A LOT of animated works had the pretention to deal with war, promising to deliver THE TRUTH about what war is, how people feels about it and should. However, too few of them actually succeed. The biggest offenders, under the “anti-war” clothing, actually does better at glorifying it. By choosing the pilot as archetype, it glamorize it.

As I have said, too few animated works managed to give people a taste of what war is and does, and how it affect people. Grave of the Fireflies is one of them. Waltz with Bashir is another of them. “Them” being the few.

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Yeah, we know what’s happening with Haruhi. However, what’s making me laugh is when some fans saying inanities like “At least, back in the day, when Gainax did it with Evangelion, IT WAS AWESOME.”
Then I look at the age range of those who said that: late 10s (16 to 19) to early 20s, I can only cringe and smirk. Eva aired first in late 1995 and ended in 1996. Do your math according to their age range. Myself, I am 29. Do your math again. So what can I say about “Back in the day, when Gainax did it with Evangelion, IT WAS AWESOME.”? Did all japanese thought it was awesome?

Wrong. In regard of the reaction of a part of the viewer pool and the sponsors, NOT so quite.

Gainax did not get an endless stream of praise mails, the reactions were as polarized. Those were not as many as you would believe or like to think. I am old enough, getting closer to my 30s. I don’t exactly have a first hand experience of Eva, not living in Japan and all. However, I got reports, I read articles and interviews of Anno and some of the Gainax staff who were involved. I talked with the few japanese students who were in Paris and experienced it first hand.

And let’s be blunt, Gainax and Anno also got hate mails. And it had gone so far that Anno got death threats for the direction that Evangelion have taken. Moreover, parts of the otaku crowd grew discomfortable (they felt that Shinji and the cast were mirrors cast before their eyes) and the anime slowly alienated more and more sponsors who would not bring their money on the table after seeing where this is going (not to mention that the Gainax staff suffered from schedule issues). Back in the day, remember that Eva was first a commission from a famous toy manufacturer who wanted a series about young teens fighting in giant robots against an unknown enemy.

Thus, with a very thin budget, Gainax gave us the famous two final episodes. And RAGE ensued. A RAGE that culminated with even more hate mails and death threats. Pressured, Gainax and Anno released the two movies, infamous for their sheer nihilism and the Shinji fap to Asuka, or Shinji choking Asuka scenes. Contrasting with the more heartwarming, although abstract, final episode of the TV series. Then Anno left Eva behind him. Coming back on it only about ten years later, when the flames died out (well, not really).

I told you this story because I could not really stay silent when zealotous Haruhi and Eva fans said that ‘At least, back in the day, Gainax was awesome and got praised for that.”

Not entirely true but HEY PINK-TINTED NOSTALGIA GOGGLES ARE AWESOME, RIGHT?

Did KyoAni get hate mails for making Endless Eight as it is? Surely. Is it as bad as Gainax back in the day? I don’t think so.

However, I think that KyoAni need to get out of what I call Studio Hubris as fast as possible. A stage that some studio had gone through in the past. I really think that firing Yutaka Yamamoto have done more damage to KyoAni than fans would like to think.

Meanwhile, I resume playing Umineko no Naku Koro Ni AND Eve Online, yes I finally left RO ;)

EDIT:

Therefore, I’ll add that you guys need to be careful when you state things like “Back in the day…”

This can be wrong. As examples, Carpenter’s “The Thing” and “Big Trouble in Little China” FLOPPED back in the day, it’s the VHS market and the word-to-mouth from fans of the movie that vindicated the films. Another example, “The Good the Bad & The Ugly” got shot down by the critics of its time period, because of their scorn for the spaghetti western genre, it’s only way latter that they recognized that the movie was, well, awesome.

You killed my will to play the game.

On the bright side, the bullshit “Vit LK with no AGI hitting 190 aspd” is gone. But at what cost?

Two-Handed Quicken + Berserk Pot

No Buff.

Is it some kind of fucking joke? My pre-renewal Knight hit 183 ASPD with 80 AGI and 2HQ, 80 AGI pre-renewal would be something like 100-110 in Renewal.

