Meandering Mountain Paths...

...Crossing each other as they wind down to the town below.

Horror #1

I totally cannot make shit like this up:

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Show Channel StartDate EndDate OnDemandSection / SubSection / SubSubSection

Life of Man-Faye Anime Selects 09/07/06 02/12/07 The Cutting Edge / Anime Selects / Man Faye

Knowing Man-Faye Anime Selects 09/07/06 02/12/07 The Cutting Edge / Anime Selects / Man Faye

Q&A Man-Faye Anime Selects 09/07/06 02/12/07 The Cutting Edge / Anime Selects / Man Faye
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That's right, not only does Anime Selects have not 1, but 3 shows dedicated to this atrocity of cosplay, but it's got it's own Subsection dedicated to it. Running until the middle of next February...

Assorted Miscellany

So, Sam and Fuzzy actually has the titular characters again, for those who've complained that post-guess Sam Logan revamped the storyline I present Exhibit A and then the core of what some might call misdirection Exhibit B.

And really that's all I had to say, or else risk repeating the Webcomic block of death from a few posts ago (Wall of Text is bad), but speaking of misdirection, looks like Lucky Number Slevin came out on DVD back on an early "teenth" of September (I looked it up once, I think it was 12 or 13 (Anyone pointing out the fact that 12 is not a "teenth" has been beaten to the punch by this line) but I don't recall precisely), I checked Comcast's OnDemand schedule to see if it was slated anytime soon, which is what preciptated my discovery of Horror #1.

Actually watched Jinki 1 over the weekend as accompanyment to Saturday Breakfast (Mmm, doughnuts). I think it was an untouched OP/ED on the basis that I don't think it has the OP/ED in the first ep, though it does play the ED when there could have been an ED, which it did, until ep 2 when it becomes a Panzinger-Z parody (or you know, however that show is spell, my cocern is far remote here). All it did was show me that the Extend part of the show kicks Jinki's ass, oh and the VA for the Ep Preview is horrible horrible horrible.

While we're on the OP/ED tangent, since I got back into Eureka Seven for the Ray and Charles subarc culminating in the raid on the Capital, it's awful to see that they've horribly trimmed OP2/ED2. Trinity Blood still runs full OP and a half length(double speed images + normal speed song) for the ED which at least shows the full ED. Kiddy Grade went and had theirs dubbed over, which I guess is indicative of the lack of faith in the sale power of less J-Bands.

The return of the Lightbulb in Ep25 of Ouran was amazing, and Kyouya's 'Pineapple' Computer is visionary of what I could see as a sucessful line of either shirts or Apple Laptop/ iPod Covers.

I don't know the new iPod Song, this saddens me.

RadioBlog is still midly amusing, at least for catching a few of the Pandora songs that I really like but haven't secured anywhere else and being able to spam-repeat them. Course the really good ones I can't find there, but that's a different problem. That said as per my Pandora profile, I'm totally considering buying (best song noted):
Mountaineers - Messy Century - Track 12, Apart from This.
Andy Bell - Electric Blue - Track 11, Delicious.
Venus Hum - Big Beautiful Sky - Track 3, Soul Sloshing (And it costs less than the Single for it, which is an Import) and The Colors in the Wheel - Track 11, Pink Champagne (Note that I can buy The Colors in the Wheel combo with Big Beautiful Sky for savings, but BBS is packaged with a Blue Man Group Album if I try to start from there instead...)
Tsunami Bomb - Ultimate Escape - Track 2, Russian Roulette and Invasion from Within (EP) - Track 1, Invasion from Within plus Track 5, Lemonade and Definitive Act - Track 6 - 4 Robots and an Evil Scientest.
Basement Jaxx - I just went with a full listing. I want mostly the Single's album but that's an Import again.
Not a complete listing, there's no Daft Punk or Go Betty Go! or some more Import stuff there, but those are my big aims at the moment.

Retrograded Firefox to a level when it's compadible with FlashBlock again, which nipped my Flash-Errors-crashing-Firefox problem completely. Still having issues with Asgard and the Maxtor drive, which is bad because I've found the utilities to rebuild it, but I sorta want to extract the data first. Order of the day, get a DVD Burn Program and make it function, start making space on the small drive to pull and burn stuff from the Maxtor.

Got a CD sleeve from the Red Cross to put in my car. It's actually way too small, and I worry about getting the CDs in and out with any ease, but I'm gonna give it a try anyways.

Tech better fucking give me some confirmation that I've sucessfully reapplied, because deadline is 4 days and I've not heard a peep, which is very very stressful.

David's PS2 is pretty much dying, takes forever to make it play Disgaea 2, which is horrible because the game is so awesome that I want to play it so much more than I am, I've not even gotten the 6th skill for every weapon yet (though my Rogue has unlocked top tier, Master Thief, and has Divine Comet (which is so much fun to use)). Got Megaman ZX but haven't been playing too much. It's really damn tough.

Valkerie Profile 2 out on the PS2 as of yesterday (or today, depending which store you getting it from I guess) but I've got Disgaea and the PS2 is flukely so it can wait. Still want Ninety-Nine Nights and Enchanted Arms though. White Knight Stories looks beautiful and could be great, I'll wait till I see the level/ability systems before further comment.

I think it's time for a complete Password System overhaul on my end, I need something new.

Blindsided

Wow...it's AWA starting today. I totally missed that memo somewhere along the way. Looks like they really moving into the fansub showing direction, because there are quite a few things on the showings that I know aren't even licensed yet. Some good stuff going on though, Hellsing Ultimate, FMA: Conqueror of Shambala (Listen to me fuckers, SHAM-Ba-La -- commercial pisses me the hell off). I'm on the fence whether I'll go or not, leaning pretty heavily towards no though. Dealer's room doesn't have anything to my tastes at a price I like except artbooks, and that's a slippery slope right there.

I've seen 90% of what they'll be showing, and the stuff they have listed that I haven't seen are final eps that won't be airing there anyways (like the end to Otome, though watching the first again would be amusing)

Net crashed out from beneath me last night, so I've got about half the Nipponsei releases I was looking for (ZnT OST, BlackLagoon OST), and I haven't checked out the other jewel of humor that Jiaz tracked down for me yet.

Check the Wiki for Disgaea, seems I'm still grooving with Rank 23-27 weapons, but since I'm focused on burning up Tiers rather than powerleveling (boring). I think the solution right now is to stack some Felony charges so I can pass the Cave or Ordeals using Felonies as sway. 6 Pirates down, 10 to go, those events are completely amusing still though, even if it's pretty much Ambling over and over.

I wonder if time has dulled my senses, everyone comnig in today has mentioned that the place smells like pizza. Which, given that they're nextdoor, isn't suprising, I guess I've just been desensitized.

Blitz:

Lenny (Innocent Venus) = Meg (Burst Angel) = Levy (Black Lagoon). Meg really doesn't have the attitude.

Bleach English VA in Ep 2? I can handle it. Chad probably should be deeper, Rukia's "jeepers" was uncalled for. Now to convince D: to cooperate, figure out what the hell she says in the original that ended up "jeepers"

Trinity Blood 2 still kicks total ass, "Gunslinger" out of ammo ftw, I should hunt down a batch of that and Solty Rei when I free up the Drive space.

Go vote for Celes, don't let the Boss win this one >.<

Jinki Extend on Anime on Demand, I should see how that is.

Eureka last week was the awesome Renton violence ep, Next week is Ray and Charles (Who's VAs are solid, trans is pristine too), the start of the next awesome arc, hell they'll catch up to where I'm at subbed soon >.>

TODO:
* Get some sleep, work early on Monday
* Build up some Felonies for Disgaea 2, get a Rank 35+ and start burning through to deeper, get Tier 4 units.
* Check out redeeming other people's copies of the Microcenter coupons, hit up CD warehouse/Frye's while in the area.
* Pick up formatting on Music folders, start processing Moy's and Danbooru's Walls, scrap the worthless, poll some opinions on the questionable.
* Find a way to survive 6-8 hour work days for the next few weeks.

I actually didn't get yelled at...

The customer came in mere hours after that post, much to my amazement. Apparently her husband had lost his cell phone, which was why it was blocked like that. Got a home number for them, got them the packages, and everyone was happy, except for me not having an excuse for future packages for them.

GameFAQs Character Battle V has begun, on round 3 already, it'll be running for quite awhile.

(Game Futures)
Wii now has a release date (Nov 19) and a price ($250), which is excellent news, we'll see how that stuff impacts the Character Battle. I haven't actually looked at any Wii info in a long time except for a few ad/previews on Cinematech, and frankly I kinda liked a static controller, but we'll see how the Wii plays out, I'm getting Twilight Princess either way, so I have to get the Wii anyways.

Finally tracked down alot more info about the specifics of Disgaea 2 (Specialists, Lovers, Felonies, etc). This game'll be amusing for months to come. I also still think I want Ninety-Nine Nights and Enchanted Arms, but I've got patience and don't really have a 360, which works to my advantage, monetarily.

Megaman ZX came out on Tuesday and I'm thinking I'll have to get that for a kickass DS game, pending the reviews from friends and webcomics.

(Massive Comics Block-o-Text)
Speaking of, Hellbound today is pretty subpar, but that's only on a relative scale against itself, and after the "What Box?" it's got pretty tough competiton. Red Meat is recycling, without making any pretenses about it. Real Life is still bleh. Ctrl Alt Del is doing god knows what. Order of the Stick is picking it back up thanks to it being September, which is awesome news given where we stand in the story. Megatoyko's alternating awesomeness and bleh with the standard filler, and Dom owes us several rants. Mac Hall is still MIA, but that's par for the course, I wonder what Matt's up to though. Dominic Deegan is up and running now that September is here, and I've gotta admit, Best of DD was a pretty nice filler streak, though cutting back from 7 to 3 was hell on my bookmarks. It's good to see it going again, it'll be awhile building conflict before we get to the tension climaxes again, but I have patience. LICD's latest arc was suitablely more amusing than I'd expected, even moderately heartwarming (well, as much as it could be, given context). Penny Arcade mentioned Prinnies, which was a new peak and then went back to their usual high level of alternating hits and misses. VG Cats still owes us a #200, but at least he seems to be hammering them out with consistency and humor again. Questionable Content seems to be trying to get us to forget that he killed off a portion of the conflict, and he's probably suceeding; moreover, it's still really fun. Sam and Fuzzy is building towards something really great, has been for awhile, but I'd kinda like to actually, you know, see Sam as Sam sometime soon, lots of unanswered questions here. Adventurers is pretty much wrapped up, maybe 3-4 more strips to go, I think I'd rather have seen RPGWorld get an ending, I liked those characters a bit more, but Adventurers did keep it in color, just less sex appeal, fortunately this'll mean more AntiHero for Hire, which has been less rocking of late, but should pick up nicely. Pointless should be kicking it again when the grind gets going, which'll be a welcome re-addition to the lineup. 10K Commotion should be wrapping up the final (but not last) chapter sometime, which'll be sad to see the ending but I'm sick of the cliffhanger. Candy is just doing odd things, managed to blow away most of the tension with distraction and I don't think a few offhand comments and allusions are going to be enough to get it back full force. Goats is, you know, Goats, and that's just about that. Able and Baker has been awhile without a solid standalone god-pun, but it's still amusing. At least I'm focusing on the comic instead of the fact of the day, that's improvement. Something Positive is doing what it does best, and that's more than enough for me. Queen of Wands' rapid-fire reruns seem to have dried up just before the good parts too. I'd love to see the attached commentary there. Kawaii Not is a veritable mini-goldmine of a style of humor I could get used to, would like to see more updates though. Adventures with Play should have a crapton of stuff to do with the Burning Crusade stuff floating around, but I'd settle for just short one-shots again. Chugworth seems to again be moving thankfully, not that storyline is one of its strong points, and Cat and Girl was arguably worth the read to get to the end. Alot of it went over my head, but what I could get was great. Gigaville is stagnating with setup, but I think there'll be a hefty payoff as a result.

