Category: Reviews

Quit playing Fire Emblem DS

Day and night time, rain and sunshine
I seek my dream everywhere
Day and night time, rain and sunshine
I seek my dream everywhere

I can’t get enough of that Chage & Aska 🙂

What I can and have gotten enough of is that stupid Fire Emblem DS. Okay, it’s not stupid. But it’s annoying. I’m on chapter 15, just a few steps left between me and the boss, and I’ve been stuck there for the past 2 weeks.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Somebody ALWAYS dies. Usually due to my carelessness, but we’ll gloss over that for now. Bartz has died, Gordon has died, Alan has died… it’s like they’re taking turns!

So finally I said, screw it all. No matter who dies next we’re moving on. Then I moved Oguma up to put the finishing touches on the boss –remind me again why I shouldn’t take a swordsman up against a general wielding a killer lance — and, as expected, CRITICAL. Instant death. And the criticals in the game are ugly and boring anyway, so I didn’t even get any pleasure out of watching that. And I was so angry I even forgot to swear in Japanese. GOSHDANGIT, YOU STUPID LITTLE PIECE OF —-ahem!

Anyway, there’s no way I could let Oguma stay dead. I mean, he’s Ogu-freaking-ma! So, reset #15. I’ll try again later tonight, when I’ve gotten over being pissed off at myself and at the game. And that’s all for today.

Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger review

I thought I’d try watching something different yesterday, so I downloaded the first episode of a sentai show called Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger (subbed, unfortunately). Actually I’ve had the mp3s for both the opening and ending themes from the show for a while, and I listen to them almost every day. Watching the show itself though, quite an…experience, shall we say?

After the Last Friends debacle, I lambasted the cast for being uniformly terrible actors. Little did I know how truly bad Japanese acting could get. Yes, I know it’s a sentai show. And I know that on some level the actors were acting badly on purpose. But oh, it was so bad! The dialogue (“Fight with your DinoGuts gushing out!! Warriors filled with DinoGuts can never lose!) The actions! The expressions. So, so, so bad. I don’t even know how to describe it without insulting the characters, their mothers, their families and their entire sexual histories since they were two years old.

Abaranger was so bad, in fact, that I watched every single last second with rabid interest and longed for more. So this is the famous “so bad it’s good” syndrome. Usually when I watch a show, I tend to stop every few minutes or so to check something on the net, eat some snacks, type up a couple of e-mails,etc. Only a very gripping show can keep me from switching at least once, and Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger was one of these. I just had to see how much worse it could get, and it didn’t disappoint me…in a bad way.

If only I could get this show raw I think I could become quite the fan. :-p

On the other hand, I tried to watch Code Geass all over again yesterday and failed miserably. Some shows just aren’t meant to be watched twice, you know? The first time everything is new and moving at a blistering pace, so you don’t have time stop and think too deeply about the story and the meanings of what they’re saying, and of course you don’t know what’s going to happen next so you can take everything seriously. One watch is definitely enough for me. Let’s keep the magic alive, shall we?

I’m going to spend the rest of the day listening to Chage & Aska’s Very Best Roll Over 20th Album on endless repeat.

Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken

So I’ve been playing this new Fire Emblem game that came out for Nintendo DS a few weeks ago and I’m already up to chapter 15. Goshdangit, Garnef, why didn’t you tell me you were planning to move? Bloody desert stages *grumble mumble grumble* Normal Mode is shockingly easy, though. The AI is really, really bad; they almost never attack .

I’m enjoying it, but more importantly I’m getting quite a lot out of it in the Japanese department. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like interrupting my gaming sessions to write out sentences or look up kanji. What I’m doing for Fire Emblem Shin Ankoku blah blah (later known as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon in the West), then, is reading all the dialogue out loud as I play. Being a remake of a NES game there isn’t that much dialogue to read anyway, but I try to sort of role play every single line, especially the bad guys parts and sort of get into the script, you know?

And what I’ve realized from this is, my pronunciation SUCKS! I can’t even hear myself properly but I can tell it sucks because it sounds all flat and monotone, and then I mean so say something but then it comes out completely differently… yah. It’s harder than it sounds. I think I’ll give a little more respect to voice actors now ^_^;;.

