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So I noticed I have a real problem

That problem being that I don’t know what to do in my free time. No I’m not going to be bored, at all. Instead I have too many things I want to do and way too little time to do them in. Of course there’s non-fun stuff such as cleaning, laundy and stuff like that but I’m not counting that as that’s normal. So the things I want to do tonight:

  1. Exercise – Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve exercised with me moving and the holiday I had just before that. I want to get back into it as it’s really calming to me to exhaust my body physically after my job. However I already do cycle ~15-20km per day just to and from work. That’s already an hour per day on bike.
  2. Read my new books – I was buying some groceries during my break at work and then noticed a book-sale and ended up buying 2 books, they were dutch, which kinda put me off, but they seemed interesting and they were very reasonably priced.
  3. Read some books I’ve had for a while – Now as you may know I literally have a pile of books that I still have to read, ranging from all kinds of subjects, which I kind of like. But I’m currently reading 1 psychology- , 1 mythology- and 1 history book. And I want to really read them and the others.
  4. Finish re-watching LOTR – I started re-watching my LOTR blu-rays as I was ill before and have yet to watch the conclusion of it, which I love. I especially want to see Eowynn again during the battle for Minas Tirith. Eowynn is awesome, despite not coming close to the character she is in the books, but that is a story for another post.
  5. Game – Rift Online - I’ve been playing Rift Online for a good while again and it’s a game I just love, partly for Trion’s Management. The first expansion is coming soon’ish and I have yet to level my new character up to the maximum level, which I want to do at the very least.
  6. Game – GuildWars2 – Honestly I’ve not put a lot of time into this game yet and people keep telling me to do so, I have enjoyed my time with it initially. But it’s not really grabbed me yet. But I do want to explore more of it.
  7. Record Let’s Plays - Before I started moving I recorded a set of a new LP – The Walking Dead. I enjoyed it a lot and it was surprisingly good and I really want to get going on that again as I’ve not played it in ~2-3weeks. I also have a bunch of other things I want to do as well, such as a coop of Torchlight 2. That one should hopefully be recorded this coming weekend, if my plans allow me/us. Then there is also some PlanetSide2 that I might record, that game really surprised me on how much fun it is!

 

September 26, 2012 Short URL
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Hikaru no Go Box Set

Hikaru no Go artwork on dvd case

As some of you may have noticed that Hikaru no Go is marked my favorite anime above one piece on my anime-planet.com profile.
It’s the one anime that I simply just love just about everything of. I’ve actually watched it twice on downloaded copies and read the manga once. This is something I frankly don’t do for any other anime.

I recently wanted to watch the series again and saw that there was simply not a lot of places to download it anymore and that would mean in some years it would be really hard to even find a copy, including them being in poor quality and being poorly subtitled. So I looked at places to buy it from and stumbled upon a DVD Box Set, however there was simply put not a lot of information available. To add to the confusion there seemed to be versions ranging from 4 to 15(!) dvd’s. After doing more research and noting specific information down it seemed that there’s 2 versions with English subtitles available: a Japanese version and a Chinese version. Both can easily be distinguished by their box art. There is no European-only version or even a native-english release for Europe.

After doing some more looking around and contacting some shops to get information, I concluded that the Chinese version is in poor quality and the Japanese version was the one to get, however I couldn’t find any examples of the English subtitles. However with all that sorted out, I ran into an issue.

Shipping

The issue at hand was that the places that would let me order a copy of the version I wanted didn’t accept a European delivery address, because they have had issues with that in the past. I looked around for a European store but couldn’t find any at all. The way I thought of solving this was to ask if someone was willing to accept the package for me and ship it over to me, which would of course bring additional costs with it which I would pay. To mind came Defkon001, I knew he’s an American and felt I could trust him, if he’d accept. So I asked and explained the situation and luckily for me he accepted.

During this process I/we learned that  the shop didn’t accept my dutch creditcard and required a United States one. Thankfully Defkon001 trusted me enough to order it himself and ship it over to me. This was a little bit of a hassle but it managed to arrive here in 1 piece, undamaged.

The Story

To give a brief summary of the story, it’s about a boy Shindou Hikaru who stumbles upon a Go board (Goban) in which a spirit lives, someone named Fujiwarano Sai who’s many decades old and doesn’t want to give up on playing the game of Go just yet and is unable to move on to the afterlife. So he ‘joins’ Shindou and gets him to play the game against his will initially, but he does become interested and impressed with the seriousness of the game.

From there onwards Hikaru wants to start playing for himself and is being selfish as he’s not letting Sai play much himself. But Hikaru fights his way up and eventually aims to become a professional Go player. All this time there is this complicated rivalry between Touya Akira who wants to match up against Sai while Hikaru wants to match up against Touya, which is certainly interesting. The story also has a moral of striving for perfection and doing what you love doing while giving it your absolute best.

