Lego Jurassic World Review

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This game is fairly new and it covers the plots of the first four films! I recently finished watching all 4 titles so it’s fun to relive the adventures in the Lego format. Each film gets 5 levels to itself, which makes for a solid amount of stages to get through. This is the first Lego game that I’ve played aside from Lego Marvel if I recall correctly and it’s definitely fun to check them out. I do like the little nods and fourth wall breaking that they give the dinosaurs.

The first world deals with the first Jurassic Park being unveiled and a few key players have been invited to see if it’s ready to be opened. Their seals of approval are all that the park need, but the T Rex may scare them from doing this! The second world has one of the guys reluctantly come back to the island…the second island anyway to save his friend, but he ends up getting stranded! The third world has the main character of the first film come back to an island filled with dinosaurs for money and has to use his wits to survive. The final world features Jurassic Park. It has finally become an attraction, but a new dinosaur escapes so a master Raptor trainer will have to deal with her! If you’ve seen the films, you’ll understand the plot anyway so I just provided a brief summary in case you didn’t get the chance to view them.

Lego Jurassic World is roughly 7 hours for the main game and getting all of the additional collectibles would likely stretch that to around 20-30. It’s a good length for the game and the average level was around 20-30 minutes although some of the puzzles would make me take a step back and think for a little while. Still, you shouldn’t expect to blast through every puzzle without a few delays so the completion time should still be pretty similar.

If you’ve played a Lego game before, then you should be fairly used to the gameplay and format. The gameplay has a bit of an overhead view, but it’s still 3D for the most part and plays out like Ultimate Alliance. You can punch and each character has 2-3 special abilities like crawling through tunnels or climbing a wall. Once in a while, there will be some minions to defeat and you can just smash them to bits with your punches. Quick time events appear for boss battles like the T Rex vs the Spinosaurus. You can never really lose in this game as you will infinitely respawn, but it’s not meant to be difficult anyway. Playing the Lego games is more about the experience and just enjoying the adventures.

I found it ironic that this game actually fixes some of my complaints from the film. Namely, the animal violence. The pigs will often escape the Dinosaurs in this version and even offer a little chuckle/snortle when they escape. Instead of eating each other, the Dinosaurs will usually just chase one another and even most of the humans end up surviving. Lego Jurassic World is a comedy adventure so it makes sure to never let things get too serious. I rather enjoy this as I don’t want to see the animals get eaten even if they are made of Legos. Like this, you can really sit back and enjoy the game. You’ll even see some Dinosaurs jumping on motorcycles and wearing cool sunglasses. It’s very surreal and epic.

The graphics are decently good. It’s a Lego game so it’s hard to say that the graphics are actually very good or if they are simply decent. Naturally, I will always prefer more of a traditional art style like Mario Sunshine or Super Smash Bros 64, but the actual Lego figures look fairly bright and colorful so the graphics definitely aren’t bad. They did a good job of recreating the areas and considering that everything is made out of Lego pieces, it’s pretty impressive.

The soundtrack is fun as the game tries to remix the main Jurassic Park theme with as many variations as possible. Whenever a Juke Box, Phone, Stereo, TV, or Bicycle bell makes a sound, you’ll typically hear the theme. There must be dozens of variations to find in the game and it was a nice touch. Most of the other themes are likely public domain or from the films, but the classic jingle will is definitely something to keep an eye out for whenever it shows up.

The trophies are all doable and fairly simple to achieve. It will take some time as you must go through all of the levels once again and collecting all of the Lego Pieces will be tricky unless you buy some upgrades. It’s a bit of a grind, but it’s actually very satisfying to break all of the objects around you and gather the pieces. It actually doesn’t get tedious at any point so that’s a good thing. Still, it’s a fair Platinum as they should be time consuming and you’ll have fun exploring the islands as you get yours. That’s a good amount of replay value and getting the Platinum will have meant that you’ll have done all of the extra tasks anyway so I don’t need to go into those. Needless to say, there are many characters to unlock and races to complete.

I’ll admit that I had been slightly hoping that the T Rex would defeat the Spinosaurus here as an in joke for the fans, but the Spino still pulled ahead. Granted, we got to help the T Rex here as it wouldn’t have even been a close fight otherwise. Maybe the game is actually trying to tell us something here….hmmmmmm. Either way, the T Rex will always be awesome and we can’t forget the Raptors. There’s even a twist ending in this game that I assume leads into Lego Dimensions. That will definitely be a fun title as a bunch of different franchises will be meeting up. My Lego video game collection will likely be growing as I get more of these titles, but at least now I can say that I’ve played the latest Lego game. They’re always guaranteed to be fun as the formula is quite sound. They aren’t too short or too long so they’re just right as a break from the other games that I’m playing like Flip’s Twisted World.

Overall, Lego Jurassic World is a fun game. If you like the Lego games, then you’ll definitely enjoy this one. If you haven’t played any before, then this is a nice jumping on point. There are a lot of things to do and you should enjoy it so long as you enjoy Platformers. You’ll be able to really start learning about the Jurassic Park franchise and the humor is well done. Of course, the price is rather high at the moment, but never let that stop you from getting a fun game.

Overall 7/10

Rock Lee Springtime of Youth Review


Well, I started this series way back in 2011 and yet…it has less than 40 chapters. This is why I’ve never cared for the monthly format as it takes forever for a series to get going. Maybe it was for the best though as the Rock Lee series was truly terrible and couldn’t get a single thing right. I have to say that almost every single chapter was a struggle to get through. It gets a lot of praise online though so I clearly don’t see the appeal of it. I guess this is the kind of comedy that the world wants from Naruto…I’ll stick with the main series and its jokes instead. I am glad that the series managed to finish and I hope that the Sasuke one turns out to be better.

There’s not much of a plot for this one as it’s just about Rock Lee having adventures. It’s a complete comedy so you wouldn’t expect much of a plot here would you? No worries, that just means that I can make this review a little shorter and there isn’t a whole lot to talk about anyway as the manga has no real positives. All of the characters are terrible and the situations that they find themselves in are pretty terrible as well.

The new Pac Man TV show infamously has a ton of crude humor and it never seems to stop. Well, Rock Lee takes that crude humor and multiplies it by 100 as it occurs on just about every page and it’s far worse than Pac Man’s. Most of it is just plain distasteful and Rock Lee/Neji are naturally super perverted to show that they are simply bad characters. None of the heroes or villains get to keep their dignity by the time that this is all over. Most of the chapters are simply about the heroes embarrassing themselves or their friends and rarely does the series take itself seriously.

The final chapter is the big fight with Gaara and it’s another example of how bad the seies can be. All of the flashbacks are taken seriously since they are ripped directly from the main series so the rest of the chapter compensates by having thousand years of death techniques all over the place and more crude humor. The series just doesn’t take a break and you will find a scene of cross dressing or crude humor in every chapter likely without exception although I can’t verify that since I don’t plan on going through all of the chapters a second time to look for those things.

At least the art is decent, but I wouldn’t call it very good since it is much easier to draw a manga chibi style so it’s hard to tell just how good the artist is. There are fewer details to worry about and most of the screens are very clear. I could see just about any professional artist pulling this off without a hitch. The fight scenes have the potential to be decent, but they are always interrupted so it doesn’t really matter.

Somehow, the series got its own video game as well as a TV show. I just don’t see how this part of the Naruto franchise grew so large so quickly. Perhaps the show would be better, but I can’t say that I’m very interested in checking that out at the moment. Also, Rock Lee isn’t bad just because it is a spinoff to the main series. Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and Reborn! also got spinoffs in the same magazine and they were all actually good. Reborn was the most fun while DBZ had the best fights and One Piece took itself seriously. Fairy Tail and Beelzebub had non chibi spinoffs as well. Why was Naruto the one that got stuck with such a bad series? It simply isn’t right!

The concept behind Rock Lee getting his own series is pretty good, but the writers clearly were not ready for such a large task. Rock Lee should have been a great main character, but instead he ended up becoming a very unlikable one. The series may have only been 39 chapters, but they took 5 years so it felt like I was reading this series forever. With it gone, the title of worst current manga will have to go somewhere else and I’m not sure which one I’d choose at the moment. It would probably be Skip Beat, but at least that series is still light years ahead of Rock Lee.

Overall, I highly recommend avoiding this Rock Lee spinoff. Unless you want to see all of the characters degrading themselves and pulling off the exact same jokes chapter after chapter, this simply isn’t the series for you. Keep in mind, the series does have a rather large number of fans so there is still a chance that you will like it, but I just can’t recommend it. The series didn’t have any positives throughout its entire run and every chapter would remind me of just how bad it was. While it is not the worst manga of all time, it is easily one of the worst titles and can hold its own in that regard to any of the other manga series. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the next work that this author does since I’ll probably want to stay far away from it. Hopefully the Sasuke spinoff has a different group of writers behind it.

Overall 0/10

Terminator 3 Rise of The Machines Review

This is of the edited TV-14 version of the film and all thoughts below should be read as such. A review of the uncut version would likely be more negative as edited versions help to address my complaints for a product…typically.
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It’s time to take a look at the third Terminator film! The second one was very enjoyable and really captured the feel of what a Terminator film should be like. The villain was impressive and the time travel aspects were handled well even if I had some questions on it. The third film wasn’t quite as big as the second film and certainly not as legendary, but it actually holds up to the second film. They’re very close and while I may give the second film the slight edge….it’s very close. Both of them outdo each other in various ways and I’ll compare them again towards the end of the review.

