Code Geass: An Awesome Beginning
On Saturday, April 26 of 2008 at 1:30 AM, Adult Swim on Cartoon Network premiered the anime series Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, a new edition to their night time line up. I honestly don’t know how well it did or if there was any hype about Code Geass before it dropped on the network, but I know one thing… I loved it. That first episode I saw on that night propelled me into a Code Geass two day marathon ( I know i’m hella late to this one, thanks all mighty Internets!!!) that left me thrilled, entertained and yearning for more. That being said, lets talk about this anime series that’s got your old boy darkmane in a tizzy.
Written and directed by Ichiro Okouchi and Goro Taniguchi respectively, with the art styling of the CLAMP ladies (not surprised that they’re involved with this one), comes the story of Lelouch Vi Britannia under the alias of Lelouch Lamperouge who exists in an alternate reality of our own where the mighty Britannia super power has taken over most of the world, including Japan. Unfortunately, like all the previous nations Britannia conquered, Japan is given an area designation number ( Area 11) and Japanese people are robbed of their freedom and rights.
About seven years after Japan was conquered a fated incident occurs which brings Lelouch into contact with his old childhood friend Suzaku Kururugi and the mysterious C.C, who would give him the ability to command others by bending them to his will called Geass. With this power he attempts two things: to destroy the nation of Britannia so he can build a new world for his disabled sister and exact vengance on its’ royal family for the murder of his mother.
Code Geass’s story is adult and by adult I mean brutally honest. People die and questions of morality come into play as Lelouch and his friend Suzaku pave their own paths for the future of Japan and the rest of the world. The “Nightmare Frames” (the stories name for its big Gundam like machines) are beautifully designed and much cooler than the ones you would find in anime’s like um, I don’t know, lame ass Eureka Seven. I felt none of the characters in the story were irrelevent. All of them were basically memorable and had good roles to play like Shirley a love interest for Lelouch or the nerdy, filthy racist Nina who’s utterly terrified of 11’s (what the Japanese are now called)
In the end, Code Geass is well written with all of the right elements needed to make a great story excellent. This one will play with your emotions and tug at your heart strings. To be honest, there was a point in the story which almost brought me to tears. That is no easy feat, let me tell you. I doubt I need to comment on CLAMP’s art style because it is already famous. There’s a manga for Code Geass as well, but from what I’ve read of it so far on onemanga.com it’s not as good as the anime but down the line it may flesh out some aspects of the story the anime leaves out. If for some reason you haven’t seen this one yet, I suggest you get on it now especially since the second season started to drop in Japan this month. Trust me, it won’t be a waste of your time like Naruto, hehe.
Devil May Cry 4: Nero
This game’s story sucks. Sorry, I just had to start there. Wait, no I’m not finished. In the next one they better explain Nero’s purpose in the series other than being an excuse to putting a Kratos like character in Devil May Cry. Who is he, Sparda reborn? If he is, that’s lame. Anyway, lets get into this.
As my compatriot stated in his review of DMC4 , I played Nero to his Dante . This youtube clip breaks down Nero’s game play very clearly. He’s a real easy character to get a handle on. But the clip doesn’t get one thing across to you, and that’s how great it is to play with upstart Nero. Yeah, you get to manhandle the bosses left and right in this game with your ultra cheesy devil arm, but you better believe doing so is not only visually amazing, but damned fun. Even though he’s more one dimensional with his fighting moves than Dante, you can really beat the crap outta everything around you in hilarious style. Unlike Japan Man, I like the fact that you were forced to deal with enemies and bosses differently when it came to both characters, although in that same breath I felt that same fact was used just to short change the players on more content. And since that last sentence hinted on issues I had with this game, we might as well continue in that direction.
