Hey, guess what? I still didn't get anything written! But, since I'm going to be completely out of contact from about twenty minutes from now until maybe ten o'clock at night, I need to post this now. So I am.

Incidentally, I did manage to get an editorial up over at Netjak, so I encourage you to read that.

Oh, incidentally. Reading through Death Note #3... L is either an absolute godlike genius, or completely batshit insane. Either way, the fact is undeniable that he's far more likable than straight-edge stick-in-the-mud ol' Light.

See you next week, folks.

Yeah. Completely blew this off due to Extreme Sloth. Maybe tomorrow.

You'd think I'd be more excited about this particular stretch of days preceding my non-Unbirthday, but alas it is not to be.

Just a little bit of chatter about Essay Week and its fallout. I had intended it to be a point where I could concentrate on the draft writing during the week instead of other stuff... so naturally, work collapses into a living nightmare for the entire week and I wind up almost completely losing my mind. So, yeah. No writing. I spent most of the week in heavy otaku-self-medication mode, reading stacks of manga and watching bits and pieces of several anime series. Related to this, I'm probably going to marathon-finish Kiddy Grade today or the first part of this week (I'm halfway through as it stands), then it's on to dot Hack and School Rumble.

Thursday evening I'm taking off for my parents' house for the weekend, so... yeah. Definitely need that vacation.

I haven't said much about The World Ends With You besides the typical glowing praise; I'm about halfway through that, as well, but I've no idea if it's going to get finished before Thursday either. Anyway, the biggest draw really is the dual-screen combat, which can be a little overwhelming at first. Play progresses on both screens at once during a battle; the top screen is the partner screen, controlled entirely with the D-pad or buttons, and the bottom screen is Neku's screen controlled entirely with the stylus. Each partner has a different way of attacking, to create combos, which generate Fusion stars for a special combination attack. I've managed to get to this point while letting my partner do his or her own thing-- you can specify an idle period, after which the top screen gets taken over by the AI (which is quite smart, in point of fact)-- but the game is coming up with more ways to force me to pay attention to the upper screen.

The story is quite fascinating, as well. The main character, Neku, is more or less independence personified-- but he's showing some pretty interesting growth. Shiki's character (the first partner) is also surprisingly deep, and Joshua (the second partner) is basically a more talkative copy of Kaoru Nagisa. The basic gist of the story is that there exists an alternate Shibuya, in which the Reapers' Game is played. For seven days, Players of the game must complete missions assigned by the Reapers or face erasure; the players are hindered by the Noise, your basic malevolent spectral phenomena. At the end of the Game, the Player left standing is the winner and gets... a spoiler for a prize. Shibuya itself is a very well-defined character here, too; and while there had to be some concessions to copyrights and trademarks-- we all know it's really Tower Records, and not Towa-- there's a fair amount of the real Shibuya in the game. (Of course, that being said, I wish they'd go into more detail in the manual or somewhere else about what's real and what's fictitious. The manual has a somewhat sparse map in the back, but it blends the game's fiction with reality-- it mentions the in-game designer "CAT", for example. If I ever get the chance to head to Tokyo, walking through Shibuya is on my list of things to do... maybe a little higher up than it was before, now.)

Oh yeah. The soundtrack is on the US iTunes store, too. And it is so worth it. The music is great-- the DS's speakers don't do it justice, really.

I'm also enjoying some manga, as stated; the big new series getting read are Hayate the Combat Butler-- which is excellent-- and Keroro Gunsou, aka Sgt. Frog. KG is... well... it's interesting, really. But it's got one very unnerving thing to it, and that is that Mine Yoshizaki (the artist) seems to love putting the twelve-year-old girl main character into situations that show her changing or otherwise in her bra. Yeah, little creepy there. Doesn't help that her mother also shows up only to show off her (acknowledged in-story) ginormous rack... yeah, this series has some issues. Still, it is hilarious, and Tamama (subordinate to the titular Sergeant, Keroro) is endearing. It's just, well, any series that makes you feel like you need a shower after reading it probably should be rated a little higher than "13 and up", huh?

So, anyway, nothing else of interest right now. Hopefully I'll have something worth writing about on the main page tomorrow.

