Monthly Archives: January 2011

Anime You Should Be Watching: Aria

Posted on by pantsukudasai56

I realize that entertainment is very subjective.  One person’s masterpiece is another person’s trash.  Still, there are some anime that are just so good that no matter who you are, no matter what your interests, as long as you’re a fan of anime, you should be watching it.  The first example that comes to mind for me is a well received, yet fairly unknown title called Aria.

Now, I know what some people are thinking.  “Is there a lot of action?  Explosions?  Naked girls?  Blood and guts?  It’s at least fast paced, right?”  There is none of those, but you know what?  You’re still going to enjoy it anyways.  Thus is the power of slice-of-life shows.  There is no action at all, yet you’re left with a big smile on your face after each episode.

The story of Aria revolves around a young girl named Akari who leaves Manhome (Earth) and comes to the Martian city of Neo Venetia to become an Undine, or gondola pilot.  This is obviously modeled after the Italian city Venice, and in fact it is stated that in the realm of this anime, Venice has already sunk, which was the main motivation for the Martian terraformers in creating the town of Neo Venetia.  Much like the real life city of Venice, Neo Venetia’s streets are all waterways.  Of course they have normal walkways, but if you don’t feel like walking, or if you need to move goods around the town, traveling by gondola is the way to go.  When the anime starts, it begins with Akari already being a Single, but they later on show flashbacks to when she first arrived and started out as a Pair.

The terms Pair and Single refer to the gloves they wear.  The gloves are both practical and aesthetic.  When an Undine is wearing two gloves, it both signifies that she is an apprentice, and it’s also because when they’re just starting out, their hands require more protection from constantly rowing.  As a Pair, they are not allowed to carry passengers at all.  As they gain more experience, and as their hands get more used to the abuse that the oar gives, they can go down to one glove, hence the term Single.  Also, as a Single, they are allowed to carry passengers as long as a fully licensed Undine, or Prima, is in the gondola with them.  And obviously, once they reach the rank of Prima, they are fully qualified Undines and can carry passengers on their own.

Life on Mars is a little bit different than life on Earth.  The main difference is that cats are sentient beings on Mars.  They can’t speak English, but they appear to understand it.  Plus, all gondola companies on Mars must be owned by a blue eyed cat.  Akari’s company is owned by one President Aria, who fits in perfectly with Aria Company’s easy going attitude.

And that is a typical scene from the anime.  I know that shouldn’t be entertaining, but it just plain is.  Episodes revolve around such action packed events like delivering the mail, or going to a festival.  In other words, there’s no action at all.  It’s an incredibly serene show and is the perfect complement to watching other anime that ARE action packed.  It’s like a palate cleanser.  As such, I also don’t recommend marathoning the show, or else some of the luster and wonderment of it is lost.

The strong points of the anime are the high production values, which can be seen when viewing some of the lush backgrounds of the places that Akari visits.  It’s obvious that the show was given the proper budget, and that’s probably in no small part to the fact that it was helmed by director Junichi Sato who directed such popular and respected anime as Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu, Kaleido Star, and Sgt. Frog, among others.  Plus, unlike with a lot of anime these days, the decision to animate it didn’t come until after the manga had been running for awhile and thus had already gotten a good following.  Another factor in its high budget could possible come from just good timing.  The first Aria season came out when companies were still willing to take a chance on a show that’s a little different from the usual otaku bait.  Luckily it proved to be successful and it was allowed to tell its full story.

And that’s another strength, is the finely told story that Kozue Amano came up with.  When you don’t have flashy explosions and super powers and naked breasts bouncing around to keep people interested, you had better be able to tell a good story, and Kozue Amano did not disappoint.  When watching the anime or reading the manga, you get the feeling that you’re right there with Akari, and that you’re both exploring and experiencing things together.  It’s that kind of emotional attachment that’s crafted that makes for a good story.

Ultimately, I can’t promise that you’re going to be blown away by this.  Slice-of-life isn’t for everyone, but you certainly would be making a mistake if you didn’t at least give Aria a chance to wow you.  And who knows?  If you go into this with an open mind, you might just find, that for some inexplicable reason, that you have a huge smile on your face at the end and can’t wait for your next adventure in Neo Venetia.

Junichi Sato

Quick Take: Halo: Reach

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

Sometimes, a full review isn’t terribly useful to people. Quantitative numbers on Halo: Reach from me aren’t particularly likely to sell more copies of the game. But I do think this game is worth discussing; it’s important, in a way. So here’s some thoughts, for which you are most welcome to join me.