I hate all of the side missions, even the easy ones. Why? Many reasons my dear readers of this post. You see, the side missions have a way of bringing mechanical flaws in the game to light, like how the devil arm will force you to overshoot your mark. Nothing like using it to pull you up to a boss for an aerial combo that misses because even though it put you closer, your still out of range to attack. Ah, how I love swinging at air so a boss or hyped up minion can knock the shit outta me. Also in mission # 2 where you gotta do 5 aerial busters in a row without touching the ground, hit detection problems arise while you’re trying to grab those bastards. Magically when you pull them up again they’ll be out of range for the slam. Oh yeah secret mission # 5, sky scrapper. That one ’s horrible. Bad enough I hate platform jumping, but how am I supposed to avoid the platform jump thing and a gate, and land on it if I can’t even see it yet? I swear I did that one like 30 times before I got it.
In the end Playing Devil May Cry 4 was as satisfying as you would expect it to be, even if its flawed. As in the previous Installments in this series (yes, even part 2) Devil May Cry 4 is full of fast pace action, stunning visuals, and entertaining characters. If you want the game to be challenging, just play it on hard. It was definetely worth the 54$ (we bought the limited edition used, minus the extra disk) we spent on it.
Blood+
When I first saw Blood +, I caught what later I found out to be around the end of the second to last episode. In my humble and honest opinion, it sucked. It was crap. Not only did I hate the english voice acting for Blood +, the art looked lame, and so did the action. Of course after that memories of the crappy anime floated from my mind and I moved on to better things like Buso Renkin. Not too long though, me and Japan Man were discussing the crappinest that is called Naruto when he mentioned the anime to me. He said “Yo, you ever heard about this anime called Blood +? Supposedly it’s really good, you should check it out then write about it. Oh yeah, check out Lucky Star too, it’s also hot right now.” The name had rung a bell with me so I responded with, “Yeah I think I might have seen some of that Blood + thing before. Yo man , if my memory serves me correctly, it was trash. I’ll watch the crap then tear it a new one in a review.” His answer to that was a chuckle and he said please do. You’re probably wondering why the hell i just rambled on with that story just now and just didn’t get straight to tearing Blood + a new one like I claimed I would. Well, it turns out that the little of what I saw of the anime on Cartoon Networkand my assumptions about it from that were not only premature, but also unjust.
Blood + revolves around a teenage girl by the name of Saya who has lost her memories. She’s been adopted into a Japanese man named Georges’ family, a family where everyone is not blood related. As she goes through her new daily life, sinister enemies and an old friend from her lost past appear throwing her and her new family into a deadly hidden war that threatens all of humanity.
At its’ heart, Blood + is just a vampire story with a slight twist. Nothing truly new happens here, you’ve basically seen all of this before. But it’s done in such a way that the old idea seems interesting and almost fresh. I found myself compelled to know what actually happened in Saya’s past and her deep connection with her enemies. The animation and action wasn’t as bad as I thought and since I watched the entire series subbed, I didn’t have to deal with the English voice acting. With that said, I also had an issue with Blood +. At times I found Saya’s mental and physical strength to be inconsistent. She’ll be focused and deadly at one point then girly and weak the next. I get that she’s teenagerish (yeah, i just made that word up), but for some reason, it really annoyed me, maybe cause that character type has been done a thousand times.
Overall, Blood +’s story is solid, with well written sub plots which add on to the main story, rooting it in reality. And with only 50 episodes total, it doesn’t pointlessly drag on like so many other anime’s out there. A great watch and definately worth your time, so check it out if you get the chance. Check the info for the live action movie for Blood+ at Anime Banzai.
Naruto, Naruto, Naruto,….. Why?
Where should I begin? Well, first off, I should start by mentioning what this post is about (if it isn’t obvious by the name of the post already). I, the young strapping lad known as Darkmane will be discussing one of the most, if not the top, popular anime/manga running rampant around the globe, Naruto.
