Month: January 2011

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka 3: Filler scenes is filler

NACHOOOO! — Sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room. It's for fun.

One of my early hopes for the season is turning out to be a little underwhelming. The pace seem to have slackened after that inspired first episode. Episode 3 has a few fine comedic moments and a little plot development. Unfortunately the rest of it feels like a too large chunk of fan service filler. Not something I’m opposed to but given the potential the series has exhibited so far it felt unnecessary and thus disappointing. I have to wonder what liberties the adaptation took with the light novels source (having never read the books, and not having a desire to).

Still, it was a decent enough episode (it’s not Beelzebub) and it is early days yet. A lot of time to turn things around and I certainly hope that it does.

Moe Cockroach

I like to say there is no subject that has not been explored in a manga or an anime. I was wrong. So, so wrong.

Presenting a 4-koma doujin about moe anthropomorphic cockroach girls. It is being made into an anime for mobile phones, apparently.

Beelzebub 1 and 2: Baby, I am disappoint

Beelzebub was perhaps the one show I regarded as a safe bet prior to the start of the season since the manga is one of the stronger WSJ titles (not that impressive of a feat, let’s be honest). This is a show that got just about everything wrong. Its biggest sin is clearly failure to stick to the source material. How difficult can that be? The story is already there dammit! Instead, we get inferior and incoherent changes to the story, some truly retarded filler scenes in front of the school food stall (the bread and the milk scenes…), and never mind in the first minutes we already have the electric shock joke and the pee joke.

There are other problems. Sub-par art (crying Baby B’el’s pacifier looks like a clown nose, why?), poor casting (Baby B’el sounds bad, a problem when he “speaks” all the time) and poor pacing. Hilda’s introduction to the family was probably the best scene but only because it was played completely straight. Problem though, Oga slept for three days before that and Hilda and Baby B’el were presumably already staying in his house for that period of time. Like I said, incoherent.

This attempt at adaptation is like aiming for the moon with the rocket in Jules Vernes’ novel, and already off by a mile before exiting the atmosphere. Disappointing and heartbreaking. Just go read the manga and forget about this mess.

Saving the world one gibbering Investigator at a time

That skirt contains eldritch wonders — HE’S ALL OUT OF GUM

Zeboyd Games made this little oddball of a game last year for XBL, and now they’re appealing for donations to bring it to the PC. Anyone interested in contributing should proceed here.

I guess this will probably send the Cthulhu purists into a shrieking rage as they reach for their SAN check dice, seeing yet another attempt to supposedly bastardize the horror pedigree of the Mythos by trivializing it as much as possible. All I can say is I like wacky and novel attempts to play on familiar geek tropes, and this is hardly on the level of Hello Cthulhu if we’re talking about levels of inanity. I can’t say how the game(s) are since I’ve never played them, but for someone to put in the coding effort requires at least something akin to a minor labour of love.

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka 1 and 2: We have a contender!

For potential best show this season. I almost gave it a miss due to the uninspiring character design, but I’m glad I gave it a go. It looks like it will be another Seto no Hanayome for me; I went in not expecting anything but it more than delivered.

So we have our protagonist Ayumu who is a bit of a pervert. He is also a zombie and a chainsaw-toting “magiclad girl” (Fucking magic, how does it work?).

To round up the cast we have a silent loli necromancer who communicates via handwritten notes and a tsundere loli “masou shoujo”, and in the second episode a busty vampire ninja makes her appearance (voiced Mio and resembles her superficially, but thankfully does not behave like her at all).Â Going by promotional art there’s yet another girl. It does look like the old standard anime harem is getting assembled but the numerous brilliant subversions (see attached screen capture) saves the series and hilarity ensues.

Highly recommended and do watch out for that panty shot.

Duh Magnet says: Kore wa Zombie Desu ka is the kind of wacky nonsense this season was sorely lacking until now, and best of all, it’s nowhere as shameless as Sora no Otoshimono.)

“We all hate Millwall right?”

This seems to be an attempt at showing how the familiar football fiefdoms have carved up London like some namby ponce version of the Warring States. Though considering the level of uncertainty (this is hardly a scientific census and you should prepare heaps of salt) in the demarcations, it’s more like the Holy Roman Empire than anything else.

“I will scour the land with rich sounds”

Mordor Down Under

I came across this at random. Complete gold if you consider what ol’ Red Eyes formerly was and the product’s name.

I’m feelin’ blue, Megan

Not feeling so smug now eh Mr Perfectly Adapted Killing Machine, you

This new study suggests everyone’s favorite apex marine predator might have a few deficiencies in the area of eyesight, which is understandable considering they see the SAME FRICKIN’ COLOUR ALL THE TIME. Those eyecones probably threw up their tiny arms and gave up long ago.

