Keep that chinko where I can see it Friday, May 30 2008

Well once again though I had commented that I was watching a lot of american movies lately right now I’ll be writing about a couple of japanese ones. They were at least the american versions of these films. These movies are dramatically different from each other having in common only their country of origin, language, and death.

First up I watched the movie “Reincarnation” 輪廻 (rinne) which is probably most notable for being directed by Shimizu Takashi the guy who did Ju-on/The Grudge. I personally have not seen those movies and have no interest in doing so but I had previously seen a movie of his called Marebito which was a joint work with well known surreal anime writer Konaka Chiaki (aka Chiaki Kon). That work was not great by the way and neither is this one. Both are somewhat surreal but I thought that movie was at least interesting. For some reason the story of this movie seemed really familiar to me but I can’t quite place it. I guess the idea of going back to a mass murder scene for whatever reason (in this case for research to film a movie about the event) is just a common enough plot element that everything else seemed familiar as well. The problem I have with this movie is that it’s like it’s trying to tell too many different stories at once and ends out not succeeding at making any of them very clear. I will laud the work for its “technical” aspects, the soundtrack by Kawai Kenji who can probably only do music for dark series but at least he’s the best at it stands out, the camera work is pretty good, the film quality seemed to be what it should be, the sets were great (especially the set of the set), and even a lot of the acting is pretty good for this kind of movie. In my opinion the two most difficult roles are ones where your life is on the line or where you’re playing an actor acting. I didn’t recognize any of the actors in the film but I’m not an expert on that in the first place and I particularly have little knowledge of japanese actors, voice actors on the other hand I at least recognize. Speaking of which I thought I recognized the artist who did the ending song that ran during the credits but I’m having a hard time now figuring that out. Oh well. Anyway the plot of the movie is whatever, I think that there are too many asian horror movies that have creepy girls or creepy dolls so to have both is just annoying. It’s almost become a bad stereotype ever since Ringu. I mean really. Of course the whole point of watching a horror movie is to be startled, scared, surprised, or whatever it is that happens to you and so other qualities are really secondary. And so saying I only “jumped” once in the movie that I recall so it even failed at being scary! I like Kawai Kenji but his music really doesn’t justify watching a movie so I can’t recommend this film unless you’ve never seen any other horror movies before and so can’t realize how uninspired the whole thing is. The work does have a certain japanese feel that’s hard to explain any other way but again while that’s worth a note it’s not really worth a view.

I have also watched the movie “wakeful nights”　寝ずの番 (nezu no ban) which is a comedy, about a wake. I wouldn’t have thought it would work but it worked pretty well, apparently it was even the first movie by the director so that’s something. Conversely unlike with the above movie I thought I recognized quite a few of the actors in the film but I can’t place any of them immediately though I’m sure I’ve seen the male lead in other films. As to the plot, an aged rakugo (a type of traditional japanese comedy that has grown obscure) master dies and after a pun that sets the tone for the rest of the movie his close family and disciples spend the night telling stories about him. Now if the point of a horror movie is to scare you the point of a comedy is at least to amuse you if not make you laugh. I rarely laugh but I was amused. Let me say that the language and charm of the original japanese is absolutely impossible to translate in its entirety but the fine folks at AnimEigo (best known for localizing older anime series and releasing them in series or season box sets that they put up for pre-order sometimes years before production starts) made a valiant effort to put out something that makes sense and is still fairly funny if not as appreciable. Personally I like works like this that display older japanese traditions which, frankly, have become extreme luxuries (as opposed to luxuries that have become less scarce with time like western theatre, opera, and symphony orchestra) out of little reason beyond increasing scarcity. Other than Rakugo such examples would be things like Noh, Kabuki, Geisha, Bunraku, even the games Shogi, Go and Mahjong (which of course are chinese), or the way of bushido/samurai. I’m not very knowledgeable about Rakugo (which is basically comedic story telling done by a single person (I suspect that only men perform)) but as far as I know there wasn’t actually a lot of it in its traditional form in the movie though the spirit of it certainly came across. I suppose you could call the very “japaneseness” of the film a flaw as far as enjoyment by non-japanese goes but other than that the only thing that really bothered me was how certain scenes seemed pointlessly stretched out. In particular there was one that started out with traditional japanese music and then all of a sudden was playing an old western piece I recognized but can not name. Mozart is probably a safe bet and is probably wrong. It also struck me as extremely odd that “don’t worry be happy” was used in the movie, twice, even if it was done by a japanese a capella group rather than the original version by a black guy (nothing is less japanese than black guys, sorry black guys but it’s true). So the scoring was jarringly off in a few points for my tastes is what I’m trying to say. Something that strikes me as a little weird now that I think of it though I didn’t notice while watching the movie is how no children appeared in the movie at all. Maybe the japanese funeral process is a little different from what I’m used to but generally when people die and families get together that means kids are SOMEWHERE nearby. Or maybe because of all the dirty language someone thought it would be better if there were no kids around? Who knows. But it was just something that would give you the impression no one had any kids if you weren’t paying attention (early on its mentioned that someone had just given birth and later there’s also a flashback scene where someone is pregnant… that might have been a deleted scene though I couldn’t tell you why it wasn’t straight in there). In any case I think the movie is worth checking out since even though it’s extremely japanese it’s also universal. After all, everyone dies right? I almost felt like the movie had some deeper meanings but whether it’s symbolic of the traditional japanese arts dying out or continuing in spite of the masters dying or something else entirely I’m not sure. And whether intentional or not, I think that it’s a good thing to laugh at a funeral.