I can remember when I first heard about Naruto. I was a GM for an on-line role-playing game. Me and a fellow GM were discussing good manga and he mentioned Naruto to me. I must say, based on his description, I was not impressed. In fact, I fondly recall bashing it and saying “wow, Japan made a manga about ninjas?, what a surprise.” But maybe about two years ago, some time after my great insight, I began watching the Naruto anime. I was surprised to find out that I was wrong about Naruto, in fact I felt very wrong. How could I have not given this story a fair chance I wondered. I sat and watched every episode to catch up with the rest of the fans. I was hooked. I would watch eight episodes day of Naruto just because I heard that in the newer episodes, everyone had gotten older and I thought that was cool. Little did I know on my way to that “coolness”, I would come upon one of the worst mistakes a writer could make under any circumstances.
It all started when that bitch ass nigga Sasuke decided to run away from the village like a pussy so he could learn from that drag queen Orochimaru, at least that’s what I think that child molesters name is. I was amped because it was their first mission alone and I knew it was gonna be action packed. I was not disappointed in the least. To be honest, that whole little storyline was awesome, they broke down into one on one matches so they could continue the chase, My favorite character in the whole series, Rock Lee showed up outta nowhere to help Naruto, Naruto had a climatic battle with gay Sasuke, just awesome. But two events more awesome then what I mentioned took place during that story arch. Another two characters I love, Neji and Chouji, had died. It was perfect. While they were chasing the guys that ran off with Sasuke, Chouji, then Neji had stayed back and fought one on one with two of Orochimaru’s freaks respectively, and died, killing their opponents before they died themselves. As I said, it was perfect. It tugged at my heart strings. All I could say was damn and shake my head. Two beloved Naruto characters went out in a blaze of glory, their full potential never realized, for the team. Now that’s great writing, I thought. I honestly didn’t think Masashi Kishimoto had it in him. Come to find out, he didn’t.
Episode 135 in season 6 was by far one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. In that turd of an episode I found out that Chouji and Neji were in fact still breathing even after their awesome and meaningful “death” scenes. Let me learn you Naruto lovin yokels something. There are multiple great fantasy stories out there, but the best have killed off characters that people loved. Masashi Kishimoto in typical “I’m to scared to break from the mold” Japanese fashion, had an opportunity to do so as well, but he either is to stupid or to cowardly to have done it. That Hokage dude doesn’t count by the way because the people in the story might have loved him, but he was no one’s favorite character. In the manga that dude with the brass knuckle knives has died already, but no one liked him either. Yeah, that’s right, if you haven’t read ahead past the anime yet, I just ruined something for you. HAHAHA, good! Naruto sucks balls, and not in a good way!
After the great disappointment of episode 135, I still watched Naruto in hopes that it would redeem itself somehow. Man was I mistaken. The filler drivel that followed was gut wrenchingly craptacular. The best things that came out of that heap of biological hospital waste was any episode that the two best characters in the whole series, Guy and Rock Lee were in. By the time I reached Naruto Shippuden, I was mentally exhausted and just watching the anime out of habit. Hope filled me though as I realized I had reached that point. “Finally!” I said, “their older now, so it’s gonna get better!”. It should be criminal how quickly that hope was dashed upon jagged rocks. Come to find out that my two favorite characters in the anime, Rock Lee and Neji, sucked. As a matter of fact, if you weren’t Gaysuke (haha), you automatically sucked. I’m not saying the cool characters stopped being cool, I’m saying they became obsolete as fighters in the series, forever delegated to fighting the lamer and or weaker enemies. All that supposed potential they had lost due to bad writing. And don’t be foolish enough to think it’s any better in the manga. There worthlessness is even more apparent. (I would spoil it for you, but I’ll let it slide).
In closing, Naruto sucks balls… wait I said that already. Hmm… what other colorful way can I bad mouth this crap of a series? Ah! Naruto sticks fingers up man pee-holes! Yeah, that’s a good one. Watching or reading this series is most likely equivalent to how that feels. There are so many other superior manga/ animes out there for people to be hung up on this one. Please, expand your options people.
Darkmane is a new author for Japan Man. His knowledge of anime, manga, and video games is unmatched. Stay tuned for more of his posts, subscribe to the Japan Man feed, comment, stumble it, and stop liking Sasuke because he is emo.
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