Ar nosurge Premium Edition

Aside from the poster of the game cover, there's nothing really that comes extra with the premium edition. The music however, sounds fantastic. I'm not sure if it's the same in Ciel nosurge, but it looks like they kept the quality of the hymmnos concert tracks throughout the soundtrack.

All the way up to the third game the soundtrack and the hymmnos song magic always felt separated but from the tracks I've listened to in the limited soundtrack that comes with the premium edition, I'm very pleased. I'm gonna make a comparison video soon comparing a rearrangement they did for "Inside AT ~Anomaly~" from the first game. Really fascinating work.

Fairy Fencer F Premium Edition

Very straight forward collector's edition. I definitely can't wear the beanie, it's not very deep and in danger of just sliding off my head.

One thing to note is how misleading they were about the music that Nobuo Uematsu worked on. From the looks of it, he worked on the main theme ONLY and even that was a collaboration. Going through the soundtrack, it's noticeable as well. There's a bit of... unnecessary grandeur(?) in the main theme that never really carries on in the rest of the soundtrack.

Of course. My luck wouldn't have it any other way.

Knowing me, my order will ALSO be shipped on Friday....

Facepalm

So I've been wondering where my Fairy Fencer F limited edition was. I wasn't even charged on the 10th like they said they would and so I decided to take a look back at my order.

I was about to send customer support an email when I scrolled to the bottom that I then saw this.

And then there's this information as well on the preorder pages:

So it basically means that I have to wait until the release date of Ar nosurge to get both games.....

Craaaaaaaaaaaaap.

In the meantime here's an old unboxing video.....

Tales of Symphonia Collector's Edition Box

THIS. OH my god. THIS. THIS is what needs to happen on every collector's edition box.

If you don't know what THIS is, THIS is a plastic encasement OUTSIDE of the box itself protecting the actual collector's edition from poor shipping and handling and snubbed corners keeping your mint condition box mint condition. Why hasn't THIS happened as often before?

No, I will not change to "kininarimasu"

Okay, I’ll bite. I have some free time to kill anyway. So first things first, according to the dictionary.com’s definitions of “correct,” the second adjective definition is: “in accordance with an acknowledged or accepted standard; proper: correct behaviorr. In this case, it will be on the matters of the transliteration of the Japanese language. Just so we’re on the same page transliteration is: “to change(letters, words, etc.)into corresponding characters of another alphabet or language.”

The main purpose of transliteration is usually for easier learning and/or communication between two languages of different alphabets. So, efficiency towards ease of reading is preferred. Since spaces exist between words and particles in the English language for the sake of ease of reading, the same rules have been applied for transliterations, like the Hepburn Romanization (a style that’s been in use and development for longer than you have been alive).

You see, Japanese is easy in the sense that their alphabet is entirely phonetic and easy to transcribe into English with the exception of a few sounds, unlike Korean or Chinese which both have sounds used in their language that cannot be easily transliterated into English and resulting in awkward spellings and pronunciation by those speaking the latter. Were we talking about either of those two languages, I’d wholehearted agree with you. Official does not necessarily mean correct, especially the (arrogant) missionary and Wade-Giles systems of transcribing Chinese that turned something that sounded like “Guanzhou” into “Canton.” This isn’t Chinese nor Korean though, this is Japanese and so something a Japanese says, can easily be written in English as you know.

I’m getting to my point, don’t you worry. Japanese uses Chinese characters (kanji) in their language to increase their reading efficacy. It is solely because of kanji that the Japanese have no use for spaces. If you think I’m kidding, I’ll use Korean as an example.

Korean, having similar roots in the Chinese language like Japanese, developed its own simplified alphabet but still used Chinese characters for many words to differentiate the meanings between homonyms mainly because unlike in Chinese, Korean does not differentiate words using tones, only sounds. In general, there are no rules for spaces in Korean besides common sense, such as not placing a space in between words. Korean didn’t have a need for spaces because, like Japanese, the Chinese characters helped differentiate between words, particles, and particular conjugation and was easy to read because of its use. During the passing of a particular act, however, Korean became frustratingly hard to read because the act temporarily forbade the use of Chinese characters.

Suddenly all the words were in the Korean alphabet and crunched together which created problems in differentiating between words. Generally, it’s been a non-officially accepted rule to space similarly to the English structure (not because Americans had a hand in it, but because it was common sense). It has its personal exceptions regarding certain kinds of particles but that’s not important.

Why is talking about Korean important? I answer that by asking a question of my own. Have you ever read a report/essay by a particularly ambitious Japanese grade-schooler or a college freshman studying Japanese? The entire essay is more or less in all hiragana with spots of Kanji making the essay EXTREMELY hard to read because of potential misspellings along with spending time trying to figure out which hiragana are linked together to form each word. Why? Because there are no spaces used in Japanese, so it’s hard to tell whether that to (と) or ha (は) is meant to be a particle or part of another word. With Kanji, spaces are completely unnecessary because most of the hiragana are only used as particles, or particular words for emphasis.

Which leads me back to my original point. We, as English speakers, do not use Chinese characters to replace words, so following your rule of not placing spaces will be a deterrent to reading efficiently. Second, we are transcribing a different language into our own, which means we should apply our rules on our letters on the words we import for the sake of ourselves. Every other country does the exact same thing to their own transliterations (applying their own rules based on their language. Applying the Japanese rule of spacing on transliterated words because it is “proper in Japanese” is downright stupid. It does not help US read any easier, which is the entire purpose of transliterating. I can say with 100% confidence that writing out the full name for OreImo as an example will be MUCH easier to read by applying our rules (Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai) than by following yours (orenoimoutogakonnanikawaiiwakeganai). I bring up OreImo because of YOUR suggestion that I write “kininarimasu” instead of “Ki ni Narimasu.” That suggestion implies that you write all your transliterations as such. And if you don’t, shut the fuck up, you hypocrite.

