Super Meat Boy isn’t a run of the mill platformer that just everyone can really enjoy and grasp. I’m going to start this review by stating that before even touching on the sometimes absolutely absurd difficulty presented to you, because I want it to scare you off before deciding to have a heart attack while playing this. Consider that warning dropped.

Meat Boy is chillin’ with his meat bitch (I guess?) and then Dr. Fetus swoops down and steals her. If the names threw a curveball then just imagine  Mario -> Peach -> Bowser. Yeah, not hard. Anyway, so the main object of the game is to go level to level making a pixel of yourself touch your girlfriend. Not usually in a sexual way, but hey, for an added challenge, why not? But you need not put yourself through hell and back in order to get a challenge from this game. There’s no doubt about it that it is a very hard game. The best part of the painful difficulty is the rewarding feeling you get when you pull of these acrobatic stunts that you only dream of seeing on YouTube. It’s, in a sense, the same feeling you get when beating a Mega Man boss.

It’s apparent that Team Meat spent a lot of time thinking out these levels and obstacles that you are put through. Sometimes I just sit and watch a replay after completing a level and am just awe struck at the sheer precision and careful attention I needed to use in order to keep myself alive. It’s an exhilarating feeling and leaves you thinking, “How could someone design a level with this sort of depth to it?” Maybe I’m thinking too hard into it, but the level design really does impress me and that, along with the controls are the strongest point in the game to me. The graphics aren’t meant to stand out in anyway at all and they don’t present themselves as beautiful. They are what they are. This is based off of a flash game. N+ with a boy made of meat, really.

So far as the sound goes, it didn’t drive me crazy. The music is tolerable after being repeated a million times over and over again through death and the only sound effects you’ll ever hear are saw blades and SPLAT from all the deaths you can accumulate.

That’s Super Meat Boy. It’s a wall bouncing platformer that throws itself in your face and doesn’t give a fuck if you make it through or not. Will it frustrate you? Yes. Will it be worth it? Abso-fuckin’-lutely. Anyone who gets a kick out of beating a Mega Man game and Mario game will agree their money is well spent.

With that blatant plea for attention out of the way, let’s get to the good shit. To commemorate The Absolution’s revival, I’ve got a (late) review of Red Dead Redemption’s latest DLC for you, just in case you’re still on the fence about buying one of the greatest downloadable packs ever graced by human thought.

Zombies are bigger in Texas.

Undead Nightmare has you back in control of the ever sarcastic John Marston, and leads you on a quest to save your family from the clutches of zombification. A ride into the nearest town, which you may remember is Blackwater, leads to the discovery that your family members were not the only victims, but also that you are not the only survivor. Others who managed to escape being bitten will need your help defending their town, which you can accomplish by either fucking up every zombie you see, or just handing over some ammo so they can do it themselves. Strangely enough, handing over ammo is a cheaper alternative than shooting them all yourself, and since ammo is scarce in post-apocalyptic Texas you may want to go with that option whenever possible.

Undead Nightmare does not just add zombies to the game. It completely changes the mechanics, the atmosphere, and the story, AND THEN it adds new weapons, mounts, multiplayer options, and crazy fucking monsters for you to seek out and kill off. If you liked Red Dead Redemption (which you did), then there is absolutely, positively no reason not to get in on this beautiful new content. I mean honestly, there’s a horse with fucking fire billowing from his mane that sets unsuspecting zombies ablaze when you trample them. This is not something you can just decide to pass up. DLC does not get any better than this. If that’s not the type of convincing you’re looking for, then go ahead and read the actual review now.

Graphics – 10
As expected of a mammoth of a company like Rockstar, the visuals in Undead Nightmare are top notch. Zombies have fucking disgusting ass faces, the sky is so beautiful you’d swear it was real, and environments are as detailed as humanly possible. Everything is really really ugly, in a really really pretty way.

Sound – 9
I enjoy the gurgled grunts of mindless minions as they rip and tear away at you. I love the disgusting sound of a well placed headshot, as their craniums explode and they fall lifeless to the concrete. I verily enjoyed the creepy remixes of the original Red Dead music, even though it’s just as scarce as it’s always been. There’s also a new track that plays when you find your way into Mexico. A track that I am not a huge fan of.

