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RepentantSky

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Everything posted by RepentantSky

  1. I was going to make an individual thread about this, but I think I'll just post it here, because I feel like talking about it what we should be doing in gaming today: https://www.dualshockers.com/shooting-madden-nfl-19-tournament-jacksonville/ There is no official number on how many people were shot or killed, but current estimates that are being brought up around the news are saying 4 dead and 9 to 11 people injured, at least two of them appear to be serious condition, mean the fatality number could increase. Police have said that the shooter who has not been identified yet committed suicide after they were done. The shooting happened at a Madden 19 tournament at Jacksonville Florida, which has now had two in the last two days, the first of which, happened on Friday night after a football game was ending and 1 was killed and two were injured there, which you can read about here: http://www.jacksonville.com/sports/20180824/1-dead-2-injured-in-shooting-after-raines-football-game The shooter of the first crime was not caught, so some have to wonder of course if the shooter in both of these cases was the same person but that does not appear to be the case, as the shooter at the Madden Tournament was confirmed to be a white male and the shooter at the football game was confirmed to be a black male.
  2. I play games like mad, though I'm mostly a console gamer because playing games with a mouse has always led to my hand cramping up, unless it's just basic clicking. I'm actually so into gaming that I'm going to start streaming on Twitch when Spyro Reignited Trilogy comes out in November. I mostly like RPG's though I do play a lot of other genre's except most shooters and multiplayer titles, mostly because those tend to be one and the same. I'm one who believes that games should be played by the one, but talked about by the many.
  3. 10. Making every setting a high school or having high school aged characters and cast. This one is at the bottom of the list for a few reasons, namely that sometimes, that setting works, such as in the recently started Yokai Apartment or Koi to Uso, or even, Attack on Titan. One of the reasons the high school setting can be seen as problematic though, is because a lot of anime fans have aged, and aren't just about watching kids all the time. The final issue with the constant High School setting, is that people like me, aka well-functioning adults, can only buy into kids handling their issues as well as, if not better than we can so many times before it's seen as unbelievable and hard to buy into. The reason this one is at the bottom of the list though, is because I get it, I used to watch kids in a high school setting and hope to myself "I hope I'm like that in high school" but seeing as that was 20 years or so ago, I'd like to see a few more anime out there that are aimed towards adults like myself, and not just by using gore to make it mature, which is an issue I'll get into later. 9. Overly sexual high school students. This one kind of plays into the last one, and the argument against it only makes so much sense. That being that because Japan has different laws about the age of consent than a lot of the world, so they can sexualize teens because they are of age, at least in most cases, and often ones that aren't are pretty shunned or at least ignored anyways. The problem with the focus on it though, is that a lot of Japan's market for anime isn't living in Japan, and that not every anime is going to bring in new kids at an age where that would be appropriate. Not to mention that it also stands as a reminder that Japan seems to forget that it's audience has aged, as I mentioned in the last entry, and they could be seen as perverse for liking an anime that has this problem, even if they aren't meant to. With anime out there like Full Metal Alchemist and Free! This is a two way road, as there is a lot of sexulizing of the male characters in those shows as well, and that needs to meet it's end. There's anime made for that purpose out there already, let people watch that if they want sexyiness in their anime. 8. Using the same dialogue for the first few episodes of an anime. I mentioned this one before elsewhere, back before editing this list, but I'll say it again, I can usually watch the first few episodes of an anime and understand pretty much everything that's going on without subs of any kind or quality, because they use the same tired lines. Japan has tried to counter this by creating lingo for each anime that does it, that only applies to that anime, but it doesn't help. This new lingo could be used to talk about a weapon. or a special life giving something the plot will claim to revolve around (though let's be honest, a lot of the time anime just goes with calling weapons Ragnarok, and life giving elements Yggdrasil) or whatever the case may be. Point is, a lot of anime start the same way, and as such, use the same tired lines that most long term fans or in some cases, people who have just watched a lot of anime, already know, thus making the first few episodes of an anime moot and/or uninteresting. There's a couple of ways to open an anime, but a lot of them are still using the same basic lines, and it's time to re-vamp the set-up episodes for a series. 