JGaming – Is Steam Otaku?

Posted by Mindez on 2011年12月23日 – 15時32分
Filed under General, Professor Layton, Video Games
Tagged as , , , ,

o·ta·ku
(noun)
1. an avid collector or enthusiast, esp. one who is obsessed anime, video games, or computer and rarely leaves home.
2. (In Japan) Young people who are highly skilled in or obsessed with computer technology to the detriment of their social skills.

As a writer on this blog, sometimes I have to make judgement calls and skew my interpretations of the above definition. This site was set up as a general place for us to post about anything anime-related or video-game-related, or about Japan in general. As far as I know there’s no clear ‘line’ as to what does and doesn’t belong on here. So as a gamer, I’m always wondering if something belongs on here. Pokémon? Definitely otaku. Layton? Yep. Steam sales? Well it’s certainly video-game related, but it’s nothing to do with Japan at all. So I’d guess probably not, right? But then someone makes a post about Minecraft and I’m all confused again.

So you know what? I’m a gamer, and as long as I’m still alive, Steam sales belong on this website dammit! This is my section, I can do what I want with it! Hmph.

December 19th marked the beginning of this year’s winter Steam sales! Almost every game on Steam has a massive chunk taken out of the price, and every day until January 1st, 12 games get their price reduced even more. A bunch of games have added achievements to go for, and there’s even a chance to win the prize of EVERY SINGLE STEAM GAME for participating. Now that’s a prize I want to win. (If only for that Railworks 3 DLC worth $1545.96).

To commemorate this occasion, throughout the sales I’ll be making a video on my youtube channel highlighting the deals, talking about the games and generally handing out my recommendations like candy. Steam sales are traditionally times that all gamers unite to give Valve all of their money. Because Steam deals are just *TOO GOOD*. I’m not going to be posting any more about this on CollectiveOtaku, the purpose of this post is just to drive people towards them and let them know they exist! So here’s the link to today’s entry, day 5 of the Steam sales! Future editions (and past editions) can be found on my Youtube channel here!

 

Incidentally, you may wonder why I’m calling this section ‘JGaming’ for this update. “But oh great and powerful Mindez!” I hear you cry, “This has nothing to do with Japanese Gaming! Surely you should call it WGaming or something!” To which I respond “Oh, there’s a reason, Billy. There’s definitely a reason.”

And there is, for the second reason I made this update today was because today I discovered that I will be getting a Japanese 3DS and an import of the Japanese 3DS Professor Layton game, レイトン教授と奇跡の仮面 (Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle), for Christmas this year. So I feel justified in calling this section the ‘JGaming’ section. (Actually, I’m calling it JGaming because I can call it whatever I want! It’s not like this blog has editors or anything.)

This will probably be my last update before Christmas, so have a happy Christmas. And think of me playing my new Layton game as you sip your eggnog and watch domestic disputes break out in houses up and down the country this Christmas day. …All families have those at Christmas, right?

The Mindez Review – Hayate no Gotoku: Heaven is a Place on Earth

Posted by Mindez on 2011年12月18日 – 18時53分
Filed under Anime, General, Japan

On Friday, almost 4 months after the 58-minute-long Hayate no Gotoku movie, Heaven is a Place on Earth, was released in Japan, it was finally released on DVD. Within hours of it coming out, fansub group Commie were the first to get it subbed. Despite being a slightly cut down version (With the extended Blu-Ray release slated for February 2012), it’s finally out for the western world to see. Potential movie spoilers ahead in this post!

Hayate no Gotoku: Heaven is a Place on Earth

The Hayate series has always been a bit of a mess of timelines and characters, with season 1 taking liberties with seemingly random manga selection and season 2 attempting to fill in the gaps where manga has been skipped over. It’s good to see that the movie carries on this tradition, with random new characters such as Tsurugino Kayura, Nagi’s friend and devoted cosplayer (Which helps them immensely when it comes to filling in their ‘random references to other anime’ quota) and Suirenji Ruka, a dance idol from the manga who appears purely to sing the opening theme. And to make the timelines more confusing, this was actually Kayura’s first appearance. In recent chapters of the manga, she is introduced as a new character for the first time. So to summarise, the second half of the first season ran alongside the second season, but before the current manga and after the first half of the first season, and the current manga is running before the movie but after the two anime seasons. Everyone follow that? Me either.

