Thursday, March 29, 2007

GTA4

By now, any of you that care will know that RockStar released a teaser trailer for GTA4 tonight at 6PM. Any that are still in the dark should go here and partake of it. It's been a couple hours, and most places have posted their thoughts on the matter already, but now it's my turn.

The trailer runs for about a minute, and doesn't really include much plot. One thing that is obvious from it is that the character this time around is some sort of Russian smuggler/slave trader that has come to Liberty City for a second chance.

Yes, it takes place in Liberty City, at least according to the signs. If you pause the video at the right time, you can clearly see a sign that clearly says "Welcome to Liberty City". The confusion starts when you consider the timeline that this game takes place in.

Considering the look of the city, it seems like a more accurate representation of New York City. There are things like the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty, along with some very detailed coastline that could fit a New York atmosphere.

Here are my thoughts. If we are to believe that this is the Liberty City of past games, where have all these new buildings come from, or where have they gone. Assuming this is the same universe as the other games, it also shows a Ferry Station, which exists in Liberty City Stories, but is replaced by an underwater tunnel in GTA3. Either it takes place before the other Liberty City games, or they've brought back the ferry station. The cars look too new for the setting to be placed too far in the past, and if they've already got a tunnel, why would they make another ferry station?

However, I'm having a thought. RockStar are no fools, and they wouldn't make a trailer like that without a reason. I have an incling that this may be some sort of April Fools prank, where they release a trailer, and two days later they say "April Fools, here's the real trailer." It seems like something they might do. There are too many ideas running through my head, and for now I just have to leave them alone, and see how everything plays out in the next few days.

Gilmorne Out.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Onichi Anime Review Episode 2: Death Note

As promised, this is our second episode of Onichi Anime Review, with the review of the Death Note anime. The podcast is our supplementary material, and if you can't see the link above, here is the MP3 Link:

Get our show here.

The anime Death Note is originally based on the manga of the same title, written by Ohba Tsugumi and illustrated by Obata Takeshi of Hikaru no GO fame. The show began airing on October 3rd, 2006 and was co-produced by Studio Madhouse, Nippon TV, and VAP. Slated to run for 37 episodes, the latest released was 23.

Warning: The following Review may contain some mild spoilers. Read at your own discretion.

Supplementary Material:

And now for some definitions:

SHINIGAMI: Death God. Demon like characters who reside in the Shinigami world. To increase their lives, they must write names of humans in their Death Note. They cannot be killed by physical methods and must follow strict rules if they want to live without punishment.

DEATH NOTE: The Death Note is a notebook, which every Shinigami (Death God) carries. In this notebook, whose ever name is written will meet their death. There are a number of rules that one must abide by when writing in the notebook, which are revealed in the anime during the eye catches (commercial break teasers). The ways of killing someone can be very specific, or very loose, depending on the writer's intent.

Here are "The Rules of the Death Note".

The Plot

The story of Death Note revolves around a number of central characters, the main one being Yagami Light. He is a 17-year old high school student and is very bored with everyday life, because it is so mundane to him. That is until he finds a notebook in the school courtyard one day. The front cover of the notebook reads: Death Note. The inside cover of the notebook contains the rules that we alluded to previously. This is also when Light finds out about the Shinigami, Ryuk, who happens to be waiting for Light in his room. Ryuk was the Shinigami that dropped his notebook into the Earth World, out of pure boredom.

This is the point at which the story really begins, when Yagami Light decides that he will create a Utopian society and crown himself the God of said state. You could almost say that this goes according to Ryuk's plan, since his only reason for being on Earth was to observe what humans would do with such power. Ryuk finds Light to be quite interesting. Light begins writing the names of many criminals into the Death Note and sees the effects of what he's doing. This comes with positive and negative reaction. Some people are glad to see criminals being judged, while others call it inhumane, and call this Judge a murderer no better than the criminals. The general public starts calling this Judge simply by the name Kira, which is a play on the word "Killer".

