Super-huge comeback post: School, Street Fighter, neighbourhood fires and VIZBIG posted by Kiron on February 25, 2009

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HI GUYS I'M BACK

Seriously though, it's about fucking time I posted here more. I still haven't found out what the hell is up with all those spambots though.

At any rate, most of my immediate troubles at school have been taken care of. Right now, all I need to do is wait for feedback on an assignment and wait until we get specified what we need to know for exams. I like that.

So... Street Fighter IV. Holy shit, this game is HARD. Capcom isn't fucking around here, they're going straight for the old-school difficulty. I'm having trouble beating it on the easiest level, and I'm not an entirely terrible SF player. Plus, Zangief's throw-spamming makes about as much sense as not being able to jump on stairs in a certain platforming series.
Seth is really the lamest excuse for a boss ever, though. Stealing other people's moves? GEE THAT SURE IS ORIGINAL. Oh well. Awesome game otherwise, and it even gave me a reason to learn to play as Bison (though admittedly, beating it as him unlocks Rose, who sucks ass.)

Apparently my neighbours' roof was on fire last night. I have no idea what, who, or why, but I expect I'll hear about it from my mother in-between rants about how I go to sleep way too late and how my room is so messy that it would supposedly be impossible to escape if our own house was on fire.
Which is fucking bullshit, unless you want me to get rid of the walls or something.

Last but not least, I found out that bol.com now stocks manga, so I ordered volume 1 of Rozen Maiden and No Need for Tenchi! (the latter better known as its anime counterpart which doesn't translate the name, Tenchi Muyo!)
Despite all the negative things I heard about Tokyopop, the translation of Rozen Maiden seemed pretty dead-on, judging from the anime. I haven't seen any obvious Americanization (although we don't get to the "onii" until volume 2, probably), the dialogue felt natural and the honorifics were still in place.
As for Tenchi, the fact that it was localised by Viz should say enough. They usually handle their IP pretty much perfectly, and this seems to be no exception. Although I can't say if the translation is accurate (the manga takes place after the first part of the anime, which I've only seen one episode of because the voices annoyed the fuck out of me), I haven't heard any complaints from the internets, so I guess that means it's good. The cover art is pretty ugly though... I mean, a gradient for the background? Ugh.

I also got the first volume of the "VIZBIG" edition of Dragon Ball Z, which combines three volumes from the original release into one. Contrary to what people tell me, it's not that heavy. (Wow, I'm really abusing the italics today.) I haven't read it properly yet, but the print quality looks very good; better than the other two manga I got. It also includes the colour pages from the original Japanese releases, whereas Viz usually prints them in greyscale.
As for the translation, I can't tell yet until I really read it. Some people complained about the dialogue in early Viz releases, but the back of the book claims it was revised, so we'll see.
The original Japanese manga had no seperation between "Dragon Ball" and "Dragon Ball Z"; this first happened with the anime, and Viz decided to carry it into their manga translation, since a lot of people are more familiar with the Z portion. The beginning of the volume includes a quick cast of characters summary, which I think was added by Viz themselves. The only other monkeying they've done with the actual content is that the first volume included here (DBZ vol. 1, or DB vol. 17 in the original) includes the arrival of Raditz to keep the whole "Z" thing in order, even though it was originally part of DB vol. 16. I don't mind this especially; it makes more sense from a story perspective, and it means I get more content in one purchase for the same price! Yay.

So yeah, I think I'm actually gonna read it now. See ya!

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