I read quite a bit of manga and usually have several series on the go as well as reading the odd one shot now and then. I must admit that I do most of my manga reading online which I feel guilty about at times. I know all too well the effort that goes into creating one. I endeavoured to make up for my terrible freebie taking habit by at least buying the mangas that I truly enjoyed. You know a manga just has to be good when I read the whole thing online and still buy it.

I stumbled across Vassalord while looking for a trashy vampire manga to read. I skipped it quite a few times because of the name which in my head read as lord of vaseline. I kept on seeing it being updated though and thought I’d give it a quick look over. The first page with a naked dripping wet long haired man made me think I knew exactly where this was going, especially with the yaoi tag. I am pleased to say that I was totally wrong.

The story focuses on the relationship between a (very) sexy vampire named Johnny Rayflo (when I imagine a vampire I imagine him) and a half vampire cyborg named Charley Chrishunds who fights crimes and hunts vampires for the vatican.

The bloody fight in the opening scene between them made me want to jump up and down I was so happy. Chrono understands vampires. First of all they actually seem to be interested in blood and it’s a sexual kind of thing. I’ve said it before and I shall repeat myself; blood should be a sexual thing for a vampire, that’s the point. She also includes some good ol’ vampire mythology as well which is always a plus in my eyes. Too many series stray too far from the mythology and if you do that you just end up with twilight fairies.

I want to get this out of the way early on. I effing love the style of these books. Nanae Chrono’s artwork is so beautiful and detailed. I simply adore it. Even if the story of Vassalord wasn’t any good (it is) I would still buy these books. There’s a very distinctive style to her work but it’s kind of subtle, not like Hirano, but there is defiantly something unique about it. One criticism for the artwork is that in more complex scenes it’s sometimes hard to tell exactly what’s going on.

I love that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Chrono isn’t afraid to add a bit of silliness or hilarity into the wonderfully gothic style story. I really thought I could figure out what Johnny was going to be like as a character from his looks, and while he does fit that over confident, devilish kind of personality I couldn’t have guessed how funny and sensitive he is at times throughout the books. The way he teases Charley is endearing rather than annoying like the way he always calls him Cherry.

I must admit I did not like the design of Charley upon first seeing him. I mean the hair… but he has grown on me. I think it was the scene with Rayfelle that made me really start to like him. His serious demeanour is a perfect contrast for Rayflo’s free and easy personality and his devotion to Rayflo is incredibly sweet rather than obsessive. The flashback to when he was a child is so cute (yeah that’s right I said cute).

The characters aren’t your usual effeminate pretty pretty anorexic type you usually see in a “shonen ai” type of manga which earns extra brownie points from me. Guys that look like guys and act like blokes, huh well that different. When it comes to the whole BL thing I like characters that don’t fit into those typical seme – uke roles that make me want to stab myself in the eye.

The story has an over arching plot with lots of smaller stories intertwined. As the books go on it seems to be turning into a detective kind of story, not that that’s a bad thing at all. There’s a strong For some reason I find myself getting strong Cowboy Bebop vibes from it. Johnny reminds me of Spike somewhat and Craig makes me think of Jet.

I think the books take a few read throughs to get everything. I think some of the story could have been explained a bit clearer but I must admit I did get a certain amount of satisfaction when I noticed things I didn’t on the first read through. For example in the very beginning Johnny is talking to Barry on the phone. All in all Vassalord is very enjoyable and highly underrated in my opinion.

I just finished watching  Togainu No Chi. The anime is some what different to the game, though I have never played it. From what I gather the game centres on everyone taking their turns with Akira like he’s the village bike. I heard quite a lot of buzz about the anime from various yaoi sources (not that I know anything about that… of course). It wasn’t until I heard the crys of the fangirls complaining that there was in fact no yaoi action that I decided to watch it. That and only having read half the manga.

The story focuses on Akira, a guy sentenced to life in prison after being falsely accused of murder. He is visited by a one armed woman named Emma who says that the charges will be dropped if he goes to Toshima and takes part in a game, run by the organization Vischio, called Igra and defeats the current king Il-re. Igra is like a poker game but with dog tags. You can only fight Il-re after you have a full house or whatever and you get the tags by killing other people for them. Fun times.

