Archives

Here's where all the old stuff goes, in case somebody wants to read it.

4-22-05
I actually got back into the gaming world recently, because of a game called "Demise:Rise of the Ku'tan". For those of you that have never heard of it, it's also known as "Mordor II". For those of you that have never heard of Mordor II, it's just about the best dungeon crawler type game ever made. The big difference between Mordor I and Mordor II though, is that Mordor II has multiplayer!

Now I think I'm going to be busy playing that for a while, since it has a freaking long playtime and replayability capabilities. It's almost as if you were playing an MMORPG, sorta. It's still addicting nevertheless.

Meanwhile, I started watching Tenshi na Konamaiki, which Megumi voices for the lead role. The main character is also named Megumi, which is pretty ironic. 50 episodes is a lot to watch, but I'm already on episode 32 or so. Pretty awesome so far and hilarious, I recommend that to comedy fans everywhere.

And... I've made no progress in FF:DOS (FF2). It'll be beaten eventually!

4-14-05
Yup, still watching other things besides Inuyasha. I managed to finish Sister Princess sometime last week, and it was pretty interesting (Depending on if you're a shoujo fan or not). Never knew there was so many ways to say "Oni-chan".

I started watching Mai Hime this week, and the first episode is probably one of the most addicting first episodes I've seen in a while. Then it sorta gets less exciting as the plot unfolds and there's more talking and such, but it picks up again midway. Sometimes I thought it was a little bit cheesy because of all the typical mecha fights, but I don't give a crap. Mai Hime is awesome, and that's that.

Speaking of Mai Hime, I found out that the person singing the OP is also the singer for the KGNE OP (Who is also the seiyuu for Haruka), and it is freaking awesome. I'm a big fan of her songs (I also found out that she sung the Chrno Crusade OP, which is also one of my favorite). One of the best OP's I've seen since Air and Kannaduki no Miko, it pretty much makes the quality a lot higher.

I also recognized some voices... expecially Mikoto's voice. So I looked them up, and strangly... I was right! Like at episode 3, I was like "Hmmm... Mikoto's seiyuu reminds me a lot of Ren's seiyuu..." And she did play Ren's seiyuu, along with Karen from Onegai Twins! There are other popular seiyuu's too, such as the voice of Sagara (FMP) and Miina (Onegai Twins).

Oh yeah, I got my legal first name changed to "Edgar" Tuesday, but I guess that doesn't really matter all too much.

4-06-05
After 80 episodes or so of Inuyasha, I snapped and decided to take a short break and watch other things. So I started watching something called "Gantz", and it is freaking amazing. It's probably one of the only series that I've been addicted to for a while, since FMA. What makes Gantz so interesting, is that they mix hilarious humor with a weird plotline.

I thought that Elfen Lied was gory, but Gantz makes Elfen Lied look like Chobits or something. And! There's 26 episodes of awesomeness. If it wasn't for school, I'd have finished Gantz already. But nope.... after 1 day, I could only go through 11 episodes. Must finish watching Gantz! I'll definitly have to get the manga after I get done watching it.

3-28-05
NOoOoOoOO!!! School is starting.

With bad news aside, Air finally finished! What an amazing series. Honestly, it wasn't as good as I expected it to be, but it was still good. Depending on how good Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle is in April, Air still might be the best anime of 2005. Of course, you have to look at the series and analyse it and understand a lot of the messages it holds, but it's pretty high quality compared to things. It's probably up at Box Torrents now.

3-27-05
After fiddling with Imageready and Photoshop, I had some fun with animated gif's. It's pretty awesome what you can do in those programs.

On episode 67 now, I still have 100 episodes to go in Inuyasha. I was planning to finish the whole series over break, but that's pretty impossible now. I've been busy with learning Japanese and stuffs, and that's progressing at a decent pace compared to the past few months. This game called "Slime Forest" lets you play an old style RPG, while learning Japanese at the same time! It's pretty interesting. Off to make more gifs!

