Hajime No Ippo The Fighting episodes 26-50! The birth of one of the greatest rivalries and the road to challenging the champion!

After episode 25, the opening song is changed to the hard rocking Inner Light by Shocking Lemon, which together with the more badass images of Ippo and the darker color palette in the opening shows that the show has become more serious and badass, now that Ippo isn't just a rookie but a rising star in Japan's boxing world with a goal of becoming national champion. Also Ippo has other rivals introduced, most notably Sendo and Volg.

So recap of this story arc.
Ippo is trying to get his fist to heal so he can fight Sendo over the title of All Japan Rookie Champion (Sendo is the rookie champion of the west, Ippo is of the east).
Sendo is a hotblooded young man who loves fighting strong oponents. Sendo, like Ippo, is a in-fighter with amazingly strong punches, altough their range is a bit different compared to the more close range of Ippo.
Sendo's special punch is the Smash, which is a very strong, curving, low-angle uppercut.
Oh yeah also Ippo's special punch at this point, altough I'm not sure if this is named yet, is a liver blow which is so strong it can make you throw up.
Also at the same time, many admirers of Ippo try to join the Kamogawa boxing gym, but the only one to pass is the very unlikely Naomichi Yamada, a fat, clumsy weakling who is kind of like a more miserable version of Ippo at the beginning of the series. Yamada throws up after every workout session so Takamura, in his infinite wisdom and politeness against his kohai, dubs him Gero-michi (barf-michi, but Gero-michi sounds less awkward).
Yamada admires Ippo for his strength.
Also a sub plot is that Umezawa, the bully that used to bully Ippo becomes one of Ippo's fans since he admires boxers. Remember this.
Also Ippo has a sexy bone doctor that all the horny, sweaty knuckleheads at Ippo's gym secretly lust after.
Also Ippo makes friends with Kumi Mashiba, Ryo Mashiba's younger sister. This becomes Ippo's romance subplot throughout the series. Mashiba himself sort of has a grudge against Ippo, altough this is kind of go-nowhere since Mashiba has moved up a weight class and can no longer face Ippo, but he semi-accepts Ippo and Kumi's friendship, altough he behaves sort of like a mix of over-protective brother and person who strangles you in the toilet if you're not careful.
So anyway, the fated day comes and Ippo faces Sendo. To face Sendo, Ippo must go to Okinawa. In Okinawa, Sendo is like a local hero so his fandom entirely overshadow's Ippo's. Umezawa and his lackeys go to cheer on Ippo, but they kind of don't want to get their asses kicked by tanned Okinawans so they stay kind of silent.
Ippo and Sendo face off, and what a match it is. They fight, and they fight, and they fight. They both trade blows, face shattering blows. The match ends with

*spoilers*
Sendo being punched in the temple, which knocks him out, but while unconcious he still beats the fuck out of Ippo. The round ends. Ippo sits down in his corner and thinks ''next round I'm going to lose''. But then the ref finds out that Sendo is unconcious and ends the match. Ippo is declared winner.
Both Ippo and Sendo consider this fight unfinished
*end spoilers*

So Ippo is crowned All Japan Rookie Champion. This moves him up to 10th in Japan's boxer ranking.
Ippo catches the eye of the Japan Featherweight Champion, Eiji Date. Oh yeah I suppose I should mention Ippo and all of his opponents are from the featherweight weight class.
Date emts the same kind of manlyness as a character from the Yakuza series, except without criminal origins.
So Date invites Ippo for a sparring match. Ippo accepts but loses to Date, who's speciality is the Heartbreak Shot, a type of corkscrew blow which hits you in the heart and momentarily disables your body.
So Ippo decides that he wants to become stronger and face Date for the title of Champion. To do this, he must beat the people above him in the ranking to get the privilige to fight the champion.
Meanwhile, in Thailand.
Miyata is training in Thailand. He's not doing so well since he continues to end up in draws against his oponents, mostly due to xenophobia and shit.
Miyata has to face Jimmy Sispher, a boxer with 8 wins, 8 KOs and no loses, but also 38 wins at Muay Thai. It is predicted that Miyata will lose spectacularly, for his counters might not be enough to put Sispher down.
So Miyata has to find a way to defeat Sispher. Miyata is a counter specialist, but otherwise he doesn't have amazing punching power like Ippo or Sendo.
So in the end, Miyata learns a new counter, the Jolt Counter, which is supposedly so powerful it will obliterate the person it hits, but if it fails you're fucked. And quite frankly, the jolt counter to me seems like the biggest case of unrealism at times, as I can't see how Miyata could suddenly generate that much power.
So anyawy, Miyata gets the shit beaten out of him (like every time), but wins with his bullshit counter. He then decides to return to Japan.
Back in Japan.
Ippo graduates high school. So does Umezawa, and Umezawa asks Ippo to forgive him for bullying Ippo. Also after the graduation, groups all of Ippo's school ask to be in the same picture as them. At first it's just scary-ass mofos you'd see in WORST and Shounan Junai Gumi but then it's more normal people. Oh yeah I forgot, the delinquent scene became fans of Ippo after they found out about his boxing history.
So anyway, Ippo climbs up the ranking, fighting some guy who emulates Date's style. Then he faces Takuma Saeki, a really really fast guy who Ippo beats by predicting his pattern and striking before.
Ding ding ding it's new rival time.
Alexander Volg Zangief (no relation to the street fighter Zangief... or is there?) is the former world champion of amateur boxing from Russia who wants to become Japan's boxing champion to earn money to pay for his mom's hospital bills or something.
Volg (which is russian for wolf, altough I'm not sure if Volg or Volk are a more correct spelling translation from Russian) is another pretty boy and is polite and isn't as fighting crazy as Sendo, in fact, he doubts if he even actually likes boxing.
Volg and Ippo do get along kind of well, and Volg kind of laments that they can't really be friends since they are rivals.
Volg and Ippo face off. Volg is much more skilled compared to Ippo. This results in Ippo getting a severe beating, however, amateur boxing is much less stamina taxing than pro boxing, so eventualy Volg starts running out of power. Ippo knocks Volg out. Volg loses, but Ippo is the one taken away from the ring in a stretcher.
Ippo now gets the right to face Date for the title of champion. Here we break off again.

