Korean Zombie Desk Car 8


Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka
It was a pretty huge fanservice episode this week. I realized that this and Madoka are the only ones that haven't done a swimsuit/beach episode. Madoka has some obvious reasons, since they don't have time for this kind of fanservice stuff, but I'm surprised to see that Zombie Desu Ka doesn't have it yet. Instead, we get a more "cosplay"-type episode. Usually, I post the screenshot of the CV for Yuu every episode, but it was a shitty screen and that CV didn't sound "Yuu-like". I know she has never spoken, but the other ones sounded closer to what I would have imagined. lolz I guess the voice just didn't sound "cutesy" enough.


Mask Donalds; at least this it fits with the entire mask giveaway thing they have in the anime. She shows up quite often as a side character; apparently, she is Yuki's friend. I wonder if anyone else noticed the ridiculous GIGA Burger poster; it seems like a huge bargain deal. XD


I bet he does too; he also likes twin tails. This was quite a large amount of screen time for a side character, though. I mean, her other friend got maybe zero lines and essentially just sat around looking pretty.


It was very uncharacteristic of her this episode, though. She opened up the episode with a Mahou Shoujo kick, but then went all dere-dere for the rest of the episode.


I don't know what to think of his new harem addition now that we get to see more of her. The other three girls clearly fit distinctly different categories, but she kind of just blends in with no real "eccentric" points. She feels a little bland, making me very un-opinionated about her.


To be honest, this episode in comparison to the other ones wasn't as amazing. I was laughing throughout it, but I guess some of it was bit bland since it was hugely focused on Yuki. Comparing this to the last episode of Madoka, I think Madoka is an edge ahead now. This is still highly recommended by me though, as both are still amazing anime so far. This was clearly setting up for a heavier episode next week.

There was a random Prince of Tennis reference at the next episode preview, if anyone else caught it.

~Pearz

Radiant Historia



So, for the week-ish, I've been playing a newly released NDS game, Radiant Historia. I finally beat it last night. Overall, I found it to be a pretty good game. This is the gist of how the game works: you are given the White Chronicle before your first mission. You learn, during that mission, that you can move back in time at specific key points to alter the outcomes of the future.

Now, I am very, very, very opinionated when it comes to time travel, since I do believe in the Butterfly Effect. I had to cast that aside to even be able to accept the idea that the small changes you make in time only affect small things. The idea that there are only two main timelines between which you travel around felt even more insane. Every action you make should create a new timeline, creating indefinitely many more timelines. I'm hugely straying from the point of the post, but I had to comment on needing to ignore the huge flaws in this time travelling.

You would hop back and forth between the two timelines, and pretty much play them in unison to complete the game. Overall, the gameplay was pretty good. The only problem was the "forced" checkpoints. They would force it so that certain things needed to happen in the other time before you could progress in your current one, effectively keeping you from getting too ahead in one. This kept the game flowing in the way the developers wanted rather than allowing a more free-flowing game where you can go to the timeline that you choose.


The battle style was interesting and fun. It was more based on good timing of when to attack or defend, since scaling in this game was extremely slow. They probably made stats scale slowly to make it such that when you travel back in time, things are still mildly difficult. So, things are more based on tactics, which I do like.

The story was good, too. It had a couple of twists along the way with a solid ending. The only real problem was one of the final twists: the raison d'etre for the End Boss' motive. It seemed a little weak to be the huge motive for everything. The two companions that follow you throughout the game have very little character. I disliked that too, since every other character got much more screen time in the story. Overall, the impact of the story was good and told at a pretty good pace.

It has a huge replay factor, since going back to complete all the small things takes a lot of time. I spent around 30 hours in this game, and I'm still not fully complete. I'm close, though. I recommend this game for anyone with an NDS. It's well worth the time (and money, in case you don't use a flash card).

Overall: 8.5/10

So, I mentioned last that I use a flash card (NDSTT), which is very outdated. Luckily, a new patch came out recently for the firmware and I can play some more games now. Two of the games were translated from Japanese (since there's  no English localization), Tales of Innocence and Saga 2: Goddess of Destiny. I'll probably play those next.

Side note: I realize that, due to my anime-reviewing lately, I instantly thought of reviewing the game as I was playing first. I'm in a criticizing mode, I guess. Either way, it's almost time for Zombie episodes again. ~yay!!~

~Pearz

Infinite Harem 8

It's a day later than intended, but owelz. I've been busy playing on my NDS, something that I will post about later when I beat the game.

Infinite Stratos 8
Charles is way too good with her IS, with the weapon-swapping to a dagger to parry and then gunning Houki. That's way too good.