Story – 9
The tale isn’t exactly original, but it’s told as well as any other story about the dead rising from the ground and devouring the flesh of every last living being. The ending has a pretty good twist too. It’s fairly amazing.

Gameplay – 9.5
Ammo conservation is stressed very well, as enemies can be killed with a single well-placed headshot, but if shot anywhere else it can take up to ten bullets before they finally go down. Clearing graveyards and saving towns are like their own little mini-games, and even though they’re relatively repetitive it’s still fun as fuck. If I had one thing to gripe about in this category, it would be how annoying it is to ride undead horses, but that’s just something you learn to deal with. Other than that you just kill zombies, and that is very hard to get wrong.

Overall – 9
Good shit, dawg. You’re missing out if you can’t cough up the twenty bucks to play it. Not to mention if you already own Redemption, you can get this pack along with the other two previous DLC packs in a bundle for twenty American dollars. Twenty very American dollars.

America – 10
Stay tuned for more shit soon. This undead blog won’t be entering the grave again anytime soon.

Why you want to play it: Take control of your favorite Final Fantasy protagonist or final boss/antagonist guy all the way up to FFXII. Interesting style of combat focused on roaming freely around a small battlefield in full 3D movement, executing attacks you’ve assigned to specific buttons. Power up your favorite character by fighting continuously and challenge your friends to a fight via PSP wireless communication. Fully voiced cut scenes featuring the kind of high blood pressure action you’ve come to expect of the series, plus those slow dramatic moments you’ve equally come to enjoy. Controls are easy to grasp, and movements are very fluid and pleasing. Lots of replayability, and plenty of interesting concepts for a fighting game.

Why you don’t want to play it: Alot of characters are just plain never used because they suck compared to everyone else. Overpowered combos and characters are easily abused. Lots of idiots who you don’t want to play with own it and inexplicably think that either Cloud or Sephiroth is the greatest character in the game. (Protip: Cloud’s pretty terrible, and Sephiroth’s a spamwhore.)

Game #5 – Bioshock 2 (PS3)

Why you want to play it: The sequel to a masterpiece of a game that caught the attention of millions of gamers and critics. Play as a fucking big daddy and rape shit with your fucking big daddy drill. A whole new element of gameplay is added with having to defend little sisters as they drain ADAM from corpses. Unsettlingly eerie soundtrack and lots of creepy ambiance that keeps your mind spinning. Various different kinds of weapons, each with unique and often satisfying effects. One of the most intense experiences you’ll ever find in a video game (at certain points). Plasmids, of course, are always fun to use, and there’s a whole ton of new ways to use them since the first game. Great and engaging story. Also there’s multiplayer.

Why you don’t want to play it: Well, there’s multiplayer. It’s not like the multiplayer is bad, it’s just not that great, and kind of feels like something that shouldn’t have even been there in the first place. I guess they did it to boost sales, but it’s really extraneous if you ask me.  Anyway, other than that, it’s just not quite as captivating as the first game.

Game #6 – Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)

Why you want to play it: Smashing, cutting, and shooting devils has never been so beautiful. New character Nero has a third method of attack over Dante, making combos even more flashy than ever. The amount of orbs you get to power up your character depends not on how many enemies you kill, but by how smoothly you do so. The game awards you for being a good player, not for being a diligent one. Hidden quests let you take a break from the main quest for a little bit to test your skills. Combos are easy to pull off, and are only frustrating to execute against certain types of enemies. The difficulty is incredibly balanced, requiring both skill and strategy to succeed. Wonderfully dramatic cut scenes advance the plot and get you pumped up for fighting. Plus, just when you think the game’s nearly over, BAM! You get to play as Dante for the next half.

Why you don’t want to play it: Some of the platforming bits can be overly frustrating, and more than one boss fight requires you to die a few times before you’ve finally memorized all of his attacks (this is if you don’t want to spend your hard earned orbs on health regenerating items, which I was very stubborn about.) The camera can be your worst enemy at times, as enemies off screen will take cheap shots at you while you’re trying to take out a specific target.

And that’s what I’ve got this week, peeps.

P.S. I beat Killer7 and plan on writing a full review of it, not one of these sissy mini reviews.

Return next Thursday, everybody!

