Gundam 00 Finale

The mother of all high production budget series has now come to a close. Gundam has always been close to my heart and I have always enjoyed the cheesy mechanical robots fighting it out in space. However, I always looked at it as just that. Gundam has always been the awesome action-packed robot-fighting anime. The way I viewed all the different Gundam series changed a couple of years ago when Sunrise rolled out the very successful Gundam series called Gundam Seed. Seed was able to incorporate the action that Gundam provides with a very solid character development and story and turning it into something truly memorable. Sunrise quickly followed up with the sequel to the series and named it Gundam Seed Destiny. Destiny, in my opinion, was not as successful as its predecessor, but certainly remained entertaining in my mind.

The newest installment in this long series is none other than Gundam 00. I began watching it with hopes that it will continue the new direction that Sunrise took with Seed. This did not happen. Focus was  taken away from the characters and placed more on the political back story. I could no longer relate to any of the characters. The situation worsened when at the end of the first season, characters that I did not know about started dying. The tone of the show suggested that I should have been sad. But really, I was not sad at all.

In an attempt to regain some foundation, some fast-paced revelations (Code Geass R2 style) were added in the second season. Unfortunately, this was not enough. I did not like any of the characters anymore. Their reasons for fighting made little sense. The political back story was over-done and everything was just falling apart. From that point on, I followed the show for the laughs. It was great to see Andrei kill his father due to sheer stupidity or Mr. Bushido turning into an irrelevant character that is better off dead. Marina Ismail is simply useless to the main plot and her role in the overall story is irrelevant since she isn’t even a girlfriend to Setsuna.

I still enjoyed the show because of the always amazing animation and battle scenes. Some of the fight scenes against the Momento Mori were visually impressive. Of course, this series has been able to take advantage of the 720p definition unlike its predecessors. Overall, if we were to discount the visual appeal of the show, the series as a whole is in my opinion, a step down from Gundam Seed and even Gundam Seed Destiny.

Clannad After Story Finale

I have delayed this post until I was able to catch the recap final episode. I did not want to miss anything before writing a post about how I felt about the show. But now that it is finally done, I can blurt out all the crap that I want.

I will start by saying that Clannad AS blew me away as an anime series. It is one of the few series that has scored a 10 on my list (along with Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo). I should note that Clannad has been my first Key anime. As a result, I am not familiar with the style and mechanics that they use in their shows. However, what I saw here was more than satisfactory. Clannad manages to teach Tomoya and the audience about family and the values that hold together people under a roof.

The question that goes through everybody’s mind as they watch the ending is of course “did this really happen”? Thankfully, after watching the recap episode you can deduce with a great degree of certainty that all those terrible events do really occur. Of course, in order to truly understand the story, it is best if you know about the game from which the anime is derived. All the good deeds in which Tomoya takes part help him understand the concept of family and finally save his from extinction. That is the concept on which the game is built. It is also the inspiration for the series.

All in all, the show impressed me to no end and I definitely recommend it. I am now in the process of watching my second Key anime – Kanon.

Toradora Finale

Toradora has been a show that I knew I was going to enjoy right from the start. It is a very character driven anime and as such the everyday high school drama cliche becomes amusing because the characters in the cliche are new and amusing. The main characters (Aisaka and Ryuji) are two alienated high school kids who become friends in order to help each other with their high school crush. There are classic love triangles formed and Minorin’s complete randomness makes for some quality comedy.

There are some emo parts to the show but that may attract some people, but is not enough to repel anybody from the show. All is good until we get to the final two episodes that form the ending. I must say that compared to the rest of the show, the ending disappointed me. Time seems to be distorted towards the end, and the story is presented out of order, leaving a few “lulwat” moments. I have heard that JC can do worse in terms of endings and this is actually one of the better endings that they have done. I still find that much is to be desired. I was confused for the most part in the ending and that takes away from the climax in the plot.

Having said that, the ending is mediocre and it does not weigh down the entire series. I will still recommend this for it definitely is a good watch.

Battlestar Galactica Finale

I spent most of Saturday at Roboticon. It was a very nostalgic feeling, being re-united with my old teammates and one of my favorite high school teachers. Unfortunately, I had to cut it short as I had promised my friends from Waterloo that I would join them in the highly anticipated BSG finale party that was hosted by John. I got there at 8:30 PM and we started the episode after a half an hour of Rock Band and drinking.

I will begin with the conclusion. This finale left a bad taste for everyone. It felt as if we spent two hours watching how not to make a BSG finale. This episode was so bad that a re-run of last week’s episode would have been a more enjoyable watch. Although, as I have mentioned before, the series as a whole has been so entertaining that a disappointment was unavoidable. I will try to outline aspects of this episode that I disliked.

The flashback to the old days on the colonies failed to invoke any meaning in the story or explain any of the characters in the show. Displaying the admiral’s worst moments of alcoholism was nothing new to the show and the notion of a new job that he was considering to undertake was simply confusing and out of place in the grander scheme of things. Of course, this was all supposed to make more sense by Colonel Tigh’s frantic screams in a strip bar.

To further exacerbate the situation, the main villain in the show (Number One) is won over by one of Baltar’s everyday rants. Interestingly enough, he realizes the lunacy in listening to Baltar and shoots himself in a moment’s chaos. This ending almost makes the rest of the conflicts in the show seem pointless and insignificant.

Of course, the most significant controversy is Starbuck. She is portrayed to be a figment of everyone’s imagination and disappears into thin air at the end of the show. Everything with regards to her death is left unexplained. Instead, we are presented with a weak outlook of Earth 150,000 years in the future in order to compare the similarity of Toyota’s dancing robots to full-fledged Cylons.