But what am I going to do about this sucky pronunciation? Getting more audio input definitely helps. I found it was easier to read stuff like “hatashite dou naru deshou ka” correctly because I’d heard that line so many times before. But I also think I should work more on output at the same time. You know how you talk to little babies, tell them to say “Papa” and then they babble and burble and finally come out with “Papa”? Yeah, like that, but not quite as cute. I need to find some audio to speak and repeat and to read out loud while checking my pronunciation. I already found this site with links to audio books and corresponding texts and am merrily downloading away even as I type. When I (eventually) get around to buying that mp3 player I started talking about 3 months ago, I’ll make sure it has a voice-recording option so I can tape myself as well. That’s my resolution for next week, by which time I should hopefully be done with Fire Emblem.

And that’s all for today.

I can’t go on watching Last Friends

Ummmmm… about Last Friends… I, err, got to thinking eh, and I realized that err, maybe I’m not quite thaaaat desperate to learn Japanese just yet? Like, it’s not supposed to be torture, right? There’s a glimmer of a good idea behind the how, but the actors just can’t get the job done. I’m talking the main two, the Michiru actress and the Sousuke guy. That Nagasawa girl has only 3 expressions: happy bunny, sad bunny and confused bunny. Pathetic. As for Sousuke, he’d be okay if he’d just keep his bloody mouth shut. He makes a decent creepy-abuser guy (though story-wise it was stupid to have his character come out in full-swing right at the start but whatever) but as soon as he opens his mouth he just blows it all way.

So, I’m not going to suffer through any more of this show. 3 episodes is more than enough. For now I’m just going to rip the audio from each episode – waste not, want not – and listen to it or something. And I’ll skip over all the domestic violence bits because they’re dumb and unnecessarily overwrought. The writers should have watched more Lifetime TV or something, they’ll show you how it’s really done (just kidding). At least then they would have had the decency to attempt to explain why Michiru puts up with Sousuke’s nonsense, and no, “her father was a drunk” doesn’t cut it. I mean, the two of them are already dating when the show starts so we have no idea how they met, or what she sees in him or anything. BS. It’s like the writers opened up a manual which said “abusers behave like this” “abused people behave like this” and so they went with it and expect the watchers to play along.

Alright then, so Michiru is stupid (she certainly looks it), fine, but is her stupidity infectious or something? I mean, why would Ruka and Takeru of all people cover up for Sousuke as well? “Oh it’s nothing, nothing happened here,” when both of them are lying on the floor with Takeru standing over them with a chair? They only just met him that day, why make up lies to cover for him? BULLSHIT. Thanks for reminding me why I avoid j-dramas, Last Friends!

Next up… I need a cleansing break. I managed to get a fairly decent cam of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. It’s been a while since I watched a cam anyway, lol. I’m almost hoping someone will get up and walk across the screen halfway through, hehe.

The Fifth Elephant book review

Well “The Fifth Elephant” by Terry Pratchett turned out to be a terrible book as far as Discworld novels go. Among the bad Discworld books it’s slightly above Monstrous Regiment and slightly below Men at Arms, about on par with Night Watch. You know, I don’t think Terry Pratchett has got it any more. Or maybe I’m just too used to him now. Or maybe it’s the Spirit of Japanese, punishing me for daring to stray from the path of immersion.

Anyway, this is a blog about Japanese, not a blog about books (English ones, at that) so let’s get back to the point, which is… GAMES. To be precise, Ar Tonelico 2 and Mana Khemia 2. I should be buying stock in Gust right about now, really. I can hardly wait for the weekend to start so I can sink my teeth into them. Which one should go first? I enjoyed AT more, so maybe I should keep the best for last? Then again why suffer through MK2 when the first Mana Khemia wasn’t really up to scratch? It was made after AT and it had worse graphics, can you believe that? Okay, so it’s settled. Ar Tonelico 2 it is. At least it will keep me occupied (and learning Japanese) until Fire Emblem DS comes out on 7th August.

じゃ、今日はここまで。