We get -15 ASPD penalty for wielding a shield, that is the heaviest penalty of all class. We are talking about a class designed, from afar, after knights in real world. In other words, professional and trained soldiers. To add to the injury, its specialization, two-handed swords, get mediocre to average ASPD. We are talking again about a character class supposed to be WARRIORS, not your pencil-armed scholar. I am really starting to believe that someone, in the Gravity staff, hates the Knight class with a burning passion.

To give you an idea, Guilltone Cross class (the assassin evolution) can hit 180 with as much AGI as the RK in the screenshots AND less buffs than a Rune Knight.

As a AGI Knight player, I am MORE than angry here. I am even more angry when others serves me the LOL FRENZY argument. It’s fucking bullshit, no LK/RK in his right mind would activate Frenzy unless he knows he is going to die and that he needs an extra boost before the death. Moreover, Frenzy get OWNED by Dispell. So, here you go FRENZY and suddenly LOL you are down to 0SP and 1HP.

Then I read “lol get a ASPD song Minstrel”. Are you fucking kidding me? Have you seen the current party mentality of RO? Even with Renewal, it have not changed that much.

Just remember when the 3rd classes were announced:

“Looks like a fast attacking type.”

BOLDED AND UNDERSCORED.

What do we have now? Our class, two-handed swords specialists, HAVE TO DISARM THEMSELVES AND PUNCH THE FOES TO HOPE TO REACH 190 ASPD! What kind of shit is that? Seriously, fuck, I want to be able to hit 180ish ASPD with at least 90-100 base AGI with 2hQ and berserk potion SOLO. Hitting 190 with frenzy only serve to ice the cake. Leave the 190-193 ASPD to the extreme ASPD Full AGI High Dex RKs!

What we knight players get now is the equivalent of being bitchslapped while we are all chained, gagged and shackled.

Fuck that.

Space: Above and Beyond, Jericho, Journeyman and now Sarah Connor Chronicles (‘Rome’ was originally meant to last five seasons and cover the rise of the Christ, guess what happened). American writers had shown an ability to write compelling stories, settings and characters. However, executives are idiots, favoring immediate audience over leaving a show a chance to find its audience leading to its cancellation. It makes me wonder if the market should not change its model and leave writers and directors to do their things as they envisioned it. I guess it will never happen unless something as big as a major crisis force them to change.

Plants vs Zombies is one of the most addicting tower defense game ever.

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This an observation from what I read in animeblogs and anime forums, especially when the more popular shows of the season are talked about.

Case in point: K-On

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Freedom on french internet is NOT dead yet.
In an unexpected turn of fortune, the law had been censored after the Constitutional Council judged that the punishment part of the HADOPI law was against the constitution.
French web users are waiting for Albanel to resign as she had promised. After all, a secretary of Culture who said that Open Office have a firewall have NO place in the governement and clearly is not competent to write laws about internet.

Source

He left us.

I remembered him as the lead of the TV series “Kung Fu”, as Justin, that dick, in the TV epic “North and South” starring Patrick Swayze, and as Bill from “Kill Bill”.

Now, that final duel in Kill Bill vol.2 have a… weird flavor once you know that he is no more.

Thirty years, over one hundred tomes, more than enough to see characters getting old and married, to see kingdoms rise and fall. But a question was never answered: Is Guin’s leopard head a mask or a natural part of himself?

This question will never be answered. Kaoru Kurimoto left us on last evening, May 26th 2009, after a struggle against pancreatic cancer. Guin, Linda, Remus and Ishtvan are now orphans; and the saga will never be concluded. She have now joined Gygax, Jordan, Tolkien and other big names of the genre.

For those who still follow the animated adaptation, I still do, enjoy it.

Source

Better scans should come out soon, along with translations. I mean, Force’s chapter 0 got one after all.

Forgive the puny scans, those were taken from a site you should know. As I have predicted, Vivid focus on Vivio AND the Mahou Shoujo part of the franchise. However, the magitech that gives Nanoha its flavor and its lore are still here.

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