Retro Achievements Update #4

Progress November/December

I played some games in the last 2 months, but unfortunately I fell into the pit of playing the pointless piece of poop Path of Exile again, which I yesterday deleted for the probably 15th (no joke!) and hopefully finally final last time.

New retroachievements.org score:

28503 points - Rank 207 (of 26394 registered players, up from Rank 256)

New grandmasteries:

-) Felix the Cat (Gameboy)
-) Pokemon Red (Gameboy)
-) Yugioh Word Championship 2004 (GBA)
-) Super Mario Advance 2 - Super Mario World (GBA)

-) Felix the Cat

Insanely easy Gameboy platformer, beat this in my first session of playing it. Decent enough, they should have put in an hard mode akin to Kirby's Dream Land.

-) Pokemon Red

Last Gen 1 game down. I honestly don't remember what I used or if anything special happened. ^^ Pokemon overkill.

-) Yugioh World Championship 2004

Another of the many Yugioh GBA titles. Fun game, but the card unlock mechanism is shit compared to the sequel (2005). It's basically "use 1 of every card" all throughout the game except for normal monsters. I tried to use ritual in the beginning but couldn't make it work due to the lack of support cards (or multiples of them rather), so I went to regular beatdown to beat this game's set into submission.

-) Super Mario Advance 2 - Super Mario World

Port of the best jump and run ever with some unnecessary minor changes. Luckily the set creator took out one unfair achievement on my request which I had previously tried to get for 2 straight hours without knowing how what exactly would make it trigger, lest I would never have been able to finish this set. Lots of fun to complete this otherwise - even a slightly flawed Mario World port is still a damn good game!

Other mentionable games:

-) Tennis (NES)

It's a NES tennis game, what did you expect. I had trouble hitting balls at all early since the timing is very weird (same for serving - in real tennis you hit the ball at the HIGHEST point of the throw). Balls the computer plays close to the sidelines are sometimes just impossible to return, which is why I put this one on hold.

-) Pinball (NES)

A glorified pachinko machine, this constitutes the only pinball game I've ever seen in my life (and please remember, my specialty IS pinball video games!) that has no nudging whatsoever. Not even 1-way. No clue what they were thinking there! Playfield-wise, it's decent enough. The only important thing is to raise the lane savers by turning the eggs to chicks - and if you manage to randomly (since no nudging) flip the cards over, you actually have a chance at getting a good score - the middle drain can be mostly avoided with flipper control, but the unavoidable left (and more rarely, right) drains will curb your morale. The flaw forever keeping this game down in the dirt is the dreadfully annoying "invisible flippers" part which you have to go through in every fucking game - would have been ok as part of a timed mode, but not as a core feature based on your score. Won't complete this set as it's way too luck-dependent, and too hard to be realistic, with the invisible phase (for me) killing all fun - if you didn't manage to set the ball savers up beforehand, it will ruin your game.

Fun fact: the Princess rescuing mini-stage is one of only two instances I've experienced where losing the wizard mode (= dropping the princess) can actually cost you a ball - the other being the pinball game with the best physics ever made - Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey (I once played a 6-hour game on that one that would've snatched me a top 5 spot on the Twin Galaxies leaderboard - one of the top gaming feats in my life.)

-) Super Mario World Bros (SNES, Hack)

Another remake of SMB 1 in the World engine. The final achievement (Bowser stealth master) is much much harder than anything else. Apparently I incorrectly remember that I completed it, so I will have to do it again (?).

-) Yugioh Worldwide Edition (GBA)

Another Yugioh game with the same engine as 2004 and 2005 but stupider gameplay (enemies have to be searched at the weird ass city map). Set was bugged as I tried it which somewhat annoyed me as I wanted to wolf it down.

-) Asterix (GB)

 Very similar gameplay as in the NES version, but different level design. Some parts are rather hard, but I will try to finish this platformer.

-) Bomb Jack (GB)

Fun little arcade-style game that requires you to collect bombs as you avoid the enemies. Harder game modes will be too much for me, but I might try to squeeze a few more points out of this.

-) Batman: The video game (GB)

Good platformer with weird story (apparently you fight Jack (Nicholson) and not actually the Joker he played in the movie!). The flying levels up the difficulty rapidly, and there is one level afterwards that does likewise - tanks block all the spots you would need to jump to, so you need to have the right weapon or you have no chance to get through. Luckily you can keep your powerups even throughout continues, which is very merciful. Will go at this again.

-) Pokemon Gold (GBC)

My first encounter with Gen 2! After grandmastering all 3 Gen 1 games (which even half a year ago I would have never thought I would ever do in my life), I was set on enjoying this one. Initially this one disappointed me (the new starters, for example, all look stupid as hell; the entire Unown part is bafflingly unneeded and the map layout is just not up to Kanto standards). While it does not have the same magic as Gen 1, it's still a decent entry in the series. Kanto revisited is so undeveloped (what were they THINKING!?! every other landmark or house you visit is broken, changed to be contentless, barred, or given up by its residents) it should have thrown out early in the development process in order to make Johto, which is overall disappointing as a territory, better!!! Gameplay-wise, many new elements have been added (held items, new types to counter the allmighty Psychic, day and night phases which are a rather annoying addition in my view (I will 99% of the time play at night, so I will necessarily have to look into the cheat to switch the daytime if I actually go for the Catch 'em all achievement. By the way, Pokemon are unnecessarily hard to catch in this generation compared to the previous. It's no isolated incident for me to require 20 or more ultra balls for a regular ass pokemon at low life, which is totally uncalled for in my opinion. What I do like is that some battles (especially certain gym leaders) are much harder than anything you have experienced in Gen 1 - but then again, this might only be because Psychic is no longer OP.

In an extremely annoying incident, my savegame got corrupted just before going over to Kanto (my computer crashed while, apparently, I had been saving) - so if I go for Gen 2 completion as well, I will have to do this one all over again...

-) Pokemon Silver (GBC)

Currently at Mt. Moon, so getting close to beating the Silver version. Only hard thing in the set will of course be the catching achievement which is insufficiently valued at only 75 points (should be 100 as in the Gen 1 sets, AT LEAST. It's multiple times harder with crappy catch rates, stupid spawn-only appearances and day and night catch lockouts!). By the way, I just use the pokemon

-) Romancing Mario (SNES, Hack)

Decent hack, hard but would be worth pursuing if not for one critical and to be honest baffling idiotic mistake - saving spot rules were changed so you can only change when you beat them initially, which makes this game unplayable on hardcore. I only wanted to go to sleep at 11 PM but went on til 1:30 AM only so I could make it to the next savespot - and failed. What I hate most is to waste my time for nothing, so I won't bother with this garbage hack any more.

-) Wario Adventure (SNES, Hack)

And another issue in the "Removed from Super Mario World Central" compilation that for some reason constitutes most Mario World hacks on RA (like there weren't GIGATONS of better hacks available to make sets for). Giving up Mario's fireballs for Wario's shitty dash that gets you killed most of the times you actually use it would be ok, what absolutely is not though is the first world boss' ability to get you perma-stuck in a corner (i.e. YOU CAN'T MOVE AT ALL!), leaving you only with the option to reset the game, negating your previous progress! Happened several times to me. Oh, and to beat him you have to hit him with ALL 6 of the 6 blocks you can pick up in his room - absolute no-go. Deleted permanently from my playlist for that painful lack of quality control.

All Entropia Universe logs from now on on Planet Calypso Forum

All my EU logs will be displayed in this forum thread from now on.

http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?290453-LMTR14-s-Swunting-(and-all-purpose)-log

My writing project: Sennen Empire - Chapter 1 now on fanfiction.net! (A Yugioh fanfic)

Sennen Empire

After writing around for a few months, I finally managed to unleash enough energy to call chapter 1 of the writing project supposed to get me back into writing finished and uploaded to fanfiction.net.

Sennen Empire is a purely serious effort with a Yugioh background, albeit featuring only original characters and an approach to a card game based world that is both more "real world-ish" and fantastic. It is based on a dream that was one of a few recently that moved me a lot. I am aware that many fanfiction (AND trollfic) writers claim to have been inspired by dreams, but in my case it actually happened! As in "No dream, no story!"

As with all of my writing efforts, the thing is ripe with themes, references and complexity getting out of hand. However, I am clearly nothing more than an amateur writer right now, which can be seen through my difficulties in avoiding to reveal too much information too quickly. Also, I can't just write down a sentence. Every single sentence has been changed 5-10 times and would have been changed a lot more often if  I hadn't just pulled the plug and drained the swamp - or, in other words, put the chapter up in a "final" version. Yeah, right. *roll*

As with my other writing projects, I know the beginning and end of the story very well - however, what happens in between is largely undecided. But that is only one of the problems I am attempting to conquer by writing this fanfic in name only.

