Kaio’s Corner

June 08th, 2007:

The Soprano’s:

My first entry here isn’t anime related, but among other things lately I’m contemplating just how David Chase plans to wrap up The Soprano’s.  He’s got a perfect setup for a final showdown between the New Jersey and New York Families, but he’s only got 60 minutes to do it.  This is also a pitfall I see commonly in anime writing where a lot of the episodes close to the end could have been put to better use, but were instead squandered for whatever reason and the real meat only started to become apparent in the last 2-3 episodes.  In this case either David Chase has something completely mind blowing in place to make things wrap up perfectly, or this is going to be one mess of an ending to a great series.  It probably should be a 3 hour special, but that’s apparently not the case.  Whatever the case is, I’m sure people are going to be talking about it on Monday in the offices to the point where work is impossible.

My Prism Ark Summary:

Here’s a link to my Prism Ark Summary With Commentary:

https://animehistory.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/prism-ark-summary.doc

June 09th, 2007

The Idol Trend Gets Absurd:

There are some things in life that just make me go “HUH?!” and Mamiko Noto and Ai Shimizu being asked to write scripts for Touka Gettan is one of them.  These two have zero writing credits under their belts and the only logical reason I can see for this decision is that they are Popular Singer/Idol Seiyuu and this is yet another Multi-Talented Idol gimmick from an industry that is full of them lately.  Touka Gettan is already suffering greatly from a rough start to the anime, delays in launching the game followed by the need to patch it excessively and now this gimmick threatens (On top of the reverse airing gimmick) to do more harm to the animes scripting than good.  I hope they have a ghost writer handy or some sort of supervisor to watch over their every letter because if people thought Chiaki Morosawa (Directors Wife/Gundam Seed Destiny Script Writer), who actually did have some brief writing experience was bad, and that Manabi Straight’s animators directing the show ultimately made the show less than the sum of it’s parts, than this is a approaching a whole new level of risk.

June 10th 2007:

Loli May Cry:

So we have a show about a half breed Devil and Human based off of an immensely popular action game by Capcom.  Our hero Dante is supposed to be a Gar, smarmy handsome one line cracking badass who slays devils and shows no mercy to anyone in his path.  Not exactly material for the average Japanese Otaku.  How do they capture that demographic?  The answer is belowAdd a loli to the story.  Enter Patti as voiced by Misato Fukuen the voice of Eve from Black Cat among other quiet loli roles.  Success as assured, but this poster wonders exactly how she fits into the whole Devil May Cry mythos.  I’m a loli fan, but I was only half-joking about this loli trend in my Age of Loli’s Post, thinking it might also just be by chance that all the shows seem to have loli characters at the same time, but when they actually go out of the way to insert a non-existant loli character into the store, it makes it is a real as the monitor in front of my face. It’s a…..Mad World and the age of lolis is here whether people like it or not.  A picture of Patti the Devil May Cry Loli is pending.

June 11th 2007:

The Soprano’s Series Finale/Made In America: So it would seem as usual my worries were completely unfounded regarding the series finale.  The secret to the finale is that the series doesn’t end.  There is only one hit in this episode (See if you can guess who it is) and there are some revelations creating loose ends that will never be tied up, and the series ends much as it began with the daily grind in The Soprano Family Life.  Everything isn’t resolved and tied up in a neat little package like your average Network TV Drama, some of the characters find new interests to pursue, others keep doing the same things they have done, some relationships end, new ones begin and perhaps the biggest testament to the ending not being an ending to The Soprano saga, but what we see of it is the sudden cut to black at the end of the episode, as if the series is permenantly shutting us out the of The Soprano Family life abruptly and decisively.  It was just the perfect ending to it all and David Chase could not have wrapped it up better if he tried.

June 14th 2007:

Paranoid Eh?: About my alleged paranoia concerning the business practices of one Kyoto Animation, let me set it straight.  “Any feelings of me being some sort of paranoid junkie who wants to dance on the ashes of a burned KyoAni building are paranoid in their own right.”  That’s the shortest and most straight up answer I’ll ever give and people can quote me on that.

