Just a Quick Christmas Message

So there I was innocently googling "Costume Quest" when I found this strange picture. I was simultaneously amused and disturbed; so naturally I felt that it belongs on Infinite Possiblogities. This isn't going to be much of a post, I'm a bit busy with family and friends right at this moment to give you a meatier one. But I have many ideas. So coming soon to Infinite Possiblogities...

1. A Review on Jungle Boy (a movie that came with a birthday card)
2. A Review on Resident Evil 5 (an inferior sequal to Resident Evil 4

Also I thought I'd mention that I discovered today that in 2011 the ABC will air a new series of The Games (my favourite Australian comedy ever, see an older post if necessary). This news caused my metaphorical vagina to moisten faster than your mum at an underwater Justin Timberlake concert.

Ikki Tousen: Battle Vixens

Japan loves underwear. Or to be a tad more specific Japan loves panties. The particular panties they like are the kind that have been lightly steamed by the body of a schoolgirl. Here's a fun fact for you that illustrates my point. Did you know that in Japan there are shops in which young girls can trade in their used undergarments for money so that any old stranger can buy them and do with them whatever they please? Well if you didn't know that then you sure are lucky you've got me around, slaving tirelessly on this blog to bring you all the must-have info of the world. I mention Japan's love of all things clinging to female genitalia because today's anime, Ikki Tousen: Battle Vixens, seems very keen to reward this love. Just take a look at the pictures I have provided. I hope you don't mind these sorts of images, because you'll be seeing a lot of them in this anime.

But there's more to Ikki Tousen than ass and titties. It actually has a decent story. It's basically about a bunch of fighters from rival schools who compete in a tournament in which there are basically no rules regarding torture and death. The story also tiptoes briefly around sexual abuse but we won't get too into that. Basically the main girl (the one on the left in the picture above) has some inner-dragon thing that all the other characters are either trying to unleash, repress or control. Ok so it's not really a fantastic, epic story or anything but I mostly liked the way it was handled. I actually wasn't entirely bothered by the upskirts and nudity because, let's face it, if half a dozen young, full breasted women are gonna fight each other in short school skirts then it would be kind of rediculous if you didn't see some bum hugging white panties. Actually, come to think of it, they're all wearing the exact same underwear. Ok so that's a bit hard to swallow. Besides, what if I have a fetish for a different style or colour? But I digress. The fact is that the semi-nudity actually makes sense and for the most part actually fits in with the situations.

The lame thing about Ikki Tousen: Battle Vixens is that for all it's shameless upskirts it's actually a pretty enjoyable anime series; which is lame because people will inevitably see images like the ones above and disregard it. It's this well balanced blend of action, narrative and rediculously comic soft pornography that somehow manages to make a consistent, decent series.That said, it's not a classic by any means. The story is consistent and makes sense but the whole thing ends up going basically nowhere. Characters have learnt nothing, the status quo is restored and the world carries on unchanged. I understand that there are further series and OVA's of Ikki Tousen so perhaps the story is yet to fully develope? I certainly feel that a few character relationships left a lot to be desired. But you know what? At the end of the day I don't feel like an anime like this really wants serious critical treatment. I mean it's definately supposed to be rediculous; the boobs make *boing* noises for fucksake. So in the end I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ikki Tousen might actually be worth checking out. You'll probably feel a little confused as to why you don't hate it, I know I am.

Undead Rant

You know how the elderly are often stereotyped as grumpy, disconnected and bored with everything? Well sometimes I wonder if I'm already a little too close to that. Well something that's been bringing me closer to that ultimate destiny recently is the undead. Oh how I'm sick of hearing about the undead. We have vampires in every teen romance novel, we have a zombie mode in every video game and I'm altogether over hearing about it. I'm sick of vampires being sexy, I'm sick of zombies being the cause of the appocalypse and I'm sick of nerds getting excited about pretending they'll survive it. So I thought what I'd do in todays blog is vent a little of my annoyance and explore the stupidity of the undead mythologies.

