Re-Catalogued!! :D

Re-Catalogued!! :D

After TWO STRAIGHT DAYS of re-cataloguing, IXI! Studios is now officially running on Blip.tv and all our video pages have been redeisgned, including new logos for all our shows! :D

Preview Review: I Am Number Four

Preview Review: I Am Number Four

Just came back from an advance screening of I Am Number Four, a new Disney / Dreamworks film. I hadn't heard about it prior to getting free tickets through SCENE. I watched the trailer; my first thought was "Oh, another superteen movie like The Covenant? Might be worth looking at."

I decided to go in completely blind rather than doing research on it. If only I'd paid attention when someone responded to my initial reaction with "Aliens, actually." I had no idea how right he was.

Throughout the first half of the movie - and I KNOW I won't be the only one thinking this - I was like "why are they aliens?" There's zero footage of their home planet or anything resembling an origin story outside of a few minutes of exposition while he drives away from another community that outed him for finding out his secret.

We never get to learn the true names of the main character (Alex Pettyfer) and his guardian (Timothy Olyphant) - they change names and appearances every time they emigrate. First he's Daniel, then he's... John Smith? The fu? The obviously fake name ended up serving the plot, but it still did little more than establish the fact that they tried too hard to blend into human society.

You know this could have been just a superteen movie when he has to run out of his class because his powers are developing.

The love interest for this movie (Dianna Agron) was actually pretty cute and fit a character archetype that has always interested me - a shutterbug who lives in a boring town and wants to get out and travel. What better matchup than a guy who's not only travelled the world, but is from another planet?

The movie also features a conspiracy geek (Callan McAuliffe) who gets proven right, and immediately starts zapping aliens left and right.

The action is good and the effects are great for the plot that presented them - thank/blame Michael Bay for that.

If you like Twilight and/or The Covenant, I Am Number Four is for you.

PS - there will totally be a sequel and it will TOTALLY be called I Am Number Five. QUOTE ME ON THIS.

Blip

Blip

Just a heads up that IXI! Studios will be widening our video hosting platforms. We will soon have or videos primary hosted on Blip.tv, to then be exported to YouTube, and even iTunes and such. :D

First Impressions of the Winter 2011 Anime Season

First Impressions of the Winter 2011 Anime Season

It’s that time of the year again, the beginning of the Winter anime season, and once again I’ve put way too much on my plate.  Welcome to my usual first impressions review of the new season, the first one I’m getting out on time for IXI Studios.  Anyways, disregarding second seasons and OVAs that won’t air for another month or two, I’ve got fifteen series to go through, so let’s get right down to it.

Gosick

This series is essentially styled like a British detective novel.  Somewhat clueless yet physically capable teenage boy, teams up with a brilliant young girl to solve mysteries in a made up European country.  The girl, Victorica, gives off a bit of a moe vibe more often than not, but when she pulls off the classic detective part rather well when the time comes.  The male lead is a little too clueless for my tastes, but I’m sure they’ll break him in as the time goes on.  It certainly seems that way at least.  Anyways, this show seems to have promise, so it seems worth a look at least.

Beelzebub

The plot of this series follows a juvenile delinquent, who goes to a school for juvenile delinquents, who somehow ends up the adopted father of the infant son of the Great Demon King.  Yeah, apparently the Demon King was too busy playing Mahjong with his buddies to bother with the whole destroying humanity thing, and decided to send his newborn son to do it instead.  This series is more comedy than anything else if you didn’t figure it out already, and it’s mostly slapstick, but still the series manages to be entertaining.  Honestly, this is probably my favourite series of the season, though that may have more to do with the lead voice actor than anything else.