Fic will only be on fanfiction.net, but I might post commentary here sooner or later. Or revised versions. Sigh.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12274757/1/Sennen-Empire

Anime reviews #6 - Another

Another by Yukito Ayatsuji

Mei or just meh...?

Another is the anime adaption of the homonymous Japanese horror novel. It is centered on the typical average generic run-of-the-mill schoolboy Koichi Sakakibara and his struggle against a curse killing his classmates and their relatives. Luckily this anime draws out some interesting events and details out of this generic high concept plot, but nevertheless it is too single-minded to truly leave an impact.

1. Story

Transfer student Koichi arrives at the scene (Yomiyama North Middle School), is told about the curse that in some years kills students in class 3-3 (cause, why not?), and the method how to ward off the curse, namely for the student body to ignore one classmate - the one believed to actually be dead and therefore an extra to the class roster. That classmate turns out ot be curious, incurious Rei-Ayanami-soundalike Mei Misaki (really! it's the same exact voice, and I was truly surprised the seiyu wasn't actually Megumi Hayashibara!) who he is drawn to immediately - but once again there's no payoff to the obvious paring (more on that below)...

So students and/or their relatives die one after the other in gruesome scenes (the level of violence feels forced and unneeded though), culminating in an all-out massacre at the end.

Was this scene really necessary?

In the end, Koichi and Mei walk down a road together, and DON'T kiss or anything WTF, leaving the viewer (or in other words ME) severely disappointed.

2. Characters

The merit of Another lies in its characters, most importantly the lead female. Koichi has few interesting character traits, he's the average clueless transfer student protagonists all setting and plot details are gradually revealed to. Other than Mei, Koichi himself is also played as the possible dead person in the early episodes.

I don't believe you.

His insouciant way of going through life (e.g. he's not trying to actively get information from his father) doesn't complement him much as a person. There's the dumb jock-ish guy and the fierce redhead class president (actually "head of countermeasures") getting angry at him all the time (you know, like in, I don't know, EVANGELION! and there's also a troublesome twosome like that in Narutaru), and some other side characters. This roster isn't particularly interesting in itself, but Another has a nice, positive way of portraying the student interactions, and even some standout moments like the beach trip that make you wonder why the silly supernatural bullshit had to be in the story in the first place. Honestly, it would be so easy and effective to make a slice of life anime where realistic characters are just friends having fun or suffering from drama - the only thing I've seen in that vein was Welcome to the NHK and that one sucked only because of some extremely stupid things happening that easily could've been left out of the story altogether! Nooo we can't have that, instead we get "We have to have a supernatural bullshit CURSE and so classmates keep dying but it's not like they were any of my best friends anyway so I don't give too much of a fuck!" Sigh. Just once...

So, Mei Misaki, our Rei of this story.

"Never" seen that look before...

It's easy to see how Koichi would fall for her. She's pale, quiet, mysterious, very reclusive (and it doesn't help she is the one ignored by the rest of the class at the begining of the story), frail, and not very adept. At living. So, since she's not exactly like every other girl ever, a dream come true to have as a friend or even more! Oh, she also has only one eye. We later learn that her twin sister (also called Misaki, but in her case it's her first name) was the first victim of the curse - but despite having lost her beloved twin and only friend Mei isn't nearly as troubled and depressed as Rei is for some reason (I mean Mei is still troubled and depressed, but just not on that level). The dead twin reveal only happens late in the anime, but still this aspect - which is one of the rare things that is able to effect me emotionally - truly should have played a bigger role in this anime. Apparently there is a bonus episode focussing on Misaki and Mei's interactions, but I haven't seen that one yet.

Once Mei gets off the class ignore list, her sheen does somewhat come off. It was clear from the beginning she wouldn't turn out to be the dead one (because too obvious), but she still was better as an enigmatic character than as just another (PUN) face on the group shot. There is one magic moment in the beach episode where an octopus grabs hold of Mei's arm and she gets scared for her life - as hilarious as this little moment is, it is also demonstrating clearly that the aura and purpose of the character has changed.

In the last two episodes there's an all out witch-hunt on Mei in a burning hotel. After seeing all the cutesy little character interactions beforehand I really didn't care for the massacre at the end which didn't flow well at all. To add insult to injury there are a few really stupid moments too, like everybody and their dog GOING BACK into the flaming inferno (multiple times even!), and even after watching the series twice I cannot recall if the "main" side characters survive or not. Koichi's boring-ass aunt Ritsuko turns out to be the actual dead person, and the curse goes on and on (at sea? no, at the school, moron). Happily end of story - but no happy ending. After experiencing all that violence and drama together, Koichi and Mei just HAVE to end up a couple, right? RIGHT!? But no, they don't even hold hands while walking towards the end credits. Such a simple opportunity, and once again missed. PFFF

3. Themes

So Another's selling point was to deliver a gory horror mystery, and it delivers on the gore part at least. Horror stories involving teenagers are not a particular novel genre, of course, nor are stories revolving around curses. Another is an extremely straightforward story, there is little room for any hidden meanings (yes, even if one character is at one time wearing a shirt inspired by a Dali painting). As the calamities decimating the class do sometimes involve random unrelated people (e.g. motorboat driver), the curse seems to be comparably powerful and could be likened to Light's tomfooleries in Death Note.

Apparently, someone had had this thought before me.

"Things are not always what they appear to be at first" is how Another could be summed up.

4. Opinion

Another was a pretty well made anime. I for one didn't care much about the horror plot or the bloodbath at the end, but your mileage may certainly vary in that regard. I certainly did get some enjoyment out of the character interactions, but there certainly was a lot more potential available in the scenario - just imagine if e.g. Misaki had been part of the cast and would have been killed only in the middle of the plot! Drama would have ensued! Tears could have flown (the policeman said)!

Visual style and animation were pretty good. I definitely would watch another (PUN) season if one was made (which is extremely unlikely though).

PS: Mei being able to move her glass eye and even being able to see with it was stupid enough to be noted in a postscript. And why didn't they just ABANDON HAVING a class 3-3 at all!? The concept of skipping a number is very well known to the superstituous Japanese: "Sometimes levels or rooms with 4 don't exist in hospitals or hotels." (Wikipedia)

Retro Achievements Update #3

Last few months' progress

Long overdue update on my progress on retroachievements.org! Lot has happened in the meantime; I've been trying out a LOT of different games, so I'll stick to the ones I made the most progress in.

My full-time employment has sadly ended now, so I'll have even more time for gaming while working only part-time now. I'll try to make these updates monthly now in the future.

New retroachievements.org score:

22325 points - Rank 256 (of 22942 registered players, up from Rank 437)

New grandmasteries:

-) Super Tennis (first person ever!) (SNES)
-) Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon R (Super Famicom)
-) Donkey Kong Land (Gameboy)
-) Yugioh World Championship 2005 - 7 Trials to Glory (GBA)
-) Yugioh: Eternal soul duelist (GBA)
-) Wario Ware Inc. Mega Microgames (GBA)
-) Asterix (NES)
-) Pokemon Blue (GB)
-) Pokemon Yellow (GB)

-) Super Tennis

Mastering this game meant beating the season mode 16 times - once with each playable character in the game. One playthrough takes around 3 hours, so do the math. Only challenge in this effort was to bestir myself to finish that game once and for all, and that I eventually did. First person ever!

-) Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon R

 A mediocre Sailor-Moon-themed beat 'em up, I lucked out as I mastered this when only a few achievements were required (by now the set has been upgraded, which in this case was rightly justified. I remember some of the achievements used to be utterly broken). It's a short and easy game, pretty forgettable.

-) Donkey Kong Land

 Quite surprised they could put out such a nice DKC game on the gameboy! Some of the moves feel off (e.g. bouncing off enemies), but it's a decent enough companion series to the classic SNES trilogy. Saving the game via collecting the KONG letters was a big pain. Some of the levels are ridiculously big, less would've been more here. Overall this set wasn't too hard.

-) Yugioh World Championship 2005 - 7 Trials to Glory

Finished this set after all. Gotta admit I looked up the duel puzzles - I can't be bothered with this shit (and even in that era, I don't yet know all of the cards). Playing "uncapped" decks in the shadow realm was a lot of fun. Certainly the point where you can build the most ridiculous Exodia deck in any of the games. All the nonsense with spreading out the tournaments based on the passing of days dragged this game down and accomplished really nothing. There's not even proper documentation for how the special character duels work exactly anywhere on the internet! Still, this game and its set were decent enough overall.