I liked the anime though I think the version I watched was somewhat censored which is a real shame. I’m all for over the top blood and gore in anime. I’m talking about the Hellsing kind of bloody slaughter that is just too over the top to feel real. I felt the ending was somewhat lazy and the anime really could have done with a few more episodes to flesh things out a bit more.Motomi and Rin are pretty much skimmed over here compared to the manga. As well as getting a feel for how things are run in Toshima. The manga does a better job of this. A personal complaint- there is less Gunji in this and I love him. He is a complete nutcase. He has a crazy ass voice in the anime as well which I’m undecided on weather I like it or not. Cue cue to me. The only thing that made me glad was when he called out “Neko-chan!”.

I really, really hated Akira in the beginning but somehow I ended up warming to him and then hating him again in the end. The same with Keisuke. Even though anyone with half a brain could figure out right from the start that he was going to take Line it didn’t piss me off when it happened. I was actually rooting for Keisuke to kill Akira for being so selfish. Akira is so blank. I mean I get the cool, silent, irreverent character type but really, Shiki does a better job of that. Ah Shiki that blood thirsty bondage samurai. They really should have fleshed him out a bit more then maybe the ending would make a bit more sense and feel less rushed. They could have at least given more time to show his relationship with N (no not that one ha) or Nano or Nicole whatever his name is. Nano has the best voice. It’s so unsettlingly calm, perfect for him.

I may have many a complaint about the anime, the sloppy animation for one and how everyone walks like a robot (domo arigato mr roboto). This is a general anime thing though it seems particularly bad here. Sometimes when people are talking their mouths arn’t moving and it’s not a bad sound- video sync. It’s lazy. Still, I found it very entertaining. I never felt bored while watching it and it gets the story across. I think a lot of people that say they hate it are those that watch it expecting it to be some kind of yaoi-fest like the game. It easily stands on it’s own without that.

Some Gunji Love

How they managed to make six episodes out of this is beyond me. I made it through the first episode and that’s all I could manage. It’s so overacted and none of the characters seem very natural (with the exception of Janine played by Emma Fryer). Ashley and Jerwayne seem to have one personality between them, even going so far as to complete each other’s sentences. Christopher’s character seems to be based on a bad impersonation of David Mitchell only without his charm, charisma and sense of humor; not to mention a big dollop of lovableness. (/fanboying) Something all of the characters lack. Lance is just plain bland and seems really out of place.

The only character I liked was Janine. She had the makings of her own personality that was quirky but not in an in your face way. I also feel that she is the only one that can act. Something about her awkwardness reminds me of Noel Fielding as well. I cannot quite put my finger on it.

Any jokes in this episode that weren’t terrible were delivered in such a way that it just made them unbearable. I can see how the idea would look good on paper and some of the things in the episode could have worked. In theory, however, reality is a bitch and that is just not the case.

Well, now that I have relived that trauma I think it’s about time for my therapy session.

[I apologize again for the terribad picture quality.]

This is a character from a story I wrote shortly after I quit uni. It is basically a creative rant about the art world and my thoughts on it. This guy is called Ataxia.

This is just a doodle of a page from the story. I’m pretty pleased with it though. The girl is called Tastlest and this is her first time meeting Ataxia. Fun times XD

I’m excited that Hellsing Ultimate OVA 8 has finally been announced. It will be out on December 10th. Let’s see if they stick to the date this time. I will still have to wait for t to be subbed in English though.

My Japanese is getting marginally better. My vocabulary has improved loads thanks to smart.fm’s Japanese Core 2000. I’m still doing Step 1 (and really slowly) but it really does work. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone that’s learning Japanese. I wouldn’t use it on its own though. It’s only really good for vocabulary and learning the kanji. There’s also this cool little game called Brain Speed. Here’s the linkage.

Still my Japanese isn’t good enough to be able to watch Koisuru Boukun OVA 2 without subs. I know I’m a terrible person for liking it but as far as yaoi goes it’s pretty much the top of its game.

