unexpected excellence (kara no kyoukai 6 - oblivion recorder)

As all of you know, I am a huge KnK fan. The long-awaited sixth installment in a seven-part series was finally released on DVD this previous week. And that means us overseas fans finally get to see it for the first time.

I honestly did not expect this one to tickle my fancy at all. It revolves around Azaka Kokuto, Mikiya's younger sister, who has the annoying bigger brother complex moe. The preview almost made me vomit with the gaily playing piano. Who the fuck was I kidding? This is fucking KARA NO KYOUKAI. They did not let me down in the slightest (except for the final preview, which I'll talk about later).

Kara no Kyoukai (The Garden of Sinners) - Oblivion Recorder

SYNOPSIS

Taking place two months after the incident with Araya Souren in Mujun Rasen (Paradox Spiral), Oblivion Recorder follows Shiki and Azaka as they search her school for the magus responsible for stealing memories with the use of faeries. Throughout the story, we are given snippets of Azaka's past - the reason why she is so desperately in love with her own brother. However, the memory that we see was already taken by the fae, and will never be remembered as it is cast into oblivion. Incidents around the school are suspicious as students are reported dead or missing. Only with Shiki's mystic eyes will they be able to find the faeries and track their owner.

REVIEW (spoilers!)

Obviously not as well-constructed as Mujun Rasen, especially given the fact that the movie was only have of its former's length, what started as a fairly linear storyline with very little intricacy, turned out to be quite a shocker. I'm not particularly impressed with how they went about figuring out the puzzle (as it was pretty much hand-fed to the audience), but the fact that the girl was never actually dead and was really just her roommate who had went overseas came as a pleasant surprise and an extremely well-executed plot device. Even moreso than a stand alone film, Oblivion Recorder was meant to be the breather between Mujun Rasen and Study in Murder Part 2. Towards the end of Oblivion Recorder, God's Word Mayday gave Shiki a part of her memory back (as he was appointed to do by Araya Souren - I love the tie-ins they keep doing with Souren's apostles, he really is the mastermind that set all these events in motion!). Memories lost in oblivion are not actually discarded, but are recorded and forgotten. We don't know what that memory is, but we know Shiki leaves without telling either of the Kokutos. Beyond that, I was particularly impressed with the visuals during the showdown between Azaka and Misaya. The special effects from her fire looked amazing. And the soundtrack. OH GOD THE SOUNDTRACK. I don't know how they do it, but my god when they blend the main theme of KnK with the theme song of the movie (fairytale by Kalafina) for the fight scenes I go absolutely bonkers. Now back to what I was saying about the preview - we learn of Araya Souren's first apostle, who hears voices and consumes people, and probably the person who has to do with what happened to Shiki and Mikiya over three years ago.

The preview itself shows virtually nothing. You hear Shiki talking about how all she ever wanted was to stay by "his" side. No action, no still shots, nada. The anticipation is driving me up the wall. All you see is falling snow before it cuts to the title. The movie is slated to be released August 8th in Japanese threatres. We can probably expect to see it sometime next summer.

I just had to write a blog about this. Coming up - new progress shots of the Griffith Garage Kit and an article on Mortal Kombat!

resin dust (tastes like shit)

I've been pretty sick ever since I got back from Evo. It hit me about Wednesday afternoon on the way to school. I just wasn't feelin it, and throughout the entire class I felt like banging my head against a wall. I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache, a sore body, and feeling dehydrated as hell. The same symptoms continued all the way till today, where I am finally on my way to recovery. Lots of catching up to do.

Over the weekend, sick as I was, I managed to complete a bit of the Griffith kit. I was planning to have a majority of the prep-work completed, but I ended up only pinning and gluing the horse together. I knew Thai resin was bad, but damn this is _bad_. A lot of the pieces don't fit together, are warped to shit, have tons of flash, and are brittle as hell. I tried to fit the horse's helm on, only to have it snap into three pieces. That's just more work for me. The next time I sit down to build this thing, I'm going to have my hair dryer next to me so I can heat every piece into malleable stuff. Here's a little slideshow of some progress work (sorry for the picture, I'll re-upload a modified version later, Blogger is hella poverty with displaying images):

Other than that, a few other noteworthy whatevers...

- I am half way done with Pure 19. FML. Seriously. I am like 80-something episodes in.

