Lucky Star – Episode 8

It’s time for athletics festival, another obligatory event for every school-based anime and manga. As expected of such event, some of the characters are better than everyone thought they would. I had few laughs with Kagami messing up in bread eating contest and Tsukasa doing her best at hurdles. There was also a reference to Track & Field, but I don’t think children these days will get it.

After the athletics festival, there were some short gags like recorder training, going to cafeteria and standing in line, Tsukasa speculating how it would be if she was born before Kagami, Konata and Kagami visiting book store and some even shorter gags. Nothing specially funny in my opinion. Lucky Channel was fun. Akira got pissed because Minoru Shiraishi gets more fan letters than she does.

Konata’s father also made appearance in this episode. As expected of person who is Konata’s father, he came to the athletics festival to take photos of high school girls in bloomers with his big camera.

Big Bang Beat – 1st Impression-

Big Bang Beat -1st Impression- is a dojin soft fighting game for PC from a group called NRF. BBB is based on Big Bang Age, an eroge created by Alice Soft. I’ve been playing BBB a lot since I got it last Sunday and now is the time for a review. This review is aimed for people who play fighting games and are familiar with the common terminology used in such games.

-System-

Chain combos, super cancels and homing cancels, air dashing and double jumping. BBB’s system itself doesn’t offer many new features, however your use of special moves and air dashes is limited. Special moves consume P-gauge that can be charged by holding down P-button. Once the gauge is too low or empty, you can’t use your special moves.

There’s another gauge called B-gauge. This gauge is consumed whenever you air dash, use super moves, homing cancels, guard cancels etc. Every fight begins with one stock which can be used for couple of air dashes, one super move or one B-dash, a homing cancel. B-gauge is filled by gathering crystals which drop whenever your attacks either are guarded or hit the opponent. This means that you can’t fill your B-gauge just by whiffing your attacks. You can gather up to 9,99 stocks.

Senna uses B-dash to set up high/low mixups.

The combo system is somewhat similiar to Guilty Gear and Hokuto no Ken. You chain your attacks from light to middle to heavy. Most of attacks can be canceled into special moves which can be canceled into super moves. B-dashes are used to extend your combos. When you perform a B-dash, your character automatically dashes or leaps towards the opponent. B-dashes can also be used to set up high/low mixups.

-Characters-

While the system isn’t that original, BBB has plenty of interesting and unique characters. I’d say the characters don’t have as much variation as the characters of Guilty Gear have, but I think there’s more variation than in Melty Blood. There are a couple of compulsory character types such as all-round hero that can do pretty much anything, big guy with lots of power and auto guard moves, character with long reach that can be used to control a lot of space and so on. But there are plenty of interesting characters as well, such as Burai, a boxer with longer chain combos and swaying that lets him pass through opponents attacks.

Please Select your Character

There are ten normal characters and four hidden characters. Fourteen characters is pretty much for a dojin soft fighter, though two of those hidden characters are slightly overpowering and the other two are weak comical characters, which means there are ten characters meant for serious playing.

-Balance-

I have only played against A.I. so I can only tell how I felt the balance through fighting A.I. and trying characters out in the training mode. So far I haven’t been able to find anything that would make any character dramatically more powerful than others. Damage potential in general is pretty low except for a couple of characters who can do a bit more damage than others. Prorate reduces damage quite fast making most of shorter combos with few big attacks more effective than the longer ones. It’s really difficult to perform combos that would take half or more than half of full life gauge.

Almost every character can set up mixups with their B-dashes. Those few who can’t do this usually have something else that will compensate for absence of B-dash mixups. For example Daigo is always in air during his B-dash which prevents him from using high/low mixups, but he has huge damage potential with his Dragon Kick super move that can drain half of your opponents life gauge when fully charged. However getting that super move fully charged requires a lot of work, which mostly means that you won’t get more than one fully charged Dragon Kick per match.

Daigo’s fully charged Dragon Kick super move really hurts!

I won’t go as far as to discuss tiers though I have few candidates for would be top tiers. I don’t have enough game breaking skills to find out the most effective tactics on my own. BBB seems like well balanced game, but it’s still too early to say how this game is played in competitive play and which characters are going to be used the most.

-Audiovisual Side-

Audiovisual side includes not so important stuff such as graphics, character designs, music and other things that don’t really affect the gameplay itself. Only bad fighting games need to depend on having great graphics and bucket loads of characters to make people play them.

Anyways, the graphics, particularly the sprites, are quite great for a dojin soft fighter. Not the best I’ve seen, but nice none the less. I think they’re better than sprites in The King of Fighters games but not as great as sprites of Steet Fighter III – 3rd Strike. Some of backgrounds are pretty lively with lots of moving objects, but most of them are quite still and inactive. All the backgrounds are well drawn and pleasant to gaze upon.