I realized that they always display three groupies every time they need to depict the "average" student body, but the three girls change almost every time. There's no Pika-tan to be seen this episode! I guess all the groupies get equal screen time and she got too much until now.

Charles and her jokes... Thinking of the five girls, she is clearly my favourite.

Houki asserts her dominance over Ichika with force.


...and then that's followed with Laura doing the same. As with every anime, halfway through we get the beach swimsuit episode. Infinite Stratos was just a couple episodes later than everyone else.

So, about Yumekui Merry: I had the video open looking for screencaps when I decided not to post. Compared with Madoka and Zombie this season, everything seems to pale in comparison. I'll still finish the series, like Dragon Crisis, but I probably won't make a post until it is complete. My theory is that Chizuru = Treesea while Pharos = their sensei. He gets way too much screen time to be someone that is just background cast.

~Pearz

Madoka Magica 8



I love this fanart so much. Whoever made it is amazing, absolutely amazing. I realized that this show is heavy, heavy storyline and pretty much discussing anything about it will ruin it for anyone that has not watched the episode already. I feel this is an amazing series to watch, so I won't ruin anything and leave pretty much the entire post in a spoiler button. A non-spoiler comment is that there are many revelations this episode. We see a different side to pretty much every charater this episode, with huge advances in the plot. Although, to be fair, every episode after the first two have been advancing the plot fast...

Spoiler:
I can't say that I didn't see this coming. 3/3 theories were pretty much confirmed this episode. I'm not sure if the subbers were clear about the last line of the episode.
The episode ends with Kyubey noting "since this country calls women who is still growing up a shoujo(少女 girl?), for girls who on the way of becoming majo (魔女 witch?), it's logical to call them a mahou shoujo (魔法少女 magical girl?)."
I think that is much clearer. This confirms Kyubey is evil and that makes sense, since Homura calls him "Incubator". An incubator is used to grow things faster and he's incubating witches, so it's a very suitable name.

Poor Sayaka, though; watching her crumble is difficult. I'm pretty sure at this point that the witch in Episode 1 was her. There's no sign of Kyouko in that episode, so I can only assume that Sayaka kills her. At least she got the one thing she was after. All I can say is that she was warned. Mami told her that wishing for others might not turn out well. You've got to know exactly what you want, which adds to why I liked that scene so much (with Mami being my favorite character for it).

It was also confirmed that Homura is probably a time traveller. The Archer Theory was farfetched, but there were too many signs pointing to her coming from another time. My theory is that she came from a time where Madoka became a magic girl and was teamed with her. Something big happened, and she went back in time to try to stop it, which leads us to now.

Nothing is for certain, but many theories have been confirmed. We still have to see how this climax winds up, but I do enjoy this series quite a bit at the moment.

I'll do Infinite Stratos and Merry tommorow; actually still downloading Merry episode.

~Pearz

Finally Saw What the Hype is About


Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica
So, a few weeks back, I dropped Madoka, due to it being a bit too boring. I mainly decided to pick up this series once again after seeing a lot of amazing fanart for it. As I watched it, I learned that the exact moment I dropped it was also when everything turned amazing. It was good enough that I've included the English Wiki link on the side of the site, for at least while I find this anime awesome. There's also tons of stuff I can't read/catch while watching, for which I need to refer to that page in order to understand.

I guess the thing that really drew me into this anime was this scene:


This occurs exactly 5min30sec into the third episode. This was enough to get me hooked on the anime and also begin loving Mami. Now, this is a big reason why I started to like the anime. The first two episodes created a very generic start for a Mahou Shoujo anime, but from episode 3 onwards things turn "grim". You see a darker side to such a flashy life. It has a more "realistic" feel to it, since it's not just all fun and games while running around killing witches. On that Wiki, there's also a ton of spoilers and theories.


Remember that this anime is an original airing of this series, so there is no info on it and everyone has their own speculations and theories regarding what is going to happen. I highly recommended that you watch the anime before you browse too deep into the Wiki, as they have a lot of spoilers everywhere. They also translate all the weird text in every episode, so you can watch one episode and look back at the episode guide to look back at what it said.

Episode Spoiler:
That same scene was when the idea first came to me that Mami might be in trouble. It didn't help that lurking on 4chan clued me in to the fact that something might happen; there's just too many Madoka threads to avoid. The second that Mami was overjoyed about Madoka saying she would be there for her was when I knew it was over. Her heart was satisfied and everything was clearly too good to be true. This happens in every anime with a character that seems too good to be true before the final episode.


