The author of the Fairy Tail manga has reassured the public that the anime series will resume eventually and that we just need to have patience for now. In that case, that's a great relief. I would miss Fairy Tail terribly if it were to go away, as it's my 6th favorite anime series of all time. Here's looking forward to many more years of Fairy Tail, even if we have to wait a few years to get it.
According to the early adopters who have played Dynasty Warriors 8 by importing the Japanese version from Japan, it's easily the best game yet in the series. As expected of 77 characters each with their own unique weapon and moveset, including every history-based character who has ever been featured in any previous Dynasty Warriors game so no fan would be left out. The new fighting mechanics are overall approved of, and the story mode now includes every single character with a cutscene and a stage they can be played during. Strangely enough, even though it has a record number of characters, Dynasty Warriors 8 managed to include everyone in the story. Meanwhile, in Dynasty Warriors 7, about half the characters were unplayable at any time in story mode and weren't featured in any cut scene at all. This to me is another example of Koei simultaneously valuing quantity and quality. Far more characters than ever before, and yet still they managed to give them all a scene in the story mode, they all got their own unique weapon and moveset, and they all are playable in the main game. The same is true of the Dynasty Warriors 8 soundtrack. Featuring songs from all across the franchise history, it boasts a ridiculously large musical repertoire of 100 separate songs. Combining this 'best of' music with new original music for Dynasty Warriors 8 gives it the best sound ever to go along with the best graphics ever. In comparison, Dynasty Warriors 7 only had 67 songs or so in its soundtrack. These are hardly minor quality boosts. We're talking 50% more songs than before. In Dynasty Warriors 7 all the characters only had one outfit with different colorations to choose from, but in Dynasty Warriors 8 everyone starts with two distinctly different costumes. It's things like this that show the makers of the game were really devoted to quality as well as quantity this time around.
Sadly, Dynasty Warriors 8 can't be called the perfect game. For one, with the PS4 coming out, it's easily possible to imagine a sequel with much better graphics than anything the PS3 can provide. In addition, despite adding so many new characters to their roster, Dynasty Warriors 8 still doesn't cover the full history of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and leaves out many important, beloved characters from the historical classic. Insufficient attention is paid to the dying days of Wu and Shu, the later Wei emperors and the first Jin Emperor, Sima Yan. Furthermore, a lot of big players in the beginning of the story, like Yuan Shu, are glossed over when it would have been fun to give them a part of the spotlight as well. Important generals like Liao Hua, Cheng Pu, and Yu Jin still sadly await a non-generic character model while people much less important than them have already gotten in to the main game roster. If the roster expanded to 100 characters, that might be enough to make the 'perfect game.' Or perhaps 115 would do it. But we're much closer to the 'full experience', a full rendition of the book that launched it all, than we used to be. It is now conceivable that some day we will reach that rainbow vale. When all the games were ending at the battle of Wu Zhang Plains such a dream felt impossible.
Girls und Panzer doesn't belong as part of the spring anime season, because it will be airing this very March, alongside the rest of the winter anime season. In fact, it would count as yet another series airing this winter and just ups our love of this season above all others. Too bad, spring season. Ginga e Kickoff is slowly being translated, but it's sure to be finished this month as well, which means it will count fully as a winter season anime alongside all the others. Add in Haitai Nanafa, which is only being translated now though it aired long ago, and Seitokai no Ichizon level 2, which is only airing now in 1080p as opposed to the awful 360p of last fall, and you've got a winter season like no other:
1. Doki Doki Precure (and previously Smile Precure)
2. Bakuman
3. Shin Sekai Yori
4. Little Busters
5. Boku ha Tomodachi ga Sukunai
6. AKB0048
7. Love Live
8. Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru
9. Da Capo III
10. Fairy Tail
11. Hunter x Hunter
12. Chihayafuru
13. Vividred Operation
14. Naruto (though now it's in filler for most of the winter season it wasn't)
15. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
16. One Piece
17. Ginga e Kickoff
18. Seitokai no Ichizon lv. 2 (though just a high definition rerun)
19. Girls und Panzer (though just 2 episodes)
20. Mangirl
21. Yama no Susume
22. Saki Achiga (though it was just one episode)
23. Robotics;Notes
24. Tamako Market
25. * Haitai Nanafa (released earlier but only translated now)
26. * Nekomonogatari (released on the last day of the fall season, December 31, but only translated by the beginning of the winter season)
Honorable mention also goes to the anime movies we got to see outside of Japan for the first time this winter: the Fairy Tail movie (which was rather mediocre and formulaic), and Ookami Kodomo (which was pretty and neat but too gimmicky and surreal to feel like a serious, believable tale you could actually get emotionally invested in) Later this March, and thus still part of the winter anime season, we get the newest Nanoha movie, a high definition retelling of Nanoha A's, my favorite part of the series. A movie can't possibly be as good as the original series since it's so much shorter, but it's always nice to see things done with a big, modern budget as opposed to a small, ancient one which wasn't even widescreen at the time.
In addition, a nice guy going by the name of DESS finished the blu ray release of Nichijou for the masses, something Coalgirls had abandoned halfway years ago. As a result, everyone can see Nichijou in its full glory for the first time ever, a very good deal.
Likewise, the full subtitled blu ray version of high definition, remastered Gundam SEED is available for all to watch, one of the most popular titles of this long, long franchise.
We've even gotten a couple more episodes of Yes Pretty Cure 5 Go Go translated. Now we just need episodes 34 to 48 to finish the deal. 15 episodes until all of Pretty Cure is subtitled into English.
In comparison, I watched the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall, and it was absolutely horrid. There have been some terrible Bond movies in the past, but they tended to be bad in a charming, silly, lighthearted way. No matter how bad they were they would still make you smile. Skyfall is different. It has zero relation to the James Bond we know and love. It looks like any other action hero movie, full of gritty darkness, always dead serious, and with everyone emitting this attitude of "I'm a badass, don't mess with me, I'll eat your face," with every step of their walking gait. None of the characters get along with each other, the villain is a ridiculous lone 'crazy' who somehow has plenty of power, but never has the will to kill any of his foes when given the chance. There's something like ten times James Bond should have died and had a gun pointed at him, but his enemies inexplicably didn't shoot him every time and so every time he would use crazy martial arts to turn the tables and kill them instead. It included a barrel of curse words for no good reason that just distracted you from the story in general, and the multiculturalism propaganda was on at full blast with tons of empowered elderly women, empowered black women, empowered Asian women, etc, with the villain being a white guy with blond hair.
In conclusion, James Bond isn't worth watching anymore. Sort of like all western art these days.
No comments:
Post a Comment