Category: Video Games

Ongoing Investigations: Case #035

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I think I will just talk about video games this week. We’ll start with Street Fighter IV. I had an interest in the game but since I don’t own an PS3 or 360 I had no real plans to buy it. Then everyone and there mom was talking about it. When I was on lunch break I even heard the manga cows in a bookstore talking about it. So I broke down and bought the game to play on my brother’s Xbox. Playing Street Fighter IV reinforced a valuable lesson. I am not very good at fighting games. I have enough knowledge to be above a button masher but not anywhere near enough skill or practice to be any sort of capable player. This is a well executed game with high level of technical finesse. It is also amazing that you cannot play arcade mode with the online challenge function on because you will get a request to fight every few seconds. I am not sure how long this amount of community will last but this is a good game to play if you like the idea of playing a fighting game online. I think Narutaki got a big kick of of it when he played it as well. Oh and for everyone who says easiest is to easy I stick my tongue at you.

I have started watching Zettai Shonen, I am four episodes in so far. It is an odd little show about a strange town in the country. Ayumu goes there to stay with his dad who he is clearly estranged from. In the midst of exploring the surrounding land and neighbors, weird things start happening and cloudy memories keep coming up. The towns folk are an odd lot that you just don’t know about them. They include a few kids around Ayumu’s age, a younger girl who seems to know a lot about what is going on, a news reporter, and a cat. The mystery of this town doesn’t seem to revolve around something horribly tragic and I am hoping it stays that way, but one never knows.

I am pretty much at the end of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings which has been quite enjoyable. I amusingly enough have yet to play Final Fantasy XII itself. I would have gotten more out of the game had I played the original but was still worth playing. When characters from the old game pop into the story it would have been cooler had I already know who they are. Vaan, Panelo, and friends are still going around being sky pirates. They find an air ship that takes them to a series of magically sealed floating islands. Using their newly gained ability to summons creatures, they go about stopping evil pirates and the evil powers that control the island. I was interested in seeing Square do a real-time strategy game. It is a rather simplistic, enjoyable RTS game but you cannot go in expecting the next Warcraft. The end game extra material seems significantly harder than anything that came before but that is Square Enix side material for you. If nothing else the game has piqued my interest in playing Final Fantasy XII just to see more of Panelo. She is super cute.

I watched more Raoh Gaiden, up through episode five. My favorite episode so far has been the one I named Raoh: Horse Whisperer. His first meeting with Kokuoh is epic. Since Kokuoh’s army of horses takes out a good number of Raoh’s minions, Raoh decides to meet this beast. As they stand face to face a tiger attacks which Raoh promptly rips in two and tells it to not interrupt a conversation between kings (which actually just consists of staring at each other). Also Kokuoh’s size varies in every scene after this. He ranges from being the same height at Raoh to being about 30 feet tall. This show is so entertaining I can’t stop watching. And for some unknown reason the fan-subbers have skipped the sixth installment, perhaps it was too powerful for them.

I also played My World, My Way. Princess Elise falls in love with a handsome adventurer but he correctly dismisses her as a spoiler brat. So she decides to become an adventurer to win his approval. The king assigns a poor guy to run around and set up monsters for you to beat and tasks to accomplish that are challenging while not being deadly. You also have the ability to change things about the game by being so selfish that the world changes just to shut you up. The idea is cute and the story can be funny at times, but it very quickly becomes the same thing again and again. You go to a town; they ask you to collect x number of items; and defeat y number of monsters. When you finish the missions you get the key to the next town and have to fight a boss on the way out. They sometimes throw a dungeon into the mix but it’s not that much different from wandering around the world map. You eventually get a little mimic slime to fight along side you. This mixes things up a little but does not radically change the game play. It feels much more like a 20 dollar game than a 30 dollar game.

I read the second volume of Mixed Vegetables. I was a little disappointed in the direction they decided to take it though I felt it righted itself a bit as the book went on. The relationship between our two main characters has really changed.

I must end with Panelo, so this is the pic of the week:

Ongoing Investigations: Case #028

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Crusher Joe randomly came up while looking for something else and I had the itch to watch it. I remembering seeing it for the first time at my introduction to anime cons, Big Apple Anime Fest. Though I don’t remember ever seeing the OVAs until now. And it is still highly entertaining. I especially love the disco scene in the movie. Between the woman who’s breast keeps randomly popping out of her shirt, the all out brawl, and Joe’s fantasmo fringe boots, what’s not to love? The show is great fun, it is by the guy who wrote Dirty Pair, so it is very much in that vein.