TL;DR
Your suggestion sounded stupid, and your rationale behind your suggestion sounded stupid, so here’s a full length essay in the form of Youtube comments detailing how stupid you sound.

Saber Alter Beach Queen Figure

The beach queen line up by Wave has been picking and choosing at random who to add. I decided to pick up the saber alter version for one reason only to be honest, and that's the almost uninterested expression she seems to have as she sits around eating an ice popsicle.

Originally inspired by this image:

What we get is this:

The figure comes with a rough yellow colored base plate which I assume is going to be sand, but she can very well sit on most, if not all, flat surfaces without any support.

The very first thing I notice off the bat is how surprisingly small she is. I'm well aware that this figure is 1:10 scale of an already short character (154 cm which translates to about 60.6 inches aka 5 feet) but I admittedly wasn't expecting something THIS small. Here's a comparison between her, the super posable Saber Nendoroid, and a mini nendoroid that I recieved from comptiq:

As you can see, even with the bonus height from the difference in the base plates, Saber Alter is STILL shorter than Raging Saber and barely taller than Strike Witch Konata (who happens to have an additional base of her own). Admittedly she IS sitting which would account for much of the height difference, but she's surprisingly lean.

I'm not complaining though, there's some solid detail on the sculpture and paint that make up for it. Hands and feet are well done and there's even dots of a lighter shade of pink on the tips to indicate fingernails/toenails. Then there's her straight face as she consumes that popsicle that really add bonus points to the overall figure. I would've honestly preferred saber alter to have whiter hair just because I think it then accents the blue popsicle better. Also, her yellow eyes would strike a contrast with her hair but that's a bit of nitpicking on my end.

Overall it's a happy purchase, and another figure that'll sit comfortably on my shelf. (No pun intended).

My Thoughts on Toonami

Toonami's been back for about two months now but at least among the people I come into regular contact with, it seems to have died down considerably. Perhaps it's because we are now the new members of today's working society that we no longer have time to dedicate to TV and rather rely on OnDemand and Streaming to be able to watch whenever we have the time to, but I also get the feeling that looking at how it is now, Cartoon Network (Adult Swim, or whoever is responsible) missed the point.



I don't know the exact specifics about how the programming worked but Adult Swim and Toonami seemed to be two seperate programs. Perhaps toonami was part of adult swim all along and I just didn't pay attention (having seen Yu-Yu Hakusho move from adult swim to toonami and censored and seeing Big O move from toonami to Adult Swim, this would make sense) but when I heard toonami was returning, this wasn't what I was expecting.


The first thing I noticed with the revival of Toonami would be the airing times. Starting at Midnight, it's a clear indication that it's breaking into Adult Swim territory (granted it WAS an adult swim prank) but I think that's where the biggest problem lies for me.
When I was a child, and going to my friend's home was the only way to be exposed to cable, we'd play on the n64 (or gamecube later on), and watch toonami and talk until one of us passed out. It was one of the entry points into anime besides the sporadic saturday morning cartoons that had popped up on UPN, WB and Fox. Toonami aired at a fairly ripe (and expensive now that I look back on it) time of 8:00-10:00 PM where I saw Gundam Wing, Pilot Candidate, Dragonball Z, Cyborg 009, Rave Master and Rurouni Kenshin. I also noticed that all the "good" shows were near the end and eventually pushed onto 11:00 PM to Midnight.

At that point though, I too was growing up and staying later which was fine with me and I didn't mind it starting later than usual. It was still within a time frame that was "comfortable" for a teen like myself. Then right after, there was a smooth transition into Adult Swim with Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Big O (which was also on Toonami), and Ghost in the Shell which would then shift over into the classic Adult Swim stuff such as Harvey Birdman, and Space Ghost.



While Toonami a form of nostalgia for others, the revival of Toonami, meant for me that there was hope that there could be another generation like me who was originally exposed to anime through programming blocks like Toonami and spent the effort to expand my views from there. Obviously, it can't be the same now with streaming sites like Cruncyroll actually being official, and other OnDemand channels being available. But even as a teen, I had torrented unlicensed anime about as much as I watched Toonami and Adult Swim. They acted as my major gateway into Japanese animation.

Some of the problems I'm seeing a couple months after Toonami's been back is primarily the viewer base. Everyone's basically over the age of 18 and watching this out of choice and not of chance. I think I can safely say most of the viewers watched it (or are now watching it) out of nostalgia and I don't think that's a safe demographic to bank on. Numbers are probably going to drop faster overtime than they will grow. While there are more people likely to have disposable income to purchase DVDs in the midnight timeslot, there's probably a less likely chance to get more people hooked on.

In today's industry where many TV companies are working on adapting to the "internet culture," a lot of those in power seem to be stuck on television being the only way to be profitable. From how I see it, Toonami could've been a perfect way to show anime companies that it is still possible to license and air anime on American televisions and maintain a solid viewership that could turn profits. Throughout all the panels I've been to and the discussions I've seen, there's always this obsession over an overblown dichotomy between the spoiled, "it's my right to see this" culture and the outdated "we refuse to use any other business model" companies. There are obviously many other groups that are more sensible but the most vocal ones are the two I've stated... well that and the group that then complains about how the state of the industry is where it is because of the spoiled groups. What my stance is and what my practices are now are currently irrelevant to this post. The point is, Toonami could have been used for other purposes.



