Adventures in Pony Customizing

First thing you'll notice is that this isn't a review.  I've decided to change things up a bit.  I'll still be doing reviews, but I'll also be posting various other things, like my forays into the world of model kits and toy customization. So, for my first non-review blog, I'll be chronicling my attempts at pony customizing.

Let me start off by saying, I'm not that much into the show.  I think it's adorable, and I gave it to my 3-year-old nieces because it's got some valuable lessons as well as being fun and cute, but personally I've seen fewer than 10 episodes. I *do* love the way that the creators allow it to be effected by the fanbase, bringing characters like Derpy Hooves, Vinyl Scratch, and Doctor Whooves from the stuff of memes to actual canon, but as far as knowing specifics and episodes, that's not really me.

What I *am* into (or at least I was 5 years ago, before I moved) is model horse customizing.  I've done a few, and it was a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of time and effort, and base horses could cost a decent chunk of cash.  With the recent MLP craze, though, and noticing that the pony toys started at $5, I thought it might be fun to try my hand at customizing *those.*

Having recently gotten into Doctor Who, I decided I definitely wanted to make a custom Doctor Whooves.  I bought a Pinkie Pie for a base, this one in particular:

The first thing I did was take her eyes and butt stamp off using Goof Off, which is some amazing stuff.  (Yes, I know the technical term is "cutie mark," but I prefer "butt stamp.") Then I cut off her mane and tail. Here she is all creepy and blank!

So then I coated her with white primer.

The paint was still sticky, so I set her up on a shelf next to an AC vent, hoping it would dry.  In the meantime, I did a little looking, and realized that I could turn a Rarity into Vinyl Scratch with very little work!  So a few days later, I went and bought a Rarity:

At this point, I realized that, oh crap, the primer wasn't drying AT ALL on Pinkie Pie.  So I did some research, and long story short, discovered that I have to get a special primer for plastics.  I should have known that.  >_o  So, back to the Goof Off!  I took off the coat of still-sticky primer and removed Rarity's eyes and butt stamp while I was at it. 

And, as of right now, I've covered Rarity's mane stubble and too-low tail hole with Apoxie Sculpt (LOVE that stuff).  I took a trip to Wal-Mart to search for plastic primer, but they didn't carry it.  So for now I'll work on Rarity/Vinyl Scratch, and get back to Pinkie Pie/Doctor Whooves after I've had a chance to get by Home Depot and get that primer.  Honestly, I'm more excited for the Doctor Whooves custom, but going from 

is going to be a much easier project to start with, since there's no re-paint and no face re-sculpt involved.  I haven't decided what I'm going to do about her glasses yet; if I'm going to sculpt them on with Apoxie Sculpt or try to make them out of Foamies or something and make them removable.  I figure I'll tackle the mane and tail first, and then see what looks most likely to work.

More updates as I progress!

Rune Soldier

Disclaimer:  Reviews contain my personal opinion, and I don't claim to be the authority on these things.  I appreciate and respect that other people may have different opinions.  Friendly debate is welcome, but name-calling and other such immaturity will be ignored.  My reviews assume you've either seen the series already or aren't planning to.  They're full of spoilers, but they won't necessarily describe the whole series beginning to end... more likely I'll rant about some aspect or another in detail, but leave huge gaps about the plot.  And oh yeah, I'll be cursing.

This is a show I'd been meaning to watch for years, and only recently got around to it.  It's a fun little romp from the writer of Slayers about a group of female adventurers who try to find a mage for their party and end up stuck with Louie, a clumsy but good-hearted oaf who never does things the conventional way but somehow still makes it work.  

The characters are all ridiculously memorable.  There's Merill, a very traditional little thief who wants nothing more than all the gold she can get her hands on; she's always got a get-rich-quick scheme up her sleeve.  She's the closest to the Lina Inverse character; she's very short, feisty, and the butt of all the flat-chested jokes.  Then there's Melissa, the priestess of the goddess of battle.  She's the soft-spoken party healer, voiced by Kikuo Inoe, most known for voicing Belldandy.  Melissa's goal in life is to find a hero to serve in the name of her goddess.  There's Genie, the ex-soldier, whose mastery of the sword makes her more than a match for any man.  And then there's Louie.

I have to say, I'm really glad I waited to watch this until after I learned how to play Dungeons & Dragons, because I got *so* much more out of it than I would have otherwise.  This, as well as Slayers, were stories based on campaigns of Sword World (the Japanese equivalent of D&D) that the author participated in, and I can just imagine how they must have played out.