To be honest these episodes kind of blur together since all the important fights just lead to more important fights in the last 26 episodes of HnI The Fighting.
But Ippo doesn't look more badass in any other place than he does in the opening Inner Light. So anyway for a 3 act structure, this is the middle point (obviously) which shows how the characters get to the final act (of this specific anime series, in the larger outlook on the HnI saga this is still pretty early).
Also, Sendo and Volg? I like them as Ippo's rivals more than I like Miyata.

Anime Blu Ray Review : Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone . Shinji, believe in... ah naw fucking you is still a bitch

Continuing with my sudden surge of suddenly giving a fuck about my blog again, here is a review of Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone.

An uneducated person like Mark might think ''Evangelion was perfect! There is no need to remake it! This is all just some sort of bullshit cashin! Fuck this! I'm going to play some more Blops and yell yell at people while getting killed by 12 year old cyborgs with xray vision!'' and to an extent he has a point.
Now the Neon Genesis Evangelion metafranchise has made over 8 billion dollars and there's still brand new figures and shit coming out like every month constantly for 15 years now. Also from time to time they make novels or dating sims or something that present an alternate version of the OG EVA universe kind of commonly. So yeah, the Evangelion franchise is no stranger to the cash in thing.
However, this really isn't a soulless cash in like the ones Hollywood shit out every week for retards. In general, Japan hasn't gone in to overdrive with the whole remake thing and their remakes have a certain amount of respect for the source material, like pretty much everything Dynamic Productions does these days. This, however, does not apply to live action movies that were outsourced to dirty fucking baka gaijin.

Okay but disregarding the gaijin (an ancient japanese philosophy), the Japanese have a fairly good track record with remakes or sequels made much later. Atleast there is actual creativity behind those things and a will to pay tribute to something you like.

But anyway let's talk about a more significant reason. Evangelion was made during a time before Gainax had an unlimited budget for their animes and they actually had to consider limitations to what they could do. This ended up for some compromises.
The final episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion were when they had to scrape dried up remains from the very bottom of the barrel of their budget. You remember how Shinji just sat in the tree of life for like 3 episodes, almost not moving at all and it was entirely all voiceover? Yeah, the reason was since they couldn't afford to animate much.
Since they had to compromise, Hideaki Anno's vision didn't get compeletely fufilled.
Then they made the End Of Evangelion movie. It still had limitations and shit but still provided a better product (in terms of production, the actual things it presented I will best leave up to you to find out, then hit me up and we'll talk).
In general, Hideaki Anno wasn't that satisfied with the final product and decided to revisit Evangelion now that Gainax are superstars with a budget that would make 70s era Yoshiyuki Tomino's penis shrink to raisin size and give him a heart attack from envy.

So here we have the first of the Rebuild Of Evangelion tetralogy. So the first movie is for the most part faithful to the original TV series, going through the same plot points and having more or less the same characters, acting like more or less the same characters and played by the same exact cast (in Japan atleast).
Without wishing to spoil too much, the plot covers around the first 6 episodes of the series.
Shinji Ikari arrives to Neo Tokyo 3 since he recieved an invitation from his estranged father who he hasn't seen since his mother's death.
Just as he is picked up by Misato Katsuragim who becomes Shinji's guardian in Neo Tokyo 3, the city is attacked by the Angel Sachiel.
Shinji is delivered to NERV headquaters where he meets his father, Gendo Ikari after several years. Gendo, not wishing to waste time, Shinji is forced to pilot the mecha known as Evangelion Unit 01, for he is the only person who can after seeing that the other Evangelion pilot, Rei Ayanami is severely injured and in no condition to pilot it.
Shinji then has to face the angels, his duty, his inner demons, fear of death and the basic fact that he is a fucking spineless coward with issues.
So after some dead angels, some really cool action and Shinji being constantly forced to man up by women, the movie ends with Shinji and Rei Ayanami piloting units 01 and 00 respectively, have to defeat the Angel Ramiel with a beam rifle powered by Japan's entire power grid in a fantastic scene with a very cool music piece.
Oh also the ending song by Utada Hikaru? It is absolutely amazing.

Yeah so I can't say I loved the original Evangelion. The characters were depressing little bitches who spend most of the series walking around aimlessly and whining.
But the thing is, 1.11 has a runtime of 95 minutes, so they have to manage it all. So Shinji has less time for whining and has to spend more time in the EVA unit, fighting Angels. So the result is that I actually felt somewhat sympathetic towards Shinji, something I didn't in the original series.
But in the case of Rei, Rei actually behaves sort of like a person instead of a walking doll in the Rebuild movies.
Oh also you're wondering where's Asuka? She doesn't appear in this movie, but in the next one.

But the highlights for me were the fights between the EVA units and the Angels. They have some absolutely stunning animation. Seriously, watch it on the biggest HD screen you can find in the dark. It's awesome. They got absolutely everything right. The animation, the colors and the blend of 3D CG.

