Cl Bl Productions - Look into my Good Eye

Namhae Part II

2012-01-28T07:53:00.019-05:00

Hi everyone! Sorry for being so late on my posts. I'm taking a course on teaching ESL. For each module I have to read a bunch of things, watch some videos, take a test, and then write an essay. I try to do this every week, so it keeps me pretty busy. Anyway, here is the next part of my Namhae series.

Part II

The following day proved to be even more eventful than the previous one. We had set aside this day to visit two spots: a Buddhist temple high on a mountain and a small village next to the sea. My friend Anthony had been to the latter place before and he was eager to show it to me. But first off, we decided to see the temple. So we got in our car and off we went.

Buddhist temples are usually found around mountains, either at their foot or anywhere along the slope. (I used to think they were always at the top, but I have seen just as many at the bottom of a mountain as at the top. Many of them seem to be on or near a mountain, though.) This place of worship (and meditation, I guess) was at the very top of a very high mountain. Now, normally one would have to hike to the top, a pilgrimage of sorts which ultimately ends with the splendor and peace of the temple surrounding you. But we had a car so we drove up instead.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t drive ALL the way up to the top. They made us park about a mile or so from our destination and we had to walk the rest of the way. It was a little cool out when we made the walk. (Not cold by any stretch, but cool.) The sky was a dark gray and mist covered most of the landscape, which hardly mattered because a mass of trees covered both sides of the road, obscuring whatever view we might have had.

Then we started to climb. Not a sharp climb, but a slow, gradual swell that went on for about a hundred yards. Upon reaching the top of this gentle slope, we discovered a break in the trees to our right, and beheld this view of the land below us.

Unfortunately, the mist kept on rolling in at times, obscuring our view. However, when it abated slightly we were offered a wonderful view of the island below, including the bay we saw the previous day while drinking coffee.

(The dark green areas in the picture are trees. The light green areas are rice fields.)

After enjoying this wonderful location for several minutes, we continued down the path that would ultimately lead us to the temple. It wasn’t too long before we ran into an open area. The dirt road we were on gave way to a well-paved area made up of cut stone. There was a gift shop to one side in this area, which I entered to buy a little Buddhist bracelet for myself (and which I later gave to my brother. I mean, why would a devout Catholic wear a Buddhist bracelet?) The side opposite the gift shop was completely clear, and offered a wondrous view down the mountain…or would have if not for the thick fog. (Seriously, I could not see a foot forward, even leaning over the safety rail a bit. Just a wall of grayish-white.)

Once we finished looking around this area, we headed to the side opposite from where we had entered. There we found a set of stones stairs leading down, which we followed.

The way down the stairs was beautiful. The side to our left was covered in trees, with a bamboo fence keeping the growth off of the stairs. The side to our right was pretty much a wall of rock with some trees here and there. It was very nice to walk down. (And obviously fairly new. I figured that they got enough tourists visiting the temple to be able to afford to keep everything in pretty good shape.)

After continuing down the stairs for a little ways, we finally reached the temple. And I have to say that it was well worth the trip.

The large carved out stone in the center of the picture was a water fountain. We used blue scoopers to get ourselves a nice refreshing drink before exploring the place more fully.

The temple grounds were made up of several buildings, an open area, and the monks’ sleeping areas (which were up the mountain a little bit and we were not allowed to enter.) The buildings were all near the entrance we had come in and they appeared to all be places where people worshipped. They were old but in good shape; it was obvious that they were well taken care of. We actually arrived in the middle of …I guess “service” is the best word I can think of for it. Many people were meditating while a monk sang and drummed on something.

Since we did not want to interrupt anything, we decided to move over to one side, where there was an open area filled with gravel and various statues. But before we got there, we found something that all of us found quite amusing.

I suppose even monks need to make telephone calls from time to time. It was still funny to see something like this in a temple on top of a mountain, though. We dubbed the site “Buddha’s Phone Booth” and moved along.

Past this point and up a few stairs was the open area I mentioned earlier. The area had a drop off on the far side of the stairs. I can only imagine what view it might have given in good weather. We ended up looking around here for quite a bit.

On top of the big rock to the left of the entrance were many prayer beads and a few plastic figures of monks. I understood the significance of the rosaries, but I still don’t know why the little cartoonish figurines were there, nor who put them there. I guess it could have been the monks, but I wondered why they would put things like that there instead of something a little more pious, especially in an area used for prayer and meditation.

We looked around a little more after leaving this area, but didn’t do or see anything worth noting, really. I can tell you that monks apparently like cats, because there were fair amounts roaming about, always keeping their distance from us. We tried to coax a few to come closer, but didn’t have much luck.

After (unsuccessfully) trying to play with the cats, we decided to go back down the mountain. But before we did that, we had to go back up those stairs. Along the way up, I took one more picture worth talking about.

I had noticed this coming down the stairs, but took further note of it on the way back up. The wall of rock to one side of the stairs did not go straight up and down. It slanted a little up, and there were little ledges in it all over the place. On top of that, pieces of the wall had broken off in many places, leaving big slabs of rock lying on the ground. On many of these ledges and rocks we could see little pile of stones which were obviously meticulously placed. I asked my friend Anthony what these were, and he explained it to me. Apparently, those piles of stones were put there by people going to the temple. It was a meditation exercise. Practitioners would take some rocks and focus on building these little towers with them. They would build one as high as they could and then stop if it began to fall over. After they were finished, the little piles were left there. I suppose they would get knocked over eventually, but no human hands seemed to touch them after they were finished. I found that very interesting.

After we got off the mountain, we went back to my friend’s house, where we had lunch and rested for a little while. Then we headed out for our next destination: a small village next to the sea. Out of all the places I visited on this trip, this one was the most beautiful.

And you’ll hear all about it next time, so be sure to check in again!

PS: I'll post the next chapter of this as quickly as I can, but it will probably take a while with my classes and all. Please be patient!

Darkness 2 Demo

2012-01-23T14:25:00.002-05:00

720p! To keep the files clean and wonderful, I had to split it into three parts to keep them under the YouTube file size limit. Everything looks great, but I am not sure how well the sound sync was in part 2.

The demo is pretty fun too. It looks like a nice step up from the first game and the level up system is making excited. I will pick it up once it is at $30 to $40.

I can't wait for the move to be over and we can get back to making LP videos.

New Video!

2012-01-11T11:27:00.001-05:00

I can grantee that you will have as much fun watching this video as you will playing this demo. Somehow, this is not a bad thing.

Thanks to a mistake the video is only in 480p. Future videos will be in 720p.

HD PVR - The Passion

2012-01-10T09:55:00.001-05:00

Here is Pat's interesting story dealing with his new HD PVR.

1. Settings on the Xbox 360

I was really excited about finally getting an HD TV and the PVR. So much so, that I just plugged in both and starting capturing footage like a fool. As you can see, this footage looks like crap, is in 4:3 and there is a terrible sound delay. I am sure most people know this by now, but if you plug a 360 in an HD TV, you have to manually set what resolution you want the system to run at.

I set the 360 to 1080p, but things when crazy on the TV. Lowering down to 720p fixed the video issue.

2. Sound still f'ed

The footage is clean. So clean that I want to eat off of it.

Anyway, the sound was still an issue. My first idea was to see if I could adjust the sound in post, but the .mp4 files created by the HD PVR were treated as corrupt files by Corel X4. I have edited plenty of .mp4 files in that program before so I was rather pissed off about this new challenge.

My new theory was to try and dump the .mp4 files into my laptop's Windows 7 based Movie Maker. I convert the raw .avi created by our EASY CAP in Movie Maker so I hoped it would work the same magic here. It worked, but I am not going to post that footage. It was in 4:3 and looked like crap.

I only had one more idea...

3. Well that worked

I used the capture program that came with the HD PVR to produce a .avi version of the capture footage. My hope was that this new file would be in HD and would work with Corel X4. 1.5 GBs later and it turns out I have a beautiful file that opens in Corel and does not have the sync issues.

You can hear/see it fix the issue during the silent moment at the start of the video.

Get ready for some awesome HD content from the CLBL in the weeks/days to come!

Let's Play - Year One in Review - Part 1

2012-01-05T15:50:00.000-05:00

During a moment of illness in the hours before seeing Thor in 3D, Pat and Mat decided to start doing Let's Play videos. Actually, back then the idea was to do a series called "Beating Our Childhood" with bag full of very good and very bad SNES games. The basic idea was that we would play a random game until we beat it or it beat us. It was a fun idea...

Unfortunately, the capture device we had at the time couldn't handle footage from the SNES. In a nutshell, the SNES isn't in 4:3 device and its bizarre aspect ratio was poison. We could have quit. We almost did.

Then we plugged in the Dreamcast, booted up NesterDC and loaded Mega Man 1.

Rockman? I guess no one is going to think we were using a real NES. This was bad news because one of our main goals was to capture footage off a real console. At least the Dreamcast is real.

Rockman was a real lesson for us and in retrospect it seems really silly that we thought anyone would watch 3 failure episodes in a row. Editing is our friend and Fire Man is bullshit.

Want another fun fact? It took almost an hour to kill Doctor Wily. We almost gave up.

We weren't so lucky with our 2nd game and 1st failure, Castlevania.

We couldn't beat Death. Well, Mat beat death, but it happened weeks later and the camera wasn't recording the correct console. Castlevania is our white whale and I promise that we will kill it one of these days.

Castlevania was when we got our first comment. Someone thought we were funny.

Mega Man II was a different story. We butchered that game. Well, Mat killed that game.

Pat did kill a dragon and this rare one sided LP created our new set of rules about when we pass the controller. Too bad this new rule wasn't really needed.

We may have started Rock Man III: The Battles of Senior Mega Man with arrogance, but we ended it as broken men. That game beat the crap out of us and gave birth to the "music over sped up failed gameplay" thing that we do so well.

This was also the last game before our original capture device turned on us and started producing busted footage. Top Man kept us safe!!!!

Our other White Whale, the Whiter Whale was Faxanadu. The footage was clean, but this game was stopped by multiple issues.

The first time was stupid. We didn't record the audio. We have a pile of audio of us talking between takes. The second attempt went great, but we broke the damn game. No joke, Pat suggested how to break it and then he broke it. What an impulsive asshole.

Who knows when our heroes will return?

Come back next time for More Mega Mans, Fighting Games and a Double Deadly Failure...

Let's Play Mega Man X2

2012-01-05T15:39:00.002-05:00

Here is the playlist embed for the Mega Man X2 LP. New episode everyday.

Episode #1 - Posted 01/04/2012 - Watch Now

Episode #2 - Posted 01/05/2012 - Watch Now

Episode #3 - Posted 01/06/2012 - Watch Now
Episode #4 - Posted 01/08/2012 - Watch Now
Episode #5 - Posted 01/09/2012 - Watch Now
Bonus - Coming Soon!
Episode #6 - To be filmed

Namhae (Part 1)

2011-12-31T20:53:00.014-05:00

Finally! The first NatoneFLOYD Travel Log in about two years! It’s good to be back!

Part I

I guess it’s about time I got off my lazy ass and contributed to this site that I’m
nominally a part of. Everything I’m going to write about in the coming months is at least a year old at this point (and some even longer than that), but I’ll do the best I can to dig up the memories and give you all good descriptions. (And by ‘you all’ I mean the seven or eight people who bother to read my posts.) The first new tale I have to tell is about an island in the south.

A little over a year ago, I traveled with two other friends down to the southern part of
South Korea. We were going to visit a friend who lived down there at the time. He no longer lives there, but I’m glad that he did for that brief period. We were able to stay at his house while we looked around the beautiful place that he called home, an island called Namhae. (Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of this place. A lot of Koreans don’t know about it either. It’s a shame they don’t, because it was a wonderful place to visit. ) As you can see from the picture below, Namhae really is very far south from Seoul.

We took a bus from Seoul down south, a trip that took about 5-6 hours. It was a nice enough ride, though, to be honest, I slept through a lot of it. We arrived on the island late at night, after crossing over one of the few bridges that connect it to the mainland. (The island itself is fairly large and in the shape of an H. As you can see, there are plenty of attractions on it.)

Our friend picked us up, took us to his place, and then we all hit the hay. The next day was when our vacation really began.

The first order of business the following morning was getting a car. There is a bus system that will take you to most of the populated areas on the island, but it’s hardly the best way to get around. We decided that renting a car for our little vacation was the best bet. So we went to the rental place, got our hands on a nice set of wheels, and we were off.

The first thing we decided to do was visit a butterfly house in one of the more rural areas of the island. (Actually, I would describe most of the island as being rural. But there are a few fair-sized towns on it where a lot of people live. This butterfly house was pretty far out there, though, if I remember correctly.) The house ended up being closed (it closed when it was cloudy out for some reason), but the natural beauty all around us made the trip more than worth it.

We kinda loitered around this area for a good hour and a half, just taking it all in. There were actually a few humming birds around, feeding on the flowers. I took several shots of them, but this was the closest I got to a good one.

On the way out, we were greeted with one final surprise.

We don’t know where exactly these baby goats had come from, and I’m still not sure if they were wild or not, but they were very cute.

On the way out, the two little kids ran down the slope on the other side of the sidewalk. Looking down, we could see many other goats congregated at the bottom, including, presumably, the kids’ mother.

After that, we decided that we all needed a little pick-me-up, so we went for some coffee. My friend knew of a nice coffee house in another town on the island known as a “German Village” and so we went there to give it a try.

Stopping at the shop gave us a pretty nice view of the mountains on one side…

…and the beach on the other.

After the coffee, it was finally time to get our poles, go to the beach, and go fishing. But the best place to fish was a little ways down the coast, so we had some more driving to do first.

(Note: the next few videos that will be shown are all of us driving around in the car. I pointed my camera out the window in order to get some nice shots of the countryside, but it was very hit or miss. You may watch all of it if you like, but you might want to try and skip ahead a few times when they get boring.)

The nice place to fish was near a beach in a small bay. We pretty much fished off giant concrete jacks that were scattered liberally along the cement dock. (Those things had a purpose to them, but I forget what it was.)

It was great fun, once we got up and ready. The scenery was particularly brilliant

We fished all day, but only Anthony really caught anything decent.

And after we had had our fill of fishing, we gathered up what we had collected and we were on our way back to my friend’s place.

We ate very well that night (My friend Bob had previously been a chief on a cruise ship.) and went to bed happy. The next day would prove just as good as (if not better than) the first.

The latest CLBL LP!!!!

2011-12-22T01:22:00.002-05:00

We are finally doing Mega Man X. This is a playlist embed so make sure to check back every day for new videos.

-Production Notes will be added soon as well.-

I'm Back!

2011-12-15T09:27:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone! Long time no see! I see the rest of the staff here at the CLBL have been very busy making videos and posting reviews. My own contributions have been minimal of late. (“Of late” being the last couple of years) I suppose I could lie and say that I haven’t had anything to write about, but the fact is I have made several great trips over the last couple of years and have just been too lazy to write about them.

Well, no more! I have decided to end my infinite hiatus and once again become a regular contributor at this site. I can no longer do music and comic reviews (at least not very well), but I can continue my travel log. I have been on a few great trips since I lasted posted, and it’s about time I began to write about them. On top of that, I have acquired a video camera since my last post, so I will be showing pictures and videos as I write about the places I have been to.

So look forward to new posts from me in the future. I will start by writing about my trip to Namhae, a beautiful island in the southern part of South Korea. After that, I will do a series on my trip to New Zealand, where I ran around the south island for ten days and took lots of pictures and videos. I hope you enjoy them!

I am very busy nowadays, working at my school and studying the native tongue, but I will try and get these reports out in a timely fashion.

That’s it for now, but you will be hearing from me again soon! Catch you later!

Let's Play Mega Man 3

2011-10-28T10:09:00.001-04:00

Rockman Triple was a very difficult game. It beat us half to death, but those seem like happy memories now.

Let's Play Mega Man 2

2011-10-28T09:56:00.002-04:00

How was it ever this easy? Magus played most of MM2 on muscle memory while Sword5 was given a few chances to steal glory. This was still part of the good days before the capture device turned on us.

Let's Play Mega Man

2011-10-28T09:46:00.002-04:00

This is all of Mega Man 1 for the NES played by Sword5 and Magus. This was recorded on our old pinnacle video capture device with the sound taken from a sony camcorder. Looking back, this was a real learning experience as Mega Man proved that skill was the most important part of making LPs.

As a bonus, this is the only LP to feature the voices of Sword5 and Magus' wives. They mostly heckle, but it was nice to know they were there.

We win this time!

2011-05-17T10:13:00.000-04:00

It's a Mega Monday!

2011-05-16T10:44:00.001-04:00

Another gift to the Internet

2011-05-15T14:03:00.001-04:00

Magical Magic, a gift to the Internet

2011-05-15T02:30:00.002-04:00

Gundam Pilot Loss

2011-04-01T13:57:00.004-04:00

Gundam is more hardcore than I thought...

0079 - Gundam: Amuro
Mother: Disowned him after seeing him shoot a Zeon soldier in self defense.
Father: Dead. Fell down stairs while drinking. He had suffered from brain damage, which made him forgot about Amuro.

0085 - Zeta Gundam: Camille
Mother: Dead. Spaced by the Titans. Could have burned to death or been cut apart before space did its stuff. This happened in front of Camille.
Father: Killed by Char. He tried to help the Titans kill his son.

00 Gundam: Setsuna
Both: Setsuna was tricked into murdering his parents to prove his loyality to Allah. Setsuna was 10.

The Heads of Janus: Most Anticipated games of 2010 and 2011. Part 2: The Future

2011-03-31T13:16:00.000-04:00

My last part of this two part feature was was reviewing how my expectations for 2010 met with reality. In all it was a very good year for my expectations. Now in this part of the feature I write my new list for 2011, and which ten games I am anticipating the most!

As we are already three good months into 2011, I'm starting this list late. Several games I have been looking forward to in 2011 have already come out. For now, I'm going to ignore these and just post the games I am still expecting for the rest of this yea,r and boy does 2011 look like it's going to have some good titles to get a little hyped up about! Unlike last time, I'm going to rearrange these in ascending order of desire, so that #1, and my last pick, will also be the game I'm looking forward to the most this year. So let's just see what I'm looking forward to in the world of gaming in 2011.

#9 for 2011: Guild Wars 2
-Release Date: TBA

The MMO genre has a sort of love hate relationship with me. It's been something of a cesspool, what with its archaic roots ala Everquest now unplayable by modern standards, several could be great titles become twisted and corrupted by an unnecessary MMO model and so many failed attempts from people trying way too hard to be or beat World of Warcraft and creating still birth abominations. It's an ugly, ugly field with many flaws.

I never played Guild Wars 1, and I gave up on WoW well before getting serious about any end game content. The traditional MMO model is outdated, and I find it to be too horrendous to be a fun game anymore, even as hard as Blizzard is trying to rejuvenate it. City of Heroes was one of my brief respites, a game I thought had a grand vision as a fun MMO. It had issues, but it was still a solid game at release, and as MMOs seem to go these days, it was already leaps and bounds better than must MMOs, and I strongly feel that if they had been able to devote their development to furthering their original ideals rather than getting mired in listening to a directionless fanbase and adding unnecessary "other MMO's" elements, it would've prospered well beyond its time.

This looks like the definition of awesome.

But this is about Guild Wars 2, so I digress. I am not a big MMO fan. Too many elements considered endemic to the genre are simply anti-fun. I've been loosely following Guild Wars 2, and it seems like it's taking a direction I could appreciate, incorperating many things I've wanted to see in an MMO. Highly active, mobile fights, a very generous class and party system making forming teams and filling roles easy and fun. One of the best parts about the original City of Heroes that few people seemed to realize was that a 5 man team of any composition was entirely viable. While not exactly the same concept here, there's a similar line of thought. And since Bioware looks like it'll be committing suicide with an increasingly disappointing looking Old Republic MMO, it's just refreshing to look at a potential MMO that actually does seem to be trying to reinvent the genre in a much more positive light.