Very quickly before I begin: Mario Kart Wii is alternately delightful and infuriating. I second the Penny Arcade endorsement of The World Ends With You. I might be able to finish watching Juno tonight-- very cleverly-written movie but I've been on the verge of exhaustion for a while. Donuts are plentiful. And I still am short one and a half essays for next week, which means I need to get on those today or on Sunday. Now, where was I...?

Anime is still very much a fringe pursuit at times. I harbor no illusions about ever fitting in with the rest of society's tastes, and I certainly can accept that what I like can on occasion be seen as, in the parlance of the times, somewhat squicky. But then again, there are some series for which the squick factor gets turned up way too high before one can even really get beyond it. Please Teacher! is sort of one of those series precisely (and yes, that makes perfect sense).

Most of what people tend to know about PT! is the obvious ten-second description that's plastered all over the back of the case: a fifteen-year-old boy (who is actually eighteen) gets into a LeTourneau-like situation with the new teacher (who is actually an alien). In reality, well... actually, that's more or less indefensible. That's exactly what happens in the series. No hiding it. And that's where my problem comes in, because there's a lot of really good detail underneath it, which nobody ever sees because of the OH SQUICKness.

I mentioned, in the Anime Report on Wednesday, that PT! has had a loving hand applied to it in creating the art and the world. The setting is modeled more or less closely after an actual town in Japan; Kei and Mizuho have visual quirks that betray their emotions even when they're trying very hard to be calm or opaque; and the majority of the shakeups in the series, believe it or not, revolve around the supporting cast. What bothers me most is how, when the core of the story is exposed, the squickness really winds up being kind of superfluous to the story.

Deep down, at its core, PT!'s tale revolves primarily around the coming-of-age that Kei undergoes, in overcoming his fear to advance, his reluctance to change, and his own unconscious desire for "standstill". This is, in majority, done through Mizuho's intervention. However what compels him most to change isn't Mizuho at all-- it's in fact the relationship between Kaede and Hyosuke. It could be argued that Mizuho's presence sparked that, as well, but I don't think so; they probably would have hit it off without any outside interference.

The "people hooking up, the world is changing" plotline has been done before in manga and anime; it's by no means rare or unusual, so the fact that it feels like this has been done before, and better, doesn't surprise me as much as I thought it would. In my case, it's Evangelion which prompted the deja vu-- more specifically, the Angelic Days manga, and its concentration on the relationships developing there. Still, in regards to PT!, as the story progresses, one gets the feeling that Mizuho could disappear about halfway through the series-- maybe even a quarter of the way through!-- and the proverbial damage would have been done. She serves as a catalyst, a presence that changes without herself being changed. She's... literarily unnerving, to say the least negative thing I can think of. "Mary-Sue" would be blunt honesty.

And yet, even with all that, she is charming. The relationship between Kei and Mizuho isn't portrayed as wrong or sleazy (even though, by American standards, it kinda intrinsically is wrong and sleazy). If anything, it's presented as very normal and mundane (teleportation and secrecy aside). I think that's one of the real triumphs of the series-- that, despite the relationship being largely unnecessary, it never descends to the level of being obnoxious or irritating.

The most telling thing I could say about the series, really, would be that it could work as a live-action American romantic-sitcom if it were age-advanced to, say, college, and Kei's illness dropped or otherwise replaced. If anything, it would be a pretty interesting thing to see where an American writng staff wanted to go with the concept. Played for laughs, some of the alien bits could be effective and virally memetic; played straight, the romance would be interesting, and it would be a good way to explore the whole "student-teacher relations" thing (in the non-squicky setting of college, that is-- come to think of it, actually, even though the roles are swapped and everyone relevant is an adult, the scenario's close to that of 3rd Rock From The Sun; so, uh, scrap that).

Anyway, I'm still liking the series-- that hasn't changed-- but you probably won't be seeing me extolling its virtues on too often of a basis. Really, it's one of those quiet pleasures; the ones you enjoy but are very careful who you actively promote it to.

...which makes having the last post on this here LJ for at least a week kinda counterintuitive, huh?

(Fret not. Those of you who'll wonder where I'm going, I'm taking a little sort-of-break over at the main page for all of next week, appropriately enough dubbed Essay Week. So, if you want to keep up with me, you can do so here. I'll be back on the LJ on the 13th. Ciao!)