To step out of that for a minute, my whole life whenever someone died it was always bleak and miserable. Similarly funerals were this way. But then I occasioned to go to a funeral just a couple of years ago that was like a celebration of a life rather than the mourning of a death. I absolutely had no idea how to react to that and went about the event in somewhat of a state of shock. I frankly didn’t even care that much that this person was dead but the funeral threw me so much by being absolutely unlike anything I’d been involved in before I ended out seeming like the most bereaved one there. Actually that was not a great funeral. But between weeping that someone is gone and laughing about the things you went to the choice seems clear to me.

As a side note AnimEigo always makes a stink about not selling their products outside of North America so some of their stuff can be hard to get a hold of. But if you want to buy then you can find someone who wants to sell. And if you know a good shop that carries imports for rent…

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Where lies the end of infinity is unknown but we are always standing upon its frontier Thursday, May 29 2008

So. 無限のフロンティアスーパーロボト大戦OGサーガ (mugen no frontier super robot taisen OG saga: Endless Frontier: super robot wars OG (original generation) saga) is out today for the japanese Nintendo DS. I’ve played it a bit and my initial impression is disappointment as usual. I have to blame a lot of this on the limitations of the Nintendo DS hardware but as far as visuals go the developer Monolith Soft (best known for the Xenosaga series which had fair visuals but other issues were abound) really does kind of suck with sprite graphics. Namco X Capcom on PS2 had some damned ugly battle sprites at times,  I’m particularly reminded of Ryu and Ken’s combination attack where they appear to have pig faces in their end pose. Monolith Soft sucking at sprites raises the question of why they’re making such games but that doesn’t really matter. The early game play is fair but I find the interface uninspiring. The plot is wonky SF crap like most of the SRW series but with even more emphasis on the comedic than usual and a sort of Leiji Matsumoto esque romantic retro sf feel (generally the SRW OG games are hard SF). That said what saves the game from being a step above trash (it’s still better than a lot of DS games though) are the amusing characters and their interactions. Since the characters are intentionally based off of other original banpresto characters in various ways and those characters are basically at best homages to mecha character stereotypes I can’t really give points for originality but the whole thing works in a way that amuses me.

And that’s the whole point of playing a game; to be amused. I should really figure out how to use the ; properly. Anyway the game is easy, the visuals are questionable, the gameplay is a step above uninspired and repetitive (which is a big step up for the boring and repetitive srw series), the characters are unoriginal, the plot is uninspired rehash, and the dialogue is great in a slapstick absurd kind of way. So make of that what you will. In the end I’d say if you’re a fan of monolith soft, banpresto, the japanese language, or the srw series then it’s worth picking up but other than that you’d have to be a really hardcore handheld rpg fan for it to be worth a purchase.

To float back to something I recall mentioning recently about the DS, this is a good example of how even when it seems like the dual screens are being well utilized there’s almost no reason why the same things wouldn’t work on a single full sized screen that was split however. In fact if developers made more use of the right analog sticks on PS(whatever) games there would be almost no limit besides human attention which is quite a bottleneck indeed. whatever.

Just in case anyone has the wrong idea I am talking about a Japanese video game that’s in japanese here. I do not know if the game will be released outside of japan or not, and I also don’t know if the game will be released in a different language. There are often “asian” versions of SRW games but I’ve never been clear exactly what those are and they’re just japanese games with at best a little printout in other languages what the controls are. There is a certain potential that the game will be released in america since the two GBA OG games were, although the PS2 OG games have not been and possibly will not be, but a European release seems extremely unlikely to me even if there is an american release. I would say a large obstacle to the potential release outside of japan aside from the small prospective client base (most people who want srw games outside of japan buy them in japanese anyway and probably will not buy the same game twice, or they just pirate them and wouldn’t buy a commercial version anyway) would be how japanese the humor in the games are, revolving mostly around language that isn’t translatable. Like the way Lamia talks which I personally can not explain. There is also voice in mugen no frontier and there definitely isn’t enough room on a DS cartridge for dual language but the dubbing would be terrible. I think it’s the copious amount of voice in the PS OG games that kept them from an american release more than anything. I always think that otaku will just want the original japanese anyway but if you’re limiting yourself to the otaku fanbase then it’s hard to make money.

