John Zeitler

I picked up a pair of noise-cancelling headphones this evening owing to three facts. The first is that my previous pair of earbuds had broken (cord snapped right out of the left bud) one morning a few weeks ago, and I needed a replacement pair. The second is that I had a sizeable rewards voucher for Best Buy sitting on my account.

The third is that, while trying to save some money and the rewards certificate, I had bought a pair of cheap stopgap earbuds at a 7-11 downtown the morning that the originals had broken. And that, today, I discovered that they were practically worthless when sitting next to someone who had quite a bit to say about my choice of commute entertainment: an anime. It matters comparatively little which one, because I am firmly of the belief that this woman would have just as gleefully excoriated me for watching SuperBook. I was not, in her words, reading the Bible, therefore I was sinning. She actually said that.

This comes literally eight hours after I had felt, for a little while, that geekery was becoming acceptable in public after seeing a forty-year-old man quietly reading a Batman graphic novel three rows ahead of me this morning.

Oh, and for the record? It was Shakugan no Shana, and I was incredibly lucky that my stop came long before any of the clothes-changing scenes came. I would have hated to have to explain to the paramedics that my minding of my own damn business caused some nutbar lady to have an aneurysm.

I’d said, at the beginning of this year, that I was going to do writeups on the games I finish after their completion, and I slacked off from this due to the whole “no-commercialism” thing in February. Tomorrow you’ll see my thoughts on Split/Second, which– if any game this year merits the label– may just be a contender for the top ten for 2010.

Oh, and just for the record? Baccano!? Awesome. You should watch it. Really.

Most of what I’m doing here in between fielding calls is either working with my hands or otherwise leaving my main computer idle, so I’m taking advantage of that by ripping some DVDs to watch on the bus rides from here on out. In truth, I should have been doing that weeks ago, but you take what you can get, really. In my case, I’m probably going to be dumping the files to my bigger external drive once I’m done with them and only putting what I need at the moment on the phone. (My iTunes setup has everything on a 400GB drive that I honestly thought, when I bought it, would be “too massive to fill”. I was half-right: I’m still only about 50% full on it, but it doesn’t have too much video on it. The bigger drive is a 1TB bit bucket.)

I did mention I could do that while I slept, right? ‘Cause I can, and will…

So, Deathsmiles. Let’s set aside the whole “Aksys is populated entirely by highly motivated perverts” thing for a moment and look at the gameplay first. DS presents itself as a fairly straightforward danmaku shooter, which is to say that you’re going to find the screen filled with about seventeen zillion lethal bullets by around the third stage. However, like most bullet-hell shooters these days, the game provides unlimited credits, so seeing the endings is mostly a matter of patience, and the skill comes in gaining score; an antiquated notion, to be sure, but I’ve always liked having personal challenges like that. While nominally a side-scrolling shooter along the lines of Gradius or R-Type, DS switches things up a bit by allowing you to shoot either left or right (but only one at a time– they’re mapped to different buttons) and by scrolling the screen vertically or in a zig-zag pattern. The game doesn’t feel cheap or unfair– most bullet patterns have an obvious or non-obvious path, and when they intersect the character’s hitbox– her heart– can usually take a light grazing. The scoring system is based on collecting items dropped from certain fallen foes, and by using the familiar (an option-like firing drone) to convert certain types of bullets into those scoring targets. Once that count reaches a maximum of 1000, shooting down foes provides massively-valued targets which also deal in a multiplier. Taking damage will force you to sacrifice a percentage of your count, while getting shot down yourself will reset it all to zero. The enemies are fairly varied as well, and the bosses are sufficiently big and menacing, and with suitably ridiculous attack patterns to evade. Overall if you decide to go through it with all five characters you’re looking at maybe eight to ten hours tops (there’s achievements for choosing either option during the ending).