This might all sound incredibly dull by reading it but you should do yourself a favor and check out the first couple of episodes, it has a style to it that keeps you hooked.

Conclusion

I simply love everything about this anime, the music, the story, the overall moral of it and it got me interested in Go in the first place. I can’t recommend it enough to people but I feel like I’m one of the few that’ve actually heard of it, nevermind like it. The artwork that’s on the case, on and in the dvd cases and the dvd’s themselves is really detailed and nice to look at.
The only downside which I knew was coming are the subtitles, which are mostly okay, but just feel extremely rushed. But the same was said about the official English dvd’s which had some other issues as well. I’ve screenshotted the typo’s from the first 45 minutes below:

For the record: On the 3rd and 4th episodes I only noticed 3 mistakes in total.

February 16, 2011
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Picking Naruto back up

Pain Rinnegan

So I had been watching Naruto for a long while but stopped half a year ago, near the end of the filler series around Shippuden episode 150. From there on it’d go into what I thought was the coolest and one of the biggest moments in Naruto’s story and I finally watched onward from episode Naruto Shippuden 151.

More…

November 21, 2010
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Scott Pilgrim and Eve No Jikan

Scott Pilgrim Logo

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

So I finally got around to watching Scott Pilgrim, there had been quite a hype surrounding the movie that to me came out of nowhere. I had never heard of Scott Pilgrim before, but from what I had heard it was a lighthearted movie about a young guy who embraces his geekiness and had to fight some exes of a girl he wants to go out with. Apparently there’s whole series of comics and all kinds of other media, but I haven’t paid it any attention.

Going into the movie I was immediately into it as it was presenting the characters. Starting off with Scott, a skinny guy who’s down on his luck after getting dumped and is in a band, and his gay roommate who he shares a bed with. Then there’s Kim, an old ex of Scott who’s also the drummer for his band, Knives who’s a young highschool girl who gets kind of used by Scott as he’s trying to work through his feelings and they soon grow apart as Scott realizes she’s just not the one, which leads to some funny situations. Then finally there’s Ramona, the girl the movie’s essentially about. She’s this alternative looking girl with dyed hair(which looks great, btw) that just seems way out of Scott’s league.

Then honestly there’s not too much to say about the story itself, it all boils down to boy meets girl out of his league but tries anyway, hilarity ensues. What really is worth mentioning though is how the movie handles it’s transitions and characters moving, Scott is a dreamy guy and there’s a whole lot of transitions where you’re wondering what the hell is going to happen next or even wonder if he’s dreaming or not. It stays entertaining that way and the movie’s very self-aware as Scott will at times even straight up ask: “Am I dreaming?” while staring at someone.  It may sound pretty awkward but it’s really entertaining.

If you’re looking for a lighthearted action comedy and don’t mind a lot of cuts and being engorged in gaming and comicbook geekiness, I can definitely recommend Scott Pilgrim to you. :)

Scott - Ramona - Young Neill - Knives - Kim - Stephen

Eve No Jikan  - Time of EVE

I also watched another movie, though this one was not as well known or even shown in cinema’s outside of Japan. This movie is called Even No Jikan, which translated becomes Time of EVE. It is a story about a boy and his friend and their soceity wherein androids are rather common in the household. It plays with the question of how this would go and infact it starts off with some  ads on tv about people who are ‘addicted’ to androids and some anti-android campaign, which I would say you would also see in the real world.

It all starts when Rikuo, the main character is going through the logs of his housedroid, later called “Sammy” and discovers that she’d been to a strange place after returning home at a weird time. It wasn’t programmed so he got curious and after talking about it with his friend Masaki at school, they decide to go see where the ‘droid spent her time and what she could’ve been doing. Upon entering the place they find that it’s a small cafe which has some unique rules to it, which boil down to: Everyone inside has to be treated equally. What this means is that there is no distinction between human and android as they look entirely alike. For androids it means that they can act ‘normally’ and disable the “Circle” that normally has to float above their head to indicate that they are infact an android.

So the boys get very intrigued by the entire situation and they try to figure out who is human and who is android, meanwhile some small social things happen and they get to know the commoners one by one. That is essentially what the entire movie is about, the questions about what the androids are doing, how much they know and learn and think and if they’re fully sentient or not. Those are very interesting topics in my opinion and I can see this becoming a question that we’re eventually going to face as mankind.

The movie is actually a “Season 1″ of multiple as it also touches upon people who seem to be governing over the androids and monitoring them as they learn and interact. This project seems to be called Code:Life, which I think is a pretty deliberate and funny name. Nevertheless, if you’re up for some relaxed and entertaining fun and the subject interests you at all, you should give Eve No Jikan a watch.

