This new Bleach game is another sequel that I was anticipating with high expectations. The last Bleach game was very good. This time the Bleach game was more of a hack and slash title than a standard type of fighting game. Each of the twenty one characters has a variety of special attacks and combos.

They did an excellent job with matching the cel shaded look of the graphics with the anime source material. The characters look like they just stepped out of the anime and seamlessly into the game. Because of the Huecho – Mundo storyline which takes place in a desolate empty expanse of null space, the environments are over used, endless and bland. But that is what the story calls for. They did a good job with what they had to work with pretty faithfully. Reading this section of the manga seemed interminable, as they crossed this desert of nothingness for page after page.

When this emptiness is portrayed in a game it also seems like an unending white-out that is just boring. The simple geometric structures repeat over and over. Remember those basic building blocks that you got in Second Life to teach you how to build structures in a game?

The dialog is also repetitive. The same one liners repeat again and again. Even though you have the option to unlock and open up the various characters, they are going to repeat the same few moves, and animations over and over. It is pretty linear, and dull for Bleach.

Your connection and involvement with the emotions of the characters in the game is minor. The controls cause predetermined moves to execute. Birds could peck at the controller and get about as good results as you do. It would have ben better if the controller was mapped to hands and feet for kicks and strikes like a real fighting game.

There is a story mode, Mission Mode and Soul Attack. when you progress along far enough in Story Mode it will then unlock more of the Missions. Then the Soul Attack Missions depend upon your beating the Mission Mode Missions.

This Bleach game was too blah and not much fun. I give Bleach Soul Resurrection, 6 flaming balls of kido out of 10.

I had done an interview with someone from Aerial 7 so I checked out what they had. I found this set of Aerial 7 Tank Headphones in a Hello Kitty motif. I wanted them immediately, but I forced myself to really look around first to make sure that it wasn’t just the Hello Kitty design that was drawing me in.

I had many needs to fill. I wanted a headset because I had enough with ear buds. I wanted a decent mic for recording vocals at home. Being able to plug it into an acoustic electric guitar could come in handy for tuning, or practice while the TV is on. It had to be stable enough to handle Skype and not add additional static. Whatever I chose had to be compatible with all of our Apple devices too.

The Aerial7 Tank Headphones feature a 57mm Driver which gives a fairly robust sound quality. They are very comfortable, and have a small enough setting for my size. It came in attractive packaging. The instruction manual was very brief though, and could have been an actual booklet to help explain how each attachment is used in more detail for people who don’t know. For my purpose, just a short description and picture of each cord that they had was enough.

The set Includes a soft cloth case to carry the headphones and the variety of cords all together. The whole thing is compact enough to fit inside the niche in a guitar case, or easily hold an iPod as well as the headphones and the cords, in your purse or a beach bag. It is definitely worth it having the soft feeling of the foam on the ears. The sound is more round and holistic, the stereo separation is much more effective. They cut out background noise such as an air conditioner very well too.

These Tanks, while offering a very cute addition to my collection of Hello Kitty skins and covers for my eQlectronics, are extremely multi functional and handy. There are the many applications for these. I can use them for song writing Apps on my iPad, or gaming, as well as listening to music on iPods. It has those 3.5mm iPhone® – Skype™ adapters which means I can plug the alternate cord with the red and blue ends into my netbook PC for meetings on Skype, and for podcasts. All I have to do is switch over to the cord with the built in mic, or the 3.5mm input plug and 3.5mm iPhone that were included. It also came with a very long coiled DJ cord that can be plugged into a mixer. The fatter plug 3.5mm – 6.3mm (1/4″) adapter is included too. With everything it comes with and the way it sounds, it seems reasonable for the price. I just hope they will last.

Having said that, there is some professional looking artwork here. The costumes are – interesting. The use of colors is eye popping and effective. But it is in that creepy hentai style of pubescent, yet with developed breasts look, that gets both fans and Japanese politicians all hot and bothered. Presumably for very different reasons. It is a game like this one, which is being imported to the USA that would curl the hair of conservative anti anime governor Shintaro Ishihara.

This game’s presentation makes me wonder who their target market was. Teens I guess. The problem with that is, teen boys usually spend most of their time gaming, and get pretty good at it. Hyperdimension Neptunia doesn’t have the game play to back itself. JRPG fans would come down pretty hard on this mess I imagine. All JRPG’s get compared to Final Fantasy games. This one cannot be compared even to an old version of FF.