Also the movie has a fair share of thinly weiled hints of the possibilty that the movie takes place in a reset universe following the events of End Of Evangelion, but I wish not to adress that now.

Now we have to wait for next year when 2.22 comes out on Blu Ray. And then I don't know how long until 3.33 Q Quickening and 4.44 come out. how... lon...
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Hajime No Ippo The Fighting episodes 1-25! Ryuusei No Ai Ga Kimi Ni Isshun no hikari nokute! eien no yume wo mite, ROLLING GO!

Hajime no Ippo The Fighting (Japanese for The First Step), known in the west as Fighting Spirit, is a manga series by Joji ''George'' Morikawa that has been adapted in to a 76 episode anime, a movie, an OVA and a 26 episode sequel titled Hajime No Ippo New Challenger, both produced by the awesome studio known as Madhouse.

Hajime No Ippo is probably one of the greatest works in sports fiction history. It has memorable characters, consistent character development, fantastic action and despite some of the stylization (like the dust clouds the punches sometimes make), it still remains fairly realistic. Also there's comedy and some drama.

Hajime No Ippo tells the story of Ippo Makunouchi, the son of a widow who runs a fishing boat. After his father passed away, he had to help his mother run the family fishing boat. Because of this, he had to work hard and didn't have much time for anything else.
Ippo doesn't really have friends and he gets bullied a lot by the bancho of the school delinquents, Masahiko Umezawa (who everyone refers to just as Umezawa).
One day Ippo gets a pretty strong beating from Umezawa but he is saved by Mamoru Takamura, a professional middleweight boxer who happened to be doing his running at that moment and was passing by.
Ippo is inspired by Takamura and wants to also become a boxer to find out what it means to be strong.
So after being tested by Takamura, Ippo eventualy joins the boxing gym Takamura goes to, which is run by the old coach, Genji Kamogawa. Also there are his senpai (superiors, seniors), Tatsuya Kimura and Masaru Aoki, who are mostly comedic relief.
At first Ippo is a complete mess when it comes to his boxing and gets beaten pretty hard in a sparring match by Ichiro Miyata, but he continues to get up after every down. This spirit convinces Kamogawa to train Ippo.
After some training, Ippo has a sparring rematch with Miyata and Ippo actually succeeds at beating Miyata.
After this, Miyata leaves Kamogawa gym for the gym run by his father. Ippo has no idea why.
So Ippo passes the pro license test and after it faces Yusuke Oda as his first opponent.
And then he participates in the East Japan Rookie Championship. He meets Miyata and Miyata tells Ippo that he will be waiting for him in the Rookie Championship finals.
Ippo defeats the African American boxer Jason Ozuma, the cunning but not very strong Kenta Kobashi, the handsome genius Ryuichi Hayami, who despite losing captures the hearts of all the swooning teenage girls (something boxers like Kimura and Aoki lament not being able to do).
Before moving on to the finals, Miyata has to defeat Ryo Mashiba, a tall, unnaturaly thin, grim and creepy boxer. Miyata gives it his all, but loses, spraining his ankle and sustaining other injuries. Miyata loses and cannot keep his promise to Ippo.
And Ippo then faces Mashiba, which kind of reminds me of Rocky 4 with how Ivan Drago beat Apollo Creed and now Rocky wants to beat up Drago.
So Ippo engages Mashiba, who has an obsession with winning which forces him to not give up. Ippo eventualy defeats Mashiba, but not without breaking his right fist. Ippo is crowned East Japan Rookie Champion. Mashiba says he has to start over and decides to move on to the Jr. Middleweight weight class.
Ippo's fist must heal. The West Japan Rookie Champion, Takeshi Sendo wants a match with Ippo for the title of All Japan Rookie Champion.
Miyata decides to box around Asia to get his groove back.
After being visited by Sendo, Ippo has decided that he wants to face Sendo.
With that we'll break off here.

So the first 25 episodes show Ippo's humble beginnings as a boxer and his rise to boxing stardom. These are some fun episodes and I think they go with the opening song pretty well since this is where Ippo isn't as determened and confident as he is later on, in that what is happening right now is sort of like a dream and he doesn't know how far he wants to take it.
Also Tsuneo Imahori's (the same composer as Trigun) soundtrack is less guitar heavy in these episodes as it is later on.
Takamura's antics are pretty funny and gags about how Aoki likes ugly women, Ippo has a large penis and the yearly training camp antics are created within these episodes.
So join us some other time as we go for the next 25 episodes. This series is definately worth a watch, hell, it's worth several rewatches.

Vanquish : powered armor, commie robots, terrorism and sliding while going GAH! WHOOOOOGLY!

So in steady haste to bring back my readership (which is less than 5 people) and within like 2 hours of my last post, I come to you with another post.

Alrighty then so Shinji Mikami's Vansquish. Shinji Mikami, Hideki Kamiya and Keiji Inafune were all very important to Capcom's golden dudes but now all of them have left Capcom. That's sorta related to this.

Shinji Mikami is the creator of Resident Evil, and he was also the person who came back and made Resident Evil in to the fanastic game known as RE4.

So some of you might remember a studio called Clover Studio. Clover are responsible for games such as the criticaly aclaimed Okami but more importantly to this article, Godhand.

Now I don't know if you played Godhand but it was one of those games that you had to play if you were a denzen of /v/ during the days before it shat itself inside out.