- I watched an episode of Bakemonogatari. Talk about eye candy and interesting design. I'm totally in love with the abstractness and production quality by SHAFT. It's almost reminscent of FLCL meets Gankutsouo.

- Played a few games of Heroes of Newerth, the new DotA. It's pretty fun, although honestly it's just more of the same shit.

- Getting a Zoddo III (transformed) sometime next week. Before you say WTF - I found this sucker on YJA for only 100 bucks. You heard me. Box is beat, but whatever.

- Credit to CnC for the banner coloring.

the expected and unexpected hype (evolution 2009)

Evolution 2009 took place at the Rio this year. The hotel rooms were much nicer than the Tropicana, and I hope they plan to do the same (or better) next year. As for most of SoCal, Evo was never about the tournaments, it was always about the food, the drinks, and the hype. I had plenty of the former two, and an overload of the latter. I think my hands went numb from clapping too hard and my throat hoarse from yelling "RAZORCRANE" too often. As Midwest would say: good shit.

Bunch of us watching SF4 regional 5v5s.

Preamble

I had the brilliant idea of leaving at 3AM Friday morning. The logic? For Ken to make it on time for the Blazblue singles tournament. Because it's been ridiculously hot, I had about 30 minutes of naptime (after about 9 hours of class, mind you) before saying fuck it, I'm just gonna stay awake the whole time. Semi-bad idea. We arrived around 7:30 and walked up to the rooms where I had about an hour of sleep before deciding to venture into the main hall. You wouldn't believe the insanity that met my eyes. The two long walls of the conference hall were BOTH reserved for Street Fighter 4 pools. That's 24 pools son, and 5 times as large as the next fighting game turnout. The doujin fighting game community was snuggled against the back wall, headed by an Aksys Blazblue booth and littered with BYOC games such as KoF 11, HnK, GGXXAC, and Brawl. The center of the hall consisted of all the other Capcom games, such as TvC, MvC2, and a few setups for FUC. The amount of people there was quite overwhelming.

Guilty Gear/Blazblue

I sucked hard this year. Countless hours of practice have made me realize only this: I needed even more countless hours of practice. It didn't help that I was shoved into Latiff and ElvenShadow's pool lol. So after beating some random Johnny and then scrubbing out against Woki (an excellent Dizzy player who almost made it out of that pool), I went on to cheer for the rest of the SoCal crew. Hellmonkey had managed to defeat Marn (who he previously lost to at Devastation), while Jo beat the living daylights out of AKA, and ALMOST overcame Marn in the losers finals. As Koogy said, Jo is definitely West Coast's secret weapon. Blazblue had an amazing side tournament turnout of 187 (!) players. That's more people than Guilty Gear, Soul Calibur 4, and Smash Brothers Brawl! There were a few dark horses, namely Wooku, from Vet Coast. Excellent tournament, though HeartNana came out on top after a close finals against Goryus.

GG teams were pretty fail for me as well. I managed to team with TGS and Stormlocke to a dissappointing 0-2 finish. Our first team went against Moroha's, but little did we know that they had Steve Harrison (an SBO qualified Ky) as their anchor. So after two hype kills by Stormlocke, we were reverse OCV'd. Lame. Our second matchup was against 9TNine's team. Stormlocke took out 9TNine, but lost to Sparks, a fellow Robo Ky player. After playing Stormlocke a bunch, I had a decent grip on the Robo Ky matchup, so I took Sparks down without much stress. Next came their anchor, who was none other than fucking Veteru. Seriously, of all people we had to go up against. Veteru is no god at GG, but he definitely has much more experience and skill than I do. We go to three games, all of which were decently close. I simply choked, no excuses here. Having lost to him more times than I won during the Aksys event a few months prior, I was a bit mentally afraid of him. Unfortunately for TGS, Veteru plays against 9TNine's I-no all the time, so he was pretty handily destroyed. And yes, that was my epic Guilty Gear performance for Evo 2k9.