I can't say why Toonami airs so late (besides it being when Adult Swim would start airing) but I feel as though the effort was wasted. For now, it's probably fine since it's still the summer and everyone who's in school is on break which more or less means their sleeping schedules are absolute wrecks and are more likely to watch Toonami, but I get the feeling that if they were to somehow pull back the time slot about 2 or 3 hours and have it start at around 9:00 to 10:00ish, some interesting data could pop up. Maybe it's the economist in me that's talking, but I feel like the revival of Toonami and all the hype it generated could have been put to use in something a bit more risky instead of something very safe, where it then has a subdued impact.

VGHS Post Production Update Spoilers

So Freddie Wong decided to give an update regarding "Video Game Highschool" a series that was funded by kickstarter and they decided to be mean and give spoilers lasting 2 frames throughout the video. With a bit of magic, I've been able to extract all the images. No, it wasn't by pressing play really quickly.

Oddly enough, it was supposed to work by pressing the numbers, but for me (and probably a few other people) it was just off by a fraction of a second. Not sure why, but I found my way was still much easier.

AeriaGames buys IJJI (What does that REALLY mean?)

I only just heard about this today (I know, I'm about a month late) and honestly, I've got mixed feelings. For those of you who don't know either company let me give a brief history.

Ijji, or NHN usa, is a direct subsidiary of NHN Corporation, a Korean company that owns Naver and Hangame.
For those of you unaware, naver would be korea's version of MSN or Yahoo in terms of popularity and various services. While it may have originated as a search engine, its services expanded greatly to provide blogs, and newsfeeds and more or less has now become a web portal. Many well known web comics will most likely have their origins from naver comics and you'll find many korean blogs to have come from naver.

Hangame is a Korean game portal that competes with Nexon Korea and used to compete against Netmarble (It used to be big but failed to hold many games with long lifetimes and didn't get enough new ones to replace the ones that died out). 

IJJI only really started gaining a foothold when it decided to host Maiet's GunZ and bought NA rights to Gunbound (which it later sold). Being a direct subsidiary has its advantages, particularly in licensing rights and the difficult of acquiring them, or rather lack thereof, since the parent company can simply extend its license into NA territory. Server maintenance, as well as bug fixes are also much more easily addressable and it shows in IJJI's games. Their most popular games generally had a two week gap between general maintenance and security checks. It's quality has waned substantially and admittedly their more recent investments were worrisome but I'll get to that later.

As for presence, their customer support was fairly solid but their forums needed work. Simply put, they may have had some infrastructure issues in terms of staff assignment because there were always not enough moderators, and it was quite obvious where the company's focus was based on the number of moderators and their activity in the respective game's forum. GM presence was average. Nothing spectacular but at least the player base could recognize them and name them without the help of a cheat sheet.



Aeria Games is a subsidiary of Aeria Inc. Japan. It was started by two entrepreneurs who had a bit of investment capital....That's about it.....
They're a developing company that's been picking a handful of Japanese and Chinese MMOs.

I heard about this company when they held only one game: Shaiya. How did it do? Honestly, I have no idea but clearly they had enough money and zealous marketing plaster ads everywhere. They are still picking up games and while I don't know of the status of each game, this constant slow growth should still indicate something.

They are dipping into a pool that's been fairly untouched which gives them the advantage I guess. A lot of these games are also actual MMOs involving worlds instead of instanced Peer-2-Peer dungeons or Peer-2-Peer action games which means that they are also buying out servers to support these games. There's also the problem that many of these games are quite bot friendly point and clicks but that's enough about that. I'm talking about the company and not the games.

Aeria games for certain knows how to support a game. They don't have the strict maintenance that IJJI used to have when it was about as hold as Aeria is now but that isn't to say they're bad. Important patches are done in a timely fashion and bug fixes are just slightly delayed.

They make up for this in a significantly stronger community presence. GMs are very vocal and are also fairly open. It may be because the community itself may be slightly smaller but it's very obvious that Aeria Games is well staffed. They're also very transparent which seems to help the company hold such a strong bond with its consumers. I can recall for a game that was fairly new, a GM was late in enabling an event by 30 minutes (I'm assuming server sided auto execution scripts weren't ready yet) and admitted his mistake and extended the event by an hour. Should this mistake have happened? Probably not, but its handling was surprisingly well done.



So let's get to the meat. What does Aeria Games buying IJJI mean?

The immediate effects:
Gunz, Soldier Front and AVA (Arguably IJJI's biggest games so far) are going to shift over which will mean there'll be an explosion in the size of the community over at aeria games. This may place a strain on the aforementioned community presence that aeria games has established.

There's going to be a community clash for sure. Every game forum has its established "VIPs" and trolls and merging two groups only places additional strain on the community that's moving. Especially considering the lax moderation IJJI has had, aeria games might be in for a bit of extra work.

NHN may be straight up dropping out of the NA market. The previously mentioned games will probably be updating more slowly than it's community is used to. Though most of the games have already dropped to once a month now....

Screenname hell is going to occur. I know for a fact my name was taken in aeria games resulting in me having to pick a different screen name to login with. It's a minor irritation but an irritation nonetheless especially since I could log in as "zerreth" over at IJJI.

The current games may see a large player base, which is always good. Consolidation also makes accounts much more easier to manage player-wise. 

The long term effects:
As I said before, maintenance, bug fixing and immediate game issues will take longer to fix. There's a "middle man" to go through which only delays communication.

Any NHN game that you may have had sights on has an even lesser chance of making it to NA shores. I was particularly looking forward to Fighter's Club but I may have to rely on Ntreev USA to pick it up now. Any games under NHN korea is going to have to require an additional cost to license rather than a extra small investment to hand down the territory license to a child company. Companies that buy games under NHN will have to turn profit quickly which means that there's a higher chance for more "pay-2-win" games appearing and an abuse in development to get micro-transaction systems up faster than the actual game foundation...

