Umineko No Naku Koro Ni

So after marathoning this series for the past two nights I finally finished it. I know now without a doubt that I have another favourite anime. I also know that they MUST make a second season for this show, if they don't I'll be very sad. All in all it was very good and it reminded me a lot of Higurashi which is to be expected because it's made by the same people.

Well hopefully with a lot of perseverance and work I should be adding around 30 pages to Hinamizawa Syndrome this coming week. These page will include the rest of the Higurashi character profiles as well as those for Umineko characters and Ergo Proxy characters. As long as I get that done I'll be able to move onto the anime reviews.

In other great news it seems that I'm getting an old PowerMac. I'm actually pretty excited about this. I may pride myself on being a pc kind of person but there's nothing wrong with older macs and I fully intend on enjoying it. Unfortunately because it's so old I'll have trouble running some programs on it, but thats what the other computers we have are for.

Well that's all for now, I really need to get to work on updating Hinamizawa Sydrome. Make sure to keep checking back here as well as there for some new content. ~~

May Is Fast Approaching!!

May is almost here! I can't believe it! Well, just recently I got around to watching Ergo Proxy. So far I'm about half way done with it and I'm loving it!! I fully intend to review this series in detail after I finish it, so as always, keep an eye on Hinamizawa Syndrome. I'm also hoping to rent Heavy Rain some time soon. If I get to then I'll of course review that game in depth as well.

So far I've come to the conclusion that Re-l is an AMAZING character. Words cannot describe how bad ass she is at times. On top of watching Ergo Proxy I also rewatched the first season of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. As is obvious, that series remains one of my all time favourites. After seeing the second season I realize just how sad the entire series is.

Well I was trying out using Ubuntu as my only operating system and it turns out that I'm entirely too dependent upon Photoshop and other such Windows only programs. So after a bout with Ubuntu I decided upon re-installing Windows 7. So once again half of my files are gone. Some times I really hate having to start over from square one.

Well that's all for this time. Make sure you keep checking back for new updates on anime and video game reviews!

Back To Square One

It's already April!! Oh man it seems like just yesterday was December. In two months I'll be 19, god I feel old.

Anyways, look who's back in the market for a news reporting job on a website. D: After foolishly giving mine up because I thought Jon would be doing stuff to help out FXN I find myself in a rut which I can not seem to escape. I'm only a member of a few forums, one of which I quit staff on, another I haven't been on that long and its marginally larger than FXN and probably has enough staff to begin with, and the third being Gaming Union. Believe me when I tell you it's more likely hell will freeze over than me getting a chance at a job there. I'm not exactly on the best terms with the admins. 

The only reason that not having a news reporting job bothers me is that I'm a bit conceited and I view myself as having awesome potential. Being that way, I feel I'm wasting it by just sitting here without being able to do that which I love. I honestly love being able to give information to the masses via the net. I mean, come on, if I didn't would I really bother running so many blogs?

What time better than this to also point out that I've been working my but off in photoshop? See? Now, my only problem is that Windows 7 gave me a ton of trouble so I was sorta forced out of frustration to shift over to a mostly Ubuntu based system. When I say mostly I mean that I'm using Ubuntu for everything and I'm messing around with other distributions of Linux just for fun. And the best part? I get to figure out how to use this amazingly complicated program called Wine so that I can run Adobe Photoshop CS2 in Ubuntu. If I can't do that, well then all graphic awesomeness is done. There is no way in the world that I can make awesome things like that which is pictured above in GIMP. It's pretty much laughable thinking that anyone can make anything worthwhile through GIMP.

I've been playing the crap out of Final Fantasy lately. I'm more than stuck on a boss fight. Let me just say this, Vanille's summon. If you've been playing the game, then you know what I mean. It's some crazy stuff. =/ I think this week or possibly this weekend at the latest I'm going to start working on putting up a Final Fantasy section on Hinamizawa Syndrome. Inside of that section I'll have reviews of all of the titles I've played as well as character bios for ALL of the games. Mind you this will take me a very long time to complete, but I figure why not? It's not like I have much else to post there. Along with all the resources for the old games I'l post a trophy guide and some other guides, tips and tricks for Final Fantasy XIII in the area. AND since the game is still relatively new, I will keep everything as spoiler free as possible. SO, don't check a guide out unless you're at that part of the game, I'd hate for you to accidentally ruin the game for yourself.