Well I’ll write more about the game some other time. If for no other reason than I’m possibly the only one using the tag “mugen no frontier”.

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The way the rain looks in Moscow on a sunny day Thursday, May 29 2008

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately. Mostly american I suppose but that’s not all their fault. So I decided that I might as well write about some of them starting with Eastern Promises.

The movie takes place and was filmed in the UK featuring people who are supposed to be Russian but the male lead is a scandinavian ethnic american national (Viggo Mortensen) and the female lead is1000% british in spite of supposedly being half russian (Naomi Watts), and the director was Canadian so make of those origins what you will. The movie is pretty dramatic, it starts out with a guy getting his throat slit before moving onto a pregnant russian girl being carted into a hospital where a “midwife” finds only her diary as possible identification while she dies in labor and an implausible story unfolds from there. If you think about most parts of this movie they really don’t make a lot of sense but I thought the setting was pretty interesting and the generally queer scenes were well acted. The brothel scene between Nikolai and Kirill for instance and the much written about bath house scene (I can’t believe anyone would actually go to a turkish bath any more, nothing good ever comes of it). In the end the movie was OK but I thought that for all the strong brutality and darkness of the story there were too many cop outs resulting in inconsistent behavior by the characters. Starting with: wouldn’t the police or some other civic agency have wanted and kept the diary to try and identify the dead woman if only considering the state she came in? The story being contrived (this midwife just happening to have a stubborn russian uncle) doesn’t bother me as much as the execution of the plot otherwise being less than believable.

Well in the end the movie wasn’t spectacular but at least it provided me with a good idea for screening prospective viewers: if you don’t want to see Viggo Mortensen’s penis then don’t watch the movie. As to that I’d rather see Viggo’s package than Lou Diamond Phillips’ unit. Don’t worry, that isn’t a link to visuals of “the diamond”.

In that frame of mind I happened to read this article just now and it strikes me as being written by a guy who has had a lot of sex and not nearly as much love.

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The Snow In Philadelphia Tuesday, May 27 2008

Well after rushing through the first couple of chapters of Dragon Shadow Spell I confirmed that the replay items you buy do not work until your next play even when bought in a replay game. I was pretty sure that was the way it was once I got to thinking about it and considering that you choose between them when you start a replay game but for some reason I just kept thinking that it would work out right and didn’t buy the god damned “items are half price” one. shit. No instead I got Painkiller at level 1 (by level 8 his attack stat is higher than a level 42 Helma) as well as Buena (who even at the first level has possibly the 4th or 5th lowest wt) and the matrix, code, and special abilities as well as EXP retainers. Damn.

So considering the fact that I don’t want to have to go all the way through the game three times or play ZERO (a mini game where you can earn money)100 times (maybe 30) to make enough money to buy the replay items I think I’m done with DSS. This isn’t exactly the way I envisioned either beating the game or deciding to move on to something else but maybe I’ll come back to it some time.

Since I probably injured my rotator cuff by playing ZERO so hardcore I’ve decided to share information on that which is probably about as close as I’ll come to writing a guide for the game now that I’m sick of it. I mean seriously I can’t even be bothered to read the dialogue anymore.

So the ZERO mini-game isn’t available until later in the game when you get access to the third “town” Mayhence area 51. It’s the big vending machine looking thing in the first area. After getting into the town and checking it out, maybe talking with someone about it, you have to go back to the shop in Rotenburg and buy the ZERO card (ka-do in katakana but you can recognize the english ZERO). To add insult to injury you have to buy credit charges which let you have one play for 100 stones a pop.

In case you can’t tell from the game instructions you use the L and R buttons to shift your axis and every other button but the right stick is used to fire at the colored spheres/blobs that fly at you. Shooting them in the dark areas is an “ng” and you get minimal points and will break your combo, shooting them in the blue area will get you a “good” and start or keep your combo going while getting you the normal amount of points, and shooting them on the line of a single color (I wonder if I have alzheimer’s that I can play something dozens of times and not remember what color this line is) will get you a “just” and the maximum amount of points.