3-23-05
And so begins the Inuyasha watching spree. I'm trying to watch the entire series of 167 episodes in a week, but I think that'll be impossible. So far I'm on episode 36 after 2 days.

At first, I thought it was sorta like DBZ where the main characters have to gather pieces and put it all together. But then after a few more episodes, it's definitly not like DBZ. I kind of find Kagome's character personality hard to believe, but whatever. I mean really, who the heck doesn't cry out in pain when a freaking gem pop's out the side of your stomach? Her whole family doesn't seem to care much for her adventurers either. I suppose the plot has to progress somehow. With those thoughts aside, Inuyasha is pretty awesome so far. 167 episodes is a freakload though. Anyway, must continue watching!

I also think I'm close to the end of FF2 in DoS, but we'll see in due time.

Oh yeah, I also had fun with Ragnarok Battle Offline. I never thought that sidescrolling adventure games were worth playing, but this game is an exception. It might be a little pointless playing by yourself, but with 3 players playing it, it's really something else. It's basically a sidescrolling game with a big RO theme, with all the signiture moves and level ups and all. If you've seen the anime or like RO, this is something you can't miss.

3-14-05
Not much has been happening, since Finals have been coming up and all. I've been trying to watch 2x2 Shinobuden, but that got a little silly.. so I'll try watching that later. Then I tried watching Video Girl AI, but that seemed a little bit too old. So now I'm watching Maria-sama ga Miteru. I plan to go back and watch everything I skipped though, after that.

Also, I made a little progress in FF2 again!

3-07-05
So I finished Narutaru yesterday, and I have not been disturbed as much as I have now, since Elfen Lied and Berserk. Narutaru is pretty much Evangelion mixed with Pokemon, complete with an uncomplete ending. I don't see how they consider it a "kids" type anime, for the themes in the anime are almost equally sick and twisted as Elfen Lied (Minus the lolicon). I really hate it when they just randomly stop an anime series after it gets exciting, like they did with Narutaru. That's ok though, because it's still good on its own. Sooooo evil.... I have a completely new view of worms now.

3-05-05
Arghhh, I was right! So much unanswered questions that never get answered. Ah well... I still liked it. Heh heh, I did learn some interesting things though. *pun pun*

I also finished watching Rozen Maiden. It's a weird story about walking living doll's that are involved in a game to beat each other up. It kinda reminds me of the plotline in Fate Stay Night, with the "big game". However, it was pretty weak in the way it unfolded the plot. At times it felt too fantasy like, where the main theme was "If you believe, you can do it!". There was some pretty funny moments though. I'm pretty sure one of the dolls slapped the main character once in every episode. She was like "Servant, please do not get too close to me or else I'll put you in your place." Good stuffs right there.

3-02-05
Still watching Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito, it seems more like a story within a series of stories now, that could tie up everything near the end. I still can't make any comments on it after 4 episodes, but I'll probably get the game it derived from anyway, so I can go back to it whenever I learn enough Japanese to understand it. Speaking of which, I switched from the BT downloading spree to DC++ again. Now all I have to do is grab everything that you can't find on BT. Girl's Bravo, Naruto, and Samurai Clamploo or whatever it's called, is next on my list to download.

And I've made nil progress in FF2 in DoS.

2-28-05
Strangly enough, I finished Kannaduki no Miko in the same day I started watching it. To my surprise, I found that the shoujo-ai genre was quite intriguing. Kannaduki no Miko wasn't as good as I thought it could have been, but the genre left me wanting more. And so, after following some reviews, Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito is next on my list!

Also, FF2 is a really strange game. I thought it would be more challenging than FF1, but after 4 hours of playing it, it seems about the same. The only thing that really bothers me, is how they literally force you to level up magic in order to make use of it.

2-27-05
I was going to start watching Inuyasha, but I decided not to since it'll take like literally 4-6 months to finish watching it. So! I started watching shorter series, like Kannaduki no Miko. Kotoko does the OP and ED, which has a strong techno beat to it. I thought it sounded familiar, since Kotoko also did the Onegai Teacher / Twins OP and ED. Pretty addicting I would say.

