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Random thoughts, rants, editorials, anime, miscellaneous bullshit and everything else under the sun.

Spotlight: D.GrayMan

Generally when I ask about this anime/manga, I get a blank look or a “Yeah I heard about it but I…”


Excuses.

D.Grayman is awesome, and is one of the few that has a better anime than the manga. (Only because the action is very hard to follow in the manga. Very.)

There are 3 good reason why you should watch the D.Grayman series; outside from its general badassary, good plot, and emotional toil)

1. The Exorcist.


The plot of D.Grayman is pretty simple, although the story is complex. There are the bad guys and the good guys who pledge their lives to stop them at all cost. The Exorcist are a group of human individuals who are able to link and harvest with a substance called “Innocence.” This rare… (I’m not EXACTLY sure what this is made of) is what allows the Exorcist to fight the “bad guys”. The Innocence is a power up and can be classified by types. Our Protagonist, Allan Walker has a parasite Innocence, while other Exorcist may have a crystal or an equipment type of Innocence. None the less, it makes them all more powerful to fight off Akuma. Each Exorcist has their own story as to why they are a part of The Black Order (the governing body of the Exorcist). With any order of people and a power that governs them, corruption and desperation leads to conflict inside the Order on top of the race to save the world from the Earl and his special type of “evil.”

2. The Noah.


Our antagonist. In the D.Grayman universe, all humans are descendants of the Noah family from the Great Flood (you’ve heard of it before.) This Great Flood, however was caused because the Noah Family have been battling the Exorcist for centuries and will continue to do so, under the leadership of The Millennium Earl(Adam). WHY exactly has been yet to be revealed, but we know that the Noah gene is immortal and exist in all humans, so that when a Noah dies, the gene is awakened in a human, who will then turn Noah. The Noah are pretty badass people. They pretty much don’t give a damn for non-Noah people (which is evident as they turn human spirits into weapons for their use). They are sadistic and cold, yet at the same time hilariously funny and witty. These are a series of “bad guys” that I actually like. The interesting thing about the Noah is their skin color (they appear with darkened skin). Ties in with black people being the origin of humanity (every human descended from The Noah)

3. Innocence


Innocence started out as a cube, and during the battle with the Noah and Millennium Earl many centuries ago, it was scattered across the world in 109 pieces. Innocence isn’t like your regular “power”. It chooses its user and at any given moment can judge a user’s morality and destroy that person (Fallen One: Suman Dark for example).
As mentioned before Innocence works by types. Equipment, Parasite, Crystal. The higher the Sync rate with its chosen master, the more powerful it can be. Here are examples of Innocence going from Level One to Level Two (Lenalee Lee), and the Innocence of the Generals (The most powerful Exorcist in the Order, kin to a Kage (Naruto) or a Captain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAeFlDHdIN4

This is a pretty shitty summary. Why? Because it’s so much more complex than this. This is an anime/manga that I’ve never been able to properly describe to those who ask because, it’s hard to explain. Everything running in chaos while incredibly making the most sense in the world. This is with me just providing the most basic of all information. The battle between the Black Order and The Noah is deeper than the members and the weapons they wield. But you’ll only get that if you watch it. And I promise. It’s worth watching.

She ain’t going.

In most medieval kingdoms, most young men would train as knights, starting as a page and working their way up through training. Once knighted, they would relish in the spoils that would come as a member of nobility. They were usually the first line of defense should anyone ever siege the castle. They were granted a peice of land to toil and cultivate, were required to work a limited of days out of the year and were expected to uphold a strict Chivalric code of honor.

And even with all of the pros, spoils and luxuries that came with knighthood, guess what was the one thing they couldn’t get? Legally anyways.

Love from a Princess.

Insert THIS idiot.

It’sa me! A’Maariooooooooooo


Mario is the equavalent to your modern day knight. His ORGINAL day job was plumber [farmer]. Roam the sewers of New York, fighting crime or pieces of large shit that look like crime, all for the love of his kingdom [city]. His night “job” requred him to be very familar with a code of chivalry and honor, which had him shimmying through pipes, eating ‘shrooms, touching stars that made him glow, and riding a baby dinosaur through a 2D world.

What was that job?

Apparently he is a self-appointed body guard, full time simp to Princess Toadstool.

