Aquarion Series: Hardcore Aquarion fans PLEASE don't read this PLEASE

Hello guys, Wolvenciel here with another mech anime review and this time its a super robot series called Aquarion. Before anything, I did say "series" but I will only be doing Genesis of Aquarion and Aquarion Evol (As Logos has not yet ended and I do not plan on reviewing that). And again. Please. Hardcore Aquarion fans... Stop reading now and go somewhere else. I'll be splitting the review into two parts. One for Genesis and another for Evol.

I can't seem to find a better picture for Genesis...

Foreword

First and foremost let me say that this is all solely my opinion. My point of view. Don't kill me for this (assuming that there are still hardcore fans reading). Don't take my word as law. Just advice. To those who haven't watched this yet. DON'T. I can't quite grasp the reason as to why this anime was SO critically acclaimed as a good, must-watch super robot anime (in the comment boxes that is).


Continuity

The anime as a whole lacks continuity in the sense that each episode was more like a filler rather than something that affects the story itself (except for, say the first few episodes and the two last episodes only). It felt more like the daily lives of the Aquarion pilots rather than about... well... everything else. There were also a lot of  huge gaping plot holes in the anime that makes you wonder when they'll actually explain it to you and you wait twenty long episodes to find out they decided not to.

I know they may have planned on revealing some of the plot twists in Evol but at least explain about the origins of stuff. The story lacks any background and base except that TWELVE THOUSAND YEARS AGO some idiot angel betrayed his friends because he fell in love with a human girl and decided to help humans fight his former friends instead. How did he fall in love? Why did he change his mind? AND the most important question of all time. WHERE DID THE AQUARION COME FROM?

Forced Romance

See that picture above? Cheesy right? Well the anime isn't. Too bad, chumps. The characters in the anime themselves lack any sort of emotional interactions with one another (I don't think they even interact that much) especially the main characters which are Apollo and Silvia. The first few episodes they decided to fight with each other (and hating each other in the process) and after twenty long episodes of doing absolutely nothing, they decided that they had always felt love in their hearts for each other (mind you this is occured at episode 24~). Yeah right. The romance is anything but natural. It feels forced as hell. It made me hate the anime more than I ever wanted to.

PuniPuniPara Art Level (You can ignore this part if you want)

A while back, I watched Shirobako (an anime on anime producing) and I saw how some animes can go from bad to catastrophic. I HAVE A VERY STRONG FEELING THAT GENESIS IS ONE OF THEM. One of the studio directors in Shirobako made this anime called Puni Puni Paradise (I'm not sure, go check the anime yourselves) in the past and due to production problems they had to cut corners in the art processes and storyboarding to catch up to the show's deadlines. The result is an anime of grotesque art of hellish proportions (imagine moe girls turning into fat aunts wearing skirts).

I noticed the art quality degrading bit by bit in Genesis and at first I brushed it off, saying that it may be because they hired some other artists outside of their company to help them with the process or something. That was until I came to episode 19. Mischief without Malice. The anime's plot suggested that it "purposely made the art for the episode look grotesque as to portray that they're under the spell of some fallen angel's prank" but for the love of Jesus Yamato you should see for yourself how ugly it was. I really think that this episode was their way of getting them to actually finishing all the latter episodes with at least a passing quality. I mean... its... its too horryfying that it may have taken them a quarter of their usual time to actually finish this one episode.

Repetitive Soundtrack

A lot of people on the net says that it is Shoji Kawamori's style to put names in the moves of the robots and I do respect him for that. It gives super robots that overwhelming feel to them. A sense of greatness, if I may say so. However, that does not make it okay to just repeat two damn songs every time the the Aquarion pulls of its Final Attack. Both songs are the ones you actually hear during the opening (if you count in the half-english version then there's three) so it really gets to you. I mean... some people actually just skips the opening song. Now you actually put the same song EVERY SINGLE TIME the guy pulls off his final attack? Come on man. Just a different soundtrack would be fine. You don't even need a song for it.


Enter Fudo Zen

As the name suggests, this guy is pretty much a walking philosophical quote google. He's actually the one redeeming factor that I had taken quite a liking to as I watched this slice of life anime. He says cheesy stuff that are sometimes very useful for you watchers to actually listen to and some other awkwardly cringy stuff that just makes you want to laugh. He's also very calm even when in a pinch and never loses his cool no matter what stands in front of him. It gets pretty boring later on BUT STILL he's a lot better than all of the Aquarion pilots combined.

