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.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Read the rest of this entry »

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