(Current Gaming)
Started replaying Starcraft: Brood Wars: Campaign for some bizzare reason. Siege Tanks still make me happy, though I should probably focus more on objectives and less on leveling the map entirely. This could've been avoided if I somehow had both my WarIII discs, but since they seem to be scatted to winds, or with Cindy despite her having her own copies, I might just pickup the Warchest again if I can get it cheaply. No Footman Frenzy sucks.

I'm trodding through Heroes of Might and Magic V's Campaign, too much blitz emphasis and using stall/diversion tactics to break even in fights, gets old fast. The Hero Progression system is awesome, but has too few options. Having to get Recruitment out of Leadership to get the Racial Specials in that tree everytime is annoying, since Recruitment is a pure Garrison ability.

(Anime Frontier)
Innocent Venus looks like it could be good, I'll pass judgement after I've seen more than the first episode plus assorted screens.

Still waiting on Ergo Proxy, luckly I'm patient.

Zero no Tsukaima is getting close to the end. Feels like a rushed ending, but with 13 episodes there's only so much that you can do.

Ray the Animation got finished, batched, I'm almost tempted to grab it just to see where the hell that series was going in 13 eps.

Ouran Host Club keeps me amazingly happy, though I feel that the only option is a more-of-the-same style ending. Not that that would make me unhappy persay.

Coyote Ragtime is gearing up for a lot in a short amount of time. There's a ton of reasons-behind and reconcilliations to be done and not a whole lot of time to do it in, somehow I think they'll manage, but we'll see.

Other than that, I've got to get Asgard to start behaving with regards to the Auxillary Hard Drive and Adobe Shockwave Flash (errors out all the time, and FlashBlock apparently hasn't been updates for the last 3 waves of Firefox updates, over a year ago?!) At least Pandora seems to run again, most of the time.

World of Warcraft's Forums are ghetto as hell, they really suck a prepairing for the bandwidth/usage hit. They should just anticipate 60% of their unique users and work from there, cause having the forums down amid Alpha-Leakage of Burning Crusade is uncool, as I'm curious and love scrouging for data when there's little else to do at work.

I'm totally going to get yelled at by a customer

And honestly, I don't give a damn. They're going to complain about this overnight DHL Letter, arrived 2 days ago, when they show up again in a month. And somehow this will be percieved as my failure. Let's face the facts shall we? Why would you have things shipped to a place you don't check? Especially important things, shipped quickly? They, or I should say she as only the wife has shown herself both to open the box and to get the mail, have only shown up once to actually get their mail since opening it two month agos. So, she arrives and waves the little red tag we put in the mailboxes to signal packages that require a signature from the customer, and so I go and faithfully retrieve a pair of DHL overnight letters from the back, dutifully marked in sharpie with date of arrival, some 2-3 weeks ago. She unleashes on me, proclaiming that we had advertised notification of packages, and thus should've called when these things came in. I resisted urges to say snide things (typically you have to request that we notify you on package arrivals, we've got several customers we do it for), and told her I'd make a note on her mailbox, which I dutifully did.

I've not been here for a few days, Boss man got ill so I had to cover down at the other store, I get back and discover that this mailbox holder has a package. So, true to cause, I go into the files and drag out their given phone number, dial it up, and guess what? They've had incoming calls disabled on their phone. I'll get yelled at for it when they show up in a few weeks, but till then, I'll be laughing about this one.

I think this copier is lying to me

Though why the hell you'd put a picture of a 2 x 3 image replication on the picture of a feature that can only do reps in the vertical dimension is well beyond the scope of my understand.

Copier hassles notwithstanding, Disgaea 2 time.

Nippon Ichi has really patched up what made Disgaea not so great and enchanced what did make it great. As if the first game didn't have infinate replay to begin with, Disgaea 2 expands upon that. Much of the core system, Attributes, Extra Gain, Master and Pupil bonus, Mastery Bonuses, Item World and Innocents (Specialists), Reincarnation (Transmigration), Dark Council (Heavy variation though), Geo Panels, Lift and Throw, and Rarity Chaining still remain.

I debated for quite awhile if I was going to retain my Disagea personas into the second game; Claire, Candace, Ivan/Evelinne, Sean, etc, but after a perusal indicated that Ronan had become a male-only class, I scrapped it and went with a fresh force.

So, what has changed?

Overall system changes.

You can now Attack while holding people, creating what is called a Tower Attack, generally weaker than each person would be individually, but good for gaining an extra square of attack distance and for fighting strongly in tight spaces. Also, you can now throw a Character or stack of Characters onto another Character or Stack and have them catch and automatically Lift the group. You can also throw diagnally by tossing while switching directions. I'd say it seems like a glitchy thing, except the game tells you how to do it.

The Counter-Attack system has been revamped. Instead of Counter, Counter x1, Counter x2, Counter x3, etc it's been changed to Counter, Counter-Counter, Counter-Counter-Counter, which is infinately more amusing.

Special attacks can now Critical, Hit, Nick, and Miss entirely, as can spells. Multihit attacks speed to be entirely binary in this respect, it's wholely all or nothing.

You now have options to turn off the special attack animations of Allies, Enemies, and Geo Panel Destruction, each individually. So if you're tired of Omega Star, you can now turn off Ally Anims and lay waste to your heart's content.

Weapons:

The classic weapon categories return, with one addition, however building on their sucess of implementation of tweaks in Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom, they're slightly revamped. I haven't had the time to play up to Skill 40 or 60, or wherever the 6th Weapon Skill lies these days (Actually, only Adell and Rozy have even gotten the 4th skill, at 10 in Fist and Guns, respectively, so far).

Fist Weapons - Damage dependant on a mix of Attack and Speed, High Counterattack value (Claire would've loved this variant).
Skills : Triple Strike - Same as before, 3 hits and a 1 square knockback, looks 300% more awesome now.
Tiger Charge - Revamped, now strikes for 4 squares away with on a 1 square knockback requirement.
Lion's Roar - Same as before, hits twice, once at 25% and then once at 100%. Not sure how the damage is relative to the first game, seems overall higher.
King of Beasts - The quintessenial Fist Skill returns. Like most of the other skills, this now deviates from the Disgaea system of 11 hits at x damage, instead opening with a upper cut of light blows, a few moderate damage aerials, and then a punishing meteor strike. I kinda like that the damage is no longer a flat constant, though in the end, it's just the total damage that matters.

Sword Weapons - Attack based damage, very rarely any movement or knockback spaces required.
Skills : Blade Rush - Same as before, 3 squres needing an open one behind, still highly useful in a variety of situations.
Hurricane Slash - Depending on whether Nightsever makes its return, this might be the essential two hit Sword skill.
Moon Slash - This one's new. Strikes a 3 target line, perpindicular to your facing. A ranged slash that crosses the T, great for when you can't move up and around for a Blade Rush on a line of three.

Axe - Strength Based damage, comes with negative Hit values but a high critical rate and damages the target's Defense.
Skills : Only unlocked the first two, and their identical to Disgaea's.

Spear - Attack based damage, comes with additional Defense. Gives a chance to Guard (reduce category and damage) of strikes from the front.
Skills : Secondary skill has been changed out for a 5 hit semi-ranged attack that lands you behind them, rest are same except cooler looking.

Bow - Attack and Hit combined-based damage. If it lands the killing blow, has a chance of spawning a treasure chest.
Skills : Against, a host of single target skills with status effects. The secondary is an attack called Raiden shot, that can actually by targetted anywhere within the normal firing grid.

Gun - Hit based damage. Has 1 Range greater than the bow, but can only be fired in straight lines. Decreases Speed on the hit target.
Skills: Changed to non-elemental, single target skills with just distance requirements. Several of them don't even have the distance req, letting you fire the skill anywhere the gun could already shoot.

Staves - Same workings as before. Increase with use or castings. Increase Potency, Cast Distance, and Area Affect of Spells.
No Skills.

Monster Weapons - Now come in two flavors. Melee with Strength and Hit and Caster with Strength and Intellect. They've added several Caster variety monsters, who damage with their skills based on Int, to go with this.
No Skills.

Classes:

Some classes got slight alterations. Lords were removed in favor of Geomancers, Ninja was made a dual gender class, Ronin was revamped to be male only. Alot of the classes now have a special feature during certain situations, alot of them are Stat X Up during Critical Health.

Warriors - Male and Female (Best weapons Sword, Spear (F), Axe (M)) - Attack Up (M) and (F) on Critical Health.

Skulls and Mages - Male and Female Skilled Caster Class - Of the Red, Green, Blue (and later Star) variety) - Faster Magical Growth (M) and Decreased SP Cost for Spells (F). Gain debuff skills, Break Armor (decrease Defense), Blind (decrease Hit), Slow (decrease Speed), etc.

Clerics - Still Female Only (Equal skill (C) with Bow and Staff) - Adds to Resistance of nearby allies (I think the actual Res Stat). Gains buff spells in addition to healing magic, Magic Wall (increase Resistance), Shield (increase Defense), Braveheart (increase Attack), Magic Boost (increase Intellect), etc.

Geomancer - Caster/Geo class - I think if they hadn't made this the crotchety old man class I'd have an army comprised of them. They're immune to Geo Change Damage, come with Star Magic and Healing right from the start, and they have Geo Change. Their attributes are mediorce at best however.

Sinners - Male Fist Weapon Class - Counterattack Damage Up in Critical Health

Gunner - Male Gun Weapon Class - Damage Up in Combo Attacks.

Archer - Female Bow Weapon Class - (I've forgotten)

Ninja - Male and Female Skilled Class - Dodge Up in Critical Health (M) and Extra Attack in Critical Health (F, absolutely badass). Males get Utsusemi (replacement jutsu) which cracks me up. They disappear in the puff of smoke and are replaced by a log while they strike the opponent from behind. Females seem to have Status Effecting attacks. Their primary Paralyzes the target by throwing Kunoi into the target's shadow, their secondary is a sleep-inducing effect.

