Like my post on Harry Potter all those many months ago I thought I'd look into the Pokemon universe and talk about some of the things that have confused or bothered me over the years. Believe me, having played all the main games quite thoroughly I think I'm well qualified to make some of these points. So here we go...
How the Fuck do Pokeballs Work?
As far as I can tell when a pokemon is sent inside a pokeball the pokemon is destroyed, sucked atom by atom into the ball for storage so that they can hang off the trainers belt until they're needed. This really poses a lot of questions for me. For example, what do the pokemon do whilst inside the pokeballs? Are they happy in there? Are they conscious? Can they die in there? Do they need sustinence in this state? I mean imagine if you left a tentacool in there a few days and just when you decided to send it out into battle it comes out as a dried up blob of crap. Can that happen? And if it can and you sent a dead pokemon out in a battle would that count as a victory to your opponent?
Furthermore, How do Pokemon Get Stored on a PC?
Yeah riddle me that one? This is really more of the same question as the Pokeball one. But really? What's going on here? So your pokemon is in a ball and then the ball and its contents are somehow destroyed and rebuilt in binary? It kind of makes me wonder how many lab ratatas had to die before they perfected this technology.
Do People Ever Eat Pokemon?
This is a topic that the show often managed to skillfully avoid. Do people consume pokemon as food? People need to eat as do all living things, so it seems likely that they would. But the show and the games spend so much time promoting the special bond that exists between pokemon and humans that the thought of munching down a seaking fillet seems almost sick. I guess there exists the possibility that the world of pokemon is much more enlightened than ours and they are all able to live happily on a vegetarian diet. But I could swear I've seen the characters eat things that look meat based in the show. But there is another possibility I suppose and that's that other than pokemon there are regular, non-pokemon animals that exist in that world too. But then again you never actually see them, what are they doing when they're not being food? Which kinda brings me to my next point.
What Exactly is a Pokemon?Pokemon basically seem to be the animals in the pokemon world. The main difference seems to be that pokemon can be easily stored. So if all the animals in the world of pokemon ARE pokemon that really poses the question, are human beings pokemon? If you throw a pokeball at a person that is sufficiently weakened is it possible to capture them? It kind of has disturbing implications in regards to human trafficing, kidnapping and sex offences when you think about it? Images of seedy men in large coats selling pokeballs in an alleyway behind the pokemart come to mind. I mean it makes sense for humans to be pokemon as well doesn't it? Surely we can't expect to believe that humans are the only animals in that universe that aren't pokemon? And if we aren't pokemon then what makes a pokemon a pokemon? Gosh it turns out that once you start asking questions about pokemon the whole damn fictional universe unravels before your eyes. Anyway, back to Heart Gold version I go.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Dear Infinite Possiblogities,
hurry the fuck up and write something decent before I am driven to hunt down your address and chew through your spine whilst you sleep.
Love always,
Adoring Fan
P.S. Your songs are shit and don't count
This is the kind of letter I'd deserve to get had I actually earned any fans. So anyway I've decided to cease and decist all of my procrastinating and get back to my blog (because lord knows I've missed the old gal). Now I'm sure there are a good number of you out there who are familiar with Sailor Moon, whether it be because you saw the anime on Cheez TV or because you stumbled upon pictures of her and her friends engaging in threesomes with the cast of Dragon Ball Z. But how many of you were aware that they made a live action Sailor Moon series in Japan called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon? Yeah, yeah I know YOU did, put your hand down (you know who you are). Anyway well there is such a thing and I watched it all and I've deemed it blog worthy. So strap yourselves in, for I am going to review and discuss the many ups and downs that is Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
Now lets get one little thing out of the way first. Do you like Japanese entertainment and culture? If you answered "no" or some explicit variant on that theme then PGSM is simply not for you. Don't look into it, don't give it a try, just walk away and be thankful that Infinite Possiblogities was here to save you from wasting your precious, precious time. I say this because, quite frankly, if you can't stand bubbly Japanese school girls singing J-Pop karaoke then you will struggle to make your way through a single episode of PGSM without destroying something or commiting some horrible crime. Having said that I must admit to being something of a closet PGSM fan. This is something I could never admit to a good number of my friends because, to be perfectly honest, I deserve to be ridiculed. I certainly enjoyed it more than I ever did the over-played anime series. Anyway, I'm sure some of you may be wondering what in the fuck PGSM is all about, so let's move on to that.
