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 |  Tuesday, February 13, 2007
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 | "Wind -a breath of heart-" by Konstantin
(2007-02-13) |
After much blood, sweat, and drama, NNL has publicly released their full English patch for Wind -a breath of heart-. The patch can be downloaded from VisualNews and you don't even need to break the support disc to get it! Of course it does appear that the game is largely out of print now, but such is the irony of fate (but not stay night). Makes me happy I didn't cancel my order back when the whole drama broke last summer.
First impressions are pretty positive. I have to keep reminding myself to avoid comparing it to Tsukihime, since the two games are fundamentally different (then again, I'm only a couple of hours in, and you never know, maybe Makoto does end up cutting Hikari up into 17 pieces at a later point, but I highly doubt it). Wind has much higher production values (they even got Makoto "Ooh, Pretty!" Shinkai to direct the opening) excelling in the visual department, while Tsukihime has Nasu for a major advantage in the novel aspect of visual novel.
The translation looks very polished. In fact, polished is a bit of an understatement, since it looks like NNL have also chiseled and sanded it into shape, getting rid of more than 25% of the original text in the process by applying basic editorial principles to the text. While in general I tend to prefer translations to be as close to the original as possible, it really does look like the game's original editors were asleep at the wheel, and its two writers were no Nasu, so it looks like nothing of value was lost in translation. In the two hours that I've been playing so far I've yet to find a single grammar or spelling error, so that's either a testament to NNL's editorial prowess or my lack of sleep, possibly both.
Things seem to be looking up for the English-speaking visual novel fandom, though if you are going to sink a metric assload of money into an out of print Japanese porno game, I'd still recommend getting your hands on Tsukihime first.
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| Thursday, February 15, 2007
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 | "Long rough months ahead...." by Totaku
(2007-02-15) |
Sorry for the long delay people, I have been gone for a while being douvoured by my Senior Project. I was hoping that I would have some breathing space with this class, but it appers I will be tied up for a while with it. So my rants will come few and far inbetween.
What I can talk about is that I do have a couple of interesting things to share with you. Being the gaming and internet geek I am, I have been pretty busy with my new collection of "The Touhou Series", pretty much the same materail Konstantin talked about long back. I've already got ahold of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry BLossom, and Imparishable Night and plan to get Shoot the Bulllet probably after a while. For now though, I may not have much, but I do have something interesting to share with you if you haven't seen it already.
The Life Ending Adventure This is one very weird game, that is actually based off of a 2ch meme that is used. Known as the Owata ( This little fellow here ---->(^o^)/ ) This little charater is a popular meme that used by posters when they jokingly say that "Life is Over" or "I have no regrets" While this seems werid, the game itself is HARD! I learned that the whole point of the game is to actually find "the perfect place to die" but to find that place you have to go through tons of sneaky traps and some that will totallly surpise you. I indeed find this little game humerous, based on what I read, this isn't exactly complete yet so more is to come.
As another Owata present, lemme show you this megaman animation thing with the little guy as he dies over and over and over again... Watch the insanity. XD
Next on a trip down memory lane, a certain Touohu fan from the board I attend actually put together a flash that is a parody of the old 80's TV show "Perfect Strangers" I for some reason found it rather ammusing. ^^ Perfect Stangers: Touhou version
Finally if you really want to have something that will mess with your head you should check this out. If you remember "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing" then you might find this movie more mind blowing. Basiclly a person from Japan made a very suprisingly awsome remix that combines that Touhou song along with another song from a PS2 game known as Matrimelee or Gouketsuji Ichizoku in other nations. Taking the song "Oumonji Let's Go" and "Marisa stole the Prcious Thing" you end up with this. This is is pretty much overall all awsome. There are a few weak point to it, but regardless of that it's awsome in way I can't describe.....
That will be all I will share for now. If you are want to talk about it, feel to free to discuss it in the Tsunami Channel forum. I'f I'm lucky I might swing by and talk about it.
Till next time.....
Ja Matta. ^_^
-Ttoaku
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| Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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| "Boxes" by Konstantin
(2007-02-20) |
This past week has been filled with boxes, lots and lots of boxes. After more than a decade in Pittsburgh (whoa, has it really been that long?), I've finally committed to moving to a city with a real Chinatown, a Japanese bookstore, and a vaguely competent municipal government. Oh, and a preponderance of tech firms paying nationally competitive rates doesn't hurt things either. Seattle, here I come! Sad thing is, I think the weather is going to be an improvement over Pittsburgh's.
But back to the subject of boxes. Even though I'm not actually moving myself until I get back from Japan at the end of April, most of my worldly possessions will be making the trek this week, in the company of two of my closest friends (who are leaving early to establish a bridgehead while I wrap things up at work) and all of their worldly possessions, due to the cost efficiencies and economies of scale involved in sending large trucks across a continent. Unfortunately, when you take three geeks who've been pouring their disposable incomes into games, books, and DVDs for the better part of a decade, you end up with a lot of stuff, both by weight and by volume. Hence, boxes.