I did not need to get technical to prove my point though as I have examples. Lets take The Conduit for instance. The Conduit is a much slower shooter than Call of duty and as such loses any feeling of intensity. Now I know you are going to tell me that its because its a Wii game, but its the design part of it that is what makes it less intense, not the HD visuals. So in order to get over this your character is given a big bar of health with recharging health, which is in most shooters right? But since it takes a good while to put at the enemy and shoot, while also keeping in mind to shot in burst to avoid the recoil spreading bullets all the place makes the shooting very difficult, and while doing all of this you are getting shot by 5 different guys. I’m one for challenge but I’m not a soldier, I don’t have the reflexes of a soldier, which is why I use a controller as an analogue to play as a soldier. Now lets say if I’m playing lets say Medal of Honor on the PS3 all I have to do is move the stick hit R1, maybe hold L1 if I want a good shot, and it does the exact same action in a little amount of time.

Now Kinect is the one out of all the motion controllers that I’m most opposed to primarily because of: no buttons. So what Kinect does is it has to constantly read your movement and determine an action based on it. It also restricts any immediate input by the player so don’t expect ANY action games from Kinect ever. Kinect I suppose is trying to attract people new to gaming to have a device that is easier to operate than a controller or keyboard. But let me ask you this: do Baseball players use practice bats in a game just because they aren’t too good at it? Now you may argue that steroids are used, but that is cheating, which is not relevant to my discussion. If the point of making a game easier for someone to play is to take away that immediate input then that obviously means that the games made for Kinect are not for “core” gamers, which is understandable since it isn’t intended for them in the first place.

Move however is trying to be a middle ground for both the “core” and casual crowd, and what you end up with is 50% of what one side wants and 50% which is not wanted. You can play SOCOM with Move, but also a Harry Potter knock-off, aka Sorcery. Trying to attract two crowds to one device seldom works in Sony’s history. They tried to attract iPhone users and PSP gamers with the PSPgo, it failed terribly. Hell when the PS3 first launched they tried to appeal to people by saying that it was a multimedia device. They did terribly for the first few years both because of pricing and not enough games. This E3 Sony showed the price of the Move which is $50 alone. However you need a a PS3 camera for it to work, so it costs more, but some games you need two of them, so it costs more… Kinect is rumored to cost $150, which is subject to change. If you are trying to attract new people to play your systems why is it that they are asking for such a huge investment?

So basically they are making this to appeal to another audience, but are making it really expensive. The Wii works because it is not nearly as much of an investment as Kinect or Move, and has games that appeal to every gamer. Sony and Microsoft are regressing back to when they charged obscene amounts of cash for their consoles, only its just controllers that do not appeal to their dedicated customers, and cost too much for them to even try it. It seems the more the gaming industry tries to move forward we keep moving back.

Game #1 – Dead Rising (X360)

Why you want to play it: Hundreds of slow moving, brain munching, casually dressed zombies on screen at once, mixed with hundreds of diverse makeshift weapons to be wielded by a hulky photographer of a man with a resolution to get the scoop and return alive. The story is optional, but if you want to get out alive you’ll have to try your best to complete it. Corny dialog and cheesy storyline, purposefully done to make it feel like a true Hollywood zombie infestation. When your tired of mowing down hordes of stupid zombies, psychopaths with weapons and shit take the place of bosses. RPG like experience system where you earn increased health, storage capacity, foot speed, and learn new zombie-killing skills. There’s a survival mode where you just have to get Frank to live for 72 hours without starving or getting eaten, which is for some reason superbly fun. Also there’s vehicles.

Why you don’t want to play it: Sometimes getting to certain spots to activate the story can be frustrating if you’re not prepared. It gets easier if you beat the game first, then take your earned skills over to the next game, like increased foot speed, but who wants to have to beat a game twice to truly ‘beat’ it? Saving is an ass and a half, as you have to find a bathroom to record your progress. P.S. bathrooms are fairly infrequent. Lastly, for you PS3 fans, it’s a 360 exclusive.

