Instead of wasting your time talking about the plot, I’ll just direct you to wikipedia’s article on the show(click). What I do want to talk about is the style.

This show has style. I gotta give it that. It grabbed me from the beginning with its OP. This show was directed by the same guy that did Baccano!. This, I think, was pretty obvious right away. The OP for both series do the same thing, in that they have the main characters doing random things, then it freezes and shows one of them using just a few colors with what I’m assuming is their name on the screen. For example:

I’m sure that this technique has a name, but I don’t know what it is. In any event, it needs to be used more often because I really fucking like it. The song that is used is catchy as hell, too. I would link it, but it seems YouTube is pulling videos of the OP down as fast as they’re going up.

Now, onto the backgrounds. You’ll notice that only the important characters are colored in. It looks like all of the background characters will be colored in shades of gray. The buildings, lights, signs, and sidewalks are all detailed quite nicely. Anyway, the pictures:

In related news, I’ve begun packing my shit at home. I can’t take it with me to BMT or AIT, but afterwards when I come home to pack and move to my base, I’ll have it packed and ready to go. I don’t know anyone else that is packing as early as I am, but I feel it’s a pretty intelligent move on my part. In addition to saving me time later on down the road, it also keeps my nephew’s filthy paws off my stuff while I’m gone.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve been reading 20th Century Boys. I started it on a whim after seeing the review for the movie on Anime News Network. After I got about 40 chapters in, I bought the movie from Amazon. That came in the mail today along with the last volume of Genshiken 2. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’m hoping it will be good. It should cover the first five volumes of the manga. I’m around volume six, so there shouldn’t be any spoilers for later chapters of the manga.

Ohayocon is next week. I’m still really looking forward to that. It’s in Columbus, Ohio on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I check into my hotel Thursday afternoon, so I don’t have to rush when the doors open. It’ll be my last taste of freedom before I go to BMT.

Posting the newest update to Kirkq and Nitrodon’s 7th Saga speed run. I posted parts 1-5 here and here(links).

I think it’s pretty fucking neat that these guys are doing this. I’m very curious to know if they can finish the game in under two hours. I didn’t think so at first, but they’re getting close. They might just make it.

I don’t think I need to tell anyone how sweet this is. There are two catches, however. Currently, if you have a premium account on Crunchyroll, even if you sign into it through the app, you won’t get early access to shows like Naruto. You’ll have to wait a week until everyone can view them. This could possibly change in the future, but as of my writing this, you gotta wait. Also, it will only stream over wifi. If you don’t have access to a wifi network, then you’re shit out of luck.

I took some screenshots of episode 117 of Naruto Shippuden in the Crunchyroll app. This first one shows the quality of the subtitles. In the event that the subtitles require more than one line, they will show in the video’s field in a little translucent box. It’s pretty tasteful and they’re super easy to read.

This next one shows the options for the video. See that little box to the left of the backwards skip button? That is where you toggle subs on and off. By default, they are off, so at the start of a video, you have to turn them on. There may be an option to have them on by default, but I haven’t looked yet. The time slider at the top shows that I have almost twenty two hours of video left. I’m assuming that it will just play through all of the Naruto episodes until I tell it to stop or it’s played the last one. I have not tested this yet, either.

This last screenshot is from the ED of the episode. These streams also include the little omakes after the credits roll, which are usually pretty funny. The ED isn’t subtitled, and only the first few lines of the omake were.

Overall, this is a pretty sweet fucking iPhone app. It’s free to download, so there is really no reason any anime fan with an iPhone shouldn’t have it.

I’m pretty pumped about Ohayocon. I know 4-5 other people going. They all have one hotel room and I have my own. It will be the first time I’ve gone to a con and had a hotel room to myself. I always end up sharing with a friend or two. I’m still thinking about changing my reservation to getting a room with a jacuzzi even if it costs about $40 more per night. Ohayocon staff as mentioned a mystery guest on their site that they say will be unveiled at the con. This pretty much means that I have to spend an hour or more at opening ceremonies. I know that I will NOT be going to the cosplay chess panel. I tried watching this at Sugoicon, and it was an utter disaster. It’s probably done by the same people. I like cosplay, and I like chess, but the two just don’t mix too well. The game basically boiled down to which cosplays the players didn’t like, which were the pieces that were killed off first. This list of events is here. Be warned. The list is current as of December 15 and it’s in no type of order.

