Just in case people don't already know, Seven Seas rescued the liscence and will republish volumes 1-6 in two omnibus collections and volumes 7 and up in single volumes.

Omnibus one is slated for release in January 2011, and then the second following in May.

http://www.gomanga.com/manga/gunslingergirl.php

Yen Plus recently aquired the liscence for Yotsuba (also formerly published by ADV and went on hiatus), so someone else picking up the liscence and releasing it isn't entirely out of the question.

So... Since the first three episodes of the Umineko no naku koro ni VN have been fan translated (with the blessing of 07th Expansion, no less), has anyone read it?

It's like Higurashi, only the main character is pretty much Phoenix Wright. And sort of the opposite (in terms of setting/motifs/themes/goal/etc.)

Basically, 18 people (members of a wealthy family and their servants) are trapped on a private island by a typhoon during a meeting to decide how to divide up the inheritance of the family's wealth, and find themselves being murdered one by one. The goal of the story is to figure out the culprit and whether the reason for the murders is an inheritance dispute or a gruesome human sacrifice ritual orchestrated by the patriarch of the family to resurrect the Golden Witch Beatrice who is rumored by other family members to have granted him immense wealth in a "deal with the devil" type scenario.

Which is sort of oversimplifying things, since there's a lot of plot twists, misdirection, and mind screwing going on as it plays off of your expectations from earlier episodes (including Higurashi) and does something unexpected instead. Or the characters bring up theories that you might think of and analyze the situation themselves only for something else happening that shoots it down.

Episode 1 was kind of boring except for a few places since it is mostly setup and character introduction, but episodes 2 and 3 were pretty consistently crazy throughout and I'd probably rank them alongside my favorite Higurashi chapters.

Watched the first season of Zero no Tsukaima today.

It's really disappointing how it ruined the plot of the novels, by cutting most of the plot and many of the action scenes in order to fit 5 novels worth of material into 13 episodes. (well, it covered the first novel in the first 6 episodes and parts of the next four novels in the last 7, to show how badly it got rushed).

Not to mention it got rid of the serious tone the novels have other than comedy storylines about Saito and Louise, made Saito seem gutless, and made Louise seem a lot more *****y and unreasonable by cutting out parts where she tries to act nice and correct her behavior combined with her appear to be overreacting over nothing because it watered down on the ecchi/suggestiveness of some scenes.

And I've heard that the second season of the anime is worse about mangling canon. :elcry:

No one's interested? :elcry:

Well, the series has been liscenced in North America by Funimation. Yay.

Quote from: Poey on July 09, 2008, 05:25:44 PM
Yeah, that's what I thought based on the couple screenshots I've seen.

You've seen the whole series?

No, just what was subbed before the group dropped it. (maybe about 6-7 episodes, I forgot)

GSG Il Teatrino is pretty disappointing though. Mostly because of poor quality animation and music sucking all the atmosphere out of the series. While the first season was more realistic in terms of character designs and backgrounds, Il Teatrino is more pastel and cartoony. As well as action scenes that cut away from explosions just to avoid animating them.

Better off just reading the manga. Except ADV has it on hiatus at the moment and hasn't published volumes 7-9 yet. :(

Chaos Wars.

I know Idea Factory games suck, but I bought it anyway.  :elcry:

On top of being mediocre, O3's given it one of the worst english dubs ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyNjSAv_OuY (skip to 5:14 for the best part)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAtC1SzWSXg

And that's not even the worst VAing in the game... I'd give that to Tontay and Zeros, who sound like an 8 year old with a speech impediment mumbling inaudibly into the microphone.

From what I've heard, the PS2 and Wii versions are identical content wise, just different in control. I'm assuming that Wiimote controls make drawing with the brush easier, but I've heard some complaints about the way the rest of the combat controls are set up.

Since you seem to like platformers, you should try the PS2's big three series of platformers, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, and Sly Cooper.

You also have a lot of survival horror titles, so maybe you could try the Fatal Frame series.

And I see Dark Cloud, but not Dark Cloud 2 which was a massive improvement.

Also give Okami a shot.

Finished watching the Neuro anime.

It's really disappointing how much it strayed from the manga, especially at the end (the whole South American half brother thing was pretty WTF) where it pretty much kills all hope of a second series or direct continuation while leaving a lot of things wide open (like the Claymore anime ending). So that means no animated Six and his glorious beardedness.  :elcry:

Also what was the point of Ai making a cameo appearance if they cut her out of the first two X arcs and didn't feature her at all in the anime only arc?

Been catching up on Spice and Wolf and Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro.

I'm really disappointed with the Neuro anime. You'd think that an anime based on one of the better Jump manga and handled by Madhouse would turn out well, but it added in a lot of terrible filler (despite having more than enough material for a 26 episode season anyway) and the canon cases were butchered beyond recognition (the Monster Robber XI arcs) or had a lot of material and explanations cut (the Electronic Person HAL arc), as well as rearranging the sequence of events for no good reason and cutting  a lot of weirdness/Yako abuse/777 Tools of the Demon World which is what makes the manga entertaining to begin with.

The first three seasons of Full Metal Panic are pretty good... But hearing spoilers for the novels past what TSR covered makes me want to facepalm from how stupid the plot's gotten after it's gotten serious.

Well, recently I've finished Moyashimon, Mononoke (not to be confused with Princess Mononoke), and Oh Edo Rocket.

Moyashimon was a cute show. Slice of life show about a guy with the ability to see bacteria as chibi doodles who goes to college at an agricultural university. Has some science lessons about how bacteria is used in food production, like fermentation and brewing alcohol. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riSLmaDK6xI Also the end of episode 8 was awesome.

Mononoke is a horror/psychological show following the nameless medicine seller from Bakeneko (a stand alone arc that is part of the Ayakashi classic Japanese horror anthology) as he exorcises ghosts by exposing the reason of their haunting. The series is probably best known for its unusual visual style. It imitates the art style and texture of traditional Japanese paintings sort of like Okami... But on LSD. As you can probably see from the OP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3YEEI0ES5M, or some of the AMV/MADs out there http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZIDJ0vORnw. Though the pace is pretty slow and confusing at times and some of the character designs are pretty odd.

Oh Edo Rocket was a bit of a disappointment for me. I liked the background art (again reminded me of Okami), but disliked a lot of the character designs. And I disliked some of the plot points, especially the whole subplot with Akai because I hated his character and didn't like how the show wanted you to sympathise with him despite his actions. Some of the fourth wall breaking moments and modern anime references or anachronisms were funny though.

Here's some anime OP parodies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0fNa_OcJDE - Bokurano (Uninstall) x School Days (using the infamous Nice Boat meme)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cu6FQnFC44 - Evangelion x Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6nEf6SF1UQ - Death Note (Zetsubou Billy) x Zetsubou Sensei

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ_3CCdrl9o - Fanmade Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro OP (I like this better than the actual OP, though the anime is a pretty poor adaptation all around ;_;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Orc2tXiaw - Dokuro-chan x JoJo's Bizarre Adventures

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDmF9vwOWWw - Zetsubou Sensei (Damn Twisted Person) x Neuro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkhimOpwvzQ - Zetsubou Sensei x Persona 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiQzsrZfev8 - Zetsubou Sensei x Phoenix Wright

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh0d77Co6LY - Zetsubou Sensei x Kirby (Zetsubou Sensei parodies are disturbingly popular...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50GUx5VbTXw - Higurashi Kai (Flower of the Abyss) x Mother 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxxHvdbpojQ - Negima!? (1000% Sparkling) x Touhou