Godhand was a very, very skill based game, in fact, I haven't beaten it to this day, but imasculatingly, my friend has beaten it with the fucking Kick Me challenge. Godhand didn't have a lot of sophisticated design and it really felt like it was made for fun. It also payed tribute to things like Fist Of The North Star and such. If you call this game shit for it not holding your hand all the way through or having ''shit design'' really then you're a pussy-ass faggot. Word.

Right so and because Godhand didn't reach up to the standards (the wrong standards) of some idiots, Clover bankrupted.

After Clover bankrupted, Hideki Kamiya and Shinji Mikami founded Platinum Games.

So anyway we'll leave Bayonetta for some other time and talk about Vanquish.



So Vanquish is a 3rd person cover based action shooter about a manlyman in powered armor killing commie robots on a space colony with a microwave laser thing that can blow up cities.

Like any Shinji Mikami/Suda 51/Hideo Kojima/Keiji Inafune/Hideki Kamiya video game the game was voiced in english for Japanese audiences so you get that good old hammy dubbed anime feel which sets the right mood where you really shouldn't take any of this nonsense too seriously and just enjoy the ride.

The game plays like a standard cover based 3rd person shooter, except you have a time slow down effect and a slide mechanic. You might think on paper that sounds like nothing important, but no, this is actually very significant. The slide lets you fastly go from cover to cover, so instead of taking potshots from the other side of the hallway you can slide from cover to cover real fast and blow them fuckers away with your shotgun in slow mo. Okay really it's hard for me to convince you like this so you better watch some video of that shit to get the idea. It's more than a gimmick.

Now but the thing is, Sam Gideon's powered armor suit overheats when using the slowmo or slide (or both) too much and then he's pretty much a sitting duck. So you have to learn how to manage your overheat meter. A dissapointing thing at first was that after melee attacks Sam instantly overheats. But when I learned you can charge melee attacks I got the point.

At first it was useful when the ARS suit slowed down time when I was near death so I could quickly make my escape, but when I got good at the game I actually got good at the game it became a huge annoyance since you can't call it off until it overheats.

''Fuck fuck fuck fuck you fucker don't waste my precious overheat meter!!!''

The game is not very long, I beat it in 6 hours 10 minutes without even really pushing it but I'm pretty sure the game can be beaten in 3-4 if you really take it to the limit.

The game's QTE's are pretty cool, my favorite being when Sam parries the swords of the Boogey's at lightning speed remniscent of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

The game's scenery isn't really much to mention in terms of design but the game itself looks good since they got the color saturation and everything just right.

Also there's a pretty cool space shooter during the credits.

So the question for me is, will there be a sequel?
The game ends pretty open-endedly, with the main villain being alive and well since you don't even face him during the game.

But the thing is, Shinji Mikami already left Platinum for Tango Gameworks and he said his next project might be his last.

I'd say you nigs should play the fuck out of this game since I think this game genuinely makes you better at video games.

Oh also, I ordered the regular editon but GAME.co.uk sent me the steelbook edition for no good reason. Thanks, GAME.

Anime DVD review : Gurren Lagann volume 1 : OUUUUUUUUUUU! ANIKI! ORE WA OMAE WO KANARAZU O WASURENAI!

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, titled just Gurren Lagann in the west is simply one of my all-time favorite animes ever. Directed by the same person who directed FLCL and Diebuster, this is in my opinion, the greatest mecha anime of the past decade.

I'll be talking about specificly the EU DVD release volume 1 of 3 by BEEZ, a subsidary of Bandai. Volume 1 covers episodes 1-9.

Alright I suppose I should tell you the plot of these 9 episodes and the basic setting, altough there really isn't something I would say is ''basic'' about it.

So it's so far in to the future the entire history of humankind as we know it is irrelevant, if this is even supposed to be the same earth. Humanity has spent hundreds of years living below the earth's surface in underground villages which have no connection to each other after being forced there by some sort of force. People have lived there for so long that they think that the surface world is just a legend.
Simon is a teenager with confidence issues very much like those of Shinji Ikari from Gainax's most significant series, Neon Genesis Evangelion. His parents were killed in an earthquake. He spends his time digging holes with his drill to expand the village since that's what he's good at. He is also acompanied by a small mole-pig called Boota.
Simon really has no friends, except for the brash, confident dreamer and leader of the village's delinquents, Kamina. Kamina dreams of breaking through the ceiling of the village to go to the earth's surface and reunite with his father who had left for the surface years ago.
When digging, Simon first finds a small medallion shaped like a drill that shines green with energy at times when he holds it. Kamina and the village delinquents try to break through the ceiling but fail and are imprisoned by the village elder.
Simon then finds a huge metal face in a wall during one of his digs. He busts Kamina out of prison to show it to him.
Then, a giant face-like monster busts through the ceiling and attacks the village. Also from the surface comes Yoko, a teenage girl from a different village who have already reached the surface. She tries to defeat the monster with her rifle but fails.
Simon activates the big face in the wall that he found earlier. It turns out to be a mecha called a Gunman (this is a pun, since the Japanese word Gaan means face, so Faceman). Kamina dubs it Lagann (enveloping face, why exactly we'll find out a bit later).
Somehow, by piloting Lagann, Simon, Kamina and Yoko defeat the huge Gunman that fell from the surface and escape to the surface world. Here their adventure begins.
but that's just the first episode.

So then Simon, Kamina, Yoko and the flamboyant homosexual mechanic Leeron travel the huge desert that is the surface in Gurren Lagann.

The Gunmen are piloted by Beastmen, geneticly engineered soldiers of a man called the Spiral King.

