Freaking out like hell……

Time is moving just a little too quickly!!

Alright lemme give you the “low-down” on what’s been going on recently since Animania.

1. assignment and project deadline approaching and I’m freaking out like hell
   -yeah projects assignment due liao. Assignment handed in already. But itu group project still pending submission. Elo group member please work faster lah……
2. exams approaching and I’m freaking out like hell
   -yeah exams coming liao. really feel like I’m not working hard enough this term. with the 2 anime conventions and furthermore the really screwed up group project this time……hiahz. Cardio didn’t seem so bad until all this receptor neuro stuff comes into play………..
3. excited about getting new comp after exam that I’m freaking out like hell
   -constant appearance of blue screen has pissed me off enough! parents granted permission to go desktop hunting after upcomin exams. talk more on this when I ACTUALLY get it.
4. so many exciting games coming out year end that I’m freaking out like hell
   jsut gonna list a few really nice ones(listed on my MSN personal message now as well)
   - Red Alert 3 (My all time favourite RTS game, can’t miss out on this one
   - Tom Clancy’s Endwars (it is totally possible to play this entire game with jsut your voice, meaning you play the whole game going “Unit 1 engage Hostile 3″, “Unit 2 move to Foxtrot”, “Prepare kinetic strike weapon”, Totally COOL!!!)
   - Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. (Its been a long time since I’ve seen an impressive airplane game. In fact the only other airplane game I liked was the Ace Combat franchise, but H.A.W.X. seems to be toally promosing)
   - Left 4 Dead( From the creator’s of Counterstrike comes the zombie killing CO-OP game. Yes!! you co-op with your friends to survive a city full of zombies, Co-op is going to be totally redefined in this)
   - Tomb Raider: Underworld (Okay I’m not like totally interested, but the model playing Lara Croft looked really nice, haha!)
   - Tiberium (Second FPS game to be released from the C&C franchise, really really hope it doesn’t dissapoint like Renegade)
   - Fable 2 ( I think I’ve explained how cool Fable 1 was, so Fables 2 is gonna be totally awesome!!)
   - Fate/Stay Night (okay this game has actually been out for long long time already, but the english translations were never completed 100%, and the company in charge of translating it seems to be 80% to finishing the final route, so……that’s really worth looking forward to as well)
5. I’m watching soooo many anime that I can’t really distinguish which is better than which that clearly anymore…….no not freaking out on this, haha
   - yeah, seriously speaking, I’m about to break the 40 limit already and I HAVE to Anime to do jsut that, but yea, time is really choking on me this time, so……it’ll take a while I guess. But yeah, for the 38 anime list on the right……only trust that the bottom 10 is ddefinitely least worth watching, the remaining 28…….a little hard for me to make up my mind. but keep in min that Fate Stay/Night is still No.

Currently looping NHK,Suzumiya Haruhi,Sakura Wars,Yakitate!! Ja-Pan, Chobits,Air Gear and Fate/Stay Night theme songs on iTunes, blah!!

Animania 2008

Went to another anime convention again. This time decided that I didn’t want to waste time going to the place late. So the result was waking up early at 7 30 to take the 8 30 bus to hopefully arrive at the place by 9 in time for the opening at 10. very sad however that mornings recently have been just unbearably cold. Its so super duper cold these days that it hailed jsut a few days back. Anyways, no rain or cold would stop me from going to the convention……wahahahah

apparently not even price was a factor that could stop me. Anime con entrance fee was 35 dollars…….yeah its quite a killed I suppose.Anyways, I arrived quite on time as expected, slightly after 9 and already can see a small queue. Was kinda dissapointed cause I tot there’d be a lot more people. But either way I came liao so just line up loo. Could see quite a lot more good cosplayers this time round and a few familair faces from Smash!2008 as well.

Well public did not dissapoint in the end, by 9 50 queue had already extended all the way outside of building liao. exactly at 10 doors were open and entry was soon granted.Animania seems to have a greater emphasis on stuff relating to cosplays, socialising and selling of items. Its slightly different from Smash! since smash seemed to have a big emphasis on selling dojinshi. In other words, I didn’t get much chance to see many amateur artists selling off their work in this convention. However there was a lot of shops selling manga and anime DVDs. There was also a stall selling visual novel games, owner even approached me saying…..”I don’t know if you’re interested, but I’ve also got some H-games with me”……Oh swts, I really hope he says that to all the guys that visit his shop…….otherwise………does that mean I have a really H appearance?……..omg……..

food stalls quite a few also, most interesting to note was that takoyaki stall was able to maintain a 15 m queue all the way from opening time till 6pm …………other stalls were selling japanese pancake, also queue until like what lidat, then a pastry stall and a drinks stall, which didn’t have that serious a queue, but probbaly cause their stuff cooked a lot faster.

they’ve got a really big gaming area as well. A bunch of Gamecubes and Playstation 2s open for the public to use. What’s really nice is they’ve got a lot of 4 player games so people can really play together. Surprisingly there weren’t as many DDR machines there, whcih was kinda surprising cause I always tot that DDR was like a must for places like this.

