Way to break it, Flan-chan!

Just a really quick one today; for my new wallpaper.

This one is of everyone’s favourite lunatic vampire, Flandre Scarlet:

As always, click the scary little girl to see her full size.

This vector screamed “use me!” when I saw it this morning, so I did. I’m sure you can read it by yourself, but the text says ‘Eh? Onii-chan’s gone all red.”

I’m hopefully conveying that you are Flandre’s toy, for whatever reason, and she broke you twenty minutes ago and only just noticed the copious amounts of blood. Because, hey, that is probably exactly what would happen.

A life lesson: submitting to scary young overpowered vampires is far more dangerous for your health than trying to fight her and at least going down in a flaming ball of devastation. But then, if you’re just a regular joe, you might get played with anyway. Borrow a Marisa or at least a Patchy before entering the mansions basement. Don’t be afraid to run…away…very…quickly.

Anyway, this is a simple but highly effective composition. I fiddled with alot of blending and colouring for the most part. And of course, added the text for atmosphere settings. Yay.

So, thats all for now, stay tuned.

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Writing on the Wall?

Hey everyone; apologies for my absence as of late; there has been alot less free-time available for me in general, since my hours at work recently increased alot; and I also purchased a copy of Rune Factory Frontier, which has been draining my time quite alot!

Within a couple of days I shall release a post for the new Winter 2010 Anime Season.

The draft is already started, so its just filling things in. Alot of pretty interesting stuff to look forward to.

Anyway, until then, here’s just a very brief post tonight with my two new wallpapers:

First up; its Aya Oshino. Not really a proper wall as more of a fairly quick photoshop:

As always, click the above to see it full size

Those whom have seen Bakemonogatari will probably recognise the above as Shinobu Oshino, the loli-vampire from that series. Basically, all I’ve done with these images is carefully alter their colour pallette. She was previously blonde, and is now pink haired.

The reason for this is because I recently started a new campaign for my RPG system, Aniventure, with a setting thats draws inspiration from Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, Kagetsu Tohya, and Bakemonogatari. Most notably, the players are stuck in a Groundhog Day loop somewhat akin to the former two, and a world full of strange youkai somewhat like the latter, in an organisation that controls youkai.

Of course, they didn’t originally know this, and were told that they were in a simple high school setting, but have since figured out this is an illusion created by a Youkai, partly through aid of a strange transfer student, Aya Oshino. (whose name is mix of Aya Otonashi from ZeroMaria, and Shinobu Oshino from Bakemono, in tribute to both). This is the source of the character idea. I described her to have pink hair, and then made this to show them her looks, basically.

Anyway, they also figured out she’s a vampire, which is my reason for her breaking free of the groundhog loop and retaining her memories (though the players didn’t play them, their first gaming session was actually the 32nd loop of a certain day; and Aya has lived each one and remembered them all).

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Secondly, we have my latest, a wall of Ryouko and Ryoushi from the Seven Friends of Ookami-san.

As always, click the above to see it full size

Another fairly simple job, taking these two vectors and making this, but one I rather enjoyed. I think the contrast between the cute Ryouko and determined Ryoushi is especially fun, since its sort of a reversal of their usual characters.

The Sakura patten just came pretty naturally to the equation, but it was rather difficult getting it to tile properly so it didn’t look atrocious since was not a naturally repeatable image. Theres actually about 14 tiles in there!

Thats all for now, but stay tuned.

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First Impressions: Baka no Test and Dance in the Vampire Bund

Yikes. I have to start with an apology for starting this stuff so late, but I’ve been doing an seemingly exhausting amount of work recently which has obviously had the means to drain away all of my time. Though it’s immensely belated (most shows are about to get to their 3rd episode by now!), its time for the usual evaluations of the anime this season. That said, I guess that there isn’t a huge amount to cover, so though I have alot to catch up,  I still imagine I’ll be able to do it in three or four posts (he says…yet again).

Anyway, I’ll start with Baka no Test and Dance in the Vampire Bund.

