What happened to the old days?

Hello, and welcome to my 15th blog posting. Does this mean I'm going to throw a keg party to celebrate? No. But it does mark the first rant on this blog. I had to take a mental poll, but I eventually chose this one. Jack Thompson came in a close second.

I've been watching cartoons for most of my life, and I believe that I have a pretty good understanding of them. Ever since I was old enough to walk, talk and eat solid foods (happened in that order), I've been fascinated by all manner of animated pictures. The first series I got hooked on (and I mean hooked) was the original Pokemon. I actually got in trouble for watching when I wasn't supposed to. That, and I loved being named after a TV character, as did my cousin.

I loved the first season of the show, and kept watching it until we moved, and had no cable for about a fricking YEAR! Anyway, when I returned to the series, it was now in the Johto region, and I was so excited about seeing so many new pokemon. But there in the back of my mind I realized I was going to have to give up some things, like being able to name all 150 pokemon (which I can still do to this day), but I didn't think much of it.

After Johto ended, I felt really good about the series and even bought a couple of games for the N64 and gameboy. But then, lo and behold, another series was about to take mine's place.

By now I was getting suspicious. The clips I had seen showed two new characters who I had never even met before (May and Max), and I felt confused. Where was Misty, the first animated girl I ever fell in love with (How could I not drool at a girl who is either wearing A) 4 inch shorts, or B) a mermaid outfit?); where was Brock, the lovable pervert who actually became my role model? This is when I finally just decided to let the series drop forever. I still watch a few episodes here and there (Mainly because Dawn is a nymphet; see 2nd post after this), but overall, it's basically dead to me.

Actually, I suppose I'm being overly mean. Most of the pokemon video games (With the exception of Pokemon: Revolution) have been really entertaining, and though I've never gotten all pokemon in each game, I've had gotten some real use out of Pokemon: Emerald, at least until I lost it. 138 hours of use, to be precise.

I could go on listing some more examples of how companies are unwilling to let good old serieses die just so they can reap a few more drops out of its teats, so I will.

Take Digimon. I never followed the original anime too closely (Or I my memory could be failing and I forgot most of them), but I'll admit that I loved the movie. One Halloween I even dressed up as... er... Gatomon, was it? I can't remember. Anyway. I thought the movie was tear-jerking, actiony and was good enough to keep me up all night thinking of different ways it could have gone. That's probably the first baby steps I took into the realm of fanfiction. But then, after something like seven motherfucking seasons, it's just fallen into the same rigmarole that the other seasons did, and did much better. The latest seasons have been nothing more than self-parodies, to be truthful.

Pokemon, Digimon, and Friday the 13th movie sequels all have the same problem: they all reach critical mass at around the 3rd installment, leading to directors who have fallen off their high horse desperately trying to get their audience back, and losing nearly as many as they get by spending less consideration to characters and more on flashy animation and marketing.

Look, as I've grown up and watched the world grow up around me, I've been disgusted with about 80% of it. TV channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network have just been releasing worse and worse shows over the past three years or so. I might add that there are much less anime played on each of these channels, but that's another story.

The last good show to come out of CN was Ben 10, and even that felt like it was lacking something. I honest to god loved Teen Titans, and that's why it was such a frigging disappointment when they decided to take it off the air. Hell, even my mother, who generally stays as far away from animated shows as possible, was wondering what happened to Terra in the end.

Cartoon Network has produced some pretty good cartoons in the past: Dexter's Lab, Samurai Jack, Kids Next Door, Ed, Edd, and Eddy, Megas XL-friggin-R.

Most of these have been directed to the 8-10 year old audience, but Megas was geared towards a teenage audience more than the single digits. It was just like a Japanese Mecha show, but instead of featuring a yaoi fangirl bait as the main protagonist, Coop is an overweight, pop culture spewing junkyard dude who lives in Philly (A lot like me, except for the Philly part). It had a ton of inside jokes and references to music and anime that (Shock!) were actually funny! Not one recent show has made me laugh so hard, except to laugh at the ridiculousness of the concept.

As two more marks for Megas, Jamie is a lanky perv who likes chicks and money (Again, a lot like me), and Kiva is H-O-T hot. To top it all off, the show was still very action-packed, with Megas often facing off against unbeatable odds, only to have something go horribly wrong that saves the day, like accidentally teleporting a 36 ounce slushie into a mech which short-circuits the controls or making an MTV satellite fall from the sky and crush something. Fucking hilarious.

I'm still extremely ticked that it only lasted for two seasons, but I can kind of understand Cartoon Network's decision on this one. Probably more than a few parents with 6 year olds complained that the show wasn't kid-friendly enough, ignorant to the fact that their 6 year old loved the show to begin with. Even if they didn't get the jokes, they still liked the giant robots.

