It burns! It burns!!!~

Man this new phone takes some nice pictures

And the last of the backlog.. (Part 3 - Anime) // Haruhi Shoushitsu (2010)

Early winter 2010 had a ridiculous amount of good anime series airing, to the point where every day there would be something to watch...
So what did i end up watching?

(This list goes from the stuff i enjoyed MOST TO the stuff i enjoyed LEAST)
(Also, everything listed is 13 episodes only)

Panty and stocking with garterbelt

So anyone on vent probably knows what this is, fucking amazing anime. While the show is seriously lacking in plot or sensibility, it makes up for it with comedy, swearing and a fucking unbelieveable soundtrack.
Im pretty sure ive already linked a FLY AWAY NOW FLY AWAY NOW video on this blog somewhere...
I wont really even try to summarise the plot or anything, just go and watch it, if you have the same sort of humor as me you will love it.
Oh also, each bad guy has a live action explosion sequence when they die.
10/10 : mostly for just being very original, having some awesome fight scenes and just being hilarious. GOD MY OHHHH~~~~

Soredemo Machi wa mawatte iru (And so the city keeps turning)

Sort of a slice of life anime about a ditsy girl working as a maid, its very character driven and pretty funny. Recommend a watch if you're looking for a lighthearted character driven comedy. It also has a really catchy ending theme song...
9/10 : I really liked the characters and the comedy

Ika Musume (Squid Girl)

Girl is a squid. Girl tries to invade land. Girl ends up working in a cafe.
Pretty quirky and cute comedy de geso.
9/10 : Shes a fucking squid de geso.

The world only god knows

Dating sim expert gets paired with a demon and is tasked with capturing the hearts of real girls in order to release their inner demons or some bizarre shit. Its like a light romantic comedy but with him trying to win over different girls each time, pretty enjoyable and a second season has already been announced...
Also. Elsie is a super adorable sidekick
8/10 : Its something a little bit different and its just a nice short watch.

Psychic detective Yakumo

Guy can see ghosts with his left eye, helps some detective with some murder / spiritual possession cases and the story sort of goes abit crazy from there with some of the cases.... Its a pretty decent show although it feels like they try to make it go abit death note with the mind games and shit at the end (it was a little poorly done and predictable sadly), its a decent watch though.
7/10

