So.... This is complicated. I'm usually a cool and calm guy, but this time was different. I feel like I need to write a little blog post for this freak-out, like a journal, or a blog (Duh). Here's the jist:

My dog passed recently and I've been... okay about it. Which I think is the problem. I've really not gotten too broken up about it. Trust me, if wasn't a happy occasion! I just didn't really grieve. (All of this amounts to something!)

30 minutes ago, I'm playing Street Fighter 4 online. It's going poorly. I'm wining a few matches but I'm losing a lot over dumb shit I should have been prepared for. I get into one match and boy, is this shit laggy! I mean, constant hitching! It ends with him mashing ultra during a lagspike and I walk away from the game for a bit, and come back to a friend request, I idiotically accept it and a message pops up full of insults about my internet and my skill, all spiced up with plenty of vile words not allowed on these fine forums. I dunno. I just unplugged the arcade stick. Walked onto my porch and threw it on the concrete...

The moment that thing hit the ground was the best I've felt since my dog passed. It was fucking therapeutic. Yeah... I had to let my emotions out by destroying a Qanba Fusion. (200 dollars). Anyway... Yeah. I have to go pick up the arcade stick pieces out of my lawn... I wonder if Sanford felt the same relief?

Sword of the Stranger is an undoubtedly top notch execution of animated combat. If that tickles your fancy, then maybe stick around for a while?

Howdy! I might not have an anime avatar anymore, but that does not disqualify me from rambling about the medium on this here website. I'd like to think that I sample media from a broad spectrum of genres and styles, especially in anime, but I'll honestly admit that a simplistic action flick is something I'll never get tired of, granted that it's well executed. I love to drink in the hand crafted choreography of a fight scene, and I bet I'll surprise you when I say, Sword of the Stranger is pretty fucking "Sugoi" in this aspect.

Stranger is a film from 2007, directed by Ando Masahiro. That name might sound familiar, as it should, being involved in other critically acclaimed pieces like the Cowboy Bebop film, Ghost in the Shell, Fullmetal Alchemist and The End of Evangelion. There are more, but hey, you get it. This guy has experience. Stranger is also animated by Studio Bones.

This movie is gorgeous. Not much else to say other than that. Care was obviously put into each gorgeous set piece, containing very little CGI that only lasts a few seconds each time. These fine gentlemen, along with Ando, are fucking masters of choreography. So you can probably guess that Stranger is no slouch. Any film can sprinkle in a fight scene between plot points to keep it interesting, but the artful fights throughout Stranger practically reach out of the screen and slap you with their awesome. Below is a scene for a little bit of proof. If you trust me, I would suggest not watching it, the video below isn't a spoiler in terms of story, just in action.

There is also a story, if you are into that kind of thing... I guess... Nerd. A young boy and his dog escape some evil Chinese dudes trying to conduct some evil mysterious ritual thing, only to run into a roaming samurai named Nanashi (Or No Name) who has vowed to never unsheathe his blade again... So you're kinda just waiting for him to unsheathe his blade for the entire film... BUT I DIGRESS! The boy hires Nanashi to protect him as they go on a journey as the Chinese bad dudes are on their tails. This story will not win any awards, that's a fact, but the likable characters and exceptional pacing make for an experience that doesn't feel like a slog to finish.

Sato Naoki is also here composing the films music. He's worked on some stuff before as well. The music is very subtle throughout the film, you never get a "DON'T LOSE YOUR WAY!!!" al la Kill la Kill, but that's totally fine. It's better that way. The music never gets center stage, but it sure does help create the atmosphere and emphasize the emotional moments in the film. This isn't the best dancing music, but it's a perfect score for this film.

My wife would like to add that the Chinese VA is apparently "Atrocious and bad" as she is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese. It's few and far between but apparently it's bad.

There is never a boring moment in this movie, unless you're incapable of enjoying some kick-ass hand animated samurai sword ballet, in which GET OUT OF MY BLOG POST. Just kidding... Maybe.

