The past week has been filled with a lot of news for the upcoming new Tales game and it was announced under the name Next Tales Of. Next Tales Of is not the official name of the series as they are still working on the official name so it’s more like a code name. Official announcement will come on June 2nd, 2012 during Tales of Festival 2012 and you can watch the countdown on this page.
In addition, if you register as a member on this site for Tales Channel, you can watch it a live streaming. Bamco (Namco Bandai) sure loves to tease us as they did the same thing last year when they announced Tales of Xillia during 15th year anniversary of Tales series.
NASL.tv just announced that North American Star League (NASL) Season 3 grand finals will be held in Toronto on July 14th to July 15th, 2012 at International Centre in Mississauga. NASL Season 3 grand finals will fly out top Starcraft 2 players from season 3 playoff which is currently ongoing and going into Week 7 this week.
For those who live in Toronto area, this is a great opportunity to come and watch StarCraft 2 matches live. Who knows we will ever get this kind of opportunity again in the future since most known Star Craft 2 tournaments are held in United States.
Is anyone planning on going ? I most likely will be going ^^ since I never actually attend a live StarCraft II tournament before and it’s being held not far from where I live so it’s a great opportunity to come and watch the tournament live instead of streaming. In addition, I would be able to cheer on my favourite StarCraft II players ^^. Who’s your favourite player to win NASL Season 3 ? Will EG.Puma take the crown again ? I am rooting for our Canadian Starcraft II player, EG.Huk.
I just had a taste of what it feels like to play an RPG in Japanese; it was very challenging and very time consuming since I kept going back and forth with my hiragana/katakana list + online translator.
I logged 3 hours worth of play time so far but in reality, it was probably just 15-minutes game play since the rest of the time I tried to read / translated it into English. On the other hand, I managed to pick up some Japanese words ^_^. Note that Romanji/translation may not be correct since I have no Japanese background at all.
セーブ (seebu) = Save
ミラ (mira) = one of the main characters in Tales of Xillia, Milla
アイテム (aitemu) = Items
アツプルグミ (atsupurugumi) = apple gel
オレンジグミ (orenjigumi) = orange gel
ライフボトル (raifubotoru) = raise bottle
マント(manto) = Cloak
術 技 (jutsu waza) = Skills
イベソトリスト (ibesotorisuto) = ?
ライブラリ (raiburari) = Library
システム (shisutemu) = System
クイックセーブ (kuikku seebu) = Quick save
ロオド (roodo) = Load
コンフォイグ(konfoigu) = Config
メツセージ (meseeji) = Message
挙る (agaru) = Climb (when you are by a stair)
入る (hairu) = Enter (when you are about to enter a new area)
しラベル (shiraberu) = Investigate / Inspect (when there’s a shiny object)
クモの巣 (kumono su) = Spider web
開く (aku) = Open (open a chest)
Animation for cut scenes is very well done and it’s another awesome work from Ufotable (same studio who did Fate / Zero). I actually think it’s better than Tales of Graces F which was done by Production I.G. Do you guys think so too ?
Speaking about gameplay, they revert it back to TP system for artes/skills which I am not a fan of and I enjoy Chain Capacity (CC) more in Tales of Graces F. Another thing that I notice is that there’s no free movement during the battle other than going forward / backward toward an enemy and jump. Skip up to 1:44 to see the battle in this video below.
One of the biggest challenge that I find is reading Kanji since I can’t read them all unlike Hiragana/Katakana which I can look into my list. Does anyone have any suggestion on how I can read Kanji and know which one is which ? ^^;; and also, is it possible to download Japanese DLC even though I am in North America region ? Tales of Xillia has quite a few nice costumes for each character ^^
After spending more than 150+ hours on Tales of Graces F, I am getting ready to move on to my next Tales series. Tales of Xillia (テイルズオブエクシリア) got my vote for the next Tales series that I am going to play. It was released back on 2011 during the 15th anniversary of Tales series and some of you probably remember the teaser video back on December 2010.
There is no localization announced yet for Tales of Xillia, however, there are many rumours out there saying that there’s a plan for localization. At this rate, it will be localized by 2015 based on when Tales of Graces was released originally on Wii in 2009 and the localized version on PS3 in 2012. Excited ?
This will be my first RPG in Japanese that I will ever play and first five minutes into the game, it was intimidating enough since I don’t understand story at all. Hopefully with little of patient, I can understand little bit here and there which ultimately helps me learning Japanese. It will be a challenge for sure.
I bought the game used for $40.00 + shipping from eBay which is not a bad deal considering how much the new game cost (~$100). It came in perfect condition and feels like new except without the plastic cover.
What’s your first RPG in Japanese that you’ve ever played ? Did it motivate you more to learn Japanese ?
For the longest time, I was unhappy with the loading time on my blog due to various reasons. Since I started blogging last month, I have been looking solutions on how to increase my blog performance especially loading time. Believe it or not, loading time matters a lot from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective.
In general, W3 Total Cache plugin fits my needs as it does page caching , minify , database and CDN (content delivery network). In term of page caching and database, my option is limited to ‘Disk’ since it’s a shared hosting environment but it still helps because MySQL queries in WordPress are just terrible. I had few occasions where my hosting was cancelled due to crazy usage for CPU power which was caused by heavy MySQL queries. Page cache certainly helps a lot because every time you refresh a page, you will not call many MySQL queries, instead, you just pull the page from your cache
I heard about Amazon Web Services before but never bothered to look into it more. Amazon Web Services offers various products and the ones I use are Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront. For those unfamiliar with these products, Amazon S3 provides a storage service similar to DropBox and Amazon CloudFront provides global content delivery network where it delivers my static content such as images from the nearest location around the world. Also, surprisingly, their interface is so easy to use/navigate around especially for a first time user like me ^__^
Almost all images, javascript and css are now hosted on Amazon CloudFront. Do you notice the loading time has been reduced significantly ? I know I do :). Do note that Amazon Web Services offers their services for free with limited capacity/bandwidth. Since my blog is not that busy, monthly cost will be minimal ($2-$3).
