They call them Tragedies for a reason assholes Monday, Sep 29 2008

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (コードギアス 反逆のルルーシュ, Kōdo Giasu: Hangyaku no Rurūshu) Yes I just pasted that from the wikipedia article for the hell of it. I’m going to call this a single 50 episode series despite being pointlessly split into 2 seasons with different titles (the second season title had “R2” tacked onto the end).

There are a lot of people who have said a lot about this series. I have said a lot about this series. So rather than go into details or deep analysis I will just make fun of all the people who were pissed off or disappointed with the way that it ended.

Code Geass is absolutely a tragedy, the protagonist Lelouch is also just about the most stereotypical tragic/byronic hero you can get. At that rate one could argue that the tragic ending was therefore passe by how predictable it was but since it fits with the form I can not condemn it. If you thought that the series was going to end with handshakes and custards even though the main character was shown to not only have but be willing to use use the ability to command people to do anything, including killing themselves in the first episode then you’re an idiot. If you thought that the creators were interested in having an ending that made people happy after the main character killed his own brother by the third episode, then you must just not be able to think.

If anything I think that the series copped out with how few of the major characters actually died. But nobody who has seen Ideon is interested in that kind of an ending even if it makes sense to have it.

In the end I enjoyed the series and I don’t see how with its premise it could have ended that much differently than it did without being the biggest copout ever (although Nabari no Ou would have given it a run for its money). I was disappointed with some of the directions it chose to take, and I thought it contradicted or otherwise did not make the best use of itself. And the ending made me a little bit sad too. But I think that it really said some things about humanity and also about the present nature of the world we live in. I will leave it to others to elucidate those kinds of thoughts though.

On a tangentially related note they showed a commercial for Super Robot Wars Z during the final episode, the game is of course out although I have not yet received my copy. I’m almost positive that they will want to put Code Geass into an SRW game at some point but they didn’t set things up very well for that plot wise. There are certainly enough units to be used in a game though. Actually among mecha series Code Geass probably reminds me the most of Votoms as to its unsuitability for SRW. Now that the series is over they might make a real game version, or at least make another DS rpg based on R2 (they did release a game but it was basically a mini-game collection if I’m not mistaken). And perhaps rather than SRW they can fit it into a Sunrise Eiyuutan type of game? But off the top of my head I can’t really think of many series that would mesh well with Geass’ world situation among “real robo” shows. I have to think that they’d plonk Geass and Gundam 00 into the same game though, you know they’ll do 00 some day. Presumably you could plug a variety of super robot shows in with the Geass plot, especially ones where the units are ancient, from somewhere else, or from another time or even parallel world. At that rate they might just opt for some kind of world hopping or integration in the first place. Although Banpresto has mashed squar pegs into round holes before so look for that to go forth with Geass.

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Uneven Spacing Friday, Jul 11 2008

My motivation to blog seems to have died out with my desire to play games and anime. It is not as though there is nothing for me to write about it is just that even fewer people care about what I have to say about my life than what I have to say about anime.

For example; the other rainy day I had a meeting with someone at his “office” which is a converted doctors office replete with a restroom that has a nailed shut cabinet for sample collection. This person is a small time player and keeps sporadic hours so he has no secretary to greet me when I arrive early and I always just head directly to the meeting room rather than sit forlornly in his lobby. As I sat there I could hear him typing away in his private room and became a bit miffed that he was keeping me waiting even though I knew he would be aware I came in since he has bells on the door. A few minutes pass and the typing seems to stop, instead a sporadic banging begins. I grow wary and call out. No answer. I go to the door and call again. No answer. I knock lightly. Nothing. I knock firmly. Nada. Through this three distinct possibilities are in my mind, either he isn’t there, he is there and being assailed somehow, or he is there after being assailed. The first seemed most likely in spite of being really stupid, leaving your office with easy to steal moderately valuable items (computers etc.) unlocked,  that gave me the courage to open his door even though there might be someone else there. And of course there was no one there and almost right after that he comes in through the front door saying he was late from lunch.