Wandering Son

This series seems to be a slice of life series, dealing with middle school life, and gender issues therein.  Yeah, weird stuff, but the characters seem very well flushed out, and interesting.  Largely, this series reminds me of Sasameki Koto, just the feel of it in general.  Not to mention the main character seems to have almost exactly the same story as the guy from Sasameki Koto.  You know which one, the only guy in that series.  This one’s probably just a matter of taste, so watch it at your own risk, you may love it, or you may absolutely hate it.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica

This series seems to draw heavily from older magical girl series for its content, but has managed to do it without seeming too unoriginal.  That may have something to do with the somewhat strange, and at times creepy art style.  The characters don’t seem too special on their own yet, but the story and powers at least seem to make up for that.  I can only say one thing to describe one of the characters, and that’s Unlimited Musket Works.  I recommend that people pick this up, I’ve got a good feeling about this series, it could be a really good one.

Wolverine

Why do I get the feeling that the only excuse for this show was to have a famous American superhero get his ass kicked by a normal Japanese samurai?  In fact, the Ironman anime had the same sort of thing going until the last few episodes…  Anyways, after the Ironman anime flopped, I went into this not quite sure what to expect.  Sure enough, everyone in Japan know Wolverine by his real name, and the first time we see him in a real fight, he gets his ass handed to him by a normal human with a wooden sword.  When did Wolverine become such a pansy?  Also, two episodes in and they’re introducing a guy who can extent an Adamantium katana from his hand as an enemy.  You know, to have someone who can compete properly, after he got his ass handed to him by a bunch of humans who tried to kill him by laying him down on the railroad tracks while unconscious.  Yeah, this is going to be such a stellar series… not…

Dragon Crisis

A show about a group of people who work to hunt down and collect special magical artefacts, who happened upon a dragon.  A dragon in the form of a loli.  The first episode was pretty quick to get into things, and there wasn’t too much introduction to the logic behind anything they did.  Usually that’s good for building some mystery, but in this case it just managed to make things seem random and silly.  My first reaction to this series went something like this… “It’s not even a minute into this anime, and I’ve heard Kugimiya Rie, found out the main character’s name is Ryuji, and seen Melon Bread on the table… this will be incredibly unoriginal.”.  Anyways, aside from that, it looks like it might be at least decent, but we’ll see as time goes on.

Infinite Stratos

This show’s about as unoriginal as you can get.  One boy going to what has traditionally been an all girls school, instant harem.  Guy not only pilots a mech, he shows an amazing talent for using it right from the start.  Childhood friend with a crush on him, you get the idea.  At very least it seems to have pieced these things together well enough that it’s not a horrible series.  It seems at least like it will be entertaining at the least, so give it a shot if you have some free time, but its nothing to get too excited over.

Kore wa Zombie desu ka?

The title of this show translates to “Is This a Zombie?”, you know, like the author wasn’t quite sure.  The series is about a murder victim who was revived by a Necromancer and tries to solve the mystery of his own death.  Or at least that’s what it’s supposed to be about, it seems to focus more on randomness and comedy more than the serious sounding plotline.  I mean, all seriousness kind of went out the window the minute the main character turned into a magical girl.  He’s a guy by the way.  I wouldn’t quite classify him as a zombie either, undead yes, but he’s still intelligent and not rotting.  Anyways, random show, and it’s already ruined any attempt at seriousness it had within the first episode.  Main character is entertaining, if no one else, but that’s pretty much all it has going for it.

Haiyoru! Nyaruani ~ Remember My Love (Craft-sensei)

Okay, now, over the years in anime, I’ve seen a lot of things turned into young women.  Badass old Chinese guys, Soda Cans, Sanada Yukimura… but the Old Gods from the Cthulu mythos?  That’s a new one.  This series is a set of short webcast flash episodes about just that, and they’re pretty random.  The only reason I see to watch this is just because you’re interested in the premise, and then drop it after a few episodes.  Also, the joke in the title of this show kind of went over my head until about an hour after I watched the first episode.