And that leads nicely onto the next thing I want to talk about (not). I finished reading Let the Right One in by John Ajvide Lindqvist. I haven’t seen the movies yet and I’m unsure if I want to. I really liked the book. I’m always up for a book about vampires where the vampires don’t fucking sparkle. I don’t think there was a single character in the book that you couldn’t feel sympathetic towards. Even Håkan who is probably the most tragic figure in the book. I must admit that Lacke and Virginia’s relationship really touched me. It was so bitter sweet and you could really feel for the two of them, more so than Oskar and Eli. Their relationship seemed to just jump forwards too fast. It never really seemed like they had that same kind f deep connection like Lacke and Virgina. Though saying that they are only meant to be 12 years old.

The book kept me interested throughout even though it had a ton of different characters and different interwoven stories. Pretty much all of the characters seemed fleshed out and were their own person as well. So yeah. Definitely recommend it. There are some gory scenes and things that I think would maybe put people off but I don’t think they’re all that graphic. Not disgustingly graphic at all. I don’t think you can read a vampire book and not expect some blood and gore to be honest. Being a Chuck Palahniuk fan I don’t think there’s much I could read that would shock or appall me.

Friday Sam-chan and I finally watched ‘The Room’. We knew it was going to be bad going into it but my god, there are some things you just can’t be prepared for. Tommy Wiseau’s arse for one. If it weren’t for Rifftrax I feel I would have slashed my wrists.

Before I saw ‘The Room’ I didn’t think it was possible to make an entire movie made up of greetings, sex scenes and throwing a football to one another standing 3 feet apart. I thank Wiseau for putting appallingly bad porn music to all of the sex scenes though as without it I wouldn’t know when to hide behind my pillow. Tommy Wiseau getting it on to music that might as well just be “bow chicka wow wow” is not something I needed to see.

My favorite character would have to be Denny. Oh Denny that loveable scamp. Unfortunately he was adopted by Wiseau’s character Johnny which seems to have left him with some kind of mental health problem. Really, is anyone surprised? It appears that all the nonstop football throwing drove him to drugs (a subplot in the movie). This is never really mentioned again. I find it rather amusing that the character Lisa is so nonchalant about her mother’s cancer (as is her mother) but when it comes to Denny she screws up her face in what I think was an attempt to cry. The whole cancer thing is never mentioned again. If only Wiseau had left out a few, and I mean just a few, I don’t want to rob the movie of its gripping story in anyway, he could have tied up these lose ends.

I have learnt a few things from ‘The Room’ though:

• How to effectively taunt someone but flapping my arms and saying “You’re just a chicken cheep cheep cheep cheeerrrp”.

• How to fight without throwing any punches and just pushing the other person over. At one point in the film this is used to great effect where Mark just touches Mike and he goes flying backwards into some bins. Clearly, he is the master of this technique. I will call him Sensei Mark.

• In the room universe the only leisure activity is football throwing. Anywhere and everywhere. Mostly in alleyways though.

• It is absolutely necessary, well not just necessary but vital that you greet everyone by saying “oh hi” every time you see them. How else will people guess that not only has the person arrived but that you know them and on a first name basis!

• Movie sex scenes should last at least ten minutes. Any less than that and your audience won’t understand what’s going on. Those ignorant masses.

• When pining for a lost love the best way to deal with it is to take out the dress you bought her hold it on your crouch and proceed to hump it. Yeah this part disturbed me. I don’t think I will ever understand that scene or forget it.

Saying all this the room is bordering on the it’s so bad its good. It’s not quite there but nearly. It’s a bit like watching aliens trying to act as humans but at least it’s entertaining and it did make me lol.

Now I’m off to a dark ally and throw a football around.

Sometimes I have to wonder to myself, whether I would be vastly happier in life if I were in fact to come from Japan. Most of my current interests seem to be based around there, mostly from watching various anime and playing JRPG’s – so surely in the land where both of these things rule, it would be like if heaven came to Earth? Then I realise that’s probably just an offensive stereotype that could lead me to having the stuffing kicked out of me by some Yakuza style gang and left as a broken shell of a man on a rainy street corner.

But I digress.