My Little Sister Can`t Be This Cute

Oh my fucking god this series almost pushed me OVER THA FUCKIN LINEEEEEE~
When the main premise is the interaction between a brother and sister, why would you make the sister the most hatable, irritating, bitchy (and not in an anarchy panty bitchy angel style bitchy), selfish, annoying, brattish, spoilt, irritating fucking ARGRHGHGH.
Its not often you really want a character in an anime to suddenly be diagnosed with some sort of terminal disease but this girl does it.
All of the other characters are actually pretty nice, and this sort of redeems the series but fucking hell that sister....
4/10 : SQUARE GO LIKE

~~~~~

I also got to fnially see The disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (2010) which was actually released in Japanese cinemas early 2010, but only recently came out on blu-ray to download (i didnt feel like going for the eyecancer camrip version).
Im pretty glad i held out waiting for it to come on blu-ray, as I was initially sort of hesitant after the fucking horrific Season2 endless 8 bullshit.
The film (subbed by Mazui) is in glorious 1080p and well translated, it runs a little long at 2hrs 40, but the film definitely doesnt feel that long, although the story seems to progress VERY slowly, the film never really seems to drag on and the plotline is pretty good, and appropriate for the haruhi series, its a good watch and totally redeems season 2.
9/10

Theres no way my blog can be this abandoned! (Part 2 - Games)

The majority of my gaming was done at home, my brother had bought DJhero2 since i was last back, and then mum bought him COD:Black Ops for christmas, I bought myself Super Meat boy in the new years sales, but before I get to those...

999 (DS)
This game is fucking AMAZING.... as a visual novel anyway... I believe I already tweeted this, but 999 is easily the best game ive ever read, the game does have a room escape game thing built in as well, and those puzzles are well thought out and fun to solve, but the enjoyment in this game is primarily found in the slowly (and i mean slowly, because theres no text skip feature)  revealing plot which presents itself over multiple playthroughs.
Read a review or somethign if you want the full story, but basically there are many branching paths in the game and each different path will reveal a little more of the story, only after a few playthroughs will you actually be able to piece the truth together and escape the nonary game.
The true ending.......wow.... it was just...wow...
Without giving too much away I can only compare it to the miles edgeworth / DL-6 Case incident stuff. If you have a DS, go and play/read that shit.

DJhero2 (360)
Its a huge improvement over the original, mostly because they tweaked the control system to be a little more forgiving (fadestabs in particular), it also feels like the framerate is improved and the new freestyle sections sound better than flava-flav screaming YEEEEEAA~ over and over again. From an achievement hunter point of view though the achievements are dumb, I dont really want to have to do 10 hours of online VS play and play all of the tracks in vocals mode and so on, and about 400 points is dumb stuff like that, Ive 5*'d everything in the game, that should surely be the biggest achievement there is but apparently singing lady gaga is more of an achievement...

COD: BlackOps (360)
I didnt enjoy the singleplayer much in this cod installment if im honest, im not sure if its because it feelsl ike only last month that I was playing through MW2 or something else, it just feels a little stale, shoot/hidebehindcover/shoot/moveforwards.... Perhaps I shouldnt play it on veteran :/
The story is pretty bad btw, even the whole twist thing it throws on you is pretty obvious (or i thought it was anyway)
The multiplayer however is a different story, they seem to have taken on a LOT of the comments about what made MW2's multiplayer shit and fixed them, noobtube now does laughable damage and needs almost a direct hit to kill anyone, killstreak rewards dont add to your current killstreak, no more commando (THANK FUCK.)....
The result is a much less stressful game, where you can concentrate on killing other players and not being blinded by seething rage when someone haloswordlunges you from 2 miles away with commando.
Also, Silenced Galil w/ Ghost/SoH/Marathon ftw.

Super Meat Boy (360/pc)
Hoooooly shit, I knew this game was hard from playing it a little on the PC but having leaderboards times and all sorts turns this into sort of a different game. Good fun for sure, but I cant see myself ever finishing the kid's levels, or even all of the dark world levels for that matter, some of them are way too rage inducing... Or even bandage girls levels! Holy shit man those are hard! :<

Xbox Kinect
So as i mentioned in the other blog post, I got to try a little bit of the kinect at my uncles place...
Its exactly what i imagined it would be, a HDified eyetoy, the lag isnt actually the massive problem I found with it, it was (surprisingly) the accuracy of it, one of the games in kinect adventures involves you standing in a glass box underwater and holes appear and you have to plug them with your body, its pretty fun but annoying when the kinect doesnt fucking acknowledge where you are.
The games also seem very limited, what can you do with a camera after all, aside from the normal sports games that the wii already has... I didnt get to play dance central but its the only game I can imagine playing which would be unique... Overall, not impressed at all.

ps. I cant fucking wait for Marvel VS Capcom 3, any other good games coming out this year is a bonus but theres not really anything in particular im really looking forward to...

Yeah... As if i could abandon this fucking blog... (Part 1 - Life)

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I tried to abandon it, I really did. 'Nobody even reads it' I told myself, and nobody probably does, but I guess after having a blog for 3 years or so I feel compelled to blog certain shit, ive realised its my release for whats going on in my life, for the events too big for twitters pathetic character limit, or facebooks social problems (in that people will judge the shit out of me if for whatever reason I feel like posting something sketchy)
And so, here is the past month or so, covering the christmas holiday.

------------------------------

So from the last blog post?.... not much has changed really, I went home for christmas on the 22nd where I was welcomed by a newly doubled glazed house which was far warmer than the shitpiece of an accomadation I had gotten used to.
The christmas holiday was essentially just me passing 2 weeks by playing on the 360 and browsing the internet (since I didnt take my PC back with me).
Played lots of SSFIV with my brother , BlackOps , DJhero2 and bought Super meat boy

Christmas day brought fewer presents than usual, got 2 really thin 'trendy' shirts from my fashionable aunt, a pretty nice bodywarmer, a waterbottle, a microwave plushie thing (i think you microwave it to heat it up then stuff it in your pants or something), and a good amount of money... Oh.. and a new phone - Sony Ericson Saito, was a little bit disappointed it wasnt a droid of some sort, but then i wouldnt get a contract anyway because I dont use it enough, so I guess it wouldnt really matter too much, all i use my phone for is texting, calling and taking pictures for this here blog - and the saito has a 12 megapixel camera resulting in some HDass 2mb 16:9 pictures, the flash on the camera is also like a proper camera too which is fucking nice.