Yumekui Merry

This series is about a young girl who comes from the land of dreams who finds herself stuck in the real world trying to get back, and a high school boy with some weird ability who wants to help her.  Now, although the animation looks like your standard moe series, this one actually seems to have some substance to it.  The plot has promise, and is interesting enough that I’m kind of hooked.  I’m a little cautious just because of the animation style, but it doesn’t look like this is going to be just another moe series.  I’d give it a watch, even if you usually aren’t drawn to that kind of animation, it seems like it may be worth it.

I Don’t Like You at All Big Brother

What do you know, another brother and sister incest anime.  We’re never going to see the end of this trend, are we?  Anyways, standard setup, boy harbours some sort of feelings for his sister, but would never act on them.  Sister knows all about that fact and tries to make it impossible for him to not act on it.  Drama ensues.  Fortunately for some people, this series uses the “not related by blood” excuse, something I don’t think we’ve seen all of 2010.  Anyways, I can give it credit for a few things at least.  It has so far managed to not do what I’ve expected it to.  The characters reactions have been the exact opposite of what I was expecting.  Girl finds out she’s adopted, and you’d expect her to be ecstatic, considering the situation, but she wasn’t, she was absolutely mortified.  At very least, it seems like they’re taking a more original approach to this material, so it seems worth a watch.

Freezing

Okay, I’m going to get this off my chest now… This show is a weird cross between Mai Otome, Strike Witches, and Queen’s Blade.  It’s about a school where people go to be implanted with nanomachines that give them special powers and be trained to use those powers in order to fight strange otherworldly monsters that appear to attack humanity.  As well as each other by the look of it…  Anyways, this show is fanservicey as hell, full of action, and has the usual idiotic retard of a male lead.  In other words, nothing special, but the story seems to be hinting at something interesting at least.  The show has a bit of promise to it, but whether it follows through on it or not is still yet to be seen.

Level E

Based on an old 90’s manga, Level E is a nostalgic little series if nothing else.  The art style alone just takes you back to a time where character designs were original, and not all random moe, and the animation team really went all out with that.  The plot is about an alien prince who crash lands on earth, losing his memories, and how his very presence there is probably going to lead the universe to war.  Seems entertaining enough, definitely has plenty of promise to it.

Starry Sky

Four episodes into this series and I have no idea what’s going on.  I don’t mean there’s a mystery and this is being suspenseful, I mean this series can’t seem to stay on one thing long enough for you to figure it out.  The series itself is about a high school that teaches a lot of courses like astronomy, astrology, and so on and so forth.  Stuff to do with the stars, as the title might suggest.  It used to be an all boys school, but now it’s co-ed, even though there’s only one girl attending.  Anyways, aside from that, I have no idea what’s going on.  There was some French kid who showed up to look for and confess to the only girl in the school, but never did as far as I know and disappeared again.  Then there was some kid who invents things, we’ll see how long he lasts.  Anyways, this series airs as ten minute episodes streamed over the internet every week.  Overall, there doesn’t seem to be too much wrong with the show, I just don’t like the way they’re pacing it.

Mazinkaiser SKL

This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time now, a sequel to the Mazinkaiser OVA.  Riding in on the success of the 2009 remake of the original Mazinger Z television series, Mazinkaiser SKL is everything I was expecting and more.  I had originally been expecting a complete re-imagining of the original, but I was happy to see that wasn’t the case.  I seems that this is set several hundred years after the events of the original, with a new cast, and two new pilots using Mazinkaiser.  Real Robot fans may wonder how the hell a mech made several hundred years before could still be useful in any way, but honestly, this is Mazinkaiser we’re talking about, its power is limitless, meaning if you add some upgrades here and there to the body, it can still overpower pretty much anything.  Anyways, Super Robot fanboy-ness aside, the action is solid, and the story is about as good as you can expect from a Super Robot series not copying Evangelion.  The series seems to be lacking the Jam Project background music that the original had, but it’s been replaced with some really awesome heavy metal instrumentals, so we can forgive that.  If you’re a fan of super robot anime, Go Nagai, or just looking for something big on action, then take a look at this OVA, you’ll enjoy it.