Plus, well, you know, the whole no monthly subscription thing keeps it more inline with buying a real game. I don't have much to say about this other than I hope it'll make good on its many promises. Guild Wars 1, from what I heard, supposedly did enough of its own boat rocking, but after the catastrophe that was Warhammer and its many, many lies before release, it's hard to get too terribly excited. Still, all the action shown so far looks fun, more like a real game than just a bland, lifeless MMO. To steal a reason from Angry Joe: just look at the tutorial they're showing. Instead of killing 10 giant rats you're looking at a fight that most MMOs wouldn't give you until you're max level. Remember that feeling playing God of War II where the first boss was a 20 story tall living statue of death? Yeah, seems kind of like that. So here's hoping this game will live true and be good!

#8 of 2011: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
-Release Date: Q3 2011

It is no secret that I love the Warhammer IP. I'm a relative newcomer; I only ever heard about Warhammer my freshman year of college. But I've grown very attached to the setting and its over the top, sometimes comically dark, gritty, gothic future. I've collected a small unit of loyal Tau, ready to progress the Tau'va in any dark corner of the galaxy as it may be demanded of them. I'll take any excuse I can get to immerse myself over and over in this IP, and Relic changed the face of RTS when it first released Dawn of War.

Even if its a reskinned Gears of War, I want it.

Honestly, Space Marine is probably not on a lot of people's radar. Nothing seems to be really all that exceptional about it. It's been put on hold at least once, but last I saw it was back on schedule for late 2011. It seems to be a fair action hack'n'slash title, such as God of War or maybe even Darksiders. They've boasted slow motion kill animations that look absolutely brutal. I'm a bit worried that the bolter, a weapon that basically fires miniature rocket propelled explosive bullets, is going to feel too much like a peashooter in a game oriented on melee combat, but otherwise I don't know much more about it to have concerns other than it feeling too generic.

Nothing gets a woman going like a hot and revved up chainsword.

But you're a goddamn Adeptes Astartes. Blood of the Emperor, son of Ultramar! You hit things with a sword that is also a chainsaw. It seems Games Workshop has been expanding it's IP carefully into videogames, and there's not a whole lot of choice to indulge into this world in a AAA title. I think the last thing we had like this might have been the FPS Fire Warrior...which could not even be saved by its superior Tau influences. Like I said, any excuse to indulge Warhammer 40,000 I will take, so here's hoping Space Marine not only comes out this year, but is at least a half-way decent game to backup that fluff. And let me be honest, that's all it really needs to be for me find it awesome.

#7 of 2011: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
-Release Date: 2011

I'm a Zelda whore. I own every Zelda game, gold cartridge where applicable, besides the gameboy ones other than Link's Awakening. Zelda II is still one of my favorite games. What's more is I seem to still derive pleasure out of each iteration of this increasingly confusing timeline of a license. Link is my bro. We share the Bro-force.

You'd survive better if you used your LEFT HAND.

You can add whatever gimmick you want the game, be it a talking sail boat, time travel, a choo choo, they've still always been the same Zelda game underneath, and I'll still buy it and lick up my delicious puzzle adventure game where I hit stuff with a usually magic sword.

Skyward Sword's gimmick, however, imposes a paradox on me. Link and me are bros, and we are also both southpaws. He is one of the few left handed video game heroes. Except in my Wii copy of Twilight Princess. Now, in Twilight Princess this annoyed me, but it was acceptable as all you had to do was swing the Wii mote and it was the same thing as hitting an attack button. But Skyward Sword is promising use of the motion + to make your movements much more important than that. And if they include a left handed mode, where I can play my good 'ol southpaw buddy, that's fantastic. If they don't I'm in a much more unusual place, and I'm left thinking the Japanese cleansed their entire islands of the leftie population.

Ah! There's a bug on my arm!

The only other thing I'm hopeful for, what I've hoped for in every Zelda game and always been disappointed by, is a greater difficulty and more sword fights. Twilight Princess and Wind Waker had an excellent melee sword fight system, but the only time it made you really use this system was in one or two entirely optional dungeons and even then the case was extreme. I want a Zelda game with more of these intense, usually very fun duels. I have no reason to think Skyward Sword will deliver on this, especially if it's going to try and coddle players like myself who are getting use to the motion + control, but I can still hope.

#6 of 2011: Portal 2
   -Release Date: April 19, 2011 in NA

I will admit to my skepticism upon first hearing about Portal 2. I could not feasibly think of a way to continue an already very short game in a satisfactory manner. Portal was really fantastic for what it was, and while I hungered for more, the real essence of the game's success was its charm. Simply adding more puzzles didn't seem like it would be enough, and even if they included more GLaDOS lines, it would feel too much like more of the same thing and never feel as fresh. My lack of imagination is my own failure.

Teaser after trailer after teaser keeps getting posted for this game, and I'm ery optimistic that they've been able to recapture that very same charm and milk it for all it's worth wonderfully. Like I said, the first one was just a short stint, and I always wanted more while acquiescent to the fact that more probably just wouldn't work. I certainly no longer feel that way. The humor seems like its going to be as organic and snide as ever, and the puzzles, especially with the new mechanics, looks like they'll continue being clever, challenging, and rewarding to play. What's more, I'm very eager to see their coop mode in action as it seems like bringing a friend on these wacky robot portal hijinks will be a blast.

#5 of 2011: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
   -Release Date: November 11, 2011

"I'm a whore" is my new mantra, I think. UmmmI'mawhore...ummmI'mawhore....

I don't think I have any valid reason to be excited about this game. I'm torn between saying I loved Oblivion and calling it one of the greatest disappointments of all time. I guess somewhere in the middle is the truth. I enjoyed Oblivion, even moreso with mods, and I imagine the same will be true here. But there was just something about Oblivion that felt so lackluster, like there was a complete lack of vision, like they were content to make another iteration of Morrowind, and somehow even that didn't come out quite right.

I guess what it comes down to is I think, like so many others seemed to, that Oblivion should have played more like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, in an open ended world. The magic and combat system were as dull as could possibly be, and even Morrowind's was slightly better, actually because of its slightly archaic system of dice rolls and weak spells. Magic was just not fun in Oblivion, and you never felt particularly like an all powerful wizard even if you exclusively specialized in magic. The same is really true of the combat. What's more, the scaling difficulty, or more particularly, the difficulty slider, never let you create a sweet spot where you hit a sort of vague realism where enemies were frighteningly dangerous, but so were you. No, either they could kill you in one mighty swing and weather more fireball spells than you could even count, or the fights were uninteresting and your threats minimal. What's more, the story telling and dialogue seemed worse than ever. No real interesting characters, a lack luster plot that never let you sort of organically slide into the world wide exploration, and in the end you don't even feel like you had much of an impact on the fate of Cyrodiil. Either you saved it or you got bored and fought of hordes of darkspawn in Ferelden instead.

Still, there's a promise in Elder Scrolls. I know, I mean know I'm not going to see the changes I want, but I can still hope. And part of that hope is that the game will still be fun anyway. There really is so much promise, Elder Scrolls offers a potentially fantastic experience, and we know so little right now that my imagination can run wild with the dreams and hopes of what I want the game to become. One can hope that Bethesda has actually learned from Oblivion and Fallout 3, looked at what so many people wish the game could be. So this game is here on this list as a hope, a desperate hope, at a decent game pushing realistic features and create a world that will be fun and fantastic to explore, fight, and live in.

#4 of 2011: Batman: Arkham City
   -Release Date: October 18, 2011 in NA

Arkam Asylum was a fantastic game. It was the first time I've seen a comic game done so well, at least since Spiderman and Ultimate Spiderman. Arkham Asylum didn't do any one thing particularly new or innovative, but what it did, it did well and with a very well done blend of the Batman flavor to it. To point: I felt like the goddamn Batman. You had a just intricate enough combat system that, even on the higher difficulty, was able to strike the right balance between making you feel like the Bullet immune, thug stomping Dark Crusader, while keeping it involved enough to still make it feel like it was a personal accomplishment: that you were the Batman.

I had issues with Arkham Asylum; mainly I was upset that in order to get 100% completion you had to finish the trials, and the combat system, while good enough for the fights in the game, had flaws that broke down quickly and obviously to make that fun. But this isn't a review of Arkham Asylum, just an understanding the promise Arkham City has. I know little to nothing about Arkham City, but if it maintains a bare minimum of the same great Batman feeling of "being the goddamn Batman", with its own great blend of Bruce Timverse Batman and The Dark Knight, it'll still be a stellar game worth owning, and the cast is looking promising. Hugo Strange was a ... strange... choice, but it shows a certain level of understanding of the material that promotes great faith in them creating a great Batman story.

Batman: Arkham City os set to come out this fall, and I can not wait to be chucking my batarangs, beating up thugs with my Batjitsu, and solving crimes as the great bat detective.

No one will ever be a better Joker than Mark Hamil.

#3 Sword of the Stars ][: Lords of Winter
-Release Date: September 2011

I guess I'll start yet another of these with my praise of the game's predecessor. Sword of the Stars is somewhat overlooked and underappreciated title for the sheer amount of wealth it brought to the 4X genre. Simply said, Kerberos, the developer, has a very positive attitude and a very prestigious pedigree going into making one of the best games I've played of space empire building and space ship battles. The original was a game of some vision: to air out all the stagnation and entrenched anti-fun elements of the 4x genre, and make a new game built on player ingenuity, experimentation with first hand experiences, and an ever changing, highly diversified game. Every race played drastically differently, had very different goals, and this diversity isn't held by any heavy handed racial stats or enforced, arbitrary objectives, but through a subtle, emergent system deriving from a combination of differences such as unique FTL systems, ship structures, and a very enticing random tech tree.

In short, the original Sword of the Stars was a game that I loved that cut the tedious statistical spread sheet crap and nested menus within nested menus, and replaced it with the feeling of being the leader of a space empire and its navy. The combats were unique, real time affairs that actually relied on physical simulation rather than dice rolls, making many parts of combat both more real and more fun, such as the firing arc of ship weapons, turn speeds, and a whole plethora of other emergent details. What's even better was it recieved, and is still receiving years later, constant support and updates from the developers, and has been fleshed out masterfully over two expansions and major content updates.

Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter is not going to be Sword of the Stars. While with other sequels on this list I'd be happy with just more of the same, it's become pretty obvious that Lords of Winter is looking to set itself apart from its predecessor in many important ways. It's looking to be an evolution in not just the graphics department, in which it is looking to be a very pretty, detailed game, but also an evolution of the game and the game world itself. SotS2 is going to be jumped ahead a good generation into the SotS timeline, meaning starting not only at a more advanced level of technology, but also a new time period in space. In the original, SotS focused on being a game about first contact; about the earliest days of burgeoning space empires just emerging from the cradle of their homeworlds, where diplomacy is hardly any bigger than the mass driver cannon you can put behind it, and where the military space forces are the unified front of an entire species. SotS II is not only upping the ante in technology and ship sizes, but is introducing the game into the next era: where space empires are more advanced, culturally, and empires are going to even have provinces spanning across the stars, where most features of SotS are going to have more depth.

Many things seem to be gaining a new tier of detail. Star systems are no longer abstracted to a single planet, but include the entire system. The empire will have provinces and capitals, ships will have whole new ways of dying and sport a new and very enticing armor system where armor will protect the hull, and need to be surpassed in order to strike damage to the critical systems underneath. It also looks like empire control will see a new level of detail as well, with the inclusion of what seems to be an upcoming mission feature of some sort. And one thing the original SotS did well was provide a quick and easy system for the control of a vast space interstellar empire, so an advancement of this system is leaving my mouth drooling. And to top off ALL of this, the new race being added, the Lords of Winter, sound like they will live up to being a galactic terror any would be space tyrant like myself will enjoy commanding, but Kerberos is being very tight lipped about any details as of yet.

Basically, Sword of the Stars II is going to be a different game from Sword of the Stars. if the first one wasn't quite your flavor, your may still want to check out Sword of the Stars 2, as imagine it might very well be just the right fix for many longing 4x fans. Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter is currently slated for release for September of this year, when the galaxy will learn to bow to its betters!

#2 of 2011: Mass Effect 3
-Release Date: Holiday 2011

Ok, so not ME3, but still.

I've probably already said enough good things about Mass Effect 2. Surprisingly, even though I'm looking forward to this game enough to make it #2, I know very little about Mass Effect 3. I have to admit, after seeing what happened to Dragon Age 2, Bioware has made me very wary. I was very tempted to knock this title down a notch or two, but I'm still now even replaying Mass Effect 1 and 2, and these games are just great. It's hard to let even Dragon Age 2 sour me too much in my anticipation for this, but Bioware had better had played carefully with this. If they manage to mess up ME3, I don't think they will have much left to their name at all at this point, and I'm not even going to go into Old Republic.

There is a bit of a conundrum here though. ME1 and 2 were great games, but ME2 drastically shook things up, and this was part of its charm. It took Mass Effect 1 and transformed it into a stronger, faster, even better game. What will Mass Effect 3 do? Did they find yet another way to re-envision Mass Effect? Is there anything left to do to it? And if so will these changes stick half as well as Mass Effect 2's did? I haven't seen much yet discussing the new game and its changes, if any, it will be bringing to the Mass Effect name. Still, the Mass Effect name has yet to be tarnished, and so I remain hopeful that Mass Effect 3 has been given the time and budget necessary to make a truly awesome experience in gaming, If nothing else, the coming story and the conclusion of the Reaper plot line are tantalizing enough for half a decade's worth of anticipation. I cannot wait to import my old Shepherd and continue her adventure.

#1 of 2011: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
-Release Date: August 23, 2011

For a long while I was trying my hardest to gain no amount of hype related to this game. I've gone on more than one rant about how much I still love the first Deus Ex game, and just how badly the crap that was Deus Ex 2 burned me. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is not Deus Ex 2. It's given every reason for me to believe it's deliberately attempting to not be Deus Ex 2. Still, after a burn like that, I know better than to get my hopes up for this game, to get too excited about its new promises until I can actually experience it first hand. I should not get my hopes up.

Hope those boxes are filled with something that stops bullets.

A month or three ago this went right out the window, and I completely lost control. I can no longer restrain my enthusiasm about this game. With every piece of new information I hear about it, my excitement has only gotten higher, and higher. Everything is telling me this is going to be the sequel Deus Ex deserves. Not just a visual reskin of Deus Ex....(which honestly, if they made remade Deus Ex to just look this pretty I would buy it again) but a new game in its own right as well.

In my days we only had mechanical augs! Like now, I guess.

There's been just as much reason for me to be concerned. The multiplatform release is a red flag, as it still stands as one of the reasons Deus Ex 2 was so horribly butchered. The game is boasting a regenerating health system, which seems problematic to the Deus Ex style of stealth and fast and lethal gunfights, and particularly my ideal of Deus Ex's "Realism" difficulty, where both you and the enemy died in just a few bullets. And I'm still sketchy about the frequent 3rd person perspective. But they've finally put out gameplay videos that make me believe this game was made to actually feel great regardless of if its on the PC or a console; a sort of smooth experience. The regenerating health offers alto of potential, and previewers' response to it, as well as the developer's own apology, are highly positive to how it's been tweaked to keep combat well paced and deadly. As well, they've mentioned a "Deus Ex" difficulty which I'm hoping will be the new incarnation of the original's "Realism" difficulty". And...well, I'm still torn on the 3rd person perspective. I can see how it will be immensely useful in sneaking about for the sense of awareness it provides, but I'm not entirely sold takedowns would not have looked more impressive in first person.

But enough things seem to be adding up for this title. So far first impressions have been overtly positive, and there's been many a praise for what previewers are claiming feel like a wholly organic and fun stealth experience.

Losing my mind with GUNDAM!!

2011-03-30T11:21:00.000-04:00

I have gotten back into Gundam. Anime seems harder to find on the internet than the last time I was into it. Here is my list of places to find anime.

This is mostly about Gundam. I love gundam. I am giving all my free time to Gundam.

This page seems to be about gundam - http://www.youtube.com/user/AnimeChannel#p/ but you can't watch any of their crap.

Here is the first ep of Zeta.

Here is the first ep of 00. Is this legal? Maybe!!

DO you want WING! Here are the WINGZ!!!

How about some old ass and original Gundam!!!

Looks like G, X, V and TurnA are SOL.

The Heads of Janus: Most Anticipated games of 2010 and 2011. Part 1: The Past

2011-03-23T13:39:00.002-04:00

It's hard to believe it's been well over a year since I made this post about my most anticipated games of 2010. Well, 2010 has come and past, and now is a time to not just look forward to what is coming, but also to look back on what has past. I had alot of high expectations to this list boiled down to 10 games for a whole year. Were those expectations met with great games, or dashed into pieces by the cruel reality of the video game market?

I'm going to first do an evaluation of last years list, separating the success stories from the tales of horror, and then look to 2011's already very promising future.

Now, if I were to do this list proper, I would have done this back in December 2010 or at least January 2011. As is, I'm still going to include games already released in 2011 in the anticipated list, but we'll see what I have to say about them already! WARNING: Spoilers may abound for already released games!

Hindsight's a Bitch of 2010

#1 of 2010: Mass Effect 2

Where's my Elcor Shepherd option!?

This was the first game on my most anticipated list of 2010, and rightly so. Mass Effect 1 is still a master piece, a brilliant work of an immersing, harder sci-fi universe with a very strong cast for entire crew and beyond. It had issues, problems and annoyances beyond all infuriation, but it was still good. So it was natural to get excited by the sequel that boasted to make the good even better.

So did Mass Effect 2 live up to the hype?

Stupid question.

I'm Commander Shepherd, and this is my favorite game on the Citadel. Mass Effect 2 certainly accomplished its goal of cutting the chaff. Mass Effect 1 had an unforgivable inventory system and game killing itemization. It also tended to feel very stiff on large tracts of the narrative. None of these problems occurred in Mass Effect 2. There are a variety of complaints thrown about the game being "dumbed down", but for my experience, every last change made a fun, clean, and action heavy game that far outpaced the original in almost every category. I was more than willing to accept a much smaller range of powers for the feeling of POWER I ended up having, where not a single decision made didn't feel important. The combat was infinitley better, and I actually enjoyed the combat of the original, and I greatly enjoyed the unique, darker direction in the atmosphere. Mass Effect 1, for all the horrible things you kill in it, was a very clean part of the future. Mass Effect 2 took Shepherd to the uglier parts of the galaxy and I think I ended up cheering at the end of the game, audibly, and with motions.

Mass Effect 2 not only lived up to my expectations, but even where there was disappointment, there was fun, and there was very little disappointment. I'm even considering buying a second copy just to play it again on the PC. This was even possibly my Game of the Year for 2011, or at least a very strong contender. So did Mass Effect 2 live up to my hopes from 2009? Most definitely.

This game kicked ass.

#2 of 2010: Heavy Rain

I could not fold this worth shit. Damn.

Heavy Rain was a game with some very lofty promises, enough to make even Peter Molyneux blush. The PS3's library has grown considerably since my post in 2009, but back then I was still waiting mostly on this game to make use of my console alongside Metal Gear Solid 4. Heavy Rain was no small feat either, the amount of money, time, and technology sunk into this project is just mind blowing. In every sense, it was a successor to Fahrenheit(Indigo Prophecy), a game which I also enjoyed, but man, did it have problems.

I respected her as a character, but I still identify her as "the whore".

These kinds of games, and what Heavy Rain is firmly entrenched in, are games more heavily built in a sense of immersion, plot, and creating a bond with the characters at any cost, even if its artificial so long as you get connected, damnit. Which is a shame that Fahrenheit's ending just absolutely fell to crumbles. Heavy Rain was boasting amazingly, photo realistic visuals, with intense attention to detail in the environment and in the actors in multiple senses. This was supposed to be less a game and more a sort of interactive movie that did more than just immerse you in sound and visuals, but action, decision; you ARE the character. What's more, this game promised to put a very real sense of the fear of death in you. You could actually die, and the game would continue on with one of the other characters and your story would be changed, mysteries left unsolved, other people perhaps burdened by your loss. It promised to be very engaging.

So did it succeed? I'm still pretty torn about I feel about this game. I will say this: on its mission statement, of making you take a more mundane (comparative to most video games) crises and feeling a very real, some might say heavy weight to them: bravo; mission accomplished. The somewhat unique control scheme was much more than just a constant quick time event, every motion you made felt intrinsically connected to the character you were playing. The atmosphere and narrative kept your head in the game making it hard to escape this very grim reality where multiple people's lives are effected by this hunt for the Origami Killer, a child murdering bastard. This game had me feeling intense pressure when all I was doing was walking an innocent young woman into multiple situations with potentially very dangerous men. There was a moment where there was just one man armed with an impromptu weapon attacking me, or when there was just the POTENTIAL that I was in the house of a truly dangerously insane individual creating a very real tension. This feeling persisted throughout the whole game, and I have to say I think this was excellently accomplished. To the point, I was always of the consequences of every one of my actions, as small as not taking a left to go around a pole to as big as whether I should shoot the man who just tried to kill me with a shotgun. He was also a daddy.

