Everything about the movie speaks to it being a niche film.  When I started hearing the buzz about it, all I knew was that it had something to do with a graphic novel that had lots of video game references.  The title has an immediate impact as well.  There's arguably a silly sounding name coupled with said named person perhaps fighting the world.  It's pretty easy for an every day movie goer to dismiss the movie right there.  If John and Jane Q. Public are going to a movie Saturday night and pick something off the signs at the theater, they're probably going to pass.  Let's see, RomCom McSissyAdventure, Dude Killhard, or Esoteric Weird Show?

Michael Cera is ironically enough a problem for this movie targeted at the geek audience.  He's now been overused and type cast in to his dork role.  The character of Scott Pilgrim should have been a slight departure for him as an actor from his normal shtick, but his casting instead put a shadow over the film itself.  I definitely know more people that were "ugh, Cera?" than "nice, I like Michael Cera!".  And I'm sure there were plenty of potential movie goers that saw his name and made assumptions about the movie that were wrong.  The rest of the cast lacks in "A-List" star power except for Brandon Routh.  He also doesn't help the movie out in regards to first impressions.  Plenty of comic book lovers despise his performance in the poorly received revamp of Superman.

The movie itself is full of zany, non-stop action and is a pleasurable assault on your senses.  If you're at all familiar with popular culture for those of us who've grown up since the 1980s, there are references galore.  There's everything from subtle sound cues to flat out homages to Street Fighter.  Those types of references combine with the direction and editing to create a new style of film making.  This is going to become a new genre.  I don't know what it's going to be like, but we've seen the start of something new here.  If you don't believe me, watch it for yourself and try to say that you did see something new and successful at telling a story.  Director Edgar Wright has translated Bryan Lee O'Malley's story from graphic novel to the screen in a way that nobody else has done before.  Complete with visual onomatopoeia and things that never belonged on the silver screen before.

Yup, Asian!

Whenever racism comes up there's obviously a lot of tension and emotion.  As an American of Chinese heritage I luckily haven't had to deal with many overt acts of racism to my person.  I grew up in the country-side where myself and a handful of others were the only Asians in my high school graduating class of around 400.  Although I have a deep appreciation and respect for my heritage, it's important to note that a more authentic Chinese American wouldn't be completely off base in calling me a twinky or banana.  Both are derogatory slang for someone who is "yellow on the outside; white on the inside".

With that disclaimer out of the way, I'd like to tackle the whole controversy surrounding the movie The Last Airbender.  This is where people's emotions get involved.  The movie is based on a beloved television series named Avatar: The Last Airbender.  Even being a show targeted at young American children watching Nickelodeon, it borrowed heavily from several Asian cultures.  The amazing thing, is that it did so with a healthy amount of respect.  Caricatures are funny, but it becomes racist when it's the predominant form of entertainment featuring a particular people.

When the casting of the main characters for the movie was released, there was a fairly large backlash in the Asian American community.  It was big enough that I took notice and looked in to it.  Right away the obvious point of tension was that the studio had cast 4 white actors as the main characters.  Out of these characters: 2 are dark skinned people who live on the ice (arguably Inuit), 1 looks East Asian, and 1 is fairly ambiguous.  These characters respectively are Katara/Sokka, Zuko, and Aang.  The opposing argument here is that these are imaginary characters from imaginary peoples.  Katara even has blue eyes.  That's fine.  I also tend not to care too much what the ethnicity of an actor is in a role.

The public outcry might have had an affect.  Jesse McCartney, the actor cast as Zuko was replace with Dev Patel.  This was reportedly due to schedule conflicts between concert tour dates and martial arts boot camp.

So now they have an Asian as one of the main characters!  This is when we get to the crux of the problem.  It's not who you end up casting but how you go about doing it.  If you cut through the noise and look at how they did the search:

Lead Roles: Caucasian or any other ethnicity

Background/Extras: Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, Asian, Mediterranean and Latino ethnic groups

So here we have a modern day case of purposefully casting Caucasian leads with their Minority support.  There's the problem plain and simple: a clear cut case of racial discrimination.  Now people who have never been the victim of racism often downplay it.  I've even had friends talk about the whole "racebending" controversy as whining.  There's definitely some truth to those sentiments.  The world isn't fair.  Then again, that's no reason to strive to make it so.  Nobody here is looking for handouts or (horrible idea) law regulated diversity in casting laws.  When there are so few roles that are open to actors of Asian descent, it's depressing when ones that so obviously should be open to Asians end up being closed off.

