Protips. The decade end the December 31st 2010, NOT 2009.

I’ll not talk a lot about anime. Other than the fact that KyoAni finally fucked up, it had to happen anyways. Firstly with Munto, then with Endless Eight. K-on! was good but not great, not to the point to get a DVD purchase from me.
Finally 2009 confirmed that we can get someone good off Type-Moon’s material with the new Kara no Kyoukai movies. However, I am worried about the Unlimited Blade Works movie.

Leaving anime aside, 2009 was a terrible year, for a lot of people in my circle of friends and what’s not. The crisis indeed reminded us that nothing can’t be taken for granted. France, in the social and economic side, have taken a downhill ride. Copenhagen was a fiasco and Michael Jackson died.

I am fairly certain that it also gave us some good, but seeing Twilight reigning in the box office, I am really worried.

Happy New Years everyone, let’s hope for a brighter future. (and perhaps I’ll be more active than I was this year)

Just very unmotivated to talk about anime. Maybe the offer of the winter will motivate me. Moreover, my time was burnt playing EVE Online, trying to beat Touhou UFO and reading Dungeons & Dragons 4.

One of the Best Ever.

On the topic of anime, this season lacks a lot of something. Fall usually bring something good. While Summer was usually the weakest in term of offer. Summer 09 had Bakemonogatari, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Umineko. Fall? Not so much. With the exception of Darker than Black, IF you liked the first.

More than TVTropes, Badass of the Week is my favorite time sinker when it comes to… waste my time reading.

Just to make sure you are not mistaken. The fictional badasses featured in this site are few and very deeply rooted in pop culture (Godzilla, Indiana Jones, Darth Vader Kefka…), and none of them are from anime. I’d like to think that Ben would hate it if the entirety of /a/ and /m/ email him about Sasuke or Kamina being end-all be-all parangons of badassitude. Myself, I’d be very annoyed if that happened. SaiGAR was ugly enough, BoTW need not to be spoiled with that.

What make Badass of the Week a badass read are the hilarious descriptions of the featured weekly badass.
Here a few samples

On the Viking of Stanford Bridge

:

Standing astride the bridge was one man. A giant Norse berserker silently surveyed the Saxon army, firmly clutching a massive double-bladed Greataxe in his weathered, calloused hands. A lone Viking hero granted permission by his King to die honorably in combat, tasked with defending the narrow bridge and buying time for his brethren to reorganize. His face was concealed by an imposing horned helm – metal plates reinforcing a mask constructed from the bleached bone remains of a fearsome animal skull, his wild eyes peering through the darkness like searing orbs of white-hot flame. A living demon, sent forth from the darkest recesses of Hell itself to exact brutal vengeance on any mortal brave or foolish enough to cross him, defying anyone with more balls than sense to test his wrath.

The full might of the Anglo-Saxon army charged the bridge, determined to extricate this colossal beast from his post through the sheer weight of their numbers, but the narrow walkway above the raging waters of the River Derwent was only wide enough for four men to stand abreast, and its guardian was unwavering in his resolve. The first rank of fighting men crashed full-speed into the Norseman like a school bus full of insolent teenagers being hurled face-first into a wall of unflinching spikes.

About Simo Häyhä

In the winter of 1939, the Soviet Union was dicks. Russian Premier Josef Stalin thought it would be really fucking hilarious if he all of a sudden sent like two million of his dudes over to nearby Finland to start kicking everyone’s asses and seizing whatever land he could get his borsch-covered hands on, while simultaneously kicking puppies and shouting profanities at inanimate objects in a vodka-and-caviar induced roid rage. While this may have been a laugh riot for Stalin and his numbnuts cronies, the Finnish people obviously were a little unhappy with the prospect of having all their cross-country skis, Winter Olympics gold medals and salmon fishing boats captured by a rampaging horde of godless commie bastards, so they decided to open an extra-large can of whoop-ass and give the Russkies the ballsack kicking they were apparently looking for.

