Too Much Study for Modern Visual Culture...

Yeah.. been slow on updates.. mainly because I lack enthusiasm and because I've been having a Railgun and To Aru Majutsu No Index marathon.. yeah, watched Railgun through and then continued off ot Index Season 1.. and soon going to start on Index Season 2.. gotta admit though, Index wasn't half bad.. sure they made Misaka look like a total egoistic princess-bitch in the first episode, but she was so damn cute around episode 20-something when she forced Mr. Spikyhead there to be her face boyfriend.. lots of lulz were had there.. <3
Anyway, I'll try to come up with something.. awesome to write about soon.. maybe.. or maybe Bad Company 2 - Vietnam is going to distract me even more.. who knows. Stay tuned. Lots of cocks for you all <3

Modern Visual Culture in Video Gaming - Apache: Air Assault

Hello everybody (the few of you who actually follow this).

I've been rather busy lately with a couple of games I've found. One of them is called Apache: Air Assault.

The game is sort of a helicopter semi-simulation. You get to fly with the American Apache in different missions and blow things up, simple yet so elegant. The game can be played with just mouse and keyboard, but I'd recommend using joystick, keyboard AND mouse. Joystick for flying, keyboard and mouse for different cameramodes and for aiming the undernose cannon. The game will not satisfy hardcore SIM-fans because of it's arcade feel, but people such as me who do not demand 100% authenticity when it comes to flying and maneuvering a craft such as an assault helicopter. I'm glad that they took the arcadey approach for I know that helicopter are way trickier to fly in real life than airplanes, and it's no different in videogames. I can barely fly a Messerschmit in IL-2 in realistic settings so flying a chopper with realistic settings would be suicide for me. The game looks just awesome, and I get giggly inside when I autohover my Apache just outside a village, pop in to the gunners place, start up the heatvision camera which is also wired to the undernose cannon, and look how little white dots run around in the village.. before firing upon them, and their little white bodies disappear in a cloud of dust and smoke, only to be emerged once more as a hole ridden corpse. I like this game, I like this game quite a lot.. even if it's nothing more than a glorified turn-your-brains-off-and-shoot-everything-that-moves kinda game. I was also kind enough to record some gameplay footage for you all, so here you go.

Modern Visual Culture Through Japanese Television

I was watching something rather interesting the other day.. after the failure review of Mitsudomoe I dropped anime as a whole for a while and ended up watching japanese television shows.. one in particular that I had watched before. Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende! mainly their batsugame parts. To be entirely honest I can't tell you much about this show. I haven't watched the Downtown tv-show itself at all unless you count couple 2 minute youtube clips here and there, I've mainly watched their batsugames. The Downtown crew consists of two men, Matsumoto Hitoshi and Hamada Masatoshi. There is also 3 other members who frequently appear in both the regular Downtown tv-show, and their batsugames. COCORICO comedy-duo, Endo Shozo and Tanaka Naoki, as well as Japanese internetradio DJ Yamasaki Housei.
The plot of batsugames is that this group of 5 people have either a competition or something similar to that every year to determine which ones from the 5 (or all of them) are going to have to participate in the penaltygame (batsugame). After this, the penaltygames this far have varied from going to United States to film a remake of the Titanic movie, going to Russia, having 24-hour tag game, and spending 24h as a policeofficer, nurse and student without being allowed to laugh during the whole time, these batsugames are called "no-laughing 24h batsugame", where, upon breaking the rules (laughing), you will be punished, usually by big men dressed weirdly slapping your butt with a stick. I'm not entirely sure what they use for the punishments, but they bend.. a lot. And they get slapped.. hard. You can see the pain is real. This makes it even funnier because the point of 24h no-laughing batsugame is to watch these people laugh and get punished for it. It's very hard for me to explain it in detail with my rather broken english, but let me just say that these are awesome bits of Japanese television and anyone interested in Japanese culture and their VISUAL culture as well, should watch them. They are rather well known in Europe and probably Unites States, so most, if not all batsugames have been more or less subtitled.

Yamasaki making a face and causing his comrades to laugh, thus getting their asses slapped.

The said comrades getting their asses slapped.

Yamasaki getting a serious bitchslap for no apparent reason except for good TV.

Aftermath of the slap we saw before...

