I still can’t believe Kaname pulled it off before even halfway into the series. Following the sledgehammer confession in Episode 10, things are surprisingly very normal. So normal that Chisaki is still going for Hikari, despite having husband material right in front of her. Kaname knows that expecting an answer, let alone a positive one, is slim. So he just wanted to tell her (and her parents, awkwardly) before they all hibernate and proceeds to go about his day normally. Chisaki obviously feels a little different about him now.
So the sea village of Shioshishio continues to prepare for hibernation, ceasing to eat and thickening their protective ena skin in the process. Somehow a thicker ena allows them to fall asleep for long periods of time, but this hasn’t happened for hundreds of years.
Hikari and his friends are still going ahead with the Wooden Maiden sacrifice, the Ofunehiki. There is one problem though: the date of hibernation as predicted by Lord Uroko falls on the Ofunehiki date, making the whole thing that much more symbolic. If the Wooden Maiden doesn’t give the Sea God strength to precent climate change, it might be the last time the sea people see those on the surface.
During a group meeting, Hikari is suddenly hit with the realisation he will be going to sleep for a long time without knowing if everyone will wake up at the same time. Surprisingly, he refuses to accept this fate and vows to start eating again in order to stop the process. Like two peas in a pod, Manaka joins him.
Akari meanwhile is in a bit of a strange zone. She’s pushing ahead with her marriage to Itaru with a calm acceptance of what’s going to happen. The surface dwellers who bungled the cooperation of the Boatdrift Ceremony apologise in a new meeting with Hikari and Akari. Now that the summer isn’t as hot and the fish are becoming harder, the writing is on the walls about what’s going on.
Once again we have an almost pointless confrontation between Lord Uroko and Hikari. It seems like nothing will sway the guy. When told of how the Fishery men will now cooperate, Uroko says he cannot prevent disasters beyond the ocean, meaning everyone on land is still doomed. Not only that, but the ceremony had no power over the Sea God anyway! Boy, they must feel silly now.
It’s wonderful to see just how much Hikari has learned about responsibility and empathy at this point, as his first thoughts after this futile meeting was how he’d disappoint those who asked for his help. The final part of this episode has Akari announcing that she is not only getting married, but the wedding will take place on the day of the Boatdrift Ceremony and that she will be the real sacrifice to the Sea God.
Whether or not anything will happen, such as her being taken by the Sea God, is unknown. But at this point they must try everything in order to prevent the calamity. I think Nagi no Asukara will start to have a lot more surprises from now on, and who knows, something as crazy as a sacrifice might actually happen.
To finish, Chisaki thinks to herself about how everyone is trying hard to change and to improve themselves. Forgetting completely about Kaname, she vows to tell Hikari her true feelings. The funny thing is, is that she had no idea Kaname liked her…and now Hikari is going to be completely dumbfounded when she confesses.
For those of you out there who were waiting to get your hands on the awesome 3DS software Pokemon Bank; Nintendo has put forth an apology because it seems as though it has had to be taken down from the Nintendo eShop indefinitely due to a huge number of people from across the globe using the eShop over Christmas to the point where it actually brought the online purchasing hub to a standstill.
There was already a high level of traffic because of the Holiday season and it wasn’t made any better by the release of the Pokemon Bank in Japan and now in North America and Europe, unfortunately the release of the software outside of Japan just proved too much for the eShop and it had to be taken down for an unknown amount of time.
Those of you who already started your 30 day free trial of Pokemon Bank will have it restarted once it becomes available again so don’t stress too much about that. We don’t know when it is coming back online but what we do know is that Nintendo have changed its release status to TBD (To Be Decided), it could be in a week, it could be in a month, we’re just unsure at this point in time. Keep an eye on the site for any updates on the news at hand.
She’s back and she is looking damn fine! Princess Zelda has been confirmed as the latest addition to the next Super Smash Bros. game so all you fans of Hyrulian Royalty can be at ease knowing your princess hasn’t been left out of the battle. Nintendo only just announced this and, much like every other character announcement they’ve made, it has come with a whole bunch of awesome-looking, HD screenshots from the Wii U game as well as one lonely image from the 3DS version which is still looking very good for a handheld title.