But lately, everything has gone from producing good shows with intelligent humor to producing shows with low production values and shit-faced characters. I would rather gouge my eyes out with dessert forks than watch these new shows. Chowder, Flapjack, George of the Jungle, Chop Socky Chooks; all of these shows are simply a way to cash in on 6 year old gullibility. Oh, and if any of you have never heard of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, consider yourself lucky.

Nickelodeon did have couple of classic shows up its sleeve. I think it's been around since the 70s. The Angry Beavers, Rugrats, and The Wild Thornberrys, which was a Steve Irwin show in the guise of a cartoon show. Rocko's Modern Life I wish I could see again, because there were a lot of jokes I didn't get as a child that I'd probably get now. Regardless of all of these shows being at least decent, Nickelodeon never was the channel to beat when it came to cartoons. Most of its programming in the beginning consisted of wacky game shows like All That, Double Dare, the Amanda Show and so on. Plus, it was the channel that aired Animorphs, which I'm so dissapointed that I missed. I found the books about a year after the series ended. Such a shame.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is the only good cartoon that Nick currently has out, and has actually gained an extremely large following of otaku, much like myself. So what does Nick do? Put it on fucking hiatus. Thankfully, the hiatus is ending in July, but only FIVE EPISODES? Christ's sake! Look, Nick, I know you want people to watch your shows so people will advertise and you will get money. That's the way it works. So don't put one of your most watched shows on hiatus, get us hyped by showing teasers in other countries that eventually wind up on youtube in shaky-cam-o-vision and then only air five episodes!

And they say there's going to be a movie, but I doubt that. To me, "movie" is something that lasts more than an hour, not counting commercials. Most of the "movies" that Nick has shown have just been 1 hour specials. Look, being gone for six months means that you should have something to give us other than five episodes and a special. This is supposed to be the show finale, with Sozin's comet coming up. What were they doing this entire time; giving each other piggyback rides? Maybe they were tired of the cash and free hookers being thrown at them constantly.

All I can say is that there had better be something waiting for us after the five episodes. I can deal with waiting for Friday to see the next installment.

And I know for a fact that this crap isn't what kids want! If I loved pokemon when I was a kid (and most of the people in my school did as well), then why can't we go back to making more dramatic shows at slightly higher prices?

Look, if you feel the same way as I do, just comment. I'd appreciate it.

Links you should check out:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wr0s37se92o RIP Nickelodeon 1979-2004
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Prjqu0F6d-U RIP Cartoon Network 1992-2004

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Naruto's New Hobby is down.

I took the story down earlier today, and I figured I'd at least list my reasons for doing so. Basically, the story was just a jumbled-together mess of perverted fantasies, questionable spelling and nearly no plot. I originally read this story when I was just starting to read fanfiction and Deviantart, so at that point, I thought it was the best story I ever read. Then I actually started writing my own, and I realized that Ryu's was chock full of things that I would never even attempt in mine.

I just don't like the story anymore. It's just perverted crap, and I don't want to be remembered for just that.

On the upside, there should be a new Bioshock story up shortly. Keep yourself tuned in.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Review of Iron Man

He was turned to steel, in the great...

Oh, there you are. Well, just got back from seeing Iron Man in the local theatre. It's not really important to the blog or my life, but it was pretty cool, so I think I'll tell you about it.

By the way, this may have some spoilers in it, but I'll try to keep them to a minumum.

The movie starts out with Tony Stark's convoy being ambushed in Afganistan. Then it cuts back to how we came to this senario; Tony's character being explained and introducing the Jericho missile system, which becomes a big part of the first half of the movie. I don't see why we had to start out with his capture and then move backwards. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Anyway, Stark is then called upon to build a Jericho for an anonymous Middle-Eastern dude that looks like the bastard child of Saddam and Osama. Obviously, this does not sit well with the gazillionare, but he has a piece of shrapnel stuck in his body that his captors are stopping from reaching his heart. But living in a cave all day does tend to get boring, so he designs a magnetic chest plate pacemaker thing that keeps the metal from killing him, hops in the first Iron Man suit and escapes, blowing up the missiles that said Middle-East dude bought from him.

Back in the good old US of 'do what the fuck we say or we'll be invading your country,' Tony now has access to good old fasioned American technology, so he goes about building the next Iron Man suit, the classic gold and hot-rod red we've come to know and love. He then goes off to destroy his weapons that the terrorists have, while looking bad-ass at the same time.