-) Yugioh: Eternal soul duelist

More straight forward than WC 2005. The set requires you to do a LOT of duels. Since the pack system makes it hard to get the cards you want (you can get cards via the password machine though, I did so only 1 time - no clue if there is any restriction on it), the deck choices are rather limited. I eventually went for a discard deck (3 Needle worms), which works extremely well as pretty much every opponent has cards like Pot of greed, Graceful charity and the ridiculous Jar duo (Morphing and Cyber) and hence helps you in draining his own deck. For the same reason it's often not really worth summoning big monsters since they are off the field very very quickly anyway. Funnily enough you can't see the limited list in this game at all, you just notice eventually that you can't e.g. put 3 Cyber jars in your deck. Sometimes the game annoyingly forces random duels on you, which accomplishes nothing since you duel all those opponents in the regular campaign mode anyway. So to cut a long story short, this game was very easy and took a lot of grinding, but at least it got me to try out a new deck type that I'll give a shot in WC 2006 too now.

-) Wario Ware Inc. Mega Microgames (GBA)

Where has this game been hiding all my life! Instant top 20 in my favourite games of all time, and earning that spot is some feat at this stage in my life! The entire concept of microgames both appeals to me and favours my gaming talents, so this one is a hit out of the ballpark in my book. Even after completing the set I'm going back to this title time and again to improve my scores on the leaderboards, especially for the featured minigames (Paper plane etc). Fantastic game, and a huge shame all the sequels are based on shitty gimmicks. First game was the best in the series already? Leave it to those Nintendo dimwits!

-) Asterix

Nice enjoyable NES platformer. Controls are mostly tight, although you tend to slip off those narrow platforms a little big too easily (can be very frustrating if you're going for the 25 lives achievement - which is currently broken anyway since it triggers on game over AAARGH). Game is rather short and easy. Checking off a platforming game is always a nice occurrence since those are not exactly my forte.

 -) Pokemon Blue

Never imagined I would complete a Pokemon set! This was one of only two Gameboy games I had beaten as a kid, the other one being Link's Awakening. Completing this game proved to be difficult in only two regards, namely in levelling all required Pokemon enough to evolve to their final form, and in obtaining the ridiculously expensive Porygon (which I don't even consider a real Pokemon since it's described as virtual in the game - how would it ever be able to battle physical creatures?!?). Fulfilling these two requirements the "real" way was completely out of the question, so glitches came to the rescue! I usually avoid glitching entirely, since these things are mostly annoying trial-and-error experiments, so I was not looking forward to having to find out how to duplicate items. Luckily, in Blue/Red there's the very comfortable "Old Man method", and so, using several of the myriads of guides that are available for this game on the internet, after quite some trouble with catching those resilient Safari Zone pokemon (you know the ones!), I put this game in its place, feeling very satisfied!

-) Pokemon Yellow

Needless to say, after beating Blue I immediately tackled the next Generation I game. They sure could have put more effort into this revised version! The additional Team Rocket battles are so sparse and crappy there's no point to them in the first place! If this game was supposed to reflect the anime more closely, why didn't they go all the way and let Brock and Misty join the player, complete with banter as in the show! Completely missed opportunity and it's no wonder Yellow is the sole tertiary variation in the Pokemon family, and the only game based on the show.

Since this game was so similar, completing the set should've been just as easy... right? NO. They actually... took. out. the. old. man! As soon as that fact registered with me, I knew I had to learn another item duplication method, and boy, was that tiresome! Documentation on the Ditto glitch is all over the internet, but the sources also contradict each other A LOT. Since I had wasted all of my long-range trainers but ONE (except for another in the water, which I found out doesn't help) I was very close to giving up altogether and only after doing a lot of research (2 hours to be exact!) on my last try (!) I finally made the impossible happen and got MissingNo. to spawn. Heureka! Now only Red awaits my crushing fist before I can finally move on to Generation II - which I haven't played in around ten years.

Other mentionable games:

-) Antarctic adventure (Famicom)

A very early Famicom title. You race a penguin across Antarctica, avoiding obstacles such as holes and walrus (I think) while collecting flags for points. Really not much to this rather bizarre game. It took me a bit to get the hang of it, but I mostly finished it. I'll go for that last missing achievement only when the mood catches me - but recently I've become more concerned about set completions than mere points (because of terrorists medding with perfectly fine sets and even single-handedly changing rom versions (!)), so it might very well happen.

-) Legend of Zelda: Link's awakening (GBC)

One of the two games I beat on the original machine as a kid (though it was the non-colour version to be exact back then). The second best Zelda game after the eternal Link to the Past. But this one got Marin, which is ridiculously superior to the slimy and useless princess (well excuuuse me!), so it's a standout title for that alone. Controls are tight, there's a big world to explore (certainly too big for me, so I standardly have to refer to guides with titles as this one), the story is wonky but that's all right in my book. I can't see myself finishing this set, as the no-damage bosses would require a lot of pattern memorisation and trial-and-error - not to mention beating the game without dying once to see the complete ending! Fantastic game, and there's still a few proper Zelda games for me to look forward to (on the handhelds, that is), since this is also the most recent Zelda game I've ever played for more than a few hours.

-) Yugioh World Championship 2006 - Ultimate Masters (GBA)

Now we're talking! This is the first title in the classic period of Yugioh games on Nintendo handhelds, which lasted until the 2011 incarnation of the World Championship series. With this game, the proper deck building system is in place, and packs FINALLY correspond to their real life equivalents! Limited and theme duels are established, and opponents are selectable at will (once you unlocked them, that is). Coupled with fast gameplay, these revolutions make this game a true classic in the Yugioh video game family. Naturally I'm planning to finish this set.


I've played a lot more games, but this update is long enough already (because I kept delaying it). Next anime review will be Another, and after that one... there are a few choices, but all of them would require a lot of work... *sigh*.

Anime review #5 - Akuma no Ridoru (Riddle story of Devil)

Akuma no Ridoru by Yun Kōga (aka "Riddle story of Devil")

You can't spell "assassin" without "ass" (*groan*)

Akuma no ridoru is a misnomer as there is no riddle nor devil to be found in this story. What you do get to see instead is a shitty format that should never had made it past the concept stage.

First of all, let's see how Wikipedia defines a riddle: "A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved."

He deserves this so hard in the first game...

I sure as hell can't remember too many of the "riddles" in this anime, as they are never important to the plot even in the slightest. The first one goes like "The world is full of x." X can be literally anything, as even the main character's teacher (or whatever, he is not important either and could as well be just a voice on the phone - actually that would be an improvement!) admits. So, does this constitute a proper riddle? NO, because the "riddle" provided lacks an unambiguous solution. Remember your Professor Layton games? THOSE are riddles (or puzzles, as they are called there).

So, now that we got that pathetically pointless aspect out of the way (you would expect the object mentioned in the title to actually MATTER in the story, no?), let's do the rundown.

1. Story

The storyline of Akuma no ridoru is an example of high concept. At a girls-only boarding school (high school level, I guess), thirteen girls are transferred into a class called "Crassaru Brackaru". Each girl has the mission to find the designated victim amongst their number, and kill her, in order to be granted any one imaginable wish possible (or impossible, really). Our heroine, Tokaku, decides to instead protect the helpless and slightly retarded (she speaks of herself in the third person, which I've ever only witnessed the absolutely worst and most hateful anime characters do) victim, Haru.

Hilarity ensues.

Well actually, it's more like Hillary ensues (and I don't mean travelling to the poles), as we get a lying, hateful product with zero originality that doesn't even have one trump (PUN) card in its deck. Apparently these "assassination classroom" shows are all over the place, and I am somewhat doubting that most of them are worth even one shit given. That certainly was the case for that shitty Danganronpa game, which deserves a curb-stomping review of its own.

So the monster-of-the-week schoolgirl assassin (all of them said or shown to be successful killers, and not bumbling losers (remember that fact!) gets a flashback detailing her pointless backstory, tries to kill Haru, fails miserably and disappears. Episode after episode this is all that happens. So, you might say, this could still be watchable? At least it's bound to have a lot of violence and gore in it? It's about teen assassin girls, right? It's supposed to be good, right?

Nobody dies. In this whole shitty show, not a single person dies. And to not make the viewer realise the sham of having no deaths in an assassination-themed show, it appears as though people die from time to time, only in the epilogue in the final episode they magically come back to life. And that even is true for Haru. Yeah, not only do we not get to see any cool deaths happen, we are outright CHEATED. It's a hateful betrayal of the original potential of the series (really, the first few episodes it seemed to be just fine!).

Since absolutely nothing happens other than the abovementioned (I'm not kidding!), let's move to the

2. Characters

Hm, in which popular anime have I seen these colour schemes before... it was about witches and cats or something...