7. Combining Fantasy with the real world, and not innovating it. This is a more recent problem with anime, as a few of these will be, but it's become one of the biggest. Anime fans all know that Re:Zero was popular, but they don't need at least two versions of the same kind of anime for each following season. The Summer 2017 season had at least three of these anime, and that was almost directly after Re:Zero, so it felt as rushed as it was. Alice to Zoruko was close to being that as well, but changed up the formula by focusing on the real world instead of the fantastical one, and even then the fantastical world isn't exactly a typical 15th to 18th century setting, so commonly found in these anime but is instead more like a Alice in Wonderland setting. It can be done right. Most that use it though, are trying more to create another version of Re:Zero, and it's simply not going to be as easy as they'd like to believe nor is it going to be interesting. Variety is the spice of life, not some cheap knock-offs. 6. Making characters eyes look more and more fake. Okay so, this is also a recent one, and an odd one to explain. Back when ufotable wasn't the well known animating team that it is, they made an anime called Manabi Straight, where the characters had eyes similar to what you might see in one of their current or more recent shows and they were praised for the look, so they thought to keep making characters with eyes like that more often, and getting praised for the anime has a whole not either because of, or despite the characters eyes. The problem is though, that anime eyes were just starting to become more believable around that time in other anime, which is something a lot of fans wanted, and now they've taken a turn for the worst. Foreshadowing is a wonderful tool that often makes people want to look back and see if they missed something after a major plot revelation has been made, and eyes looking at someone, something or that are simply used for a facial reaction to an event, is a great tool for foreshadowing. However, you can't really do that with a character who's practically got no emotion coming from their eyes, and with the unrealistic eyes being what they are, that part of storytelling can be lost. Even without that, the fact that no one looks human anymore because their eyes are so alien in appearance, can also make it hard to connect to a character, and that is frustrating to see. 5. Stop the Harems, all of them. This is a trope that at a time was once compelling, used to make anime romantic drama's more enticing for fans, but as of late, both Japanese anime and anime style games have used it as a way to simply push one note characters towards a Mary Sue sort of protagonist who acts all flustered about the situation to show they have a good or innocent side, and they are often treated as though that's the best way to get that across which, is foolish. They had ways to do it before the Harem idea was used, and a lot of people weren't tired of those. But hey, gotta get that sexy in there for all those lonely anime fans on prom night right? All Mighty No.9 jokes aside, the point of the Harem has long since been lost, and it's time to drop that trope, because it's going nowhere fast, and is a pathetic way to write a character that we may be asked to care about later. Also, as a final note, a character should never just be made at the expense of being meaningful for the main character, and should always have a point. 4. Stop assuming 99 percent of relationships are straight. To be fair, there is at least one anime I saw a trailer for recently that I thunk was part of the Summer 2017 anime season that clearly had two men in a relationship, but then again, it looks like it's a typical high school drama in every other sense, and I already mentioned the problem with that. Plus, there was only one of those types of anime these that I'm aware of for that season. and three anime out there trying to be Re:Zero? No thank you, that's not the kind of anime world I want to be a part of. It doesn't matter if it's Yuri, Yaoi, or hey, for the sake of being really compelling, a new anime genre where the main character is Bi and has a hard time choosing between someone of the opposite gender or of the same gender. A love triangle like that could make for some amazing story telling. It needs to happen more often, and in doing so, it might be a way to force anime as a medium to be taken more seriously by those who treat like it's still for kids. 3. Making action scenes look like they were directed by Hollywood. For those in the know even a little bit about current Hollywood, a lot of movie action scenes are shot with shaky cams and a lot of jump cuts, making it cheap to produce, and less harmful to actors and stuntmen, but ultimately hard for viewers to follow, and as such has been a point of contention among fans for the last several years. Japan has recently started picking this up with some of their action scenes, only they've changed it to make it even worse, because the action scenes that do this, don't use either jump cuts or shaky cam (at least not all the time), but instead just cut out the action bit of the scene entirely while placing in sounds that make it appear to the ears that action is happening. To be fair, some of the anime where this happens