Louie seems like a multi-class build gone wrong.  He's got levels of wizard and fighter, but mostly monk.  The girls hire him on as a mage, but he has trouble remembering his spells.  He's brash and lacks the patience for magic, so he'll often try to hack at his foes with his sword instead, but he's also a terrible swordsman.  Louie's go-to attack is his patented "Louie Punch," and it seems to work on *everything,* often with hilarious results.

While there is good comedy to be had between the seasoned adventuring party and the brash noob, at times the girls are just total bitches to Louie.  He'll go out and punch a giant boar in the face, defeating it in one hit, but the girls are embarrassed by him because of his technique.  Really?  He killed the enemy, who fucking cares how he did it?  

The series also has a bit of a disappointing ending.  It at least wraps up the story arc it introduced and explains all the mysteries that had come up, but there are a lot of minor loose threads I would have liked to see addressed.  Will Melissa ever accept that Louie is a hero? Will Louie ever realize that his childhood friend Ila is actually in love with him? Who is Louie's real dad? It's a very open ending, leaving off with the party about to embark on another adventure, and I would have enjoyed another season.  Alas, it was not to be.

Despite this, I recommend the series, especially to anyone who likes fantasy or D&D.  You'll really get a kick out of it.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

Disclaimer:  Reviews contain my personal opinion, and I don't claim to be the authority on these things.  I appreciate and respect that other people may have different opinions.  Friendly debate is welcome, but name-calling and other such immaturity will be ignored.  My reviews assume you've either seen the series already or aren't planning to.  They're full of spoilers, but they won't necessarily describe the whole series beginning to end... more likely I'll rant about some aspect or another in detail, but leave huge gaps about the plot.  And oh yeah, I'll be cursing.

I had a lot of fond memories of Lois & Clark.  I watched the first season back when it originally aired, and remembered it being my favorite iteration of Superman.  After watching all four seasons, I still feel like that... but ONLY about the first season.  It had clever writing, lots of comedy, and Dean Cain plays by far the most interesting version of Clark Kent I've ever seen.  Teri Hatcher's Lois is a no-nonsense reporter that always gets her story and can kick some serious butt when she needs to, and I think John Shea's Lex Luthor is my favorite screen version of the villain.  The supporting cast is great, too, each of them having their little quirks to make them memorable.  The first season is a lot of fun and truly entertaining.  So by all means, watch the first season. And stop when you're done with it.

Season two starts with a number of mistakes.  First, they make the mistake of killing off their main villain way too soon.  It seems like all live-action versions of super hero stories do this.  Granted, it probably had something to do with the actor wanting to leave the show, but in some cases I'd rather see a different actor playing the same villain if only to give the show something to really keep it together.  A good villain is like a strong glue to a superhero show; without one, the story simply falls apart.  

Without Lex, the show is forced to bring out a string of ridiculous, non-threatening villains that just leave you scratching your head.  They briefly attempt to introduce a new crime syndicate, but most of what they do comes across as goofy comedy rather than anything that needs to be worried about.  The first boss is taken down quickly, and you have a glimmer of hope when freaking Bruce Campbell takes over as his son, but he ends up being in a total of two episodes.  It was very disappointing.

The writing also takes a sharp turn for the worse.  It's clearly an attempt to make the show more family friendly, but it comes across as dumbed down to the point that it's painful to watch.  The Christmas episode featuring Toyman is a prime example of this.

One of the things that got to me the most about this show, post-season-one, is that, in a completely shameless attempt to pander to the teen demographic, they replace the original Jimmy Olsen actor with then-teen heartthrob Justin Whalin (who also starred in such classics as "Child's Play 3", and later the big screen adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons).  In season one, Jimmy had been a clever, sympathetic aspiring reporter; maybe not someone you'd normally associate with the role of Jimmy Olsen, but he was a *good character*, which to me is more important.

In season two, Jimmy is suddenly and jarringly a teenage intern that the writers really don't know what to do with, and for a long time just pops up randomly around the office like "Hey guys, what's up?" grinning like an idiot and posing for the teen girls to swoon over.  For most of season two and three, my fiancee and I referred to him as "Fake Jimmy," and wondered what he did to "Real Jimmy," and how he'd managed to convince the entire staff of the Daily Planet that he was the same person...

Jimmy does eventually get better; the writers start giving him a real character to play somewhere in season 3.  Perry White mentors him and considers him like a son, and since he is the youngest person on the staff and the internet really took off during the time the show was airing, Jimmy became an expert hacker and the go-to guy for information.