How this develops, I don’t know. Did he follow a Koopa to Mushroom Kingdom, happen to lay eyes upon the lovely Princess Toadstool and LOSE HIS DAMN MIND?

Nobody invited you here, sir. Why are you hunting our livestock, eating our plants and stealing our money? That’s some Mushroom Kingdom citzen’s retirement fund, you prick.



Why does he do this? I don’t know. She has a personal Royal Guard from her own Kingdom, and although the airhead has a penchant for being kidnapped every 3 months, shouldn’t her own people handle that? (if they were competent enough to protect her, that is). Why do a pair of plumbers from a completely different universe decide that they should PEROSNALLY be in charge of rescuing a stranger?

Yes, it’s more than likely because Mario has fallen in love with the Princess. But dog….she ain’t going. First of all, Princess Toadstool is worth an estimated ONE BILLION DOLLARS. That’s 1,000,000,000 dollars [that’s a lot of zeros]. She is also the ruling monarch of Mushroom Kingdom. Not a village, not a clan, not a town, but the entire Kingdom. You, Mario, are a self appointed knight.



She is probably grateful that someone is competent enough to resuce her, because apparently her own kingdom can’t up security enough to keep her safe, [Toad and Toadsworth are the head of her personal retainers, that could be why] but at some point she has to wonder WHY exactly does he keep coming to her rescue?

He know he ain’t getting none, right? Right?


If anything, with her wealth and stature, the likelyhood that she’d go for Mario is VERY slim. Probably waiting for some Prince from a far off kingdom who is taking his sweet time rescuing her himself [because that’s the way love goes]. Or waiting for Mario to take his happy ass home, because Luigi be slanging that cock…rooster [Sorry Princess Daisy]. Oh, what’s that you say about true love has nothing to do with money and stature. Okay. I’ll give you that. But….


That’s more than likely to be what Mario and Luigi actually look like while Princess Toadstool, with her army of personal assitants, hairstylist and general “Stay Sexy” team of professionals, probably looked like this…


Mario probably had dreams that eventually after rescuing her enough times, her “walls” would come down and she’d admit her love for him, have a big happy marriage, which would get him out of his shithole apartment that he shares with his brother and into a lifestyle of luxury.



Nah, dog. Although she may appreciate your sacrifice of resucing her when she needed help, you sir are in the friend zone and SHALT NEVER leave it.

Ain’t no love for midget plumbers dog.

Water Water Everywhere

You’re just a running along, pretty rested up because the only thing that was difficult besides that retarded ass maze room in the Fire Temple was The Fire Dancer mini boss. You’re also off the high of beating Volvagia, who you beat faster than Queen Gohma. So what’s next? A quick trot you and Epona make across Hyrule field from Death Mountain Crater to Zora’s Domain. You swag out Zelda’s Lullaby and you’re in.

But wait, after you find King Zora’s fat ass in what looks like a block of frozen cherry Jell-O, you see that you’ve got to endure what might be considered the wackest of all side levels ever created. The Ice Cavern. Flying blue bats that freeze you *blink*, some kind of ice sculpture thingamagig that guess what…freezes you. Then that over complicatedly buttfuck of an ice block section, which now you’ve developed a newfound sense of acrophobia due to the fact that you could fall off the edges at any given moment. And this is all just a prelude.

Now you’ve gotta go where?

What did you just say?





asdkajldfkjaSKRtj’o3i ldjfa;,sdjr’h’olkjp28u]-8y09-1493 319!!!

Oh! Sorry! I just threw my keyboard down and river danced on that bitch. Does that shit say the WATER TEMPLE? You bet your highly frustrated ass it does.

They ain’t lying


Popular to contrary belief, although playing video games is fun, at NO point should it make you want to re-up your gun permit and go shoot a dolphin.



First of all the probability of me believing that the Zora can create a tunic that helps me breathe under water, but can’t design a temple that doesn’t want to make me pull out each one of my hairs individually with a pair of pliers is very low. Who, on what drug, created this shit?

So in a nut shell, The Water Temple was created to….*blink blink* Oh right. The Water Medallion. It was created to protect the Water Medallion from the hands of evil, but apparently the way it was designed, it protects EVERYBODY from ever laying a finger on it. At one point in the game, you forget that it exists. Hell is it even REAL?

