OtakuSennen

Well, you can look at the term "Newbie" in two ways, if you want to be sort of deep regarding this topic. 1) You can simply consider one a newbie by post count. To get out of this range you have to have 250 posts. Or you can have the "deeper" way of thinking of a newbie. 2) One can be considered un-newbie-esque (Yep, I'm good at making up words) once they produce long, coherent posts without a dozen random smilies at the end of the post that have nothing to do with anything. This also entails they use proper typing and spelling, along with deep, on-topic thoughts and express them well.

[color=darkblue]*dances around* I'm in it. I feel special. It seems really good from this point, Laura. It's written with a nice, upbeat style. I can just imagine that sound from Evangelion, titled Misato, playing its happy tune in the background. This is gonna end up being a truly nice story. However, you did misspell "coffee" and "noogie", however I'm not even entirely sure how to spell the first one. I won't give a rating until the entire story is done, if that's all right. But why am I so happy..? I guess we'll just have to find out.[/color]

Well, if you were to play a massive multiplayer online role playing game, such as The World, you will find that if you are in a crowded area, despite the many character designs, you will still find many similarities between players. Plus, it's not like Elk and Tsukasa, or BlackRose and Mimiru frequently meet, so it's not some huge conspiracy/coincidence. About the Key of the Twilight.. [spoiler](Wow, I haven't used tags in a while) Well, anyway, there are many theories/ideas about what The Key of the Twilight really is. In the latter portion of .hack//SIGN, Morganna (The voice) tells Sora that Aura is The Key of the Twilight, and that's what pretty much everybody in SIGN thinks about the issue. But there are still other ideas, such as maybe Tsukasa's Guardian is, or it may simply be a metaphor. Could the Key possibly be the people that are involved in the happenings of The World, or maybe it may just be the spirits of those people, with the personalities that trigger the events, simply their souls are the key.[/spoiler] And yes, kiteS23 is correct. Morganna convinces Tsukasa that she is his mother, in some ways. The voice tricked him, however. She simply showed Tsukasa a memory of his life, and he was the one that called her "mother". For all we know, Morganna was aiming to be someone else involved in the wavemaster's mind.

Wow, if that's not fake that's pretty darn awesome. Is it just me, or does Subaru's staff look larger than it normally is, though? I mean, it looks very large, and not only that, but Subaru's head looks a little small. Ah, well. I haven't actually seen many screenshots of the former leader of the Crimson Knights from the game, so I could be wrong. Heck, I've never really played the game. Also, Sora's katars (his weapons) look a little long. But who is to say that the characters can't change their weapons..? But then, I am almost certain that the users' weapons don't change appearance in the game, but again, I haven't had the pleasure of holding a PS2 controller that I own. But, according to what I've seen and read about the Japanese language, Sora, which means sky, is written with one character, and in the screen it shows two letters. That's sort of one sign of forgery. Helba's name is correct (I can read katakana well enough.. Well, most of it), but she has maximum stats- 9999 and 999 consecutively. Even if she IS a hacker, I think that would be unfair in the game, having a character of such calibur when the rest of the fighters are far from that.. Unless you want to be a wimpy gamer. (No offense to thou folk who enjoy getting through a game without a challenge) Do you remember where you found these screenshots, Sai? The URL or website, I mean. If it's from a very reliable source on IGN, this is most likely real. If it's from some cheap-o tripod fansite, I wouldn't be so sure.

Eh, I saw it and I'm honestly not that impressed. It's most likely the dub, but as many of us have all learned from past experiences, video-game-to-television transistions never go that well. Let's look at The Legend of Zelda cartoon from years of late 80's-early 90's lore, the Megaman series of infamy from back in the day, PLUS NT Warrior of present day. None of them were that great series PERIOD, let alone were faithful to the video game series. My main problem with THIS one, however, is the horrible dubbing. A lot of people were not fond of the voices in the Sonic Adventure series, and I see little difference in this one. They all portray rather stereotypical characters in anime, such as the adventurous outgoing person (Sonic), the submissive weakling female character (Cream), and the know-it-all old (That professor guy.. I've watched one episode, so I didn't catch his name). Of course, this is more of a young child's anime, whereas I am into more mature, intelligent stories, so why do I honestly care? Young children should watch what they want to (And, if you're an extremist parent, what is so sugar coated it's not even rated Y7), and I should watch what I feel is fit for me.