A couple of days ago a huge event occurred that shook the very foundations of the planet- Final Fantasy XIII was released. Judging by the title of this post it may give away that I’m a huge fanboy of this series of games, and have played the majority of them (some random spinoffs such as Dirge of Cerberus still elude me.) And, so, acting with behaviour you might expect from someone such as me, I immediately rushed out to the nearest game shop and… bought FF7 and 8 for the PSP. Because of one main reason:

Final Fantasy has been shite since FFX.

So because history has taught me not to instantly buy and instead wait to see what others think, instead of talking about FFXIII, I shall instead rant about how bad the previous couple of games were.

As one of the first PS2 games I had, I loved FFX like it was my own child. I put it to bed every night, took it on days out during the school holidays and let it climb into my bed if it was scared during the night. In an innocent way, don’t get any ideas. You can imagine then my excitement when I saw FFX-2 was being released! My old naïve self bought it instantly and… wow. Just wow. I’ve never had such a girly experience vomited onto me in my entire life, and my first thoughts were these:

To enjoy the game you must fall into the following categories:
•    A girl so girly that you are a walking bastion of clichés
•    A feminist who was desperate to see a game with no decent male characters
•    Of questionable sexuality
•    You are a girl so young that boys still have ‘cooties’ to you
•    You are a pervert, playing solely to see the girls change their clothes to be more suggestive with each dressphere (stupid name anyone?)
•    You hated the storyline of FFX, and play simply to see it raped

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the above parties (other than the 10 years or younger girls – stay the hell away from my genre!). However the audiences were a problem to me as, logic would say….

If you make a sequel to a game, why would you make it for a different audience? It just makes no bloody sense.

Honestly the ladies of FFX were some of the least slutty in the series before X-2. You have Yuna, quiet and shy, going on a suicide mission so has other things on her mind than guys. Rikku, has no real love interest and is bossy loud and overall slightly annoying. Lulu, well despite her ample cleavage she’s so tight with her privates her dress is literally made out of belts. Compare these to say, Tifa – just google her and you have seen enough. So why is it in X-2, I find myself in a strangely suggestive situation with Yuna sitting on top of the apparent antagonist who wears so little that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she’s the female star of the Emperor’s New Clothes. If this weren’t bad enough, you have to play a minigame where you give her a massage whilst she makes very suspect noises beneath your scantily clad body. Square….

What did you do to my beloved characters?!

Yes yes, I know that they don’t technically belong to me. But if they did I would be sure to save them from this virtual rape. In the FFX-2 secret ending, they even bring back Tidus? What exactly was the purpose of this, for the sake of a few seconds of cinematic at the end? I liked the fact that Tidus disappeared at the end of FFX. Sure it was depressing, sad and all the rest of those words but it made for a decent ending. It felt conclusive, and was a break from the usual happy endings of previous FF games. This really didn’t need or warrant a sequel, especially one with as poor a plotline as this.

Speaking of characters, I’ve got two main complaints. Firstly – who the fuck is Paine? A strangely masculine, quiet and serious character, which seems to be like the Auron of FFX-2. That is, Auron if he was far less awesome and his background was far less developed. You might be getting the impression here that I don’t like Paine, which is true but I’m not totally set against new characters for a sequel. This can at times work well. However in this case, such an obvious clone of Lulu, Auron and Squall really didn’t work for me – kind of ironic such an emo character was called Paine too. But this is only touching on the depths of the awful. Next up…

Shuyin. What. The. Fuck.

He looks like Tidus. He acts like Tidus. He was once a Blitzball player from Zanarkand. He’s voiced by the same guy who did Tidus (in both English and Japanese). His actions when you fight him resemble that of Tidus – some of his moves are even copies of Tidus’ limit breaks. Christ, what were they thinking?

This was such a cheap move it blows my mind, to have the main ‘bad guy’ as a pretty much recycled model. They are clearly the same person, yet this is barely explained in the story at all. What in hell’s name made Square think they could get away with this? I wish I knew. Yet being the cashcow that Final Fantasy is, I’m ashamed to admit my fanboyishness made me instantly rush out and buy it on release, and despite how horrified I was, I sat and completed it fully.