Kamina decides to hijack a gunman by sheer force of will. He hijacks a huge, red gunman that he dubs Gurren (Red Lotus).
They also encounter a commander of the Spiral King's army called Viral, who forms a rivalry with Kamina. He pilots the huge gunman known as Enkidu.
During the fight with Enkidu, Gurren and Lagann combine (or as in mecha anime they call it, GATTAI) in to the titular mecha Gurren Lagann. They defeat Enkidu and steal his helmet, which becomes the trademark headpiece of Gurren Lagann.

So over the course of the 9 episodes of this volume, Kamina becomes the leader of the ever-expanding human army he calls the ''Gurren Dan'' and they get in to several fights with Thylimph, one of the 4 generals of the Spiral King's army.

Spoiler warning, be careful he who reads this

So in episode 8, Kamina commands the Gurren Dan to attack Thylimph's warship called the Dai-Gunzan which Kamina plans to make the Gurren Dan's flagship.
Before the fight, Kamina and Yoko share a tender moment which makes distresses Simon since he also harbors some feelings for Yoko.
Okay so why is this important? Lagann is vital to the plan since Lagann can fuse with other Gunmen and override their systems and runs on force of will and the psycholoical state of the person. Simon can't focus.
So during the attack, Lagann can't sucessfuly override the systems due to Simon's psychological state. Kamina jumps out of Gurren during the middle of the battle to punch Simon in the face so he'd come to his senses. As soon as Kamina returns to Gurren, he is fataly wounded by Thylimph. Gurren and Lagann fuse after Dai Gunzan is taken over, then they kill Thylimph.
Then, Kamina dies from his wounds.

And the final episode of the volume is this, also spoilers
The loss of his best friend and big brother figure, Kamina, strikes Simon with grief. This sends Simon in to self-destructive tendencies in which he continues to mereclessly kill enemy gunmen and their pilots every day.
Once during a battle, Simon's anger overloads and disbalances Lagann which goes berserk. Simon somehow ends up in a place that is like a graveyard full of metal coffins. He opens one of them and finds a strange girl named Nia. Nia has a positive effect on Simon, which makes him slightly less angry and miserable.
Nia is extremely polite and naive, not knowjng much about the world. She said she lived with her father until her father got angry at her and sent her to the graveyard for asking why she was born.
At the end of the episode, when the Dai Gunzan, now redubed the Dai Gurren is attacked by another one of the Spiral King's generals, Adine, it is revealed that Nia is the daughter of the Spiral King and she commands Adine to stop attacking. Volume ends here.

Another episode, not as important in the long run but still notable is episode 6, which is the fanservicy onsen (hot springs) episode (a common trait in anime). There is the TV and the DVD version. Does this mean you get to see Yoko's tits? No! Instead you are treated to what is a really, really hilarious episode with Kamina almost getting everyone killed thanks to his pervertedness. I suppose they had to censor the episode since Kamina runs around with Boota covering his dick while Kamina has inner conflict of ''on one hand, they're being held hostage and shit, on the other hand, I could get to see TITS. FUCKING. TITS!''

I'll give you a full on review of the entire series and the characters at the very end after I finish volume 3.

But Kamina really is as awesome as everyone says he is. He manages to capture everyone's hearts with dramatic, manly monologues. Plus his antics are sometimes absolutely hilarious. Such a shame that he... well anyway.

Simon, despite being the series main character, isn't really that much of a main focus, only at the introduction of Nia he truly becomes important.

Yoko is a pretty generic anime action girl and her importance is pretty much abandoned as soon as Nia is introduced.

Viral is a pretty cool guy, and he's voiced by motherfucking Nobuyuki Hiyama, AKA Mr.Hotblood

Nia is obnoxiously cute and shit. Also it's interesting seeing a character that is so amazingly polite. Her role isn't really shown in this volume. Also she is played by Yukari Fukui, who also voiced the main character of Diebuster, Nono.

Other notable characters would be the hilarious homosexual Leeron (voiced by Vash the Stampede's voice actor, Masaya Onosaka), the lawful Rosiu who later becomes Gurren's pilot, and Kittan, introduced sort of like as Kamina's friendly rival and overall pretty cool guy.

Yeah so it was nice seeing these episodes again. I reccomend them. Mark is a fool for giving up so soon.

Latvian History : an almost epic saga of butthurt spanning over a millenium

Alright so in the future I will destroy Latvian literature for your amusement but first I need to give you some background on shit so you could understand the context better.

1000 years ago in this piece of land shaped like a piece of bitten rye bread, there were several tribes of pagans who lived simple lives, living in sheds, beating women, drinking something that resembles beer, molesting goats and playing kokle. What is kokle, you ask? It's a plank of wood with something resembling guitar strings. A lot of peoples have their own version of the kokle, even the chinese.

Now Latvia and it's nebhouring countries, Lithuania and Estonia are actually geographicaly located in a perfect place. There are no real natural threats here besides thunderstorms and occasional floods. No earthquakes, no volcanic activity, no tornados, nothing. The land is very fertile so the land can be cultivated to grow pretty much anything that fits in to this climate. There are woods and shit and stuff. It's also one of the places where you can get amber from the seaside too. However, today that doesn't really cut it since we also have almost no mineral resources or indeed anything. This place is only really suited for farming. Also the land is very flat, the highest point in the country is just measly 312 meters tall. Also the only waterfall we have is the widest waterfall in europe, but it's only like 1 meter high.