Um, yep, the .hack manga, Legend of the Twilight, has been out for almost a month now, I believe. Other than maybe Excel Saga, this is probably the funniest manga I have ever read (But I don't really have that much manga, so who am I to judge?). There's quite a few internet-related jokes in there. Well, maybe not jokes as much as references. There were several newbie jokes in there. Plus the animation is top notch. The characters are pseudo-chibi, yet they seem realistic enough when they need to be. I liked the light-hearted feel of the series, along with the feeling of an authentic MMORPG. It was time for a change in .hack. I had enough dark plots, now I want a happier one. Which we now have. Oh, but I think they took out "Bracelet" in the title because it's long enough as it is, for an American television series. Oh, and yes, at anime conventions across the country last summer Bandai showed a preview film witch contained series such as Love Hina Again, Junkers Come Here, Witch Hunter Robin, and the anime version of .hack//Legend of Twilight.

Yes, that is Elk. I am positive of it. Note he has the same staff as he normally does in all of the official art of Elk, his face markings are the same, and his eyes are the same color as in the games. And, of course, the outfit. If you look on the back of the rest of the booklets in the .hack//SIGN DVDs you will see characters from The World, and all of them are primary ones from either SIGN or the games. I believe the second DVD has Mimiru, right? And I forgot what the third and fourth are. I lent my discs to a friend and he hasn't given them back yet.

Yeah, there were quite a few different animators in .hack//SIGN, who all seemed to have their own styles. In some episodes you'll see the characters have bigger eyes and smaller noses, sort of more of a light chibi-esque style of animation. Yet at the same time, you see the characters with smaller eyes and larger hair in other episodes. (I.E. KKC's crack artist) But I think it would have been better if the artists collaborated more. Like in Evangelion and Witch Hunter Robin, for examples. Throughout most of the scenes the characters look so similar as if the same person did all of the initial sketches. But it's not such a big deal, in my opinion.

Heh, I don't think I'm gonna get this.. I mean, I just spent $130 on the "Perfect Edition" boxset, and I am now flat broke, and now I have the series. I know the plot, I know the script, I know how it ends. Animation and voices aren't everything, you know. Plus I can just get the director's cut information from my dear friends Syk and Maladjusted. ~_^

*sigh* I doubt that this woman's 1-year-old child knows which is the "channel up" button on the remote, so why does she care so much? Is she trying to be a saint and forwarn all of the other parents and tell them how to raise their children? If so, that is sort of moronic. A parent should raise their child how they see fit, and if they don't want their newborn watching a Pikachu thwap its tail on some Bulbasaur's head then that is their choice. Here's a solution for all of these oh so wonderful extremist parents: Buy a V-chip or one of those add-ons to a television that blocks some things your children see. That will solve this problem well enough. The children will find out about violence anyway, whether it is other kids at school (later on in childhood) telling them, or if they just play in the room with the news on hearing about terrorist plots. I knew about OJ Simpson's murder charges when I was four, and that got me to where I am today-- OK, bad example. God, if they find Pokemon offensive, let's just wait until CN puts Evangelion on Adult Swim for a week, if they ever do that.

Heh, playing an RPG with other humans in real life based by luck of the dice in some aspects can be truly a great experience. The idea behind a pen & paper RPG? Well, it gives you a creative thing to do. Human creativity is a near endless supply of ideas and characters, so no two games are exactly alike. Plus the coolest part about D&D is dressing up like an elf and chanting spells. ~_^

Um.. A pen & paper RPG is like the original role playing game. Before the days of video game ones. Dungeons and Dragons is a pen & paper RPG. There is no real advanced technology in playing the game. You buy the books, and the sheets, and the paper to keep track of your experience points and money in the game. People create their own levels and stories in it using a pen and paper. Actually, I've never played a true game of D&D.. Just the cheap-o starter set, and even then I had nobody but my 10-year-old brother to play with so it wasn't enjoyable. That answered your question, right? EDIT: Heh, Shy, you beat me to the punch.