"New Toy" effects wear off and transferred games return to their old player base.

There's also a reduced chance of seeing more "creative" events. Since the company isn't in direct contact with the developer regarding content, seeing user based content appear in game will be much harder.


How the hell did this happen?
I don't know the specifics, but I have a good guess. About 1 or 2 years ago, IJJI licensed a bunch games that weren't under NHN korea to see how they would do in NA as an attempt to expand. The problem all the games IJJI had licensed already flopped in korea. One game I hadn't even heard of. Perhaps it was completely new. The point is, those games never made it past a 2nd closed beta, and one game went over to Aeria.

Then there are the handful of games that flopped on IJJI, which is, needless to say, NEVER a good sign. With a declining user base, and lack of new games that could increase cash flow, the parent company must've just decided to drop it. Guess that's the problem with every company once it hits peak and starts to decline.


Other things:
This is not a merger, this is one company swallowing another. Buy-outs/mergers have always indicated through history that the combined product is worse than either input on their own. In this case, you're seeing IJJI products now under Aeria Games management, which has its benefits and drawbacks.

As per contract, NHN is supposed to put a bit of investment into Aeria (probably to help the purchase of new servers and staff) but they're completely wiping their hands clean from the looks of it.

It's kind of sad. I was always hoping that IJJI would find some way to abuse it's position as a direct subsidiary to try and be able to compete with nexon like the korean version is doing. I despise Nexon with a hateful, hellish passion. The mere thought that they intend to continue operations in NA just sets a terrible example for other companies.

Hasty Thanksgiving's Resolution at 3 AM

*Lift this blog off the ground and get it running again.

There are too many things that are distracting, destroying, demoralizing, and depressing me that I need an outlet. Kendo works well but I need something else. I've been reading less, and it's significantly noticeable that my vocabulary and mastery of english grammar is beginning to deteriorate.

I enjoy writing and even if it is only for myself again, so be it. I must clear my head so I can focus better on the things that need focus.

Fate/Extra - First Impressions

Inverseman and Laevatein over at moar powah! happen to be people I know outside of the internet and it seems that we all pre-ordered and started Fate/Extra with different characters. So as a result, Inverseman suggested we do a collab first impressions of the game as it will be different from each perspective. I personally don't know what's entailed in a "first impression" but I'm guessing that it's just a few paragraphs rather than an 8 page long review. This probably also means that I'm going to have to be very terse and skim over parts like how the game's music was great but the volume balance was bad without being specific....I'll give a full proper review once I finish the game.

Being a huge fan of Type-Moon's "Fate" series, I preordered Fate/Extra the moment I heard about its license in the States. I first heard about this game when it was announced in Japan and cursed my fate that I was still not proficient enough in Japanese to be able to play it without aid. As you know, story means a lot to me and while gameplay is easy to figure out, it's the Type-Moon narration that draws me to this game. 

Fate/Extra's story is as follows. You are a student who attends Tsukimura Acadamy who realizes that your entire life so far has been fake. It was all a pre-screening process to decide who was eligible to participate in the Holy Grail War that was about to start in the world you've been "living" in. The war consists of "Masters" and "Servants." Masters are the main competitors who have the ability to summon a Servant, the soul of a legend, who are catagorized into 7 Classes: Saber, Archer Lancer, Rider, Beserker, Caster, and Assassin. Forming a team, they will compete against other Master/Servant teams to come out on top.

I started this game with a few facts in mind: The main character's gender could be chosen (as it seems popular with all the games nowadays) and there was a choice of 1 of 3 Servants to use throughout the game. Saber, Archer and Caster. Coincidentally, that is also the game's projected difficulty level from easy to hard respectively. Not only having a thing for fox-girls, I also have a general mindset that games should be played on the highest difficulty as the challenge is what makes a game enjoyable but the satisfaction of playing a game using as much skill as possible is what makes it "fun" for me, with the exception of Cheating AI, so I decided to choose Caster and wow, what a difference that made....

Player commands on top. Enemy command list on bottom

Battle consists of simultaneous turns that are broken down into 6 moves. Each side submits a move order and then the battle commences depending on what both sides submitted. Basically, there are one of three commands you can submit per move: Attack, Guard, and Break. In a rock, paper, scissors fashion, Attack beats Break which beats Guard which Beats Attack. If the same command was submitted on a move, two things can happen. Both sides take damage or both sides cancel each other out resulting in no damage. If one side successfully manages to land the superior move 3 times in a row, that side deals an extra blow separate from the turn.

Here is where difficulty comes into play. First off, the player is unaware of what the enemy pattern is. Usually at first encounters, only one move is revealed, which means for a while the player has to guess the other moves. As the battles with the same monster repeat, there's a chance upon victory of having an additional move revealed slowly making battles easier. But what does this mean for Caster?

Most of the battles a physical punch fests. Caster being a magic type follows the general archetype of being weak regarding physical attributes, which mean that this can only spell disaster. Without a doubt, I felt the difficulty of my class rushing at me quite quickly. Having absolutely no information, I basically had to wing it and hope that I took minimal damage during the opening turns. Then by using deduction, I had to memorize my enemies patterns. Basically, by seeing which attacks went through and which attacks clashed or failed, I was able to learn what the opponent used during that move. Early on, weak inductive reasoning worked fairly well because each enemy had very few patterns so revealing key moves allowed me to assume certain patterns. Needless to say, this slowly got harder as I progressed on but luckily monsters of the same type but different tier seem to retain some of the patterns of the previous tier making it less dangerous.