Halo: Reach

I was only peripherally aware that Halo: Reach was launching. I mean, it wasn’t marketed, and it’s only a small-time game series… okay, no, of course, I was suffocated by the news. And I was as excited as any casual fan of the series. The problem is… I’ve never been a casual fan of the series. I’ve played thousands of games of Halo between Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and of course, Halo 3 (I only got Halo ODST because it was bundled for free with my new XBox Arcade), and that’s the telling point for me. By the time Halo: Reach came out, I wasn’t as excited for it as I should have been. I didn’t have it pre-ordered, I wasn’t enticed by the Legendary Edition (although I’m not much for collector’s editions of any kind). And the reason why is very simple, and it’s ultimately the most important thing that I can tell you about this game.

I already knew what to expect, and I wasn’t as excited as I used to be. Were you?

By now, Halo fans know exactly what to expect. The game is based around the balanced trinity of grenades, guns, and melee attacks. It is not a cover or tactical shooter, but rather a fast-paced action shooter with players protected by regenerating energy shields. In most ways, the popular multi-player shooter was defined by Halo: Combat Evolved. The graphics are an improvement, the features have expanded, and this is the biggest and best game that we’ve yet seen in the Halo universe. Bungie is run by very intelligent people; the fans don’t want the wheel to be re-invented. They want a new release that fixes perceived problems with previous titles, hands over a whole new slew of maps, re-imagines some of the weapons while leaving other fan favourites in place, and adds a couple toys that we haven’t seen before. In a lot of ways, Halo: Reach is like Madden 11. If you change too much, then you’re not playing Halo anymore, and then what’s the point? Bungie themselves obviously understand this; to go in a new creative direction, they must create a new series.

So what’s my bottom line with Reach?

Well, like all of the Halo titles, it has a surprisingly meaty single player experience. I know that people look at you funny if you even mention the story of Halo: Combat Evolved, but there’s more there than you might expect. It’s at least as elaborate as the story in any Call of Duty title. And the storytelling is done partially through the environments we travel through. Bungie has done a consistently good job of creating beautiful environments scored by epic music. The locations and places are familiar, and yet somehow very alien. It’s an excellent narrative when you bring everything together, complete even with single moments that make you get the tingles. For my money, Halo 2 was the weakest single player campaign, but the story bridged between the set-up in Combat Evolved and the conclusion of Master Chief’s story in Halo 3.

ODST took things to another level, adding more characters to the dynamic. We saw real interaction between characters, even if the player’s character, the rookie, is the typical “strong, silent type”. Reach, I think wisely, took its cues from ODST. We’re treated to an entire cast of powerful Spartan soldiers in their powered armor, with disparate personalities and motivations that make them interesting to us. But Reach also taps into something that we haven’t seen before in the Halo universe. Reach is a prequel. It’s a historical event in the universe, and we already know how things turn out. Disastrously. So woven into the narrative of Reach is a sense of despair. The Covenant is overwhelming. Each move the Spartans make seems like it could be the tipping point, but we’re always knocked back down by the inevitability of it all. It’s rather sad.

Now, from a gameplay standpoint, I had my problems with Reach‘s single player mode. I thought it went on ages too long (although, for me, it seems that I just don’t love Halo the way I used to) and grew tedious. But the narrative quality of the single player was good; far and away better than contemporary rivals like Call of Duty: Black Ops. It took a little time for me to digest the experience, but in the end, I thought that Halo: Reach was definitely worth playing, and makes a fantastic capstone to a series that has really been revolutionary in terms of a genre that is now one of the biggest around.

Oh, and the multi-player is good. I didn’t focus on it here, though, because as I said in the open, it is exactly what you expect. There are new wrinkles – and they’re good ones! – but all it boils down to is this: Do you still love Halo? Then play on!

What Lisa Watched Last Night: What Did I Do Last Night?

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

No, What Did I Do Last Night? is not the latest Lifetime movie, despite the title.  (What Did I Do Last Night?: The Lisa Marie Bowman Story — I like the sound of that….)  What Did I Do Last Night? is a 30-minute “reality” show that currently airs on the Current TV Network.  Check your local listings.

Why Was I Watching It?

Originally, I had turned over to Current TV to watch Al Pacino in Scarface.  What Did I Do Last Night? came on immediately after Scarface and, as often happens with my late night television habits, I was just too lazy to change the station.

What’s It About?

Apparently, over the course of each episode, the show’s smug host (Jeff Leach) gets a different English person drunk and then films them acting like a complete jackass.  The next day, he shows the footage to his hungover victim and scares them sober.  Or something like that.

This episode’s victim was a cheerful blonde named Rita who, once she got intoxicated, ended up climbing on top of a table at a bar.  The next morning, Rita responded by saying that she was “disgusting” and then breaking down into tears.  That’ll teach her to try to enjoy herself when she goes out.