PGSM is the story of 5 teenage girls who have no reservations about getting dressed in public having dormant powers awoken in them by talking cat toys so that they can fight evil shit. Turns out they're not always very good at fighting and so they often get helped out by the love interest known as Tuxedo Mask whose disguise consists of wearing a tuxedo and a mask. Just to give a brief overview of all the costumes the Sailor Scouts all dress like they're going to a costume party to lure out sex offenders in an undercover police sting operation and everone/everything else looks like a Queer-Eyed Power Rangers cast. But I actually liked how the show looked. It's colourful and vibrant and except for the occassional dodgy CGI effect it looks pretty believable.
But enough about the aesthetics. As well as being about hot chicks killing shit there is quite an extensive story of forbidden love, tradgedy and the search for identity woven in with the rather camp beat 'em up. The story itself is fairly straightforward in esscence however it is on many occassions made unneccessarily complicated by weird pacing. There are some points where the story moves painfully slowly to reach conclusions that are immediately obvious to the audience assuming they aren't brain damaged and then there are times where the plot twists and turns at a bewildering pace. Oh and I hope you like flashbacks, because PGSM has flashbacks in spades. There is this one kinda cute scene where Usagi offers her love interest some pastry thing that you will get very sick of seeing. Seriously, they must flashback to that moment about 12 times throughout the series. We're not goldfish guys, we can remember that these guys are into each other. Having said that, the story is still quite easy to follow, with maybe the exception of the ending. The ending isn't exactly confusing per se, but it has that "what the fuck was all that about?" quality that seems to plague the endings of so many animes (what happened when Mr. Serano opened the car door at the end of GitS: Stand Alone Complex? How come Section 9 allowed Kuze to get killed at the end of 2nd Gig? What the fuck was the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion all about!?!). I mean I get it's supposed to be symbollic and lightly philosophical but does that really mean we have to be confused too? Oh and one more thing *SPOILER ALERT* Since when did it become stock standard for anime series to end with the destruction and rebuilding of the world and/or the self? I mean I know it can be an interesting way to end a series but it can be a little anticlimactic at times. *SPOILERS OVER*
Actually speaking of anime stereotypes PGSM does play out much like an anime would and conforms to a lot of the perplexing things that animes never really explain. How come Japanese people are so accepting of the fact that monsters have just started popping up? How come nobody can recognise people who are dressed in costumes that actually reveal more of their body than regular clothes? How come Japan can't last a full series without shoehorning in some annoying, kookie child (I mean they made her out of a cat...what IS that!?!)? How come the transformation of only girl who clearly hasn't hit puberty is the most overtly sexual? How come everybody is always singing the same J-Pop song all the freaking time until you just wanna tear out your eyeballs and stuff them into your ears? HOW COME SAILOR MARS, MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER, DIDN'T EVEN TRANSFORM IN THE SPECIAL, MOVIE LENGTH EPISODE!?!
hurry the fuck up and write something decent before I am driven to hunt down your address and chew through your spine whilst you sleep.
Love always,
Adoring Fan
P.S. Your songs are shit and don't count
This is the kind of letter I'd deserve to get had I actually earned any fans. So anyway I've decided to cease and decist all of my procrastinating and get back to my blog (because lord knows I've missed the old gal). Now I'm sure there are a good number of you out there who are familiar with Sailor Moon, whether it be because you saw the anime on Cheez TV or because you stumbled upon pictures of her and her friends engaging in threesomes with the cast of Dragon Ball Z. But how many of you were aware that they made a live action Sailor Moon series in Japan called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon? Yeah, yeah I know YOU did, put your hand down (you know who you are). Anyway well there is such a thing and I watched it all and I've deemed it blog worthy. So strap yourselves in, for I am going to review and discuss the many ups and downs that is Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
Now lets get one little thing out of the way first. Do you like Japanese entertainment and culture? If you answered "no" or some explicit variant on that theme then PGSM is simply not for you. Don't look into it, don't give it a try, just walk away and be thankful that Infinite Possiblogities was here to save you from wasting your precious, precious time. I say this because, quite frankly, if you can't stand bubbly Japanese school girls singing J-Pop karaoke then you will struggle to make your way through a single episode of PGSM without destroying something or commiting some horrible crime. Having said that I must admit to being something of a closet PGSM fan. This is something I could never admit to a good number of my friends because, to be perfectly honest, I deserve to be ridiculed. I certainly enjoyed it more than I ever did the over-played anime series. Anyway, I'm sure some of you may be wondering what in the fuck PGSM is all about, so let's move on to that.