June 20th 2007:

One Week To Manliness: The time has FINALLY come, after many delays, Super Robot Wars OGS is finally set to be released next week June 28, 2007.  I can’t even recall what the original release date for this game was, but I swear it was in 2006, possibly September.  Anyway, barring any unforseen events, the delays end now and I get to play what looks to be one of the flashiest, most hot blooded Super Robot Wars to date.  Once I have it expect a long spiel on the overall awesomness of the game, WHICH I’m sure will be the case.

July 5th 2007:

Haruhi Season 2: The Haruhi Season 2 announcement will be made in two days, AND ALL WILL BE LAID TO BURNINATION!  Seriously though, I hope people can get along despite any differences in opinion on the quality of the show and make the most of this “second coming”.

Super Robot Wars OGS: I’ve only played 3 stages, but I can already tell it runs off of the SRW MX engine based on the fact that the units can face diagonally and that crazy events with 3D camera angles happen within the stage themselves.  Yes the stage isn’t just a flat 2D plane like most games in the series, like MX and Impact before it (mostly Impact) there is actually height factored into the terrain.  The possibilities a limitless.  The cut in animations are also nice, and the story seems to be following the TV Series rather than the Original GBA’s.  I Judge this by them referring to OG1 as Episode 1: Divine Wars, and the fact that Ingram had his talk with Yuuzes and Tenzan Nakijima is present at the Burning PT tournament like in the anime followed by the whole pillar falling on poor Kusuha thing (only you know with much better artwork then the anime).  These events didn’t happen in the game.  I’m trying to remember what else happened in the Anime that didn’t in the game, but those events are bound to show up too.  Also the Geshpent’s never looked this cool before, but now they are just as larger than life as the S Class units.  I think the delays were for perfecting the games presentation because things have never looked this good in the series before, they’ve taken all the best the series has had to offer over the years and rolled it into one.  The only gripe I have is that for some reason it won’t let me check the enemies stats and weapons, even after I’ve hit them once and should have scanned them for the vital data as a result (that’s how it normally works).  Maybe I need to get Latooni and her crazy analyzing glasses first. :q

August 21st 2007:

So I’ve come to the point where I begin to wonder if anyone is interested in what I’m writing or if there’s something I’m doing that isn’t clicking as nobody seems to be terribly interested in my articles.  This is one of the reasons I’ve slowed my posting down as I begin to wonder if there’s a point or if I’m just doing the wrong series.  I guess lately I just don’t know what people want so I’ll continue to shoot in the dark, but hopefully something will hit the mark.

August 27th 2007:

Another Kyoani Rant?!  How Predictable Of Me….

Thanks to Rembr for leaving a comment, I don’t get many of those.  I was typing this as a response and it got pretty long, so I decided to turn it into a full blown entry on my corner, which begins below.   I hope people will also keep in mind that this is just an opinion and not meant to be a definitive statement.  I also hope people regardless of their own feelings will read this with an open mind and be respectful in their comments should they choose to make any.  Here goes:

I guess I’m not as hip with some of the trends in anime these days, and that’s probably why I don’t enjoy some of the things Kyoani does as much as others.

I may be a little quick to criticize, but I also think others are too quick to praise.  To cite there most recent series, I’m not sure there’s much deeper to look either in a lot of the Lucky Star episodes.  For example a lot of people see the Kagami/Tsukasa moment in the one episode where Kagami shares her food with Tsukasa and call it an expertly directed scene showcasing the love a sister can have for her sibling. I see it and I see the scene. I know the purpose, I think it’s nice, but I don’t see anything special about it.

Also, much of my criticism isn’t so much criticism as an expression of frustration. when I see people looking at the Haruhi Soda sequence for example and saying it’s FTW and hysterically funny, I think to myself, no it’s not, it’s intriguing, but it’s not anything spectactular considering the frequency of Haruhi stuff in the series lately. Later when I discuss it openly that frustration needs to come out, and usually that results in something close to a denounciation of the sequence.