Good or bad, the police cannot have this self-proclaimed Judge of good and bad, do as he pleases. They begin an investigation, headed by Yagami Soichiro, who happens to be Light's own father. This investigation is helped by a very peculiar individual, who is called throughout the world, the top rated detective. His name is L. Or at least his alias is L. He never really gives out his real name nor does he really show his face to anyone, until this investigation, when he helps out the investigation team lead by Yagami Soichiro. This begins the cat and mouse mind game between L and Kira, with many surprises along the way.

We are later introduced to yet another key character of the series, Amane Misa, who you will later find out to be the Second Kira. Her Shinigami's name is Rem, who has helped out Amane Misa for personal reasons and developed a certain connection with Misa, for which she is willing to kill those who oppose her. Amane Misa has an extreme crush on Kira because he "punished" the murderer of her family. She becomes very devoted to Yagami Light and claims that she fell in love with him at first sight. Light only sees her as an asset because of a certain ability that she has, which he doesn't. You'll just have to watch the show to find out what that ability is though.

That is all I will have to say plot-wise, because otherwise the show would be ruined for you all.

The Animation

As stated previously, this show was illustrated by Obata Takeshi. If you've seen Hikaru no GO, you can kind of tell what his animation style is like. Though Death Note looks extremely refined compared to his previous works. Much less cartoony and a lot closer to reality. Overall, the animation looks great and is definitely worth a watch.

The Audio

Overall, the background music in this show is very nice to listen to as well. The opening and ending themes are really well done and the songs are something else. Well worth the listen anyway.

Overall Grade

I give this show an "A-" for the grade, because there may be some flaws here and there, since nothing is perfect, though this show is very close to perfection. I'd have to say that this is the best anime of the new season and anyone who enjoys good plot and fantastic mind games, should definitely give this show a view.

Where Can I Get It?

Just recently it was licensed by VIZ in the United States and the DVDs are slated to come out sometime in the 4th Quarter of 2007, but VIZ has promised downloadable episodes sooner than that, though no date has been established for it either. These downloadable episodes are supposedly in Japanese with English subtitles only, which is a great thing for us that love subtitles. The DVDs will of course have both the Dub and the Sub. Meanwhile, these episodes are available for download from a number of bittorent sites, which I will NOT supply links to, but if you are a long time anime fan, you probably know how to use these sites anyway. Up to episode 23 has been released fan subbed.

That concludes our review for the anime Death Note. Next time on the podcast and here, on the site, I plan to take a look at the often overlooked, but very good anime, Rose of Versailles. Meanwhile, you can contact us at OnichiAnimeReview@gmail.com and give us some opinions and suggestions for the podcast or for the site. You may even get your e-mail read on the air! Until next time, this is Gokuu Son signing off. Jya matta minna.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Review: Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

Hey folks. It's been a while since I've posted anything, let alone anything productive. However, it seems my counterpart has been doing stuff, so I might as well jump on in, and give you some of my opinions. So without further stalling, I'll be reviewing Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PSP.

I had originally wanted to purchase this game when it initialliy came out, around Christmas time, but certain things held me up. I don't remember the details now, but let's move on. I had seen the Metal Gear Acid series, and was unimpressed. I've been a big fan of Metal Gear for a long time now, and it just kinda made me sad that it's name got lent to a Strategy game. Strategy games are fine, if you want to play D&D and don't have any friends that are willing to stoop that low. However, when somebody says Metal Gear, D&D is just about the farthest thing from my mind.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is a legitimate Metal Gear Solid game. It also, surprisingly, fits into the storyline of the entire Metal Gear series. You play as Snake, as usual. This is the Big Boss Snake too. It takes place a few years after Snake Eater, and Big Boss finds himself captured by some guy named Cunningham of the CIA. When you come to conciousness, you find that your neighbor in the prison is an extremely young Roy Campbell, who proceeds to help you escape from your cell, and you return the favor. It becomes quickly apparent that up against this new enemy, the two of you won't be enough to stop an entire army of Russian soldiers and an impending new threat called "Metal Gear."