Life Lessons from TW LJF

RECAP of the Last Episode ofÂ Taiwan Long Juan Feng

So, It ends.

And what a damn boring ending it was.Â After taking a shower, and ironing my pants, the damn folks are still not done shooting their guns at one another.

In fact, I don’t even understand why they carry pistols when they hardly shoot the damn thing. (and since they don’t shoot, why are the police wearing bullet proof vest!?)

So, the ep begins with Huang Ping Qiu getting executed by a bullet through the head, which is an irony cos I recalled #1 Killer A-De couldn’t even kill him when he emptied a magazine at point blank range.

Then I went to take a shower and everyone was on the rooftop threatening each other with their guns.Â (Gun control is a major issue in Taipei. It’s as if every one and their mother can just whip out a pistol from nowhere)

After 20mins of empty threats, Zhilong took the place of sour puss Jiayi and leapt to his death, falling to his death in slo mo while recalling all the awesome stuff he done :

Killed my fake dad

Killed my real dad

Killed my dad- in – law

Made real mum cry x 20 times

Made my wife cry x 14 times

Killed my dad in law (oh, I said that already)

Made sweet love with Yvonne

Man, I am Awesome.

*splat*

Somehow the good guys managed to get the guns, Jiayi slapped Angel, the latter looked shocked! (this is one thing I can never understand about the show, the woman killed their brother, and she’s like… “is this slap necessary!?!) anyways, back to the show…

shot Angel in the leg, nobody shoots, everyone bargaining for soemthing , police arrives, Angel refuses to surrender, ran to jump off the roof

Second best bit of the show : Nobody amongst the 20 odd gun welding folk even bother to shoot the villainess as she slo mo run her way off the edge of the roof, yet they keep repeating her name hoping she’ll stop running.

Hello!?!?!

Anyway, Angel meets the floor. Splat.

Fast forward, to the living room and this is the moment everyone.

Three hundred, Seventy-One episodes later, and it boils down to these two last sentences from Mr Huang Zhizhong

“Life is full of up and downs, Life is full of joy and sorrow…

BUT….the lesson in life is…

<Jia he wan shi xing, He le jiu shi li liang!> YAY !!!!!!!

to this I say… KNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Word to your mother.

Will Power – TW LJF Penultimate Episode

Literally just finished watching the remaining half hour of Taiwan Long Juan Feng.

More thoughts from me! (Amazingly I can’t stop blogging about this show)

RECAP – The Penultimate episode #370 (or something..okay, I lost count!)

Usually the second last ep are the good eps where the show still manages to start tying things up, yet leaves some traces of the DNA of the actual show we follow. TW LJF has none of this.

For almost the entire run of the series, we learn that this Huang Family has been trying to fucking build this MRT or some shit, though nothing ever gets built, yet two thousand contracts has been signed by corporates within these 300 over eps (in the midst of all the drug rapes and gun pointing)

So, what do we actually get from this all crap-tastic ep? A fucking will that seemed to be written by Grandpa Huang whose ang mor name was probably Nostradamus.Why? He predicted the bloody future , thats why.

The will probably rendered the entire series redundant. All the fighting, raping, maiming, drugging, more raping, more scheming, etc. For Nothing!

The writers basically retcon the entire series!

What the will said* (my version..well..its still 70% there lah.)

“my name is blah blah blah, i done many bad things in my life…and decided to atone for my mistake by…LETTING MR A DO SO AND SO BECAUSE I LET HIM DOWN AND ALTHOUGH I LET HIM HANDLE THE BUSINESS

I SHALL STILL BE THE LEGAL OWNER OF SAID BUSINESS

SO IN THE EVENT OF MY DESCENDANTS GROWING UP AND HAVE TO FIGHT FOR THIS POTENTIAL RAILWAY LINE 30 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE

THEY WILL STILL OWN THE PIECE OF LAND THEY WILL POTENTIALLY SPEND 361 EPISODE FIGHTING OVER

(and to make sure they will not find this will)

i shall not tell anyone i wrote this letter until at the point of episode 340 i will leak news that i may possibly have left this secret will that nobody knows so that they can spend 20 eps searching for it and then the will will undo everything we thought happened for the 320 eps before it.

and this secret will be held by this person who won’t even appear in the show.

ugh. i die. thank you.”

– Signed, Dead Grandpa Huang

Stay tuned for the Finale of the show. Subtitle : Why 20 pistols can’t stop a running woman jumping off the goddamn roof.