Raisel’s Library
Alex: Oooh, a backstory episode. Huey was so cool back then. x3 But yeah. Things are almost ready for the finale, so it’s time to get some extra story and information on Huey. He hasn’t really changed much, when you think of it.
I am curious as to the existence of that other girl, though…there are multiple libraries?
Xenoblade gained quite a bit of online fame during one Project Rainfall, where fans of the franchise did all that they could to bring the games to a shore outside of Japan. And for once, Nintendo of Europe listened. They brought the first game, Xenoblade Chronicles, to Europe, with the promise in America that if it sold well, they’d release it over there. And man, did it sell well. I had so much trouble tracking down a copy of this game that I was even seeing some people selling sealed copies for double the RRP. I didnt think that any game could be worth that, but when I was lucky enough to stumble across the last copy from a fresh batch in my local game , I got to see why people would pay a small fortune for it.
It’s actually rather ironic, when you think about it. One of the last games on the Wii is what myself and the majority of the gaming community regards as one of the best, even beating FF13 in terms of a JRPG. So, this is my review on the game which took me 100 hours to complete the main story(!), pushes the Wii’s graphics to the maximum and is generally the best game to grace the console.
Yes, the main character is an orphan who is the only person who can save the world thanks to a mystical power. Yes, he has a childhood friend who’s in love with him. Yes, there is a slightly tsundere character, a trusty adult, a wacky best friend, and a magical animal who will join you. Xenoblade takes so many cliches that it stops being a cliche and just becomes a jumble of overused ideas which slowly evolve into a jumble of brilliant ideas, with characters having fully fledged backstories, developments and genuine motivations to all take the characters through the story.
Then again, that can be said for almost any modern JRPG, because it’s become a standard to have loveable characters so you can release figures and artbooks of them later in the marketing world.It looks good. It plays good. But does it fall into the trap of being nothing but an endless corridor? It doesn’t. The world of Xenoblade is vast and huge, and you can literally spend hours just wondering around, finding hidden treasures, secret locations or stronger monsters to train on.If you spot a landmark off in the distance, chances are that you’ll be able to go there sooner or later, even if it is slightly off the beaten track.
As i’ve made pretty obvious, any fan of Role Playing Games should pick a copy of Xenoblade up. Great voice acting, wonderful graphics and gorgeous locations, with amazingly fun gameplay to match. But, my complaints to this game do drag it down slightly in terms of how I feel about it. But since they’re slightly spoilerish, skip them if yo don’t want anything from the game spoiling.
The game goes on for a long time. A verryyyyy long time. 80ish hours if you’re doing a proper playthrough. However, it…starts to kick its feet a little at the 60-70 mark. It drags, and needless grinding rears its ugly head. The ending to any game should be a spectacular event, but this one…just isn’t. It’s like it feels the need to change genres at the last minute, and it just doesn’t work. This especially applies to a certain character whose name begins with A and follows with L-V and ends with S, so it leaves you with a less than brilliant taste in your mouth after finishing it, sadly. And then almost like it wants to rub salt into your wound, it offers a New Game+ mode..but tells you that you’ve got to keep your Level 99 rank and start fighting Level 1 enemies again. Yeah…no thanks. Getting 100% on the game will probably mean two playthroughs, and when the New Game+ option is just really annoying, you’re slightly peeved off.
One final complaint I have is with the Main Character. Each character gets a rather large set of Skills, which all do different things on the battlefield, and some rather enjoyable Mix and Matching ensures, especially when you’re trying to pick your characters. So when the main character only brings along 8 skills which all slot onto the screen, in contrast to the 16 and even 19 that the other characters possess, it all feels rather…flat.I know he has those Monado arts, but I don’t count them considering you need to fill the gauge before using them.
It’s a shame, really. Those tiny little nitpicks bring the game from a perfect score down to a comfortable 9, and you’re left wondering just how awesome it could have been if those last 20 hours hadn’t dragged and gotten stale and old.
Score: 9/10
The Idiot, the Tests, and the Summoned Creatures 2
Alex: Ah, time to get around to the anime that’s been my guilty pleasure of the last season. Baka To Test is a romantic comedy styled anime that has students in classes duel it out using summoned creatures who get stronger the smarter you become. Basically, a lot like say, Pokemon or Digimon, or anything along these lines.
The first season and the OVA focused largely on the whole “battle” side of things, with several conflicts between classes and a love triangle that doesn’t get much attention. The second season focuses much more on the characters and the romance feel of things. And it doesn’t hesitate to be funny at the points where it wants to be.
We even get a backstory on the characters and why the love triangle even formed, and backstory on the other large love story in the anime. Both the serious backstory episodes which focuses on the characters prove to be the best episodes by far, and the episodes work really well to flesh out the characters and their strange antics in other episodes.