Let's be honest hear though, here's the real reason for this game:

Shelby. Bad ass. What are you going to do about it?

Shelby was by far the best character. I was quite surprised by how much Madison was able to redeem herself by the end of the game, but Shelby stole the show. His story was a gritty 1940's crime drama, and he was a man who head butted his armed assailant into submission. With how much respect and fear this game put into you of the gun, the scene where he walks, alone, into a crime lord's mansion with his sidearm like he's the grim fucking reaper incarnate, is beyond epic. This was a crowning achievement for the game, perhaps its very apex, when they made a scene that in any other run of the mill first person shooter would be boring or overdone, into a moment of pure success.

But they can't end a game worth crap again. This twist...is the worst goddamn one history. I practically threw my controller in surrender at it. Ask Sword5; he was there. I think I might actually have. From a certain thematic angle I can understand it, the part where you're actually hiding the evidence is sort of neat. However, you spent over a quarter of the game in the killer's head, behind his hands. It absolutely kills this game's narrative that you can betray your own self like this, and by the time you get to it, even with the dramatic "reveal" as to his reasons, it's still bullshit. You've been this man for a quarter of the game. He wouldn't do this, it lost all its belief. I think I would have been more accepting if Nathan had actually somehow been the damn killer, as horrible as that would have been, instead of this garbage. Not to mention in the very final act, I felt like the game cheated me out of my true, hard won ending by failing ONE event when I barely had any ability to even see what they wanted first. The game was great about not letting that happen, up until it mattered most. Maybe that was when I threw my controller.

The game had also promised that each character would have "flaw" that would be important to their game. This was an outright lie. Shelby had to take his pills once. Madison's insomnia was important for one scene only, and even then it didn't make an actual difference. And Nathan's? NATHAN'S WAS A BIG FAT PLOT HOLE. It both meant nothing, and had no explanation. It hurt the game's otherwise strong narrative powerfully. I don't know if this is a disappointment so much, as the concept seemed pretty cheesy to begin with.

That said...I think the sad ending I got was actually better than the all happy one. Nathan saved his son but died tragically to the police, Cyber CSI dude was finished off by Shelby, Madison went on to live a lie, and possibly encourage a new game with a new killer. It was actually very beautifully tragic.

So did this game succeed? Artistic crap aside, discounting the insane money funnel, and setting aside nude Madison?

With reservations.

I'm going to say: yes, with reservations. In the overall experience, I'm actually willing to forgive its unforgivable twist. Every moment playing this game was tense, so what it set out to do, what I played the game for, I got and I got it in spades, and visually, it was still jaw droppingly stunning. The actors were fantastic, despite what sort of stupid tick the French seem to have for being unable to pronounce the word "origami" correctly...in a game with origami as a central plot device. I mean, goddamnit, the only non French actor, Shelby, is the only one who could say the stupid word right, and if that's because he's the killer someone needs to be slapped. On the head, not the back. However, one big way it let me down was replayability. I was expecting to play this game over and over, making different choices and seeing different endings. In the end alot of the feelings of vulnerability, pressure, and freedom were just an illusion, and it becomes pretty transparent by the end of the game. The game conceals this illusion masterfully, which is why I still consider it a success, but there is no desire whatsoever to play through this game again, knowing exactly where its carefully constructed reality falls apart.

#3 of 2010: Super Street Fighter IV

With 50% more ninja!

Sexy, arrogant, and deadly. Perfect.

No idea how those pants work.

Holy hell fighting game time is fast. It feels like this game is ancient now, especially since I've moved on to a new fighting game already. Super Street Fighter IV was essentially a glorified expansion pack. It added several new characters, tightened game balance, DLC costumes, and a new Ultra Combo for each character.

Simply, it's exactly what I expected out of it. Super Street Fighter IV was not a disappointing continuation of Street Fighter. It added in almost every character in the Street Fighter franchise I cared about who was missing, and the new characters it added were great. As horrible as I am at fighting games, I still had a penchant for the new fighters. I think Korea should be pretty damn happy with Juri, she's a real badass and I dig her personality. The developer commitment to this game I don't think should be understated. Thanks to their success their still pushing out another update fixing some issues, like, the issues called Hakan and Makoto. Man I wish I weren't crap with Makoto.

Fuck this dude and his ultra 2.

They didn't need to do, but the new story mode for each character wasn't too poorly done either. There's not alot of good things to say about this, but really, you don't play Street Fighter for the spectacular anime cutscenes, great voice acting, and heart stopping plot lines. You play it for a solid night of beating the crap out of your friends and vice versa, and Super Street Fighter IV gave me alot of that.

Super Street Fighter IV was a fighting game expansion, at expansion price, that breathed a good amount of renewed life into Street Fighter IV for me, prolonging its life a good deal longer. I'm going to call this anticipation a success!

#4 of 2010: Dark Void

NOT Disney's "The Rocketeer"(TM).

I was looking forward to Dark Void. Capcom knows how to make fun games, and this game looked like it would be fun. Probably a pretty light, possibly nonsensical story, but a fun game.

Sadly, I have even less to say about it now than I did back in 2009. Dark Void simply did not make my list of game purchases in such a tight year. I read reviews, mostly sounding disappointing, but I simply have no room to comment. I suppose the fact that it was low enough on the ladder to be cut might say something, but as far as I'm aware, I could be missing out on a good night.

Sorry, Rocketeer.

#5 of 2010: Alien vs. Predator

They fight crime.

Man, what do I say about this game. I'm torn about it, ethically. I never played Aliens vs. Predator, the full game. I did play the multiplayer demo...alot. And I mean alot. Everything I am about to say about this is based solely off that horrible, horrible experience.

The Alien likes the queen piece.

I was one of the biggest fans of the Aliens vs. Predator 2 game. There was something done viscerally right about playing an escaped Alien drone, lurking in the shadows and biting off heads while tail whipping hapless marines, or cloaking and vigilantly stalking my prey, or just praying to any space gods that can hear me that neither of the former will eat me. The single player was great, but the multiplayer, even the standard deathmatch, was amazingly rock solid and had me hooked for a much greater span. It somehow brought those aspects from the single player, the unique playstyle of the aliens, the predator, and the marines, and made it shine in multiplayer brilliantly. The frame if mind you were in while in singleplayer was the exact frame
of mind you needed to hunt down your live human prey. And it somehow all still worked wonderfully.

The new AvP multiplayer was...severely disappointing. I like to refrain from the meaningless term "consolization", but something about the controls just felt horrible on the PC. Sluggish, perhaps, and items such as the predator's leap simply did not work very well at all on the PC's control scheme, despite it being a central part of the character's arsenal. I was willing to forgive the lack of a crouch, and tried really hard to, but it still makes little to no sense for a modern FPS to just not have it. It makes peering over edges, hiding behind boxes, and lowering your profile, all very core elements, just disappear or feel unruly. Something about the formula felt much off as well. I feel AvP2 should have an award for how diversified the three races (and then subsequent classes! I also love me some alien lifecycle servers) played, and yet still felt perfectly balanced. What I experienced of this demo was anything but, and almost every weapon on the marine felt entirely useless if it wasn't overpowered and ridiculous(how do you neuter the flame thrower? Honestly?). Not to mention the insane amount of kill animation stacking, where you want to do the kill animation, but if you do odds are someone is going to use one on you, and then someone will do it to them, and then you'll be back in time to do it to that person. It's an orgy chain of finishing moves. There was some promise in a revised melee system, ala Oblivion style, but it ended up feeling bad and unresponsive as well, often leaving you wondering just why the other alien was able to outmelee you when you did everything right.

The experience soured me heavily, and, like Dark Void, the new AvP game did not make the cut with my limited budget. I do, however, feel much more justified in this cut. Dark Void was based solely on a drop of interest unrelated to its gameplay, AvP's cut was based off hours and hours of trying as hard as I could to like a new incarnation of one of my past favorite multiplayer experiences, and finding it impossible.

The game didn't even seem to be much of a graphical update, and alot of the shadows seemed...just gone. However, despite this horrible experience, and despite reading horrible reviews, I have to admit I did not play the full game, and I never sampled the singleplayer experience. It's possible this was a good game, but I very much doubt it. I'm going to have to double stamp this one.

Sorry, marine. Looks like ceaser said "no".

#6 of 2010: No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

They do the opposite of fight crime.

This is going to be short. I did not play No More Heroes 2. I don't know why. I know exactly why. 2010 was a real packed year, and sadly, not every game I look forward to can I purchase. Unlike Dark Void, where I simply lost interest because of a waning appeal, or Aliens vs. Predator where I had a souring experience taint my hype, No More Heroes 2: Desperate struggle just didn't make the cut due to budget alone.

I'm afraid there's just simply not much I can see. I was hyped about this game, but as much as I loved the first and had a blast with it, it's still just weak enough, somehow empty feeling, that when the concept of more of it went shoulder to shoulder with other AAA titles out there, it came in a little short. But unlike the former two games mentioned, this is still one I would play in heartbeat if I could.

#7 of 2010: Metroid Other M

I'm going to refrain from going on a rant here, as much as I can anyway. I made it no secret on my 2009 post that I am a very big Metroid fan, and I adored the Metroid Prime series for a wonderful FPS translation of Metroid. Metroid Other M was one of Nintendo's dubious decisions to outsource an otherwise in studio game. Team NINJA doesn't exactly seem like a perfect fit for the Metroid franchise, ands its key figure, The King of Videogame Arrogance, Tomonobu Itagaki, had left. And even still, this game was making promises that seemed conceptually challenging. 2d controls again with improvised first person shooting? A talking protagonist? Characters? Some semblance of a plot? These are things Metroid has not been before, and their premise was greeted with both intrigue and trepidation.

What do you mean "he'll die first"?

Alright, now I'm going to disagree with the whole of the damn internet. Other M was a damn fine game. I'm not going to review it in full here, but it was fun. I had fun. I shot things all the time with my gun arm, and Samus felt more badass than ever when I finished off massive enemies upclose. The story was weak, but unlike every want-to-prove-I'm-not-sexist-aphile out there, I think Samus retains alot of her strong character throughout the game. Ok, her restriction on her weapons are questionable to the point of absurdity, so team NINJA dropped the ball there on a good explanation, but be honest its only the explanation that fails; this a game mechanic in every single Metroid game and then some. And it also made for a very hilarious scene where, and I substitute my own flavor in this paraphrasing, Adam had basically commanded, "It's Ridley!? Oh crap, unlock EVERYTHING!". I was amused. But there's nothing misogynist about a character having respect for people other than herself, especially formative ones, or at feeling terror when they see, yet again, the monster that ATE HER PARENTS AND THEIR ENTIRE COLONY, then died, then came back, then died and came back again, usually delivering a severe butt whooping to herself before dying! It very well mirrored my own sense of terror that every appearance of Ridley gives me in a Metroid game, very much the "oh shit" moment, and I don't have vivid memories of him as a realized bogeyman wearing my family's skin and eying me up like a desert cup. And despite all this, aboard a station filled with the most deadly creatures to ever threaten a galaxy, she is still unquestionably the most deadly badass around.

He's pretty characterless. Hard to feel even hate for that.

Doing this never gets old.

Ok, I'm failing on my lack of ranting. This game did have flaws that do not make it the strongest entry in the Metroid series. It's as painfully, if not more so, linear than even Metroid Zero, and even that game probably had a bit more exploration overall. This is killer to what has been a pretty hard aspect of all Metroid games; hell "Metroidvania" is a product of this very lack of linearity. Enemies just felt too easy from room to room, very rarely demanding you use all the cool new moves Samus has, and never giving you much motivation to fight them if you can easily ignore them with the removal of item drops. But the control sceheme, while feeling somewhat forced, was not one of these problems. It felt great, and surprisingly, the fist person swapping worked better than expected. It still felt stiff, but it was obvious the game was built around you having to do this to hit bosses and such, and so it compensated in a way not to feel punishing, but not too patronizing either. The "hide and seek" sections were unforgivable though. I have no idea how those passed any sort of playtesting, where the game expects you to be a mind reader and find one, tiny, hidden detail. The plot also did not end up making much sense at all, but despite all these flaws, I still had a ton of fun running around and shooting things with Samus and solving the classic kind of Metroidvania puzzles. In this the core of Metroid felt very clear.

There was literally no motivation to play this game again though, as its hard mode was, well, definitely hard, but in an unconventional sense that just seemed to remove the fun. Samus with no powerups? That's completely contrary to a normal hard mode, where you're supposed to make better use of powerups, not do without them. Ah well, I had a blast with this game. It won't be making my top list of favorite Metroid games, but it didn't really disappoint me either.

#8 of 2010: Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty

Is there really anything I can say here? Is there any claim I can make that this game failed in anyway? Has anyone not heard of this game? Do I need to expand about how big this game is, how popular, how much insane money it makes, enough to dwarf the even more insane budget it has for CG movies? Even praising this game seems silly, the standards it was being held to from a company with the sheer insane budget and manpower of Blizzard are just too high to speak with any surprise about its success. It's like being surprised the Romans won another battle against the Gauls. Who didn't see that coming?

This is nothing like how my battles looked.

I am not a good RTS player. I am an even worse Starcraft player. Me, and the standard RTS style like Starcraft parted ways long, long time ago. I still bought this game, dabbled in multiplayer, dabbled in custom MP maps, and played through the single player campaign once and a half. I still had fun doing all of that, and I enjoyed all the characters they put in it, especially since I've always been a huge, unjustified Nova fan.

Which brings me to one thing I think I can say that doesn't sound too redundant. I actually enjoyed the story of the singleplayer campaign, as simple and plot hole filled as it might be. But what I think really shines about the campaign is, aside from that Zeratul's last stand mission, you don't need to be a good Starcraft player to either enjoy or accomplish its hard objectives; you just need to be clever and have some foresight into the mission. I thought this was immensely rewarding as it let even a crappy RTS player like myself feel accomplished. If they can keep this up I'll gladly buy the next Starcraft 2 game, even though I haven't touched Wings of Liberty in months.

Aw hell, it's 'bout time.

#9 of 2010: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

So as Team NINJA tackled the Metroid franchise, Hideo Kojima tackled the other half of Metroidvania. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow had some interesting promise in this respect. I will admit I expected some bleed over from Kojima's beat you over the top style of narrative with hour long cutscenes in the Metal Gear Solid series. And, if I'm going to continue to hold the game to unfair MGS staples, I would expect that even if the plot wouldn't necessary be coherent, it would have an amount of depth that would be mind boggling.

I...I don't think that works out well for Gabriel.

Lords of Shadow was not quite that game. I will admit that I have not played most of the Castlevania games since their anime style, handheld leap, but I am enough of a fan of Castlevania to have read up on them, and I do own Circle of the Moon. Story telling is not Castlevania's strong suit, even over all these past release where it's been getting more and more of a plot and more characters. In this respect, Lords of Shadow has probably the strongest narrative placed into a Castlevania game. It's no Metal gear Solid; it's very simple, not convoluted, and also not all that deep. The characters are somewhat token-esque, which was a bit if a disappointment as the trailers, and even the in-game description before each stage, emphasize this heavy interest in the character Gabriel, his past, and his hero's journey. In practice though, he's the same heavy emo hero the whole way through. I'm not one to use the "emo" excuse on an emotional character lightly, but the game seems to try and build up this thoughtful, smoldering anti-hero who struggles with himself, but in reality Gabriel never seemed to be this sort of "emo" person. He was a straight edge, never crying or lamenting, but going from one monster to another to do what he does best: kill monsters.

This is art, but this scene is in the game.

Gameplay wise this game was fun. I had just come from similar games like Itagaki's Ninja Gaiden and his rival's superior game, Bayonetta, so I was ready for this type of smashing beat-em up action game, one that relies heavily on prolonging long, masterful combos and split-second timing to avoid and even counter enemy attacks. I actually found Lords of Shadow even more easy to pick up in this manner than Bayonetta, but it took time to build up the powers that made Gabriel feel fun to play, and honestly the hardest parts were often the earliest parts before he had any of his plethora of tools. Even still, there was a punishing level of challenge throughout the game that kept me on my toes, and even where the narrative was weak, trite, or predictable, it still elegantly portrayed a sense of the epic journey that Gabriel was taking. The setting is enchanting, often stunning, and Gabriel's adventure truly feels like it takes him across the world on his courageous quest.

The difficulty was abit too punishing for me at times, but Iwas ablle to muddle through, and as these games go the more I played the better I was finding myself becoming at executing advanced combinations that the game required for survival. But then again, I'm also stubborn and play on the highest difficulties.

Assassin's Creed: Vampire Killer

I think one of the neatest parts was the twist in Lords of Shadow. This title has been announced as a sort of reboot for the series, and while it has issues if you tried to fit it into the existing canon, I do not think the premise is at all out of line with the Castlevania line. I admit with some pride, after doing some elementary math (Vamprire Lord = not Dracula. Game has 0 Dracula, where Dracula is X. X = ?) I was predicting this ending, but when the end fight is you kicking Satan's ass, I was beginning to have my doubts. Even though they went through almost no explanation of this twist, there was a part of me that was still geeking out over it, and felt it made the entire game worth it.

Lords of Shadow was a success story for me, and I would still recommend it to others. you just have to forgive the plot and some of the characters. Even Sir Patric Stewart couldn't entirely redeem them. Despite this the game was alot of fun, and a very well paced quest that never felt like it lost its sense of epic adventure

#10 of 2010: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Not the Origami Killer. Yet.

I'm growing increasingly more hyped up about this game. I've said before that the original Deus Ex is one of my favorite game experiences of all time, and after replaying it recently I stand by that. Even with that horrible old unreal engine, it's still held up rather well.

Sadly, this game did not actually come out in 2010. Honestly, after what happened to Dragon Age 2, I cannot begrudge them even a hair for continuously pushing back this game. If they have to push it back another year, so be it, so long as they do not rush and they put out an excellent game. I'm worried that I've already heard of some features they cut due to time concerns, features I would have liked. That said, this game didn't actually come out in 2010, and while that should probably warrant a disappointment stamp, I think those should be reserved for released games that actually disappointed, not just my sense of disappointment at not having it yet :(

And that's it for my retrospective on my most anticipated games of 2010. I'll be back real shortly with part 2 of the Head of Janus: Looking to the Future where I lay down my most anticipated games for this year!

"The Forgotten"

2011-03-12T21:47:00.000-05:00

He loves the homeless.

Not gonna lie. I watched this episode two weeks ago and this is the first chance I have had to report on it.

This was the first episode of BTAS that I remember have a strong effect on me as a kid. I am not sure if it had more to do with the Batman forgetting who is was or that fact that his hair had changed color. Anyway, more on that in the thoughts section.

I had to dig deep for the factoid section. This episode an original villain and didn't have a normal supporting cast. Just imagine nervous rambling while you read it. Yeah, that should work...

From Wikipedia:
While investigating the disappearances of Gotham's homeless in an undercover disguise, Bruce Wayne is kidnapped. Imprisoned in a chain gang mining camp and suffering from amnesia, will he be able to escape and free the rest of the prisoners?

THIS HAT IS AMAZING!!

Never take the Bat Jet again. I will kill you.

I NEED TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING!

What are you fine strapping
young men doing here?

My Thoughts:

This episode was about half over the first time I saw it back in the 90's. It was a real mind fuck to see a white haired Bruce Wayne walk around a slave camp at gun point. At first, I though this was an episode that was taking place in the future, a future that totally sucked for Batman. I don't I really understood what happened until well after Bruce remembered who he really was.

Structurally, this episode has a lot in common with the episode that shall not be named. Both episodes had an out of place villain, dealt with slave labor and had a punishment room/box. However, this episode was focused on Bruce and not some random kid. Oddly enough, this was the first episode where I really started to get a feel for Batman/Bruce Wayne. It was odd script, but I think that it was a step in the right direction for this show.

That dream scene was great. It is odd to see how much he already fears The Joker. I guess losing his memory would bring up fears of losing his way. It was freaky stuff.