It turns out that since my hearing is so good and the building so thin the typing (if there is one thing I recognize it is the clack of nails on keyboard) and other sounds I was hearing were from the offices above and beside his own. Which opens up the question of whether something untoward was going on elsewhere that I was unaware of. It also occurs to me that with his fortuitous entrance he might have been playing a trick on me. But in the end I found out that even though I did not respond in the most courageous manner to “what if this guy I know is in trouble” I did respond rationally and honorably. How much good I could have done him if he were being assailed is open to speculation. At the time because there was a distinct absence of noise (remember that I can hear well enough to pick up typing in adjacent offices) I was leaning more towards “perhaps he is tied up in there” and I could have gotten him free of that since I carry a sort of rescue knife (it can’t really be used as a weapon but can be used as a bottle and package opener or to cut someone free of ropes) on my person the majority of the time.

To be frank about the matter I still feel guilty that in my youth I only strove towards self-preservation and that cost people dearly. One could rationalize it as a product of the times, the situation, or my age but there were others who put themselves out there that were my same age. It is not as though this one incident erases that or alleviates my guilt but it does put my mind at ease to know that I have changed.

To detract from any kind of message here, after the first 11 episodes I thought that there was no way Code Geass was going to end this (R2) season but after 13 I think that it just might after all. Whether that is good or bad I can not say but I am now of the opinion that splitting shows really detracts from them. I liked Higurashi no Naku Koro ni much more than its sequel HnNKn-Kai (what the fuck is that acronym?) and as for Code Geass it is wearing itself out. In the first season Lelouche succeeded in the most bizarre of times but in R2 he seems to be failing in the most absurd of ways, mostly as a human. And the story has just gotten insanely stupid. OK I’ll admit it, it’s more like I’ve just come to realize how insanely stupid the story is. But that would not have happened if the series would have just been 50 something episodes in the first place.

The reason I bring this up is that as the new season of anime has started (whether this is summer season or mid-summer season I’m not sure) two series that are continuing from a certain amount of blank time have my attention. First is the third Zero no Tsukaima series which is a guilty pleasure for me even though it’s a total pile of crap. The one that I’m more surprised about, although if I followed along with anime and game news any more I would have surely heard about months ago, is that there is a new Slayers tv series! It’s called Slayers Revolution this time and I can only assume that if it is true that scheduling conflicts caused there to be no 4th season 10/11 years ago there are no such conflicts now that most of the people involved in it aren’t in nearly as much demand. We~ll supposedly the story of this series is original as opposed to being based on the novles by Hajime Kanzaka although I have never been clear on the relation between the various slayers anime series and the novels. I’ve never tried to be frankly. I am however a fan of the series even though its brand of fiction has few redeeming qualities (moderately amusing, a little bit interesting, trite moralism and little real tension) and so I would recommend it to any casual fan that comes across it. I seem to recall the series from the 90s not looking very good but most anime has a flat attractiveness these days so I doubt that will be much of an issue. I am aware that the novels have become available outside of Japan this decade as the series popularity cooled off, I have personally read the first 6 of the 8 released by Tokyopop in America and was not greatly disappointed. I have always felt that there are inherent problems with a man writing as if from a woman’s perspective, and vice-versa, but it is not a major issue. There are any number of books you’d be better off reading for the price they retail at but not as many series that you are likely to enjoy more.

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It’s never great to hear the police sirens Sunday, Jun 1 2008

Well apparently a lot of people are confused about Endless Frontier SRW OG saga, personally I’m more concerned about the gun shots and sirens in the distance but this is as good of a time as any.

Since my last post on the subject I put in a fair amount of time with the game, so far I’ve gotten 6 of the 7 characters shown in the manual but have yet to get a mecha. I was initially confused because one character’s “mecha” is in fact a puppet that they manipulate so it doesn’t actually count as one of your mecha. If I’m not mistaken the mecha might only be usable for support attacks but I’ll save that speculation since I’m probably close to reaching them for myself.

Apparently a lot of people are confused about the controls. Probably these are people who have no japanese ability whatsoever. The controls of the game are pretty simple, although I think the game would have benefited from making ANY use of the stylus. As far as I can tell you can’t use it for anything in the game which is just stupid. I have often considered that in standard games the stylus has an ease of use for menu navigation which of course an RPG like this game is filled with.

