Anime I genuinely reccomend : A guide to anime that I would argue is good part 1 : Shounen (yo, kitte kure, ningen nante taishta mon ja nai sa...)

Merry Jesus Day. And with that out of the way....

By now you probably have noticed that I like anime and I watch a fair share of it. I do consider myself to know a thing or two, altough you really shouldn't take my word as the law of the land (a comon misconception about anything some retards think about something one has posted on a web page, I'm just a dude, yo).

Now, if there is a word I like to use to describe my tastes, it would be ''Simple''. Simple doesn't mean stupid. Simple doesn't mean ''for children''. Simple doesn't mean ''cheaping out to reach a wider audience''. Simple simply means ''easy to grasp''. Making stories is a lot like describing physics or chemestry, you can go on and on in a tangent about some sort of complex bullshit, by the time I have already used the wifi the classroom has since it's next to the computer lab and have continued reading Achewood, or you can put it in to a few easy to understand sentances, or maybe show me, then I'll be able to understand even the most complicated concepts as long as the rules remain clear.

Shounen!

Shounen manga is generally intended in Japan for like 12 year olds or something, but doesn't mean it's only for them. Shounen Jump, obviously, the magazine that contains most of the most the famous shounen manga. Mangas like Fullmetal Alchemist or Fist Of The North Star or Great Teacher Onizuka have been categorized as Shounen simply since they were published in magazines with Shounen in the title, but I would argue that they're really not, atleast not by today's standards.

Let's start with an obvious choice that some might argue becomes unobvious again due to the obviousness and the fact that it gets hated on. The definitive shounen manga, Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, the 42 volume manga spanned from 1982 until 1995. It was adapted in to two animes, the first one, Dragon Ball, spanned for 153 episodes and adapted the first 14-ish volumes detailing Goku's childhood up until his fight with Piccolo Junior and becoming a man. It was followed by a 293 episode (edited down to 272 episodes in the initial western release by Funimation) anime that told the rest of the story contained in the manga. It also had several anime movies offering non-canon side adventures taking place in debatable time spaces in the story. It was followed up by the anime Dragon Ball GT, which was made after Akira Toriyama ended the original manga and had a story made by the studio, it was a pretty big failure and a lot of fans consider it non-canon. Recently it was rehashed in to a condensed, remastered series called Dragon Ball Kai.

Anyway, I'm not sure if DBZ really needs any big introduction, since it's one of those anime everyone has heard of. It popularized, if not created a lot of the tropes present in shounen manga, such as the aspect of power levels and how the characters scale according to them, the training thing to become way, way stronger, tournaments, transformations and the way how the inner energy is a plot device to do some superhuman shit. Altough Fist Of The North Star and Saint Seiya also had some of these elements, in them these things were more vague which makes them less definitive.

The story of Dragon Ball is the story of Son Goku, a naive country bumpkin with incredible power, and his adventures that involve the Dragon Balls, ancient crystal balls that can grant you any wish by summoning the eternal dragon Shenron.
Dragon Ball chronicles Goku's life from when he was a kid to when he had grandchildren, when he has fought the baddest motherfuckers in the galaxy, in all of nature and magically possible across the earth, the galaxy and even the afterlife.
Dragon Ball has an expansive cast, altough most of them become irrelevant about at the time when Z begins.

The first 14 volumes were more about the adventure and make a lot of dick and vagina jokes and less about the fighting, and the being stronger aspect was less about how much Ki you have (like in Bleach) and much more about how you can adapt to this situation (like in One Piece or Naruto, or One Piece).
But after the time skip and the introduction of Goku's son, Gohan, the series becomes much more power level and fight centric and it's a lot more about WE HAVE TO SAVE THE GALAXY FROM EVILDUDER, YO! But not all of the charm is abandoned.

Definitive version : highly debatable. The manga is the most straight up version and arguably the best, but the anime adaptation is fine on their own, but they suffer from the two anime STDs of Bad Pacing and Filler, but I kind of like the expanded universe they created with the movies and the TV specials. GT can be ignored since it's not very good. Kai has a superior soundtrack and doesn't suffer from the STDs, but the digitaly edited remastering isn't that good and the voice actors (in Japan) are now all old people and have started not to give a shit about their performances since they're old, maybe not as much the heroes but the villains show this pretty clearly.

Biggest flaw : the translations, continuous arguments over demographic and the totally fucked dubs, and maybe the plot element of powerlevels.

But the things that make it good would be the fact that if you go to it with an adult mind set, you can still enjoy it and see things you wouldn't see as a child, provided that you're not watching the OG Funimation dub.

You still have to appreciate DB for it's historical significance to manga if not for what it is itself, since it defined shounen manga in Japan and was one of the first anime to become really, really popular world wide.

What you can call the true successor to DBZ, Eichiro Oda's One Piece is a still running 50+ volume manga about pirates, who are pirates in the same way the characters in Naruto could be called ninjas, on a seemingly never-ending quest to find the ultimate treasure that the legendary pirate Gold Roger hid at the end of the Grand Line, an isolated ocean crossing the middle of the planet, going from island to island, encountering the inhabitants of them, rival pirates and the world government who want to stop the age of piracy.

