Oh, I guess before what I watched over the weekend, would be what I watched during the week. Those of you who are familiar with the game, you’ll recognize Alicia in the picture to the right, as that is a picture from Valkyria Chronicles, the game. I was too lazy to snap a pic from the anime and so I just grabbed the first thing off google. I actually would really like to play the game since it looks thoroughly awesome and I’ve heard good things about its story, but being a poor college student, I don’t own a PS3 – the only system it’s out for. Back to anime though, we meet Alicia Melchiott early on, who is in the town watch in some small town in Gallia. The country of Gallia is on the verge of (or is already in, I’m unsure) war with its neighboring country. From there, we get to meet Welkin Gunther, who is mistakenly thought of as a spy by Alicia. The name Gunther is apparently the name of a war hero from the past, and Welkin just so happens to be his son. Anyway, to sum up the episode, the town that Alicia and Welkin are in gets attacked by imperialists and they manage to get to Welkin’s mansion where he meets up with his younger sister Isara. There, they hold out for a while before finding a convenient tank in the shed whereupon the episode ends. The way the episode rushes right into the action and gets things moving kind of already got me hooked, so that’s good. From what I’ve heard from the game, it seems this anime will have good material to work with, so this should be pretty safe to keep watching. I feel like the art style tries to mimic the game’s art style (which looks gorgeous from screen shots, btw), but doesn’t quite look as nice. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s pretty decent all in all though, so it’s not like your eyes will hurt from waching.

Tears to Tiara the anime is next as well. This was also based off of a game as well. It was first a PC SRPG, and then remade into a PS3 game with better graphics and drawings. The picture to your left is from the PC game. I actually played it as well and thought it was decent (a Leaf game – they also made Utawarerumono). The animations actually resemble more of the PS3 game though, so looking at this picture might be a little deceptive (to be honest though, the simple art actually grew on me as I played the game more and watching the anime kind of shattered my images). The anime opens in basically the same exact way as the game, with Riannon praying to a star in the sky hoping to face her fate with courage. Stuff happens, she gets kidnapped by a fat, non-holy-looking priest, and is offered up to the Demon god Arawn. That’s about as far as the first episode goes in terms of story. Something that bothered me was the way Arawn is portrayed prior to his awakening. He looks like a big gaseous blog for about 10 minutes while the corrupt priest keeps demanding worldly things…or rather, keeps demanding the world. Animation is fair, drawings kind of bother me, but only because of the PC game I’ve played, and it seems to follow the story pretty truely. Not really sure if I’m actually going to like this anime-fied, since the story in the actual game comes up lacking towards the end, but whatever. I need stuff to watch.

Alright – short summary of the weekend watchings. Really short because I’m feeling tired and lazy.

Asura Cryin’ – Seems interesting. Based off a light novel. About a kid who can see a cute ghost, is given a mysterious suitcase, and is dragged into the middle of some religious(?) war all in around 20 minutes. Turns out his suitcase has a giant robot in it that takes the form of a black liquid blob. Probably be an average anime from the looks of it.

Saki – An anime about Mahjong. I don’t know anything about mahjong, but it looks like it’s gonna try to make a game that old chinese women play seem exciting. Oh yeah, and there’s hidden elements of yuri in it, so that’s a plus…and that’s about all it has going for it. Maybe if I knew more about mahjong, it’d seem interesting? (I doubt it though)

Tayutama: Kiss on my Diety – (pic) Harem anime! Based off an eroge I think. At first I thought it was going to be loli, but then it turned harem. Ok, I admit that Mashiro’s loli-stage was really cute, but I’m not really into loli, so thumbs up to growing boobs and getting taller. So Yuuri tries to perform an exorcism on some ancient seals and a twist of events ends up releasing all of the demons trapped inside and leaves him with Mashiro to try and reseal the demons. We already have the childhood friend character and the spontaneous girlfriend character. Let’s go searching for more in later eps!

Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica Crimson S – Seemingly another harem anime(?)! Has a world where spirits and humans live together, mutually benefitting each other. Dantis can play music that summon and heal the spirits, and the spirits help the humans out by using their spirit abilities. We meet Phoron who is in a school for people who want to become Dantis, but has failed the examination to move on to the third year. While he’s preparing for his makeup, he decides to sing and awakens an out of control spirit. Turns out that it’s the same spirit he met 12 years ago while he was singing by himself in the night. The spirit (Corticarte something something) calms down eventually and then suddenly forms a contract with Phoron. Another seemingly average-looking anime so far.

I think I’m forgetting one or two, but that’s about all I have in me for now.

Oh yeah, I’m glad episode two of FMA: Brotherhood proved to follow the manga plot more. I think they did a really good job on the story of how the Elric brothers got to where they are now. If you’re YUI fans like me, then you can listen to the full OP to this series here. Good stuff.
Ignore: they already took it off youtube

P.S. – my toilet exploded cause of one of my roommates. This blows.

The first one that I grabbed on whim was K-ON!. I don’t really participate into the anime community all that much, so I am not too informed about what is hyped and what isn’t, so I just randomly grab series off of baka-updates if I feel like it (I usually grab a lot of ep 1′s). Well, after watching this episode, I’m hooked. What actually grabbed me first was the awesome OP. Watching through the rest of the episode revealed the overly clumsy and airheaded Yui, the pushy (and hilarious) Ritsu, the somewhat serious Mio (to the left), and the ‘rich-girl’ Tsumugi. The episode goes through the events that lead the 4 girls together into the light-music club (Akarui Ongaku in japanese, hence ‘K-ON’). The characters definitely have stereotypes to them, but are used extremely well so far. This anime is definitely going to be one of those “slice-of-life” animes that just detail everyday events in these girls’ lives in the light music club, but I’m completely fine with that (being a Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh fan and all). I actually had to go grab the first few chapters of what was translated of the manga so far just because I liked it that much. I greatly anticipate hilarity to ensue for the rest of the series. Oh yeah, the art-style is a little different than usual (as you can see, their noses are practically non-existent), but I find it really cute. Some people may be turned off from it though. A last note, I also really liked the ED – I’m awaiting for some more good music from this series.

Mio is a definite win.

Next up – Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I’ve actually been waiting for this because I heard that it was going to be a more loyal adaptation of the manga. I was thoroughly surprised to watch the first episode and find that they drop you into an event that I have no recall of ever happening in the manga. Am I just braindead or is this a little different from what I was expecting? The animation seems pretty good so far though, and the preview for the next episode shows some promise. I guess I’ll have to wait for a few more eps to come out before judging this for story. The OP, as soon as I heard it, I knew it was by YUI. Since I have never mentioned it, I really really like YUI, so I am pleased. Actually watching the OP gave me hope for what is to come though, and I found the way they presented the ED was pretty cool. Other than that though, I don’t really have much to say about the start to this series. Surprising since I’m certain that this has probably received tons of hype from fanboys everywhere.

So, that’s about it so far for what I’ve picked up. I’m eagerly awaiting for tons more series to start so I can pick up on them. Oh, and for anyone uninformed, North Korea has decided to be even more crazy these past few days, launching missiles over other countries that could potentially reach our West Coast.

And…I have a computer science test tomorrow. T_T

I have officially decided to finally ditch windows xp sp3 performance edition and opt. for the much savvier, sleeker, and aesthetically appealing windows 7 build 7068 which came to torrents not too long ago. The transition has been pretty easy, minus the fact that I had to reformat my old windows 7 partition and reinstall everything. I do keep a folder of all my essential (and not so essential) applications and programs, so it makes re-doing everything fairly easy. One of my major concerns was getting macdrive to work. Version 7.2.5 is actually compatible with windows 7 already, but for obvious (or maybe not) reasons, I had to find alternate ways to install it, which proved to be not so easy. Almost ended breaking my entire installation, but luckily I had a system restore (from where? Dunno). Eventually got it working properly, and it seems to be smooth sailing from here on out. Mostly every other application I use already has 64 bit support. Oh, I had to use poweriso to mount all of my iso files though, as daemon tools isn’t supported yet. I’m also getting pretty consistent file transfer rates of 50 MB/s, which is fairly impressive, as all my xp could muster was around 25 MB/s after some tweaking. Been shuffling files around with the extra space that windows xp doesn’t take up anymore (all 250 gigs of the partition), so that’s awesome. Oh yeah, was having a lot of locks near files (particularly documents and settings) from windows not wanting to give permissions. Found a nice little tweak to take ownership easy though (made my life a lot easier). Haven’t done much stress testing, but it seems that my games from my other HDD still works, so don’t have to go reinstalling them, which is awesome. I actually get to partake in direct X 10, woot (not that it matters all that much). Hmm, overall, I’d have to say I’m pretty satisfied with the way Windows 7 is coming along so far. I was already impressed with build 7000, but I have to say that the improvements to 7068 are pretty noticeable. Little things here and there really make the entire difference between the feel of an operating system. From the pin organization to customizing which notifications you get from your system, things just happen efficiently and without any strain on your system. It’s safe to say that I’ll be anticipating even more to come with the RC in May. The only thing I need now is a new video card and to replace all my 500 GB drives with 1 TB ones. Oh yeah. I love turning off windows features. Only turning them off, not on.