The movie is, as you may expect from Hayate no Gotoku, pretty formulaic. The entire cast of main characters is persuaded to go travel into the countryside for a few days, Nagi gets bored, the characters get lost and find themselves in trouble. The particular brand of trouble this time being a carnival that Nagi, Kayura and the Hakuou Three Amiga manage to get trapped in as everybody outside the carnival forgets about their existence. Cue Hayate desperately trying to remember about Nagi and Nagi desperately trying to find a way out. And of course, this being Hayate no Gotoku, we can’t avoid lots of blatant misunderstandings between Hinagiku/Maria and Hayate. And of course, this being Hayate no Gotoku, they couldn’t resist putting some Hinagiku fanservice in. However, unlike the OVA, the fanservice was very sparse and not at all distracting.

In its favour, the ending payoff is definitely worth the build up, something that is incredibly important. I definitely feel that it was worth watching as a viewer of the series, for some teasers into Hayate’s past and some awesome and well made scenes towards the end. There are some great scenes throughout, mostly with Hinagiku (Despite not being a big Hina fan myself). But conversely, it didn’t feel like this needed to be a movie. This would have been a fantastic two-parter in a season, but it didn’t hold up spectacularly well on its own (Something that I think the producers realised as it was released in theatres as a double bill with Mahou Sensei Negima!: Anime Final). Bottom line is that if you enjoy the series, watch it. But if you haven’t seen Hayate, this is probably not the best place to start.

For that reason, I rate this movie 8/10. On par with the second season, no better nor worse, it can just be thought of as a quick mid-season two-parter episode. Roll on season 3!

JGaming – Pokémon plus Samurai? Sign Me Up!

Posted by Mindez on 2011年12月18日 – 04時22分
Filed under General, Japan, Pokémon, Video Games

Back in November, Nintendo made the announcement that a new Pokémon game would be announced before the end of the year. Yesterday, they followed through with that and now we know what the next DS Pokémon title is going to be. Is it Pokémon Gray, like everybody thought? No, in fact they have very clearly stated that there will not be a Pokémon Grey. In fact, it’s not even a new game in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, or the Pokémon Ranger series, or a sequel to any of the standalone Pokémon games.

I can just imagine the pitch meeting. Everyone sitting around thinking of ideas. One guy suddenly snaps his finger and goes “Got it! Pokémon in FEUDAL JAPAN!” to which Tsunekaz Ishihara jumps up and shouts “Yes! This man is a genius!” and then there would be some brofists and high fives and they’d order pizza or something. I have a pretty good grasp of how these kind of meetings go, I think.

So without further ado, the trailer for Pokémon + Nobunaga’s Ambition on the Nintendo DS.

The game is slated for release some time in Spring 2012 in Japan. No immediate plans for a US/EU release. The game is a crossover between the Pokémon franchise and the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise. Both have a significant number of games in their respective series’, and both are fairly popular in Japan. I can’t really say much for the popularity of Nobunaga’s Ambition outside of Japan, being from the UK we’ve actually never had a Nobunaga’s Ambition game, so I’d only heard of the series when this was announced. But it seems like an incredibly weird and incredibly unexpected crossover.

So, Nobunaga’s Ambition is a turn based strategy game where you have to conquer land, build armies and use them to battle your enemies. Pokémon is a game where you roam the world collecting cute monsters and use them to battle your enemies. So I guess there’s a FEW similarities – They’re both bloodthirsty battling simulators. Yeah, that pretty much sums up Pokémon.

From the looks of things, the gameplay seems very closely modelled off of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, and in my opinion it probably will turn out to be simply Pokémon Mystery Dungeon with an overarching storyline set in feudal Japan. Which I don’t think is by any means a bad thing, I’m a fan of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games and I do think that it’s the story that lets those games down, so this definitely has the potential to take a good idea and making it better. And I think this game definitely has potential. I’ll certainly be importing it since it’ll probably take numerous years to see a European release.

And who knows, maybe next year we’ll see Pokémon + Professor Layton or Pokémon + Phoenix Wright. I could definitely see Layton and Phoenix Wright being awesome Pokémon trainers.

What I’m Watching (Winter 2011 Edition)

Posted by Navarr on 2011年10月28日 – 23時21分
Filed under Anime

What am I watching this season?