Now when you think of Finland, the phrase “military powerhouse” isn’t exactly the first thing that pops into your head. Likewise, when you looked at Simo Häyhä, a slight-framed Finnish farmer who didn’t stand an inch over five feet tall, you also probably didn’t think “total fucking unstoppable badass”.

Let’s just say, you have over five years of weekly articles, enough to sink your time if you just caught the wagon. And it is well worth it.

Why do I write about it?

Well, the webmaster just released a book. I am considering whether I should buy it. Perhaps as a christmas gift? ;3

I must say that it is a horrible decade for the children of the 1970s-1980s.

The early portion of the 2000s decade saw Charles Bronson and Barry White leaving us. The later one had the Pope John Paul II, Arafat, Gary Gygax, Luciano Pavarotti (guys like me remember his contribution to Bono’s “Miss Sarajevo“, personally my favorite song of the 1990s), Michael Jackson and some more I forgot but all of them left their marks, small or big, in the pop culture of the two mentioned 20th century decades.

Now, it is the turn of Patrick Swayze who left us after a long battle against cancer at age 57. He is most famous for his roles in Ghost and Dirty Dancing. Nerds and B-movies fans will also remember one of his earlier role in Red Dawn. Tearjerking movie fans will also remember City of Joy. This is enough for me to state that he was one of the icons of the 1980s. Now he is gone, watching Ghost will not bear the same feelings anymore.

RIP Patrick.

I see that my decision to get the D&D4 manuals was the right one:

As far as D&D worlds are concerned, I found Forgotten Realms horribly “generic”, while I can not deny that video games in this world like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights are good.

However, Planescape and Dark Sun did it to me.

One had to play Planescape Torment to start grasping how rich the Planescape universe was.
I was really sad when I knew that Dark Sun was not in 3.5. Dark Sun is as one could say a post-apocalypse survival fantasy, lovingly brought to life in the books by Brom.

This is an universe that needs a good DM to make the players feel the harshness of the climate and Athas’ people. Slavers, gladiators, dictator-like Sorcerer Kings, raiding elves and cannibal halfling, Dark Sun brilliantly takes fantasy tropes and run them through the blender of the post-apocalyptic and survival genre. Mad Max + Dune + Conan the Barbarian could describe the atmosphere of Dark Sun.

This is why I love Dark Sun and is more than happy to see it coming back with D&D4.

Before 9/11/2001, I was hoping for something to happen on the 12/31/1999, something interesting. Of course, nothing happened.

Forward to 9/11/2001. I went through two months of night shift work in the security, something like 15 hours a day for five days by night. It was very difficult and it messed up my sleep schedule for the years to come. Four days earlier, my boss told me that I had to grab my paycheck from his office, in a lost city in the north of Paris, something like Saint-Leu La Foret.

This day, I left my home to run to the train station at 1:00PM. Then I found that it was indeed in the middle of NOWHERE! Saint-Leu La Foret was a craphole lost somewhere in the nostril of France, my boss’ desk was very far, somewhere in the industrial distrinct of Saint-Leu, where there was no freaking bus. Cue a long walk of two hours to reach the office, knowing that I had left my home two hours ago. Then I reached the desk and nobody was here. I called my boss on his mobile phone from a phone booth that was stuck in the middle of that industrial district for whatever reason. I had to wait one more hour before he came back to his office.

Finally, he was here and gave me my pay. It was not a check, instead it was 7000 francs, in money paper. Something I should better hide quick in my bag.

Cue another TWO HOURS walk back to the train station, THIRTY MINUTES waiting for the train to come. Then I decided to turn on my walkman, the old school one with tape and radio tuner. I tuned to my favorite station to enjoy some good old rock music. Then I heard the journalist talking about something about NYC. I did think it was some kind of prank, something they usually do.

The train came and on my way back to Paris, I gazed over the french landscape from the window of the train, while listening a tape where I recorded some X Japan. Back in the station that would bring me back home, I listened the radio again, there was still some of these rather worrying news. To myself, I thought, “It must be something really serious.”, the quality of reception of the radio was crappy, so it was kinda jammed.