PGSM is the story of 5 teenage girls who have no reservations about getting dressed in public having dormant powers awoken in them by talking cat toys so that they can fight evil shit. Turns out they're not always very good at fighting and so they often get helped out by the love interest known as Tuxedo Mask whose disguise consists of wearing a tuxedo and a mask. Just to give a brief overview of all the costumes the Sailor Scouts all dress like they're going to a costume party to lure out sex offenders in an undercover police sting operation and everone/everything else looks like a Queer-Eyed Power Rangers cast. But I actually liked how the show looked. It's colourful and vibrant and except for the occassional dodgy CGI effect it looks pretty believable.
But enough about the aesthetics. As well as being about hot chicks killing shit there is quite an extensive story of forbidden love, tradgedy and the search for identity woven in with the rather camp beat 'em up. The story itself is fairly straightforward in esscence however it is on many occassions made unneccessarily complicated by weird pacing. There are some points where the story moves painfully slowly to reach conclusions that are immediately obvious to the audience assuming they aren't brain damaged and then there are times where the plot twists and turns at a bewildering pace. Oh and I hope you like flashbacks, because PGSM has flashbacks in spades. There is this one kinda cute scene where Usagi offers her love interest some pastry thing that you will get very sick of seeing. Seriously, they must flashback to that moment about 12 times throughout the series. We're not goldfish guys, we can remember that these guys are into each other. Having said that, the story is still quite easy to follow, with maybe the exception of the ending. The ending isn't exactly confusing per se, but it has that "what the fuck was all that about?" quality that seems to plague the endings of so many animes (what happened when Mr. Serano opened the car door at the end of GitS: Stand Alone Complex? How come Section 9 allowed Kuze to get killed at the end of 2nd Gig? What the fuck was the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion all about!?!). I mean I get it's supposed to be symbollic and lightly philosophical but does that really mean we have to be confused too? Oh and one more thing *SPOILER ALERT* Since when did it become stock standard for anime series to end with the destruction and rebuilding of the world and/or the self? I mean I know it can be an interesting way to end a series but it can be a little anticlimactic at times. *SPOILERS OVER*
Actually speaking of anime stereotypes PGSM does play out much like an anime would and conforms to a lot of the perplexing things that animes never really explain. How come Japanese people are so accepting of the fact that monsters have just started popping up? How come nobody can recognise people who are dressed in costumes that actually reveal more of their body than regular clothes? How come Japan can't last a full series without shoehorning in some annoying, kookie child (I mean they made her out of a cat...what IS that!?!)? How come the transformation of only girl who clearly hasn't hit puberty is the most overtly sexual? How come everybody is always singing the same J-Pop song all the freaking time until you just wanna tear out your eyeballs and stuff them into your ears? HOW COME SAILOR MARS, MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER, DIDN'T EVEN TRANSFORM IN THE SPECIAL, MOVIE LENGTH EPISODE!?!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Sweat!
Just to tide you over while you wait for my next "real" post to come along I thought I'd share another song from my semi-talented past. Part of it was written by my brother too, although I don't really recall which parts (let's just say it's the parts you don't like). Anyway, this song has a few different levels of complexity to it lyrically. On the surface it's about self-gratification and loneliness; but it's also about searching for meaning and failing to find satisfaction in the physical world. Yeah, I know, wank wank wank, here's Sweat!
We struggle with the spiritual
Sweat!
When all your emotions rot and fade away
When all your emotions rot and fade away
Silence is waiting
but will you still be here to bleed for the next day?
but will you still be here to bleed for the next day?
Consistency ended when existence began
We’re downtrodden, outdone
We’re downtrodden, outdone
We try to be philosophical but we’re too fucking dumb
It’s the same today
Masturbate around the other way
It’s the same today
Masturbate around the other way
Sweat!
Sweat!
It itches so bad you scratch and tear at your skin
Silence, hating
And waiting forever for this to begin
We pick and overanalyse but miss the point
Downtrodden, outdone
We try to be deep and meaningful but we’re too fucking dumb
It’s the same today
Masturbate around the other way
It’s the same today
Masturbate around the other way
And it’s the same old rain
And it’s the same old rain
Washing down and around into the drain
Distract yourself
Pretend you aren’t all alone and in pain
Sweat!
We struggle with the spiritual
And blame it on the physical
Distill it ‘til it’s simple
Ashamed to be human
When all we need is our hands
To slip away into nirvana
But I’d give it all away
I’d give it all up
To share it all with you
For you to feel the touch as well
Sweat for me my dear
sweat for me my sweetness
sweat for me my sweetness
Sweat for me my love
Sweat for me my fallen angel
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