And you know it’s the same with every Kyoani series since Haruhi.  People everywhere on the internet can’t stop talking about Kyoani and how incomparably brilliant every series they make is, and I just get so annoyed because I cannot see anyway that the things they say are true 99% of the time or how the have not been done before (not saying it’s a crime, but saying a lot of things they do are not a stroke of creative genius never before seen), and the bandwagon effect, don’t even get me started.

When I see all this, it makes me feel that if Lucky Star is the pinnacle of the light Comedy/Slice Of Life Genre which from what I can tell most people seem to think is the be all end all genre these days, then there really isn’t any point in other studios continuing to make anime as perfection will always and only be achieved by Kyoani.  If that’s the case, they should all just merge into one studio under Kyoani, as clearly nobody else knows what they are doing and are inferior.  I’m sure a lot of fans would have no problem with that though.

As a fan of many types of anime it’s so frustrating to see the kind of comments and posts that support the ideas that should lead to this conclusion, undoing all the progress that so many studios and genres have made in there own right.  It’s like suddenly everyone’s become ungrateful for what other studios have done and now everything everybody else does means nothing to them, as they feel Kyoani will just do it better or remake it better (a frequent joke on Anime On My Mind and a saddening belief that so many people seem to hold).

Lately though I’ve been finding better ways to express what I see on the internet, like with my joke review of Episode 16 of Lucky Star from the eyes of a hardcore Kyoani fanboy.

Anyway, to answer your last question, I don’t speak Japanese, but I can read Katakana, and understand 50% of the dialogue you get in an average series without subtitles.  I’m better at reading, writing, and hearing things than I am at saying them.  It’s really kind of embarassing.

September 2nd 2007:

If your putting in a lot of effort and nobody seems to want to read your articles, what does that tell you?  Well it tells you that you probably shouldn’t be bothering, so I won’t be.  I’ve spent a lot of my vacation on getting this website up to a suitable level of content, and I don’t have much to show for it.  Do people have anything to say about my summaries, no, do they have anything to say about my personal pieces no, does anybody say “I like that you did this, or it’s interesting”, no (which really makes me wonder why I bother), do I feel what I’ve worked has been appreciated or read for that matter, not really, was it worth it…..maybe.

My good friend Deathkillz has also disappeared off the face of the earth, and one of the most enjoyable parts of all this was coming up with ideas and cheering each other on.  Now that he’s vanished it’s just not as much fun anymore.  I hope to see him again, maybe that would give me the incentive to do something again.

For now I direct people to Klashikari’s articles on Higurashi, they’re very nice, and other people seem to be enjoying them, and it’s what people are actually reading so thank god for that, I don’t have to worry about my blog articles being missed or feel it will have any adverse impact on the website whatsoever.  I figure I’ll take at least 3 weeks, catch up on some of the shows I’ve been watching, but not blogging and just get some rest.  I’m more than certain for a variety of reasons that Klash can handle things on his own.

September 21st, 2007:

23…….damn, when did all the time go by.  It feels like just yesterday I was in high school in the library lazing around as a 16 year old layabout.  Sometimes I feel like I’m going to be 40 before I know it.  My mother had asked me what I wanted for my birthday I said just for them to not be on our boat, but she insisted on getting me something and for the rest of the family to be able to feel they are doing something for me, so I said Metroid Prime 3: Corruption would be a cool gift.  I’ll see what happens.  For now I’m going to some mystery place for dinner and will update later on tonight after the day is done.

Update: It turned out to be Tony Roma’s, a rib restaurant.  Now I’m feeling bloated and full, but satisfied.  I guess that’s a pretty good feeling to have on your birthday.

October 11th 2007:

Since Klash lacks the sense of humour to allow me to make a joke about Clanand Episode 02 on his article page, I’ve decided to put it on my own page instead.  Here goes:

Things are getting emo already, girls cutting themselves, main character has family issues, main girl is very sick, all they need is for Simple Plan to supply the music.

The “Joke” has been dealt.

October 30th 2007:

In case anyone wonders why I’m constantly upset over Kyoani and it’s fans, look no further than yet another example as to how over the top they are with their devotion to their studio in relation to another well known studio with lots of fans.