I own a PS4, and I've been eagerly waiting for a Character Action game to be announced for the platform (Yeah, yeah, Legend of Korra, I know and I'm excited, but I was thinking more AAA). Low and behold, one is announced at Gamescom. Hellblade. Okay, aside from being a terrible name, it could be fine. Then I see it's coming from the Ninja Theory boys down in England. Oh well.

Then they show up at the Giant Bomb panel, and everyone cheers when they talk about the games they've put out. That floored me. How could people cheer when they say the words "Heavenly Sword"?????? That's when I realized that I might be the minority here. Well, I want to take a look at their past games and share my thoughts on them, so at least people can understand me when I say that Ninja Theory should stop making Character Action games.

Heavenly Sword

Okay, let's start with their Playstation 3 debut, Heavenly Sword. This game's story and world revolves around this thing called the Heavenly Sword. A heavenly guy beat some Demon Warlord and left the sword in the mortal world, resulting in humanity warring over it's power. Yeah, I bet you forgot that, I had to look this up because of how forgettable it is.

The game's protagonist is a red-head named Nariko. Her design isn't the worst thing ever, but there is nothing really interesting about it aside from the hair. Just like the plot, she is pretty forgettable.

Forgettable is a common word with this game. Level design didn't do anything to grab you. Something that I'll admit Ninja Theory has learned how to do. Unfortunately, this game wasn't too good at it.

The gameplay here is pretty basic. You use the Heavenly Sword (I haven't mentioned that this is a dumb ass name for a sword yet, but it is) in 3 different stances. Speed, range, and power. This doesn't really add too much variety, and honestly, the combat is JUST God of War. It's uninspired. It isn't awful by any means, and it works, but it doesn't do anything to stand out. It also uses QTE's too much.

Oh, and you could steer projectiles with the sixaxis controller. It's just as dumb as it sounds.

Heavenly Sword wasn't even bad. It was forgettable, and that is arguably worse. Also, didn't run at 60fps. BOO!!!

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

"Hold on, let me scan this blog before we read more of it"

Okay, this game is a weird one. Some people really seem to like it, and I remember people calling it the best game in 2010, but was it really that good? NO, at least in my opinion. This game is a re-imagining of Journey to the West, a novel written by Wu Cheng'en. The big difference being that Enslaved is set in a post-apocalyptic future. I have to admit that the premise is kick ass. Was the execution done well? Eh... I'm gonna get the rough shit out of the way first. The combat in this game is SO BAD!!!!!! Holy shit!!! You have stupid enemies that will block, attack, or sit there and eat your attacks. Your attacks consist of an overpowered stungun, a crappy laser, and your staff. Staff combos are non existent, because just mashing heavy attack and countering when enemies glow red will beat this game. Not to mention the "bosses". One being a dog that you can shoot with your stungun, hit with heavy attacks, and repeat. There is really nothing here, and it sucks.

Kiiiiiiindaaaaa...

People really like the story of this game. Specifically the relationship between Monkey and Trip. I found it thin. Their relationship grows a little too fast for my taste, probably because of how short the game is. Not to mention that Trip isn't likable for the majority of the game. Monkey is the one that compromises and helps Trip on her revenge mission without hesitation, even though he is the "Criminal slave being forced to protect against his will" while Trip is selfish and doesn't even ask monkey to help seek revenge. She just demands it. Boo. I hate you, Trip.

Character designs aren't great either, and Trip is JUST Nariko...

The artistic design is fucking gorgeous in this game!!! The simple climbing in the game presents you with beautiful vistas that made me stop and just look for a while. The mixture of color was nice to look at. Ninja Theory killed it in terms of aesthetic design.

Enslaved is a good game to look at... Not to play...

Didn't run at 60fps. BOO! Even the PC version had a FPS lock. DOUBLE BOO!!!!