Christmas day was the usual for us, visiting the grandparents for a meal, presents and then getting robbed by the grandparents over some 'casual gambling' - We play 'Dai Di' usually, although MahJong has been played in the past once or twice (out of 21 years)



^ This here picture was taken before my great aunt ROBBED the entire fucking table, green chips are equal to £1 , by the end of the night she (top right of pic) had like 4 stacks of green chips and we had to bring in a blue chip to equal £10 - she had 2 of those. You know you're getting fucked up in a gambling situation when you need to invent a new, higher tier of chip for one player.
In Dai Di, you get 13 cards to start with and you pay all other players according to how many cards you have at the end of the round, eg, you have 1 card left when someone finishes then you pay 10p, IF however you have over 7 cards, you have to pay DOUBLE, and IF you somehow manage to not lay down a single card you get ultrafucked and it goes TRIPLE, remember you have to pay ALL players that have less cards than you, which means you could be paying out like £5 in one round if you're unlucky with your hand (pretty high when an average win will net you £1 or so)

Uncle there had a XboxKinect, so i got to play with that a little, details in another blog post.

Boxing day was also the usual, going to my dads side of the family's house, to meet cousins and some other extended family, additional guests this year (who was also present last year) is some cambridge student we've nicknamed 'big eyed girl' for obvious reasons, she and her family are Japanese.
Boxing day then, was basically spent sitting around eavesdropping on their family conversations trying to understand shit whilst watching crappy TV (deal or no deal anyone?), we also watched Avatar - which was a good way to burn some time i guess.

New years Eve was pretty boring, just stayed at home and watched the fireworks on TV before playing some games with the brother.

New years day we went to aunts, had nandos for lunch and then played 'Cranium' , which is like a crossup between trivial pursuit, charades and Pictionary - Some of the challenges are pretty cool/hard, for instance stuff like Puppetry were you have to control a teammates limbs and the rest of your team has to guess what word you're trying to tell them, or sensodraw which is pictionary but without looking, Oh the game also comes with a lump of playdough to mould for certain challenges. Sadly I forgot to give my mum my camera to record stuff otherwise I would have uploaded the video of me doing some charades, maybe next time eh.

And then it was back to the unihouse on the 4th or so, and back to PC, shopping and cooking for myself, and lots of HD anime and league of legends.

Aachi wa Ssipak (2006)

aka. What the fuck am i watching



So looking at the 'similar' anime section of Panty and stocking on aniDB, I saw this film.
The synopsis is as follows (copypasta from aniDB)

In the future, all energy sources are depleted, except human excrements. To reward production, people receive addictive, Popsicle-like Juicybars. Aachi and Ssipak are street hoodlums who struggle to survive by trading black market Juicybars. Through a chain of events involving their porn-director acquaintance Jimmy the Freak, they meet wannabe-actress Beautiful, whose defecations are rewarded by exceptional quantities of Juicybars. For that reason, Beautiful is also wanted by the violent blue mutants known as the Diaper Gang (led by the Diaper King), the police (most notably the cyborg police officer Geko), and others.

...... yeaaaaah.....

The film is bizarre to say the least, the art style is somewhat of a cross between beautifully detailed and oddly proportioned characters like Geko in the screenshot above , the story is odd - but you sort of just go with it eventually, the highlight of this film however is the action scenes which are fucking ridiculous to the max, generally featuring geko and the diaper gang (below), probably the most absurd action scenes ive ever seen - more ridiculous than your average devil may cry combo montage youtube video.
The film is an action comedy, with more emphasis on comedy depending on who you're watching it with and what you're expecting, as always - watching with a bunch of like-minded people is recommended for maximal comedic value.
The film is also really quite explicit with its gore, decapitations, bloodspray, grenades stuffed in throats, people getting impaled... its all there, and very animated.





^ This bitch creeps me out.

This film is a definite 10/10, comedy and raw explosive action scenes, thats everything i need in a film.

Place Promised in our early days (2004) // Voices of a distant Star(2002)

So after seeing a trailer for a new Makoto Shinkai film, i figured i should check out the rest of his stuff, I was sort of looking forward to tear jerkers from both of these but neither really did it...

The Place promised in our early days (2004)

So I had already seen 5cm per second, and heard this was sort of similar, hearing this... I was pretty terrified to watch the film, 5cm per second was depressing to the core, I dont mind sad but... sheez.
Anyway. So in Makoto Shinkai fashion, the films visuals are fantastic, easily better than the average ghibli film, the film also had a very powerful score to go with the emotions in the film, the film itself however - for me anyway, was a total bore....

Synopsis here :
In 1996, three teenagers, Hiroki, Takuya and Sayuri, make a pact—they will build an experimental aircraft, almost invisible to surveillance, cross over to Hokkaido and unlock the secrets of the tower. Their dream was never realized, because Sayuri was sent to Tokyo for treatment after she fell into a coma. It is now three years later. The rosy illusions of youth have fallen away, but not the unbreakable strength of the trio’s promise. The truth of the tower will be uncovered, and with it, the link between it and Sayuri’s mysterious, carefully tended condition.

While I know for this sort of film its important to build on the characters and spend lots of time on the characters relationships with each other, its basically the entirely of the film, very very little seems to occur, the pacing was just too damn slow, and then the climax of the film is depressingly underwhelming  after waiting 80 minutes for it...
Just not for me I guess, It has a very high rating on aniDB so im sure its just a taste thing, I'd say the film was mediocre but then I get bored pretty easily, and I did just watch Aachi and Ssipak the other day (review of which coming soon)
6/10

Voices of a distant Star (2002)

VOADS isnt a proper film, but a 25 minute OVA, despite this, it manages to achieve about the same emotional impact as The Place promised... (above) which ran 90 minutes.
The film tells of a couple seperated by space, with one of them flying deeper into outer space as a gundam pilot or some shit, they try to communicate by mail but the distance between them results in messages taking longer and longer to arrive...
The film gets its point across well enough, and manages to do so without amazing visuals and music, sort of proving that a good story is way more important than the former. Its a good watch for 25 minutes and I recommend it if you feel like watching something a little depressing.. You all love watching depressing stuff right?

85/100

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And heres the teaser trailer thing for the next film that the director is doing....