The main character, Monkey D. Luffy (everyone calls him Luffy) is a Goku-like weirdo with a big dream of becoming the Pirate King by finding One Piece, a quest that even the mightiest pirates consider nigh-impossible. At first everyone thinks Luffy is crazy or really, really naive, but when he displays his actual power, people quickly stop laughing. Luffy has consumed the Gomu Gomu No MI (Rubber Rubber Fruit), a Devil Fruit which gives his body the elasticity of rubber, which he combines with his monstrous physical power results in making him a very powerful fighter.

He is joined by his crew that he gathers on his journey, his crew is joined by Roronoa Zoro, a swordsman who weilds three swords and wants to be the strongest swordsman on the earth, Nami, the navigator who mostly serves as the voice of reason and provides comical punishment for most of the crew, Usopp, a cowardly sniper who has to constantly face his fears and try to man up in the face of danger, Sanji, a cook who fights only with his legs and fancies himself a ladies man, Chopper, the ship's child-like doctor and freak of nature that is a cross between a reindeer and a human, Nico Robin, an archeologist who spends most of her time not really interacting with the other crewmen and being mysterious, Franky, the fucking awesome cyborg guy who runs on cola, Brook, the ''gentleman'' skeleton with an afro who is no gentleman at all. (also I would like to take an educated guess that Boa Hancock will probably join the crew at some point after her status as a Warlord Of The Sea will be revoked, maybe).

But the things that in my mind makes One Piece in many ways superior to DBZ would be that A : it feels like Oda has a lot of imagination and B : the fact that it never really lets go of the adventurous feel that Dragon Ball let go of during Z.

Flaws : Some people may not like the artstyle. 4kids tarnished the reputation of this series with a god-awful, censorship-filled dub. Some very uneducated people think it's much too kiddie to take seriously.

But the thing that might stop you from enjoying One Piece would be it's ball numbing lenght. The anime has nearly 500 episodes at this point, which is slightly less than DB, DBZ and DBGT combined. Watching all of this would require a massive time dedication. And the manga has 60+ volumes, which is also pretty damn long. And the manga isn't anywhere near it's end anyway.

Now for something a bit more obscure (not that you could truly call anything running in Shounen Jump in the past 15 years ''obscure''), Hiroyuki Takei's Shaman King. It has had an anime adaptation that I've never watched, but I have read the manga back to back.

Shaman King is a pretty typical shounen manga about various characters fighting in a tournament and pretty much every trope established by DBZ is used, but with a ''spirit'' theme. But what made it enjoyable was that the characters were pretty well developed through the series and they and their abilities were quite imaginative.

The story is about Yoh Asakura, a young shaman (the universal word in Shaman King for people who can mess around with spirit based abilities) who participates in the Shaman Fight, a tournament that happens every 500 years where shamans from across the earth fight over the right to use the power of the Great Spirit, which is pretty much god, to change the direction in which the future will go and fufill the winner's wish.
Yoh himself doesn't really desire anything, since he acts like he's stoned all the time and doesn't really need anything. However, Yoh's twin brother Hao Asakura, who is quite possibly the strongest Shaman on earth since he commands the Spirit Of Fire, wants to wipe out humanity so nature could rule over the world again. So Yoh's quest to win isn't quite ''I want to make my dream come true'' as much as it's not letting Hao have his wish.
Yoh, who's spirit partner is the ghost samurai Amidamaru is joined by his allies, the ex-delinquent and fucking awesome guy, Bokuto No Ryu (Ryu Of The Wooden Sword) who is partnered with the spirit of the bandit Tokagero, Yoh's rival Tao Ren (the Vegeta of Shaman King), who at first hated humanity in the same way as Hao but then realised he was wrong (thanks to the power of FRIENDSHIP) who is partnered with the ghost of the ancient chinese warrior Bason, HoroHoro the snowboarding nature enthusiast and Faust XIII, a necromancer who has led himself to near-death with his obsession of reviving his wife.

Some anime fans complain how tired a trope the tournament thing is, since it's the cheapest way to get two characters, regardless of their relationship to get in a fight, but I actually really like this cliche, I think it works better than in like Bleach where they just go on a walk and get assulted by someone like in a JRPG.

The interesting thing about the fights is the Over Soul abilities, where they channel the spirit of their ghost partner in to a medium item to generate a spirit-powered weapon (a concept ripped off by Bleach but with cutting the ghost parner part out, altough I think the idea might have originated from YuYu Hakusho), and the Oversouls are inventive enough to seem original without seeming as absurd as some of the Devil Fruit abilities in One Piece.

Biggest flaw : There are no real flaws about it, but it's kind of like the Uncharted series as it brings nothing new to the table, instead just being well constructed. A personal complaint I have is the incredibly wrong way naked feet are drawn by the artist. Oh yeah and also the manga was canceled around 17 chapters before the story could come to it's natural conclusion, but the Kanzenban rerelease of the manga a few years later had the last 17 chapters in it.