Alright, that’s it for another season, though I may still end up picking up a few other things later one if I hear good things.  Anyways, not that much looks that good, but then again, it’s a small list, and we’re coming off of a good year for anime, so give things time to try new things and we’ll see what happens.  Anyways, that’s it for me, see you again in three months with my first impressions of the Spring season, which is usually the best one, so it’s something to look forward to.

NEW SHOW - The Irreverent TheReccher

NEW SHOW - The Irreverent TheReccher

Behold the birth of our newest series! Our movie expert, one of our ragemasters, TheReccher, finally takes the stage! Knowing full well we host our videos on YouTube, his debut video is a rant ABOUT YouTube! Enjoy!

posted a video for all you SOBs

posted a video for all you SOBs

Who's heard of the Sons of Butcher?

That old Teletoon show, right? What some of you might not know is they're an actual rock band out of Hamilton, Ontario. My siblings and I headed down there on January 8th for their hometown concert, and it was an awesome show. We even snagged an interview!

What does this have to do with gaming, some might ask. One of the band members actually creates Flash games! Oh, and the band actually engages in one of the geekiest pursuits around, as you'll find out from our interview. So, go check out our first video of 2011.

The Top 10 Anime of 2010

The Top 10 Anime of 2010

Hello there and welcome to my Top 10 Anime of 2010 list. This is the second year I’ve done this, but the first time I’ve done it for IXI Studios, last year’s list having been on both the Starhill Podcast and Blog. Now, as usual, this list will only include anime I’ve actually seen, which, as large of a list as that is, is not all of them. So if you see a show that you think should have been mentioned that didn’t end up on this list, don’t get all up in arms over it, it’s possible that it just slipped past me. Though honestly, if a show I wasn’t watching was that good, I’d more than likely have heard about it and gotten to watching it anyways. Also, this list only includes anime that actually aired starting in 2010, so shows from 2009 that ended in 2010 do not count, though there may be exceptions to that rule depending on the situation.
Anyways, this season we’ve seen a lot of two things, classic horror movie monsters, and incest. I mean, KissxSis, Aki Sora, and Yosuga no Sora all in one year makes those line-crossing series seem a little commonplace. Plus we’ve had movie monsters galore, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Highschool of the Dead, and Shiki being prime examples. All in all though, it’s been a great year for anime, much better than 2009 anyways. Last year I had my list down to a top 12 in seconds, this year took me a lot of effort to get it any lower than 34. That fact should speak for itself. Now, let’s get this show on the road. Here are my Top Ten Anime of 2010:


10 (Tied) - Otome Youkai Zakuro

I won’t talk about this too much since I’ve already covered it just a month ago in my review of the fall season, but it deserves another mention. This was an excellent series from start to finish, with a little something for everyone. It was fun, light-hearted, and very serious when it needed to be, striking an excellent balance. The conclusion was nothing too special, a little unoriginal, but still a solid ending that wrapped up all loose plot threads while leaving the possibility for a season 2. This is a definite must-watch series for everyone.

10 (Tied) - Kaichou wa Maid-sama!

Tied for the number ten spot, we have Kaichou wa Maid-sama, a series about the female student council president at what used to be an all boys school, trying to hide the fact that she works at a maid café. It was a fun series, full of little twists and turns, and a romance that for once in an anime was actually believable. That seems to be more of a trend as of late, but still, it helps the series immensely. Anyways, the coupling was cute, the stories were fun and entertaining, and even though it was kind of aggravating that it took the two of them that long to finally get together, the series was fun to watch despite that. I mean, you know you’re dragging things on when literally every single character in the series is pissed off that they’re not an official couple yet. Anyways, fun series, great to watch if you’re into romantic comedy style series.