The only reason I could imagine this being so is money, since that's the goal in any business.  Movies need to get people in the seats.  And the film industry is saying that the movie going audiences wouldn't go see The Last Airbender if there were ethnic actors in the lead roles.

If you want to learn about the whole controversy, I learned a lot just from searching the web, as well as from racebending.com

Looks like a happy story!

My good friend Ryan, proprietor of comics and action figures at Charging Star Comics recommended that I check out Final Crisis.  He knows how much I enjoy a good trade paperback so I figured I'd give it a go.

You can find all sorts of information about the book at it's Wikipedia page, so I won't go in to any detail here.  I was impressed previously by some of the large DC crossover story lines like 52 and Infinite Crisis.  When I picked up the Final Crisis trade, I had just finished enjoying Blackest Night in issue format and was reading (and still am) some selected Brightest Day books.

Unfortunately for me, Final Crisis is a bit of a let down.  I'm going to have to read through it a second time to see if it gets any better, but right now, it feels really disjointed.  I can definitely imagine I would have enjoyed it more on a book at a time pace.  I read it in about two sittings, and the story just doesn't flow very well from book to book.  Just reading the plot synopsis makes me chuckle.  It seems to be stereotypical comic book over the top.  There's just too much plot jammed in to so short a time span.  Just from a timeline perspective, it ranges from the formation of the universe to the present.

Part of my displeasure may stem from my recent love of Marvel's cosmic stuff.  Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy, and others have shown me that Marvel can do more than just capes on Earth.  I've never liked what I consider DC's equivalent.  The New Gods, Darkseid, and Apokolips never really clicked with me.  If I remember correctly, the story at least doesn't deal with Jimmy Olsen.  The relationship between him and the New Gods reminds me of Wesley Crusher's relationship with The Traveler.

Pumpkin Scissors?

Pumpkin Scissors is a supernatural, alternate history, action, mystery, military show.

It starts off a little slow with encapsulated episodes.  Slowly the information begins to connect between episodes to give the viewer an idea for what the big picture is.  As the over-arching story unfolds the show's pace really picks up.

Unfortunately this apparently is one of those anime shows that isn't finished.  I'm not spoiling much by saying the show ends on a fairly big, if not somewhat obvious reveal.  Then there's a poorly tacked on ending.

Overall, Pumpkin Scissors is a lot of fun.  Besides the ending, there are a few other quirks.  The dub supervised by ADV has some odd accents.  There's a mix of British, German, French, and American all rolled in.  There are three main nations in play, but the accents aren't consistent between them.  There are some recognizable voices but I definitely enjoyed the dub more than the original Japanese.  In order to enjoy the show, you'll need to tolerate some magic mixed in with your German style soldiers that have been robbed of their Nazi symbols.  It almost feels like they just wanted an excuse to use the word "jäger" a lot.

There's a theme of class struggle with commoners versus nobility.  It's not a subtext or anything but obvious and part of the story.  The main story is one of an illuminati style group pulling the strings of corruption from behind the scenes.  Sadly this plot just gets running when the series ends at the 24th episode.

I definitely recommend the show if you like fun with a side of awesome.

I AM BETTER COLORED MAN

I've been watching anime and reading comics for less than half my life.  Because of that I have no real attachment or sentimental memories of my childhood favorites.  I can say that one of my favorite movies is The Last Starfighter; knowing it's a corny movie I can still say that I love it.  As I play catch up with anime and comics, I'm finding that a lot of material that's recommended to me suffers from the same nostalgic memory lens.  People remember things as being awesome, but under the light of fresh eyes, the ink starts to fade.

Take for example Gundam.  More precisely the earlier Universal Century stuff. I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for criticizing it, but a lot of the art is pretty poor.  It's quite possible that I'll never experience the adventures of Amuro Ray because I can't stand to watch it.  Until I saw Cyborg 009, I thought I had issue with character designs.  That was the first show that made me realize that wasn't the case.  So what's the matter?  I love mecha.  I enjoy mecha so much that I'm willing to put up with awful plot lines and whiny characters (see Gundam Wing) to get my fix.  It boiled down for me to a very shallow feature of the art.

I group anime and comics together here for a purely aesthetic reason: color.  The two art mediums share a common production process:

1. The original art is drawn by a penciler
2. An inker goes over the pencil drawings with pen or marker
3. Finally color is added

It's that last step that kills much of old animation and comics for me.  I didn't realize it until I looked at comic books and anime together.  In general, the art that is created after computers were used to color is awesome.  A lot of stuff created before then in these mediums just don't do it for me.  I can certainly appreciate it for what it is, but I just don't like it very much.  There are going to be exceptions, but especially with comic books a lot of the material was mass produced.  It was pumped out as quickly as possible to sell as many copies they could and make the most profit.