Yeah I'd suppose this would be it for the first volume of reccomendations, since the shounen genre kind of is the same thing over and over, and I want to keep FMA, Eyeshield 21, Hokuto No Ken and others which I don't quite consider pure shounen in my hand for a bit longer.

happy holidays, niggili dillilies

Fortengard wisdom : theoretical alcohol brands and their commercials

Now I think I should provide some context about these before I write them. I have friends in Finland with who I play Super Street Fighter IV with on some weekends, and it involves booze. My buddy Ernest is better than me or Joni at video games, but he usualy drinks himself in to a coma and the next day he's got a terrible hangover, while Joni, who is fuled by alcohol takes the helm and plays against me through PSN, and we have a fierce, rivalry, altough it's mostly from Joni's side.
So I was reading Achewood because of reccomendation from Cathal, and I read one of the earlier strips where Mr.Bear catches Lyle doing caligraphy, and Mr.Bear commends Lyle for it, but Lyle just says ''I just sometimes imagine what it would be like if I had my own whiskey brand, you know?'' and the label says ''Liquid Banjo''.
This got me thinking, what if I had my own brand of booze? And what if I had a commercial for it? And what about my friends?

Then, I imagined this

There is a fog in a dark room, the only light comes from the window and the light of two monitors. The camera pans, revealing the contures of anime figures, DVD cases and stacks of video game magazines. There is a man sitting on a bed, his identity obscured by the lighting. There is the tapping of buttons coming from something he is holding with both hands. There is movement of obscured shapes on one of the monitors.
clickity clackity
clickity clackity
in the background, a clock can be heard, too
The clacking becomes more intense
The man is getting more worked up
by the other monitor, there is a bottle, it's label not seen
Suddenly, a sound!
''KO!!!!!!'' the announcer in the video game yells
The man throws down his controller against the bed
A clock is shown, it shows that it's now 2 AM
He reaches for the bottle
He drinks from it
''Fuck Joni, seriously''
He puts it down again, now the light reveals the label of the bottle
And then Nolan North narrates ''Pissing The Night Away, a new sensation by James Fortengard, for those friday nights''

But wait, there's also a sequel, with a new protagonist, brand and style.

Nighttime, in a room with decent, but nondynamic lighting.
A man with blonde hair is passed out on a bed.
In the background, music by Finnish superstar Matti Nykanen (just fucking listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmMD6bLnvMI&feature=related )
You hear the clicking of buttons
A dog barks and walks by
A the back of a man who looks like a cross between Brad Shoemaker and the guy who portrayed the Glitch Gremlin in AVGN.
click click clack
''fakkin bullshit'' says the man
The camera now shows the man from the front, not showing the screen
He reaches for a bottle of cheap looking liqour
He plays the game with one hand
He drinks from the bottle, not breaking his gaze from the screen
As he starts to take another swig
''KO!!!!!!!'' shouts the game enhusiasticaly
He almost spills his drink and chokes
He coughs a bit and with a gasping voice he says
''Fakking bullshit'' in his unique accent
He puts the bottle down and goes to the PC to send taunts to the player who he just faced
The camera now shows the label of the cheap looking liqour
And Billy Herrington reads this
''Kuppenkorva, gives you the power of 10 drunks and will show syphilis who's the boss of this gym''
Endorsed by Darksydephil

And then there's a 3rd chapter in the saga.

The blonde man is in an alcohol-induced coma
A dog walks to him, whines and licks his hand
There is intense clicking of buttons heard in the background, the person clicking them not seen
this scene goes on for 10 seconds without change
the chirping of crickets
the sound of something falling down
''FAKKING SPAMMER'' yells the unseen man
The dog stares at the direction of the unseen man
the sleeping man makes a ''nnnggg'' sound, twitches slightly
The camera zooms out, a bottle is now in the foreground, and the camera focuses on it
The voice of Dante, Reuben Langdon, reads ''Ruined Tomorrow, you'll sleep like you a rock, but help you god when you wake up''

I'll probably come up with something more like this, and if you want me to make one about you, just ask. It also doesn't have to be booze.

what a terrible night to have a hangover

Anime DVD review : Gurren Lagann volume 2. The rise of mankind and the new threat

Gurren Lagann volume 2 contains episodes 10-18 and covers the rest of the Spiral King arc and the first episodes after the 7 year time skip.

synopsis (containing spoilers for both vol 1 and vol 2)