Heavy Knight - Male High-Defense Class - The game loves to throw these things at me with spears in Stages where I can't sidestep them. They've got brutally high natural Defense and Health, and they get Defense Up on Critical Health.

Thief - Female Skilled Class - I think these things were male, based on voice, in the first game. That is no longer the case. Not only can they steal, but they actually have a variety of status effects, termed as stealing various intangiable things. Poisoned is Steal Health, Paralyze is Steal Freedom, Sleep is Steal Consciousness. They've lost their long throw range, but it's worth the cost.

Chaos Warriors - I think these are akin to the Earth Defense Force soldiers of the first game, but you have to get to New Game + to unlock them, so I'm uncertain.

Beastmaster - Female Skilled Class - I kinda find the furries cute. They're similar to the Catgirl Monsters, but human. They amplify attributes of nearby friendly monsters, and their Skills are Monster-specific buff spells (ultra powerful version, their secondary adds Attack, Intellect, and Hit all at once).

Knight - Female Skilled Class - The Knight revamp is amazing. Instead of adding a random spell to their attacks, they cast a spell to channel any element into their weapon, retaining it until they change elements. In addition they have spells to increase Elemental Resistance (Fire, Ice, Wind). Sadly, giving them a Sword severely hampers their cast-range, but it's a small price to pay for kicking ass.

There's a nice host of monsters, some with execeptionally cool abilities. Zombies gain life when they finish an opponent, Ghosts regenerate with each round. There are a few with select Elemental Immunities (Like Hounds are immune to Wind), and of course, Prinnies explode.

Currently my army consists of Adell, Rosalin, the female storyline Snow-Clan Ninja (Replacement jutsu with a Snowman with), Male Warrior, Female Warrior, Thief, Red Skull, Priest, Female Ninja, Knight, Beastmaster, and a Warslug (Named Sluggy. He's Immune to Ice, Intellect based Damage. Primary is a 5 Square Lightning Spell, Secondary is a self-targeted Intellect Boost).

Geo Symbols

The Geo System functions the same as before, they've just added some cool new Symbols to the lineup:

Move +1, Move -1, Attack +1
Attack +50%, Attack -50%, Defense +50%, Defense -50%
Heal 20%, Damage 20%, Ally Damage 20%
Enemy Boost +50%, Enemy Boost x3
Exp +50%, Mana +50%, Hell +50%
No Entry, No Lifting, No Close Combat, No Ranged Combat (You can use multisqure attacks, just only the point blank targets get hit), No Tower Attack
Stage Complete (Storyline only, not item world. Stage ends when you end turn with a character in it)
Warp, Clone, Fusion (Fuses Enemies on these squares, leveling them as if they had been thrown together), Invulnerablity, Encroach (Your character cannot leave these squares), Enemy Level up 10% (10% Chance of a Level up for each enemy on these squares. Ie, each enemy has a 10% chance to level, not 10% each per monster), Split Damage (Damage dealt to any of your characters on these squares is split evenly amongst them).

45 Second Blitz

Argh, I get paid far too little to hold this franchise world together.

GameFAQs Revisions planned but not made, check back by the end of the week for the comprehensive rant-fest (in a good way) of Disgaea 2 and touching on it's predacessors, hopefully.

Till then, I'm gonna hope I somehow make 4 less hours of sleep a day and 4 more hours of work a day @ triple workload a workable system.

GameFAQs Character Battle V (Very Long, no suprise)

Typical format for this thing, Bold for Winner, Italics for personal pic if it differs.

Nice one this time around, 8 Divisions - Top 4 Female, Bottom 4 male, all named for the top seed, and you're supposed to pick the Top 6 at the end, with quite a few unprovens this should be interesting.

As usual, all gut instinct and no past-run probability other than as memory serves, Statistics aren't my forte.

Just the first round, I may comment on the big matches of subsiquent rounds after I decide I like what I have here first.

Spazer Division
Samus Aran (Metroid) vs Nidoran F (Pokemon) - I like seeing Nidoran F as a contestant, even if it's a middling pick. It's an original pokemon, so appealing to the older generations who started with one pokemon but not the subsiquent, but not a very boldly known pokemon either. Still, nice to see them mixing it up.

Ada Wong (Resident Evil 4) vs Jade (Beyond Good and Evil) - I don't think BGE got too much fandom, it's still sorta an underground/indie game, that an Ada kicks total ass in RE4, both as a story character, in Mercs, and even in her story via the PS2 version. She'd probably go another tier up if it were something less than the top Seed of the division she'll hit next.

Rikku (FFX, FFX-2) vs Lenneth Valkerie (Valkerie Profile: Lenneth) - Even with the rerelease of VP:L for the PSP I don't think that it has any hope of overcoming a Final Fantasy, even one associated with FFX-2. Plus, personally, I liked Rikku.

Kairi (Kingdom Hearts) vs Claire Redfield (Resident Evil 2) - RE2 is pretty dated, though Claire has shown up in a variety of other things since that game's release, so I'm counting on the popularity of KH to outshine that of an older Resident Evil character. Certainly, the inclusion of other RE characters might help Claire's performance overall, but even with that and Kairi's wallflower status in KH I don't think it'll be enough.

Limit Division (They're stretching here)
Tifa Lockheart (FFVII) vs Ivy Valentine (Soul Caliber) - Nice to see Ivy make the list though I don't think there are too many characters in this list she'd prevail against, especially not against an FF, and definately not a FFVII. Dirge of Cerebus might not have invoked much bonus support for Tifa, but she won't need it with the legion of Sephiroth fanboys out there.

The Boss (MGS3) vs Celes Chere (Final Fantasy VI) - *Close Call*. I honestly can't say I know which way this one will go. VI is pretty vintage, MGS3 is not, and Celes, though also a tragic figure, doesn't have nearly the graphic support to her story that The Boss does. There's alot to be said of the Boss's role in MGS3, but I'm counting on the FF support to win this one by for Celes but not expecting to happen (Here's hoping they use Opera House scenes for her vote pics anyways).

Jill Valentine (Resident Evil) vs Sheena Fujibayashi (Tales of Symphonia) - Sheena's cute, stacked, and in a pretty good game, but somewhere along the way we've already established that as nice as ToS is, its fanbase is still lacking and Jill may be another vintage RE, but she's been in a ton of them as well as several games, so I think she has the edge.

Princess Peach vs Princess Daisy - Not bothering with the game denotations here, just about anything Mario will suffice, though Peach recently got her own DS game. I think Daisy has a bit more of the sex appeal vote (You never get me to admit I just typed that) but Peach has ultimately been in more games (SSBM as keynote) and frankly "Hi, I'm Daisy!" is well more than enough to convince me that "Yeah, Peach has got it!" is the better alternative.

Triforce Division
Zelda (Legend of Zelda) vs Carmen Sandiego (Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego) - I laughed so hard at this pairing. I'm only vaguely aware that Carmen even has games. It's a creative entry, but really also a fairly wasted spot. Sure, Zelda will trump most anything placed against her (Short of stronger FF characters), but I'd have liked to have seen a challenge here.

Terra Branford (FFVI) vs Sarah Kerrigan (Starcraft) - Even though I pulled for Celes earlier, I just didn't like the "main" character of FFVI (though that's debatable, the way the game is set up, I didn't use her once I could manage not to, aka past Banon (Nearly typed Baron, damn you Aquarion!)). I don't think there's a big SC community on GameFAQs, but I think Kerrigan'll win anways, and I'm glad to see her on the listing.

Kos Mos (Xenosaga) vs Amy Rose (Sonic) - It's been covered before, but I don't support Sonic much. And despite how well my despised Hedgehog tends to do, I don't think it'll carry over to the pink one, at least not with enough force to prevail over Kos Mos.

Aeris Gainsborough (FFVII) vs Marle (Crono Trigger) - Final Fantasy fandom will prevail of that of Marle, despite how decently Crono tends to thrash in these events (at least it's not Serge). Again, I didn't miss Aeris, FFVII wasn't really a healing req'd game, and even then the Materia System sorta voided the need of a Caster even for healing.

Aeon Divison
Yuna (FFX, FFX-2) vs Roll - Yay Roll. Admittedly you don't stand a chance, but you're a very underplayed Female Power card that Capcom's held for quite awhile. Please Capcom, give her her own series or major role, and stop making X and Zero sound like girls to compensate without her.

Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark) vs Cortana (Halo) - Errrm... This is a hard call due to overall level of suck. Perfect Dark 0 was a lackluster game, even against games of the preceeding generation and it's originator on the N64 was both doomed on a stupid system, and basically a marginally updated version of Goldeneye (I concede, best worked bots I've seen in a game in a long while (Or at least for a Console System, UT/Quake Bots ftw)). That said, Master Chief goes down early in these things, and while I don't expect Cortana to fare too much better, digi-boobs or not, I do think Joanna is that much weaker that Cortana will win out.

Chun Li (Street Fighter) vs Kasumi (Dead or Alive) - I'm uncertain why these two are so different in their original seed value, as I think they're pretty close. I've underestimated SF values in the past, and with all the "vs. Capcoms" out there it's not hard to see why. But I think that DoA4's freshness combined with the forthcoming Beach Volleyball 2 will give the Kasumi's digitally mastered jiggle the edge it needs to surpass Chun Li.

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) vs Alyx Vance (HalfLife 2) - I admit I've not played HL2, but I don't think Alyx is all that major of a player in it. I may not personally go ga-ga over Lara, but I think her games have notably improved, and that there is a fanbase there that Gordon Freeman's continuous bad performance will show that Ms. Croft will be the victor.

Patriot Divison
Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid) vs Soma Cruz (Castlevania) - That's right folks, Solid Snake can beat even the mighty reincarnation of Dracula himself. Soma's a badass, complete and total, but he's not got a prayer again Solid Snake. Glad to see Soma make the list, shame he'll be off it right quick.

Squall Leonheart (FFVIII) vs Tidus (FFX) - Gunblade > I'm a dream and my dad is the source of all your woes *Disappear*. Enough said.

Riku (Kingdom Hearts) vs Yoshi (Anything Yoshi, anything Mario) - I feel odd and uncertain betting against the SSB character to win, especially for a virtually non-present Main Character that gets credit only for partial FF relation. I think Yoshi is minor enough to not win this, but I won't be floored if I'm proven wrong.

Dante (Devil May Cry) vs Ryu Hayabushi (Ninja Gaiden) - This reminds me that I need to play Ninja Gaiden. Other than that I think that Dante's popularity has been proven, especially since the level of suck in his games has dramatically lessened over the course of the series. Sure, Ryu's a ninja, but he'll need something bigger than that to win this matchup.