First impressions were very good. I don't know Robert Downing Jr. or any of his films, but he did seem to bring the role of Tony Stark, weapons mogul with a bank account so large you'd need both hands to count the number of digits in it to life. Something I like about Tony (And about most Marvel characters in general) is that he's... well, human. This is not to say that the Thing is going to be settling down with a white picket fence any time soon, just that he has human emotions and faults. He's a womanizer, a drunk, he's extremely cocky, he's late all the time, he gambles, and he has a knack for making people feel like douchebags around him.

Unfortunetely, most of the other characters are as flat as Safira's breasts. I could probably get the same feel for their characters by watching Python, any Jason film and Scream in a marathon. They just seem to have no personality to me. I've seen it before, and it kind of gets boring looking at the same stereotypes over and over again. Bald guy with beard=bad guy. Main love interest will eventually have to choose between letting her man die and killing the villian. Though I suppose it's alright since she didn't really make out with him at the end as they fly off into the sunset. I really wish movie directors would stop using these stereotypes. span>

Regardless of the other characters' lack of personality, the movie was very good overall. A couple of the action scenes were peppered with witty, actually funny dialouge, and although I want to stab the directors eyes out with a dessert fork for not using the Black Sabbath song for more than the fucking END CREDITS, this was a very enjoyable film.

If you're too young to enjoy Indiana Jones or too old to enjoy Speed Racer, then by all means, see this movie. You'll have a blast and you'll definitely remember it. I'd reccomend it to anyone who likes superhero movies or the last Transformers movie. I'd say it was as good, if not better than Transformers, and a hell of a lot better than Superman Returns.

I give the movie a 9/10. Almost everything is great, but the flatness of the supporting characters keeps me from giving it a perfect score.

Chapter 7 of crossover

I don't know why I'm putting it up here, but I am. So suck it.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3478926/28/Like_mother_like_daughter

Review of Devil May Cry 4

Hey guys. I was gone for a couple days, but I'm sure none of you noticed it. Oh well. Anyway, the reason I was gone most of today and yesterday was that I finally went out and bought DMC4. I just finished it today, so I figured I'd share my opinion with you guys.

(By the way, I've never played a DMC game before this, so forgive me if I'm sort of biased.)

The core part of gameplay is the combat, and I'm happy to say that it kept me very entertained throughout the game's ten hours. Both Nero and Dante have unique attacks which can be used to make some fucking SWEET combos. If you don't find something fun about launching an enemy up into the air and keeping it afloat with a cusion of bullets, then you seriously need to readjust your standards for entertainment. Then there's the 'style' part of combat, which pretty much has nothing to do with anything except getting you more points to level up later in the game. Basically, the more unique combos you do without getting hurt, the higher it goes and the higher your grade is at the end.

Nero's "Devil Bringer," as it is called, is his demonic right arm. I found this was a great thing to use and just fool around with. Plus, combined with some of the powerups in the game, it can produce some of the sweetest finisher moves in the game. More than once, I felt myself leaping up out of the couch, screaming "OH YEAH! YOU JUST GOT DROPKICKED, BIYATCH! SUCK IT!"

Yeah, I really do play video games that way.

As a small side note, there were some simply eye-popping tent-pitching scenes with DMC's trademark drop dead gorgeous girl, Gloria. Basically, she's there for wanking material. That's it. If I took a drink everytime her breasts defied the laws of physics, I'd easily have a dangerously high blood-alcohol level in about 45 seconds.

The weapons play a key role in the game. Nero is armed with a motercycle/sword called the Red Queen (Don't ask about the motercycle; you'd have to play the game to really understand the hilarity), a double-barreled six-shooter called the Blue Rose and the aformentioned Devil Bringer. Both are decent weapons, but Dante's arsenal takes the cake, with him sporting his staples of Ebony, Ivory, the Coyote-A and his skull sword (Okay, I forgot the name; sue me) and tons of new weapons, including Gigamesh, a spiked up glove and boot package similar to Beowulf in DMC3, and Lucifer, a freaky spider... thing that is attatched to Dante's back and fires large spikes into his enemies that he can explode.

Another weapon that I got a serious hard-on when using was the Pandora. It looks like a suitcase, but has supposedly 666 different weapon forms, all of which I assume were just as badass as the ones I used. You can use a bow that shoots explosive arrows, a tri-barreled bazooka, a lazer that looks like the Death Star's fucking sister and a gigantic... you know what? I don't even know how to describe it. It's that cool.

The combat was excellent, but the single gold star I stick on for it is immediately taken off for some monumentally retarted level design. There are two parts where you have to roll a gigantic spiked die to move a big representation of yourself a certian number of spaces across a board game. Honestly, this has to be one of the most idiotic puzzles I've ever seen in a game. There's not rhyme or reason, and as soon as you insert random chance into a game, all tactics go out the window.