On Thursday of this week, I decided to reattempt putting OS X on my laptop. This has been an ongoing battle for a few months now, and to no avail. Now, I actually have leopard 10.5.5 installed and running! It’s amazing…except for the fact that my audio jack doesn’t work (although the speakers do…weird huh?) and my USB devices aren’t recognized. Scoured the internet for a fix, but haven’t been able to come up with any fixes. I’ve tried for around a day to find something, but didn’t work out in the end. There are some projects going on that could potentially fix the problem, but until then, I’m kind of dead in the water as I use my USB drive to move anything and everything to my laptop. Without it, it’s kinda disheartening that I can’t watch movies in bed. Oh well, at least it’s on there, along with my windows 7 as a dual boot (bwahahaha). What finally got Leopard on there, was iDeneb v1.3. I had tried v1.4, but something wasn’t working right. As soon as I tried v1.3, it worked fine. Haven’t fiddled with it much, for fear of breaking it, but I’ll get around to it. It’s nice being able to use my wifi, have video display looking fine, get audio from my speakers, have a working battery meter, and basically anything else a functional macbook would use. Just no USB kinda…kills it. I can wait though, they say rewards come to those who are patient enough…right? Oh yeah, almost forgot. The laptop I got leopard on is an Asus F3T laptop. Having an nForce chipset with an AMD processor was an unfavorable setup, but it worked out in the end. Kind of.

In the anime world, I’ve just finished watching Toradora, Asu no Yoichi, and Toaru Majutsu no Index, I’m on the verge of finishing Gundam 00 seasons 2, watched the 2 extra eps to Clannad After Story, only 2 eps left of Shikabanehime Kuro, and only an ep left of While Album. Needless to say the season is almost over and a new one is on the horizon. Looking back though, this season was actually not that bad. I thought it would be hard to enjoy regular anime again after Code Geass, but it turns out not to be the case. The few series I didn’t really care much for were Asu no Yoichi, Shikabanehime Kuro, and still kinda on the fence about White Album. I’ll admit that White Album is original in its own regard, but I just find it hard to follow at times. Could be that I’m not all that into drama, but I find that I usually enjoy most types of anime. Perhaps it just didn’t appeal to me, kinda like how pistachio ice cream doesn’t appeal to me. It’s more inherent than an actual distaste for it.

Asu no Yoichi was nothing special; a harem with a perverted teenage “samurai”. Yoichi, who lived in the wilderness all his life, focusing only on training in swordsmanship, gets thrust into a city dojo with 4 girls. Yeah, like I said, nothing special.

Shikabanehime Kuro is actually pretty decent and was an enjoyable watch. The story continues from Shikabanehime Aka, which is about a boy named Ouri who gets involved with a Shikabanehime (literally means ‘corpse princess’) named Makina. The story is about zombies who kill other zombies, but is actually interesting – a decent watch if you have time.

Toaru Majutsu no Index, I actually wrote about in an earlier post, so go dig it out – I’m too lazy to write more about it. The season was consistently decent with a fair number of arcs. There looks like there will be another season for it in the future, so I’ll probably be watching that as well.