So in addition to the questionable gameplay and shoddy graphics (a lot of it really looks like SNES quality aside from the battle sprites and portraits which are probably more like PSone quality) the game has a pretty steep difficulty curve. I ended out having to use up almost all of my items in the desperate first fight against W06 (I can’t recall her name) right after getting Reiji and Xiaomu and having not saved for a while. This game could have been really improved by being able to switch out characters while in battle as it turned out that Harken, Reiji, Xiaomu, and Suzuka was a horrible boss fighting party (you need Kaguya for healing even though she’s offensively handicapped) and I had to blow through almost all my rare items to avoid game over. I kind of wish you’d have a little more indication than a save point 3 screens and likely an experience level back that boss fights are looming in this game. I also wish I had any idea what the algorithms are for damage calculation or that you’d be given any indication when an enemy is going to break off your attack or break it off and counter. It seems somewhat random although against W06 she seemed more apt to do it after support and continuous (combination) attacks. It really pissed me off because she kept doing it when I wanted to use a hisatsu waza so I ended out sitting on a full gauge until she was almost dead.

Yeah so anyway, the fact that your characters in the “back” don’t get full experience doesn’t help with the sudden difficulty increase at all. You probably aren’t likely to be forced to use specific characters in this game but you kind of want to use the different ones at different times but being forced to trade them out to keep their levels even isn’t great.

Of all things as much as the game is similar to Namco X Capcom a lot of things about it remind me of the Code Geass DS game. Mostly how in that game after you reached a certain point you pretty much had to combo attack enemies in order to take out one enemy a turn. You get better economy in this game (probably due in large part to having 4 characters instead of 3) but as it has gone on it becomes rarer and rarer to be able to beat an enemy with just a single characters own attacks. You have to add spells, use combos and/or supports in order to take out grunts. And damn it I have no idea why the normal enemies that accompany bosses are so strong. You seriously end out fighting grunts that are almost more durable than the last boss you faced. That’s not too damn fun. Back to the Geass comparison, at least you don’t have to shout out character names to do supports or something. The voice recognition in Geass is horrible and I would find myself basically blowing syllables straight into the mic to try and get things to go. I’ll write about that some other time. But at least the stylus comes in pretty handy in geass and they made fair use of the dual screens. Outside of battle the duo screens are nearly wasted. It is nice to be able to look down and see your current status and how much exp you need to level up but I think they could have squeezed a map into there too. Then again dungeons are so small in this game they probably didn’t think you’d need one. hm

Initially I had said that the character humor was the redeeming quality of the game but it kind of grates on you after a while that all the characters are constantly either insulting each other and/or calling characters nearly random names in different languages and there’s almost no acknowledgment of this whatsoever. I can’t even tell you how many times cracks are made about Kaguya’s breasts but mostly she gets called some sort of cow all the time (thinking about it her white and black outfit doesn’t help) and she almost never acknowledges this at all. In fact almost the only times that there’s back and forth between characters is when it’s Aschen (especially in her wonky acting DTD form) making comments about people or of course the “classic” back and forth of Reiji and Xiaomu. To be fair it remains amusing even as it becomes annoying but that the vast majority of the dialog in the game is pointless crap really says something about how shallow it is.

By the way to those of you who didn’t get the bonus CD with the game, it’s not really anything that special. In my case I probably really pushed it with how late I let it go before putting down the pre-order on it but that’s why I ordered it from a japanese shop. In the end I had to pay about 1.5 times the price of the game between a lousy markup (although not as bad as I thought, apparently the game was about 6,000 yen in the first place and I was charged about 7,000) and a really really horrible shipping rate (like 2,000 yen). On the bright side I got the game as soon as it came out but I frankly wasn’t in any hurry. So if there’s something you have to have as an otaku then you have to be willing to basically throw away money to get it. For me it was the bonus cd with this game. I wouldn’t have cared if I hadn’t gotten screwed on the namco x capcom bonus cd when that game came out (and I didn’t pre-order from a japanese shop but instead the cheapest and closest place I could find) but I wasn’t going to let that happen again. Even though that meant paying 1.5 times as much for it. Anyway for those that are curious what’s on it, even though it was touted as a drama cd there are only 3 drama tracks but there are 10 music tracks which seem to feature the majority of the “more or less original” music in the game. A lot of the music sounds really familiar to me and I can only assume it’s some cross between music from past SRW games and the stuff from Monolith Soft (I swear they’re playing the music they used for the xenosaga characters early on as background) but I might be imagining that. Well actually I know that some stuff is re-used, like the music for the original characters from NxC. But that isn’t on the bonus cd anyway if I recall correctly (and I might not).

Well you can expect me to continue to write more about this as the game goes on. If I figure out what the deal is with the mecha before I get close to beating the game then that will be the next “thing” (everyone knows I’ll write all kinds of other crap with it too) I write about in relation to the game. I suppose if people really wanted it I could write about the controls.

