Birdy The Mighty: Decode
Birdy The Mighty: Decode (13 eps), Birdy The Mighty: Decode, The Cipher (OVA), Birdy The Mighty: Decode 02 (12 eps)
English Dub available

Birdy was one of those series I didn't expect to like, but enjoyed it anyway. It follows the adventure of an intergalactic cop named Birdy who tracked down some alien scum who are hiding on Earth disguised as humans. During her investigation, she ends up tragically (and quite accidentally) killing an innocent teenage boy named Senkawa. In a last ditch effort to save him, she ends up joining with him, housing his consciousness in her body, while she ships his body off to another part of the universe to be repaired.

I kind of expected this to be an "alien comes to earth, befriends a human, is confounded by normal human experiences, and so on" kind of series, but it's not. By the time we meet Birdy, she's all ready been on earth a few months, has her own life and cover identity here, and is fairly well acclimated to human culture. The charm of this series is watching two total strangers, who lead two vastly different lives, be forced to be all up in each others business. There really isn't much way for them to hide from each other, and when people they care about become involved in the story, you can really feel the tension between the two when they disagree on how to handle things.

Action wise, the animation is great, with the action being very kinetic, but still being easy to follow. The series is well animated, with bright colors and clean lines. There are some momentary stylistic changes in season 2, where a more scratchy art style appears. That's only done to represent a character's psychosis, and it does that well, but its still jarring all the same.

All said, its a good series, and definitely worth watching.


Air
Air (13 Episodes), Air: Summer Special (2 episodes)
English Dub available

Air frustrated the hell out of me. It starts out as a nice character driven piece about a stranger who ens up in a small town and befriends the locals. Along the way, some mystical shit happens, which happens to be related to something that happen 1000 years ago in that same region.

The early part of the series starts out a little slow in terms of plot, but the characters are interesting and charming, so its still very engaging. Unfortunately, the series starts to fall in love with itself down the line. Episodes 10, 11, and 13 are basically a rehash of the first seven episodes, with a bit of expanded information revealed about the characters. Episode 12 is really where the story really ends, but it does wrap up the emotional story rather nicely, though the ending is a but heartwrenching.

There isn't much in the way of action that goes on in this series, save for the flashbacks to the origins of the mystical shenanigans, but the characters are all interesting enough that they can hold your attention. The art is well done, and you won't be busy trying to separate one character from another.

If you're in to emotional, character driven stuff, you should give this a look. But if you're looking for more action and magic, look elsewhere.


High School of the Dead
High School of the Dead (12 Episodes)
English Dub available

I was surprised by how much I liked this series. I kind of expected it to be Resident Evil dropped into your typical Japanese High School Anime. Which, I figured, meant over the top zombie fighting action, mixed with gratuitous fanservicey shots teenage girls in school uniforms. And, admittedly, you do get that, but in addition, there's also a very rich story, and a cast of rather engaging, interesting characters who grow and change as the series progresses.

Honestly, when the series stops being about panty shots and zombie killing, its actually a really good story about a bunch of kinds who band together to survive as the rest of the world starts to fall apart around them. There are also a number of cut away scenes to show how the rest of the world reacts to the zombie apocalypse, and watching governments struggle to maintain order while people struggle to keep their sanity is very engrossing. You get to see some people crack under the pressure, and be able to redeem themselves, while others just fall to pieces. You get to see some people take advantage of the chaos, and others rise up against them. The main characters also grow into their own, and watching that sense of self be threatened by other survivors, mainly adults, makes for interesting conflict. It really plays on the idea that the worst thing about the zombie apocalypse isn't the zombies, but the people who lose their own humanity in a desperate bid to survive them.

The animation quality is good, and the zombie killing action is over the top and fun. But there is a lot of gratuitous T&A (episode 6 especially), and the boobs move in a way that completely defy all logic. But if you can manage to get past that, this is definitely a series worth watching.

I have to admit, I'm severely disappointed in both Operation: Rainfall, and the coverage of it.

For those who don't know, Operation: Rainfall is a fan movement to get Nintendo to release Xenoblade, Pandora's Tower, and The Last Story here in America. These games are already out in Japan, Xenoblade is set to be released in Europe, and the group behind Operation: Rainfall wants Nintendo to localize (translate them to english and release here in the US) all three games. Now, frankly, if they had just stopped there, I'd be on board this movement. Because, yes, I do want to play those games, they all look incredibly interesting, and admittedly, the Wii has been sorely lacking in anything new and interesting. Outside of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, there really isn't much coming out that I want. I don't really care about how much effort it would take to localize the game, or how many resources it would cost Nintendo, I just want to play these games. It's completely selfish, and I'm okay with that.