It’s kind of odd. I’m going to spend a lot of time in Columbus prior to shipment. I go to Columbus for three days for this convention. On Sunday(Jan 31), I come home and spend the night here. The next morning(Monday) I go to my recruiter, and from there back to Columbus for another physical, signing of paperwork, swearing in(again), then off to the hotel. The following morning, probably at some unearthly hour, my military service will officially(legally) start. I will probably eat breakfast at the hotel the military provides, lunch at MEPS, then take a plane to San Antonio.

I will attempt to get a con report up on Monday(Feb 1) before I leave. I will have my iphone with me until sometime Tuesday(Feb 2) evening so I will be tweeting LIVE UPDATES up until the military takes my phone from me.

I’ll admit, I went into the series knowing nothing about it other than the fact that it was about mysterious creatures called ‘mushi’. I didn’t know the plot, main character, or the setting. Turns out, the series doesn’t have an overall plot. very episode is its own stand alone story. The art and settings reminded me very much of Kino’s Journey. Ginko travels from place to place; sometimes at random, and sometimes following rumors. But Mushi-shi had something that Kino’s Journey did not. When I watch Kino’s Journey, it feels to me like it is a story about a girl that travels from place to place on her motorrad. Mushi-shi’s main character had an actual profession: healing with the powers of the mushi. Kino had no profession other than being a ‘professional traveler’. When I think of that, that part of Mushi-shi reminds me of Master Keaton. In Master Keaton, the main character Taichi Hiraga-Keaton would go from place to place using his expertise in various things to help others. All three of these shows have three things in common: they are episodic, the main characters try to help those around them, and they heavily feature travel.

I think Mushi-shi is a great show, but I don’t think it’s for everyone. You need to be in a position where you can just sit back, relax, and enjoy a show without a central plot. If you go in expecting a single story that starts at episode one and ends at episode twenty six, you’ll be disappointed. I don’t know that marathoning the series is the best way to watch it, either. I think the best way is to watch a few episodes or one DVD at a time, preferably at the end of a long day.

Now, for the live action movie. I stopped at a Best Buy on my way home from the gym today and bought the DVD for that as well. I can’t say I cared quite so much for it, though. I was hoping that it would be a new story. I wanted two hours of fresh content, and I didn’t get that. The movie is essentially four episodes of the anime. Episodes three, seven, twelve, and twenty to be specific. Wikipedia says it covers chapters two, seven, nine, and fifteen of the manga, but as I have not read the manga, I can’t comment on that much. It opens with Ginko going to the inn where the girl is growing horns in episode three. Throughout the movie, it flashes back to Ginko’s past, which is the subject of episode twelve. After healing the girl with horns, Ginko meets Koro, the man chasing rainbows in episode seven. He travels with him to the house where Tanyu spends her days writing the stories of Mushi-shi that pass through, which is what episode twenty is about.

If I had it my way, the movie would have covered Ginko traveling to the shrine at the sea where mushi were thought to resurrect the dead or explained how his mail cocoon worked, because that was an awesome episode. Sadly though, the movie wasted a lot of time on one of my least favorite episodes(the girl with the horns) and not nearly enough time on the others, in my opinion. I think it could have been better if it was a new story. Even if the anime covered everything from the manga, I would have preferred the director to come up with something new.  Though considering the praise it’s gotten around the world at film festivals and such, it seems the right decision was made.

tl;dr – The series is good, but only if you’re not a narutard. The movie isn’t as good as the anime.

By the time April rolls around, I’ll have a new first name: Airman. But that’s still a ways off yet. Gotta focus on what’s in front of me first, and that’s getting ready for BMT.

* Not really summer camp. More like an early spring ass kicking.