Akikan! seems about as inhumane as waterboarding if used on unwilling or unsuspecting audiences. Okay that is an exaggeration but it is still a putrid, pile of fecal matter molded poorly into an anime. We were originally not going to watch the show because it looked like a rather bland magical girlfriend show. Oh, and it is about a can of melon soda that comes to life and has to be given CO2 energy by way of making out was not helping. Then again Kannagi is about a wooden sculpture that comes to life and that was an entertaining show. The main problem is that Akikan! takes every cliche thing a harem anime has ever had and executes it in the worst possible manner. The main character, Kakeru Daichi, is alternatively a creepy sadist or wimpy loser. Melon is just a rampaging moron in the Akane Tendo vein but far, far worse. There are some other stock side characters such as the far less important male friend, the ignored pretty female childhood friend, the crazy lesbian, and others I am sure I have forgotten. The creepy predatory gay government official shows up for a few seconds mostly to be very creepy and then disappears without contributing anything to the plot. Also for a show designed to appeal to guys we see way too much naked Kakeru. I actually enjoyed this anime in small part for a reason completely unrelated to the show itself. It was actually fun to watch Narutaki’s facial reactions to the utter garbage on the screen. This is the new low water mark that other anime have to beat to disappoint me. Sorry Wild Cardz.

Started watching Fairy Musketeers thanks to Crunchyroll. So far have gotten through episode 4. It is a very cute, children’s magical girl show. All the characters are named after fairy tale characters, our heroine being Red Riding Hood. Her along with some others, including her wolf Val, are protecting the key which is in a little boy named Sota. It stays true to magical girl form with cute outfits, weekly monsters, and wacky hijinks. I also really love the evil minion Hansel who works for the Queen Cinderella (who is the villainess of the entire series). It doesn’t seem to offer anything new but it does its genre nicely. If it were dubbed I would recommend it for children!

Fairy Musketeers is for two major groups. The first is children. The second is older people who want a comfort food magical girl show with absolutely no otaku pandering. That means no panty shots and no innuendo. I assume that its simple nature will turn  hardcore fans away but so be it. It’s not for them. I do find it interesting that even the major villains are fairy tale heroes. Normally you would have fairy tale villains as the villains not other fairy tale heroes. I wonder if there is some story reason for this or is it just the way things are. Red Riding Hood is your standard genki girl but I was thrown off by the Snow White character design. I assumed she was going to be a shy bookish peacemaker girl. She turns out to be bookish but she actively fights with and speaks her mind to Red Riding Hood.

So I picked up a couple of trades of Grant Morrison since he is one of the guests of honor at New York Comic-Con. Batman and Son was an okay work, but I found the dialogue clunky and stiff. I also realized I only like Andy Kubert’s artwork about half the time, and that half is when he is drawing Batman. When he is drawing normal people they are constantly looking sinister even when I don’t think that is the intention. The story itself is interesting and the ending is crazy atleast but I think I prefer a more traditional Batman, what can I say. Also read Batman: Arkham Asylum with art by Dave McKean this work was really gripping and different but once again not my cup of tea. The dialogue is awkward, this really drives me crazy. The artwork is out of this world and even more so when you think that it was made pre-computer age. This work I understand its significance in the comic book world even if it wasn’t for me.

I went back to playing Mugen no Frontier: Super Robot Wars OG Saga. It may be all in Japanese but the general plot and gameplay is simple enough for me to not have to worry. I am sure I am missing some of the subtler details of gameplay but such is life. It has a technowestern feel. The main character is dressed in a full cowboy getup  but has an android partner and a transforming laser gun. The are also other Capcom characters including the main characters from Namco X Capcom and KOS-MOS from Xenosaga. The more I play the more I realize that the basic foundation of all Super Robot Wars games is fan-service. In the standard games it is robot porn. It’s hot cross show robot on robot action. In the gaiden game it is your more standard arse and boob service. I don’t mind such things but it’s worth mentioning that is is there. It is a fun little menu based RPG with some amount of action elements during attacks and defense so keep you interested.

Since I have been reading a lot of Batman lately, this is the pic of the week:

Ongoing Investigations: Case #023

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Has anyone played the original Higurashi sound novel? I am curious what the fan-service levels are in the games. I ask this because I don’t remember the Higurashi anime being the fan service bonanza that the manga or the art books are. They really like the semi to fully lesbian fan-service shots in the artbooks. It’s like they were drawn by male fujoshi. Despite the abundance of fan-service in the Higurashi manga it is a pretty faithful adaptation. Yen Press went all out with color pages in the front and middle. The manga has yet to even give me close to the chill that anime did but it is still enjoyable. However, I don’t think it’s going to win any new fans to the franchise.