Actually, I can't say that I have a favorite anime song, as much as I like different anime songs for different reasons. There are very few Japanese songs (that I've heard) that I actually don't like.. I'll just name off a few now, in no particular order. Yasashii Yoake AKA Gentle Dawn- The .hack//SIGN ending theme song. It's actually the very first song I've ever memorized in Japanese all the way through. The lyrics really touch me, and the visuals that go with it at the end of SIGN are somewhat symbolic and meaningful. Even my mom likes the melody line.. Zankoku na tenshi no tesis AKA Cruel Angel's Thesis- At first I found the song to be sort of moderate, and it seemed to be a little too outdated melody-wise for me to like it. It was too... Upbeat, I guess you can say. But that thought is no more, as endless hours of watching Evangelion DVDs has burned the song into my brain. But now that I know the lyrics, and have seen the visuals for the song on Eva, I've come to appreciate it much more. (And no, not the pseudo-perverted visuals.. There's some symbolism in there as well.) Tsuki no Le AKA (I forgot what the translation is)- This one is one of the Outlaw Star end themes. Technically, it's the first non-horrible dub song that I ever heard. When I say dub song I mean like the American Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! theme songs. Not at all like the original versions from Japan. Actually, I completely forgot about this song for about 2 years, then I downloaded a random Outlaw Star song.. It turned out to be this one and I immediately remembered it, with my grin wide and my eyes lit up. I just find this song really well-sung. That's the main reason I enjoy it. There are a ton more, such as the Witch Hunter Robin opening theme and Gundam Wing's "Endless Waltz"-- That's the name of the song, I believe, along with the Gundam Wing movie's name.

Motion suits? Geesh, that'll take a while to perfect. There are a couple problems with it anyway. 1) The cost. I mean, how long will it be until every household in the world has some sort of motion suit or two in it? Once that is achieved, then MAYBE the prices would come down, but that would most certainly take a long time. 2) Space Restrictions. Wouldn't such a thing take up so much space it would kinda be hard to play in a cluttered computer room or at-home office or wherever your computer would be? If you have the visors on or something like that, you would be quite likely to knock over the vase containing the ashes of your grant aunt Sophia or something of high value (If your aunt Sophia is of high value. Lolz. :p) 3) If you have such realism suits, wouldn't that mean some more perverted players could take advantage of the attractive female players' skimpy skirts? And if that is the case, with the game being so realistic, plus all of the different ways a human body can move, you can't go "yah they could just block that kind of action" or anything to that extent. That would be near impossible, if not entirely out of the question. It would just be simpler to make the game a highly realistic game you see on a computer screen. It may not be like what they have in the .hack series or anything, btu it is much cheaper and efficient. Not to mention it's much more perfected than VR technology or motion sensor suits. Of course, that's not to say that our technology is perfect. 20 years from now people will look at.. Let's say Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for Gamecube as an example, because of its great (by our standards today great) graphics.. They will look at the game and laugh at how horrible the visuals are compared to their current-day technology.

Well, we can't see into the future, so there is no way of telling whether there will be a real version of "The World" available to us... But that may be either awesome, or a disappointment if it does in fact come out. Having such a world with such possibilities as a player would be really awesome.. But with those possibilities comes limits with today's technology. The realism in movements portrayed in .hack//SIGN, LEGEND OF TWILIGHT and the games would really not be that possible right now. Plus the graphics would probably not be so great. It IS an MMORPG, after all. But here is a page talking about a company working on a project called "Tasogare", AKA Japanese for "Twilight". Legend of Twilight, Book of Twilight, Key of Twilight, Bracelet of Twilight.. Sound familiar? :p [url]http://sourceforge.net/projects/tasogare[/url] (Actually, there is a thread in the PC forum about the same topic)

>.< Stupid illegal operations. Had do restart this entire long review. HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY, GAVYNN!.. But let us have the review begin with the central aspect of the piece, the bowl of fruit. Everything is really well-shaded in this picture, DW. You must have put a lot of effort into that aspect. The fruit are drawn.. Properly, I guess you could say. Nothing to say about how the fruit is not exactly round, but is close, eh? The bowl seems to be kinda angular around the rim though, but maybe you intended that. The dog and wolves are not anatomically correct, so I'm afraid I'll have to mark you down for that.. :p (I'm joking.. Of course.) But I noticed something about the dog on the right.. His right hand, holding the banana, has three fingers and a thumb. Well, there MAY be a thumb there. You can kinda see a nub for a thumb, but it's kinda hidden by the banana. His left hand, however, has three fingers and no thumb. If I'm right, Gavynn, I caught you. Ha ha ha.. Also, the trees' trunks are a little wide to have such thin branches. Good treehouse material they would make, but that's not how trees normally are. *squints at the signature in the corner* Does that say your last name is Brown..? [b]9.4/10[/b] Will your teacher accept the extra material around the fruit?