Kyoani Is The Best Studio Ever Club

Celebebrate The Works Of Gainax Club

If people can’t see the difference in tone as to how these two factions approach their fandom, one healthily and dedicated, but reserved, and the other rabidly and arrogantly with no regard for the works of other studios then let me know and I’ll describe it to them in detail.  What’s funny is you can also see one of the Kyoani fanboys going over to the Gainax club and claiming that Gainax is inferior and Kyoani beats them easily.

It’s like I’ve claimed before, Kyoani fanboys cannot accept the efforts of other studios and give them their due and must always trumpet their own as the sole creator of good work, but now I have finally been given the proof (perhaps by divine intervention since I’m running a good luck streak a mile wide) to show it in writing.  Maybe Shin Oikamas oughta join that Go Kyoani Club, he’d fit right in.

Anyway tomorrow I’ll get back to Gundam 00 summaries and reviews, but I feel like taking a break tonight.  Sorry folks.

October 31st, 2007:

I’m annoyed by memes at the best of times, but there’s one that is just so overused right now it’s barely even clever, let alone do people stand out when they say it.  It’s lost all effective meaning….that’s right I’m talking about “in despair/zetsubou”.  Ladies and Gentleman, friends and relatives, we are gathered here today to mourn celebrate the death of the “in despair” meme along with any humourous connations it may have had.  Let it’s overuse and milking dry of life and value in meaning be a lesson to us all for the future as we look to better days and more coherent and meaningful ways to describe our emotions online.  Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of no resurrection into eternal life.

November 2nd, 2007:

Yeah, I’m not really good at this sort of thing as a result of a stubborn inbred trait in my family to rarely if ever admit our fault in anything, but after talking with a few people who’s opinions I value very much, I feel that I owe much of the fanbase an apology for my behaviour over the past little while.  I’m not saying that I’ve changed all of my beliefs, and some are still as strong as ever, but that the way I’ve been going about expressing them has crossed the line more than a couple of times and has been both counterproductive and unnecessarily hurtful to the anime fanbase as a whole.  I make no excuses for my actions and just want to say, that to all the people I’ve accused of being Kyoani fanboys or whatever names I can come up with, we may not agree on much of anything at all, but the name calling, bullying and coldness on my end was uncalled for.

November 20th, 2007:

Apparently I’ve managed to get everybody here addicted to Fire Emblem almost overnight, so don’t be surprised if there’s a shortage of articles for a little while as people grind their stats and strategize away.  Personally I’m working on Fire Emblem 10 or Goddess of Dawn (I started all the way back when there was only up to 5 on the SNES no less) so I’m way ahead of the fellas.  People complain about GoD being difficult, but it’s only moderate compared to the likes of 4 and 5, the latter of which I would almost call broken in terms of what it throws at you.  Anyway next time I think to suggest a game to somebody I’ll be more careful, as apparently it will spread like wildfire until everybody I know is playing it.

December 5th, 2007:

I’m currently focusing all my energy on getting through the last 2 of my 6 work shifts in a row and 12 in 2 weeks at the restaurant where I work, so all of my time when off work has been devoted to light activities.  I want to get the Gundam 00 Episode 09 article up, but it’ll have to wait until Friday I’m afraid.  Next week I have a MUCH better schedule so I should theoretically have Episode 10 up by Monday then (Got a Christmas party on Sunday).  Thanks for peoples patience if they have been waiting.

December 7th, 2007:

Note to self:  Some people, no matter what you say will always twist things around just to be a douche, and therefore probably aren’t worth talking to anyway.  They’ll also manage to see the worst in everything you do and are really quite pathetic for it.  Logic does not matter to them it would seem.

Janurary 13th, 2008:

This Week In DS9: Gul Dukat may think he has won in the latest arc of Star Trek by taking Deep Space Nine back for the Cardassian Union Dominion, but what he doesn’t know is that those mines he thinks he can destroy, are self replicating, and will never go away as far as anyone knows.  The series continues with it’s plot twists and tenacity even as it enters it’s darkest and best chapter.  Captain Sisko won’t just leave the station in Dominion hands, and he made it clear to Dukat that he will be back by leaving his most treasured possession there in his office for Dukat to find.  The only question is what now.  The Defiant is all that the DS9 crew has left, and two of the most important members of said crew were left behind on the station in Odo and Kira Nerys.  This seems to have been a move that will help pacify the Dominion until Sisko can finally convince the Federation and Klingon envoy he has rendevouzed with to fight back.  It seems like a losing battle, but if anyone can win it, it’s Captain Benjamin Lafayette Sisko.

