TV: Fall 2012

Boy this fall looks utterly insane for TV.


The Office: Thursdays, starting 9/20
Well I'm glad this show is in its final season. It was fun for its run, and I was one of the people honestly glad when Steve Carrell left because I couldn't stand the character. Rumors about a Dwight spinoff are not encouraging and it would probably be terrible. But I do like the sentimentality they gave to Steve Carrell's exit from the show and it would be great to have him back for the finale.''

South Park: Wednesdays, starting 9/26
Another season of lovable absurdity.



The Big Bang Theory: Thursdays, starting 9/27
Another season of Sheldon being Sheldon. Sounds like a plan.


Family Guy: Sundays, starting 9/30
It is an incredibly stupid show that I continue to watch anyway for the funnies.

Hayate the Combat Butler: Thursdays, starting 10/4
Third season of the anime being done by the same people that did the dreadful movie and seems to be focusing on the plot and characters I don't like as much. But I'll probably watch it anyway.

Little Busters: Sundays, starting 10/7
Key being Key. Given how much I've liked Clannad, Angel Beats, and to a lesser extent Kanon, this could be good. JC Staff seems to be doing a decent job on the animation surprisingly from what I've seen in the PVs.

Psycho-Pass: Fridays, starting 10/12
I'm one of the oddballs that actually really really liked Guilty Crown despite some of its flaws. Animation was beautiful, liked all the characters, Production IG and noitaminA are putting together what looks like another fabulously (and not in the Star Driver way) animated series but this time with the writing of Gen Urobuchi behind it. And they seem to be going the Death Note / Geass approach to vigilantism. All that with the voices of Shizuka Itou and Kana Hanazawa. Sign me up.

The Retarded Student Council, Saturdays starting 10/13
The first season of this series went beyond the impossible on the number of gags and references per minute and complete lack of attempting to have any plot. It was hilarious and I'll watch more of it.

Community: Fridays, starting 10/19
I started watching this show because I was bored one day. I watched the entire first three seasons within a week and was hooked. Sucks that  the series is only getting a half season for the new season and whatnot. Six seasons and a movie, though! Can only hope that if this is really going to be the last season that they wrap things up nicely. Episode titles that've been released so far seem to revolve around a plot arc hinted in last season's finale about Jeff reuniting with his father which could be nice.

Other stuff I'm still watching
Naruto Shippuden (Thursdays)
Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth (Tuesdays)
Sword Art Online (Saturdays)
Kokoro Connect (only a few more episodes, but Saturdays)

What it looks like overall
Sundays - Family Guy and the other ones if I bother to watch them. Little Busters in there.
Mondays - nothing. because having something Monday would be good. and Mondays are terrible.
Tuesdays - Rock Lee. I miss Bleach.
Wednesdays - South Park.
Thursdays - The Big Bang Theory, The Office, Naruto, Hayate the Combat Butler. I guess the busiest day isn't any busier than when Guilty Crown was there to be watched in the evenings since Community moved to Fridays.
Fridays - Community, Psycho-Pass
Saturdays - Sword Art Online, Kokoro Connect, Retarded Student Council

Fullmetal Alchemist: Sacred Star of Milos

That up there is a PV. I was fortunate enough to see a screening of this movie at Otakon and felt like I finally had something worth blogging about again. Before you ask, no. I do not have screencaps, streams, or anything else of the movie. Buy it on DVD when it comes out.

The movie spends a good ten minutes showing Julia's backstory before Ed and Al get any screentime and it's interesting even though you don't really get the significance of her family fleeing from Milos to Creta until later in the movie. With Ed and Al on the screen just in time to see someone break out of prison in Central Amestris and fail to stop him (seriously, where are Bradley and the rest of the homunculi while this is going on right under their noses?) and then chase him west to Milos in the west, a warzone between Amestris and Creta struggling for its independence from both with the probable inevitability of being used in the Nationwide Amestrian Transmutation Circle either way. Okay, no more jokes about the plot of a filler movie in the grand scope of the overall plot. Also I don't want to spoil things so I'm gonna stop talking about the plot almost entirely now that I've given you a little taste of it.

So, was the movie good? Yes. It stayed plausibly within the story of the series, had a good standalone plot with interesting movie-exclusive characters, catered to the fanbase well (if the mass cheering at the Otakon screening at every little thing that happened were any indication) and stayed true to central ideas, ideals, and themes of the original work despite Arakawa's lack of involvement in the film.