So anyway, for who knows how long the precursors of today's people here lived in their sheds doing nothing significant that we know about, in the 1100s the Pope and the Germans were preparing for another crusade. They had two choices. Ether they head in to the middle east and fight with muslims or they head up northeast for a bit and beat up the pagans that live there. For the crusaders, they had to chose between fighting organized moorish darkpersons who were all dedicated, trained and decently armed or fight a bunch of pagans armed with clubs dressed in clothes made from linen who they might just be able to bribe with shiny objects. So not only would winning in the territory that is now the baltic countries easier, but also the prize is better since the land is much more lush than some shitty desert where the only true gain is some place where Jesus might have been born.

So first the Germans sent some priests and shit to here and tried to convert in a peaceful manner. The locals didn't really mind the foregin preists, even pitching in when they wanted to build a chruch, but after the old men died, something like this happened.
''Jani, those old men in weird robes not made from linen who made us sit and listen to some strange tounge that sounded like my grandpa when he was foaming after that fox bit him have died. What should we do?''
''How about we make a bonfire to pay tribute to the Landmother and scare witches and vilkacis (latvian werewolves) away!''
''yay''
So they pretty much became pagans again, no, more like they never stopped being pagans. They only helped the missionaries since they didn't consider a bunch of old men in robes a threat which is why they didn't chase them away armed with wooden pitchforks.
So then they started sending knights and soldiers in to Baltia. After a few years of knights killing pagans, the germans became the rulers of the land and the territory of Baltia became Livonia, a part of the German empire.
In 1200 the Dome Church was built and the city of Riga was founded. So then a lot of cities were founded and they all were ruled by German knights and later the descendants of them. Meanwhile, the locals became slaves. Okay they're not really called slaves but they pretty much were.
For the average Latvian life was like this : farm turnips, get whipped by a german, on sundays sit in this weird brick house with a penis-shaped point sticking out of it and listen to something that doesn't sound nether like Latvian nor the language the guys with the whips curse at us, secretly pray to the Luckmother to have the whip men die horribly, beat children and wives, curse nebhour for having a better turnip, eat turnips and die ether of exhaustion at the old age of 38 or the plague, and this shit lasted more than 500 years.

Meanwhile, three kingdoms had territorial dispute over the territory of Livonia. Latvia is located in a very valuable place for the Russians. The Russians wanted the Latvian territory of Livonia in patricular since from the gulf of Riga you can sail out and sail anywhere. It was literaly Russia's window to Europe, otherwise if they wanted to trade goods with say, Germans in Germany, they would have to march like 5000 kilometers through several lands. With the gulf of Riga, they could make it so much easier and their biggest threat would be scurvy, impure thoughts about their crewmates when there is not a single woman in sight for weeks to months and the very, very very... (very x 13) unlikely chance of sea robbers.

The other two countries were the Germans who wanted nothing to change since they were living good and the Swedish, who I don't think had any real reason to want to own this land besides inflating the king's already cosmic ego and to troll the Russians.

And over the course of hundreds of years the land was owned by all of them at some point. Germans eventualy lost ownership of Livonia as a part of their empire, but the German lords that still lived here were still filthy rich, owned large stretches of land and still had more ''stinkige, drekige, letische dummkopfe''(stinky, dirty, latvian stupidheads) that they could whip farming turnips for them.

The Swedish ruled here for some time and these times are written in history books as ''good times'', since during these times the Swedish were convinced they would be staying, which is why they paved roads with stone bricks that have lasted to this very day when my dad drives a struck over them, cursing at them as they shake all the glass jars of honey in the back jitter so hard he fears that they might break. In short, fuck those bricks, fuck them. Also, altough it isn't today's Latvian territory, they founded the first university in Baltia, which is where all the smart people supposedly came from. But while it really does seem like the Swedish intended to stay, they only lasted like 50 years at best before being chased away by the Russians. After that point the territory was more or less Russian land up until the collapse of the Russian empire in the 20th century.

But there was still a very strong German influence in these lands, as the rich dukes and counts and lords and shit still had pollitical power, this remained so up until World War I where they all quickly fleed to somewhere else since this place became a battlezone.

A significant point in European history is when in Germany Martin Luther (not the black one) told the catholic curch ''fuck you guys'', made a simplified version of Christian doctorine and translated the bible to German so that the farmers could finally make true sense of why they are forced to listen stupid shit those guys in black robes talk about every Sunday. Hell, who knows, maybe then they would stop paying tribute to the Forest King and understand why fucking their daughters is not cool.

So then old man Stender, a german priest who had to read the bible to the farmers in lativian territory translated the bible to Latvian. Disregard what the book is but there is still a very, very important thing about it that is very significant to Latvia to this day. Stender pretty much invented written latvian language, since there was no such thing before this translation.

Up until the 19th century it was territorial disputes, trade disputes and occasional wars. The Latvian farmers didn't really give a fuck at all, since no matter who's in charge, they're still the ones who are out there in the feild, farming vegetables, the only thing they think to themselves is ''I don't really care or understand what this ''politics'' thing means but I do hope that the next lord will whip me less.''

Indeed, the best thing to happen to the average latvian farmer folk was the day when they started farming potatoes instead of turnips.

Okay well, no, not all latvians were farmers, some of them lived in cities and were craftsmen who did things like make barrels or brew booze or tailored shit or something. These city latvians had it better since for them it was much more likely that they could one day own their own shop or something. Some of them became rich traders, but then the first thing they did was hide their turnip farming roots and pretend to be germans. And some latvian farmers actually owned their own land which was independant from the rulers so they wouldn't get whipped. But still the majority was poor and lived on the lord's land and worked for the landlords.