That's where the storyline ends, and I start talking about the gameplay. Well, if you enjoyed Metal Gear Solid, MGS: Sons of Liberty, and MGS: Snake Eater, then you're in for a treat (if you happen to have a PSP). This game is very much the same as Snake Eater, and rightly so. You'll be sneaking around levels holding up and grabbing Russians, and shooting them in the head after they've given you their delicious bounty. Either that, or you can drag them back to your base of operations (It's a truck) so you can persuade them to join your team. Torture aside (We never saw it, so it never happened), once you get them on your side, you can use them in missions, in order to add a level of steath onto Snake's already impressive line-up of things like sneaking, crawling, and doing summersaults. While using a russian soldier, other soldiers that are dressed the same way don't really care what you're doing. Other than that, the extra characters don't really add anything to the gameplay.

One thing that I was rather disappointed about was that Snake's neverending pockets have been gimped! Now each character you have only allows you to carry 4 items, which includes extra ammo. I found myself running through an entire level with Snake to take everyone out, and sending other units through to collect everything. Other than that, the new style is refreshing, and It could be a more interesting genre on a more complex system like the PS3 where you can have AI for each of them, and assign them tasks such as Covering Fire, or switch between them in real time, without needing to find cover.

Moving onto graphics. Like most PSP games, they look like they belong somewhere between PSX and PS2. The levels, also true to form, are about as big as the sections of the map in previous titles. However, since they are each separate levels, you have to load each of them before you can play. The cinematics, however, have been done a bit differently this time around, mostly, I'm sure, because of the same reasons the levels are small and that the graphics are average. Limited resources. The new style is a comic book style, with black and white images drawn somehow so that the pictures move. Just because they're different doesn't mean their bad either. I thought that the gritty artwork they used was perfect for the general story of the series.

Something else I need to mention is the playtime that the average person will get out of this game. Something I like to call replayability. While the main point of Portable Ops is to add another piece of the puzzle to the world that came out of Hideo Kojima, it has a lot of things that you can do with it after the story is all out on the table. First of all, is an online multiplayer mode. Take a team of your four best (or worst, depending on the mode) soldiers across the world wide web via any hotspot in order to test your skills against anyone in the... well, at least in the country. Not sure if we've broken that border with this one. It includes three different online modes, which are also playable via Ad Hoc wireless, so if it isn't enough that one person owns a PSP in your general vicinity, and you can find other real life people to play against, then you can do that. One of the modes even lets you play "for real" where you capture anyone of the other players that you kill, and they capture anyone that they kill. Scary, right?

If you can't find anyone else to play with, or you've become fed up with the multiplayer stylings of other people, then you can always start a new game, which will allow you to keep your soldiers and also, since you probably missed a couple of these guys on the first pass through, capture all the bosses. This can get fairly complex, and will most likely require a faq or walkthrough in order to be completed with maximum efficiency, but who knows, maybe you're just a glutton for punishment.

The whole package is actually very impressive. For a fan of the series and a handheld that doesn't have too much that will allow you to play over the internet with people, this is a welcome addition to my library. If I ever finish all my other games and have some free time to kill, then I'm definitely going to come back to this title and capture the rest of the bosses and lose them to the people that play online.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Onichi Anime Review Episode 1

Today we're trying something new. As you saw the other day, we had the review for the Dragonball Z Remastered DVD Box Set. I decided, we would try it in a downloadable podcast form. I'd like to see what you guys think. Send us your opinions to OnichiAnimeReview@gmail.com

MP3 Link

Gokuu Son

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Orange Box

I suppose it's about time that we actually started doing something with this site that actually concerns reviews. And as such, I shall pop the proverbial cherry here with a review of FUNimation's new release of an old classic, the Dragonball Z Season 1 Remastered Box Set, which was released on February 6th, 2007. A mouthful, ain't it? Well, let's get down to it.