But, apparently, Operation: Rainfall doesn't want to stop there. Supposedly their big aim is to change Nintendo's policy for bringing titles over to the US. Which would be fine, if, again, they just admitted that they want this for purely selfish reasons, but the people behind Operation: Rainfall seem to think they know how to run this aspect of Nintendo's business better than Nintendo can. Ballsy, so give them credit for that, and on the surface, they do make so compelling arguments. Now, I don't know the ins and outs of localizing a game, and all the hurdles, both legal and financial, that come with it. But I actually started looking stuff up because I have too much fucking time on my hands. Strangely, the more I learned, the more I realized that the people behind Operation: Rainfall don;t know what they're talking about. They seem to have very little idea of what goes into localizing a game, the cost and resources involved, legal issues with international licensing, and whether or not that game would be a commercial success.

This brings me to my second disappointment, the coverage of Operation: Rainfall.

If there was ever a chance to prove that Videogame journalists were journalists who simply covered videogames (as opposed to sports or politics), rather than gamers playing at being journalists, this was it. And gaming news sites everywhere, IGN in particular, dropped the ball.

These sites have reported on Operation: Rainfall, in so much that they acknowledge that they exist, and have accurately repeated their message. Except no one has stopped to examine their message, or the facts behind it. No one has actually reported on what Nintendo's current localization policy is or how it works, and examined whether that needs to change. No one has bothered to report on the sales success or failure of localized games on the Wii--

--actually, no. That's half true.

There's been some people who put out raw sales numbers, comparing the sales of a few localized titles to see where they sold the best. I'm basically going to pick out five games from that list (mostly RPG and adventure titles, since they fit the same genre as the three wanted games.), along with the numbers with them, as reported by vgchartz:

( Numbers and analysis under the cut )

It's been a while since I did an honest to goodness update on this thing. Not an icon post, or a video, or a meme, but an honest to goodness "This is how my life is going" post. I'm not sure why that is.

I have been busy as of late, but not so much so that I couldn't update whenever I feel like it. I think... idk, but maybe the allure of shouting out every detail of my life to the world at large has faded. The people I keep in regular contact with already know what's going on. Those that don't, I don't really see the need to keep them informed of All The Stuff I'm Doing. If I wanted them to know, I'd be in regular contact with them.

But I've always been a relatively private kind of guy.

Though I think its more that, now that I've gotten older and all of that, that I look for more depth in my conversations. Even the silly ones. I guess that's why I prefer talking to certain people, rather than throwing comments out to the public and see who bites, particularly since the people who do bite are, 94.6% of the time, utter assholes. That's largely the reason why I mainly lurk at ontd_p, and rarely comment. Thoughtful responses to complex political issues are usually met with insults, accusations of racism/bigotry/sexism/nazism, or, if you're lucky, a gif. Its largely a bunch of immature shallow screaming at the wind, and I'd rather save my voice for when it counts.

Or maybe underneath all of that, there's a subconscious fear that what I post won't even be noticed. It's kind of silly, really. But sometimes I do think "why bother" if what I post is going to be buried in a friend's feed in about 15 minutes. Not to mention that social media is all spread out these days. LJ, Facebook, AIM, BBM, Twitter, Plurk, and whatever the fuck else, its like you have to cross update at 18 different places just to make sure you get everyone's attention.

Still, its nice to have a place where I can organize my thoughts and look back over them later, since there are a lot of little things you end up forgetting along the way. So I guess I'll keep this going for now, since its one of the few places where I can write an entry of more than 140 characters; still keep Facebook, even if I use mine more to keep tabs on people than to update them; and I'll still be on AIM, since I've never enjoyed talking to people over the phone.

EDIT: Oh, and in case you're wondering, life is going good!

Most of these are from the movie, but a few nice fan art ones are thrown in. Also, it was kind of a pain to get good screen caps of Harute, Zabanya, and Raphael, as they are all so awkwardly built.

Comment if you want to, but do credit if you take and use these.


00 Qan[T]: 29
00 Raiser: 7
Exia: 2
Setsuna F. Seiei: 207
Feldt Grace: 61
Harute: 10
Allelujah/Soma: 77 Total
Zabanya: 19
Dynames: 3
Lockon Stratos (Lyle): 40
Tieria Erde: 16
Miss Sumeragi: 11
Mileina Vashti: 4
Misc: 3

Preview:




( ...something as simple as this )

Mostly Setsuna and his Gundams, since I rp him. Comment if you want, credit slick_nyc if you use.

00 Quanta [6]
00 Gundam/00 Raiser [53]
Gundam Exia [36]
Setsuna, Season 1 [56]
Setsuna, Season 2/Movie [401]
Misc [2]

Previews:


( Icons )

I certainly hope you voted today.