In the 19th century the rulerships entirely let go of their grip over the latvians and they could do what they want. It was okay for them to become scholars, become rich and own significant buisnesses like say newspapers or something. During this time, true, intelligent latvian culture was born.

So suddenly there were smart, well-situated Latvians who weren't limited by poor education or the government stopping them from having a buisness more significant than a small barrel workshop.

Okay so no, there were still poorly-educated potato farmers and the bulk of city folk worked in the factories, but atleast for once there was culture that wasn't teaspoon-shallow myths about old magic ladies who troll farmers with sausages passed down from parent of turnip farmer to child of turnip farmer through centuries.

So then the latvian intelligence started rallying their felllow people with ideals of having their own country and shit. The Russian empire was also weakening all the time. Then, in the 20th century, it happened.

World War I. WW1 left the Russian empire in shambles after the heavy loss of both human and economic resources. At this weakend state, after the end of the war, the latvians declared independance.

Then, the most significant and successful Latvian battle occured. So there was this german warlord Bermont who wanted to claim the land for uhh... Well anyway there was a war in Latvia, which to this day remains the only battle the Latvians have won, and win they did.

After this followed the 20 happiest years in latvian history. So the latvians finally had their own country where they could do as they please without being put down by the russian or the fat german. This was the most productive time

But then, World War II came and the Soviets took over. All of the latvian intelligence quickly escaped to places like the Americas or Australia, and everyone else... well...

Latvia was a frontline with a lot of struggles between the nazis and the soviets. Latvians were enlisted in both sides. During this time the Latvians became nazi sympathisers. Now before the jews start demanding compensation for the moral damage that sentance and the russians come here and shoot me dead, think about it like this.

Now my grandparents all experienced WW2 as children and at the sympathy for the nazis was based off of their experence. Now I can't verify this all for realz but this is what they told me.

The german soldiers were all stoic, organized, tidy men who even shared their rations with starving children. The russians were dirty drunks who will rob your village blind as they pass through it. Which seems better to you?

So then the war was over and Latvia became a part of the soviet union. During this time the latvians were at a very low point after the days of success in their own country.

Soviet times were pretty shitty, with serious lack of supplies. I might talk more in depth about them some other time. I'm also not going to talk about today's Latvia ether anytime soon.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 1 : Phantom Blood : Hokuto No Ken in 19th century London with vampires

You might be asking, what the fuck is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure? Is that some sort of low budget porno from the 80s? No! Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a long running manga by Hirohiko Araki about... uhhh...

Well the problem is that the thing is so long and consists of so many seperate storylines that it's impossible to summarize it in one paragraph. The vaguest explenation I can come up with is this.

There's this family called the Joestars and some of the people who descend from it are fated to experience bizarre adventures in their life, that in some way involve the Joestar's old enemy Dio Brando. Also all of the main protagonists's names can be in some way shortened to ''Jojo''.

Okay so let us talk about the first part.

It's not the Japanese Hardy Boys, it's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

I suppose I should give you a summary since I doubt any of you have read it, and probably won't anyway.

It all starts with a scene of an ancient aztec ritual where a young woman is sacrificed by a man in a stone mask, which then stabs him in the head. Then the man claims to have become immortal.

In 1870s England, a theif by the name of Dario Brando spots a carrige that had crashed off of a cliff. He rushed down there to rob the dead, he finds that the husband and the child had survived but the wife had died. The man, Lord Joestar thought that Dario had come to help him. Dario pretends that that was his intention. In this way, Lord Joestar was in debt to Dario.

Years later, Dario Brando is on his deathbed. He then sends a letter to Lord Joestar to take care of his son for him. Dario then dies. His son, Dio Brando had no sympathy for his abusive, drunk father, and the last thing he does before leaving is spit on his grave.

A teenage Dio Brando then lives in the Joestar mansion and becomes the step-brother of Lord Joestar's son, the young Jonathan Joestar. Dio begins to antagonize Jonathan and proves that he is pure evil, even going that far as to make it so that Jonathan's pet dog was burned alive. It ends with Jonathan and Dio having a fist fight. During the fist fight Dio's blood hits an ancient Aztec mask that reacted to the blood by shooting out spikes from the back. This shocks and perplexes Dio and Jonathan, and they never speak of this event again.

In 1889, Dio and Jonathan are in university, and act as friends, But Jonathan states to himself that it doesn't really feel like a true friendship. Jonathan is researching the mask, trying to find out what it does. In the same time, Lord Joestar falls ill. In the library, Jonathan finds Dario's letter to Lord Joestar, which describes the symptoms of the illness. Jonathan then realizes that Dario and Lord Joestar have the same exact illness. He then realizes that Dio had been bringing the medicine to Lord Joestar, so he starts suspecting that Dio is posioning Lord Joestar and that he might have posioned his own father.

Dio finds out that Jonathan is figuring this shit out so he has to find a way how to deal with him. Then Dio stumbles on the research on the mask. Dio then thinks that the mask is a weapon, since the spikes probably kill the wearer when the blood hits it. He then goes out to town to find out if this is true. Jonathan goes to the police to find out if the medicine really is posion, while Dio goes to test the mask. On his way, Jonathan fights Robert O. Speedwagon and his gang of hoodlums, who then, Speedwagon is surprised by Jonathan's bravery and determination, and becomes hif friend. Then at the mean time, Dio trys the mask out on some random drunks in the shady part of town. When Dio activates the mask, the mask doesn't kill the man he put it on, but transform him in to a vampire. Dio barely escapes with his life, as the sunrise kills the vampire. Dio then realizes that he can too become a vampire.

