Typically one would say "Thank you for helping me keep this blog strong!", but I won't. I say it on every "update" and it's tired out by this point. Yes, I am still thankful, but that's not going to be the purpose of this post.
Well, I want to mention the state of various posts I'm working on or I've promised I'd put up. Then I'll sprinkle in some things on my mind lately.
First, Mass Effect 2.
I started it over a year ago after being inspired by the Smithsonian exhibit The Art of Video Games. To see Mass Effect 2 among several other games that earned some really, really great attention for the medium as a whole really excited me. Heck, one of the books in the gift shop was titled From Pacman to Mass Effect! This gave me the motivation to take a closer look at the game and really pick at the good and the bad. The review took the span of one post and covered everything from plot, characters, presentation, etc.
Then I finally caught up and beat all three games in the trilogy. I had WAY more material to sit through and nitpick. Add on the first Mass Effect three-part review and I knew I had to restart the entire piece I finished. So I reread my post. Most of what I originally wrote was lacking in details. Hardly any "criticism" cropped up. It felt like something IGN would make before tweaking it to make up for the fact the writer didn't even play 15 hours of the game, let alone 200 (1).
It wasn't bad, per se. It was just unfinished.
Now that I have a better idea of what to tackle, the review was put on hold since the beginning of this year. I played the game a few more times over the summer to refresh my memory, and I began rewriting the review again. But then another game and my fanfic left me a bit distracted. My brain is still all over the place.
However, in short, I will get this review done. Part 2 is 87% done as I'm typing. It'll be out soon, I swear. Part 3 will take a while too, but my mind is set. I will finish Mass Effect 2 before I tackle any other game, movie, book, album, or whatever pops in my head. I'm focusing in.
Now for the other elephant in the room. Persona 4.
I spent the entire summer playing this game so often that I would forget about other things. My Persona 3 fanfic would get pushed aside, my blog too. My opinions of the game were very fresh when I completed it and I had to get it out before they vanished. I don't regret making the post (excluding my terrible grammar), but it distracted me. Thank you, Persona 4, for ruining my life.
The review will come after Mass Effect 2. I have my Vita up at school with me so I can easily get back into it whenever I forget something. Therefore, handheld high school shenanigans take a much lower priority than the console-exclusive space opera.
Anything else? Oh yeah. This is hidden in my drafts, but these things have crossed my mind recently.
Damn, Atlus, you've been robbing me of attention and money this year. At least it's been pretty fun. I'll take the Megami Tensei franchise over Final Fantasy any day of the week. Just PLEASE dont go away... PLEASE.
Anyway. Devil Survivor 2 The Animation. As one who has not played the game, I have my few cents to throw in as an anime fan. Would it be best if I had a history with the game? Perhaps. But many hours of surfing the net and roasting marshmallows over the Megami Tensei Wiki, I have a better understanding of the MegaTen franchise and their subseries than a typical anime viewer. So I still plan to say something about this sometime. Because, man, this show... this show...
I'll cover it another day.
Moving on to... fan service?
Kingdom Hearts meets... Twilight. Sort of.
I don't think I'm going to make an entire post about Amnesia. There's not much worth saying other than me feeling... conflicted. The art style is striking and really, really pretty; the opening and ending themes are melancholic pop rock. It's up my alley. The presentation is as good if not better than Vampire Knight's, another mild guilty pleasure of mine.
Everything is either decent enough to keep my attention... or so bad I'm bashing my head against a wall. The main lead has no name. Seriously. Just Heroine. And she's got no personality at all. Bella Swan's got more meat on her than this amnesiac "heroine". The guys are attractive, but their personalities are pretty generic.
Shin's the red impatient tsundere with a good heart (and a year younger than Heroine(2)); Ikki's the blue royal flirt cursed with the blessing to make all girls swoon before him.. except Heroine (3); Kento's the green, logical one who barely gets any attention; and Toma...
