Anime Review: Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni

Originally, I passed up on this anime. It seems that since Saga of Tanya the Evil received such great praise, "dying and being sent to another, magic-filled, world" type anime are getting made left and right. In other words, it's part of the 'copy-pasta' craze that has been hitting the anime (and manga, and light novel) scene for the past decade. There seems to be absolutely zero shame in completely ripping off whatever schtick a popular, original anime that made it successful. Further, these anime always appear in the off-season of whatever they're copying in the hopes that people hungry for more will jump on it. Anyways, enough of that blog-in-the-making rant...


The Story
The premise is interesting, despite the obvious copying. Who wouldn't like to get a second chance in life in a world much more interesting than your own. These type of stories fall into what I consider the, "God Modeing" sub-genre. It's been a rising theme in a lot of novels since Amazon made it incredibly easy to publish somewhat successfully via their kindle ebooks. I named it after the distasteful role play practice of dictating what happens with complete disregard of the other role players, essentially making yourself a god.

So how is Isekai (shortened because the name is just too long...) 'god-modeing?' Well, first, the protagonist is allowed to come back to life after dying. Not only that, but God is extremely apologetic for his death and allows him to come back in a magic-filled world along with any one request the protagonist has to help give him an advantage in this new world. This story is unlike the others (Tanya or Magic & Knight) in that the protagonist isn't reborn. He enters this new world exactly as he currently is.

The protagonist chooses to take his Smartphone with him. "He, that's dumb! He can't charge it or use the internet, so what's the use?" Well, the protagonist thinks of this and god tells him he can use the magic - which he assures the protagonist that he will be able to use in 'no time' - and he'll allow any non-direct communication with his original world. That means he can use the internet so long as he isn't using it to talk directly to other people. So he has the internet and access to way to charge the battery of his phone. He also gets God's phone number, of course.

Further, God gives the protagonist one last gift before sending him on his way. He 'boosts all his abilities' and essentially makes him super human. This is made apparent in the first episode when the protagonist is in a fight, with all his opponents movements being in slow-motion and being able to strike them down in a single hit. Of course, he does this to save two young and beautiful girls.

Now that the protagonist finds himself on this world, cell-phone or no he has no money and has no idea what to do. Sure, he has a map of the world on his Smartphone that he can follow just like a real-world GPS map, but there's still no money to use once he's there. Lucky for the protagonist, he is immediately approached by a wealthy merchant who deals in clothes who wants to purchase what he is wearing because it's so outlandish and unique. Everything from his school jacket to his boxers. So there's his money issues completely solved for the foreseeable future.

You might notice something. So far the protagonist has had zero struggle in this new world. It's obvious that once he does have a struggle, it's going to either be incredibly easy to over come or some world-changing event that has absolutely no build up and can't really be topped without doing the exact same thing again. In otherwords, there isn't much of an actual structured story and there's no real struggle. It's exactly what any random person would come up with in a random afternoon of day dreaming. Why would you give your day-dream self any real struggles? You would have more fun in a sandbox world where you're essentially a god, right? It's great for day dreaming, lame for story telling and it gets boring really quick.

Essentially, this type of story isn't good for anything other than a short story, a novella, or a one-shot. It's certainly not suitable for a series of 20-minute episodes where this theme has to be stretched so far. It'll be popular with the fan-fiction crowd and those who are into the lighter, main-stream anime. And the internet means that almost anything will have an audience. But it's not a great story, even if it fulfills a niche that a lot of us want to indulge in every once in a while. Including me.

So, as an overview: We have a weak story, with a weak world, with a weak protagonist. This protagonist has everything handed to him so there's no struggle to make the story interesting. And despite having everything handed to him, the protagonist is such a weak character that he doesn't even do anything interesting. He doesn't take the world by storm and make himself a king. He doesn't become an amazing merchant by using his smartphone to recreate the industry in the world. No, he becomes an adventurer. The only reason this was made into an anime is that anime apparently have become incredibly cheap to make.


The World
This is a pretty big part of this type of anime. It's even more important than the protagonist, honestly. The world in Isekai is your typical fantasy game world. There's generic inns, large towns in places that make no sense, guilds for adventurers, quest boards, etc... Basically if you've ever played a somewhat generic open-world RPG, you've got the world of Isekai.  Whoever came up with it had no real interest in building the world, and apparently preferred to focus on the protagonsit (and failed at developing him into someone really interesting...) and that results in a rather bland experience across the board.

