I had another (in my opinion, better) image made, but then I got a BSOD and it got sent to oblivion ... Enjoy the ass shot though.

So, and thus we move on to another my my reviews. This time the subject will be the first season of Black Lagoon.

First off – Characters. It was a bit weird at first to hear Italy (Hetalia: Axis Powers) as the main character, Rock. Overall the main cast, as well as some of the recurring characters were pretty likeable. Dutch, Benny, Revy and the newcomer “Rock” form the main cast, the workers of “Black Lagoon”, a delivery company. The supporting characters – such as Balalaika, The Gun Wielding Nun and various others are also very interesting and fun characters. I definitely think the characters contribute to how good this series has been so far.

The plot was also fairly good. Split in to separate arcs it was more alike to a procedural programme than a serialised one. The stories were interesting and had plenty of action, and were definitely a plus. The music was also fairly good. The OP and ED weren’t really my kind of thing, although most of the ED I could listen to in order to relax.

To be honest, I don’t have much to write about this show. I just liked it. So, I think I’ll leave this review here and move on to other things. Expect a review of the second series – The Second Barrage – sometime in the coming days.

Star Captain Monthly Mecha (August) - www.mechquest.com
Sorry for the bad pic, part of the mech is hidden off-screen so I had to do it mid-attack, so the scythe is held at a funny angle/place, and the head is hidden.

As a new month as rolled around Mechquest has released it’s newest Star Captain (SC) monthly mecha – The Reaper. It focuses on Damage Over Time (DOT) and as such boasts a few different special abilities to go with it. Beyond this is the ability to level up as you level up, so it becomes obselete at a slower rate than other mechs. I bought the best version I could – the Level 20 version, which can level up to level 23 (my current level, as of writing, is 22).

So, off I went to test out this mecha, and to figure out a strategy to use it. The first thing I notice when I went in to battle is that the body attack had an automatic cool down of 99 turns already on it. This confused me, but I’ll come back to it later.

The first default weapon I’ll talk about in depth is the head – “Odious Sonic Beam” (where the word Odious is different on each version of this mech). It isn’t that strong of a weapon, but when it’s last hit hits, it has the ability to DOUBLE your DOT effects, which are already fairly strong for this mech! I ALWAYS start out the battle with this attack while using this mecha, as it can speed things quickly to an end!

The next attack I will focus on is the “Odious Reaper’s Mark”. A single hit weapon for the Front Shoulder slot, it also has a unique ability. By covering your opponent in a heavy coating of red dye (not sure if the dye changes colours, it might do depending on your colour settings but mine shows up as red), it makes it easier to hit them. So, if you can hit better, you’re more likely to be able to inflict your DOT effects on your enemy. I don’t often use this, but it’s a good thing to have in case your opponent has either a dodge bonus, or they can lower your Bonus To Hit.

The next thing I’ll talk about is the three main weapons of the mecha – the Odious Scythe, Odious Blue Blade and the Odious Chakra Launcher. The Scythe sits on your front arm, the Blue Blade is a hidden energy weapon in your Back Arm, and the Chakra Launcher is that big thing on the Back Shoulder. They each have a DOT effect, so when given the head’s DOT booster it’s REALLY effective. The Scythe has a single attack, while the Chakra Launcher and the Blue Blade have 2. From the looks of the damage I’ve put out, it seems like the Chakra Launcher might be the strongest.

Finally, the body attack. Those of you who are unfamiliar with this game might want to know what the “body” slot is. It’s unique to every mech design – you can’t equip another one (which you can do with all the other slots). The Reaper’s body attack is called the Odious D.F.A, which stands for “Death From Above”. As noted before it has a 99 cooldown at the start of the battle. Well, it shows 99 next to the weapon on the battle menu, but when you hover you notice it has pretty much an infinite cooldown. So, how do you activate it? Once you get to below 25% of your health in a single battle it will be available to use, and it’s a great weapon too! The reaper jumps in to space and then dives down on to your enemy. It has the ability to destroy the enemy’s head weapon (although I haven’t experienced this yet) and also inflicts a stun effect on your opponent. It’s best to use this attack with the Reaper’s Mark activated, so you can ensure the effects will take hold on your enemy. The stun is really useful, as when you’re low on health it can keep you alive and also give your DOT effects some free reign on your enemy’s systems.