Toma... is everything that's ass-backwards about Japan. And romantic fiction geared to women in general. This insults all men everywhere. He takes HIM's "This Fortress of Tears" waaaaaaaaaaaay too damn literally. He is goddamn Junior in the TV adaptation of Under the Dome. And Japanese women eat this up. And the Heroine puts up with it. She makes women look like the submissive sex we've been deemed since the dawn of mankind! And I had to watch this garbage for TWO EPISODES while Kento only gets ONE! ... Why?! WHY?!
 |
| "AND FEMINISM MARCHES THE %$#@ ON!!" |
Toma is the reason I prefer the tsundere over the yandere. One's sugar and spice. The other is a $#%@ing siren with a bazooka strapped to its forehead.
Anywho... the last guy is just as bad as Toma. He's batshit insane for no adequately explained reason, or the anime was too lazy to explain how he developed his psychosis in the first place. Because this anime is made to get girls to wet themselves over hot anime guys. I could barely tolerate this eye candy. My fanfic is better written than this. At least my female protagonist has a name. At least she does more than pine over her love interest. At least the love interest has more personality than these boys.
Dear lord, Amnesia... I'm betting the visual novel was somewhat better than this AT LEAST with Shin, Kento, and Ikki's routes. Because this show is really, really, really stupid. And bad. It's fun, but it's really bad.
One last thing. It's old news by now, but I think I'll talk about it sometime before I die.
Christmas Day viewing in the theater with my mom and cousins. Never seen the musical live nor have I read the book. I don't know a lick of French. Then some time later, I saw the 25 year performance version on TV. Yep, that version had a Jonas Brother. My cousin and I had a field trip bashing the hell out of him. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's a summary of my feelings on Les Miz.
I don't get the appeal of this story. At all. Not based on the adaptations I've seen.
It's rushed and suffers from ADHD. There are too many characters with flat personalities, shallow motivations, and overdramatized conflicts. The love triangle is more annoying and boring than a typical anime romantic comedy. Cosette and Valjean don't have a father-daughter bond worth giving a crap about. Javert and Valjean's conflict is shoved aside for more characters with dumber subplots. The timeskips toss aside any build-up for what could be meaningful, emotional, and passionate relationships one can sob their eyeballs over. Instead, it's just the pretty set pieces and bombastic singing that does it.
YES. I KNOW that is the point of musicals to be over-the-top, emotional and dramatic. But this is a shallow dismissive "argument" used as a diamond and steel shield to protect something "fragile and precious". YES. I am sure the nearly 1,500 paged novel nourishes the main characters with plenty of meat to make them interesting. I am sure there is appropriate build-up for character development and conflicts. I am sure there is enough fat to make Victor Hugo's magnum opus to be as beloved as it is. I can only hope so because the musical and the movie feel so sickly and bare. They're skeletons wearing a wedding gown for a royal family.
Now the film. The shaky camera is annoying. I hate the close-ups. Russell Crowe is a rock singer in an opera, no shit the two don't go together. His style is the glaringly obvious flaw, not the voice itself. Hugh Jackman is decent, but shrill. Anne Hathaway was only fantastic because Fantine was the only character with a palatable arc shown on screen that was established, followed, and completed. It was 100% worth crying about. The rest of the film goes downhill from there. I stared at my phone's clock several times because I got tired of the pacing and lack of substance.
Controversial statements? Totally. Fangirl is ready for the flying tomatoes.
Only a few things baffled me more than Les Miserables: Ergo Proxy for its pretentiousness and dreadful pacing, Oblivion for its underdeveloped premise and horrendous characters, and Toradora for its psychotic tsundere and otherwise cliched structure.
... But enough negativity. I have to truly end on a positive note! What else is there?
Aug 15, 2013: "There's an update for Persona 4 Arena on the way. Not much in the way of details now, except for one thing: Junpei and Yukari are going to be playable characters."
... Voltech, you liar. That can't possibly -
O_O
Ju-Ju-Ju-Junpei? IORI JUNPEI?! "Who's da man?!" Junpei Iori?! The lovable Ace Defective?! The Magician of Persona 3?! Voiced by Vic Mignoga?! The guy who swings his sword like a baseball bat?! The one comic relief character I really, really, really love?!