Sarah Conner is gone and John must now fend for himself. The problem is that John wasn’t prepared to attack the world on his own. He has managed to scrape by somehow, but now Skynet has sent another Terminator after him. The original Terminator is around to help John against the TX, but can the older model really prove to be effective at this point? Judgment day is at hand and the humans will have to get ready for what is about to happen. Only John can save the world, but can he even save himself?

As with the last film, John makes for a very poor protagonist. It’s hard to root for him when you consider the fact that one of his very first scenes is him getting locked up in a cage and swallowing some intriguing pills. He doesn’t get much better than that as his personality is simply unlikable. It’s like he was only half listening to Sarah’s warnings and he barely even seems to remember the Terminator from the second film. Granted, it’s another version of the character, but I expected more of a reaction although he clearly does remember the cyborg since he references the second film several times. I don’t know, he just didn’t feel consistent in that area and he never became likable.

Kate is the main heroine and she probably gets the saddest role in the film. The TX naturally takes down her fiance so that she essentially has no choice but to hook up with the main guy. She moves on from the Fiance in about 5 minutes so I don’t think that the relationship was that serious anyway, but it still makes her look bad. She really had no reason to like John since they hadn’t seen each other in years and the Hollywood effect (As I like to call it anyway) should have just let her off the hook here. As just friends, it would have worked out a little better.

Enough about the humans though. John and Kate are really the only two important ones. Kate’s father does have a role involving Skynet though and the fan favorite Dr.Peter also makes a quick guest star appearance for another fun scene. Beyond that, the Terminators really take on most of the important scenes so let’s talk about them. The classic T-800 is still a very likable character. He remembers what happened in the second film thanks to a sort of unified mind or something like that.

The fight is certainly tough for the Terminator since he’s really outgunned at this point. The TX is supposed to be superior in every way so only plot hax can protect the T-800. He’s still the best character in the film, but I have to admit that the fight scenes were really stretching logic at times although I’ll go into that more in a second. If you liked The Terminator in the first two films, you’ll likely enjoy him here. He gets more than one great burn and most of his scenes have him doing something cool like “Talk to the hand!” or “You’re Terminated” There was definitely a lot of memorable material here.

The TX is the first female cyborg to be shown and she makes for a merciless villain. Technically, she is easily the strongest Terminator that we have seen at this point and her weapons are very impressive. A single hit from her energy gun can destroy most Terminators and her instant regeneration is about as good as the T-1000’s. She can take over other pieces of technology and just acts more like a modern robot villain in general. She was certainly an imposing figure and made for a good enemy to the T-800. Even if she was a little overpowered to be honest.

Unfortunately, this film has more plot hax than the first two by a long shot. As mentioned, the TX is supposed to be superior to the T-800 in every way and she proves that in several scenes. Yet, the T-800 is able to physically overpower her during the big showdown and he actually lands a number of hits. It’s like watching a Mario player in Super Smash fight someone who doesn’t know how to DI. The Terminator simply keeps hitting and flipping her and she doesn’t really try to fight back. Eventually, she just seems to realize that she’s in a fight and disposes of him rather quickly. Perhaps she was toying with him since the Terminators do have a little personality at times, but the film didn’t play it off that way. She also had many opportunities to destroy John, but didn’t. One example is when she was on the car that he was in. Simply firing her energy blast would easily destroy him along with the vehicle. Such a minor explosion would barely harm her after all, but instead she tried throwing some punches and got knocked off of the car. Rookie mistake TX….

While the plot hax was around, the fight scenes were still the best in the franchise. The film producers/directors must have realized that CGI is the way of the future as the battles are like watching the Man of Steel if it was made a few years ago. The characters are really landing heavy blows on each other and they even have some decent speed feats. The action scenes are certainly ahead of their time and while you won’t enjoy them if you don’t care for CGI, CGI fans like myself (Only for live action) will definitely get a kick out of the bout. The TX should have won without much of a fight, but it’s more entertaining this way I suppose. Their battle was certainly the highlight of the film.

I found this film to be less violent than the second one and it feels like the series is getting a little tamer with each installment, which is always good. Of course, keep in mind that I am reviewing the edited version. The film can also still be intense at times like when the TX impales someone and drives while in that position. That scene was definitely pretty gruesome and the body count does get rather large at times. The implied violence can also get to you so naturally, you should know that you are about to watch a pretty intense film when you start this one. The soundtrack is also great and I have to say that it might even be better than the second’s. It’s very fast paced and the classic theme also shows up to increase the intensity. Most of the tracks really fit the scenes and while you won’t remember them for long, they are enjoyable while present.

In the end, how does this film stack up against the second one? Well, T2 has the edge with the main protagonist as Sarah is much better than John. T2 has less plot hax in the fight scenes and it was also a lot more epic as the stakes felt more real and theatrical. T3 was really epic as well, but in a way, you could tell that it was the sequel that was meant to be more comic bookey. Not a real word, but that’s a good way to describe it. While T2 was more of a thriller, T3 felt like a comic book film with super villains fighting the main lead. Even just looking at how the Terminators teleport onto the scene. T2 had the much cooler entrance as the Cyborgs just appear while T3 has a black bubble that appears first, which looked decently interesting, but it wasn’t quite as epic. T3 easily had the best action scenes of the trilogy and I dare say that it had better one liners for Arnold although most of his lines tend to be really cool. As such, it’s a close battle and both films are neck and neck, but I’ve got to give T3 the slight edge here. It’s hard to say whether T3 will always have the lead or not as one may age better than the other, but it’ll be interesting to see.

I’ve also got to give T3 props for the ending as it was fairly incredible and the kind of ending that you don’t see very often anymore. At least, not without a “Part II” or a direct sequel. While Salvation would end up rolling along, this was still an ending to a complete film and one that was fairly surprising. I was expecting more plot hax to be honest like the bomb plan actually working, but I loved every bit of the ending. It was all part of the plan and the heroes were just being led along. I’d love to see another ending like that sometimes, but it’s hard to handle correctly. We’ll just have to see if anymore films have it in them.

Overall, Terminator 3 was better than I ever could have anticipated. The fights were a lot of fun and the humor was handled well. It felt like a complete film and a very interesting one that used time travel to its fullest. Skynet never gives up and the quick pacing of the film keeps the audience guessing. The pacing isn’t quite as good as T2 as it slows down sometimes, but it’s typically fast enough. If John had been a better main character, the film would have been that much better. I definitely recommend this film to Terminator fans and you may be pleasantly surprised upon watching it. I wonder if the upcoming Terminator film will manage to have a stronger Terminator than the TX. Somehow, I doubt it, but that would be interesting to see.

Overall 7/10

Slayers Revolution Review

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I’m closing in on the end of the Slayers franchise. It’s been a fun ride and this is certainly one of the definitive fantasy franchises out there. Revolution is certainly a lot newer than the other TV shows and you can tell as the animation is much brighter and more colorful compared to the old ones. Gone is the classic 90’s style and you can say hello to the 2000’s. The budget is consistently good for the animation and it is a lot of fun to see the classic cast return.

Slayers Revolution is only 13 episodes so that means that the plot can move at a much quicker pace than it usually would. A mysterious rabbit with hands for ears appears one day and starts destroying magical tanks. The cops believe that Lina Inverse is behind this so they hire special investigator Wizer Frayon so arrest her. To prove her innocence and get vengeance on the rabbit Lina and friends decide to find him. That being said, forces beyond what they may comprehend are also at play in the shadows. A kingdom which fell to a plague is involved and an evil kingdom is seeking the use the Zanaffar armor to make themselves a legitimate threat to the rest of the world. Finally, what does Zellos have to do with all of this?

While the series is only 13 episodes, it still makes time for some filler episodes. One of them involved a boulder contest as the heroes had to make the best golem possible to defeat the others and roll a ball up a legendary mountain. Pokota (The rabbit) decided to get involved as well for a fairly enjoyable one shot episode. Slayers has always been a series that had a lot of filler around to keep things from getting too serious with the main storyline. As far as the fillers go, they weren’t bad here and I at least did enjoy that one. The series is at its best when the show gets back to the plot though.

The beginning of the show is a little slow, but it starts to get more exciting as it shows up. Especially once the assassin, Zuuma, shows up. He’s fairly powerful for an opponent and then the heroes set sail for the evil kingdom to settle things once and for all. The final 5-6 episodes are essentially one long climax that takes a few pauses before continuing each time. The climax can certainly hold its own against any of the older titles. (It can’t win though, but it can hold its own) You’ll want to be ready for the giant monster at the end!

The series does a good job of mixing comedy with action as per usual. I’d say that Slayers has been modernized in a good way in that it is still similar to how it used to be in a nostalgic way. You could even make the case that Revolution feels more like a Shonen than the previous titles at times since the action was really nonstop for almost half of the series at the end. While Next still had some of the best fight scenes in the franchise, the sheer power of the animation keeps it close here.

As I mentioned earlier, the animation never lets up and it’s worlds beyond what we saw in the previous shows. One look at the theme song will show you that this series means business and that’s especially good news for all of the energy attacks, which have never looked so vibrant. As this is J.C. Staff, I’m not surprised since they are certainly one of the best animation companies on the block. I look forward to seeing how great the next show looks.