Now, enough about weaponry, let’s get to the aesthetics. The mech looks pretty cool, with my only dislike of it coming from the feet. They just look horrible, but I suppose I can deal. Blades are a big thing on this mecha, with all but one attack involving sharp weapons, and the design incorporating blades in the shoulders, feet and elbows. I’m not quite sure why they went with a double-ended scythe though, since you only use one end of the blade, and the other end is normally hidden off-screen when standing still, but I suppose it makes for a nice look.

Overall I like this mecha. It’s a huge improvement on last month’s Aegis mech (which looked horrible and had a “type” I didn’t like, so I didn’t buy) while also being more effective (in my opinion) than the Warbear mech.

So, that’s the end of this review, see you next time everyone, Bye Bye!

The Transmogrified Victorian Notepad – AKA Steampunk Notepad. It looks really cool, although I think it would probably be a bit heavy (made from aluminium and all). I also don’t really have anywhere to make it, and I doubt I’ll have anywhere to make it while at Uni! I’ll probably try and make it out of something else – Perhaps covering some card with leather instead of the aluminium might work better?

“Harry Potter” Wand – Well, they call it a Harry Potter wand, but it could just be a wand. I think I’d modify something like this with some wire, to give it a sort of handle wrap, like a saber – the hand guard bit. Luckily this shouldn’t require any specialist equipment, and I should be able to do this in my Uni room.

Steampunk Gun – There’s LOADS of different ways to make a steampunk gun on this website, so it’s all about designing and creating your own. This is just a link to one of the guns that I found to look very nice. I’d probably use some of the ideas given in the various different “instructables” to make my own. But once again this is something that will probably require specialist equipment, so I doubt I could do it in my Uni room

There’s three things for now. As I continue to look around that website, I’m sure there will be plenty more things I find that I would like to make, and I will report this here. So, bye bye for now everyone!

So, Persona 3 and Persona 4 are practically set in the same world, only at different times and in different fictional areas of Japan (At least I think they’re fictional areas – anyone know of a real life “Inaba” and “Port City”? Well, P3 (as Persona 3 shall now be typed as) is set in Port City, at least I think that’s what it’s called. For the school life elements of the story, we move to the local high school – Gekkoukan High School. Now, P4 (Persona 4) is set in the more rural location of Inaba, with the local school ‘Yasogami High School’.

Both Protagonists are the same age, but with different looks. The P3 MC (Main Character) is known as “Minato Arisato” in the manga series, but as with both games you name him whatever you want, and no hint is actually given to what his “normal” name is at any point in the game. Minato has a very “Emo” look to him, often slouching and has his hair covering half of his face. His starting persona is “Orpheus”, who people might be familiar with from Greek Mythology, although he also has two personae that are “his”. The first is Thanatos, who is the transfiguration of a social link character – Pharos – who is actually the person who is meant to bring about the end of the world but was locked inside Minato before the series started. He’s a member of the Death Arcana, and people might recognise the name either from mythology, or as a part of Freud’s Tri-Parte Personality Theory, as the death instinct of the ID. There’s also Messiah, although I don’t really remember there being anything mentioned about it in the storyline … just the fact that it looks like a fusion of Orpheus and Thanatos. The P4 MC however has more of a geeky look with his “Bowl Cut”-like hairstyle, and has better posture that goes by the name Sōji Seta in the manga. He’s also taller (I think). He has the persona Izanagi (A name which is important when you know who the True Ending’s boss is!), who can be “upgraded” to Izanagi-no-Ookami in your second playthrough (although it is also used in the True Ending’s final boss battle, although it just uses and instant-win attack). I definitely have to say that I preferred P3′s MC because (major game ending spoiler) he dies, and because he can wield any weapon (while P4′s MC can only wield Two Handed Swords)