She’s wearing her original attire, or something close to it, and it seems as though she has some new moves up her sleeve. There’s one thing I can’t help but bring up…no Sheik? None of the images feature Princess Zelda’s alter-ego, Sheik, which I find to be something odd, I’m sure she’ll still be around but until images of her are release we’ll just have to make do and be happy with the beauty that is…Princess Zelda! The new “Super Smash Bros.” game is set for a release sometime within the new year so keep your eyes out for that and keep your eyes on the site for any and all news pieces and updates to come.
Tiger and Bunny: The Beginning Studio: Sunrise Publisher: Siren Visual Format:DVD(Reviewed) Release Date: 20th November 2013 Price: $34.95 – Available Here
Overview
Reading the name “Tiger and Bunny” really doesn’t do this series justice, it seems a little sissy and possibly like this is NOT an anime about Western-like superheroes who compete with each other to save lives in incredible ways, knowing anime though it could’ve been about a Tiger and a Bunny living happily together…this is NOT that. Tiger and Bunny is a “once in a million years” type of anime that seems to slide into western culture easily and fits the superhero genre like a glove. Years after the home release of the series we’re met with the very first Tiger and Bunny movie which seemed like a promising film that many fans of the series would be excited for, to see the great story of Tiger and Bunny continue on into a set of movies is something great but, without giving away too much, it looks like my expectations for this film were far to high.
Story
Now before I jump into the review for the film I’d like to refer you all to the reviews I did for both the first and second parts of the Tiger and Bunny series (Part 1 and Part 2), reading them will help you better understand this review and it will also allow me a bit more space to talk about the story within this movie instead of harping on what has already been said. As someone who has watched the Tiger and Bunny series multiple times I was very excited for the movie, I assumed it would continue off of the series which left on a huge cliffhanger so when I saw the title “The Beginning” my brain automatically thought “Well, maybe it’s the beginning of the end?”, it turns out I was entirely wrong.
The movie goes for a solid hour and a half yet fifty minutes of it is all footage we’ve seen before in the series just with a few small and ultimately useless scenes added in. It covers from the beginning of the series up until the point where the heroes must stop a giant statue from destroying the city which was, once again, covered in the first two episodes of the series and for it to be placed within the movie seemed like a bad idea. The last fifty minutes had the team face off against a new “Next” with an interesting power that I cannot outline because, I suppose, it’s part of the excitement. The villain, Robin Baxter, is a thief with an odd ability that has allowed him to slip away from authorities in almost every country, he’s a master at the art of stealing and he loves what he does, this time he targets Sternbild City but the local heroes wont be letting him get away with it this time.
The original story, which started about half way through the film, was actually not bad at all, the villain wasn’t terrible and the setting was actually pretty good, not to mention the interactions between characters were probably done just as well as they were in the series. I just didn’t like the idea of a recap, it seemed…lazy, so to speak. I highly doubt that anyone who hasn’t watched the series would be watching the movie and it’s not some sort of “reboot” type of deal similar to what Rebuild of Evangelion has been doing so why make a large amount of the movie the same as the series? Had they animated it different I would understand but most of it was just the same clips added from the series.
There were some small scenes that I enjoyed because it gave us a small insight into the back stories of the characters, scenes like when the heroes had a little party together and you actually saw what Rock Bison’s power is rather than it just being skimmed over like it was in the series. As I mentioned above, character interactions were also done well but…look, it felt like the series which is great because the series is fantastic but we’re supposed to be watching a Tiger and Bunny movie, I expected it to somewhat outdo the series and honestly…it didn’t. I understand that the film was meant to fit in-between episodes two and three, they did a great job at making it noticeable, but it made me sit back and wonder why they didn’t just add it somewhere into the series because it gave no deep information that would change the series for fans, it was simply another “villain of the week” case for the Sternbild Heroes and it was ultimately a little disappointing.