'Children who chase lost voices from deep below' - which im pretty sure is a completely different title from its japanese counterpart 'Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo'

Black Rock Shooter (2010)

(I guess i review this like a film?)



Black rock shooter is a 50 minute OVA roughly based on the Hatsune Miku song composed by Supercell of the same name, I say roughly based because its a fucking song to mini-film adaptation.
It does feel like a film, and it does feel like it runs way longer than 47 minutes, but you'll be wishing it was a full length film....

The story is... intresting... Im not going to say its deep because you'll watch it expecting a really deep film and hate me but the way in which the film is presented is very artistic, there is minimal explanation of anything throughout the film and it jumps between High schooler life and Black rock shooter who has an eye which catches fire and a gun for an arm. Its definately something you'll probably want to rewatch in hope of understanding what the director is trying to deliver.

Im not entirely sure why but parts of the film reminded me of the girl who leapt through time, ordinary life, with a supernatural subtext

I've probably said too much already as I had no expectations or background on the story and rather enjoyed it ,
You can grab 'Mochi fansubs' 720p version here

I find most films go on too long, so i sort of liked the half-film style of BRS,
4/5

Minecraft video and something extra...

Made a random Minecraft TNT video the other day, didnt take as long as you might think... Got to practice with the speed functions in vegas too




And now the something extra....



NICE TRAIN!

I love the super-reusable techno beat

Minecraft

Minecraft is a dangerous, dangerous game...





Finally finished my second minecart rail system so I have a way from central to my mountain hideout.

Also made a volcano, a really badly done naxxaramas and some other misc stuff.

Need ideas for stuff to try and make, If anyone has any ideas, send em and i'll consider it...
I generally only have cobblestone/rock/dirt/glass/gravel/sand to work with though

Everyones a comedian

So our kitchen was a right state the other day because, as usual for a student house, nobody was doing their fucking washing up. A few people decided to just wash everuthing up that was left out (i personally didnt want no part of that shit, because i always wash my stuff up eventually, unlike some people that conviniently 'forget')

Go into kitchen after lunch today, see this...



Also, some pictures on here from a while ago that I havent uploaded (havent been using my phone for pictures much because its so shit, not sure when i get a new phone but i cant fucking wait, think i'll go out and specifically buy something that has a good camera on it, i dont even use the rest of the features - if it texts, calls , rings in the morning to wake me up and takes pictures im happy...



And a few badly shot pano pictures from new york





^I believe these two are taken from the 'top of the rock' (the Rockafella Center)


^ And this REEAAALLY bad one is from The statue of Liberty

Sonic Colors

Its...... good....
And its a new sonic game...
How could this have happened....

But uh, yeah... its genuinely a really solid game. The graphics are really nice for a wii game and the framerate is good, the game feels fast and mostly fluid and the music is (surprisingly) amazing - ( Planet Wisp and Aquatic Park- are good example of some of the better tracks in the game, but even the 'bad' tracks arent horrible)

Sega seem to have understood roughly what fans want and have taken the best parts of the last few games:
- The rush/boost system from Sonic Rush
- The 2.5D platforming segments of Sonic Unleashed
- The full 3d path bit from Sonic and the secret Rings
And they left out all the shitty gimicks, the werewolves, the extra characters...
The Colors system is new and different, but it works well with the game and doesnt slow it down too much.

I dont know if anyone remembers Takashi Iizuka in an interview saying this was the one that would break the sonic cycle, but he was totally right. Sonic Colors is genuinely one of the better games ive played in a while.

The game also has a good amount of replay value, time trials, hidden rings, S ranks and LOADS of multiple pathways, particuarly on the first 2-3 worlds where you don't have all the colors unlocked.

Go get it. 5/5

Jackass 3D (2010)

Went to see it at the cinema the other day.. Its.... a Jackass film. Im not sure what else needs to be said. It runs about an hour and a half and is pretty entertaining if you enjoy Jackass antics.
There is a LOT of pain, shit, cocks, slow-mo facepunching and shit.
Did i mention shit?

The 3d, sadly, doesn't enhance the film much at all, the opening and ending is shot in full 3d, with exploding shit flying out of the screen and so on, but majority of the film is in pseudo 3d which was abit disappointing.

Highlights for me was the guy sitting behind the Plane engine , High-five and beehive tetherball (which i laughed so hard at i could barely breathe).
Lowlights was probably the 'Poo cocktail supreme' which basically involved steve-o being put in a bungee capsule filled with liquid shit. The people outside the capsule were throwing up, it was pretty horrible to watch :X
Oh, the sweat drinking and then throwing up was pretty fucking nasty to watch too.



Im not entirely sure whether i would recommend seeing it at the cinema or not, if you have friends, go see it and hope its pretty full so you at least get that atmosphere. If not, its probably fine to just wait for the DVD to come out since the 3d effect is pretty mediocre.

The Polar opposite of 'Productive'

So i went home on saturday, thought i'd pick up lots of the stuff I left at home (glasses, game controllers, etc) and then get some work done, i actually packed a really really optimistic amount of work to be completed. Instead, we ended up going out for dim sum in the morning and then the family watched TV pretty much all day, X factor, strictly come dancing, etc etc. All that shitty TV. And i really didnt feel like doing any work at all , so instead I started up a new game of Minecraft (totally worth the £9 btw) and made a new base - http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/World3.rar - , its kinda coo', really need to find some diamond though so i can make a portal to hell (or whatever it is you do exactly) . I still feel like I have alot to learn about that game though.

The next day then, Because saturday was so unproductive, I thought i'd wake up nice and early and do some work.... Instead, I watched extreme house makeovers. So then I thought i'd go back to the uni-house, because i'd be able to work better there.... 2.5 hours or so later, I log in to vent and cross is installing Dynasty Warriors Online, Guess i should check this out....
That was about 6 hours ago. The game is very very awesome, my workload is very very un-awesome. FML.

Suddenly, it was November

I still feel ill, fml.

In other news....

Work / studies:
Realling getting the better of me at the moment, i've failed to get any jobs so far to the point where applying for others just seems like a waste of time, they're so much effort to fill out only to get a goddamn automated email back saying 'nope'. Ive also been struggling to keep up with lecture notes, or more specifically 'integrative neuroscience' - all of which is just a complete bitch to understand.
I started my 3000 word assignment yesterday, its due on thursday week 10 , so I have exactly 5 weeks to complete it - It seems pretty dickish to write, mostly because its based on genetics which i fucking suck at.