These screencaps are from the latest No-Laughing 24h batsugame where they are Hotelmen. It's the longest of the series, and quite funny, even though not my favourite. Yamasaki getting slapped by the big guy wearing shades (Chono) has become a sort of a tradition in batsugames. Yamasaki has had the living shit slapped out of him for.. 3.. or was it 4 times. This explains his panic-like reaction everytime he faces the big guy in sunglasses.
You must be wondering "Where can I find this fantastic piece of art and superior japanese television culture?" Have no fear, for I am here. Just sign up at www.gaki-no-tsukai.com, no worries, it's just a forum, and after that you are able to download almost anything Gaki no Tsukai related, with or without subtitles. As far as I know, batsugames are the only ones that have been fully and entirely subbed, but that's all you need.

I guess that would be all for now. And yeah, don't wait up on the Mitsudomoe review.. not feeling like it.

Study of Modern Visual Culture through WTFBBQ WAT IS TIS?

Why.. didn't anyone tell me? ...There's new episodes of Black Lagoon out there.. and nobody told me!?
For those of you who do now know what Black Lagoon is, it's a very.. very.. awesome and so very epic anime series that I love.. has 2 seasons.. haven't confirmed what these new episodes are, OVA or Season 3.. but there's at least 2 of them.. links included

- Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail - Episode 1
- Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail - Episode 2

I'm going to get to the bottom of this and find out what the heck is going on.. me to miss 2 episodes of this awesome series? This is an OUTRAGE!

*EDIT DESU

Okay, it seems that the Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail is OAV that had it's promo streamed in Japan on 26th of June of this year. How the hell could I have missed this? According to this source, it's going to be 5 Episodes long, both DVD and BR being released rather close to each other. This only means that I have to review Black Lagoon as well as Mitsudomoe, and once I've gotten my hands on the HIGHQUALITY release of the Roberta's Blood Trail, I have to review that as well.. well.. more work for me I guess. And more stuff for you to read too.. dunno if it's a win-win or lose-lose situation :D
CHEERS!

Revy says hi ^_^

Quick update on my personal life.

I know I know, I promised the next post would be the Mitsudomoe review but this is far more important.
It's simple, and doesn't take much explaining. Tomorrow (Tuesday, October 19th) will be my last day at work.. at least for now. I'm getting laid off (lomautus) untill April-May, 2011. This means few things. First of all, I will have a lot more time to watch all sorts of things and write about them here, and second.. My income will drop drastically. Which means that I might disappear for a month, maybe two depending whether I'm able to pay my for my internet connection or not. Have no fear though, I will inform my readers through this blog if things are coming to that.

Anyway, the next post WILL be about Mitsudomoe, I swear.. in the meantime, enjoy this little sneak peek of the series:

-_-;

Study of Modern Visual Culture through Anime: Mitsudomoe

My next review shall be centered around the 'moe' lolianime Mitsudomoe.

Look forward to it. cheers.

Study of Modern Visual Culture in the latest animation: Panty and Stockings with Garter Belt.

A friend of mine, over the internets that is, said that the latest animation to come out of the great land or the Rising Sun, Nippon, was a bad excuse for anime riddled with american style animation and characters.

I managed to sneak a peek of this new series, 2 episodes to be exact, and this far I have to say that he has a point. The  series does look rather 'americanized' and reminds me of a cross-over between Genndy Tartakovsky's Dexter and Powerpuff Girls. But I liked both shows. Thus it's not a problem for me.
The plot seems to be that Panty and Stocking are both Angels, fallen angels to be exact, the point is that they are looked after by a, what seems to be, african-american christian priest called Garterbelt... and the sole mission of Panty and Stocking (besides having sex with every good looking guy [Panty] and eating every single sugary goodness there is [Stockings]) is to collect something called 'heaven coins' ...if I remember correctly. And they gain these coins by completing tasks handed out by the heavens, conveied to them by the great black priest. These tasks, this far, have included destroying ghosts and phantoms of such, while getting covered in shit.. literally.

All in all, the show seems entertaining and slightly innovative. Haven't seen much like this from Japan before but it didn't give me the same 'chills' as FLCL (FuriKuri) gave me years ago when I first saw it. The show is entertaining and if you enjoyed Dexter and/or Powerpuff Girls, you are going to enjoy Panty and Stockings with Garter Belt.

Enjoy the show, cheers!