As for the humor, Slayers is typically funny and this series does a good job with that for the most part. The only downer in that area is the fact that the chest jokes are still present and more prevalent than ever as the villains always use this to taunt Lina before she blows them up. Still, while it is annoying, it’s probably the tamest form of fanservice that you can even have in a show and isn’t really enough to hurt the score. It also vanishes once we are around halfway through the series, which was certainly nice to see.

As always, Lina Inverse makes for a pretty great main character. She’s easily the strongest member from the main heroes and her Lord of Nightmare’s techniques really make her a threat for any opponent. She never uses the Giga Slave as the risks are probably too great, but she has many other spells at her disposal to tip the scales. While I would have liked for her to have beaten up Zellos to show how skilled she is, Lina always has a plan up her sleeve. It’s hard to find a more likable main character than Lina and I’m confident that she will always be a likable protagonist at this point. When I think of epic anime heroines, Lina is certainly near the top.

Gourry is true to form as you would expect. He’s still a fun character to root for and you’ll feel bad for him since he no longer has the Sword of Light. For most of the series, that does prevent him from being useful and he tends to be in the way during a fight scene. He tries hard, but it’s tough to manage when you have a sword that breaks over and over again. He gets a great fight scene at the end of the show to make up for this tough and he certainly outranks most of the supporting cast members.

Zelgadis used to be the intense rival character of the show, but he’s typically played for laughs in the current seasons. He has a lot of serious moments as well, but he’s so weak that you really can’t take him seriously. While teaming up with Amelia, he was barely able to beat a puppet. His skills have definitely stopped improving and they may have regressed over the years. At this point, he’s easily the weakest member of the main group, but I suppose that he means well.
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Amelia is certainly a more likable character than Zelgadis and her search for peace and justice is one of the reasons why the character is so endearing. It’s also good to see a fighter using magic as a close combat type of attack instead of just shooting energy blasts all the time. She’s still not quite as strong as Lina, which we saw in the filler episode where the two fought, but Amelia has become a dependable fighter in her own right. Unlike Lina and her other pals, Amelia never allows herself to be corrupted and tries to help everyone that she can.

Zellos makes an appearance in this season and his role was actually a little larger than I would have guessed. He mostly sticks to the shadows, but actually gets to fight at one point when he challenges Lina and her friends. That was great since we haven’t seen him fight in a very long time. He easily overpowered them and showed why the main characters would always be outranked. Even if their spells can destroy him, they can never hit because of the large gap in speed. Zellos was a fun villain to have in this series and he’s certainly gone up since Next. The new voice an intriguing switch and I’ll have to get used to just about all of the new voices, but it’s not like I’ll have to get used to them for very long at this rate. I expect to see him in the next season as well.

Sylphiel appears briefly for the final fight, which will be cool for long time fans. As in the first show, she starts off with a very impressive scene as she blocks a blast from the legendary Zanaffar. After that, she quickly forgets how to be a fighter though and goes back to fainting and being in distress. It’s odd as the exact same thing happened in the first season. Maybe that’s just her gimmick. She obviously has a lot of combat potential, but it’ll likely never be explored. She’s a good character, but a longer action scene would have helped a lot.

Pokota is one of the new main characters for this season and it’s safe to say that he’s not holding back in terms of personality. It doesn’t really work for me even though the show was trying to go for the tough guy routine. I can’t take him seriously in his present form and his quest to destroy the magic tanks felt pretty futile since they can be manufactured so easily. He has a tragic past and a few twists as well, but he didn’t really add anything to the show. He’s great at running and somehow knows how to use the Dragon Slave, but he was never very helpful when actual villains arrived. It’s a classic example of a character who’s great against heroes, but bad against villains. Sort of like the police in your average super hero film. They can sometimes have the edge against Batman, but fail to stop random muggers. Pokota certainly didn’t do wonders for the cast, but he should be a little better in the next season since he’ll have mellowed out a little.

Duclis is one of the big villains and his plot ties into Pokota’s. Duclis wants to make the world pay for abandoning his people in their time of need and gets a giant monster ready to destroy everyone. Towards the end, he loses confidence in his goal and basically just decides to leave everything up to fate. He had a solid design and his light saber was cool, but he’s certainly not one of the more interesting villains around. I also wouldn’t say that he was a great threat power wise although he was a decent fighter. The show hyped up a fight between him and Lina, but it got interrupted before it could start, which was regrettable.

Gioconda was probably the worst villain here though as she was fairly generic. She just wanted to become richer and richer with every passing year. A noble goal, but when you’re already a multi billionaire…what use is more money? She already had her own kingdom, army, and castles. I just wonder why she would need more money or power, but goals don’t always have to make sense I suppose. She’s a decent fighter when she has a weapon, but I’m confident that Gourry would have had the edge if he had the Sword of Light. As it stands, he was holding back anyway. Gioconda’s android was much more memorable and she also seemed to be a better fighter as she could heal.

Zuuma is an assassin who really wants to destroy Lina Inverse. He is a human who knows quite a few good spells and his shadow magic can nullify all other spells. That’s definitely a very handy technique to have against someone like Lina since he would have the edge over her in a sword fight. He did a good job of handling the whole team and I have a feeling that he’s going to do quite well in the next season as well. He was certainly the best villain here and a great addition to the overall cast.

Zanaffar is the big monster who appears at the end of the show and works quite well as the final boss. He can actually talk, which was certainly a good thing and his abilities were impressive. He is impervious to most spells and he has a giant laser blast which can deal massive amounts of damage. I don’t think that he could be Shabranigdo, but he could give the other giant monsters a decent fight. His lack of speed is probably the main thing that holds him back, but that’s where his immunity to magic comes in. He’s a solid all around boss when you really think about it.

As I mentioned earlier, the best part of the series is the last 5-6 episodes, but the best episode of the batch would probably be the 3 on 3 fight in the Gladiator Ring. That was a lot of fun and we got to see how some of the fighters handle themselves individually. Because Lina is always surrounded by her friends, we rarely get to see her fight on her own. It’s why I was sad that she didn’t end up fighting Duclis. If that’s one thing that Slayers Revolution needed more of, it was one on one fights. Next actually had several of them and I suppose that it is one of the perks of being about double the size of this show. The pros easily outweigh the cons for long running series and I’d gladly take another 10 fillers if it meant that we would get 3 more episodes with some great fight scenes. A longer Gourry vs Zuuma fight would have been great as well since you could tell that it would be a really fun rivalry.

As for the soundtrack, Slayers Revolution certainly doesn’t disappoint there. The theme song is easily the best one in the franchise and the theme is quite catchy. It plays during the climax of the arc and certainly fits in quite well. The ending theme is also solid and the music that appears during the show is good as well. While not amazing, there were two themes during the episodes that I certainly liked. One was the danger approaching theme (Not the title, but that’s the best way to describe it) which occurred whenever things were looking bad for the heroes and the normal battle theme was also decently good. The theme song is what really helps the series as the soundtrack can be a little bland otherwise, but certainly still good and it fits for the series. It fits so well that a lot of the tunes have been present for the whole franchise.

Slayers also ends this season with a lot of cliffhangers to ideally be wrapped up in the next installment. The Android who helped Lina and friends seems to be part of a bigger scheme and the Rezo jars are still around the world. If they are all destroyed, Rezo will die as well. We also can’t forget the fact that the heroes need to find Rezo and fast if they are to awaken Pokota’s people. These plots and more, you can bet that the next show is going to have a lot of action and even Zuuma shall return if you saw the after credits scene. He has the jar and he has the power. The heroes barely stopped him last time and unless Gourry is able to keep on using the Sword of Light, the heroes could be outclassed.
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Overall, Slayers Revolution was quite good and the 13 episode set up worked well for the series. One thing that hurt Slayers Try a little was the large amounts of filler that the series had, which kept you from getting too invested in the story. Part of the appeal of Slayers is the random adventures that they have, but I prefer to have all of the filler before the main plot or after it so that it isn’t interrupted too much. That rarely happens though and it still works out all right, but the short length of the series forced it to go at a rapid pace. Whether you have seen the other Slayer titles or not, this is a fun fantasy/action anime to check out. I would highly recommend still watching the other Slayers shows if you liked this one though as you will see their origin stories and learn a lot more about the universe as a whole. There are a lot of wink-wink moments to season 1 for the fans and it’s always fun to know the references. I’ll be checking out the next show soon and we’ll see if it can manage to top this one.

Overall 7/10

Jurassic World Review

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I recently saw all three Jurassic Park films so I was all set for this one. To an extent, the premise of the Jurassic Park franchise guarantees that the films will always get low scores thanks to the fact that it revolves around dinosaurs and will have a lot of animal violence. This film is no exception and it’s safe to say that it does lose to Jurassic Park III, but beats the first two films. If you’re a fan of the older films, you should definitely enjoy this one.

Claire has helped to put Jurassic Park back onto the map as the new amusement park, Jurassic World. While her boss doesn’t care to much about the financial part of the operations, that’s where she comes in. She had her team create a new dinosaur that was even bigger than the T Rex to increase the wow factor of the park, but ends up underestimating the creature. It escapes so she is forced to call in the resident dinosaur expert, Owen Grady!

That’s essentially the plot in a nutshell and while I will be talking about the film a lot, I’ll try to avoid spoilers. I managed to see this film yesterday which was fun since a day 0 viewing is always intense. The audience wasn’t quite as ready to roll as they were in Age of Ultron or the first Avengers, but it’s mostly due to the timeslot. They were still ready for action though and I had my comfortable recliner so I was ready for anything as well.