  • Ben-To (3/12)
    A fascinating anime where students and others fight over bento boxes that have a reduced price.
  • Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (3/?)
    In this anime, a group of students start a club in order to make friends (since none of the three have any real ones).
  • Naruto: Shippuuden (233/?)
    Yeah…
  • Pokémon Best Wishes! (53/?)
  • Working’!! (4/?)
    I loved Working! and this is the second season.  It focuses around a small group of family restaurant workers.  Its based on a 4-koma manga.
  •  Chihayafuru (0/25)
  •  Kimo to Boku. (0/13)
  • Mirai Nikki (0/26)
  • Mashiroi Symphony (0/12)

The Mindez Review – Nichijou – Now It’s On

Posted by Mindez on 2011年10月16日 – 05時34分
Filed under Anime

Well. It seems another competitor has entered the ring. I was kinda expecting my last post to go totally unnoticed. But it seems that certain people still have this site buried in their RSS feeds or email notification lists and managed to see that I updated, and it seems that a certain Navarr-esque entrant has decided to compete for the latest post. With a Minecraft post, even (Which I consider to be cheating)! So I must find something else to post about. I’m not going to lie, part of me was justifying My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as being just as otaku as Minecraft, and I was so tempted to make a random pony update. But I’m above that, so in its place I’ve actually mentioned SOMETHING JAPANESE (*cough cough*) and written a review of Nichijou. But I warn you, Navarr. You’re playing a dangerous game, and my threat of ponies is ever-present!

So I should probably get on with it.

Nichijou (日常) is Japanese for ‘everyday’. And honestly, I can’t think of a more perfect word to sum up this slice-of-life comedy series. Originating as a manga series in Shonen Ace in December 2006 by Keiichi Arawi, it was given the anime treatment by Kyoto Animation, airing 26 episodes between April 3rd and September 25th of this year. The same studio that brought such hits as Lucky Star, K-On! and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – And it shows. The series meets the high standards that you would expect from the creator of all of these.

The actual ‘storyline’ (if you would go so far as to call it that) revolves around multiple intertwining groups of people, the main two being  a group of 3 high school girls, Mai, Yūko, and Mio, with their high school shenanigans, and an 8 year old professor who’s never actually named that somehow has the intelligence and resources to create an advanced high school aged robot called Nano and a talking cat called Sakamoto. Just like real life, right? There’s also a bunch of other colourful characters that have their own adventures, such as Kōjirō Sasahara, a posh kid that rides a goat to school, Tsuyoshi Nakanojō, a… kid with a natural mohawk, and Kenzaburō Daiku, president of the after-school ‘go-soccer’ club, a game for which the rules are… interesting, to say the least.

Okay, so you might have got from that that it’s not the easiest anime to describe. But the series takes the formula of ‘high school girls doing things’ and really lets the imagination flow, and in time the characters all become part of this world. The quickfire nature of the sketches means that if a particular sketch may not be to your liking then a funnier one is likely not that far off. However, this can act as a bit of a double-edged sword. The series doesn’t quite have the character development of other similar series’. The characters and personalities are the same from beginning to end, which can make it slightly harder to really get into the characterisation. I walk away from the series only really feeling that I’ve ‘connected’ with maybe one of the characters. The series has no persistence – For the most part, sketches could fit in any episode, and the world just resets to the state it was in before the sketch started at the end of it. This can make it easier to jump in to episodes, but means that the characters don’t really flesh out as much as one might hope.

Graphically, the series looks amazing. The colours are slightly washed out, which makes for a very nice visual style to watch. Audibly, the series is also amazing. All of the OPs and EDs are incredibly catchy and are now thoroughly embedded inside my head. There are a lot of voice actors that also worked on Lucky Star and Seitokai no Ichizon, which makes that well done as well. In terms of humour, that’s always going to be subjective. But I would definitely say that the series has a good balance between cheap laughs and long payoffs. Certainly a style of humour that I personally loved. The only real issue I have is that people may be turned off by the lack of persistence in the world, no episode is affected by any other – But that’s a common theme amongst anime, so it’s acceptable in this context. Overall, incredible, a must-watch for any fans of Azumanga Daioh, K-On!, Lucky Star, PaniPoni Dash or anything similar.

A solid 10/10 from me!

Minecraft? That’s Pretty Otaku.

Posted by Navarr on 2011年10月15日 – 09時37分
Filed under Minecraft, The SkyBlock Adventures
Tagged as , ,

Mindez is correct in his post.  The activity on this blog kind of just died along with its Authors.  Nobody really wanted to post in it anymore so I’ve been thinking of letting the domain expire.  In the meantime though… CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I’ve started a Minecraft Let’s Play – of SkyBlock.  Its full of uncensored Snark and Popular Culture References, such as “Winter is Coming.”

I do hope you thoroughly enjoy its uncensored goodness.  I have a bit of a potty mouth, meself.

 

JGaming – Professor Layton 4 – And The End

Posted by Mindez on 2011年10月15日 – 08時18分
Filed under Japanese, Professor Layton, Video Games

Well, it kinda looks like this blog has become a little bit defunct. The hosting’s going to run out soon and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be renewed. A real shame. So chances are, nobody is going to see this post.