The amount of targets vary by stage with the fewest in the first one and the most in the 5th one. The tricky thing about ZERO is that you have to get a high enough score to advance. I’m not sure what it is on the first two stages but in order to advance past the 3rd stage you need to score at least 7000 on all 3. In order to go past the 4th stage you need 8000 points and in order to clear the 5th stage you also need more than 8000. If you do things right on the third through 5th stages you’ll be shown a picture while the score is tallying up (which takes forever but you can make it finish by pressing circle or start and press again to go to the next stage). The third stage picture is a group of monsters and the item shop robot or whatever the hell it is with a congratulatory note, the 4th is Suihi eating ramen while Sith (the cat) looks on, and the 5th is inexplicably Helma. I’m not sure which of the two character designers did what but the styles are distinct.

I’m also not sure why 7000, presumably 70% gives you an A and 8000 and 9000 are double and triple a respectively. According to a japanese site I’m looking at if you mess around with the buttons the title screen will change and if you press select at some point (after stage 4? after clearing stage 4?) then something happens with suihi but I don’t feel like checking it out, it ain’t worth it.

As to what it is worth, when you clear the game you can buy a Zero card 00 which lets you play the game infinite times without a charge. Unfortunately the thing costs 4000 stones which doesn’t typically seem worth it to me but since the thing takes under 10 minutes to beat and you can earn upwards of 900 stones in that time it’s possibly the fastest normal way (otherwise you have to exploit the half price replay item to buy for half and sell for full at a level 9 shop) to make money in the game so if you’re really dedicated to getting everything in one playthrough it might be your only shot. I’m assuming that you get a maximum of 200 stones per stage, I also assume that the max score for a perfect is 10000 but I’m really not sure since I’ve never gotten a perfect score. I heard you can only get 999 stones max in a battle though so who knows, maybe it won’t let you get a thousand.

For some reason even though I have been able to get more than 9000 points on each of the stages I have been unable to clear all 5 subsequently with a score of that or more. Just for posterity here are my meager best scores.

1. Arioso: 9905
2. Gig: 9974 (so damn close)
3. Noble Planet: 9410
4. 9426
5. 9615

You would notice that my best score is on the second stage and my worst (barely) is on the third. The game doesn’t have a hi-score feature or anything by the way. Anyway my scoring is consistent with finding the second stage easiest, the 4th hardest, and the third a stage I just have problems getting a high score on. I definitely got hung up most often on the third stage, by the time I managed to get to the 4th and 5th stages I was able to clear them within only a few plays.

As a last note it seems to me like you get more points for the… let’s call them “elements” at the start of the stage, presumably you get a boost to your score for comboing but the action is too hectic for me to closely observe the score while playing since it doesn’t let you pause (since that would let you prepare yourself better for the patterns as they emerge).

Ah that wasn’t the last note: in order to get 7000 points you have to get a lot of “justs” and combo most of the elements. In order to get past 8000 you need to be ore than 2 to 1 on your just to good ratio with a minimum of NGs and broken combos. In order to get past 9000 you can only afford a few ngs (you have more leeway in latter stages since there are more elements to shoot down and thus each is worth less) and need to do close to or better than 3 to 1 on justs to goods.

If you let enough shit by then eventually that town or whatever the gauge is for gets destroyed and you lose. That isn’t hard to avoid if you don’t care about your score. I have a hard time telling whether it hurts your score more to get an ng and break your combo, which does at least give you some points, or to let something go by you which eventually breaks your combo but usually gives you enough time to shoot more stuff down first to extend it. You could probably figure it out if you’re motivated. Yes so that’s my horribly done entry on this topic. What a damn waste of time. I really should give up gaming but I probably won’t until I really can’t physically play any more.

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IF (you can touch the rainbow with your toe) Tuesday, May 27 2008

Well I finally got around to beating the japanese playstation 2 game Dragon Shadow Spell. I have written about the game various times while playing it so I don’t feel like doing a full review but to summarize here are the things I liked and disliked about it.

Likes: the designs, the graphics, some of the characters, the mission select, the humor, the depth of character interaction from the bonus missions and private conversations, the world the game takes place in, certain aspects of the battle system, some of the music, being able to carry things over on repeat plays, the game’s charm.

Dislikes: the main character, the main character’s special ability which cripples him, the convoluted plot, no status or inventory menu during free movement, the broken platform jumping elements of the free movement, how hard it is to gain new skills (beat an enemy to get code for yourself and cumulative matrix, as the matrix for a type of enemy fills up you can learn various stat increases and abilities but for most of the enemies you won’t get more than 20 points through the normal course of the game), the broken experience system which discourages the use of more than 6 characters on a regular basis, the heavily imbalanced stats, the steep jump in enemy difficulty at the end of the game, the turn limit in the Heaven’s door free battles, the controls for the ZERO mini game, the extreme difficulty of making “money”, having to buy expensive items to let you carry things into a replay that do not work until that replay (I have yet to confirm whether items bought in a replay game work right away or force you to once again beat the game before you can use them), how easy it is to miss character events and how tedious it is to try and get them all, the ending, the fact that nothing changes through the course of the game based on your actions (meeting a character in a bonus scenario or event but having there be no recognition in a mission scenario), the lack of closure for a lot of characters, the bonus characters  (who you can’t use until a replay anyway) starting at level one in a replay game.