DYNAMIC CAMERA ANGLE AND ACTION LINES

Which is great, except when I mess up because when I do... I'm dead. Literally. If I didn't memorize patterns immediately or figure out which pattern was weighted more early on, I'd be taking hits that remove significant chunks of my HP. One poor turn literally kills me and it's game over. It also doesn't help that when I improve the stats of caster, it makes minimal difference. It also didn't help that early on my caster would do such insignificant damage that battles with normal monsters would last around 5 turns.

When you're getting your ass handed to you by what appears to be two halves of a mechanical cube barely connected together by what appears to be some form of Dark Matter and named "MOONDUST", you've just hit a new low in player humiliation....

According to Laevatein, one of his friends pumped only magic into Caster which I can't say I'm supportive of considering how many battles I'm going to be in with normal monsters. Since Caster has limited MP, and it's much harder to recover MP than HP it would be better for me to balance my stats a bit.

No really, why are you SO weak?

WELL. If you got these kinds of scores on a test, you think you'd be doing well? You know that guy in the background? He's really plotting to kill you.

Still though, this is the kind of difficulty I don't mind. It's a nice challenge and mildly fun knowing that I have to concentrate constantly or else. I will admit though, I have simply ragequitted a few times after nearly clearing an entire dungeon only to be killed by a rare pattern that I didn't take into account for, but it's always temporary. The story is also very interesting and I'm loving Caster's personality and side comments which seems to every so often hint at who she really is, as well as her true wish and reason for being in this war.

Besides that

Ichiban Ushiro no Dai Maou - Review

This week's review will be on the anime "Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou" (Or "Daimaoh," for those of you used to the old transliteration). In a nutshell, This anime was a show based on the light novel that simply was produced and aired at the wrong time. What do I mean by that? If there was any show that helped indicate that the year 2010 would be a year that would push along the era of weak stories and gratuitous amounts of fan service, it would be Seikon no Qwaser. Seriously, it was released in early January of that year and simply had breast feeding scenes every other episode, and it's as if they're only following the trend of Queen's Blade that first aired almost a year before. And then once we get into the spring season of 2010, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou would only disappoint fans as it would further support the argument that anime was headed toward a deep dark, fanservice flooded road. Had it been only released perhaps 2-3 years before, this show could've ranked fairly high and been regarded as a "good" show overall. Maybe it would have also had a 26 episode budget instead of being filler until summer.

But instead it gets one cours instead of the usual 2 because it's only purpose is to stall for time. They're gonna introduce a wide array of characters, introduce the main antagonist by the... 8th or so episode and attempt to wrap it up in the last 2 episodes because episodes 9 and 10 must now about about the lame ass backstory of said recently introduced antagonist who's actually just another useless idiot (like the main characters of visual novels, except he DOESN'T get the girl, so now he's in a state of NTR rage). Christ, it's so formulaic you might as well add onto say that "it's not lupus."


Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is about a boy named Akuto Sai who is to transfer into Constant Magic Acadamy, a prestigious prepatory school that guarantees that graduates will attain a government position. His dream is to be a Grand Priest (apparently a high government position) to try and better society, but all of that crashes down on him when his aptitude test (a Yatagarasu that predicts the future of students) declares that his future occupation will be Demon King. All hell breaks loose (no pun intended) and the entire school panics as it will be educating a student whose goal in life would be to destroy them. Losing the trust of nearly around him, there are those that still seem to find themselves attached to a now reclusive Akuto. Which leads me to my next point.....


What the hell is up with the english title? "Demon King Daimao"? Really? You're going to repeat the same name except in a different language? How did that get even approved? I understand that saying Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is a bit hard on the english tongue but what the hell happened? I understand that this title was probably included in one of those batch licenses that companies seem to be forced into doing if they actually want to license highly rated productions but at least translate the title or something.

Titles mean a lot. Whether it's books, movies, TV Shows, or animations. It helps give the audience a first impression of what to expect from the show. As stupid as it sounds, people who watch "Saw" are going to be expecting something sort of key element of the story that will involve a Saw. It sounds stupid because of how obvious it is, but WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO EXPECT WITH AN UNINFORMATIVE SHITTY TITLE?

Regardless, if you want to translate the title literally (like an idiot who's studying Japanese) it comes out to something like "The Demon King of the Most Furthest Back". Sorry, I dont' know why I'm so angry while writing this review...

My personal translation would be "The Grand Overlord in the Far Back". In this way, not much is lost in translation. In the show, Akuto's seating is in the seat at the back of the classroom which explains the title. While all Japanese school anime seem to feature fixed seating arrangements, such is less likely the case in American schools however, the multiple implications of the translated title still work. While sitting in the very back row can denote deliquency, it can also seem to imply those who are shy or anti-social. This double meaning works well for the main character and would have the audience expecting something from the show. Speaking of which, although "demon king" is the literal translation of Maou, I've always thought that Overlord worked quite well. It has a strong enough negative connotation that isn't too harsh (such as tyrant). It also makes fun


Considering the over arching story, shows like these tend to be very wide open and normally result in multiple mini arcs that then make up the series. Because of how short this show is, one would expect better/faster pacing and a need for efficiency to get main plot points out quickly but that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, it seems hellbent on accomplishing as little as possible while attempting to introduce the large array of secondary characters. There's even a goddamned "school trip to the beach" episode which more or less guarantees a waste of budget and an entire episode for fanservice.