Simon is in a depression after the loss of Kamina. He also cannot control Lagann anymore due to his mental state, making him useless to the Dai Gurren Dan. Kittan has pretty much replaced Kamina as the leader of the group, altough it's a role he can't really fill. Nia, who didn't know what Kamina was like, still tries to get Simon to stop wallowing in despair.
After some diversions and a trap (not the gayboy kind), Gaume, another one of the 4 generals of the Spiral King has taken control of the Dai Gurren and is holding Nia hostage. Simon finally finds determenation to fight again and recues Nia. Then, as Lagann combines with Gurren, which is now being piloted by Rossiu, Simon delivers one of the most iconic monologues in the series, the ''Brother is dead, he's not here anymore, but he lives on in my heart...'' monologue, during which he finally accepts Kamina's death, gains new determenation to continue fighting and pretty much becomes the leader of the Dai Gurren Dan. He defeats but fails to kill Gaume, who retreats.
Slightly later on, Viral learns that Kamina, who he considered his rival, had died in the battle with Tylimph. Viral asks the Spiral King to make him stronger. The Spiral King accepts his request.
During the mandatory beach episode, Adine assults the Dai Gurren on sea, but is killed by Gurren Lagann.
Skipping ahead slightly, the Dai Gurren Dan assults Teppelin, the giant flying (?) fortress city of the Spiral King, also killing Cytomander, the 4th general of the Spiral King.
Gaume generates a force feild over the city, but Simon destroys him. All generals of the Spiral King are dead.
Then, as the force feild is destroyed, it is revealed that Teppelin is actually an impossibly huge Gunaman, and that the Spiral King and his throne room are at the very top.
To get Gurren Lagann, containing Simon, Rossiu and Nia to the throne room, the Dai Gurren is totally wrecked in it's mission, altough noone important dies in it, in what might be my favorite sequence in the entire series, which also uses the insert song ''Happily Ever After'', also by Shoko Nakagawa.
And then they arrive to Lord Genome, the Spiral King, who is revealed to be human. Simon quickly defeats Viral, who is utterly shocked when his powerup has changed nothing. The Spiral King says to Viral ''I didn't make you immortal so you could beat them, I made you immortal so you could tell this story until the end of time.''
He then engages Gurren Lagann in his personal Gunman, the Lazengann, which is very similar to Gurren Lagann, and has an awesome design.
Lord Genome beats down Simon with ease, but after a long, grueling battle, Lazengann, most of Gurren Lagann, and the throne room is destroyed. This isn't really a problem for Lord Genome, since he can punch so hard it can damage Lagann. But Simon stabs Lord Genome in the chest with his Core Drill, and blows a huge gole in Lord Genome. As Genome lives his final moments, he congratulates Simon on his victory, but says that he has pretty much started the end of the human race, something he was preventing all this time by keeping humans under ground. Before he falls off of Teppelin, presumably to his doom, he says ''When one million apes appear on the surface of the earth, the moon will destroy them all'' (kind of like in Majora's Mask).
Still, this is a massive triumph for humanity, and they believe that they are in for a future of prosperity.

And then there's a recap episode, recaping the entire Spiral King arc.
And then we get to the time skip.
It's been 7 years since the fall of Teppelin and now humanity is living in prosperity. Most of the important members of the Dai Gurren Dan are now high ranking officials of the world government, and Simon is the commander of the government. However, the one who actually controls the government is Rossiu. Humanity has reached a population of over one million.
Meanwhile, Yoko has become a teacher in a seaside city.
Simon proposes to Nia, who does not accept at first, but later agrees after she has marringe explained to her. Simon gives her a ring. As she puts it on, she becomes possesed by some sort of force.
Nia now refers to herself as the Messenger Of The Anti Spirals. She now talks in a cold, montone, stern fashion altough still retaining her formality. Nia, who no longer really is Nia, then reveals to Simon, and to the entire human population, that Lord Genome was truly protecting humanity by having it live underground, otherwise the moon would destroy the entire planet, since the moon is actually a death machine made by the Anti Spirals that is programmed to destroy the earth if the Spirals, life forms with Spiral energy in them reach a certain amount of population. The beastmen that Lord Genome created do not have this evolutionary energy in them and also cannot reproduce, which is why they did not trigger the mechanism. She also says that the fact that Nia is the daughter of Lord Genome, the previous leader of the Spirals has nothing to do with the fact that she became the messenger, instead it's the ring's fault. In a sense, it's all Simon's fault that humanity is now in peril of extinction, and if Simon and Kamina hadn't escaped from the underground, none of this would have happened.
She then warps away, as Kamina City is assulted by Anti Spiral drones. Simon somehow defeats them in Gurren Lagann, but imediately after it, Rossiu has the army arrest him due to the public outcry, since everyone now blames Simon for the crisis.

Volume 2 ends here

The finale of the Spiral King arc is one of the absolute highest points in the series, but the first time skip episodes at the end of this volume and the beginning of volume 3 are kind of shitty to be honest, but this volume is still worth it just for the ending of the Spiral King arc. Still, the early time skip episodes do a good job at setting up the next story arc, altough I do have one really big complaint about the setup I'm saving for later.

Also with the time skip, the opening is changed to the second verse of the same song (Sora Iro Days by Shoko Nakagawa), which I don't think is as good and the closing is changed from UNDERGROUND by HIGH VOLTAGE (all caps) to Minna No Peace (everyone's peace) by Afromania.
The characters are mostly the same both before and after the time skip and there are no voice actor changes ether.

There's really not that much I can talk about without spoiling, plus I would like to analyze only after I talk about volume 3.

CLEARLY! ZUN ZUN CHA ZUN ZUN CHA Donuts and America edition!

So taking a leaf from Markinator and Cathal's more relaxed and less focused writing style, I think I'll write some bullshit. See, while I do think the quality of my writing has improved, I think we need some more bullshit and swearing instead of sounding like a sentient anime encyclopedia.

