We want to Hatsu-YOU up! Do YOU want the chance to win tickets to Hatsume Fair 2012 and see the Addicts live? Comment below with why you feel you deserve the tickets, be truthful, be funny, but most of all, be an addict! We’ll chose two winners who can come to the convention complementary of the A.A.A. Podcast and the organizers of Hatsume Fair at the Morikami Gardens in Delray Beach, Florida.
The Deadline for Entries is the 11th at 6:00pm EST. Good luck!!
(Tickets can be mailed, or picked up in person for the winners)
Episode Reviewed In:Episode 110 Alternate Titles: None Original Japanese Release Date: July 2002 Episode Length/Run-time: 26 Episodes Summary: The story follows Robin Sena who is a “craft user” not to be mistaken with a witch. Craft users are raised by the Roman Cathloic Church to use their powers to hunt down witches. Witchcraft is a dormant trait which lies in human “seeds” when they awaken it drives a person, generally, to madness. Robin works for the STN-J a group which looks over seeds and hunts witches but through her work with them she begins to learn more about the witches she hunts and what her group really does. Review: I suppose I’ll start out by saying that Witch Hunter Robin is not an exceptional anime. It’s far from bad, and it’s downright entertaining most of the time, but it is hardly something which will merit acclaim, praise, or a second watch anytime soon. However, I am a huge fan of the occult and witchcraft so this series is right up my alley and tickles my supernatural bone. The series falls under the old routine of monster of the week for about the first half. In my opinion you can watch episodes 1 and 2, then skip 3-11 and pick the series back up there. Some of the episodes are interesting and the DO progressively let you in on secrets of the STN-J group but it is filler, no ifs-ands-or-butts on the matter. The plot doesn’t really take off until the halfway mark, where they then take the non-existent buildup and your now over-familiarity with the characters to progress what is the real plot. Being a fan of the occult I didn’t hate the filler, and some of it was amusing, but filler is filler, they likely could’ve condensed it down a fair bit. When the series does pick up, it really picks up and the plot moves quick. Not break-neck speed that makes you go “wooooah hold up!” but a good place that is enjoyable. The show is never riddled with action but has the pacing of a good mystery novel and uncovers things at a decent pace that makes it worth watching. The atmosphere of the show and animation style are just fantastic, and really carries it along. I’ve heard it described as “neo-goth” and I can see how it fits really well. The show almost has such a good atmosphere it feels like TV shows like Charmed (without the silly fluff of Charmed) here in America. The characters also make the show worth watching, from traditional clichés to people facing deep moral dilemmas. And the music is pretty solid too, I rocked out on my iPod for a while to it. Overall, I may be a little biased because I liked this show so much because of the themes it used and the questions it asked. But I really enjoyed it.
Entering the contest takes only minutes and is 100% TOTALLY FREE!!! I encourage you to get your friends involved so we can make this contest extra fun this year! Click on the link on either the top of the bottom of this post, go to the page and click “Predict It!”. If you need to make an account on BracketMaker, it is free, safe and easy! Please join us and help us make this fun! In the past we have had 30-40 entries. I want there to be many more this year!
***If you have any questions about this contest, how it was created, or the entry process, please PM Mitsugi on our forum.***
This is a 64 day, single elimination tournament where anime characters from the 1990’s and 2000’s, will battle it out to represent their respective decades to determine which decade is superior in anime history. These characters were nominated by our forum members, over the past weeks, and tournament seeding was determined based on voting frequency. Characters who received a greater number of nominations, received stronger seeding.
Also, to throw in an extra element of fun, 2 forum members and 2 podcast hosts have been entered into the contest as the 16th seeds. These forum members are Guts Matrix and Canadaman. The Podcast Hosts are Chiaki and Roukou. Congratulations!
The matches will begin as a poll on the main websites top page. There will be one poll per day, starting on January 7th, until the event is concluded. Website visitors will vote in the poll for their favorite character, the character with the most votes moves on. The character with less votes is eliminated. There will be pictures included on the poll to show the characters involved. Last time we did this, Chiaki made all the pictures and they were quite nice.
These matches will be predicted by YOU, in your quest to be the winner of this contest. Predictions are done in the style of the NCAA March Madness Men’s Basketball Tournament and points are awarded for correct predictions. The person with the highest point total at the end of the tournament wins the contest.
What do you get if you win the contest? How about a 1000 piece anime puzzle, unopened, purchased in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan, by Mitsugi and Chiaki. We selected it, with love, for you.
