Also known as reviews of random stuff, by me, for me.

The Dark Knight: Wow. I thought Batman Begins was good, but Iron Man was more enjoyable. But TDK has really raised the bar for comic-based movies yet another notch. What an absolutely amazing movie, and there really isn’t much left to be said about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. Oscar-worthy, and made the movie worth every moment.

Got into watching anime again. And as I usually do in these cases, have been binge-watching.

Gundam 00: Heard enough good things about it to watch it even though season 2 isn’t out yet (and I really don’t like watching incomplete series). I’m really not a big Gundam fan (08th MS Team aside), but it really did turn out to be excellent. Even if Setsuna F. Seiei is a bit… wonky. Enjoyed it enough to decide giving other Gundams a try…

Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED Destiny, OVAs, etc: The first series wasn’t half bad. The character designs look kind of weird – almost all the male characters look just slightly too short – and the reuse of footage can be pretty jarring (though probably wouldn’t be as big of an issue if not watching the entirety of the series at once), but overall it was fairly decent, with cool mecha (Freedom/Justice Gundams especially) and an enjoyable, if standard issue, storyline. Destiny, on the other hand, just felt like a poor extension. Shin is such a terrible character that I really couldn’t care that the entire series shifted the focus back onto the old cast halfway through. Another thing about Gundam series… do they have someone whose job it is to come up with all those semi-intelligible abbreviations which say “GUNDAM”?

5 Centimeters Per Second: One word – incredible. The visuals, especially when viewed at 1080P, is simply astounding, and the story is an amazing telling of what is at its core a very simple theme. I enjoyed this so much that I was compelled to write a review for it at MyAnimeList.

The Place Promised in Our Early Days: I watched this, also in 1080P, after finishing 5 Centimeters and falling in love with it and deciding to check out the other works of Makoto Shinkai. I really wish I had watched it in the reverse order, because then I probably would’ve appreciated this more. It’s certainly a good movie, and I enjoyed it, but it just can’t compare to 5cm. Whether it’s the imagery, or the characters, or the story, it seems that the newer work does everything just that bit better.

Welcome to the N.H.K!: Certainly among the most unique of anime/manga in terms of subject matter, this one really does hit pretty close to home. I’m still not sure if I would consider this series to be funny, good, or depressing, but it’s definitely interesting in an almost morbid way.

Ichigo 100%: Read the manga first. Story is classic textbook harem shounen, but I did like it nevertheless (because I almost always do -_-), and kind of surprised myself on which heroine I ended up liking.

ef – a tale of memories: Another anime based on a VN, it was very pleasant and touching despite the odd format of telling two concurrent and mostly-unrelated stories simultaneously.

xxxHOLiC: Really not sure what to think of this. It’s kind of repetitive, but funny; the story/setting is interesting, but nothing really ever happens. Kind of just a meh.

Kara no Kyoukai: It’s based on a story by Type-Moon (before they were Type-Moon). It’s voiced by Maaya Sakamoto. It’s got music by Yuki Kajiura. How can I not love this? Eagerly awaiting each new movie. The songs by Kalafina are also awesome.

Sekirei: It’s like the story of Fate/stay night, but expanded for more fan service. I’m not even sure what made me start watching this, but despite that fact that I can in no way say it’s a great anime, it’s still keeping my attention… enough that I read all the available chapters of the manga as well.

To-LOVE-Ru: Another fan-service harem show, but that the main protagonist actually has someone he likes from the beginning makes it an improvement, I suppose. Cute characters, even if episode 18 and it’s near-Bestiality subject matter is almost disturbing.

Firefox 3 is fantastic. Huge upgrade over Firefox 2. But Mozilla Weave is, so far, a terrible replacement for Google Sync.

PS3 is a nice system. MGS4 looks amazing. Need to finish MGS3 first. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is awesome. Need more FFXIII information. Game controller costs are getting ridiculous – $50 for a Wireless 360 controller, $55 for a Dualshock 3, $60 for a Nunchuck + Wiimote, and never mind Classic Controller attachments. The World Ends With You is a wonderful game, but I still need to finish it. Homebrew via CycloDS Evolution is cool (thanks David!). Phoenix Wright games are quite good. Picross is awesome.

The Hulk was pretty good. As was Get Smart. Anne Hathaway looks gorgeous.

Code Geass season 1 was amazingly awesome, even if I don’t like Lelouch. At all.

AudioSurf is quite possibly the best $10 game I’ve ever played. Available on Steam, it’s more or less Guitar Hero meets WipeOut, and since you can use any song in one of many formats, it has infinite replayability. I suck at every mode except Mono though. -_-

Saw Iron Man. Twice. It’s absolutely awesome, and definitely falls into the top tiers of comic book adaptation movies. I might even say it’s better than Batman Begins, and that’s a pretty tall order. But The Dark Knight comes out this summer too, so we’ll see. But Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is just brilliant. Can’t wait for the follow ups!

Quite a lot of high-profile movies this year. After Iron Man, there’s also Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Speed Racer, WALL-E, the aforementioned The Dark Knight… looks to be a good summer for movies.

Oh, and upgraded WordPress to 2.5. Works alright, I guess…

No, I’d say it’s just as it’s always been, but more so.

Anyway, it’s been another few weeks, so time for another update I suppose. Watched Die Hard. It was pretty good, even if it hardly made any sense (see here). Watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was decent but not spectacular, just like all the previous Harry Potter movies. Watched Transformers (again, at Luke’s insistence). It was still good, and Megan Fox managed to look sexier this time around (she looks better in the movie than in most press photographs, actually). :-D

Bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Also ended up buying a Wii (finally), Twilight Princess, Wii Play and a set of component cables… yay for unexpected expenditures.

Anyway, the book, like the movie, pretty much follows in the vein of all the previous installments – those who enjoyed the last 6 books (of whom there are millions) will enjoy this one. I will say, though, that I’m a bit unsure as to the ending. As the end to both a book and a series (presumably), it’s not much of a surprise – after all, 6 books over 10 years has created too much attachment to, and fondness of, the main characters by the readers for J.K. Rowling to do anything drastic with them – though there are some interesting small surprises here and there. The story takes its sweet time to reach the interesting revelations that all have been waiting for, but it’s hard to fault the pacing too much – it is, after all, much the same as it always has been, and I wonder if it’s the fact that this is the one that must provide for all the answers which makes one look at it in a different manner. All in all, a good read and a mostly satisfying end to an interesting saga. Now to wait until Sept., when my box set of all 7 books arrive, to re-read the entire story again.

And finally… Zelda. I can’t believe that I’ve actually been able to wait over 8 (!) months after release to play what many are calling the best Zelda game ever, but I did (one major reason I suppose was the lack of available Wii systems and my not-completely-sure-why refusal to play it on Gamecube). But finally that’s over, and time to start digging in!

Might take me a while though, what with work, raiding, and the desire to still have a sliver of a social life on weekends. We’ll see. The fact that Wii Sports is also pretty damned fun probably won’t help.

Oh, and managed to find and get 老爸向前冲, a Chinese TV series that I had seen a few episodes of when I was last in China. It’s… corny. But somewhat amusing. I’ll see if I get around to finishing.