O_O *looks at Syk's wallpaper* I'm special-ful. I'm in the screenshot. :p I like that wallpaper a lot, Syk, not because of my messages and Invader Zim buddy icon in it, but because of the wallpaper. It's really awesome, using some really nice effects. Hm.. What anime IS that from? Oh, yes. Berserk, correct? I never would have noticed. *looks at the middle of the wallpaper* Oh. *sniff* I want Windows XP too. My task bar is always cluttered with 20 AIM windows.. That looks so convenient to have them all grouped in one. Nice job, Syk. You made it yourself, right? As for me, my brother has stupid Bionicle Lego wallpaper on right now and he won't let me change it. I demand an Evangelion one, but nope. I'm the one online 20 hours a day, and he's on one half hour in a month and gets his own wallpaper. Considering I didn't make it, I'd rather not post it. I want my own computer.

Hm.. What do I hate about anime? Well, at least in some dubs, you'll frequently some sort of moral in it in some way or another. Take, for example, Yu-Gi-Oh!. "Yes, if we work together we can do anything!" "Teamwork is great!" "We shall win because of friendship!" Now I'm all for morals and everything, but I prefer it all to be more subtle, like you have to think about the series some to find it. Like in Evangelion, for example. I think that the underlying theme is something along the lines of "Life is how you make it" or something to that extent. It's not that obvious. I like that more. The intricate plots and great art are what mostly draw me to anime and manga. Normally in American cartoons you'll get simple plots, and the episodes rarely tie into each other. Bad guy appears, they beat it, all is well. In the next episode they all have a birthday party and never mention a thing about the horrible gashing wound the guy had (But still kid friendly, of course) in the last episode which magically disappeared. Yet a good story arc in an anime may take 4 or 5 episodes. (Of course, Dragonball has 26-season long fights, but I won't get into that) And, of course, the animation is always so detailed. The average anime character has a fairly realistic character design, in comparison to the circle-eyed stick figures with color we call American cartoons.. >.> [spoiler]The fanservice isn't what attracts me to an anime, but it helps. :p Well, not really.[/spoiler] But, AzureWolf, what I believe that maladjusted and Queen Asuka and everyone meant by repitition was the repeating of scenes, like a jab-fest in Dragonball, which they show 20 times over. Not when referring to a repeating line or a recurring theme. When used properly, repitition makes an anime really great. Plot-wise, not animation-wise.

Actually, I have a slightly different situation.. My friends know about anime and know about all the different ones, but don't care about them in the least. I talk about anime and manga all the time at my school, and they just seem to tune me out. One of my friends actually tends to just look at me and go "Shut up" frequently nowadays. *sigh* They all hold video games about anything else, and believe I "wasted a fortune" on the Evangelion box set. It seems impossible to find anyone at our school that DOES like anime, as well. The only people at our little maximum security prison of education that are otaku are already my friends. I'm considered the outcast/know-it-all of the group. Despite one guy has a sailor's mouth, one hasn't eaten anything in 2 days, one has been known to have a "girlfriend of the week" for two years now, and the others are just.. Strange. *sigh* Between the the pricy DVDs, the lack of musical discs based on anime in America, and the bad rap of anime, sometimes it is hard acting in the name of Japan. (Well that sentence certainly came out strange..)

Hm.... Here goes a review. [b]First one--[/b] Ooooh, I smell a bitmap. ^_^ It's good that you converted it to JPeg or Gif or whatever you did. Normally bitmaps aren't allowed on OB. But that's impressive that you made a bitmap of such high quality on Paint. You DID use paint, right? But that's a nice color scheme, and the Goku came out well in the blue scheme. But you may wanna put a very light blue in the white areas. It seems sorta blank there, in a bad way. [b]8.8/10[/b] [b]And Xyander's..[/b] This one is interesting. Why are there two Super Saiyans that become one non-SS Goku, though..? It's good that you put the framerate up higher, but I still think you could put a little more time into that detail. [b]7.9/10[/b] [b]Tommy's second one:[/b] This one's just kinda plain. I guess it's OK, but I think you may wanna put your name in it or something. [b]8.2/10[/b]