DmC: Devil May Cry (What a dumb name!!!!!)

Okay! Here we go! This is the controversial one! Time to defend my distaste for this game!

Before you attack, I just wanna say that Old Dante was shit, and Reboot Dante isn't any better. They're both dumb and I didn't care about the change. That is the least of my issues with DmC.

I'll change it up and start with the positive. Level design and platforming are great in this game. It was fun to traverse these impossibly cool areas as they crumbled and formed around me. Thumbs up!

Okay, the positive stuff went by fairly quickly... onto the mechanics of DmC... They are too simple. Devil Trigger is dumbed down! Stances are gone! Lock-On is GONE! Almost all advanced tactics are gone! (No DRI's, No Enemy Hopper Jump Cancels, No Royal Guard!!!!!!!). SSS ranks are handed out like free candy! Colored enemies are maybe the WORST thing in the game. Why would you intentionally prevent the player from being creative with his combos in a Devil May Cry game? UGH!

Enemy design is TERRIBLE!!!! Only one of them are fun to fight, being that teleporting samurai guy, and the rest are just boring or bad.

Bosses are bad. Yeah, I said it. That stupid News Station boss that everyone talks about LOOKS cool, but it is literally jumping through squares, pressing a button, and doing as much damage as possible in the bosses recovery time. That is bad design. Even the fight with Vergil is much worse than the fights with Vergil throughout DMC3.

DmC is cool to look at and jump around in, but it is too braindead easy for me to feel satisfied playing it. It felt balanced with reviewers in mind, requiring little to no effort to do "Cool shit".

Ran at 60fps on PC, not console. Half-Boo.

In Conclusion?

This really looks like a lot of bitching, but I'm not excited for Hellblade because Ninja theory has a bad track record. I just want Sony to hire Platinum to make something for PS4, because I'm not looking forward to my inevitable purchase of the Xbox One for Scalebound, the only game I'm interested in on that system. I already did it with the WiiU, and now I'm going to do it again. I'd like a good AAA Character Action game on the system I already bought, and I don't have any high hopes for GenericBlade...

/rant i guess?

I didn't do Kung Fu Chaos because no one knows that that is...

There will be some spoilers

Hey folks, I have time on my hands, so take a seat and let me talk about Evangelion. I'm going to be tackling a specific topic, something that friends ask me somewhat regularly. "Should I watch NG Evangelion, or the rebuilds?". That is a question that I don't feel comfortable answering with a simple "NGE" or "Rebuild".

Let's begin with me, the guy typing this up with maybe a little too much alcohol in his system to be accurately comparing these different takes on a somewhat complex series, but fuck it, lets give it a shot. I love Evangelion, and I've spent a lot of time with the series. I've watched the Neon Genesis series 5 times now, I've read the manga adaptation, I've seen the rebuilds, and I own too many figures.

Hideaki Anno, the man behind the series. To understand some of the things I'm going to bring up, you'll have to know some things about this man. Anno was a man that was involved influential shows such as Royal Space Force and Gunbuster(Inspired Gurren Lagann!!!!!!). He also was a very depressed man. After a Movie deal for an adaptation of Nadia: The Secret of the Blue Water proved to be too stressful, Hideaki Anno pulled out, the project fell apart, and resulted in a 30 million yen loss on Gainax. Anno fell into a depression lasting several years, until his return with Neon Genesis Evangelion. Why does this matter? I'll get to that.

When you're depressed, its safe to assume that you might blame God. This could explain a lot of Evangelion. From its name, the constant symbolism, Adam, the enemies being "Angels", and more. There is an odd feeling throughout the entirety of NGE(Neon Genesis will be referred as this from now on). This is a feeling of omnipotence. Everything seems out of our control, mysterious, and results in a somewhat hopeless feeling. Rebuild has cut out some of these scenes, recreated the rest, and has created no new scenes with the same feeling. Why is this bad? Because it doesn't add anything. It tries to fit into NGE's shoes, while still wanting to stand different. It doesn't add value, and it's nods to the original series just feel like cheap nods.