Also here's a drinking game, take a shot every time I write the world ''clearly''.

Well there really isn't that much to talk about in some ways, but I think I'll probably try to find some sort of way to keep you interested (which is kind of like how picking up chicks works out for me)(nyeh).

Nyeah, so right now I returned from some German language competition and on my way home I bought some insanely delicious donuts. Like holy shit now I know why those fucking American cops are so fucking fat and lazy if this is their primary source of calories they need to beat me when I'm just holding a gun-shaped Transformer while my house is robbed by 12 year olds hopped up on PCP and industral-grade Cool Aid (the kind that will ether kill you from diabetus, or make you immune to it) and need to play Blops on a PS3 that happens to be mine since they need their fix like REALLY BAD, MAN. But atleast I don't get beaten TOO hard by the cops since they go in to cardiac arrest after the 3rd whack. But in the next morning it will be hard to exlain what these dead cops are doing in my front yard. But as soon as they go in to my house, the republicans will soon find their reason. Since I have a large collecton of video games and watch cartoons (''which are clearly meant for children!'')

''CLEARLY!''

They will say that I'm clearly a gay, liberal, terrorist hacker atheist with ties to Julian Assange, an alliance with the Chinese and possibly might be keeping Osama in my basement. (Osama is actually like, super good at CoD, I mean like holy shit, and the waffles he makes I mea.... I mean, which is CLEARLY NOT TRUE) and then I will have to ask Latvia for political asylum or something since I don't think I'll be able to fend off Fox News forever and my reputation amongst white people will be forever tarnished, but the muslims will all call me a brother, but I don't want to say no to pork! (my sweet, sweet pork).

Where was I?

Oh yeah, So maybe I should reconsider going to America next year. I don't know.

But anyway, as I endulge myself on these delicious, delicious donuts, which sadly, go straight to my sexy, sexy bum, which the ladies love (clearly!), I'm not sure what I should write.

I'm happy to see that my nig Mark has revived his blog, which is awesome, since while he might be a sage of stupid at times and is clearly wrong on several subjects, he is still a master wordsmith when it comes to nonsense.
Also my bro Cathal has a pretty cool idea about a rap-based RPG, which might sound corny but actually when you get deeper in to it (just like how I'm getting deeper in to this muffin, with my tounge (oooh you naughty boy)(that's what she said!)), it reveals a fantastic idea if it's conceptualized correctly.

So yeah, I also started watching Gainax's new animu. And I think it's awesome. Jesus fuck.

donuts suki suki donuts stocking donuts

Detroit Metal City - A story of a pussy of galactic proportions who is also the greatest death metal frontman ever

Detroit Metal City is a parody manga by Kiminori Wakasugi. It is a parody of the various music movements in Japan, but mostly focuses of the metal movement and also the popular, trendy hipster shit. It was adapted in to a live action movie and a 12 episode OVA with the average episode run time being 13 minutes. You could argue that Detroit Metal City is the Japanese equal to Metalocalypse, and you will be 140% right.

Soichiro Negishi is a country bumpking from Nagoya who moves to Tokyo to become a trendy hipster pop star, he adores swedish pop and the shibuya-kei movement (which is hip and trendy as fuck, and also gay). However, the rent doesn't pay itself, so his job is to be the frontman of the death metal band Detroit Metal City. As the frontman, he assumes the identity of Johannes Krauser III, who is the opposite of Negishi. Krauser is violent, rude and metal as fuck. The series focuses on the ways how Krauser, and the popularity of DMC interfieres with Negishi's normal life.
Negishi does get to live his dream in a way. He's in a popular band... as Krauser. He gets to be on TV... as Krauser. He has best selling albums... as Krauser and he gets to star in a movie with his favorite actors... As Krauser.

Negishi is a pussy on his own and I think he might be gay, but when shit gets tense he starts to channel Krauser. The dynamic between the two personalities is kind of like those of Akira Fudo and Devilman (Semi-obscure Go Nagai reference! GO!).

Krauser and the death metal scene in DMC is a kind of blunt and direct commentary on the metal crowd. DMC is kind of like Horsedick.mpeg since they sing about mostly the crudest and most direct things that are associated with death metal.
Their discography of songs includes songs with such classy titles as Satsugai (Murder, which is also the opening), Mesu Buta Kyokuyoku (Female Pig Symphony), Ano Ko Wo Rape (Rape that girl), Mao (Demon Lord/Satan) and Fuckingham Palace (which is actually a cover of another band's songs in the DMC universe). And these songs actually exist and they're on an album IRL. And they're actually not bad (if you're in to that sort of thing).
Krauser is rumored to be a sexual deviant who has raped hundreds of girls, and that as a teenager he had raped and killed his parents, and has demonic powers. And Krauser's fans take this very seriously and treat those things as cool facts, but not in a ''OHHHHH, THAT'S SO EDGY'' manner, but just a ''OH LOOK A BEER KEG, COOL!'' kind of way.
Krauser also appears with an middle-aged gimp named The Pig Of Capitalism that he beats up on stage.
DMC doesn't hate on these things at all, but it still does point out on how ridiculous and slightly retarded these things sound.

