Monday, April 23, 2012

fully charged blog post

New Music

Quakers
So this is a huge cabal of 35 MCs working with a trio of extremely talented producers. Their combined efforts have produced this hour-long 41-track beast of an album. In my eyes, though, this represents hip hop’s best effort, through dark ritual and hard science, to resurrect J Dilla. Success? It’s damn close. Here we get a synthesis of a Madlibesque loop-mining operation and the a definitive next-level “screw the rules” sort of approach to beat innovation. Picture: football field halftime: tribal rolls on drum-line snares with the trumpets two rows back blasting Radiohead’s anthem over America’s, which pleases your p-funk style cheerleaders tossing alien propaganda to the hippest of cats in the stands, nodding slowly in approval. More amazingly, this sound collage of what seems like everything cool tossed in a hat is completely unified and cohesive. Credit the talent of the production and rappers for that – if the fundamentals are sketchy, what hope does anything else have? But yeah this has more than hope, this is definitive next level Stones Throw sorta flow. Get hype or whatever. S

Transverse Temporal Gyrus
This being the live single for record store day from Animal Collective. Always good to hear new AnCo, always refreshing for them to still be so refreshing. This takes me back to both Oddsac, their most recent, and their earliest stuff, and yet sounds completely unlike what they’ve done before. Great! That new LP should be FANTASTIC.

Old Music

Igorrr
I found out about this guy through ITG, and I’m really glad I did, ‘cause he’s really something else. At first I was dismissive as I misjudged his aesthetic to be the “brutal hardcore” sorta metal instead of your “grotesque noisebarrage” workings of Venetian Snares et al. Now I think of him as like, Venetian Snares with a fascination with romanticism and metal instead of baroque and hip hop. They go equally hard, though, and Igorrr serves quite nicely when I’m in the mood for drum nausea. Really cool stuff.


Animes/Mangas

Rinne no Lagrange

5 or 6 episodes into this, really impressed so far. Wished I’d watched it while it was airing, oh well. This is like some bizarre parody of mecha by way of moe. We have a cast that’s essentially an inversion of Evangelion. Madoka’s robot stops and instead of crying or hallucinating or something she gets a phone call. “Moshi-moshi?” She tries to strangle the enemy robot with a power line. Robots don’t breathe! And there’s no absolute terror field or LCL or whatever, the robot just goes and it’s from ancient aliens or something. All the bad guys are the protagonists from a different show. The overall plot is like some aliens want to use some ancient earth technology stuff to battle different aliens and one alien from each and Madoka have these ancient earth robots, and there’s a prophecy, and that’s passable. There’s some dramatics about one girl being jealous of the other, the old “only one friend” (oof!) schtick, but it’s not really that lame. All character designs and voice acting fantastic, but I think that can only be expected. Funny scenes really quite funny and action scenes exciting. Dramatic scenes sort of fall on their face but do so in an endearing way. Really though I think what’s so fantastic about it is the colour schemes and aesthetics and such, that’s what really makes this show an absolute joy to watch.

Medaka Box

Marathoned to catch up with this recently ‘cause I want some shonens to follow now that a lot seem to be ending. Overall I enjoyed it. Definitely has all the standard flaws of weekly serialized shonen: powerlevels BS, unnecessarily complex structuring, poor arc transitions, sudden shift from original premise to lol battle manga, etc, but I almost look forward to that sort of stuff, I mean, shonen is what I’m here for. No amount of reflexivity can save it, in fact, reflexivity always highlights these sort of flaws and doesn’t necessarily lampshade it. I think one of the biggest things people need to realize about postmodernism is that reflexivity is actually extremely easy to do and doesn’t equal cleverness 100% of the time. I’m tired of the “you gotta admire the balls it takes to break the fourth wall or whatever, ‘cause they’re showing you their hand” thinking, it’s actually sort of a cowardly thing to try avoid critique of the text as the text and not some metatext where most criticism is invalid i.e. it’d be silly for me to say Medaka is generic shonen because it knows its generic fiction. PRETTY WEAK, you’re still generic shonen, I win.