are simply taking ideas from action anime of the 70's and 80's but it's not either of those decades anymore, and it needs to stop before it becomes as common a practice in anime, as it is in Hollywood. If you're going to show me action, show me action, don't try to fool me into thinking it's their when it's not. 2. Gore for the sake of gore. It might seem odd to have something like this so high on the list, but hear me out. For the longest time, pointless amounts of gore has been seen as a way to try and make people take something seriously that might not have been otherwise. It's treated basically like a kid trying to play adult and everyone laughing at them either internally or in the case of the internet, externally. An anime, a TV show, or anything like that, isn't always going to be treated with greater respect simply because of it's rating. Violence needs to have a place, and that place needs to be within the service of the story the violence is happening around. I've seen anime out there that say, "we're going to blow this person's head up because we can, or this person is going to get cut into tiny pieces and we'll show the brains, internal organs and all other matter of human mess as the focus of that because that'll make it so people take our show seriously." No, it doesn't, if violence feels out of place and doesn't serve the story, it's pointless, and there are many anime out there, where this is the case. If you want to show me someone getting blown up, do it, but make sure there's a reason for it. 1. Using the same voices all the time. We're practically going full circle here as in the 8th entry, I suggested we stop using the same lines all the time. In that entry I said that it's possible to watch the first few episodes of an anime without subs because the lines are the same almost all the time, but making that even worse, is the fact that those lines are often said by the same sounding voice, even if the actor is different. Japan has been notorious about using the same voices since all the way back in during Gigantor's time and there some people who like it when people always have the same kind of voices, because to them it's more about the characters as opposed to how they sound, and that's totally fair. However, as someone who has watched hundreds of anime over the years, I can honestly say I stopped caring about who voiced who, and instead am more interested in what they sound like because I've already heard those lines a thousand times and would like them to sound different please. Japan seems to think that having about 7 voices for men, and 5 for women is enough, but with literally hundreds, if not thousands of actors out there, it does feel like people who are trained to voice act, only really are taught how to imitate, and while that does take a certain level of skill, I'd like to hear more Maka's and Natsu's out there, people who have different voices, and who can sell those voices to anyone. Making a show pop is about a lot of things, but to me, one of the things that prevent that from happening, is everyone sounding the same. @Beocat and @ArchieKun I found the list I made and edited it and fixed grammatical errors and the like so that it makes more sense, but if you still want to see the old thread, you can do here:
  4. Maybe a year ago at this point, if not longer, I wrote a list about 10 things that need to be changed in anime, and most of them were addressed towards recent anime. Not just because I want to see anime improve as it goes on, but also because the stereotypes of older anime, even ones as far back as Gigantor, are more tolerable to me than current/modern anime. Not that all current/modern anime are bad, but there are a lot of them that are not nearly as good as they should be, mostly because they rely too much on things that were just small parts of anime past. The things that were only slightly annoying in the past, like the constant perfect main protagonist, have become more rampant, and things like that make modern anime more annoying than older ones. So yeah, I prefer older anime to new anime.
  5. I should do some basic polishing off of some my Yo-kai Watch stuff and show it off. I've got at least 4 Jibanyan figures, 3 Komasan figures, both the main and Zero Yo-kai watches, several other Yo-kai figures, some of which are doubles because ones are open and others are not, and a few of the Yo-kai Manga, though I haven't bought any of those in a while so I'll need to catch up with them sooner or later. Beyond that I have some DBZ figures, and a one or two old DBZ manga. Might have a few FMA Manga as well.
  6. That's obviously Conker's Bad Fur Day.
  7. I mean this is a simple question right. I don't really see a lot of anime out there for this summer, and I have even less of idea of what might be good this season due to not having the time to look really look it up. So with that in mind, what are you all watching? Is there something besides AoT going on right now that has your attention? I need anime to watch for the rest of the summer and I have no idea where to start.
  8. You know the first episode was good, but it wasn't fantastic. Not as good as season 2's first episode anyways.
  9. I can't help but feel like the most recent game I bought as God of War back in April. Been kind of a slow year and I haven't bought any older games recently either.