If I were to levy complaints against the film, it would be toward its handling of side characters. Given that the movie doesn't definitively state whether it takes place in the first anime's continuity or the manga's continuity there's a limited character pool you can pull from, but even those characters they didn't do justice to. You'd expect Alex Louis Armstrong to be a pretty strong force in the movie (and chew some scenery. and sparkle.) but he's there for about three seconds  . Mustang and Hawkeye have actual roles in the movie, but when it comes to the action the Flame Alchemist who in other events has mass-nuked and burned things does next to nothing and the number of bullets Hawkeye fires in the movie can probably be counted on one hand. Secondly, while the plot is a good bit better than your average anime movie (I've watched seven Naruto movies and three Bleach movies, some of which make no sense at all in terms of plot) the action wasn't as good as those other anime movies tend to get. But Fullmetal Alchemist was never a story about long fight scenes and such I suppose. But while fixing these grievances might've made it better, the grievances by no means make it a bad film.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the film and I honestly hope they make more filler movies like this to explore some of the other areas bordering Amestris and some of the other unknowns of the Fullmetal Alchemist universe. Would be great if they could get Arakawa on board with writing future films too.

Musical Hard Drives

Musical Hard Drives: A techie's struggle to preserve his gadgets balloons out of proportion

1. PS3's hard drive grows close to full over a period of several months. User considers the idea of buying a new one entirely but decides to just upgrade the hard drive for much cheaper and avoid ever having such a problem again with a nice 750 gig hard drive as opposed to an 80 gig he had in the system before. 
2. User logs into Newegg to order Laptop drives.
3. User finds good deal on laptop drives and decides to buy an extra to revive an old laptop as a Linux machine. 
4. User receives laptop drives in the mail! User prepares external hard drive to backup PS3.
5. External hard drive cannot be read by consoles because it's formatted in NTFS. User seeks guides which tell him to format the drive in Fat32.
6. User discovers that Windows cannot out of the box format drives to Fat32 for partitions larger than 32GB. Given that the PS3's hard drive has 80GB of data, 32GB is not enough for a backup. 
7. User tears hair out trying to find a way to format the drives including using the Windows command line and trying Windows 7 to do the job. To no avail.
8. User finds third party tool to reformat the drive. User copies all data off external, deletes partition to prepare for backup. User reformats drive in FAT32.
9. User backs up PS3 onto drive.
10. User puts laptop drive in PS3 and restores it from the backup. This part went well. 
11. User attempts to put extra laptop drive he ordered in old laptop, not realizing that old laptop is kind of archaic and only uses IDE drives. This one is totally user's fault.
12. User orders enclosure to turn extra laptop SATA drive into external drive. Because he has to do something with it. 
13. User builds external drive. It works. Does not really have anything to do with it other than having an extra backup.
14. User prepares to order IDE drive to revive old laptop as a Linux machine. Because he has to do something with it. 
15. User's main PC starts acting up! Good thing user has everything backed up on an external so he can format quickly...wait...
16. User backs up everything on external, preparing to format his OS drive on his main PC.
17. User writes a post on his crappy blog documenting his progress in this escapade.

Things learned from this:

• NTFS is not a good way to format a disc when you planning on using it on things that aren't PCs.
• If it says it can't format it in that format, it probably can't format it in it. No amount of trying to trick it into formatting it that way is going to work. 
• "Ooh, a good deal!" is not a good reason to add to a workload
• "But you have to do something with it!" is never a good reason to add to a workload
• Have multiple externals around so you can back stuff up easily, and so you can be assured that stuff is still backed up even if you have to reformat an external. 

Tsubaki Yayoi, Wings of Justice

This combo video is outdated since the balance patch has come through making Tsubaki and Rachel actually usable. And they can do way cooler stuff than this. But I decided since there wasn't an article on here about BlazBlue yet that it was necessary to add one. Tsubaki is awesome, her role in the story is awesome, her hat is awesome (it even has its own fan club: here )

Hoping for the third installment soon (though the numbering is getting bizarre with all the handheld ports of Continuum Shift, evidently they're calling the one on the Vita Continuum Shift II Plus...) but Continuum Shift is up to date with all the balance stuff so they've avoided the problem that plagued Guilty Gear and Street Fighter for so long and had only genuine sequels in the main line. And BlayzBloo Super Melee Brawlers Battle Royale, but everyone knows that game is amazing

Mario Trailer and other stuff I liked at E3

I figure this video captures the game I'm most interested in from the insanity that is E3 this year. Feel like they've got an amazing grasp on what works (Galaxy 2 was amaaaaazing, my favorite game of 2010). I'm gonna go down a list of stuff that interested me from this year's E3 though. By company because it's easier to sort and remember things that way. Also if you want a ton of video links you're reading the wrong article because I'm lazy. Also, just skip the middleman and look it up on youtube.