9 - Yosuga no Sora

Yet another show from the fall season I mentioned only a month ago, so once again I won’t dwell on it too much. This series was based on an H-Game, but it managed to be so much better than the usual based on a game anime. The romances were endearing, and the only thing separating one path from another were little things that basically amounted to luck. There were all sorts of sex scenes in this series, but they didn’t ever feel forced or out of place at all. Honestly, I thought it was a little more realistic that way since it was more like a real relationship between young people. Especially the last two arcs where they happened more often. Two teenagers who’ve loved each other since they were little finally got together? Things are going to happen. Two teenagers who’re in love with one another living alone under the same roof? Things are going to happen a lot. While you can’t exactly call the format of the series original, considering Amagami did the exact same thing during the summer season, it was still fresh enough that it worked for it. If you’re into romance, give this show a shot, you may find you enjoy it.

8 - Nurarihyon no Mago

The premise of this series is simple. Yokai Yakuza. The rest just kind of writes itself, and in this case, it worked out well. I almost want to classify this as a shounen series, but I stop short of that because of how quick most of the fight scenes actually were. The series follows a boy named Nura Rikuo, who is a quarter yokai, and three quarters human. He is next in line to become the Lord of Pandemonium, Nurarihyon, the supreme commander of all Yokai. Problem is he can only take on his yokai form at night, though that does give him an interesting outlook on things. He spends his days as a human, and his nights as a yokai. He is both, and has trusted friends and allies on both sides of things. I really wasn’t expecting this show to be as good as it was, but the story was good, the characters were interesting, and frankly, I just like Yakuza films so that kind of setting really got me hooked. This is one of those shows where I was waiting every week for the new episode to come out, it was just that good.

7 - High School of the Dead

There is only one way to properly describe this show, and that is “So ridiculous that it’s awesome”. As anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock this year should already know, this is a series about the zombie apocalypse in Japan from the perspective of a set of high school kids. The show became known for several things pretty quickly, not the least of which being the amazing… umm… attention to detail when animating the girls as they moved around. As fanservicey as it was, it wasn’t any more so than most American horror movies, or B-movies anyways. That was only half the ridiculous part too, the other half being the absolutely insane combat sequences. Some of the insanely physically impossible moments while fending off the zombies, and the graphic nature of others. Then again, this is an anime with zombies, so you know they had to incorporate the usual anime way of dealing with things. Swords, guns, and whatever else they could get their hands on at the time became a good enough weapon to fend off zombies. So the show was less about holing up and surviving somewhere, and more about moving around in the midst of the zombie horde and taking out everything that got in their way. Now, there aren’t many zombie anime out there, and from what I hear, that’s because of some sort of taboo in Japan over the very idea of them. However, they seem to be getting a little better about that, so we’ll probably start seeing fewer vampires and more zombies in the future, which is cool. Also, glad to see they kept the American horror movie habit of making it easy to see who was going to die next. Like the guy in the first episode who said “I don’t need a weapon, I’m a black belt in karate”. That guy was totally going to die.

6 - Amagami SS

At number six we have a show that actually managed to do something original despite being based on a dating sim. Shock! I know right? The story itself was nothing to special, enjoyable and cute as it was in every arc, but the original part was the format of the show. In most H-Game based anime, they take each individual path from the game and try and meld them into one plot, where he only ends up with one of the girls, generally at random, despite doing the storyline for most of them. This show however, decided to do things differently. Instead of just sticking him with the main heroine of the game and leaving all the others out in the cold, it did all of them individually. The show was made up of four episode arcs where they would go through the story for a different one of the girls, and then reset back to the beginning for the next arc where it would start again with a different girl. This really works well for it, and despite being split up into completely different arcs with no relation to one another, it actually means everything flows together a lot better. Plus the main character doesn’t come off as either a complete dick or a complete wuss when he chooses only one of them and abandons the others, and that means you like him more than most dating sim protagonists. All in all it was a great show, and deserves a watch. Can’t wait for the OVAs to come out, if just to laugh at Chuck because of how much he hates the idea of one of those episodes.