A lot of little workshops going about the place as well. Partitioned only by large curtains only…..its kinda troublesome for those people at the workshops also cause whenever something big goes on at the main stage, the sounds often get a little too loud. But then again a lot of the little workshops are……a little weird. Like there was this workshop where some lady was trying to actually give a LECTURE on how japanese manga and anime influences the modern culture…….obviously enough it was stationed at 1 corner of the convention and you can see like about 5 -8 people there at any 1 time, and its normally old people jsut resting there………… Of course there were some interesting workshops going on as well, had like karaoke workshops, and hip hop dancing class workshops, workshops that teach u to sew(for cosplayers) and also tips for good cosplay. haha.

Of course for me workshops weren’t that big a thing really. What I love about cons like this are……Cosplay, Merchandise and Food.  And yea I did manage to catch a lot of more good cosplayers this time round since there were so many. Although I have to say there were also a lot in Smash but the ones here are a lot better. Merchandise wise…..this time I didn’t get any artworks since there weren’t any nice artists around. Got me a Full Metal Alchemist Pocketswatch which just looks really nice(now I have to watch the Full metal alchemist anime) and a god-knows-what-anime-ring just because it looked nice.this time even crazy the cat ears still selling for 20 dolalrs, but its not even a hairband this time. This time is only hairclips equipped with some cloth to make it look like car ears……..like hell I’d get smth lidat!! Figurines this time were a lot more……..but also a lot more expensive, small gundam figurine with the height of your average fork and spoon length already cost like 35 dollars……..so scary……..

Hang around the stalls most of the morning until the cosplay event at 2pm. Forgot to makan lunch so at 1 30 ++ tummy actually rumbled no choice had to go line up at god freakin long queue for food. end up went to cosplay event at 2 ++ which means I missed out a few already and cannot get front row seat also. Had to go sit at the far far back like almost 30 rows behind which is barely ANYTHING liao………luckily borrowed Kyloon’s big-ass camera and used the extra panjang 15cm ++ zoom lense, caught every picture as if I was standing at front row.

finished my day at about 5 ++ and tried to balik liao loo. Apparently we made plans on how to get to the convention…..but we forgot to make plans on how to get home, end up had no clue how to get home with dunno what bus at what bus stop. end up floated around McEvoy here and there for almost 2 hours before finally give up use taxi go home……..so swts.

Ill post some interesting pictures up over here, all the cosplay pictures probs will load up on facebook at a later time. I’m gonna try some gallery thing this wordpress is giving so hopefully this time wun have crazy big-ass pictures liao.

Queue at 9 30

queue at 9 50

Weapon’s Rack

Mushroom from Kingdom Hearts

despaired mushroom

Tamaki and Haruhi

dunno what character

Ikki and Agito

the Sun brothers

Interesting Note: More than 5 Haruhi dances were performed, at least 3 neko dances and 3 groups cosplaying ouran high school that day

Sadly I couldn’t get a chance to take picture with the cosplayers because I split up with my friend, he wanted to stay longer at stalls while I wanted to hunt cosplayers, so there wasn’t someone to hold the camera if I went in to take picture.

Games

Have recently previewed and played several really nice games.(yeah i know this is gonna have an impact on studies, need to fix that soon)Just thought I might share some with you guys.

First up better give something for my favourite category, PCs.

Evil Genius

Okay I know the games that I’m going to mention are going to be a little outdated for 2008, but still they’re really interesting games. For those of you that have loved Theme Hospital or the Sims, you really should try out Evil Genius. Play Evil Genius is a lot more fun since instead of always playing to do the right thing to survive, the game makes you play as the evil genius instead. So how you play this game? Just a few simple features of the games to list:

1. you build your secret evil liar underground of a mountain on an unknown island.
2. you build training rooms to train henchmen to do your evil deeds.
3. you gain cash by looting from all across the world
4. you have holding cells to imprison those nosy spies that try to infiltrate ur liar, and you have a few devices to interrogate them. I personally like to put them in the mixing bowl and spin them round and round.
5. you can build freezer rooms to store the dead bodies of the agents that you’ve killed
6. You can research doomsday devices for world domination!!woo hoo!