Getting Drunk and Stuff

Before I go ahead and talk about the finals, I must go over the most hype part of this year's Evo: getting_FUCKED_UP! It started with Bryan and David, who bought a bottle of Cap Morgans at 9AM and started drinking. Later on after the singles tournament, we went back up to the room and downed a few shots. While both Hellmonkey and I only had about 4-5 shots, Bryan and David had been drinking the whole god damned time while the rest of us were downstairs playing. Bryan drunk dialed Lily in front of everyone, and we then had the excellent idea of going back down to the hall. On the way there, I kept doing Aikido rolls on the floor and Hellmonkey kept plopping down indian style and holding his arms out to do Toki's Fatal K.O. pose from Fist of the North Star. As we got closer to the hall (where everyone could see us), I started rolling around again and did some stupid MGS stuff and boasting that Stormlocke would have been proud. When we actually arrived, Bryan introduced himself to everyone multiple times, David kept hugging me in a tender way, and Hellmonkey went around to everyone telling them how he air threw Marn like 30 times during winner's finals in his pool. After all these shenanigans, we lost Bryan and I decided to go up to sleep. Later I found out that David picked up Bryan from the public restroom where he had passed out.

The next night, after watching SoCal's terrible performance in the 5v5 regional tournament, I downed about 5 shots of Cap Morgans and a shot of Grey Goose (all within like 15 minutes) and became hyper-buzzed. I played against Spirit Juice (got fucked up by), Blitz (broke even with), Digital Watches (did better than I expected, won more than lost), and Hintalove (same as Watches). I think my reactions are actually better when I'm drunk, cause I 1-frame jumped almost every exploding-chain-ball-thing that Digital Watches threw at me (except for the point blank ones). Some time later, after everyone was asleep already, Bryan and Ben were playing GG for shots and eventually moved on to SF4. Ben was sucking it up and finally told Bryan: "dude, if you throw me one more time, you're going to have to take a shot for it." Well, Bryan ended up throwing him three more times, and they both ended up finishing a bottle of Grey Goose. After they stopped for a while, I'm pretty sure I heard Bryan singing in the shower before I fell asleep at circa 7AM.

The Finals

I woke up at 9AM to the clanking of Hellmonkey's training mode practice. He was trying to master the timing of guard cancelling Faust's full-screen stab thing into a combo when I asked him if he wanted to grab something to eat before his on-stage performance. We ended up at some cafe eating some over-priced eggs and shit before heading to the hall for Third Strike. Guess who won that. I won't even have to say his name. Anyways, GG finals this year were pretty awesome. Latif sent Senkei to losers, Flash sent Hellmonkey to losers (close match, David even double-perfected Flash game 2), ElvenShadow kicked Joe Higashi out, Marn took Wuku out, and then Hellmonkey got paired against ElvenShadow. This was the matchup that I had been loathing, because we have no Fausts in SoCal, David's matchup knowledge was severely limited. While ElvenShadow plays every weekend in Japan against the world's top players, we have Hellmonkey here who plays GG maybe once a month. The matches came down to the wire, but David's ghetto corner lockdown with j.HS kept Mike from freely zoning. Mike is renowned for his use of j.D and double jump crossups, but David blocked the majority of them, so props to his defense. Some truly opportunistic playing followed by several errors on Mike's part led David to victory. Let me say, there might have been a few RAZORCRANES and AMERICAN DUSTS in there! The rest of finals were a bit depressing, as Marn defeated David again in a few close matches and Latif took Flash out. However, in the grand finals, Marn decided to butt heads in an Eddie mirror versus Latif. Talk about awesome. Latif's true powers were revealed, as he continually outplayed Marn on every level. As JP Ken said, Marn's Eddie is just a basic Eddie, while Latif is on a whole different level offensively. No one, not even the Japanese, can continually pull the Shadow Gallery loop as consistently as Latif can, and I am extremely proud of the fact that we're shipping him to Japan for a chance to compete against the best at SBO. I still don't think he's reached the level of godlike because his abuse of the greatest technicalities of the game (especially matchup and instant blocking related issues) aren't present, but his execution and offense are literally out of this world. I am extremely proud of both Hellmonkey and Latif and congratulate them on their finishes.

Latif vs Marn, Eddie vs Eddie in GGXXAC Grand Finals

We then stayed to watch Sanford beat J Wong in MvC2 and waited for the Blazblue 3v3 finals - HeartNana/Jan/Fubarduck vs Veteru/Pulsr/Wooku, but unfortunately that match was pushed back way too far and we had to leave. After dropping Ken off, we hit up BCD and called it a night. I also didn't go to class this morning cause my head felt as heavy as a boulder. GET HYPE.

Pictures in the next blog, I'm too lazy to upload them today. I had a lot of fun at Evo, but it's time to come back to reality (and school. fuck). Lots of stuff coming up. Anticipating the arrival of my Griffith GK soon, so get ready for that.

before the storm (events in full motion)

Classes Resume

I figured I'd get this out of the way first. Yes, my summer session begun as of today. No, I am not enjoying trying to learn pre-print production methods in the blistering heat. My class schedule occupies me throughout most of the week (Monday through Thursday), so I'm sorry if I can't make it to some events that are coming up.

