Getting the Race out of Airbender
Yup, Asian!
Whenever racism comes up there's obviously a lot of tension and emotion. As an American of Chinese heritage I luckily haven't had to deal with many overt acts of racism to my person. I grew up in the country-side where myself and a handful of others were the only Asians in my high school graduating class of around 400. Although I have a deep appreciation and respect for my heritage, it's important to note that a more authentic Chinese American wouldn't be completely off base in calling me a twinky or banana. Both are derogatory slang for someone who is "yellow on the outside; white on the inside".
With that disclaimer out of the way, I'd like to tackle the whole controversy surrounding the movie The Last Airbender. This is where people's emotions get involved. The movie is based on a beloved television series named Avatar: The Last Airbender. Even being a show targeted at young American children watching Nickelodeon, it borrowed heavily from several Asian cultures. The amazing thing, is that it did so with a healthy amount of respect. Caricatures are funny, but it becomes racist when it's the predominant form of entertainment featuring a particular people.
Glad it’s the Final Crisis
Looks like a happy story!
My good friend Ryan, proprietor of comics and action figures at Charging Star Comics recommended that I check out Final Crisis. He knows how much I enjoy a good trade paperback so I figured I'd give it a go.
You can find all sorts of information about the book at it's Wikipedia page, so I won't go in to any detail here. I was impressed previously by some of the large DC crossover story lines like 52 and Infinite Crisis. When I picked up the Final Crisis trade, I had just finished enjoying Blackest Night in issue format and was reading (and still am) some selected Brightest Day books.
Unfortunately for me, Final Crisis is a bit of a let down. I'm going to have to read through it a second time to see if it gets any better, but right now, it feels really disjointed. I can definitely imagine I would have enjoyed it more on a book at a time pace. I read it in about two sittings, and the story just doesn't flow very well from book to book. Just reading the plot synopsis makes me chuckle. It seems to be stereotypical comic book over the top. There's just too much plot jammed in to so short a time span. Just from a timeline perspective, it ranges from the formation of the universe to the present.
Part of my displeasure may stem from my recent love of Marvel's cosmic stuff. Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy, and others have shown me that Marvel can do more than just capes on Earth. I've never liked what I consider DC's equivalent. The New Gods, Darkseid, and Apokolips never really clicked with me. If I remember correctly, the story at least doesn't deal with Jimmy Olsen. The relationship between him and the New Gods reminds me of Wesley Crusher's relationship with The Traveler.
Anime Brief: Pumpkin Scissors Review
Pumpkin Scissors?
Pumpkin Scissors is a supernatural, alternate history, action, mystery, military show.
It starts off a little slow with encapsulated episodes. Slowly the information begins to connect between episodes to give the viewer an idea for what the big picture is. As the over-arching story unfolds the show's pace really picks up.
Unfortunately this apparently is one of those anime shows that isn't finished. I'm not spoiling much by saying the show ends on a fairly big, if not somewhat obvious reveal. Then there's a poorly tacked on ending.
Overall, Pumpkin Scissors is a lot of fun. Besides the ending, there are a few other quirks. The dub supervised by ADV has some odd accents. There's a mix of British, German, French, and American all rolled in. There are three main nations in play, but the accents aren't consistent between them. There are some recognizable voices but I definitely enjoyed the dub more than the original Japanese. In order to enjoy the show, you'll need to tolerate some magic mixed in with your German style soldiers that have been robbed of their Nazi symbols. It almost feels like they just wanted an excuse to use the word "jäger" a lot.
There's a theme of class struggle with commoners versus nobility. It's not a subtext or anything but obvious and part of the story. The main story is one of an illuminati style group pulling the strings of corruption from behind the scenes. Sadly this plot just gets running when the series ends at the 24th episode.
I definitely recommend the show if you like fun with a side of awesome.
The Coloring Divide
I AM BETTER COLORED MAN
I've been watching anime and reading comics for less than half my life. Because of that I have no real attachment or sentimental memories of my childhood favorites. I can say that one of my favorite movies is The Last Starfighter; knowing it's a corny movie I can still say that I love it. As I play catch up with anime and comics, I'm finding that a lot of material that's recommended to me suffers from the same nostalgic memory lens. People remember things as being awesome, but under the light of fresh eyes, the ink starts to fade.
