Thank you, Go Nagai

Shitty picture in my poorly lit room. I didn't realize I had like 60 dollars sitting there until it was too late. Conspicuous consumption or an innocent mistake? YOU DECIDE. Ice Princess Yukiko-Hime from Go Nagai's Dororon Enma-kun. I guess the figure was intentionally sculpted to represent the anime revamp Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera, but whatever; I needed it. She looks a bit younger in the face but--er...not in the body, compared to the original manga. Of course since it's Nagai and Yukiko strips/loses her kimono in every panel the clothes can be taken off in typical Japanese PVC figures of animated hotties fashion. Damn thing essentially came nude in the box and made me feel like a voyeur peeking through her cellophane window packaging. I guess my morality and integrity were reinstated when I put the clothes properly on her after completely opening the packaging. The clothes themselves are probably my only grievance with the figure; putting them correctly on without breaking--I did once--the fragile plastic was about as nerve wrecking as The Wages of Fear, or less dramatically, Nicolas cage putting the green poison ball/sphere clusters inside those missiles in The Rock. Or whatever. It was scary and tense and slightly perverted. Overall I'm extremely happy with it and can't stop oogling at it.

I love you, Go Nagai.

Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko: A Consummate Example of 80's Animated Bliss

Good god. Talk about combining everything I love about 80's anime into one beautifully animated amalgamation of feminine aesthetics, sword & sorcery, giant robots, and a dash of classical piano complemented with J-pop. Damn shame that Righstuf released a dubbed VHS at one point and probably doesn't own the rights anymore. Thankfully a phenomenal rip exists of what I gather is a now terribly out of print--and sumptuously priced--Region 2 DVD. Big surprise there, of course. I guess one can hope in their most outlandish otaku dreams that such a thing can get localized at some point. I'm sure Righstuf is just waiting for the right moment to surprise the .04% of classic anime and release a fairly obscure OVA to the public, right? Hopefully I can commission an internet buddy to make me a poster of it and further whet my insatiable desire for even more posters and figures and all that materialistic hogwash that I need.

But yeah: teenage girl stuck in an alternate fantasy dimension. Talking dogs. Robots. Magic and shit. It's perfect. Do yourself a favor and download it here: http://bakabt.me/149936-genmu-senki-leda-h264-remastered-a-fanrips.html

MY BRAIN

I need to watch all of Maison Ikkoku. I also need to watch all of Urusei Yatsura. I guess I should give Inuyasha a chance if I love Takahashi so much. That's like 300+ episodes and nigh on a hundred TPB mangas. I need to read some William Gibson and some Robert A. Heinlein. Better throw in Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft's entire library as well. Not enough time in the goddamn world. Not enough fuckin' time. Trying to catch up on Bradbury as well, then follow up with some Asimov. Never finished The Black Company; fool's move, there. Need to watch all the seasons of Space Battleship Yamato. Too overwhelmed to start Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Why the hell haven't I watched all of Galaxy Express 999? Could be watching/reading/playing shit, but nah, guess I'll update this garbage blog. Everything is out of print. Fuck VIZ. This day has been wasted; only one episode of Victory Gundam down--and a half episode, at that. Waste of a day. I should be reading Harlan Ellison short stories and getting all cynical and hateful at my own lethargic nonsense. Guess I'll just drink coffee and think about all the great things I should be indulging, consuming. Need to go back in time; change some things--oh, hey Regret. Bloody hell. Need to read everything Tezuka wrote. Swallowing the Earth is getting a 2nd printing and I'm ecstatic; Message to Adolf as well. Barbara is also getting translated. Please, please localize Marvelous Melmo or The Amazing Three and everything else as well! Vertical is doing an outstanding job and creating quite the catalog. Drawn & Quarterly is doing alright themselves; I really wish they'd chill out with the indie garbage and focus on classics a bit more, though. Today I will finish Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. I think about the loss of classic Gainax far too often. What a forlorn company.

Esoterics, wine...graduate to whiskey. STARE AT THE CAT on the bed. Nebelung. This is a rare breed. This is the best goddamn cat you've ever seen. He knows what he wants, but it doesn't stop there, fool. Stay loyal till the day I die, and will watch anime with me. Can't buy that at the fuckin' market. Listen to late 80's jpop...maybe transcend into some 90's shit. Watching a bunch of "Oh, My Goddess" OVA; get real fuckin' depressed. Realize that harem anime is the only thing that you need...but that's a lie, especially since the aforementioned isn't such a sub-genre. GET fuckin' pissed. Live off of sandwiches and shit for years--oh, you saw that? Get over it; it's godly, at best. Get a fuckin' Mai Shiranui figure in the mail? 11"? Oh, but half the goddamn head fell off? You can rot off, bitches; this isn't some fuckin' fairy tale. Toei's mascot's film is mediocre.

Amalgamation

Was bored and got drunk and watched Lupin the Third: Crisis in Tokyo (Or Tokyo Crisis, as the film pronounced). Film was awesome, but I couldn't help noticing at the end that a random van in the street had the Helloween band name/logo on it. Then I realized how great life was. 80's power metal is the greatest. Life is okay.