The Name
The first thing to ever bug me about the undead is that they're called "the undead." Let me explain to you how the English language works people. When the prefix "un" is placed before a word is juxtaposes the meaning of the original word so that the new word means the opposite. So then the word "undead" would literally mean "not dead". Now this in itself is fine because zombies seem to posses very basic signs of life and Vampires are able to pick up chicks at bars so it's easily argued that both of these beings are not actually dead. But then comes the problem, neither are we. Regular, 9 to 5 workin' John and Jane who deliver your post and have sex with the highschool swim team, none of them are dead either. So is everyone  not buried or cremated also "undead"? That doesn't really work does it. A better word for it would be "semidead". Semi, for all you dickhead writers out there who can't fucking get it right, meaning partly. THAT one makes sense. They're not quite dead or alive but exist in a weird grey area. Easy.

The next thing that pisses me off about the name is that I can't count the number of times that vampires have said the words "I'm already dead." Excuse me. No you fucking aren't. Dead people can't be arrogant, tall-talkers for one. Vampires can be killed too, by stakes and what not. If there's one situation in which you can NOT be killed it is if you are already dead. But apparently vampires, who are supposedly already dead, can die. So let me get this straight. The undead, are named in a way that literally means they AREN'T dead, are actually already dead but that doesn't mean much because they can still die. Die, die again. Maybe all this is just a scam on the part of the vampires so that they can collect 2 lots of life insurance? Besides which vampires all seem to "outlive" human beings, which is something the mopier ones often sulk about. I mean it's rediculous, are they dead or not? Try and get it together people.

The Zombie Appocalypse
I realise that by this point in my post I haven't given much attention to zombies. Want to know why that is? It's because zombies are fucking boring. I have no idea why or how people manage to talk about zombies so fucking much. Here's what they do. They shuffle. They kill. They sometimes gurgle out a single word. How the hell are people able to go on and on about them? At least vampires are trying to be interesting. But the main reason zombies are talked about so very, very is because the entire Geek Kingdom (ie, the internet) is obsessed with discussing the Zombie Appocalypse.

The annoying thing about the zombie appocalypse is how seriously it's taken. Everyone acts like it's going to happen like it's the Y2K all over again. Nerds actually have models for how the zombie appocalypse will play out depending on factors like the weather and the method in which a person becomes a zombie. It's pretty stupid. I can see the fun in pretending like it's the end of days and you just wanna live a little while longer in your stronghold, but actually making predictions about something that is never, ever, going to happen seems like a perfectly good way to get institutionalized. Let me put things in perspective for you. You know how people think that dice-based role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons are for losers? Well thoroughly planning how best to survive the zombie appocalypse is for the alpha-losers. The losers who other losers bully. And let me just leave this with you to think about. If you can't even function in human society without having your lunch money stollen how the fuck are you going to survive wave after wave of mindless killing machines who can smell you sweating into your Batman underpants?

The Undead VS Daylight
This one only really starts to unravel as you think about it. In many fictional universes the undead, be it zombie, vampire or werewolf (assuming they count, I don't see how they're any less dead than a vampire anyway), are often tranformed or killed in some way by sunlight. Now watch as I suck the fun out of this one.

Vampires usually only come out at night to avoid exposure to sunlight which would severly weaken and eventually kill them. Assuming that this is true, why is it then that moonlight doesn't do the same thing? Moonlight, after all, is just the exact same sunlight being bounced back to earth off the moon. Perhaps you could argue that reflected light doesn't have the same effect, which is fine I suppose except I'm pretty sure I've seen mirrors used to reflect light at vampires to weaken them.

Werewolves have the same sort of issue. Why does the full moon trigger their transformation? again, it's just reflected light. Perhaps you could argue that the other lunar phases do not have sufficient light to triiger the tranformation? But then why do they not transform in sunlight?