So I herd u liek animu cons! U n-deed herd rite-- GAH. Sorry, can't run with that joke as much as I thought I could before my eyes started to bleed. Anyway, as you might have expected, April saw me getting caught up with a handful of new and semi-new series; ( here's the list of what I saw in April... )

It's not like there's any real expectation that I'll follow this (when have I ever, really?), but in any event, ( here's the planned watching list for May... )

( May is going to get a few new discs into my hands... )

Finally... The same friend who indicated to me the comedy gold lurking deep within School Rumble also made mention that there are a handful of teh magna bokks that I, as an otherwise excuseless otaku, should be reading. The biggest one that caught my attention was Hayate the Combat Butler, which already had my attention just because of the ridiculously awesome title (it's just, well, based on the title, I was expecting an inversion/rehash of Mahoromatic). Then there's also, despite my protests, continuing Bleach and Black Cat, getting caught up on Yotsubato!, and starting up a serious look at Negima!. I also am looking into reclaiming the full set of one of my favorite manga, Cardcaptor Sakura. With Shutdown Day on Saturday, I'm thinking a blitzkrieg of reading is the perfect way to spend a day unplugged.

I'll catch you tomorrow with notes on Shutdown Day, and on Friday, we'll be back here with a little bit of a deeper analysis of Please Teacher!.

Lots of changes this week-- we're getting to them. The first is that the Game and Anime Reports are now being issued at the most natural point near the end of the month; this might actually change back to the old rule, because I'm not sure if Essay Week will screw up the order or not. They've been every four weeks to this point, so I'm not sure if I'll keep to that schedule or not-- we'll see. The next is... well, you'll see. Read on.

So, as I'd anticipated, the month of April was very slow for gaming. Late in the month I started work on Beyond Good & Evil, and that took up a significant amount of time. So, here's the list of ( what got done and when... )

Yeah, minimalist. I decided to clear off the "planning to play" list and go to the backlog list for some fresh or at least less-bleak-looking challenges. Here's ( what I'm working on right now... )

(The Writing Month continues, since I didn't get much of that done at all. As it turns out since Shutdown Day is this coming Saturday, I likely won't get May off to a good start in that regard either, but I'm getting back to that. Again, if by some chance no gaming gets done in May, I'll skip the Report.)

That said, ( here's how I plan to prevent myself from writing in May... )

Here's the current numbers on the Backlog List:
Overall List: 12 completed of 53, 22.6% (UP 1.4%, Goal 40%) with 41 remaining.
Prioritized List: 12 completed of 35, 34.3% (UP 5.4%, Goal 50%) with 23 remaining (18 exempted).
2008 Goal: 12 completed of 25, 48% (UP 4.0%, Goal 100%) with 13 remaining.
Quick Play Count: 10 uncompleted Quick Play games.

Finally... as much as I love my DS, there are a couple of PSP games I'm looking at getting started on once more. Prime among them are Brave Story and, believe it or not, Phantasy Star IV. If I get up some serious gumption, I could also credit a loop through one or more of the Parodius games, I reckon; of course, I wouldn't feel too comfortable doing that until I get through Time Pilot (Live Arcade... I'm so close on that one, too). One way or another, I'm going to try to get another Clear during May, while at the same time writing up more of the draft.

Tomorrow I'll chit-chat a bit about Essay Week, and on Wednesday we'll have the Anime Report-- which itself is anything but minimalist.

I just spent four hours downloading and installing the first two parts to the Metal Gear Online beta. That would be acceptable if there were not a third part which refuses to download at all. I can't do the direct download (crashes with "A network server error has occurred"), and the peer-to-peer runs too goddamn slow to download (it sat at under 0.1 KBPS for about, oh, TEN MINUTES before I gave up).

The single-player game had damn well better be worth it, because if I had to go by the beta, I'd be declaring the PS3 completely worthless right about now.

I strongly encourage those of you with PS3s to download the Echochrome demo that hit the PSN Store. It's brain-melty goodness.

Beyond that, I got nothin', folks.

Over the weekend, Epic Games president Mike Capps wrote, in regards to the Wii, that "nobody turns it on" and that its popularity was "like a virus". I'm going to have to call a little bit of bullshit on this-- and the reporting being done about the remarks, which I and other bloggers have taken grossly out of context. (In my case, it's to highlight the non-contextness and to make a different point, so it's only a little hypocritical.)