The Presentation
The reason why we call it the Orange Box, is because it is just that... a big, orange brick with 6 DVDs stuffed into it. The actual package comes with a slip cover, which when taken off, reveals the actual folded set with an image of Vejiita (Vegeta for those that want the English spelling) on it. On the spine of this set, you will see what appears to be the start of one of those long pictures that will be completed by the time you have the entire series on DVD, which was a nice touch, but the problem is that it doesn't appear on the slip cover, which means you basically need to discard it if you want to see the entire image. The actual DVDs are packaged in a poor manner of one on top of another, distributed over three "pages" of the foldout. On the inside cover, there comes a little booklet with descriptions of characters and episodes for this box set. The other thing that this presentation boasts, is its Digitally Remastered from 1080p footage, widescreen video and an English Dub with Japanese music (as the fans had so long ago wanted) in 5.1 surround sound, while the broadcast English Dub, with Bruce Faulconer's music is there but with 2.0 stereo sound. And of course, there is the mandatory Japanese Dub with Japanese music, which is also presented in 2.0 stereo. We'll get into the Pros and Cons later in the review, but for now we will discuss other aspects of this set.

The Video
Well, as I had mentioned previously, this box set was said to have been remastered from 1080p High Definition film masters into widescreen presentation for the fans. There has been extensive color correction work and digital noise reduction done.

The Audio
I apologize that I once again must refer to the above about the audio. Unlike with the last Ultimate Uncut Edition releases, the broadcast English Dub is no longer presented in 5.1 surround sound, while the English with Japanese music is. The Japanese audio track remains as before, in 2.0 stereo mix. Just to mention before I forget, the English Dub for the first season is redone from the original releases of the show by Pioneer, which used the Ocean Studios for dubbing. I never personally owned the UUE releases, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the script was changed slightly from the Pioneer version and is the same in the UUE release and this new release.

Disc Contents
So what exactly do you get on your 6 discs you ask? Well, first and foremost, you are provided with 39 episodes of the show. Discs 1-6 have all 39 episodes with an average of 6 to 7 episodes per disc, the only exception being disc 6, which has episodes 36-39 and Extras. You might ask.. "What are these extras you mention?" Well, here they are:
"Dragonball Z Rebirth" - A look at the restoration process. It's an interview with one of the people that worked on the whole re mastering process for the series.
"A New Look" - A little promotional video about the new release of DBZ in its remastered, widescreen "glory".
"Textless Songs" - As this indicates, you get both the opening and ending themes without any credits on them.
"Trailers" - Also self-explanatory. This extra contains trailers for a couple of other FUNimation releases.
The other interesting aspect of this disc is the "Marathon Mode", which you can get from the main menu. This allows you to watch the entire disc without any breaks in between the episodes. So you will have the opening theme at the beginning of the disc and the closing theme at the end of the disc, only once.

Pros/Cons
So, what do I think of this set as a whole? Being a longtime Dragonball Z fan, the original news of this release was extremely exciting, but as time got closer some elements of it became less and less appealing.

First of all, it is important to think to yourself about one thing... Dragonball Z is originally a 4:3 aspect ratio show. How is it possible to create the 16:9 aspect ratio from a 4:3 original release? The answer is quite simply: Crop top and bottom. For those of you who haven't jumped off the bridge to commit suicide from this news, let me continue. That's right, this presentation is cropped and pretty poorly in some places.

Digital Noise Reduction... what does that mean? It means that your image will be slightly blurrier than the original presentation, so that the noise does not appear, but at the same time you WILL be losing some details on the animation.

English Dub with Japanese Audio... too little too late my friends at FUNimation. These days, I don't listen to dubs at all, so unless you're a lifelong dub follower, this wouldn't suit you and even then, you probably enjoy the Faulconer music more anyway.

So does that mean that it's really that bad? Not all aspects of this set are bad. I found that the 16:9 presentation wasn't the worst thing ever, especially on a nice 16:9 television set. For one, you have to imagine that FUNimation is trying to look towards the future, where 4:3 ratios will be extinct and if they ever plan to release Blue Ray/HD DVD of this, it would most likely have to be in 16:9 format as well. The point is, 16:9 is really NOT that big of a deal to me, it may be to many others.