I was cracking up for the first 30-45 minutes. Roughly of course since this isn’t the kind of film where you will be glancing at your watch. It was probably partially intentional by the film, but I mostly didn’t laugh at its jokes, but at the scenes due to being unintentionally funny. One example of a joke where I was laughing (on the inside, I rarely laugh on the outside) was when the parents tease Zach after his heartwarming moment with his friend. It was all in good fun so the parents went a little higher on my coolness chart. They were essentially non factors here though as their screen time was minimal. The kids were fairly awful, but they did help the humor for the film.

Another example is when the two kids finally meet up with Claire. She tries to be nice and excited about seeing them only to get one of the more awkward receptions. Zach basically doesn’t want to talk to her at all and Gray’s mood swings of being somber and then super excited don’t wait for anyone. Claire can’t stay so she lets her assistant babysit them. You just gotta feel bad for Claire and I sympathized with her for the whole film. She doesn’t have a lot of free time so it makes sense that she hasn’t seen her nephews in 7 years. It’s regrettable, but these things happen and the kids shouldn’t hold it against her. She’s trying to be a good Aunt, but they never even gave her a chance. Gray may have, but he was disheartened when she couldn’t stay.

Let’s quickly talk about the two kids. Zach’s thing is that he believes that he’s really cool. He completely ignores his parents at times and ends up flirting with every single girl that he meets. (Even though he’s taken) Zach’s constantly giving Gray a hard time. “Sometimes we have to grow up!” Those may not have been his exact words, but he gets a lot of the most generic dialogue in the film and he’s also a shining bad example in many situations like when he decides to head to the forbidden zone. He felt like the kind of character that you would see in a commercial warning you not to hang out with people like that. He has his hero moments towards the end with Gray of course and he sees the light, but that would help him in the sequel, not here. He was just terrible.

No worries, Gray was awful as well. He’s way too excited and constantly blasts through rides to the dismay of the babysitter. At one point, he starts to whine about where all the dinosaurs are…even though we see that dozens of them are in front of him only about a minute later. There’s no way that he wouldn’t have been able to see them. It reminds me of a critique for the flowers film where someone saw a dead body before they ever could have seen it. Sort of the opposite of this event. Gray really had no consideration for anyone but himself during his visit to the park and while you can sympathize with him since Zach doesn’t want to hang out with him, Gray should have still done a better job of enjoying the park. He’s also pretty emotionless when pointing out a giant dinosaur that is around.

Time for a few quick nitpicks. After two characters jump into a lake, we see them walking a few minutes later and they are hardly wet. Their hair is matter and one of the T shirts is soggy, but the characters look way too dry considering the fact that they were completely underwater for a little while. Anyone who has ever jumped into a pool and then walked out will know that you don’t dry out that quickly. There’s also the ball ride where two characters explore the park. Even once an emergency announcement cuts off the presentation and tells everyone to leave…the ball is unaffected. The passenger still has complete control of it and that’s certainly not very safe. If passengers could control these things to go wherever they wanted, people would constantly be crashing into dinosaurs.

I did also chuckle at the fact that one guy’s whole job was making sure that all of the balls were safe during the crisis. He tells everyone that they’re all safe until he actually looks at the screen and realizes that one is gone. Whoops….that didn’t look too good for the guy. I liked his Dinosaur collection and admired the fact that he always talked a good game, but he was out of his league and he also tried flirting towards the end. Luckily, it wound up being the ultimate friend zone moment and I thought that it was handled rather well. We need more friend zone moments to be honest as they would make just about every film better.

The actual park is definitely somewhere that you would want to go and it looks kind of like Epcot. They have big water rides and a petting zoo section as well. You could say that it’s a fusion of your local zoo with one of the big amusement parks. It’s hard to believe that people would get bored of such a place even though the wow factor was apparently leaving. How I see it, Zoos have remained relevant for decades, a Dinosaur park would at least last 20 years without any big decline in viewership. That being said, Claire may have been overreacting as the numbers still seemed to be quite good when she was mentioning the statistics.

Let’s take this time to quickly talk about Owen and Claire. I haven’t really mentioned Owen up til now, but he did have some solid scenes. I did enjoy his interactions with the Raptors and I like how it was handled. He was their partner, not their boss although he thought of himself as an Alpha. Owen’s essentially your average action hero who has his good moments and his iffy ones. His flirting and dicey remarks keep him from being a good character, but he’s still decent for the most part. It’s easy to root for him at any rate and he certainly knows what he’s doing. He’s another guy who never bows to authority and talks when he feels like it. Imagine if everyone in real life were so bold right? I think the world would be topsy turvy before long.

Claire is a good main heroine for the film and she was actually one of my favorite characters. She didn’t want to have kids which is a noble goal and she has spent her career moving up in the ranks until she became one of the higher ups at the biggest amusement park in the world. That’s no small feat to say the least. Towards the end of the film, she has a bit of a generic ending where you can probably guess that she decides to back away from one part of her logic, but she was still a good character through and through. I thought that she did a decent job watching the kids. Sure, she left that to the assistant, but she gave them VIP passes and they got to have a blast. It’s not like she could take a day off when the big bosses were in town and awaiting her sales pitch after all. I also can’t really imagine her getting on some of the rides and having a blast like the kids. Actually, one of the rides was only built for 2 anyway.

The assistant was actually fairly likable and I originally thought that she was going to be one of the main characters. The actress looked like the main one from Twilight so I thought that I may have just been out of the loop there, but considering her minimal role, I’m going to assume that it was someone else. She definitely didn’t care to be there, but she’s probably seen and been on all of the rides many times over at this point. Still, her facade was good enough to fool the kids I’d say, but they were intent on giving her a tough time right from the start. Her character path goes down a dicey road and I felt bad for the whole time. It just wasn’t her day.

The higher up in charge of the park was decently charismatic. The film was going for a Tony Stark kind of feel for the guy and it worked to an extent. He started to look a little iffy towards the end though, but at least he cared about the dinosaurs a little. As always, there is a human antagonist to liven things up and he is similar to the guy from the first film. He talks tough to everyone and he has his own plans in mind. He gave the film another jolt of humor and I liked him as one of the big bads. This guy certainly wasn’t playing around.

Time to talk about the mystery dino. If you’re seen the trailers, then you know that there is a new Dinosaur hybrid attacking everyone. While she is a little smaller than I had expected, she still packs a punch and makes for a great threat. There are few dinos who can hope to match up to this fighter and she is also very smart. The fact that this dinosaur has been created in a lab gave the writers a little freedom to add some new techniques so this dinosaur doesn’t just need to rely on physical strength. It has two defensive skills, which greatly increase how deadly it can be in a fight. This dinosaur was definitely one of the highlights.

The classics like the T Rex and the Raptor are also present of course and I still love both dinosaurs. Once you see this film, you’ll be reminded why the T Rex is so awesome and how merciless the Raptors can be. It would have been fun to have seen the Spinosaurus enter the fray, but maybe next time. The Raptors get a fairly large role and are integral to the plot. They are still my favorite Dinosaurs out there and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. They just look so happy and cuddly next to all of the others.

As you might expect, there is a big climactic fight towards the end of the film and it’s quite impressive. It was a fight that I actually called out as I walked into the theater and I was thrilled to see it play out. The fighters gave it their all and we see some nice teamwork as well. The fight isn’t that short either and gives the dinosaurs enough time to really show what they are made of. It’s easily the best fight scene that we’ve gotten in the Jurassic Park franchise and it’s hard to picture this one being topped.

There are some plot elements left around to get you ready for the inevitable sequel. Let’s just say that the next film could have dog sized super dinosaurs running around and it’ll make for a pretty epic clash. Alternately, it could have a plot similar to the original King Kong. Either way, the sequel should be fun and I wonder if the main characters would return or if it would be time for a new cast. I would like these characters to return, but I’m open to change so that we wouldn’t have to see the kids return.

Now, this review sounds decently positive so you may expect something like a 7? A 7 is what the film would have gotten if not for the main negative, but it is something that it almost literally impossible for the Jurassic Park franchise to get away from. That is…animal violence. It’s a dinosaur eat dinosaur world out there so it’s expected and I’m not surprised at the fact that dinosaurs are getting hurt all over the place. It simply makes sense even if it is regrettable. So, while I enjoyed the film as a whole, I’ve still got to cripple the final rating due to how many times an animal is injured and how prevalent this is in the film.

One scene is really just there so that the mini army can get some hype as a gun man casually shoots one of the Pterodactyls. That was just unnecessary and a lot of the other animal scenes aren’t much better. We see dinosaurs blown up, eaten, and effectively drowned. If you’re a dinosaur in this film, then you’re in a whole lot of trouble. A lot of the hurt also comes to my good ole Raptors, which is unfortunate, but probably a price of being one of the main characters. I could go on and on, but you get the drift and it occurs too often to be overlooked so you should prepare for a fairly low score on this one.

Still, it was more fun than the first three Jurassic Park films and certainly seemed to have more fun with itself as well. I’m glad that the Park finally got to open and the film was certainly able to make it look much more authentic than it could have with older effects. This is one of those times where the fact that it’s modern and has some good effects, really helps it. To an extent, I feel like new technology will always help films to have an edge over older ones. The older ones typically hold their own through the better writing, but when you have a good modern film against a good old one, the modern one certainly has that extra edge. Jurassic Park III still wins overall, but the tone and pacing of this film can’t be beat. World feels like a classic Summer Blockbuster.