To Be Continued

I... don't want to write anything more on this one because I'd do more harm than good to both myself and this anime. Just... please... Don't watch this. If you're not into super robots, don't. If you do, I'll still say you have been warned. The next post will be about Evol. A bit more colorful by the looks of it. You'll have to wait until next time chaps. See ya.

Touhou Review: TH 09 Phantasmgoria of Flower View

TH 09 Phantasmagoria of Flower View

The 9th official game released in the series (maybe 10 because TH 7.5). This game shares similar gameplay style as TH 03 where it is a versus vertical scrolling danmaku. The story happens in spring where flowers have bloomed. However, The flowers that should not appear in spring are blooming as well. Once again, it is time to seek the truth behind the situation. Upon reaching Muenzuka, The heroine discovers that the spirits with no vessels are the one that cause the flowers. 

Since it is a versus danmaku game, it has wide choice of characters to choose. Having more than 10 characters to choose (including the unlockable ones), each character will have their unique shooting styles and bombs. There are 3 new characters introduced into the game which are Aya Shameimaru, Komachi Onozuka and Shiki Eiki Yamaxanadu (final boss),  Also, it is even more difficult than TH 03. There is, a character appears no appeareances since TH 05 which is Yuuka Kazami. 

This game also have multiplayer function which allows pvp. Danmaku pvp... Interesting eh?

For the Extra stages, the player will have to clear Normal Mode (which is very hard to me)  and as far as I known, there are no Unique boss to the stage. It's just that the stage is run without any continues allowed. 

You can choose up to 14 different characters and each has unique shot styles

"Bakas" are also incuded

 Aya is a pretty hard opponent despite being on normal stage

Below is some replays of the gameplay

My view on this game? RNG. This game is so random because you can only pray that the enemy under AI control actually make mistake and die. Sometimes the AI can move like no human can within vast amount of bullets. My only strategy for this game is shoot and don't get hit until the enemy die eventually. Just don't die before the enemy. 

Here is the link to the game (Moriya Shrine)

https://mega.nz/#!flQ0iYyB!acmdJ2Zk9a0nHRr58g1v2wVc2yQVGQEW665gDFLnNIg

That is it for TH 09. See you in the next review (TH 9.5) where ZUN brings Danmaku to a different level. Bye

FFXV Comic Fiesta Talk: For Casuals Only

Hey guys. Its me, the ever inconsistent idiot, Wolvenciel here to bring you something else that is not a review (but in a way its like a summary I guess). Last week I went to Comic Fiesta, an anime/manga/games/japanese convention that is held annually in Malaysia. Truth be told it was one of the more bland Comic Fiesta but I've only been there three times so what do I know huh.

Anyways, getting straight on point I'll be summarizing stuff that was presented during the FFXV talk they had in the afternoon section of Day 1 Comic Fiesta. The talk was given by Square Enix's Hajime Tabata and Wan Hazmer from Business Division 2 (you can google them up as to what they do on the game, I forgot).

Though it was like a presentation, it was delivered in a casual way

So they talked about a lot of stuff so I'll just cut around them and explain to you guys just a few key points of the game. Again, read the title. If you're a hardcore fanatic FF fan you'd be following the updates by the devs via the net and THERE IS NOTHING NEW HERE. I'm just saying.

Judging from the slides, you can see it was a bit boring... 

 They explained most of the basic stuff like the theme, setting and the characters in Final Fantasy 15 and I'm sure even you casuals know this stuff. But I'll still say it. The story is about this prince, Noctis (his real name is long as hell so I'm not gonna go there) who lost his country and journeys with his friends to reclaim it. Wan Hazmer explained that they made the theme a bit general (reclaiming a country isn't an unusual theme) and easier to understand as they wanted to aim for a more general audience. YES. THIS MEANS YOU. YOU CASUAL FF PLAYER. He says that even someone who doesn't play any FF game would at least have a look at this one. We'll see when it comes out.