Magic is prolific in this world, as you might expect. I'm hoping that a similar anime will appear at some point with a sci-fi setting rather than fantasy magic. But then again, the point of these types of stories is to put the modern-day protagonist in a situation where he can be super-human and essentially a god. A random High Schooler or Salary Man (unless it's the guy from Tanya, I guess) won't have much success in a sci-fi setting unless the author/creator is incredibly good. Anyways, the magic is your typical fair found in generic fantasy anime.

In typical shit-show fashion, the world is filled with beautiful, attractive young women who are into fighting. So this means this is a harem anime. Oh yeah, because the artist, animators, and writers all suck... it is also a comedy. And when I say comedy, I mean that it's unfunny trash. All the jokes fall flat, all the gags are dumb, and every piece of world lore is stolen, borrowed, and twisted from some other work.


The Artwork
Is incredibly bad. This is the same style of artwork you would expect from a low-budget 1980's hentai. If you've never seen one, or an anime of a similar caliber, it essentially means that the animators do whatever they can to avoid movement in the animation. On top of that, the backgrounds are... well, they look good but too good. They have no personality to them. For example, the protagonist finds himself in a sizeable fantasy medieval town. There's no horse poop on the roads, no dirt on the walls, no tons of horses or carriages (remember, avoiding movement is their MO). No, there's nothing but pristine artwork with very little faint hints of wear in the stonework.

To give you an idea how bad the artwork is, the facial animations are completely static. Occasionally, for an important character, you might get some minor eye animation. However, for literally every character they use just a repeated mouth animation whenever they are supposed to be talking. Nothing matches what is being said. There is very little variation, if any, in any particular scene. It's just the same "open-close" whenever they talk.

The completely aversion to movement is incredibly apparent. There's no special techniques to cover it, no plot device that might help make much movement unnecessary. No, this is supposed to be an action anime with lots of combat and the animators can't even be assed to use more than three or four frames when a character is pulling a piece of paper off a board. I feel like this anime maybe had two people working on it, that's how bad it is.

Speaking of action, though... The action scenes are just as static as any other. All the movement is done by flashy colored backgrounds and camera pans that imply movement. But really, there is none. "Why even make an anime?" is all I can think while watching this. I truly feel bad to all the people who worked on this because they're obviously not that great at what they do, otherwise they wouldn't be in a situation where they have to scramble for any work they can find. I am not surprised that I had a difficult time finding any actual names of people who worked on this project. I imagine that they all (rightfully) feel ashamed of themselves.


Conclusion
Fuck off. Seriously, anyone that had a hand in the creation of  this shit-show needs to take a step back from anime and re-think their lives. You're all failures and you contribution to humanity is less than a flies swarming around a pile of cow shit. Never watch this trash, I beg you. Wait patiently for Tanya to restart, or avoid the Isekai genre all together. If you ever die and god gives you the chance to come back, beg to experience your own 'isekai' adventure and revive in literally any world that this crap does not exist. It's horrible, not worth watching, and should be avoided at all costs.

Zootopia Mini-Review - 5/5 Stars, One of the Greatest Animated Films of All Time

I originally wrote this for Netflix. Unfortunately, their review platform restricts how long your review can be and so I had to cut this down drastically for it to fit there. For that reason, I am copy-pasting the original here.

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Zootopia may just be the greatest animated film I've ever seen, and I've seen many. And I'm including the films by Japanese juggernaut Studio Ghibli in that, too. The reasons for this are many fold. There's the obvious; The animation is simply beautiful and perfection. You can tell that a number of very talented people poured their heart and souls in this, dedicating a substantial portion of their life to giving us this master piece of artwork. To give you an idea just how much effort went into this, Judy Hopps, the lead, has around 2.5 million animated hairs. That is ground-breaking, both in technique and in technology. The attention to small details is astounding and is a recurring theme in the film. A great example that you'll see early on in this is the train. A simple stage we will only see once and only briefly. Normally it would be relatively bland of detail, because why focus on such an unimportant (in the scheme of things) setting? But they did focus on it and there are tons of small things, such as security cameras (which helps set in your mind that this world mirrors our own, which is important in some portions of the film where security footage is used).

Then there's the voice acting. Simply perfect. The choices were great, of course. The voice actors fit their characters well, working to match themselves to their animals. This is shown in very small ways, such as Judy Hopps speaking quite fast, being over energetic to fit with the idea that Rabbits are fast. It's a small detail that adds a lot to the character, and every character is like this. Every single one.

The humor is there, too. With plenty of small gags, that are brief and fleeting. Then there's the larger gags that span the whole film, even if you don't notice it. You'll wonder why a Sloth is named Flash, and you'll think it's just an ironic name. All will be revealed, though. Like I said, a recurring theme of the film is the attention to small detail. It builds a world, and it builds humor. As time goes on and your mind notices and collects these small details, the jokes and gags get funnier as they make more sense within the context of this world that you are learning about.