Moving on from the Main Characters, let’s talk about your party members. Persona 3 has a FAR better cast of characters in my opinion. From Akihiko the boxing legend to Koromaru the Dog with enough of a psyche to be able to summon a persona, or Ken – the foul mouthed 10 year old. I had trouble picking who I wanted in my final party because I liked too many. The opposite, however, was true for Persona 4. Sure, I loved Kanji and Teddie was pretty cool, but I had trouble picking who the final member of my party should be for the final boss(es) because I just didn’t like the rest! Naoto had promise, but sucked in battle – I mean,she uses ALMIGHTY, HAMA and MUDO skills! That’s just annoyingly useless in boss battles! In the end I just decided to go with an all male team, and rounded it off with Yosuke – but he got surprisingly strong at the upper levels (which is surprising because he’s of the Magician Arcana ) So in terms of the characters in the “team”, I have to go with Persona 3 again (which is now winning 2 to nothing, by the way).

Moving on to EVEN MORE characters (those of you who have never played Persona probably thought it ended above, right? Think again! I would include the teachers, but Persona 3 wins hands down with the inclusion of “Magic Class” (so, I’ll give that 3 to nothing). But not, this bit is about Social Links. Social Links are a BIG part of both games as they increase the levels of the personae that you fuse, making it MUCH easier to get good ones and making the game MUCH easier. You can actually max out a persona’s skills when fusing, depending on what the level of it’s highest skill is and whether or not you’re doing it on a “Bonus Social Link EXP” forecast (Persona 4 only). So, since this entry is running long, I’ll keep this fairly short (or at least I intend to while writing this … it might run on a bit!) So, let’s compare a few of my favourite ones. First – Death! In Persona 3 it’s a storyline based one, so you can’t “fail” it, and in P4 it’s a link where you don’t have to worry about what you say, and don’t have to bring a Death Arcana Persona along with you to get extra “points”. Which is good. I think I actually prefer the P4 character, as one of her first lines is “I am Death” which threw me back a few feet. Next up is the Sun Link – probably one of my favourites from P3, it was lack lustre in P4. Then there’s all of the ones based around your team members. All of your team mates get a Social Link in Persona 4, while only the girls get one in P3. I actually prefer the P3 way! In P4 you had to finish the social link to “evolve” the character’s persona, but in 3 it was done via the storyline, so this NEED to do those links was really annoying! Since this is running on now, I’ll give Persona 3 the win for Social Links – 4 to nothing now!

Finally, the comparison of characters that get so little recognition – Elizabeth and Margaret, also known as Igor’s Bitches. Not much to say about both, except that Elizabeth (P3) was rigid and very separate from the Real World, while Margaret is very more “normal” and fluid in her speech pattern. So in this instance Persona 4 gets a win – 4 to 1 in favour of Persona 3! And in case you didn’t notice, this section was basically to get Persona 4 a point – it’s not fair to be so disliked

So, Persona 3 wins 4 to 1. I kind of mad this “winning” thing up as I went along. I was going to have it rack up points continually, but I think it’s going to go like tennis – Persona 3 has won the first set, giving it a score of 1 to nothing.

See you next time for the next part of this feature! Coming up next … Quests, I think. Bye Bye!

Zero no Tsukaima is set in an alternate universe where those who can use magic are the nobility, and those who can’t are the “plebians”. This was a word I didn’t know, and I don’t know whether it was just a word the subbers chose to use or not, but I gathered that it meant commoners, or the lower classes. I suppose that’s where the chavs got “you pleb” (which is ironic in that case), which makes it another classical word they had to go and ruin (see also: Vex, e.g. “You vex me bruv!” or “What you so vexed for, innit”).

So, the series revolves around Louise, who has no real talent for Magic and instead causes explosions whenever she tries. Her efforts have gained her the nickname “Zero Louise”. At the start of the series, she is going in to her second year of Magic School (like Hogwarts, only less bad acting from the main character). At the start of the second year all students must summon their Magical Familiars. For example, one person summoned a Salamander, another summoned a giant Mole-thing, and another a Dragon. Zero Louise however summons a Plebian, something which has apparantly never happened before. This Plebian become’s her familiar (hence the title “Zero no Tsukaima”, roughly translated to “Zero’s Familiar” I believe?).

Well, that’s enough of the background for the show I think. Moving on to my thoughts. I loved the characters in the series, even though they might be the most common types – The playboy, the horny girl, the silent intellectual, the useless one. However, they all seemed pretty cool to me. Each of their personalities was matched by their summoned familiar.