January 14th, 2007:

Well he did it, Sisko won it, but not without much sacrifice.  When it came up to the brink of the battle to retake DS9 (more action then has ever been seen in an episode of Star Trek period.  I mean most of the time it’s a bunch of sparks and people flying over the railings, but this time you actually saw the outsides of the ships in fleet battles with ships numbering in the hundreds),  all seemed lost when the Terok Nor (DS9 under Dominion occupation) crew managed to bring down the Infinite Minefield.  Sisko took the Defiant into the wormhole, and in what may be the only intended Deus Ex Machina I’ve ever seen, convinced the Prophets (aliens who inhabit the wormhole) to interfere with the Dominion reinforcement fleet of ships numbering in the thousands that would surely spell defeat for the Federation if allowed through the wormhole.  The Prophets did not like interfering in what they called “The Game” and warned that a pennance would have to be enacted.  That penance would appear to have been Gul Dukat’s (the very man who brought about the current situation through his scheming and war-mongering) daughters life as she was gunned down by Dukat’s most trusted subordinate, who was outraged that she betrayed them by freeing the old DS9 crew from their holding cell.  Tora Ziyal had been a recurring character over the past few seasons, and was a complete innocent in all this.  As the Federation now returned triumphantly to DS9 and it was the Cardassian and Dominion’s turn to withdraw in a hurry now that their reinforcements had mysteriously vanished, there was an eery sadness hanging in the air.  Jake Sisko was reunited with his father, and Rom with his wife, and Worf and Dax are about to be married, but Dukat has lost everything as he huddled in a corner, dejected and left behind with nothing left to him that matters.  His cause is gone, his daughter taken from him forever (and to Cardassian’s family is everything) and he is slowly descending into madness.  All that was left for him to do was to give Sisko back his baseball as he was escorted to the infirmary by Odo.  Dukat has always been a complicated character.  Sometimes he has been an ally, in this case an enemy, but never truly evil, and I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for him even now, as nobody deserves to have their child taken from them, no matter what the crime, and Garak and Kira have reason to be sad too, as they were very close to Ziyal.

This has certainly been the darkest chapter in the series so far, and perhaps Star Trek history.  As I’ve heard it, a lot of fans were somewhat turned off by the much darker tone of this series compared to Star Trek The Next Generation, with it’s episodes that always seemed to end on a positive note.  I guess if Gundam is like the Star Trek of Japan, then DS9 is like the Zeta Gundam of Star Trek.  It certainly fits in that the next series after this was basically the Double Zeta of Star Trek, with it’s weak writing and goofier characters that were less easy to like.

January 18th 2008:

This Week In DS9: Well, Gul Dukat’s back.  For the whole series circumstances have been flirting with whether Dukat is a villain or not.  I always though he was sort of a tragic villain, and at times he seemed like a descent person (such as the episode where he and Kira ultimately located his daughter and they forged a bond again later when she helped him take over a Klingon ship to defend Cardassia back while the Klingons were briefly at war again with the Federation) and it almost seemed like he was going to become one of the good guys.  Even when he joined the Dominion it seemed like he was doing it for Cardassia, but now after the death of his daughter he has been driven completely mad it seems.  Perhaps there is truth to what he says about never being respected and that he tried to rule Bajor fairly during the occupation and they rejected him, but that isn’t an excuse for what he has sworn to do now.  Dukat has sworn to destroy Bajor, claims to have always hated the Bajorans, and now he has escaped and is probably headed there.  If Benjamin Sisko is like a messiah to the Bajoran’s it would almost seem like Dukat is destined to play the role of their false prophet or Anti-Christ.  I still see him as a tragic villain of circumstances in some ways though, because I think he truly is a better person then he is now.  Filled with his rage over the death of his daughter and all his failures he has lost sight of any goal, but revenge.  Gul Dukat remains to this day I think, one of the best written villain characters I have ever seen in a science fiction show, even equalling the likes of Char Aznable.

