Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 02/28/2014

Nah, the gore was fine (I brought up Baccano, remember?). I was more bugged by the bad writing and animation. The flying head with its eyes opened and blinking reminded me of that first episode of Gantz, so it surprised me when I looked up Shigurui and Wikipedia said it was "realistic".

@believer258: i think everyone anime fan or not should watch Baccano it's like telling someone to watch Cowboy Bebop you just fucking do it!

and you know whats better than Danganronpa? Danganronpa 2!

Patrick Klepek: "I've covered anime you know".

I hope that Patrick ends up playing Persona 4, really interested to see his reaction to it. There's a bear in that one too! Less concerned with murder, though.

Also, pretty funny to hear the host of the powerbombcast joke about anime's insanity. I love the craziness of wrestling, but explaining a crazier anime plotline is very similar to explaining the crazier wrestling plotlines.

@believer258: Ah yeah, the train scene. I guess they are quite similar. I'd say the gore of Gantz and Shigurui is more obscene than the stuff in Baccano. Shigurui is most likely described as realistic because of the art style and the setting. I know some pretty unrealistic stuff happens, though I can't remember any specifics about the story at this point. It didn't overstay its welcome, I know that. It kinda just ended and left me wondering why there was no next episode.

Dopin Ranga

i miss s0n1c_h3dgeh0g

I guarantee you they have more experience with/knowledge of both of those franchises.

Came for the kawaii, stayed for the truth bullets.

@patrickklepek don't be ashamed of anime, embrace it. Let all that anime wash over you like a bucket of horrible. I did it, and I seem pretty ok, well I think I'm ok.

Probably familiar with the names, but not the content. Stuff like "Truth Bullets" and principal bears are pretty simple compared to obtaining witness testimony from orca whales and forming friendships in order to extract powerful demons such as Satan from your soul.

Much better idea to put it up on Tuesday instead. I figured out what to put in the google machine to tell me that would make for an interesting show. I don't want to spoil for those that don't know but I would love to hear what Patrick and The Wolf have to say about what makes it newsworthy/noteworthy.

Quick heads up Patrick, you can jump farther with DK it's just a little tricky. Basically if you roll and then jump out of that roll you'll do a super long jump. As you say in the Retro DKCs you have very little air control (wasn't the case in the original trilogy actually) so if you need to land precicely out of a roll jump you have to get a feel for how long it goes and then pull back hard to stop it early or use Diddy or Dixie to brake. Once you get this down I feel Dixie is more useful than Diddy 99% of the time since it's the roll jump that gives you distance not the buddy ability.

I wrote a blog about this that was in the Community Spotlight last week if you want to know more. It has pretty pictures in it! Like this jump I was able to do with a single roll jump from the platform on the left to the platform on the right. It takes a little practice and sometimes I fuck up and die but it's really useful for going faster. You could also watch some of the fastest runs in the Time Trials which do all sorts of mad tricks you probably will hurt yourself trying. Simplest trick though is the roll jump.

Also don't forget to go looking for the alternate exits. Paths indicate secret exits unless they lead to a Temple level. The levels on the stones aren't unlocked through secret exits. Some of the best levels are secrets, including the first silhouette level.

PS The DKC games were always gorgeous. Look at these animated GIFs I found. There's also a recent piece on the creation of DKC that's a real nice read.

Holy crap this new Wolfenstein sounds rad! :D

anime blows

I'm cool with this coming weeks episode being on Tuesday, I'd love to hear about South Park

So you like 80's movies because they take ridiculous things too seriously and you can't take anime stuff seriously because it's too ridiculous.

Got it.

Treating anything that has an anime style to it and lumping it under the term "anime" and then making blanket statements about the whole thing is a lot like when people lump all video games together and make blanket statements about them. Anime is a pretty diverse genre, there's stuff there for all kinds of people.

Anime is capable of being great, just like romantic comedies are capable of being great. That being said, most anime/romantic comedy films are for jerks

To be fair, like Video Games, Anime isn't what it was twenty years ago. It's just Video Games have in general gotten more sophisticated as a medium allowing a deeper variety of meaningful expression to be made. Whereas Anime in general has degraded to a much less broad, arguably less sophisticated medium, where the majority of works that reach us from Japan today are playing to a similar audience expressing similar things. Panties mostly.

I have too much respect for Japanese animation to be happy about the current state of the medium.