Hmmm, have I touched on everything? I managed to stay pretty vague on all spoiler related areas and that also slightly limits what I can discuss in the review. The first half was really funny and made this the funniest film in the series and the ending also had the best action scene from all 4 so it was a nice balance. Any scene with the Raptors is typically a good scene as well. As for the soundtrack, you’ll certainly recognize the classic theme from the first film as well as the trailer theme, which plays during one of the scenes. The soundtrack may be a tad generic at points, but the main theme is still iconic and you probably won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. As long as you have one memorable scene, that’s more than most films have got.

While the animal violence is really the only big negative, there are some mild ones as well since this still wouldn’t be a perfect film if the violence was gone. (Although it would be a good-very good one) The kids naturally weren’t good characters, but the rest of the cast helped to nullify them. The writing isn’t great although this is mainly due to Owen and Zach’s characters as the rest are typically fine. There is one scene that will puzzle you a little bit as two security guards seem to have no idea that the Park is in trouble even though the alarms had already gone through a good half hour ago. It struck me as a little odd and random. That’s about it so the film was mostly solid. At around 2 hours, it was a good run time, which gave the film enough time to develop the characters and showcase the dinosaurs.

While Jurassic World is mainly a popcorn film with a lot of epic action and enjoyable moments, it can actually get pretty somber and sad at other moments. One of those moments is the Dinosaur graveyard, which is definitely tragic and one of the more emotional moments of the film. One moment that is supposed to be emotional is when we learn of a divorce, but it has no point in the film and its thrown out so randomly that you probably won’t feel any emotion other than a casual wince. Of course, if you like to have fun with films, then that may be a good thing as I was having fun grinning and wincing for some of the dialogue, but in a good way. On the whole, Jurassic World is still a fairly upbeat film that stays happy for most of its run time as it only gets sad once in a while.

The Pterodactyl attack scene will just get thrown in with the rest of the animal violence issue, but I wonder how some critics will take it. I read a critique of Jurassic Park III that Pterodactyls shouldn’t be strong enough to lift a grown man. Let’s just say that they lift quite a few people during the attack in this one. Is the science/films right or are the real life keyboard warriors correct on this one? I don’t know myself, but it seems perfectly feasible that Pterodactyle could lift humans up since animals are typically so tough. I’m no dinosaur expert though and am happy just being a casual moviegoer.

Overall, I’m definitely glad that I saw this one. If you liked the first three Jurassic Park films, then you should definitely like this one a lot. At the most, you may not like the fact that it’s much more of an action film than the first Jurassic Park, which was a survival film, but it’s still about dinosaurs and it’s still a good film so I believe that you would end up enjoying it. The animal violence is regrettable and it’s something that likely won’t leave the series until they bring in the mecha dinosaurs and I’m ready for that to enter the picture soon. Well, next stop should be good ole Terminator and it’ll be fun to see how that holds up.

Overall 3/10

Future Card Buddyfight Review

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Buddyfight really started out strong. It came out of the gate swinging and I liked the new battle style a lot. It didn’t revolutionize the card fighting genre like Cardfight, but it was a fun approach to the new style of play. The characters were likable, which made for some good intro duels. The middle of the series is where Buddyfight began to lose some of its steam as the show started to get a little repetitive. Luckily, the final tournament showed up and helped to break the cycle. We had a lot of fun duels towards the end, which was intense. Buddyfight ended as it started, a very fun show with lots of excitement.

Gao Mikado is the main character and one day he decides to start Buddy Fighting competitively when he draws a good Buddy. His Buddy is Drum and he comes from Dragon World. Let’s take a step back quickly and look at the universe. Drawing a Buddy opens a portal between dimensions and the monster inside of the card actually appears. Luckily, all monsters (for now) are friendly so this is safe for all people. Even villains enjoy having their buddies so that they can improve their abilities and really break the law. Gao and Drum bicker a lot, but they ultimately become close friends who help each other when the going gets tough.

The series starts off cautiously and Gao duels many opponents who become his friends and rivals. Then a tournament is announced and Gao decides to enter to show the world how great he is. The tournament will be tough to win as many new faces show up, but they don’t scare Gao. Gao thinks of himself as the Mighty Sunfighter so he never backs down from a fight or from a challenge.

Part 2 of the series is where the stakes start to get higher. A villain group known as Disaster has shown up and they want to rid the world of adults. By opening a portal to the dark part of the monster world, they can end everything! A betrayal also rocks Gao’s world and the heroes will never be the same again. Gao will have to brace himself as he tackles this overwhelming challenge!

Let’s start off with how to play the game. The gameplay is unique in the sense that it is all about offense. Each turn involves you attacking the other player and you don’t have to take time to defend. Each turn, you can summon monsters until their combined level is three. Then, you attack the other player and try to get his life down from 10 to 0. There are naturally spells and traps to augment the gameplay as well. It results in a very fast moving duel, which makes it difficult to stretch into multi parters. Even the final fight of the series is barely more than one part and if you cut out the subplots, it probably could be one episode.

The clan that you choose will determine what your fighting style is like. Gao uses a Dragon deck so he focuses on attacking until his opponents finally go down. Katana World is about misdirection and fooling your opponent and Magic World is totally for defense and gimmicks. Naturally, Dragon World is easily my favorite since offense is definitely my style, but they all have their merits and weaknesses.

Gao is the main character of the series and also one of the main highlights. He’s one of the better main characters as he is determined and always wins the right way. He doesn’t use any stall tactics or overpowered cards to win as he chooses to talk with his skills. He’s one of the only main characters to ever go from the premiere to the finale without losing once. I doubt that many characters could hope to pull that off and the series isn’t exactly short. There are over 50 episodes to be found in Buddyfight. “The strongest deck in history” is his catchphrase and it shows how tough he is. Gao’s modest at times, but he knows just how good he is.

His partner is Drum and they definitely had a lot of banter during the older episodes. Towards the end of the series, they definitely became close, but still had some banter at times. Drum’s not bad, but he’s surprisingly weak considering that he’s the classic partner of the series. Not a problem though, he has some super forms to help him out in that area. He’s not the best monster, but certainly not the worst one and at least Drum has character.

Zanya is the calm and collected member of the group. He uses ninja cards to defeat his enemies and he has a trap card, which can be used to stop just about any opponent when used correctly. While he is very tough and the characters always acknowledge that, he’s not quite as good as Gao or Tesuku. He’s better than guys like Tetsuya and Shido, but he still needs a game changer if he wants to be among the best. I’m confident that his skills will be at that level at some point and we just have to give the guy some time. The only thing stopping him from being a really cool character is his gimmick, which gets old quickly. Zanya is deathly afraid of girls and he can’t talk or duel when in front of them. You can see how this becomes a problem and it is brought up constantly. I still like Zanya a lot, but this does take away from his coolness factor. Zanya is a big believer in honor and justice so you can see why I like the guy. He has some pretty emotional duels during the series. His buddy has a really cool design, but is almost always silent so he doesn’t get to have much of a personality. Ah well, at least Zanya’s a cool fighter. The next ally of Gao’s is decidedly less quiet and fierce.
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Tetsuya’s whole gimmick is that he loves dancing. His friends fear that it takes up too much of his time and that he’s not totally devoting his energy to Buddyfighting. They’re not wrong, but Tetsuya is still a good duelist. While he is decidedly weaker than Gao or Zanya, Tetsuya always gives it his all and comes through when the team needs him. His jingle is surprisingly catchy and you may find yourself dancing to the tune when he begins the duel. The fact that he mixes in Banana’s with his hair is brilliant and one of the reasons why you shouldn’t underestimate the guy. While he is rarely solemn, Tetsuya knows when it’s time to be serious. His buddy probably has more personality than all of the other monsters. The demon has his own TV show and actually does some undercover work to help the heroes find the location of the villain’s base. He is also a whole species in and of himself, which saves a lot of time for when he has to check out multiple locations at the same time.

Tasuku is the boy genius of the series and it feels like the show heavily considered making him the main character. The show’s endings are always about him and even the opening gave him a decently big role. The show may have also just been trying to make him a fan favorite from the start. It wasn’t hard since Tasuku is a great character from start to finish. He goes through a similar character arc that Kai went through in Cardfight. The series seems to really love using the redemption plot device as a character will get a taste of darkness and the terrifying power that comes with it, but ultimately returns to the light for good. This happened to Rouga, Kiri, and Tasuku in the show and I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens to more characters. (To a lesser extent, you could say the same for the final villain of the show)

Tasuku is a nice guy and he always has fun when he is in a Buddyfight. He helps Gao enjoy the game and encourages younger players as well. He gets frustrated when the police force is corrupted and goes too far in his attempts to make everything all right on his own. Luckily, that’s where his Buddy comes in. Jack is a dragon and like Drum, he gets a lot of development. Jack is a buddy who really cares about what is going on in the human world and he plays a pivotal role in getting Tasuku back to the side of the heroes and he refused to become a villain. Having a good friend is always important and the bond between Tasuku and Jack is a strong one. These two will certainly continue to be some of the highlights of the show and Tasuku is easily my favorite character aside from Gao.

Kiri was once one of Gao’s best friends until he changed. He was very timid and also weak when it came to Buddyfighting. As a result, Kiri got bullied all the time and decided that he needed more power. The villains were glad to give him that and now Kiri was able to use his powers in the real world like Rouga, Gao, and Tasuku. He instantly became one of the strongest fighters in the series and he was pretty hardcore as the Grim Reaper. To quickly specify, the monsters are already real for all of the players. The only difference with Disaster Force/Future Force is that you can also make spell and equip cards real. This is still really good as Kiri has his Winter Wonderland (Not the exact name) card that can make a blizzard appear out of the blue.