There's not just humor, either. When you see the Disney opening at the beginning of the film, you think it'll be a simple child's movie with not much to it. That's not true. Far from it. It deals with a myriad of topics that you would think that Disney would want to stay away from. Some of these I'll get into later, but an example of this is love. And I mean real love. Not the Disney princess falling for the underdog who isn't a prince but sure acts like one, while the real prince goes after the princess and has a horrible personality. Two opposing personalities forging their way through the world with a past that has molded them into who they are, trying to find a way to be happy and not lonely and stumbling upon each other without expecting to. It's something I cannot explain in this paragraph, so I won't try to. But this is just one example of the deeper topics the film deals with.

And that brings us to the overall theme of the movie; Racism exists and it's bad. Unfortunately, some people (such as a reviewer here on Netflix) see this and take it face value, assuming that's it. For some reason they get so caught up in themselves and their preconceived notions that they can't see past this. I'm not sure how to exactly put this, so I'll try my best.

To put it very, very simply, within the film the Prey animals are essentially meant to reflect white people. The Predators are then meant to reflect the minorities. It is mentioned several times that the Prey vastly outnumber the Predators. This is further reflected by the fact that within the film, the Mayor of Zootopia is a Lion, a predator. Who could this be meant to reflect? Our current black president, Barack Obama. I believe this is here to show that while the Predators are, for the most part, the sole animals who partake in unsavory actions (such as the real world statics showing that minorities are responsible for a lot of crime, especially violent crime).

Major spoilers ahead.

The big crime to be solved in this movie is the number of missing Predators, and then what is causing the predators to go 'savage' (commit serious crime). Keep in mind that from this point forward, when I use parentheses I am making real world allusions. Now it is found that the reason these Predators are going 'savage' is because of a plant that when it comes into contact with an animal (Prey or Predator), it causes them to go crazy, aka 'savage.' This plant is being harvested by a certain group of Prey animal, who are then refining it (and turning it into a blue substance within a lab setting, a neat nod to Breaking Bad) and using it to infect key Predators and turning them savage. These Predators aren't important people, which is important because it shows that Predators are liable to go savage, at least that's how it is being presented within the news, causing many Prey who normally would have no issues with Predators to fear them.

Do you see where this is going? To me, it's fascinating the wide range of topics this film covers and how deep they go. Layer after layer. They add up to a story that reflects our real world in a way that most real-world, live-action films fail at. The writing for this was top-notch. I personally feel like these are important topics that need to be discussed and this is a great way to introduce children to something that may very well define their generation. Topics of racism, race profiling (For example, the Fox lead being profiled as a cunning con man, even if he is, and being refused service or not having his word taken seriously when he has important information on a crime), and race violence.

Now, you may think it's pretentious for me to assume all this. And perhaps it is. I haven't talked to the writers and I honestly have not read any reviews or interviews or any media on this film. So I could be wrong, I suppose.

In the end, I'm simply going to say that this is one of the most satisfying films I've ever watched. From the humor, to the beautiful animation, to the deep plots and topics that kept me thinking all throughout. Kudos to everyone who worked on this masterpiece and I look forward to what comes next from this studio, these writers, and the directors. Thank you for your hard work and the enjoyment you gave me. I regret the fact that I skipped the movie while it was theaters and waited all the way until it was on Netflix before watching.

Mobile Suit Gundam Online - Account Creation and Game Installation Guide

Hello. In the past I made a MSGO Guide video that got something like 30,000 views over two years. It still gets a decent amount of daily views and a handful of questions/comments (mostly about it being outdated and expressing interest in a new guide)  daily. I've recently made an updated video guide and today I will also be making a written guide.

This is for the Japanese version and requires a VPN. 

If you would prefer the video guide, scroll to the bottom of this post!

Account Creation
1) First, you will need to make an account. You will do that by click HERE.
-It should be in English, however it will sometimes appear in Japanese. If it DOES appear in Japanese, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and there will be a small bit of English text that says "International Portal" click that and you'll be taken to the English page.

2) Creating your account is extremely easy. The only important thing is that you Select Asia/Japan as your Country/Region of Residence, as shown in the image below.

Game Downloading and Installation
3) Now you will need to download the Installer. Do that by clicking HERE.


4) Installing is incredibly easy. It'll be in Japanese (or in a strange random string of symbols if you do not have Japanese language packs installed). Simply look for the option with 'N' in it and left-click it.

5) Once you have the BNO_Launcher downloaded and installed, open it in Administrator mode by right-clicking its shortcut and selecting "Run as Administrator." 