What Worked?

Well, Rita did say she was going to try to reduce her drinking so technically, I guess you could say the whole show worked.  Except, of course, that’s a load of crap because the show’s not about helping people.  It’s about humiliating them while the viewing audience thinks, “I might be an unoriginal, boring, unimaginative toadsucker, but at least I don’t ever get that drunk.”  And, taken from that perspective, the show again accomplished what it set out to do.

What Didn’t Work:

There’s a thin line between helping and victimizing and this show pretty much crossed that line from the beginning.

This show was a lot like Intervention in that it claims to help the addicted but only after they’ve managed to exploit that addiction for all that its worth.  Of course, there is a big difference in that the Intervention film crew doesn’t actually shoot anyone up with heroin while this show actually gets people drunk so that the smug host can criticize them for it.  The whole time that Rita was being shown stumbling around drunk, nobody ever asked if, under nontelevised circumstances, she usually drank quite as much alcohol as the show’s producers insisted on providing for her.

Plus, they pulled a very cruel trick on Rita early on in the show.  While Rita is debating what to wear on her drunken night out, the show’s producers are heard encouraging her to wear a white dress with a low neckline and a very short skirt.  What they didn’t tell Rita — but what they surely knew — was that her entire trip to the bar would be filmed with an infrared camera which would basically make that white dress transparent in a way that a non-white dress would not have been.  Since the dress itself was practically skin-tight, Rita didn’t wear any underwear with the dress which means that, for the final 15 minutes of the show, she’s seen thoroughly shitfaced in a see-through dress with a huge amount of pixels over her crotch.  And it’s impossible to maintain any sort of dignity when you’re climbing on top of a bar with a blurry twat.

I felt very bad for poor, exploited Rita.  I hope somebody bought her a drink afer this show aired.

“Oh My God!  Just Like Me!” Moment

At one point, after the producers have gotten her drunk, Rita is shown falling down and then falling again as she attempts to stand back up.  “Oh my God!” I shouted, “just like me!”  What’s sad is that, for the most part, I rarely drink.  Yet, I often fall.

Later on, as Rita was standing on a table and demanding, “Everybody look at me bum!”, my sister Erin said, “Oh my God, just like Lisa.”  As much as I love my sister, I have to disagree.  Obviously, not being English, I don’t use terms like “bum.”

Lessons Learned

Don’t wear white on reality television.

Review: League of Legends

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

The Bottom Line

A top notch multi-player experience sometimes marred by its terrible community.

Unfocused Ramblings

When a friend of mine first told me about League of Legends during its Beta period in 2009, my interest was piqued, but I’d been drawn in by World of WarCraft, and it wasn’t until early in 2010 when I finally took the time to download the free client and begin playing League of Legends with my friends. I wish I hadn’t waited. Even years after I stopped playing WarCraft 3 or The Frozen Throne for their own merits, I had continued to occasionally play a game or two of Defense of the Ancients: All Stars. As powerful as the World Editor was in WarCraft 3, there were still always going to be limitations on how far Defense of the Ancients could progress solely as a custom map within a game published by someone else. The natural evolution of course was for some of the developers of Defense of the Ancients to go to work for Riot Games to produce their own title; an experience totally under their control but based on the same style as the wildly successful custom maps that preceded it.

If you liked Defense of the Ancients, the odds are pretty strong that you’re going to love League of Legends. It incorporates most of the things that made Defense of the Ancients great, and eliminates some of the inherent weaknesses of working within a real-time strategy engine. After all, WarCraft 3 is designed to have a little inherent command latency, and the engine itself limits what kinds of spells and special powers (as well as the physical skinning of) any and all heroes. Moreover, the core game-play statistics can’t be changed for the benefit of a single custom map (obviously), so League of Legends is a much more polished experience. Now we have Ability Power as a core game-play stat to increase the power of spells and helping to balance the scales between powerful physical damage heroes and heroes with ridiculous spell abilities in the late-game, among a thousand other things.

Okay, for the rest of you who didn’t waste many hours of your lives playing Defense of the Ancients, what is League of Legends? It’s a duel between two teams of either three or five champions supplemented by a limitless army of minions. Each champion is a heroic figure with five unique special abilities (as well as a variety of “core” game statistics, like movement speed, attack range, damage dealt, total armor, etc.) and your objective is to breach the defenses of the opposing army by knocking out their defensive towers to gain access to their base, and ultimately, to destroy the opposing Nexus, a capitol building, which ends the game in victory. Your Champions gain experience points to progress through 18 levels (at each level gaining or improving one of their special abilities) as well as harvest gold pieces which are used to buy items that enhance your Champion in various ways. Along the way to victory or defeat, obviously, you will be opposed by the Champions of the other team, controlled by other human beings. They represent your true opposition, and you’ll have to overcome them if you plan to win the day.