January 25th, 2008:

This Week In DS9: Like Sisko at the end of this episode, this episode brings so much to the table that I almost feel like I can’t digest it all and need time to get away from the series to think before going in for the final season.  The gist of the episode is that Sisko is given the authority to lead an attack on Dominion/Cardassian Space and chooses to do so, despite a warning from the prophets that he needs to stay near Bajor.  During this time Gul Dukat returns to Cardassia after research and swearing his sole purpose to get revenge against Sisko, who he blames for bringing about all the things that have happened to him up till now, releases a Pah Wraith (think evil prophet or fallen angel) from a Bajoran Relic.  Acting as it’s host he travels to Deep Space 9 via it’s power and the Pah Wraith murders Jadzia Dax, Sisko’s best friend and a Major character who has been in the series since the first episode, and corrupts the Orb of Prohecy which causes the wormhole to close and cuts off the prophets from Bajor.

His intention had been to cut off the prophets only and allow the Dominion to send reinforcements, but now his blind rage has netted him and the Dominion nothing and only caused devestation and sorrow.  I’m through feeling sorry for him, he is a lost cause who deserves whatever is coming his way now and I hope Sisko gives it to him.  For now though Sisko has suspended his own commission as the CO of DS9 and relocated to Earth with Jake, acting as a lowly dishwasher in his fathers restaurant.  The Dax symbiont will live on in another host, but having to witness his best friends death twice in one lifetime has greatly affected him, and without the prophets to guide him he needs to get away from it all and search out his answer, much like Gul Dukat did when he experienced a loss.  Unlike Dukat though, Sisko’s answer will likely be one that amounts to something.  This was such an amazing episode I think I’ll probably take as much time as him to digest it all.

January 29th, 2008:

Sometimes I’m truly thankful I chose to be an independent and not join Animeblogger.  Why?  Well some of the blogs on their are so extreme in their views and see everything in such black & white terms that I’m afraid it might make my blog look like one of them if people saw Anime History grouped among the likes of Derailed By Darry and Epic Win.  Not all of them sacrifice integrity for “cred” though.  There are many good one’s like Random Curiousity and Animeachronism, but the number that do go for the act like a 12 year old route and literally all share the exact same thought processes and style just makes me not want to be a part of it all.  It’s not worth it.  You wanna honestly know what it feels like browsing some of them, like being in an I.R.C channel populated entirely by Grade 10 schoolchildren with too much time on their hands and not enough cognitive ability to put a meaningful thought to the keyboard.

January 30th, 2008:

And now some of them are whining because I criticized their black & white way of looking at things.  That is pretty much the final essential ingredient of the hack writer right there and makes them look like Bill O’Reilly of Fox News fame.  Oh well….

February 12th, 2008:

This Week In DS9: The series has definitely entered it’s final chapter now.  Disatisfied with the Cardassian’s inability to get things done, the Founder has forged a secret alliance with the Breen.  Meanwhile Sisko has married the woman he has been in love with since the 3rd season in Kassidy Yates despite warnings from a prophet who turned out to be his mother (This prophet posessed his real mother Sarah Sisko and led her to marry his father) that he will know nothing but sorrow if he did.  Perhaps most ominous of all is that Gul Dukat masquerading as a Bajoran (his hatred has since led him to become that which he hates most, something I’ve always thought to be the pinnacle of hatred) under his new role as the Emissary of the Kosst Amojan or Pah Wraiths (the fallen prophets who were cast out of the wormhole for interfering with the corporeal world to much)  has tricked Kai Winn (The spiritual leader of Bajor, head of the religion and a nasty woman at that) into thinking they are meant to work together to bring about the restoration.  Kai Winn seems to have been easily fooled in her desperation to believe she and not Sisko has been chosen by the prophets to carry out their will.  What she is really doing though is carrying out the Pah Wraiths will, which I’m sure Dukat knows will bring about his goal, the destruction of Bajor as the galaxy knows it.  Now Sisko faces a seemingly endless assault from all sides.  He must protect the woman he loves, defeat a Dominion that is more strong than ever, stop a madman from carrying out his wishes and try to find happiness for himself.  Things are only bound to get more complex from here on out.