Destiny Division
Sora (Kingdom Hearts) vs Tingle (Zelda) - Damn, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one. I'll be interested to see if Tingle's Zelda ties net him more votes than CATS, since I'm convinced both are roughly equal jokes at this point.

Pheonix Wright (Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney) vs Gordon Freeman (Half Life) - Eh, I'm basically flipping a coin here, but I tend to do well hedging my bets against Gordon and I see no reason to change that now. Just get a few of those Objection URLs flowing on the forums and it'll be a clear win.

Kratos (God of War) vs Ryu (Street Fighter) - Here we go with undervaluing Street Fighter again, but I think God of War has the edge here, especially with being the newer, prettier game.

Mega Man (Mega Man) vs Axel (Kingdom Hearts) - As incredibly fucking awesomely badass as Axel is up to the moment of his premature Nobody-Death I don't think him or KH's popularity will overtake Megaman.

Blast Division (See, that's how much I dislike Sonic, I can't think of the top seed without looking)
Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic) vs CATS (Zero Wing) - As much as I root for CATS, Sonic is gonna win, and it isn't going to be close.

Ganondorf (Zelda) vs Vincent Valentine (FFVII, Dirge of Cerebus) - As per Jiaz's line of thought, Dirge of Cerebus is going to give the Final Fantasy fans the motivation and call to overcome Zelda's power backing Ganondorf, even with SSBM credit, but this one should be close.

Kirby (Kirby) vs The Prince of Persia (Prince of Persia) - Yeah, the game denotations were totally not needed. Two Thrones could've been cool but it's not overtaking SSBM and the rest of Kirby's fame.

Luigi (Mario games) vs Zero (Megaman, Zero) - This could be closer than I think or even swing the other way. With Luigi getting the votes that Mario usually would, but I think Zero's got the power neded to overcome Mario's green inferior bretheren, SSBM or not (Plus, Luigi isn't so great in that).

Time Division
Crono (Crono Trigger) vs Captain Falcon (F-Zero) - It took way too much effort to think of Captain Falcon's game. Seriously, they're pulling out the stops to prove my SSBM theory wrong here. Anyways, Crono wins, easily.

Bowser (Mario) vs Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil 4) - I'm thinking that the awesomeness of RE4 will overcome SSBM fame, but this one I'm shaky about.

Auron (FFX, KH2) vs Alucard (Castlevania) - Thanks to Soma Cruz stealing his mojo I think that Alucard isn't going to be able to scrounge up enough support to overcome the "Greatest Dead Warrior". SotN was great, but the more recent games have been Feat. Reverse Dracula less and less and more and more focused on the Belmot descendants and other oddities.

Master Chief (Halo) vs Sub-Zero (Mortal Kombat) - MK hasn't had a game in awhile and I think the hype is mostly dead these days. While I don't value Master Chief in these things, I don't think even Sub-Zero'll overcome the severe handicap that MK has.

...and your family's family, which is really just your family.

Had a customer come in today, wanting to ship out a set of golf clubs to his kids in California.

Me: So, you've set to this location before?
Him (Rolling the box over to show the address): Yeah, it's for my kids. I'm hoping to get them interested in a hobby so they'll spend less time drinking and partying.
Me: And your first though was... golf?
(At this point we both dissolve into laughter)
Him: Well, it takes awhile to play, I figured it'd keep them busy.
Me: I see.
(Transaction finished, he leaves)
Me (To Co-worker): Golf eh?
Co: What's to keep them from drinking before they golf?
Me: Or while they golf?
Co: Would definately make it more interesting.

In reading all of Bash I think I linked maybe 10-20 quotes out, Overheard in NY's Overheard in the Office did give me this jewel that totally merits linkage though

Virtual Spittakes

So, I was doing the Friday routine: MWF Webcomics (Penny-Arcade, Sam and Fuzzy), Daily Webcomics (Questionable Content, Least I Could Do, Sinfest), the Friday comic (A Softer World), ANN's "Hey! Answerman". Finished up the core routine and expanded onto the usual activities, Google News, Thottbot News, GameFAQs. So I find that the user-created Top 10 list on GameFAQs is at least a topic I might be responsive to, Video Game Relationships, and unlikely to be 100% Final Fantasy fanboying, so I read it. Lo and behold, #10 at the top. Koudelka / Edward. I mentally-hang for a moment, trying to remember who's who in that game. Piece it together and read the entry:

"This one is a bit tricky, because no signs of a relationship show until the end. During the entire main game, Koudelka often spits out harsh words at her two companions, and while she's really not as harsh on Edward as she is on James, her actions lead you on that she really doesn't care about the two in any way whatsoever. But they still manage to stick together, and help each other out. However, Koudleka and Edward seemed to have formed something, after Edward plows Koudelka in a tent in one of the endings."

At which point my brain fires off the following; Wait, what?! Koudelka had multiple endings? Wait What?!?!.

So yeah, I guess I've gotta dig it out again and coax the PS2 into playing, because reading about multiple ends inspired me to look at it again. For those who don't know, Koudelka is loosely tied into the Shadow Hearts (sometime during the original) series. It's got lovely FMVs and a title song worthy of my winamp playlist, but this also appears to be where about 80% of the game's funding went. It runs slow, it has no music to speak of outside of battle and the occasional FMV. But it does support one of the RPG-core theories, which involves insta-death at a particular part of a game if you don't have a certain item with you.

Anyways, speaking of moments of sheer 'What?!' finished off Black Lagoon since Shinsen put out 12. And, uhh, stoner Legarch doesn't make any more sense than last time. The episode boils down to his hallucinations and Rock's melancholy while Levy and Shenhua trade profanities while wiping out their meager opposition. It doesn't feel like a closed-case in the least, so even without knowing that there is a second season you know there is. Closing question, was Captain Picard and Klingons really the best thing for him to be shouting about, how recoignizable is that sort of thing in Japan?

What's 15 into 99? (Gaming Half)

The next generation rant (Freaking long)

I think the new direction of Nintendo and their DS system is nothing revolutionary in plan, but I believe it has all the potential to succeed. While Sony's pushing of its PSP as a changing device, capable of many function was creative, I don't think they secured enough of the portable gaming market, the portable video/music, or the portable browsing market. I think that there are those who made the allowances to cater to the PSP showed progress; PSP sized Anime Raws, PSP sized webcomic alt-addresses and wallpapers, but that it wasn't followed through. Valkerie Profile: Lenneth is a potent addition to the lineup in a market seriously desolate with regards to portable RPGs, especially with it being based on the Japan version and thus less altered as the US original version was (Note: Fire Emblem is GBA, not DS, and I am making the distinction even if DS can play GBA). So long as Sony can keep it's hand full of high value cards they may yet be able to make to maintain a signficant chunk of the portable market, but they need a few more solid contenders with a good mix of pickup and play games like Me and My Katamari as well as LP (Long(er) Play) games like VP and the Metal Gear Acids. With the PSP multi-player limitations, Sony needs to focus on the mainstays of solo gaming: solid puzzle games, RPGs and pseudo-RPGs, Strategy games, RPG-elemented action/adventure, and some high replay or LP sport or sport-esce games.

What Nintendo offers however is akin to the Othello promise "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master". I just caught their latest advert in a copy of Newsweek, depicting a bus stop with two people sitting bored waiting for the bus and a third playing on his lovely DS Lite. The accompanying caption reads
"The average wait for a city bus is 12.8 minutes.

Do something with your nothing."

Nintendo's new line of pick-up and play games for all ages that have some challenge or poise for even veteran gamers is visionary. Especially with the rumors that EA may drop PSP development to focus on the DS (See Monday's Little Gamers) it would seem that the PSP may be losing ground, though with the imposing need for Sony to push out the PS3, that may be the least of their concerns.

Back in the beginning (my beginning, not the beginning), Nintendo and Sega, Nintendo was the system for RPGs while the adventure and action games were the realm of Sega. Now-a-days there are 3 players, and they're all worth something. Sony is still the juggernaught of RPGs both the mainstreamed Square-Enix and the rising star that is my beloved NIS and but they also control some solid ventures in other directions: Katamari, Twisted Metal, Devil May Cry. They no longer exert total control over the what I'd have considered the "post-teen genre" now that XBox is on the market, they tend to split evenly those games which aren't developed for both systems, and with RE4 and GBA's successes with Castlevania those can no longer be considered solid Playstation ground.

Playstation still reigns high as the solid solo system, but it's territory that the XBox is eagerly contesting with it's own offerings like Fable and Oblivion as well as in games released for both systems that just looked more polished on the power of the Xbox360, like Shadows of the Colussus or Burnout. Nintendo reigns supreme still in both the youth games, Playstation isn't lacking here but the advertising and polish of this genre on Playstation (Monster Ranchers, etc) are both lacking, and in multiplayer. The incredible portablity and stability and ease of setup of the Gamecube, and hopefully the Wii, combined with it's vast array of plug and play multiplayer goodness is something that Microsoft has yet to be able to compete against. Yes, Halo is an incredible game, and multiplayer excellent and offers infinate replayability, but it's sluggish and it likes to play Land-Grab and Oddball, whereas the collection of Mario-themed sports games, Mario Kart, Smash Brothers, Mario Party, are practially unrivaled. Yes, there are polished alternatives on Playstation and Xbox: DoA4, Fusion Frenzy, but they don't compare to the glory and ease of what Nintendo presents.

If Sony wants to hold and recover, they need to open the PS3 with a slew of not only their mainstay RPGs, but an appeal to the games they have lost to their competators. I don't expect them to manage a system of multiplayer to rival XBox, and I definately believe that neither Sony nor Microsoft will be able to hold a candle to the party system that is Wii, but if they can release pristine games that don't require patches on a stable system even for extended extended play, they'll already have a leg-up on their Microsoft competition. Personally, I want a PS3-based, Devil May Cry, SSX, Twisted Metal, and Ratchet and Clank. When I think Playstation, it's those 4 games + RPGs (and a bit of AceCombat, but that's a secret and mostly David).

If Microsoft wants to maintain the early-bird advantage, they need to worry about the home computer. They need to secure games that can be played out of the box with ease, without excessive patching. They need to refine their machine, close holes in the development system, continue to upgrade their Live-infastructure, and find a way to keep their systems functioning. It's disturbing that in the short months that we've had a 360 in the house it's already starting to freeze and the damage it did to our first Oblivion disc is nigh-unbelievable (It's got a solid ring burned into the bottom of the disc). They need to push their Live-capable multiplayer without shutting out the fans of same system Co-Op. The beauty of Nintendo is getting 4 people one system, even on their portable systems alot of the games can be played in some for of multiplayer with less than a cartidge per player. Microsoft needs to secure a line of games to rival Mario/Samus/Megaman and Ratchet/Dante and use their graphical supremacy as a selling point, underlined by replayability. The Achievement / Gamerscore system is already pretty cool, even if it's not standardized at all across games and the ability to download demos is revolutionary. Add in the ability to store and save music, and use it for custom game soundtracks and you've got all kinds of levels of success waiting to be claimed. Capitalize on it.