Unfortunately, I’m not in the best mood for writing at the moment so I shall be cutting this entry short here. I’ll take this final chance to say that I could have watched this all in a day, and I would have if I hadn’t watched two episodes late the night before. I ended up watching the other episodes the following day, something that hasn’t happened in a while. So therefore I rate this show highly, and I can’t wait to go on to the second series – let’s hope it doesn’t ruin it!

See you next time, bye bye!

Harry Potter’s Rape: Yeah … it might just be my memory, but I don’t remember Harry actually getting dragged in to the water and raped by that Inferi

The Death of Dumbledore: Like what? I honestly laughed when he started falling from the tower! It was just funny!

Snape: Oh god! Every time he spoke we were in stitches!

Random Diner Scene at the beginning: Yeah … like … that served pretty much no purpose!

Random Romcom scenes: They can put these in but not some of the important bits?!

WHERE’S THE VISIT TO THE GAUNT HOUSE?!?: These are very important

The Hiding of the potions book: “Ok Harry, you close your eyes while I kiss you and then hide this book somewhere in the general area that we’re in so nobody can ever find it! Oh, and I wont put a wig on a bust and put this weird crown thing on top of it to mark it’s location because that would be setting something up for the next film that the producers are probably going to change, because I’m not actually supposed to be in this scene anyway!” And how did that bird get inside the cabinet? I’m pretty sure the one that Draco transported died, so was it to highlight the fact that the cupboard was now working?

Random “Let’s destroy the bridge” scene at the beginning: I WANTED THE PRIMEMINISTER SCENE!

No Funeral: Although this is apparantly in the next film? It would have been a good end to the film if they had the funeral and ended it there, with Fawkes’s song, the burying of Dumbledore with his Wand, followed by the burning! Not that cheesy stupid scene with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

The camping up of Dumbledore: Did anyone else notice? Apparantly the Director thought the “Dumbledore is gay” thing was a rumour, until told by Rowling herself. But he just seemed a lot camper this time.

Aragog’s Funeral: THAT WAS SO LAME! I SWEAR Aragog was bigger in the first movie! It just looked so small.

Slughorn: Actually, to be honest, the casting seemed okay (in my opinion). They obviously can’t make him look like as much a slug as his name suggests, but it was better than Umbridge before! The thing is though, when he said to Harry “Are you game?”, I honestly thought he said “Are you gay?”

The prostituting of Harry Potter: Yeah, the whole thing about Dumbledore getting Harry in to the Slug Club just seemed like he was being whored off!

Daniel Radcliffe’s Acting: Let’s see. “Dumbledore’s Dead! I’ll just act this scene plain faced”. “Slughorn, you’re talking about my dead mother and you’re all teary eyed, I’m going to convince you by remaining completely straight faced with no emotion whatsoever and you’ll believe my bad acting and give me your memory!”

The inclusion of scenes from the next book: The Burrow Burning? I thought that happened at the Wedding? Which I’m guessing isn’t happening next time then?

Luna finding Harry on the train: Wasn’t it supposed to be Tonks? And wasn’t Snape supposed to bring him up to the Castle? Weren’t we supposed to see Tonk’s Patronus?

Well, I think I’ve gone on long enough. There’s probably more but I’m trying to forget the trainwreck that was the Half Baked Pothead. You may be wondering where I got the title for this entry from? Well, when Harry takes the Felix Felicis he was just so high! The way he walked even suggested he was high. There’s this and the fact that the directors and producers must have been high when creating this “movie”. Just to mention some highlights – Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix once again produced some wonderful scenes – the ones she was in anyway! One of my favourite characters. Well, she’ll be in the second movie for the next book a lot I suppose – and they better keep the “GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER, BITCH!” line in there, OR ELSE! Also, Luna was once again lovely.

So, that’s it for now. I’ll see you guys later, bye bye!

Just a short post for now, to tell you about the new layout and header for this journal. I decided to go with a new layout because the old was a bit too thin for my liking. Even though the actual blogging section of this new layout is about the same size, I feel it looks better with that extra column. The header took me a little while to do, but not too long. I love the Colour Balance tool at the moment. It’s really fun to mess around with (and WAY better than Hue/Saturation which I had been using for so long!) Thanks go to Deviantart for teaching me about it (I can’t remember which tutorial it was that showed me how to do the header like I do though, but if I find it again I’ll post a link!). The renders used in my header at the moment comes from Planet Renders.