Well on that note, I bid you so long for a while, I think this may in fact be one of the longest posts I've ever made. And I feel pretty blasted proud of myself. 

New Haircut and Breaking News

Hello~!! Its been a little while hasn't it? Well just recently, probably about a week ago, I got my hair cut for the first time in about.. nine months? I'm not sure how long actually. But anyways, it looks fabulous~

So other than that, the breaking news would be that I found out, a few days ago, that I'll be moving back up north in a little over six months time. Jon's parents decided that they would prefer me to be elsewhere so I made the decision to move back to my dad's. Granted his parents are going to want me out before then, but if that happens, I'll be at my aunt's temporarily. Everything is pretty much in order though, so I have nothing to worry about.

In other news, I'm working on a few brief game reviews tonight, and I should have them up before I go to be so I would like to remind you all to keep checking Hinamizawa Syndrome. There you'll be able to keep up with the latest game, anime, and album reviews that I have to offer. You can also find a few character bios there. Pretty soon I hope to expand that section.

A New Way To Spend My Time

Due to Jon having college classes and me not being able to take some at the moment, I've found quite a few new ways to keep myself amused.

I recently started learning Japanese as a way to keep myself amused and busy. Its been going pretty well so far. It's far more complicated than I thought it would be. Though I've been challenged already I've made up my mind not to give up.

I'm also studying history, Japanese culture, Latin, and some math in my spare time so that I don't get lazy when I finally go to college. There's no real benefit in all of this studying that I'm doing, but for myself I view it as a nice challenge and it will give me a nice sense of accomplishment.

I recently tried Demon's Souls on the PS3. I heard a lot of good things about the game, but after trying it all I can say is that you have to be a masochist to actually enjoy the game. Its a well known fact that I have very little patience when it comes to difficult games. I give up rather easily in fact. This game, however, is just stupid hard. There is no reason why anyone should die so often. Also, would it be too much to ask for a few pointers? The developers were probably evil little satanists that felt like it would be something new and innovative to just throw the player into the game with no help at all, that way they could just laugh at everyone when they complained while playing it.

Aside from all of that, I swear that I'm going to start doing more reviews. I get so busy sometimes that I forget that I'm running two blogs. ^^;

First Wave Complete

Well I've been very busy lately. I've been trying to find a way to keep myself busy while Jon is at school and to do something productive rather than just sitting at the computer or playing a game. Well I finally found a few things. First of all, I'm going to continue studying history, after all that's what the blog was for in the first place. And secondly I'm going to being learning Spanish and Japanese. :D Now, that, is something productive if I ever thought of it in my life.

As far as my other blog goes, the first wave is complete. All of the main character bios for Higurashi are up, now I just have to do the secondary characters and move on from there to more anime and eventually a few video game reviews. I'm considering putting my Heavy Rain article on the other site, it might get more hits there any ways.

First Impressions of Heavy Rain

Well I haven't played the game yet, I'm sure I will one day though. I have however watched a lot of gameplay and played the demo a little. So here's what I have to think about the game based on just that.

First of all the movement of the characters irritates me. I don't like having to "hold down the gas" so to speak, in order to move my character. I also don't like the fact that there's a lot of Quick Time Events (QTE) in the game. After playing the demo I get the feeling that half of the game is going to be nothing but QTE's and honestly, if that's the case, then I feel bad for the people that made the game. I know a lot of people wouldn't mind a game consisting of mostly QTE's but, honestly when you play a game like that, where's the freedom?

A few thing that I really like about the game include the story, graphics and character development. The graphics are absolutely beautiful, anyone with a mind can see that. Honestly for me, they're a bit too realistic, but its not something I couldn't get used to. Times in gaming really are changing after all, aren't they? The story is amazing in this game. I tell you this, when you get to the end you will be a bit shocked. Like I said, I haven't played the game, but if you do enough research online you can find everything. The way the characters are developed is also very impressive. Every character has a nice backstory and they're all related in some way to the others due to the story. Not many games lately have given me the pleasure of seeing a nice, fully developed cast of characters, so Kudos Heavy Rain.



I'm sure that by now everyone has heard about the controversy surrounding the 'strip tease' scene. Well, I've seen this scene and some of the gameplay leading up to this scene. I see no reason why it should be a controversy. There are far more sexually explicit things in other games, and they get little to no attention. For example, every God of War game, including the upcoming third title, has a sex mini game included. When do you hear about that on the news? Then again they never show anything in those. So what, some animated breasts are shown, is that really that big of a deal?