Update: How can one show be so awesome.  I remember a friend of mine telling me in High School how great Deep Space Nine was, but unfortunately it took me 6 years to get around to seeing why.  This just may be the best television show I have ever seen in my life with the latest episode The Changing Faces of Evil.  How the writers managed to cram so many interesting things into one episode I don’t know.  The title refers to the fact that Legate Damar, the leader of Cardassia, who has had enough of his people being treated as second class citizen’s in their own domain and of how the Dominion keeps giving concessions to the Breen, has started an official rebellion against the Dominion and has thrown in more or less with the Federation.  Meanwhile on Bajor, Kai Winn who was never really an ally and always kind of treacherous, but never dangerously so has found out that the man she has thrown in with is in fact her greatest enemy.  On top of that she has killed her most trusted and loyal Vedek to keep this a secret and the blood she spilled revealed the text on the Book of The Kosst Amojan, which is the key to releasing the Pah Wraiths.

Meanwhile, the Breen have proven effective in disabling the Federation/Klingon/Romulan Task Force with their new weapon and in attacking the Federation headquarters on Earth.  They also managed to destroy the Defiant, Captain Sisko’s ship for the past 4-5 seasons.  It’s interesting that in the darkest hour of the series that the Alpha Quadrant’s greatest hope is a person that was their worst enemy not even a week ago, and that the greatest threat to them is supposed to be one of it’s closest protectors and spiritual leaders.  That’s just one of the many things that makes this series one of the best though, that alliances change, characters become lovers, friends, husbands and wives and even betray one another.  We can find out that a person we thought was an ally was in fact a changling for the past 6 or so episodes, or that a former enemy is suddenly a friend, then an enemy, then a friend again.  The writing is superb for this show and it’s a shame it all went downhill with the next series.  I guess once this is all over I’ll have to start watching The Next Generation again.

February 20th, 2008:

The more I partake of anime blogging, the more it reminds me of a Bill O’Reilly episode.  Simply replace Republicans with Slice of Life anime, Democrats with Sunrise and Gonzo and topics of homosexuality, terrorism and such with Mecha and Shonen anime and sit back to watch the ensuing chaos.  You’d be amazed how much it looks like the No Spin Zone if you take it like this.  I mean I even got “Cut his F^$^ING Miked” by one blogger.  Anyway that’s all for today.

February 28th, 2008:

It never ceases to amaze me how Jason Miao continues to have no goddamn idea what he’s talking about half the time when it comes to just about anything….but especially Gundam.  If we are to believe him then the last Gundam series that didn’t have a planned upgrade to a new main Gundam unit was apparently Gundam X.  Oddly enough Gundam X did have an upgrade, the Gundam Double X, and Turn A Gundam was in fact the last series to not have a midseries upgrade AND Turn A Gundam came afterwards.  That’s like two and a half factual errors in one sentence coming from such an “expert” on all things Sunrise and “Trainwreck”.  What a joke.

Methinks Jason really just needs to give up the professed expert on Sunrise routine and to go focus on a subject where he actually has a clue, like perhaps American Football.  This guys disinformation is starting to approach Ministry of Truth proportions.

March 1st, 2008:

Remember kids, all demons are evil unless they are loli succubus’ that refer to you as “oniichan” in which case it’s okay if they try to attack you, because they don’t reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly mean it and are just having a moment.  This knowledge was conveyed to me by the Chapter 4 Boss of Eushully’s Mine Fukuki Se Ni Tayutau Uta.