So yeah there are quite a few more dislikes than likes on my part. That’s just my way. All in all I enjoyed the game and it’s not like the ending was bad, the game brought itself together at least. It just seemed like so much of it didn’t matter and that was frustrating. By my end of the game I couldn’t tell whether I couldn’t have a conversation with certain characters (who happened to be ones I’d stopped using) during the last mission (which is supposed to be the way to decide whose ending ou get but…) because I had missed some of their events or because their levels weren’t high enough or I didn’t use them enough or what. My motivation to replay the game at this point is pretty low. Since the last mission throws you into 3 of the longest battles in the game my motivation to replay that alone 9 times or even the 5 times available to me is particularly low let alone the 30 or so mission battles in the game (maybe). I imagine that it’s because of there being individual endings that there aren’t scenes to show what happens to even groups of characters afterwards but this really leaves NPCs hanging in the wind.

Probably the thing that disappoints me so much is that I played the ZERO mini game a bunch of times to make money for the replay items AFTER I locked myself in for the… supposedly “true” ending which apparently only lets you get the ending of one NPC no matter what you do. I feel like this was a huge flaw, rather than forcing you into that they could have easily had the last choice you get in the game, whether there’s someone you want to talk to or not, decide that. Although things would not have been clear that was how to get that ending, it’s not like most other things were clear anyway.

So saying I guess that “disappointment” is the main thing I’m feeling. I dumped so many hours into this game and I feel like I wasn’t really rewarded. Now if I ignore these immediate feelings I did enjoy playing the game. Probably I would have enjoyed it more either if the main character didn’t suck so much or he didn’t have such a lousy (it’s nasally and whiny, since the character is like that it’s even worse) voice. There is some question in my mind whether or not this will turn into some sort of series. I find it highly doubtful that the same cast would be assembled again but it’s easy to imagine a game using the same world.

One last note related to the experience system. There is basically a finite amount of experience available in the game. Characters do not level up in battle but instead you are given EXP to your pool at the end of battle which is also the only time you’re allowed to level characters and only the ones that were in the battle. Using only what’s given to you in the missions, including the 7 quests (not that you got much for those either), I’m not sure that by spreading the exp out evenly between all characters they would be strong enough to comfortably beat the end bosses. It should be possible, but I had a hard enough time after going through all 40 available free battles to reasonably beat the final boss. The main problem is that by the end of the game the offensive stats of enemies are proportionally much greater than those of your characters but that’s another matter. Anyway the game was passable quality wise but it was annoying and broken so it’s no wonder that it hasn’t been and probably will not be released outside of japan.

And so after beating the game I find myself only able to recommend it to hardcore SRPG fans, which is nearly the only type of srpg fan anyway, and among those only the ones who have a fair understanding of japanese (without the charm of the game’s character scenes it would be a real chore) and are also fans of convoluted fantasy anime/manga. Yeah convoluted fantasy, that’s how I would describe the genre for sure. to tack a number on it I’ll give it a 7.5 but let me say that if it weren’t for a variety of flaws, or possibly if the game was a lot shorter and had branching story lines, then it could have been a 9. That hour wasted (that’s how much I suck more than how hard it actually is to some extent) trying to make jumps on the bridge to get to the stones (money) really grated on me…

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scrupulous scandals Tuesday, May 20 2008

Do you know what can get you into a lot of trouble? Gambling. Do you know what can get you into even more trouble? Using copies of the koran for target practice.

Or does it? Certainly the US has taken heat for this, but what about the individual soldier? According to this article on Reuters (it’s probably in 10 others on there) “They (the US military) have also undertaken disciplinary action against the soldier who was involved and he has been removed from Iraq“. Exactly what this disciplinary action is can be left open to speculation and I myself am not an expert on military law. It is pretty hard to imagine hard prison time resulting from the episode although a court-martial is a possibility and anything can happen in one of those, I wouldn’t be surprised if the result was dishonorable discharge but I don’t honestly know what the hell that means I’m just recalling terms from american war movies.

In any case here’s the important thing: this soldier is not going to be punished with his life by his government. Whether someone will kill him over this or not is beyond the scope of my estimation. On the other hand being in a “war zone” is certainly one of the most likely places to get killed. So what this all really means, and I don’t think a lot of people have caught on to this one is this; deface the koran, make sure prominent iraqis find out and become outraged, and get out of iraq.