It's a shame too, because the cast is fairly diverse and all fairly strong alone. The main character for once isn't some loser, or a reluctant genius. He's a developed, level-headed and self-motivated character who isn't prone to random counter yelling during perverse situations and works well as a decent tsukkomi for comedic relief. The backstory and setting for the world isn't too half-assed either. The ultra-religious undertone existent within the government has been done before, but there's less emphasis on the strong religious aspect which works well to hide the cult-like society and Akuto's goals as well as his actual beliefs that are explained later.

There's also the SINGLE moment when Akuto acts sadistic and evil which counters his general personality but considering the length of the series and the actual main focus of the show, this never gets embellished and the deep infusion of technology with magic is also never explained which left me with many questions. However, as the show progresses on, Akuto's acceptance of the situation around him and his more level headed personality countering the hysteria around him is something interesting to watch. It's quick development in a short period of time but it strengthens Akuto as a good main character.


Considering that airing in 720p is almost standard now, not much can be said about the animation quality except that I'm seeing a lot of stills. It's not noticeable because many of us are used to seeing them in animation, but the very first episode is a good judge of how you'd expect the budget to be spread out. The main and secondary characters are very detailed, and their animation is extremely crisp, while most background characters will stay that way and pretend they're stuck in a landscape painting. Effects are done extremely well. While the 3D modeling needs work (as always. There's never been a case where an anime had well implemented 3D modeling except for Panty&Stocking) particle effects, bloom and general compositing is extremely fluid and nicely meshed into the animation. Actual fight scenes and the use of magic are animated quite well although explosions could use a bit more work. If you look closely enough you can see the repeated layers.

Good CG

Bad CG (Seriously, when will animators realize this looks REALLY bad when everythign else doesn't look that spotless?) The track looks great.... but the train.... just... urgh.

The humor is quite well done. Because of the dynamic range of characters, the comedic points of this show have a bit of extra flair, especially with the observational AI Korone. Not only that, the constant stabs at Akuto's actions and assumptions about the uncanny link to evil is amusing to watch. It's a bit of Schadenfreude as you laugh at Akuto's earnest attempts to establish good rapport with his classmates only for it to backfire on him and help him dig his own grave.

I'm not sure what to say about the music. It seems that since Disgaea, any other show involving Maou seem to follow suit in terms of music. Same instruments are used and similar melodies are borrowed. It's not particularly bad but it does mean that the music then becomes easily forgettable. Oh, and the opening theme is misleading. I have yet to see any part of the show get that dramatic or mindblowing....


It's not a heavy recommend from me. If there's a second season released, I would watch it to see if it improved but I simply can't deal with how much lost potential there was in this show. Regardless, this is currently streaming on hulu via Anime Network, and the DVD and Blu-ray are both out. This show IS visually appealing so the blu-ray will make a significant difference in quality over DVD.

Uh...... huh.....

Well.... Disgaea 4 is supposed to be released September 6th, but I've never seen a package take 2 weeks to get across the country.... Soooooo I guess this means I'm getting Disgaea 4 about a week before release..... Nice. I've always wanted an excuse to fall off the face of the earth for a short period of time during summer break.

C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control - Review

First off, let me say "Yes, that is the title of the show." I'm sure you're aware of the tentative grasp of the English language Japanese have, and evidence of such is littered throughout the internet and the country of Japan. So, do I have any idea how to translate that title into something that's understandable? Absolutely not. Nor will I even try. That is simply too much effort and considering I don't have any connections with the industry, I can't even begin to guess at what they were attempting. Funimation's official title is [C] Control - The Money and Soul of Possibility, but even that falls shy of making "perfect" sense. It's just a re-arrangement of where "control" goes and I can see why the title is named as such, but something about it still irks me.

[C] (which is how i'm going to refer to this show assuming wordpress doesn't freak out and assume it's HTML code) is about a college attending economics major named Kimimaro Yoga, who's having financial troubles as he works at a convenience store in attempt to pay the tuition. With a father who disappeared from his life at an early age and a family who can't support his studies, Kimimaro curses the circumstance he's in. It is during one of these days of self-reflection that he meets a man who brings him into the "Financial District," a place where "Entrepreneurs" invest their future (not the financial term, the ambiguous time frame term) and battle with others in an attempt to gain money. However, like in life, even gaining money in the Financial District isn't as easy as it sounds.


If there's anything that should tell you to watch this anime, it's probably that it's one of the few anime in the last couple of years or so that have involved the main character(s) being older than the overused high schoolers. We're finally getting characters that are dealing with their own lives, and trying to find out who they are and what they want in life (high school can get too superficial sometimes).

[C] is an original short 11 episoder meant to be a season filler as well as a testing ground for Tatsunoko Production (I'll explain later on). The budget is fairly solid, story works pretty well and and a as a show overall, it's a good time sink. Nothing award winning but it has a fairly good script, character designs and doesn't get too heavy.



While supposed to look like an average background character, Kimimaro does a pretty good job at looking ordinary yet unique at the same time. The color scheme is probably the saving grace and helps him from blending in too much with the background. His bright sky blue hoodie contrasts pretty well with the lonely, grayed urban backdrop of the normal world and the ultra high-tech appearing, neon flooding Financial District. His primary companion in the Financial District named Mashu is also very distinct, and problematically one of the few humanoid companions of the Entrepreneurs of the Financial District.

I dunno, but for some odd reason, every time I saw Mashu, I was reminded of Nekomusume from Gegege no Kitarou

I say problematically because this creates the "unique identity isolation effect" if that were to ever be an actual term. Because most of the companions are beast-like beings and the limited cast of main characters seem to have humanoid beings (who also have comparable traits) the art itself unintentionally (or purposefully) isolates these characters into being unique and emphasizing the main reason why they're the main characters. It's irritating to watch sometimes I 'm not one for figurative giant scrolling marquees indicating that because this trait is unique, the character is special.