There are three levels of bullshit where you, your tunic, boots and longshot have to figure out what level the water needs to be at, what room you need to be in at the correct time, deciphering whether you need a big key or a small key, all the while avoiding whirlpools, spiked clamshells, those godforsaken Tektites, and a grown up and apparently horny, Princess Ruto.

If he hit that….is that considered beastiality? I mean it’s not to far removed from Ariel and Prince Eric.


And JUST when you think you’ve pretty much got your “longshot here, okay, big key there, iron boots here, longshot, longshot, longshot, take your boots off. Wait, damn it. Hell, start over. Gahdamn it Link! Take your boots off! Ah shit I accidentally switched to the Fire Tunic! I can’t breathe, I’mma die. Oh shit! Oh…okay. I made it!” swag down, here comes THIS monkey see monkey doo bitch.

Hey there


After clashing swords for thirty minutes you realize you can just daddy stroke on the devil’s head with some Din’s Fire. So at this point, you’re thinking that after all the bullshit with water levels, and keys, dungeon maps, crabs that can float on water, longshots and arrows, that the boss of this Temple is about to whoop yo ass, right?



All of this for MORPHA? Morpha. A GIGANTIC AMEOBA? This is who you’ve chosen to guard the Water Medallion?
Fuck you Water Temple. Fuck you.

Let Me Learn You: Anime

People ask me all the time “Jade! Why do you like anime so much? Should I watch it, too?”

Bitch, because I do. And yes, you should. Surely I, being of quick wit and intelligence, figured early in life that this wasn’t the correct answer. So I came up with this.

As I was contemplating writing this, I discovered it was insanely hard to write. It sort of like, someone who went to school to study Physics, and turns around and tries to explain why they love Physics without trying to cram 4 years worth of Physics learning down a person’s throat. Does that make sense?

I started watching when I was nine years old, and I’m 28. So, you know…baby steps and baby bites.



Anime. By definition is just the Japanese’s basic cartoon. Pen, paper, paint, voice actors (or seiyuu), studio and you’ve got an anime.

9/10 an anime will originate as a manga (Japanese comic) and will be adapted as an anime depending on the popularity of it. But for time’s sake, I won’t go into that. A great anime and a great manga are TWO different red booty monkeys.




Most of you probably experience some level of anime, with producers such as VIZ and DiC bringing anime to America’s television with dubbed over English voices. The two most popular and frequently mentioned anime that most Americans have watched would be Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z.



Although heavily edited, chopped and screwed from the original manga and Japanese anime, it introduced a different world (over-characterization of the facial features especially the eyes, mannerisms, cultural influences, and continuous flow of a storyline). So if ANYBODY wants to start somewhere, those would be a great cornerstone, seeing as it’s easy enough to find whole arcs of the storyline, rather than getting what you can when you can.

If you’re older and not particularly interested in the juvenile themes( although still more complex than a lot of the cartoons shown stateside) presented in those aforementioned animes, you can try for a bit more mature taste found in animes such as Ninja Scroll, Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Or movies such as Ghost in the Shell, or Akira. Most of these you can still find in a dubbed format.


A middle ground, possessing adult themes but still fun to watch would be animes such as One Piece, Samurai Champloo, Inuyasha, Naurto or Bleach. If you’re lucky most of these are still being shown on Cartoon Network in the dubbed format.



I recommend watching anime dubbed, until your familiar enough with it, before moving into what most elitist anime watchers do. Same titles as mentioned before, except it’s a mixture of watching the anime (subtitled with the original seiyuus instead of English voices), reading the manga, and being able to discuss the complex themes that underlie the more apparent themes presented.

Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga, or video games. It’s supposed to a negative term, but fuck you, it ain’t.


If you’re ready to get started, you can of course catch these shows late at night, mostly on Cartoon Network. Once you’ve digested the three or four animes they grace us with, you can now start into the world of the fifty-‘llem animes available to you online….for FREE .99. Websites such as anilinkz.com or animefreak.tv offer free dubbed and subbed animes to anyone willing to wait for the streaming video to load. If you’re interested in reading the manga directly, try onemanga.com or bleachexile.com. When your anime balls are big enough, come holla at me. Then I’ll start showing you some REAL shit.

I HAD some videos to show you, but some of my anime obsessed counterparts are real life ACTUAL NERDS. Like pocket protector, take my T9 Calculator everywhere I go, What’s a Vagina? type nerds and….

Well…. *sigh* Watch it anyway.