The problem with almost every one of my complaints is that they're basically all based upon anchient folk laws and the like, back when people didn't understand things like the moon or death. But I don't see why we have to continue with these laws in our current fiction. People defend these stupid old mythologies and thing like they're fact. You know how in the Twilight Saga vampires sparkle in the light instead of dying and everyone teases it saying how they're "not real vampires." Well here's a news flash dickheads, there ARE no real vampires. Even if sparkling teenage hearthrob vampires is extremely lame at least it's new. At least it's not just retreading the same old nonsensical shit and acting like changing this arcaic mythology would somehow be an affront to mankind. You'd be forgiven for thinking I hate the undead, but that's not quite true. I just hate the way they're getting treated these days. People have stopped being creative with them and are just happy to throw them all in together or randomly shoehorn them into some irrelevent story or game. It's the laziness of it that annoys me. Put in zombies and your game will sell. Put in vampires and you're teen romance novel will sell off the back of Twilight. Fuck you all. How about this for an idea? Get creative and do something new. Make your vampires weak against musicals, make your werewolves temperature sensitive, make your zombie hordes unable to go outside in the rain. Just do something fucking new.

Beautiful Katamari

A good long while ago I reviewed We Love Katamari on the Playstation 2. You might remember it. You might remember me liking the game. You might also remember that post being a bit shit. I am aware as much as any of you that sometimes my posts are a little bit on the dull side, especially when it comes to things I actually like. Beautiful Katamari (one of the games in the Katamari series don'tcha know?) gave me the opportunity to re-examine the Katamari formula, only this time much better. So let's get into the review shall we? Royal Rainbow!

The story begins with The King of the Cosmos on holiday with his family. Because the King of the Cosmos is both extremely powerful and extremely careless he manages to destroy the universe in a game of tennis. Game, set and match universe. So the King does what any all powerful universal collosus would do and gets his puny son to roll shit up into balls so he can hurl them into orbit and declare all extraterrestrial bodies replaced. You might think this sounds lazy of him but oh no, the King keeps hard at work harshly critiquing your efforts and punishing you when you fail to roll quick enough. But in all honesty the King of the Cosmos is a lovable character. Sure, he's out of touch, mentally inbalanced and destructively irresponsible. But you'll love him anyway.

Gameplay wise Beautiful Katamari is basically the same as any Katamari game. You roll shit into a ball. The ball gets bigger. Bigger balls roll bigger shit. The King belittles your efforts. Repeat. But this formula, although simple, manages to stay very refreshing and addictive with the use of clever level design and some interesting rules. There's one level where you have to quickly roll up a Katamari that is 10 000 degrees celcius by rolling hot things and avoiding cold things. Of course, Katamari logic dictates that hot and cold things are often abstract and confusing. For example a penguin counts as a cold thing and chili sauce counts as a hot thing. I'm pretty sure a penguine would burn better than a glass jar, but who am I to argue? Katamari logic can take a bit of getting used to, especially when you're trying to decide whether you are yet big enough to roll something up. There have been times where I was marching proudly along, rolling up all the puny objects in my way only to have some piddley little knick knack push me away like a repulsed blind date as you lean in for a goodnight kiss. Apparently size matters with katamari's too, but at least katamari's can grow without surgery.

Although the design sounds simple it always manages to stay fresh and fun. The mere act of rolling up something new is rewarding in itself, in a sort of Pokemon, gotta roll 'em all, kind of way. The game keeps track of your collection of crap, filing it away neatly and giving you an idea of how much of the world has been left unabused by your presence. The way a Katamari handles also feels right. You can start off a level speedily rolling up thumbtacks and gum saving up for being able to roll up that dogshit that's been giving you trouble and end up later on in the level slowly ploughing through cars, people and even buildings in the same slow, lumbering, unstoppable manner of Godzilla. People even panic and attempt to flee from your path. There's something very primally thrilling about seeing some jerk kicking and screaming as they are rolled around into other people. The levels are relatively short, usually clocking up about 6 mins. But you will find yourself replaying them over and over trying desperately to earn yourself a perfect score from the King. After doing so you unlock Eternal Mode for that level, allowing you to roll freely around it without a time limit. There's something extremely cathartic about toiling for hours for the perfect score and then going back to the level in Eternal Mode to reduce the level to an empty room or a flat area where a great city once stood.