At the same time, reflexivity can be very clever, and here it is often pretty clever. Stuff like “Medaka can’t lose ‘cause she’s the main character, so the villain’s scheme is to make the secondary character the main character” - that’s clever. As is “the villain is trying to end the manga, BATTLE TO CONTINUE SERIALIZATION”, that’s REALLY clever. And the first “breaches” of the fourth wall or whatever, when she says “I’ll end it before the anime starts” and such, that can be pretty chilling. So overall I think the metaness is a positive in the series but my point is that it isn’t automatically and it has some drawbacks, too.

Anyhow let’s uh look at the individual arcs:

WOAH DID YOU KNOW THIS IS BY NISIO ISIN WHO DID -GATARI STUFF? I had no idea.

But yeah:

Suggestion box arc: Naively I thought this would be the premise for 140 chapters or whatever. So naïve! But it sorta seemed like it would with the miniarcs of the swimming team etc. This was great fun, funny, Medaka was an interesting character. A

Flask Plan Tower arc: I guess this starts with the little arc against what’s his face with the bouncing balls. Alright whatever now we fighting mangas and there’s no turning back. None of the villains were all too interesting I thought but some of the fights were quite good. The guy who pulled stuff from hammerspace was probably the most interesting. But yeah bun too much “here’s a guy, here’s his backstory, here’s three chapters of a fight, now he’s redeemed somewhat, now you win the fight”, bun. C+

Minus 13 arc: KUMAGAWAAAAAAA!!!!! and his cohorts were all pretty great characters. The fights here were better than the last arc but still maybe just a bit too much straight fighting. But yeah plus like a million points for how good a character Kumagawa is. He’s a bit inconsistent and sometimes the like, miracle broke and he suddenly seemed lame but when he’s in his zone, like, when you first meet him and such, sheesh. Rarely do characters get so compelling. B+

New kids arc: Kumagawa now an ally, interesting new enemy, and the feeling that we’ll never see a new male character again. The new middle schoolers were all pretty interesting as were all the council leaders and such. Good variety of battles but still all the pratfalls of strict battle manga. Kumagawa has good scenes but isn’t allowed to steal the show nonstop which is uh NOT OKAY but whatever. B

Vs Medaka arc: Here’s where things get really crazy meta which is pretty interesting. Kumagawa’s naked apron alliance is funny but sort of anticlimactic. Luckily the actual climax was like boom boom nonstop occasionally poignant often moving ALWAYS EXCITING GOOD JOB THE SERIES COULD HAVE ENDED HERE BUT NOPE YOU WON OR SOMETHING WHATEVER good stuff. A

Bridal suitors arc
This just started so I dunno but it might be fun. Anshin'in one-shotting the first cast was sort of predictable ‘cause no way new male characters are gonna stick around for more than a chapter. But yeah the scenes of her using 600 of her 13 quadrillion powers was pretty cool. But what are they gonna do now? She’s just gonna not fight anymore in this arc prolly but that makes no sense. Anyways seems like this series isn’t ending any time soon and that’s fine with me ‘cause honestly I’d rather read a B+ series for a few more years than have it end on a A-. If it could end on like an S+ I’d rather see it end but y’know might as well ride it out.

Character rankings

Kumagawa Tier
Kumagawa

Interesting Tier
Anshin'in

Occasionally Interesting Tier
Medaka

DEVIL COOL Tier
Zenkichi

Good enough Tier
The rest

The Anime

I may watch eventually. I was sort of curious as to why Gainax picked it up. They aren’t really the “all craziness” studio that they were in the heyday but they usually have some reason to pick it up. Here I think the answer is the metaness. Once the manga starts going off about being a manga and ending before the anime, the anime has free reign to do uh anything and when Gainax can do anything they usually end up doing something interesting. Oh but it’s pretty unlikely they’ll be able to make it that far into the series so uhh.

MEEDAAABOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS

So I’ve never been one for the uh watch an old show for nostalgia thing. Occasionally I guess I’ll watch some old Pokemon on a stream or something, I guess, but I’m not usually down for the marathon nostalgia binges of my peers. This isn’t because I don’t like socially marathoning shows, or watching old stuff or bad stuff or anything, it’s more because it seems like my memory disproportionally prioritizes remembering shows from my youth so I don’t really forget them enough for proper nostalgia. Oh well probably for the best. Anyways Medabots is sorta different because I had always missed a bunch of episodes when I was watching it as a kid, and I think the ones I did see I only saw parts of because of having to catch a bus or something, so basically I only had a very rough idea of what was going on. Well now that’s changed because I have a rough idea of what’s going on. Pretty entertaining, though. I remember thinking this premise was like the greatest idea ever when I was a kid and it’s still pretty good I think. So yeah. I bet you forgot about this show. Check it out. The dub has maybe the worst voice acting I have ever heard though.

Bakuman
So this ended recently! Wow! Eventually I may want to do a sort of retrospective look at it but not right now. Doesn’t seem fitting with the end. Plus, what I liked about Bakuman wasn’t really any individual arc or plot element, although I did like some more than others, it was the overall premise of creating manga and all the great characters. At the same time, there was overarching elements that I really hated, too. Like uh the whole Mashiro/Azuki relationship sheesh talk about suspension of disbelief busted wide open like they could not romanticize this idea enough for me to like it or believe it for a second. Goes double for the whole pretty creepy following in his uncle’s footsteps sorta thing. So of course to spite me the final chapter is entirely about these things, but really, what else could it be about? People call it abrupt but I could do without 10 chapters of unnecessary epilogue stuff, like, give credit to the mangaka, we know the characters well enough to know what they’ll do in the future. Still, I was hoping for something, I dunno, more grand? Not that I know what. I think the scope was right but I wanted it to knock me off my chair somehow. Maybe the characters were too in character? Nervousness etc is cute and realistic but this is the grand finale, they can be forgiven if the characters become more agents of a powerful story than their established flawed selves.

Really though my beef is the final line being “From now on, we can always be by each other’s side” when they could have been by each other’s side the WHOLE TIME.

But yeah it was good overall, still going to buy the series, etc.

The World God Only Knows

With Bakuman ending and Bleach and Naruto going who knows where and a bunch of other stuff looking like it’ll end I figured I needed more weekly series to read so I picked this one that uh looks like it’ll end any second now too well shoot. Oh well. I’m about 40 chapters in now and really enjoying it, just finished the student teacher arc which I thought was fantastic. Premise is great, characters are great, art is great. Some arcs/characters better than others of course but usually if I was meh about one I end up loving the next. Seems (from /a/ threads) that it transitions from small arcs based around new characters to haremesque “who’s he gonna choose” among a few main characters, which I’m overall pretty okay with. I love the chapters between arcs too.

Okay so that’s good.

/u/ stuff roundup

Went on another rampage through Dynasty Scans again...

Prism
This is onto it’s second volume now and has really held up. I even ordered the first volume! I’m sort of meh about the whole “it turns out the boy I had a childhood crush on is actually a girl and now attends my school” cliché but I guess it does good work in that it allows both a reason for initial attraction and still allows for the “oh wait I guess I like girls” realization scene. So that’s okay. Artwork still good, the style of the character designs was initially offputting but I’ve gotten used to it, still good mix of comedy and drama and moe. S

Tetsunagi Kooni
Ahahgugdeduhghghdghagjhegd edgedheg hhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggg Ume-sensei this is just toooo much. And yet way too little!! Seriously six page chapters like every two months do you hate your fans personally? But yeah this is EXCELLENT, really really nice slice of life, really beautiful. Worthy successor to Hidamari. **

Cirno and Reimu’s One-two-three
Started reading this, read the first two volumes. I love the art (hyper stylized character designs mad cool) and the story and everything but holy cow I just cannot get my head around the pairing. It is simply an affront to every rational aspect of my mind. It’s to the extent that I have begun to reevaluate exactly what I consider “true” about 2hos and some deep introspection about interior correlation between strength of belief and evidence. Not really. But Reimu x Cirno is just a straight out and out no man like what like no way no how like how is this so good when it’s centered around something tantamount to 1 + 1 = 9.