Kiri was a decent friend at first, but certainly not my kind of character and he was a lot like Syrus. I was glad to see his character go through a mini arc and he ultimately became a hero again. The only difference is that he now has a lot of power. I’m confident that he will be able to help Gao out a lot in future arcs. His power up certainly helped him as a character even if I don’t care for his buddy. He just doesn’t do anything for me at the moment and needs some more personality.

Shido is one of the worst villains in the series. Apparently, he is still one of the better duelists in the school, but I can’t take him seriously. He is typically used for comic relief and isn’t much of a threat to someone like Gao. He is constantly being humiliated and appears far too often if you ask me. His partner is Sofia and she is portrayed as the serious member of the group. The problem is that she’s not much better than Shido and I have not been impressed with her either. She gets nonstop hype, but the hype never seems to transform into something more than that. I feel like the writers really don’t know what to do with her at the moment and it shows. I’m sure that she will start fighting more at some point, but for now…she is simply biding her time.

Rouga was the first real villain to show up and he stays as a supporting character throughout the series. He goes from being a true villain to a misunderstood rival who is just looking out for his friend. The turnabout certainly is cheesy and he looks really bad when he lets the main villain get under his skin. When taken seriously, Rouga is a good opponent for Gao. The problem is that he doesn’t know whether he is a villain or a rival most of the time. It’s safe to say that he’ll just be a rival in the sequel series and that will mean that Gao has yet another on. Depending on how many guys you count (Tasuku, Noboru, Kazane, Zanya, Genma, Tasuku……) it’s a long list. I suppose that a lot of people will be gunning for you once you’re at the top. Rouga’s buddy is pretty cool as he is one of the only monsters to have a decent amount of personality and Cerberus never backs down from a fight.
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He’s decently tough and doesn’t feel like an average monster, which is a good thing. I don’t think that Rouga has been handled particularly well in this series. I still like him as a rival for Gao, but he has certainly dropped in the ranks from his first appearance and it will take a while for me to be able to take him seriously. At this point, he just seems to be a little out of his league.

Genma is another rival of Gao…in a sense. He has less of a role than the others, but he’s a decently strong Buddyfighter. I’ve never been a huge fan of his though and he comes off as very arrogant at times. He also takes it very personally when his friend uses a counter card against his iconic monster. That would be like me getting upset if someone counter picked to Olimar to defeat my Captain Falcon in Smash Bros. It’s a strategically sound move so I can’t really agree with him here. Genma’s tough, but his whole strategy does revolve around his dragon so once it is defeated, he is essentially doomed. I do love his recycled footage yells though and he really gets fired up when dueling. He can certainly be better, but a lack of screen time probably didn’t help his case either.

Jin is a sneaky member who is always hard to pin down. Is he helping the heroes or on the side of the villains? The answers to these questions are eventually answered and he does play a decent role in the series, but he is a bit of a lightweight. I’ve never considered him to be very tough and he gets himself into some pretty tight pickles during the series. He needs a new deck as stealth doesn’t work out so well in this game. He’s not really my kind of supporting character, but he’s not bad.

Noboru is Goa’s original rival. At the very least, I would consider him to be Gao’s main rival as they actually got some trash talking in and Noboru really wants to defeat Gao. I don’t see that happening anytime soon as the gap between them continues to grow, but it’s still good that Noboru is trying to get on top of the situation. Surpassing Gao is just tricky for any opponent. Noboru’s buddy is a little on the dull side though as it is an old man who doesn’t have any cool special abilities. It’s impressive that Noboru can still win with his current deck as it is just a really watered down version of Gao’s. Nonetheless, I do really like Noboru’s character and he should go far in the series. He even gave Tasuku a good fight!

Terumi works for Disaster and she probably has the toughest time out of all the members since she starts to see the light and is quickly thrown out of the picture. The heroes never did give her a happy ending and it doesn’t seem like that is going to change in the sequel series. She was never a very likable character for me as she was infatuated with the leader of the villains even though she should know that he didn’t actually care for her. She was used from the start and never did anything about it.

Elf was another member of Disaster and he was not very good. Elf rarely ever fought and it was hard to gauge out good a fighter he was. It barely even mattered though since he was more interested in talking a good game than actually backing it up. His design was meant to be his whole gimmick and that will never be enough to actually be a very compelling villain. He also didn’t get any real character development unlike the other characters and I wonder if he will return soon.

Gremlin is one of the members of Disaster and he’s a decent fighter. While not quite as impressive as some of the other fighters, his legendary deck building skills are why he is feared by so many. He built the decks for all of the other fighters after all and that takes dedication. By the end, he has essentially seen the light and remembers how the game should be played. I can’t say that I really bought his sob story though as it seems like he just jumped off the deep end for the lolz.

Kazane was Gao’s final rival of the series and she just popped out from nowhere during one of the episodes. She helped Gao to remember what it was like to really enjoy the game and Kazane’s a fun character. She’s easy to root for and while her deck isn’t particularly impressive, her skills are certainly real. Her role has stayed small so far, but I’m sure that the writers have big plans for her at some point although she’s quickly fading away from being a main supporting character in the sequel series. Big plans or not, she’s a fun new rival for Gao to have. He certainly has a lot of them now!

Kemura is one of the weaker supporting characters, but I’m not too surprised since he debuted alongside a group of fighters who were essentially filler. His gimmick is that he’s constantly trying to eat his buddy and it is reused way too often. It wasn’t even funny the first time so you can imagine how tedious it gets by the 5th or 20th time. The only reason why the group was ultimately a good idea was because we got to meet one good character. Kirisame is a swordsman and his skills are about on par with Zanya’s. He’s a strong fighter all right and he even shows that he could give Gao a good challenge.
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Kyoya is the big villain of the second arc and he is certainly powerful. He took out Tasuku when they fought and he actually stood up to Gao. Granted, Kyoya didn’t stand a chance against the world’s greatest Buddyfighter, but he still tried hard and gave it his all. His goals didn’t make all that much sense though and it is hard to relate to the guy. His voice also wasn’t that good, which may have helped to prevent me frombeing a fan of his. His super form looked cool though and he is a powerful villain. He just wasn’t very good or interesting.

Azi Dahaka got a ton of hype throughout the series and fans of his were likely disappointed that he was used as an after thought in the series. After being shown to be the big mastermind behind Disaster, he didn’t do anything until he was summoned and then Gao still managed to take him out in a single hit. He did have a very ominous speech where he mentioned how Gao and the others have sealed their fate by defeating him, but that hasn’t gone anywhere at the moment. Still, the hype is real and it’s safe to say that defeating him a second time will not be so easy.

Baku and Kuguru are essentially Gao’s best friends. Baku makes the decks for Gao while Kuguru gives him the necessary intel for the fights. It’s too bad that they never got into the game as they could have been good Buddyfighters. They aren’t bad characters and are all right I suppose, but they definitely don’t add much to the series. Baku had his subplot with the Gremlin, but that’s about it. They aren’t bad though and every hero has to have a few friends. They help Gao when he’s down.

Buddyfight’s animation is quite good. I remember thinking that it looked solid from the start and the sequel series managed to improve the series even more. This title can hold its own against just about any other show. It’s still not going to be in your top 3 of all time or anything like that, but the animation is still great. Certainly well above average to say the least. The fights certainly look good and likewise with the overall animation. It’s just like Cardfight Vanguard in that every part of the animation stays consistently bright and solid throughout. The character designs and backgrounds never falter.

The soundtrack doesn’t get overshadowed as it is also quite good. The villain theme is certainly my favorite piece of music in the series. It is definitely dramatic and does a good job of building up hype for a fight. The openings are pretty lackluster though and a little worse than average. Again, the sequel series managed to improve in that area. Still, the overall soundtrack is good. I won’t call it great like the animation, but you’ll enjoy the themes and the villain music really makes up for the rest of the tracks.

Buddyfight is a great series through and through. I remember being properly hyped for the fact that Cardfight was getting a spinoff. The Cardfight cast even appears for an episode as a little cameo before getting written out. I hope to see a crossover between these two series at some point. They are certainly some of the best anime titles to have come out in the last few years and have helped to bring card game shows into the light once again. With those two going on alongside Yugioh Arc V, it’s a good time to be a trading card fan. Now, we just need Buddyfight to get its first film.

Buddyfight is a very light toned show for the most part. For a while, there isn’t much danger so the characters just have fun dueling. As expected, things began to get serious during the second half of the series and Buddyfight was able to bring us some thrilling and emotional battles by the end. Some of the fights between Tasuku and Gao at the end were amazing along with Tasuku’s battle against the enemy. The scene where the Reverse Dragonic Punisher first appears is one that you won’t forget in a hurry and it was certainly one of the best animated scenes of the series. The show really had some good variety when it came time for the duels.

As I mentioned in the intro, the pacing can be a little iffy sometimes. Buddyfight is the kind of show that doesn’t mind having several rematches and seeing the same characters fight too often can take away from the excitement. It’s similar to how I never like to see someone duel twice in a row in Cardfight because we will have just seen the deck. That happens quite a bit here, but luckily the duels are so fast paced that it is typically okay. I think that the show slowed down considerably towards the middle of the series, but the strong beginning and ending kept it in the great category. Buddyfight 100 is starting to make the same mistake though except that it has a weak beginning so far. I’m confident that it will be able to get past this issue.

