Revo: GR-2

I have gone retro retro-anime. Some of you may be old enough to remember Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot. It was a dub of a tokusatsu show actually called Giant Robo. Well, back in the early 90's (just a couple of years before anime hit it big in mainstream North America) Giant Robo was remade into a retro-styled anime with martial artists doing impossible stunts and larger than life robot smashing action. Revoltech paid tribute to this 7-part OVA with Giant Robo and his nemesis GR-2.

Actually, as I blogged before, I had Giant Robo a full two weeks ago (and it's been out for much longer). But you know, until today, it didn't make the jump from moderately interesting all the way up to "total coolness." That's because GR-2 actually comes with an additional piece of the most memorable scene from the Giant Robo show...

...but before I get there, here's a closer look at GR-2...
...and that's about it, because, really, GR-2 is a rather plain action figure.

The scene I'm talking about was that after several episodes of crazy robot fighting, we had already seen Giant Robo fire storms of rockets and missiles. We had seen that Giant Robo was studded with enormous cannons. But that wasn't all there was... fans were treated to his ultimate weapon: his flight-pack turned out to be a gigantic bazooka!

I distinctly recall watching this in a darkened room at the University of Quebec in Montreal with members of Club Animate. And although everyone had their personal favourite (including people who didn't necessarily like Giant Robo), the crowd erupted with thunderous applause and laughter and cheering. I mean, really, that was on the level of watching the Death Star blow up for the first time.

Anyway, without rambling on further, here's a closer look at the extra pieces that came with GR-2 that make for the "deployed bazooka":So anyway, here's a final photo of what Robo looks like stock for comparison:

UFS: Chun Li (set 4)

Just a thought - I'm still a relative n00b when it comes to UFS. But I thought it'd be fun to take a look at the contents of the starter box I picked up today. Chun Li is perhaps one of the first fighter game characters I ever played (if not the first) and I've always liked her speed and relative ease to play (who else had such an easy throw?).

Well, for the deck, it's the usual sort of thing to expect - a playable mix of cards, some from the "The Dark Path" expansion, and some exclusives. I wish I knew which were the exclusives but since I don't know off hand, I just scanned a couple of my favourite cards from the box. Of course, besides the character card, I chose to show a card based on the artwork more than anything. And really, you can't go wrong with licensed work by the guys at Udon Studios.

The card I'm showing off has the amusing title "Strength and Beauty." It's one of those hit-or miss cards that played at the right moment could turn a regular attack into a devastating one. I haven't taken the time to check how many Reversal cards are in this particular box yet but if it's anything like the Terry Bogard box, then there's a good chance this card could come in useful.


On a more general view, without actually playing the deck yet (since I have no-one to play with until I meet up with my brother next weekend), I remark that the deck appears fairly well balanced. Which leads me to believe I've just been the victim of bad luck when my first box (Taki of Soul Calibur 3) was severely unbalanced - it had many more Attacks than Foundations. Since Attacks tend to have lower control check values, it was proportionately more difficult to play the Foundations... I've spent my time since attempting to rebalance the Taki deck.

I also remark that Chun Li's attack cards seem to deal less damage than the average (some of them only 2 Damage)... Not sure if it's my imagination. But I did come across an Enhance while shuffling through the deck that boosts Attacks - but only those with low damage. Hmm... I wonder... Anyway, can't wait to try it out... And we'll see how she does stock and later when I start tweaking it with cards from boosters.

Bonus: for fun, I also wanted to share this classic (classic in that it was published some 10 years or so ago) image of Chun Li by Satoshi Urushihara. Enjoy it because it was a pain looking through so many freakin' hentai images to find this! ^_^;

New Toy! Logitech MX Revolution

It seems ridiculous now that I think about it. Ridiculous in more ways than one. Firstly, I realize that my mouse doesn't work... It hasn't worked in years. The scroll wheel was buggy and jumped my pages around uncontrollably any time I touched it. Well, I learned to live without it because up until this mouse, I didn't even have a wheel to begin with. But after many visitors on many weekend stays in a row pointing out the obvious to me - that my mouse DOES NOT WORK, I decided it was time to replace that POS mouse I bought for $10...

Ultimately, the situation has improved... but the situation is still ridiculous. Yes... my mouse is now the most advanced piece of technology attached to my PC. Next to my haphazard PC case (which makes it looks sort of fast and furious), my POS computer still sports a mismatched keyboard (an old IBM Media Pro of which the driver is not even installed at the moment), and a mismatched beige monitor... my fresh MX Revolution is a Ferrari to my f*cking Daewoo computer.