Think about that for a minute and you realize that major scandals could be over the horizon. Right now this is an isolated incident (an initial report I heard characterized the event as though as though at least an entire squads or battalions were doing this) and though it will probably be perpetuated for anti-american propaganda it doesn’t seem poised to suddenly be the thing that results in suicide bombings on every street corner. But what if entire squads of disaffected soldiers start doing it in the hopes of geting out of iraq? It’s hard to see it going beyond squad level for logistics reasons but something tells me this will not be the last such incident. Although I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first either so there you go.

I would say that traditionally assaulting someone’s values tends to make them even madder than actually assaulting them. This is not unlike how hitting a bee hive will cause bees to swarm, how much harm the bees actually take is questionable but they are for the hive and if you’re against the hive then they’re against you.

Conversely I don’t necessarily have problems with people declaiming religion. I rather like religious imagery though. I can’t remember who it was (probably china though possibly a middle eastern country) a while ago that blew up some sort of large stone carved bodhisattva in a cliff face or something and that was a shame. Actually my first response to the story was “they should have lined up the bible and the torah as well”. Although something that a lot of people don’t realize is that both of those books (less so the bible itself than parts of the bible) are considered representations of the sacred and therein respected by the muslim faith as well even though they are not followed on their own. I’m not a great expert on that one so I won’t say any more, but my point is that it’s possibly only going to make your stereotypical (who by definition does not exist) muslim extremist even madder. But I digress so I will end.

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desires most black Friday, May 16 2008

Well as the comment on my most recent post points out, the japanese word for gold is kin and gin means silver. This is a mistake I constantly make when romanizing, I can actually tell the difference between the kanji. Although if I’m not mistaken the kanji for gin is made up of the kanji used for kin and something else (the kanji ryo?) so it’s just confusing either way. For the record I meant to entitle it “kin for the win” and had I not included the translation note no one would have ever noticed I messed up since gin is a shougi piece as well so if I ever looked back I’d have though I meant to do it all along. I’m not quite sure what to say about that so I won’t say anything.

Recently while aimlessly watching tv as people are prone to do I happened to catch the start of a certain movie. The only thing that was remarkable about this was that they waited about a half hour before going to commercial break for the first time. Frankly it was pretty difficult to abandon the channel during the break after hanging on for that long. I did anyway of course but it got me to thinking: who the hell realized that was a good idea? I guess I’m not sure that it is, I still didn’t watch the commercials after all, but it was a lot better than the usual break every 10-15 minutes during a movie; which is the main reason I don’t bother watching movies on tv most of the time. Anyway that’s just something to pay attention to. You might not have realized it but tv shows are actually shorter now than they used to be in the (distant enough) past to some extent. The difference is more apparent among hour long programming than half hour programming, a lot of shows used to be upwards of 50 minutes and are now less than 45. I think half hour programming has only gone from 25 to 22 or so. This is part of the reason why a lot of the older shows aren’t in syndication anymore, demand is of course another reason but that’s another story. So that’s just something to think about.

Another thing I was thinking about is that it’s not like developers didn’t make split screened content in games until Nintendo put out their dual screened Nintendo DS. A lot of the games on the system typically use the off screen to show either a/the map, some kind of status screen or menu, or a dialog box. All things that you can find in regular console games. If there’s a difference it’s that you’ve always got two screens with the DS but a regular game screen might only ever show one thing at a time. In the end of course people can only spread their attention out so much so to have you try and play on two screens at once would be beyond most people. There is something to be said of the stylus letting you select exactly what you want to without having to cycle through things like with a game controller, or drag the cursor like with a mouse, but that isn’t necessarily something that required two screens either. I imagine that you can do similar things with the Wii and its remote on a tv screen. Did they come out with those retinal sensors for computers yet? I’m pretty sure they have motion detectors for you to do stuff with your hands but I think they still work like a typical mouse. I’ve never really seen one in use. It might be worth looking into.

As to what the thing I’m most interested in right now would be, probably not dying from what could be a pandemic. They’re pretty quick to declare “possible pandemic” these days but after evading genocide from way back when until now I’d just as soon not get wiped out en masse in the end anyway. I don’t necessarily have a problem with dying from a disease, it’s not ideal but it’s a death, but I’ve always been the type to prefer not to do what everyone else is doing if given the choice. Not that a pandemic is the same as a fad. Probably. I suspect that people that get the same diseases are broadly doing the same things. Like breathing and drinking water. Or more cynically drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. If you drink and smoke and then get cancer then you probably deserve it. Yeah, I went there.