When you look at the full context of his statement, Capps says (emphasis mine) "Everybody I know bought one, and nobody turns it on." Now, in and of itself, anecdotal evidence. Fine. The problem is that that statement, while highly accurate, ( tells people absolutely nothing... )

I had a really good rant about how upset I was that the PSN Store update didn't bring me anything to play on my PS3 until MGS4. Then, this morning, just before I started up this rant, I put Disc 1 of FF7 into the machine, expecting it to fail... and it didn't. It ran. So I suppose the machine is worthwhile, as I don't trust my PS2 with non-DVD-based games anymore, but it invalidates a really good rant about downloadable games. I'll try to revise it for sometime next week.

...I cannot believe that I thought of that title as a fitting anime reference, then thought it would actually make a good title for a Fate stay/night story. And I'm even more horrified that I know exactly where I could go with such a story, and I'm going to stop now before I actually write it.

AHEM. The Tekkoshocon VI Report is up now at the main site, with pictures forthcoming. This is the first con report I've written up since 2006, and the fastest I've had one up, well, ever, really. I hope you like it, and I hope that I can be bothered to write up something of equal quality for Otakon '08.

In the meantime, please excuse me while I go completely insane.

OK, quick notes. The Tekko Report is a third of the way finished... I expect I'll be able to complete it tonight. I picked up two import games (Final Fantasy Tactics A2, which is awesome if you enjoyed Tactics Advance, and Parodius Collection Portable, which is quite literally five kinds of wacky). I also started watching Please Teacher, which after two episodes seems... interesting. I'll probably continue with it in a bit-- right now Kiddy Grade is Priority One (okay, that one was totally intentional).

Actually, if you want to get REALLY technical, finishing my damn novel draft should be my first focus, but it's not. Not yet.

Anyway, the report will be up soon, and we'll see what's going on for the rest of the week after that. Catch you all later.

Sorry this is so late, but this has not been a good week with regards to getting posts up on time. In any event, I've got the time to write now, so let's go ahead and talk up some games.

On Monday I picked up AudioSurf, and instantly became hooked; the game is very reminiscent of Amplitude in some respects, but then again it has a vibe all its own (pun completely not intended there). The ten-second summary is that you follow a roller-coaster-like track which bounces and flows based on your selected music (most any music file you feed it), collecting like-colored blocks to score points. A very simple concept, to be sure, but it's far more fun than it strictly has a right to be. As I mentioned previously, I've been playing tracks that are frenzied and fast, meading most of my play to be along bouncing, bopping downhill stretches. I'm partial to the "Mono" modes, which are simplicity defined: there's only one color of block that scores points; all others are detrimental. Despite the fact that the game's made for short sessions, I've loaded seven-minute-plus tracks into the thing (Andy Hunter - Amazing, The Shamen - Destination Eschaton Hardfloor Mix, tons of BT) and found that it never gets old. It can breathe new life into even old played-out songs that I'd skip over previously... I don't think I'd listened to Tunak Tunak Tun all the way through in months. All it really needs is a "nonstop" mode where multiple songs are played in succession, and/or an OS X version, and I'd be in abject ecstasy.

Wednesday morning brought with it Ikaruga for the Xbox Live Arcade, and of course I picked it up. The game's still as hard as I remember, and unfortunately it still has the annoying "play X number of hours to unlock credits" system from the GC days... but to be honest, I have to apologize for that opinion. ( Okay, the remarks behind this cut are more graphic than I usually write. But still funny, I think. )

AAAAAANYWAY. Off to pick up the Tekko badge now, and when I get home, maybe I'll play a little more of a few different games. Diversity, after all, is good.

I'd been looking for a decent countdown app for OS X that shows hours remaining instead of days and hours, but to no avail. So I rolled up my sleeves tonight and coded my own. It's currently running right now... telling me a) there're only 44 hours left until the Tekkoshocon festivities begin and b) I should have probably gotten up to get something to eat at some point during this educational experience. Seriously, I didn't leave this chair for the last four hours or so. When I wanted to do some testing to see if the app handled sleep mode gracefully, I just turned to my left and played AudioSurf on my windows box (which, incidentally, is the full extent of the gaming that I've done this week so far).

