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kajnrig

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Everything posted by kajnrig

  1. kajnrig
    Well, it WILL be the tenth anniversary come December... There's another album releasing in celebration. And the VF-25 was insanely popular, IIRC. I wouldn't say it's out of the question...
  2. kajnrig
    So within the first half-hour of Dream Drop Distance I get introduced to something like ten separate gameplay systems. This will not be fun, methinks. The World Ends With You characters showing up was pretty cool, though. And the writing/dialogue has certainly gotten better in recent games.
  3. kajnrig
    Played through "Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep -A fragmentary passage-" (spelled exactly that way oy vey) in a little under 3 hours on Proud Mode. Still hold that Aqua is the best character to come out of this whole mess of a franchise. And it's frankly ridiculous that they're managing to actually bring everything together finally. Or maybe I'm just finally acclimated to all the BS now. The graphics are phenomenal, and I can't wait to see them fully polished for KH3. The combat feels waaaay more like KH2, finally. None of the long, drawnout animations with their long, drawn out cooldown timers that plagued BBS, and an actual attack that tracks downward in the air. I can't tell you how many times my launcher attack sent me sailing ten heads higher than my enemy and then either 1) my followup stabs into the air above them or 2) I wait to drop down to their level but by then I've gotten trapped in the falling animation's recovery frames and can't cancel out of it. Here you almost never sail above an enemy in the first place, and when you do you have a beautiful downward slash that brings you to them in quick time. Now it's on to Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance HD. Let's do this! oh also megaman 11 is it good? aside from those bugs i mean
  4. kajnrig
    ...eh bit of column a, bit of column b?
  5. kajnrig
    okay so coded kind of shits the bed halfway through when it becomes about not-sora and this universe's weird dumb metaphysical bs but it's only a small turd so that's okay i guess??? and we're moving past it as i write this so it's fine
  6. kajnrig
    I'll probably pick it up come the next paycheck. I didn't really care too much for it, but it does look like a genuinely good game, and the kids have been clamoring for it. Agreed, and agreed. Aside from having the absolute dumbest title, 358/2 Days turns out is... well, it's still as ridiculously convoluted as anything else in KH, but it also has one of the more engaging stories isolated from the larger narrative. You can feel the universe straining at the seams to accommodate all of this melodrama, but said melodrama is wrapped around a sweet story all the same. The only way it could be better is if they NEVER EVER EVER mention her again. But they will (and indeed I think they already have), because this is Kingdom Hearts, and EVERYONE has to have their saccharine sweet ending. Even literally nothing. Sora gets the shaft because he was tasked with being the audience surrogate, the blank slate upon whom you project yourself. Over the years they've added as much as they can to him to make him stand out, but he's still something of a Gary Stu because he "has" to be. He embodies what the "ideal hero" of this world should be: really overbearingly sincere. And I mean all the characters embody this to a point, but he really takes the Gary Stu cake. Which is fine, I guess, but building a story that revolves around such a character is tricky as heck... not that they haven't given it their best stupidly-convoluted shot. I feel bad for Aqua. Of the three playable characters in BBS, she's easily the least literally dumb one. She's not nearly as gullible as the other two, she is about as mobile as Ventus is barring the ability to glide, and her moveset makes me want to pull my eyes out of their socket the least. Story-wise, she's also the least "tainted" by the KH universe. She suffers from "anime melodrama syndrome" - ie people, just TALK TO EACH OTHER - to an extent, but otherwise she's mostly a level head trying to do her job chasing after the two crap kids and cleaning up their messes. She's the most down-to-earth of all the KH characters, and unlike the other two who merely react to the events around them, she actively gets stuff done. She saves Ventus, she saves Terra, she sets the worlds up to have any chance of surviving at all... she truly is the hero this world needs but doesn't deserve. I don't know if I'd vote for her to be the focus of the story - I agree that Roxas and Ventus are more key (heheh) to KH than she is - but I definitely want to see more of her and less of everyone else. I still can't bring myself to like Axel. Dunno why. Maybe it's the whole Organization XIII thing. I thought they were the least interesting antagonists ever, on par with the Aerial Knights, and I still do. They'd have been more interesting the less we knew about them. Plus the "Real Name + X" thing is just... just the worst. Anyway, can't wait to start up 2.8! Yeah, so hype!
  7. kajnrig
    So I finally finished all the episodes of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, and the last "game" remaining on the 1.5+2.5 HD Remix is Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. I wasn't looking forward to it in the slightest - it was an iOS game (I think) that was basically just a retread of the first game - but the twists and turns in this story are frakking bananas, it's amazing. The premise is that King Mickey et al find a mysterious entry in Jiminy's journal (the one he uses to keep track of all your stats in KH1+2), decide to digitize it for analysis, discover glitches in the data, and create a digital Sora to troubleshoot those glitches by beating them with a digital Keyblade. Simple enough, until BOOM Mickey and them get sucked into the digital landscape too, including a digital recreation of the very computer room they were in. And then BOOM they have to jump from their digital world to the journal's digital world, and then BOOM digital Sora has to jump into digital Riku's digital world because there's a second journal's worth of glitches to fix, and while I'm sure it would be a chore to basically backtrack through the same content, this version of the "game" is just cinematic so you don't get any of the fatigue. It's a trip.
  8. kajnrig
    Which ZZ do you have - original or Ver Ka? I built the original in the form of the FAZZ Sentinel Ver., and I found it as awesomely stupid as its source material, and I mean that as a compliment. There are some parts that don't make the transition from ZZ to FAZZ, but by and large it's the same kit. It's from that era of Master Grade where they weren't quite so infatuated with complexity and gimmicks and articulation and the like, but I just remember it being this big old mess of a kit to put and keep together, and a lot of fun for it.
  9. kajnrig