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gin (the japanese word for gold and a shougi piece) for the win Wednesday, May 14 2008

Not to make a big deal out of it but of all things 柴田ヨクサル Shibata Yokusaru’s (best known for Air Master) most recent work ハチワンダイバー (81 Diver=hachi one diver from the 81 squares on the shougi board and the main character’s self-styled play name) which is basically about the japanese board game shougi has been turned into a live action drama. The series is apparently much more popular than I’d have guessed for that to come to pass. Frankly the manga is pretty screwy and even though I know nothing of consequence about shougi I read it and am amused by how ridiculous it is which is Shibata’s signature. The art seems to have taken a hit in the quality department lately but that could be my imagination.

Anyway the live action version is alright but you just can’t capture the ridiculous art of Shibata in live action. They also couldn’t find a girl for the female protagonist “ukeshi-san” who has breasts anywhere near as large as the manga character. This is understandable but they could have at least padded her out or something for the comedic effect. Actually the manga character is somewhat more full figured as well now that I think of it. The main character is as much of a lame duck as ever.

And by the way now that my japanese has recently gotten better (trying to translate a video game can do that) I finally figured out the starting premise. The protagonist was what you might call a “pre-pro” shougi player, if you’re at all familiar with Hikaru no Go and the go ranking system there it’s comparable for shougi as far as I know. Anyway I think he was 3rd-dan (rank) but you need to be 4th-dan to be a real pro and… he didn’t make it for varying reasons. So he leaves his master and starts gambling on shougi. He manages to amass a fair amount of money but different things happen and as the series goes on he gets pulled more and more into the strange shougi underworld with its colorful cast of characters.

This series isn’t what I’d call a hardcore gambling series compared to the likes of Akagi and the other works by Fukumoto Nobuyuki in which the yakuza are a large factor and things are really dangerous. Unfortunately as of the 6th volume the series has been setting itself up for the likes of super enemies and competitive tournaments but if all is good then it will just keep going on like it has. I’m curious exactly how they’ll play certain things from the manga out in the anime, I can’t see a transition for the doll guy or the shougi video game. It would be nice if they did things differently but heaven forbid they come up with something original.

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When the sighs overflow like a top loading washer with a box of detergent in it Tuesday, May 13 2008

After officially 63 hours of playing Dragon Shadow Spell (I got tired of not separating those two words), possibly twenty hours of which was comprised trying to log information and translate the dialogue from the first half of the game (after which I gave up on the venture) and another 10 or more has been spent leveling in the free dungeon and playing mini games to make money, I am at least 4/6 through the game. As far as the first play through goes anyway. I can’t say for sure exactly what would comprise completing the game since as far as I know you can get all the endings on your first play through as long as you’re willing to play most of the 9th chapter twice doing the 53rd mission differently as well as doing the first battle of the final chapter (which apparently only has two or four stages) differently and either having or skipping a conversation with certain characters in the final chapter… hmm… well assuming you’ve gotten everything else, anyway.

Other than getting the endings, you have to play the game at least twice in order to complete the final dungeon and probably in order to make enough credits to buy everything in the shop. I’m not entirely certain why they force you to play the game a second time in order to take advantage of things like earning twice as many credits (well they’re actually “sage’s stone”s or something like that) and only paying half price for things. The thing I’m not sure about is whether the “replay items” carry over from a save or have to be bought in a save. I’m pretty sure it’s the former since there are items like “carry over your levels” but it’s questionable when it comes to the purchases for using enemy characters. hmm well I may or may not find out. Frankly I’m not the least bit certain that the game is worth playing through twice even though it would foreseeably (is that really not a word? It should be one and I’d swear I’ve seen it in books) be even easier than it originally was (which is probably why you can also buy items to make things harder) and take a lot less time. For me since I’m not exactly a japanese expert but I’m possibly an SRPG expert I think it might take me more time to read the dialogue and understand it than it does to complete the battles. At that rate setting up for the battles might take longer. It is ever thus for me. Ever thus.

Random (questionably romanized) list of my preference for the characters in DSS

1. Painkiller
2. Buena
3. Helma
4. Vista
5. Arthur
6. Djehuty (although they say it “jefty”
7. Prinveil (sounds and looks like “purin(pudding)bell”)
8. Hugues (I never would have guessed that’s what ユーグ is supposed to be)
9. Suihi
10. Gawain
11. Sarah
12. (R/L)aika (officially it’s an L but they even make a point of his name being “rai”…)
13. Thereze
14. Ra
15. Kaito (the protagonist)
16. others

DSS, like most Flight Plan games has a pretty large cast of characters that get a pretty decent amount of development. To me the most annoying thing about the game is that the side things you do have absolutely no apparent effect upon the main plot scenes. This is especially frustrating when, having been introduced to a character in a bonus scenario or chance encounter, you’re introduced to them as if it’s the first time in a main scenario. I mean, come on.