Game #2 – Arcana Heart (PS2)

Why you want to play it: A truly deep fighting system that focuses on aerial combos. Maps are extremely large both vertically and horizontally. Classic 2d play will put a smile on any fighting game fan’s face. Ability to home in on your enemies with a dashing technique, mainly used after knocking an opponent into the air so you can jump up there and stick your fist in their ass. A good roster of unique characters, none of which are easily more powerful than the rest. Gallery mode for you to view all your kawaii shojos in their development stages. The ability to choose from 11 different ‘Arcanas’ which will add attacks to your character’s moveset and sometimes give certain attacks an elemental boost, giving every fighter customization options.

Why you don’t want to play it: An all girl cast of anime style characters means you’ll likely look like a faggot when purchasing it or showing it to your friends. Each girl seems to play off of some sort of anime trope or fetish, leaving very little room for a real personality in your favorite fighter. The final boss is, though not unexpectedly, nearly impossible to defeat.

Game #3 – Muramasa (Wii)

Why you want to play it: Extremely stylistic 2d hack and slash with various different moves and enemies to defeat them with. Hundreds of different swords categorized into two types for you to create and utilize. Lots of flashy things and beautiful, natural looking backgrounds. Gigantic bosses, like you remember from your favorite old school hack and slash game. Two different characters to play as, each with their own unique stories to follow, giving the illusion of double the amount of gameplay that you were expecting. Great game to play on your classic controller.

Why you don’t want to play it: You don’t like hack and slash games. You don’t like Wii games. You don’t like ancient Japan.

Come back next Thursday, boys and gals!

“Persona 4 is a game reviewer’s dream.” – I can’t remember where I read this, but someone did say these words.

And I’m here to repeat them. Persona 4 is a game reviewer’s dream. It was hardly a mainstream title when it first came out, and even now that Persona is making a comeback with all these portable re-releases it still has a limited fanbase. This is what game reviewers live for. The chance to review a good game that passed by the masses, and tell the whole world about the wonderful experience they missed out on. Here’s what I’m trying to say: If you like JRPGs and own a PS2, buy Persona 4.

It combines elements from all over the JRPG spectrum, and it implements them very well. I may even go as far as saying it does so flawlessly, but that’s beyond my comprehension as an ameteur game reviewer, so we’ll just say it’s very, very good. Let’s see… It’s got a little bit of Pokemon, a bit of mechanics you might see in a dating sim, it’s got an old fashioned RPG dungeon crawling system, and, of course, it’s got the illusion of freedom, as is important in all RPGs. Although Persona 4 gives you a little bit too much freedom.

See, the game tells you what you have to do, but it doesn’t tell you how you should do it, or even when. You get to choose that all on your own. If you decide your time would be better spent flirting with girls than achieving your objective, then the chance to advance the story will pass you by, and you will have to reload your save file. In a way, it’s kind of similar to achieving missions in Dead Rising, only a lot less difficult and frantic.

So here’s the plot: You, [Protagonist #880], have just moved from the city to a small town called Inaba. After arriving there you begin to hear strange rumors about a TV channel that plays in the middle of the night, cleverly called the Midnight Channel. Supposedly when you gaze at your TV while the Midnight Channel is playing, the image of your true love will appear. But the reality of the Midnight Channel is much darker than the rumors, and soon you’ll find yourself able to go back and forth between the realm of reality and the TV realm by literally crawling through the screen of a television. From there, you meet up with several interesting characters who join you in your quest to solve the mystery behind the Midnight Channel using your newly gained special powers, provided to you by strange creatures known as Personas.

The Protagonist’s first Persona is quite intimidating, though relatively weak.

Normally, everyone can only have one Persona. But you, as the great and mighty protagonist of a JRPG, are allowed to carry and switch between multiple Personas, even during battle. As you progress and get stronger, the number of Personas you can hold will steadily increase, up to a maximum of twelve. In order to gain new Personas for use (which you will want to do as soon as possible, because your original Persona only remains useful for a very short amount of time) you must defeat ‘shadows’, the enemies of P4, and then play a ‘shuffle’ minigame at the end of the battle. If you can pick out the Persona card from the rest of the cards, you get to keep it and use it according to your will. Just like catching a Pokemon!

Once you’ve gathered a number of Personas, you have the ability to fuse them together to not only make stronger Personas, but also to free up some space in your Persona repertoire. This way you can keep capturing more and more Personas while, in the process, gathering fusion materials to make your Personas stronger. Simple process. Effective.

