The Gamer’s Litter Box

“An adaptation of the popular arcade and console game series, King of Fighters revolves around the pursuit of three artifacts that will grant their owner unlimited power over reality.”

Also, Kyo Kusanagi is played by a white guy.

*deep breaths*

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Kotaku: Meet (Then Pity) The Cast & Crew Of The King Of Fighters Movie

Tomorrow’s Earth Hour, where 1 billion homes will switch off the lights for one hour from 8:30 p.m. I won’t be able to participate since I’m rushing for the deadline, but I’ll switch off my computer at home (normally I leave it on the whole day for anime and ‘mature reading materials’ torrents), not play any video games in return, and switch off the lights at my cubicle.

What will you be doing for Earth Hour tomorrow?

I’m a guy but when I saw the AMAZING kissing scene, I squealed like a fangirl. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

EDIT:: Someone made an animated GIF version of the kiss. It’s small, but you can feel the sensuality and passion behind the kiss. It’s probably one of the best kissing scenes in anime. Period.

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/9839/1238008109187.gif

Busy weekend as I attended two anime and game events - the Anime Comics Games Convention event at Tropican City Mall, and Hotlink Games and Anime Festival at Berjaya Times Square. I’m pretty tired and I’ve a backlog of work to sift through in the office, so I probably won’t be posting here until the end of the month.

Although the walk-in crowd at ACGC Tropicana wasn’t that great, I found it a lot more varied and interesting compared to the Hotlink Games and Anime Festival at Berjaya. Actually, the “anime” part at the Hotlink event was erroneous because I didn’t see any related anime events or activities there, except for a couple hired cosplayers and the cosplay competition on the 2nd day, which I didn’t attend. It was cool to see the Malaysia-Singapore matchup at the Sudden Attack booth though.

Sometimes I can’t help but admire the endless energy that cosplayers seem to have for their series and craft. I can’t see myself exhibiting the same enthusiasm, like going on stage to do the Caramelldansen performance when the song plays. Probably I’m just an oldfag who can’t adapt to the new generation of anime and videogame fans.

I was right. Just got the press release earlier today. The new series, called Fullmetal Alchemist - Brotherhood, will be broadcast weekly on Fridays 8:30 p.m. from April 10. The regional broadcast will come with English and Chinese subtitles.

Press release after the jump!

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Keen-eyed Malaysian gamers who have been following the development of building sim Cities XL might spot a familiar landmark amongst the various buildings that one can build in the upcoming title. In particular, one building has a remarkable resemblance to Wisma Tun Sambanthan, a 27-storey office building located in KL. Perhaps one of the designers or developers was a Malaysian and decided to pay homage?

Cities XL screens

Wisma Tun Sambanthan @ Flickr

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately (just yesterday I watched The International) and the latest one to get my attention is the upcoming premiere of LaMB, which will be broadcasted on Animax-Asia this March 24th. Animax has been hyping LaMB quite a bit as it’s the company’s first high definition animated film. Not only that, the script was prepared by one of the finalists of the Animax 2007 Pan-Asia Animation competition heralding from the Philippines while its production was done by Singaporean studio Peach Blossom Media. Earlier this evening, some media and invited guests got a sneak peek of the movie before it premieres across the region next week.

In general, I think the film was okay. Not spectacular, but okay. I like the story and although the script has a familiar ring of protagonists finding love and redemption after a tragic accident, the movie was still entertaining. But its really short screen time (approximately 45 minutes!) didn’t allow the characters’ backgrounds and story world of LaMB to be fully fleshed out. Yes, viewers who want more information on the world of Ceras can visit the official website to view the web manga. But how many will do so? Most viewers would straight away watch the movie first.

