Around the Sidebar in 120 Seconds
CATASTROPHE
- First up, Taro tells a tale of woe as beer is now actually cheaper in Japan than soda.
- Shaggy weighs in w/ the latest info on KOFXIII’s arcade release, but no word yet on whether this one is going to not suck.
- The Cat o’ Nine Edits continues to regale us with his recent trials and tribulations w/ the stoner that runs Kotaku.
- Jack points out that Sony isn’t terribly good at this whole ‘the customer is always right’ thing–on the upside (for Sony), neither is Microsoft.
- KoG stamps out a few more, short-ish, posts, the latest of which dwells on manga, something I’ve never spent more than a few microseconds thinking about.
- Fei proposes a deal: you listen to some of his music–for free!–and he’ll keep making more.
- The Nerd posts up a commercial that, for whatever reason, I failed to see when it was new, centering around a bouquet of flowers and some ass-beating.
- El hombre de Mexico shares w/ us the trailer to the Parasite Eve sequel, and hasn’t updated in a week, leaving him this week’s winner of the Thoughts of Fei Sidebar Super-Failure of the Week.
- Oh! Spoke too soon! It seems that Thoughts of Fei has actually nicked the trophy from The Wanderer as he hasn’t updated in 10 days! Congrats! Again!
- Zig pontificates on Suda51’s latest opus (or dirge, depending on whom you ask), No More Heroes 2.
- And, finally, the Knight points out that feminism (of the kind found in the fever swamps of academia), in the final summation, probably hasn’t done women a whole lotta good.
Categories: Video Games, Way Off Topic
WAXING ERRATIC 
…which is kind of odd, considering that manga is the fount from which so much Japanese pop culture flows including characters, ideas, and tropes for video games.
And I’m pretty sure you’re interested in video games! Without manga there’d have been a serious dent in Japan’s film industry, pretty much NO anime industry, and video games from that country would probably be far different… perhaps even a lot closer to western games.
Maybe you should consider joining the hip kids and give manga a go.
How do you figure that gameplay mechanics (the only thing I really care about in games) would be a lot different without manga??
And you might as well credit Disney with everything you allege manga has brought to Japanese pop culture, since that’s where Tezuka derived most of his inspiration. (Tezuka being the guy that almost single-handedly created the manga monster.)
Also: I pretty much can’t stand anime/Japanese film with but a few, rare, exceptions. (The exception, in film, mainly being Kurosawa even though i keep trying to get into modern Japanese film with virtually no success.)
I didn’t list mechanics. When I said video games (from Japan) could be tilted closer to western games, I thought it pretty apparent that I meant we could’ve had yet another country issuing video games with tits and NATO soldiers and none of the JPN-style characters and stories… no cat girls, no big sword emo boys, no lolis, etc.
I wasn’t aware mechanics WAS the only thing you cared about. We’ve done had something of a graphics discussion– so I already know you are soulless on that point. But given some of the games you DO seem to get into or are anticipating, it would appear you have some affinity for JPN pop culture. You’ve even included some anime/animation nods in your ‘Am I In Your Head All Night’ features. The naem ‘Shion’ itself pretty well epitomises J-nerd! It is much more common that fans playing (relatively) obscure japanese RPGs have some crossover interest in anime and manga. BUT even given all that, it looks like I’ve made an incorrect assumption. And you did realise I was funning you, right? If anyone could be an exception to the typical J-game/anime/manga fan it’d be you.
Yeah, Disney was Tezuka’s inspiration. That doesn’t invalidate my point at all. Without Tezuka and the mangaka/gekigaka that followed you still wouldn’t have JPN pop culture as it stands. I’m not giving Americans no credit. I’m saying manga is the fount… it has been and still is. I’m not sure how Disney getting the fount going changes anything.
If you don’t LIKE Japanese film or anime… cool. No sweat. As I said I was joshing you and it APPEARED to me that you would be into more than the mechanics. No wonder my ‘blog generally bores you to tears!
It’d be fair to say that I like giant robots and the like but, again, you have a case of no Heinlein probably no super robots/Gundam. (Definitely the latter.) But, of course, I don’t care a bit for the actual stories that undergird any of them.
(I just think really big robots–be they Battletech or Gundam–are really cool.)
‘Soulless’ was joke too!
Kinda.
Fired.
Didn’t you knock out some Dragon Ball Z game guides?
Hahahaha! That must’ve hurt Mr Anime Hater a little!
In all seriousness, I’m sure you compartmentalise and just get the job done. But still….
Hahahahahaha! Got some Pokemon stuff in the works too? Hahahahahaha!
Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, Shaman King–the list goes on and on and on!
Sorry I made the assumption you liked anime and might like manga!
Hahahahahaha!
Sh*t, that’s funny.
Well, the problem is, I was requested to work on them and, since I like money, I did the jobs 🙂
money>ambivalence to manga
I know! I know it NOW!
But you must’ve done a bang-up job, cuz the hits just kept coming!
Hahahahaha!