Then Dio comes back to the mansion where the cops wait for him along with lord Joestar and Jonathan. Dio tries to kill Jonathan with a knife while trying to activate the mask, but lord Joestar blocks the knife with himself, sacrificing himself for Jonathan. Dio becomes a vampire. Then Dio kills all the cops. Jonathan then fights the superhuman Dio in the burning mansion. The fight ends with Jonathan crashing Dio on the sword of a statue from a fall from the second floor.

Jonathan thinks that Dio is dead and he then heals up while being nursed by his love interest Erina. Dio has survived the fight, but is in bad shape. He then also begins a slow recovery while at the same time making ghoul slaves out of serial murderers, and takes over a mansion in a remote city called Windknights or something.

Then a weird gentleman named William Antionio Zepelli visits Jonathan, reveals that Dio is alive and offers to teach Jonathan a martial art capable of destroying the vampire for good.

The technique is kind of confusing in the name department. At first Zepelli refers to it as ''Sendo'', but then for the rest of the series it is refered to as ''Hamon'' or ''wave energy'' or ''ripples''. I'm just going to call it ''the ripple technique'''or ''ripple energy''. The ripple technique is based off of proper breathing that controls the lifeforce and turns it in to energy that can be used to do stuff to things. Zepelli displays this by punching a frog on a rock, and he used the energy in a way that did not harm the frog at all but split the rock in half.

Then Jonathan, Zepelli and Speedwagon set out to Windknights to fight Dio. First Jonathan goes one on one against Jack The Ripper in some sort of catacomb inside a tunnel. Jonathan is tasked to defeat the ghoul Jack the Ripper without spilling a single drop of wine from a glass, or Zepelli will abandon him since then he wouldn't be able to meet his standards. Jonathan wins (duh)

Then they encounter two ghouls of knights who were long dead, I forgot their names. Butkus and Hugebigmchuge or something. So first Jonathan fights Butkus or Bruticus or whatever, who has the ability to control his hair. The fight ends with Jonathan hitting Butkus with the ripple which restores him to human form for a few brief moments before he dies, but not before entrusting his sword in the hands of Jonathan.

Then Jonathan is locked in a cage match against the insanely huge guy. Jonathan was on the losing end until Zepelli sacrifices himself and takes a fatal blow. Zepelli gives the last of his strenght to Jonathan to power him up. Jonathan defeats the insanely huge ghoul and goes to fight Dio.

Then Jonathan and Speedwagon are joined by Zepelli's master Tompetti and his two subordinates, Dire and Straights. Right abou now you will start noticing what the motif for the names of the characters is in the entire series.

So then they quickly dispatch a bunch of ghouls named, I shit you not, Paige, Jones, Bonham and Plant.

Then they finally fight Dio. Dio quickly kills Dire who used his stupid gimmicky special move on Dio but Dio was like fuck this, froze his blood and ripped him in half.

So then Dio and Jonathan have this short and not very interesting battle which ends with Dio being hit with the ripple anf falling off of a balcony. Dio cuts his own head off before the ripple reaches his head and escapes with his life again, unknown to Jonathan.

So then it seems like the nightmare is over, but is it really? Jonathan and his wife Erina then decide to travel to America and start a new life there, but so it happens that Dio is there on the boat as a head in a jar and has a few more ghouls. Then Dio hits Jonathan in the neck with his new special move, which is concentrating and ejecting liquid from his eyes with amazing pressure. Dio then says that he will now use his vampire power to take over Jonathan's body. Jonathan grabs Dio's head in a death hug as the ship's engine explodes and they both seemingly die.

Erina escapes, along with an orphaned child, from the wreckage.



Okay so the reason why I love this manga is since it's very original in terms of characters, designs and abilities, but not a lot of this is present in Part 1.

First of all, the action and abilities is kind of ehhhh. The most interesting abilities were those of Dio. Dio could evaporate the oxygen from your blood and freeze your blood, he could also pressurize liquid in his eyes and shoot it at you. The ripple in this part is always the same, they just punch something and it burns away with the power of the ripple. Part 2 makes the ripple way more interesting. There's also this one scene which really asks you to suspend your disbeleif when Jonathan and Zepelli use the ripple to make sort of like a hang glider from leaves.

The beginning of Phantom Blood is kind of like some sort of Dickens-ish drama and the rest is kind of generic.

Another thing would be the characters.

Jonathan is in my opinion the worst Jojo. Jonathan has like this childish view on heroism that makes it seem like he doesn't really understand the gravity of what exactly is happening and what the long term effects would be. In one scene he grabs a knife pretty hard with his fingers and Speedwagon yells ''DON''T YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR FINGERS!?'' and Jonathan is like ''not really''. It didn't seem like Jonathan was brave, it seemed more like he doesn't understand the full consequences. He might be a bit too pure, you could say.

Dio is in my opinion the greatest villain ever conceived, but that doesn't really show in part 1, since he's just like ''oh what a joy it is to be evil''.

Zepelli is probably the best character in the part, since he was the only one who understood what is happening fully.

Another thing is that the designs don't really stand out that much in Part 1, but maybe that's just since everything in supposed to look like 1800s clothing.

The art isn't as good as it is in later parts, and the first volume looks like it was drawn on toilet paper.

Overall, if you want to read Jojo (and you should), then you shouldn't give up on it just because of part one since everything gets way better after that.

There was also an animated movie based off of Phantom Blood which never saw a DVD release, so there is no way for me to see it. I would love to see it, but I can't. feels bad, man.


Also I ordered a bunch of figmas, now I'm descending down the spiral of pathetic hikikomori shit