Playing matches levels up your Summoner (that is, the personification of the player) and allows you access to a tree of “Masteries” which offer little bonuses to various things that your Champions can do, as well as access to customizable “pages” of Runes. Each match you select a Rune page from your book, which provides fully customized benefits to your Champion such as increased Mana regeneration, a higher chance to dodge enemy attacks, and more. Your multiplayer games also net you access to “Influence Points” which can be used to buy new Champions as well as Runes inside of the League of Legends store. You can download the client and play the game for free even to this day, but Riot also allows players to purchase “Riot Points” from their store which can be used to purchase champions, alternate skins for them, and other bonus content within the store as well. New content is added very frequently, and the product is at a consistently high quality, which really speaks well of Riot Games and its staff of developers.

The Big Question

Aside from ‘why did it take even this long to create a title like League of Legends‘ ? The question absolutely must be: Where do we go from here? It’s a common theme amongst my game reviews; I know. It’s an important question, though. League of Legends is an impressively complete experience. The developers have adequately explored core game-play mechanics, and the game and its objectives themselves are somewhat non-negotiable. Obviously we can continue to enjoy new Champions and Items eternally, but this isn’t truly a source of growth. A third question might be, “where did all the trolls come from” ? One thoroughly maligned aspect of League of Legends is the community, many of which are players that came from Defense of the Ancients, who are a surly, foul-mouthed lot. It’s hard to defend the community, and people with a thin skin might want to avoid this game.

Overall Game-Play: 9.0

The game play very occasionally suffers from graphical or camera glitches. Since they’re always correctable (if only by recalling to base in some cases) it’s not a game-breaking problem, but it’s also the only real criticism I have for a game-play system that is very tight for the most part. Because the interface is designed intentionally for the player to command only their own Champion, you don’t end up targeting another unit and losing control of your hero (as could happen frequently within the WarCraft 3 engine). The four ‘active’ hot keys are consistent amongst every Champion (Q, W, E, R, matching the skills from left to right on your interface) and aren’t competing with internal game commands (as occasionally happened in WarCraft 3). In addition, there’s no inherent latency, so commands are executed crisply and cleanly (barring lag, of course) which makes so-called ‘skill shots’ (that is, abilities which must be aimed and strike the target to take effect) much more common and much more use-able than they ever were before.

The match-making system, champion selection screens, and other framework for the game also deserves a notable mention. Although it’s gone through a couple of iterations by now, the system works very well. New users will learn their way around quickly.

Story 6.0

Although the game obviously has no single player aspect to it, the creators still actually took the time to create a world in which the game is set. Each Champion comes with their own piece of back-story that fits into a larger overall narrative about a world in turmoil, the various nations within, and their larger-than-life heroes – who obviously bring their talents to the institutional League of Legends to test themselves against other such powerful figures. It’s obviously not a focus of the title, but the story is cohesive, and to my mind, appreciated. It’s nice to have a little understanding of who my favourite Champion is, how s/he gained their powers, and what their goals are. Of course, it’s all just fluff, and you can ignore all of the story elements of the game and never miss a beat in terms of game-play.

Graphics 7.0

The graphics are of the cell-shaded variety and look very nice. The most impressive graphics are, of course, the skins of the Champions themselves. Given how many custom looks are available for your Champions and the sheer number of Champions that now are available in the game, I have to give a little nod to Riot. Of course, there’s no real place in the game for incredibly flashy or ultra-realistic graphics, so you won’t see anything in-game that’s going to blow you away. That having been said, all of the models are nicely crafted, and the game’s graphics definitely have a polished feel. The graphical performance is smooth and doesn’t break, and the look and ‘feel’ is consistent across the character models despite their diversity.

Sound 7.0

The sound in this case comes from combat and spell sounds, a relatively quiet announcer (who nonetheless is unfailing in her ability to identify key gameplay situations), and a simple score. Oh, and the unique voice acting for every single one of the League’s champions. Obviously this last part is what you’re going to deal most with, as your Champion responds to everything from you initially selecting them before the game begins to moving about, attacking, or casting spells. We’re not treated to an epic score in the background that fires our passions as we play, but the sound, like the graphics, is a polished effort that doesn’t disappoint.

