[manga monday] Heart no Kuni no Alice

Personally, I hardly read any manga at all, I prefer my pictures to move around with flashy effects whilst making noise.  So, the majority of what I’ve read are things that were thrust in my face by one person or another.  Heart no Kuni no Alice is no exception, and it came recommended to me by my friend Alex.

Building a Better Party

I’ve been wanting to do just a fun post to get our readers thinking for a while now, and I think this is a pretty good prompt for you all.  We’ve all thought about what would make the ideal group, party, or what have you, from fictional characters.  The most likely setting is a fantasy RPG world, but if you want to pick out somewhere else (school?), go right ahead.  The limits are any media derived from Japanese culture, this includes video games, anime, manga, drama series, and so forth.

Now, when you do this, I want you to try and be creative about it.  Sure, you can make a party of Cloud, Squall, Vincent, and Riku, but, everyone’s thought of it, and it’s not a terribly interesting group choice as is.  Of course, if you want to write a 10 page dissertation proving me wrong, more power to you.  Also, keep in mind that your characters need to be balanced.  They need to be able to work together not just on the field of battle, but also everywhere else as well.  It’s no good to have a bunch of expert warriors if no one knows how to cook!

Write as little or as much as you want.  Whether or not you’re game for this, I’ve picked out my own personal best party, and you can check it out after the break.

Rant – The Invisible Panelist

I’d like to start this out by making it very clear who I’m talking about, or rather, who I’m not talking about.  If you have a panel slot, and you also have a legitimate reason to not be present for your event, go, take care of it, you have my blessing.  The following is not meant to apply to you.  Also, this is kind of a long post, so there’s a convenient TLDR at the bottom if you can’t be bothered to read it all.  Are we clear now?  Good, then let’s get to work.

Seiken no Blacksmith – Episode 01

Today, we are going to play a little game.  I am going to describe the plot of this episode, and I want you to think about what it sounds like.  Let’s see if we reach the same conclusion.

Review: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

I spent the last week of my life blazing a trail through this game, partially at the request of friends and partially because I enjoy beating things down with a large key.  30 hours of gameplay on Proud mode later, I completed my mission.  Now it’s time to reflect on the whole experience.

The Last Remnant Review

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been pushing through The Last Remnant, one of Square-Enix’s new IPs for 2009.  This is old hat for some of you, but there’s a surprising number of people that I’ve talked to who were interested, but never actually went to pick it up.  So, let’s take a look at it to see how it delivers.

Yu Yu Hakusho – Manga Review

I finished Yu Yu Hakusho about an hour ago.  175 chapters read over the course of 4 days.

And it was flippin’ epic.

Pokemon Special – RGB Arc

This is one of those things I’ve always wanted to read, but never really got around to: the Pokemon manga.  Now, the games aren’t necessarily known for their stellar plots, and especially not the TV series which is almost entirely episodic, so is the manga any different?  Let’s find out.

Funimation Wants Input

sushiwolf linked me this on LJ, and now I’m sending it to you here.  Funimation is holding a poll to gauge interest in anime series to dub.  Probably the most out of left-field here is a proposed redub of Sailor Moon.  So, take a few minutes out of your day and participate.

I’m personally hoping for a dub of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei…

http://blog.funimation.com/2009/05/we-need-your-input/

Post Mother Marathon

It’s finally over after 77 hours.  This is one of the most exhausting things I’ve done in my life, but we did so much good.  The marathon shattered expectations and records, with the goal of $6000 being met at 10 in the morning on Saturday, just 40 hours in.  The final donation count is $10450, which is 174% of the original goal.  The last two thousand or so were the results of a charity auction in the closing hours of the marathon.

You also might remember I said the chat was kind of crazy.  Here’s the log statistics.  14.1 MB in size, 6397 pages, 1929710 words in length, 14297426 characters typed.  You can shave off about 600000 words for usernames and timestamps.  To give you a comparison, the Harry Potter series is approximately 1 million words in length.

I know several people from the community that visited, a few even messaged me.  If you stopped by for any time at all, thanks for the support.  See you in July.