But you know what? I’m going to post it anyway. Partly because I just woke up this morning thinking about this blog and how much potential it had when we first got together to start it, partly because I have another episode of Layton 4 to post (albeit one that has been on Youtube for a good few… months now) and partly because I’ve spontaneously decided to have a little competition with myself to see who can get the last post on CollectiveOtaku before it goes down. I’m winning, by the way. That’s the joy of having competitions with nobody but yourself.

It’s kinda fitting, then, that the last post on CollectiveOtaku, and my last post on CollectiveOtaku, and my last JGaming update, should also be the last episode of Layton 4. I put it off too long – In two days, Layton 4 will be released in America (Although I won’t be able to get it for another month and a half thanks to the time it’ll take to localise from English to English which I understand is a VERY complex matter). And I’m sure I’ll get that game, and I’m sure I’ll be LPing that game in another couple of weeks or so, on my channel, in English. There’ll be other Japanese games I’ll want to play of course, down the line. I’d love to make it a habit to import Japanese games and LP them. It’s just not something that will be happening here.

I really do think this place had potential, but I don’t think any of us (Myself included, Navarr excluded) were really putting in the time or organisation that would have seen it. And now we’re all off working on our own projects, our own studies, our own lives. And while I never really got the opportunity to get to know many of the writers for this blog (Excluding the couple that I already knew before starting it), I’m glad to have been part of it. See you around.

This is how the blog ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

My final contribution: Layton 4 episode 4.

Design our Logo, Get Free Anime!

Posted by Navarr on 2011年1月22日 – 14時56分
Filed under Contests
Tagged as ,

So, we don’t have a logo.  Well.. we do, but I made it in like paint and it sucks worse than anything else in the existence of the entire universe.

So, lets have our first contest!

The rules are simple: design our logo and save it in PSD or SVG format, and the best logo we receive gets a free three month anime membership to crunchyroll.

Additionally, there are some rules:

  • Nothing OVERLY ecchi.  A little ecchi is fine, but we’d prefer it to be kept at least PG-13.
  • We must receive at least one good logo before disbursement of this prize.
  • It MUST have a transparent background that looks good against light and dark colours.
  • That means if all we get is really badly drawn stuff in MSPaint, then nobody wins the prize because we will still have no logo :(

Other than that, go wild!  Make us a logo and keep in mind the idea of the blog: Collective Otaku.

Oh, and please, don’t go with the creepy otaku stereotype.  Nobody on this blog fits that.

Good Luck.

P.S: The deadline is March 1st, 2011!

PPS: To enter, send the submission as an email to navarr+logocontest@gtaero.net.

JGaming – Professor Layton 4 – The Beginning

Posted by Mindez on 2011年1月18日 – 21時49分
Filed under Japanese, Professor Layton, Video Games

When I was a kid, I had a Sega Master System. But that’s kinda irrelevant because I can’t actually remember almost any of the games that were on it. So yeah, let’s just skip that generation. When I was a (slightly older) kid, I had a Sega Mega Drive (Or I guess a ‘Genesis’ for like 95% of people that are going to read this). The Sega consoles were the first that I ever owned and I have many memories of games I used to play.

For some reason, I guess from some yard sale or somewhere, I actually owned a Japanese copy of a game on the Mega Drive that I’ve come to learn was called “Shining in the Darkness” (Or “Shining and the Darkness” in Japanese). It was a hassle to get the game to work to begin with, since Japanese Mega Drive cartridges were differently shaped and the console actually did have a built-in software region lock, but I eventually managed to play the game and, well, there I was playing a game entirely in Japanese. That was my first encounter with the Japanese language, actually. Quite fitting that my first encounter with Japanese would be related to gaming, actually. Perhaps this is subconciously fuelling my desire to be a Games Programmer at a Japanese company. Who knows.

But yeah, I didn’t understand a word of it. But it was still an awesome game that I was really enjoying; the story itself was very minimal, basic dungeon roaming kind of experience. As far as gameplay elements went, it was easy to see my health and level. I think the main stumbling point of that game came when I had to figure out the shops, since enemies were just smashing through my armor. That’s probably the point at which I gave up. Since I got the English version a few months later, it wasn’t a big deal for me at the time. I gotta say as well, younger me had a lot more patience than I did, considering the opening cutscenes are kinda long to not understand any of it.

Shining and the Darkness

Shining and the Darkness, my first ever Japanese gaming experience.

