It looks like one of the best ecchi series of all time will be making its third season premiere a lot sooner than some previously thought. The official website for High School DxD has been updated to reveal that the new season, dubbed High School DxD BorN, will begin airing in April 2015 for the spring season.
With this announcement came a new piece of key art as well as a new promo video. From what is shown in the promo video, which you can see below, as well as from the key art, it appears that the anime adaptation will continue to closely follow the storyline that has been told throughout the continuing light novel series.
It is worth noting that FUNimation has licensed and released both the first and second High School DxD anime seasons in the West with an English dub so there is a very good chance that this third season will be given the same treatment.
Today during the Tekken 20th Anniversary Fan Thanksgiving event Bandai Namco revealed a brand new female fighter named Lucky Chloe who will likely be one of the characters I try out first once Tekken 7 is released. Chloe is a fighter that is themed around cats as she not only sports a twintail hair style, she also wears cat ear headphones, cat paw sleeve gloves, and a cat tail.
A handful of images and concept art for Chloe have been revealed so far as well as some gameplay footage showing off her fighting style and a few new trailers have been released and can be found below.
Capcom has recently revealed when they plan on releasing their HD remake of the original Resident Evil and it just so happens that when it is released, it’ll be at a rather cheap price considering how expensive your average HD re-release is nowadays.
Resident Evil HD Remake will be released on January 20th for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC for $19.99. This is a digital only release but it will be one that supports 1080p on the current generation of consoles and 720p for last-gen. It will also allow players to swap between the original 4:3 ratio and the new 16:9 widescreen version and choose whether or not they wish to use the classic control scheme or the more modern controls.
Hello Games must have been extremely busy preparing for this weekend since not only did they release a new trailer for No Man’s Sky yesterday showing off the various modes of transportation in the space adventure, but today they have released a new trailer to show off during Sony‘s PlayStation Experience opening keynote in Las Vegas.
This latest trailer is designed to give players a sense of just how large the universe of No Man’s Sky actually is with four minutes of gameplay footage. You can check out the trailer as well as a handful of new screenshots below.
While there were plenty of huge announcements coming from the PlayStation Experience, there were some smaller ones as well. One of these smaller announcements happened to come from SCE San Diego when they revealed that they were working on a top down free to play title called Kill Strain.
Kill Strain will be released on the PlayStation 4 next year and offer 5 vs 2 vs 5 player combat. From the sounds of things, players will be fighting against an initially small group of infected that grows larger as their own teammates turn into mutated abominations. Anyways, beta sign-ups have been opened up on the game’s official website.
To think that a title like Shovel Knight, which has been given an extensive amount of praise, including some of our own as you can read in our review here, required a Kickstarter to be released. Despite the game’s humble beginnings, Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight has turned out to be very successful.
So successful in fact that it is making the jump from the Wii U, 3DS, and PC to all of the current PlayStation platforms. The title will soon be arriving on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. No exact release date was given but a new trailer was released and from what we can tell, it looks like a Kratos boss fight may be in the game now.
Killing Floor is a co-op PC shooter that saw players fight against swarms of enemies as they try to stay alive and face off against increasingly dangerous enemies all while using various firearms and melee weapons that can be purchased between rounds.
Well, it seems that since the PC version of the original game was so well done that when the sequel, Killing Floor 2, is released by Tripwire Interactive the title will not only be available for the PC but the PlayStation 4 as well.
Unfortunately no release date for Killing Floor 2 was revealed with this announcement but we do have a brand new trailer for the game containing plenty of gruesome gameplay footage and you can check that out below.
Today during the PlayStation Experience Shinji Hashimoto of Square Enix took the stage to announce that the company is planning on bringing Final Fantasy VII to the PlayStation 4. Now before you go nuts, it is worth noting that this release is not a remake as it is simply the PC version of the game that featured some mildly upscaled visuals.
Currently no price point has been announced nor has a release date been revealed for Final Fantasy VII. What was released was a trailer for the release which contains everything fans of Final Fantasy VII should expect but nothing that they actually want.
Despite the fact that we already knew this, Atlus USA took to the stage at the PlayStation Experience to confirm that fans of Persona will definitely be able to pick up Persona 5 for either the PlayStation 3 or the PlayStation 4 sometime in 2015.
What made this worth announcing is the fact that although the PlayStation 3 title localization was revealed, nothing has been said since the PlayStation 4 version was also announced so this little tidbit helps assure fans that they will be able to pick up Persona 5 on either console if they so choose. You can also check out Atlus USA’s version of the second teaser trailer below.
Studio: Silver Link
Publisher: Hanabee
Format: DVD (reviewed) / Blu-ray
Release Date: October 1, 2014
Price: $59.99 (AUD) – Available Here
Overview
WataMote: No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular! is one of many slice-of-life anime adaptations produced in recent times, but it mainly follows just one character as opposed to the more common group of four characters. Main character Tomoko Kuroki is unpopular and well aware of that fact. Her goal is to make friends, get a boyfriend and just be popular. She does make a little bit of progress, but even if she ultimately achieves very little, is this slice-of-life series worth watching?
