Archive for December, 2005
December 24, 2005 – 8:33 pm
Everyone’s talking about this. It’s originally a game made by TYPE MOON, a doujin group who made it massively big with what many are saying is one of the most magnificently crafted games of its genre, Tsukihime.
I’m not into visual storybook games, they take time to play and reading takes a ton of concentration. You also have to identify with the main character, who, as far as most visual storybooks go, solves the story and gets the girl (well, one of ‘em anyway). Anyway I’m too lazy… still haven’t gotten far with Akai Ito.
Fate/stay night is getting made into an anime, and it’s highly anticipated within the “in the know” anime circles. Honestly I wouldn’t have had a clue if I wasn’t trawling blogs for Mai Otome analyses. What I’ve seen doesn’t terribly excite me, so I guess the actual game plot and execution must be subliminary.
What I do like, however, is Tohsaka Rin, one of the secondary characters. Damn, this girl is hot! Must be the long black hair and bad ass attitude. I played the demo and she was the main character in that. If the anime doesn’t satisfy my fix for 2006, I may have to start doing games.
Posted in ANIME, Fate/stay night | 2 Comments »
December 18, 2005 – 8:04 pm
Character roundup on Mai Otome! (up to ep 11)
First of all, it’s great to see all the old faces back. The cast is growing and growing by the episode, and while some – like John Smith – are pretty much the same, others – like Midori and Akira – are very different! Mai Otome, as an anime in and of itself, isn’t terribly appealing to me. I don’t much care for the plot nor for Arika as the lead (although she definitely wins over Mai… maybe). But, as a full-budget AU fan-anime, woo boy does it rock!
Anyway, the reason I’m writing this up is because, for some reason, in the preview of ep 12, Akira rocks! Midori’s kinda interesting as a whack Sentai ninja leader (so what’s the connection with Youko, eh? smirk, nudge), Shizuru kicks ass when she fights but is boring in her interaction with Natsuki, except for that teeny wheeny really hentai scene, Nao is awesome as the ultra competent bad girl. Wow, who woulda thunk…
Posted in ANIME, Mai-Otome | No Comments »
December 11, 2005 – 9:25 pm
Remember I have a prechant for long-haired girls with swords who are really really competent? Caving into boredom, I checked out Shagaku no Shana, a new series this season which looked as if it would have the appropriate character.
After ep1, my mind is reeling. Okay, yes there’s the girl with really long dark hair, a really long katana, whoopass attitude from hell. There’s only one problem. She has massive eyes, and she looks frickin’ 10 years old. With breasts.
Actually, all the female characters look like kids. The male fare slightly better, but only just. They are all supposed to be in high school I think, which puts them at 15 or 16. It’s wrong. All that eye candy and half hidden panty shots and half nekkid posing girls in the opening and closing, its all wrong!! God, help me. You can’t go around drawing little girls as sex objects and pass it off as saying they’re in high school. Moe has gone out of hand.
You know what’s really scary? The generation of otaku grown up on this crap, and Mai Otome, and whatever else… how twisted would that be??!
Then again, I grew up on Sailor Moon. Hmm. Guess we’re all messed up.
Posted in ANIME | No Comments »
December 5, 2005 – 4:40 pm
I got hooked on the ending theme “lithium flower” for GitS SAC, so I ran out and got the 1st soundtrack from Akiba (love my bike…). After running that on repeat for most of Saturday night, I’m now totally utterly hooked on the first track “run rabbit junk”. My god, this is such a freakin’ awesome track, I’m so totally pumped.
Make it hard to concentrate on work :D
Although Kanno Youko is the god(dess) of the anime soundtrack world, I find my taste for her stuff varies tremendously. I love certain tracks on Esca, and now SAC, but I’m pretty lukewarm on her other stuff. Kajiura Yuki hits me better, although you could argue that her stuff all tends to sound the same. But, it’s the sound I like, so it’s not an issue for me. Goes to show that subjectivity plays a big role in evaluation. Is variety necessarily good?