These cheap nods are present in another sense between the series. Characters. The characters of Evangelion are what sets it apart. This is where it all comes tumbling down in the Rebuilds. I could go for days about each and every character, explaining how each one is a shadow of it's NGE version, but who really has time for that???? Too keep it short, I'll two examples, Misato and Naoko Akagi

Misato is deceptively complex. She is a women that has always hated her father because of the neglect towards her and her mother as he prioritized his work over family. He was distant and that made Misato despise him. Yet, during the Second Impact, her father sacrificed his own life to save hers. This results in her being confused as to how she could hate someone that saved her life. She becomes mute, jump forward, and she has bounced back. All seems well, but the closer you look, the less things seem well. She drowns her sorrows by drinking. A lot. She makes light of it, but honestly, a lot of people that drink to dull the pain do that. She has a father complex, going after men that remind her of him. Resulting in her sexual relationship with Kaji. She invites Shinji to live with her in a heartbeat. She is damaged, yet a lot of this is brushed aside in Rebuild with a quick explanation by Kaji, to Shinji.

Naoko? An important plot point for showing who Gendo is. A scientist that is responsible for creating the important system that controls everything in NERV. A lonesome women that is pity fucked by her commander(Gendo) to keep her happy and doing her best work. When she is confronted with that. She strangles a 5 year old and throws herself off of a building. Fucked up, right? Not even in Rebuild.

Less is more. This saying is made unbelievably clear when comparing NGE vs Rebuild. Rebuild CONTANTLY tries to be "Edgy" and "CrAaaaAaaAaAAaaaazy" and ends up falling flat. Hard. Every Eva Unit apparently has a Berserk Button, when before, Shinji was the only one who could become this monster capable of tearing angels apart. But it's made so trivial in the Rebuilds, all of these "edgy" scenes become dull. They don't have weight. You seem so much action that just because Eva Unit 3 has Asuka in it, "raising the stakes", it's hard to care as much because you seem so much action beforehand (NOT TO MENTION THEY BLIND SHINJI IN THIS SCENE, DUDE, THE WHOLE POINT IN NGE IS THAT HE WATCHES TOJI GET TORN APART BY HIS OWN "HANDS")

In conclusion, Eva Rebuild 1.0 is a faithful recreation of NGE, 2.0 is the tripping point, scaring me as a fan of the original, but 3.0 is VERY interesting... The time jump is my favorite part of the Rebuilds. It shows a sign of going completely on its own, not relying on cheap nods, but carving it's own path. I'm hopeful for 4.0, but right now. Neon Genesis Evangelion is the better series. If you haven't seen any Evangelion, start with NGE, if you've only seen Rebuilds, go watch NGE. I've been told that it's hard to watch NGE because it looks "old", but I think that it has held up better than most anime of it's time.

This is too much to read, anyone who reads all of this is a maniac and I thank you.

As you may or may not know, the film adaptation of Persona 3 has finally been made available for import. Being a fanatic of the Persona series, I made it a goal to see it as soon as possible. After my second viewing, I've decided to share my opinion on the film, hoping that some might find it useful when making a decision to watch it or not.

How much Persona 3 is actually in this film? Well, not a lot. Actually, the film covers very little in the grand scheme of things, leading me to believe that we'll (hopefully) see more than just 2 films. The plot moves along and chooses the fight with Emperor and Empress as it's climactic endpoint. This means Fuuka has only just been introduced, and 4 other S.E.E.S members haven't played a role in the films yet.

How loyal to the source material does this stand? Surprisingly well, to be honest. The enemies shown throughout the movie had the correct weaknesses(To my memory). Very little was added or replaced in terms of scenes. The tone is very similar to the games, with the only outlier being MC's cold and nonchalant demeanor that is more exaggerated than the attitude that the MC in the game had, having him just come out and say the death isn't a big deal. the fight with Emperor and Empress is a tad bit different, but I'll let that one slide because it made it more dramatic.