Audio and Visuals
I know I continue to compare the movie and the series bet I believe it’s justified. The main cast make a return for the movie and I’m so glad they decided to bring them all back because they have such a dynamic and make for some incredible and odd characters that are both real and unreal. There were a couple scenes within the film where certain characters were paired up, for no reason other than that was how the story panned out, and the interactions between all of them were so good, they felt so real and the credit goes to the writing team and the delivery of the voice actors and actresses that worked on the series. The music was great, I didn’t take much away from the score but from what I remember it was pretty much what you would hear in the series, that’s possibly why it didn’t really hit me. When it comes to Tiger and Bunny I can’t help but focus on the voice actors only because they’re so damn good, it honestly made the movie that much better for me.
Tiger and Bunny: The Beginning basically looked the exact same as the series. The series was animated fantastically and all the costume and character designs were done to a high calibre, the film is the exact same. The new character, Robin Baxter, was designed to have a suit similar to those of the heroes which, when you look at the big guys of the series, is actually a little refreshing because, had the movie gone differently, you could imagine this man joining the team of heroes and actually fitting right in. Sunrise has, once again, done a brilliant job at fusing both traditional animation and CGI animation, they’ve once again proven to be one of the very best at animating in such a style and I hope they continue to do it into the future. The animation is fluid, the designs are brilliant and it ultimately reminds me of the way the series was done because there is no huge gap between the quality of the two, if anything the series actually had better and more aesthetically pleasing scenes.
Extras
In a surprising turn of events, this release came with no extras apart from a reversible cover for the DVD case. There were no on-disc extras nor were there any physical ones, what’s surprising about it is that when Siren Visual released the series down here it came with so many “goodies” but this time there was nothing, it was bone dry. Once again, a little disappointing.
Overall
Tiger and Bunny: The Beginning IS a good movie, I don’t mean for it to sound like I didn’t enjoy it because I sat through the whole thing without faltering once despite having seen most of the footage time and time again, my only big problem with it is the way they went about throwing in a recap instead of continuing with the story, I would have understood if they reanimated the scenes but it seemed like a “cut and paste” job for the most part. Still, the voice acting is absolutely brilliant and that goes for the animation too, I just can’t help but compare it to the series, it’s a bit upsetting to say but I think you’ll have to go into this movie with low expectations if you’re to truly enjoy it. The Beginning is basically another little story added into the Tiger and Bunny series and I would’ve have preferred for it to be shortened and called an “OVA” because that’s pretty much what it was. If you’re a fan of the series and a fan of the genre I still recommend you get this, let’s just hope the next movie does much better than this one.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Sword Art Online will be getting a TV special on January 1, 2014, called Extra Edition and Daisuki.net will be streaming it immediately following its debut in Japan.
The two hour special by Aniplex will feature Kirito and the others as they go on an underwater quest within Alfheim Online to grant Yui her wish to see a whale. It turns out Leafa can’t swim, and as Asuna and the girls teach her Kirito is out meeting someone…
The special streams worldwide on Daisuki.net, except for French-speaking areas, China and Korea. Streaming begins at 01:00 Japan time as a simulcast, rather than a livestream, so users can watch the special later as well.
Additionally, a special page has been added to the Daisuki website featuring a trailer, wallpaper, Twitter accessories, icons and a hidden secret.
Dementium II HD is the 3d port of the Nintendo DS first person shooter Dementium II. The game has been rebuilt to include brand new 3d visuals and revamped controls for the PC. William Redmoor returns as the protagonist of Dementium II HD as he fights his way out of the Bright Dawn Treatment Center as hell comes perilously close to reality.
Story
William Redmoor may have killed his wife and daughter. Maybe not. But he is trapped in the insane asylum and the game kicks off as he awakes from intensive brain surgery. William finds a series of postcards he has apparently left himself and discovers the hellish monsters are penetrating his reality and the doctor who performed the surgery is up to no good.
Those who have never played the original Dementium will be a little lost at the start. There is no recap of the first game to get new players up to speed, not that there is much to get up to speed to anyways. Unfortunately Dementium II HD suffers from an extremely murky plot. There is a lot of potential material to work with in Dementium II HD, but instead the story takes a really bland and overused route of all sorts of baddies invading the world. Though the game hints to that William could simply be utterly bonkers and everything could be in his mind, taking this route so feels more like attempting to make a puddle of water as deep as a swimming pool.