Plus, there are some serious issues with the saving system. Say I just barely made it past mission 15, surviving by the skin of my teeth, realizing that there's no way I'll be able to do it again. When I save after I complete the level, it actually saves at the beginning of the previous mission, not at the beginning of mission 16. This is just poor planning. Honestly, how could this have passed through so many testers without being caught?

And this is the thing that ticks me off the most; when you complete the game (As I did) there is no option to go back and replay some of the previous levels without making a completely new profile. When it happened during the missions, I assumed it would go away once I beat it. When it didn't, I was pissed enough to toss my 360 controller through the TV.

This game has some seriously good points, mainly the combat, but I can hardly recommend it just for that. If you're a big DMC fan (And I mean 'get a hard on everytime you play a game' big) go ahead and buy it. If not, just rent it. You can finish it in two days, easily. I'm considering returning my copy back to Gamestop. There's no reason to play it anymore.

I give it a 7/10. It's a master of one trade: combat. And that's pretty much it.

I don't know if Taku's going to be finished with the next chapter, and I have no intentions of doing it, so the next chapter is currently on hiatus.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Very poorly Painted pictures (Heh. Alliteration is funny.)

Just some humerous pictures I made using Microsoft Paint.

Video Game Quick-hits.

Although I am very depressed that no one is reading (Or at least commenting) this, I suppose I should blog about something other than crappy Korean movies. I guess I'm going to be reviewing video games now. This is just my limited collection, so if you can suggest any 360 games, I'd be happy to oblige.

WARNING: NO FANBOY ZONE.

By 2nd favorite game is undoubtedly Halo 3. Halo 2 was just awesome, and H3 is an improvement on the first in every aspect. The multiplayer is much more refined, and the weapons are much more balanced than the first time around. the graphics have been given a great makeover, too. With all the achievements to unlock, and the unparralelled multiplayer, this is definitely one to fork out the 100$ for. And I say that because you will be dropping the fourty dollars for XBL immediately after you get this game. That is, if you don't lose the Ethernet cable first.

Next is Bioshock. Winner of god-knows how many Game of the Year awards, I think it deserved every one of them. The insanely spooky atmosphere gave me the creeps even after I turned the console off. I felt myself dreaming of Little Sisters and looking around the corner for Big Daddies for weeks after I finished this game. Every time I hear steel-toed clank on metal, I reach for the nearest wrench. Though it doesn't have any multiplayer to speak of, and DLC is pretty much nonexistant, it's still a great buy. Give 2k games your vote, and another 60 dollars. Trust me, they deserve it.

WARNING: DO NOT PLAY IF AFRAID OF INSOMNIA. AND GIANT DRILLS. AND CREEPY LITTLE GIRLS.

Probably my favorite single-player game on the list, Call of Duty 4 comes complete with everything any FPS fan could want. Though the storyline may be a bit worn thin (Nukes, Middle-East, blah, blah, blah), the interactivity gives you the chance to see the characters like no cheesy action movie can. The graphics are simply amazing, and the cover system is both innovative and frustrating. I say frustrating because die-hard Halo fans like me are used to running straight into a firefight, usually screaming "Ph34r m4h j(_)5t1c3!" But it does add a very unique style of gameplay that games like Army of Two can only try to replicate. Split-screen can be a little iffy, with most of the kills going to the person who gets the first shot in. LAN matches are great, or so I've heard. Break out the CC and shell out another 60; this is definitely a must-buy for any fan of the COD series or first person shooters in general.

The game I probably have the most fun with is Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Before the hate starts flying about how I should get Rock Band, lemme tell you this. One-hundred and sixty five dollars, used! I am not willing to shell out that kind of money when it's just me and my brother playing. I think it would be cool to buy just one instrument at a time, but that would kind of defeat the purpouse. Guitar Hero 3 is a very good game to pick up and play, but it certianally takes some skill to make it anywhere in this biz. Trust me kids, you will not be doing TTFAF on Expert anywhere in the next few weeks... or months... or years, if you suck. There aren't as many cult classics in this one (In addition, no ASX! >:O), but there are much more recognizable titles, like Mississippi Queen and Welcome to the Jungle. It may not be a good first 360 buy, with the obvious price tag of 90 dollars, but you will be sucked in by the peer pressure. Give in to it. As a side note, it is a very good idea to raise your medical coverage if you plan on playing regularly. You will be sent to the hospital many, many times.

Those are the four of my favorite games, and the only four I own. I'm off to play GH3 now. See ya.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.