Been a while since I last blogged. So I went ahead and built an Astraea unit, HG, 1/144. I used one of those magazine boxes with the Astraea HG conversion kits, not the actual Astraea HG box that’s out there. That said, I had only gotten it for $10 so at the time it was worth it. Sat on this for so long, so it was time to actually do something with this kit.

The Exia R2 comes with the GN Sword Kai, so I modified it a bit and painted the gray part of the blade white. Looks a little more like the GN Sword III, in my opinion. Back skirt was missing stickers, so I went with red Gundam Marker for that. Top headpiece was also missing a sticker, so I took a toothpick (believe it or not) and dabbed it with a Tamiya dark green.

The GN condensor clear pieces were painted with Tamiya clear green, similar to the method used by rrobbert184. Unlike his though, I don’t think I can see any brush strokes; maybe some very small dabs but almost impossible to notice. It looks great; even better than using stickers to create the same effect.

Legs were also from the R2 rather than regular Exia. GN Shield was painted white, though a bit shabby. I do plan on filling in that space with black if I get a panel lining marker somewhere; anyone got any bright ideas?

Played MMORPGs

• Star Trek Online
  Star Trek Online is a good game overall, I don’t see why companies like GameSpot and the like rate it so bad (5.5). However, it does feel incomplete but that’s to be expected of most MMOs when they’re just starting up. Give it a year and your opinion may change. I don’t plan to be playing 24/7, but every once so often as things change and when I have some time to go where no man has gone before.
• EVE Online
  I tried playing it again in the summer last year, and found that it was still as boring as ever, or took up too much time to justify keeping the ISK intake in and buying PLEXes. If I can’t be bothered to make ISK and buy PLEXes, why should I continue to play the game? I’m not even paying for it (only paid the initial $5 re-entry cost), so oh well.
• Mabinogi
  I notice Nexon has reached some of the new content Mabinogi has in Korea, though whether I will come back to take a look at it is another story. It’s nice to see that there are a few changes in Nexon policy for the better, but whether that will translate to having a company that can properly support players and provide quality customer support is another thing altogether.

Recent Purchases

I’ve recently made some orders online, for ESPGaluda II and a Hori Fighting Stick EX 2. Now you may say, why the FSEX2? It’s because right now it’s $39.99 CAD from Amazon.ca and it’s not an offer I’m going to easily throw away. The thing is supposed to be some $60-70, so it’s definitely a bargain. Compared to the $150+ price range that tournament-level sticks have, with a bit of tinkering (I know the process already, and I have the tools and people with expertise for it), I may one day have something that can compete with those sticks.

Upcoming Releases

• Mobile Suit Gundam UC – March 12
  Yes, I already watched it, but I am getting the Blu-ray. If you’re not, I don’t know what you’re doing.
• Chaos;Head Love Chu Chu – March 25
  Not exactly a game I’m looking forward to. The fandisc, shall we call it, appears to have a lot of service for those who are fans of Chaos;Head, but I’m more in love with the Steins;Gate aspect of the world. If there’s anything interesting about the game that I will miss out on, such as Steins;Gate related stuff, then I might give it a shot. Otherwise, this is going on the backburner… until maybe it goes cheap?
• Ketsui: Kizuna jigoku tachi – April 22
  The legendary shmup of shmups, shall we say. This is a must-buy. Though it’ll be 360 only, that’s what the FSEX2 is for.
• Angel Beats – April 22
  This is an anime I will be keeping tabs on, it being written by Jun Maeda. I notice he’s taken a step away from visual novels, but that doesn’t mean he’s done with writing stories.
• Lost Planet 2 – May 18
  Already pre-ordered this one for the 360, really looking forward to it.
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker – May 25
  I haven’t pre-ordered this because I’m waiting for it to come out on PSN, so I can buy it. Screw the UMD format, because flash memory access times are where it’s at. MGS4 was a total disappointment, but Peace Walker is turning out to be the game that MGS4 should have been, and then some. In fact, MGS4 should never have happened.

Current Anime

As a final note, I noticed that the plethora of current anime is all just total garbage. It’s all full of moeblobs and focusing on girls but very little on good storytelling. There are a few exceptions out there, but sadly they are a minority in the sea of anime where everything is all about what’s under a girl’s clothing. Sadly, because of how stupid the otaku in Japan are, this will only continue to worsen until I don’t know what kind of bubble pops. I will pray that those who know how to continue writing good anime will continue in the industry doing what they love.

P.S. Mizushima may be high from all that love he has for the Middle East, but he did make Gundam 00. Great times.

I’m also quite tempted to buy the Blu-ray now.

P.S. Non-mainstream Japanese theme song is a plus.
P.S.S. English and Japanese mixed in some places is lol. Does this mean the English voice acting is working alongside the Japanese versions too?

Again?! LOL

Almost makes you feel sorry for the people who bought MG Exia. ^^;

Source: Official PG 00 Raiser Website

I did a bit of investigation and checked out the Xbox Live Marketplace… what I found was that 248 Indie games were available on the Japan marketplace, while some 408 were available on the US/Europe marketplace. And of those numbers, only some games were shared but not all.

Needless to say, I think this is more a problem on the author’s part for not checking content restrictions and restricting it to the region it’s supposed to be limited to. Otherwise, all 408 games would have appeared on both marketplaces, rather than this not so mutually exclusive (or not exclusive at all) state of affairs.

Edit: Just found this:

Games are now evaluated for “one world” or worldwide approval.

…

Each game has to match the standards of all countries we support – that means the strictest standard will be applied for all countries. A game must pass all criteria before being allowed for sale in ANY Xbox LIVE marketplace.

Guess it’s the way the games are made then. If this was the policy, why on earth did the author decide to put a galge like this on Indie Games…?

Now they’re making a movie based off Unlimited Blade Works. If you think about it though, not long after the Fate/stay night TV series ended, Kara no Kyoukai’s movies came out, and they were a resounding success. What’s not to say that Studio Deen realizes that what they did was pretty stupid, and that they want to try this again for round 2? After all, people do learn after screwing things up… most of the time.

Of course, this is all just a very dim, but glimmering hope of light for the UBW movie, and I pray that it will actually work out well. If they had billed the Fate/stay night TV series as just being the Fate scenario back in the day, maybe it would have worked out better; all they’d have to do is follow the Realta Nua variation of the Fate scenario.

Better yet, they could have done it as a movie, and that would have worked out as well.

Courtesy of your local Shoppers Drug Mart.