So,... can someone explain to me what "It's so Anime" means? Like,... If I said "It's So Novels" or "It's So Movies" does either of those make any sense? There's such a wide range of things being clumped into one thing in these statements... Anime covers every genre every other entertainment medium covers, and has as wide a range of artists, stories, art styles, blockbuster popcorn AAA tentpoles and indie darlings as every other entertainment medium.

Hrm... maybe if I try it a few times:

"The Scarlet Letter is novels as fuuuuuck."

"Transformers is just sooo movies."

"Spirited Away is anime as fuuuuck."

"Call of Duty is so video games."

....actually, I think I might kinda see it a bit now. That said, still seems an insane thing to do, sweeping entire entertainment mediums into the same bag. ~shrug~

Kinda, but saying anime is all about panties nowadays is the same as saying videogames are all about guns nowadays. Partially true, still a tremendous blanket statement.

Yeah, I think most of the people that like things I don't liker are jerks too.

@believer258: The Baccano light novels don't have that Quentin Tarantino feel that the anime has. They're still pretty good. Most of them are available in English if you know where to look.

it is a travesty that Patrick is playing Danganronpa without having played Ace Attorney, & it's even worse that he's thinking of playing it on IOS. Can't he borrow the DS versions from someone?!?!

And if you can deal with some, er, questionable editing. I don't have experience with the Baccano LNs in particular but some other LN translations are barely English.

What an awesome episode, Patrick and Alex are getting pretty ridiculous together.

It'll be interesting once the embargo's up for South Park. I have a feeling there will be a lot of reactions similar to when the TV show started 17 years ago. The show gets away with so much now because people hear about the episodes on abortion, sex change operations or jokes about rape and just go "Oh well that's South Park." The video game world is so sensitive to so much that I don't think it'll go over well with people who haven't been fans of the show. Remember, even the non-fans have been saying forever that it would be nice for there to finally be a good South Park game, but for it to be good, it's gotta be true to what South Park is.

@gasparnolasco: Yep I just think that despite all the guns Video Games have improved as a medium. Anime arguably hasn t. In it s current form it deserves some of that derision.

Bums me out man, nothing is like Anime when it s at its best. Sword of the Stranger is the most recent thing I ve been able to genuinely praise without caveats.

Amen to that!

@matoyak: When people talk about annoying anime cliches and archetypes, it's usually in relation to Shonen stuff, you know, the shows the average American child was exposed to. For every Cowboy Bebop and Ninja Scroll, there's a hundred Naruto and a hundred JRPGs with extremely similar characters.

There's also the insanely melodramatic dialog that pervades a lot of Japanese media.

Well the anime store called, and they're running out of you!!!

anime is for jerks

Personally, I find it weird to say "I hate anime". It's like saying "I hate live-action movies" or something similar. How can one jump hate an entire medium? It just seems ignorant to me.

Well anyway, I was quite surprised to see that picture just randomly on GB though it seems like Patrick just image-searched "anime".

@devoureroftime said:

This is your brain on anime.

(Also, I hate anime and Danganronpa is pretty good so far)

Saying you hate anime is like saying you hate all types pies.

@lackingsaint: You do realize alex said exactly that (sarcastically). In other words, I was joking.

I've realized Alex has good taste in music. At least in music shirts!

On Dangan Ronpa: Ace Attorney and stuff sounds cool but the rhythm aspect is a deal breaker for me. I have very little sense for rhythm so I avoid games that involve it.

I can see how Patrick thinks House of Cards has tons of plot holes for the same reason he thinks there's not a lot of "politicking" going on. Frank's schemes may be far-fetched and convoluted but that's not the same as the show just writing shit that fits.

I mean I'm hardly surprised that a games journalist in his late twenties who fears his wife's judgmental opinions on the games he plays, doesn't know a whole lot about politics.

Sorry, I figured if you were directly quoting Alex you'd put quotation marks around it, rather than just write out the statement with no additional comment.

@devoureroftime: Wait, I thought this was your brain on anime:

or how about.... video games?!?

Dan-Gun-Ron-Pa

In all honesty, do people consider Cowboy Bebop anime? I know it's 'Japanese Animation', but I've seen people who appall anime adore the s**t out of that show.

Because it's an animated show made in Japan. That's all it needs to qualify as "anime".

Wait, when did this air? I kept looking around for any announcement of it and I was on GB all of yesterday morning and I never heard anything. I thought they just quietly cancelled it for the day.