The game still has it's flaws of course. Aside from the aforementioned Katamari logic to get your head around there's the camera. There are many occassions where I have done something I regretted because I couldn't actually see where I was going or even where my katamari was. Sometimes when your Katamari is big it obscures your vision and you find yourself crashing into unseen, mystery objects. As well as that I have found myself getting unfairly stuck because my katamari is just big enough to get wedged into some tight nook that is time consuming and damaging to get out of. Although these few flaws can be frustrating they certainly aren't dealbreakers. Katamari is as fun as it ever was.

I've heard some people complain that the Katamari games haven't changed at all. Whilst this is most certainly true I don't really care for a number of reasons. First of all, these games are so unique and fun that having more of them is definately good. Secondly, almost every katamari iteration appears on a different console, allowing more players to enjoy the game. Now that Katamari is on the Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PSP and iPhone I don't see any reason why you, the reader, can excuse yourself from trying a Katamari game out. It may not sound like much and may look outlandishly camp and Japanese but just trust me, it's fantastic. The only reason I'm not playing it right now instead of blabbing on and on about it is because my fucking poorly designed Xbox 360 Pro has fucked up and is yet to be replaced by a new Xbox 360 Slim. But I've already ranted about how the Xbox 360 is shit. I bet if you opened one up it's probably being run on one of those potato batteries kids make in school. Yeah, that's it. Microsoft enslaves children to build Xbox 360's out of vegetables and chicken wire. Sigh...I miss Katamari.

Christmas Songs Rant

Remember when I actually used to post pictures with my blog? Well I've decided to stop being a lazy cunt and start up that tradition once again. So here's something vagueley relevant, enjoy!

You'd have to be majorly out of the loop to not be aware that Christmas is basically a month away. It's that time of the year when fairy lights begin to pop up in windows and front yards and mall Santa's start making their appearances. It's also time for fucking Christmas compilations to be played in every place with a sound system in the western world.

So let me open with this. Christmas songs are the shittest. The. Absolute. Worst. Music. I'm always surprised to see which saps actually get roped into making Christmas albums. Nat King Cole, Mariah Carey, The Simpsons; there's even a fucking Pokemon Christmas album. And they're all shit. Even the ironic, comdey ones are shit. In fact I'd go so far as to say that anything with the words "Christmas" in the title, be it movie, album or book, is shit with the possible exception of Christmas Lemmings.

So seeing as how I work in a shopping centre I have recently become plagued by stupid Christmas songs playing over the store radio. after a few hours of suffering a fellow employee said " fuck I hate Christmas songs" to which I agreed, but in my mind I sort of said to myself "well duh! Who the fuck doesn't?" Then I reached this realisation in my mind, I didn't know a single human being on the face of the Earth who didn't dread setting foot in stores this time of year for fear of being driven to auditory suicide by "Jingle Bells Rock". This presented me with many questions. Did there exist such a mythical beast that actually liked this garbage? If so, were their numbers significant? Assuming not, why are we exposed to these songs? Do the corporate big wigs in marketing like this music? Do they think it helps move units this time of year? There were so many questions that popped into my head and the weird thing was I couldn't shake the feeling that these songs would be, for the most part, a negative presence in shops.