Somewhere around season 3, the show departs from the dumbed-down kiddy formula to a soap opera style of writing, which is where it *really* got unbearable for me.  The worst of them was the entire string of episodes involving clones.  Lois and Clark were supposed to be married, but secretly a clone of Lex has come back and cloned Lois (who we referred to as "Clonis").  He replaces Lois with Clonis, and so Clark actually marries Clonis (*gasp*).  Meanwhile, Lex takes the real Lois to a secret underground lair where he plans to have his Indian manservant, Asabi, transfer their souls into perfect, cloned bodies (since his original cloned body is starting to fall apart).  Lois is, of course, not into this idea, but the writers had changed her from someone who could actually defend herself to a helpless damsel in distress sometime in season two, so she just waits around for Clark to save her.  Long story short, Superman saves her, Lex dies for real this time, but at some point during the whole fiasco Lois had been hit on the head and got amnesia, so there are another several episodes of them dealing with her not remembering Clark.  I wanted to burn my TV.

And oh god, don't even get me started on "Mike."  Mike is a god-like angel figure that shows up and randomly teleports everyone to a (very fake-looking set of a) flowery mountainside for Lois and Clark's finally real wedding in the beginning of season 4.  The whole scenario is very strange and heavy-handed and religious, and probably the lowest point of the whole show.  Like seriously, a random angel named Mike??? WTF?

There are a few episodes in season 4 which surprised me and were very well-written and clever, but it was very much too little, too late.  The season ends on a very random note, and it was clear they didn't know they wouldn't be picked up for another season.  I honestly can't even remember who the villain even was, only that, during the course of the episode, Lois and Clark found out that Clark's Kryptonian physiology was too different from human for them to ever have a baby, so they were all boo-hooing, and then they randomly found a baby in their living room.  They didn't question it or anything, were just like "yay, a baby!" and then the series ended.  I blame Mike.

RahXephon

Disclaimer:  Reviews contain my personal opinion, and I don't claim to be the authority on these things.  I appreciate and respect that other people may have different opinions.  Friendly debate is welcome, but name-calling and other such immaturity will be ignored.  My reviews assume you've either seen the series/movie already or aren't planning to.  They're full of spoilers, but they won't necessarily describe the whole movie beginning to end... more likely I'll rant about some aspect or another in detail, but leave huge gaps about the plot.  And oh yeah, I'll be cursing

Going into this series, I'd heard there were two kinds of anime fans: those who like Evangelion, and those who like RahXephon.  Being a HUGE fan of Evangelion, I was still determined to give this show a chance.  In all the reviews I'd read, people were saying it was a better-paced, less cryptic version of Eva.  Eva certainly has its flaws, so I wanted to see if they were right.  However, after seeing the show, I can definitively say that these people are FULL OF SHIT.

Before I launch into a list of what I couldn't stand about this series, though, I will say that the movie was fantastic.  It was a sort of truncated version of the series, but with a few major differences.  It jumps right in and immediately explains what the series couldn't be bothered to.  The extraneous characters are eliminated (including a few I liked, but there are just so damn many to begin with), and the most obnoxious character in the show is changed entirely, making her much more bearable and also much more clearly explaining her role.  There is still an issue of creepy middle aged adult/teen romances, but for the most part the movie is awesome.  If you take away anything from this review, save yourself the frustration of slogging through the 26 episode series and just watch the movie.

That being said, on to the show.  I tried very hard while watching this series NOT to compare it to Evangelion, but it's incredibly difficult, especially in the first few episodes.  It just smacks you in the face with comparisons, especially in the case of one of the main characters, Haruka.  In appearance, she is literally Misato with a haircut and some jeans instead of a skirt.  If you want to know all the similarities, this is a more extensive list than I care to compile in a review blog, but it covers pretty much all the visual stuff I noticed: Eva Xephon: Comparison Gallery . Warning:  there are 17 pages of this.  I think some of it is reaching, but most of it is pretty accurate.  Not to mention, most of the music sounded like it was right out of End of Evangelion, with the exception of "Stranger in Paradise," which I've heard used in a lot of anime (even Sonic the Hedgehog), and still weirds me out... at least it was the most appropriate use of the song I've seen in an anime.