But also the shibuya-kei trendy hipster faggot movement is shown as a bunch of metrosexual wusses who like really sappy, sacherine songs that are not that good but they posture with them since they're indie in a way of sticking it up to the man.

Other music movements featured would be the punk scene, represented by the anti-sexism girlband known as the Kintama Girls (Kintama is slang for testicles) and their diss record ''DMC - Dumbass Motherfucking Cherry Boys''. But there's not that much actual commentary.

And then there's the rapper from ''New York'' known as Kiva, who was actually a classmate of Negishi from Nagoya. Kiva starts a beef with DMC and ends up losing horribly since his flows and rhymes are terrible and Krauser knew his secret past that he is not actually a gangsta from New York but the son of a fish shop owner fron Nagoya.

Then there's the final boss of the OVA, Jack il Dark, who is a parody of OG metalfags from the USA, Gene Simmons in particular. He's someone who really embraces being what Krauser is supposed to be but isn't really. Also he sounds like a middle aged white guy who is dubbed over with a menacing Japanese voice, but you can still hear the english, which is hilarious.

An amusing thing about DMC is the amount of times the words FUCK and RAPE are used, and they use the english words.

If you have 2 hours and 30 minutes to spare, marathon DMC, I think it's pretty hilarious and has some interesting commentary.

Great Teacher Onizuka, a story of a perverted delinquent who is also the teacher you wish you had learned from

You know how each generation has some sort of comedy series or film or something that to those people it just transcends comedy and is something more to them? Movies like Kicking And Screaming or Rushmore maybe? Yeah so GTO is kind of like that for me.

I should probably talk about the GTO trilogy, yes, trilogy.

GTO and it's prequels are all done by Toru Fujisawa, and this is his magnum opus. The art style is fairly realistic, and a trademark of his would also be the fucking intense and exageratted face expressions of Onizuka.

The saga of Eikichi Onizuka begins with the manga Shounan Junai Gumi (Pure Love Gang From Shounan, (it's very important that you spell it Shounan, as in Shounan Bay, not Shounen as in Shounen Jump, since if it were shounen it would be targeted at fujoshi with that title).
SJG was the story of two high school delinquents (a very popular theme in the 80s and 90s manga), Eikichi Onizuka and Ryuji Danma, dropping out of high school in search of money and pussy. That's like the plot. And they get in to fights and shit.
SJG was pretty much the Japanese version of Beavis and Butthead, but made a bit more serious and with slightly more intelligent and likable protagonists.
I never actually read SJG to the end, but I can tell you what I do know happened.

It's been a few years since the end of SJG, Ryuji now has a steady job and a girlfriend and has settled down. Onizuka spends his time now sitting in shopping malls under escalators, smoking and looking up skirts of school girls going up.
Onizuka doesn't know what he wants to do with his life now, since he's now 22 and shouldn't be doing the stupid shit he did when he was 16.
After rescuing a schoolgirl from delinquents but then seeing the schoolgirl run to her lover, a balding middle-aged teacher, Onizuka, in his infinite wisdom decides that he should become a teacher to woo in high school girls and also get payed.
But eventually the morality aspect catches up to Onizuka and he realizes he shouldn't take advantage of impressionable schoolgirls, but he still decides to be a teacher.
Onizuka applies to Holy Forest Academy as a social studies teacher. The first time it doesn't go well since an ex-biker with dyed blond hair and almost nothing in his resume fails to impress Vice Principal Uchiyamada who dismisses Onizuka. As Onizuka is leaving Holy Forest, two expelled students come in with baseball bats and want to beat up Uchiyamada. Uchiyamada yells at Onizuka, who is a karate expert, to beat up the delinquents and then the job is his, while he repeatedly calls the delinquents trash, something Onizuka experienced a lot and something he absolutely hates. Onizuka suplexes Uchiyamada against the floor and then tells the delinquents that they don't have to dirty their hands, then they leave.
So Onizuka abandons his dream of being a teacher and becomes a truck driver. But then he recieves a call which says that the principal of Holy Forest would like to see Onizuka in person for some reason. As soon as Onizuka hears this, he drives cross-country in his lorry to be there on time.
The principal thinks that the fact that Onizuka's untraditonal-ness and the fact that he doesn't classify people as trash unlike, say, Uchiyamada.
And so, Onizuka is tasked to deal with the infamous class 3-4, which have been terrorizing their homeroom teachers, leaving the last poor soul to do that as an morbidly obese, bullimic member of a cult who's prayer chants are, strangely, the names of Mobile Suit Gundam characters and mobile suits.
Onizuka then helps solve the personal problems of the individual students, one by one somehow convincing them to be good. This leads to Onizuka preventing several suicides, crashing through a 20th floor window of a skyscraper to beat up rapists, arm wrestling 100 people in a row and all kinds of other insane escapades.

So let us go over the seperate versions of GTO.

GTO was adapted as a television drama. The television drama starred noone I know and meh, but I did watch an episode or two out of curiosity.
So they really altered Onizuka as a character, which kind of alienated fans. The drama version of Onizuka is just coolness stereotypes of late 90s early 2000s Japan instead of a perverted buffoon. Did they misinterpret the character? No. It's a TV drama made for women, obviously women will lust after the cool guy, but if he was a perverted, stupid dyejob then they wouldn't.