Gameplay
Dementium II HD is a first person shooter that mixes retro styled FPS mechanics with Resident Evil styled horror. Unfortunately, what is considered a decent title on a Nintendo DS does not fare as well on the PC. Hit detection is flaky, especially with melee weapons. The flamethrower behaves more like a lighter than it does an actual weapon in terms of range. Problems with hit detection are worsened by highly mobile monsters like the brain creatures. Even more frustrating are the enemy health pools. The health pools seem arbitrary at best. There are some portions of the game where a monster will seemingly absorb two or even three times the damage the exact same creature soaked in earlier areas.
The regular enemies are rather boring and brainless. They rush mindlessly at William until he drops out of line of sight. Then it is like he never existed in the first place. Though each enemy type is supposed to have unique strategies for managing them, the enemies boil down to two groups: enemies you can stab and enemies you probably should not stab. At least the later boss fights are mildly more interesting, with some actually requiring more skill than just running up to enemy and mashing attack as quickly as possible.
The game is not very scary. Although an overused technique, there is no surprise scares in Dementium II. Very blatant combat music kicks in the minute William is sharing the same area as an enemy, even if the enemy is practically out of sight. I did like the fact guns are not reloaded automatically, which ratchets up the tension a tiny bit during a fight. Even though William moves with such little enthusiasm that seniors in walkers would be able to outpace him, the enemies are even slower and can be dodged easily by simply sprinting away while reloading.
Dementium II HD’s controls did not port well. Though the mouse and keyboard controls are perfectly serviceable, the default binds are a little strange for any veteran of the FPS genre. However, the controls can be rebound to something more familiar. Though the game boasts full controller support on its Steam page, the control scheme just does not transition well to the controller. There are simply too many different keys that need to be bound. Often games compensate for the fact controllers are extremely limited by making certain buttons situation specific, but Dementium II HD only recognizes one action for every button. Possibly the most frustrating portion is that disabling the controller vibration does nothing. The big ogre mini-boss will still cause the controller to rumble, even though vibration was disabled and I was playing with the mouse and keyboard.
Visuals
Adding “HD” to the title of Dementium II HD feels like a half truth. The game is a high definition remake of Dementium II in the sense the graphics are now in 3d and are of higher quality compared to the original Nintendo DS version. However, the graphics look like they came out of the year 2000. Models are of extremely low quality. Many of the objects in the game are 3 dimensional geometric shapes with textures that do not even make an effort to hide the fact. The textures are just as bad, with some textures displaying extremely noticable pixilation from the low resolution. The cut scenes are a little confusing, jumping from high quality cut scenes to pixelated messes. The very first cut scene was very good, but the very next cut scene looked like a 360p YouTube video was inserted into the game.
The UI is simple and usable for the most part. However, the crosshairs are practically unusable at certain parts of the game. I appreciated the fact the crosshairs drifted around as William moved his weapon, but there were many parts of the game where the area was so bright that the crosshairs simply disappeared into the background. The ability to adjust the crosshair’s colouring to something more obvious would have been beneficial.
The visual style of the game is passable. The monster design have a few hits, but are mostly misses. The most interesting and terrifying creatures are the first creature William encounters. They are creepy, inspired by the hospital setting of Bright Dawn Treatment Center and merged with something that would haunt the nightmares of most people. However, the quality of monsters take a sharp downhill turn from there.
Audio
Dementium II HD’s audio does not inspire much awe either. The game’s sound files are of low quality and sound not much better than what a Nintendo DS is capable of. The volume of certain sound effects are way too quiet compared to the rest of the game. Unfortunately all of the guns fall under this category. I have heard .22 calibre bullets that had more punch than Dementium II HD’s firearms. Many times, the combat music and enemy noises completely drown out the sound of weapons firing, forcing me to rely on visual indicators to know my weapon actually fired. The quality of music is not bad, they are standard horror fare that could have been from any generic horror film. there is also a distinct lack of variety as there are only a handful of tracks and only one combat track for the entire game.