We also need Johnny Depp to reprise his role as Willy Wonka...

The world where this show takes place is developed but not quite complex. There are a lot of aerial shots as well as long pans which seem to indicate that they were trying to show off the "large world" that exists within the show, and there are discussions regarding what's happening in other countries with actual English voice actors speaking proper English in an attempt to emulate foreign companies but it's simply not good enough. Development of characters are still far too shallow with the exception of the leads and a select few secondary/tertiary characters but too many of them are far too easily forgettable, which indicates a large problem especially for a show this short. There's also the discussions of morality, the value of future and ethics which seems to bolster the world a bit, but in actuality, it just creates a small "sphere of influence," if you will, around said section that's drifting along somewhere in the world with no concrete connection, especially since most of the show is spent on Kimimaro being wishy-washy. Hell, even the entity that is Kimimaro's father, who is supposed to have some sort of major influence to how Kimimaro became the way he is along with their connection to the Financial District is blurry. If anything, I'd say that's a big problem.



The production values regarding the animation are pretty well distributed.... I think.... Maybe? As I mentioned earlier, this show seems to have been a testing ground for Tatsunoko Production. What I mean by that is the show elements that take place in the Financial District (Mashu, Masakaki) switch between from being rendered in 3D or 2D. Not only that, it seems that quality assurance is inconsistent. One thing is for certain though, the battles and the rendering of the Financial District is very well done and does show off a high budget, which leads me to believe that the inconsistency with characters moving between 2D and 3D is a result of the production team testing something with the models. What's even more unusual though, is that sometimes it's hard to tell that the character is in 3D because of how well they're rendered along with high quality compositing but other times it's very noticiable as the cel-shaded model sticks out in a 2D environment. Tatsunoko isn't an unknown company (to Japanese at least). They may not be as strong as Kyoto but they have some money making cows that can help them fund production for newer shows. Seeing this kind of work from them only leads me to believe they were rushed and were trying different methods during production. I'm expecting this to be fixed into a more consistent style during DVD/Blu-Ray release, SHAFT style.



For the spring season, [C] wasn't too bad. There were a couple others that I was following simultaneously and despite all its issues [C] held up fairly well. I ended up dropping, or not even watching, a handful of shows during the spring season for different reasons but I decided to stick with this one. The development and relations between the main characters of the show were fairly well developed but there was always a feeling that something was missing, and it's a lack of depth with many other characters that have had repeat appearances. Granted it's 12 episodes and thus it's a given that it's going to be missing some content, and depth but this is too much. It's a matter where they're supposed to "show not tell" but they're keeping it too straightforward and simple at times which is keeping this show from being better. The music is too forgettable, while the OP and ED themes fit and showed off the high quality that Tatsunoko is capable of, the actual soundtrack was lackluster. The pacing I would say was pretty good overall, so if this show had gone to 15 episodes or so, it may have helped fix all the problems I mentioned (excluding the animation issues)



I watched this show through Funimation's simulcast stream. If I recall correctly, Anime News Network seems to be in some sort of partnership with Hulu. You should be able to watch the episodes there until DVD/Blu-ray media is released.

www.sketchpad.tv - Live streaming site for artists by artists

First off. I'd like to shift everyone's attention over to sketchpad.tv. ATK decided to go out on a limb and try something new: utilize live streaming and pool viewers together. This way, artists can get more attention and more exposure. We're still looking for artists to stream in certain timeblocks for now we're just hoping that we can garner enough attention.



Secondly. I've decided to start writing for a site called Moar Powah! It's like an "everything" blog but it's made by a college friend of mine. Hopefully, if he starts pushing me with deadlines then I'll be more willing to write stuff on both there and here.

Sekirei & Sekirei ~Pure Engagement~ - Review

Minato Sahashi has failed his college entrance exams twice and is basically branded a loser. He meets a girl named Musubi who's under attack. Giving her shelter and time, she then tells him that she is a being known as a Sekirei and that he is an Ashikabi, one of a arbitary number of masters who have the ability to contract with some of the 108 Sekirei in existence. Forced into a secret "Sekirei Project" that involves him, Musubi and the city, Minato does what he can to get by.

I know..... It's hard to read. There are so many things that flash warning signs: loser protagonist, random girl falling on him, secret projects, 108 people unrelated to the chinese novel.... In fact. It's a spoiler but to be expected, let me add harem in there as well...


Simply put, if you were to mash Mai-hime and Ikkitousen together, you'd get Sekirei. Without giving too much away, Sekirei are these super human beings who have specific abilities such as controlling fire or being a skilled martial artist. Sekirei also seem to need to be "winged" to fight properly. To "wing" Sekirei, the most general way is to kiss them in which they will then stabilize and follow their Ashikabi, though apparently contact between the mucus membranes also counts.


...


...


YES, the anime is massive fanservice.
By the way. I'd like to mention that it's one of the male sekirei mentions that they could go "further" than just kissing, even if he is a bishounen.

I've been trying to figure out a way to deal with this but I'll break it down in the usual manner.

First off, the art style itself isn't bad. Generally the eyes are very round and it's really to each their own. Character designs for the protagonist and main support characters are fairly solid, they all fall into a generic archetype which is kinda annoying.

Moving onto the characters themselves, the protagonist basically forms a harem of cookie cutter girls who have unique abilities which is basically the only thing that's keeping them from being mistaken with another person, and the creator can't seem to decide on whether he wanted a 108 harem fest or if he wanted to actually create 108 distinct "heroes" as you see a handful of male Sekirei, two of which are significant characters though it's still about a 11:1 female-male ratio.