The anime ran for 38 episodes between 1999 and 2000. It starred Wataru Takagi as Onizuka in what is quite possibly his most iconic role, but also made him in to a often-typecasted actor who usualy voices masculine delinquents who aren't quite cool in the cool sense, which is actually interesting, since his first starring role was Garrod Ran from Gundam X, a 14 year old kid with soft features that fujoshi want to molest.
The anime covered around the first 14 volumes of the manga, stopping slightly after the Okinawa trip. The anime series ends with Onizuka leaving Japan to instead teach american delinquents, in a very unmemorable ending.
The series openings were Driver's High by L'Arc-en-Ciel and Hitori No Yoru by Porno Graffiti, both bands also had opening songs in the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist series (altough Porno Grafitti's song was omitted from the US version).
The anime was faithful to the manga but they did sometimes avoid some of the really extreme things that happened in the manga, but this doesn't really interfiere that much. For instance, when Miyabi and crew of bitches were held hostage in a skyscraper, in the anime the ones holding them hostage are just yakuza, but in the manga they're sexperverts who want to rape them too.

But the manga is the best thing. The anime ended before some of the most extreme, pulse pounding and balls to the wall arcs in the manga.
I don't really want to spoil them that much, but they're actually the best arcs in the series. There's tense drama, some really well-planned action and all kinds of crazy twists.

But the thing about Onizuka is that while a lot of the situations are over the top and unlikely, it always remains realistic. While Onizuka does take beatings that would kill an average man, he never makes you say ''that's fucking impossible'' like pretty much anything in most shounen series does.

The character of Onizuka and the situations he gets in are what makes this manga. Onizuka is kind of a loser, he's not incredibly smart and his luck is what it is, but he can teach you valuable life lessons in a way that is not patronizing. Onizuka is willing to sacrifice life and limb for his students, even if they call him a loser and an idiot who has nothing to teach. But that's not to say he's not above getting real pissed at his students and using methods that might endanger them in some way to have them give up on being assholes.
Actually, Onizuka reminds me very much of Mamoru Takamura from Hajime No Ippo, in that both are perverted, very masculine buffoons who will do stupid shit for most of the time but at the right time they will give you priceless life advice. Also Wataru Takagi plays Masaru Aoki, gymmate of Takamura and Ippo.

I haven't even talked about any of the other characters, but should I really? I don't know.

Well there's vice principal Uchiyamada, who is a middle-aged, balding man who is caused tons of stress by Onizuka since Onizuka ends up wrecking a lot of things, including Uchiyamada's car, several times. Altough Uchiyamda is kind of a hated figure for most of the series, more nearing the end it is shown that he actually likes being a teacher and feels a certain amount of satisfaction from helping future generations. Uchiyamada is very dismissive of Onizuka and delinqents, calling them trash, but over the course of the series he eventually accepts Onizuka and stops being so judgemental.

Then there's Suguru Teshigawara, the psychopatical math teacher who is a stalker who is obsessed with Azusa Fuyutsuki (who is also Onizuka's love interest) and is losing his mind since over the course of his entire life he has been pressured to match the expectations of other people. He finally snaps in one of the last story arcs and there's some really intense scenes there.

Actually, there's a lot of great characters but to get in to details would result in spoilers, plus I might be forgetting some stuff since it's been a while since I read Onizuka.

The comedy in the series is great, altough most of the jokes stem from pervertedness. But then there's a running gag where Onizuka wrecks principal Uchiyamada's Toyota Cresta. There's also some pretty funny referential humor, altough I suppose you have to know Japanese pop culture then.

There was also a prequel manga called Bad Company which was a story about Onizuka and Ryuji Danma's middle school days, which might be the most violent piece of Onizuka media that I can think of.

Also right now there runs a manga called Onizuka 14 Shounan Days, which is an interquel about the 14 days Onizuka spends doing something that is unknown to the readers in the original manga after he dissappears from the hospital he was hospitalized at that point. I should probably read this.

So I suggest you definately read the manga, I think it is one of the best mangas I've ever read, and I've read a lot. You'll laugh, you'll cry and at the very end it will leave you with a positive outlook on life and motivation to do something that makes you happy with your life.

Sadly, the manga itself has been out of print since 2009. feels bad, man

Anime Blu Ray Box Set Review : Full Metal Panic the first series

Full Metal Panic! is a novel series adapted in to 3 animes and several mangas. It is half military mecha anime with a certain sense of realism and half slice of life high school comedy with slightly romantic overtones. It is one of the first animes I watched when I started getting in to animu for realz.