Anyway, the show starts off with a bang, and has a spectacular budget for most episodes, but after the first few it suffers from the same meandering plot-stalling tactics as Eva did.  Boy leaves home for world of military and robots, boy gets frustrated, boy spends way too much time running away from responsibility. Only, where Eva started to pick up around episode 8 and the introduction of Asuka, it feels like RahXephon flounders around until nearly the end, with the exception of some seemingly randomly placed epic episodes.  Pretty much anything in Tokyo Jupiter was awesome, but that was very few episodes.

As much as I fucking HATED Shinji, at least he felt like a very consistent, well-developed character.  There was no question as to where he stood or where he was coming from.  Kamina Ayato, along with almost the entire cast (aside from Haruka, and Dr. Kisaragi's crazy stalker assistant) were incredibly vague and wooden.  Ayato barely reacts to anything, including the fact that people are constantly calling him "Orin"; he asks about it once, and someone says "don't worry about it," and so he doesn't ask about it again for the ENTIRE SERIES.  I don't know about you, but if multiple people were calling me by the wrong name for the better part of a year, I'd *at least* correct them!  He would also have completely random attitude changes, even within the same episode.  In one in particular, he spends the first 2/3 of it insisting that he doesn't want to get on RahXephon and fight, and then suddenly he's just in the mech and really enthusiastic about fighting.  WTF?  And I can't even count the number of times that he has absolutely no reaction to major plot revelations.

Speaking of characters, there were roughly a bajillion of them.  I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, because the character design was very similar for the most part, and many characters were referred to more than they were shown.  Some of my favorite characters ended up being really extraneous, and it wasn't made clear until the movie why they were there at all.  And weirdly, one of the biggest showdowns in the series is between characters who hardly get any screen time until the very end, when they have an epic battle.  To let you know how un-essential these characters are, one of them was cut from the movie entirely, and one was combined with another to help simplify things.

One of the weirdest things about the show is that it was very close to being a harem anime.  Everyone seemed to be in love with the 17-year-old main character.  I was completely mystified by this, seeing as he lacked a personality.  But there were at least three characters who were in love with him, some who flirted with him all the time, and several others who claimed him as being "very important" to them.  The ones who loved him included a girl who already had a very committed boyfriend, and a 29-year-old (there were time differentials going on due to plot reasons, but still...).

I know, there are people out there saying "But what about Shinji and Misato??"  The difference is, Shinji and Misato kissed once.  Misato having an attraction for Shinji was supposed to be more about her traumatic past and resulting refusal to grow up.  The kiss was supposed to be her way of shocking him into waking up and taking action, and she knew she wasn't going to be able to follow through with her promise of doing more.  In Evangelion, most of the character relationships were incredibly unhealthy, a striking commentary on society, and an illustration of the baggage that all people carry regardless of the front they put up.  In RahXephon, some of the same relationship dynamics are present, but they are glorified instead.

Anyway, I know there are going to be people out there who disagree with me - people who couldn't take the self-loathing and angst of Evangelion characters, or couldn't stand to see the psychological breakdown and utter mental desolation as the series wore on, or people who just plain didn't like the mindfuck aspect of it.  If you're one of these people, RahXephon might be for you.  I just think it still has major issues with pacing, storytelling, and character development.  I have to assume that all the rave reviews I've read of it are from people who also saw the movie, and after seeing it explained and wrapped up in such a way, immediately forgot about all the flaws of the series.  But that's just me.

Plug'n'Play DDR

Disclaimer:  Reviews contain my personal opinion, and I don't claim to be the authority on these things.  I appreciate and respect that other people may have different opinions.  Friendly debate is welcome, but name-calling and other such immaturity will be ignored.  My reviews assume you've either played the game already or aren't planning to.  They're full of spoilers, but they won't necessarily describe the whole movie beginning to end... more likely I'll rant about some aspect or another in detail, but leave huge gaps about the plot.  And oh yeah, I'll be cursing.


Wanting to get more in the spirit of exercising, for Christmas I asked for one of those plug'n'play DDR mats.  Compared to the cost of an actual DDR game + a dance mat for whatever console, it seemed like a pretty good deal.  Being plug'n'play, I figured some things would be scrimped on (like maybe there'd be no graphics but the arrows), but I didn't know just how much content the thing would be missing.


I plug the thing in to my TV, and first thing I notice... this thing is pretty much 8-bit.  I don't care so much about the primitive graphics, but the MUSIC is 8-bit, and this is a music based game.  But whatever, I'm into retro games, and the 8-bit midi renditions of techno music are actually kind of charming once I get over my initial shock.  