Seriously I’m reading the third volume now and the idea of Reimu running around to tidy up for CIRNO is impossible for me to believe.

Now I’m on the fourth and this sort of nonsensical shipping is still screwing with my head.Whenever I get really like emotionally charged about it I read something like “omg I kissed Cirno!” and I feel like I’m reading some joke slashfic of Percy the Train x May from Pokemon. You guys remember that one, right?

Really good though yeah. S-

Hanjuku Joshi
This one was really good, going through a lot of Morishima Akiko’s stuff now. Loved the art and the characters, liked the two-relationship plot especially with the big difference between the two. The girl’s plot started with no initial attraction but uh escalated really quickly, hitting what’s usually the climax of a series like this within a few chapters. That was good, though, they managed to keep escalating with an established relationship without doing the pretty tired formula of “and then they had some fights”, which is great in a blue moon (See: Girl Friends) but usually just hard to read. Some interesting character dynamics of “I don’t want to be a girl” and such kept it from being too shallow. So yeah, good series, probably will never get localized, dang. S


Video Games

Super Mario 3D Land

Played through this, PRETTY IMPRESSED. I was all set to hate the controls or hate something, I don’t know, I was just skeptical I think. I think I was skeptical in the exact way that they anticipated and they were completely ready to dismantle all my fears. It plays like Super Mario 64! It plays like Galaxy! It plays like SMB3! All at the same time!!! How?!? Magic, or something! Slight disappointments uhh I think the tanuki suit is way too good for a 3D game so I refused to use it much, the boomerang suit is sort of underwhelming too but I don’t know what to do to fix it. Also not enough koopas! I understand that kicking a shell in 3D is pretty crazy so you can’t have people doing it willy-nilly but they were degraded from second most common enemy to occasional set piece. I miss my koopas! And only three different bosses is sort of lame. Good stuff is everything else. Loads of amazing level designs. Difficulty ramp is near perfect. Special world is especially excellent in terms of difficulty, great mix of challenges that never go too far towards sheer frustration. 30 second clock? Shadow trail? That stuff is GENIUS, yo! And the new challenge levels are brilliant too. Silver tanuki suit even more imba than regular but turning into a statue is really fun. Luigi, as always, is tons of fun to play with. And it records your best times for stages! Probably best element is just the number of elements that are pure visceral fun: note blocks, coin trails, enemy hop chains, anything with the propeller block... Great game great just great. S+

Ocarina of Time

Did you know that OoT can be beaten in less than an episode of Seinfeld now? For relas. I mean there was a lot of jokes about the any% run before and how wacky RBA was (lol trading with villagers lets you into Ganon’s tower!) and then about how wacky credits skip was (lol defeat Dodongo hooray the kingdom is saved let’s party!) but I don’t think anything can take the cake from a route of go swimming → catch chicken → suicidal tree cleaning → bottle is instrument → tree is in collapsing tower → TIME PARADOX BREAKER. This is simultaneously the greatest and stupidest thing in video game history.

Project M: Demo 2
This is out now and it’s PRETTY FANTASTIC. New stages: AMAZING. N64 Hyrule is AWESOME. New Green Hill Zone is GREAT. Castlevania is like MY FAVORITE STAGE. Metal Cavern now has MERZBOW REMIX has ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCED THIS PROBLEM? Seriously the sound didn’t load correctly and has a real harsh noise vibe. DON’T KNOW IF COMPLAINING.