[color=royalblue]Hm.. Well, I have to go to bed soon, so I'll just post one good one and one bad one that come off the top of my head. [b]Good-[/b] .hack//SIGN. Sometimes I wonder if Bear's Japanese voice actor decided to do the English version as well. They just sound so similar.. The only bad voice I can find in the series is Mimiru's.. And still, it fits the character well and I can't imagine her voice any other way. The actors got how the characters should be portrayed down perfectly. Tsukasa's voice was KINDA weird at the beginning in the dub, but the actor must have had a flu or something, because it got better around episode five. [b]Bad-[/b] As if it hasn't been said enough yet.. I'm sad to say my favorite anime of all time, Neon Genesis Evangelion, had some of the junkiest voice actors of all time (Which I have heard). I hear the words "Cruddy dub" And I think of Asuka saying "Hey Shinji! Looky looky!" as she did in the thermal expansion episode.. Heh heh heh.. Good episode. *back to topic now* And Shinji was portrayed more whiny than I would have liked. He sounded more like a bratty 10 year old than an introverted 14 year old.. At least, that's what I think. But I [i]did[/i] like Rei's voice. If it were just a little louder it would have sounded pretty darn close to the Japanese Rei's voice. Let's remember, people, she's generally a clone of another version of herself, a replacement, a backup, and has no true purpose in life other than piloting Eva unit 01. (Well, the only purpose she finds early on) She has virtually no friend but Gendo's and even that could be considered debatable.[/color]

For somebody who's become obsessive compulsive over RPGs in the past year or two, I have very few games of the genre. Curse the plague amongst the games of Nintendo. There's, like, 4 traditional role playing games on Gamecube. Now, Game Boy Advance is better with it. They have Lunar, Fire Emblem (Well, they will soon enough) and other things, but my favorite RPG of all time must be probably Golden Sun 2: The Lost Age. As if the series wasn't fun enough the first time through with Isaac, Garet, Mia and Ivan, the characters seemed to be more complex and deep in Lost Age. The psynergy was also much more dynamic, and the extra Djinn and classes gave the game I guess what you could call replay value.. Or just a large amount of gameplay time, with all the different Psynergy and team combinations you can try out. Oh, and also the graphics are really nice for Game Boy Advance too, I guess you could say. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes one of those classic games that quite a few people have fond memories of ten years from now.. Well, at least I know I will.

I enjoyed this movie a decent bit. Actually, it's the first anime DVD I ever owned, which was the foundation for my small yet growing anime collection that I have today. I really didn't have much interest in purchasing the movie until my mom watched the Oscars and saw it win for best animated picture. After that I did some research on it, and found it to be more interesting than I expected. But I did find it to be pretty cliche, plot-wise. Yet still, it was original enough. But what truly got me was the art's quality. The background were so detailed you could have mistaken them for individual paintings by a professional artist. The one problem I had with it, however, was Chihiro's dub's voice. It was so high pitched (not that that's uncommon in dubs) But in some scenes, such as when she was talking to her pig parents about how she's gonna rescue them, the dialogue is a bit strange in a corny way and the actor lacked expression, it seems. Of course, that's where the Japanese language/English subtitle feature comes in. Ah, I love DVDs... Actually, that's the only non-TV based anime DVD I own to this day, though I'd like to buy or rent Princess Mononoke as well. But first comes End of Evangelion, as I am saving up for it. I heard that Hayao Miyazaki is now retired from film making and has decided to write novels now.. Is that true, or was that just a silly little rumor in Anime Insider?

Hm.. There are probably two reasons: One may be that the game is just so old it was simply outdated and they cancelled producing it, making a copy very rare. If this is the case, go on ebay.. However, the more likely reason is that it was never released in America. I mean, I've never heard of a Kenshin game in the past. So I suppose online auctions would be again the way to go, but you'll have to have a mod chip in your system for the game to work if it's out of your region coding.

Well, if you've ever cosplayed at an anime con and had an elaborate design, I would go with that. But.. How about, to keep this thread going, we list what OTHER people are gonna dress up as this Halloween, if they are, that is. This year I'm just gonna buy myself my own candy so I don't get any of the junky stuff, like crusty, hard Smarties. I plan on just sitting around with my friends and watching Halloween specials.. This holiday isn't much of a big deal for me.