The Cafe with some commoners
October 31, 2010
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Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

1935

I’ve mentioned to some people and in some of the earlier posts that I had been watching Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I’ve only just finished watching all 64 episodes. I’ll give a brief summary of what it’s about for those unfamiliar with it.  But first some background, the anime is based on the manga. There was a first “season” of  Fullmetal Alchemist before which became really popular, but it eventually stopped following the original manga and started going it’s own way and ended awkwardly and eventually they released a movie that followed the season.

Then there was Brotherhood which was essentially a re-imagining or the real version which follows the manga. Plus I like the artstyle more and it just seem overall improved. So let’s dive into the story. The anime follows 2 brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric in an imaginary world where they live in the small country of Amestris, which is surrounded by bigger nations such as Xing to the east and Drachma to the north. It’s a very war-focused country and therefore it’s led by it’s military but they do call their Leader(Fuhrer-president) King. There is the normal military which use their machineguns, grenades, mortars and even a tank or two and then there’s another side of it: Alchemists. Alchemy rules in the land and it’s based around touka koukan (Equal-Exchange), what this means is that things may be broken apart and rebuilt using alchemy, aslong as the original amount of items is used.

However not everything may be transmuted, mostly referring to the taboo of Human Transmutation as you may have the ingredients that a human is built out of; but you still can’t create a human as there’s still the matter of the soul. However our 2 brothers lose their mother when they were young and they decide to try and transmute her back, however a nightmarish monster is created and there is a big loss as Alphonse loses his body and soul as a sign of equal trade and Edward trades his limbs to affix his brother’s soul to a suit of armor. To still be able to live a decent life Edward gets new limbs in the form of Automail from the family where they’re now living. Automail are basically prosthetics but more advanced than that, they’re a very common thing in the land of Amestris as I’m guessing a lot of people lose their limbs due to the wars. That’s the main premise of the series as the brothers start their journey to get their bodies back.

While they do this however they uncover many secrets all over the land and they end up having to save the country and since I really don’t want to spoil anything, let’s say that the threat is very unique and interesting and there’ll be many battles and situations where people have to outwit the enemy because of their overwhelming strength. I strongly suggest you check it out if it at all sounds interesting to you.

October 5, 2010
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Guardian of the Light, FMA

lara-croft-and-the-guardian-of-light-logo-590x348

So I’ve been a bit quiet over here with new posts as I’ve mainly been doing some forum-based stuff and posting on there. Besides I’ve not been doing too much of interest lately, just playing civilization 5 and watching some series as I mentioned here. So because of that I didn’t really feel like I had anything to write about.

But today there’s been the release of Lara Croft and the Guardian of the Light of which I’ve seen some footage and it looked really good to me. It is however a c0-op game in essence as that adds to the gameplay value. So I’m definitely looking forward to playing that, the puzzles and combat seems like it would just be fun. The only thing that worries me is the length of the game. I’ve not actually read reviews to know about the length as that’s generally not how I judge a game, I judge them by watching gameplay as that’ll give you the best idea of what it is really like. But I’m thinking of let’s playing it as it just seems like plain old fun.

Other than that I’ve been watching quite some Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I had watched the original Full Metal Alchemist anime before and very much enjoyed that though it felt like it ended very suddenly. Brotherhood’s loner, in better quality and all-around more polished I think. Even if you don’t like anime, you should probably check it out if not only for the opening song, which I’ve actually made the “Featured Video” of the site for a while now. :D

September 28, 2010
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Anime openings

So writing about Go brought up Hikaru No Go which had a nice opening. That brought me to think about how many anime actually have really nice opening songs. Going through those videos to find the links made me realize just how many great openings there really are. The frightening thing is that I’m likely forgetting the majority of them!

Initial D – Stage 4 Opening

This song actually made me really dig M.o.v.e, they’re a really diverse and unique band.

D.Gray-Man – Opening #3

This song is just so incredibly catchy, even though I don’t understand a word.

One Piece – Opening #1

One Piece is without a doubt my favorite anime and this song gives me goosebumps to this day, it’s pure magic. I can still sing along with most of it.

One Piece – Opening #8

This opening is also etched into my brain.

One Piece – Opening #11

I can totally sing this along, but that’s probably because this is a lot newer and has more english in it.

Ghost In The Shell Opening

This song is an absolute classic and it just blows your mind if you listen to it on high quality(aka, not youtube).

Hajime No Ippo – New Challenger Opening

This intro made me get completely into the band, gotta love J-Rock.

Soul Eater – Opening #1
This song made me watch this anime, which I didn’t like at first, but I grew to love it. I have this song to thank for that!

As a special mention I have to link to this opening, Major- Opening #4. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it, I don’t like the voice but still it gives me goosebumps every time.

To conclude this link-heavy post I bring you the cutest thing you’ll ever hear/see:

June 13, 2010