I step on the dance pad to play, and quickly realize that this thing is NOT made for adults.  The arrows are really close together, and I'm constantly stepping on the wrong ones.  Luckily the game is forgiving about that, so it's still playable.  Three songs in I notice, this game is too EASY.  Coming from me, that's really saying something; I'm notoriously bad at DDR. I've played the actual version of this game on a friend's console, and I can't usually make it through more than a "two-footer" (level two) difficulty.  On this plug'n'play version, I made it through the level five difficulty with no problem at all.  I had to turn on "Trick Mode" to feel like I was exercising at all.  


All of this I don't even mind that much, though.  The biggest disappointment about the whole thing is that there are only about ten songs, total, in the whole game.  And that includes two re-mixes of other songs, so really it feels more like eight.  There's almost no replay value in it at all.  I'll probably use it anyway, because in Trick Mode it's an okay workout, but it probably won't be long before it's not a challenge anymore and I'll be trading it in at Game Stop.

Warrior

Disclaimer:  Reviews contain my personal opinion, and I don't claim to be the authority on these things.  I appreciate and respect that other people may have different opinions.  Friendly debate is welcome, but name-calling and other such immaturity will be ignored.  My reviews assume you've either seen the movie already or aren't planning to.  They're full of spoilers, but they won't necessarily describe the whole movie beginning to end... more likely I'll rant about some aspect or another in detail, but leave huge gaps about the plot.  And oh yeah, I'll be cursing.



For my very first review I'll be tearing into - I mean analyzing - the movie Warrior.  I'm not talking about that 80s cult classic The Warriors, but the 2011 sports drama starring Nick Nolte and featuring UFC fighting. (Ultimate Fighting Championship, for those who don't know, is a Mixed Martial Arts league.. I'm pretty sure there's a reality show about it?). Weird combo, right?  I was TOTALLY clueless about the subject matter of this movie, so when it started off, I settled in for a lengthy drama about a fractured Irish family.  Suddenly, the jaded son is asking the ex-alcoholic father to train him for the UFC!  omg, fight movie, we're going to have some action!  Sudden cut to suburbia with the guy's *other* son, who's going to lose his house if he doesn't make a lot of money fast, and then *he's* training for the UFC!  So you pretty much know from the beginning these guys are going to end up fighting.  There's your basic plot.


If you like family dramas, or sports movies, or the UFC, you'll probably like this movie.  It was pretty decent.  Some things in it felt a little forced, or unlikely, but as my film teacher is always insisting, you can get by them with "the willing suspension of disbelief."  But I went into the movie with everyone saying "Oh, it's so good, it's so good!"  So the more I saw, the angrier I became with it.


First of all, it's got a lot going on.  In some respects, that's good.  It has something for everybody to be interested in.  But for me, it felt a lot more like it interrupted itself.  Just when the drama with the characters was getting interesting, BAM, horribly violent fight scene.  Not that I'm squeamish about violence, but it's a pretty jarring contrast.  I kept wanting to ask "Who got sports movie in my drama?" or "Who got drama in my sports movie?"


Secondly, as much as it wanted to be different, there were so many utterly cliche sports movie tropes in it!  It had a training montage, which it tried to make new and different by using a four-way split screen, but it was still a training montage.  And the fights leading up to the final fight all had the typical sports movie stuff - reaction shots of the people at home watching it on TV, generic music trying to build tension, the announcers making witty quips about the main characters being underdogs, etc.  It made me FURIOUS.


Finally, the movie relied heavily on Beethoven's 9th Symphony (you know, Ode to Joy).  I am SO TIRED of hearing that song in everything.  Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it is one of THE most overused songs in world cinema.  It's like putting "All Along the Watchtowers" in a Vietnam War era movie, or "Requiem for a Dream" in a movie trailer.  It just makes me groan.


So, now that I've ranted about what pissed me off, here's what I liked about it.  The acting was superb.  Both of the actors playing the brothers are covering accents, and you can't tell at all.  All the performances are very natural, and I found myself being drawn in to the human drama despite how mad I was at the movie.   The whole thing was also very well shot and well directed.  The movie balanced three main characters and maintained equal interest on all three, which is hard to do.  And the main thing that kept it from feeling like every sports movie ever was that there were *two* main characters in the sports event.  This forces you to pick a side, or creates great tension because you're not just rooting for one guy, you're conflicted over who you want to win.  It also does a great job of making MMA fighting look interesting; since most of the fighting involves grappling, which is not pretty to look at, that can be tough.


So, to sum up, I thought this movie was horrendously overrated.  It's still worth watching if you like sports, the UFC, or dramas about estranged families, but the hype pretty much killed it for me.