If you think that all of the points above are reason enough to hate this episode, then you will be surprised that I have saved the biggest reason. The 29,000 survivors of the human race decide to erase their advancements in technology by ramming the fleet into the sun in order to start a clean slate on Earth. By the way, this was all Lee’s idea (go figure). The Chief decides to take up living in the arctic after strangling one of the final five for killing his wife. The same wife that cheated on him and was carrying a child that wasn’t his.

A lot happened in this episode, but the events were mostly out of place and failed to explain any of the themes in the show. In my opinion, it is best to ignore this episode and pretend that the show ended last week and was somehow discontinued by Fox, much like Firefly.

Absolute Mind F***

Last Friday night, I headed to Justin’s house as usual. I arrived to his house only to find that it was vacant. I decided to wait outside, and shortly, Justin arrived accompanied by Wyatt. The three of us happily decided to spend the rest of the evening playing Braid. This is where our journey began in a completely bizarre environment where we were forced to think in ways with which we were not accustomed.

Braid can be described as a futuristic version of Mario on the surface. The story (again, on the surface) follows the cliche of the hero trying to save the princess from the grasps of the evil monster. You will soon learn however that the story is nothing like you would expect. By the end of the story, you will be so confused that you will immediately venture onto the Internet and try to find out what it all means. Then you will proceed to read a 20 page plot analysis on the Internet. Unfortunately, you will still be very much in the dark as to the meaning of the story as a whole.

To complement a very deep and interesting story line, the game takes advantage of some very creative gameplay mechanics. The game is about time travel. However, time travel is done as perfectly as I have ever seen it before. The time travel is made the way you would expect it to happen. Everything in the world moves backwards when the time travel takes place. The characters across the screen go backwards. The background music rewinds. The rain that has been dripping down will immediately start to fall upwards. The puzzles in the game are then only solvable by utilizing time travel in some of the most creative ways.

The game may seem short, but each puzzle takes a rather significant amount of thinking to solve. At each level, the player is presented with a new special concept in time travel. This ranges from time travel allowing the player to create a shadow clone of himself or being able to warp time to slow the movement of objects.

Overall, the game ended that night at 3:00 AM by which point I was suffering from a raging headache that lasted all throughout the next day. All in all, this game is one that I recommend to anybody who is looking for some thinking in a game that has creativity, beautiful art, and an astonishingly involved story line. What is most impressive is that this game was independently developed by only one person over the span of 3 years.

Video Games Live

I must once more apologize for my time off blogging. I have been very busy with various events and was unable to commit some time to the scribbles. It doesn’t help that I have several things that I would like to make posts about. Some of these topics include Watchmen, Braid, and Clannad After Story. I have decided to make a series of posts discussing all of the above in reverse chronological order. Therefore, I will begin with Video Games Live!

Video Games Live was glorious. I was accompanied by Wyatt and Justin to this amazing event. We drove up to Kitchener on Saturday evening so that we could listen to a symphony playing our favorite video game music. Overall, it is an experience that any video game lover should take part in at least once. I will now describe the highlights of the event for me.

It all began with a very cute into video of Pac Man. It was then followed with Metal Gear Solid music. I have never played much of the MGS games, but I have, like everyone else, heard much praise of the series and the music sounded fantastic. Shortly after came what we had all been waiting for. Baba Yetu, the opening theme of Civilization IV. I thought that the choir did a perfect job. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the lead singer. I found him too silent and lacking in the accent.

One of the very notable portions of the night was the performance of the Video Game Pianist. For those of you who don’t know, he used to play video game music (mainly Final Fantasy) blind-folded. He was absolutely exhilarating and his performance brought everyone in the audience to their feet.

Then we all got a dose of the heavy hitting songs from Final Fantasy, Halo, and the Chrono series. There was a very nice segment for Mario as well. All in all, they were all done very well and entirely enjoyable. Another notable portion for me was Hikari. I found that it was very well-done. However, I was not impressed with the Disney video that played along with it. I thought that this song could have only been improved if Utada Hikaru was there performing live at the time.

Now if you thought that the entire event was simply a symphony orchestra, that is incorrect. There were quite a few little goodies sandwiched between the songs. Videos of composers would be displayed as  they introduced their songs. Also, we had the pleasure of video chatting with one of Blizzard’s composers on Skype (and yes, it was laggy). On top of all of this, there was some stuff for the audience to take part as well. A volunteer was brought to the stage in order to play Space Invaders while the symphony played in the background.

Prior to the concert, a Guitar Hero competition took place in the lobby of the theatre. The winner of the competition was brought up on stage to play Emotion with Tommy Tollarico playing the song along with the entire symphony. He was heavily embarrassed since he failed on expert rather early. I did not want to be that guy.

I do have some complaints however. They mostly surround Tommy Tollarico. I understand that he is the reason this event takes place in the first place. However, I feel that he ruined the Halo and Final Fantasy segments with the electric guitar. He insisted that the show was about him, when it was really about video game music and the symphony.

After the show, Justin, Wyatt and I went back to the lobby to see what the Meet & Greet was all about. After Justin was man-handled by Tommy Tollarico’s bodyguard, we realized that it was basically a long lineup to worship Tommy. We decided that (as Wyatt clearly puts it), we don’t really /like/ Tommy so we headed home afterwards.

All in all, I’d say that was the best spent $20 for me in a while. I would like to catch this show once more at the very least. It is definitely a treat and I highly recommend it to you all.