    RC VF-31a

    kajnrig replied to tankball's topic in The Workshop!

    This and your SV-262 don't have nearly the attention they deserve. Many props for the work. Any chance you'll be fleshing out the design and incorporating a less conspicuous propulsion system?
  10. kajnrig
    So I know this figure is currently discontinued by Bandai while they work out some production kinks, but it's apparently still in stock at Gundam Planet. I dunno if GP is any good or not, but there you are if you're interested. https://www.gundamplanet.com/figure-rise-labo-fumina-hoshino.html
  11. kajnrig

    Macross figures

    kajnrig replied to CF18's topic in Toys

    Saburo, do you manually edit the focus while taking the shot or do you do a composite with everything in focus and then edit the focus via software as necessary? ...is that even a thing, now I think about it? EDIT: whoop new page
  12. kajnrig
    That opening brings back memories... Also, yes, those shipwrecked episodes were bad, and have a notorious production story to explain them. (I don't remember all of it, something about being directed by someone else on the team... or even outsourced, maybe? also financial troubles because 90s Gainax, etc. Long and short of it is that they're very obviously different from the canon episodes.) The creators have publicly disowned those episodes. I want to say they even went so far as to exclude those episodes from the box set, isolating them on their own extras disc. (That sounds a bit farfetched, though.)
  13. kajnrig
    A lot of the love the design in general receives apparently comes from it being the star of Gundam Zeta for a good length of the show before the Zeta shows up. It maybe takes part in some of the more dramatic scenes of the show as well. I'd imagine that the engineers and kit designers themselves are fans of it, too, so all of that means it tends to get a higher design/marketing budget similar to the granddaddy Gundam or any "first issue" of a new line, etc. Its PG kit is widely considered among the best of the PG line, especially for the level of detail of the inner frame. I've heard complaints about the Granddaddy Gundam and Zeta before it, and about the Strikes and Astrays after it, but never it. Its Revive HGUC likewise received a big marketing push, and the RGs are generally very well-received. (It did get some flak for being recycled in the RG Sinanju, but 1) that's more a criticism of the RG Sinanju, and 2) has less to do with actual criticism of the kit and more with a mistaken expectation that each RG be totally unique from the ground up, I think.) Me, I don't have any strong feelings for the design, so all of that hype is a bit lost on me. But kudos to those who do like it.
  14. kajnrig
    It's above the Kshatriya/Zeta posts <--note to self: read better. Anyway it looks like a SRW design. Could be wrong, but that's my first guess.
  15. kajnrig
    Didn't the series box set include English subtitles? Or am I thinking of Delta?
  16. kajnrig

    Hasegawa VF-31

    kajnrig replied to seti88's topic in Model kits

    It is, indeed. It convinced me to buy the kit.
  17. kajnrig

    BANDAI DX YF-19!!