In spite of not being able to swing a cat by the tail without hitting a precariously balanced stack, the apartment still manages to feel larger somehow. All the gaping shelves and posterless walls seem to stretch out and feel downright unnatural. Ah well, considering that the majority of my days is spent staring into one computer screen or another, I shouldn't notice the difference too much. While the walls might have been stripped of their moe, there's still a game's worth to tide me over.
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| Tuesday, February 27, 2007
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| "GAR" by Konstantin
(2007-02-27) |
After the subject sprang up on the forums, I thought I'd take a stab at defining GAR. The term is still very young and unstable (it popped up about a year ago, when a 4chan /a/tard made the legendary typo while proclaiming he was "gar for Archer"), even more so than moe, which had a few years to stabilize and still takes pages to properly define.
The way I've been interpreting the term ever since it emerged from /a/'s memetic primordial soup was as primarily as an expression of masculine appreciation of a character. Specifically a character that one believes is worthy of respect, admiration, and submission due to particular actions and exhibited qualities that establish the character as an alpha male. Those qualities could be charisma and leadership skills, fearlessness in the face of certain death, stoicism when dealing with all manner of adversity, or general fuck-all attitude with the badass skills to back it up, though it's usually a combination of all those and more.
Part of the problem with defining GAR and moe is that they're two sides of the same subjective coin. Just like cat ears and glasses make some want to reach for their wallets and others for their flamethrowers, there are certain character traits that can enhance the GARness for some and reduce it for others. For one thing, I think that not only can female characters be GAR, they can be simultaneously both GAR and moe. In fact GARmoe emerged as a /a/tard term within days of the original typo, provoking debates on whether Nanoha was GAR, or whether women could be GAR in general. The conclusion was a resounding yes, interspersed with loli threads and meme repetition, as is the way of /a/.
It's going to be interesting to see whether the concept migrates back across the Pacific and takes root on 2ch and its ilk, or whether it already existed there. With the wave of commercialization and almost scientific classification and specialization of moe in games, manga, and anime, it's going to be interesting to see if someone sees commercial potential in GAR. Then again, it might be harder to produce cookie-cutter GARnes, since it tends to emerge as a result of particularly skillful character development, and it's not enough to just have a character look tough and act badass. After weeding out all the joke entries in the first two rounds, the current SaiGAR tournament provides a great sample of the truly GAR characters in the past two decades' worth of anime, though looking at it one gets some appreciation for how rare true GAR really is. Though I still think that Balalaika got robbed. Had she been nominated, I think she'd've made it at least to the quarter-finals.
As for the question of the GARness of the TsuChan cast, I don't personally find any of them particularly GAR, and don't think it was ever Akira's intention in the first place. Though you never know, if he ever does restart Magical Mina, I can see her becoming a White Devil and befriending the crap out of her adversaries with her devilish ways.
 | "Very busy" by Akira
(2007-02-27) |
I don't know why, but I'm very busy these days... I come home around 12~1 pm at night and I usually don't have time to work on the comic strips. I hope it'll change a bit in March. ; _ ; I'll upload something tonight I think.
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| Wednesday, February 28, 2007
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| "More random collections." by Totaku
(2007-02-28) |
My hands are a bit tied up for this week so I'm going to limit my conversation here... Nexr week I'll have more awsome stuff to talk about. For now though...I just got a view more videos to talk about.
Starting off, if you remember that "Perfect Strangers" version of Touhou. The guy who made that video also managed to come up with another short animation piece which turned out to be both full of win and awsome. Mentos, like you never seen it before. XD
Besides that, I don't recall Konstantin put up this piece, but I a while ago, the fokes who did the crazy 2Kids version of "Casey and Friends"(a parody of Higurashi) also managed to put together another work which is quite humerous called Breath Note(a pardoy of Death Note). Enjoy your editing insanity. XD
And speaking of Death Note, people on the 4chan board have been all up in arms over the new Death Note OP. I've taken a look at it myself and have to say...words can't describe how random it is. All I can say is it is off the wall crazy mixed in with Death Metal. It's going to become one of the mixed in views (I've seen tons of both positive and negative respondes..) Enjoy your new twisted opening for Death "Metal" Note
Now on one final lighter note.... Let's pretend that in an alternet reality of Death Note..... that Light Yagami was extermly over weight and book he find and writes in doesn't kill people but makes them fat instead....when you put that together, you get thier stange little Japanese live comedy called Debu Note Definetely worth a laugh. XD
That's all for now....
Till next time...
Ja Matta. ^_^
-Totaku
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