Nintendo has what they need, they just need to be a company about it. This spontaneous changing of names, and odd, if revolutionary, controllers should fall below the priority of making a recoignizable and playable system. I'm reserving judgement, but to match the way they advertise, Wii needs a to be a system that inspires people to want to touch it and want to try out gaming. To hit the market strong, Nintendo needs to open high and low, bringing out stellar games for the new generation of young gamers with Pokemon, Mario, and other games with lots of color and life; appealing to the I'm-not-really-a-gamer gamers with Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing; continuing and expanding their multiplayer lineup, adding new life alongside Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Smash Brothers; and rewarding/delighting long term gamers with not only Zelda (Twilight Princess), Megaman, Metroid/Samus, and Mario, but also new innovative games that really push the unique features of the Wii.

On the Horizon

So, what am I looking for?

DS:
Mega Man ZX (9/12) -- I wasn't really into all of Zero's Command Mission games, but I think this one might have just enough of Megaman X in to for me to enjoy. If nothing else it'll hopefully be a good semi-LP Adventure game for the DS/GBA until another Kirby game hits the market.

PS2:
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (8/15, Today) -- Having played it a little bit, and seen a bit more, the game seems enjoyable enough. I'm uncertain about length or replay, but the FMVs and even just one run-through seems likely to be worth the price of admission. I won't pick it up on-release, but I will pick it up at some point in the near future. Perhaps a rental-shelf were I the type to rent games, but I don't because I always come back for them sometime in the future (unless they totally suck, and not even that is always a deterrant).

Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (8/29) -- Perhaps not the greatest name but there's only so much one can do about that. Disgaea has provided me with over 250 hours of amusement now and Disgaea 2 just takes the what NIS has learned from their previous games (La Pucelle, Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom: Chronicles of the Sacred Tome) and continue to refine this little gem that's quick going from an indie-gamer secret to a mainstream-mainstay.

Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathrustra (8/29) -- Same date as Disgaea 2, but given that I've yet to finish Episode I, I'm not going to be in any rush to aquire this one. However it looks to have made massive improvements in fluidity and flow over the previous two, so definately worth adding to my collection.

Final Fantasy XII (10/31) -- Halloween release WTF?. Anyways, I've got all the prior FF's so XII won't be any different. I'm not 100% behind it, but what I've seen and played gives it a flow and challenge that seems enjoyable. I'll play it through and likely most of the extra but I fear that the gambit system and I might not always see eye to eye.

Xbox 360:
Ninety-Nine Nights (8/15, Today) -- Call it a Destiny Warrior clone all you like. The quintessential genre of Hero versus armies is one I've always enjoyed and I don't see any reason why this game should be any exception. I'm not 100% on the value of replay, but definately worth the purchase. I'd probably get it today were time condusive and if I didn't have other things to be playing. Yes the characters have names that seem like they were picked with a ping-pong ball and a keyboard (Aspharr, Dwingvatt, Inphyy, Klarrann, Myifee, Tyurru) but the game is still everything that Joan of Arc sorta worked towards (except that spamming Heavy Horse attack won't win every fight this time)

Bomberman Act Zero (8/29) -- Yeah, bad day to be released when competing with Xenosaga III and Disgaea 2 and alongside Saint's Row (don't get me started, I think Penny Arcade said it best), but I love Bomberman and this one looks like it might not be half bad. Time will tell I guess.

Currently Playing

So in Oblivion, having severely overplayed my hand by enjoying the simply it is to level a Mage, I rerolled as a character designed to level only when I chose to. As it turns out, that wasn't the best of ideas either and some middle ground, melee and strength heavy, blend is probably still ideal. Either way, I'm actually playing the game, or at least trying to, but ending up exploring every single dungeon, ruin, and keep between points A and B.

I did end up buying Heroes V since Best Buy wasn't asking the full $50 for it. I've gone through the first of the six campaigns (one for each town) and it's pretty enjoyable, the new skill system is really cool. Campaign is pretty damn hard until you realize the key is always to blitz right at the start with lots of conservation of army strength until you can gain an even foothold and then just accumulate until you can smash the final objective(s). I think Heroes III handled the Hero specializations a bit better, but the flavor still exists here. As standard, the inital release was desperately in need of a patch (broken campaigns, missing tooltips) but now it's fairly playable, though still slower than your average PC turn-based game.

I'm saving most of the Dead Rising discussion until after I've beaten the game once, or perhaps spoiled the rest of it either way, but I do want to say that this game is sadistic. I mean, were the Zombies not enough? Do you really need escaped convicts, maniacs (Clown's death scene is awesomely horrifying, Shopkeep's is amusing), Special Forces, Dynmaite-laden knife-toting (That I can't take!) Cult psychopaths, unco-operative escortees, jumping glowing parasites, and Zombifying-bite super zombies? And I've still got another 24 hours+ to go!

Rabbit Rabbit (Anime Half)

First post of August gets the singnification of being a new month, although I concede that a solid fortnight into the month might be a little bit overdue for said proclimation. Even that many days later, I still don't have any August-related titles lined up, so I'm stuck with that which I've got.

Endings

So, World Series of Pop Culture ended, but was fun to watch, hopefully there'll be one more weekend rerun of the second half of the competition. Not my cup of tea as I'm only redeemed in partial comic knowledge and music, but the show itself isn't totally overdone like certain other shows in that style (*Cough* Is that your Final Answer? *Cough*).

Best Series Ever also wrapped up with Legend of Zelda taking top billing (no suprise to me, it was my pick) and while I can call the winner of the end game, I wouldn't have been near the top spot with some of my picks.

Haruhi ended, and overlooking the "You were my chosen one! How could you betray me like this!" moment it was all awesome. Actually, the chosen one bit was awesome as well, except for me thinking of Episode 3 when it occured, which soured the moment. Episode 14 is awesome, 13 is well suited to have come before it and thus the ordering of episodes before that pair is mostly irrelevant, though the cliffhanger of island syndrome was pretty brutal. Quick spoiler-lite series highlights include Hairstyles, Yuki's Battle and the aftermath, Searching for the Shadowy Figure + Fall + Cave, The Band (The full version of Lost my Music is brutally awesome but the singer has to hit a few "yeah!"s that are in a register and tone I'm not comfortable hearing for Haruhi's demeanor), and Kyon's decision plus actions in 14.

I finished up Sousei no Aquarion over the past weekend, enjoyable down to the last moments. The truth of Sirius's memories was creative, if not to my tastes, as was Toma's love of the Solar Wing being . Series highlights, spoilers, still stand at

• First usage of the OP -- Apollo taking control of the Aquarion Jet to form Solar Aquarion.
• First Gattai -- And the total WTF O.o reaction.
• Everything Fudo does -- And the total OMG moment when his connection to Aquarion/Apollo/Toma is revealed.
• Rena-vision -- Especially the final one we see, of Apollo and Silvia in the garden before Sirius reclaims his sister.
• Military Aquarion -- Angelic Glen is so-so badass, but black Aquarion with a Rifle? Total badass.
• About 70% of the attack registrations -- Especially any of Pierre's.
• Rena in Aquarion -- I prefer the ep where they fight the reflecting mirror Mystical Beast for the Moon Phase-esce drinking of Apollo's blood, but the final ep with Rena fighting is equally good.
• Lastly, the Cosplay Ep -- I don't really think I have to say anything more about that.

All my eggs in one basket

So it seems that divesting all my faith for the current anime season (note: I use CAS extremely loosely, incorporating all series I'm watching which haven't presently been subbed to completion into its folds. To extrapolate on this looseness: given those parameters, Kaleido Star is current season) into the hands of only a small number of groups combined with my stalwant railing against no-name startups or groups of questionable capability (Read: YuGiOh, have you seen their site? In fairness though I don't actually know if that indicates how well they sub, and sooner or later I might not have an alternative but to find out) has resulted in a disappointing stagnation over the past week+ in terms of growth in anime (which isn't all bad, as I'm low on Drive Space, but nothing that can't be aided by clearing up some of the clutter on the old drive). Worse yet is the fact that I'm actually up to date on all of this stuff as well, making the delay that much more crushing.

Before I delve too much into how I feel about what I am watching, I do want to remark on what I'm not watching but perhaps should be.

• Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicles - I'd love to be watching this, damn real life for tripping up Tofusensi and the quality subbing subsiquentially falling completely to shambles.
• Blood+ - Actually, this is being done by two groups that I enjoy, so it's not that it's not being subbed, but that I'm roughly a season+ behind and catching up on other stuff first.
• Kamisama Kazoku - I'm hoping for a batch now that this is finished, it looks interesting enough to have watched.
• Utawarerumuno - Shadow Warrior Chronicles!, err... I mean, I think I could do with some furry harem, but you're never allowed to quote me on that.
• Innocent Venus - Jury is still out on this one, it seems sorta down my alley, but I'm not totally grooving on the art style from what I've seen. If no other group with a name I recoignize shows up with this one I'll take one of the present offerings and see how the first few play out.
• Shakugan no Shana - I've got it all, I just haven't found myself the initative to watch through it. Perhaps I'll flip coins or draw cards to decide what series (Blood+, Shana, Otome, Honey and Clover, School Rumble, or get and watch FMP TSR) to play catchup on next.

Speaking of things I can watch, Anime Network On Demand has the entire series of Ikko Tousen, however the ANN info wasn't particularly decisive as to whether or not it was worth the watch. I might check it out were the On-Demand not on the same TV as the 360, which has a bit more weight at the moment for reasons to be discussed later.