Nothing to see here. Scroll down please

Now lets go on to the world design/mechanics. They played some clips on how you drive in the game and the views that you get while driving. Its awesome (yes its expected of Square Enix but still its VERY NICE). The guys also emphasized that after such a long time, TOWNS are now back in the franchise (cries tears of joy). Yeah well all of the 13 games... don't have towns in them... sadly... The driving is just okay in my opinion. Yeah fine the world is friggin huuuuge and there are just cars passing by and the four people in the car bantering with each other so I'm pretty sure it'll still get boring in the long run. But there's the scenic view and the monsters on the roadside for you to kill that boredom with. So I digress.

Yeah guy. Get your phone in my picture, I don't mind. Heh.

 Another new mechanic introduced in this franchise is fishing. Yes fishing. And its a bit like what you get from those old fishing games in PS2 or in your phone but with some FF fishes/monsters as well.

"Even the fishing itself feels like you're in a battle with monsters" - Wan Hazmer

The fishing mechanics looks enjoyable enough to me. Plus, it uses the standard game's battle OST. So that makes you feel like you're really battling a monster (even more so when you're actually fishing one). However, what surprised me the most about this is that you can cook and eat the fishes you caught. I wouldn't know what effect they would have but I guess it would be like those monster hunter games I guess (really I don't know they didn't say anything about this).

I'm not sure if that's a lot or just a few.

Last but not least, there are chocobos. They run, they glide, they jump, and they friggin DRIFT. So it'd be at least a bit more enjoyable now for you to ride on. At the end of the talk they showed how detailed they wanted the game to be. They measured all these real life aspects like shadows and saturation and cloud shades and all those natural phenomenons and tried to make them go alive in the game. I think its awesome that they actually put a lot of effort in this one (because f**k XIII). Still. We'll see when it actually comes out huh.

P/S: To Malaysian readers, Hazmer put in Teh Tarik in the game. Look it up on youtube or something.

Admiral Rkidz and Shipgirls Wedding

Today is finally the day I get to marry all my favourite shipgirls after one and a half year being a teitoku. It is truly the most wonderful day for a kantai collection players after all the hardwork, time and resources poured into the game.

By now, I'm already a level 104 teitoku with 2 first-class medals. 

Nagato is the first shipgirl I fell in love with. She is strong, beautiful and dependable. She looked serious, but had a hidden cute side within her. I've tried to craft her for more than a year. Waiting, hoping, dreaming, crying. But finally, she somehow dropped. Not from the construction dock, not from LSC, but from map drop. During the Saury Event no less. Took me by surprise, can't believe my eyes. I've been a level 102 admiral by then, and she is the last shipgirls that I need to prepare for my huge weddings. Kept you waiting huh, Big 7.

Kaga is a very beautiful woman. She has this cool and matured aura. Her presence itself is very relaxing. She is the most used aircraft carrier I have, and prove to be a great asset for every battle. She will make sure you get air superiority each sortie, and that's why she's very dependable. She does however eat a lot of bauxite, but that's also a cute side of her. 

Tenryuu is a very cute woman. She tries very hard to look tough and menacing, but deep inside she is still rather childish. She has been a great caretaker for the destroyer class, taking care of them in each expedition non-stop. One would wonder you would marry a ship with significant stats and not very useful in sorties. The reason I've played this game however is for the shipgirls itself, not the game mechanics. And ship like Tenryuu is what keeps me going on, and push forward to be a better teitoku.

Haruna is a charming woman. She is the first ship to reach level 99 since I've been using her for almost every sortie that need a battleship. Her smile always makes me feel warm inside. She looks very innocence compared to her other sisters, yet that's her main charm point. She had stayed with me for a while now, and prove to be very dependable. For Haruna, it's always daijoubu.

Wish me happiness guys!

The Bold Bald Heroes

"I can't prevent the future. To me, it's already happening." -Dr. Manhattan

"I'm just a guy who's a hero for fun. I'll leave tomorrow's problems to tomorrow's me." -Saitama

Two of the most powerful, bald heroes clashes together in an epic match up. One is an almost godlike being with unique power beyond human comprehension and known for his eccentric view of the world. The other is just a laid back hero that can basically defeat anything effortlessly and does his job as a hobby. These two seems to be the polar opposite, but at the same time are really similar to each other. And no, I'm not talking about their head, but instead the ridiculous amount of innate power they have.

Who knows what would happens if both of them are actually going to fight each other seriously?

Saitama, the Caped Baldy.

Dr. Manhattan, a being with a unique godlike power.