Posted in MUSIC (Anime&Game) | No Comments »
December 4, 2005 – 11:52 am
The anime season has been particularly dry for me, even considering Mai Otome which is cute and fun but not really stuff I get into as a series. I prefer my anime a bit more serious, dark and mysterious and cool. That’s just not happening. Speed Grapher got mired in mediocre execution after a promising start.
When the new stuff doesn’t quite cut it, it’s time to poke through the old. I have to admit, overlooking GitS SAC was a rather massive failure on my part as an anime fan. It’s one of the most highly regarded series in the last couple years, production values and storywise. I guess I didn’t really take it seriously when I was in Ann Arbor last year, because there were no subs at the time. And I knew too well that even for my level of Japanese, Shirow is simply beyond my grasp. Add in the fact that I didn’t consider the movies that good (too much philosophical mumbo jumbo as opposed to say Patlabor), and so I just let it sit and forgot about the whole deal.
Now, faced with the risk of brain decay, I finally decided to correct this. 5 days for the torrent, and I was happily in possession of the first series.
I’ve seen the first 7 eps, and it’s definitely living up to its reputation. No, it surpasses my expectations completely. The art and animation is excellent for a TV series, even given Production IG’s pedigree. The direction is brilliant at times. Some of the stand-alone stories may not be all that original or deep, but the overall quality is beyond what you might expect of any long-running series or movie, much less anime.
Most of the credit goes to the background setting. The world of GitS SAC is fascinatingly cyber, so alien and half fantasy, yet so very plausible because of the way the characters have been portrayed. They are all larger than life, badasses who are the best of the bunch, recruited from the military mostly, I think, although all their interactions hint that they walk the other side of the law with little guilt. Cyber hacking and roughing up people to make them talk, all in a day’s work. And the tools they use could be exactly the way the lone sheriff looked after his six-shooter and horse. No fuss, no special awe about the melding of digital and human.
Everyone in SAC treats ghost hacking and cyber inplants as just another fact of life, the way we got on using our computers to buy things online, despite the possibility of identity theft, hacked credit cards, paper trails on our activities… The world of SAC is our world, just a little more techy. It makes for a compelling draw, it becomes so easy to immerse yourself into Shirow’s creation.
Because for all its connotations about the nature of personality as a tangible, changeable, hackable “thing”, for some reason life is still fine and normal. It’s not that different, not really bleak or full of despair. This sets it apart from other superbly grim cyberpunk stories like Blade Runner, The Matrix, take your pick, where you don’t really want to live there, and you really don’t want to imagine humanity falling there either.
Next: The best part about SAC – The Major and the end credits
Posted in ANIME | No Comments »
December 3, 2005 – 10:55 am
Slow food is something people came up with in protest of fast food, basically says that you should eat real food that has been prepared with care, and savour it bite by bite instead of gulping it down from a wrapper while typing on the keyboard or rushing down the street.
I need a slow day, a day when I wake up in a nice room, and I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything according to a schedule, when I can just wing it and look forward to a slow food lunch and then do some slow shopping and strolling. My usual day comprises of waking up, brushing teeth, headed to work where I work almost non-stop, hardly breaking for food, until real late, and I go home and finally unwind by websurfing fanfics, reading the Economist, or manga, for an hour or so and then sleep. And repeat. The day is so packed with Crap To Be Done that, even bone-tired and sleep-deprived, I need to veg my brain for like an hour before sleeping. Sucks.
Today feels like a slow day. I’m supposed to be in for meetings, but I’m feeling pretty wtf about the whole deal (I think it started when I had two drinks and was instantly hammered, last night). Waking up in a nice dark hotel room with nothing to do but wait for an old friend to wake up so we can go snag lunch and dip in a spa, makes it even more surreal. I wonder if Europeans live this way. Definitely not the Americans, who reported hit 75 as their new average work week. Insane.
Slow life is too slow for me. It stresses me that I can’t get everything I want to do done, but I wouldn’t trade this life in for one of a tai-tai who sits around gossiping and drifting from slow food lunch to slow food lunch. Of course, what I really want is the option to switch been the two at will :D So, slow day, here I come.
Posted in FLAVOUR OF THE MONTH | No Comments »