As for the characters… I’ll be honest, I’m not all that into EGL. I do find that, when it’s executed well, it’s quite visually appealing (after all, I am a male and I am breathing, so of course I’m going to get a little excitable around well-dressed ladies). Obviously the youth thing (and that, y’know, they’re not real) makes it more of an aesthetic attraction and strictly platonic, but it’s not exactly a secret that the character designs are not made with that sort of thing in mind. There’s a very, very fine line between coquettish and co– er, ahem, deceptively provocative, and the girls of Deathsmiles are all over the map in that regard. I don’t want to turn this into a discussion on whether or not the phenomenon of moe is inherently good or bad (it’s all art to me, and the merit of art is all in how one reacts to the emotions it stirs), but from playing through the story mode, it’s sort of obvious that these girls could be dressed in pretty much anything and the plot could remain unchanged. Ultimately the EGL thing is just another facet of the game’s aesthetic, and while it’s fairly well-executed here (sometimes), it’s mostly just window-dressing and completely unrelated to the fantastic gameplay.

But there is no way in hell that I will put that faceplate on my 360.

I’ve got a little bit to talk about, but the first thing of any real interest is that I’ve got to get a new suitcase. See, the last time I needed a big suitcase, around the size needed to check, was back in 2008. After I got home, I put it into the storage unit at my apartment, whereupon it was promptly stolen. So yeah, when I took my trip last year I thought, “Oh, I can make do with a duffel bag!” and almost broke my back hauling it around. Thus, hardshell case that is NOT going into storage kthx. I’ve found a couple likely candidates and will be picking it up this weekend.

Tomorrow I’ll give my thoughts on Deathsmiles.

So it’s time for me to start making preparations for a few big events… one later this week, and one closer to the end of next month.

This is going to be one busy summer, boys and girls.

Perhaps it’s a side-effect of the whole early rising thing that I do, or perhaps it’s because I just happen to pick series that, if they were any more potent, would have big ol’ warning labels on them about not using them while operating heavy machinery, but I’ve been struggling to get through more than two or three episodes of this current anime before falling asleep. There’s just something very comforting and relaxing about, well, comfort and relaxation.

Come to think of it, it would be a bad idea to use pretty much any DVD while driving. I think I need to do more research on this. The anime-sleepiness thing. Not driving while watching anime. I could really only do that once anyway, and I likely wouldn’t be able to write down coherent notes afterwards.

The CEO of television dubbing studio Bang-Zoom Entertainment, Eric Sherman, posted a strongly worded article on Tuesday claiming that, solely due to the download of fan-subtitled anime, the studio would likely shut down within twelve months. His reasoning is that the existence of a free source for an anime not legally available in North America intrinsically and irrevocably cuts into the profits of a dubbing studio such as his. Mr. Sherman goes on to say that “anime is going to die”.

( There’s more than a few holes in his argument… » )

Today’s news came to me a little early. I have some remarks about the… uh, remarks that Bang Zoom CEO Eric Sherman made regarding the state of the NA anime industry. Naturally, I’m a little tired now and can’t finish them in anything resembling coherency. Tomorrow. Probably.

Completely unrelated: You want to download the Split/Second demo. RIGHT NOW. I MEAN IT.

I didn’t mention this at the time, but while at Tekkoshocon, I happened upon a flyer for Winter Melody, a webcomic that seems to be in its infancy. Even with so few pages up already and a little bit of background information on the characters, I think it’s shaping up to be a really interesting story– or at the least it’s cute enough that I can overlook its somewhat moderate pacing. (Incidentally it seems to have started off as a 4-koma, a format that just doesn’t get enough English-language attention.)

You’ll notice I kept saying “seems” up there, and while I’ll be the first to admit it’s the verbal tic that’s replacing “actually” in my overused-phrase bin, there’s a damn good reason for it this time: I have no idea who is doing Winter Melody. There’s no credits on the page, no names, nothing… just the webcomic. Not even any ads! Since I’m a stickler for credit, sadly that means I can’t yet put it on my main links page, but it’s at least in my bookmarks toolbar for the time being.

It’s weird to think that I’m practically opening myself up for identity theft compared to the talent behind that series.