I'm also willing to give stuff a try.  For example I just read the thick volume 1 of the Age of Apocalypse saga.  Most of the trade is colored old school.  Lot's of white backgrounds with single color fills.  I was getting along fine until the end of the book.  There they have a run of Blink.  These books are colored in a modern style that makes the rest of the book look like the Sunday funnies page from the newspaper.  Wary, I checked out the second volume at my local comic shop (Charging Star Comics).  Sadly enough the book reverts to it's old coloring ways.  I probably won't continue reading the story arc because of the alternate universe aspect of it combines with the dated coloring to create in me the perfect storm of meh.

What do you think?  Am I too shallow here?

The Loot!

So on a whim I signed up for Darkhorse's Manga Month giveaway.  Nobody actually wins these online raffles!  Well I won something, haha.  So thanks Dark Horse for some free manga.  Not only that, a special part of the prize is a copy of Berserk, autographed by Kentaro Miura!  Also included is Dark Horse's 20 Years of Manga Mug, and copies of Blade of the Immortal: Blood of a Thousand, Gantz #1, and Eden: It's an Endless World! #1.  These all look awesome and might make me want to read more manga.

Curse your devious marketing ploys!

They didn't notify me ahead of time, so I got home to this box from Dark Horse sitting on my porch.  The labels identified it as containing 50 copies of the Dark Horse Spring catalog.  It was sent to my name, so I thought maybe for some reason they decided I'd be a good recipient for catalogs, haha.  I had totally forgotten about the contest.

I was definitely pleasantly surprised!

It's Autographed!

Summer!

There's a hat trick of anticipated roleplaying games for the Sony PSP coming out this Spring and Summer.  When I initially bought my Sony PSP 1000, I was hoping for an awesome catalog of RPGs to play, considering the Playstation and Playstation 2.  That really hasn't been the case.  Armed with my Darth Vader emblazoned PSP3000, my PSP game library is a shadow of its former self.  Shin Megami Tensai: Persona was fun, but even that was a remake.  Beyond that, I can only remember having true PSP RPG fun with other remakes, like Final Fantasy Tactics and Star Ocean First Departure.

SMT: Persona 3

That being said, one of the titles I'm looking forward to this summer is a remake: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3.  It's shipping on July 6, 2010 for $39.99.  Originally released on the PS2, it gained a little bit of controversy because of the way its characters summon their powers: shooting themselves in the head.  If you can accept that bit of storytelling, it has a compelling storyline and a turn based combat system with some automated AI party member elements.  I own the limited edition for the PS2 but I never completed or got very far in it.  That has more to do with finding new shiny things to occupy my time than the game itself.  By the time I got around to wanting to play it again I had an LCD TV, which makes the poor PS2 look awful.  And then this version was announced.  So I shelved the PS2 version in anticipation of some awesome fun on the PSP.  There's supposedly some new content, including the option of a female main character.

Hexyz Force

Atlus is keeping themselves pretty busy.  In addition to SMT: Persona 3 Portable, they're also publishing Hexyz Force on May 25, 2010 for $29.99.  I haven't read too much about the game, but Atlus keeps pushing and marketing the aspect that it has two whole story lines to play through.  This doesn't seem too unique a concept, as off the top of my head I can think of the Front Mission series having multiple play throughs unlocking the entirety of the story.  Here's the marketing blurb:

Hexyz Force for PlayStation Portable is a traditional RPG taking place in the world of Berge. This world has two sides to it, one light and one dark. Accordingly, the player will be able to choose between two different protagonists at the game's beginning. In the light scenario, the protagonist is a shrine maiden by the name of Cecilia, whereas the dark part's hero is a knight called Leevan. Depending on this choice, the setting, story and characters will change fundamentally.

Japanese Cover

The title I'm most excited for is Valkyria Chronicles 2.  This is probably because I don't own a PS3 and never got to play the first Valkyria Chronicles game.  Being a strategy RPG (SRPG) junky, the lack of VC has been torture.  The game is set in a historical fiction WW2 setting, with extra emphasis on fiction.  The setting is complimented by a graphics treatment that makes the game appear to be drawn on canvas.  It all goes together in a way that reminds me of the anime Pumpkin Scissors.  I can't wait until the game is released by Sega on August 31, 2010 for $39.99.  The SRPG gameplay combined with action/shooter elements should fill a gaping hole in the current PSP lineup.  I can only play Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea so many times.