So yeah, it’s kind of fitting that my first experience with Japanese at all came from a gaming point of view considering the topic of this post. But the point I’ve tried to make, in a kind of roundabout tangential kind of way, is that I am a gamer. I’ve been a gamer since first turning on my Mega Drive, and I’ll be a gamer until… well, probably until some big company ruins everything about gaming in their hunt for profit (I give it about 3-4 years at an outside guess). Even then I’ll probably still be gaming, dusting off the hard drive with all my emulators and playing through all the classics again.

Back in February of last year, I started a Youtube channel. Well, technically not STARTED a Youtube channel, since I’ve had the channel for about 5 years now. But I started posting to it. Attempting to follow in the wake of big star Youtubers like Chuggaaconroy, SSoHPKC, NintendoCapriSun, ProtonJon, etc. as a Let’s Player; someone who essentially just played games, recorded it, and talked. A simple formula, but one that tends to result in amazingly entertaining videos, particularly from the aforementioned people. I don’t think I’m quite there yet, but hey.

In the last month or so of my LPing career so to speak, I’ve been a bit too busy to work on actual LP series’ for having to do lots of intense revision for some exams that are coming up, so to avoid major prolonged downtime I decided to start another series. A quick series, a series that I could basically just open an emulator, hit record, blabble on, then post it. Lemme just tell you… that didn’t work out.

For some reason I’d decided to play through a Japanese game; Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Flute. I.. can’t remember why I started this project when I knew I’d basically have next to no time to do anything, but I did it anyway. The idea was that I could pick up some Japanese while translating every line, it’d be super quick and it’d be a pretty awesome idea for a series. It may have been an awesome idea for a series, but it sure wasn’t quick. Oh well, who really cares about revision anyway. Right? Guys? …Right?

Ah well. So this is going to be my little niche in Collective Otaku – I’ll be posting occasional 15-or-so minute videos on my Youtube channel, http://www.youtube.com/mindez, and I’ll be mirroring them right here on Collective Otaku. They probably won’t be THAT regular, but they’ll exist at least.

So now, I present to you, Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Flute, the fourth game in the Layton series, set before all of the other English released ones so far, FULLY translated, line by line, painstakingly, including puzzles. The first three episodes are below! (Although the audio quality sucks on the first two because I was using my laptop. NEVER AGAIN!)



What I’m Watching (Winter 2011 Edition)

Posted by Navarr on 2011年1月18日 – 20時19分
Filed under General

Alright everyone, so the last time I made one of these posts was AWHILE ago, and I’m trying to get Collective Otaku back up on its feet again, so here we go with another What I’m Watching.

  • Angelic Layer (2/26)
    I am very much aware that this is a very, very old anime and I am finally watching it.  I took a liking to it after it was recommended by a close friend.
  • Gosick (2/?)
    This is an anime about a little girl who is crazy good at solving mysteries, no matter how crazy they are.  It feels like Umineko no Naku Koro Ni but without actual magic being involved.  It may not be original, but I’m still looking forward to the next episode.
  • Lilpri (40/?)
    Why am I watching this.. why can’t I stop.. what’s wrong with me? ;A;!
  • Kimi ni Todoke, Season 2 (1/13)
    I LOVE ♥ Kimi Ni Todoke, as does one of the singers for Puffy Ami Yumi.  There is no way in hell I’d miss the second season.
  • Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (2/12)
    This anime is completely ridiculous.  It seems its only purpose is comedy.  All the situations in it are entirely outrageous.  I don’t recommend it.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magika (2/?)
    Wow.  Maybe I’m just a SHAFT fanboy, but I love what they’re doing with this one.  I definitely recommend you pick it up.  It is fascinating for a Mahou Shoujo anime.  As Blog好き says, its full of SHAFT being SHAFT.
  • Naruto: Shippuuden (194/?)
    WHEN WILL THE FILLER END?!
  • Onii-chan no Koto nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne! (2/12)
    The title is a mouth full, but it looks like it will be interesting.  Its about an adopted girl’s love for her brother, of whom she loved before she found out she was adopted.  Very ecchi.  She does not have pure intents at all.  Mostly humour based, this one.  Much different from OreImo.
  • Pokémon Best Wishes! (15/?)
    DON’T JUDGE ME!!!!
  • Sora no Otoshimono: Forte (2/12)
    Yes, I’m late picking this one up, but I enjoyed the first season.  Its pretty much just for the humour.  There is no good reason to watch this series.  Its just funny.
  • Tegami Bachi Reverse (15/25)
    Tegami Bachi, I love you! ^_^;;  GAUCHE?! DOKO DESU KA, GAUCHE?! v.v!
  • Toaru Majutsu no Index II (14/24)
    If I could love the Toaru series any more, I would.  owo;;  Index + Railgun = ♥