Now, on to the headers. First up I’ll include my old headers from the old layout. It was basically my first attempt at making a header for this blog, and so didn’t turn out that great.

As you can see, it’s not that great. It was basically gradients, bevel and emboss, a “Magic Circle” brush (courtesy of a Deviant Art user) and an image of Alice, a devil/demon/persona from the Shin Megami Tensei universe. There was no real editing on here except for a layer effect – outer glow (precise)

Next up is the second header. Here I started to use the Deviant Art tutorial and made the first header which I was proud of.

There was quite a lot going on here. An initial layer of “Clouds”, followed by a layer of black and white vector/abstract/whatever you call them brushes (looks like shards of glass). On top of this went three different Colour Adjustment Layers, with each one set to full blast of Red, Green or Blue. The result is this sort of foggy atmosphere with the shards in the background. I can’t remember what effects I put on the text, but Alice was a Hue/Saturation change I think. There’s also a bored around this header – two in fact. The first is just a simple black border (not sure if that shows up) and the second is some scanlines (they should be visible – if not, look closer!). That’s about it for this one.

So, moving on to the two that I have made for my new layout. These are a bit big, so they have been resized to fit (unfortunately)

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to like being full size, but I suppose we’ll forgive them! The basic construction of these headers was the same as the previous one, but slightly different. I had the colour adjustment layers in a different order so that it gave a more reddish effect. The text and render are ABOVE the colour adjustment layers, so they aren’t affected by them. Instead I added the effects to the text (I believe it was bevel & emboss, drop shadow and a gradient) and added colour adjustment to it (not a colour adjustment layer, as that would change the whole image!) The effects on the first header’s text is slightly different to the second. The first header’s render also includes a glow, because there was a slight amount of white around the render, so I thought it would cover that up. The colour adjustment was then applied to the renders. Instead of just doing all red though, I messed about with the settings until I got the colour that I liked.

So, what do you all think about my headers, and my improvement? I’ll probably spend some time over the summer learning some new techniques, since I have a lot of spare time.

Until next time everyone, bye bye!

I find it amazing that Alice in Wonderland is something that I love so much, yet have never read. I think many people would claim to love it, probably due to either the Disney movie or the one that used to get played on the Hallmark channel, but I bet a lot of them have never actually read it! It’s one of the books that many people know about and know the plot of, but would probably make many mistakes about it’s content. For example, I’m sure people think that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are characters from Alice in Wonderland, but they would be mistaken. They are not at all in the book, but I assume they will be in “Through the Looking Glass” (A book that I have recently ordered and shall read once it arrives). These misconceptions have most likely occured due to many of the film productions of “Alice in Wonderland” actually being a composite work of both novels.

Now, that’s quite enough of that. Moving on I will talk about my impressions of the book. I think it is one of those books where the movie adaptations do not do it justice (but I am not sure if a movie adaptation ever does the source material any justice!). To the Mad Hatter’s tea party to the Mock Turtle’s story, I found great pleasure in reading about Alice’s adventures. Sometimes it does take a double take to get some of the points, but that is a great aspect of the narrative. Alice is in a strange world and it pulls us in by disorientating us. The inclusion of rhyming adds to the novel greatly, and some of the rhymes are quite funny. “The Queen of Hearts, She mades some Tarts” – I laughed at this. But it was not only rhymes that Lewis Carroll had made up, but also those which were modelled on existing rhymes everybody would know, but the changes made to them add to the confusion that Alice is experience – “Twinkle Twinkle little bat, how I wonder what you’re at”. Even as an adult (even if just barely) I find great joy in reading this book for the child-like quality of it.