Theory Spoiler:
Correlates to this theory. I think this is-spot on and I would be kind of disappointed if it were not true. I mean, it is hard to refute it when this anime is based hugely on Goethe's Faust. Every sign points directly to this theory. Also, it hugely explains why Kyubey pushes so hard for Madoka to become a magical girl. Mainly because of Goethe's Faust, it pretty much guarantees that he is evil.

This one is about the dream sequence at the start. Mainly due to the latest episode, where we clearly see Sayaka moving closer to the bad side. I guess I just have a thing for watching the fall from grace. I'm not 100% certain that this will happen, but it is something that I secretly hope will happen. It's a decently convincing argument, but still hard to say if it will really happen.

The third theory that drew my attention was the Archer Theory. I liked the naming of this theory, mainly. It was named after another anime, but it's ironic that the concept art of Madoka and Homura both had them using bows as weapons. I just found that interesting although I highly doubt the theory. It's also kind of supported by when Kyubey says that Sayaka has super-fast healing because of her wish. So, the fact that Homura can almost teleport while moving could insinuate that she might have wished for something regarding time travel.

Japanese fans noticed that the font of the kanji "魔法" (mahou, magic) in the show's logo text is heavily stylized, and could be read instead as "廃怯" (hai-kyou, cowardice, hesitation).

The visually valid joke title, "廃怯少女 まどか☆マギカ" (Hai-Kyou Shoujo Madoka Magika), could be translated as "wavering girl Madoka Magica"
Since this isn't much of a spoiler, I'll include it here. It could also could explain why, in the dream sequence, she still isn't a magic girl yet.

There is a chance that I will add this to my weekly blogging. It depends on how the episode this week turns out. I gotta say, though, that story-wise, this is amazing. It is shaping up to be one of my favourite anime of all-time, depending on how it ends. It is living up to all the hype and hysteria surrounding it. I mean, it already has a spin-off manga series out; how big do you have to be to get that? I really hope that this lives up to my expectations.

~Pearz

Korean Zombie Desk Car 7


Kora Wa Zombie Desu Ka
I'll start this off by saying that Madoka will get a post very soon. I re-watched Madoka and, this time, caught up to the most recent episode. For now, I can say that I was dead-set that Zombie would be the best anime this season, but now I'm not sure with Madoka turning into a contender. I'll explain more later.


We get to learn about the String Theory from the genious Haruna. We also learned about Tanabata from her, too. It was a very informative episode. ;)


I didn't realize what this was talking about until I heard it the second time while doing screencaps. What they were talking about was this. It is a very, very common Chinese dish that pretty much every Cantonese person has eaten. It's just a small tidbid of info that I found interesting when I watched this.


The new girl comes into his harem with a bang. She steals his first kiss and becomes his wife. Seriously, way to try and dominate the harem instantly; it's too bad that Yuu will win in the end.


There's also a random girl for one line but I wonder if she'll one day gets more appearances. Overall, this was another good episode that had me laughing nonstop. Hands down, this is one of my top picks for humour anime, but it gets hard to compare when considering a serious story like Madoka. It's like comparing apples and oranges when comparing humour and storyline; whichever one I saw last ends up being the one I like more. The one big thing is that, with humour, you can't really go wrong but, with story, one episode is all it takes to completely ruin it.

Side note: Dragon Crisis has officially been dropped due to being extremely low on my ratings. The balance of power was broken in Episode 7. When it is story-/battle-based, a power balance is very important. When things stop making sense compared to older episodes, I dislike it very much.

~Pearz

Infinite Harem 7 and Yumekui Merry 7


Infinite Stratos
It took an extra day to sub this week, due to translator issues, but it was a decent episode. We get to learn a bit about Houki's past, which isn't too bad.


There's also a lot of trash talking between the girls. It was fun to finally see Laura's IS in action, too.


Her IS seems a little...overpowered. I mean, that is like Matrix powers...


So, he likes his girls to talk like boys? I think this is the root of the problem, as a main character. It could explain to me why he doesn't notice his own harem; it's 'cause he's not looking for a girl.


This also explains why Charles is in the lead, by far, for his harem. The anime is going decently, I guess; it's nothing amazing but still watchable. So far, it's the neutral 7/10 for this anime.

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Yumekui Merry
This was a pure filler episode. This entire episode happened in one chapter of the manga. (I'm trying not to get ahead in the manga compared to anime, so I only keep 1-2 chapters ahead of anime, by the way.)


Sigh. GG subs, trolling us with their subs again. D:


At least they finally get together-ish. Although it wasn't hard to see this coming.


I think Treesea is Chizuru's dream demon. I actually wouldn't know, since Chizuru only exists in the anime. It seems like another mysterious character that we won't learn about until the final episodes. We will see, though.