Catching Up With Adventure Games

I don't know what the fuck I was doing when adventure games were at their peak. I was dicking around and already gaming during the glory days of companies like LucasArts and Sierra On-Line, but for some damned reason I never had the chance. I have fond memories of playing Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on DOS in elementary school, as well as some distinct memories of, er...attempting to play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis at a friend's house, but for some reason I just never got into them at the time. I've done some serious thinking, and I think I've reached the conclusion why: I never owned a fucking computer at the time. This is only partially true, I guess. When my family first got a computer, RTS and FPS games were in full force, and obviously being at an impressionable young age such games were quite overbearing. Certainly I do not regret my game choices at the time, for I have some of the fondest memories of playing fantastic games like Doom 1/2, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Rise of the Triad, Blood, Blake Stone, etc, but I still feel as if I missed out for not experiencing the immense catalog of games at the pinnacle of the genre.

Obviously I've tried to reconcile with my foolish past of being an unfledged gamer with wanton materialism, primarily thanks to eBay. Consequently, most of my gaming purchases the last few months were solely adventure games, because I'm pissed off and have a shitload of catching up to do. Certainly the most impressive purchase was Snatcher (see my post on that below), but I'm also absolutely ecstatic to finally own The Secret of Monkey Island, as well as three of the sequels that follow. I need to get off my ass and play all the crap I bought (instead of writing), but I sadly haven't had the time; or, at the least the time I want to devote to the games. Currently playing through the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and absolutely loving it, as well as LucasArts' Full Throttle. I've been kinda slacking on the latter, but what I have played is superb, although I imagine it will be hard to top Schafer's extraordinary Grim Fandango. I think I'm most excited for The Last Express, mainly because of the exalting review on Hardcoregaming101.com and my love for animation. Sigh...I should be beating Snatcher right now. I would have been done with it if my goddamn cat didn't eat my Sega Genesis AV cord, but thankfully a new one just came in the mail. Shit.

I have been wasting my life with sleep. I should start doing meth.

Get drunk; write about bullshit. (A drunken love-letter to Valkyria Chronicles)

Fairly intoxicated. Such an event usually requires thorough analysis of relevant obsessions that I indulge in. Around tax season this year I finally decided to buy a Playstation 3, with my sights centered on a select few games, with those being: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (1 & 2, respectively), Heavy Rain, Demons' Souls, The Lost Guardian (still awaiting it's TBA release), and Valkyria Chronicles. To be honest, I don't know why I wanted a PS3 in the first place. I followed Heavy Rain from it's conception, birth, and finally it's release, but have thus played it. I've now aptly name it Shenmue 3 (unofficial edition), and while it still piques my interest, my desire to play it is fairly antiquated at this point for a number of reasons (I will play it; other games are a more pressing matter).

I could write about the other games, but since that last paragraph the alcohol is fairly stabilized in my system. I'd rather Eidos to keep making Tomb Raider games than play the macho Uncharted. Demons' Souls is a welcome third-person throwback to the hardcore days of the now obsolete dungeon-crawler like Wizardry, Ultima and even Phantasy Star, but I'm fairly pissed at that game at the moment--but for good reasons! The Lost Guardian I'm still fairly ecstatic for, but I consistently lose interest with the elapse of time. I still need to fucking play Ico. Something tells me Diablo III will be out by that time (doubt it), and any time that is considered luxurious will be spent probably playing Blizzard's latest abomination to an already stale catalog of repugnant 3D graphic accelerated games that accustom the market of Wal-mart DELL desktop users. Every Blizzard game looks like an updated version of Sim Theme Park--a game that originally looked like absolute piss in the prime of 3D computer gaming evolution. Look up Sim Theme Park and Warcraft III. Compare the two. I dare you. Certainly most games have surpassed the graphical prowess that was Warcraft III, but my observation still holds some relevancy to Blizzard's shit-excuse for "accessibility" and their departure from the morose and stygian graphics that encompassed the absolutely dire world that was both (especially) Diablo and Diablo II.

I forgot what I was talking about. I guess that was quite the tangent, and per usual, I digress from such. Anyway, the last thought I had was the prevalence of alcohol and the Playstation 3--oh, but that brings me to the main subject: Valkyria Chronicles! I have a hard time typing 'chronicles'. Oddly enough, the letters flow like the finest lepidopteran when I am intoxicated! How superb. Oh, where was I? Valkyria Chronicles has subdued my infernal hatred for modern gaming; or, at least to an extent. I'm a huge fan of tactical gaming, and obviously an anime influenced water-color art style (see Nausicaa tattoo), and Valkyria Chronicles has (surprisingly) surpassed many of my modern gaming qualms and expectations. Surely this blog could have been more of a convincing adulation for a game that I obviously admire, but I must admit the computer monitor is becoming quite transposed and queasy at the moment with my steady consumption of cheap rum and generic cola.

What am I getting at? Oh! It's a fantastic game! Aesthetics are highly prevalent, yes! Alicia has become quite the, er...character to admire and fancy. I like this game a lot. I like the narrative. I like the art style. I like the diverse lot of characters and the pseudo-steam punk WWII themed world. I am too drunk. I am glad I am still slightly coherent.