A note about Kaito: his voice is awful. His looks aren’t great either, what the fuck is up with japanese and characters who carry goggles around but never war them? But it’s the nasally, whiny, weak voice that grates on me. Considering that he’s the protagonist I’d say that he accounts for close to half of the spoken lines, and he is in the majority of most scenes. Of all people the voice for Suihi is Furuya Toru best known for either of his enduring roles as Amuro R(a/e)y in the original gundam series (I think he’s been in every SRW game that has voice) and some of its sequels or as Seiya from the Saint Seiya series (which was possibly more commercially successful outside of japan than gundam, and definitely compared to the success of the amuro only gundam series). His voice was the only one I recognized but some of the others seem familiar. I’m actually not that big on actors or artists and usually only bother to keep track of the names of those whose works I appreciate or encounter the most.  Well whatever. I may yet do a sort of guide, minus translations, for DSS if only because of the apparent lack of availability of one in english. Even the thing I found in english about how to get the endings is quite possibly wrong. According to the japanese site I found a lot of info on it doesn’t mention anything about needing to do even half of the things that the english instructions give, and similarly those don’t tell you anything about the two late game battles with npcs whose life or death determine the endings (or perhaps just final battles?) that you can get.

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Didn’t I say before that there’s always a reason for things to be cheap? Monday, May 12 2008

I picked up a bottle of “pomegranate liqueur” the other day for a euro. A EURO for a liter bottle of booze! I thought this was a great price so even though I don’t like pomegranates and was out buying something else I picked it up. If I’d have stopped to think about it for a minute I would have realized that there’s no way it would even taste like it was worth a euro, I’m not even sure it tastes like it’s worth a dollar although it tastes about as bad as a dollar. But I had success the last time I picked up a bargain bottle of hooch when I grabbed some mango schnapps so I gave it a try and regret it somewhat. Bargain alcohol; it’s not.

And so with this in mind I have temporarily (I always take it up again later) given up alcohol once again. Mostly because I’ve drunk (I’m dumping the pom) all the alcohol that I have and blew through my windfall already but that’s another story. I have decided to take this opportunity to make a list of what my favorite things to drink on any given occasion are. Things will be in the order presented.

Overall: water, lemonade, cola, juice, soda, alcohol, tea, milks, broth, coffee, misc.

After getting out of the shower: cola, beer, orange juice, any cocktail.

Watching sports on tv: beer, hard alcohol, water, soda.

Relaxing at home: gimlet, pina colada, rum, margarita, brandy, wine, gin, water, juice.

With food: broth, screwdriver (orange juice and any hard alcohol usually), juice, water, milk.

Casual night out: cola, gimlet, pina colada, daiquiri, lemonade, rum and coke, beer, mineral water.

Over ice cream: balsamic vinegar (silver from Reggio Emila or gold from RE or Modena only, the biggest perversion in my life is to put 25 year old balsamic on generic peppermint ice cream), dulce de leche, kirschwasser (the only german thing that I tolerate), lemonade, juice, flavored syrup (ice cream topping).

Formal night out: bottled water (clear head), gimlet, brandy, wine, martini, mineral water, sparkling water, soda (usually to piss someone off, go to a nice restaurant and ask for limonada or coca-cola if you’re sure they don’t have it and then say “well if you don’t have that then just make me a double martini since it will obviously be a long night”).

Sporting event: beer, cola, sports drink.

Watching a Sitcom: strong beer, hard alcohol, lemonade.

When invited to someone’s house: if you like them whatever they offer, if you dislike them the best thing that they have regardless of whether you like it or not.

When serving someone at your house: If you like them; the best thing you have or whatever they want or like (if you really like them you know what they like and will have it to offer), if you hate them then make cheap instant coffee or tea (preferably past date); whichever they don’t like using tap water and without offering milk or sweetener, even if you have any lie and say you’re out if asked.

with cake (excepting cheesecake): milk, red tea, juice, champagne, mimosas, coffee

with cheesecake: thai iced tea (smells like cigarettes tastes like cane sugar), gin or anything likely mixed with gin, water.

with pie: wine, soda, water, herb (such as peppermint) tea.

with cookies: milk, cocoa, tea, coffee

just to drink something: pink lemonade (better fucking be more sour than sweet), water, soda, beer, cocktails, green tea, herb tea, white tea, red tea, black tea.

And so on, you get the idea. Feel free to write in with requests like weddings at different times (bloody marys, screwdrivers, cranberry juice, orange juice, soda, champagne, and mimosas when it’s in the morning for example) which now that I think about it pretty much comes down to something for kids to drink, cheap booze, hard booze, and expensive booze. And indeed perhaps that’s what life comes down to. You reach a certain age and you just take any excuse to drink alcohol even if you’d probably have been happier with cola or lemonade.

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