6) Ensure that the correct game is selected in the Launcher. This image will help you determine which one is correct:

7) Click the large Orange Button to begin the initial file downloading. This will be short and will only take a moment.

8) Once the initial files are done downloading, press the large Orange Button button once again. This should download and install the bulk game files.

9) Once the bulk files are downloaded and installed, you should be ready to play.

10) If the following Orange Button is displayed (check the symbols) then you are ready to play.

-If that image above is not what you see, you have more files to download. However, before downloading further files, FIRST close and re-open the Launcher. It is possible that you do in fact have the game up-to-date but the Launcher may be experiencing a common bug where it attempts to re-download the same thing over and over.


VPN Set-up and Playing
11) I use Mudfish VPN and so this guide will use it too. So far it has proven to be the easiest, most userfriendly VPN I have experience. However, this comes at a price. You will need to put in a minimum of $1 USD credit to use the Japanese VPN servers. This $1 should, if you use the VPN sparingly and only while playing MSGO and not while downloading files, last you for several weeks or even months.

12) Create an account for Mudfish VPN (linked above) and download the installer. Install the VPN - click Yes to everything and install the optional stuff as it is required for the VPN to work.

13) Once you have downloaded Mudfish VPN, set up your account, and implemented your $1 of Credit (which actually comes out to $1.08 USD), head to the Mudfish VPN Dashboard.

14) In the Dashboard, navigate (using the Left-side Menu) to Setup > Program.

15) Once in the Program Setup, click on the "Full VPN" tab and select a "JP Asia" server from the drop-down list. Click 'Save.'

Remember, you can right click on these images and select 'View Image' to see a larger version of the image!

16) Close the current Mudfish VPN Webpage and then, on your desktop, Right-Click the Mudfish shortcut and choose "Run as Administrator." This will cause a new Mudfish Webpage to open and will automatically configure and start the VPN. 

17) Visit WhatIsMyIP.com and ensure that you are connecting from a Japanese server.

-If it says you aren't connecting from Japan, you need to do the following

--Temporarily disable your Virus/Malware protection as they may be blocking the VPN from working. I use AVG and SpyBot Search & Destroy and I have no issues, but other programs may cause conflict and disabling them may help.

--Make sure that the virtual adapter ("TAP-Win32 Adapter V9") is NOT disabled (it needs to be enabled!) in your Device Manager (Search for it by going to the start button and typing "Device Manager" in the search bar).

--If neither of those works, you need to contact Mudfish support. It is possible to run Mudfish using one of the free VPN servers to make sure the program will work for you! Download and try the VPN for FREE before making any purchase!

18) If it tells you that you are connecting from Japan, open the Launcher and then click the large Orange Button. This will launch the game. You can Left-Click to skip the intro cinematics.

19) At the log-in screen, enter your Bandai account info. You will then be presented with a pop-up giving you two options. Click the LEFT option as shown below.

20) On this new page, re-enter your Bandai account information and hit ENTER. This will load you to a User Agreement page. Click the RIGHT option.

--If for some reason this does not work for you, go back through step 18-19 and select the LEFT option on the User Agreement.

21) After that, you will be taken to a new page with a pop-up window. Click OK and close the browser page as you are ready to play.

22) Re-enter your account information in the game and you will be taken to the character creation process which is very straight forward! Watch the video if you need help with that.

Quit Age of Wushu, Playing Dragon's Prophet, and more

So, I recently quit Age of Wushu (again). This time, it was due to getting bored with the game and not wanting to invest much more into it, as the plan was to quit once ArcheAge was available from the start. It still has most of the issues - poor customer support, bad translations, bugs, lag, etc... However, Earthquake, one of the community managers, has begun taking player input to help improve the translations of the game. I even helped contribute by posting the correct translations for some of the Shen Family Golden Needle faction. So, that is a step in the right direction!

Since then, I've been playing a few games I got from the Steam Summer Sale, as well as Dragon's Prophet to pass the time. I've also been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 here and there. However, a bulk of my time has been spent playing games for OnRPG.com. This week that was Skara - The Blade Remains and HEX: Shards of Fate. Of the two, I've got to say HEX was the more fun. I enjoyed Skara, but I've been getting my fighting fix from Chivalry: Medieval Combat/Deadliest Warrior.


Steam Summer Sale
Oddly enough, I've only bought a few games from this years Summer Sale (so far). Usually I end up buying a lot more than I would ever play, like most normal people. It's not so much because there was nothing more I wanted, just that I've forced myself to realize I probably wouldn't play most of what I got and the money is better saved for when ArcheAge rolls around. Anyways, the games I got were Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, Contagion, and one other I can't remember the name of at the moment.