I also have some qualms about the animation quality in LaMB. LaMB’s art style uses a combination of 3D graphics and Flash animation; for the most part of the show, the art style works to paint a believable sci-fi world. However at times, the characters’ animations looked jerky and unnatural, especially when the characters are doing a normal walk or are talking. I don’t believe the jerky animation in LaMB is due to the limitations of Flash - I’ve seen some fantastic Flash animations on Newgrounds, and even on some local cartoon TV series using Flash. Perhaps the studio isn’t that experienced with handling realistic character movements in animated films? Furthermore for a “HD” animated film, the visuals in LaMB looked grainy than sharp. I think it’s because the visuals in LaMB aren’t optimized for cinema theatres.

The main characters’ voice work in LaMB is generally good, with Vaness Wu giving a solid performance as Jack Grisworld. I can’t really say the same about the peripheral characters such as the various soldiers, scientists, and even Keiko’s parents as their dialogue sounds uninspiring. Later on in the film, there is a major battle scene which felt odd to me because both fighters don’t utter a single word. I understand that their characters aren’t allowed to speak, but couldn’t they grunt or cry out in pain as they trade blows? Or maybe a little dialogue to show their motivations for fighting? The near silence during the fighting scene felt quite weird to witness in the theatre.

This is not to say that LaMB is a bad movie. The story in LaMB is good, and the voice acting (sans the peripheral characters) were solid. The 3D visuals were adequate but the animation could definitely use some improvement. If Animax-Asia were to broadcast another locally-produced animated film, I’d defintely watch it. Hopefully the premiere of LaMB this March 24th will spearhead the development of more cross-regional productions.

As much as I don’t like reading the News Strait Times for their pro-government news, at least they propagated the message that ultimately, parents are responsible for making sure what their children are playing. The piece, which was apparently front page news in the NST yesterday, highlighted the common knowledge that most Malaysian parents do not monitor what videogames their children are playing. Likewise, local retailers don’t care about rules and ratings when selling videogames since there’s no law or enforcement preventing them from doing so.

“The onus is on parents. Just as many failed to realise the dangers posed by junk food, today’s parents are also failing to realise the dangers of violent video games and television shows,” - unnamed consumer advocate.

The article, however, could have been improved by arguing that such violent videogames are normally intended for mature adult audiences. At least it didn’t try to blame videogames for the spate of violence in the country - our crappy economy and poor law enforcement is doing a heckuva job already, thank you very much.

NST - Video Games: Fighting Violence

I knew Dragon Ball: Evolution movie was going to suck, so I was prepared for all sorts of major suckage. And true enough, it didn’t disappoint in this department. Some observations:

• What’s up with Chow Yuen Fatt’s way of talking? Throughout the movie, he looked like he just chewed on a whole plate of spicy chillies.
• Justin Chatwin’s acting was actually okay, especially in the beginning. But later on, he starts to sound very monotone when he talks about finding the Dragon Balls with Chow Yuen Fatt, like he’s reading someone’s cue card offscreen.
• Yumcha has the worst American hick accent I’ve ever heard. It’s like a bastard child of an Australian and a redneck.
• I could hardly make out Piccolo’s “clones” when they fought Goku underground. No wait, scratch that - I couldn’t see jack shit. I guess they ran out of budget rendering their faces.
• Really, really crappy, amateur editing near the end of the movie, showing the transition of Oozaru to Goku. I guess they again ran out of budget here too.
• The World Martial Arts Tournament scene got only 2 minutes of screentime, lol. They might as well not include it at all.

So in the end, what has the Dragon Ball: Evolution movie taught me? It taught me that years of fighting experience and training can be skipped as long as there is the allure of a hot girl promising to snog you at the end of your training. Sex is the greatest motivator!

The main website for DaiCon has gone LIVE. What’s DaiCon? It’s the brainchild of the EMINA club, the same group of people who brought the GACC in MMU Melaka, which saw two notable seiyuus such as Masakazu Morita (voice of Kurosaki Ichigo of Bleach) paying a visit to Malaysia and giving a Q&A session to anime fans.

Will DaiCon be any different? Inviting a special VIP to the event? Perhaps. I’ll leave it to the organizers to reveal it themselves.

DaiCon Main Website