Haru Ichinose

Haru doesn't really make the cut for the role of the loveable retard, being too weak, passive and naive (and not in a good sense), having the fuck-annoying trait of talking of herself in the third person and doing absolutely nothing to make herself a more interesting person. She is indirectly responsible for the death of her entire family, which somehow didn't make her emo. She tries to make her classmates like her, despite knowing they are all only there to kill her. Later, her bumbling survival of 700 billion assassination attempts is justified by her having innate magical powers (the dreaded unnecessary-inclusion-of-supernatural-elements-syndrome strikes again!) that make her a so-called "primer" who has the ability to manipulate people, even unconsciously (in other words, she has a really high Charisma score - which is not a magical ability). Hence, of course Tokaku-SAAAAN was FORCED to protect Haru, and all her classmates had to fumble their respective attempts of disposing of the girl like incompetent fools. This is likened to a queen bee controlling her worker bees - note that that comparison is of course complete bullshit as a queen bee doesn't control shit in the hive. Bees don't work that way! A queen bee's job is to lay eggs. That's it. Didn't do their research.

Tokaku Azuma

Tokaku is a trained killer from some clan that is opposed to Haru's clan or whatever. I didn't pay attention to that aspect at all, which is a shame since clans really don't only belong in shitty shonen shit like Naruto. Oh wait, they totally do! So FUCK THEM.

Tokaku's character would have been a-ok. She is shown to be a hard worker and cold professional, not actually evil but willing to do the necessary, likeable enough to be the main character. Tokaku certainly had potential. She is in a situation of dependence on her teacher, which unfortunately never is further developed. When she falls for Haru, the viewer might expect a sexy lesbian romance story to develop... but is painfully disappointed, as absolutely nothing of that sort happens after a promising beginning! Of course, if this had been a heterosexual relationship, the epilogue would have Haru carrying her child in her arms nevertheless, because having children without even sharing a single on-screen kiss beforehand is a standard trope for shitty manga/anime!

Other characters

Well, there was the one who had two daddies. Point? None. There was the tall masculine one (reminded me of Jun Inoue from Saki) with her midget child-like love interest ("Koromo, not Kodomo!"), which of course was not played out. One psychopathic girl was a shameless ripoff of Genocider Syo (Genocide Jack/Jill) from Danganronpa, right down to the very specific detail of licking her preferred murder weapons, pairs of scissors. One had a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing going on, one was immortal and wanted to die (LOL), etc. Nothing out of the ordinary here, people! Oh, yes, one thing! They're all girls, so that... doesn't change anything either.

3. In the end

In the end, after the writer has run out of assassins/filler material, Tokaku tries to KILL Haru, who is only her only friend in the entire world! Only the girl is magically saved by having (get this!) a TITANIUM RIB (LOLOL) from some other attempt on her life (remember, Haru is supposed to be primer who can control people. Yet, everybody and their dogs always want to wipe her out! Something doesn't quite add up here, people!) Hence Tokaku has proven to still have free will strong enough to beat Haru's primer ability. The point was...? There was no point! Tokaku's job always had been extremely easy, due to the fact the less strong-willed girls couldn't kill Haru anyway. Stabbing Haru was the easiest thing in the world since Haru was passive, naive and unwilling to fight back. So Tokaku did the only thing she could do - certainly not a feat worth of a twelve-episode anime!

Now if Tokaku had actually succeeded in killing Haru, we would at least had a little drama. Haru was Tokaku's only true friend she ever had, and by killing Haru she would have been granted any wish imaginable, any but the thing she actually most desired, namely being with Haru! Leave it to a hack writer to miss even this oh-so-obvious opportunity to make this shlock at least a little more tolerable!

You wish...

Also, since Tokaku fails to kill Haru, she doesn't get a wish. But in an early episode it had been said by Nio (the student being the contact to the organzisers of Class Black) that there would be eleven assassins, one defender and one target this year. So if Tokaku had just kept her wits together (or do what any REAL assassin does - namely make sure the target is actually dead ("security shot"), she would've been granted the wish. Feels bad, man.

Haru's wish - to leave her clan - does absolutely nothing. She's still a primer and would automatically attract a new group of people by this show's logic. How do you leave a clan in the first place? Also, weren't all her relatives dead anyway?! Keeping Haru alive seems to me like a really bad creative decision...


4. Themes

So, does this have any deeper meaning? Let's see.

Riddle story of devil promotes friendship. But so does almost every other anime ever made. Hmmm.

Family ties are important, since you are stuck in clan-like structures that determine your entire existence. But on the other hand, family ties are completely irrelevant because your family is inevitably wiped out by assassins which scars you for life. So that is not a well-developed theme either, eh...?!

Killing is bad - so in this show killers only try to kill the target... is that related to the intended message of the show? I don't know anymore, man. I reckon the theme of this show is to not waste your life watching shitty anime (yeah, like that is gonna happen... *sigh*)

5. Opinion

One more thing I need to mention was the final moment of the intro, where naked Tokaku (after a shot where she grins a bloody grin, blood dripping from her knife - as if she had just eliminated the last rival assassin), hugging naked Haru, stares directly at the viewer, as if to ward off additional danger to her prize. That was a nice, well designed moment.

Oh, and the turning point was the assassination attempt in the natatorium (word of the day), where the convoluted and utterly unbelievable trap catching Tokaku instantly punted this show into the fantasy genre even before magical charisma powers turned Haru into a witch retroactively. That was when I gave up on this show.

It definitely wasn't the worst thing I ever seen, but I really can't recommend this show as it delivers nothing new, wholly fails to impress in any regard, almost reaches Bokura no-level on the predictability scale, has no riddles or devils anywhere to make it interesting, brings back dead people to stay PG and DARES not to even toss us the lesbian romance we all hope and crave for as it's the only way to feel emotion... ahem... yeah. Moving on...

(maybe next time. spoiler? maybe)

PS: and why did it take eight fucking months for me to write a new anime review?! eeeeeehhhmmmm. MOVING ON

Interactive fiction review #11 - Gardening for beginners

Gardening for beginners by Juhana Leinonen

Gardening for Beginners by Juhana Leinonen is a short speed-IF game describing the misadventures of a budding gardener.

What is supposed to be a peaceful and upbeat day of work quickly turns into a nightmare as the player is beset by the horrors of nature.

I can recommend this game as a choice to suggest to text adventure newbies, as it is uncomplicated, easy to play and funny to boot.

Personally I would add an option to name your fish to add some more personal involvement to the game. In fact the enclosed framework of the game world even would allow for a game granting the player to do whatever he wanted to do (e.g. drink the poison, or eat the fish).

Anyway, quite a fun little title to play.

5/10

Entropia hunt logs #2 - Gallard, 5000, Hunt III

Gallard - 5000 - Hunt III

This log spells the end of the Gallard iron mission chain, and not a second too early. Now I can move on to some other monster, or maybe leave Arkadia altogether and explore what else the universe holds in stock, if that opportunity comes up.

Documenting this log frustratingly got screwed up with me interrupting my sole focus on swunting Gallards to enter the Gold Rush event. The Universal Ammo count definitely is off by some 40-70 peds, the Weapon Cells and BLP numbers seem rather wonky too, though I have no clue what happened there. Those last two are incorrect either in this, or the previous Gallard Hunt II log.

As a consequence, I definitely will create a cover-all log form before starting my next run. This must not happen again, as it's a massive loss of time if one element of data ruins an entire log. This log is basically worthless in terms of calculating my total loss on this hunt.

All the other loot values definitely are correct (plus minus a few PEC with the handgun drops).

Side note: Sweat gatherer level gain has slowed down considerably, but still is increasing motivatingly enough for me. I sold 20k sweat for around 1.75/k at some point.

Globals: 0

Retro Achievements Update #2

What I've been doing over the last few months...

New retroachievements.org score:

11039 points - Rank 437 (of 14110 registered players)

About 70 places closer to the top, quite nice for the fact I haven't really accomplished too much since the last update.

Games I spent time on were:

-) Yugioh World Championship 2005 - 7 Trials to Glory (GBA)

A title overshadowed by the 2006 version I used to play a lot, years and years ago. This 2005 incarnation is severely crippled in its deck building mechanisms (to this day I don't know how to sort my cards!), I literally needed to ask for help to even be able to build my first deck! The actual gameplay is nice and fast though (speedup also helps), even though the very limited AI and old-school-ness of the card pool makes this a very easy game compared to more recent incarnations. The mechanics of game progress are a jumbled mess in this game, to be able to play various tournaments and do challenges you need to "sleep" in order to pass time - with the aforementioned becoming available randomly. Quite annoying and needlessly complicated, needless to say that the formula has been much improved again with the 2006 sequel. Still, it's a Yugioh game and therefore enjoyable enough by default. Not sure whether I will try to GM it as I would need to start a new game in order to be able to do so (and need to possibly do a lot of retries for some of the achievements).