BUT! I have learned one important thing. XCode 3 (the Leopard version) makes Objective-C much less like being torn apart by rabid wildebeests. It's still by no means easy but at least you're not being bent over and ripped a new one by the almighty scepter of "YOU CAN'T DO THAT, DUMBASS" every five seconds.

For a very basic first-time application that doesn't handle any data at all, it's actually got some pretty nifty features. Maybe I'll upload it to TFO.net someday. It's off to BK for me for right now, and then off to bed.

Over on the main site I casually dropped that I'd managed a good deal on a PS3, ahead of the June date I'd set for it (to get with MGS4). All things considered I don't think the deal warrants much more discussion, so I'd really much rather move on to the games I've tried so far.

But first, the 800-lb gorilla: Blu-Ray. I made sure to rent a visually-demanding movie in order to try out this newfangled technodevilry for myself, and to see if my stance against it overtaking DVD was at all warranted. For the stats-geeks in the audience (both of you): I'm running at 1080i on a 30" LCD screen through component input. The movie chosen was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and I watched through about half of it last night. The verdict is that there's almost no difference whatsoever for me. Oh, sure, there's less compression artifacting, but I only noticed that inches away from the screen when I was getting up to put the disc away; at my normal viewing distance of about ten feet, it looked just as fine as DVD. With that out of the way, let's move on to the real reason the machine is in my posession: the games.

( GameStop had a full set of The Eye of Judgment used... )

I also made the mistake of getting Sonic the Hedgehog. Sue me, it was twenty bucks, and the demo had been tolerable-- but that was just a demo, and it was apparently in no way representative of the final game. It's also buggy as hell-- I died in the hub area while executing the "follow a trail of rings" move, and that was after experiencing crippling slowdown earlier in that selfsame hub area. It's going back at some point.

Moving forward, the other rental was ( the surprisingly good Ratchet and Clank Future... )

My problems with Ratchet and Clank ( paint a more distressing picture of the industry than I'd like to admit... )

The PS3 is no threat to the other consoles I have, and getting it really was just a pre-emptive measure. It's easy for me to try to rationalize it after the fact but the problem is that I'm having a hard time internally justifying it without saying, "Well, MGS4". I'd have been really excited about it if there had even really been some good downloadable titles on the store; the only things that really grabbed my attention were flOw and Jumping Flash (though if I'd not jealously kept it, Wild ARMs would be mine, and if I hadn't got it on the 360, I would have picked up Castlevania SOTN). In the long run, it's likely to just sit and collect dust for a month or two while I wrap up some other games and do the novel draft; come June, however, there will be Blu'd.

......yeah, that was pretty pathetic. Anyway. Catch you all on Monday-- next week is Tekkoshocon!

Netflix has been good to me this month. I came across a pair of older movies, and confirmed that I am an idiot for not signing up to Netflix sooner. Regardless, ( here's the list of the anime series I watched on March... )

( The plan for anime watching for April is as follows... )

( April's purchases are going to be pretty slim... )

Finally... While I feel better that I'm expanding my horizons a bit more with regards to 'new' anime, I'm still stuck on the same handful of genres that I typically stick to: high fantasy, space opera, and light sci-fi comedy. The trial of Elfen Lied was intended to help me get out of that habit of staying in my comfort zone, but, well, we all know how well that worked out. I came across the first Bleach box set the other day, and while I really do like the manga (what of it I've read), my aversion to buying into a current series approaching the apogee of its hype curve kicked in and I passed it by. In about a year or two I know I'll be kicking myself for doing that, but meh. I think next up I'm going to try to watch through a couple of the more 'acclaimed' movies that have come around; I've heard good things about Paprika, and I suppose that since I liked Tokyo Godfathers it's not that unsafe of a try. Now that Mahoromatic has been sent back, though, I'm not likely to pull any more trial discs until after Tekkoshocon, and I have the chance to sample a few more titles without risk.

Catch you folks tomorrow.