The main character, Rouga, and his big flashy Super Punch.

BBB has quite nice sound track. Not as good as Guilty Gear’s smashing sound track, but at least none of the tracks annoy me particularly and they are all fit for the game’s mood. The song in opening video and the music of final stage are pretty good. Some people have complained that the sounds don’t work properly, but I haven’t had any problems with music, voices or sound effects.

Last but not least, the character designs. There are basically three ways to choose your character in a fighting game: You use tier lists, pick character that suits your playing style or decide to play with the character that looks the coolest. I usually favour the third option. BBB’s cast is made up of typical anime-ish characters, but none of them feels too cliched, except for Daigo who is the compulsory Bruce Lee rip-off.

Knowing that BBB is based on an eroge, it’s surprising that there are only four female characters of which two form a team and are counted as one character. Doesn’t really matter as I don’t choose my character based on gender. Actually, my main character is female only in Guilty Gear, KOF games and games with only female characters such as Eternal Fighter Zero and Immaterial and Missing Power.

-Extras-

Besides survival mode there isn’t any other extras and the story mode isn’t too difficult to beat even with maximum A.I. level. The A.I. provides more challenge than it does in general, but it’s still far from the best fighting game A.I.’s there are. There are also the secret characters I already mentioned, but they’re not very interesting.

-Conclusion-

Big Bang Beat -1st Impression- is definitely one of the most enjoyable dojin soft fighters I’ve played so far and I’ve played many. Even though the A.I. isn’t that great and there are not many extras, such as mission mode or tons of unlockables, BBB will keep you addicted with something more important for a great fighting game than anything else: Superb gameplay and variable characters.

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All screenshots in this review have been taken under 16Bit graphic mode.

Cirno Training

Mountain of Faith? Why would you want to play that? Cirno Training is way more addictive!

In this game you have to answer incorrectly to all the additions displayed on the screen. If and olnly if the correct answer is nine, you have to answer correctly. Whenever you choose the right answer Cirno will flutter her wings and smile.

So moe! I’m gonna die!

I think this little game proves a couple of things. First, the simpler the game is, the more addictive it is. Second, cute games are irresistable and you just can’t stop playing them. Together these features make Cirno Training a game that’ll keep you addicted at least for a while.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Episode 9 (spoilers)

Major spoilers ahead. Don’t read any further unless you’ve already seen last episode.

Kamina is now gone and Simon is extremely upset about losing his brother. He is in non-stop berserk mode which eventually causes him to lose the control of Lagann. He finds a trunk with a keyhole similiar to Lagann’s. Simon opens the trunk with his drill pendant and finds a beautiful young girl, Nia, sleeping inside. Nia has never seen humans nor been outside and she is fascinated by everything she sees.

Simon and Nia are attacked by a Ganmen. Simon is still unable to control Lagann and they have to flee. Not a second too early, Yoka and Kittan come to save them. Nia is taken to Daiganzan where she meets lots of different people. Suddenly they’re attacked by Adine who has come to avenge Chimiruf. Nia claims that she is the daughter of Spiral King and orders her to stop.

The mood of this episode was dark, though that’s no wonder. It’s raining and the sunlight is blocked away by black clouds. After Simon meets Nia, the rain stops and the sky clears up as if to show him that there is still something to live for in this world. By the end of this episode, Simon is still upset about Kamina’s death, but mayby he will find a way to accept the harsh reality and hold his head up again. I don’t expect it to happen right away, but he should be okay sooner or later.

Nagasarete Airantou – Episode 7

Suzu visits her martial arts master, who lives in the southern forest. Her master is the Lord of South, a little yellow cat with two tails. Suzu and Ikuto participate in a survival battle between cats and dogs to decide the next Lord of South.

The girls decide to have a flower viewing picnic at Nothern forest because Airantou’s only Sakura grows there. To avoid meeting the Lord of North, they decide to split up into small groups. Ikuto gets paired with Machi, who has the habit of always choosing the most dangerous route. After a long and hard journey they finally get to see the Sakura in full blossom.

There was lots of cats and dogs in the first part. I don’t really like dogs but cats are OK. I’m not into mascot characters in general though I don’t mind seeing a couple every now and then.

Lucky Star – Episode 7

Konata has gotten hooked on MariMite (short for Maria-sama ga Miteru, I haven’t seen or read it myself) and is trying to act like a young high-class lady. Kagami and Tsukasa notice Konata’s weird behavior right away but Miyuki doesn’t notice anything special.