Basically everything I hate about this game is straight from Brawl and also pretty pointless to hate. Stuff like how gaudy a lot of the designs are and how overly busy a lot of the animations are and the sound effects are REALLY LAME AND ANNOYING. Hopefully someone is working on the aesthetic mod side of this, with Melee textures and sound effects. The design team on Brawl has never ever heard of the phrase “less is more”. Everything from turning around to fully charged smash attacks seems to have an equally obnoxious and inappropriate sound effect.

What really matters is the characters. I MAIN RANDOM, ‘cause EVERYONE is FUN. Something weird seems to be going on with the random thing, though, I get Mario roughly half the time. ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCED THIS PROBLEM? My guess is that it’s loading from some big character index that the demo has only half filled, and empty slots default to Mario, who is likely character 00 or whatever. Anyways brief character rankings:

Fox – My technical Melee Fox roommate finds PM Fox incredibly frustrating. I imagine it’s like waking up one morning and finding your limbs have all changed in size by a few inches. The analogous thing here I guess is that in Melee I just sat around all day and never moved my limbs, so I don’t really care. A-

Falco – Here is where I actually notice some technical disparity, but again, I’m far from a technical Melee player so it isn’t too bad. Blue lasers look wimpy. HANDS OFF MY PREY is good though. A+

Puff – Yo screw Puff for real. I don’t like her new sound effects but her new outfits are great. Still not going to play her as much as possible, though, that boat has sailed. C

Sheik – Yes here is the new main, where I try to space back airs and get gimpy offstage kills and feel guilty for playing a hated character. World of difference. Ftilt stuff seems even lamer due to weird DI issues on weak hits. Black costume is really neat though. B+

Marth – Marth somehow feels even wimpier than he did in Melee. Even tippered fsmashes seem underwhelming. Aside from that he’s still Marth and I still barely know what I’m doing with him but have fun. B

Peach – I haven’t played much PM Peach but she seems about the same. Of the new designs I think I like Peach’s the best, it’s still busy as all hell but the sort of elegance fits her. Same with Zelda. New utilt and the easter egg on the side B are neat but not really relevant enough for me to care. Also the new system for DJC aerials is really cool but I haven’t figured out how to use it really well yet. Dsmash is the same and that’s the only move I really need though. Peach is still sort of fun and sort of lame. B-

Captain Falcon – Yeah it’s Cfalc what more do you want? Side B grabs the ledge, knee easter egg, that’s all I need. *

Ganondorf – I largely like the new Gdorf, new d and f tilt are good, new side B and up B hitbox are cool. Some stuff seems wimpier, though, like, uh, every other move besides maybe his bair. Oh and his uair now seems too strong, I miss the insult of the minor toe hit for the ledgeguard. B+

Mario – I have been playing a ton of new Mario because the randomizer hates/loves me. He’s really fun! Everything painfully wrong with him in Melee has been fixed and he really feels like the solid, well-rounded character he was always supposed to be. A+

Pikachu – Same fix as Mario, really. New bair is wonderful. I gotta learn about the stuff he can do out of his up B more. I hate his sound effects, though, like, hate hate hate. A+

Donkey Kong – New dash attack is SO COOL. Everything else is how I loved it in Melee with various slight buffs. More fun than a barrel of etc. S

Luigi – You can slide around and that’s basically all I care about. Recovers a bit better yeah that’s good. The storing of misfires and such is really cool, looking forward to figuring out how to do that best. A

Link – Suddenly a real character! A really solid one at that. Feels like N64 Link in a lot of ways, the cool mid-range projectile spacing game, big heavy hits, all that. Don’t like the design, though. B+

Zelda – Turns out Zelda is plenty playable if she actually has more than two good moves (three if you count her down B, basically the best move in the game). Didn’t Demo 1 let you cancel your fireballs somehow? Or did I dream that? Anyways very cool character, very cool concept. A

Game and Watch – Smashes as strong as so called “heavy weights”. Up B puts you in regular fall rather than special fall. An actual shield! Aerials as strong as they should be!! SHORT HOP DOUBLE BACON. Yes. Yeeeeesssss. S+