Take for example Gundam. More precisely the earlier Universal Century stuff. I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for criticizing it, but a lot of the art is pretty poor. It's quite possible that I'll never experience the adventures of Amuro Ray because I can't stand to watch it. Until I saw Cyborg 009, I thought I had issue with character designs. That was the first show that made me realize that wasn't the case. So what's the matter? I love mecha. I enjoy mecha so much that I'm willing to put up with awful plot lines and whiny characters (see Gundam Wing) to get my fix. It boiled down for me to a very shallow feature of the art.
I group anime and comics together here for a purely aesthetic reason: color. The two art mediums share a common production process:
I Won a Prize!
The Loot!
So on a whim I signed up for Darkhorse's Manga Month giveaway. Nobody actually wins these online raffles! Well I won something, haha. So thanks Dark Horse for some free manga. Not only that, a special part of the prize is a copy of Berserk, autographed by Kentaro Miura! Also included is Dark Horse's 20 Years of Manga Mug, and copies of Blade of the Immortal: Blood of a Thousand, Gantz #1, and Eden: It's an Endless World! #1. These all look awesome and might make me want to read more manga.
Curse your devious marketing ploys!
They didn't notify me ahead of time, so I got home to this box from Dark Horse sitting on my porch. The labels identified it as containing 50 copies of the Dark Horse Spring catalog. It was sent to my name, so I thought maybe for some reason they decided I'd be a good recipient for catalogs, haha. I had totally forgotten about the contest.
I was definitely pleasantly surprised!
Awesome Upcoming PSP Releases AKA If Only I Still Had Summer Vacations
Summer!
There's a hat trick of anticipated roleplaying games for the Sony PSP coming out this Spring and Summer. When I initially bought my Sony PSP 1000, I was hoping for an awesome catalog of RPGs to play, considering the Playstation and Playstation 2. That really hasn't been the case. Armed with my Darth Vader emblazoned PSP3000, my PSP game library is a shadow of its former self. Shin Megami Tensai: Persona was fun, but even that was a remake. Beyond that, I can only remember having true PSP RPG fun with other remakes, like Final Fantasy Tactics and Star Ocean First Departure.
The Uncanny Valley of Mass Effect 2
Yvonne/Miranda
The uncanny valley is a robotics term coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori. If the familiarity of a robot was graphed over the realism, the valley expresses the area between an unrealistic looking robot and a real life person. There's a large dip in how comfortable people feel when viewing or dealing with something that is so very close to being realistic but not quite there.
As computer generated animation has improved in fidelity, animators have crept closer to the valley. Normally it's not too bad but many point out SquareEnix's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as an example. I don't feel that it's too bad there. There are however some factors in Bioware's Mass Effect 2 that definitely creep me out. The prime culprit is picture to the left. The character of Miranda Lawson is both voice acted by and modeled after actress Yvonne Strahovski most famous for her role on Chuck. Seeing the not quite lifelike animations on the not quite lifelike computer model of her was definitely strange. It was only magnified by her voice coming out of the speakers. This wasn't just because her voice is coming out of an eerily close representation but also because of her voice quality: she used her natural accent. In the role of Sara in Chuck she forces an American accent, but in Mass Effect 2 it's her normal speaking voice. I really can't say if any changes would have been for the better. EA/Bioware definitely used her being in the game as a marketing bullet point though.
A Short Walk: I Choose You!
Pokéwalker Included!
So Nintendo revised Pokémon Gold/Silver with HeartGold/SoulSilver for the DS. And in what I can only imagine is an attempt to thwart software piracy, released a pack-in hardware accessory with the version of the game: the Pokéwalker. What is this ingenious device? It's a pedometer that you beam your Pokémon to to level up by walking.
Genius.
Great Scott! Achron: A Time Travel RTS
Imagine playing a real-time strategy game. You're built up a force of tanks and are moving across the field of battle. The other player meets your tanks and by chance they've papered your rock. In swoops some ground attack aircraft and your tanks are gone. Normally you'd curse and build up a new force to counter that tactic. Not the case in Achron, a new RTS coming from Hazardous Software.
Copyright in the Digital Download Era
What follows here is just my thought process on copyright and piracy. I'm not trying to judge, just bring to light the factors at play.
A recent discussion amongst a few of my followed on Twitter brought this question to mind: how did the piracy of copyrighted works evolve to how it is today? Thanks to digital reproductions of digital products, there is rarely any difference between an original licensed work and a pirated copy. When copyright law was envisioned these circumstances can't have been imagined.
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