How about the animation? The film looks great in it's entirety. Every character looks right and good (Aside from the occasional weird looking face on Mitsuru). The animation team managed to sneak in Philemon any place they could and it fun to catch one every now and again. The effects during fights have been stellar, and really make me excited to see my Waifu Aigis(<3) in action in the 2nd film. I did have one complaint about the action scenes, the physical hits felt lackluster (Akihiko and Polydeuces in particular). When a character was hit by a shadow, or a shadow was hit with blunt force, it didn't have the right weight behind it. They felt weak.

Acting? Well, I wouldn't call myself an expert on acting, but I think it was overall pretty good. MC sounds fine. Although Junpei seemed a little too angry at MC a little too early.

Pacing? I mean, they're doing what they can. I feel that only sticking to the main plot is the correct choice. The S. Links in P3 aren't the greatest and characters develop fairly well in the main tale. Even with the little amount of story the showed, it still felt rushed. Although that is a problem that is near impossible to fix for a 80+ hour JRPG.

Overall I really liked this movie and I'm hungry for more. This is spades better than Persona 4: The Animation, and I'd recommend that anyone watch this. Even if you never played the game, it's good enough for you to watch, and it might even convince you to get it on PSN.

So, please get excite for Midsummer Knight's Dream

If you saw it, I'd love to hear some other opinions on it, as it will take some convincing to get my friends to see it. They have a bias against Persona because I say shit like "Aigis is the best robot waifu". Go figure

I love Persona 3, and with some extra time on my hands recently, I felt the urge to visit it again. Now, I after completing my third playthrough. Looking back on it, i feel the urge to put down my feelings for my favorite character in words. I don't know why, since most probably don't care, but I gotta tell someone that falling in love with a fake robot was a special experience. (In short: I wanna talk about my Robo Waifu)

Aigis, The 7th Generation Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon. You meet her(it?) in Yakushima while on a SERIOUS babe hunt as she stands, staring at the ocean in front of her. All she knows is that she needs to protect you, she doesn't know why, but she knows that it's her primary objective. As the story moves along, we see her question human life, and the purpose of her own existence. Only one thing to her is certain, that she needs to be with you. (In short: Aigis is mad attracted to you, but she doesn't know why)

The more she experiences human interaction, the less she understands. This brilliant character growth makes her more human. We aren't able to understand things out of our control. Human beings are totally incomprehensible, and we can never "calculate" why we do the things we do. (In short: She totally is becoming human)

Then she comes to an answer. The purpose of life is to be in contact with others. To not be alone. This troubles her, because as a machine, she thinks that she'll never have this. She tells you that you are important to her, she tells you that she loves you, but can never be with you. She is a machine. You are human. One day... You'll leave her. As she says this, you walk up to her, embrace her, and she runs away. This scene is sorrowful the 3rd time through... You know the bitter truth of what comes, and you know that she is right. (In short: She loves your ass!)

You talk to her, and she tells you that she has thought it through. She invites you to her room, and tells you that that she can promise one thing, that she will never leave you. You take her hand as she asks you to burn the memory of yourself to her Papillion Heart (Super delicate componet contain everything that makes her unique). The scene fades to black. (In Short: You are part of her heart.)

Then the end comes. You know it's coming. You sacrifice yourself to protect the human race from itself, then drag your tired body to the roof with Aigis as your soul slips away. You fulfill your final promise, and say goodbye to Aigis, who sheds a tear. Credits roll. (In short: This scene will have you bawling like a little baby!)

This relationship is tragically beautiful. You play an integral part making an obedient weapon become a loving human before your eyes. You make the ultimate sacrifice and leave your imprint on this girl's heart (Literally!). She lost you, but she'll never forget you. (In short: Aigis is awesome.)

Damn, this drags a bit. I should sleep...