-) Super Tennis (SNES)

I've been working hard on becoming the first person (!) to GM this game's very time-consuming and rather boring set (well it IS a sports game, what would you expect...)

Super Tennis is a more than decent SNES tennis game held back rather sharply by its ridiculously low difficulty and some limitations in ball control and swing selection. I won't elaborate any further on this title as my mini-review should match (PUN) the blandness of playing this monotonous and unrewarding title. Btw, topspin return = RIDICULOUSLY OP! Didn't they test this game before they released it!? *facepalm*

As the achievement set (which has the STUPIDEST achievement names possible!) requires me to win the game again and again with all the different players, I've been doing just that. About 8 players x 3-4 hours per playthrough are left. Super Tennis has an absolutely atrocious password system; thus I am pretty much limited to grinding this game on weekends (I currently am working in an office, which is the best job I've ever held actually!) in order to be able to avoid the pain of entering 40-something letters, numbers and question marks (seriously...) per password *facepalm*.

-) Super Bomberman (SNES)

One of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had was 4-player multiplayer Bomberman (not even an official version, but some Windows freeware clone) with mates and family members. 15 years later, I got very little fun out of this first Bomberman title on the SNES. The campaign mode is rather boring (remote bomb = OP), with the last boss being an extremely negative experience to boot. You need the "fist" powerup (not the "boot" unfortuntely, or I could have made a pun :-() to be able to defeat said... and you lose (some of) your powerups on death. Ergo, if you die to him, you are better off fast-forward suiciding so you can play the previous level again and farm the fist and remote bomb. A very painful and frustrating experience that certainly coloured my opinion on this title quite heavily.

I am reluctantly attempting to grind down the battle mode challences, but as these are very hard and need a lot of luck, I'm pretty much stuck at the third level and don't know whether I'll brute force these after all as the process certainly isn't any fun at all.

-) Donkey Kong Land (GB)

A more than decent title (very good for a Gameboy title, but lacking in comparison to the eternal classics on the SNES). Controls have some wonky moments (e.g. bouncing on enemies is very jumpy, also rolling feels rather off compared to the SNES games - a platformer of course lives and dies with how precise and fluid its controls are, and in the case of this game, they are a valid reason I can't see myself replaying this title too frequently). Levels are, oddly enough, usually much longer than SNES ones and therefore fittingly have multiple save points. I'm currently at the beginning of World 4 (of 4), so I can't give a final verdict on the difficulty compared to the "Country" games. Overall, it's a quite good game. As usual I can't judge music or sound since I play with those off, listening to music or watching videos on the side instead.

-) Chrono Trigger (SNES)

I've been trying to play this RPG several times over the last 10 years, but never got too far, being hampered by the tiresome combats and my general weariness to complete games (I have actually stopped playing games ON THE FINAL BOSS, no joke! only to start them again from the beginning and quitting them at some point again... and so on!)

Now, since I have a reason to play games all the way through (points!)... nothing has changed. Mood is, as is common knowledge, only a thing for cattle and loveplay - but in my case mood is everything when it comes to long-winded non-action titles like this one, and said mood doesn't hit me too often. Right now, I'm in the second section of the game (the past) and have very little motivation to boot this up - but tomorrow this might randomly be completely different! Chaotic neutral!

-) Frogger (SNES)

Doesn't need many words, it's just a very late (1998!) port of the classic arcade game. I got to stage 4, then it gets too hard for me. LOL

-) Zelda: Link's Awakening (GBC)

Now this is a game I actually played back in the day when it came out! Same as Pokemon Blue (I think), I beat this game on the original machine but never on emulation. I might not be able to complete this 100% as you need to do a deathless run (to see the epilogue or something), but I'll try to beat as much as I can otherwise.

I only count the top-down titles as "real" Zelda games, so this one, along with the eternal classic Link to the Past, is - for me - as good as it gets (haven't played the GBA titles though yet). Ocarina of GRIME for all I care!

Of course (people actually called me arrogant partly because of using phrases like "of course" a lot!), next to all this retro shit, I've been playing Entropia Universe 24/7. There is never a reason NOT to sweat, so I've been working on the last batch of 5000 gallards in order to be able to finally check off my first iron mission. Also dabbled a little in the Arkadian Gold Rush (Category I) event, but quickly got bored of shooting the same damn monster for hours. Injecting some uncommons or even a boss into the mix would have worked wonders here... Additionally there was the problem of getting the right weapons for this kind of monster - I've never been hunting big stuff, so I couldn't do much more than randomly get a gun from the auction I deemed able to do the job.

Stuff I'm planning for the "near" future (think 6 months *sigh*):

-) Game of Thrones season 1 review (ugh!)
-) Why I dropped Yu-No (visual novel)
-) Puella Magi Madoka Magica anime review (this will be another big one!)
-) Working on my first serious fanfic "Sennen Empire" (a Yugioh fanfic, basically a project for me to get back into writing fiction after a more than 5-year break!)

StuffIcouldreviewifIhadtakennotesbutIdidntsoIwouldhavetowatchthisstuffagainwhichprobablyisnt worththehassleeeee *pant pant*:

-) Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei anime
-) Another anime
-) Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (visual novel) (...though it would be a lot of fun to tear apart this clusterfuck!)

Entropia hunt logs #1 - Gallard, 5000, Hunt II

Gallard - 5000 - Hunt II (first one with full tracking)

Another 5000 Gallards down, still 5000 more to go to complete my first Iron Mission chain! I swunted a lot more this time around. Very happy with the skill gains. Net loss on the hunt much less than I had thought beforehand. Compared to Hunt I loot was somewhat worse (unfortunately I didn't track expenses in that one so I can't really compare the overall result). I occasionally healed other people with the mindforce chip, so it's not 100% accurate.

On a side note, scanning has gotten very frustrating now, barely any skill drops any more. I hit Level 7 Humanoid Investigator with big pains.

Globals: 0

Interactive fiction review #10 - Last Resort

Last Resort by Jim Aikin

Imbalanced relation of size and difficulty

Last Resort by Jim Aikin is a large, ambitious mystery/fantasy game.

The player controls a teenage girl (unfortunately we don't learn much about her other than she's rather superficial and shallow) who, as we soon learn, is heading towards a rather grim destiny in the course of the day. To escape your predicament you have to perfectly solve a large number of puzzles which I would easily label INSANELY DIFFICULT. Herein lies the main problem of this game.

The player's puzzle-solving ambitions are hampered both by invisible timers and dead ends, which is an absolute no-go in a game of Last Resort's magnitude! The inclusion of puzzles which can only be solved in a short window of time completely contradicts with the game's non-linear approach to gameplay. Twice I progressed through a larger part of the game, only to be stumped with finding me in an unwinnable situation. (I gave up afterwards, as would most people.)

It is really a shame this game is held back by this ball and chain, because the writing and general approach are quite good. The game's events are somewhat unrealistic, but to a degree that can easily be forgiven. (Spoiler - click to show)An example: Would you really let the girl you are going to sacrifice later in the day wander around freely? On the other hand a more interesting main character would likely put the player over the edge of trying to complete the frustrating puzzles. (In such situations, the game Portal always comes to my mind.)

To summarize, brave players might find quite some fun in this monstrous game. It's a trip best aided by the complex hint system. (I have asked the permission of the author to post the password - the usage of one should never be necessary in the first place! - here.) (Spoiler - click to show)Password: Gertrude Stein

No score

Entropia Universe stuff #1 - 5000 Gallard drop list

5000 Gallard drop list

Blogger is being retarded when it comes to spreadsheets (or really anything other than plain text!), so this is the best I can get out of it.

This time unfortunately I didn't keep track of my expenses (600 PED of ammo... maybe?), but next time I'll be more careful. Piron PBP-0 (L) count and tt values are an approximation.

Oh yeah, and also extracted 27876 units of sweat out of these little space turkeys (before I got bored of swunting). Plus a trophy head (unfortunately there's no figurine for them). Fun time... but 10000 more await me!

Globals: 1 (about 15 PED)

Sum of returns: 376.90 PED

Item	PED	Quantity
Gallard hide	40.66	2033
Shrapnel	86.69	866992
Animal muscle oil	31.20	1040
Animal oil residue	27.01	2701
Animal hide	13.99	1399
Soft hide	0.40	4
Socket I component	3.30	33
Tier I component	1.10	11
Body fat	0.48	6
Nova fragment	0.04	4332
Blazar fragment	0.00	746
Corria timber	20.40	102
Hair gel	11.70	90
Wool	0.20	1
Thin wool	0.25	1
BLP pack	15.10	151098
Weapon cells	96.38	963831
Piron PBP-0 (L)	28.00	28						approx

Retro Achievements Update #1

Retroachievements.org

Retro Achievements is a project very dear to my heart. I've grown up with (a schoolmate's) SNES and been playing old games (mostly the SNES games I knew from my childhood) ever since I first downloaded an emulator (around 2004 I would guess). RA provides exactly what the name says. You simply register a RA account, download the modified emulators from there and the roms from any rom site and BAM you can play retrogames with achievements. Nintendo and Sega consoles and handhelds are available.