So obtaining and fusing Personas is great, but more importantly (to a certain group of people) is the social aspect of the game. Where most RPGs focus solely on growing stronger in combat and talking to NPCs is treated as nothing more than a way to advance the plot or learn new (usualy useless) information, P4 turns talking to people into a whole other aspect of the gameplay. By communicating with certain characters, you can befriend them and proceed to increase your social links with them. As these social links increase, your ability to fuse certain types of Personas will also rise. Not to mention when you max out a social link with a female character you have the option to become intimate with them. That’s right. Intimate.

The Protagonist seems to be buddying up well with Yukiko here.

So you’re not just restricted to fighting and improving your combat stats. You also have a completely different set of stats that are used purely for social interactions; namely Courage, Knowledge, Understanding, Expression, and Diligence. Increasing these stats is usually accomplished through reading certain books or taking part time jobs for some hands on experience (and a little extra cash). There’s so much to do in this game it’s ridiculous at times. You’ll be torn between choosing how to spend your after school hours, either talking to one of your friends, going inside the TV for some combat training, fishing by the riverbed, or maybe eating at a local restaurant. The freedom here is amazing.

But you can’t just do whatever you want all the time. If you don’t go into the TV to train and get new Personas, you won’t be strong enough to accomplish your goals as smoothly as you might have wanted. Basically what I’m saying is P4 is not free from one of the most annoying, yet for some reason crucial, part of any JRPG: Grinding. There are some points where you’ll find yourself running back and forth between two monster spawn points for an hour and a half just taking them down  with everything you’ve got until your SP runs to zero and you have to exit the TV for the day. But then when you return the next day, it’s all worth it to see the monsters shrink in size before you.

Your power compared to that of the shadows in a dungeon are shown by the shadow’s size. Once you get around ten levels above them, they start to get really, really small and wimpy. They lose all intimidation and watching them float around becomes a form of entertainment in itself. Wonderful.

Since we’re on the subject, let’s talk about the dungeon crawling. Basically, before you enter any given dungeon, you have to pick the party members you would like to take with you. You can have three members accompany you into the dungeon, giving you a maximum party size of four. Unlike most JRPGs, you can see your party members at all times. They don’t sink into your body when they’re not needed, but they never get in the way either. It’s kind of pointless gameplay wise, but I think it’s a nice touch to be able to see your followers as you roam around the dungeon.

This is the very first dungeon you enter, along with your two friends Yosuke and Chie.

Anyway, when you enter a dungeon you start off on the first floor (a concept you should not be unfamiliar with) and on each floor is hidden a staircase, along with an assortment of enemies and treasure chests. Now all you have to do is scramble around until you find what you’re looking for. You can either try to find the staircase right away and just move up, or attempt to reveal the entire floor and get all the treasure, in the process running into several enemies which are crucial to defeat for the experience. The choice may seem obvious, but sometimes it’s better to run up as many floors as you can, avoiding combat completely if you can.

See, combat isn’t just initiated randomly. You have to come into contact with one of the shadows in order to start the fight. If the shadow touches you without you doing anything, it gets a preemptive strike on your party. This really sucks, so what you’re gonna wanna do is press the ‘x’ button to swing you sword, and try to hit the bastard from behind. If you hit a shadow with your weapon from the front or side, no one gets the preemptive strike. If you hit the shadow from behind, your party enters rape mode. That’s how it works.

In combat there are four main damaging elements, and two rarely used, but arguably more effective elements. The most popular ones are Wind, Fire, Electricity, and Ice. The other two are Darkness and Light. The key to winning most battles is to exploit your enemies’ weaknesses because, once you do so, you’re pretty much guaranteed to win the fight. When you hit an enemy with an element it is weak against, not only does it get knocked down, but you get an extra turn immediately afterward, meaning you can continue to exploit any other enemy on the field’s weakness until you’ve knocked all of them down in a single turn.

And what do you do once you’ve knocked them all down? You rape them, of course! One of your party members will say something like, “Now’s our chance! Let’s kick their asses!” and you can either press the ‘x’ button to agree with them, or the ‘o’ button to hold them back. Pressing ‘x’ initiates an All-Out Attack, where all of your party members run into a giant smokestack of rape and pillaging and attack your helpless enemies relentlessly. Once the smoke clears, your enemies will most likely be dead, unless they have the fortitude of a brick wall (which some enemies do).