So I sort of did the Gurren Lagann suggestion made by our friends in their review, which was to watch the last 7 episodes and not worry about the rest. Well, I had already watched the first 9 but I did skip the next 12 and watched the end. I was entertained by its ridiculousness and was also able to grow fond of a couple of characters in that short span at the end. It goes full-throttle giant robot as robots start hurling entire universes. As for why I decided to skip so much, that would be a major spoiler. However, I can say that there is a missing piece of the puzzle and the show for me was incomplete without it. My overall feeling was the show was good, whereas the first 8 episodes were great. It was hilarity to the max.

I enjoyed Gurren Lagann for what is was, an over the top giant robot show about believing in courage and guts. I enjoyed it more than Boxingoctopus and Lothos because that is all the expectations I went into the show with. Therefore I never felt let down. I for one enjoyed the middle part of the series although not as much as the beginning or the end. Certain parts of Gurren Lagann seem like Gainax’s response to Evangelion. Simon is like Shinji Ikari in both of them spiral into the abyss but Simon is able to rise out of it where as one of the major points of Evangelion is Shinji’s inability to connect to others and find a way out. I can’t say for sure if it’s partially reactionary to their older work or it is less intentional and more the natural comparison by viewers despite any active agenda. I also really liked the very Japanese concept of circular belief. Circular belief being the idea that there is someone who you believe in that believes in you when you can’t do that yourself. I suppose I have always wanted someone like that myself. I also think the fact that Simon and Nia grew on me helped a considerable bit. They would never ever be as cool as Kamina or Yoko but then again who could be that cool.

Read Nightmare Inspector volumes 2 and 3, I am glad to see this series establishing little bit of a running narrative along with giving Hiruko and Mizuki some backstory. Though I just makes me want to know more since we’ve only gotten crumbs. They have also introduced a humorous tenant who moves into one of the rooms on the upper floor of the tea house. He isn’t in it too much so the somber and melancholic feel of the series stays in tact but he does throw a little spice in the mix now and then. This manga-ka always puts in some funny bonus stuff including a song written by Hiruko about how much he loves soda.

I have been playing Chrono Trigger for the DS. It stands up well in retrospect. The game play is solid, the story is still fresh, the amount of little changes you can make on the plot are still well done. Playing this reminded me of a conversation with my brother about Final Fantasy 7. We were discussing how flat characters in RPGs are today but they were even flatter back in the day. You were more willing to fill in the blanks in your mind back then. I remember the characters of Chrono Trigger being much deeper than they actually are. They aren’t bad characters if they were I would have never remembered them so well. It’s just the amount I had to fill in from what was implied had become actual fact. Still it’s great to be able to go back and play this again now only it’s portable. If I had a PSP I would be sorely tempted to play an emulated Chrono Cross on it like David Riley is going to do. Even though the prevailing logic is Chrono Cross is the devil’s spawn by most fans.

Finished the xxxHOLiC novel AnotherHOLiC. I have to say putting the first story in FAUST was a good move, not only did it make me interested in the novel but it was also the better story of the three and it doesn’t require me to know about the manga. The second story seemed too similar to the first, but also easier to figure out. And since those stories were back to back it made me wonder where Watanuki’s brain was. As for the third and final story, since I haven’t read the manga it didn’t help establish anything about Watanuki for me. I didn’t really understand his reasoning. Oh and the other guy in the story was super annoying.

I assumed this story happens early in the xxxHOLiC storyline but I can’t say for sure. Although it is never outright stated, one of the reasons Watanuki works at the store is Yuko is training him either as a her student or her outright successor. So it seems like the part of the story where she is no longer by his side on jobs but he has still not learned enough that she has taken of his training wheels. I thought that the first two stories bookend each other well enough so that they made a point when the third story came along. I just hated hated hated the eye theory guy in the last story. NISIOISIN is talented at making original characters that are annoying jackasses. This is not a compliment. He a good writer but he has to start cutting back on shrill, nasty characters in his work.

I made an entry for the Anime News Network 2008 Holiday Logo Contest. This is my first year entering. I had some extra time before my vacation so I thought, why not?

The best way to cap off Reverse Thieves completion of Gurren Lagann is with a piece of Gurren Lagann fan art: