have to do things systematically.


To put it loosely, School Rumble is about a high school girl named Tenma Tsukamoto who's in love with Ouji Karasuma. Then there's the typical biker delinquent Kenji Harima who's fallen for Tenma Tsukamoto. As both try to confess their loves to their respective crushes, things get in their way and begin to complicate matters on an exponential level.

To put it simply, this is a love story. A really funny one. It takes more or less everything you would know about a series like this and throws it out the window. You thought you knew Shounen or Shoujo genres? You were so wrong. Let me start off with the plot which sounds unusual. Typically, it's some form of love triangle mixed with comedy. Unfortunately, Karasuma's passion for curry renders him completely oblivious to Tenma's feelings for him (I can't make this up).

The storytelling is truly a work of art. It's a bit convoluted but is the best representation for that "If my high school life was a TV show" project (assuming you ever had such a project). Normally, these kinds of shows mainly focus on the main characters and have a handful of sub-par secondary characters that help the story move along. That doesn't happen in School Rumble. Not only do you get an entire class of character (like Mahou Sensei Negima for example) but nearly an entire grade and they all have a part. You see the all the archetypes but then you also see them warp into a necessary character for the show. They're not just some member of the general clutter of random people. You see everyone's personality and it doesn't require an episode to flesh it out. Just little bits from every episode help add to the personality of that character. Often you get some weird school where there's only like a few couples and because there are only a few couples they're the talk of the school. That doesn't happen. I remember reading this one review that said that keeping track of who has what relation with who made his head hurt. That was where I found beauty. School doesn't just revolve around a handful of people, it revolves around everyone and that's what this anime does. Some characters really couldn't care less about what happens to couple A. I remember wanting to show a few stand-alone episodes for my anime club but realized they all needed some form of background to understand. So I drew a flow chart. It was a mess.

There's Girl A and B who have a secret crush on Guy A, but he has an open crush with Girl C. Unfortunately, Guy B has a crush on Girl B who is the younger sister of Girl C and because of his general personality of being a serious, short-tempered person, he often mistook the relationship between Guy A and and Girl B when they worked together. Then there's Girl D who has a similar personality to Guy B and isn't true to herself about her feelings towards Guy B because of his aloof attitude towards her and the close professional relationship they have with each other in terms of being students of the same class... and on and on and on. What I found great was that it wasn't some shallow crush either and the viewer doesn't realize who has feelings for what until you see all the subtle changes in the personalities. That's amazing. It doesn't spoon feed you story but it also doesn't ask you to do any rocket science or force any illogical connections either. It's a blend that's really hard to find.

The comedy is equally amazing. It starts off with many typical scenarios and looks to be sub-par but then it surprises you. It doesn't take the turn you'd expect and instead goes completely awry. Some turns you didn't even know existed. Referring to that other review once again. There's a scene in which you have the class cleaning the pool, with soap and hose water. What does this often lead to? Fan service. Panty shots, wet shirts and a general glorification of the female body. What happens in School Rumble land? They somehow get into a hockey match involving bar soap and brooms.


The voice acting talent is just superb as well. Most anime in general feature only a very tiny amount of veteran actors who fill the roles of main characters. School Rumble? It's a gold mine of veteran actors and a slew of professional amateurs that embrace the stage. Just listening, it would be hard to believe some actors were given their first roles in School Rumble. Then there's all those one episode stand-in characters who are usually given to amateurs to break the ice. Even those are taken by veterans of the trade gracing your ears with more than just quality acting. It's a collaboration of talent to make a production amazing.


If you got to this point. I applaud you. I actually have more to say, but right now I'll answer that question that's in your mind. "Zerreth, all you've done so far is spew praise for this anime. I've read about (insert number here) of your reviews and you always found some fault in them. Is this the exception?" You're right. I did, and this is no exception. I don't think anything is perfect and so here goes.


If you think about it, the cost to do one episode must be outstanding. The thing is the production team leading this is Studio Comet. They're not bad, but they're not brimming with money like Kyoto Animation is, and so here's where the anime takes a hit. Generally, the art is clean and character designs are well done, but.... animation-wise, it's a bit disappointing. It's an odd combination really. If it was a voiced comic strip, it would look stunning, but once they start moving, the animation has many moments of spikes in quality. There's a lot of stills and cutting of corners where it's necessary. There's also a good deal of rendering which isn't properly blended and stands out significantly. It kind of feels like a let down knowing how much work went into the anime in general to see that the animation is the one that's hit hardest.

Occasionally, the story drags on a bit. It's not just filler per say, but it's one of those necessary evil episodes where technically nothing happens, but is there to reconfirm plot points. I personally don't mind these at all, but these are a certain type of "filler" and I know many who have an abhorrence to such a thing. One thing I do say however, is that quality doesn't drop with these episodes, so the high quality will be intact but it'll just be focused on... nothing.

Finally, what I feel to be one of the most important points and key part that makes me hesitate to recommend this is the phenomenal amount of the Japanese language, old Japanese culture and modern Japanese culture needed to fully understand the entire show very well. I took a gander at a quality fansubber's site and each episode had at least a page-two pages of side notes that they wrote down for those who weren't so savvy with the culture. Trust me. Being an avid watcher of anime won't be enough to understand everything. There are many points in which the anime uses puns and old sayings to add to humor and I know there will be many viewers who won't get it. The thing is, some of these very important comedic scenes are crucial for the next scenes and so one can easily be having problems understanding why something is happening or why there's an awkward silence following something witty.


Overall however, the good parts make the bad parts look like dust particles. I honestly believe that this is a work of genius and such a thing will be very hard to come by.

As a final note, there are two seasons along with a final third OVA that will be released. Interestingly enough, each season is referred to as a semester in the Japanese school calendar.

P.S. Haha! Check it out! I posted exactly at noon with this scheduler. This has made my day.

HAH!

Finally fixed that goddamn advertisement. Now you guys should see some variety. I know advertisements are are still advertisements, but at least they can be something related. Would you rather stare at a bunch of text referring to llama-sitting? I think not. (Though it would be amusing for the first two days or so)

Tales of Symphonia: Knight of Ratatosk (Dawn of the New World) - Info

Don't know why they went out on a limb and changed the name drastically. Whatever. New Symphonia game. June 28 Japanese release, September 2008 US release, get it. There's a naked catgirl in it, go. Why is she there? Because it's a fetish that has existed in Japan for decades, next to the Gothic Lolitas....
Why aren't you using that time machine in your grandmother's basement yet?


In all seriousness however, this new tales game is actually a big deal. I'm not sure if the development team is the same from the Symphonia and Aybss team, but if it is, you can expect some really good, quality work. All but Kratos return in the new game and apparently even after 2 years, no one has changed in appearance, unless you count the increased saturation on one's clothes. Presea's got her feelings back (yay) which is all I care about really...

It's coming for the Wii and you can definitely expect this game to be very good. There hasn't been any word on whether or not Namco is going to use the same voice actors but I hope they do and they probably will. The japanese team did and they used a few of the same actors for Tales of the World, so hopefully we'll get some more high quality voice acting coupled with a game that has very good prospects.

Apparently, there's going to be a new system in which you can get monsters to be on your side (like Dragon Warrior Monsters). In total, you can have up to 10 characters in your party and 4 on the field. I haven't heard of any details on FoFs from Tales of the Abyss, but what Namco seems to be doing is a good strategy. They take a very effective battle system, and continue to improve it. I was a bit sad that Unison Attack wasn't in Tales of the Abyss, but I'm not really worried.

I wonder how they're going to incorporate the Wii mote. I'm probably going to just use a Wavebird but that seems to be defeating the entire purpose of the console...
Whatever, this will be another (among many) reasons to finally get that Wii. Me? I don't actually know. Disgaea 3 comes out on the PS3 but Tales of Symphonia comes out on the Wii... Decisions, decisions

Scheduled Posts

May 1st update for Blog spot.
Apparently now I'm able to pre-write posts and then schedule them to be posted later on. This is great. This means that I can write whatever I'm thinking at the moment instead of copying and pasting and then ultimately losing what I was going to write while I was on a roll. I can just write whatever review I have and then schedule it.
It's like... anti-procrastination on a whole new level.

I have to say. From a scale of one to ten in ascending order of awesomeness this is probably one the best things to happen to blogspot.