The product of an all out attack early on in the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to deal around 1500 damage with one of these attacks.

And that’s pretty much the flow of dungeon crawling. Every few floors there’ll be a mini boss, and then, of course, the real boss is at the uppermost floor, which is usually identified by a save point sitting just outside some kind of massive door.

Story progression is done most often through cutscenes featuring the in game sprites standing in a static environment talking about things that have happened. This would normally be really unacceptable and boring in a video game, but you’ll actually be amazed by the characters and entranced by the excellent voice work put into each scene. Plus whoever wrote the dialog for this has a great sense of humor. The only problem is that the dialog was written by a Japanese person, so some of the Japanese humor is a tad difficult to comprehend. No worries though. If you’re the type of person who plays JRPGs you probably won’t mind.

It’s not all testacle jokes, I promise.

Oh right, speaking of the dialog and Japanese people, I should probably mention just how Japanese this game is. Of course it takes place in Japan, that’s not a big deal, it’s the fact that the English speaking characters use honorifics when addressing each other that really gets you. “Let’s hang out, Rise-chan.” “You’re my best friend, Yukiko-san.” Things like that. As someone who spends as much of his time playing video games as he does watching anime, this didn’t bother me. Like, at all. In fact I thought it was kind of cool. But if you’re some kind of Japan-hater and can’t stand to have honorifics in your English dialog, perhaps Persona 4 isn’t for you after all.

So yeah, it’s got more J than your average JRPG. For some people that’s a warning, for others that’s a selling point. I for one enjoy having cute little 3d rendered Japanese girls call me Senpai every time I do something cool. Maybe that’s why I don’t have a girlfriend in real life.

ANYWAY, back to something you care about, not all of the cutscenes are just boring ass speech. Some of the cutscenes actually feature boring ass animation! A-1 studios did some anime style cutscenes for Persona 4 and, to be honest, it doesn’t look like they got paid much, because they consist mostly of characters standing in a still pose with nothing but their mouths moving. It looks really cheap if you’re able to notice such things.

But enough about animation. That’s not what makes Persona 4 Persona 4. What makes P4 P4 is the music. There’s a reason the game comes with a separate soundtrack disc in the packaging, and that reason is that it’s goddamn amazing. Some people would probably disagree with me on this for several, indeterminable reasons, but I know that I’m not the only one who enjoys the music enough to play the soundtrack CD through my computer or while driving my car. It’s really something, I promise. Especially during the final boss fight.

Speaking of which, there are actually about three different final boss fights, depending on how you handle the game. I’ve been told there are four endings, but I was only able to get three: The bad ending, the normal ending, and the true ending. Sources say there’s a ‘worst’ ending, but, as I said, I don’t think I managed to get that one. And don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil any of them. I’ll just say that the game will end early if you get the bad ending. If you manage to move up to the normal ending though, then you get to traverse an extra dungeon and take on another final boss, a boss even more final than the last. But then, if you go even further and somehow unlock the true ending, you get to climb yet another dungeon with yet another final boss, EVEN MORE FINAL THAN THE LAST. Fortunately, this one is as final as you can get, and this is the one with the epic ass music.

It’s truly a masterpiece of a game, and I am honestly surprised that more people don’t know about this game. This is probably really unprofessional of me to say, but goddamnit, I’m gonna say it. Persona 4 beats the shit out of any Final Fantasy game I’ve ever played. Persona 4 is the King of JRPGs in my book. Atlus done me proud. Persona 4 is a very, very powerful game, up to the point where it starts to toy with your emotions, sometimes nearly forcing you to the brink of manly tears. I promise you, this game is worth your twenty dollars.

I went ahead and took the liberty of buying Persona 3 as well, since a lot of people seemed to like that one also. I haven’t gotten too far into it, and I probably won’t do a review of it, but it has piqued my interest in the Persona series. I am looking forward to Persona 5 like nobody’s business. Final Fantasy lately has been ruining everything I thought JRPGs were about, but Persona has restored my faith in the genre. Once again Atlus, bravo.

Bravo.