I'm a day early, but I figure I might as well take care of it right away. Is everyone sick of Smash Bros. yet? I'm sure not. Right now, my Game Clear count for the year of 2008 stands at 11, which just happens to be 7 more clears than I had at this time in 2007. If this keeps up-- and it certainly will!-- I'll have no trouble hitting my goal of 25 games in 2008, even with the taking of April 'off' to focus on writing. Anyway, ( let's take a look at March's accomplishments... )

What a month, huh? Never expected to get that many; I figured Brawl would take up way too much of my time, but it didn't. I'm playing it more casually than I expected, I suppose. How about we ( take a look at the current Next 5 List... )

(Note that April is a Writing Month; barring frustration with the writing, I'll likely be playing few to no games this month in favor of the second draft of Harvesting Blueberries. If there are no games played, I'll skip the April report.)

And here's ( the Planned Purchase list for April... )

The Backlog List saw some improvement. Overall we have the following numbers:
Overall List: 11 completed of 52, 21.2% with 41 remaining.
Prioritized List: 11 completed of 38, 28.9% with 27 remaining (14 exempted).
2008 Goal: 11 completed of 25, 44% with 14 remaining.
Quick Play Count: 9 uncompleted Quick Play games.

Finally... A day or so ago, I was remarking that the releases are starting to slow down. It might just be that the games I'm interested in are already out, and that most of the hype this year is going to be dedicated to titles I could care less for. Then again, this is still pre-E3 in a post-E3 world, so it's more likely that the industry is waiting on the still-animated-yet-not-getting-any-fresher corpse of E3 to announce their big titles. Nintendo almost certainly has a new franchise coming up-- they've already released Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash, and Mario Kart, so they need to dig deeper into their IP coffers for 2008 and beyond (here's hoping they finally get around to announcing Mother Collection DS)-- but is remaining way too tight-lipped about it for my tastes. And the same goes for Microsoft and Sony; after GTA4 hits this month and Metal Gear in June, the landscape just looks kinda bare. Suddenly I don't feel so bad about being this far behind in handling the backlog.

Catch you folks tomorrow on the main site.

You know what? I don't want to talk about Tuesday or Wednesday. Today wasn't looking to be too hot, either, but there's time yet. At least the weather is cooperating somewhat. That would be good for some outdoor gaming, but unfortunately I'm planning on spending most of April and a little bit of May writing. Maybe.

Before I do that, however, ( I came across an oddity with ADV... )

I'm also partial to print myself, but that's just me.

Anyway. I'm trying to see if I can catch a little bit more of Kiddy Grade tonight-- I meant to see Disc 4 on TueTHE DAY THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED., but stuff haTHINGS WHICH SHALL NOT BE DISCUSSED.. We'll see if things settle down over the next day or so-- I hope so, because come hell or high water, I'm starting writing on Friday and if I'm not in a good mood, it's not gonna be pretty. Believe it.

Catch you later, folks.

...or, more accurately, "the philosopher's stoned". OW! Sorry, sorry.... well, all right, I'm not sorry (seriously, I live for puns), but it's a good way to introduce my wrap-up of Fullmetal Alchemist.

( See, I have some spoilers, and you have some spoilers, and I have a cut... I HIDE YOUR SPOILERS! )

On a side note: Holy crap do I need to try to get Laura Bailey's autograph at some point. I think she's about my top voice actress right now, specifically for being able to convincingly pull off both Tohru and Lust and still sound completely natural each time. This also setting aside the fantastic job of delivery that she does, which (as mundane as this makes it sound) is now something I'm coming to expect from Funimation's dub work.

Overall, taking into account the story's digression into real-world politics with regards to "the other side of the Gate", the story doesn't lose too much sight of its core theme. Even though it's used sarcastically on more than one occasion, the motto "Alchemist, Be Thou For The People" is at the heart of the tale, and something that the pacing and the plots and subplots carry with endearing ease. The series never falls too deeply into depression or brooding, as Trigun did, nor does it fail to convey the gravity of the story, as Outlaw Star did. FMA's moved to near the top of my personal rankings-- still behind Love Hina, Azumanga Daioh, and Nadesico, but quite up there.

I'll be brief: The promised Page O'Crap isn't coming until Tuesday. Hopefully by then the miasma of depression will have worn off and I'll have had enough impetus to watch through more of Kiddy Grade, which despite the fact that it's immaterial fluff is just not grabbing me tonight as much as it ordinarily would. But we shall see. Catch you then... or Monday, rather, on the main site with probably a page of writing drivel.