There are things about this set that infuriate me a lot more than the widescreen format.
For one, it is a blatant lie that this footage was remastered to its previous "glory", frame-by-frame. When compared to the Dragon Box (R2 release), you can tell how poorly the FUNimation version stacks up. Yes, the colors have been altered a bit, and it does look nice at certain points, but there are many video glitches that ruin the release quite a bit. The fact that we lose detail from the scenery is yet another problem we run into with this release, because DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) does too much where it's not needed.

So the question is... what is my grade for this release and should you buy it? Overall, I would have to give this release a C+/B- rating, though many sites would probably give it a straight F just for the widescreen. The fact that its retail price is $29.99 is a hard sell point and shoots some points into its grade. So, if the things that I mentioned before don't bother you so much and you're willing to put up with FUNimation's bullshit, then this box set may be for you. I will still probably buy the ensuing bricks that come out, but my plan is to also buy the Dragon Box single DVDs overtime, so that I can have version of the show that remains faithful to the original release.

If you're still awake, after my long review, and want to find more information about this release and many other things Dragonball related, please visit one of my favorite Dragonball fan sites out there, DaizEX.com, where you can visit their forums or listen to their weekly podcast about anything and everything Dragonball. As for myself, I hope you have enjoyed the review and if you have some comments about my style, something I should change, something I should keep the same, please drop me a line or leave a comment. Jya matta minna.

Gokuu Son

Sunday, February 18, 2007

The return of "the beast"

I'm sure other people have more beastly computers than I, but since I don't see any of them around, I will continue to call my pc that. I haven't been able to find the review template, but nuts to that I say, I'm going to make a new one, and let the reviews flow in. I'll probably start off with some Zelda: Twilight Princess, even though it's pretty old, and then probably move onto some Resistance: Fall of Man. Oh, did I forget to mention I had a PS3? I'm pretty sure I did, oh yes!

That's all for now. I was hoping my friend in Japan would be posting here, but it looks like he doesn't like us anymore. Either that or the weblog thing is too popular for him. He's kinda anit-pop-culture. But that's his thing.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

The Burning Testicle

Excuse the rudeness of the title of my post, but today, in my hands I finally hold the key to all the answers in the WORLD!!! (of Warcraft). That's right, I got my hands on the brand new expansion set, The Burning Crusade. The title of this post comes from my excitement, as I'll finally get to travel into the unexplored lands of the Outland. GO ME! Anyway, more stuff about The Burning Crusade as soon as I actually finish installing it and trying it out... 29%... 30%... GOGOGO!

Friday, January 12, 2007

Formatting

Ah, this formatting thing isn't so hard. Just gotta figure out what everything is called.

Look at the new banner. I think it was one we were going to use on the old site, but never got around to, or one we actually did use on the site, but it's our banner now. It looks so nice, I might just change the color scheme to match it.

Personally, I think I should do some stuff to make it more dynamic, like make each of the pictures relate to posts of different subjects. I wonder if I could actually do that. But for that to work, we'd have to change the pictures to something that looked like their subject matter, like adding some game screens, ::COUGH COUGH::.

Anyways, I've got a wii, so once I find that damn review template, I'll start reviewing all my games, and hilarity will ensue.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Welcome Back, It's Been A While

So yeah... Onichi.com shut down sometime ago and there you have it, no word was present on the future of Gojiita.net or Onichi.com... and now, the future is here. Gojiita's Domain is no more and Onichi has moved here, so no confusion should be present. Anyway, we will try to bring you the same quality of content that the old Onichi.com and Gojiita.net used to, so stay tuned for more updates about anime, video games, and of course almost anything in the Asian culture.

Jya

The Triumphant Return

Although I guess we really couldn't call it triumphant...

Here it is again, folks. The return of the Onichi.com blog, reborn in a service that is free, and therefore better. It's also probably more secure, and has more functionality or whatever, but did I mention it's free?