Baka no Test (aka. the Idiots, the Tests, and the Summoned Creatures)

The random prediction I made about this in the previews turned out correct: the chibi versions are indeed the summoned creatures (facepalm). Anyway, this is another one of those highly discriminating tiered school systems that manga and light novel writers seem to love the idea of. Special A of course being the other notable one, where the ultimate students get the ultimate facilities. Of course, that focuses on the top, this on the bottom. We hear about Yoshii, who is a complete idiot, so gets assigned to class F. We also hear about Himeji, the token lovely awesome girl who also happens to be sickly and in ultimate discrimation, she gets assigned to F because of her illness preventing her from taking the exam. I’m sure I’d smell a lawsuit there if this were based on the assumption of any other country.

Anyway, Class F naturally has cardboard coffee tables, smelly tatami floors and an unmotivated teacher. Where most schools try their dardest to give the ‘intellectually challenged’ extra special help to make up for their problems, this school does all it can to remind them of just how awful and idiotic they are.

Naturally, Class F immediately starts a revolution, which is apparently allowed in the school charter, by challenging Class E to a virtual reality summoned creature battle with the stakes being Class E’s classroom and facilities (which are at least slightly less drafty with hardwood desks). Basically, students summon a creature which has hitpoints equal to their current total exam score. If their creature gets KO’ed they have to immediately take remedial lessons to get their score up, and can also leave and take more exams to increase health and attack power.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to go very well. Even though the battle goes evenly for a time (as it real idiots vs. slight idiots), the eventual difference in grades slowly becomes clear. Yoshii, the protagonist, has a slight secret weapon: he’s such an idiot he has to help teachers with chores so his chibi has the special ability to affect real-world objects. Unfortunately it also passes on its pain to its user, and in fact becomes totally useless.

So, of course, everyone in class F ends up relying on Himeji, who is of course a super genius only relegated to the class due to sickness. She completes 5 exams in the space of 30 minutes and pumps her creatures score up to 412, turning it into a greatsword wielding warrior girl chibi:

Which, of course, goes onto pwning all of class E simultaneously with a giant super-robot wars style FMV attack.

Which was apparently the class presidents plan all along. Strangely though, he forfeits the prize for some reason, and then a ludicrous challenge letter arrives for class F from… Class A? Oh dear…

Though the concept is fairly dumb, it is at least pretty. I imagine this will be one of the shows that will be fighting over my last couple of remaining slots rather than being guaranteed one. Nevertheless, its good chances as a backup show, especially on those days you want to watch mindless entertainment.

Dance in the Vampire Bund

Again, this one turned out fairly similar to my initial estimations in some respects: Vampires reveal themselves to the world because they buy a entire slice of Japan in order to form themselves a new country due to the efforts of Mina Tepes. However, I didn’t expect HOW they would do this: though the medium of TV show (within a TV show… whee go narrative framing).

It’s played straight, as they bring in various “experts” (ironically, the actual manga-ka guest star is THIS show’s original manga-ka) to determine the validity of vampires, whom of course throw out the concept.

Only to have the proof shoved in their face, first normally as Mina Tepes appears as a girl in the audience and evidence is provided from a recent murder scene.

Of course, still no 0ne take the bait when they they play it straight, so it comes down to the stupid actions the vain special guest star, an actor playing the vampire in a recent live action adaptation of a vampire manga, whom turns out to actually be one (ableit one with the true form of a ‘frog’ which is weird) and also the one resposible for the recent murders.

This idiot is promptly destroyed on live television by Mina, who promptly makes her announcement to the world.

Of course, they’ve turned the literary tradition on its head, not that I didn’t expect it. Since this Mina is apparently the descendant (?) of Vlad, rather than one of his wives as is the case in Dracula.

I have also actually watched the second and third episodes of this. Werewolves appear…and there’s a mighty amount of dubious loli fanservice provided by Mina herself (notably, the scene with the application of super suncream…OH DEAR).  The fact that all of this (the blood and the nudity) is also provided without censoring (fairly rare in an anime) suggests this is shown REALLY late at night. But hey, it makes a refreshing change.