For those who are into looking at cartoon breasts, there is plenty of it. It would seem that someone had tons of these designs, and then a game was worked around it. It is as if the game play was an after thought. You are going to see dialog boxes galore with the gals Green Heart, Blanc, Black Heart and Purple Heart showing off their cleavage, side boobs, and under boobs time after time, as the text goes on and on forever.

It must have been intended as a satire of the gaming industry. But the gist of it has been lost in translation. Even if you are kinky enough to appreciate all the boobage, you might not be willing to read thru all of it as it goes on, and on.

Hyperdimension Neptunia from Idea Factory’s brittle attempt to rag on the video-game business casts the big name game consoles as Goddesses at war. The game is an attack on the game industry. Like an Ourobourous swallowing its tail the game eats itself.

“Shut yer hole, thunder tits.” This memorable quote from the game is exactly how I would imagine a Goddess speaking, wouldn’t you?

Idea Factory, Sega, or the script writer for the english dub certainly seems to be carrying several grudges. They have come out in Hyperdimension Neptunia with an axe to grind. Even convention goers and the players themselves get slammed by these console Goddesses. The english voice acting, isn’t acting at all. The lines are read with a tone of incredulity, and vacancy. “WTF, why would my character say this?”

The characters have merely been tacked on and used to fill out a JRPG template and not a good one at that. Neptune herself was conceptualized from the unreleased SEGA Neptune which was a failed system, planned to come out back in 1994 and never did.

There is Princess Pear a character who must symbolize Nintendo’s Princess Peach. The Nintendo Princess herself has never taken her clothes off. They represented all of the game consoles with these under dressed anime type girls. Of course the console war is on between these personified archons. The war is for control of the planet “Gameindustri”. The four Goddesses are Purple Heart, for the never released Sega Neptune, White Heart for Wii, Green Heart is Xbox and Black Heart is PS3. Purple Heart is banished to Planet Neptune. Bitter at all Sega? She has amnesia, and has to collect Key Fragments from around the world.

The story itself is reference heavy. The jokes don’t really work. The dialog is shockingly terrible. The excuses for having the girls touching each other, and strip aren’t convincing. The nudity is all fan-service. One of the characters is dressed only in a few cloth bandages within the first fifteen minutes of the game. There are numerous crotch and panty shots. With long lingering trailing camera pans over the boobs and private areas, the game is a primer for video game sexism and objectification.

The writing never has a punch line. It is so awkward. Some reviewers have said that they actually feel asleep. My reaction was irritation, bordering on throwing stuff. The cutscenes are stupid. The whole thing fails and is not really erotic. The female characters snipe at each other lewdy. This game was like watching an episode of Cheaters, with all of them contesting each other for dominance.

Heaven forbid that a teen girl gets a hold of this nightmare game, attracted to it by the female avatars, and the RPG genre. There are numerous digs at White Heart or Blanc for being flat chested. This persecution is a common and hurtful type of bullying for girls. Unfortunate high school females who develop late or never at all do not need a message like this in a video game. This aspect of the game is so insensitive and so mean that it may be the worst part of the dialog.

It isn’t just the horrible narrative, to use that term loosely. If you could call it that, but even worse, if that is possible, are the game mechanics under the story. The RPG side of it isn’t very well done. It is weak, and again you get the feeling that this was all thrown together without much care. It is as if they were counting on consumers buying it based on the packaging, and then being satisfied that they got your money.

Game play takes place entirely underground. There is no area of exploration, so they saved a lot of money by not bothering with environmental art. Boobs don’t grow on trees so why have them?

As you would expect, since there is no place to go, random battles pop up constantly. The battle system is reminiscent of an old PS One RPG Xenogears. The characters aren’t going to really develop better powers. It is all focused on the somewhat flashy, but loong attack animations. Here again you are given the feeling that the battles are unnecessarily long, just to test you to see what it will take to get you bored and quit. It’s like the game is saying “Why are you still here?”

Most of the game takes place in the linear dungeons. They didn’t put much effort into those either. It is monotonous and repetitive. They over use the same textures and don’t do anything innovative there. The puzzles you have seen before, then there are enemies and then the boss battle, rinse repeat. And more of that dialog that goes on and on.

Even though there is a nurse with a giant syringe as her weapon, the healing feature in the game is broken. The healing items cannot be used manually or used outside of combat either. Instead the healing items get assigned points and go off randomly in battle without you being able to control it.