Here are the relevant dates of the contest:
Relevant Dates: Signup Deadline: January 5th, 2011 Tournament Start: January 7th, 2012 Tournament End: March, 9th, 2012
He once watched an anime called MD Geist and said its the worst ever, Once he drank a Dos Equis beer and it was exceptional, and once listened to another anime podcast other than AAA and said never again…… he is the most interesting man on the AAA network.
Ok lol, so that’s going to the new intro to each blog entry because I love those commercials and the beer. In this edition of the series I’m going to talk about a musou games; Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3. I know the hack and slash genre has a lot of critics and fans at the same time which leaves it as one of the more hotly debated game genres, and I had never played any until this game, but this game has new features that set it apart from the previous entries in the series. That said, lets take a look at the game.
Background Story:
The story devised for this game is that a number of characters from the various Gundam series are transported to a location along with their mobile suits. The location is never really spell out, perhaps some alternate dimension or whatever. Some of the characters met up and form groups and began battles against other groups of characters. Some mysterious signal is being broadcast and the characters follow it, and this drives the story. Not much of a story :P, however a story isn’t really the main focus of this game.
Game Play:
The story mode of game is broken down into chapters in which two or three characters are playable at first. Each individual character is restricted to his or her signature mobile suit until you buy a license in the game shop which allows all playable characters to pilot it. Each chapter has a number of missions that all have the same end conditions, that being killing the end boss character of that mission. How you go about getting to the end of each mission is really the difference in each mission. There are over 300 different missions within the story mode in 8 different categories. The combat is much the same with other DW games, a lot pressing of the A button to create chain combos to perform different special moves and the unique signature attack of each character. A new feature is the addition of the Partner Strike, which is an attack performed by a partner character set at the start of each mission, which can used to turn the tide of battle. There are a number of other new map features that add a more strategic atmosphere. The Emergency Dash is a new option that allows players to get out of danger if timed right. There 81 different units to choose from in the game to be collected by acquiring MS plans and building them in the MS lab. The plans can gained whenever you finish a mission and you typical get 4 or 5 after each mission
In the online mode up to 4 players can play together in 15 unique missions. There are reports that more missions on the way at some point, although no date has been given.
Audio\Music:
The music in the game is average at best, not horrid and not exceptional either. The characters are voiced in certain parts of game, but not in all dialogue between the characters. The voice actors are the ones that portray the characters in both the Japanese and American versions of the shows, so that’s some good continuity between anime and game.
Artwork:
The art style is an upgrade over the previous two DW:Gundam games. The graphic artists choose to render the characters and mobile suits in a cel shaded style which is bright, well detailed, with great environmental effects, and visually pleasing. The background environments are enough in number without getting too repetitive.
Closing Comments:
DW:Gundam 3 is most importantly an improvement over the previous games in this series. It does all the things the other games have done in a better way that made the others a success. That said it still has the issues of other Dynasty Warriors games, almost completely devoid of anything resembling a story and sometime repetitive combat. This game is almost just for Gundam fans, however it may appeal to fans of the hack and slash genre, which is a viable business model in Japan and not so much in America. Not many Gundam games get released in the West, well at least not many of the good ones, leaving not much to play if your a Gundam fan in the Western world, so its a question of take it or leave it. For myself its just good to have a decent game to go and blow up things with my favorite mobile suits.
I give this game 3\5 beam sabers slashing up grunt suits
Today I’m starting a new feature which will deal with the worst of the worst of troll groups in anime fandom. The terms fanboy and troll are often used to describe devotees of a certain series, so I have decided for the sake of clarity to merge the two terms into new single one; fantroll. The definition of fantroll is a extremely devoted fanatic of a certain series or franchise to the point of delusion and who directs hatred towards fans of other series or franchises because they do not share the mindless devotion of the fantroll to the given series or franchise. For the inaugural entry I thought it would be most appropriate to start with the single greatest example of the fantroll; the Eva fantroll.
I had been aware of Neon Genesis Evangelion for some time, hearing all kinds of things about it, and when one of my friends lent me her copy of the show in 2005 and I sat down and watched it. My thoughts on the show at the time was that it was a average mech show. This was before I slowly become aware of the phenomena that is the holy status that some percentage of the Eva fandom hold the show in. As I heard more of ravings of the Eva fantrolls about how it was “the greatest anime of all time” (You can thank ADV for starting that nonsense), my enjoyment and opinion of the show went down considerably. Before I go into the things the hardcore fans of this show rant and rave about, I just want to be clear I do like this show.