One of my Christmas gifts this year was the new Zelda game. I’ve wasted most of my waking hours playing this game over the last three days. Before I get into my rants about the game, you should know that I haven’t finished it yet. I’m three temples deep, and am about to head to the Spirit Tower for the third time.

My biggest complaint about the game is obviously the most noticeable. The tracks. The novelty of driving the train around wears off pretty quickly. I don’t mind technology in the Zelda series, which is probably the topic of every other Zelda-nerd’s rage for the game. What I hate about the tracks is that it forces you on these predetermined paths. With the ships in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass you could go pretty much any way you wanted to a given destination. You can escort people from town to town in the carriage of your train, though. That is pretty cool. You have to obey all the traffic laws of the rails when doing so, otherwise the person your ferrying will end up unhappy.

I have issues with the fact that the entire game is controlled through the touch screen. The DS has eight buttons and a D-pad. Spirit Tracks makes VERY limited use of them. The left shoulder button is probably the most useful, since it saves me the effort of having to tap the icon to use whatever item I have out at the moment, be it my bombs, the whip, or whatever other items come my way. Pressing down on the D-pad brings up my map which I can then draw on. It seems to me that the controls coud be much better. I would LOVE to be able to bind Link’s basic sword swing to a button. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to swing but ended up taking a step forward. What a pain in the ass.

Next up. Collecting…. bunnies? Yes. This game has you collect rabbits and return them to a man in bondage gear(not kidding). I’ve turned in 20 or so thus far and have gotten a heart container for my efforts. I don’t know how many there are, but hopefully I get something REALLY good for catching them all. They’re a pain in the ass to spot, and even harder to catch with the net. On top of that, you’re only given ten seconds to catch them. If you fail, you have to ride the train back to a city or to Beedle’s balloon, enter and exit, then return to the spawn point for the bunny. It fucking sucks. I hate bunnies. I feel sorry for them, though. I wonder what the guy that runs Rabbitland does with them all once I leave?

Now, for the things I like. It seems the people behind the Zelda franchise learned their lesson with Phantom Hourglass. Remember that PAIN IN THE ASS dungeon you had to keep going to and keep repeating the SAME motherfucking levels over and over again? Well, Spirit Tracks has the same setup, except with the ability to skip past levels of the dungeon. Fucking brilliant. Now it feels like a new dungeon every time I go back to the Spirit Tower since I can just skip to the next part that I have to do.

The game also features a challenge pit, must like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess did. You pay 50 rupees for a shot at one of three levels of difficulty. They seem to be unlocked after clearing certain temples. Level 2 opened up for me after I finished the Ocean Temple. I got a heart piece and a bomb bag upgrade for beating the first two levels. Each level consists of several rooms filled with various monsters that you have to kill. The last room is a boss monster from the temples you’ve cleared. There is no way to recover your hearts other than what potions you bring in with you.

Overall, I like the game. It’s much better than Phantom Hourglass. Mostly due to Nintendo learning their lesson about that dungeon. It still doesn’t hold a candle to Wind Waker, Link to the Past, or Ocarina of Time. I’m still waiting for Nintendo to outdo themselves again.

This post was brought to you by one too many shitty fanfics.

I don’t know if the movie can be as good as the TV series. I know. It’s the ancient “it can never be as good as the original” argument. But really, you can do so many things with animation that you simply cannot do with live action. Even with CG, it wouldn’t look right in my opinion. Earthbending comes to mind first. In the cartoon, you would have earthbenders stomp on the ground and a chunk of rock would shoot up. Then they would punch it to send it flying. This is all really neat and looks almost believable because both the rock and the movements of the character are animated the same way. I think that if you tried to animate the rocks with CG in the live action movie, using live actors, it would just look awkward.

I’m going to hold my judgment until after I’ve seen the completed product. I’m sure the live action films will all be enjoyable, but I don’t think they will live up the the cartoon series. Also, as far as I’m concerned, they won’t be good without Toph. Hopefully I don’t have to wait until the second movie for her to show up, but considering no information has been released on an actress for Toph yet, I suppose I will. Avatar just isn’t Avatar without Toph. She’s pretty much the best character of the show.

Yup. Pretty much.