    kajnrig replied to seti88's topic in Toys

    Is it still too late for me to get my three-toys-in-one-box version with all three having the best proportions for their individual mode?
  18. kajnrig
    If there's a writing equivalent to criminal negligence, I'd say they're at least guilty of that. Are androids human/machine hybrids, or was that cyborgs? In the case she's fully synthetic, I'd say she fits squarely in the Sharon Apple category, just with a different, more immediately identifiable as "human," body. And in that case, I'd be with Seto that her very existence would be against the law. Now, perhaps AI tech has advanced in the intervening years (how many years is it? Plus is 2040, Delta is... 2068? So some 30 years or so?) that there are legitimate existential questions to be answered. Maybe even talk of Ghosts? You know, in some sort of Shells? (But speaking of Ghosts, judging by the behavior of the Ghost drones once Luca unlocked their AI systems, I would say they're still a long way off from approaching anything even remotely resembling "AI civil rights" territory.) Say what, now? See, this is why I hate the Protoculture stuff. I seem to remember the original SDFM and even DYRL? worked music into the story as a metaphor for cultural exchange. The reason song was so powerful wasn't because of ancient Protoculture engineering, but because it symbolized the exchange of ideas across language and cultural divides. A love song being one of R Lee Protoculture's drill instructor jingles is much less romantic.
  19. kajnrig
    All of that is great fodder for a story to be told. Even if she were, say, created 20 years ago and thus is 20 years old with 20 years' worth of idol experience, she still lacks any other knowledge of interacting with people in any other meaningful way. If she's just a weapon or a tool, then what happens when her creators don't need to use her? Turn her off? Confine her to an isolation chamber? Evidently Lady M chose to allow her some measure of freedom and socialization, at which point, what does she do? What happens if/when she finds herself in an unfamiliar scenario? Why is she allowed out at all? Do Lady M and co. see some benefit to her living, in both a literal and metaphorical sense? If so, do they cross an ethical boundary by continuing to treat her solely as a weapon/tool? If so or if not, what does that say about the Macross universe's ethical stances? Sure, they may ultimately "see her as a tool and not a living sentient being," but so much of her role is tied into being, or at least accurately mimicking, a living sentient being. And again, they ALLOW her to be a living sentient being. So... there's some major disconnect there. And not to belabor the point, but her age DOES factor into this, because if she IS allowed some sort of socialization as it seems she is, even minor socialization spread across 3 years of existence is very different from minor socialization spread across 20 years. Or if she is isolated for any significant amount of time, 3 years' worth of isolation is very different than 20 years' worth. And so on and so forth. I mean, at the end of the day, you're right, her "age" doesn't matter because she's a fictional character. But what does it say about the real-world creators that they ignore all of that and instead just treat her as tits and ass and a great singing voice? It says that they employ Incompetent writers, sure, but also it reinforces the notion that their sole priority in this endeavor was to make a vehicle for the introduction of an idol group, all else be damned. And they've done serious damage to the Macross... legacy? I guess?... in the process. It's nothing that can't be fixed by the next entry, but... well, it just feels like a cheap cash grab, and that's not a level that Macross had stooped to before.
  20. kajnrig
  21. kajnrig
    Despite all I've said already, I'd love to see an MP Eva in this style.
  22. kajnrig
    I think it's the fact that there's so very little else there, of substance or otherwise. I can't tell if there's so little story because they were so focused on the fanservice or they focused so much on the fanservice because they had no story.
  23. kajnrig
    Should we expect the /G as a P-Bandai release, then? Also, it seems to me that between the 7S and 7S/G, people seem to prefer the 7S, or at least it is more... "prominent" in the merchandise than the 7S/G? I would think the latter would be the more marketed since it's exactly the same as the former BUT WITH MORE, but why is that apparently not the case? I'd have preferred a Quanta, but I haven't built a single PG outside of the Eva-01 anyway. Couldn't they just mix and match frame parts from both the Exia and 00 for it?
  24. kajnrig
    The amount of Reina/Makina petting in the series was distracting enough (not in the sense of titillating, just generally) that I remember it was a notable point of conversation at some points. And while some of it felt contextually appropriate, you could tell a lot of it was there for "titillation's" sake, not for the sake of informing anyone's characters or otherwise adding anything of actual substance to the show. The way I hear it, which is... better...? I guess? But like Seto said, ...which is complicated by what he also points out: Like, it's hard to emphasize just how creeped out I am by the way they handled Mikumo. She is literally designed to be sexy (even though her design does absolutely nothing for me but anyway) without any understanding of actual sex. She has the confidently sexy smile and swagger of Sheryl Nome, but none of her intention. Instead of sex appeal being something she exploits, it is literally the only way she knows how to express herself. And all that is creepy enough, but it's great fodder for a story about her; what really gets me is that the writers completely ignore it and instead just keep ogling her and even invite us to do the same. Aside from Mikumo, I think this sentiment holds true enough. Philosophical question of the day: If each time they "service" the "fans" and the fans sigh in exasperation instead, can it really be considered fanservice? I remember while the show was airing some folks were talking about the character animation quality as well, and while I thought it was fine during the series, the spoiler videos that... seem to have been removed now... had some really spotty facial animations. I wonder what's happened to the talent pool at Satelight in the time since Frontier that the writing and animation have gone downhill like this. *thinks about your Makina gainax gif* Gee, coulda fooled me... Hot Valk scissoring action. You sure you're not in it for the fanservice?
  25. kajnrig
    Thanks, glad they got to you okay. To be honest, I experienced a bit of seller's remorse after shipping them off. The nephews saw them as I was boxing them and were really bummed to learn they weren't for them. I think I'm gonna have to scour YJA again for these and all the others like them that were released. So much for getting rid of all the knick-knacks.
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