I’m rather interested to see where they take this, so I’ll probably continue to follow this.

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And now for something completely different…

Just a short post today, full of needless variety and pointless statements (yay?).

First of all, I’ve decided fairly fair and square that Kampher, Lost Property of the Sky and Kuuchuu Blank are almost invariably out of the runnings entirely for me this season and rather than forcing myself to do an angsting First Impressions post like I did with some shows last season, I’d rather just not.

Seitokai no Ichizone and 11 Eyes are also hanging precariously, almost relying a great next performance, and I still need to start Kimi no Todoke (though I’ve heard some horror stories about it). If they change my mind, these three shows may recieve a late preview. But in general, I think I’m actually pretty full already with the others.

Interestingly, even most of the shows I was into had a slight dip in their second episode this season, and others have also suddenly become good by the third episode. Nyan Koi and Railgun both had dubious follow ups to otherwise great first eps, only to pull themselves back out the mud for the third. Blacksmith continued mediocrity until suddenly introducing plot in the third ep and being moderately interesting. Bantorra the same, but replace Mediocrity with Confusion, which has suddenly cleared up a bit. Letter Bee was 70% angst and seriously grating my nerves until the third episode where it has suddenly been saved thanks to this:

As I predicted initially, the Loli is the shows savior. And she’ll probably get the monkeydragon next episode.

Kobato, I have to wonder about. She…is…so…damn…stupid… It makes you want to punch her. Her dog plush, Ioryogi, is pulling the shows entire weight at the moment, though I still have episode three to watch, so we’ll see.

In the meantime, you can have a new widescreen wallpaper. Its Shinobu-chan from Bakemonogatari:

As always, click the above to see it full size.

I still maintain that Bakemonogatari was the best show of the Summer 2009 season. Great characters, actual plot development, and ye gads an actually satisfying ending (which is supreme rarity among at least 50% of anime, which seems to fizzle out or run out of time). Though Shinobu chan didn’t actually see much screentime, she was still a highly bemusing background presence. Awesome stuff.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and New Banner (squee!). I figured Shana has been doing the rounds for a year now, so I gave her a break, yeah? She’s been replaced with Ilya, Rin, Saber and Archer from F/SN. I know it isn’t anywhere close to cherry blossom season, but oh well…

Anyway, thats all for today. See ya again soon.

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Happy Birthday, Detarame!

Yup, that’s right, Detarame turns 1 today!

So its time for Wine and Cake with the Scarlet Sisters, apparently.
The only party where you’re more likely to pass out from blood loss than drunkeness. Whee!

Morever, this is a TREBLE commemorative post!

As well as celebrating this blogs first anniversary, I deliberately haven’t been blogging for a couple of days despite having things to say, so that I could make this precisely the 100th post. Finally, a few days ago, we also cracked 20,000 visitors (its actually 21,288 as of time of writing), so this is also a belated celebration for that milestone as well.

So, yay, three achievements in one!

I’d have also liked to have made a sketch to celebrate this post, but sadly I appear to going through some artists block at the moment. Maybe next year. I suspect I’m in for the long haul. Sometimes its been a bitch to catch up with work and RealLife TM commitments, but I’m still glad to have kept this blog going. I find it mightily enjoyable to spill my thoughts from time to time.

Also, this is polling time, if you feel like contributing. What exactly do you enjoy most about Detarame? I tend to try and split evenly between interrogating Anime Seasons, posting my creative endevours, and reviewing/having ‘lets play’ sessions of various obscure games and visual novels that I found, all three of which seem to be popular in their own ways. But if theres anything else that you’d like to see or things that you’d prefer me to focus on, now is the time to shout out.

With that, I’ll wrap up with various thankyous:

Firstly, I’d like to say a BIG thankyou to my readership and visitors for sticking with this bizarre storage of my leaking brain over the past year.

Secondly, I’d also like to thank everyone who was kind enough to link and promote me through whatever means, relatively novice blogger that I am.

Thirdly, a thankyou to WordPress, whose blogging service is quite excellent and without whom this site would not be possible.