In other words, the series is funny, light hearted, and one of the best rom-com’s around. The only huge disadvantage is that these episodes are focused too much on characters, and the episodes last series are too focused on the summoning battles. If you’re a new-comer too the series, then it’s best to mix and match the episodes. Argh, it’s hard to explain what I mean xD
The Wheel Spins Us Round and Round
Alex: I love an OP which fits the series. And as the OP to Penguindrum says, “Fate is laughing”. Because if Fate was a real person, i’d imagine that they would be laughing at this episode and how cold and cruel the wheel is.
I’m starting to think that the entire series is being told through Shouma’s perspective on things. There’s so much about Kanba that we don’t really know, like that Red Scorpion Heart, or how he could revive Himari the first time. And to that note, why it didn’t work the second time. The fact that the Penguinhat, and even the Survival Strategy completely failed could have been for several reasons. I’m wondering if it means that the Penguindrum is out of reach permanently. Then there’s the issue about their parents, they said “A boy” not “Twins”. Is Shouma REALLY related to Kanba? And how did they survive long enough to give birth to Himari, if they committed such a terrible crime? And uh, bunnies? I didn’t think that bunnies were the enemies of penguins. And lastly, in the story about the parents, notice how the image of the “evil” Penguinhat was everywhere, instead of the “good” Penguinhat? I’ll have to see what they’re doing next week to judge, but this episode was amazing. I’m glad that they finally stopped Ringo’s arc and moved to the meaty story..
You Finally Realized It
Alex: So, even without the diary…Ringo still wants to rape Tabuki. Ohkay. At least things really start moving this time, when she actually turns down Tabuki and lets him go. It finally looks like we’re going to be tying the two stories together and getting to the meat of things.
Even though it never gets old of hearing Himari spit venom at Ringo, this weeks Survival Stratagy gets interesting as the location changes and everything goes back to an incident 16 years ago, the day Kanba and Shouma were born and the day Momoka died because of it. Time for Penguindrum to heat up…ohyeah~
Kaiji: Hakairoku Hen
Mimi: Kaiji returns in the infamous manly tear drama, ready to torture you along with him. This season is split into two arcs: Chinchiro and Pachinko. After the events in Season 1, Kaiji is working in an underground labor camp, and he plays both games at a chance to gain freedom. To describe them briefly, Chinchiro is a dice game where the player has to get two dice out of three to land on the same number, with the remaining number being that player’s score. Kaiji plays this with a bully whose big nose you just want to punch right away. The second game is totally different from anything we’ve ever seen Kaiji do before. All the player has to do is turn the dial, sit back, and pray for one ball out of several hundred to land in the winning hole. Heh, if only it were that simple.
My biggest complaint for a lot of recent series is that they’re way too short. Well, Kaiji has the opposite problem. The Pachinko arc gets dragged out over 18 episodes, which is more than twice as long as any other game in Kaiji. I wish that S2 included more games or just cut back on the number of episodes because the slow pacing was a little torturous. Aside from that one complaint, I love this show. Kaiji continues to charm us by outwitting his opponents and designing his own schemes. The Chinchiro arc would have to be my favorite because of its dark atmosphere. Kaiji has to deal with the harsh conditions of his new environment and gets bullied by the other workers. And the Pachinko arc, despite how easy it sounds, turns out to be the most clever and wicked. After all, they used up more than half of the season to develop it.
Kaiji has always been about mind games—toying around with the opponents’ psyche. The suspense comes from the characters having “crazy talk” in their heads while fearing for the worst. You just never know what the outcome is going to be. Zawa~ zawa~ However, there are differences in how the suspense works in both seasons due to the style of the games. In S1, Kaiji is forced to undergo life-threatening situations and physical torture. Who can forget the episode about the drill in his ear, which nearly pierced his eardrum? Now that’s what I call suspense! In S2, there’s only one episode where Kaiji gets seriously hurt, and it’s not even used for suspense. In fact, I think that the Pachinko arc sacrificed suspense just to pull off as many clever and dirty tricks as it could…and to torture Kaiji for as long as possible. These differences don’t necessarily make one season better than the other, as it really just depends on what kind of games you prefer. The ending to S2 is a lot more satisfying, though. =)
Of course, one cannot complete a review for Kaiji without mentioning how superb the voice acting and sounds are. I think I’m in love with Kaiji’s VA, Hagiwara Masato. He is best-known for his role in this series, next to Akagi. I would also replay specific scenes over and over just to hear a certain track being played. The OST is a must-have, even if you haven’t watched the show! Here is just one of my favorite songs. It was very hard to pick. D:
The bottom line is: Kaiji rocks. It has always delivered ingenuous game play and intense acting, which make it a thrilling series. After all, who can resist the odd-shaped noses, manly tears, and the overly enthusiastic narrator?