Bowser – Bowser, a good character? Bruh, you LYAN. No. I’m for RELAHS. Bowser’s super armor is the most hype thing I’ve ever heard of. His forward smash is the most satisfying thing a human being can do. Seriously, they have created a heavyweight tanky character that actually feels like he ought to, like you’re controlling a crazy powerful tank of a boss. You actually feel like you have your say in how the match progresses as Bowser! That’s amazing! Jump cancelled down B whaaaaaat?!?!? **

Ness – If I could figure out how to do the new DJC system well I think I’d be all over Ness. They gave him his N64 dair back! That’s pretty nuts! He can almost recover most of the time now too! Pretty exciting. I wonder if they gave him the Yoyo Glitch? A-

Snake – Cool concept for a character, finally works. Throwing bombs and such around is fun and you really feel the sense of helplessness when they want you to, as opposed to VBrawl Snake, who just punched his way out of any problem. B

Wario – Farting is still lame! It’s a cool attack but oh man it makes me cringe. Everything else is cool although I suspect I’m not using his side B right. His dair is tons of fun. A-

Dedede – Pretty exciting character but I dunno, feels weirdly clunky. I think I’ll figure him out more in the future. Side B is fun, lots of his moves are hype just cause they hit hard. Neutral B seems useless? That was true for Wario too. B+

Lucario – Ahhh what am I doing I am not a Street Fighter player what is happening. Lucario seems really cool though. I kind of want them to add super meter aura type stuff to every character. Kind of. B

Toon Link – He finally plays like I pictured he would in Brawl! Like Young Link with feasible aggression! Sure, he’ll prolly end up being a lolprojectile character if you were to use him for reals but he’s tons of fun. New dtilt and fsmash are great too. A

ROB – Lots of pretty cool stuff going on here, his recovery options are a blast (lol), laser is always hype, I really don’t know what I’m doing with the down B, very solid overall. B+

Pit – I hate the voice acting aaargh. Everything here is a lot of fun though. Arrows are a really fun projectile, gliding is exciting, recovering seems very dramatic, I guess his up B is supposed to be your general kill move out of like, upward combos? That’s pretty cool. Lots of potential here. Should figure out how his down B works. A

Wolf – A new space animal??? Well he has a shine and combos so I guess? Horizontal Falco? Pretty cool. Smash attacks and even the aerials seem really satisfying, more so than most spacies stuff. Oh and you can ledge cancel his side B from the ground on a lot of stages like by going towards one of the side platforms and that’s roughly the coolest thing ever because it also KILLS. A

Sonic – Sanic is still mostly lolgottagofast but has some solid kill potential in his downsmash. I still have no idea what I’m doing with side and down B but I feel like there are things that can be done. Prolly would have like twice as much fun with him if I could moonwalk. I just wish his dair wasn’t so awkward. B

Ike – PREPARE YOURSELF for HYPE OVERLOAD, this man is a swordvan that can rocket himself into walls and bounce off. How cool is that? A

Charizard – It is the dream of every child of my generation to go around smashing stuff as Charizard. A dream of paramount importance, second perhaps only to psychic rampages as Mewtwo, but Melee quashed that dream. And Brawl quashed the dream of Charizard?? PROJECT M RESURRECTS. Charizard feels both fast and powerful, like Captain Falcon in dragon form. Down B never seems intuitive to me but it works actually really well. Nicely done. S+

Lucas – Lucas is still a bag of tricks and a half and I still can’t do half of them as well as I should. His new aerials are a bit less interesting but way more useful. Zair is probably his best spacing too, though. Down B seems useful but I am too dumb. Pretty exciting though, all around. B+


Other stuff

I was going to talk about books but my kindle is screwing up so whatever will deal with that later. I was reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and finding it “begrudgingly compelling”. Or rather I am begrudgingly finding it compelling. I want to read The Recognitions next I think.

I was going to talk about Community but I think I’ll just wait until the season finishes.

I’m sure I could come up with something else to talk about but this post is long enough.

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