April 08th, 2008:

Words of wisdom, if you are ever looking for a free Antivirus, use AVG and not Avast.  Avast came recommended to me by a friend who insisted it eats up less resources than AVG and since Steam doesn’t like AVG I decided to give it a whirl.  I put up with 3 months of intense lag before deciding that “On-Access Protection” and non-conflicting Steam just wasn’t worth it.  You see this Avast that is apparently supposed to be a lite program requires so many seperate processes to be running in order to maintain it and eats up so much processing power every time you go to do something that it literally makes any protection it might provide worthless since it cuts any program (specifically those that access the internets) usage in half.  I’m ready to let my buddy have it tonight as there is literally no way he’s right on this one, Avast is a massive MASSIVE resource hog that rivals Norton or arguably surpasses it.  Have a 2.2?  How would you like it to chug like a sub 1.0 GHZ trying to run XP?  So yeah AVG by far is the best free Antivirus I have ever come across and I’m glad to have it’s “bloated resource hogging” back compared to Avast “Lite”.

May 30th, 2008:

Being sick sucks.  I had a plan to work on my Code Geass articles as well as some other stuff I have planned for this Code Geassless week, but unfortunately when I’m going through a box of Kleenex every 4 hours it’s very hard to focus on my creative writing and attempt to be witty.  So hopefully this whole throat cold thing settles down by Sunday and I can get on that.  Sorry folks.

June 18th, 2008:

RAM is good, company is complicated.  I’ve finally upgraded to a computer I can be somewhat proud of with my installation of 2 extra Gigs of RAM.  This roughly quintuples my amount from the former 512 MB which as people can imagine was lag city for just about anything I tried to do.  The problem is I can barely put it to use right now as I have company that makes playing any sort of games in the Den a pipe dream since it’s technically also the guest room.  Balls to that, I want to play me my Ikusa Megami 0, but I guess I’m going to just have to be patient and wait.  At least now I know I clobber the system reqs for it where previously I was just at the minimum system requirements.  Why pre-builts are so generous on everything other then RAM I will never know since it’s pretty much the cheapeast part of any computer.  Actually after what I’ve been through with it barely resembles the computer that came out of the box the first time so I guess it’s a custom now…..my custom Zeta.

July 25th 2008:

Vacation time.

August 9th, 2008:

A day in the life of a crusading super villain who wants everyone to obey his whim:

-2:30 PM:  Woke up feeling rather drowsy.  It’s raining outside.  Oh well better watch some X-Files

-3:20 PM: Checked E-Mail and other such villainous acts.  Browsed the usual haunts on the internet, made a post on animesuki and finished watching episode 4 of Roots: The Miniseries at long last.

-4:50 PM: Went back to watching X-Files again.

-5:40 PM:  Started another episode of X-Files but was interrupted by a call from the old parents.  They wanted to go to dinner.

-6:15 PM:  Went to Asian fine dining restaurant with parents and caught up with the goings on.  Had lots of fun even though the power went out something like 15 times while I was there.  Best time I’ve had in weeks.  Need to spend more time with the parents.

-8:00 PM: Got home and am seeking to continue the super villainy and mind control plots.  When will it end I wonder.  RICHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARDS!

August 30th, 2008:

My one month final trial period to see whether it’s actually worth reading other anime blogs has passed.  Judgement:  Fat chance

All I see anymore is pettiness, complaining and writing whatever it takes to get the most views and commenters.   The feeling of sameness across the board remains and I don’t see anything being written that interests me.  Nobody seems to be listening to anything other then what they agree with and as such new ideas and ways of looking at things are not being generated.  So what’s the point?  What do I have to gain if I choose to read one blog or another when everyone pretty much has the exact same thing to say? The answer is nothing.  Maybe in a few more years anime blogging will get some new blood and people with new ideas and a more open mind and the old blowhards will finally die off.  Maybe then it’ll be worth it to read them again.  Until then like I said.  Fat Chance.

January 5th, 2009:

This marks the day that I officially retired my Revenge-Chan avatar since it has served it’s purpose for 2008 and the new year is about new beginnings.  It’s all about the Def Leppard Rock of Ages album cover avatar for the time being.  We’re going to see how it goes and I think there’s a good chance I’m going to decide to keep it for a while.  Also, gone is the “Soapbox Hero” motto.  From now on it’s going to be “Standing Up And Kicking Love Into Motion”, not just in reference to my favourite Def Leppard song, but also to a new outlook for the new year.