Finally, lets all give a round of applause to all those creators of the things we enjoy, from anime directors to game programmers. Though you are too many to name, know good sirs and madams, that we, your avid fans, salute you!

I imagine I’ll be posting again in the next couple of days, so keep tuning in, yeah, and see you then!

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Touhoumon Part VI: Return of ZUN

Just a quick post today to point out my latest Touhoumon progress on the new Aquamentis patch.

Currently at about Lvl 28 and about to enter Rock Tunnel. Which is a little bit overlevelled, but oh well (Its not like I enjoy grinding. Quite the contrary, I despise more than neccessary. But the fact I can fast-forward on the emulator version compared to normal makes it far more tolerable!). I was laughing at seeing the nice little changes this patch has, like the fact that Pokemon centres are now Eirin Centres (staffed with actual Eirins, rather than Nurse Joy). All of the actual pokemon map sprites have also been made into touhous too. The stupid Cirno sitting by the cut tree also made me laugh.

Also surprisingly, the Rival has had some of his lines changed. He’s shockingly polite and lovely now. Which makes him so much more satisfying to crush, right? Although it won’t be easy, his levels are pretty intense, often higher than the local gym leaders (whom are already tougher than the original game).

Oh yeah, and Bill is now ZUN. The foremost touhoumaniac. Well, of course, he is their creator, after all. The fact that he turned himself into a Reisen was pretty disturbing though.

Anyway, here’s my lineup:

First up is Marisa, of course. She did indeed have a pretty tough time initially, and personally, I’m still overly impressed with her moveset at present. Spore is similar to Swagger. It vastly raises the foe’s attack and then confuses them. Which is too risky really for Marisa. Learning is novel but ultimately a gimmick, since there’s no way of knowing what move you’re going to steal. Basically, at the moment, she relies on Swift and Thundershock.

I was surprised to find Alice appears on Route 1 in this patch! This meant she almost immediately threw herself in as the psychic team member, whom, as a bonus, has all the good Ice moves on the side. Shes gone from strength to strength. And in any case, if you know your Touhou, you know that you REALLY can’t have Marisa without Alice, so its fitting!

Another surprise was finding that you can pick up the other starters pretty early now rather than after the Elite Four. I found this Sakuya in Mount Moon, and immediately put her to work. Ice/Steel type is fun, and much like my older game, having Double Kick on her really saves you when you’re in desperate need of a Fighting Move. (especially since I haven’t found a Wriggle this time to use Jump Kick) Perfect Square still has a crap animation, by the way, but oh well. For reference, yes, I have also caught a Chibi-Reimu, completing the ring of starters, but I decided not to add Reimu to my party for now. Maybe later.

Its nice to see Remillia is back and catchable again. Everyone loves ludicrously powerful loli-vampires (or is that just me!?). You can also get her sister Flandre much earlier if you decide on needing a sister team. She has a pretty ridiculous physical attack (though crap defence) making her an atypical Dark/Flying sweeper. Naturally, she’ll also be possessing the Fly HM when we get it later.

Considering I’m a bit of a Tenchi fanboy, its not really surprising to see her here, despite the fact that I rarely use Rock types in actual pokemon games. Nevertheless, Rock Tomb is always good, and Swagger in her hands is much more useful and less risky, though it’ll probably go in favour of Strength eventually. Tackle will become Earthquake, I guess. I’m actually a bit of a twit here, since I meant to delete Tackle for Swagger, but instead pressed wrong and lost Magnitude! I was unwilling to lose three levels of training for a reset, so she’s stuck without it for now. Darn.

And look, its Kisume again! She’s so Kawaii, hiding in that bucket! Of course, thanks to the bucket, she has that ludicrously balmy defence score (and a nature which boosts it too!) making her the ideal Staller. Whirlpool will probably go in favour of Surf for her heavy attack (since it seems that it cannot stack with Fire Spin, sadly), and then we’ll slap Toxic on her. She may not have an awesome attack, but a Toxic + Fire Spin + Barrier combo will be pretty silly against any physical sweeping pokemon.

Anyway, thats all for now.

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