~~~~~~~

Gaming:
Since amnesia.....
Started playing League of Legends again, such a fun game, although I suck at it now and completely fail at last hitting creeps, also all of the champions I used to love have been nerfed to a state where im not even sure if they're viable anymore - im pretty set on saving up for Kog Maw, becuase he's a badass.
We've also been playing  the 'Bloodline Champions' beta, which is an arena style DoTA - No creeps, no mana,  lots of different skills and a high need to utilize skillshots to be able to do proper damage.
There are 16 characters currently and the game needs some balancing work, but its pretty fun. Its also nice that it is advertised as completely skill based so you sort of know that when you molest the other team, its purely because you played better than them. I did record some footage the other day which i may edit and upload, but in all honesty my character (gunner) is kind of boring to watch [basically just me being a dick sitting in the background and sniping people for stupid amounts of damage]

~~~~~~~

Other:
Did you guys know we now have a joint youtube channel for uploading random gaming videos?
http://www.youtube.com/letsplex#g/u

3 Years

November 3rd, is this blog's birthday.
3 Years. 3 goddamn years.
Holy shit.
I cant believe I, not only still have this site, but still update (semi) regularly. Thats got to be some sort of achievement.

Content

721	Posts
1	Page
11	Categories
103	Tags

721 posts over 1095 days
Thats apparently an average of 1 Post every 1.51 days , sure doesnt feel like it eh.

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The low amount of blog comments makes my dick kinda soft if im honest. Makes me feel like nobody reads the stuff i type, in which case why bother.