But this quality is backed up with great intellectual points. Something I have only just found out about the novel is the meaning of the content (which I am not ashamed to say I have found in the wikipedia page). For example, while Alice is crying in the early stages of the novel, she tries to perform multiplication. To most people it would seem like nonsense, since she achieves entirely incorrect answers – or does she? Alice is actually unknowingly multiplying in different number bases – base 18, base 21 and base 24. However, among many different mathematical allusions there are also allusions to historical events – the scene where the cards are trying to paint white roses red could be a historical allusion to the War of the Roses, where the House of Lancaster was represented by a red rose, and the House of York by a white one. The well written narrative where this allusions so perfectly blend in to the content shows Lewis Carroll’s talent as a great writer, and that Alice in Wonderland is not just intended as a children’s book.

Now, I don’t want to write much more – this is already getting longer than some of the essays I wrote for English Literature (only this is not at good, and I hope it wont be graded!). As a final point I would like to point out that this novel is like a drug trip – Alice can be seen as high, so maybe Lewis Carroll was an opium user and wrote this while high. The nonsensical nature of it could surely reflect this. So, I say this to the British Government – legalise cannabis so we can have some decent writers again!

Until next time, bye bye!

So, there’s all the images I took as I was going along. I was planning on doing each image followed by a little bit about it, but it didn’t work out that way So, that’s the model. It’s a lot more pink than I thought it would be, and it looks like I will have to buy some Gundam paints to make it look decent – I’m not even good with painting on paper, how will I handle intricate painting of parts?! Well, the stickers were a big enough pain to put on …

Coming up later today will probably be a review of the book I just finished reading, so look forward to that

See you all later!

Sengoku Basara is one of the latest games to receive an anime adaptation. Set in a time reminiscent of the warring states in Japan, the series focuses on various armies and their generals. The only general in the vast array of antagonists however is Date Masamune (a name you may recognise from various JRPGs as one ultimate sword), who weilds 6 Katana. Called the “One Eyed Dragon” because he only has his left eye, he relies on his second in command, Kojuro, the Right Eye of the Dragon to support him.

Speaking a lot of the time in English – where quite often it’s good English, and other times it’s Engrish, Date Masamune is shown to be the rival of another main character – Sanada Yukimura. He is the second in command of Takeda Shingen and wields two spears. Where Date Masamune fights in blue (which shall be covered later on in the review), Sanada Yukimura fights with a red glow. Juxtaposed against each other for most of the series, it is great to see them team up for the final battle.

The opening theme is a song by one of my favourite J-Bands of the moment, Abingdon Boys School. At first I was opposed to the opening, but I grew to love it. The video for the opening shows lots of CG samurai doing something similar to tai chi in the background (all in perfect unison – most likely copy and paste clones of each other). We get some nicely stylized introductions of most of the characters in the opening, which is a great introduction to the series. The ending theme is much more subtle in terms of action where instead the usual slideshow if images is used, with some animation in parts. I also like the song for the ending, and it’s nice to be introduced to a group that I don’t know about so I might find some more music.

The battle scenes in the series utilise a LOT of manly roaring, and the animation style changes slightly. The artwork is more saturised and each of the main characters get their own glow (mentioned earlier where Yukimura is red and Masamune is Blue). It isn’t really explained in the series what the glowing is, or where it comes from, or what each colour represents – I presume the studio are relying on the people who are watching to have played the game and understand. This doesn’t stop you from enjoying the series however, it’s just a little sloppy. I presume that it had something to do with fighting spirit, and that each colour represented an element – obvious but should really have still been explained.

While the antagonist is rarely seen in this series, he is voiced by the wonderful Norio Wakamoto. This is almost enough of a reason to watch a series as he is one of the few seiyuu who I actually bother to learn the name and voice of. He has a nack for the evil overlords and his voice just booms dominance. While Oda Nobunaga himself isn’t shown to do very much, with many of his deeds just explained, when he does appear he is very sinister – killing his allies, using them as bait before destroying them. His army is the only one in the series to utilise guns.

I don’t know enough about Japanese History to talk about the historical accuracy of this series, and neither can I compare it to the game since I have never played it. But overall my conclusion is that Sengoku Basara, through all of it’s “GAR-ness” is a fairly good, but fairly simple series. It seems to only focus on the few main characters, with some new ones I don’t even remember suddenly showing up at the end to save the day, appearing for only a short while. I do think people should watch this show, but I think there are many out there which are better that you should watch first.

That’s it for this review, see you all next time!