So, Kayne West decided to make a 30-minute high concept art flick/music video. And it's... well, it's not bad. I can't say its good, but props definitely go to Vanessa Beecroft (Art Director) and Kyle Kibbe (Cinematographer) as well as the team of Phillip Lim and Martin Izquierdo (Costume Design) for the visual style. If nothing else, it looks fantastic. If you just mute it and watch it (which you might be better off doing), it's very, very pretty. The music itself was hit or miss for me in spots, which isn't good when that's what supposed to be carrying the film. The were a couple of good segments, but several where I wanted to skip forward. There's also a story in the video, which is relatively simple, but gets buried under Kayne being artistic.

In the end, I'll give Kayne credit for being creative, at least. Any hip-hop video that isn't "Hey, look at all the money and bitches I got!" is never a bad thing, in my book.

I have no idea who thinks up these Old Spice commercials, but I bet they'd be a blast to go drinking with.

Give me a character I play and I'll give you their:

01. Full name
02. Best friend
03. Sexuality
04. Favorite colour
05. Relationship status
06. Ideal mate
07. Turn-ons
08. Last sexual experience
09. Favorite food
10. Crushes
11. Favorite music
12. Biggest fear
13. Biggest fantasy
14. Quirks in bed
15. Bad habits
16. Biggest regret
17. Best kept secrets
18. Last thought
19. Worst sexual/romantic experience
20. Biggest insecurity

Characters I play

Marvel: Nate Grey, Iron Lad, Cyclops, Hellion, Doc Samson, The Falcon, War Machine, Josiah X, Ronon the Accuser, Worldmind, Machine Man, Exodus

Other Fandoms: Leon S. Kennedy (Resident Evil), Kevin Ryman (Resident Evil), Grunge (Gen-13), Setsuna F. Seiei (Gundam 00), Black Mask (DC Comics)

It's like a childhood fantasy come true.

http://supermariobroscrossover.com/

Well, more than a thing. I made a comicbook.

A short one, mind you, but I did it!

It's not great, but its based on an idea that has been turning in my head for over a year now, so I got part of it out there in a short story.

You may all read it here.

( Cut for language and race stuff )

So, the NYC Board of Education is catching flak over their school schedule. It was bad enough that they decided to end the previous school year on a Monday, but this is their opening schedule for all public school students.

Wed Sept 08th - First day of School
Thu Sept 09th - Rosh Hashanah SCHOOL CLOSED
Fri Sept 10th - Rosh Hashanah SCHOOL CLOSED
Sat Sept 11th - SCHOOL CLOSED
Sun Sept 12th - SCHOOL CLOSED
Mon Sept 13th - Second day of school

Virtually every single school in the system submitted a request for a revised schedule, but all of them were flatly denied.

I went strolling through midtown Manhattan earlier tonight, and stumbled upon a video shoot in Times Square. Apparently Justin Timberlake was shooting a video or something... well, he was trying to.

I don't think the director got a single decent take. Every ten seconds someone was either snapping a photo with the flash, cheering loudly, or there was a car honking in the background.

They had several takes, and maybe between them they can edit it into one decent scene, but, really, they should've known better than to try to film in Times Square at 11:30 at night. They really should've waited until 4am. Of course, there'd still be car horns, but the crowd would be a bit more manageable.

I want to really like Covert Affairs, as it is a good show. It's just that the motivation for the female lead character centers around an ex-boyfriend who skipped out on her. If not for that one thing, I'd really love that show.

So, yesterday, my sister gave birth to her first kid, Douglass Wayne Anderson Jr. I finally got to see him earlier today, which was cool, despite the presence of other family members. Not that I mind them, but there's been this constant jockeying for position where my nephew is concerned, with who gets him when and all of that crap. Which, again, is fine, but there's this kind of implication that because I don't bother to participate in all of that, that I'm not as excited as everyone else is, which is bullshit.

The way I see it, that's my nephew. That means that there's spot in his life that says "Reserved for Uncle Will", and fuck you all if you think I'm going to bother making a complete jackass out of myself just to get something I'm entitled to. Besides, as of this post, he isn't even 48 hours old yet. He's got plenty of time, as do I, and hell if I know how my sister and her husband want to handle this parenting thing. So, I told them if they need me, I'll be around, and even if they don't need me, I'll still be around.

And that's that.

Though, on another note, why do women make these insane high-pitched noises every time they see a baby? Is it an instinct or something, because it seems like every female I know makes noises at the same pitch and same tone every single time. I had to sit through a hour of hearing that, and all I could think was He's doesn't think its cute, he thinks you're an idiot, and so do I. Please stop before my ears bleed.

Maybe I just have no maternal instinct. Which, if I don't, I'm perfectly okay with it.