Nintendo

• Super Mario 3DS seems like a good blend of Mario Galaxy gameplay with traditional 'go to the end of the level' platforming. And it has the Tanooki Suit from Mario Bros. 3 which should be good and fun and nostalgic.
• Kid Icarus Uprising looks a little strange but it was one of the things that got me interested in getting a 3DS originally, though I was going to hold off on buying one till games came out for it. Then I got bored and bought the 3DS at midnight launch anyway. But Sakurai's at the helm, it'll probably be well done.
• Mariokart 3DS caught me out of nowhere but it seems pretty cool what they're doing with the whole vehicle-changing thing and the customization options. I liked Double Dash more than the Wii installment (and pretty much any of them better than the N64 and DS ones
• Those three are making me feel like getting the 3DS was a good idea. Getting the Ocarina of Time port as my first game for it which has me less excited than a lot of other people since I've played it like a bajillion times and I could care less about 3D, but I'll enjoy the game undoubtedly.
•  Zelda: Skyward Sword nailed down for a holiday release. Game looks fun, and I really hope there isn't any frustrating gameplay mechanic to ruin it like all the sailing and the triforce quest did for Wind Waker.
• That Kirby game on the Wii looks fun. I haven't really played a Kirby game since Kirby's Dream Land and that didn't even have the 'eat enemy to steal its power' thing. Will probably pick this up.
• The new hardware WiiU with the tablet controller. Looks strange and some of the tech demos look like they could be interesting, I'll have to withhold judgment till I see the games. But hey, there'll be a Zelda game on it and a Smash Bros game on it, it'll be good.

Sony

• Uncharted 3. Everyone else has already heaped their praise upon this franchise so I won't bother. But the trailer looked great and Chloe and Elena and Sully are all back for more.
• Resistance 3? It's been a really long time since the second game and I wasn't thrilled with it but the first one was one of my favorite shooters for a while and one of the games that got me playing shooters again with all its crazy weapons, and the third one seems like it'll be more like the first. Also it's being bundled with that Move thing that I was probably going to pick up eventually which seems like a decent deal packing in the nunchuck thing for once.
• I've played Infamous since I got a free digital copy and I have not liked it. So Infamous 2 and that Sly Cooper series are probably not for me.
• The Vita. Hardware looks very solid, all the bells and whistles are there if devs want to use them but seemingly not forced on people. Forcing touchscreen stuff did not work for me with the DS Zelda games, but I got great use out of the touchscreen on my DS with a niche strategy RPG bullet hell game 'Knights in the Nightmare.' Look it up and go play it. Wow, tangent on touchscreens. The installments of play/create/share LittleBigPlanet and Modnation Racers look like they'll do pretty well on the Vita and the Uncharted game looks great as well. That's like three games I'm already interested in. It has 3G plans available, does anyone know if it has phone functionality so I could replace my phone with it? That's something no one's told me about.

Microsoft

• Didn't take them long after Bungie left to start milking Halo. CHIIIIIIIIEF. Will play Halo 4 on a friend's copy before even thinking about picking it up.
• Never been interested in Kinect and that seems to be what they're pushing the most. Shame.

Namco-Bandai

• They did not have anything for me and my love of Tales games. Anything. Nothing on a specific US release date for Tales of the Abyss 3DS or Tales of Graces. No news about Tales of Xillia getting localized. :( 
• I guess there was Soul Calibur stuff.

Introducing another stupid blog you don't care about

Welcome to the graveyard of originality, where original ideas go to die. Except not. Why? Because I'm pretty sure you don't care. Seriously. Why do people with blogs always think that people come there because of them? Chances are there's some topic of mutual interest that caused people to stumble to their blog and keep reading the entries for that.

So here's what you will get and won't get out of reading this:

Will get:
~ Random links to articles, videos I found cool, adorable, noteworthy, or stupid enough to recommend other people partake.
~ Game trailers, screenshots, videos
~ Random anime clips, thoughts on particularly notable episodes
~ Movie reviews when I bother to drop $12 on going to see a movie in the theaters
~ Hints about EL.mentalist, the tabletop/card/video game under a one-person development team.

Will not get:
~ Personal life stuff. One, it's already established no one cares. Two, I don't care to share.
~ Politics. Politics pisses me off and I don't like things that piss me off.
~ Feeding off that, angry opinion pieces in general. If I squee over something I like when I post a game trailer,  that's probably the most opinion you'll get. I'm doing this to have an outlet rather than IMing offline buddies links to game trailers and expecting a response for somer eason.
~ Any consistent update schedule.

Why read?
I dunno.