Midseason Review of the Dead

Sort of a part 2 to the post below this one.

Zombies Are In The Details (High School of the Dead)
>Review in short: good but slooooooooow
This show has a lot going for it: decent characters, good plotting, and violence. It is too bad that this show has the pacing of classic Dragon Ball Z episodes. It litterally takes them 2-1/2 episodes to leave ONE building. And guess what? The first half of episode 4 is review! This anime gets caught up in small, useless conversations and events and then spends whole episodes on them. In conclusion, this anime can be enjoyed, but one needs to appreciate that the plot is too slow to drive the show. Oh, and try to ignore the animation shortcuts, ugh.

Janguru wa Itsumo Hare nochi Bunmei (Occult Academy)
>Review in short: unwatchable
The jungle was always nice, and then came Bunmei. But unlike the show I stole this title from, Bunmei doesn't make the show but instead utterly destroys it. The first two episodes of the show introduce a strong, confident, and cool female lead named Maya... who by episode three gets pushed aside as the main character by a weak, cowardly, lying, pathetic worm of a man named Bunmei. The show's intriguing supernatural mysteries take a backseat to Bunmei's pathetic rom-com misadventures. In honor of this tragedy, I am going to start using 'Bunmei' as a word of its own, e.g. "oh wow, that is so freaking stupid; that is so Bunmei".

Vampires For Everyone! (Shiki)
>Review in short: Best show of the season O_o
Remember the movie Signs? Remember how the first half of the movie was spooky psychological fun, and the second half was an irridemably stupid trainwreck? Thusfar Shiki has the first half down pat. It does it so well it actually drives the show and makes it fun it watch. This show may be violence-free and bloodless (lol), but the show does not need them because it lets your mind do all the gruntwork, not unlike classic horror movies. Now I just pray this show never replicates the second half of Signs.

The Truth Is There Is No Review (Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail)
>Review in short: There is no review because there is no show
*Facepalm* My bad, episode one was only a preview. This show streaches over multiple-seasons of anime so this show can't really be watched right now.

Gotta Have Vanilla! (Digimon Xros Wars)
>Review in short: unremarkable fun
This show is exactly what we thought it was. This show gets major props for finally mixing-up the Digivolution formula and therefore giving us something that changes episode to episode, but otherwise this is a typical if not slightly dry season of Digimon. This show is entirely episodic, and thus each episode progresses in the exact same exposition-enemyattack-climax pattern. So, while this show has little to no depth to speak of, it does suceed in being fun and, frankly, I hope it gets Digimon back on American Saturday TV. It deserves that much.

Violence & Horror Makes a Comeback

The new anime season has begun (summer 2010), and it is looking miles more promising than the previous season (spring 2010). Thus far I'd say while summer 2010 has half as many shows, it has many more worth watching.

Anime Worth Noting (in no certain order)

High School of the Dead

Genre: Horror, Ecchi

Themes: Zombies

The Good: (A) Zombies finally get some anime love! Here's hoping this is a trend! (B) No doubt this show is toned-down, but it is still plenty violent.

The Bad: (A) Ecchi and super-violence...at the same time...WTF (B) Weak female lead

Available: The Anime Network Online (first two episodes free, every other episode subscriber only)

Occult Academy

Genre: Action, Horror

Themes: Demons

The Good: (A) Kickass female lead (B) satisfying violence

The Bad: (A) Horror and humor...at the same time...WTF (B) is that a catchphrase? Please God no.

Available: Crunchyroll (free)

Shiki

Genre: Mystery, Horror

Themes: Vampires (spoiler?)

The Good: (A) Everyone seems to like it but me. (B) Not shojo. Not Twilight-related.

The Bad: (A) An irritating main character (B) boring side characters (C) a little slow paced

Available: Funimation (free)

Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail

Genre: Action

Themes: Mercenaries, Guns

The Good: (A) Super-fun over-the-top gun violence!

The Bad: (A) A plot that gives 2-bit side characters the best parts (B) I've read the manga, it gets crappy not long after this. A low in the Black Lagoon series.

Available: Illegally!

Digimon Xros Wars

Genre: Adventure, Kids

Themes: f-ing Digimon

The Good: (A) extremely flashy animated-effects (B) enemies universally use a darker pallet (C) already better than last few seasons

The Bad: (A) show's pace feels rushed (B) smells like a plot hole...already. (C) slightly boring digi-destines

Available: Illegally!

Time for an update!

The following was posted via mobile phone.

Game: battle field bad company 2

I recently picked up this game because playing the demo was awesome fun with my friends.

The campaign is good, the idea that you unlock guns by picking them up is rather neat to me. The downside is some weapons look very similar to others with their icons, and others are almost impossible to find. But you don't actually NEED extra weapon types to play the game, it just expands the options.

The story of the campaign is interesting, starts off in WWII japan and then flashes to the future in Russia. I'm not done so I won't talk much more about the plot other then to say it's got a few surprises....

The multiplayer mode though quickly deviated from the demo. The maps are much much much much larger, so large that you can be sniping, in a game with 18 people and not see anyone for a minute or two.

The objective nature of the game types makes this alot of fun to play with friends, but make it really hard if you can't hop into a squad for various area spawns.

The weapon class balance is good, as are the spawns. You can spawn off of a team mate or puck a spawn area.

Musically the soundtrack is pretty good, it seems to fit the modes of the game well, visually nothing new but nothing old.

The on thing that bugs me is there isn't cooperative campaign, you can't look at your statistics unless connected to live and you need to verify your EA account every time you use your game...

I'd give it 7.5 stars of 10