I've been spending a lot of time in Deadliest Warrior - about ten hours since I got it the other day. It's been quite refreshing and is a great way to recharge my batteries when I'm starting to get bored of other games. So far, my favorite classes to play are the ninja and Samurai (hey, I may not be a super Japanophile, but  still love it). I've been getting quite frustrated the past day or so, though. It seems like a majority of the servers are full (and stay full), forcing me to play on a server with only 5-6 other people which often time leads to stacked teams. I much prefer playing on a full or almost full server, where it's a lot harder for the teams to become stacked.

Contagion I got because my cousin (who has been staying with me) has become addicted to L4D2 and I figured he would enjoy it. Surprisingly I was right and now I'm lucky if I can go half an hour without him asking to get on my computer. I've played the game myself a few times, and it's quite decent. I enjoy how it looks and feels a bit more realistic than the L4D series. The only negative I've found is that, in some of the servers/game modes, both the survivors and zombies are trying to kill you. I much prefer the modes where you're working with others to accomplish a goal, rather than trying to backstab each other.


Dragon's Prophet
The day before yesterday I decided to check out Dragon's Prophet after a thread on OnRPG made me feel a bit of nostalgia for the game. I enjoyed the game a decent amount, and the only reason I quit last year (about 7-8 months ago) is because the game is definitely a bit pay-to-win. Trying to play the game without investing at least a few hundred dollars to unlock more inventory/bank/dragon slots and help you along with improving your gear and whatnot is akin to playing Entropia Universe with nothing but sweating for income. Simply click on the link to see how fun that can be.

I do love the dragons in the game, though. And the housing. Heck, I even enjoy the combat a decent bit. I grew up on point-and-click for MMOs and Dragon's Prophet has the perfect (in my opinion) blend of point-and-click and action for its combat. However, the grindy nature of the game ended up making me bored of the game and so I quit. But now I'm back and I'm having some fun trying to re-figure everything and doing my best to make sure I don't screw up anything progress I made before I quit.

My main character, Jizzybell - a level 65 (now 66) mage.

So far, I've been sticking to Wintertide, doing the public events and soloing dungeons. I also joined a new level 100 guild, and I've been working on getting guild points in there so I can get into the guild base and start using some of the flutes I have saved up. It's bearable, but it's not quite as fun as when I was playing with a couple of friends. I'm hoping I can pull one of them back into the game and play with me for a while, but most of them are busy with other games so I doubt they'll feel like it. Oh well.

I've also been taking part in a couple of the festival events. One of the things I enjoyed the most in my time with Dragon's Prophet are the various events. The content is usually fun, rewarding (if you have a house or like costumes), and it gives you a bit of experience. The Halloween event has been my favorite to date, partially because I started the game right as it was starting but also because I feel like it had the best content and rewards without being to grindy. My Chaotic Terror is still my favorite dragon and I got it from the Halloween Pack (along with my pumpkin house and a bunch of decorations). 

In the screenshot above, I'm fighting Pinatas with a special sword that has "Dragon's Prophet" written along the blade. I thought that was pretty neat. Basically, each time you hit the Pinata, it spews candy which you then collect. Each piece you collect gives a satisfying "Ding!" as well (if you played the Sonic games as a kid, you'll feel nostalgic as it's almost exactly the same as the sound from collecting rings). The event is quite grindy, however. You need 100 candy to get just one candy coin. And the furniture stuff costs in the hundreds of coins and the weapon skins costs 1,500 coins (I think). Which is 150,000 candy you have to collect. That takes a hell of a long time, unless there's a better way to collect candy that I haven't found. Apparently there's also a dragon you can capture, too, but I haven't figured it out yet. And there's a dance event that happens every couple of hours, too. 

There's a few new features that have been added since I last played. Like the Dragon's Compendium, which is almost like a dragon pokedex and achievement system rolled into one. You get various rewards by collecting eight of a dragon or winning a certain number of fights in the arena using it. The rewards are Dragon Runes and Dragon Elements, which are used in another new feature - Dragon Skill Evolution. I honestly have no idea how that works yet, but plan to do some research tomorrow. Looks pretty neat, though.

That's about all I have to talk about for now. I am thinking about investing in getting a new house, but don't know how well that will work for me. Last I remember, house spots costs a few million gold and I have just over 800,000 to my name. Plus, the items used to purchase house slots on the Marketplace/cash shop don't seem to be there anymore. I could just be looking in the wrong places, though. Anyways, thanks for reading.

Oh, and I'm planning to start up another blog where I talk about anime and manga. It can be found here if you're interested.