Now I’m going to pick apart the show, and discuss some of the outlandish and outrageous claims that the fantrolls make about Eva. One of the most often cited aspects of this show is the use of Christian imagery and icons. While its a interesting element of the series, fans often read more into it then there is actually there. They forget that its a show made for a Japanese audience, and the presence of Christian symbols its just a weird novelty to the creators and not some deep, intertwined, and complex plot element. Moving on to the most annoying part of Eva; Shinji Ikari. Boy do the fantrolls even like to hype up Shinji , I once had someone claim to me that he was the greatest character in all of anime, wow that’s arrogance lol. Someone also wrote into Gundamn’s mailbag with badly butchered grammar and made a similar claim, but went a step further by saying that Shinji was the reason people watch mecha anime. Honestly, are you that caught up in your worship of this mediocre series that your so delusional and pretentious to try to say this guy is the single most influential character in the history of anime? I could probably think of a 100 characters that have had more of an influence on anime.Char Aznable and Lynn Minmay are just two off the top of my head, who have had much more of an impact on Japanse culture and anime than him. Shinji did nothing at all during the series to warrant being called iconic, in fact he’s just like almost every other mech lead character in recent memory. Another annoying aspect present in Eva is the disposable enemies that appear almost every episode for the first half of the show, this is also known as the monster of the week cliche. This gets old fast and really saps my enjoyment of the show during the first half. The constant remakes of Eva are also extremely annoying which serve just to devalue the series and are just a cheap way for Gainax to make money off the mindless cult that worships the series as the second coming.
What all this adds up to is a symptom of a larger ailment in the Western fandom that has to do with what shows are considered the greatest by Western fans. A lot of fans in the West only see a very limited amount of anime series from Japan and there is a tendency to automatically declare these series the best there is. When they find out about other shows they tend discount these shows and go on believing that what they hold dear is the greatest without evaluating the merits of the other shows, its cognitive dissidence at its finest.
Well that’s all for this post, I’m considering what group to profile next. It was suggested to me to talk about the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom so I might do them next.
Innovation is usually seen as a good thing by most people in any given field in human endeavor, however there are always a small percentage of die hard adherents to something that cannot accept change in any form. This is nowhere more apparent then in video game fandom. So I’m going to look through some of biggest fanboy dust ups over game companies trying reinvent their franchises.
OK, these are not in any particular order, there just ones I have been made aware of. The first one is the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, of which I’m a huge fan. There have been a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh games across many game consoles, but the three that are relevant for this discussion were on the Game Boy Advance and Gamecube. The first GBA game was the Sacred Cards released in July of 2002 and it was different in a couple respects. First, unlike all the previous games in the franchise, this game actually has a story, in fact it lets you play one of the story arcs from the show. The other difference was the rules of the card game itself were different, and that’s really pissed off the fanboys of this franchise. The second GBA game was called Reshef of Destruction, was very similar although it had a completely original story. Now both of these games have flaws, like most games, but they are also good games broken the formula and because of that the fanboys labeled them as inferior, which is so short slighted. Moving to the Gamecube, in 2002 a Yi-Gi-Oh game was released called the Falsebound Kingdom that was radically different from anything seen in the franchise thus and since then. The game was a combination of the RPG and RTS genres and was not a card game at all. Instead the monsters from the cards become characters in the game to be used on RPG style teams of 3 under the command of one of the cast from the TV series. A lot of the items in the game are also cards from the card game, which shows the detail the developers put into the game. RTS element comes out in the missions in the game in which you move your teams and engage your enemies and capture bases, additionally there are other objectives to complete sometimes in a given mission. The games was received very negatively by the review community as with many games that step outside the norm. The game has some flaws, as the maps for the missions were really low rent and not very inspired, but was balanced by the great graphics of monsters and battle animations.
The next franchise that attempted to go a different way and hit a brick wall of fanboy rage was Devil May Cry. The controversy stems from the redesign of Dante, a design that wildly changes from the previous four games. This game doesn’t even have a release date yet, its suppose to come out in 2012 sometime, and the hate is already flowing from the fanboys. You would think that people at least would wait until the game came out ,and not just complain about the visuals.
Infamous is another franchise that has felt a rain of fanboy artillery fire over the design of a character, Cole, the main character in the game. The difference here is that, Sucker Punch the developer of Infamous, caved into fanboy pressure and changed Cole back to to way he was in the first Infamous, although there was still minor changes to him to better fit the new game. Again its just kinda sad that fanboys cannot get pass such trivial things like character designs.