I found the site (by random googling) when there were 1000 members or so (some 3 years ago) and now it has over 10000, so it's growing nicely. I've entered the top 500 today, so still a way to go - I doubt I have the potential to become #1 since I never was one to quickly learn and master new games (or even play them for more than 2 hours if I didn't immediately figure them out) after I entered my teenage years (and especially during the last 5 or so years where I barely played anything new), but that's not much of a concern to me now. My only hope of ever getting to a competitive level in a multiplayer game died with League of Legends (which I am still sad about, though I don't miss it anymore - in fact I can barely remember ever playing it), so now the only thing I can excel at is to reach world class in certain single-player retrogames.

Back when I joined RA, I introduced the concept of a hardcore mode (i.e. no save-stating) to the administrator of RA, and he actually implemented it! Certainly a rare and blissful moment of being able to convince somebody on the internet of doing the logical thing. ^^

Anyway, my most important accomplishments so far are:

Grandmastery (i.e. getting all achievements for a game in hardcore - by the way, I only play hardcore! achieved in the order listed below):

-) Super Mario World
-) Donkey Kong Country 3
-) Kirby's Pinball Land
-) Donkey Kong Country 2
-) Donkey Kong Country 1

Achievements that were specifically hard to get included beating Lost World K.Rool in DKC3 and King K.Rool in DKC2 while taking no hit in the respective battle - I had massive trouble with both of those and actually consider the first-mentioned the hardest thing I've ever done in a (single-player) video game.

Other noticeable events included me beating a Pokemon game for the first time in my life (on emulator at least, I probably beat Pokemon Red or Blue on a schoolmate's gameboy back when it came out) and scoring the highest legitimate score on Kirby Pinball I could find documented video-wise on the internet - one guy has over 17 million but himself basically admitted that score had been scored with cheating). Sure, that game can be cheesed pretty easily, but it still takes a lot of effort to stay concentrated during the many hours (pinball is like that) it takes to score big. Digital pinball games are the video game genre I'm absolutely best at, and I hold some de facto world records (even though of course competition on these games was never that high - but still!)

So, more thoughts on video games when I full clear some more games. Right now I can't really see what the next one will be though...

Anime review #4 - One Outs

One Outs by Shinobu Kaitani

Based ball... made interesting!

So One Outs is something I would have never thought would show up on my radar... a BASEBALL anime. As a European, I don't know a baseball glove from a Lacrosse... crosse (and seriously these two sports seemed (note the ed) to be equally stupid to me), so naturally I wouldn't have sought out a baseball anime on my own volition. I randomly found OO by looking at Masato Hagiwara's Wikipedia article to see what characters other than Akagi and Kaiji (in the respective namesake series) he voiced. The article mentioned the included gambling element - and I was game!

So, both the good and the bad thing about One Outs is that it's like Akagi. A lot.

Well, no shit, Sherlock!!!

The protagonist, Toa Tokuchi, is basically the baseball-playing version of Akagi, only with an even less fleshed out personality. After the brief introductory baseball-based gambling game "One outs", Tokuchi is convinced to go pro and join the Japanese baseball league as a pitcher. He enters a gamble with the corrupt owner, with both of them solely interested in ripping the other one off as hard as they can (financially).

So, after the second episode, this is all we get to see. One game of baseball after the other, with literally no time spent on Tokuchi's personal life or any other aspect of him. Why does this series still work?

This series still works because it manages to make the sport of baseball look exciting. Tokuchi wins games single-handedly not only with his pitching ability, but also by manipulating and taunting his opponents and devising complex strategies on the spot, facing off with opponents who themselves have special skills (e.g. a black American guy who can run really fast), etc. All of this is used exactly like in Akagi, namely to create interest in how the protagonist is going to overcome the next dire situation and what trick he's gonna pull out of his sleeve (or in this case, glove) next. All this is very interesting to watch and some hilarious moments ensue.

e.g. we get an episode where it starts raining. Which is apparently bad for playing baseball. (I wouldn't know.) Hilarious!

This aspect is handled very well and made me watch the bigger part of the solely existing 25-part (25? why not 26!?) Season 1 in one sitting. Unfortunately the aforementioned covers only roughly half of the volumes of the manga, which is why I don't even know how the gamble is ultimately resolved. I would estimate the guess that the anime was abruptely cancelled, since in the case of knowing the series would remain incomplete beforehand, there often is an alternative ending made (e.g. in Elfen Lied).

I still think the series could've been improved by broadening the focus a little more than... exactly on one element.

So, the rhinoceros fucking the elephant in the room - the Akagi connection. Toa Tokuchi is basically a less evil version of Akagi. He's the same natural genius and lucky guy, he shows no interest in any other matter than his field of gambling, he is a chain-smoker (while being an athlete nevermind!), and, most importantly, he is voiced by Masato Hagiwara, who sure seems typecast on this role. Hell, at one point there is a mentioning of the "crossing the narrow bridge"-thingy, and that was a gamble in Kaiji! Twice! So don't give me the "you're imagining things dude" bullshit this time... it's a ripoff - but in this case that simply is not a problem at all. When you rip off things, always rip off GOOD things (baffling how many authors neglect this simple principle)!

Fallen into the abyss? Or descended into the darkness...

So did this series make me understand the ins and outs (PUN) of baseball? Theoretically, almost. Practically, no. Not at all. I tried watching some footage, but I have massive problems with being able to tell a ball and strike apart (and how would people in the stadium ever be able to see this with the naked eye?!?), and as soon as people start running around after a ball was hit by the batter, I'm at a complete loss. Still, I definitely respect baseball more after watching One outs than the other 2 big American-only (for a reason) sports, Handegg and Hoopball. Cause after all, the Japanese adapted it, and that alone is reason enough. Plus, watching this series actually made me rewatch Akagi for the 4th time or so! (Damn, that is a well made series!)

Final verdict:

Recommended for people who liked Akagi or Kaiji, and people who like baseball. Not recommended to anybody else for the sole reason it's painfully incomplete - and your disappointment when you realise that fact is guaranteed!

PS: A review of something that DOESN'T suck is not very funny for me OR you. Oh well, they can't all be stinkers...

hidden texts for picture inspect command (since blogger is retarded right now):

1 - I don't think Sherlock Holmes himself was evil though. Probably just OCD-afflicted (and lawful good or neutral).

2 - Another thing I don't understand about baseball: why are there like 300 matches per season?! Every match is multiple hours long and doesn't even have a fixed end! You would have to be a professional VIEWER to not miss anything!

3 - Never forget that the abyss gazes back at you... and that I love to mention that since that quote is featured in Baldur's Gate 1.

Anime review #3 - Shin sekai yori (aka "From the new world")

Shin sekai yori - based on the novel by Yusuke Kishi (2008)

I smell a rat... and not the good kind!

Shin sekai yori is a despicable anime that doesn't know what it wants to convey, and by this tricks the viewer to the point of betrayal. Why is it that even dreck like this can have moments of sense of wonder? Exactly because it is anime.

Aaand also because of this. You don't exactly get this with western stories. At least certainly not with fourteen-year-olds.

Important preface: Never forget we know as little about the deep ends of the setting as the main characters themselves in the early part of the story - AND THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ARE NEVER ASKED. BECAUSE THE AUTHOR DIDN'T CARE ABOUT FIGURING OUT THE DETAILS HIMSELF.

Ok, so those 6 school children (with that number reducing by the episode) aged 12 (the perfect age for the beginning of a story) goes on a kind of survival field trip (whoops - it's only 5 children now) and finds out their society is actually a totalitarian mind-controlling dictatorship or oligarchy (only it turns out their society is only 20000 (I think) people or 7 - yes that is SEVEN villages) that kills children based on their potential to be a risk to society. At this point, this anime was really shining. The atmosphere was really great - right from the start with Saki's (more on that complete turd of a main character later) natural psionic power (called cantus - "singing") erased, only to be given back to her immediately afterwards - very cruel and touching moment. The childrens' interactions were gold; as we learn in the course of the story, love has literally been coded into man's DNA and as long as we have the group together (woah it's only 4 children left now!) this aspect is providing much of the story's value. In episode 8 when everybody turned gay (it's true! so gay we even get queer rats!) I was having one of those moments when I thought I was watching the best thing ever LOL - even with the question whether there actually ARE any sexual relationships there unfortunately unresolved, the viewer can see the members of Group 1 care deeply about one another - though this is sadly diminished by the tunnel vision focus of the entire anime. In fact, we can only glean the main characters' personalities from their interactions at school and at the field trip (and we get an idiotically clumsy montage of Saki/Maria at the point their relationship is PAINFULLY severed - painful for the viewer because it hardly makes any sense), there are basically no details given on any off-school circumstances that would further establish the setting. The children moving around the villages in their spare time doesn't cause them any trouble, but that is about it. We never see how free the ADULTS actually are in the society that is specifially focussed on controlling the "threat" children pose.