The music was fantastic. I would buy the soundtrack from this episode.

Most importantly, I want to give Boss Biggis a shout out. He was willing to eat people and his first reaction to Batman was to chase the caped crusader with a shotgun. Even though he was 70% suck, I have to admit that he had been pretty good compared to what we have to deal with so far.

Factoids/Comic Notes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining - Here is the wikipedia article about Gold Mining.

Yeah. That is all I got.

My Show Notes:

01:44 - Bruce didn't sound like he meant that
02:12 - Screen cap. Batman cares for the homeless.
02:39 - Cool. A whole closet of fake identities. Fingers crossed for Matches.
03:05 - Crusin' for the homeless
03:12 - Oh wait. This is a case. He is solving a mystery!
04:20 - Will he go for a third?
04:26 - He did!!!
04:38 - That cat was in on it.
05:13 - That isn't good.
05:41 - Ironically, I remembered this episode just as he said.
06:11 - Hold up. This is like a fat above ground Sewer King!
06:35 - Evil Jazz!
06:55 - The box? It is just like the light.
08:32 - Plot structure aside, this is more interesting.
09:41 - Alfred continues to impress.
10:09 - Dream scene. This was really deep when I was a kid. Still is. I guess.
10:20 - Wow. Great scare.
11:04 - Didn't need that angle.
12:46 - Fast thinking. Alfred is good at this crime solving stuff.
13:30 - I like this Riley guy.
14:25 - Batman is a frame of mind. Nice kick.
15:03 - Really great music in this episode.
15:47 - Nice Sweater. Real adventure stuff.
15:48 - I regret saying that about Alfred.
16:24 - Wait? That was a little too smart for a computer.
17:09 - Not sure what to think about the Spain joke.
17:24 - Nice moment. The punch did sound a little too hard.
18:05 - He is willing to eat people and shoot at Batman. This guy is okay.
18:51 - I like the black and white look.
19:11 - Can you see in the dark?
19:39 - They only made it worse. "Quick. Make this easier for Batman!"
20:36 - What about all the henchmen? Guess they knew the risks.
21:10 - I can live with that one-liner
21:44 - Best joke of the episode

X-Men (1992) - Season 3, Episode 29

2011-02-23T01:14:00.004-05:00

Don't ask. Well, I guess I should at least say that I was looking for Marvel 3 Combo videos and I somehow ran into this gem. Maybe gem is too kind, but I did have a fun time watching this episode.

Anyway, the X-Men Animated Series on Fox was just as important as BTAS for my childhood dreams. The animation is pretty good and the acting is only slightly worse than I remember it.

I hope I have to time to give this series the attention it deserves.

Oh yeah, the full episode is embedded from Marvel.com after the break! Enjoy!

From Marvel.com
A Shi'ar emissary, Erik the Red, violently takes over the Eagle One space station. The X-Men race into space to save the astronauts on board and battle Erik the Red. But on the way back to Earth, an energy wave collides with their aircraft. With no other options, Jean takes matters into her own hands and pilots the plane while shielding the rest of the X-Men, exposing herself to the Phoenix Force!

Holy Crap! Legal Footage! The Full Episode! Joy!

Show Notes:

01:01 - I hate to say this, but I think the bad guys would win in a head on collision.
01:03 - Oh rad. It is the Phoenix Saga. Google isn't that bad.
01:38 - Not a fan of bug ships. I thought these guys were a bird based alien race?
02:32 - Rust gun? Kinda makes sense. Maybe.
03:07 - Picard can go to hell. This is my Professor X!
03:44 - He is in awesome town. 10 points to Gambit!
04:15 - DOOMED! This is nuts. I love it.
04:49 - Space is not for black people. We can't risk it.
05:23 - Good moment. I wonder if anyone else had the guts to talk with X?
06:17 - She talked a lot. Did she really do that every episode?
06:54 - I love tiny Logan. Some times I forget he is only 5'5"
07:03 - I will admit that the flesh tone of Jean's outfit was very confusing for me as a kid. Skin pockets?
07:33 - Haha. Take that! No pep rallies in space!
08:05 - I hope no one ever dressed like her in real life. Not cosplay. Just the style.
08:18 - ?!?! Oh yeah...his eye's don't kill.
08:59 - That is some loud ass TK.
09:27 - Wait? Who would follow his orders? This is beyond trust.
09:37 - His eyes! They are huge! I am freaking out!
10:29 - I guess it matches the space suits, but that station looks alien.
11:08 - Answer a decent question with a reference. Wait. I can't complain about that.
12:09 - First off: They should have helmets. Second: Don't blast anything in space!
12:39 - Okay. That is the kind of guy that would bring poison gas to space.
14:41 - I guess all lasers are set to hurt, not kill.
15:15 - I bet Logan would have done okay.
15:34 - My abs are filled with Science!
16:03 - Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk.
16:25 - Aim for his science abs!
16:45 - Wow. Beast and Gambit were really lame a few seconds ago. I thought they would bounce back.
17:15 - He cares about his space slaves.
17:25 - I wonder what it is like to record computer message like that. "Boy they are fucked if that happens. Take 2"
18:24 - Did 4 people run that station?
19:08 - It would have been okay for everyone to admit they hated Gambit at that moment.
19:30 - Mind YOINK!
20:12 - Wow. No jokes. That was a great moment.
21:23 - Great scream...why am I awake?

Batman TAS "POV"

2011-02-23T00:18:00.001-05:00

Things are looking good!

Batman is back. Well, BTAS is awesome again. More than awesome, this episode finally delivered on the tone and style that was set back in the first episode. This is the BTAS that I remember. This is the BTAS that defined my childhood.

Maybe I am over reacting, but this episode definitely didn't have the Sewer King and that is worth tons of praise.

Feature wise, I am focusing more on sources in the factoids section and I have added time codes to my show notes. I hope that this will help make this blog more interesting and useful to Batman fans.

From Wikipedia:
A botched police operation results in the suspension of those involved: Officer Wilkes, Officer Montoya and Harvey Bullock. Confronted by their superiors, each of them is forced to tell their tale of what happened that night.

Peddle to the metal!

An Axe? Why does he have that?

Zap! Bitch!

Very likable.

My Thoughts:

This is how you get ants...

Holy crap it is good to feel good about being a Batman fan. This episode had everything you would want from a solid Batman story. Crimes were solved, the action was solid and Batman was a symbol of terror!

There are two big things that need to be pointed out about this episode. The first is that POV is basically Rashomon in the Batman universe. The second, it that this is probably the episode that won Renee Montoya her place in DC comics. Renee was the center of this episode and I would not mind have more stories based around her solving crimes.

Renee is also important because she an original character created by Bruce Timm and the gang. I think that this proves that Sewer King was a fluke.

This was a world building story that finally gave hope that there are more people than Batman fighting the good fight in Gotham city. This episode also makes me wish they would give more attention to Gordon.

So far normal crime seems to be the best Batman villain.

Also, F Bullock. That guy sucks.

Factoids/Comic Notes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_(film) - This was the first film that told the same story from different

Phoenix Wright

points of view. Unlike Rashomon, we are shown the truth while the story teller give each of their own versions. Rashomon also involved a ghost and I am not sure BTAS is ready for that kind of junk yet.

http://www.vicsage.com/wp/news/renee-montoya-week/ - Here is a website that took the time write a bunch of stuff about Renee Montoya. There is a part of me that thinking that this info is unimportant because this site covers what Renee became after she was transfered into the comic books. This will be the last time I point BTAS fans towards the faceless lesbian Montoya.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcement) - I am tagging this concept so that I can link to a video from The Shield. No one likes Internal Affairs. No One.

Kavanaugh Exclusive Clip | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

My Show Notes:

01:27 - Great music. I feel good about this one.
01:59 - Lame line. Nice to see a rookie.
02:20 - Not into her acting skills. Sounds forced.
03:07 - Did Batman see him do something wrong? Bullock was corrupt in the comics.
03:20 - I get the title now. This should be cool.
03:27 - That is how you get ants.
04:01 - Spanish!
04:33 - So we get to see the truth? I thought the animation would match the story.
05:33 - An Axe? Who brings an axe... never mind.
07:44 - I am glad they were light with the narration.
07:55 - Wow. This guy really wants to find a dirty cop.
08:10 - It would have been nice to have Dent here.
08:20 - Yeah, Rookie
09:23 - Maybe the people of Gotham are quick to think magic.
10:37 - Bullock is freaking out.
11:44 - Drill guy is creepy.
12:32 - He had time to run!
13:08 - I don't like Bullock.
13:49 - I wonder if there are any nice people in internal affairs.
14:20 - No justice off the clock.
14:47 - The smallest amount of leg work solved this case.
15:42 - Ron Pearlman?
15:46 - One liners...
16:31 - Strong Toss.
16:49 - Batman loves his belt.
17:03 - That guy rolls deep
17:28 - That bad guy looks like Bruce
17:43 - He aimed over them?
18:26 - Great Batman shot
19:08 - She is earning her keep.
19:36 - Drill man is out for blood.
20:03 - Batman hates people that play cards.
20:34 - She is really earning her keep.
21:17 - Hackle was walking around with their badges? Also F Bullock.
The End - That was awesome.

Batman TAS "The Under-Dwellers"

2011-02-21T22:31:00.000-05:00

We Suck.

I hope this is the low point of this series. There is nothing to gain from the episode. It belittles this show and the very notion that anyone who made this series had any common sense. I hated this episode. I took breaks so that I could finish it.

There is a lot of hate in this blog post. This episode killed this blog. It will take weeks for it to recover from this mess.

From Wikipedia:
Batman traces a series of bizarre robberies on the streets of Gotham back to a band of children - poverty-stricken outcasts who have been raised to do the bidding of their master, the Sewer King.

What is going on in her head?

My music protects me from BS

Get out of my show!

Where is my dignity?

My Thoughts:

One of us...

This is the worst episode of BTAS. I am not giving an opinion, this is a demand.

Nothing about this episode made sense. From top to bottom, nothing felt like anyone sane had anything to do with it. They must have needed to dump an extra episode into the season and only had an afternoon to put it together.

Who in their right mind sees a small figure running around in a green cloak and thinks leprechaun. I will admit that Gotham has its fare share of weirdness, but it is still in America. The fact that Batman even repeats the word leprechaun after hearing it from an obese fainting woman is maddening.

How Un-Batman was Batman:

He is killing it!

1. He says leprechaun
2. He asks Alfred if he believes he could have seen a leprechaun
3. Oh yeah. He jumps on cars to chase this leprechaun
4. Pulls down a bell in a room fill with children. Without warning.
5. He never uses any of his gadgets to fight Sewer King.
6. Batman admits that he wants to kill the Sewer King. I approve, but it was un-batman.
7. leprechauns!!!!

The only value this episode could have had was if it had been some kind of fever dream origin story for Robin. Forgot the circus, this Robin came from underground!

Factoids/Comic Notes:
Oliver Twist. I have never seen the movie or read the book, but I bet it is to blame for this piece of garbage. I am not even going to look up the movie to see if I am right. I am never going to check that story out unless it is being retold in space.

Oliver Twist is a bad person. He is a dark being that corrupts Batman with his army of leprechauns. I hate Oliver Twist and so should you.

The Sewer King was the first original villain created for BTAS. It took about 14 years, but he did manage to pop up in an issue of 52. This is proof that American comics are rotting to their core - http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-underdwellers,49791/

Sounds like this was a terms and service nightmare. Why couldn't big brother have killed this while it was still a script - http://batman.neoseeker.com/wiki/The_Underdwellers_(Batman:_The_Animated_Series)

Futurama

Bender's Orphanarium

www.comedycentral.com

Tosh.0

Funny Jokes

The Comedy Awards

My Show Notes:

That kid looks like he is 50.
Batman is thinking "Damn Kids"
Slow night.
I hate these one-liners
Ragman! No wait...its a kid.
So far this seems really below Batman's pay grade.
He is really sticking with the whole leprechaun? There was no hat! It was cloak.
Maybe he just wants an easy day.
Kid slave labor land!
Oh crap! That had to hurt.
The light burns!
WTF.
This is terrible.
Does Batman want a pot of gold.
Batman totally almost killed that kid.
Is this how he found Robin?
Nothing to eat? Was he going to share?
Oh crap. Weapons.
Wait...is it loaded? Who would...argh.
Black and white? He has a color screen in his car.
This better be a cake walk.
Who is this guy?
How many gators does he have?
I am glad the Joker isn't the worst villian
This feels like an anime
Gotham is hell.
haha. Eat that SOB!
Wait. F this guy.
Stop playing on the tracks.
Creepy. so creepy
This was painful

Batman Break

2011-02-07T15:45:00.001-05:00

59 Marvel 2 matches and a busy work day have pushed Batman back.

I will try to make it up later in the week.

Batman TAS "Pretty Poison"

2011-02-05T14:57:00.002-05:00

"AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

My favorite part of doing this feature is finding out that Batman used to freak out when stuff got weird. Sure he has fought man/bat hybrids and clown robots, but crazy plant monsters are a different matter all together. Batman hates plant monsters.

And yes, I am really starting to enjoy taking screen shots.

I devoted this episode's factoids to Paul Dini because I am pretty sure we have plenty of Ivy episodes coming down the pipe.

From Wikipedia:
When District Attorney Harvey Dent collapses after a meal with Bruce Wayne and his fianceé Pamela Isley, it transpires that he has been poisoned. Batman must find the culprit and discover an antidote before the DA's time runs out.

It all started in 1952...

I remember you and you and...

Hey...her legs should be green!

He hates her.

My Thoughts:

Batman used his brain again! He noticed a clue, followed it up and solved a crime! Slow clap people, things are really starting look up for BTAS.

Snark aside, this was another strong show for BTAS. Ivy was a great villain and I have to admit that she lost most of her impact the moment she put on that silly outfit. It is also great to have Dent as a likable supporting character before his upcoming fall.

I just wish that Batman didn't have to use luck to win. He was lucky that his panicked batman rope just happen to start a fire.

Is it just me or is Alfred the brains of this operation. He dresses Bruce and even tells him what to eat. He does all the leg work for Batman's theories and manages to have better one liners. This is definitely something to keep track of.

Now enjoy my Bruce face hall of fame!

He just got a clue. A raging clue.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Law man made mess!

Batman knows more than any doctor!

Factoids/Comic Notes:
This is the first episode of BTAS written by Paul Dini. There is a good chance that if you are watching a good episode of BTAS and it has a female lead, it was written by this guy.

Dini had his start with He-Man and wrote one of the best episodes of the original Transformers cartoon. Most of his cartoon work has been awesome, but his comic writing is another story. Dini helmed the mostly aimless post 52 Detective Comics and was guy in charge of Countdown, a comic that I went on to call hippie trash.

Feel free to watch Linkara's Countdown videos for more info on that - http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w

Dini is married to a real life Zatanna named Misty Lee - http://www.mistylee.com/

Dini has been named one of the writers for the new Spider-Man cartoon - http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/08/04/paul-dini-ultimate-spider-man-animated-series/

My Show Notes:

First episode written by Paul Dini.
Sepia Tone. How long ago was this memory?
Harsh tone.
Get to the chopper!!!
First sight of Montoya.
Kevin Conroy as the waiter.
Batman has become a real symbol of terror.
This joke is getting a little old.
Dent and Ivy. Fun match up.
I need to add a clip of the broker line..
Spit take!!!
I hope we get lots of Dent before Two Face
Bullock is a dead end. Eat more food fatty!
We? I guess Alfred helped.
Why did she ever need a costume?
Cool. He just noticed a clue.
Alfred was his 1st generation Oracle.
5'2"
Great voice. So sweet. So cruel.
Wow. This is a pretty crazy world.
He freaked out. I love seeing batman freak.
Nut job. She picked her name and costume.
Good match for Dent. They both have anger issues.
She isn't immune to all poisons yet.
Cape damage.
She killed the hell out of that thing.
That fire was dumb luck.
Totally nuts.
Hope Harvey didn't buy a ring.
Crazy TOWN!!!!!!
Wait? She got to keep the poison flower?

Young Justice "Schooled"

2011-02-05T09:21:00.006-05:00

BC teaches combat skills

I know this isn't Batman, but I don't think anyone has checked out the latest DC animated series, Young Justice. In a nutshell, this show is a like a mix of Teen Titans and the Outsiders. We have young heroes who are doing black ops missions for Batman.

The animation is fantastic and the cast is really strong. This feels like the first time that DC has really tried breaking away from its Bruce Timm roots.

Did I forget to mention that it is a DC cartoon made by the guy that created Gargoyles?

My Thoughts:
I will loop back and hit the first four episodes when I have time. Just trust me when I say that this series started strong and is only getting better.

This episode focused on Superboy's anger issues that are only getting worse because of Superman's unwillingness to even look at his clone. We had some good character stuff here and I am glad that Superboy has a chance of being less Hulk-ish in the future.

Action wise, the team was asked by Batman to safeguard parts of Amazo that were being taken to S.T.A.R. Labs for study. Things go poorly and I have to admit that League does an amazing job of not bothering to make sure that their team of side kicks isn't dead. I guess that is trust?

I guess the last thing that really stuck with me was how well suited Batman is to watch over this team. Batman had the first mainstream sidekick in comic book history and it is only fitting that he has a soft spot for younger heroes. I still can't believe he is the nice guy compared to Superman.

Oh yeah, that monkey joke was great.

Miss Martian is like Kitty Pride

Robin is trying to play nice.

Unwilling to talk about Superboy

There is a great joke here.

Batman TAS "The Last Laugh"

2011-02-04T06:50:00.000-05:00

Here's Your Sign

Another day. Another episode of Batman. Episode Four brings back The Joker and somehow manages to completely wash away the shame of that terrible Christmas show.

So sit back, get ready and hope that ever even episode doesn't star the Joker.

The Joker loves robots. He buys them in bulk.

From Wikipedia:
The Joker covers Gotham City in a cloud of laughing gas and begins plundering the crazed city. But after Alfred is infected with the toxin, Batman has added incentive to stop the Joker and acquire an antidote from him before all of Gotham dies with a smile.

It's a knife joke...

Sour Candy.

This was kinda scary.

Robots. Why robots.

My Thoughts:

All is forgiven. The Joker is a insane, violent and very fun to watch. This episode is well worth a watch for its chilling opening score and twisted Joker plan.

This isn't the best episode for Batman. He spends most of the Bruce scenes as the butt of Alfred jokes and had to depend on stupid luck again to take out the Joker.

Good stuff.

Factoids/Comic Notes:
Joker Venom/Toxin has been used since the Joker first appeared. He used to coat knifes with this stuff. It is important to remember that the Joker is not immune to Joker Vemon.

There is a real life poison that kills you with a smile - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_dropwort

Even though the comics gave Joker a background as chemistry. This version of the Joker was a hit man before his change. This hit man background makes less sense considering how seems to make his own poisons and is able to always have a robot with him.

Maybe I shouldn't read too much into the robots. No one cares if you kill a robot.

My Show Notes:

The Joker? Again?
Wow. This is kinda creepy.
No heat vision. Shaving is a dull for Batman.
Hell yes! Alfred is real. Boom!
He is too fat for his scuba suit?
Great stuff with the mirror. Joker is menacing.
That gas spreads super fast.
River front property is biting Batman in the ass right now.
2 gas episodes in a row. Scarecrow could learn a thing or two from The Joker.
That double decker bus is bull crap.
Bat boat with belt controls. Sweet.
Wait. the captain was a guy? I thought he was a toy.
Oh...he is a robot. Where did Joker get a robot?
Wow. That air hole stuff was great.
Batman is boned. I am enjoying the tension.
He is saved by the power of money.
Lasers?
How would Robin have gotten in the way here?
Finally riped off the masks.
4 episodes in and he is dealing with robots.
I never liked seeing batman without the cape
Killed?
I don't think this Joker wants to kill Batman.
I love the soundtrack for this show.
Fire, hooks and razor cards disagree with my no killing angle.
Pebble in my hand!
This Joker trips a lot.
Alfred is bummed. It is great have the real actor.
That joke was terrible.

Batman TAS "Nothing to Fear"

2011-02-03T09:39:00.000-05:00

These always look awesome.