  10. I decided to take a look into whether or not Ellie from The Last of Us should or shouldn't have died to save humanity. You can check it out here if you'd like:
  11. I'd say if anything, twitter has done that more than Discord has. As some people have said, Discord is a bit fast and therefore harder to follow. More than that though, twitter doesn't have that problem, and thus can be used as effectively as forums. To make things even better, on twitter, you can have a one on one conversation with someone and not be told you need to move it over to PM's (DM's) because there are different connotations there. Also, it's easier to get followers on twitter than on forums that allow for that because you can retweet things, like someone's tweet and add your own thoughts to any tweet and then throw in hashtags that the entirety of twitter might see. I have discord installed on my computer, but I only use it because I watch Twitch streamers and can message a few people here and there without it being seen as off or weird.
  12. I started playing Ni No Kuni II in it's hardest mode, and I gotta say, it fixes a lot of my complaints about the game. I think the leveling is a bit too fast still, making the mode a little less interesting than it should be, but it's nice to play the game in such a way that it's actually challenging again. Game was waaay too easy before.
  13. I have a Gameboy SP Nintendo DS (2X) 3DS PS2 PS3 PS4 PSP PSVita Xbox360 Xbox One PC
  14. I didn't notice them until you said anything honestly.
  15. I say meh. I feel like that trailer only dropped because a lot of Elder Scrolls fans would have been so mad at Bethesda if it wasn't there. This game could be 5 years off, and sooner rather than later, that conference won't even matter, just like that trailer.
  16. It took a while to find the time and write it, but here is my thoughts and what happened at Square's 2018 press conference:
  17. I didn't care much for Bethesda. I don't care about ESL, ESO, Rage 2 or the mobile games. Doom Eternal and Fallout 76 were all I cared about. Just announcing Elder Scrolls VI with a small trailer like that doesn't mean anything either. That game could 5 years off for all we know. It's hard to care about a game that far off. So basically, Bethesda had two things I care about, and a bunch of stuff that was either bad or that I didn't care about. Microsoft had some of that, but not nearly as much.
  18. Microsoft's conference is the only decent one so far. It had a lot of slowdowns, too much focus on games that didn't need it, not enough on ones that did, I didn't care to hear about Game Pass or the Studio's they bought, but they did have a few exciting announcements, which is the best we've had so far. I thought E3 was going to be big this year, but with only Sony and Nintendo left, I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed by the end. Those two have to pull some serious surprises out for me to be happy.
  19. Here's my article regarding what happened with Bethesda's conference. I would have posted it sooner but lo and behold, my internet went out right as I finished it:
  20. It took almost 7 hours of writing pretty much non-stop, but here are my thoughts on Microsoft's E3 press conference:
  21. Just in case someone here hasn't seen this yet: https://www.dualshockers.com/kingdom-hearts-3-release-date-coming-january-29th/
  22. The first conference of E3 is done, here are my thoughts on it: Let me know what you thought about it.
  23. You gotta do what you gotta do. Take your time to get things together, things like that will wait until you're ready.
  24. Limited Run Games is going to have a press conference set for 12 PM on June 11th: https://gematsu.com/2018/06/limited-run-games-e3-2018-press-conference-set-for-june-11 To make things easier for people who may want to see all the conferences. the day before E3 starts, so this Friday, I will be posting the times for each show one more time and a YouTube or Twitch channel from which you can see the stream live if you are able. I will also be posting my reviews of each conference from the Facebook page for which my lists and other things have come from during E3 in case you miss anything and don't know what to look up/don't want to try and find what you want to see by skipping through conference times to find it. My reviews will talk about every major game release or update with videos pulled from YouTube to show you, so you won't miss a thing even if you can't catch the shows live. It's gonna take a lot for me to do all that, but I'm gonna do it for my page, so I should share those posts with you guys as well. You'll excuse me if I do a little but of plugging here, but I will also be tweeting during the conferences as well, so if you don't have to watch but can check twitter for a bit here and there, you can follow me on twitter @RepentantSky so feel free to do that as well. Unless more information comes out for E3 between now and Friday, this might be my last post on this thread until things start, but I'll keep you updated.
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