So, we got ourselves a good story going? The story of blooming (PUN) love set against a background of an oppressive thought-controlling society that itself enforces love and consensus but eventually wants to turn people straight again so they can produce the next generation (the duty pairs anyone?! at that point I actually believed that was what they were intended for because they stressed the part where it had to be exactly a boy and a girl so much - but that thought was complimenting the author's intellect rather too much... and by the way, don't get me started on the fact an alternative society ONE THOUSAND years in the future makes boys wear blue school uniforms and girls wear pink skirts... but then again they still use the idiotic kanji system and EVERY FUCKING OTHER THING LOOKS LIKE THE JAPAN OF YESTERDAY STILL AFTER A MILLENIUM AARRGGH).

So, do we have a good story going?

No. Because the above is not at all what this story is about. LOLOL


Insult #1 - The story betrays the good elements in favour of bullshit elements


The REAL plot (...AAAND we're down to 2 children now) turns out to be some asinine bullshit about the rat race mankind engineered out of a mixture of human and molerat DNA (how this would be used to transform an already existing (!) slave caste into hybrids is beyond baffling) rebelling and causing commotion that seems to be the end of the villages but really doesn't affect them all that much in the end (they basically laugh it off). Of course, since the interesting part comes first, the viewer is tricked into watching the rat stuff for the eventual resolution of the questions/dilemmas posed in the early part. Which of course never comes.

Fun fact: In the second half of the anime the stifling atmosphere the society gives off is all but forgotten!

So let's analyse the Saki/Maria relationship (cause that sure was the main thing that kept me on the edge of my seat once things turned dire, once that ship had sailed (PUN)): Very little is shown, but that is really the only example of subtlety you get in this anime (don't confuse subtlety with lack of given information - the preface applies here):

Maria is the kind of likeable, charismatic person that always is the focus of attention, and also the kind of person who gives her friendship/love easily in turn (in other words, she's exactly like Shiina from Narutaru) - but from we get to see, she loves Saki honestly from the depth of her heart. Truly, I loved her characterisation myself, as this kind of girl certainly appeals to me very much. If anything remains for me from shin sekai yuri (PUN), it's the character of Maria (without the repulsive aside described below, of course).

More of this, please.

Saki, on the other hand, is, like in all other things, an indecisive weakling, at one point pointlessly being embarrased by Maria planting a quick kiss on her lips. Wikipedia says "Saki finds her feelings for Shun unrequited when he starts dating Satoru instead and she starts dating Maria" (I have to quote this here because I didn't really catch that myself, but can't be fucked to rewatch that episode after what happened... later). But... if this is true, and Saki only turned to Maria because of Maria's attracting nature as described above AND being forced to love by her genes AND because her being weak and therefore choosing the easiest target, the embarassing post-lost-forever montage scene makes no sense whatsoever, since it heavily implies they were in love way earlier than that. On that note, we also see them together (likely) NUDE IN BED only AFTER the moment it becomes clear the two will never see each other again. What a weird order of things. Certainly their separation would have been seventeen times more impactful if those scenes were rearranged and better integrated in the flow of the story.

As I said above, how deep (no pun here, let's stay reasonable) their relationship went painfully stays unresolved. But this does not justify the way Saki, while never forgetting Maria, acts in the very end. Yes, the story doesn't actually fuck this up completely until the very last episode - where we get a painful déjà vu.

Now, we get to see this really hateful aside where Maria explains to the viewer (!) how, while loving Saki, what she REALLY wanted all along was to have children (*facepalm* - also, at age 14, mind you), and that obviously wouldn't be possible with a girl. Never mind adoption or just getting pregnant from somebody else. No, if you want to have children, you need to dump your lesbian lover, no matter how cruel and soul-shattering that is to/for that significant other.

TV Tropes constructs this from that despicable scene: 
"Maria appears in the end, more or less recapping how and why she left the village with Mamoru. But then she reveals another reason why she left: she wanted to have children, something that would have been biologically impossible if she stayed with Saki. "

Be that as it may. Only...

THAT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED! THAT ONLY WAS AN ASIDE!

And the dominoes fall. Saki gets NO closure from this relationship. Saki doesn't question Squnk, the queerat she herself saved from drowning earlier (sure, they are humans all right, they lie even to their saviours), nearly thoroughly enough (by absolute force if necessary) about the details of how Maria's sayonara letter came to be. Saki doesn't try to find out anything about where Maria went in her spare time (remember, we are told the government knows everything about the surrounding lands and can easily find even two runaway children in the wilderness - one thing I certainly would have done if I had been the author is having Saki actively look around, no matter how unlikely it would have been to turn up information). Now, we all know group 1 members in this anime are very forgetful because of brainwashing, but we also know Saki never forgets Maria. She doesn't enter a relationship with anyone else til age 24, and when she sees the red-haired Demon her only word is, rather impactfully, "-ria". Surely Saki could have used her newfound political power (we could just call her Twilight Sparkle at that point) to grasp at whatever straw presented to her to find out the truth (note: finding out the truth otherwise always has been paramount to her!).

So you are telling me to just sit there like a bitch and take that bullshit? Oh boy, but we aren't even done yet with the dominoes falling one after the other. Or we could also liken it to a house of cards crumbling. The chains lead straight to hell, and the Kytons are pulling.
 moar references
On that note, the unborn monster child telling Saki in a dream to let Maria die is actually that, a monster - yeah, even before it grows up and slaughters people for fun. Saki doesn't catch on. Don't do what the monster child tells you. Ever. Do the opposite, you dumb fuck!

Because Maria (and that useless whiner Mamoru) was ALIVE ALL ALONG. FOR AT LEAST NINE MONTHS. By the way, this part is conveniently overlooked in this anime, but easily enough reconstructable. Squealer, our ratty mastermind, forced Mamoru to impregnate Maria, the latter to give birth to the monster child (we can glean from his treatment of his own queen how he must have treated Maria in the meantime), SLAUGHTERED her and provided her bones as proof of her death to the evil government. And Saki could have rescued her. Hell, Maria probably was right in the tunnel Squnk came out of to bring Saki the farewell letter (which might or might have not been written under duress, it doesn't matter)! Track back his footsteps -> BAM. Maria GET. ONE HUNDRED POINTS. It hurts... it hurts to see a likeable character wasted in such a way.

Less of that PLEASE! Poor Maria... if only Saki wasn't so dense.

...

So, we are supposed to believe Ratfuck could come up with a TEN-YEAR-PLAN as convoluted as this in a situation where many variables weren't clear whatsoever AND he was the only one to see its outcome through (as seen by the fact the queerat revolution dies the moment he is captured) AND at a moment where he hadn't even been rat king for a long time. Note that most rats are displayed as completely mindless and hardly capable of talking human. Squealer isn't the rat Einstein, he's the rat E as in E=MC²!

So, Saki finally gets an opportunity to talk to the captured Squealer in the final episode before he gets tortured the very shit out of him. So, reader, what question would be on your mind in that situation? Maybe... "what happened to, you know, Maria? You remember her, the mother of that hellchild of yours, that one that you constructed your entire strategy around? Surely you remember my lover Maria? Tell me what you did to Maria in order to get both the result of a boning AND bones from her!" Maybe something along that line? I sure was expecting something like that. A closure, no matter how cruel, for the open wound that never stopped bleeding for over ten years.

And what do we get? What does Saki ask Squealer?

"Why... did you revolt?"

Yeah.

That is when the feeling of "I watched something that hadn't been thought through and turned out rather shitty overall" turns into "I watched something I utterly loathe now because it just raped my invested feelings with a hedgehog-spiked dildo (now that's a dilemma!)".

You think that's bad? Remember the time I used to watch South Park?

There is no closure whatsoever for Saki. So the fact she can suddenly have a child with whatshisname (once again, without them even sharing a single kiss before - ALL OF MY HATE) while not even being able to have a relationship before in her entire adult life is pure plot convenience, in other words the DESPICABLE UTTER BULLSHIT bad Japanese (but of course also Hollywood) authors are capable of because they don't give a single fuck about integrity. People want to see a "happy" end, no matter how much it contradicts the character's motivations beforehand, so let's give those swines their pearl onions.