I’m not going to try and translate the game but to give you a basic plot synopsis: “what the hell is going on? let’s jump from world to world from cross gates that required incredibly powerful psychics to activate in SRWAlpha3 but any moron can use now while making new friends and enemies and fun of each other as we go along to figure it out while the girls wear skimpy outfits. So saying the line between “girl power” and “fan service” when there are 5 female protagonists, a majority of female antagonists, and only 2 male protagonists, is drawn with the outfits (lot of cleavage and leg) and dialogue suche as Kaguya being called “twin bombs” by Harken. Yeah

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extravagent shades of paint Friday, May 2 2008

Today’s installment features various thoughts that came to mind that I don’t feel like thinking too deeply about. Apparently a package that was being sent for me got caught up in some kind of transit problem. I’m not sure what the hell this will mean, I don’t think it was insured or anything and I haven’t been able to find out whether it simply missed transit or has been damaged. This is the first time in my life when I’ve been aware of such things happening. Possibly I haven’t received mail or packages before, but I’ve remained unaware of such happenings. Anyway.

I got to thinking about things and wondered just how much of an effect sending stuff to space has on our climate and weather. If I’m not mistaken it’s mostly metal that’s been launched in the form of orbiting satellites, for the sake of materials let’s include the international space station. What I really wondered is how much of an effect it might have that oxygen and water are leaving the atmosphere. You wouldn’t think it would make that much of a difference, but does anybody really know? Wouldn’t it be stupid if space programs caused unnatural global warming?

So far there have been two video games related to the Code Geass anime series and neither one is what I had expected upon hearing there were plans for game versions. Both are arguably portable games as well, the psp game has a PS2 version but I think that they’re identical, which is presumably an attempt to target the casual gamer. The nintendo DS game is an RPG that most closely resembles the Zoids Saga series of games and makes fair use of the DS’ features. Somewhat in the spirit of the Super Robot Wars franchise the game is super deformed aside from character portraits and CG images. The game isn’t anything exceptional but it’s a rare bandai game in that it’s not terrible, and it earns some esteem in my mind because it actually has multiple endings and story paths that are independent of the animated series. Geass is a series with a lot of “what ifs” and it’s nice to see some of them explored. You also have an original character to play around with in the game but the focus is definitely still Lulu.

On the other hand never did I imagine that they’d make an “adventure game” (read: text based game, borderline dating sim/renai game/love adventure game”) out of the franchise. I’m impressed with how much voice work is in the game but nearly full voice for the major characters (which I believe it has, I haven’t played it myself) has become the standard for high profile games, especially adventure games. Logically one might expect to play as Lelouche in such a game but actually you play as a totally different character that has a geass ability and so the story ends out with some dynamic additions and subtractions. Well anyway, as to what kind of game I was expecting based on the geass franchise, that would be an SRPG where you played as lelouche and went through the story doing this or that, with various plot branches. I suppose I should have realized they wouldn’t be likely to let you complete the story of the series before they complete the animated version though. That kind of game would potentially work better as a text based adventure game but frankly the series has too much potential to have turned out differently, mostly to Lelouche’s detriment to be feasible as a game. This is mostly related to the geass ability, if you could command any character to do any thing or follow any particular set of orders then that could get pretty out of control. Even if you restricted it to main characters it would still get out of control. I understand that you game over a lot in the ps2/psp game. Anyway as I’ve said before you can bet money that eventually they’ll put geass in an SRT game, probably along with Gundam 00 if only because they’re somewhat like sibling series as far as production goes.