There are many games from Japan that I have seen and would love to see a port in english. Why this one made it through is questionable. Dating and sex are part of life. But how it is discussed and in front of whom is always going to inspire debates and differences of opinion. This game falls badly between the cracks. It is too graphic for teens. It isn’t interesting or sexy enough for an adult to enjoy.

Hyperdimension Neptunia is one of the worst and most sexist, senseless and worthless games I have ever played. Do yourself a favor keep walking and skip this heap. The game is flawed and broken. I give it 2 inappropriate boobs out of 10.

Over and over in manga and anime we have seen many visions of life in a post apocalyptic future. Since world war two, included in the consciousness of Japanese writers has been “This tragedy happened, our people survived, if it happens again this is how we would survive, again.”

Glued to CNN since last Friday, and unable to write a word, I sadly absorbed the images, and turned to mangas for some of that strength and inspiration. I was surprised and moved to find a scan of High School of the Dead that came out just this week. Readers of the popular series may have shared my dread as the real life events of last weekend rolled out with eerie similarity to the scenario played out by that manga in fiction. The power going out, people not being able to find each other, insurmountable road blocks, cell phones down, and the radiation problems. Other scenes evoke shivers that I remember from drowned villages in the Traditional Japanese Horror Tales, and Princess Resurrection. It is as if some of these writers were tapping into a psychic vision of what was to come.

On the news in real life we all hold on for those little miracles, stories of survival, an 83 year old lady on her bicycle, the four month old baby found in the rubble, a couple of doggies who are faithful companions get rescued. Beyond the heart breaking stories of the indomitable Japanese people, I can foresee a future for them too. One they have inspired all along.

They will survive, and recover. Then they will make a comeback and surprise everyone with the facility and cleverness of their recovery and rebuilding. Everyone needs Japan back on its feet. The micro chips, and practically all things geeky are tied to Japan. The slick looking skyscraper – and magnetic – levitation – cars – future that we have all foreseen begins in Tokyo and we all know that like it was burned into our collective unconscious.

Between the bouts of sadness and impotent frustration I meditate on holding a vision of the future, the images given to us by the Japanese people, who will certainly be back to lead the way.

In the meantime, everything has changed. I hug my puppies extra times, I savor and appreciate every moment with more presence than ever. I need to get back to writing about tech and games, I feel very lucky that I am able to.

Seen as an embarrassment by some, there is an influence to clean up anime. Its place in Japanese media, can cause cultural  misunderstandings when anime is often seen as sexually promiscuous and degrading towards women. What they really want to get rid of are the ones that  sexualize underage young girls.

Criticism has come about now due to the vagueness of how the bill was written. An over broad description of what is taboo  could mean that anime in general could have to become more censored.

Ishihara and the new law are feared to be a ticket to anime’s demise. Like video games in the USA which are trashed by people who never play them, it would seem that stereotypes against anime exist inside and outside Japan. Some people believe that anime is just cartoon porn. In reality anime covers just about every age group and type of interest.

Anime that contains sexual content is usually called hentai. Lately more sex has been used to dress up thinner story lines to get it to sell. Because sexual content has been crossing the line between main stream anime and hentai, it has drawn the attention of politicians like Ishihara.  As boundaries continue to be pushed and sexual subject matter increases, there is certain to be a battle between both sides on the issue.

More than just being about getting drunk,  the making of rice wine is still an almost sacred, and revered process. It involves the purest of cool water as it comes from the mountains. This one was made in the Saitama Prefecture. It is a Yamahai, which means that the brewer uses native yeasts, those just floating in the air of the brewery. It is a very tricky process which not many modern brewers use any more.

There are various “paths” or “ways” in Japan for mastering a discipline. Such as the tea ceremony, Ikebana flower arrangement, traditional archery, or working with incense. Shudo or the “Way of Sake” appeared at the end of the Ashikaga Shogunate around the fourteenth century.
Sake can be works of art. The Way of Sake has a special path each month, said to purify the soul. It is an elegant way that the flowers and the seasons are incorporated in a ritual – like fashion. Even the cups and the method of pouring has significance, and the beauty of such gestures is said to enhance the experience, elevating it from merely intoxicating to enchantment.

Shudo for February is called the “month of reviving plants,” in the lunar calendar. In February in the old Japanese calendar, ume sake is made with Japanese apricot blossoms which were in bloom at that time. According to the Japanese traditional calendar, February 4th is the first day of spring.

In the manga xxxHolic they celebrated by drinking sake and floating chrysanthemum petals, on September the ninth. That sake is for wishing for longevity and exorcism. The delicate fragrance infuses the sake’ with chrysanthemum flowers.

The mystical confluence between people and bacteria is brought to life in the anime called Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture. Where the “Forgotten Japanese Spirit” is the Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an air borne bacteria which creates alcohol out of sugars.

Tadayasu is a gifted boy who has a type of clairvoyance that allows him to see the little micro organisms. He goes to the university with his good friend Kei Yūki whose family runs a sake brewery. There he is able to witness the magical process of dancing bacteria that everyone else would need a microscope to see.

As the story goes Okiku was a beautiful girl who worked as a maid at the home of a samurai. One day while she was washing a collection of ten heirloom China plates, she dropped one. The outraged samurai killed her and threw her corpse into an old well. That’s how the story is told – one way. Others say that she refused to be his mistress and that was why he really killed her.

But then every night, Okiku’s ghost began to arise from the well. Then, she would slowly count out the nine plates. Followed by heartrending sobs, over and over and over again, tormenting the samurai. Finally, vengeance was wrought when she had driven the samurai insane.

This famous Japanese folktale that can be traced back to the Kabuki play called Broken Dishes at Banchō Mansion. Folktales a re different than ghost stories in that they are based on the memory and retelling of an actual event. As if she went to her death in disbelief, she continues to count out to nine and then wails in an unearthly voice each time she discovers one plate gone.
Her story has formed the basis for a multitude of manga, anime, games and movies. Notably were Japanese horror mystery films Ringu, (The Ring), Kokkuri and the American /Japanese hybrid films The Grudge,  Ringu adapted from the novel of the same name.

Source: Wikipedia

You’ll play as either Matsuri or Fujimaru Kudo, who are twin Shinigami from the Rukon District of Soul Society. It takes place 100 years before to the main Bleach storyline. You get a team of eight Shinigami to play in the turn-based isometric tactical combat. You can power up some of the characters to use Bankai. Eventually points gained from kills can be used to increase stats. Some of the characters can support each other on the battlefield with attacks or blocks.
There is an overall problem with 3rd Phantom that has more to do with the level design and how the game play events are paced. The customization options come too slowly, and don’t do enough to make it more fun. It plays solidly, if not stoically. You can almost get a nap in while the games AI plays against you. The battles take an eternity to play out. Everything takes a long time to navigate. A battle plan that should take mintues can take a half an hour to execute. Then if you have to go someplace in a hurry it is really difficult. If you shut down in the middle of the battle, you might be sent back.

Seeing your favorite Bleach cast members in a game is always fun. Most of Bleach’s English voice actors are on there. The expressions they say, the little jokes and remarks are what you are really there for. The animations will be interesting at first, but there is lots and lots of repetition.

Game – play seems to be centered on tactics and strategy. It might have sounded like a good time on the drawing board. In reality it is monotonos and the fun factor is some where near dull. I made it fun by choosing all girl teams which made it challanging.  Who will enjoy this game is going to depend on their perspective. If just seeing Rukia and Rangiku in a game is enough for you then you’d be satisfyied. If you are looking for the great music and spirited battles that make Bleach so popular you won’t find it in Bleach 3rd Phantom. I give it 6 Zanpaktou out of 10.

To perform Kokkuri-san, at least three people are needed and a ten yen coin is used on the sheet of paper with the matrix of Kokkuri-san drawn out on it. Kokkuri – san contains numbers, a basic Japanese alphabet, yes, no, entrance, exit, and the torii gate of Shinto shrine.

The modern variation of this mysterious divine device is featured in popular Japanese television anime XXXHolic. The Kokkuri – san is also called Angel-sama and other names depending on the different areas in Japan. It appears in episode 3 of xxxHolic “Angel”.

Many manga and anime have had themes about kokkuri – san including the episode 4 of TV anime Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan, Ushiro no Hyakutarou (manga), and in Ghost Hunt “FILE 6: A Prohibited Game #2″ “FILE6″ the Shibuya team discovers the popular spirit-summoning game called ‘Orikiri-sama’ this time which may have propted a suicide, and resulted in many spirits inhabiting the school.

Kokkuri-san is also the title of a Japanese horror movie that was released in 1997 in Japan it was and in America with the title Kokkuri. The movie is a subtley made suspense chiller. The film demonstrates how a slice of life can reveal an occult side of what appears to be innocent. Without a musical score and only using natural sounds, with no special effects and realistic portrayals of the supernatural, the movie is an elegant red gem.