Mimi’s Score: 8 Meeps out of 10 (Very Good)
The Future is In Our Hands
Mimi: Just what I wanted to see—Kaiji getting his friends out and having a manly tear fiesta…even though he’s, uh, broke again. GRRR Endou!!! *adds him to my hate list* You know, it’s actually kinda sad that Kaiji won’t be friends with him or that other guy, after all they’ve been through. But whatever. The 45ers are back!!! T_T I just loved this ending. Kaiji is a remarkable friend. In the end, I didn’t need to see Ichijou get tortured in the underground to feel satisfied (though that would have been a great bonus). Warm and fuzzy manly tears FTW!
Kamisama Dolls
Mimi: Kamisama Dolls, to put it nicely, is strange. In the opening scene, three children are getting seriously attacked by a giant robot monster, which is the last thing you’d expect to see from an anime with “Dolls” in the title. My initial impression? Epic! I had no idea that I was in for such a dark mecha series, with the opening and ending credits sung by the awesomely talented Chiaki Ishikawa, no less. I thought: Woah, is this gonna be as awesome as Bokurano!? Well, I should have just stopped right there. As the episode truly begins, we see a drunk college student trying to confess to a big-breasted chick. And these, my friends, are the two bland main protagonists who try to annoy you with every cliche in the book.
Don’t believe me? Just look!
The Shower Scene
The “Oops, I fell on top of you!” Scene
The “Omg I can see your bra through your wet clothes” Scene
Brother complex, anyone?
But they’re not as annoying as…
The jealous girl friend Scene
The RAGING jealous girl friend Scene
And get this! The climax of the series is when the RAGING jealous girl friend kidnaps the big-breasted chick, and the BLAND main lead has to rescue her! NO wait, the real climax is when the RAGING jealous girl friend fights her man’s sister because he won’t run away with her, and then her giant robot loses control! Ohhh the drama~
If I had known that the series was building up to that, I wouldn’t have bothered to watch it. Why did I watch it? Well to be fair, Kamisama Dolls has a few interesting and unique qualities. It’s not everyday that you see the main lead’s baby sister controlling the giant robot. I enjoyed the action and dark twists, especially the episode about the teacher coming to the village and getting humiliated, resulting in a bloodbath ending. A few of the side characters aren’t bad, either. No, I’m not talking about that psycho female detective or the RAGING jealous girl friend. I mean this guy! He’s the only character who didn’t annoy me to high heaven.
To see such a dark, interesting premise ultimately ruined by the RAGING jealous girl friend is what frustrates me. Why does a character like her have to exist here? The occasional fanservice, cliches, and unfunny slice-of-life moments also made the series less enjoyable for me. I tolerated them in hopes of a good finale, but you saw how that turned out. And finally, there’s no story. The characters simply fight and try to capture the main lead’s childhood friend. It’s all building up to something that we don’t get to see. I guess I’m supposed to feel motivated to read the manga for the real story. Meh. Overall, this series is a letdown from an otherwise epic beginning.
Well, if you happen to like giant robots that can sing like dying cats, then by all means, check this out. =D
Mimi’s Score: 5 Meeps out of 10 (Average)
Dusk’s Score: 7 Meeps out of 10 (Good)
Ayakashisenshi-hen (Bewitching Battle Chapter)
Alex: Uh. This time, thanks to the power of a strange staff Rika picked up from the shrine storage, Rika and Satako have stumbled into a parallel world where fog covers Hinamizawa, and Satoshi is living with Keiichi. And the Tokyo Magika is making its move on the humble village..dun dun dun!
In this world, Magical Girl Oyashiro Rika fights off the Ritual Tool Summoning Demons with the aid of her magical partner, Hanyuu. Rika’s landed in the craziest world possible…and there doesn’t seem to be anyway out.Even the great witch personality, Bernkastel, thought that the whole scenario was stupid. It was interesting to hear that only the Rika in the world we’re used to has Bernkastel inside of her, though. Maybe being a magical girl makes everything okay?
So yeah, this episode does what Kira should have done from the start – take the setting of Higurashi and go nuts. Think of as many anime genres as possible and stuff them into a single episode, call it comedy gold and you profit. Enjoyable, funny, and far out..~ Go Magical Girl Rika-Chan~:333 07th…Explosion!
Negotiator Meowth, Break Through the Forest of Beartic!
Alex: Nothing new to say about this episode. It’s great to see Meowth with the heroes, but his acting finally became a little transparent this time. I seriously doubt that he’s turned good, and I reckon he’s just leading them into a trap.