When Transformers: War for Cybertron was announced, the main complain yet again was superficial about character designs. The G1 40 year old virgins were complaining about why wasn’t the game using the 1984 designs. Well maybe because its 25 years after the fact, and things need to change sometimes to bring in new fans to a franchise. Blinded by nostalgia glasses is a common medical problem for most Fanboys, and can be corrected by getting out of your parents basement, actually getting laid , and not watching porn all the time.
In sum, I just wish fanboys would come out of their formulaic comfort zone, and give a game with a different take on a beloved franchise a chance. Its almost like fanboys are afraid of change in and out of their game life, which is probably why they cannot get out into the world and get their lives going. If there is any group of fanboys from anime or video game fandom you look to see get owned by me, please leave a comment or pm me on the forum.
This has been pubic service message from the Truth and Fact Defense Force.
Hey Anime Addicts, so I finally finished main lining the wondrously busty Catherine and now will proceed to review the game. I know that this game has a big following on this site, and I hope a lot of you will read this who are not yet fans of this game will pick it up and play it because its really a one of a kind game. This game has controversy surrounding it, not only for the mature content( when I told a friend I was playing this game she said oh the sex game :P), but also for the difficult of the game itself, I’ll address both of those points below.
Background Story:
In this game you take the role of Vincent Brooks, a 32 year old, systems engineer for technology company. He’s kind of a lazy, unorganized, and very in the moment average guy with not much of a future planned out. He has a girlfriend of 5 years(amazing I know), called Katherine. Katherine has recently began to talk about getting married and then Vincent started to have very dark nightmares. The next morning he wakes next to a hot, young, and curvy girl also named Catherine and wonders he how he will get himself out of this mess.
Game play:
Catherine is two games in one, a puzzle game and what you might call a ” moral” psychological thriller. The puzzle element of the game is pretty straight forward as it involves 9 stages with various themes and lengths. At the end of each stage there is a boss stage in which a large creature will change up the wall of blocks and will attempt to kill you. In each puzzle stage there will be various items that can used to help complete the stage. Sprinkled through the stage you find “sheep”, other guys like Vincent trying to escape the nightmare and they will try to impede your progress. As you proceed through the game there will different types of blocks you will encounter, ice blocks, spike blocks, exploding blocks, black hole blocks, etc. and learning how to manage each type of block will be integral to your completing the game. Also important is mastering the various techniques for scaling the different walls of blocks, these will be taught to you at certain points in the game.
The other element of the game, the moral psychological thriller, mostly takes place between each stage in the form of questions asked by a disembodied voice in a confessional booth and the question is usually on the subject of some issue of morality. How you answer the questions affects the ending you will get upon finishing the game, there are 8 endings in total, three for each Catherine, and two neutral endings. Some of the questions will asked at a bar called the Stray Sheep where you will interact with your friends and get messages on your phone from both Catherine. In the bar there are additional features like a mini game called Rapunzel which is also a block based puzzle game, and there is a jukebox that plays various songs from different Atlus games.
As for the game being too difficult, honestly with any game you should probably play it on lower difficult levels, learn the game,get skilled and then try to beat it on the more challenging settings. Its true this game is very challenging, in fact the develops actually created a very easy mode because people complained it was so hard. I found the game to be not as insanely difficult as people make it out to be, playing on easy I think I never dropped beyond 90 retries as there are more enough items that give retires, so on normal and hard it cannot be that impossible.
Visuals and Graphics:
The game play graphics are pretty good for this day and age, the blocks are rendered in nice detail and are as the characters. Where this game really shines in terms of visuals is in the cut scenes. There are two types, ones that are CG graphic or ones that are anime style. I really love the anime cut scenes, I have never seen such great animation in a game and Atlus really went out of their way to make those scenes so beautifully animated. The CG scenes are good as well, just a little overshadowed by the anime scenes.
Closing Comments:
I loved playing Catherine its a one of a kind gaming experience that combines two genres of games that I think no one ever thought would go together, and yet it seems to work in this incarnation. Its a special treat if your a anime fan like me, and most of you that will read this most likely are. This game asks some interesting questions about relationships and what people want out of life and I found myself rethinking a lot things I thought I had figured already about life. In sum, if you want a game that will make you think, with puzzles, and you are a fan of anime this game is for you.
Random things happen in a seemingly “normal” school setting through a series of vignettes.
Review:
A quote from Jim Rome comes to mind about this anime, “I get it, it’s just not funny.”