Fable: The Lost Chapters

this game is basically a RPG type game. You start of as a little kid playing in your nice little village. then suddenly bandits came and killed off everyone in your village except you, who was such a coawrd at the time that u didn’t do anything when you saw the bandits slash ur sisters eyes out. But its gets better, you get picked up by a Hero who decided to take you into their “Heroes Guild” and train you to become a Hero. After a few years of trainig you’ve finally graduated from the guild as an offical Hero. Of course as a newbie Hero on the block people will think lightly of you. But over time you’ll receive quests and help people out, whther its helping bandits raid a town or protecting the town from the raid, it all up to you. Eventually you’ll become more and more famous the more good/bad deeds that you do.What’s cool about this game is that whichever way you choose does not hold bad consequences, meaning even if you’ve done so many evil deeds that’s your about the same as the Devil himself, you can still proceed on the game. However note that whenever you go into a city as such a notorious person….. people in the city react differently. Tha’ts another cool thing about this game, the NPCs are much more fun to interact with. Like if you were a scary looking barbarian, people that see you will squeel at the sight of you and run away, people carry crates or firwood will dropped whatever they’re carryin from the shock of seeing you and run off screaming. Instead if you were a good hero, they welcome you and clap asn you walk by, Also……the more famous you are, the more women in the game will develop crushes on you.Which brings me to the third cool thing about the game, you can marry as many women as you like, provided you have houses for them to live in. Iplayed the game and have got 1 wife in each city so far, hehe. AND!!! you get to have some bed action with them too…. wakakkaa, ofcourse bed action censored and you can only hear the little conversations that go on…..After defeating the evil bad guy in the game you’re still free to roam about solving quests and doing a bunch of fun stuff, which is also really cool. Overall I think altho the games graphic really was quite lousy, the really realistic feel to the game really made it fun.

Also, Fable 2 is soon to be realeased on the Xbox360, I hope it’ll be out for PCs soon enough as well.

Just wanna touch a little on PS3 as well, since I’ve had a friend who jsut got 1 of those, so I tot I’ve talk about a really cool game.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot

alright I admit you probably wun be as excited about the game as MGS fans, but seriously its a really cool game. The storyline of the game ties in with all the previous MGS series. MGS 4 is suppsoe to be the ultimate conlusion for the MGS world. meaning that after this you won’t be seeing anymore Metal Gear games coming out. The game’s graphics was really cool (PS3, gotta love the graphics), a whole lot of cinematics (I have to admit about half of the game was playing cinematics) I’ve never really been a graphics person myself, but being able to see how the gameplay graphics and cinematic graphics differ by only a little bit, I’m serious impressed with graphics power. the gameplay is still like previous metal gear games, stay stealthy, sneak inside the base, and then fight off a bunch of bosses. Sounds really cliche, but seriously this is the first time I felt that graphics really could make a difference towards your gaming experience. Little advertisement here also: the MGS 4 game disc utilises blue ray technology, effectively consuming almost the entire 50GB capacity of the disc. Blue ray power…… now for the not so interesting side……I probably should note that…….I think the developers of MGS4 were kinda dissapointed with certain PS3 features.

That’s all I fell like sharing today, Hope you guys try it out, I really had fun(too much) trying them out.

Smash! Anime Convention

Went to first anime coonvention today. Its jsut a small scale one tho, organised by some anime sorta association. Entry was 15 dollars which was kinda pricy I think. Convention was open from 10am till 8 pm. I didn’t think I’d be staying for too long since I thought there wouldn’t be much to do. So decided to go to the convention a little later.

Went to the convention at 12pm. the Place was packed with people, not exactly what I expected at all since I didn’t expect so many otakus(manga/anime/stuff like this fans) to gather at this small convention. Also, amount of people cosplaying to the event was really a lot. Of course, being in western country mia anime convention, need a lot of manual filtering…….

So…some of the highlights in the convention. Ground floor was packed with stalls selling otaku items. In particular are stalls selling manga collections and anime DVD sets and stuff. Also there were stalls selling the really cute plush toys as well as little cosplay items such as fluffy cat paw gloves and cat ear hairbands……..totally cute, but being priced at 50 and 20 dollars respectively…….have to pass on that today……haihz. Also got stalls selling character figurines. That was probably te only stall that always had people standing around it till the end. Even I myself probably visited that stall like 5 times throughout the day that I’ve been there. Was really tempted to get Fate/Stay Night mini Saber figurines…….but then mana tau the kotak tulis “Daber” instead of “Saber”(means its fake)……so……..end up din buy also.