Gundam 00 Season 2 proved to be just as good as the first season, picking up right where it left off. Animation has maintained its good quality, and the story develops even further. Some of the characters develop a lot, while others seem to kind of reach a standstill, but you end up focusing on the only the changing characters anyway, so it doesn’t really matter all too much. I assume if you’ve watched the first one and liked it, you are already watching this.

Let’s see…I still have Toradora and Clannad After Story to talk about. I had actually stopped watching Toradora after the 11th episode for some reason, but once I started watching it again, I realized I had stopped right before things started to snowball. For what I had watched of the anime, I thought it was going to keep on entertaining its audience with everyday happenings of Ryuuji and Taiga as they slowly start to fall in love, but it didn’t actually turn out that way. There ended up being a lot more drama and issues in their relationship than I anticipated and I think I was unexpectedly surprised. Once the anime started to focus more on that, I think I actually started enjoying it more – a good watch.

Now, for easily my favorite anime this season, Clannad After Story. The prequel, Clannad was also pretty awesome to begin with, but the After Story was just awesome. The animation, story, character development, and the sound all received high marks in my book. I realize this anime has probably every Key fanboy out there, but it’s hard to disagree. Following Tomoya and Nagisa through each of the other characters stories, then finally focusing on their own, and then through Tomoya and Ushio’s story all happened amazingly well. The story telling aspect of this anime has to be one of the best things I’ve watched in a while. It’s rare that an anime actually stirs up my emotions quite as much as Clannad After Story was able to do this time – I know I sound like a sap after saying that, but I feel like this is a definite watch.

Hmm…so while I definitely recounted a lot, I feel like I skimped since I could easily write an article on each anime. Perhaps in the future (more like never), but for now I think I wrote enough to at least catch up for the past few days. I’m gonna try to keep updating more, but I find it hard especially since this semester has been giving me a headache. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted until next time.

(get it? posted? it’s a pun…)

Anime watchlist (not ordered in anyway other than which I remember first):
- ToraDora (temp rating = 8.5)
- Asu no Yoichi (temp rating = 6.3)
- Clannad After Story (rating = 8.9 just finished this)
- Gundam 00 Season 2 (temp rating = 7.8)
- Kara no Kyoukai (temp rating = 9.3 – I realize this is a movie series, but it’s awesome)
- Shikabane hime Kuro (temp rating = 7.2)
- Toaru Majutsu no Index (temp rating = 7.5)
- White Album (temp rating = ?? – don’t know what to think yet)

I gave out temporary ratings for what I think of these series so far. I realize that I use the the decimal place quite liberally, but I feel these numbers reflect what I actually think of them. The scores are probably pretty generous too – after sitting on an anime after a while after I finish it, the ratings that I stamp on them usually fall within a better range (at least I think so…I think a lot of people would disagree with me). Since I generally enjoy watching series from various genres, I try not to be biased as well. Anyway – I need to find new stuff to watch as this season is ending for a lot of these series.

So far on the upcoming list is only Fullmetal Alchemist season 2. Gotta get back into researching what’s upcoming and promising.

So what do you do during your Spring Break? I used to believe that everyone in college went down to Florida or somewhere tropical to have fun and party and stuff. Well, no, not really. For most people that I know, they don’t go off on extravagant trips anywhere and just chill out at home. My Spring Break was especially boring because it didn’t match up with any of my other friends’ from home. I did hang out with my friend, who you may know as misfire, though. I also spent a night at Rutgers visiting since that’s where most of my other friends ended up for college.

So here’s a summary of my break in pictures. Trying the picture blog for a post and I’ll see if I wanna continue or not if this goes well.

This is the front half of my bedroom from my chair. My desk is a mess despite only being home for a week and my bed is full of laundry. Was really taking it easy. I forgot to take a picture of the remaining 3/4 of my bedroom for some reason…

Misfire’s macbook that he’s so fond of. Obviously he doesn’t take care of his screen too well. It’s very uh…grimey. We were hanging out and doing…not much of anything. He taught me a little bit about ableton and showed me what it was. He mixes music if you didn’t know – check it out here.

So my trip to Rutgers featured:

Cake

and Bananas.

Ended up sleeping at my friends’ suite. It’s actually pretty sizeable, with 3 doubles and a common room. My friends have 2 TV’s with entertainments thrown around and whatnot. They used to have 3, but I forgot to ask what happened to the third one.