Story
Tomoko Kuroki is three months into high school and has not talked to anyone. She has made no new friends and goes relatively unnoticed by her classmates. Just saying goodbye to her teacher after school is a big deal for her, but she makes very little progress at all after that first step. Getting her life advice from otome dating sims, she has frequent delusional fantasies about what high school life should be like and how her classmates should treat her. Her misguided notions about life also lead her to get over-excited about real life ‘fan-service’; seeing a girl’s underwear and having her best friend hug her while said friend’s breasts are pressing up against her excite her as much as if she were a dirty old man. She has become more of a dirty old man than a high school girl due to her excessive gaming, and her reclusive tendencies contribute to her inability to communicate normally with almost everyone in the outside world.
This series turns out to not be about making Tomoko progress, but rather about exploring how this high school girl sees the world and how dating sims have affected her outlook on life. Tomoko thinks of the popular girls as ‘sluts’ and even thinks of her best-friend as a ‘slut’ because she wears short skirts and got a boyfriend before her, but this series unfortunately does not present any meaningful commentary on such issues. It does explore what it is like to have a friend to spend time with; good company can make just about anything more fun and enjoyable, even if that company is a cat or a couple of random middle-school kids. Much of the comedy in this series comes from seeing Tomoko’s ridiculous fantasies and how others actually see her in reality. When a giant bug terrorises her classroom, she thinks she will look really cool and become a hero if she squashes it. Instead, she ends up getting cold reactions from her classmates. She lies to her cousin about various things such as having a boyfriend, and this all comes back to haunt her when her cousin confronts Tomoko’s ‘boyfriend’. If watching WataMote has one positive aspect to it, then it is that it shows us that we should just be ourselves and not lie to others or change our appearance through expensive clothing or makeup.
Visuals
The visuals are passable but nothing special. Lighting effects are often rather crude, but where the animators do put in some effort to make their work stand out is with the opening animation. It is a surprisingly well-animated piece that acts as a metaphor for Tomoko’s desire to break free of the demands of society and her place in it. The ending theme songs all have decent animation too, so the visuals are not a major disappointment in this series overall. Particular effort is put into animating Tomoko during the scenes in which she is trying to change her image, but viewers may find the results to be exaggerated and disturbing.
Unnecessary fan-service in this series includes a couple of panty shots and Tomoko’s friend Yuu Narise, a girl with large breasts that are unfortunately seen bouncing frequently. This is disappointing, but not at all surprising for a series that is so aware of itself as an anime. Viewers will likely appreciate the well-animated parody of Death Note in the first episode and the parodies of other pop-culture items including but not limited to Star Wars, Space Invaders and more.
The English subtitles are also passable, but this is yet another home video release of an anime series that lacks subtitles for some of the songs. The ending songs in episodes 5, 6 and 11 are not subtitled, which is most likely due to a licensing issue but disappointing all the same.
Audio
The audio is of mixed quality. The background music, for the most part, is appropriate. However, there are a couple of pieces of music that do not contribute anything to the feel of the show and sound very bland. The opening theme song is a decent heavy-metal song and the ending is a decent pop-song, with the lyrics of both songs being especially fitting for the series. The special ending songs are also rather better than expected.
What really holds this release back is Sentai Filmwork’s English dub. In it, the students have very out-of-place American accents and the teacher sounds suspiciously like a text-to-speech voice, but the thing that really brings the quality of the dub down is Monica Rial’s gravelly portrayal of Tomoko. She pulls off the shy Tomoko reasonably well, but otherwise makes her sound like a chain-smoker, a rather odd decision given that she is a high school girl. None of the other voice actors in the dub suit their characters either, with the only almost passable performances being that of the Yandere Boys’ singer and the dating-sim characters. David Matranga’s portrayal as Tomoko’s frequently annoyed brother Tomoki is not bad, but it does not fit either. Unsurprisingly, Japanese names are mispronounced. The Japanese audio is fine, on the other hand; Izumi Kitta gives a great performance as Tomoko and the other members of the voice cast give a suitable performance for each of their characters.
Extras
Extras in this release are limited to the textless opening animation and textless ending animations. Trailers for other Hanabee releases are also included.
Overall
Anyone who has or ever had any difficulty talking to a member of the opposite-sex, looked at the popular kids and wondered why the ‘cool’ kids had so many friends while they did not or even anyone who thought/thinks that life should be like dating sims may connect with Tomoko Kuroki. It is the identifiable nature she has that is both WataMote’s greatest strength and weakness. Some viewers will watch the series and want to root for her and hope that she eventually succeeds in making new friends. Others, however, may find the blunt discussions about the frequently delusional mind of a teenager to hit too close to home and be too confronting, even if they did not experience any of the anxiety that she did or if they only know a friend who had/is having a similar experience.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Author’s note: The initial score given for this review was inaccurate and has been updated by the author to reflect Capsule Computers’ ongoing commitment to providing reliable reviews for its readers.
It looks like one of the best ecchi series of all time will be making its third season premiere a lot sooner than some previously thought. The official website for High School DxD has been updated to reveal that the new season, dubbed High School DxD BorN, will begin airing in April 2015 for the spring season.