Overall
Unless you are a huge fan of the original Dementium II on the Nintendo DS, Dementium II HD should be avoided. I question the logic of porting a FPS that did well on a handheld device like the Nintendo DS and expecting it to stand up against even budget FPSes of the same price range on the PC as the bar is set much higher on the PC. Dementium II HD has a poor story, lousy audio, and low quality graphics. The term “HD” is thrown around as a marketing buzz word these days, with HD sunglasses and HD make-up appearing on store shelves. It is to the point that the value of phrase is completely shallow. Unfortunately, Dementium II HD is no different. It is just shallow.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Message to all LINE users, at long last your prayers have been answered, you can now play golf on LINE. That’s right in an incredible unprecedented event, Gameloft the legendary mobile games developer and publisher, have teamed up with chat messaging colossus LINE to bring LINE users an experience unlike any other and it’s name is LINE Let’s Golf.
Bringing together the popular LINE messaging platform with the iconic Let’s Golf games series, a collaboration of mythological proportions has finally been realised with LINE Let’s Golf. A meeting of mobile application giants such as this is one that can only be compared to the mighty eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which is an understatement of course.
Ever wanted to play golf? Well now after centuries of human existence we have reached the point in our history where such a thing is possible all in the palm of your hand. Well what are you waiting for? Prepare your golf club to get a hole in one! Now that is what I call an eruption.
LINE Let’s Golf is available now on both iOS and Android devices. Be sure to pick up this historic game now on iTunes or Google Play. This is a monolithic release to say the very least, one of which will forever be etched in history that will signify a changing of the tides in the matrix known as the mobile gaming platform.
Development on a brand new MMORPG is now underway and gamers can explore the fantasy world of Aura Kingdom from Aeria Games, the publishers behind Waren Story. Aura Kingdom has already started its closed beta, launching it a couple days before Christmas as if it were a gift for its long-awaiting gamers.
In the wake of the conclusion of the highly successful Founder’s Beta, thousands of players have already immersed themselves in the online game. For anyone excited to sign up for the Closed Beta, it comes with guaranteed access to exclusive items, titles, and the ability for players to save their character name when the game transitions into Open Beta.
Aura Kingdom empowers players as Envoys of Gaia, tasked to defeat evil forces which threaten the kingdom. Players can have an option of one of eight classes, with hundreds of possible weapon and skill combinations. Envoys can even call on the powers of spirits, summoned from the Dreaded Realm to aid as loyal battle partners.
Aura Kingdom is free to download and play. Players with a beta key can download the game now from the official website.
As a crazed fan of Kill La Kill I am very excited to bring you news of the Anime’s next piece of merchandise and this time, well…it’s a big one! Kill La Kill has become mighty popular and for every hater out there I guarantee there’s at least 100 people who are absolutely loving it and with good reason too! It’s quirky, it’s comedic and it’s full of hardcore action!
Well it seems as though the folks over at “Phat!” (a merchandise manufacturer) and “Good Smile Company” (a merchandise distributor) have revealed that they are going to be selling a big piece of Kill La Kill merchandise starting up for pre-order next April and the figure will be of Ryuko Matoi (the main character) wearing Senketsu while in a battle pose, as you can see from the pictures within the article it is looking absolutely amazing and really is a must-have for fans of the series. The figure gets an actual release in June of next year (2014) but it goes up for pre-order in April, the figure will sell for about 8,800yen or US$84 so it’s fairly pricey but hopefully it is worth it.
Blood Lad fans will be happy to know that series creator Yuki Kodama will be involved in another anime project, however this time not an adaptation of one of Kodama’s manga series like Blood Lad, but rather one that features Kodama’s design work.
The series is Hamatora, which is planned to be a mixed-media franchise, which began with a manga in November. It will continue with the anime series starting in Winter 2014. The series follows a gaggle of super-power people called ‘Minimum Holders’ all of whom contain the ‘Minor Miracle’ power.
It looks to be one hell of an anime series. You can see for yourself in the Hamatora trailer below.
