Inazuma Going!!!

Level-5's bread and butter has been their Sports - RPG hybrid game series Inazuma Eleven for the Nintendo DS; now with the release of the Nintendo 3DS we see a continuation of that series with Inzauma Eleven Go. Naturally since the original Inazuma games had an anime adaption, Go has also received the animation treatment from Oriental Light and Magic.

Now I'll be honest, I never watched the original Inzauma Eleven anime so I came into this show kinda blind. While you can get through this show like that, I think some things were lost on me. Mainly they mention characters from the series before quite a lot. While the story mostly holds up even if you don't know who they are, it's still kinda confusing and well I'm willing to bet less dramatic. I ended up having to google some names and reading the Inzauma wiki while watching the show at least three or four times just because I felt out of the loop.

The show itself has the most zany over the top presentation, where soccer is literally the most powerful force on Earth. A bit like Yu-Gi-Oh, everything seems to revolve around and is resolved by games of soccer. The over the top moves and actions made the show lots of fun but the show is really repetitive. Which is perhaps the greatest flaw of it.

Mamoru-kun to the Rescue!

A bit over a year ago the North Coast of Japan was struck with The Great East Japan Earthquake killing many, and leaving many homeless, jobless, and lost. Even though it has been over a year the effects can still be felt, people still need help. CyberConnect2 has started a program to help those in need; Mamoru Reconstruction Assistance Project. Now what is this Reconstruction Assistance Project you may ask? Well in their own words:

"This is a charity aiming to support people in the 3.11 disaster area. In this project CyberConnect2 sells original illustrations on gumroad, an online e-commerce service, and donates all the profit to Japanese Red Cross Society."

If you are curious, Mamoru-Kun is a character from the Little Tail Bronx world, the same world were the Tail Concerto and SolatoRobo games take place. Mamoru-kun shows up a bit in SolatoRobo (a totally awesome game I will cover soon enough), hailing from the land of Nippon. Now beyond just being a character in a loose series of games he is also a symbol of Fire Safety (among other things) for children in the Fukuoka prefecture. You can read more about Mamoru-kun, this charity, and check out and hopefully buy some nice art at the official site.

Each wallpaper only cost 100¥ and goes to a good cause. There are plenty of cute arts to chose from as well. Any fan of SolatoRobo should be in heaven. I bought one of the wallpapers for my iPod and I really love it, [check below]. Thanks for reading, caring, and if you buy anything, thanks for helping out some people in real need.

Little Battle

Wow, it's been longer then a month since I posted anything! But no worries,  it's not like I stopped doing cool things in the time that I've been away. In fact I've done plenty of blog worthy things! I've just been lazy. Over the next couple of days I'll post more entries in my blog about the things I've been up to lately.

So now with that outta the way let me tell you about Little Battles eXperience. It's a neat little PSP game made by Level-5 that reminds me a lot of Megaman Battle Network and Custom Robo. With a sequel coming out for PSP and the PSV as well as an enhanced port of the original game for the 3DS, it's safe to say that it has become a series. Just like Level-5's Inazuma Eleven series the game has gotten an anime treatment courtesy of Oriental Light and Magic.

The anime has been a bumpy ride for me. The beginning of it had me feeling rather mixed. The show felt too serious for such a simple and silly premise. I came in with a similar mindset that I approached Inazuma Eleven Go and well that was wrong of me. These series are pretty different in contrast. The things that happen are not wild and over the top like in Inazuma but are actually pretty grounded in Earth. Well for the most part, there is some random zany stuff that just feels kinda wrong with the tone. Such as a transfer student arriving to school via Military Jet. Yeeeeeeeeeeah, that was just weird and would be more at home for Inazuma and not for Little Battlers. For me it took about six or seven episodes for this show to actually get good. Over this time through some world building the narrative does start to feel more mature and the tone it takes begins to work in favor. As cutesy as the show is, it actually does have a nice and serious plot.

I'm now twelve episodes in and have found the past couple of episodes to be real enjoyable. I'll write a little bit more about the show when I finish it. For now just know that's what I've been up to the past week, watching Little Battlers! Oh and for those of you interested Dentsu's American branch will be releasing and dubbing the show in English sometime in 2013 for American audiences. There is also a plan to bring out the toy models from Japan too. No word on the games themselves but I actually have high hopes that we'll see them over here in the states soon enough.