But am I enjoying the new mouse or what? Still got a little kinks to work out like customizing some of the functions but this baby has the coolest scroll wheel I've ever played with. It clicks for precision scrolling, but then if I'm scrolling on an unusually long page, it automatically disengages the micro-gear and allows me to free-spin the wheel. And despite the warnings I've seen on some sites, the latest version of Logitech's "Setpoint" driver (4.0) does work with Firefox. The Docu-flip wheel at my thumb becomes and alt-tab and the forward and back navigation buttons also work in Firefox 2. And to top it off, the little auto-search button works great: it was relatively inuitive to reset it from Yahoo to Google.ca.

So far so good. Not sure if it'll make a big difference to gaming (doubt it) but it is nice to actually be able to use the zoom functions in RTS games now.

Reaction: Ratatouille

I'll start out by saying, this wouldn't have been my first choice of movie. But then, whenever I get myself wrangled into seeing a Pixar movie, I'm never disappointed and usually am very entertained. That said, the meetup group went to this last night and I have a few observations I wanted to note (these are essentially the bullets I gave them in person over dinner).

1. Love the hair effects. Hair and water are possibly the one major animation challenge left when it comes to CG work. It's subtle, but the way Collette's hair fell and the tiny little movements made it real - which is surprising considering her (and everyone else's) very cartoon faces.

2. Liked the plot device that the rats didn't "talk" to the humans in English (the humans' POV showed them only hearing frantic squeaking) - but ...well... they're still talking animals and I'm not big on talking animal movies.

3. My favourite scene also unfortunately leads into my least favourite editing decision: Our hero rat discovers a will left by our master chef that his son should inherit the restaurant (the audience knows this pretty much from the beginning). But upon discovery, the ambitious sous-chef goes on a wild chase through the city attempting to catch the rat who now has the legal proof that the restaurant will not be his. The chase was great fun... except the resolution of that scene left me slightly bewildered as to how much time passed between the chase and the revelation that Linguini was the heir to the restaurant. I was under the impression that the sous-chef had just crawled out of the water and run back to his office looking for the rat... but then the dialogue implies that some time has passed and word had already gotten around.

4. The supporting cast was amazingly fleshed out and well-designed. I've also possibly killed a man with my thumb as well. ;)

Tubes Backlog for July

List stuff I'm too lazy to put up decent posts for.

Civil War: Wolverine TPB
Got this cheap through Amazon. It's an awesome story proving that from time to time, a tie-in can be done right despite the nebulous nature of big events. Wolvie goes AWOL and does what he does best: hunts down Nitro (the guy who blew away Stamford, thus kick-starting Civil War). Along the way he also uncovers a bigger plot behind Civil War. All this plus groovy Humberto Ramos art.

Revoltech: Giant Robo
I'm on a revivalist kick lately and finally started hunting down the DVDs of "The Night the Earth Stood Still." This figure is typical quality for Revoltech - chunky PVC goodness. And the paint job is fantastic: on such a small head there are actually eyes on the facial details. Johnny Socko would've been proud.

Hellboy Director's Cut DVD
Arrived in the mail from eBay. 2004 doesn't seem so long ago but damn, I forgot how much I enjoyed it. The 3-disc set presents a new interpretation of "cast commentary." It's not a commentary track: it's actually a video for you to watch them watch the movie. Lots of other goodies too.

Bunch of Warhammer40k stuff
I don't usually do this but I'm giving a shout-out to Maelstrom Games. They're a UK outfit dealing in tabletop-games at bulk pricing and free shipping. I just got a paint set retailing $40CAD for only $20. That's a no-brainer. I also got the Cities of Death expansion rulebook so I can't wait to read it and try some urban warfare scenarios.

Monsieur Bome 22: Rin Tohsaka
I said I'd stop getting these. It wasn't bad in the beginning when they came out once every 6 months. But now, forget it. I don't have the money or space to get them all. However, I'm making an exception for Rin because... I'm in love. She's comes off a little cold in the anime version of Fate/Stay Night, but gradually warms up throughout the series. And yes, I'm such a loser.

Cutey Honey Live-Action DVD LE
I haven't had a lunch box in 20 years. But the LE version came in a tin featuring an embossed image of Eriko Sato as Honey and I couldn't resist. Loved the movie from the first fansub I downloaded years ago, but seeing it in a full DD5.1 mix is awesome. The dub was tolerable too (the mix is a little clearer in English than on the Japanese track).

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's
"Shootin' at the walls of heartache, Bang Bang!!" It's GH2 all over again but with less bonus features. However the set list is way better. It's tough to play a music game when you aren't enjoying the music. But for this edition, even when I'm not familiar with the tune, I'm still having loads of fun. My PS2 has been the longest-lasting console investment I've ever made.