Yvonne/Miranda

The uncanny valley is a robotics term coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori.  If the familiarity of a robot was graphed over the realism, the valley expresses the area between an unrealistic looking robot and a real life person.  There's a large dip in how comfortable people feel when viewing or dealing with something that is so very close to being realistic but not quite there.

As computer generated animation has improved in fidelity, animators have crept closer to the valley.  Normally it's not too bad but many point out SquareEnix's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as an example.  I don't feel that it's too bad there.  There are however some factors in Bioware's Mass Effect 2 that definitely creep me out.  The prime culprit is picture to the left.  The character of Miranda Lawson is both voice acted by and modeled after actress Yvonne Strahovski most famous for her role on Chuck.  Seeing the not quite lifelike animations on the not quite lifelike computer model of her was definitely strange.  It was only magnified by her voice coming out of the speakers.  This wasn't just because her voice is coming out of an eerily close representation but also because of her voice quality: she used her natural accent.  In the role of Sara in Chuck she forces an American accent, but in Mass Effect 2 it's her normal speaking voice.  I really can't say if any changes would have been for the better.  EA/Bioware definitely used her being in the game as a marketing bullet point though.

The game's voice acting had some other odd choices.  The quarian's are full of strong character actors.  One of my favorites: Adam Baldwin, seems to have used his speech patterns from Firefly's Jayne Cobb.  So out from this suited alien comes an odd western drawl while standing next to a very similar character who is voiced by the French accented smoky voice lady from Flashforward.

Look at that dip!

Overall, I definitely would have preferred a cast of experienced voice actors instead of Hollywood actors.  The cast does include one voice actor who should be instantly recognizeable to any anime fan: Steve Blum.  After checking IMDB, I find it amazing that he acted several characters that I did not initially identify him in while playing the game.  And that's the way it should be.  I shouldn't be going "Oh, the ship's computer is Tricia Helfer" while I'm trying to play.  It removes part of the immersion factor.  And after so many people have worked so hard in bringing a game and it's world to life, it seems a shame to mar it with that kind of breaking of the fourth wall.

The amazingly star studded cast for reference:

• Shohreh Aghdashloo
• Maggie Baird
• Adam Baldwin
• Michael Beattie
• Claudia Black
• Steve Blum
• Keith David
• D.C. Douglas
• Keythe Farley
• Seth Green
• Jennifer Hale
• Tricia Helfer
• Michael Hogan
• Brandon Keene
• Adam Lazzarre-White
• Mark Meer
• Carrie-Anne Moss
• Martin Sheen
• Liz Sroka
• Yvonne Strahovski
• Courtenay Taylor
• Simon Templeman
• Jocelyn Ahlf
• plus too many more, haha.  Look it up on IMDB if you want more names

Pokéwalker Included!

So Nintendo revised Pokémon Gold/Silver with HeartGold/SoulSilver for the DS.  And in what I can only imagine is an attempt to thwart software piracy, released a pack-in hardware accessory with the version of the game: the Pokéwalker.  What is this ingenious device?  It's a pedometer that you beam your Pokémon to to level up by walking.

Genius.

Not only can you beam over via infrared a single Pokémon from your PC Box, but an item as well.  You can then beam this item to another Pokéwalker.

There are also a couple mini-games you can play on your Pokéwalker.  You can sift through tufts of grass looking for a wild Pokémon to fight and capture.  You can also look for treasure in the form of items.  Both of these activities use up Watts which are generated by walking.  You've got to work for you fun!

You can also check the last 7 days of steps and your lifetime number of steps taken.  There's no off button so it stays on all the time though it goes to sleep after a while.  You can adjust the contrast of the LCD as well as adjust the volume between loud, soft, and silent.

I Choose You Little LCD Screen!

Overall, the Pokéwalker adds a new dimension to your Pokémon play.  In a single day of work as a computer programmer, I generated about 1800 steps.  Pretty sad.  Maybe now that spring is here and I'm going to start running/walking again I can generate some more.

It's important to note that your Pokémon will only level up once per walk after it goes back in to your DS cart.  Also your Pokémon never really leaves the cart and there are instructions on how to force it to come back from its walk should you lose your Pokéwalker.

Targeted at Small Children and Forgetful Adults?

In Achron you can time travel and fix that mistake.  Go back in time and build some anti-air to accompany those tanks.  Maybe instead you reroute them to avoid the enemy aircraft.  All while you're doing this, your opponent can see you meddling with the timeline and perhaps work some interference of their own.

The developer says that they've taken measures to balance the time travel so that players will have to weigh the benefits with cost.  In an interview they directly address my initial concern about games devolving in to giant battles at the start of the game's timeline.

Achron definitely has the potential to be Super Awesome!