So this has already been a very long rantview, and I haven't even touched anything but the (in my eyes) main romance! Oh boy.


Insult #2 - Saki should never have been the main character


Saki is incompetent, useless and plain stupid. She is unable to save any of her love interests (other than "Mr. I'm her husband now out of nowhere!", but she only manages that feat by risking the entirety of humankind (maybe... I never figured out whether the seven villages are all that is left or not, it's vague at best), and unable to resolve any problem successfully in the course of the entire story! Of course that doesn't stop everybody from constantly complimenting her (really, this shtick is repeated several times over the course of the story almost word-for-word!), saying that despite her weakness, both physical and mental, despite her indecisiveness and inability to keep a clear head in the face of danger, despite her lack of cantus skill, despite her lack of even the most basic common sense, she actually is a natural leader (LOL) and truly fit to succeed Tomiko Asahina (immortal cunt who didn't manage to come up with more than "Let's kill children who might be dangerous." in 200 (!) years of leadership! Hey, maybe Saki really is fit to replace her ¬¬). I was strongly reminded of the Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns' sycophants don't stop his bad financial decisions and drive him into ruin. This would be so obviously exactly what would happen to the society lead by Saki!

In the very end we get an Eva-like "Arrigato" sequence, with all the children Saki DIDN'T save thanking her, namely Shun (who is literally a gay ghost later - take that, Casper!), and also Maria! Let that revolve in your mind a few times... Maria thanks Saki who didn't even try (GANBATTE YOU ASSHOLE!) to save her, who left her to torture and death by RATS! And there are still fanboys defending this show?!

And let's not forget that Saki is a collaborator of the worst sort. Not only does she not oppose the sociely (i.e. the adults) that KILLED her sister (there's that other completely unresolved plot point. Saki never wants to find out more about her dead older sister. Remember Narutaru? Remember how Shiina figures out who her dead older sister was? And how that was important to the plot too? Ayup, we get nothing like that in Shin sekai. Saki doesn't care. Saki forgets. That is why she is the natural born leader in this story's confounding mindset), that lead to the DEATH of TWO of her lovers, no, she even JOINS that society, and not so she can undermine and destroy or at least change it fundamentally (being the Mary Sue chosen one with direct protection from the de facto eternal god Asahime)... Saki just assimilates herself to the standards that ruined her very existence. In the end, she just mewls about how maybe (yawn) when her children (YAWN) have grown up (YAWN!), society will be just a little tiny winy bit better. Even though she is now Celestia Asahina's successor (that fact is not stated specifically, but it isn't contradicted either. And in this rathole-ridden story something like that means it's a given fact) and could change society in whatever way she wants! Alas, she is Saki, and I really don't need to say any more about her at this point, I have already been exhausting.


Insult #3 - Setting and tone


I've touched upon the setting a little already above, but there is some more stuff to bitch about. Now it's not exactly legit to complain about stuff that DIDN'T happen and that I just wanted to see instead of what actually happened, but this is exactly why this blog is a 50% review/50% rant blog. I just do 'em that way.

The setting and tone of the story initially were very oppressive and overwhelming. Children got killed off, brainwashed, gene-manipulated (I loved the moment where Saki was considering to give Satoru (OK OK I looked up this name a handjob to relieve stress LOLOL) and told how the entire SOCIETY is brainwashed systematically with Group 1 being actually an exception in how much of a free will they were left with. In other words, pure 1984 going on here and while a story with such tone isn't exactly enjoyable to watch (who likes to see the characters he loves get oppressed and threatened at every step - of course, nothing can ever beat Franz Kafka's Amerika at that sentiment), it at least was INTERESTING and CAPTIVATING to watch!

Why did this tone get completely replaced with one where there was no danger of being simply wiped out by the corrupt powers in charge - in fact, why did this element get shifted wholesale to the queerats (who are never actually depicted as the equals of humankind Squealer likes to stylise them as, not even once!)?! Why did any sentiment of overwhelming and soul-crushing evil magically disappear as soon as Saki accepted things to be the way they were?! Why are we supposed to care when this totalitarian state is finally challenged and threatened by just revolution?! The tone shifts to one where you are supposed to cheer for the heroes, where you are meant to want to see them win - but this leads only to the restoration of the status quo! The tone is OFF. It is completely off in the second half of the anime - the story has completely gone the wrong way.

This isn't what I signed on to watch...

What I would have done here to salvage the entire project is to make Saki figure out all the unsolved bloody questions personally relevant to her and take bloody vengeance on all people responsible, make her go out in a bloody blaze of glory and set a... ahem... GORY signal fire for all survivors how even the most oppressed individual will NATURALLY shake off tyranny. That is, in retrospect, what I would have liked to see. (Of course I'm always open for even better solutions, for example I certainly wouldn't have been able to write anything like Evangelion myself before seeing it and learning from it.)

Insult #4 - I literally could go on here forever

I literally could go on here forever, complaining about how the mind trick the children learn in school is the only non-generic power they ever use later (took him the entirety of his school life to figure out just that mirror trick... Satoru should have been culled too), or how precious time is wasted with filler-like drawn-out episodes:

-) The ones where the children are captured by the Queerats, fight a completely pointless battle against more Queerats - never mind the irony of it all - with every time they help Squealer, they help him doom everyone that dies in the course of events - Saki does never realise or even accept she is indirectly responsible for EVERYTHING BAD THAT HAPPENED TO EVERYBODY) and magically find their way back to their completely unshaken friends (seriously I have no clue what the author was smoking when he wrote that part. It's like Maria, Shun & Mamoru didn't even care they got their two other friends back unharmed after what must have been days). Oh and for one episode the art style changed completely. (Remember, Evangelion had money problems too. But Anno actually used that to his advantage.) I wasn't bothered too much by that sudden change though.
-) The one with Shin being a faceless ghost who killed everybody around him. Ok so Saki loved him for a few minutes, but that doesn't vindicate drawing this episode out so much and in such a trippy way. This was just another episode that was baffling and really annoying to watch.
-) The search for Mamoru, followed immediately by the search for Mamoru and Maria! Since it didn't account to anything, it was way too drawn-out, especially since we get a TEN YEAR TIMESKIP right afterwards. Yes, I hated on Saki a lot above because she didn't look for Maria enough but this isn't a contradiction at all; I'm talking about the actual minutes of them monotonously skiing through the snow (INNN THREEE DEEEEE) here. Less is more sometimes.
-) All of the chase and fight episodes are TERRIBLE. Common sense is defied here around every corner (PUN if you know what I'm referring to here). I know they never learned to fight, but still... also the resolution the demon child thought she was a queerat and therefore unable to kill one was a complete guesstimate. Call it plot convenience, call it a bad author who wrote himself into a corner, both sentiments are true.

All of the time wasted with these filler-like episodes could've provided the screentime to finish the story the way I sketched out above.

By the way, if a fanboy comes across this review and actually does give it a chance instead of mindlessly resorting to what a fanboy is conditioned to do (i.e. flaming)... if you read this and can't understand why I'm complaining about things you might not have even noticed or that might not have bothered you at all since the good elements were so good they hid all shortcomings for you... I can only advise you to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion repeatedly and revise your standards. It IS important that the setting is sound. It IS important that the character's motivations add up. It IS important to apply coherence to your story and not let the quicksand of plotholes drown it slowly, but steadily. It IS important to provide closure to at least the most important events the main character(s) were involved in, OR state explicitely they weren't resolved (Shinji and Asuka at the beach... LOL. Beach terror... By the way, there's an excellent fanfic picking up right there... Orchestrating the silence). Eva teaches you all that, and more. Eva isn't perfect, but it is the apotheosis of anime and I measure everything I watch by its standards. This is why I can't be like a fanboy and overlook the flaws. You don't have to be like me. But at least give me the benefit of the doubt. Don't be like Saki. Don't simply accept and forget.

Never stop challenging

EVERYTHING

I don't believe you.

PS: Maybe I'll put this somewhere fitting but I don't want to forget it in either case: the actual directon did have its moments. I randomly came across this blog here http://blog.draggle.org/shin-sekai-yori-10-sakis-crotch-and-butt/ when looking for an image of Maria and I too did notice what the author is speaking of in (I guess her) review while watching. Only I am certainly all for that kind of thing LOL. She still gives the anime an A- rating. Well, that is what I've been talking about above - having standards IS important.

PPS: Writing this review is certainly worth the pain I endured watching this show. Even though it's a long long LONG (5-6 hours) process, creating something of my own design is truly one of the very few things in this meaningless life I can enjoy. Kinda.

PPPS: So if the show managed to inflict emotional pain on me, does that mean it succeeded all along and I'm the fool that has been played? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO