Review: Working!!

Only Japan could make the life of a part-timer look glamorous and exciting. If food services work was anything even resembling what Working!! portrays, then I definitely wouldn't have quit my old job flipping burgers at my university cafeteria. As you can tell, Working!! isn't exactly a show grounded anywhere close to reality, but what else can you expect from a whimsical slice-of-life anime?

Working!! does have one thing correct though; it's the people you work with that make work fun. There's a lot of unique and wacky characters that all work in the same family restaurant. From the lazy ex-delinquent manager Kyouko to the androphobic (e.g. man-fearing) Mahiru Inami. Amazingly enough, the character cast of Working!! avoid a lot of the generic stereotyping, making them stand out amongst the throngs of cookie-cutter anime characters this Spring season, which is a great thing.

But that's where Working!! starts to fall apart; there's really nothing else besides the characters. Being a slice-of-life, there's no real drama or plot, so all of the anime's charm lies in whether you like the characters or not. The gags are amusing, all of the wacky characters interact in ridiculous ways, and the laid-back pace of the show is great. But if you aren't even intrigued by the characters after the first few episodes, there's nothing in the rest of the short thirteen episode anime to really catch your attention.

If you do like the characters, you'll be annoyed at how incomplete Working!! feels in the character department. The writers don't bother to flesh out even the most suspicious of characters, which is frustrating since it would have given the show more substance.

Those looking for a easy-going anime will most likely enjoy Working!!, but those looking for a even a bit of suspense or tension should probably move along. Working!! is a show that soothes rather than a show that captivates, so if you want something light-hearted and laid-back, Working!! probably won't disappoint. Otherwise, you can move on without missing much.

At the very least though, it's better than K-ON!! this season. Take that for what you will.

Review: Angel Beats!

 Angel Beats! is like your favorite childhood book; fun and memorable, but ultimately very adolescent and somewhat simplistic. From the unique premise set in the afterlife to it's high-powered musical inserts, Angel Beats! is definitely the one of the most memorable shows of the past Spring 2010 season, but unfortunately some of the flaws are just as memorable. Angel Beats! doesn't deliver a masterfully-woven story on life and death, but it does manage to tell a tale that still resonates strongly.

There's really no beating about the bush about the main flaws; Angel Beats! is not very well written or very well directed. There's a lack of consistency since the rising action never gets properly set up, and as a result there's no overarching narrative flow between the thirteen episodes. Consequently, most of the characters never get a chance to really develop or stand out. Plus there's plot holes aplenty, almost all of which are ignored by the writers, which is a problem since some of the plot holes actually are more memorable than some of the characters.

Luckily though, in the places that Angel Beats! falls apart in delivery, it makes up for it in surprises. There's a solid number of memorable and emotional moments as the characters remember and come to terms with their traumatic pasts. Add in some nicely produced music and brief flashes of great animation, and you have some moments that you'll definitely revisit later on. When there aren't any emotionally-heavy set pieces, there's plenty of whimsical and funny moments to carry the story and characters along.

In the end, it's painfully clear that Angel Beats! could have been much better. There's too much pandering to popular stereotypes, a over-reliance on deus ex machina motifs, and no emotional roller coaster here. But even despite the flaws and wasted potential, Angel Beats! is still a show that I recommend worth checking out. Even though Angel Beats! isn't a great show, it still tells a unique story that has a chance to pluck at your heart-strings.

E3 2010: Motion Control Madness

To be brutally honest, I find it hard to be excited by either the Microsoft Kinect or the Playstation Move. Thanks to the mediocrity of the Nintendo Wii, motion controlled gaming hasn't really been that appealing to me, and a good number of gamers have felt the same too. Safe to say, coming into this year's E3, there have been some fairly high expectations from Kinect and the Move

So were those expectations met after the Microsoft and Sony announcements? Somewhat. Both companies have proved that their ambitious technologies work very well, but they didn't prove that they could challenge the Nintendo juggernaut.

June Playlist: Alt Rock explosion

It's been a while since my last playlist, so I've been catching up on music that I've missed in the past couple months. First up is the title single from Relient K's latest album, "Forget and Not Slow Down" (embedded above). It's a solid song filled with musical and lyrical catches, a great example of Relient K's masterful composition of guitar, piano, and vocal sounds. If you're looking for something a bit more pop-oriented from the same album, "Candlelight" is a great fast-paced piano ballad that really showcases lead singer Matt Thiessen's songwriting talent.

Despite not being quite as solid as Relient K's latest album, Thousand Foot Krutch's 2009 Welcome to the Masquerade album still has a few interesting tracks like "Forward Motion" and "Fire It Up". While "Fire It Up" is a energetic headbanger that may please the punk rock fans, "Forward Motion" is a ballad that takes better advantage of the band's vocal strengths, and is just a more memorable song in general.

While B.o.B. doesn't really fit with the other alt-rockers here, his album The Adventures of Bobby Ray is still a great album that is worth mentioning. There are the hits "Airplane" and "Nothing on You", plus other great songs like "Magic" featuring Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo. A talented musician that can play multiple instruments, B.o.B. isn't your ordinary rap artist, and his collaborations with rockers Rivers Cuomo and Hayley Williams (in "Airplane") show just how broad his creative talent is.

Oil and dirty water ahead

The BP oil spill in the Gulf is the worst environmental disaster in history. The fact that it's still growing is baffling people. There's just one question they are asking right now; "We managed to put man on the moon in the 1960's, but fifty years later we can't plug a hole at the bottom of the ocean?" Working the phones at Senator Boxer's office, I had one constituent scream his disbelief that the U.S. government wasn't sending NASA to plug the leak.

Last time I checked, NASA specializes in rockets and spacecraft technology. They don't specialize in plugging a broken and brittle oil pipe 5,000 feet down that's spewing thousands of gallons of oil at 9,000 psi. Quite different from building a rocket to brute-force Earth's gravitational field.

In summary, the Gulf oil spill has been an act of technological arrogance, so it's not surprising that we have been trying to find technological solutions to help stop the leak and help clean up the devastated Gulf ecosystems. From smartphone apps to help chart the widespread damage to the Gulf coastline to massive supercomputers calculating fluid simulations in an effort to find a method to plug the leak, there's no shortage of tech that has been deployed.

But we always have to remember that technology isn't the be-all-end-all solution.

Those smart phone apps? It's useless if there aren't already people on the ground trying to clean up. Those supercomputers? Only tools to aid the engineering and scientific minds working to find a solution to this crisis. And let us not forget that it was human error that allowed the safety equipment in the oil rig to fail at that critical moment. 

So the lesson to this slightly rambling rant? Don't idolize technology. We can't brute force issues and problems with tech; it can only aid us in finding solutions to the various problems in our lives and in our society. It's made living our lives easier, but we shouldn't let it define our lives. This is a call of caution against the looming technology-dominated future, and a reminder that even our technological brilliance cannot save us if we lay waste to Mother Earth.

Rant over. While we're talking about BP, be sure one of the funniest twitter parodies I've ever seen.

Extreme makeover, Intel edition

The iPad may have captured the hearts of yuppies everywhere, but netbooks are the overlooked heroes of portable computing. The enormous touchscreen on the iPad is pretty sexy, but it is utterly useless for those of us who actually use the Internet to get work done. Unfortunately, the most of the netbooks you can buy now have been hit pretty hard with the ugly stick. There's a reason why you'll have a hard time spotting a netbook in broad daylight at you local Starbuck's; faux chrome accents and flimsy plastic casing aren't exactly cool.

Thankfully, for those of us with the gift of eyesight, Intel has the solution.

Enter Intel's new duo-core Atom processor and "Canoe Lake" (huzzah awkward Chinese translations) chipset architecture. Long story short, the new tech that Intel presented promises to allow netbooks to be faster, lighter, and most importantly, sexier. The first two improvements most techies will love, but the last improvement is what all tech geeks and nerds secretly really want in their electronics. After all, they do call it tech fetish for a reason.

It's unfair to compare the iPad and netbooks, since they each do have unique specialties despite having common functionalities. But at least when this new Intel tech hits shelves later this year, we won't have to choose between looking like a nerd and looking like a geek. Trust me, there's a difference.


Source: Engadget

...And I'm Back Folks!

Just got back from Taiwan, so hopefully I can get back to my normally (un)scheduled ramblings. Here are some choice shots that I took from my trip, so go ahead and click on the thumbnails to view the full shots. Sorry, I don't have a DSLR, I just had an ancient digi-cam to work with. Still, some of these shots turned out fairly decent.

Talking about something somewhat tech-related, it's interesting that Apple doesn't have actual stores over in Taiwan. Instead, they outsource actual physical retail to a local company, who copy the look of the Apple stores pretty closely. But it's still pretty obvious that the guys behind the rows of iPods and Macbooks aren't exactly the Apple-certified geniuses.

Also, taking photos without a DSLR is somewhat annoying, not because of the quality differences and the lack of photo settings, but because without a giant obnoxious giant lens on your camera people tend to look at you weird when you're trying to position yourself with tiny digi-cam. I guess you need to look like a photographer before people start ignoring you.

Acting like a photographer has also made me appreciate how much nerve and shamelessness you need to pull off some of the more dramatic shots with people. All those dramatic depth-of-field shots with people in them are really, really difficult to do unless you have the guts to put aside your fears of prying into some personal space. Props to you photographers; you sure know how to invade people's privacy.

Taipei was such a great place to take photos. It's not as pretty as Tokyo, nor as historic as London, and it's not as romantic as Paris, but it is a city that's full of raw, unadulterated life. Hopefully the next time I go, I'll bring along a DSLR, so I can show you more of Taiwan's gorgeous and interesting scenery.

First Impressions: Spring 2010 Anime Season

Man, this season actually packed with things that I can stand watching. Amazing. That said, I actually wanted to wait at least until the third week of the Spring 2010 season before previewing them, but since I'm bound for Taiwan in a couple days I don't have much choice. So all of my impressions are based on the first two episodes of each series. Not the most accurate impressions, but work with me here.

Angel Beats

The opening moments of this show pretty much sum up everything you want to know.

Aside from K-ON!!, it's probably the most hyped series of this season. From the amount of gracious fanservice (guns, explosions, a random j-pop concert, and more guns) in the first episode alone, it's certainly trying to live up to it. The plot, which revolves around Otonashi and Yuri and their attempts to rebel against 'God'  in the afterlife, is surprisingly comprehensible. However the characters definitely aren't memorable or unique, all being familiar stereotypes that we've seen before, especially Yuri.

Another problem is that Angel Beats is somewhat inconsistent. Compared to the first episode, the second episode seems rather half-baked. Everything still looks good, but it's easy to tell that they just couldn't maintain the intensity from the first episode. That said, the unique plot and stellar production values are keeping me intrigued, and I'm looking forward to seeing more action later on. Overall, Angel Beats is show that's worth checking out.

Arakawa Under the Bridge

Yea. Don't ask me.

Otherwise known in English as "What The Hell Am I Watching." Be warned though, my Japanese-to-English translations tend to be tinged slightly with sarcasm.

On a recommendation from a friend, I'm checking out Arakawa Under the Bridge. It's a Japanese gag anime, which means there's tons of Japanese puns, cultural references, and a tendency to be totally impenetrable to those who aren't Japan-o-philes. The story is about a straight-laced student who meets a beautiful girl living under a bridge, but I would be lying if I said this summary actually conveyed what the anime was about. It's akin to Gintama, if the writers of Gintama were hopped up on a few illicit drugs.

I'm sure there's a ton of stuff in Arakawa Under the Bridge that will please both anime nerds and literature majors, but I'm enjoying it because of the very charming and unique characters. Even though it's been nothing but visual gags and puns so far, I'm hoping that they actually might develop an actual plot between the two main characters later on.

Giant Killing

 Goal? GOAL!

Hell yea, you are the best anime of Spring 2010.

I'm not lying. I don't like soccer, I don't normally watch sports shonen, but Giant Killing has caught my attention like no other anime this season so far. I decided to give it a try just to break my usual habits, and I have not regretted doing so since. Underdog sports team in the ruts? Check. Cocky youngster who thinks he can change things? Check. Checkered histories and longstanding rivalries? Check. Awesomeness? Check. Giant Killing has everything it needs to be the perfect sports shonen, and then some.

Since I'm not a regular of the genre, I'm hard pressed to describe what's unique about Giant Killing. But I can say that so far pacing of the plot and action has been stellar in building up drama, even if it is moving at a somewhat slower pace than the other animes this season. Even though it doesn't have the art and animation budgets of blockbuster animes like Angel Beats and K-ON!!, it's gathered attention because it's setting up what could be a damn good story. Really, the title says it all.

Kaichou wa Maid-sama

 Sorry pretty boy. Your act ain't working here.

...and we go from Giant Killing to this. Anime has long been defined by the balancing act between fetishism and commentary, and Kaichou wa Maid-sama unfortunately falls heavily in the former category. Now that wouldn't too much of an issue, except the writing is terrible. Two episodes in and all the audience knows about the male lead is that all the girls and guys swoon in his presence because...he's pretty. That's all.

Hell, he barely even talks too, which is another problem.

So how do you prop up the creepiest, most poorly-written male romantic lead? Have the overbearing female lead have an almost unexplainable love for being a maid. No, don't mind the fact that she's the strong-willed student council president, let's make her attractive by letting her cosplay at work as a submissive maid, and let's make that the central conceit for the show.

Ugh. Next.

K-ON!! (Season 2)

How I wish this happened more often.

I hope you liked the first season of K-ON!, because it's more of the same. The only thing that's changed so far has been the ridiculous amount of money and attention they've pumped into the second season, and as a result K-ON!! is definitely the best looking show of the season. The opening sequence of cuts and shots in the first minute of the first episode actually shows some cinematic effort, and once again makes me wish that this series was about making music instead of eating sweets and being cute.

Goddamn it Japan. Make a worthy spiritual successor to Beck already. As a slice-of-life show, K-ON!! looks like it will entertain, as long as you don't mind the lack of music.

Working!!

Oh god. She's so cute.

There really needs to be less exclamation marks in anime titles this season. Besides sharing a similar obsession with punctuation in the titles with K-ON!!, Working!! is also a slice-of-life series. Unlike its more popular musical compatriot though, it focuses more on slapstick humor and personality-driven gags, which is somewhat hit and miss.

My main issue with Working!! is that it's just a series of animated shorts, like Arakawa Under the Bridge. However, whereas Arakawa Under the Bridge has some pretty solid writing to back it up, Working!! is nowhere as witty or as well written. Apart from some half-hearted efforts to flesh out its characters, so far most of the cast come across as one-trick ponies. In particular, the introduction of the man-fearing Inami definitely hasn't impressed me. Really? You're a waitress in a restaurant, and you have to punch every guy you meet because of fear?

Yea. Some gags get old fast.

At the very least, the setting and mood is charming, and Poplar (in screenshot above) does make up somewhat for the annoying parts of the show. I hope the series gets better, as there's promise.

Review: Pokemon Soul Silver uses Nostalgia Attack!

It's Super Effective! 

Oh god. The nostalgia that this game brings back from my childhood memories is amazing. What got me into gaming and anime was none other than the original Pokemon Silver 10 years ago. I was so overcome with nostalgia that I went out and bought a new DS specifically so I could relive those memories with the new Pokemon Soul Silver. Yea. A totally unbiased review coming up.

 Click to see the difference 10 years looks like.

The good? It's the Pokemon game you loved as a kid. The bad? It's still essentially the same Pokemon game that you played as a kid.

Nostalgia aside, it's actually kind of infuriating that most of the general game concepts have remained mostly unchanged for over a decade. So if you're not entranced by the nostalgia or the remade world, Soul Silver won't really have any staying power. Plus this remake hasn't fixed some things about the original, like the utter dearth of different pokemon in the first quarter of the game.

In fact, you can't even some of the newly added Pokemon until really late in the game, which makes me wonder why they added them in the first place.

All that said, it's hard not to be impressed with Soul Silver. Pokemon games have always been about the large immersive worlds with large numbers of interesting creatures, and Soul Silver doesn't disappoint. Not only are there several new areas, but also new additional gameplay aspects like the Pokeathalon mini-game events, so even old veterans of the original Pokemon Silver have something new to see. Add all of the above with a much improved art style, and you got yourself a great looking game.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Soul Silver has been the Pokewalker. Essentially a tamagotchi (remember those?) for Pokemon, it's unique since it operates off a pedometer. However, it doesn't offer anything revolutionary, other than making Pokemanics easier to spot. Luckily, you don't need to use it. The Pokewalker has its uses, but it feels really tacked on.

Honestly, if you want your kids to exercise, find another excuse.

Despite being a remake, there's enough new elements to make Soul Silver worth the money. Once you add in the sheer nostalgia that it brings, it's almost priceless. Plus it doesn't hurt that it's a remake of a very solid game. Of course, if you've never liked the Pokemon games, then Soul Silver won't change your mind.

But if you've hated Pokemon games since you were a kid, you probably hate cute animals and pretty things anyways. Just saying.

2010, Year of the Touchscreen Tablet PCs

Nuh-uh. Not the iPad. This is the HP Slate. 
 

The iPad might not be worth all the hype, but it sure as hell has kicked off a craze for touchscreen tablet PCs, and they all the new touchscreen tablet PCs happen to look disturbingly similar to the iPad. As much as I docked points for the iPad's lack of certain features earlier, there's no denying it's appeal to the casual user. You don't need amazing computer knowledge to operate one, and chances are most people will overlook the iPad's weaknesses thanks to how intuitive the touchscreen interface is. Touchscreen tablets have great potential to expand the market for portable computers, and this is why everybody's banking on tablet PCs this year thanks to the hype that the iPad has created.

Nope. It's the Fusion Garage JooJoo.

Besides the iPad, the other tablet PCs that I can name off the top of my head are the HP Slate, Archos 7 Home Tablet, and the Fusion Garage JooJoo. Hell, even Dell is rumored to be making one. Quite a lot of tablet PCs, considering touchscreen tablet PCs didn't really fly off shelves before the iPad was launched.

With numerous alternatives to choose from, the future computing is slowly being set into place. It doesn't matter if these tablet PCs lack the processing power and other functionalities of traditional computers, since there touchscreen tablet PCs are promoting the future of multiple-computer household. No matter how much techies and purists like me rail against how trends like these promote aestheticism over functionality, it's undeniably where the consumer culture is currently taking us.

Of course, it's not set in stone that tablet PCs will really take off, as it depends on how Apple and other companies build services around the hardware. But in one day, 300,000 of you seemed determined to make 2010 the Year of the Touchscreen Tablet PCs, so I expect tablet PCs to be here for good.