The premise is that Sgt. Sosuke Sagara of the anti-terrorist group Mithril is sent to a high school in Japan to protect Kaname Chidori, a seemingly normal high school student. He has to protect her since she is a Whispered, a person who has data about secret technology programmed in to her subconciousness and kind of also ESP. This makes her a target of terrorists who want the data in her.
Sosuke has to fit in to high school, which is way more hard than it sounds like, since while he is a great soldier, he is also incredibly socially inept and behaves like Mr.Spock if he was a violent military otaku. Chidori herself doesn't help much, since most of the time she's annoyed by Sosuke's lack of understanding for people's feelings. At first she thinks he's just some military otaku who takes his obsession a bit too far. Chidori herself is a huge tsundere so this results in Sosuke being hit with a lot of objects.
Other characters include Tessa Testarossa, the 16 year old captain of Mithril's nuclear submarine (which might make her the most unplausable character in the series), Sosuke's teammates Kurz Weber and Melissa Mao, the no-nonsense manlyman Lt. Commander Kalinin and some other military members and classmates of Sosuke.

Yeah so it sounds kind of stupid and generic but the thing that sets it apart is that it's actually well written and executed. The characters have like actual depth to them

The series can be divided in to two kinds of episodes, comedy episodes and serious military mecha shooty bollocks drama episodes. I actually favor the comedy episodes. While the military action is decent, at times it is a bit too boring. The comedy episodes, on the other hand, are hysterical.

So about the serious drama episodes. These are the episodes where Sosuke is in a mecha and fighting terrorists. The mecha action is fine, in FMP they don't use particle rifles or any of that scifi shit, instead everything is done using contemporary firearms, just big enough to be used by mecha. Also giant knives. And it's actually a pretty realistic version of mecha combat, altough nowhere near as gritty and uber-realistic as VOTOMS. The mecha themselves aren't huge, in fact, they might be 2/3 the size of a Gundam.
A thing that spoils the realism for me, however, is the Black Technology and the Lambda Driver. This thing generates energy from your emotions to create sheilds or destructive bursts of energy, which makes it HAXXXX when all the other mecha are stuck using shotguns and knives.
But the really boring part of the drama episodes is the fact that it takes them so long for actual fighting to happen.

I do have to say I liked Gauron. Gauron is intimidating as fuck, once you see him grin you know that you are going to be fucked up hard. You really do get the feeling that he is insane, but not in like that ''oh you poor misguided soul''-way, more in that ''AWWWW SHIT PLEASE DON'T KILL ME DAWG'' way.

A lot of the humor in FMP stems from the fact that Sosuke has very little understanding of how average teenagers behave. This might sound stupid but it actually creates a lot of hilarious scenes. My favorite episode is where they try to teach Sosuke about dating and understanding women, that episode left me in stiches.

But jokes aside, Sosuke Sagara is basiclly the character that Heero Yuy tried to be. Sosuke is an emotionless badass who is amazing on the battle field, but has like actual flaws and depth, unlike Heero. While Heero's emotionless douchery was never really that intricite to the plot but was kind of there, Sosuke's lack of emotions play a significant role and in a way it's ironic that he has to pilot the Arbalest, a mecha that has the Lambda Driver, which is activated by emotions.

But really, think that the action episodes really outweight the comedy ones, which is a shame since the comedy episodes are gold while the mecha action is compitent but doesn't have a lot of omph to the fighting, since the Lambda Driver is used mostly just by Gauron who uses it to kill grunts with ease and everyone else just shoots with regular weapons.

The lowest point in the series for me was probably the arc with Sosuke and characters who are both introduced and killed in the same arc trying to assassinate Gauron in the middle east. There is no comical relief and besides Sosuke and Gauron there are no characters we actually care about and it takes them like 5 episodes to fight, only to have the fight end in 2 minutes.

Also Tomokazu Seki (countless roles, including Domon Kasshu, Beyond The Grave, Ichiro Miyata) does a great job as Sosuke Sagara, but when Sosuke starts to yell hotbloodedly he starts to sound like Domon Kasshu, which is cool as fuck. Satsuki Yukino (Yoruichi Shihoin, others) plays Chidori and has a somewhat memorable vocal performance compared to other japanese voice actresses which all blend together for me. Speaking of which, Yukana Nogami (C.C. from Code Geass) plays Tessa Testarossa in a fitting but not very memorable way, altought I might have prefered Yukari Fukui. Akio Othsuka (Solid Snake/Big Boss, Batou, Brian Hawk, Moomin's Papa (only one person will get the reference)) does a good job as Kalinin, but I feel that he didn't have a lot of interesting things to say. Shinichiro Miki (Takumi Fujiwara, Kisuke Urahara, Roy Mustang in FMA Brotherhood (but not the first)) is very fitting as Kurz Weber. Masahiko Tanaka (Ryo Mashiba) plays Gauron, and he fits well with the psychopathic nature of Gauron.

So do I reccomend FMP? Well if you like mecha anime you could do a lot worse, but the mecha part of the series takes up the most of the series while the humor is left in second place. If you just want to watch a funny slice of life then I'd suppose you should just buy Full Metal Panic Fumoffu, since that takes all the humor that was excluded from this series and just makes one big slice of life comedy out of it, which is actually the best Full Metal Panic series.

Oh also I'll probably not review The Second Raid since Funimation, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make the first series and Fumoffu region A and B, but not The Second Raid. So until there's a EU release of TSR I probably won't watch it.