2-21-05
So I finished Lost Universe today, and it was a lot better than I expected. After watching FMA, a lot of things drop in value, expecially old anime. Lost Universe did indeed start out slow, but it picked up near the end. As usual, Megumi is an amazing actor that can turn the whole show around. Lost Universe placed pretty high on my list, like around the Scrapped Princess awesome level. It's a shame it had to end... Sayonara, FCS Canal.

2-21-05
Ah! My Goddess (TV Series) and Genshiken got licensed yesterday. There's been way too many licenses going on in the past week, it's just outrageous. Not much happening this week. I've still gotta finish watching Lost Universe and everything else that I've burned. Oh yeah, I'm also about 30 minutes away from beating FF1 on FF:DoS!

Personally, I expected the remake of FF1 to be an exact duplicate of the original NES one, with some graphics updates. The only thing I really liked about the remake, is that if you make all your character attack one monster and it dies before everyone gets a turn to attack, they'll attack a random monster on their turn. On the NES version, it'll be like "No monster to attack!", and it'll skip their turn. That was just really annoying, even though it required more skill to do. Anyway, they made the game too freaking easy. Not only is the accuracy increased on everybody, the exp to level is lowered, monsters hit for less damage, stats are higher on characters, the magic system is redone so it's abusable, and it's just too freaking easy in general.

An example of this is in the sidequest dungeons that are supposedly level's 70+, according to Gamefaq's. I went there at level 29. Yes, level 29. Not only did I reach the last floor of the Earth Gift Shrine, but I defeated two of the big boss fights before I decided it was too annoying to run down there again. Then at level 40, I beat one of the hardest bosses in the game in one of the other shrines. The guardians of the crystals normally have 2500 hp (Now I can 1 shot them). The boss I beat had 15000 hp, and did a crap load of damage. The game is just too easy in general. But then again, I guess I have no right to complain since it'll make life easier on everybody else. I guess not everyone is as awesome as I am. I'll be looking forward to the FF2 remake, which is one of the only original's I've never played before.

Update: So I finished FF1, woohoo! It was way too easy if you ask me, compared to the original. Here's a screenshot of my party in it's final phase of glory.

Anyway, I've started on FF2 (NES) now! I have never played the original, so this is like a totally new game to me. My initial thoughts so far...

So I bought the basic equipment, and it seemed like FF1. A lot like it, actually. The magic system was pretty weird though. Then after I glanced at the status screen, I realized you didn't have "exp". It gets even more interesting here. Apparently everything is "skill" based. So I go outside, walk around some, and kill some monsters. Suddenly, I get ganked by monsters that do 300 damage. Keep in mind here that I have 30 hp or so. Not even being able to flee or do anything at all, my party perishes. Now this is the kind of excitement I'm looking for. Wonder into the wrong area, and boom! I'll be looking forward to finishing this game.

2-16-05
Naruto was licensed yesterday by ShoPro or something, but it's some pseudo company. The fansubs aren't going to stop, and the torrents will still be up. Just to be on the safe side though, I've decided to put Naruto at the top of my download queue. Now the only really long series that I plan on watching sometime this year that I don't already have (Besides Naruto), is Ranma! Anime fin has it, but I need to somehow clear freaking 35 gigs of space for it. I won't even have that much space even if I deleted my entire anime and manga folder. I suppose I'll have to get it in pieces or something.

Update: Freaking, Cartoon Network has officially licensed it! I've gotta grab the episodes before they take it down from the working trackers. One thing I'll never do is watched Naruto dubbed, and I advise you do the same.

2-14-05
This weeks sucks, since I have mid-terms and homeworks galore. Speaking of which, I was at the computer lab today and across from me, this guy was playing WoW. Who the freak plays WoW on campus at 10:00AM? To make it worse, he was still there at the same computer, when I came back 6 hours later to finish up homework. I seriously wanted to strangle him. Freakers shouldn't play WoW at school, period. I still need to finish watching Lost Universe. Moving along slowly at episode 5...