Running into difficulties with setting W3 Total Cache and Amazon S3/CloudFront ? Post it below and I’ll do my best to help.
Saint Seiya Omega reminds me a lot of my childhood memories when I was and am still fond of Saint Seiya series. Saint Seiya is also well-known as Knight of the Zodiac. Saint Seiya is one of first anime series that I watched when I was a kid. This went back as far as 1988. Most of my readers probably weren’t even born yet :).
Trailers
Saint Seiya Omega is a sequel of the original Saint Seiya and Seiya, the pegasus saint, was told as a legendary gold saint who defends Athena many many times. Our main protagonist, Kouga, in Saint Seiya Omega was saved by Seiya when he was a little kid. Unlike the original Saint Seiya, Saint Seiya Omega incorporates element such as Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, Lightning, Light and Shadow for each constellation.
Opening
If you haven’t watched the original Saint Seiya, rest assured that you don’t need to in order to understand the story in Saint Seiya Omega. There will be couple references to the saints in Saint Seiya through the series but you can easily check wikipedia to find out more information :).
According to Anime News Network, there will be 12 episodes but I find it little bit short considering the original one has 114 episodes separated into multiple arcs. Can anyone confirm if this is correct ?
Saint Seiya Omega uses the same opening as the original Saint Seiya – Pegasus Fantasy but it’s sung by MAKE-UP featuring Shoko Nakagawa (Shoko-tan). Great anime series is always being accompanied by great a opening and I believe it’s an important factor to get viewers excited into the anime. Without a great opening (song and animation), I just don’t see how viewers will be interested in the series.
One minor complaint that I have with Saint Seiya Omega is the character design. It has similar character design as Precure since it was designed by the same person, Yoshihiko Umakoshi.
For fellow readers who enjoy the original series, I just don’t see why you would not enjoy Saint Seiya Omega. On the other hand, for those who haven’t watched Saint Seiya before, you may like this series if you enjoy anime series like Flame of Recca or Fist of the North Star.
For those who are feeling nostalgic, enjoy the original Pegasus Fantasy opening below 🙂
Original Saint Seiya Opening – Pegasus Fantasy
Live Pegasus Fantasy by Nobuo Yamada
Is this Saint Seiya Omega in your Spring 2012 watch list ?
Claymore chapter 126 was just out yesterday and I was happily reading it as it becomes a monthly ritual for me. I was turning to page 20 of chapter 126 then I saw the word “END” on bottom left of the page …… “Pause for few seconds” and “Pause for few more seconds”. I am lost at words. I thought this was a joke and I found it really hard to believe but Anime News Network confirmed that it actually ended ; ;.
Am I the only one who’s highly unsatisfied with how Claymore ended ? I am not sure what’s going through Yagi’s mind when he finished this series. There’s many things left hanging:
Clare. What happened with Clare? She is the heroine of the whole series but she got removed towards the end of the series. Not to mention, the only reason Clare went on her journey and did all those crazy things was because she’s looking for Raki.
Descendant of Dragons. What are they and where are they coming from ? Even though the organization is the source and cause of all these youmas, it does not explain where those creatures are coming from and what’s the purpose for infecting those humans with those parasites. What’s the main reason behind creating of those youmas and have those claymores fight them ?
Why did Miria not tell the rest of Claymores about the origin of youma? What’s the point of keeping it a secret ?
What’s up with Priscilla after image toward the end of chapter 125 and what was she saying to Miria?
Why did Cassandra decide to leave Miria’s group alone and go somewhere instead?
Feel free to add more my dear loyal readers and what do you think about how it ended ? I don’t mind how Bakuman ended but I just can’t accept the ending.
Jormungand is anime based on a manga with the same title. The story is about an arm dealer named Koko Hekmatyar who sells weapon to many countries while evading local authorities since arms trading is illegal obviously. She’s always accompanied by her team which consists of war veterans. Her latest addition to the team is a child soldier named Jonah who ironically hates an arm dealer. The only reason he joined was to find the arm dealer who’s responsible for his parents’ death.
I have watched episode 1 to 4 so far and telling a story about life of an arm dealer is definitely unique and never done before even though there were a lot of anime series out there about assassin or hitman theme. While the story has a serious/tense tone in it, Koko’s character does a good job on keeping the balance between comedy and action as she’s a very easy-going / laid back person. For an arm dealer, she smiles all the time and laughes during desperate situation which is something you will find in a real life.
As I mentioned in my previous post, having a decent opening and ending song does play a role in deciding whether I will continue watching the series or not and a decent/good opening song will get me through the first episode at least and probably wanting for more episodes at end. Opening song of Jormungand is titled “Borderland” by Mami Kawada. Koko is voiced by Shizuka Itou, the same seiyuu who voiced Haruka Morishima in Amagami SS and Amagami SS+. It did cross my mind for a second that Haruka switches roles with Koko and becomes an arm dealer ^^;;. Can you imagine if that actually happens ?
Jormungand has only 12 episodes in total so I think I am going to finish since I am like 1/3 there and I highly recommend Jormungand to everyone. Give it a try and you will find it interesting 🙂
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