Anyways, the current anime season:

• Honey and Clover -- Actually, this belongs in the previous category, however with Aquarion finished the first season of this is next to be completed and then I'll be digging through the second season. And thankfully Solar and Ideology are doing very nicely at keeping the pace.
• GunXSword -- That 17th episode was pretty damn good, exceptional for not including Van except to the bare minimum (Not that Van's all bad, but there are stretches where you have to wonder if they couldn't have included more Spike and less Vash in his influences), and amusing despite (or with the aid of, your call) the best efforts of the censorship donkey. Plus, the hints at Faerlina's Armor control schema (pole-dancing) which should be amusing to watch. Carmen 99 and her make great epic opponents, especially the way their weapons interact.
• Ouran Host Club -- Excellent music, fantastic art, great characters. I'm not certain I want any sort of relationship development past what stands here. Kyouga is awesome in all his dealings, the "rape" scene as well as the entirity of episode 17 being the core moments of it. Tamaki isn't really my alley, neither is Honey nor Mori's self-created servitude. Just give me more of the Twin's goodness, Kyouga's schemeing and innocent drama-free Mori x Haruhi and I'll be happy.
• Coyote Ragtime Show -- The first 10 seconds of the OP are all I watch. Just the "Coyote Ragtime Show" bit. The rest is alright, but it just doesn't stack up. The ED is, of course, always worth watching, being UFOTable's claymation expertise on display (really, it's damn impressive). Mostly I'm just hoping I don't have this go Speed Grapher on me before my eyes as the little girl falls completely in love with her father's friend and her protector/caregiver, cause honestly, that just annoys me. My preferences for Ginza (aka: Adult Jo (Bakuretsu Tenshi fame)) aside, that's just not something I need, it's just awkward and annoying all at once. I'm not certain that I like the growing mass principle of the group gathering up to go after the treasure since I think things work perfectly fine in smaller numbers, makes for better fluidity in fights and more hero-time (aka sheer WTF-Awesomeness!) for the each individual. I'm disappointed to have Sister's down and out before they even really get personalities, though I guess if you're gonna off one, Sept was probably the one I'd least object to, unless you're getting a 3 for 1 and wiping out the annoyance that is the Winter Trio, little children have no place in this war, grotesque strength or not. More May screentime please, especially angry May.
• Black Lagoon -- I think that Levy plus Shenhua plus Legarch is reason enough for a second season. I want that interplay for another two or three episodes solid. I'm hoping I get to see what skills Legarch possesses to set him in a position of equal standing with Shenhua. I also wouldn't mind sleeping-Levy again, that was adorable and an excellent addition to the Rock plus Levy development, even if it didn't add to anything. The new villians are freaking awesome, though I think they might have too many resources at their disposal, not that numbers work at stopping our heroes. Chan and Levy's shootout was amusing but not overkill awesome. Their lack of taking cover was definately a few extra marks in the badass book though. For next season give me Levy, Shenhua, and the Sister's of Battle girl, the Bloodhound can take a break with her charge, oh, and tons of the Russians, though I don't need extra Porn in the background, and less Nazi's.
• Ergo Proxy -- I actually give Shinsen lieniency on the next few eps, as they're apparently ridicu-fucking-liciously complicated. I'm not totally on board with the artstyle of this still, but between kickass OP and ED and a story that has me interested mixed with a partial relationship drive, a ton of scheming and backstabbing and misdirection by everyone involved and an unhealthy level of randomness. All of which falls in the shadow of the awesomeness that is Pino.
• N.H.K. -- Speaking of randomness...NHK really worries me at times. It's a delve into the side of Otaku-Hikkomori-dom (there's gotta be an abbreviation for this redundancy) that I wasn't particularly interested in seeing, but am utter intrigued by anyways. It doesn't hurt that his sempai for the lit club is easy on the eyes, however I think the overall draw is the totally madness (and I kinda wanna watch him get redeemed, lessons for the rest of us down in our own traps of our own making). I'm not 100% as to where this one is going, but I can say that the full version of the ED is roughly 3x as frightening as the Tv-Size and I'm thankful that I can't picture the little creatures to accompany it. The OP also has the Ergo-Proxy lure, where I feel there's a lot to be learned by studying it, but I'm not about to.
• School Rumble -- Can we just have Flag Faction? Please? That's all I really want. Harima x Yakumo would be alright as well. Just take Tenma and let her be happy and cute off in a corner and not cause any trouble. This is far more Harem-troubled than I'd originally anticipated, but the complete cool-random that flares up more than balances it, not to mention the utter-cute moments (Eri holding the giraffe in 18...sweet merciful heavens is that adorable).
• Zero no Tsukaima -- You might rally that by not watching Shana I shouldn't be watching this. But honestly giving the magic to the girl and the sword to the guy I feel alot better about the show. Plus it's not such blatent loli-bait which is one of those things that just isn't in my preferences (corrolary - NHK is getting harder to watch for this reason). The idea of "real world" things being exceptionally valuable and mysterious in a medieval Harry Potter setting is a delightful thing to me. It's an avenue that's often been considered, but never with quite so much excellence. I'm not certain that the over-the-top nature of everyone will bode well, but I do like that obvious pair who are obviously not together as a genre as well as the powerful Sorceress who is still learning to use her powers (So long as it doesn't become some mushy love unlocks my power blah blah blah routine), I just worry that ZnT might have too many interfering characters to trouble things up. I'm not fully up on the 'eye'dea (Typo turned pun, apologies) of a floating eyeball being a "bugbear" and the quiet Yuki-clone is quick becoming an archtypical character, and as much as I'd like to see Saito cause her to warm up, I think there's enough Harem atm. Hell, Kirsche is a harem on her own (I swear, if we get another pun about being "in heat" heads may roll, or at least my eyes). The talking sword is kinda cool though, I like his attitude, and mostly I just wanna see where all of this leads, so here's hoping this nice twist on a common theme can make the most of it.
• Eureka Seven -- With all the pieces set into place for the final match we're in a string of episodes building relationships and ties. Which means that I'm bored stiff so I'm holding off until something gets put out with a at least a few more explosions than just exchanges of covering fire of Anemone rampaging ineffectually. Once we get a hearty episode I'll actually suffer through Renton learning the importance of teamwork to win a Soccer match and all of the learning about Coralian episodes. Plus-side, Eureka looks normal again! Down-side, kids are still effing everywhere.

Holy crap, writing in Compose mode makes the core HTML appearance really pretty cluttered. Unconverted paragraph tags be damned. Other half (gaming) hopefully later today/tomorrow.

When at work without speakers

Sites such as these:

AnimeNfo Radio

Kawaii Radio

Don't really do me much good.

This is not a double post

Though it will be the second post for the day. So if you're one of the few who tries to sort this madness, be aware that it's a double-time job.

So, thanks to the Florida trip not only does that CRV of mine need an oil change (Reccomended at 14K miles, and I was at 13999 when I got to work last Friday), but also I've (Would "but I've also" be a proper usage? It's not like I'm splitting infinitives, just correlating conjuctions... guess I need to buy a copy of Elements of Style for myself when my 22nd rolls around) logged a whopping 105 hours into Dual Strike, 206 medals out of the 300 cap. Started playing around with the combo dual strikes, rather than the most effective pairings (eg. less Sasha, less Eagle, less Jake, less Javier, my powerhouse 4, and more of the rest). Some of the ending quotes are kinda cute.

Used my abuse of FilePlanet to secure a copy of the Heroes of Might and Magic V demo. Beautiful game, absolutely stunning. I was not expecting nearly this level of artwork and although I hear the cutscenes and music are semi-lackluster it's totally compensated by the return to the HoMM 3 style with a few choice twists. HoMM IV was a total sinker of a game. The inclusion of active battle heroes plus the small build capacity of cities was a dampner, and unlike II, II PoL, and III, with their brutally hard campaigns, IV was cheese. Your hero / hero-pair, if you made it through the first few missions, could often carry your entire army though to the end on sheer power. The ability to combine heroes, allowing for the Holy Trinity of IV - a Battle Lord with full Grandmaster Tactics Skill lineup and full GM Leadership plus full Nobility for improved raw income, growth, and resources, an Ranger with GM Archery, GM Combat, GM Pathfinding (and GM Navagation as applicable) with enough Master/Grandmaster Skill in the focus school of the campaign to cast the top tier buff spells (Cat's Reflexes, Dragon's Strength, Guardian Angel) and debilitators to control truly threating grade 4 monsters (Cloud of Confusion, Beserker, Teleport), and a raw dual GM Spell Caster across the primary and one of the two neighboring skills to either bombard with spell damage or continue the buffing/control spells on rounds that your main hero is better off firing into combat. Just grab a few of the choice artifacts (Lifesteal or Polearm weapons, Amulet of Fear, some form of Magic Resistance if you don't get GM from Combat).

Anyways, that aside, HoMM V campaign is pretty brutal from what I've experienced and played and the game seemed pretty cool. Not certain I'm ready to toss the cash on the counter due to concerns about glitches and patches, as well as questions about the broadness of stand-alone scenarios, but unless I happen upon my copy of HoMM III, I'm going to be wanting one of the two to satiate a hunger for massive campaign Turn-Based Fantasy Strategy.

Valkerie Profile is getting rereleased on PSP, and if it includes a removal of the obstentatious and cumbersome timered World Map that the PSX version suffered of I think it'll be due incentive for me to get one, otherwise tracking down a PSX ver alongside Xenogears and Rhapsody will still be my agenda. Past that, the full Atelier Iris series is really starting to appeal to me as FFXII, Disgaea II, and V.Profile II only seem to get a bit further away every month. I'll probably pick up a few of AI to tide myself till the others get cheaper (who am I kidding, Disagea at least is unlikely to go down and definately worth the playtime).

Merely minutes past post and Omni was already taking issue with a few of my picks for the GameFAQs BSE battle. And in all likelyhood, as usual, he's probably right. Metroid > Pokemon and SSB > Warcraft.

The ending to Condemned: Criminal Origins really isn't much of one, and the game itself doesn't really make sense going back in context. However, it's still one hell of a creepy and difficult game, and the last areas of the last stage, brutally so.

Your mother is a terrorist

Obligatory World Cup reference, and yes I did watch the game, and yeah, I was rooting for France.

Not going to be talking about the RadioBlog link, which is a fundamentally impressive set of HTML meta-code, but that's mostly coming from the no-so technologically inclined person that I am, since it sorta stands for itself.

Debating with myself whether the lingerie ploy of the second phase of 10K Commotion or the drawings of the green-haired girl at the party in early Machall is more likely to actually succeed. I'm inclinded to believe the former has greater likelyhood, but I'm certainly no expert.

So, round 1 of the Best Series Ever is over at GameFAQs, and as usual I'm certainly not suprised, though not perfect in my predictions either.

Legend of Zelda > Civilization (98.15% predicted correctly; landslide, but Civ isn't a FAQ friendly game)
Megaman X > Suikoden (77.84; guess Suik had more followers than I'd have thought)
Pokemon > Star Ocean (83.74; Suik had more support than Star Ocean even, needs more stateside games)
Metroid > Kirby (89.22%; poor Kirby, I'd expected better for the pink puff)
Metal Gear > Soul Caliber (88.25; SC had no real chance)
Fire Emblem > Silent Hill (50.65; close call for those participating, don't have the numbers so I can't say how clear a victory the actual voting was)
Castlevania > Halo (31.49%; perhaps I've been overestimating Halo's popularity, with how badly it seems to lose in all interations of GameFAQ competitions)
Kingdom Hearts > Harvest Moon (90.3%; this wasn't really a competiton)
Super Mario Bros > Madden NFL (96.11%; nor was this one)
Warcraft > Grand Theft Auto (33.94%; A close call and a large upset for those participating)
Sonic the Hedgehog > Devil May Cry (77.06%; I still don't like Sonic)
Super Smash Bros > Dragon Quest (81.25%; No contest)
Final Fantasy > Diablo (97.25%; There wasn't a question)
Mega Man > Mario Kart (62.96%; Alas poor Kart, Mega Man is still a crappy series relative to X, Zero, Axl, and Bass/Treble)
Street Fighter > The Elder Scrolls (65.96%; I admit, Oblivion's leveling system is crap. And the proliferation of vs. Capcom games should've clued me in that SF still had a powerful stand)
Resident Evil > Shadow Hearts (96.21%; Doesn't change that fact that I still need a used copy of Shadow Hearts to play)

Down to a mere 3 people with a perfect 0, 474 with the perfect 16.