Oh yeah, I found this hilarious site a few days ago, and I've read most of the things "Azrael" has written. Pretty funny stuffs.

Azrael's Editorials

Top 5 Anime Characters
1) Sakura Kinomoto (Card Captor Sakura)
2) Kasuga 'Osaka' Ayumu (Azumanga Daioh)
3) Asakura Nemu (Da Capo) ~In case anybody didn't know, Nemu won the best anime character award for 2003. Go Nemu!~
4) Zelgadiss Graywords (The Slayers)
5) Alphonse Elric (Full Metal Alchemist)

I should make a favorite page or something.

2-7-05
So I finished Full Metal Alchemist this weekend, and it blew my mind. Never have I seen anything as spectacular as this, since the whole Kenshin series. If you have never seen this, I feel sorry for you. Not only does it have an awesome plot, characters that have depth, and exciting episodes that keep you glued to the screen, it also has humor that is comparable to Midori no Hibi. Although there are some flaws I could point out, it is still a step away from perfect. Now that the FMA watching craze is over, I'll list my top 5 favorite anime's of all time!

1) Full Metal Alchemist
2) Rurouni Kenshin
3) Great Teacher Onizuka
4) Card Captor Sakura
5) The Slayers

So I'm finished with Full Metal Alchemist... what next? Lost Universe is next on my list, but I have to take a break with Genshiken.... Ah ha ha ha! Good stuffs right there. Basically, Genshiken is about otaku's and anime, and what they do. I have to give them credit, since half the crap the main guy does is something I might have done. I haven't felt this way since watching Great Teacher Onizuka.

Since I side tracked from Lost Universe, did you know Dark Star and a lot of other familiar things are back? Even the seiyuu for Zelg, Amelia, and Martina are back! And of course, Megumi is in it as well. It's quite old, but still good.

Anyway, I'll do a proper Full Metal Alchemist review soon, or something of that sort later.

2-4-05
After watching 34 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, it's pretty clear now that it's better than most of everything I've seen up to now. Everything is so perfect. The plot, the theme, the sound, the characters, the surprises. FMA is also very thought provoking. I swear I thought I knew what was going on, but everytime I thought I did, the next scene just confused the crap out of me.

I don't know at all how this is going to end, since there's like 4 potential endings. There's also a movie coming out too, which I'll be looking forward to. So far, my favorite characters would have to either be Alphonse or Roy. Roy might not have much screen time, but his personality is hilarious. Al just reminds me of the perfect little brother, and it's amazing how the creators of FMA designed his personality. Everything is just... perfect...

On a side note, the Air movie is showing in Japan tomorrow! It'll only be a matter of days before it's fansubbed. I've also got my hands on half of "Lost Universe", and I'll have the rest in a few days. Once again Megumi is just awesome and I'll have to watch it next after FMA. The whole theme of Lost Universe reminds me of Star Wars mixed with Slayers. The characters also look a lot like ones from Slayers, which is expected since it's a parallel universe. One thing is for sure though. I'm going to have to rent the FMA game after I'm done watching it.

2-2-05
So after about 5 days of downloading, I've burned over 80 gigs of anime onto DVD's. Fate Stay Night is also about finished, so that's another good thing. Full Metal Alchemist is even more awesome, after watching up to episode 15. I can't imagine how they're going to keep up the quality of this series for 36 more episodes, but I still have high hopes.

I was also checking out the site statistics today, and somebody actually looked at all the pages. The number of times viewed actually doubled overnight. Looks like my site is becoming more popular!

1-31-05
After many months of searching fruitlessly, I think I may have finally found a slight chance of obtaining Fate / Stay Night. Of course, this all depends on whether or not the uploader person stays in the hub for the next 24 hours or so. Then again, the person uploading at 200kb has been in the same hub for the past 5 days, so I'm still getting stuffs from him. Even if I do somehow get it, it's not like I'm going to play it until I learn enough Japanese to actually understand it. My Fate / Stay Night fanbook also finished downloading, so I'll be remaking my avatar, sig, and other things with high quality pictures that you rarely see in the next few days.