I slept out here in the common room – here’s another angle of it.

Grabbed some breakfast before leaving in one of the dining halls on Busch Campus. Seems that there’s no one there on Saturday mornings. It was already 10:00, would’ve thought to have seen at least a few more people there.

Got some eggs, toast, potatoes, and a banana, along with milk and apple juice. The eggs were actually pretty bad, but food was edible overall – not the first time I’ve eaten here.

Break ended with some of mom’s spaghetti. Yum. Nothing better than some spaghetti and meatballs at home. She also cooked me some brownies. Moms are the best =).

Hmm..so yeah – that sums up my break pretty much. Pretty uneventful and all, but whatever – relaxing. Back to the days of school now though, meh.

—Skip this paragraph if you don’t care for MMORPG’s that revolve around fighting as this was mostly about them—
What is it that makes an MMORPG’s fun (or not fun)? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that of how well the game is balanced and how easily someone can start playing. Since about 99% of MMORPG’s revolve around maxing out your character’s level and creating a good build of stats and/or skills (I assume if you have played at least one MMORPG, you will know what I’m referring to), creating an environment where a player doesn’t realize they are repeating the same thing over and over again proves exceeding difficult, however if successful, makes the game extremely addictive. The reward for leveling up also must be enough to keep a player wanting to level up more and more, as to not get bored of the game. Also, an MMORPG must provide many alternatives other than just leveling up a character to distract players enough that they have variety in the way they play – this can be very successful if these alternative also offer some kind of reward that benefits the player as well. If these few aspects can be pulled off well, I think an MMORPG is on the road to a good start. While it may not sound like much, I think these are some of the hardest points to overcome in creating a good MMORPG.

A good MMORPG doesn’t necessarily have to revolve around fighting and leveling up characters to fight against some evil or opposing faction of other players though. What ultimately makes an MMORPG is the social aspect of the game. A game called Second Life proves this by letting people do anything they would in the real world (with the exception of flying) in this virtual world. You can go around to meet people, buy land to make a house, get objects, and even open a shop to make money in the virtual currency (which you can trade for real currency!). The thing that a game like Second Life and a game like World of Warcraft have in common is the large social scene which dictates basically how the game plays. Without the will of the players, these games would break down. The players are the ones who dictate everything from the virtual marketplace to whether they want to level an entire city and leave no NPCs (non-playable characters). Of course there are measures in place to prevent this since it would be inconveniencing to other players, but it is still plausible if enough of the community wills it so. An MMORPG makes it possible for players to meet, cooperate, fight, trade, and just about do anything else in a social sense with one another. How well this is executed and promoted, I believe, is also in tune with how well the game comes out. If an MMORPG was lacking in this social area, then what would be the difference between the MMORPG and just a regular single player RPG?

I wonder exactly how many people find that they are like me and find that they have no talent for the arts at all. I realize that changing this is only a matter of willpower and persistence, but because of my interests, it falls pretty low on the pecking order for where I devote my time. Attempting to play the piano or draw do, however, find their way into my life briefly at times. It’s funny how my attempts at drawing, no matter how detailed and grand I visualize the end result to be, ends up looking primitive, sloppy, and boring. Reproducing ideas from the head onto paper somehow get confused and lost in translation somewhere. Oh well, I realize that if I’m dissatisfied with any of my skills or abilities, that I should do something about it and practice, but my personality, by nature, is impatient. I like being able to produce results very quickly and things that take years to develop, are naturally not one of my top concerns at the moment. This probably isn’t a very good habit to have, but one that I am fine with for now as it may prove to help specialize the skills I do have later. Perhaps down the road I will feel differently, but for now this is where I stand, despite having that little voice inside telling me otherwise. Maybe it’s just a matter of time till the voice gets too loud for me to ignore, but being that I have a million other goals and desires now, it probably won’t be anytime soon.