Picks for the next round:

LoZ > MMX
Pokemon > Metroid (Tough call actually, but I'll root for Pokemon)
Metal Gear > Fire Emblem (FE could've done so much better without such harsh opposition)
Castlevania ? Kingdom Hearts (Hard call. I think KH will edge this one out though personally I pick Castlevania for the win)
Warcraft > Super Mario Bros
Super Smash Bros > Sonic the Hedgehog (Brick, Brick, Brick)
Final Fantasy > Megaman
Resident Evil > Street Fighter

Bastille Day Test

The GameFAQs Summer Contest and Dot dot dot...

...and I feel fine. Let it rain, rain, Ra~i~ain.

Really, I think that song is always a suitable response to anyone using the widely adopted Manga-styled '...'.

Month + 1 day of delay. Not really horrible given my track record, but I claim my weeks vacation to Florida to play a role in the timer-differential.

I'm starting to think that I'd really like a WordPress support for this, just because I'm finding Blogger's system to be a bit more trudging and sluggish, though a fair deal of that is probably that I access it only via less-than-stellar internets.

Anyways, I didn't actually submit for this one, but GameFAQS is doing a "Best Series Ever" Contest, and here's my guesses. It's already partially underway, but that's not factored into these, they're older than that and I'm not changing them if I was wrong already.

Bolded Title is my expected winner, Italics indicate the one I will/did vote for.

Hyrule Division:
Legend of Zelda vs Civilization - The first, and the first of several PC vs Console styled matchings. I like Civ. I've spent days and days playing the second, and his highly similar Alpha Centauri. The third was a total bust, absolutely worthless, and I haven't played #4 but I've heard good things. Meanwhile, Legend of Zelda has yet to ever let me down, except in making Twilight Princess so awesome but not being out yet. Oh, and the pain of doing the Water Temple in Ocarina - Master Quest, but that was a good kind of horrible agony. Also, it's not called the Hyrule Division for no reason.

Suikoden vs Mega Man X - Suikoden is interesting, it's got 5 games US now plus a Tactics, and all of them have the 108, all unique and special. But it's not a big ticket game francise, nor really all that good IMO (Played 1 and 3, own 4). Megaman X is my flavor of Megaman. The dash command really made the game. It was a breath of fresh life to the stagnating series and made for a really excellent platformer series (Voice-overs in later stage games aside).

Pokemon vs Star Ocean - I'm not saying Pokemon isn't great. But honestly it's just too much in too many directions. It was a great game originally, but the system breaks down at higher levels, and once they added breeding and all 100% more types it just became a really odd mash of an excellent tactical-strategy game with a kiddy facade. There's some great strategy and innovation there, but minus points for over-milking the system with half-assed things like Pokemon Snap and Hey you! Pikachu. Star Ocean, otoh, isn't really a well settled US Series yet, with little being in the spotlight past the success of the Third game. Fantastic battle system, less than stellar travelling options. Hours of enjoyment thanks to Battle Trophies, but not really too settled in the mind of the masses.

Metroid vs Kirby - Hard call but ultimately the overwhelming ability of Kirby to continue to have stellar games across Nintendo systems (with 2 recent excellent games on the GBA) compared against the nightmarish navigation and headaches of Metroid's latest games seals the deal for me. I do think the Varia Suit variant Samus hype could win the day but when the battle

Snake Divison:
Metal Gear vs Soul Calibur - Soul Calibur is nice and all, a solid weapons-based fighting game, perhaps the best of it's kinda. But Metal Gear sorta defined an entire genre, set the stage for Splinter Cell (argue all you like, I feel the two are the same game, just a different mood, cast, setting, and style). Snake Division belongs to Metal Gear, truth.

Fire Emblem vs Silent Hill - Eh. Silent Hill may have 4 games and a movie relative to Fire Emblem, but I think the Smash Brothers inclusion plus their multiple more-recent releases gives Fire Emblem the edge and the victory.

Castlevania vs Halo - Even though Master Chief himself has repeatedly been kicked around in the opening rounds of character contests, I think there's still enough generic Halo popularity, especially with bigger E3 news about Halo 3 than the total lack of anything on the forthcoming front for Castlevania except perhaps the occasional handheld game that tries to improve upon SotN and loses all it's focus and thus appeal in the process. There is always the odd chance that Halo fans just aren't GameFAQs people, and seeing how little FPS's need FAQs, I could see it happening. On a personal level, Halo is fun, Halo II legendary is asskickingly hard but the Musketeering (All for one, one for all) sorta ruins the co-op aspect, but Castlevania, especially and almost exclusively SotN, the new handheld Nintendo offerings aren't bad either, just reigns over anything Halo could hope for, especially with Halo 2's non-ending.

Kingdom Hearts vs Harvest Moon - Harvest Moon is cute and all, but it doesn'tstand a chance against KH, especially as people are still finishing up all the greatness that was KH2 (Since I know that A) Not everyone got it immediately and B) Not everyone marathoned it quite as much as I did).

Mushroom Division:
Super Mario Bros vs Madden NFL - I'm not actually a SMB fan, but I'm pretty much an anti-mainstream-sports game fan. Madden is the pinnacle of football games, but there are much better ways to get your gaming adrenaline flowing, EASports ftw and all, Mario is an icon. Madden is a voice, and some of us find him kinda pompus.

GTA vs Warcraft - Another Console versus PC pairing. Tell me all you want that GTA is a PC game, just like Halo it's a Console game first and foremost. GTA is popular, but Warcraft as a series is greater, even without factoring WoW into the equation.

Sonic the Hedgehog vs Devil May Cry - I'm not really a Sega fan, never have been, and definately never been a Sonic fan. Dante's done well in past competitions, especially since DMC3 didn't suck, but I'm not covinced that he can overcome the rabid fandom that Sonic fans have presented in the fast.

Super Smash Bros vs Dragon Quest - Dragon Quest might be an origin-level RPG and even had decent success with DQVIII (especially with the FFXII Demo attached), but I don't think it's going to stand any chance against the power of SSB, which I've witness rewrite the history of several previous character battle contests.

Ultima Division:
Final Fantasy vs Diablo - Diablo, fairly popular. Not a FAQ-friendly game as it got lots of it's own major fansites. Also, doesn't stand a chance against FF. I may've really enjoyed Diablo, but I think even most of my amusement was third party additions.

Mega Man vs Mario Kart - I don't really like the non-X Mega Mans, but I think they're popular, or at least enough of a running gimmick to beat out even the glory of Mario Kart DS's wireless competitions.

The Elder Scrolls vs Street Fighter - Morrowind/Obilivion will crush a series that hasn't had a new game see the light of day in ages. SF is nice and all, but it's old, and old means it's lost the support that other games have garnered in more recent eras.

Resident Evil vs Shadow Hearts - Shadow Hearts is a relatively newcomer, a bit niche, and nothing compared to a sweepingly massive series across consoles with several connected movies, some of which are even good. Shadow Hearts is good and all, and I'd love to get my hands on a copy, but RE wins.

A new generation of gaming

Well, originally this was going to be a Wednesday post but circumstances redirected that effort so it was revised to a Thursday post, initally created, then lost completely when Blogger went down for Emergency Maintenance so it's now a Friday post that will hopefully get completed as such.

David picked up a XBox 360 + Dead or Alive 4 early on in the week, I nearly got Guitar Hero as well since $45 for the entire thing is easily dwarved by the $60 cost of 360 games. He went out again later and traded in the old XBox to pick up Condemned: Criminal Origins, Morrowind 4: Oblivion, and Ian got Wario Ware: Touched for the DS.

I haven't seen Condemned, but I did play a bit of Oblivion. Actually, my father and both brothers did too. David's playing a Cat-race Stealth-type, Archery, Sneak, Hand-to-Hand, Acrobatics, Athletics, under the Rogue sign. Clive's got a Warrior, Blade, Heavy Armor, High Strength, etc, human. Ian's playing a mix of the two, Blade and Stealth Cat person. I'm playing the Mage. Wisdom and Endurace Focus, Sign of the Mage; Alchemy, Blade, Heavy Armor, Destruction, Restoration, Security (Should've chosen Alteration, just cast Unlocking). It's odd for me to play this style of RPG and not have a Personality/Speechcraft character, but at least most games aren't as unwise as Fallout was (I could literally take a Signal Flare into a store, and end up with the store's entire stock). Oblivion is pretty cool in the short time I played. Lots of travel nothingness to deal with at the start, and I really hate murky questlines (Ie: Not set with giant blinking objectives or concise journal objectives), but it's still fun.

DoA4 has at least a few new characters. Haven't unlocked anything past Gen Fu and Leon so far, plus a few costumes. They've added a Brazilian Masked (Mardi-Gras style) Wrestler, Gen Fu's Apprentice who's a very girly looking boy who uses what looks like a combination of Crane Style and Gen Fu's martial arts. There's also Kokoro who's another generic Japanese girl, traditional dress and fighting style. Brad Wong has an outfit that looks just like Gen Fu. Christie's main Costume (Costume 1) is a open-front black jacket with no undershirt. Zach still has the horrible alien/teletubby costume. Tina now has a cowgirl outfit, complete with hat. And Bass is even bigger than before.

Story mode now ends with different enemies for different characters, and an uberboss like DoA3 had (much as I hated his cheapness) isn't present. There is, however, an equal evil that some characters get to face. DOATEC's Alpha 152, which is a transparent-greenish energy being, built off of, I believe, Kasumi's model. She's a floating enemy with the ability to teleport as a counter or just of her own free will. Her attacks are lightning fast and her knock range is obscene. She has a few combos that involve swinging her legs at an incredible rate. Most of her combos can deal 1/4th - 1/3rd of your life, and in one particularly nasty juggle I did lose more than 2/3rds of my total life without a chance to counter or break. She has 3 grabs, all wicked. One is Kasumi's jumping leg neck break, but is executeable from a much much greater distance. Another begins like Kasumi's leg-based should grapple throw, but instead of using her legs to throw you, she drops you to a leg-based neck lock and spends awhile pummeling your head (a long ass, duration, combo). The third is absolutely the nastiest, she grabs your character's head, cracks their neck, and holds them with one arm while holding her palm in front of their face and charging energy, then releasing it in a blast of force sending you flying away.