This feels like the real second episode and is a nice return to form for Batman:TAS. This time we have the introduction of the Scarecrow, a character that was re-envisioned 2 times before the end of Batman:TAS.

Feature wise, I put more effect into finding fun facts and have started a running total for things I know are going to happen a lot over the course of this series. I am starting to have fun with thing.

Everyone in the world is afraid of Spiders!

From Wikipedia:
Batman encounters the Scarecrow and attempts to foil his scheme to burn down Gotham University, but in the process is exposed to the Scarecrow's fear gas, and is forced to face his own guilt over the deaths of his parents.

Super Sassy!

I burn with disappointment...

SCIENCE!!!!!

Playful Justice

My Thoughts:
Now this is more like it. Still not as good as I want it to be, but this was great step in the right direction for this show. Batman is back to being a green horn at the hero business that has to depend on his will power and hard work to save the day.

I do this for you!

It was funny to see Batman get shot to easily. I wonder if this is one of the last times Batman gets shot in the back?

The scarecrow is kind of a crap villain and this early design was really boring to look at. I kept wondering how he kept his fat head fit in that skinny little mask.

This was the second doctor within the first three episode. I guess evil science is a big part of Batman's world.

The whole "I am the night" thing was a little cheesy, but was great to see Batman push past his fears. Judging from the ending I think this had more to do with overcoming the fear gas instead actually coming to terms with his father issues.

I wonder if they will ever give Bruce a chance to come to terms with his father? At least he is getting good support from Alfred.

Factoids/Comic Notes:

First use of "I am vengeance. I am the night. I am ... Batman!"

The Scarecrow was once transformed into a beast called the Scarebeast. He has also worn a Yellow Lantern Ring of fear twice, but quickly had it taken from him before he could do any real harm. I think it would be best if he had kept the ring.

Scarecrow is sometimes shown with a scythe. He doesn't get one until the 4th season of the cartoon.

Scarecrow was a member of the Legion of Doom in the Super Friends.

Scarecrow was voice by Henry Polic II during the first 3 seasons.

One of my favorite Scarecrow stories can be found in the book - Forensic Files of Batman

My Show Notes:

Father disappointment. Are we back to the younger ep 1 Batman? Good sign.
The Scarecrow is a little bland. Voice MOD!!!
He uses Gas and Gas!!!
Just imagine if that had been a real gun.
Fire Dad is disappointed him is human son.
The police are somewhat friendly to Batman now? When did that happen?
Batman Vanish #1
I have snakes!!! Thank you public schools!!!
Bruce no need sleep! No need shaving!
So damn catty! I hate you fake Alfred.
Father son stuff. It is great to see some character moments.
Money box with open top? Now that is too easy.
His greatest fear was having bone hands. I have a similar fear.
The rich hate batman. This proves it.
What a crazy zeppelin world this is.
Archer was right!
Catch pharse beats out fear. "I am the night" #1
Batman has let two people fall to their deaths.
Star Labs? That is fun.
First real Batman terror moment.
Fantasia?
First grave shot. #1

Bat Totals

Looking at Parent's grave: 1

Said the "I am the night": 1

Walked away while people were talking : 1

Batman TAS "Christmas with the Joker"

2011-02-02T14:47:00.000-05:00

This episode is a joke.

Now I remember why I never finish these features. Watching a bad episode of anything sucks all the fun out of blogging and the second episode of Batman TAS is truly one of the worst things I have ever seen.

So sit back and watch me eat my words about wanting a Joker episode. Check out for my negative show notes and my random factoids about the Joker.

Also Christmas...

From Wikipedia:
After escaping Arkham Asylum on Christmas Eve, The Joker takes over Gotham's airwaves and terrorizes the city. He then challenges Batman and Robin to find his hidden TV studio and free his hostages, Commissioner Gordon, Detective Bullock, and Summer Gleason, before midnight.

Wait for it...Bat Man...

Your tears are like candy for my hand!

Where is the danger?

I am being snarky.

My Thoughts:
I hated this episode from the first scene. I just couldn't believe that the Joker could have stolen/bought/collected any of the junk he had in the episode. Where did he get a Tree Rocket? Did he build it in jail's therapy rocket lab or did no one think to check why the tree was delivered by goons?

Why did he bother with a TV show when he had a CANNON ON A MOUNTAIN! Why is there a cannon near Gotham? He also he had a Santa Tank...

I can't believe Robin just walked into frame and acted like he has always been part of the show. I know who Robin is, but this introduction made me freak out and distrust this colorful stranger.

Worst of all is the fact that Batman is left clueless until the Joker forces a clue down the dark knights throat. In fact, Batman was just kind of crappy in this episode. He almost beat up an innocent man, he hated on Christmas and had to use dumb luck to beat the Joker.

Overall, this episode was a huge confusing mess that I can only imagine was rushed to completion so that it could air before Christmas. I can only hope that the next episode has no Robin, Joker or any kind of rocket powered ferns.

I can't believe I never want to see the Joker again...

Factoids/Comic Notes:
We are getting close to the real Alfred. Only one more to go.

It turns out that Jingle Bells was written for Thanksgiving. I can't find a real history of the spoof in this episode, but I doubt it came from this show. It sounds like it could have come from the old Adam West show.

Much like Golden Age Two-Face, the original Joker was written out of the Batman comics after his second appearance. Fortunately, the editors thought that this villain deserved bigger things than an off screen death that happen during a prison breakout.

Alex Ross painted a Batman Christmas plate.

Batman hates Christmas, but I bet he loves Labor Day!

My Show Notes:

This is beyond stupid. How did he build a rocket inside of AA?

I do better in the future. Trust me.

Wait? Robin is here too?
"The Joker has no family." Batman is mean.
"I could never get past the title." - Batman on It's a Wonderful Life
Bruce is still talking like Batman while he is at home-wait- look at that huge retro TV!
Where did he get a Tank/Santa monster?
How do the candy canes work? Are they covered in glue?
Hamill is still working out the voice.
I wish the hand puppet has stayed as a running gag. He could have been friends with Scar Face.
I get the feeling that Batman being hated by the police is gone.
Where did he get a cannon? Why is there a cannon?
Machine gun robots? I am done.
Operation Cause and Effect?
Batman knows his shit when it comes to toys.
Giant Toy Soldiers? This is a total Adam West mess.
Bat...man...get it?
All of this to shame Batman.
This was awful.
Okay that last shot with the joker was rad.

Batman TAS "On Leather Wings"

2011-02-01T15:52:00.005-05:00

Are you questioning my monster tape?

I have returned with a new feature that I really thought I was going to be about Teknoman. Anyway, thanks to some tweets from Magus I have decided to watch/blog the original Batman cartoon. I have no set timeline for this blog, but I plan on at least getting the 1st season done before I give up on this idea.

So get ready for some fun commentary and a few factoids about one of the most important cartoons ever made.

From Wikipedia:
"On Leather Wings" is the pilot episode of Batman: The Animated Series. It first aired on September 6, 1992. It was written by Mitch Brianand directed by Kevin Altieri. This was the first episode of the series to feature the villain Man-Bat and was also Man-Bat's first screen appearance. In comics, Man-Bat first appeared in 1970. Although "On Leather Wings" was the first episode of the series to be produced, it was the second to be broadcast, following "The Cat and the Claw, Part 1," which premiered just the day before.

Crime meets science!

Fight!

In a Nutshell:
Batman is framed by Man-Bat.

My Thoughts:
What an odd way to start this series. I can understand why they would want to wait on using the Joker, but Man-bat is one of the worst ideas of all time.

Good thing everything else about this episode was so strong. Batman/Bruce Wayne is likable from the start. It is refreshing to see him as a detective and a man who freaks out at the sight of monsters. It will be interesting to see when this character crosses the line into the mythical being he became.

Regardless of my hate for Man-bat, I think it is kind of odd how unlikable Dr. Kirk Langstrom was. There was no reason to feel sorry for this guy and this fact is made all the more bizarre by Batman's willingness to protect Langstrom from the police.

Maybe this had more to do with the police's willingness to try and arrest him than his compassion for monsters?

Nothing that memorable, but that doesn't change the fact that this is still one of the best produced shows from the early 90's. Hell, this show still looks and sounds fantastic.

Both of these men are Kevin Conroy!

Factoids/Comic Notes:
Alfred's real voice actor starts in 3 episodes. Here is info on the lesser voice.

Info on one of my least favorite characters - Man-bat.

Kevin Conroy's imdb page.

Who is the fat man Harvey Bullock?

Harvey Dent was originally called Harvey Kent. This was changed quickly to avoid confusion with Superman's human name. Two-Face appeared in the comics before the un-scarred Harvey Dent. Two-Face was also cured in his third appearance leading to the creation of multiple Golden Age Two-Faces.

Blood in my cartoons!

My Show Notes:

Why start with Man-bat? Lots of 'science' for Batman.
Kevin Conroy as a wimp cop is super funny.
Gordon, Bullock and Dent. Strong start. Batman isn't popular yet. JLA had him like a god.
Oh crap. Wrong voice for Alfred.
Playful start with Batman and Alfred.
Fuck yo police line.
The dome helmets still bother me to this day. They look silly.
Gadgets and toys. Great Stuff.
We have the wrong guy? Should we call off the attack? Nope. Let's see how this plays out.
Smoke bomb fight!!!!
Millionaires love you zoo!
Bruce is high pitched. Batman is low pitched.
Cockroaches and Bats. yup. the future will be messy and loud.
Nothing fishy about monster sounds.
Yo Alfred. You so catty.
SCIENCE!!!!!
Burn the truth!
Zero to Evil in 3 seconds. Batman brings out the truth.
Batman backed up. He freaked out.
Get him in a head lock and punch his monster face in!
Blood!
So f'n catty.
SCIENCE! SCIENCE! Batman has SCIENCE!
He took pity. No cops?
Music and Animation looked great.

Something New...

2010-11-02T20:31:00.000-04:00

This way my stupid voter thingie is not the last thing on here...

If you guys could vote, that would be fantastic!

2010-07-15T12:55:00.002-04:00

This Picture.....

2010-07-14T07:50:00.002-04:00

Kicks Ass.

That is all.

Out of Curiosity....

2010-06-17T06:37:00.002-04:00

Did anyone ever beat Final Fantasy XII?

Kind of random, I know, but I've been thinking about it for the last few days.

Oh, and hi everybody. Long time no see.

Webcomic thingie!

2010-06-15T11:13:00.003-04:00

Gentlemen, in case you are interested in a one panel webcomic that "parod[ies] the comic book industry and the heroes and characters that dwell within", check out Gutters:

http://www.the-gutters.com/

It looks promising. Also, it updates MWF.

Review: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood S1E5

2010-06-02T12:40:00.002-04:00

I justed wanted to avoid the whole Nina thing...

That has to hurt somehow!

It was nice to watch an episode of an anime about a character getting out of his funk by having the shit kicked out of him. Instead of 25 minutes of emo, we are treated to nightmares, three sins and an awesome fight.

I don't really have much to say other than that.

Oh yeah, we get the real Envy in this episode. Unlike the anime, this body/character isn't Wraith and has none of Ed's limbs. At this point he seems to be a vain anime dude and is nothing like the child he was in the original anime. The chat sins have is also very different from the original anime and at this point their goal is more about chaos than creating stone.

Armstrong is still awesome and Hughes' belief that everyone on the show is just a freak two of the high lights for this great episode.

Come the action and stay for the random striping!

4 out of 5

Review: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood S1E4

2010-06-02T11:02:00.003-04:00

That was sad and dark. Just about one of the saddest things any anime could ever do and this is only episode 4. What a terribly great episode to come back to this series with. I want to keep this review/blog short so I can get to the next episode before getting depressed or something.

So...um...yeah.

On the awesome side of things, Scar has entered the series and has started his murder fest again for the first time. His first target was an idiot that was willing to stand within arms reach of a cage he just created to capture this would be killer. It is good to see Scar again, however I know that this version isn't as kind as the anime character. I wonder which one I will end up liking better.

The less said about Tucker and Nina the better. Unlike the original anime, this is the end of Tucker and that makes me over joyed. He was a twisted soul that did a good job of reminding the Elrics what they could become. It also created the prefect nightmare material for me.

I really wish I could be watching this show in English. Oh well, I guess beggars can't be choses and I benefit from not having to her Nina in a language I understand.

Dark stuff, new characters and Ed crying in the rain.

4 out of 5

Review: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood S1E3

2010-05-16T23:49:00.001-04:00

What is old is new again.

This episode covered the first chapter of the manga. It was dark in tone and very well produced, but most of the emotional scenes were undermined by the second episode. I take back what I said in my last review, I wish the creators had the balls to just start here instead of trying to be clever.

Every moment that stuck to the original manga was fantastic and am starting to think that I have picked a winner with this show.

Can his science explain why it rains?

Episode 3 is completely undermined by keeping the to source material and by being the third episode. All of the shock value of Al was wasted and the speech about their mother made it feel like the show was spinning in place. I am glad that presentation spiced things up or else this episode would have been a bit of a waste.

I not sure if this series will keep up the dual shots. They added some spice to the exposition and I guess you could say it was like have panels. It was interesting stuff and I hope we will see some more creative stuff in the future.

Damn this episode was dark. Ed walks into a town, disproves their god and walks away from girl who is in tears. Maybe this is why they didn't want to lead with this episode?

It was also great to see the sins again for the first time. I don't remember Gluttony being that creepy.

Good times held back by episode 2's glow.
4 out of 5

Review: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood S1E2

2010-05-16T22:42:00.003-04:00

The series takes a break in the second episode to cover some heavy late game topics. This is an episode that would only work in a series that everyone already has knowledge in. We are given a look at what happened to the boys' mother, how they were reborn and the day that Ed became Full Metal. To keep it short, I really dug this episode and I really can't wait to watch more.

My mind is blown!

If you are a fan of the manga or enjoyed the first show, this episode will be important because it loudly draws a line in the lore sand. You are shown 'god/the truth' and are given a pretty good hint about where this series is going. I wish they had the balls to start with this episode, but I guess they needed some action as well.

The animation of this show is fantastic. Everything from the peaceful moments of Winry and Al waiting in the wind to Al and Ed's sparing match looked great.

It looks like we are hitting the first episode of the manga next time. I hope I don't get too bored watching the same stuff over again. In a perfect world, the series will have super fast pacing over the ground that was covered by the first show.

I really like the intro song. Come to think of it, intros are one of my favorite parts of watching anime. Sure it has nothing to do with storytelling or characters and everything to do with advertising, but I still dig it. I wonder how long this one will last? I think Naruto ran one song for every 30, so we should have two for this show.

I am not that wild about the ending theme, but that could have more to do with the lame art.

Good times. No complaints.
5 out of 5

Here are the first 40 minutes of Saints Row 2

2010-05-16T12:44:00.000-04:00

Review: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood S1E1

2010-05-13T22:56:00.006-04:00

I understand that I have no right to change shows mid review job, but I really wanted to check this show out and I am super done with wanting to watch more Spider-Man.

This is a completely new Full Metal Alchemist anime that is going to do its best to follow the original manga. In case you didn't hear, the first show out paced the manga and came up with its own cannon. The identity of the 7 sins were different, alchemist was explained with a bizarre pseudo science and it all ended with anime Hitler!

That's right, Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood has nothing to do with the first anime, its movie or anime Hitler. Being a huge fan of what the first show became I was sitting on pins and needles to watch this show.

However, as I started to watch this anime I remembered a terrible fact. For as much as I enjoyed the first show, I didn't really dig the manga. Let's see if time and my fresh desire to watch anime will allow me to enjoy this show.

Nowhere to be seen. Sad Panda...

The first episode of FMA: Brotherhood feels a lot like an OVA or a one shot movie. It has all the right names and faces, but something just feels wrong. I don't want to say that I didn't like it, but I would have a hard time recommending this after just watching the first episode.

Episode 1 covers a murder filled night staring an Ice Alchemist that has a mad on for Bradley. From what I can remember this story was never in the original manga so it makes an odd start for a show based around accuracy. Other than the new villain we are re-introduced to most of the characters we already know and love. Unfortunately, this also means that a full third of this episode with filled with characters mistaking Al for Ed. This episode really beats the short joke to death and I can only hope that it will never show up again.

The action and the animation were great. It appears this show had a pretty good budget. I can only hope this means they don't have a B team waiting in the wings to ruin my day.

I guess I am a sick bastard because the only times I enjoyed this episode was when it became brutally dark. I am not sure if this is because the light hearted moments sucked or because the dark stuff felt more like the old show.

Kind of a weak start, but I am willing to watch another.

3out of 5

WE ARE DOING THE RIGHT THING!

2010-05-13T12:53:00.000-04:00

This is a life changing commercial for Gundam Wing voiced by Opitmus Prime! Sure there are some spoilers, but I saw it before the show first aired on the cartoon network. If you have any doubts about this show allow it to wash them away in a flood of justice!

Get ready to Saturday my brothers!

Space: Above & Beyond - Ep. 4, Mutiny

2010-05-13T09:33:00.006-04:00

Synopsis: The 58th are stationed aboard a civilian cargo vessel for transport to their next front in the war. Once aboard they learn the cargo aboard the ship is cryogenic sleepers and unborn in-vitros, both awaiting transportation to a hard labor mining facility, and Hawkes begins working with the in-vitro crew to try and discover if he has any relatives in the batch. Things begin to awry as the ship takes a dangerous course that fries the sensors and overheats the fusion reactor, causing stress in the civilian crew and igniting tempers, but McQueen suspects the threat might be bigger than just random interference and EM spikes.

This episode was very heavily in-vitro focused, and so it came down to a really personal McQueen and Hawkes episode. Although this did get a little grating, I was surprised about well done this was and how much I was still entertained by it. At its core this episode very quickly becomes focused on the classic crutch of drama, the tough moral decision, and this episode didn't really pull any punches.

We get more expansion upon the whole in-vitro concept in this series. Not only were they mass produced to fight the AI's, it seems even today we still continue to produce them as a slave race. There was a great dialogue between McQueen and the ship's captain that I think captured the "WTF?" factor behind this. McQueen admits he was grown to serve on a mining facility, and "if there's a hell, I've already seen it." (and thus finally confirms that he is in fact also an in-vitro). The captain tells him that it was different back then, before they banned indentured servitude, and that the whole ship's manifest were volunteers who signed up for it. And McQueen points out the unborn in-vitros didn't sign on for anything. The line sounds more stale than it was delivered, but it really does highlight pretty well the "what the hell are you talking about, captain?" when he mentions an entirely voluntary cargo.

At least the in-vitro's aren't super strong and super intelligent, I suppose?

The captain himself is never really put in a bad light. He's actually pretty respectable, and McQueen never really breaks his hard ass Marine Corps character either to cry for the in-vitros. Unlike Hawkes, McQueen has some damn perspective. This is entirely justified though as McQueen's been out of the tank for much longer, supposedly, while Hawkes is a much younger in-vitro. We learned just this episode in-vitro's are "ripe" at the age of 18, so odds are Hawkes is still a very young human indeed. Part of this episode is actually dealing with the fact Hawkes is still new to learning and understanding emotions, and McQueen is the goddamn boss.

So anyway, Hawkes goes crying and looking for "family", and I don't want to echo the one real racist in this episode, but what the hell kind of family does an in-vitro have? Just a similar genetic batch? Production facility? For that matter, why is there such an enormous amount of genetic variation in whatever process we use to make the in-vitros? Anyway for a second time, as Hawkes does that and learns to sympathize for the in-vitro crew members, the ship gets itself in real trouble.

McQueen yells kind of needlessly at West whose on ladar, sonar, or whatever detail. "Use your guts!" he yells at the machine driven man, when McQueen had already decided a long time ago that they were actually under attack by a special hunter killer Chigg craft, the U-378. I imagine this is to make a relation to the German U-boats of World War II.

After the Chigg ship disables their reactor the captain has to make a hard choice. He has to cut power to one of the cargo holds to get enough energy to run the ship and fire their only defensive weapons. He comes to the conclusion quickly as a matter of math, not even racism. The in-vitro hold has less lives than any other hold with people. And so they're left with the moral decision of either the whole ship dying or just a few people.

As you might expect, the in-vitros mutiny over this decision. Rather than do anything sane, they end up accidentally killing the captain and his completely racist second in command. At this moment Hawkes' confusion and indecision are just getting annoying, but after the damage is already done McQueen and Hawkes talk the mutineers out of it so he can make the hard decision, kill the in-vitro cargo, and save the whole damn ship like they would had done in the first place had anyone bothered to listen to McQueen.