Standing Ovation

As most of you readers are aware, EVOLUTION 2009 is indeed this coming weekend. With that said, we may be in store for the biggest fighting game tournament yet. Daunting? Slightly. Overwhelmed? Hardly. If anything, this is the bolster that the 2D fighter community has been longing for. It's a renaissance of sorts, so to speak. I wish all competitors the best of luck and give all attendees a great, big bow. Thanks for making the community what it is today.

As Promised

Zoddo Senma, in all of his bloody glory. I am now a proud owner of a horse-riding statue (considered the crown jewels of the Berserk collection).

Ok dude. This box was fucking gigantic. You have no idea. I'm pretty sure I could've smashed my dog with it.

This is the legit, real deal. Serial #137. Came with a limited edition Mozgus pewter too. That means it was one of the first pre-orders!

Pictures, none of which do the statue justice.

ART OF WAR rarely does well with blood.This statue is a true exception.

Now at the top of my glass case...till it's replaced by Joa's Armored Berserk!

I have no regrets purchasing Zodd Senma. I worked my ass off in the past month or so to try and get it. Albiet, I was lucky quite a few times with some freelance opportunities and even a focus group testing at Activision that paid well. It is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive statues I've ever seen, period.

The Next Project

It's a grand one, and it's going to take much effort on my part to complete. I will be constructing and painting my very own 1/10 scale Griffith, Hawk Solider - Horse Riding resin kit. My experience is nill, but my confidence with this kind of stuff is far from keeping me down. The reason for wanting to paint this kit is because the only painted version available is by Art of War, and that one is only 1/15 scale. Much detail is lost, and the grandness of the piece is subdued. I will be attempting to build this beauty over the course of August, so please keep checking back for progression!

As painted by Korean artist, Goldmacho.

I'll probably have a lot to say after this weekend, so check back next week for the post-EVO rundown :)

meandering (through another summer)

So I did a lot of random crap over the past week. This includes watching anime, playing tower defense games in Warcraft III, reading manga, watching Korean dramas, going to Anime Expo, and trying to learn Eddie in Guilty Gear. What a waste of time.

- Zoddo Senma: the first horse-riding statue that I'll be adding to my Berserk collection should be arriving either tomorrow or the day after. I'll definitely post some pictures on here - I can't wait! On a side note, Joa received my Headlong kit yesterday, so I'll keep this blog updated with progression photos from that as well.

- Catching up on anime: before class starts, I should probably nail out all the stuff I should have watched over the past month (but fell out of for some reason). This includes Eden of the East, Sengoku Basara, Basquash! (maybe) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I already finished Hatsukoi Limited (which was entertaining, though nothing I hadn't seen before) -- the loli-pop idea is pretty awesome, I might just try it some time.

- New anime season!: so far there's only two shows that I'm probably going to follow. Bakemonogatari (by SHAFT) and Canaan (by the creators of Type Moon). Get hype.

- Reading manga: need to catch up on Bakuman and Fullmetal Alchemist. Recommendations however have created a desire to read Vagabond and Hatsukoi Limited. As time permits, anyways.

- Playing TDs: fucking terrible. Some of these TD games don't even take skill (like Green TD). There's no mazing, no looping, no juggling. Just a bunch of scrubs that get owned by the first air stage. What the fuck happened to Warcraft III !?!? :(

- Playing EDDIE: I have no idea what spurred me to learn Eddie, but I've always wanted to play him...just never picked up my balls to do it. It's no joke - Eddie is pretty hard to handle. I've never messed with a negative-edging character before, so this experience is completely foreign (and difficult) for me. After a few hours, I finally managed to learn a simple blockstring, how to add some simple high-low mixups, and how to go into a ghetto semi-unblockable. I still don't really know what the fuck I'm doing, and I'd give it at least another few months before I can even wrap my head around everything he's capable of. By then Guilty Gear won't even matter. Boo.

Sorry for the shitty post. I'm super tired for no apparent reason. I also got to spend the past week with Victor at the house while my parents were out. He finally moved out this past weekend, but we had a good time suckin on beers, watching Demolition Man, cooking some awesome improv food, and just hanging out. Good times, good memories.