Upstairs, got more amateur artists and amateur people selling stuff. Basically it was an area where people who had talent for drawing manga to sell their own arts, I believe they call it Dōjinshi. Second floor was also gathering place for a lot of people. At the moment you reach the last step up the second floor, already u can see a line stretching at least 3 meters……line up for what ar? Maid Cafe loo…..haha. Basically its like any regular cafe, except the workers dress as your traditional black and white maid costumes. then you have cake and drinks at the palce loo. For the sake of respecting privacy, all photos are supposed to be taken with the consent of the person whose photo is being taken. So for the Maid Cafe, there was only a photography area where people were allowed to take photographs……I kinda weird but yeah…….apparently its lidat lah. Throughout the whole convention also u mau take photo with cosplayers also should ask for permission mia.ho ho……

Next up on second floor were some other stuff which me not that interested in lah. This area was basically a mini drawing school, has a bunch of tables with paper and pencil an instructor teaching u basics of drawing lah, me no patience to follow u sit down draw draw draw lah. Right beside it was more high tech version of it, using tablet display and stylus to draw manga also.Think I was more attracted to the tablet disply and stylus than the art being drawn, hehe. Yep, also on second floor, aside form manga by amateurs, also got cute items by amateurs, haha. had some cute little hats and handphone straps and pouches for sale also. All looked quite cute lah, but then me a littl hesistant in spending 20 bucks for something made by amateurs, really sorry lah, really wanna give you guys a chance but seriously didn’t dare.

There is still another building beside the one I spent more of my time in called the Squarehouse (the one I was in was naturally called, the Roundhouse) whihc organises game competitions. So some of the game competitions there were DDR(conventions like this sure got DDR mia lah), Tekken Dark Resurrection(classic), and some other ones which I’m not too familiar with. But yeah I hardly paid any attention to that part since I completely suck at those.

Doing all of the above, I probably only spent about 2 to 3 hours the most(mind you, queueing up for Maid Cafe already took up over half an hour, then go in makan dunno how long lagi). Remaining time spent watching the cosplay competition. Haha. Got to meet all the contestants, single participants as well as group. Got several nice ones loo, even westerners were doing quite well actually and then there are also not so good ones. Got banyak characters that me still not familiar with despite my 100+GB resume, swts. Apparently another friend of mine who far exceeds my abilities as an otaku……has over 280GB on his resume, and furthermore the guy has a truckload of figures and other items. So……guess I’m not THAT extreme yet lah. there’ll be a few pictures at the end of this post, I can’t post all up cause haven’t received all of them but also cause got bandwidth limitation. I’ll put more on facebook so u guys can see there lah. I’ve got over 100 so I probably wun put them all up lah, just some that I feel are worth showing bah. And also a few that I feel shouldn’t go on facebook…………\eheh…….

Yeah so probably watched cosplay competition until about 5+, didn’t wait to see the results lah, since the winner was never really what I was interested in anyways. Spent the remaining time going through the stalls one more round to try get a souvenir of some sort. by this time many shops already wanna close store dee, so u can hear stuff like “sale!!”, “10% off”, “50% off” and stuff like that, I guess that kinda makes people who bought them early a little pissed, althought they were given more choices when they bought at the beginning of the convention. This one guy, selling his own Dojinshi, didn’t wanna bother carrying all the unsold items back, so he placed all remaining items into 1 plastic bag, and labelled it [1 dollar for the whole bag]. 2 seconds after he placed the label on the bag, a dollar coin came flying to the table and the bag of artwork was gone. Just so you know those artworks were A4 sized and were initially sold at 4 dollars per piece. Anyways, I had 1 of the amateurs draw a A4 sized picture of Suzumiya Haruhi for 2 dollars and bought one of his artworks as well. Kinda actually wnated to buy from the guy next to him tho, which seemed more pro, but then he was occupied so I settle with this guy lah, Mr Fumaru u better become successful one day…….wakakkaka

Okay I think I’ll put up a few pictures now, I’ll start with the drawing of Suzumiya Haruhi that I bought, drawn by Mr Fumaru.

Suzumiya Haruhi

Elda & Freya of Chobits

Dante of Devil May Cry

Jin and Lili of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection

Pocky

Apparently image size is kinda big….. and I dun really know how to solve the problem, so i apologise beforehand