This episode actually wrapped up "Farthest Man from Home" with West actually, get this, feeling remorse and learning from his stupid actions when he went AWOL. I think this is the first time in a long time I had some respect for him.

Meanwhile Wang and Vansen, our two gunners for this episode, had some great dialogue about love and how Wang can't be falling in love with someone he only ever knew in the extra-net, internet thing. They do some pretty good bonding. You know, while looking up some facts for this show I learned the actor playing Wang felt he was a somewhat racist character, presumably because he'll turn coward traitor later on, but so far he really seems to be a fairly likable character, and he certainly did not seem to be the coward in this episode.

Hawkes needs a character pick up after this episode. I know he's got to be something like, what, five years old? But his whining about not feeling emotions or knowing even if humans do is getting old. Even though killed a "sister" in that in-vitro batch, I really don't think he had a leg to stand on to get high and mighty with McQueen, who was one of only 4 in a batch 60-some in-vitros who survived that mining facility he was opened in. Need to see him being badass again or something.

Not a bad episode, and better than I was worried it would be. I will admit, when I saw the title, I instantly was worried it would be McQueen's squad who were going to go mutinous on us. Glad to see that seems to be coming to an end. There was some really good drama and I'm beginning to understand the sort of precedent this show made to make Battlestar Galactica possible years later. It's not the same level of drama mind you, but I can see the ground work getting laid here.

Oh, an the episode starts with the all too classic "two days till retirement!" guy getting shot by a random Chigg sniper. Talking about his wife and eating at home and stuff before taking a bullet in front of Hawkes. Classic.

The Spectacular Spider-Man: Episode 11

2010-05-10T17:15:00.002-04:00

Wikipedia "With Electro's help, Doctor Octopus breaks himself, Vulture, Sandman, Rhino and Shocker out of Ryker's Island prison to quench their mutual thirst for revenge. Even with his new black alien suit, Spider-Man finds his old enemies, now called the Sinister Six, are more than he can handle."

Tons of actions, Eddie goes nuts and we have a pretty good ending twist. I am still not crazy about the black suit, but things are looking up over all.

Episode 10 was enough to put me off Spider-Man for about a week. Episode 11 was good enough to make think about watching this show again.

I am not sure if it was too soon or something, but I though the Sinister Six were completely boring. I did enjoy that Doc Oct was the mastermind and there was some great banter around a dinner table. Funny stuff, but it was nothing new and with fresh ideas this cartoon is point less.

Eddie Brock is a madman and I am willing to say that this show has completely failed that character. His character makes no sense at all and MJ's willingness to date this psycho also seems stupid. Did he ask her out while talking about how much he wanted to kill Peter?

Here is my real question: Why no back up generators for the prison? They got out way too easy. I guess I can't complain because they are going right back. I wonder for how long? My god I hate the villains now.

I did like the twist of the suit using him. I guess.

Oh yeah, Aunt May had a heart attack and stuff. Meh.

btw I wrote the teaser weeks ago. Still haven't watched another. I just need to bang out a few more until this season is over and I can pick another show.

Space: Above & Beyond - Ep. 3, The Dark Side of the Sun

2010-05-10T11:54:00.003-04:00

Synopsis: The 58th are sent on "routine" patrol to an important He3 fuel mining facility on a rock called Bunuel. Vansen is put in charge of the squad, but when they get there they find the facility has been taken over by AI pirates. Now Vansen is directly confronted with her past and the slaughter of her parents and must overcome not only her enemies, but her own memories.

This was a good episode! The nature of it served to answer alot of questions I had from the pilot and the narrative was really strong throughout. Although this episode involves the whole squad, including its fair share of obvious red shirts, this was a Vansen heavy episode with a highlight of West, and I think she comes out the stronger character for it.
We learned alot this episode. In particular we saw the personal face of the AI enemy from the war long past and learned just what happened as well. I think the answer was actually...pretty unique for science fiction settings. This was no emergent AI, at least not in the hard sense, but instead one created by a final FU virus by an angry employee. In particular, we made a race of slave robots that looked like us and had all our human frailties if I were to guess by this episode, but they really were cold machine until the virus gave them one simple directive: "take a chance."

I thought this was really neat. Robot or AI rebellions are far from rare in science fiction, but I don't think I've encountered a cause for a rebellion quite like this one. I think this speaks pretty highly of the creativity behind this series, and the execution was pretty good too. The AI look just like us, I imagine for the same reason every alien looks like us in Star Trek, except for some weird cross hair contact lenses. They talk like us as well as the beeps and boops, and they worship chance like a religion or way of life. I can understand the obsession with chance to a degree, but when they were willing to break out a card game to make a deal with their prisoners, I started to feel it was just a tad ridiculous. But then again, these AI are very, very human it seems, and these ones in particular didn't look like marines or anything military beyond guerrilla fighters or just pirates.

And I finally learned why we had the Tanks. We really did "breed" them as an army against the AI. We bred an artificial army to kill an artificial army. I'm sure it made sense at the time...right? Well, joke was on them because the Tanks refused to fight anyway. Haha, take that fathers and grandpas who had to fight and die because your clone army wouldn't fight the droid army! Oh god, wait, it really was potentially a bad Star Wars prequel plot >_<

Vansen was strong this episode. She's still haunted by nightmares of her parents' murder at the hands of the AI, and her emotions clearly get the best of her; first by having her cower from the fight with the AI, and then by the classic bloodlust "we kill em all!" speech. None of it really felt contrived, and I think the actress did a tremendous job at making me really feel Vansen's mind in this episode. \

In the end, Vansen gets separated from the rest of the marines and makes a comeback after becoming bad ass #1 of the series! She just goes to town and kills a whole bunch of silicates and saves everyone. I know that might sound tacky by the way I wrote it, but I assure you the show handled it nicely.

The episode ends with her killing the last of the AI as they were escaping with the He3. She really let none of them leave that rock, and the impact of the moment was that, as West pointed out to here, the navy could've intercepted them and retaken the stolen He3. Vansen had just learned her parents were killed because of a coin toss, though, and that kind of anger doesn't listen to reason. She blew them all to hell and I'm not sure she was wrong. Well, maybe if I were the commander general in the RTS game world of Space: Above and Beyond I probably would when I lose a buttload of my resources to an angry marine, but still.

West really shows command potential in this episode, covering multiple times for Vansen. I know he's sort of our main character if we have any, but there's something in his personality *cough*insubordination*cough* that often makes me feel he's not a good fit for leadership.

Also had some good lines for Hawkes. "Tanks don't have any luck, because we used up all our luck just being born." He saves everyone's ass by being the guy to know the AI's "parlay" keyword, which is of course their massive fetish for luck and playing poker with people they want to kill. I think the best part of this was just how determined the episode seemed to be at the beginning of making a self determination message, which is a theme I can usually get behind very easily. When Hawkes gets the AI to play a game of Black Jack, one he loses by a nail bitingly close margin, the AI leader states "fate's a bitch" in an annoyingly mocking tone. And then they all get shot up by the rest of the marines. That was a pretty good lesson in making your own luck, bitch! I really wish someone had yelled that at her.

Strong episode all around. Good acting, very interesting science fiction being thrown about, and some good old fashioned space marine shoot outs. I don't know what it is. I don't know if I blame the movie Aliens, or if space marines really are just that cool, but I have always loved space marines. They are just awesome, and this episode and felt like a good space marine episode. Once again, I'm looking forward to the future.

Space: Above & Beyond - Ep.2, The Farthest Man From Home

2010-05-07T09:24:00.003-04:00

Synopsis: The military pulls a lone survivor from the ruins of the lost colony on Tellus, driven mad by his ordeal and exclaiming himself to be the "Farthest Man From Home." West undermines military authority to learn from the man that his fiancée may actually still be alive on the planet's surface. The only problem is Tellus is a restricted area controlled by the Chiggs with strict orders to remain untouched. West takes it upon himself to steal a Hammerhead and against orders fly to the surface to attempt to find his fiancée, but finds himself shot down and faced with even bigger mysteries on the planet's surface.

"I know Commodore Ross. He wouldn't hesitate for a second to court martial all of us. Someone higher up must have pulled a string. We need to be careful, or we'll be hanging by that string." - McQueen

Bullshit he wouldn't hesitate a second. This episode is from start to finish about insubordination. I think I'm spoiled on our modern military fiction these days, science fiction or otherwise. This episode is entirely about West using the Marine Corps like his own personal bitch to get into space and where he wants to be. The pilot did a pretty good job about establishing a relatable connection between West and his fiancée Selina Kyle, err, I mean Kylen Celina. So in this episode it's not too hard to sympathize with West in his motives, but I honestly think it was too early for this. I think West needed more time to grow in our hearts before we see him pull an action that should in most any reality have gotten him killed, if not by the Chiggs then by the damn Marine Corps. I was willing to cheer for him, but the substance just wasn't there yet.

That said, this was a pretty good episode. The beginning felt a little weak, and the "Man Farthest From Home" thing just felt out of place, unless it was a foreshadowing or deliberate plant for later plot lines. So was West's excursions through the ship's air ducts, which I can only imagine made some poor maintenance crewman's life a living hell to clean up after later. The crazy man didn't really sell me on the crazy, and the actor playing McQueen, well, most anyone really, isn't selling me on their anger either. he seemed to be pretty calmly yelling at West during his act of desertion to Tellus, and his threats felt stilted and weak. I'm not really sure what's causing this; if I'm just spoiled to modern shows and the standard back then really was a bit lower, or if its perhaps something in the film quality or my own mindset?

The episode did pick up on the planet's surface though, where West found his survivors. West surveying the wreckage of the colony was a well done moment, and it was practically tingling when he found the makeshift memorial the colonists made with their ID tags and a brief, final audio recording. West's fiancée leaving him a cryptic message "look to the high ground" seemed all too...well, completely out of place. I can understand her final thoughts being of her lost love, but to suspect he'd come to find them, and leave such a painfully obvious clue where to find all the survivors? It sort of ruined the moment for me.

West wasn't successful in the end though. He found two survivors hiding out in a Chigg graveyard where the Chiggs were apparently afraid to go. This is interesting as it simultaneously demonstrates that maybe Tellos is an old Chigg planet to begin with before humanity began to settle at all. And what's more, it adds a somewhat humanizing aspect to the Chiggs without even having a single one on screen. They know fear, and they have superstitions. Strong ones that override military importance even! The first episode humanized the Chigg captive too with his dog TAG that may have simultaneously been a keepsake of his family, loved ones, or clan, and his desire to die. Well, I assumed he was asking to die, since I'm sure HE knew that the water was poison to him.

What's more soul crushing was before the entire squad from McQueen down broke further protocol and rank to launch a full scale rescue operation, army and marine corps air cover, West found a prison camp the Chiggs must've erected. Just how long has it been since the pilot that the Chiggs are only just now offloading the prisoners from Tellus? They were hooded and overlooked in pretty stereotypical P.O.W. theatrical cuts. Feeling for this series' tendencies to the drama, I'm more than willing to bet Kylen was among those prisoners. And this is yet another interesting element to the Chiggs: they took prisoners at all!

This episode had some great Hawkes moments, particularly after he was shot down and meets up with West and they start a shootout for their lives. I think that was the real golden moment of this entire episode, and it showed some much more likable character in Hawkes that he's been needing.

And one final elements is added to the drama of the series, and that is this insidious sense of something corrupting or controlling the military and its authority. Someone is making everything that happened to Tellus after it got raided disappear. Every survivor is escorted, forcefully, by military chains, and a very well dressed man in a suit is hanging out onboard the ship that seems to command the Marines around as if he were their Commander in Chief. Is this Corporate influences, from the same company that funded the colonization of Tellus? This could be interesting to see unravel.

I'll end this on a McQueen note. The actor may not be selling me on the anger, but McQueen is boss. He's getting yelled at for his own history of insubordination with the possibility of getting court martialed on the spot and he responds with, "with my war record, I should've been made a goddamn general." Ok, maybe he didn't say GD, but it felt like he should of. I imagine he would have if this show had been written for TV just a decade later. Same reason R. Lee Ermey was a little castrated in his performance as opposed to Full Metal Jacket.

Exosquad Rocks

2010-05-04T13:42:00.001-04:00

Ok, I'll jump into this shit. Space: Above and Beyond reminds me of another show from about the same time with a similar setting. I of course mean the excellent Exosquad, which has super badass when I was in third grade. It, uh, had not aged as well as some shows, but I remember it being good so I'm diving in, damn it. Plus, it's all up on Hulu now.

The show follows Able Squad, the foremost mecha team in the human fleet. It suffers from a typical problem in that these guys get sent on every mission, even ones that are better suited to ground troops. Maybe someone in command really hates Able Squad. Anyway, the squad has eight members. J.T. Marsh is the leader, he's pretty boring. Torres, DeLeon, and Weston are regular pilots. Bronsky is the easiest to remember, because he's a fat alcoholic who is bad at his job. I don't know why the fuck he's still in the squad, but he's comedy relief. They've got a pair of rookies, Takagi and Burns. They also have Marsala, a Neosapien, who says things like, "This story is what you humans call a joke?" and, "Beep boop I'm a robot."

That brings up the major plot point of the series. At some point in the past, humans genetically engineered a new slave species to terraform Venus and Mars. While personally I think a race of giant, super strong, super intelligent, sentient beings makes a poor slave race, clearly it's because I've seen shit like Exosquad. When these vastly superior beings rebelled fifty years before the start of the show, their only disadvantage was that they had mining picks and shit while the humans had missiles and spaceships. The humans brutally put down their rebellion and returned them to crushing slavery. Over the next half-century one of the leaders of the rebellion became governer of Mars, and thus was put in charge of the gigantic manufacturing capability of the planet. So to be clear, after putting down a slave revolt only because they had superior technology, the humans then put the slaves in charge of that technology.

In a shocking twist that an eight-year-old me described as "fucking obvious," the Neosapiens rebelled again. The show starts right before that.

Space: Above & Beyond - Pilot

2010-05-04T10:43:00.001-04:00

"In space no one can hear you scream! Unless it is the battle cry of the United States Marine Corps!"

I want to imagine R. Lee Ermey is some sort of immortal sustained by the U.S. Marine Corps like a mad super science project. This was not speculative fiction, because one hundred years from now R. Lee Ermey will still be alive and kicking and shouting into the terrified faces of new recruits to the Marine Corps!

The first episode, this pilot, is a good hour and a half long so I've got plenty to talk about.

For an opening episode, especially one that determines the life or death of a new series, this was great. A great deal happened to really set the stage for a whole series and we get very formal introductions to each of our main characters. The flow was decently steady, surprisingly so for an episode that had so much it needed to establish, and the story telling was really top notch, especially for when this show originally aired in 1995, which was about half way through Babylon 5's run. It relied very well on the "show, don't tell" aspect of good story telling, and this episode showed us alot.

So what we've got seems to be a pretty standard near-future science fiction setting. We've left our solar system, began terraforming mars, and have discovered wormhole technology and just begun settling the reaches of space. We apparently had some war with an AI army, I assume of our own creation, but other than it being a polarizing, traumatic event of our history its not mentioned much here. And then we also have artificially created humans, the "tanks". Why we needed to start making humans this way I'm not sure, it's also left up in the air for now. What we do have is what seems to be our last form of racism with some less subtle but still fairly small undertones about Tank equality and general resentment against them for refusing to fight in the AI war. Were they an artificial army we tried to create to fight the robits? Did we have some mass extinction event and needed to create a slave caste that wasn't robit? I'm hopeful I'll get more answers as the series progresses.

So we got introduced to all our main characters. West seems to be a pretty relate-able guy and a fair focus of much of our story. He was originally going to be one the new colonists sent out to the edges of space before Tank affirmative action forced him and his lover to have to choose one of them to stay behind and get replaced. At the moment they both firmly believed in supporting Tank rights, and I'm not entirely sure how West feels about it now. His only recourse from getting booted off was to join the Marine Corps and hope to be stationed on the colony with his love. Guess people have all kinds of reasons for enlisting. But things got real personal when the aliens showed up from nowhere and destroyed the colony and the love of his life. Now we have a good inventive to see West lose it and carry personal hatred for the enemy of the series!

We also met Hawkes, our token Tank. It's a little ham fisted to start off his story with him about to get lynched by a mob of street punks and then subsequently arrested for hunting down the guy who tried to kill him. He's clearly our bad boy outcast whose fed up with the world and society and doesn't quite socially fit in anyways. Like I said, they were a little ham fisted with him in this episode but it was pretty important to establish just where he's coming from. He's insubordinate, uncaring, and until an in-utero (a normal bred human, I haven't heard them use the term yet) gave him a hand. I mean, literally in a figurative sense, offered him a hand to stand up. That seemed to soften him up alot, especially when that same guy got shot just ten minutes later. Hawkes seems like he'll become a likable character but for now he was really a little too whiny for his own good. It's understandable of course, but it was starting to get too constant and too annoying. Fortunately the writers seemed to know just when to pull back on it so it never became a real issue.

And we meet Shane Vansen, our good natured marine with a scarred past. Like the previous too we meet her before her enlistment as she relives the tragic events of watching her own parents get murdered by AI troops while keeping her sister quiet in hiding. I was pleasantly surprised to find that even though this event is important to who she is, it is not defining of her character, although I find myself with surprisingly little to say about her. I believe the actress wasn't fully warmed into her role yet, but the same can really be said for just about everyone else besides R. Lee Ermey.

We also have a few other characters who seem to be central, but didn't really get as formal an introduction or play quite as big a role as the big three I just named. Wong is the man you saw getting yelled at in the clip I linked to, and other than having a mild phobia of people yelling at him, he didn't rally do much this episode to set himself apart. Neither did the other two marines worth our attention, although Vanessa's desire to be one of the Angry Angels, an elite squad in our military, gave some character insight. Unless that was actually Vansen. I honestly can't remember yet who that was.

So we get our introductions out of the way and we get everyone into the marine corps, where this show wins like five stars for getting R. Lee Ermey to be their drill instructor. I think if I ever find myself in any armed service by whatever luck, I will honestly be disappointed in the man who chooses to make my life hell for not being R. Lee Ermey. Also apparently in the future marines are actually fighter pilots. Or something. A marine of the future seems to do just about goddamn anything. I wouldn't be surprised to find the fricken mechanics and capital ship crewman are all also considered marines. Whatever, future military in space. But there is alot about the world I don't quite follow. Every one we follow is in the U.S. Marine Corps, so Earth doesn't seem to be quite unified, at least militarily. I can buy into that pretty easily, it makes more sense to me, but I don't quite understand how space colonization works then, or how we were able to respond an alien threat in a unified manner, unless everyone out there was purely from the U.S. space military (whatever they choose to call it). It's a little ambiguous, but it was just a pilot.

The whole training mission running into an enemy scout was a little convenient for my taste, but it served its purpose well enough of introducing us to the face of the enemy. Well, their big helmets, gills, and green blood anyways. I also liked how stupid these damn marines were to think without a second the water might be toxic to a completely alien life form of which they knew nothing. They just gave it water and of course the water kills it. I guess it was asking for it? But still, it didn't seem to even occur to them.

One thing I'm really impressed with is how well I think the CG had aged. It's clearly old school low poly count, but compared to how well B5's CG has aged? There's something about it that I think is catching.

I'm assuming the grizzled awesome old man who was put in charge of their squad at the end of the pilot is also a tank by the way he interacts with Hawkes, but he seems to get respect from people. He was kept kind of mysterious for the small role he's played but instantly he seems likable. The storytelling did a good job of making him seem like a wise father figure or a grizzled war veteran with a heart of gold. You could tell almost on sight, but his subsequent actions were great for reinforcing that, such as his dialogue with Hawkes when Hawkes is refusing to fight and die for them(the in-uteros) and he replies calmly and accusingly, "what would you die for?". Or when he throws the table out of the way during their mission briefing to make it personal, or when he first informs them he's going to be their CO and begins with a threat about how they better damn well follow orders better under him.