Up to over 50 DVD's now, my anime collection is pretty decent sized now. I might have saved about 3-5 DVD's if I had spent time reducing the size so 26 episodes would have fit on one DVD, but most of the format was OGM and it would have taken an extra week or so of straight conversion to AVI format. Speaking of burning DVD's, I'm up to episode... 70 or something of Inuyasha. My download queue size was 78 gigs when I started Friday, and now it's down to 17 gigs left. I've had to burn things and delete them every 4-6 hours or so, to prevent my HD from becoming full.

So I'm finally done with Record of Lodoss Wars, which I finished a few days ago. It wasn't as good as I expected it to be. The TV series was pretty weird, compared to the OAV. If I were someone else who had never seen this, I'd probably just watch the OAV and skip the TV series. The OP and ED's sucked too, in the TV series. The TV series is basically the OAV, except with an altered middle to end part. Here's the timeline for the whole thing.

-OAV: Beginning ............ Middle ................ End
-TV Series: Middle.......... Altered Timeline and Added Characters between middle and end........ Altered ending but same concept of OAV ending

The TV series was suppose to give us more info on the characters from the OAV, but instead of doing that, it added a crapload of new characters and made them the "main characters". What was really annoying, was that they were like exact duplicates of the OAV main characters, except worse. But don't get me wrong, the OAV was awesome.

After watching Record of Lodoss War's, I finally started on Full Metal Alchemist, since I already had the full series sitting on my HD. After the first 10 episodes, I had a clear idea of what this series was going to be like, and I have very high hopes that it'll be one of the best series I've ever seen. The theme is something that's very addicting, and they set up the perfect plot introduction from the first 3 episodes. If you've ever seen Elfen Lied, you know how they had an awesome introduction episode where the first 10 minutes or so had you going "Holy crap, this is going to be an awesome anime!"? Full Metal Alchemist had that something like that as well. I'll try to explain more of why FMA is so awesome.

Quick note about what FMA is about: Ed and Al are two brothers that are very interested in Alchemy. The alchemist rule states that you cannot gain something without sacrificing something of equal value. You cannot turn paper into a tree, nor lead into gold. After their mother died, Ed and Al tried to use alchemy to revive her. Unfortuantly, they failed. While Ed only lost a leg in the process, Al's entire body decompossed. Without time to think, Ed sacrificed his right arm to infuse Al into a nearby metal armor. A few years later, they have become more experienced alchemists and seek to return their bodys to normal.

Good characters are something that every anime series needs. It's pretty amazing how well they set up the past, and the whole timeline to unfold the story. Ed and Al are both equally awesome. Al is hilarious, since his soul is inside a metal armor. It's like a moving robot or something, except you know that he's not really a robot. Ed has the characteristics of your typical main hero in a typical RPG game, but the things he has to endure and do makes it more interesting. At times you can't really understand his motives or what he's thinking, but after a bit you'll be like "Ohhh, so that's why he did that!".

This probably won't make you go watch Full Metal Alchemist right away, but you should eventually. Episode 51 marks the end of the series, but there's a movie coming out that'll supposedly conclude it even more than it does already. Speaking of movies, freaking FF7:AC isn't out yet.

The EFZ and Air updates are going to be delayed, since I haven't found a way to save a screenshot in EFZ yet. As awesome as Air already is, my interests are in FMA right now. I haven't heard any good male sung OP's or ED's recently (Besides X TV and D.N. Angel), but the FMA OP is pretty dang good. Speaking of which, I found out that Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicle isn't finished yet, so I've also delayed reading that for now. I expected Sakura and Shaoran to be in it since they're part of the main cast, but I didn't expect a Chii cameo to appear as well. Anyway, must read for any Clamp fan!