Speaking of which I’ve been thinking about the lineup of the newly announced game for the PS2 known simply as “Z” at this point. Most of the letters for games end out standing for something but I’m not sure what the z would be other than possibly representing that the game will be the last srt on the ps2. I’m not too familiar with z words. It would be really queer if it was “super robot taisen zeta” when they’ve included “zeta gundam” (allegedly based on the recent movie version remakes “a new translation”) in the game. In any case the lineup features a lot of more recent mecha series and I have personally viewed the vast majority of them at least in part. It’s hard to say just which is the most surprising new addition. All things considered it’s probably Orguss. Aquarion and Eureka seveN kind of came out of nowhere but they’re relatively newer and popular series so it’s not too strange. Other than Full Metal Panic (not in Z) which isn’t an original Gonzo series anyway (being based on a novel series) I think that Gravion (and Zwei) will be the first Gonzo series to make it into SRW even though they’ve release their fair share of mecha series. I suppose that it’s their most orthodox (retro) mecha series as far as that goes, it just has excessive “fanservice” and I was never under the impression that it was that popular (although I liked it). The thing I really can’t get a grip on is how they plan to unite all the series since they have a mix of a large amount of incompatible gundam series (the majority of them, including the return of Turn A), super robot series that demand a certain kind of world, and a lot of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic series. I was right that if they were ever going to put King Gainer in they’d pair it with Xabungle but I don’t see how they plan to include these series all together unless they plan to do an alternate world/time jump like in Alpha Gaiden. I suppose they could POSSIBLY work in tandem if you wanted to say that the colonies were cut off from the earth but it still just doesn’t quite fit so I don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I’ll probably write more about this later. Let me go ahead and lambast them now for wanting to start a new srw line (that’s the rumor but if you have a game called z I don’t see how you could have a z2 like with alpha) using the series they’ve announced. I actually think that putting SEED Destiny, rather than just starting with seed and including whatever other derivatives,  of all series in with these other gundam series is a cop out. But whatever, the games are all preposterous anyway. If you play the srw games for any reason aside from being an otaku of some sort (mecha, series, character, voice actor) then there’s something wrong with you. I guess I’d accept “visuals” but not “fun” and definitely not “story”.

The upcoming SRT game I’m looking forward to is actually “srw og mugen no frontier” which is only tangentially part of the series. If I understand the gist of it the game is somewhat like “alternate world ATX team (male excellen and female kyosuke) plus Reiji, Xiaomu, and KOS-MOS from Namco X Capcom” and will be more of an RPG with the timed button command input battle system of namco x capcom (which is similar to xenogears/xenosaga and the valkyrie profile series in ways). I should probably think about pre-ordering the game sooner than later as far as that goes, I’m not sure how much I care about the pre-order bonus (a bonus soundtrack/drama cd?) but I’m still miffed that I missed out on the bonus when I pre-ordered Namco X Capcom so I feel like they (monolith soft, namco/bandai namco, japan, video game importers, fate) owe me one.

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Too bad they’ll never kill Suzaku Monday, Apr 7 2008

As promised, after Gundam 00 ended, Code Geass (hangyaku no lelouch) R2 has started. And it is good. Which is somewhat relieving since the crop of new shows this season is especially slim and this just might be the only new show I watch for a while. I have plenty of things to catch up on in all facets of my life though so that’s not such a bad thing. I am very tempted to re-watch the first season and so on but we shall see what life holds.

So as to some speculation which might spoil… probably the first series since there wasn’t that much that actually happened in the first episode, other than a lot of people getting killed anyway.

All through the fall and winter I wondered to myself just what was going to happen after the climactic end of the first season of “CG” while utterly ignoring all the geass stuff that came out in the mean time. Well it turns out that nothing happened. Apparently almost all the rebels got captured or killed and the order of the black knights was effectively defeated on the verge of things because of Lelouch’s sentimentality. Wouldn’t that look better with an e? no? Well apparently everyone has somehow had their memory wiped of different events and otherones implanted and Lelouch was being left to his devices at school in order to be bate for C.C. who finally shows up one day. And in typical dramatic C2 fashion gets shot through the heart then kisses Lelouch reawaking his power which he uses to command those who were observing him to kill themselves as Karen and some other guy I don’t recognize bow in their KnightMares. Hmmmmmm Suzaku shows up in front of the emperor and says that he’ll take care of Lelouch. I really hate that fucker.

My hatred for Suzaku is well documented and I continue to hold the viewpoint that he ruins the show. Nunnaly doesn’t help anything either but it’s really that piece of shit that spoils things. Now I would hope that Zero would just kill Suzaku right away but you know that won’t happen. If Suzaku is to die at all it will not be until the approximate end, and in fact it’s a lot more likely that Lelouch will be the one who dies. Which is what happened with, X/1999 spoilers, Kamui and Fuuma in the X tv series (in the movie Kamui did kill Fuuma though and the manga will probably never end because japanese people are pathetic, so). Which didn’t make me happy since I hated Fuuma too. hmm… yeah you remember things like that.

Anyway it will be interesting to see how the show turns out. I will try to refrain from frequent commenting until the show ends. For all I know they might have used up all the bang in the first episode. I doubt that at least. Well count on lots of random brutality in this series.

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