After several hours of working for the man all troubling thoughts had left the forfront of my brain, but the music kept on playing. Eventually, as the evening wrapped up, I noticed something else disturbing about these songs. Many of these so-called "Christmas Songs" are sexual in nature. Whilst for the most part they seemed mostly harmless, mentioning topics no more frisky than stealing a quick kiss underneath a sprig of mistletoe, there were a few that got into the eggnog and decided to get slutty. There was this one song in particular being seductively and slowly wrung out of the speakers that actually featured lyrics that went, and I kid you not, something almost exactly like "I want you to crawl down my chimney, I want you to fill my stocking up" which doesn't bring to mind Christmas as much as it invokes images of a sexual deviant with Santa rape fantasies. My advice would be to avoid that track at any office christmas parties you might be planning, otherwise you might find the photocopier unusable and office relations becoming awkward.

But really I don't know what I hope to achieve here. I have no power at the best of times but even if you had the charisma and fanbase to bring down Microsoft I don't see how you could possibly prevent the overuse of Christmas songs in the lead up to Christmas. Me trying to stop these songs with the awesome power of my blog would be like trying to stop the tide coming in with the awesome power of parking tickets. I'm not sure why it's so hard though, because I'm pretty sure they are almost universally loathed. But somehow, despite this, the Christmas soundtracks have become an undefeatable force in the shopping world. I don't think I'll ever understand society.

Kite

Any regular reader of Infinite Possiblogities that has two brain cells they can rub together has probably been able to deduce that I have a certain appreciation for Japanese culture. Ok so I don't walk barefoot across my matted floor or spend ours on end preparing tea but what I am into is anime and gaming; both of which have some heavy Japanese connections. In the past I have tended to review good anime because I spend a certain amount of time researching to see what anime series are worth watching. But for reasons I won't delve into I sometimes come across anime that is shit. I guess it can't be helped, but every cloud has a silver lining. The polish of this particular turd comes in the form of this blog post. Whenever I find myself experiencing some disfigured abomination of mankinds creation I can always take solace in the fact that I can run home to my blog to vent my frustrations and take the piss. So with expectations set low enough to scratch a hampsters ballsack I present the review of Kite.

So what the fuck is Kite about? That's really a very good question. Only running at about 50 mins the story of Kite is something of a vague, half-baked affair. So it starts off in an elevator where a hitgirl kills some famous jerk. She flees the scene of the crime in an action sequence that feels like it was ripped right out of Ghost in the Shell before the Crime Scene Investigators turn up. After a bit of stickybeaking the scene changes to the hitgirl and the head crime scene guy talking in some dingy appartment. It's all blah de blah de blah then BAM! Hardcore sex scene. Wow ok so there's a hentai bent to this anime. Didn't expect that one. So anyway the story kinda starts to get retarded at this point. Basically the plot is about the different characters and their twisted relationships with each other. The hitgirl has some sick father/foster parent/boss/kinky sexual relationship with the CSI dude, which is made a little more disturbing by the fact that he basically has this same relationship with all his other female hired killers who all seem to be of school age. Creepy relationships aside for the moment, hitgirl has agreed to fuck and kill in exchange for the identities of her parents killers. So then there's this young boy who's also a killer but is trying to get out but apparently the seedy corrupt CSI dude doesn't like this, or indeed the boy, very much. Probably because the boy doesn't put out. Anyway the boy and girl are friendly There's obvious chemistry...kind of. There's a few more arbitrary hit jobs and then the boy drops the totally unsurprising bombshell that Mr. CSI killed hitgirls parents to which hitgirl replies "yeah I've known that a while now", just in case their relationship didn't already totally creep you out. Anyway, the boy is forced to watch CSI fuck the hitgirl at gunpoint before being walked away to be killed. CSI and the girl had apparently planned this to trap him and make him miserable. The boy escapes, killing the ugly sidekick. The girl betrays CSI, shooting him in his disproportionate hentai dick before killing him. Then there's this totally ambiguos and disatisfying ending where the boy is implied to have been shot by some little girl for some reason and that's it.