He's PLAYABLE in Persona 4 Arena?!
YUKA-TAN TOO?!
I'm off to celebrate with Fanta and chocolate Oreos until I get back to my PS3.
... But is - ? Oh, right... Portable isn't canon. Damn it!! T-T
Thanks again for the views, guys. I may not update often, but I enjoy the fact that people read my ramblings. I hope to keep Rants From a Fangirl until I run out of steam.
Seeing how much I squee and rant like an opinionated zealot, I hope I can last for a while longer. :D
... So much for not saying it. Oh well. XD
~ Melanie Light a.k.a. Fangirl
~~~~~~~NOTES:~~~~~~~
(1) - 200 hours is probably a rough estimate of how many hours I put into Mass Effect 2 alone. Don't ask how many saves I've played. I lost count after six.
(2) - It's not often I find a male in a relationship to be younger than the female. So I admit that Shin's got a few extra interesting points on him than the others. ... And male tsunderes don't tend to piss me off much.
(3) - Ikki is Edward Cullen. Obvious, I know.
4 comments:
"Anyway. Devil Survivor 2 The Animation. As one who has not played the game, I have my few cents to throw in as an anime fan. Would it be best if I had a history with the game?"
Short answer? No. Less-short answer? Hell no.
I wouldn't say that the DeSu2 anime is bad, per se. So if you haven't played the game it's based on, you should be...all right, I guess. I don't know about "entertained", but I'd bet there are worse things you can watch. But from my perspective, the anime completely missed the point of the game. Completely. And the game made a slew of VERY good points, so seeing the anime throw out so much is extremely distressing to me.
To be fair, the anime starts out strong, but the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. It's not the fact that it diverges from the game, but the fact that it squanders a lot of the potential it had. I'd bet (and others would, too) that it'd be a stronger series if it had 26 episodes instead of 13,; there's too much ground to cover, and what they focus on doesn't exactly make a strong argument for itself or its canon.
I don't think (or at least hope) it's the kind of series you'd hate...buuuuuuuuuuuuut if I had to recommend one or the other, I would immediately recommend the game over the anime. Though I could be biased.
...And now I have a sudden compulsion to do a post on the DeSu2 anime. *sigh*
In any case, congrats on reaching the big 200. I'll be looking forward to seeing some more cool content on your end.
Side note: more info on Persona 4 Arena has come in. Here's one of the links if you're interested; apparently you can play as the Shadow versions of characters now. Likewise, based on the character select screen it's pretty likely we'll be getting at least two more characters. Speculation START!
http://www.siliconera.com/2013/08/16/new-persona-4-arena-introduces-shadow-type-characters-and-more/
I figured as much about DS2. Looking at it as simply a somewhat informed MegaTen fan, I was a bit baffled by the... approach to characters and tone. The show seemed pretty damn confused with what it was doing. On one hand, it was pretty dark as the premise would suggest. Then all of a sudden, we get a bullshit moment that even happy-honky-dory Persona 4 would stick its nose at.
The review is in my draft pile, so I'll give my few cents on DS2TA later. But to say my feelings are mixed to disappointed seems most accurate. Or if you beat me to the punch, I'll mention a few things.
O_O
The new 'Persona 4 Arena' is only getting me more and more pumped... only for Junpei, Yuka-tan, and whatever the plot's gonna be. The game itself is another rant for another day... but it's fun, despite my horrendous fighting-game skills.
I'm a bit worried as well about Persona 4 Arena and Persona 5 and what story they'll each follow. Will P5 do its own thing? Will it be adding to the P3 and P4 canon?
Sheesh... I gotta cool down. But the unknown is so scary! @_@
And thanks a bunch for sticking around! I hope to reach the 300 mark sometime! :D
Here's to another 200! I've enjoyed them a lot. Also, I started my own blog. Come check it out: victoria-grey.blogspot.com.
Anyway, I hope your blog continues to be great.
Thanks a bunch, KK! I'm following you right now. Hope yo hear more from you!
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