At least Yui and Engi show up in the next episode again. It'll be someone to perk up this show again.

~Pearz

HON - The 6 Worst Games I've Ever Had in My Life...in a Row

Now, we all have some bad games here and there, but these 6 games were killer. Not only do they rival some of my current worst games, but they were put together back-to-back. This just put me to WTF RAGE.

Some background first: I generally play the mid or carry. My favourites for the mid are carries like Soulstealer, Forsaken Archer, and Corrupted Disciple. My current HON stats are here.

Game 1: Mid as Tundra
The game started off with them screaming for me to pick Hellbringer over Dark Lady, since Blue would carry with Zephyr, so I made the concession and went with Tundra. The game then started normally...until I realized, "NO WARDS!?!??!?!" Now, I'm not one to rage QQ about supporting and, as a Tundra, I can scout runes myself, so I let this pass. Being a better mid player than the opposing Moon Queen, I proceeded to dominate her with rune control and first-blooded her around lv7. At this point, I decided to go ganking to help the other lanes, which is where the trip downhill began.

I quickly learned that at top, Rampage and Chipper had pure hatred for each other and were trying to get the other killed. When I tried to go up to save Chipper, he ran the other way so that I couldn't save him. *facepalm*

From there on, every gank I ran failed since they had wards (and saw me coming), whereas we didn't. Conversely, since I was not at mid, I couldn't tell which way MQ was going, leading to many successful ganks on their side.

Long story short, we got one ward placed 20min in by our carry, Blue, but it was too little too late. We had already lost horridly.

It didn't help that Myrmidon insisted on using his mic even though no one could hear him, and Rampage and Zephyr talked in some non-English language, assuming we understood.

I thought that nightmare was over, but then began...

Game 2: Bot as Slither with Rho
Now, I'm not much of a support player, but when the team decides they must be xx hero, I'm forced to balance team out by supporting. The game started and I began thinking that this would be a joke of a game. They had 4 carries and Tempest; we could win this pretty fast.

There's not much to say; the early game was about getting stomped badly until the mid game began. I would keep calling to push the towers down, but we decided to run off and farm instead of pushing together. There were wild goose chases for heroes in jungles, which would lead to getting counter-ganked. Our team decided to run around, doing whatever they wanted, while their team ran as an actual team. They played together and demolished our lack of teamwork. It was probably the least rage-filled game. It was just another game lost to bad teamwork. It's sad, because it was a game we should have won easily, if we had just pretended to work together.

Game 3: Mid as Soulstealer
Now, this was a Banning Draft game. We clearly got the better picks as a team, and Soulstealer is one of my best. I was pretty confident going into this game. Then the game began and so did the pain. The other team ran two players mid against me, leaving bot for solo Kraken against Sand Wraith and Torturer. Tort asked if he was needed mid, but I refused since I had confidence in my skill (and, also, a farmed Sand could win by himself). I did not see myself getting utterly destroyed at mid by the two of them. Two heroes were out-levelling me and keeping me clearly out of the EXP range of the creeps. I knew this lane was gone and had become a free farm for Disciple, but I didn't realize that the other lanes had lost just as bad.

Armadon and Plague Rider lost top, giving off a free farm to Magebane. I still don't even know how this is possible. Bot gave off two  kills to a solo Kraken, leaving all three lanes in bad shape. When Disciple, with his free farm from mid, starting ganking around, we couldn't even leave the base. The game ended 10min later, and we got demolished.

Game 4: Mid as Soulstealer (solo)
After such a huge slaughter, I wanted to redeem my SS. I mean, how could I lose with SS twice in a row? It was a simple reason why we lost this time: zero support. There was no courier, so obviously also no wards. They even ran against me 2v1 in mid (this NEVER HAPPENS and then it happened twice in a row...) This time, the players facing me were much less skilled. They could not keep me out of the lane, and I was at least keeping up with the farm of the two of them, which is good for 2v1.

However, having no courier forced me to walk home for my items twice, which really slowed me down. Combined with zero rune control, I had no idea who was getting ganked when one of them walked off.

Now, with a dual mid, their solo lane was top for Wild Soul. It was expected that Rho would win that lane, being 2v1, until I learned that this Wild Soul was insanely good. He just ran in, slaughtering them, and this was combined with the mid heroes ganking bot constantly, destroying that lane too. They just pushed together with better coordination, and we were running an under-farmed SS and lacked any nuking power to initiate.

They slowly pushed us back until we finally lost. Two horrible defeats in a row with one of my best with a lane setup that never happens; who would have thought?

