Manga, Ramen and Everything in Between

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Joe-San's Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Review

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! By: Akira Amano

Ciaossu. Sup guys?! Today I'm reviewing one of my personal favorites. This Shojo style Shonen Manga is done by my favorite author/illustrator, Akira Amano and ran in Shonen jump. It has 409 chapters and has an anime with 203 episodes (Apparently its just on hiatus not quite sure).

Story/Plot

The story is set in Naminori, Japan. It follows a nonathletic unpopular absentminded middle school-er Sawanda Tsunayoshi or as he's called loser Tsuna. That is until the day a hitman named Reborn comes to his house. Reborn tells Tsuana that he is next in line to head the worlds most powerful Mafia family. Tsuna isn't convinced, but Reborn becomes his tutor to train him to become a good mafia boss. Reborn helps lift Tsuna's status from loser to cool (somewhat). This brings Tsuna new friends, but it also gets them caught up in the mafia business.

ART
I really like the more shojoish style brought to this shonen Manga. It gives the Manga an interesting atmosphere. It goes good with the story and the charecter design is pretty cool, although sometimes the faces look kinda weird. Overall there isn't much bad stuff to say about it though. Nice job Amano-Sensei.

Final Remarks
Reborn is a great example of what can happen when you mix styles for the better or worse. Although the story line is the classic strong guy trains weak guy into a BOSS (Literally). It is still very entertaining despite its rushed conclusion. Still a must read.

John-San Eats Asian Stuff!

Home-made Sushi!

In this one, I hire a sushi chef!

Enjoy!

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Blaine-san's Anime Review: Naoki Urasawa's Monster

Naoki Urasawa's Monster

Naoki Urasawa masterfully puts together a highly psychological anime, after the hit manga. This series has multiple instances where the story could go right over your head, unless you fully stay involved in the story line.

The main character Dr. Kenzo Tenma starts out as a brilliant neurosurgeon at a massive hospital. He has a bright future only if he kisses up to the main people of the hospital.

The story really begins when a young man named Johan Liebert is rushed to the hospital with a bullet in his head. The director of the hospital sends Dr. Tenma to go to work on the Mayer even though Johan came in first. Dr. Tenma saves Johan, so the mayer dies. This starts Dr. Tenma's spiritual journey with the idea of all men being created equal.

This belief later leads to Dr. Tenma's journey to end Johans life because any person who is in Johans life in any way is killed because all Johan wants is to be a fake person. Meaning, all proof of his existence is erased.

Additional info:

Director-Masayuki Kojins

Writer-Tatsuhiko Urahata

Music-Kuniaki Haishima

Studio-Madhouse

Licensed-Siren Visual/Viz media

Network-NTV

English network -Super channel, Syfy, Chiller

Original run date-April 6, 2004-September 27, 2005

Episodes-74

Additional info from Wikipedia

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Xavier-kun's Arcade style video game rampage!:Super Street Fighter Arcade Edition PS3

Konnichiwa

Hey its Xavier-kun here with my first post for the series of reviews on arcade style fighting games because I love how they play and the overall amazingness and otaku swag. So to start it off will be one of the newest installment of a classic Street Fighter series

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alright so here is how I'm gonna break this whole review thing down: Graphics, Balance, Story and Characters.

Story
The story behind Super Street Fighter Arcade Edition is that the evil S.I.N. corporation that wants to complete a mysterious project by holding a tournament to lure the strongest fighters to use them.
So everyone goes through the tournament fighting for a variety of reasons until you fight your rival which includes a motive that ties in throughout the series i.e. Cody and Guy having a history spanning from the Final Fight series or Rufus and Ken who have nothing to do with each other rather than Rufus is full of himself.

Graphics
The graphics are pretty amazing despite earlier versions being in anime style:

(super street fighter turbo 2)
So missing an anime touch to the art style which really disappoints me because that pulls the overall otaku friendliness level down, but the graphics are still great and cell shaded.

Balance
The balance in Super Street Fighter Arcade Edition is really good although this game definitely is a big step up from something along the lines of Marvel vs Capcom 3,Persona 4 Arena, or anything with a simpler combo system. There is definitely a required amount of playtime and tutorial time to really get good at the game, so it's time consuming but well worth it when your so amazing online.

Characters
The character roster is pretty amazing standing at 39 characters (4 exclusive to arcade edition) each with a style of their own. The only let down with games like this that have such huge rosters is that the characters can be broken down into "classes":Simplistic(Ken/Ryu) Grapple(Hakan/Zangief) Distance(Dhalsim/Vega) and

Characters(Balrog/Blanka). So cool with 4 types of characters but when you play games like Persona 4 and BlazBlue with completely different characters (although rosters less than 1/2 the size of SSF)that require individual time/effort to master it disappoints to see the lack of originality that goes into each character.

8/10-Great game but really lacks character originality

Friday, May 24, 2013

Xavier-kun's game review: Arcade style fighting games galore!!

KONNICHIWA AND GOMENASAI

Well hey there guys well first thing is that I am super sorry for not posting anything on the blog for a while so John-san has been holding us up for a good while and we will definitely be posting more otaku stuff not just food reviews (although ramen is super good). So basically what I'm about to do is make a series of posts within the next few days about(hence the title) ARCADE STYLE FIGHTING GAMES!!! Why? because they are amazing and a good portion of the best come from japan so HA!. Well that's all for now will post the first review in the next hour or so and I really need lots of recommendations of Japanese or anime style fighting games(may make a few exceptions for American ones...maybe).
well since this post is severely lacking pictures I'm gonna improvise.