Tsukasa gets a cell phone, apparently from her parents. She forgets to turn her cell phone on vibrate and it gets confiscated after ringing in the class. After she gets it back, Tsukasa forgets it in her pocket and it goes to washing machine. So much for her first cell phone. The scene where Tsukasa tries to find out her own phone number to give it to Konata was extremely cute. Tsukasa’s popularity points are going up once again.

Besides for one line in the blog entry for the second episode, I haven’t really talked about Lucky Channel. At first it seemed like recycling one or two gags again and again, but they’ve been coming up with new ones lately. This time Minoru Shiraishi does the “Oha-Lucky~!” thing because Akira is currently having a bad mood. It gets worse when Minoru introduces himself before her. It was quite fun.

Akira is one of those few characters who look really cute but have absolutely horrible personality. I don’t really know how one should react to such a character type. Mayby she’s a tsundere who will eventually drop her bitching and get friendlier or they’re trying to create a new type of moe…

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Episode 8 (spoilers)

There were some major developments of story in this episode so my describtion will be slighty more vague than usually. You should see the episode before reading any futher and I really mean it.

Dai-Gurren Dan is preparing for the final battle against Daiganzan. Yoko visits both Simon and Kamina encouraging them to do their best tomorrow. Kamina and Yoko embrace each other and kiss. Simon, who also has feelings for Yoko, sees this and is very upset about it, but tries to hide his feelings.

The battle begins. Although Daiganzan is still immobilized, it’s fire-power is something not to be underestimated. While distracted by Kamina and his comrades, Daiganzan is attacked by Lagann which tries to hijack it. Still upset by what he saw last night, Simon is unable to use all of his fighting spirit and thus can’t hijack Daiganzan. Kamina gives Simon a hard punch and tells him to believe that he, Kamina, believes in him. Simon is now able to hijack Daiganzan.

As Kamina pilots his Gurren, Chimiruf, the captain of Daiganzan, attacks him with his Ganmen, Byakou. Witnessing Gurren getting impaled with Byakou’s spear is enough to make Simon snap making him lose the control of Daiganzan. After a little rest, Kamina punches Simon’s Lagann with his Gurren and tells him to calm down as they’ve already won. They unite into Gurren-Lagann and finish off Chimiruf and the rest of beastmen around.

There’s still more, but I’ll let everyone see that for themselves. The 8th episode is definitely one of the best episodes in Gurren Lagann so far, if not the very best episode. Hurry up and see it for yourself!

By the way, Nia will make her first appearance in next episode.

Kagami invades your Computer!

I think this is not a joke because it was posted at Symantec’s website. Trojan.Haradong.C is a Trojan horse that replaces your local files with an image and does other nasty things. What image you ask? See below for an answer.

Hey, that’s a familiar face! It’s Kagami from Lucky Star! I think it’s quite funny. Too bad Symantec’s website doesn’t mention where the image is from.

Source: jumpC.com

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho: Tou – Episode 14 (spoilers)

The final episode wasn’t a re-cap episode as some had speculated. Instead it is an epilogue telling what everyone is doing a week after the events of 13th episode. Tendou Kozune makes a comeback and turns into a demon. After Kyoichi and Hiyuu defeat him, Ryuuzan tells that someone must have put Tendou under a spell thus there is still someone pulling the strings.

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho: Tou – Martial Fist Chapter, a sequel to TMGK:T, will be aired in July. Wheter it’s only a single normal episode, several episodes or longer TV special wasn’t revealed in the “scoop”.

Since there is still going to be more TMGK:T, I’ll watch this Martial Fist Chapter before writing review of the series in whole.

Nagasarete Airantou – Episode 6 (spoilers)

Due to recent earthquakes, the source of all bathing water has dried out. Ikuto and Suzu go down to the well to find out what is blocking the stream. After another earthquake the bottom of the well cracks open and they fall even deeper. They find an underground lake and the source of all the hot water, which is currently blocked up by a huge rock that must’ve fallen from the roof because of the earthquakes. Ikuto manages to open the blockage and water gushes out wiping both him and Suzu along. Suzu can’t hold on to Ikuto’s hand and sinks down. Ikuto follows her saving her from drowning. Suzu is upset because Ikuto almost died to save her, but very happy at the same time. All’s well that end’s well.

There was also a bathing scene where all the girls took turns to take a bath. Sixth episode of Gurren Lagann had bathing scenes, Sixth episode of Lucky Star had bathing scenes and now sixth episode of Nagasarete Airantou had a bathing scene. Is this just a coincidence or is it this season trend to have bathing scenes in the sixth episode? I really didn’t count, but there was a lot more nosebleeding than usual, though that’s just because the girls were wearing less clothes than usually and Ikuto is at that age.

This was particularly funny scene. Poor Ayane…