Game 5: Bot as Slither (solo)
We had a Wild Soul and I wanted to give Rho as Swiftblade the better farm at top, so I went bot to take the punishment. As expected, it was a horrible lane. I gave their carry, Magebane, a free farm. That, combined with me missing a lot of my slows, hurt a lot.

I had faith that Rho would carry, so I kept at it, buying out wards to give our team sight (something we got none of in the other games). The other support here bought zero wards all game, despite playing one of the biggest support heroes in game. Sigh... I should have known, since the guy kept spamming over his mic just to piss the team off. That was when mid kept getting ganked from the top heroes, and he would be screaming into his mic about the lack of wards and lack of MIA calls. Eventually, Magebane decided he was done free farming and ran around destroying everyone. So much for mid coming to slowing him down... It was a gruelling game supporting combined with people raging over mic.

Game 6: Bot as Dark Lady
Blacksmith insisted on going mid even though we had a much better choice with Bubbles. It was no surprise when he got his ass handed to him by Soulstealer. Behemoth, being the amazing asshole,  forced me to go bot (which is not as good a lane for a carry), since he was all, "OMGZ I NEED FARM TOO." I was fine, since I would be facing the Sand Wraith, and would be potentially slowing him down in his process of destroying our team .

The game was starting off well, with us keeping Sand from farming...until backup came. Mid had gotten annihilated (no surprise), so their mid proceeded to move to the other lanes, destroying those too. We got zero warning from our mid, other than him raging about how bad it was and how unlucky he was. The team fights had started, and I wasn't farmed enough. As the game dragged on bit-by-bit, Sand finally came in, swept us all up and then the game was over. If only our mid hadn't failed so hard... It wasn't a huge WTF loss, but it didn't help that I had lost horridly five times in a row before this.

So, six complete losses in a row; we didn't stand a chance, no matter what we picked.

Stealth edit: My favourite HON song...

~Pearz

Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka 6



This episode had some serious plot, so I have to go back to the original title. Personally, I prefer the humour, but a serious plot-driven episode isn't bad either. We finally got to learn more about Yuu and also met Dai-sensei.


Was I the only one that got the WTF moment for half a second here? I was like, "WHY IS IT GLOWING!??!?!?!!?"


Here's a clear shot of Dai-sensei; I wonder if she'll end up in his harem, too. From the looks of it, we will get to see her more later, which is a good thing.


I saw this coming from a mile away. I was screaming at my laptop for what would happen next. Sigh. It's just cliche stuff that happens every time. I can't say it was particularly bad, just horribly overdone.


There are EXACTLY the same ones I can buy and eat every week. God, they are awesome, but so expensive.


It was a really good episode, overall. You've been introduced to probably the entire main plot with this episode. Finally, there's a purpose for Ayumu and his Harem to go after. I'm excited to see more episodes. I still think that this is the best anime of the season, by far.

BTW: There will be no more Dragon Crisis posts. This arc with a fail wolf that looks like she's constantly being raped just by being touched does not amuse me. If I'm posting about this BS, then I might as well one-up it and do Rio instead.

~Pearz

Infinite Stratos 6 and Yumekui Merry 6


Infinite Stratos
Reverse trap = win. Charles shows how absolutely awesome she is and how she blows her competition out of the water in Ichika's harem.


It started with some amazing yaoi action; even Ichika can't resist his charm.


He even wanted to get Charles to shower with him and then got disappointed when it didn't happen.


It's all part of Charles' master plan to win Ichika: bait him a bit and then bag him.


She even followed up on what she missed out on last episode and got fed by him here, too.


I am 100% sure that this is the ranking of the girls now. Charles is ahead by far with Rin barely making an appearance this episode. I enjoyed this episode with Charles clearly dominating the harem. Let's see how Laura goes now.

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Yumekui Merry
We finally got to see that Merry is much stronger than she appears.


I hope to see more of Engi in the future, since she and Yui are my favourite characters so far in this anime.


John Doe made his reappearance this episode with a lot of back story, explaining how dream demons came to the real world. You got a good insight to the background story, and also a hint as to what their next objective will be. After striving to steal Main Character's vessal, it felt odd to see him being so helpful. It feels almost like the original synopsis with the World of Cats was just a cheap ploy to get people to give it a try. His character has turned into nothing more than a side character that helps provide new information.


There's no shortage of fanservice, at least, to keep people watching during lengthy explanations.


I don't think I even need to go more in-depth about how tsundere Merry is, as this episode made it clearly obvious.


It seems like the next episode will be a pure fanservice episode. Every anime lately has to go to the beach at least once. Dragon Crisis did it last week, so now it's Merry's turn.

~Pearz