So that was fucking confusing right? Basically the story can be summed up as this. Creepy, powerplay sex. This is the most confusing 50 mins you will ever experience. The whole plot is arbitrary and raises a multitude of unanswered and fructrating questions. Why did the girl repeatedly have sex with her parents murderer? Why didn't the boy or the girl kill these creeps a long time ago? Why was the boy feeding cats? Is the boy dead? Why did a girl less than 10 years old try to kill him? Why? Why? WHY!?!

Some people might argue that this movie is just hentai and as such the story is just an excuse to explore strange sex situations but I'm not sure I completely buy that. Although the sex is extremely explicit and obviously hentai-esque there isn't really enough of it to go to all the trouble of making a story for it. To cut a long review short, Kite is sexually explicit retardedness. Even if hentai was your cup of tea I'm not really sure that the story is well enough contructed with well developed characters for anyone to ever consider it good or even ok. What it is is a series of twisted sexual relationships and character motivations that make little to no sense. I don't really know what else to say about it; that's Kite. It's stupid but it has big dicks and tits in it.

(Appologies for my delayed posts, I've had exams and shit. I should be able to make at least one post a week from now on so stay tuned.)

The L Word (Season One)

FACT: Guys like girls. FACT: Television networks like money. FACT: The person who first put two and two together to make a softcore sexual, lesbian based television drama must now have enough money to pay God to do his gardning and housework. So it's no surprise that after much controversy, media attention and general outcry from conservative, white housewives who go into automatic outraged-mode when their neighbours hairdresser tells them about a nipple they heard was visible through the top of an actresses blouse in a photoshoot; that The L Word managed to become a success. But wait, I hear you cry out from deep down in your caves of cultural ignorance, what is The L Word? Well it's time to get comfy knuckleheads as I move on the paragraph two and make some sense of my introduction.

So The L Word is set in L.A. and follows the lives and dramas of a handful of young women, most of whom are lesbian, as they eat at trendy cafes and engage in sexual acts that are filmed with gratuitous detail and scored with popular music and panting. The variety amoungst the main characters is there to ensure every single gay achetype is present like some sort of lesbian (and by that I mean, of course, MORE lesbian) Spice Girls. There's sporty lez, boy lez, bisexual lez, pretentious accent lez, husband and wife lez and, everybodies least favourite, might-be-lez-might-not-be-lez. All we need are wheelchair lez and asian lez to complete the rainbow but then this is only the first season, there are 5 more and no doubt some new ones will wriggle in.

At this point you probably think I'm being pretty cynical and in a way I suppose I am. The L Word can be overtly pretentious and trendy like a hipster reading Jaymes Joice beside a Japanese koi pond and the way the show was launched off the raunchiness of the concept was also shamless and predictable but underneath the thin shell of apparent shittiness is a show that's actually pretty decent and engaging. In my younger years I found myself occassionally dipping my feet in the shallow waters of The L Word as a masturbatory aid but actually found that the show was actually deep enough to swim and dive in. After the first few episodes the characters actually become more than just archetypes with names and start developing and becoming, dare I say it? Endearing. Of course the variety and wide focus in the cast means that everyone will pick out their favourite lesbian and have one that irks them horribly and not wanting to get too presumptious, I think most of you will hate Jenny. But I guess that's what The L Word is all about. It's supposed to give us a varied cast with challenging plots. I particularly like some of the later episodes in season one when one of the main cast is personally attacked for being partly responsible for the organisation of a controversial art exhibition. I actually felt quite angered by the fictional protests of these conservative, Christian bastards and not because the show lacked quality; not because I have my own personal gripes with conservatives, but because the show had managed to engage me.

So in conclusion I have to say that after one season I think The L Word is pretty good. It's got drama and complex issues woven amoungst a tapestry of mostly likeable characters if you're willing to take the plung. Plus it's got tits and girl-on-girl panting if you're just looking for something to do with your dick.