Paper Moon

Another week without Tsubasa. So are we officialy on an every-other-week schedule now, or what?

Oh well. Other things to look forward to:

One
Two
Three
Four
Five

Also, I guess I should just give up now, because I am never going to get any work done EVER AGAIN.

(Seriously I have been so South Park-deprived for the past two years that it is not even funny.)

UPDATE: Seirei no Moribito novels hit American on June 1st. AWESOME.

There is no new chapter of Tsubasa to make fun of this week. So here's a context-less screenshot from episode 18 of Shakugan no Shana II instead.

( Failure at bukkake? )

1. No packaging. What. The. Hell.

No, I'm serious.

The first Tokyo Revelations disc came in a nice, standard-sized DVD case with a CLAMP-illustrated wraparound cover. The second disc? No case. No cover illustration. Just a sheet of cardboard with a slight indendation for the disc to sit in.

I'm serious.

No, even worse: The box in which the combined DVD/manga package is sold has a little window so that you can see the DVD disc. The exposed DVD disc. There is no clear plastic window on the box, no protection, no nothing. Just a hole in the box that completely exposes the DVD disc. And these boxes are being sold without shrink wrap or anything - just stacked in bookstores, as they are, with all of those exposed DVDs rubbing against each other.

What the hell, guys. Just what the hell.

ETA: Okay, I'm an idiot. It turns out that the DVD case that came with the first Tokyo Revelations box actually has space for THREE DISCS inside of it. You have to actually lift up the liner materials to see the extra disc slots, which of course, for some reason, I never did. Oh well. I still think it's a bit odd to be fitting three DVD discs into one DVD case, but... I guess it will save me shelf space in the long run?

Anyway, continuing with my original post...

2. Still no animation in the opening credits sequence. Oh come on, Production I.G. I had hoped that the first "opening sequence" was a fake-out and that we would get to see a *real* opening sequence as the OAV progressed. No such luck.

So, um, did they blow their budget on twenty-five minutes of animation? Is that why we get no opening sequence, just a song being played over a black background? Is that why we got no DVD case?!

The episode itself was pretty good, though. It's a faithful adaptation of the last a really good part of the manga. Plus a few extra little touches were added - Syaoran's moment of hesitation at the end, Kurogane's (ahem) body language when he was holding Fay, a few extra lines of exposition for Yuuko that hint at Fay's to-be-revealed-later backstory. The addition of the squish glorp sound effects during That One Scene, however, I could have lived without. Also, the final shot of Kurogane, which I think was supposed to be dramatic, except that the animators drew him kind of cross-eyed.

Yay, Tokyo Revelations today!

( Behind the cut. No real spoilers. )

And now, awesome news for the day: Capcom is finally making a proper Fate/Stay Night 3D fighting game. I say "proper" 3D fighter because I can't quite bring myself to count Fate/Tiger Colosseum as a "proper" fighting game. It's fun to have chibi characters whaling on each other, but I'd rather have the real thing, you know? Now I that I can finally have a properly-rendered Hercules and Gilgamesh whaling on each other, my life is complete.

No, wait. Not quite complete. Somebody still needs to make a Mahabharata fighter.

Still nothing happening.

Seishirou's sword is cool, though.

There was a grand total of one new piece of information revealed, and it was of the eyeroll-inducing Oh, really?! variety. Spoiler: Tomoyo-hime and Ashura-ou were communicating in their dreams. Knowing this adds nothing to the story (except for giving Tomoyo an excuse to eloquently eulogize Ashura-ou for a few words bubbles), but adds a lot to the pile of this-is-really-stretching-my-suspension-of-disbelief "coincidences" that seem to flooding the series of late.

Hmmm, why do these pacing problems feel so familiar? Oh, right.

I'm still annoyed that Sakura has been completely written out of the story, just when she was actually starting to be awesome.

I'm still very annoyed that Yuuko's omnipotent powers are being used as a deus ex machina to solve almost every single problem in the manga. Stop that. The "but they have to pay a price!" gimmick doesn't make it any less of a deus ex machina. The characters still aren't solving any problems for themselves. Paying a witch to solve all of their problems for them is not the same thing. For the past forty chapters, almost every single possible source of dramatic tension in the series has been solved when Yuuko intervenes. That's some real cheap-ass storytelling right there.

Well, the good news is: Only eight days until Tokyo Revelations.

The annoying news is: Shounen Magazine made a big deal out of rolling out some character designs for TR II at the end of this week's chapter. And they *happen* to look exactly like the character designs for the first installment of Tokyo Revelations. Gee!

1. I knew that the resolution of the Seishirou story would be anticlimatic compared to everything else (Tokyo, Celes) that just happened in the manga. Fortunately, CLAMP seems to realize that too, so at least they spiced things up by dumping a bucketload of comic relief in this chapter. I like that. Seishirou's story can't become TOO serious at this point, because, like I said, it could only come off as anticlimatic.

2. Fay finally gets to use his awesome new "power" yays. (And thank god there was no angsting involved.)

3. I can't tell if this version of Seishirou is not actually as evil as the x/Tokyo Babylon Seishirou, or if he IS really as evil as the X/Tokyo Babylon Seishirou and is just doing a really good job of pretending that he's not. Also, the fact that Tsubasa!Seishirou is related to Tsubasa!Fuuma automatically makes him seem less evil, simply by power of association. Because Tsubasa!Fuuma is made of win and awesome.