The whole premise of Nichijou relies on the random nature of its absurdities. Don’t look for any kind of plot or development here, you won’t find it. One moment they’ll be in class, the next they pull out an AK47 and start shooting. People are depicted randomly with cat ears, there is a robot, and odd tangents that serve as little than extended “jokes” run rampant. Like having a whole 30 seconds devoted to finding a gun in a book, then moving on and never mentioning it again. And I get it that some of these are representational of relationships with people, emotions, or the nature of the person. That it is supposed to be a humorous representation. But, that being said, just because I get it I didn’t get any amusement out of it.
All the jokes fell so flat I was extraordinarily bored through the whole show. I did find it better than shows like A-Channel, simply because the cast was broader and flushed out better with more amusing relationships and personalities. But it was only slightly better and nowhere near the level of shows like Azumanga Daioh which really illustrate how to do this genre and do it well. And sure, I get it, humor is subjective, but just for fun I looked around the web and the sea of “blah” opinions of the show says a lot.
One praise I can give it is that for its random spells the creators do a good job of shifting the art style, character designs, and music in a way that fits the antics but still seems to go with the overall theme of the show. I liked the regular style of the show a lot too, I will admit. It’s animated with a surprising amount of detail in a deceptively simple pastel style.
Overall, I think anime in this random genre people should just give up. It’s way too easy to fall flat. Sure there were some amusing moments but out of 12 hours of content I’d sure hope there would be, statically speaking. It’d be a talent to be almost that awful. I feel this anime would’ve been much better suited as just 12 episodes, or, even better, an OVA. Pack the good ones in with the awesome animation and leave it at that.
Tsukimi is a geeky girl who lives in Amizukan, an apartment complex that no men are allowed to enter, with other otaku, hikkimori, and NEETs. She has a deep love for jellyfish due to a memory of her late mother. One evening, when trying to save a jellyfish she recieves help from a beautiful girl, but this girl is a trap!
Review:
This is an anime that I was earnestly surprised at how much I enjoyed. The premise seemed a little cliché, nerdy people afraid of popular beautiful people. But the execution was awesome. I loved how the “ugly” people were, well, actually ugly. It wasn’t like a lot of series where the “ugly” ones were actually really beautiful all things considered, they were pretty homely in this one. But it worked with creating the realism of the seires.
There are two main points of conflict in the show. One with Tsukimi and her relationship not only with a boy but a cross-dressing, popular, beautiful, rich boy, and how she overcomes this within. The other conflict is the risk of the Amizukan being torn down to make room for new building projects in the city and the geeky girls loosing their home and safe-haven.
The pacing of this show is also really great, it moves well and progresses in a speedy but not hasty manner. Things seem realistic in how the emotions change from encounter to encounter.
At its core I’d say Kuragehime is a feel-good show which anyone who has ever felt slightly socially outcaste can enjoy. It was a show I enjoyed a large amount and really recommend as a worth-while watch.
Tooru who has just entered the same high school as her best best and childhood friend Run, who is now a second year, and Run’s friends Yuuko & Nagi in their daily lives.
Review:
I feel like this anime is supposed to be really funny, or, at least, a little funny. But the problem remains I found myself SO bored watching it. The characters are the normal funny formula, the young one, the bookish one, the ditz, the well-meaning screw-up, perhaps I’m jaded but it all just falls flat. The slice-of-life doesn’t really help either, because there’s no real conflict, or overarching plot, or real antagonist, just random stuff happening one thing after another. For example, there is an entire episode about sneaking into the school at night, and not even for a fun reason, they just forgot something. I had foolishly thought that there may be some semblance of a story or at least relationship building throughout the show, given the relationships at the beginning and the cute girl crush one of them had, but that was foolish thinking. The love just serves as a plot device to have one girl be all protective and have some slapstick humor as she punches people who get too close away. The style of the show is nothing to write home about either. Everything looks chili, even the adults are done in a very simplistic style… Though I suppose on the bright side they don’t look the same age as their students, so thats a pro for the show. But they have things like montages during stupid little songs, the budget is too low for a montage I tell you! Animate everything! I suppose this is one of those anime that you just have to be into to want to watch. If this is the kind of stuff you like, random acts of girl/Moe cuteness with little else than this really delivers. I suppose its not too Moe that non-Moe fans will not upchuck after a minute, but its still pretty solid Moe stuff left to right, up to down. The biggest thing I enjoyed personally was the opening, its a good song and good animation, otherwise I found myself dragging my bored feet through this show.