Well, that doesn’t matter, because I have a great post for anyone willing enough to read it. We didn’t actually get around to doing a preview of all the new anime coming out this past season, but I did happen to latch onto a few of them and watched episodes on and off between playing Persona 4. Here, friends, are my thoughts on some of these Japanimations. (BTW I beat Persona 4 and it was epic.)

ANGEL BEATS!

Nine episodes of this and I still have no idea what’s going on. It’s a fine enough show if you decide to ignore the pretzel tied backstory and just focus on the characters and beautiful animation, but that’s easier said than done. And even then you have to force yourself not to gag when you hear any given character’s personal catchphrase, which each of them have and tend to spout at moments when it is either unnecessary or completely predictable. The only bearable (and honestly interesting) character is Otonoshi, the red headed teen that the story follows. Up until he regains his memories, you’re probably going to wonder why the hell you’re even watching this shit, but after he starts to remember what happened before he died you kind of want to watch just to see flashbacks of their original lives so you can wonder if your death will ever be so tragic or caked with drama. Also, every now and then there’s lots of shooting and the like, which serves absolutely no purpose other than to keep you entertained, since people can’t die in the world this show takes place in.

K-ON!!

I got up to around five episodes when I decided that this just wasn’t the first season. It’s good, yes, as K-On should be, just not as good, in my opinion, as the first season. The first season was more about them learning to play instruments and songs together, which, near the end, led up to a really touching moment. In season 2 they already know how to play. They’re already best friends. All of the characters have been explored and explained. There’s nothing new. It’s just a continuation of what I already watched. Surely that’s the safest way to ensure that the second season of an anime remains as good as the first, but sometimes you have to take risks, and risks K-On!! does not take.

B Gata H Kei

This anime got a lot of hate on different forums around the glorious internet for it’s admittedly stupid plot revolving around a girl who wants to have sex with… I think it was 100?… people. And with a story like that, I can say, it deserved all the shit it got. But anyone with a good enough sense of humor who was able to see this story as a joke rather than taking it seriously was greeted with a charming little anime with more laugh out loud moments in a half hour period than most Adam Sandler movies. B Gata is a comedy, and it should not be taken as anything other than that. Sure it tells the story of two teenagers who are just confused about love, but Yamada’s intense determination to have loveles sex with A HUNDRED PEOPLE tends to overshadow that portion of the story. Bottom line, it’s funny. For funny people only.

And that’s all I’ve got for you, gentlemen and women. I’ve heard good things about Heroman and Maid Sama, but I never did get around to watching those. Been too busy playing around with Red Dead and Persona and whatnot. I got lots of new games to review, so those will probably be coming up soon. Later gators.

Angel Butts!

Angel Beats! is the story of a boy who wakes up at some sort of school, and can’t remember who he is or how he got there. The boy then sees a girl with a sniper rifle perched near him. She tells him that he has died, that this is the afterlife, and that she’s a member of the “Like-Hell-I’m-Dead Battlefront”, a group of fighters formed to kill the Angel roaming the campus sent by God to help kill the students of the school, thus helping them become reborn into their next life. This rebellious group of kids want to take over this world by killing this Angel. The boy. after being killed 3 times, remembers his name (Otonashi) and is introduced to the rest of the “Like-Hell-I’m-Dead Battlefront” members, who are all crazy. The group, after being introduced to Otonashi, move out on their next mission, securing meal tickets from the regular students who attend the school by holding a concert.

The show is based on a light novel written by Jun Maeda and illustrated by GoToP, both members of the visual novel group Key (The wonderful folks who brought us such masterpieces as Air and Kanon. That was sarcasm, by the way. Screw you, Key.) and serialized in Dengeki G’s Magazine. Angel Beats! is a bit off-putting at first because of the clash between the show’s humor and it’s art style. You’ll get Otonashi being killed in funny ways, but the serious-looking art-style takes the punch out of the joke. I laughed, but it just didn’t come off as funny as it could have been, say, in a more comedic and less serious art style. But that definitely did not take away from the quality of this anime. Angel Beats! But PA Works did a good job on the animation, because it’s pretty.

I like it. There. I said it. Key has made an anime I actually like. I’m not jumping on the Angel Beats! bandwagon, but this is definitely a good one. For now. Recommended

More details when everything gets more concrete,

Seth.