Back in my hometown, I walked, having run after the bus way too late. Then I finally reached my home, my youngest brother and youngest sister rushed up to me and told me, “Brother! Brother! There were two planes that crashed over NYC!”

Then I stared at the black & white old computer monitor that served us as TV after our old TV died on us one year earlier.

This was how serious the events reported by my radio were.

A lot of people from 9 to 70+ (on 2001) remembers what they did on the 9/11/2001.

This is what I did on that day.

I am not dead. I was just away, taking a little break from anime watching and blogging because the bile of these last months and weeks (especially regarding a series without pretention classified as the antechrist and the herald of cynicism) have become unbearable, unbreathable and unreadable.

That aside, I was dog sitting, if we call this baby sitting for dogs. It was chilling, almost Kitanoesque. It was two great weeks on my own where I did some interesting discoveries, like this spanish black comedy called “El Crimen Ferpecto”, found an addiction in Gordon Ramsay’s shows and decided to go ahead and start purchasing Dungeons & Dragons 4 books, about time.

I have the first and second Players Handbook, and the first Monster Manual. All I lack now is the Dungeon Master Guide, I have ordered it online two days ago, I hope the french postal service don’t fail me.

I had lots of fun with Touhou 12.3 and Touhou 12, where I found my favorite stage 6 boss: Byakuren <3

While the characters from touhou games episodes 8 to 11 had to slowly grow on me, my liking for Byakuren was immediate. Gothic lolita, long hair, “onee-san” aura and some Yuria + Jesus vibes were enough to hit me. Nue is a close second because of her zettai ryouiki. Touhou 12 itself was a harder game than I expected from the demo.

Perhaps this period away will set my enthusiasm for the hobby ablaze again, I hope so.

PS: I added a new blog on my Nerd’s Corners, one dedicated to BAD movies, you should check this out.

PPS:

Things that happened the 09/09:

09 AD: Arminius led an aliiance of Germanic tribes that annhiliate three Roman legions in the forest of Teutoburg.

1999 AD: Sega Dreamcast is released in North America.

2001 AD: Ahmad Shah Massoud is assasinated.

I am trying to put what I feel about Endless Eight in simple words. However, I can’t. Just saying it is shit is not enough. To me, it is the same effect as watching Roland Garros tennis tournament where I bet on how long before all french players get kicked out of the tournament, before we get to the more interesting matches.

I would try to justify with, “Well, KyoAni always had pacing problems, just as Makoto arc showed.” However, the pacing issue have nothing to do about it. Laziness? Not really. I mean, while they reanimate the same scenes and revoice the same dialogues, lights, frames and general cinematography are different. With varying degrees of quality.

Whoever thought that it was a good idea to stretch of 30ish pages short story up to… eight episodes until now was very wrong. That guy deserves to be have all kind of unspeakable things done to him. It’s an idea on the level of “let’s bungee jump off the Effeil Tower! Without the bungee cord!”, or “Let’s wear the same board as Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3 in the middle of a ghetto!” You think it is a good idea because it requires sheer balls of titanium, until reality comes to hit you in the face, HARD. However, it appears that the ones behind that idea had NOT realized it, or just did the ostriche trick: stick one’s head in a hole to not confront the reality. There is a difference between productive audacity and vain audacity. Guess on which side I think Endless Eight is sitting.

As for the publicity side of the thing, I think it is on the same level as New Coke in the 1980s or the arrogant advertisement french campain for the Nintendo 64 in the mid 1990s. It promises you it is going to be a great thing, something like reinvented steel, then you see it is not the case.

It is unnecessary. What is sad about it is that I LOVED Endless Eight in its printed form. And they managed to make Sighs, my least favorite of the series, all the more desirable! And people stated that K-on! is the most cynical work by KyoAni as hard cold fact! Personally, I do see the ugly head of mercantile cynicism way more in Endless Eight.

The bottom line, screw Endless Eight, wake me up when it is over. I’ll be somewhere, doing pew pew in Eve Online.

It’s Touhou 12.3. Demo or what’s not should be out by august 15th. Three characters, two new and one returner will be added. Now my main concern is whatever they fix the wrongs of Hisouten or not.