In the end though, where does Buddyfight rank among the other card shows? Welllll…it would have to be in last by default. It loses to Cardfight and all of the various Yugioh Series that I’ve seen. I’m confident that it would beat the original Yugioh though and if we count it, Capsule Monsters as well. Considering the fact that Buddyfight is still a great show, you can see how steep the competition is in this genre.
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Overall, Buddyfight was a really fun watch from start to finish. Finally, we had another original franchise that was introduced to the market and ended up being a big success. It’s hard to state just how excited I was so see a new series on the air. I was confident from the start that it would be really good and I got to watch it weekly from day one thanks to the official Youtube site. Nowadays, it’s hard to create a new franchise out of the blue that still ends up being so good. Buddyfight was over 50 episodes, which gave it a lot of time to flesh out the characters and give us some good stories to go along with the fights. The animation was very good and the soundtrack was good enough to make sure that it was an epic anime in all categories. Even if Buddyfight temporarily faltered at some points, It’s a show that excelled so much that this is barely noticeable. The sequel will have a very tough time taking it down. I highly recommend this series to all fans and you won’t be disappointed upon checking it out!

Overall 8/10

Still of the Night Review

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Time for a modern mystery film! The poster is quite good as it takes the classic saying and throws in a knife for good measure. The only reason why it doesn’t work is because none of the characters look particularly intimidating in that scene. Hmmmm….ah well. I appreciate the effort. This film was not quite as good as the last two that I mentioned and it never ended up rising above itself. While I get what the film was aiming for with the flashbacks…it shouldn’t have bothered.

The main character is named Sam. He is a pretty good psychiatrist, but one of his patients is murdered one day. Sam takes this personally and begins to look into the matter. A mysterious lady who says that she had an affair with the guy appears. Her name is Brooke and she works with auctions. Sam forgets that one should always stay objective in a case and falls for her right away. That’s pretty embarrassing for the guy given that she had been messing around with a married man. Doesn’t Sam know a trap when he sees one? It becomes more and more evident that she may have destroyed the guy, but isn’t that too obvious? Sam better hope so because his life continues to be in more and more danger as the cops suspect that Sam’s days are numbered.

I almost chuckled when I googled this film to grab the names and saw that it said PG on the right. This film got a PG….really? You can tell that the Indiana Jones film was needed as the days before the PG-13 rating were certainly scary.The film isn’t that violent, but the Teddy Bear scene alone would make it PG-13 and that’s before the film becomes a horror thriller when the girl appears with the knife. Even the fact that there are flashbacks with a terrible character would make it PG-13 for all of the insanity that he is spewing.

As I’ve essentially established, I didn’t care for Sam. Going for someone who’s already been in a pretty bad affair is not the way to start a romance. Later on, we find out that she was calling it off, but it’s still a bit much and Sam didn’t know that for a while. Sam is also not the bravest action hero that I’ve seen recently. His life is at stake of course so he should be nervous, but going to the laundry room in the creepy basement at life is not the greatest of moves. Even if my life was not threatened, I wouldn’t be doing something like that.

Then, Sam also went to Central Park at night and was nearly destroyed by a random mugger. Again, that wasn’t his best move and the mugger wasn’t even that tough as he was easily defeated a few minutes later. I don’t see how the guy wouldn’t hear the heels getting close to him so he evidently lost in what must have been close to a fair fight. Sam just took too many risks in solving the mystery. I definitely couldn’t get behind him.

Naturally, I also didn’t care for Brooke. The beginning really destroyed her chances of being likable. Especially when you consider that she was hanging out with a guy who seemed to not exactly be a nice guy. She also didn’t help make herself less suspicious since Brooke was constantly acting a little shady and it’s easy to picture her destroying the guy. There are several times when she is following Sam and acting very suspicious so that you can think that she did it. But…did she do it? That’s the question!

No matter who the main villain was, Sam didn’t look too good at the end. He forgets to lock his car door and his reflexes and hearing are pretty bad. You’ll know where the scene is going as soon as there is some rustling in the backseat and it’s hard to even feel bad for Sam. Why would he not notice someone in his car? Definitely not a great move on his part and you’ll just be facepalming as it goes from bad to worse when he makes his last appearance. He basically just yells “Stop!” without making a move. I wonder if the villain will decide to stop…

The film certainly has a lot of misdirection as it tries to make everyone seem pretty imposing and scary so that Sam is unsure of who to trust. The scene with the laundry was a perfect example of this and it was also quite iffy. Someone was certainly messing around down there so were they doing it as a prank or were there ghosts in the machines? I prefer to think that it’s the latter, but you never can tell sometimes.

One reason why the film is not so good is naturally the romance between the two leads as it makes them look pretty bad. The dream also had something to do with it as the Teddy Bear getting injured was completely unnecessary. That was an example of the film just trying to be gritty for the lolz. That was pretty not cool and the film quickly turns into a horror for the climax as the heroes nearly don’t make it.

Still, that’s not really enough to break the film down to a 3 is it? No, the final piece in the puzzle is the flashback scenes with the guy who died. The film is trying to be deep and have a lot of layers by adding in this feature, but it was better off without it. We quickly learn that the guy was a pretty bad individual and almost all of his lines will just make you cringe. It’s easy to see how this guy was murdered and his speeches just bring down the overall quality of the film. His lines give us some hints as to who got him of course, but we could have found out that intel another way.

Did I mention that the cops also don’t look too good? The Detective starts to get onto the trail of the villains so he is quickly taken out of the picture. I suppose that he never had any proper combat training as he was taken down so quickly that it ended up being off screen. Yeah….that’s not cool. He was around a lot, but he never really got anything done.

Overall, Still of the Night is a film that took a lot of wide turns and didn’t succeed. While it started out as your average mystery film, the ending decided to play out like a horror film as the villain moved in with the knife all Jason Voorhees style and started to cut the cast down to size. It was handled decently although the protagonists IQs started to drop as the scenes went on. The film was simply riddled with too many problems along the way like the romance, the flashbacks, and the Dream. The Dream was totally unnecessary and we had to see it more than once. Not cool! There’s also something about the actual film that will keep it from catching your attention. Perhaps it is the characters as they definitely do not grab you. If you’re looking for a good thriller, horror, or mystery film, you can do better. This one is better left at Blockbuster this time.

Overall 3/10

North by Northwest Review

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Looks like it’s time to check out one of the classics by Hitchcock. This film plays out like a James Bond adventure in many ways, which is good and bad. The film is certainly nice and long so there is enough time to fit in quite a few plot points, but the movie ends up being one of Alfred’s weaker ones. It just can’t hold up to some of his other classics, but gives it a good effort.

Roger was just an ordinary joe for a while. He had a good job and he was satisfied with how his life was going. One day, he is kidnapped by a group who claims that he is actually Mr. Kaplan. Roger is angered by these accusations, but he drinks a beer and is nearly tricked into driving off a cliff. He regains his wits in time to survive, but how will he prove his innocence? The police are irritated by his driving while drinking trick and then Roger is framed for murder. With everyone after him, it’s going to be tough for Roger to escape. This will take all of his extreme skills.

As I mentioned, the film is a little like James Bond. One of the ways in which it is similar is how long the film is. The plot is constantly changing as the film goes on and new situations present themselves. It’s safe to say that you won’t see the ending coming from the early parts of the film because of how many transitions are present. Length can be a tricky thing, but this film handles it rather well even if I do prefer the first half of the film to the second.

See, at first, Roger is just your average joe. He is framed so he tries to clear his name after he escapes the country. We get to see him jump on trains and outrun the government. The second half has him become more of a special agent as he tries to deal with the villains. The film turned into a bit of a spy movie as we had special agents and villain organizations. Still pretty good, but a pretty big shift.

In an unfortunate similarity to James Bond, Roger begins to like one of the antagonists and they have several prolonged scenes of trying to start a romance. It goes on for quite a while and these scenes are what brings the film down. Even when Roger is trying to enact a plan or get revenge on the enemies, he takes the time to flirt and ignore the fact that Eve wants him to just leave her alone. How many times do you have to be betrayed to get the message right?

The “heroes” are also more than a little shady. I’m talking about the council who is aware of Roger’s plight. Not only do they do nothing to help the guy, but they actively try to destroy him at one point as they don’t want to risk Eve’s safety so they allow Roger to walk into a trap with one of the airplanes. (Or was it a helicopter?) It’s hard to forget that Eve was in on it so the romance should have been over and done with it. None of that “It wasn’t personal Roger” talk could get out of that one.

Roger’s mom is a pretty funny character to have around. She doesn’t take the situation seriously at all and puts Roger in many tough plights. As far as she is concerned, Roger is guilty and just making up stories to make himself look better. She had to miss a show because of Roger and I like to think that she is holding it against him for the whole movie and that’s why she’s giving him such a hard time. Missing the opera is certainly not fun.

Roger was a likable character for a while, but then he went James Bond and it was all over. The guy stopped being the epic protagonist that he used to be, but he still had his moments. The auction plan was brilliant as he did a good job in summoning the police. He started to act with more confidence in the second half of the movie as he finally began to gather his bearings and accept his role. It’s easy to root for the guy even if I don’t care for his character.

Eve is in a tough spot right from the start. She is forced to make quite a few tough decisions. It’s hard to say whether she makes the right ones or not, but then she shouldn’t have continued to mess around with Roger. There was no reason for it and endangering the mission is not cool if she was still planning to take it seriously. The main villain is fairly dull. He talks a good game…but he really doesn’t have much of a role. He’s simply the villain and there’s not a whole lot to say about him. He actually still liked Eve the whole time until he found out about the treachery as she was his girlfriend before she ever defected. He simply underestimated the power of morality and money.

As with most spy type films, there is a bunch of plot hax to be found here. Right from the start actually as Roger is held a gun point while in a very high class restaurant. The place is bustling with people and nobody notices this. Roger isn’t exactly subtle about the situation and the gunmen don’t really try to quiet him down. You’d think that the place had been deserted and the no witnesses part comes back to haunt Roger. Roger also walks right into a government establishment and allegedly take out a powerful politician. Where were the guards and how did nobody notice that Roger did not actually commit the act? These are the kinds of questions that you will have to ask yourself as you watch the film. Plot hax like this doesn’t really hurt the film, but it will make you shake your head a little.

As expected of such an old film. The writing is very good and the characters all sound respectable. Even the villain is polite in a passive aggressive way as he threatens Roger. I was surprised to see that the soundtrack was also very quick and ready to go. You don’t expect such a colorful soundtrack in such an old movie, but we had some nice tunes. That helped the film really be complete.

Overall, This is another compelling installment by Hitchcock. The main thing that holds it back is the relationship between Eve and Roger as it doesn’t make sense and is unnecessary. Once Eve sold him out to the villains, that should have been the end of that. We hardly needed more flirting after that. The film is quite long and the film uses this effectively. You’re in for a good ride in this film despite its faults. I recommend this film if you’re really into the James Bond films and you would probably like it even more than I did. However, if you’ve seen some of Hitchcock’s other thrillers like Dial M for Murder, you may find it to be a bit lacking. This film was extremely close to getting a positive rating after all, but I don’t do .5s so it had to be held back.

Overall 5/10

Fire Emblem Ankokuryuu To Hikari No Ken Review


It’s hard to believe that I’ve been reading this for around 5 years. I started in early June during 2011 according to my original blog post and the series just finished the other day. Of course, the series had already been over for years, it just hadn’t been scanned yet. Well, I appreciate the work that the scanlator did and the series was a good read. It had enough things to hold it back from being great, but it’s a good series and I got to see Marth take a leading role.

So, Marth’s kingdom was basically taken over and his family line is at an end. Marth is the only one standing and his “army” is really just a small batch of soldiers. Still, he is Prince Marth and he cannot let evil infect the planet. Slowly but surely, Marth gathers allies to help in the upcoming battles. Once the army is large enough, he will take back his kingdom and finally restore the land to peace and prosperity. The problem is that Marth is a bit of a pacifist and he doesn’t like to fight, but the only way to take down the villains will be to go to war with them. Will Marth have what it takes to defeat them all?

Now, as I mentioned earlier, it’s been around 5 years since I started the title so that’s why the basic plot may sound a little fuzzy. It’s been a long road and sometimes the manga would go on break for months or even nearly a year. While I still remember it as a fun title, I can safely say that you will be able to enjoy it much more than I did as reading it from start to finish without such long breaks is a lot more enjoyable. This way you won’t forget any plot points or begin to forget the characters. You’re always able to launch yourself right back into plot despite any breaks since the situations are typically simple, but nothing beats the average fast blast through the title.

The artwork for the series is solid and the fight scenes end up looking powerful. At times, Marth looks very similar to one of the heroines, but I suppose that their character models are similar as they even have the same style of hair. The artist probably could have still made them a little more differentiated by giving Marth a cool cloak. At times, he has his signature cape, but it’s more of a generic desert one than the one that you will remember from Super Smash Bros. Seeing as how Marth is just starting here, I suppose that he hasn’t matured to that level just yet. It would have been awesome to have seen him with that look though.

Marth gets a lot of development throughout the series as he shows everyone what a capable leader he is. At first, he had a lot of trouble with villains who were of only moderate skill, but by the end he is able to take on just about anyone. In terms of pure swordplay, he’s still not among the best yet, but he has the legendary sword Falchion. He uses that one in Super Smash Bros as well and it is a very powerful sword. It can block any energy/fire attack and no villain can stand up to its limitless power. The blade serves Marth quite well.

One part of the manga’s plot that is a bit much though is how outnumbered and outgunned Marth’s army is. At one point, they face off against an army who has a mage with them and there’s no way that the heroes should have won. The Mage could blow up cities with a single blast and Marth should have been unable to stop him. The only reason why the heroes are still able to do well is because the mage lowers his guard and lets the heroes get close to him. That guy was easily the strongest character in the entire series and he wasn’t the final boss so it was expected, but still no easier to believe. It’s why you should always be careful to keep the villains in realistic reach of the hero’s power. Slightly stronger perhaps, but not by a great deal. Seeing as how Marth is still human and he didn’t have the legendary sword yet…it shouldn’t have even been a fight.

While the title is still set in the fantasy land of Fire Emblem, it’s mostly realistic. If not for the occasional dragon or magician, you could have thought that this was based on a real world. Dramatized of course, but it is very down to Earth. That means that we don’t get a whole lot of feats, but the sword fights can be fun. My only problem with them is that the battles tend to be very short. At its core, the series was still a tactical one so we typically see the heroes making plans and discussing how to attack the enemies. It’s smartly written.

That being said, the series could also get a little slow at times. Once again, I do think that this wouldn’t be very noticeable if not for the breaks, but sometimes you can go quite a while without any real action. While Marth can be a skilled fighter, he’s not exactly a thrilling main character so that doesn’t help. Marth’s heroic, but he lives in a land where wars are always being waged and does destroy his opponents, although he tries to spare as many as possible. He couldn’t keep his hands clean all of the time and that’s actually a part of his character arc. It would have been nice to have seen him arrest everyone, but it’s always tough in a war. At least, now peace can reign…or not.

The series ends with Marth stating that more battles will be fought and that it will be quite some time until peace is kept within the lands. So, he heads off to win these battles with his friends and the series just comes to a close. It’s a decent ending as there are certainly many Fire Emblem games and there’s not much of an alternative on what kind of ending could have shown up. It seems like you need to play the game to get the full story, although you may have expected that.

This series is based off of one of the video games and the author has fun throwing in guest stars and cameos from some of the fan favorite individuals in the game who weren’t totally relevant to the plot. It appears like the red haired swordsman, one of the best characters in the series, is one of those guest stars. He never really contributes to the series except to beat up some henchmen and get a lot of hype. Still, I liked him from the start and I believe that I had him fight on the blog a while back. He was certainly a skilled warrior.

Oguma was the main “rival” character. I used the quotation marks because he acts like a cool Shonen rival, but technically, it’s hard to call him that since Marth is not competitive at all. Oguma was really needed as he is the army’s best fighter and without him, Marth would have surely lost the war. Oguma thought up many of the plans that were used in the battles and his overwhelming power in combat was a great asset to the team. He was certainly likable. Sheeda was the main heroine and she is good with dragons. I believe that she also knew some healing magic. Sheeda was a nice supporting character and helped out throughout the series. There’s not a whole lot to say about her, but she helped to remind Marth that while the war is going on, not everything is bleak. She has a happier ending than most of the other characters. Kain is the main comic relief of the series and he’s all right I suppose. I just didn’t really care for the guy and his magic abilities never got to be that impressive. He’s around, but he rarely helps out and is typically getting into danger all of the time.

There are certainly many more characters that pop up throughout the series. There were about 12 volumes, which were made up of 59 chapters so a lot of things got to happen. There was a more experienced mage who loved to tease Kain about the fact that she was infinitely stronger than him. There were also some fun fights with other black dragons and the main villain made his plans. More of the characters would leave a lasting impression on me with a re read and I may go through the series again someday, but I feel like I still remember enough of it that a re read isn’t quite necessary. While I don’t know most of the names, the characters are what really counts.

Another reason why the series was so good is that it was a class act from start to finish. The series avoids the fanservice trap and none of the characters are terrible. There were probably some unlikable villains and heroes around, but I can’t think of any that made it to Roshi or Oolong levels. The writing was good and didn’t need to rely on any cheap tricks to get through the story.

Overall, I definitely recommend checking out this title. Now that it’s finally finished, you can blast through it and witness the legendary war that Marth fought through. It’s no wonder why his kingdom looks like its in ruins in Super Smash Bros Brawl. I do think that Meta Knight wouldn’t have stood a chance against such a seasoned veteran there! Marth’s a solid lead and he’s surrounded by a good supporting cast. There is a lot of action in the series even though there are large periods of peace between the fights. The art is solid and the writing is consistently good. I’d probably add another star to this title with a re read as it would address my pacing problems a little, but either way it’s a complete title to check out. I’ve now finished two of the Fire Emblem titles and I highly recommend checking out the one with Al and Roy if you haven’t yet. The franchise has numerous manga titles so hopefully I will be checking out another one of them someday. If this manga doesn’t give you some incentive to play as Marth, I don’t know what will.

Overall 7/10

Sword Art Online Progressive

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It’s time to head back to Aincrad with this series. Seeing as how Arc 1 is easily the best part of the SAO franchise, it’s good to see it again. Unfortunately, the series is already heading into the fanservice trap, which is regrettable. If the series can stay away from that it should be okay, but if not, it’s game over! I’ll have a review for this once the manga finishes. Overall 5/10