Multi-Player 9.0

Well, in this case, there is literally no single player aspect to the game, so I suppose this could stand as an overall score for the title. Personally, I find little to complain about. The most important thing for you to know, though, is that Riot is dedicated to keeping this game updated, changing, and improving. I touched on this briefly in my open, but it’s important to expound on the point. Riot patches League of Legends frequently, tweaking abilities and items in order to provide the most balanced experience. Just as importantly, the stream of new Champions is very steady, which ultimately is the only method by which the game can expand. Obviously, there’s not much (if anything) that is going to change about the way the game is played from start to finish, so everything is in the details here.

AMV of the Day: And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors

Posted on by Arleigh

It took awhile but finally an official Youtube version of the AMV which won three awards during Anime Expo 2010. Scintilla’s very excellent “And Now, A Word From Out Sponsors” is the latest entry to be AMV of the Day.

This AMV is pretty brief but what’s shown gives enough proof as to why it was voted by the Anime Expo attendees to win three categories. It won the Staff Favorite and Best Comedy categories, but it was winning the top prize for Best In Show which cemented this amv as top in a field that had some very good entries.

The video edits together several scenes from different anime to match the lyrics of the song. A song aptly titled “Burger Dance” by DJ Ötzi. Some effects work such as putting the KFC, Pizza Hut and McDonalds logos into the scenes were made, but in the end the song is just a laugh riot from start to end. It had everyone singing along to the chorus. That is just how great and fun an amv it was.

Now, if the creator of the amv “Alchanum” just follows suit and also uploads to Youtube that Best Drama amv winner.

Anime: Code Geass, Azumnaga Daioh, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Fruit Basket, K-On, Axis Power Hetalia, Lunar Legend Tsukihime, Naruto, Princess Tutu, Revolutionary Girl Utena, serial experiements lain, Sgt. Frog, Soul Eater

Song: “Burger Dance: International Remix” by DJ Ötzi

Creator: Scintilla

Review: The Walking Dead Volume 13 (by Robert Kirkman)

Posted on by Arleigh

It’s been almost a month since the final episode of the first season for the tv series adaptation of this comic book aired on AMC. The Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd produced series became a major hit not just for the channel but also for everyone involved. While the adaptation deviated from the comic’s path at times in the end it helped established the post-apocalyptic world creator Robert Kirkman had been working five years to create. This is a world that is still on-going and, just weeks earlier, released the thirteenth volume of collected issues 73 thru to 78.

The 13th volume is aptly titled, Too Far Gone, as it continues where the previous trade paperback left off and that’s Rick and his group of survivors trying to settle in the safe, walled community in Alexandria, VA. This wasn’t the respite Rick and his group were hoping for, but it is as close to one as they’ll get as their original destination of Washington, DC resembles much of everything else they’ve seen and that’s unsafe devastation.

As Rick gradually gets used to going back as a lawman for the community everyone else do their part in doing the new jobs handpicked for them by the community’s leader Douglas. Through the first half of the volume we see through the point of view of certain character that this safe haven they’ve joined has it’s fair share of secrets and that not everything was as stable as they’ve been led to believe. While some of the revelations the reader will read as the volume unfolds doesn’t bring back images of Woodbury and The Governor, they do show that the underbelly of the Alexandria community is just as rotten but in other ways.

The title of the volume is in regards to Rick as a character and to a small degree the rest of his group. Here they are in a safe place with other survivors who just want to try and get back to living life the way it used to be. The paranoia and mistrust Rick has built within himself after the long journey from his hospital bed to this place has begun to chip away at not just his sanity but his humanity as well. He hasn’t turned the corner to become another Governor, but his actions in regards to trying to safeguard their new found safety does show that Rick and some in his group do not trust all the smiles and well-wishes thrown their way.

Rick knows that as safe as they all might seem now it doesn’t take much for all of it to come crashing down. It’s this looming threat that forces Rick to behave in ways which does have people question if he’s lost it and has he become a danger not just to their new benefactors but to his own people as well. The answer to this question wasn’t clear and remains, like all of Kirkman’s answer to certain moral question throughout the series, ambiguous and left up to the reader to decide if what Rick has done for the safety of his son and the others keep him in the role of hero or villain.

The volume ends in relatively safe conditions, but clues of an ominous consequence at the solution to some of the community’s outside problems may just bring a much bigger one in the next volume.

For those who are fans of the comic book the last two volumes has been slower affairs with quick bursts of action and horror. Like volume 6 and 7 previously, this relative calm before the storm may just bring about another major change to the roster of characters we’ve been following since the battle at the prison. Will we see another major kill-off of characters? Only Kirkman can answer that and it will be another 4-5 months before the next volume hits the streets. It will be a long wait indeed.