Category: Ongoing Investigations

Ongoing Investigations: Case #046

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I picked up one of the blind box Gundam 00 Calendar Characters and got lucky! My pick turned out to be Allelujah for May/Children’s Day. There are 12 figures total, one for each month, so each meister has 3 figures. As you can see Allelujah is in his flight suit here, but each of the others has a different outfit. Some look more fun than others. They also come with two accessories related to their month/holiday. Though since the pose and heads are basically the same across the board I don’t have the desire to collect them all. But it is certainly worth having my favorite of. He is quite cute and tiny, and easily worth my $6.

Suikoden Tierkreis is a fine return to form for the Suikoden series even if this is a side story. After some lackluster entries, I am glad to see a very solid renewal of the franchise. Suikoden Tierkreis involves parallel worlds and destiny vs. free will. I won’t claim that it is high literature but it competently handles pretty weighty topics in a competent and entertaining manner which can often be hard for video games. The story starts after some friends who are part of a small village defense force find a book that revels the memories they have are lies. A new organization that believes everything is predestined seek to make a single world where everyone believes as they do. So this rag tag team must rally together to defeat this fanatical organization. I really like that your main allies, the Magedom, are almost as nasty as your enemies in the Order of the One True Way. One of the biggest strengths with 108 recruitable characters is you will always like at least one or two characters. However, many charters don’t get detailed character development. The main charters is sort of the generic plucky never give up shonen hero but at least he has a personality beyond silent protagonist everyone likes for no given reason. The main cast is all enjoyable so you don’t have to cling to side characters in the game. The game play is the standard turn-based RPG battles. Without a doubt the two biggest flaws are the encounter rate and the voice acting. The random encounter rate is really high which makes exploration a pain. Also, there are only one or two decent voice actors making it overall quite bad. Unfortunately, there is a lot of voice acting. I tend to play it on my commute on the subway so it often does not matter but when I do hear it I tend to skip.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #045

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It time for more the part of Ongoing Investigations were I show you what toys I bought. First up is new two newest Portraits of Pirates. The set seems to have back in black as the theme. The first is the newest member of the Straw Hat Pirates, Brook. He is a skeleton, with an Afro, a top hat, and a suit who plays the violin. If this combination of words does not make you want a figure of him, I am not sure what I can say to sell you on it. He comes with a sword cane, a tea cup, and his tone dial. Also you can also pop open the little compartment in his skull and keep the tone dial in there which I find an amusing attention to detail. In contrast we have Rob Lucci. Another man in a black suit with a top hat but with a completely different tone to the lighthearted Brook. Rob also comes with his pigeon Hattori and his mask. I really think that as the Portrait of Pirates series has gone on they have really come into their own. While Rob is  not as complex as some of the latest entries into the series he is well done and really captures the essence of the character. Brook is complex and customizable for a static pose figure. I am a little surprised that they decided to make Rob instead of the more popular Kaku.

Picked up Spiral’s seventh volume. There are some bigger points that start to uncover themselves here, just hints but it is expected to come slowly. Ayumu taking on brute force verse his logic is great. It also randomly reminded me of the L movie where they sort of imply that violence can beat brains as well. I don’t think I would normally notice that but since I watched that and read this so close to each other it stuck out. I also like that Ayumu is admitting his brother is manipulating everyone like a puppet though he just plain doesn’t want to think so. I also found a couple of moments with Hiyono possibly revealing there is more going on under the surface. Has me curious. Looking forward to more as usual.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #044

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On free comic book day I picked up the Viz sample of Ultimo along with a few other things. Even with just half a chapter I can honestly say don’t bother with this series. The writing is really lame and also exceedingly annoying as it likes to tell you what is happening. Dear Hiroyuki Takei, this is a manga. That means there are pictures to tell me what is going on! You do not need to also write what is happening in little boxes all over the place. Also Ultimo is a boy? I swear I see boobs on this character design. This sample made me say “Who cares!” Which is a shame because I only read a bit of Shaman King, but I found it enjoyable enough.

I finally got my hands on Emma volume 8. The story proper of Emma has ended in book 7. The next three books are all side stories of various characters. Since Emma is one of those stories with delightful secondary characters this is a more than welcome prospect. The side stories jump around in time so we will get a little story about Kelly Stowner and her husband years before the original story and then jump ahead to look at how life has been treating characters like Eleanor and Tasha. The stories are just as charming as the main story so I was generally very pleased. I really liked The Times which we get a peek at various characters as we see how they are all connected by something as random and ubiquitous as the newspaper.  I will admit that they don’t really add anything to the main story but that is largely unimportant. One of the strengths of Emma was its wonderful depiction of Victorian England. As long as the stories remain as well written and heartwarming I look froward to the next two books as well.

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