I programmed for the first time in my life during high school taking some lackluster class based on pascal. The language was boring and tedious being procedure based, and didn’t allow for anything too advanced. I did get the basics of programming from it though, such as data types, what kind of math was involved, and using simple structures such as if statements and loops. From there, I took a computer science class that was based off java. I consider this my real first language, but my teacher was a d-bag and basically learned nothing of real programming. I found myself with a computer science AP test-prep book as my only resource about a week before the AP test to learn anything useful because the entire year I was copying and collaborating off of other people in the class. Seriously – I only got a 4 on that AP test cause I was able to answer the multiple choice flawlessly, writing down utter junk for all my short answers. This was probably the worst way for me to be introduced into programming because after 2 years, I still basically knew nothing of object-oriented design, function, classes, or anything well…USEFUL. The terrible experiences from high school made me hate programming and entirely influenced my decision to enroll in the computer engineering major vs. the computer science major.

Rolling around to college and I found myself breezing through the introductory engineering course that went over light C++ (I mean, I wasn’t completely useless as I had the gist of everything basic). Recently though, during last semester I was finally able to get some real knowledge of programming since I was finally motivated enough to try to make what I knew useful instead of just knowing of certain things and then not knowing how to make sense of them at all. I realize that I slept through the entirety of that class, but being forced to do homeworks and programs actually made me understand how to use stuff I already knew how to do. Now that I feel like I have a firm grasp of basic java and am getting into more of the inner-workings of C++, programming doesn’t seem quite like the scary monster I had imagined from just flipping through the random programming books from book stores. Just recently I’ve been trying to learn a scripting language called Lua for some subtitling stuff. Haven’t gone too indepth, but it seems like a very friendly language. I actually forgot when I started transitioning my train of thought from “Programming is boring and it sucks,” to “I want to teach myself more languages on my own, like python, C#, actionscript, etc.”

It’s cool to think that I’m at a point where I can start learning new languages at the basic sense on my own just because I’ve become familiar with one or two of them. I plan on at least attempting to learn more in the upcoming years and maybe gain some valuable knowledge and skills. I realize that some languages are probably still beyond my grasp, but I figure by just learning more about them in general, that will help me out gain the ability to understand the others.

Toaru Majutsu no Index is an anime based off of a light novel. The main character, Kamijyo Touma, is a student in a place called “Academy City.” This city is special because the students who go there are espers – they have been exposed to certain drugs and a special curriculum that allow them to gain a special ability. Each esper’s ability is manifested in a different way and the power of everyone’s ability varies individually. The students are categorized into levels based on the mastery of their ability. Kamijyo Touma is a level 0, or in other words, has no psychic ability whatsoever. What he does have, is the unique ability to ‘cancel’ any unnatural phenomenon with his right hand. This might sound like an awesome ability within itself, but is a sort of plague for Touma being that it seems to even cancel out his luck, causing him to go through misfortune at almost all times. The main story revolves around a young girl Touma meets called Index. Index is a nun from the Church of England, but has no memories prior to the previous year. In the first episode, she meets Touma, hanging from his balcony (see above). It is quickly revealed that she is being persued by a certain group of people who are after the 103,000 banned magical texts that she has memorized. From here on out, Touma manages to get involved with magicians, vampires, high level espers, and other supernatural beings with his right hand as his only weapon.

Ok, so from what I’ve written so far, this sounds like a really corny, cheesy anime. Being that I don’t elaborate too well, I can’t really do this series justice without putting spoilers in. The animation is pretty well done and the characters are all pretty likeable as they fill their roles nicely. Touma does have a small harem that he picks up along the way throughout the series, but it isn’t overly present. Each arc is actually disjointed nicely from all the other arcs, so things don’t seem shoved together and rushed. Apparently there are only 24 episodes that are going to come out in this season though, so I’m not quite sure how far along the series will advance the main story being that it does spend much of its time focusing on other characters as well as Index’s. I am kind of curious to how the light novel is and how it progresses since there actually hasn’t been much focus on the main story at all after the first arc is completed. I guess that’s for if I ever study Japanese enough to read a book (which isn’t likely for the next decade).

So far, I’d have to say that I’ve been enjoying this series a lot and suggest it if you are looking for something this season to watch. My favorite series that I’m watching this season though, is easily Clannad After Story, but I’m not going to get into that now. Oh, I’m also waiting on the last 2 Kara no Kyoukai movies to come out – this series of movies is awesome. Wait – why didn’t I just write about one of these?