5 - Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

This is the exception I mentioned at the beginning, since this actually aired in spring of 2009, and not in 2010. However, I had to add it here because I neglected to put it on my top 10 of 2009. That was mainly because the part of the series that had aired in 2009 had yet to actually get to the meat of the series. It was still kind of marred by the incredibly rushed retelling of the first series that was the first thirteen episodes, and what came after that was still only getting to the good part. The final 26 episodes that aired in 2010 though were absolutely amazing, and I have to give credit where credit is due. If you took the first 13 episodes of Brotherhood, and replaced them with the first 26 episodes of the original series, you would have a perfect anime.

4 - Shiki

This show got off to a bit of a slow start, but once it got going, did it ever get my attention. I only regret that I hadn’t started this show sooner than I did, only hearing about it about a month and a half after it started. The basic story is about a small town in the middle of nowhere that becomes the target of a clan of vampire-like creatures that call themselves Shiki. They plan to take over the town by using the population as a food supply, and creating more of themselves in the process. The main focus of the series though is on the humans, and how they react to the strange happenings around them as many people start dying. For a while it looked like there was nothing the humans could do, but then towards the end one character pulled a plot worthy of Code Geass and flipped the tables completely. The interesting part I found was how this show really blurred the lines between good and evil. It was sometimes hard to tell whether it was the humans or the Shiki that were supposed to be the evil ones. Especially toward the end where you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the Shiki. Hell, I found myself booing my own race and cheering for the ones who eat us for lunch. If a show can make you do that, you know it did its job.

3 – Katanagatari

For those who liked Bakemonogatari, you’ll probably want to look into this one as well since it’s based on a series by the same author. It is the story of a martial artist named Shichika, who uses an unarmed martial art made to combat armed opponents, and Togame the Strategian (long explanation for the joke in that name, I won’t explain it here so just watch the first episode if you’re curious). The story follows them as they go on a quest all over Japan to find the 12 perfected swords created by a legendary swordsmith in order to gain favour with the Shogun. Now, as you’d expect from the author of Bakemonogatari, this show has quite a lot of inane dialogue to it, but you’d be surprised just how much character development can happen in those seemingly pointless lines. Plus the action in this series, as well as the abilities of each of the swords are actually rather cool. It’s a fun, light-hearted sort of series for the most part, but it does have its serious moments. Also, the last episode of the series was just pure awesome from start to finish, and provided an actual, solid conclusion to the series. Something of a rarity in that way. The episodes aired one a month over the course of the year, and were each a full hour in length, allowing them to get through one sword a month. All in all, I enjoyed this series immensely

2 - Angel Beats!

At this point I’m pretty sure most people know what my number one choice is, but we’re not quite there yet. So let’s focus on the number two for now. Angel Beats is about a group of teenagers who died and found themselves in the afterlife. Not satisfied with the way they died, or the strange afterlife they’ve been placed in, with a girl named Yurippe as their leader, they decide to lead a rebellion against God himself, or so they think. Anyways, this was just a really good show, I don’t know how else to describe it. The world it created for itself was full of mystery, and the characters were all likable and entertaining. The music was absolutely amazing, and the storyline was interesting from beginning to end. Not to mention that massive double-twist at the ending. The entire series just drew you in and didn’t let go until it was all over. It’s definitely worth a watch, everyone should see this series.

1 – Durarara

Back in March, I could be quoted as saying that I really wished the anime industry could top this anime this year since it had three seasons to do so, but obviously that didn’t happen. Not that I mind, this year was full of amazing series, way more good than there was last year. Durarara was just an over the top, ridiculous thrill ride from beginning to end, and we loved it for it. It was fun to watch, the characters all had such depth to them, to the point where most had to get their own back story episodes just to scratch the surface. The series was filled with little twists and surprises, and above all, the unstoppable force that was Shizuo. The all star voice cast helped quite a bit too, and I don’t mean the female A-list that shows up in every slice of life show, I mean the male A-list who know how to just make their characters sound awesome.

Anyways, that’s it for this list, see you in a few weeks when I put up my first impressions of the Winter 2011 season of anime.