Which brings me to my next point: what the hell R. Lee Emery? Was it an off session for you? Because these maggots are in-sub-ord-in-ate! My god do they seem to throw protocol and orders out the window every chance they get! They have more discipline than anyone in Star Fleet or aboard the old school Battle Star Galactica for sure, but as far as military fiction goes there were moments I just wasn't feeling it when these guys take off on their own and come out ok because they saved the day. Maybe now that they have Mr. Tank Hardass for their CO I'll see some more discipline getting whipped around. Hmm, Freud would have loved that sentence...

There's probably more to say for this episode, but I think I've said all I can and be somewhat useful for now. The next reviews should be shorter, but these are hour long episodes now I believe, so we'll see. In the end though, I'm really looking forward to where this series takes us. This episode clearly felt like it was establishing its base and groundings, which means it has a solid place to launch from into whatever it decides from here.

Space: Above and Beyond

2010-04-30T19:46:00.001-04:00

Curve ball! I think the next series I will be reviewing is a cult classic back from the mid 90's. Space: Above and Beyond was on during a tumultuous time in my TV viewing life, and I have very little memory of what small portion of it I was able to catch in its brief run time. S: A&B might be one of the earlier examples of a good series canceled by FOX in its prime, just as its fan base started to grow. I personally learned much more about it only recently than I had ever had the opportunity to see when it originally aired. I saw this series up for sale for only $15 at Best Buy and decided to pick it up.

I figured, what the hell, I'll give it a shot for $15 and I'll post my impressions here as I go along in the series. Now I actually don't know a whole lot about the show. I know it's a science fiction military drama and that an AI rebellion is at least loosely involved. Other than that, I really don't remember enough or have read enough to know just what I'm getting into. As with Mezzo: DSA, I'm going into this series as relatively blank as possible and will make of it however it stands on its own. I do remember kind of childishly linking it to Exo-Squad in my head, but why and if that was justified I really cannot answer today.

That said, I am aware that a lot of credit is given to S: A&B for bringing the sci-fi military drama to is modern day level. It seems as if modern series such as the new Battlestar Galactica really owe its existence to S: A&B pioneering the field in television, despite it being canceled before the end of its first season.

So join me as I explore this series and find out for myself the credits and foibles of Space: Above and Beyond.

DC continues to produce cartoon movies

2010-04-28T10:02:00.003-04:00

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&from=sp&fg=shareEmbed&vid=c9358acd-5576-4f1f-9034-f061a3294951" target="_new" title="Exclusive: 'Batman: Under the Red Hood' trailer">Video: Exclusive: 'Batman: Under the Red Hood' trailer</a>

About 3 years ago all I ever wanted from DC was page to stage animated movies. It was my dream to see my favorite comics brought to life without the disadvantages of using live actors or having to put up with mass market changes. I wanted stuff drawn, animated and acted for hardcore comic fans.

What I got has been a mixed bag.

Movie List

Superman: Doomsday - Sad stuff. For whatever reason DC felt compelled to force over a thousand pages of comics into a 90 minute film. It was rushed and felt empty. The cast was disappointing as well.
Justice League: The New Frontier - Fantastic. They worked hand in hand with the original creator to make a film that was better paced than the comic. Just about everything worked in this movie.
Batman: Gotham Knight - The Animatrix can go hell. American writers and Japanese directors. This lead to interesting art that didn't match its story. Waste of time.
Wonder Woman - Never saw. I hate origin stories.
Green Lantern: First Flight - See above.
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies - Rented this the week I got married. It was mostly action and felt completely soulless. It had the voice actors I wanted, but it lacked any sense of history. This makes me want to blog about the old DCU cartoons.
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths - Need to see this film. JLA: Earth 2 is my favorite comic book and seeing an animated version would be a dream come true. Unfortunately, the trailer made it look like they changed a lot from the Grant Morrison classic.

And now they are giving the business to one of the first Batman graphic novels I bought after I really started to get into comics. I think it is a funny choice because the DCAU has done a great job of making Robin one of the most confusing characters to ever grace the screen

In comics there have been 5 Robins.

Richard Grayson - The first guy. Circus. Dead parents. Tons of girl friends. Was Nightwing. Current Batman.
Jason Todd - Replacement. Hated. Murdered by fans and brought back to life by old men. Really good in a recent Grant Morrison comic.
Tim Drake - An interesting character 20 years ago. Now he is a carbon copy of Grayson. Currently running around as Red Robin. Was adopted by Bruce Wayne after his parents were murdered. Sigh.
Stephanie Brown - Drake's girlfriend. She became Robin after Tim quit. She was brutally murdered, but got better. She is the current Batgirl.
Damian Wayne - Bruce's son. Also the child of Talia al Ghul. Evil, arrogant and brutal. Trying to live in his dead father's shadow.

The animated series has had two robins:

Richard Grayson - Same deal. A little older when his parents died.
Tim Drake - Tim's name, Jason's story. Also had a bad run in with the Joker.

There is a chance that this could be the first time that we will see Robins 1-3 in animated form. That has me excited to the point of letting my guard down. I hope that this puppy is R rated or something fun like that. The original story dealt with drug dealers and machine guns. It will be great to see this snapshot of the Batman universe from when I was still hopeful for comics.

The Spectacular Spider-Man: Episode 10

2010-04-21T13:07:00.001-04:00

Wikipedia: "Spider-Man gains a black costume, courtesy of the alien life form, during an encounter with the Black Cat. Meanwhile, a master of disguise, the Chameleon, starts framing Spidey for various robberies, using inventions and effects provided by Quentin Beck and Phineas Mason. Spider-Man is left with no option but to team up with Black Cat to stop his new enemy's crime spree."

If you have ever wanted to see me roll around on the ground screaming like Golem you should check out this review. Let's just say the episode 10 was a mixed bag for me.

First the Hate:
I am sick of black suit Spider-Man. Sure the Black Cat makes this episode more interesting, but the rest of it feels like I have fallen ass backwards into 1995. Peter gets the suit, he figures out it alive and someone else runs around dressed in his original costume. Bah! If you need me I will be watching the old show where Greg Brady was Peter Parker.

The worst part is that there is another Spider-Man cartoon coming down the pipe that is going to do all this crap all over again. I have been loving this show for 9 episodes and now I feel completely soul dead broken. Things just feel like a rehash and a waste of time.

Hopefully, this Venom crap will be over soon and we can get some interesting stuff back in the show.

Now the Love:
The Black Cat fight was the highlight of the episode. It had great banter and some fantastic by wire action. It looks like Cat will be the thing that really shakes up Peter's life. I wonder how this Liz, Gwen, MJ and Black Cat life will be treating Peter in the episodes to come?

The Rest:
I hope that this means that we will start to see some team ups in the future. Spider-Man is fine on his own, but always seems to really shine when he teams up with another character. Maybe we could get some Human Torch or Daredevil action.

They finally said that the police chief was Gwen's father. I wonder if they will be able to get away with killing this guy? I wonder who will kill this guy? Maybe Venom?

We also have the last straw for the Eddie and Peter's mostly forgotten friendship. This would have worked a little better if Eddie hadn't been brushed under the rug for most of the season. I think he has only showed up to look mad at Peter ever since episode 4.

Overall, this was a pretty good episode that only held my attention when Black Cat was on screen. I can only hope that the Chameleon is going away for a few episodes.

I do have a few questions for the future.
  - Where are the villains going to come from without Osborn?
  - Where is the Big Man? Did the Goblin force him into hiding?
  - Will there be clones?

Mezzo: DSA Final Impressions

2010-04-20T18:49:00.002-04:00

Alright, I apologize for the delay. I had every intention of writing this sooner, but you know how that goes. Now that I've finished watching all 13 episodes of Mezzo: DSA, I figure I'll give some brief, final sum up thoughts on the experience along with my overall impression.
Honestly, Mezzo wasn't quite as bad as I made it out to be. It is just as uninteresting as I had made it out to be. "Underwhelming" I think is the dominant word when it comes to this series. It seems like either needed to try a whole lot harder or be alot dumber.

I understand that good television if often formulaic as a practice, and I'm ok with that. I'm not asking that Mezzo take any risks, but what I ended up getting just felt so devoid of any real emotion or creative drive. I joked alot about seeing the plots of each episodes in other anime, but this is a brutish way of describing what I feel is the real problem with Mezzo. Me joking that it's stealing direct plots is just a symptom, and not entirely accurate. No, the real issue I feel is that at its heart it seems to just try to be an imitation anime. If you've seen enough anime, you've already seen Mezzo, and Mezzo doesn't really even put its own spin, character, or flavor on the tropes it seems to knowingly use.

Mezzo: DSA is a highly episodic series, meaning you could pretty much watch any episode in the brief 13 episode series without having seen any of the others and not be lost. This is a good thing, however, good episodic series of this nature do more than just restore status quo at the end of each episode. Usually the status quo is at least challenged in a handful of the episodes. I just never felt, even in passing, that this was going to be the case in any episode.

My greatest hope was to see Asami grow into a new person. There was a really great episode to set this up, but until the last two episodes there was no follow up on this. A very large chunk of screen time was occupied with Asami, a considerable amount for how little change she actually makes. It was satisfying to see her finally stand up to her bullies at the very end, and hell, she even helped the DSA alot and took out the Black Scissors weirdo by herself to rescue Mikura. It shows her progression in action. It was enjoyable, but it still felt a little underwhelming, as if for the amount of time dwelling on how much she wanted to be like Mikura across the whole series she should have made progressed even further by that point. She should have slowly made that change over the process of each episode, but instead she only suddenly follows through in the last two, meaning she hasn't had time to evolve into a little Mikura-like terror, which I think was the real calling she had in this story.

Back on my point about being an imitation anime; it's hard for me to describe this. The particular formula that the show used leading into its end episode reflection seems to be the best way to explain it. It isn't the formula so much as its ineffectual use that gets me. The emotional intake you're supposed to get always, always fell through because it seemed as if the plot was just a mechanical product of "well, this should get the tears flowing/minds pondering/spines tingling. Says so in the manual". It felt like there was an anime manual, just anime mind you, not even necessarily any other medium, as to how to achieve the desired affect and Mezzo went about fulfilling it like a heartless robot. So, you see it's not so much that it's formulaic as it is the force behind applying that formula that really seems to falter.

If you can numb yourself a bit, Mezzo's not too bad a way to kill some time. None of its faults are terribly egregious, it's really just that there's so little to feel worth praising. The first episode, and the scenes we've seen from the OVA in the series, seem to indicate a heavy crutch on great action sequences early on, but all the action sequences since the first episode felt stilted, slow, or just not as fun to watch. It seemed like early on that was going to be a real strength of the series, and Mikura's little girl shoot first ask questions later attitude is set up perfectly for this type of style. It seems a shame that Mezzo just couldn't deliver on this.

I think Magus should watch...

2010-04-20T14:41:00.003-04:00

So it appears that young Magus has finished his first quest back into the world of anime. I will admit that I am a little slow to the table at getting this list out, but I have been busy and sick. Hopefully, Magus is still looking for some input.

Here are my top 5 choices of what he should watch next!

1. Buso Renkin
This the second series of the dude that made Kenshin. I tried to read the manga, but was never able to see past the fact that it wasn't Kenshin. Does Magus have the will power to not hate this show because it isn't an anime about teenage Yahiko?

2. Darker Than Black
I know nothing about this anime. The only research I did was to read its amazing name and wish I had the time to watch it. Does Magus have the fish gills to tell me what is darker than black?

3. Now and Then, Here and There
This series was suggest to Pollo by amazon.com because it had incest and rape. I am not joking. I also not willing to find out if it was telling the truth. Will Magus look where I dare not!

4. Inuyasha - The Final Act
I am willing to bet that this is a lie. Will Magus find out the truth?

5. Black Cat
Brendan and I really liked this manga. It was cool and I imagine the anime is pretty good as well. The only problem is that it is only 26 episodes while the manga is almost the size of DBZ. I wonder if all the fun was cut out or if this series makes any sense in its cut down form. Will Magus figure this one out?

Mezzo: DSA Episode 13

2010-04-18T10:42:00.002-04:00

Episode 13: Shell of Destruction

From Anime Network: There are warrants out for the arrest of the DSA.

Well, that's the end of Mezzo: DSA. As anti-climatic as expected, but still pretty action packed as far as the series go.

It's just...weak. I don't know how to describe the sense of suspension or action they try to create throughout this entire series besides weak. Harada took a knife to the chest last episode, and was collapsed in an elevator bleeding to death. Maybe we were supposed to think he was going to die? Awesomey definitely did. But there's just no strength to it. No fear, no attachment, not the slightest apprehension. But it's not just Harada.

Running joke assassin might be dead? I was half right and half wrong. He survived his fall, sure, but not to become actually relevant or important like I had hoped. In retrospect, I don't know why I had such a lofty (read; normal) expectation for him. He lives long enough to give Mikura his name and take another bullet without ever, ever, actually being a real character. He has literally been in the season almost as much as the DSA agents, and he's had about as much impact as the fat cat that appeared out of nowhere. So, maybe farewell, because they left what happened to him completely unaddressed. They cut away after he took the last bullet, and Mikura justifies helping him, and then nothing. What the hell kind of a loose end is that? Whatever, it's not wholly unexpected anymore.

So we also had two assassins put on the job by our corrupt police chief. Well, two crooked detectives. If running joke assassin didn't get a spotlight, how much hope do you really give these guys? You'd probably guess right. They also have horrible voices. It's kind of out of place since I think the DSA themselves, and most of the anime for that matter, has done a very good job adhering to modern standards in anime dubs, but these guys' voices stepped right out of 1980. It's good that they don't talk much...or matter much. One of the gives us a our climatic final battle on a ferris wheel. Our standards at this point are pretty low, but it almost had one moment where I would hold my breath. That's something?

This episode did do a decent job of the finale's normal goal of turning everything topsy turvy. The DSA are being hunted by the police, forced to blow up their own headquarters and subsequently the barbershop they live on, Awesomey has to flee for her life, and Harada is...gently delivered from his life threatening injury to being perfectly ok recovering with a bandage. Sigh.

Eventually we see vengeance take its course, which was mildly satisfying. Crossing someone who apparently has career ending blackmail over your head is a bad idea. Kurokawa ends up completely revealing the police chief's affair with that bratty, maybe underage girl in a very public and humiliating manner. That was good, but really, if that's all he had over the police chief, how did we get to this point? It seems like something should've given sooner, and the finale being about him feeling up the girl is just underwhelming. I'm using that word alot.

Seeing the police chief get beat up by a crowd because of this exposure was pretty comical too. The line was almost spot on "Hey! It's the old man. He's a pervert, let's kill him!". It was kind of satisfying to see Black Scissors weirdo end up killing him though. That man's all professional. He even let the DSA move back into his dilapidated roof! What a nice weirdo. Oh, and I can't forget that we finally saw Awesomey kick those bullies' butts. She actually showed alot of restraint. I wonder if elementary school brats like that can get guns. Oh well, Awesomey can handle them now. Yay!

I have no idea what the hell the very ending of this was. Did the manga go further? There was a brief flash of what looked like a villain from Trigun or something similar, not something that belonged in Mezzo. Was it from the OVA? Whatevr the hell it was, there was a hundred loose ends and Mikura just laughs it off like she's going to shoot the whole damn world. I might actually watch a sequel if she did.

Alright, coming up will be my end of series review to finally capsize..err, cap my whole Mezzo: DSA experience. I'll be getting it up soon!

Mezzo: DSA Episode 12

2010-04-18T10:33:00.002-04:00

Episode 12: Shell of Origin

From Anime Network: Asami is learning how to fight under Mikuras direction. Mikura is concerned with Kazuto wanting to kill Kurokawa. Mikura decides to stay close to him so she prentends to act as his bodyguard and he is attacked while eating at a noodle shop. Deciding it is too dangerous for Kurokawa to go out on his own, Mikura makes him stay home and she ends up doing some shopping for him. While shopping, Mikura is kidnapped by the Black Scissors to prevent her from getting in Kazutos way. After noticing her disappearance, Kurokawa, Harada, and Asami launch an investigation to find Mikura. Having some idea of who the culprit is, Kurokawa and Harada set up a trap. Asami, on her own, finds Mikura. Kazuto falls into a trap but turns the tables on Kurokawa. When all seems lost, Mikura comes to Kurokawas rescue in the nick of time. However, while all this was going on, the police put in an all points bulletin for the arrest of the DSA.

Huh. Anime Network stopped pulling any punches with these synopses. Well, stuff finally happens.

It's the last two episodes of the season, so as is expected, it's a two parter finale in a climactic climax! Well, relative to Mezzo it's a climactic climax anyways. Bishy running joke assassin actually makes an attempt, Awesomey finally shows solid character progression, and things actually change when the police chief declares the DSA a criminal organization at the very end of the episode. This is the kind of stuff that should have been happening all season long to create drama, but I'll take where I get it.

They've been hinting for a long time that bishy running joke assassin is off put by Mikura for some reason. There was a really weird looking character that was man but was voiced by that VA that usually does the old raspy woman's voice, who suggested he fell in love with Mikura. God I hope not, there will literally be no attachment to his emotions, no force whatsoever. I'm hoping its something more like a long lost brother or something, but that doesn't seem to make much sense.

We also got his back story, which was about as deep and invoking as any single one shot character throughout this series, which is to say its not. looks like he killed his father to avenge his mother as a kid and got picked up by the Black Scissors, but after all this time and as clumsily and heavy handedly as it was handled I just really don't care. There's just not much sympathy lost for him. It's not like I hate him, that would be an improvement. No, I don't really feel anything for him outside of his role as a joke assassin, which he no longer is. I was a little shocked when he just outright killed the aforementioned creepy man without so much as looking at them just for suggesting he was in love with Mikura. That was pretty cold for a man who hasn't killed in a whole season, and for a character who had been highlighted to be above average goon level just a few minutes prior.

Awesomey took the entire season being the same exact character, just wishing to herself the whole time to become like Mikura. Well, that's unfair. She has very, very slowly been making an actual change in character, it just took till now to see the real, physical change finally take root in her character, but compared to everyone else in the series her change has been very well done. The particular episode with the VR tank did a great job setting us up for this episode, where Awesomey is finally actually training and even goes out of her way, taking initiative, to rescue Mikura! Sure the rescue attempt was meek and she doesn't have Mikura's ninja moves yet, but damnit, it was heartfelt! I don't even care if it's unexplained, if she has Mikura ninja moves next episode I'll be verbally cheering at my monitor.

Oh wow, what a surprise! The police chief was the villain, and he hired the assassin to kill Kurokawa! This could not have been foreseen and is an amazing turn of events! That level of sarcasm was almost painful. Ok, so maybe it wasn't supposed to be a big secret, and the plot is supposed to be uninterestingly straight forward. But the man's been made out to be a pedophile sleezebag and is sleeping with his daughter's friend. The flashback o their past two years ago seemed kind of unnecessary, and it's stuff like that that really makes me question the direction and focus they have when they write these episodes.

Anyway, we get mostly a shootout between running joke assassin and the DSA, and I'll be honest, I think I gave the show too much credit in believing Kurokawa might actually die within these last two episodes. I'm also not sold that bishy running joke assassin died at the end of the episode either. I mean, we have precedent of characters with just as much presentation and investment as him getting killed off; not a big deal. But come on, they spent the entire season with him, and he still hasn't had any really interesting scenes! No dialogue, no real progression, just a bare bones origin. I don't even think this series would leave him dead that easily.

So the police chief got impatient and just cracked down on the DSA. This finally creates some real conflict in this series, and for the first time in the whole season the DSA seems like they actually need my concern. It kind of makes me wonder why the police chief decided to do this now, it seems like Kurokawa's had something over his head this whole time, but whatever that is we don't know. I assume it was more than just his sex life. Oh well. Next episode is the finale! I'm looking forward to maybe, just maybe, seeing action, climax, and closure?

Kurokawa Quote of the Episode! "When you're a bodyguard you have to stay tight onto someone, like the waistband of tighty whiteys. Mikura got loose and now there's nothing covering my ass!"

The Spectacular Spider-Man: Episode 9

2010-04-16T12:09:00.005-04:00

Wikipedia "While Colonel John Jameson struggles to land his damaged space shuttle, Spider-Man struggles to defeat the Green Goblin, who also threatens Hammerhead and Tombstone. But Peter Parker's biggest challenge will be facing the truth when he finally learns the Goblin's "true" identity, all on Halloween!"