The stages are a bit more dynamic, though not alot. There are a few object here and there that can be broken. The game also introduces low collison barricades, which someone can jump over, or be knocked over, but otherwise act as barriers. Things like fallen logs (outdoors) or the lane divider for the street (Casino Street level). There are also a few enviromental effects: T-Rex in the background, speeding cars on the Casino Street, that can do a bit of damage and add a bit of fun.

I'm thinking I need to at least look at the demo of Heroes of Might and Magic V, though from what I've read via Penny-Arcade's Rants, it's just a magically colorful as the IV, still probably worth my time though. I'm also considering Civ 4, because it is a good series, even if Civ 3 was a rather botched product.

Till then I'll just be waiting for Disgaea 2 and Final Fantasy XII, or for Atlier Iris 1 and 2 to crash a bit more in price.

Anime Outlook

But before that. I've just learned that apparently Nora Jones uses the word Mother-fucker in one of her recent songs. There's something really unsettling about that. I obviously need a new way to get music, since it's mostly Anime OSTs that supply my Winamp's growth these days.

So, the perspective as we near the Summer Season (Yes, Spoilers, and lots of them):

Black Lagoon -
OP: Fantastic. CG'd bullet reflections, fun stuff with Levi.
ED: Has an ED of last season's quality (Aka, on par with Tactical Roar, Solty Rei, Mai Otome, or Cluster Edge; which is to say static and boring without even an appealing song).
Upside: Fantastic show, humorous and shounen. Strong, diverse characters, building relationship tension, well drawn gunfights and brawls.
Downside: Uhh...I'm not really certain where the plot is going, if there is one. Seems like a string of loose jobs without any visible overarching connection.
Impulse: I'm not certain I want a relationship to get settled yet, as much as I complain about FMP stalling Sousuke and Chidori so much, I think I prefer things massively unresolved, or only slowing working towards resolution. Rock better get to fight something sometime, and more Levi doing the music killing please.

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi -
OP: Interesting and lively, with enough foreshadowing to make me smile. I don't know how many of the Haruhi images are actually straight from an episode, but there's few enough to not feel like a cop-out tactic.
ED: Spawned a ton of knockoffs and a minor dance/parody craze. Not enough said? It's a good song and has great animation to boot.
Upside: Besides being a rather massive hit across the anime boards, the show merits all the praise. Massive art quality, great characters, an interesting plot.
Downside: Depends if you want your episodes to come in the proper order. Not going to be enough episodes of this goodness.
Impulse: Honestly, I think I enjoy the later eps (the true later eps, not the early eps ordered near the end) just for Kyon and Haruhi's relationship. Take the end of the Baseball Ep (4/7 , in order/truth) where Kyon talks Haruhi out of continuing with the Baseball Tournament; or the Split into Groups and tell Kyon your secret (Ep 5/?) episode with Haruhi's failed pairings and the angry straw-sucking. That all said, I don't really like Mikuru, she's sorta an obstacle to Kyon x Haruhi (And my tastes are for the dominant, not the submissive, and definately not the Meido / Loli)

Ergo Proxy
OP: I think I could spend 5 hours analyzing the images of the OP. I'm not going to, but it's that deep and fun. Yes, I know the text repeats alot, but there's still enough of it.
ED: Radiohead - Paranoid Android. Last Season styled though, just scrolling credits. Fortunately the lyrics work for me, so it's not a double whammy, the song isn't suck as well.
Upside: High art level, tons of references and hidden meanings, truly mysterious. Growing relationship and Pino. Pino is victory, pure and simple. Goth makeup.
Downside: Dinkiest fights ever and the weapons are pretty dull for a post-modern setting. Some of the character designs really take some getting used to, and our hero's dream sequences I could do without.
Impulse: Usagi-Pino is like victory^3. I'm really curious about all the plot that's yet to be expositioned. The "villian" is pretty crappy so far, especially after his spacing out in Ep 2. Seems that anyone not in the OP is pretty much assured to die, which is sorta bothersome, but it's been good for plot and development.

Ouran High School Host Club
OP: This is the Jpop-y, sugary stuff that makes me smile. It's not the greatest OP of the season, but it's still firmly rooted on the "like" side of the scale.
ED: The ED is growing on me. It may be static images, but at least they have color (unlike Shakugan no Shana's ED) and the song is both fast-paced and interesting.
Upside: Haruhi's for the win. A full cast of loveable (or detestable) characters, fantastic art, and a Gakuen Alice styled Academy (Bestest School setting, trumps the standard boring-school (See Suzumiya Haruhi, FMP, School Rumble, etc.)
Downside: Kyoya need a bit more development. I'd like the running debt-tally to factor into things a bit more.
Impulse: I think I prefer all the Host Club over Tamaki, but perhaps that to be expected. The first episode with the lightbulbs was so victorious I don't think anything after it can match that level of awesome, but they sure are trying. Honey-sempai's Ninja skills could use a bit more showcasing perhaps.

Eureka Seven -
OP3 (Fly Away): Decent song, shitty shitty animation quality. Also features the damaged Eureka appearance, definately not a plus.
OP4 (Sakura): Good song, though the start is alot stronger than the actual song.
ED3 (Tip Tap Tops): Black and white + new art style = inability to recoignize anyone. That said. Hali Cali is great and the art, while different, is fantastic.
ED4 (Coolon): Credit heavy ending, haven't seen it more than once so I can't really impose judgement.
Upside: I think we're past all the awkwardness as of now (Ep 38 atm) and ready for the drive to the grand finale.
Downside: I can't really root for an underage relationship that extends beyond friendship. I liked old Talho alot better.
Impulse: The last few eps have had some glorious moments (like Grandpa evading the military to deliver the board to Spec2 Nirvash). Still need to see what happens with Anemone. Gotta wonder what'll be resolved with Renton's father's / sister's stories.

Tsubasa Chronicle Season Season
OP: It's a good song, but it's a bit too slow for my liking, especially for an OP that features fighting. I like the portrayl of the shadows of the characters.
ED: I love this song, and the animation is as good as the show, even if it's not much more than static. Enough said.
Upside: More of what we love.
Downside: Mokona seems to be like 20% less cute noises, however the goggles from the dragonfly race totally made up for that for at least 10 eps.
Impuse: While I totally support Syaoran and Sakura getting bolder, I kinda liked just having Kurogane and Fye fight. Not a big deal, they seem to still be doing their basass interplay while hiding from their pasts, so we've still got all the stuff that made last season great, and more.

Well, that's enough text for now.

I actually have a planned post

Well, not really, I had a planned post, but I don't know if I'll have time to get through it all. I'm getting to this approximately 6 hours later in the day than I'd initially expected, so I'll likely have to pick up the torch where ever it is that I end. Standard assortment of mini-posts to follow.

Your stop, sir.
So, I've discovered that being the only person in the family to have a car with more than 2 doors has pretty much pidgeonholed me into the lovely duty of family chauffeur. Not a serious issue, but this certainly wasn't originally as planned (in my defense, all the vehicles in the family minus my father's had 4 doors when I got the CRV).

X III, the Last Stand (Yes, Spoilers)
So, I went with the family to see X-3. Preface to this, I must admit that I did not go into the movie expecting to see my comic book re-portrayed on the screen as it played out there. I'd have to have been a fool if I expected this, because honestly, you know from the first that certain elements have changed. What did I want out of this movie? I wanted some good explosions, convincing characters, and at least as much side-line showboating as I got in the second movie. If you're asking yourself what side-line showboating I'm speaking of, I mean the scene where William Striker's forces are storming the academy. We get to see Siren (it's a girl, so it's not Banshee), Kitty Pryde aka Shadowcat, Colossus, Arcade (I can only assume based on his interactions with the television) and even a glimse of a girl with giant square earrings whom one can only conjecture must be Jubilee, even if she's not wearing the traditional flourescent yellow raincoat. So, bearing this in mind, how does the movie stack up:

Are the characters true to their comic book selves? Yes, all their actions fit what I'd expect. No one does anything that had me questioning motives or reasoning. Is it fully satisfactory? Not quite. There are a lot of things that don't totally add up across the pages. Mystique selling out Magneto after he abandons her for becoming human? Totally within the realm of both their characters. Magneto getting angry at Pyro when the latter suggests he'd have killed Xavier, again fits, though it leaves an odd juxtaposition of ideals that never gets resolved properly (though taking them both out and ending the Brotherhood does alright).

The dialogue could've done with a bit more. Not in any specific venue but across the board there are exchanges that could've been intensified. Kelsey Grammer as Beast? Wonderful, and he has some of the best lines in the movie ("I cannot believe this once fit me"). Juggernaught and Kitty? Not so great. Senseless pandering and namecalling. Though I fully concede that Shadowcat's mocking of Juggernaught was justified, Juggernaught isn't really much of a comedic relief character. Magneto was great, wonderful. He was everything Emp. Palapatine should have been. Phoenix was great too, angry, conflicted, powerful (to continue, I always hated Phoenix. She was trite for far far too long in the comics/show, and served as a consistant annoyance in my opinion).

The effects are wonderful, with exceptions. I've gotta admit I was a bit miffed at the family in the car on the bridge scene. They get such attention, yet when it comes time to the be hurling cars and blasting them with flame, it seems to have completely been forgotten. The moon rising up over the Alcatraz complex? Despite a bright, midday battle? Every car with it's lights on? Those sorts of oversights are not forgivable, though they can be overlooked. The lack of a response from Angel's father post-recue by his pariah son? Again troubling, but at least not out of character that time.

Where I really feel the show needed help was the characters. Did Magneto's secondary wave of minions (Ie, not Multiple Man, not Jugger, not Pyro, but the lesser Brotherhood members) have any real identity? No, they did not. Spike was a recoignizable, if foolish and shortlived character. The rest of them, while appropriate, were virtual nameless plot devices. Mainly the Mutant-Senser, the other two were just there to show the type of brutes the Magneto employed (Well, at least blowfish was, the other one, the Chameleon, didn't even do much except help throw Angel's father out of the window). The Shockwave one (I don't even know what gender he/she was supposed to be) was again just used to destroy the guns that had been modified to stop Magneto, as opposed to having him rip up a bridge girder or defensive tower and smashing in through the weapons in an arcing blow (Ignoring the question of why there were no weapons inside the building).

Watch the credits (not the post-credits, that's another discussion in and of itself) and you'll note credits given specifically to Psylocke and Jubilee. Did either of them manifest their powers, prove their identity, no. Did my favorite X-man make a show, of course not, if he hadn't by the second there was no way to have him make much of a magical appearance. Iceman becoming truly Iceman was great though, and the combat tactics of our team of 6 was fitting and fun ("Don't ever do that again"). Exavier's unnecessary foreshadowing, not needed.

The post credits is interesting, and anyone who doesn't stay through the credits is a fool at any movie in general, extras or not. I don't think they'll make another movie. Honestly, I'd love one, get some different characters some screentime, but I don't think it's likely. I'm just biding time for Pirates II now, although the Snakes on a Plane trailer was amusing, mostly for audience reaction.