So coming to the end of that, I wouldn’t recommend FFX-2 to anyone who liked FFX. It wasn’t so much a bad game in general, just to anyone who thought the story would continue somehow – it doesn’t. It just sort of wallows a bit in a slimy sea of vague and strange plot points, that the game is quite careful not to delve too deep into for fear of revealing how shallow they really are.

So I hear you ask, what about FFXII? That completely changed the way the game worked, surely you liked that? Well… I’ll open THAT can of worms next post.

I was disappointed in this film. I don’t know if this is because my expectations were stupidly high but wow. There seems to be a trend among movies now where story takes a backseat to special effects. Is it too much to ask for both? I mean Alice in Wonderland looks fantastic even if sometimes a bit too crowded. I loved the vivid colours and the way the proportions were messed up. The Red Queens huge head was a nice touch as it’s true to the John Tenniel illustrations.

So, story. While there is a story it is quite underdeveloped I think. Trying to merge both books into one is a good idea. Of course there is then the problem of having so much to cram into the movie a lot of which seems to be a given. That you already know about them so they don’t need any or very little development . Well yeah they kind of do. It should be able to stand strongly on its own. Even more so if the narrative strays from the original.

There’s also a hint of American McGee’s Alice in Wonderland in this. I think a movie more like that would have been a nice twist on the story and could have come up with something a bit more original.

Alice was a bit wooden and a bit meh nothingy but not terrible. Again, she looks great just like you would image Alice to be. She doesn’t question things as much as she does in the books / previous adaptations. The only thing she really questions is whether or not she is dreaming. She did seem lifeless and somewhat faded into the background around almost every other character. Mainly the mad hatter.

Yes the mad hatter. This was a bit up and down for me. Sometimes I thought wow yes brilliant and other times I wasn’t so sure. I’m so happy he didn’t turn into another Wonka. That was rather cringe worthy. Sorry I will stop comparing these two movies. I do quite like the look of the hatter even though I think it’s trying a little too hard to be mad. Part of being mad is more in the way you act. I think he could have acted a lot madder rather than be dressed in a mad way. It’s all a bit too obvious.

He also changes sometimes and drops into a Scottish accent, his eyes go orange and he goes a bit serious and angry. This split personality thing could have been done a little better and a bit subtler but I like the idea.

At times the hatter seemed to be more of a focal point than Alice. Great because who doesn’t love the mad hatter. But he does completely over shadow Alice. Why not just do a movie about the mad hatter. Also why try and turn him into some kind of hero when the hero is meant to be Alice.

Other characters such as the door mouse got too much screen time in my opinion. Whereas the March hare could have had a bit more. The White Queen was a bit too floaty and aloof but that’s how she’s supposed to be. The knave of hearts was pretty good though a bit generic bad guyish.

The Cheshire Cat was rather good and not just because Mr Fry makes my panties wet. I loved his voice, perfect for the character. The Cheshire Cat and the hatter worked rather well together which was surprising. Speaking of good voices Alan Rickman as the caterpillar is just so amazingly perfect. When I think of monged out caterpillars, I think Alan Rickman. The cast for this movie couldn’t have been better… other than Alice … sorry.

I was impressed with the red queen as well. Helena Bonham Carter was crazy, mad and hot headed while still being vulnerable which is a nice touch. A good all round performance from her. Better than JohnnyDepp’s anyway, as her performance seemed effortless where as his was a bit too over the top sometimes.

The cgi was amazing for the most part. As I said before the film looks great however in some places there is just too much detail, too much to take in and it all gets confusing. Maybe this is because of the whole 3D thing and I didn’t see it in 3D. I can’t really talk fairly about effects because it’s getting to the point where they just don’t impress me. I would rather have a shitty looking film and a great story rather than an amazing looking film and shitty story. Or better yet a GOOD story with GOOD effects even though this is for another rant I bring it up because this film fits nicely into this category even if it’s not the worst offender.

The ending was a bit rushed and would have been far better to leave it after she leaves wonderland and not have the whole going to travel the world on her own real life adventures or whatever. But the caterpillar pulled it back for me and made the last part bearable.

Okay, to sum up my incoherent ramblings: Alice in Wonderland is entertaining and very enjoyable to watch though a stronger story and more character development would have prevented it from being a disappointment.