And as usual, we've got a male protagonist, with a self-esteem issue, is a pushover, next to useless, somehow wins the heart of a handful of Sekirei, and would be a "good" character if he only pushed himself.....right. This is probably the biggest turn off for anything for me. I'm so absolutely sick of useless protagonists who have no strengths except for being some sort of arbitrary moral support when he "decides to do something." Christ, even having him attend college would improve my view, but no. He's gotta fail TWICE and be a loser rounin cause "that's when you pick yourself up!" He's also a terrible reluctant protagonist (Saito from Zero no Tsukaima does a better job) and the voice actor is pretty bad.


Setting up the usual harem scheme, this is also supposed to mean massive fan service, and to be honest, I'm on the fence here about this. Having been released a couple years before the "moeblob" and the Seikon no Qwaser/Queens Blade censor pushing era (July 2008 and July 2010 for the first and second seasons respectively) Sekirei was not subject to the stupid pink, airy background with the character yelling "iiiiyaaaaaa" the annoying time wasting scenes we see today. I think I've only seen maybe one or two of these ridiculous glorified scenes that are purely for fanservice only.

That isn't to say there aren't any breasts. There's lots of breasts, so many of the characters are so endowed you'd think there was some sort of disease going going around, and likewise there are also many bathing scenes and instances where breasts are exposed, and while that may seem to be the focus for some people, it feels like one of those cases where the animation production is simply just going along with following the manga and its respective scenes. There's not much glorification on the fact that there's exposed skin (except in the first few episodes) and it almost becomes like an everyday thing where even major plot points are discussed in the nude. There's no frame cut, dynamic angle changes, or change in music, and for that I'm grateful because in some sense, it's actually tasteful, or used as humor. There's one scene where the main characters are discussing something harem related and all you see filling up the frame from different angles are the breasts of the characters talking.

The other type of fanservice is the ikkitousen style of exploding clothes during fight scenes. I don't think it ever gets as bad as ikkitousen where I recall in of the OVAs one of the characters just straight up yells that there aren't enough exposed breasts in the scene but it's on that kind of level.


Moving on, the production values for Sekirei is fairly solid. You do see the occasional still shot, panning corner cutting but most of the fight scenes are crisp and generally don't repeat clips. But it's obvious that they also have a limited budget and know how to evenly distribute it (unlike SHAFT...) but it does also result in some unintentionally hilarious scenes such as this:

I... um....uh.... I think the answer is C? I mean I think I see something regarding phenotypes but I'm not too sure what a ""oquckdame" is... or the rest of the page for that matter.... You know... maybe Minato really isn't that stupid.

Also with 108 characters, it gives the creator some freedom in the different kinds of battle characters she can create. It's good animation overall and CG rendering was pretty well done. Kyoto animation probably holds the title for best 3D rendering followed by J.C. staff but Seven Arcs is a very capable and competent production team, even if they haven't been the main team for many series.


The story and some of the execution of the plot needs work. Lots of work actually. There are questions that I had about plot points early on that were never addressed, such as "What happens when a Sekirei shuts down?" There are apparently rules that govern fights between Sekirei but it's never explained as of yet about the result. It seems akin to death as that's how the characters in the show are reacting but then there are hints that they can come back or something.... It's sketchy. There's also the issue where in the second season, there's a constant recurrence (almost to where it becomes an inadvertent gag) of the "bad timing" device. The one I'm referring to is where there are two characters who are looking for each other but have bad luck and never do meet resulting said characters being at the same place at the same time but looking in opposite directions or alternating their arrivals at a same place. In general, this isn't a bad device UNLESS THEY NEVER MEET. In that case, it's simply downright irritating and a waste of time. One can only have so much tolerance before it gets annoying, and it occurs throughout an entire season. Overall, however, the main plot is hammered in fairly well (I think...) but it's specifics that get somewhat problematic.

The biggest part about Sekirei that keeps it from being the absolute trash it's over arching plot is supposed to make it out to be are the inter-character relations. In addition to supposedly being all different Sekirei seem to also have been "born" in chronological order starting from number 01 all the way to 108, and within the numbers there are elite groups and members who work under different organizations and are in different political areas of the city the show takes place in. In addition, there's a strong emphasis on "fated" destinies and the belief that Sekirei actually choose their master based upon their reactions to certain people, and of course there are Ashikabi who initiate the "winging" through brute force resulting in a large range and mix of characters that can exist in the world. Putting the main protagonist's harem aside, the show gets fairly deep into tertiary characters, but unfortunately, not deep enough. It falls just short of a complex and well crafted world.


Before I wrap this up, one final thing that amused me (I couldn't really find a place to put this anywhere else) was Kusano's character. She's the 108th Sekirei and the youngest in the entire story I believe. She's supposed to be about 5-8 years old and is one of the few incarnations of the old school "moe" device. For those of you who are unaware. There are actually two uses for "moe." The old school/generation version was used to describe characters (mainly girls) who evoked a platonic love from the viewers for the character. Basically the main difference from the old "moe" and the lolita complex was that moe was non sexual. Nowadays, it's used fairly plainly to mean something that's cute but closer to sexual emotions. Anyway, Kusano is a pretty plain and generic character standalone, but the execution by the creator along with the voice actor made this show a bit more amusing with the occasional jealous fits that Kusano has.



Sekirei is a show that needs work. It's good but not great. It's bad, but not terrible. Depending on your point of view, I would generally say that it ranges at either below average or above average but not the middle itself. It isn't a bad time sink and the physical quality of the show is pretty good. Assuming the manga still runs, Sekirei will probably go for a third season as well.