Allow me to have a few moments to geek out. Tombstone is awesome, this is the best Green Goblin and I am starting to like Gwen more than MJ. What kind of crazy messed up world have a fallen into.

Let's get to it.

I don't like JJ's son. John comes off as a mix of Buzz Lightyear and Colonel Bud Manstrong. He is a little too perfect. I am looking forward to the day that he becomes a werewolf and is only able to grunt. His plot was also pretty boring, but even the episode pokes fun at that as well. I wonder if there has ever been a likable version of this character?

We had some great action this time around. The 3 way fight between Tombstone, Spider-Man and the Goblin was a lot of fun to watch.Tombstone brought a level of charm to slow moving and powerful that the Rhino seemed to lack. I can only hope that we get a real fight out of Tombstone before this show is brought to a close.

Now that I think about it, Spectacular Spider-Man has improved just about every Spider-Man villain that has appeared. The Shocker was given a better background, Tombstone has become the Kingpin and Doc Oct is actually fun to watch. I can't wait to see what the creators have in mind for Venom/Eddie Brock.

Judging from the Green Goblin we have a lot to look forward to. This is hands down the best Green Goblin I have ever seen. His story is better, his fighting style is fun to watch and he is able to match Spider-Man in one liners. Hell, he even broke the 4th wall while he was messing around with Spider-Man. At the end of the day it is a bummer to see him go, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

If you are a Spider-Man fan you need to watch the Goblin arc.

Sheepishly, I have to admit that I never realized that Harry was great at football because of drugs. I thought he just had a hidden talent or something. However, why would they keep making a drug that keeps getting stolen? Harry drank like 15 serving of that crap in this episode alone. Why not halt production for a week or spike the latest batch to put an end to your Goblin troubles?

I also wish we could have had a real Hammerhead fight. I have a feeling that he would be fun to watch. Unfortunately, brains and gas beat mobsters.

It also looks like we will get some black suit action next time. I wonder if the show will toss a curve ball and make JJ's son the first Venom?

Quick Hits
- I am willing to bet that was the real Black Cat.
- Rand is an interesting character.
- Peter is a ladies man. Also Liz wants to jump is bones.
- Peter finally pulled a batman. Just walk when no one is looking dude!
-MJ is a total free agent. Flash totally got kicked in the mud.

-I like Gwen more and more. The Look.

Spike Alert: News Dude.

Mezzo: DSA Episode 11

2010-04-16T12:05:00.009-04:00

Episode 11: Shell of Illusion

From Anime Network: Someone known as Phantom is murdering various men in influential positions. The leader of the Higuregumi, which is a group of Japanese gangsters, is also a target. The Higuregumi hires the DSA to act as a decoy to get Phantoms attention. Kurokawa disguises himself as the Higuregumi boss but the real boss is murdered anyway or so everyone thinks.

I'm being unfair, but this episode's opening was Serial Project Lain and the plot was another Ghost in the Shell.

I don't get it. There's only two episodes left to this season. Running joke assassin is apparently actually very competent. So why have we gone 11 episodes with only one former actualized attempt on Kurkokawa's life, and the rest all meekly abandoned? He finally became actually involved in the episodic plot in this episode as a red herring to the Phantom assassin, but the man infiltrated his way past security and had a garrote on Kurokawa's neck. Which makes me think maybe I need to apologize for criticizing Kurokawa's anti-hanging training. But he was right there this time before getting scared off prematurely. But he then immediately kicked Mikura's ass, and I'll never understand why facial recognition is apparently a fatal flaw in anime. Every time a character is in a fight and suddenly recognizes who they're fighting, they lose. I guess they need to perfect forgetting faces and voices or putting bags on their enemy's head.

What's more is, understandably, the Black Scissors finally decided to execute their assassin for taking a whole season of the series to kill a pretty defenseless old man. And then running joke assassin kicks their asses in a heartbeat. He is clearly very good. Why is he running joke assassin for any reason other than a very bad plot convenience?

They have a penchant for making really, really ugly people in this anime. Inhumanly ugly, not just normal ugly. The chief of police has catfish whiskers, the Black Scissors weirdo has the creepiest skin tone and blood shot eyes, and the boss of this Japanese gang is a one eyed green toad monster. I had expected the weird discoloration of the Black Scissors weirdo was due to some sort of drug use that was referenced in the OVA maybe? Because it looked like someone who was killed in that OVA had the same thing. The rest are just abominations it seems.

One thing I notice as I write these reviews is that I don't address the episodic plot as much as the continuation. This is a product of the show itself, I believe, where the episodic plot honestly feels like it really is just the background. They've really been kind of empty with only a few moments here or there worth mentioning, I've noticed. But the real problem with this is that what does continue between the episodes and build up with each one is also pretty repetitive and honestly stuck in a rut. It's all been pretty much me hoping to find out their all robots, still wishing Awesomey would finally be awesome, and running joke assassin failing again and his origin being ever so slightly illuminated. If the next two episodes are the climatic, non-episodic clash most seasons usually have, it will be pretty much on their own with no real dramatic build up to the climax.

Mezzo: DSA Episode 10

2010-04-16T08:20:00.007-04:00

Episode 10: Shell of Cursed

From Anime Network: The DSA is hired by a country to transport its mummy while it is in Japan. There are various curses associated with the mummy and those in the courier business are afraid to take the job. There has been various mishaps which have been attributed to the mummys curse, the DSA is eventually stopped by a group of armed men who want to steal the jewels attached to the mummy. Mikura turns the tables on these armed men and discovers the truth behind the curse.

Now all we need is a vampire or wolfman and we've gone full on Abbott & Costello! I'm pretty sure I've just surrendered to this anime at this point. The mummy ride wasn't too bad.

It's not really a mystery, you can pretty much guess the events right off the bat. Of course the curse is just a group of criminals trying to steal the mummy. We get some half decent car chase shoot outs from it. Although at this point we have multiple ghosts, aliens, virtual reality dream tanks, kill-bot love-bots, so again, why a mummy's curse couldn't be real is a little strange. Actually, I think this is another great opportunity for a Kurokawa Quote Moment! "But for your information we no longer takes jobs involving ghosts, aliens, or sex-starved robot wives!". Also got a great quote from Mikura. "Besides, last time we worked as couriers we almost started a plague, remember?" I think that's encapsulates this series pretty well.

But oh wait, the curse of the mummy was real! It was a reverse curse! You read that right, a reverse curse. The mummy protected them with good luck. They did a reverse curse mummy. That's actually pretty fun to say.

The highlights of this episode was pretty much Mikura getting pissed off at an old mummy and giving it a "talking to", much to the paranoid and superstitious Kurokawa's horror. And...that's about it. It's beginning to feel like each progressive episode has less and less content. I don't know how 25 minutes can continue to feel repeatedly like 10 minutes, and not in a good way.

Ok, so we're down to only 3 episodes left in this season. This has been the second episode in a row where people have told running joke assassin he needs to actually do something and not just be a hardly noticed stalker. This also seems to line up pretty well with the police chief's anger at Kurokawa, so let me go out on a limb and suggest that he's hired the Black Scissors for this. At this point I don't know if these things are even supposed to be "oh my god!" reveals or just as completely telegraphed as they are. Well, I'm still sticking to my Mikura-bot, Awesomey-bot, and Harada-bot story, so maybe I am just wrong. Three more episodes to find out!

The Spectacular Spider-Man: Episode 8

2010-04-15T11:41:00.001-04:00

Wikipedia "Peter Parker and Spider-Man learn that actions have consequences when nebbishy Dr. Otto Octavius becomes the megalomaniacal Doctor Octopus. The cause: Green Goblin; the effect: Mayhem!"

Note: This is show is canceled and dead, I no longer feel guilty about posting episodes from YouTube. I have to imagine that the change over from Sony to Disney is only going to make getting DVDs of this show a nightmare.

Dude! Doc Oct is X the Eliminator from Bird Man. I thought his voice sounded familiar, but I never would have guessed that it was my favorite fat sucky villain voicing my least favorite Spider-Man villain. Turns out that guy has more acting chops than I thought.

On another VO note, Harry is starting to sound more like Tidus from FFX with every passing episode. I guess removing the meekness from his character is forcing the actor to use his speaking voice.

Great action in this episode. I think this is the first time that someone has treated Doc Oct as a fast character, but it makes sense because his robot arms should only be limited by their motors. It was great to see Oct beat the tar out of Spider-Man while completely losing in the battle of verbal wits that was also taking place. Again, having X as his voice really sealed the deal for me.

I am starting to wish Spider-Man would just beat the hell out of somebody. I know he is a smart hero, but his plan based fights are starting to bore me. Just hit someone until they stop moving, no more sweating them to death or trying to power them down.

Love triangle or square thing is surprising me. This Peter isn't hurting for the ladies. It seems like Gwen and Liz are into him, and I am starting to wonder when this will become an issue. MJ also turned out to be a completely different character than I expected. She just wants to have fun and seems to hook up with whoever she wants. I guess she is going to be around to cause trouble for whatever relationship that Peter does start.

Why did Peter forget his "I have to take picture of super villains for my job" excuse. His name is going to be under the photo anyway when this is all over, so why not take credit before the battle. This Peter doesn't seem like the sickly type and I am surprised he is fooling anyone.

We had more teases of a shuttle launch. Will Spider-Man have to use the black suit to defeat Green Goblin? Its extra powers could make Peter really hurt Harry and that would be a better reason for getting rid of the suit instead it feeling gross. Or I could be reading too much into teasers for the next arc.

Anyway, I am about ready for the Goblin to go down. I wonder who is next?

Great episode.

New Spike Alert: Play by play of the football game. He was talking in a high pitched voice, but is definitely him.

Mezzo: DSA Episode 9

2010-04-15T11:20:00.005-04:00

Episode 9: Shell of Dreams

From Anime Network: There is a rash of murders and the killer is leaving messages behind. All the victims received death threats before being murdered. One person who receives a threat comes to the DSA and hires Mikura to be his bodyguard. However, he seems to be much more interested in her as a woman than to have her around as a bodyguard. When she tries to end the contract and takes her eyes off from him, he is found dead. Mikura gets a few nasty surprises when she pursues the killer of her now former client.

I guess this was the Pierrot le Fou of Mezzo? It certainly started messed up enough, but I don't mean to imply that Mezzo's gotten anywhere near the quality of Cowboy Bebop.

I'm starting to think no one really hires the DSA. The only work they get is from people who want to kill them. It's another pretty transparent plot this episode with a bit of a creepy twist to it. The serial killer dresses up like a clown and apparently plays Saw with his victims before killing them. other than having a guillotine in his hallway, though, his actual actions are just, very briefly, implied, so there's no real shock value to him. Like most characters he's forgettable at best and his ultimate scheme was to get a noose around Mikura's neck. Which she falls for, which kind of tarnishes her badass reputation. I do find it amusing that Kurokawa has actually trained her to resist being hanged though. I know their work is dangerous, but that can not possibly be so common a scenario!

We get a little more insight into Kurokawa's relationship with the Chief of Police. Up until now all we knew was that the Chief seemed to hate Kurokawa's guts but was somehow still at his beck and call. His presence has been growing bigger over the last three episodes, so I'm guessing his role's probably going to be bigger soon too. But I thought running joke assassin was going to get bigger to before now, so...

Speaking of, we got another end of episode revelation. Apparently bishy running joke assassin works for the Black Scissors weirdo! Who, aside from his virtual reality self, we haven't seen in forever, and whose barbershop they live on the roof of. To paraphrase the one line he had, as the trope-ish unseen observer done all the time in anime, "well, you're finally going to do something soon." God, I hope so. Though I will kind of regret running joke assassin ruining his perfectly good name and actually doing something at this point.

Mezzo: DSA Episode 8

2010-04-15T09:07:00.004-04:00

Episode 8: Shell of Thoughts

From Anime Network: Asami wins a ticket to try out a new virtual reality dream machine. After some unflattering comments from Kurokawa, she puts the winning ticket down and excuses herself. Seeing the ticket, Mikura tries the machine for herself. Once she tries out the machine, instead of having dreams of happy thoughts, she is in placed one hideous situation after another. In addition, something goes wrong and she becomes unable to come out from the dream. The DSA and Asami look for Mikura and track her down to the lab where the machine is housed. After being briefed on Mikuras situation, Asami enters the dream world in an attempt to rescue Mikura.

Oh, Japan! You rascally rabbit, you! You know, I hunted down descriptions of the Mezzo Forte OVA that preceded all of this. And I know there was graphic sex in it, but it sounds like it wasn't actually a pornographic movie, it just had some sex in it amidst all the violence. The series has been relatively pretty clean actually, and then we get to this episode.

One more time: oh, Japan! It took us this long to get to tentacles? Tentacles very clearly molesting a bound Mikura in all the wrong(right?) places? If I wasn't conflicted enough about Mikura's age, its gets better. Awesomey, in CHAIN MAIL BIKINI (that's right, I broke capitalization for this!), showing up to join the tentacle love fest! Now Mikura may be confusing, but Awesomey is most definitely not!

I want to, I mean really want to, say this as a negative against this episode. I might be jaded pretty heavily, but this was hilarious. It wasn't taken all that seriously and it seemed to come so perfectly from nowhere, in sequence.

There's an old criticism against Star Trek ever since The Next Generation that pretty much any episode taking place in the holodeck is an admission that the actual setting is boring and they didn't want to write for it. Here, Mezzo decided to become some sort of ninja, ancient japan setting. This actually piqued my interest quite a bit. And we even saw the return of the completely forgettable running joke assassin we haven't seen for a few episodes as a rival ninja to Mikura! The physical setting and plot of this episode was pretty lame and forced. But the virtual reality, despite being somewhat disjointed, was kind of catchy.

Oh yeah, and hell to the yeah! The real thing to like about this episode is that Awesomey has finally earned the name I've kindly given her! This was a very Awesomey heavy episode, beginning, yet again, with her getting picked on by her asshole friends. Mikura gave her a pretty cold shoulder instead of helping, but we're very familiar by now with Mikura's tough love, you have to take care of yourself policy. But this episode finally saw Awesomey take some initiative and decide to just shoot a bastard, even if it was a virtual one. I have never been so happy to see a little girl corrupted so, but it was really easy to cheer for her here!

I don't know if Awesomey has really changed yet, but this episode did a pretty good job at setting up her breakthrough. Japan's chief export of tentacle rape aside, and also ignoring the entirely forced setup to get them in virtual reality and the stupid level of carryover to the real world (her handkerchief bandage carried over? Really? They were in tanks apart from each other!), this was a pretty strong episode. Although the chief of police's presence makes me think this is pretty clumsy foreshadowing to him becoming a villain. Still, this Awesomey emergence kind of feels like the precedence to a storm. I hope the next episodes see some real action!

Mezzo: DSA Episode 7

2010-04-15T08:08:00.007-04:00

Episode 7: Shell of Sorrow

From Anime Network: Mao and Kanako try to force Asami to go into a supposedly haunted house and take some pictures. Asami see an image of a girl there, then witnesses Mr. Ouya getting beaten up by a thug. The Ouyas want to clear the building. The thugs are refusing the leave unless they are paid a good sum of cash. Asami introduces the couple to the DSA and the members are hired to evict the thugs from the building.

The DSA has fought extraterrestrial space invaders who control the weather. They've been hired to do dangerous work, by a ghost. So why exactly is another ghost so unbelievable?

I actually liked most of this episode. This was the most Awesomey we've seen in awhile, and apparently she's still bullied by her real dick "friends" from school. For a moment I still thought they were harassing her to whore out again. Going into a haunted mansion was a very nice relief and more what I expect from them. Still, even as timid as Awesomey is, I can't imagine those two brats making it through this series without a bloody nose at some point. No one picks on Awesomey-bot! Well, not forever anyways. Right? I mean, character progression is the point of almost any story, so clearly that'll happen here? Right? ...Please?

I still think this series needs more shooty. It's drama just does not come across as very strong. I mean, the secret at the end of this episode is the kindly old couple killed their daughter and walled her corpse into their building and her dead spirit haunts it now. How is that not explosive to all kinds of drama? And don't get me wrong, when you find out the old couple who own the building were her parents, it was really creepy. But yet again, especially for what it was, it was kind of weak. Also, Awesomey now has a best ghost friend. It's the silence that makes the relationship work.

We did have a pretty good moment when Mikura came up with a "plan" to bug the apartment of the thugs. Dress up time! She decided going to an abandoned building to pose as a masseuse was, of course, a great plan! The part where I think this was really humorous was when the thugs responded exactly as one might expect, while we, the viewer had the knowledge the whole time of just how dangerous the poor bastards wanting to grope Mikura were playing it, not the other way around. This of course did eventually end with a man thrown into a wall, what I would think should be a dislocated jaw, and rampant machine gun fire. This was great.

Ok, so maybe Mikura's not a robot. Sad face. Either that or the giant thug who her kicks only tickled was a SUPER ROBOT! Yes, this is the only answer! Tune in next time as I continue to wade through the lies that are Mikura's humanity!

Mezzo: DSA Episode 6

2010-04-14T08:20:00.007-04:00

Episode 6: Shell of Memory

From Anime Network: Harada runs into an old girlfriend, Mano Asakura. Hes cold toward her and expresses how uncomfortable he is around her. Mikura and Kurokawa try to dig for clues about what happened between Harada and Mano.

EVERYONE IS A ROBOT! This anime is making me robot crazy. Mikura's a robot, Awesomey's a robot, Harada's probably a robot, the viewer's a robot!

This episode was pretty Ghost in the Shell-ish. In fact, if I went through archives of GitS episodes I might even find this one in there. It's a Harada heavy episode. I guess we got to explore Mikura's past in the last episode, so here we basically had a 20 minute long high school dating sim with Harada back in his younger years.

Surprisingly, I think this episode was better than their previous ones. Very little Mikura, and absolutely not a single a gunshot, but they finally spent some time and effort on their emotional presentation. Even though Harada basically strikes me as a stone golem of "huh?"'s and "wha?"'s, I actually felt a little for him at the end of this episode when we find out the woman he's been dating is really an android.

I had suspected pretty early on, but since I still suspect the main character is a robot without any real evidence, that really doesn't mean anything. Still, even if their romance was kind of cheap and corny, and like I said Harada's not exactly the most engaging character in dialogue, I still kind of wanted their relationship, the one that was in the past so we knew ahead of time it would fail, to work. I think that's pretty progressive for this series.

Ok, so now we know what Harada's robot obsession is. And perhaps its creepy that he still carries around his old girlfriend on a memory stick, and maybe he went a little Sephiroth on us when he found out the truth and destroyed millions of dollars of equipment and burned a lab down. I'm not sure what the "father" of the robot thought was going to happen when the boy his robot had been romancing was going to find out his emotions were being played by a robot. Smile and say "thanks! Mind if I take this empty body of hers home for some...hardware testing" ?

I think the real twist is that I was convinced the robot really did have emotions as a person. She ends up not doing as she was told and running her battery down while with Harada because she just wanted to spend more time with him. I like that, it's kind of touching. Speaking of touching, apparently poking is a sign of an android trying to be human. I'm onto you, Awesomey! Your memory jogging poke on Harada may have been supposed to be a red herring, but it won't deter me from your true, cold, machine nature!

And just as the episode ends we see Kurokawa, again when he was still a cop, get linked to Harada. I guess we now know how he met both of the other DSA agents. I wonder if the next episode is going to be Kurokawa's back story? I would kind of like to see that actually.

Kurokawa's not a very interesting character really. I think the VA has to scrunch some lines or something; the speed that he has to deliver a decent portion of them seems to screw him up emotionally sometimes. But that aside, he's actually had some good lines and is playing the part of the straight face, kindly father figure pretty well.

That said, I kind of wish I had started a feature a few episodes ago of posting my favorite Kurokawa quote for the episode. This episode's quote had just the right amount of wrong in it to make me laugh. (To Mikura on saying she might get a part time job): "Hey, don't take a job where balding middle-aged men stick dollar bills in your underwear, because I go there to get away!"

Worst Webcomic on the Internet

2010-04-13T13:46:00.005-04:00

No. Seriously. WTF?

Also, if this one stills comes out shitty, I'm holding it personally against blogger for not inviting me to the beta where I can do without their crappy current uploader. Grr. Just..click on it for the real image. Either that or tell Blogger to put me in their damn beta or frikkin upgrade already.