Geek vs Life

The following is the official press release announcing Sakura-Con’s musical guests.

Seattle, WA1-23-2008 Sakura-Con hosts US debut of Ali Project and welcomes musical guests SCANDAL

Sakura-Con 2008, March 28-30th at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center will host the Japanese band Ali Project for their first ever US appearance. Also confirmed for Sakura-Con 2008 is the Japanese, all girl band SCANDAL. Both are presented with special thanks to NEU BAUHAUS.

Ali Project is a highly accomplished Japanese band with 19 albums to their credit and songs on over 14 anime soundtracks-including series beloved in the US- such as: .hack//Roots, Clamp School, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Noir, Rozen Maiden (TV, Ouvertüre, Träumend), Wish.

Their success in Japan has led to invitations to play all over the world, as their fan base continues to expand, but due to native popularity and an intensely busy schedule, they have declined to play outside their homeland until now. Sakura Con will boast the overseas debut of Ali Project, featuring their first appearance, performance and interview ever held outside of Japan!

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience Ali Project right here in the USA!!

SCANDAL was formed with four bright and talented high school girls in Osaka, Japan. Quickly moving from doing local live performances, to gaining recognition across Japan, SCANDAL is embarking on a full fledged US tour in 2008-including a special appearance at Sakura-Con.

This year is proving to be Sakura-Con’s most musically diverse ever! With special thanks to JapanFiles.Com, as previously announced, Japanese band ketchup mania, the winners of the Shojo Beat 2007 award for “Best Japanese Punk Band”, will be performing on our main stage with Ali Project, fresh from their performance at the prestigious SXSW music festival!

Also appearing at Sakura-Con, as previously announced, are The Slants, the popular “Shojo Beat approved” Asian dance/rock band from our own Pacific Northwest.

If you like music, chances are we’ll have something for your tastes at this year’s Sakura-Con!

Pre-Register now and save substantially versus at door prices. Remember that pre-registration helps ANCEA, a state and federal non-profit organization, put on the best Sakura-Con possible! For more information please visit our website at http://www.sakuracon.org.
FULL CONVENTION MEMBERSHIP RATES
$45 until 3-2-2008
$60 at the door
Children age 6-12 are half-price
Children under 6 are free

ANCEA is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about popular and traditional Asian media and culture.

So I was trying to come up with a witty excuse for why this is too late. The best of them being something along the lines of “I fell into a time warp, so really I will have been putting this up as soon as PAX was over, but the time machine only works on forward, and I misread the decimal, so this unfortunately will not have been the case.” Morally, and well, grammatically, reprehensible overall. Life’s just been crazy. But our friends at Obscura Labs have put together yet another wonderful piece regarding our time at PAX. Check it out!

This trend is really starting to bother me. There are perfectly good Japanese films getting remade for American audiences. Unfortunately, these remakes are of movies that were made, in some instances, a couple years ago and are just word for word remakes with an “American” audience.

The leading theory behind why this is happening is sheer racism. Hollywood believes that American audiences do not like all-Asian casts. If such is the case, why have movies like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, “House of Flying Daggers”, “Hero”, and “Memoirs of a Geisha” done so well in the box office. However, this is a thinly veiled excuse. Hollywood is just incapable of saying they have no new ideas, so they have to pull them from other countries, hoping that they can draw audiences in that are ignorant of the original movies.

For example, “The Eye” with Jessica Alba, which is coming out in the next few months (Feb 1, 2008. Sorry, mia culpa-Ed.), is an Americanization of the original. At best, it is just going to be shot in an American style with effects that American audiences are “used to.” After seeing the preview, and having seen the original, the similarities are too close to even bother with going to see such a blatant rehash. Likewise “One Missed Call” which gives credit to its Japanese forbearer appears to be a word for word redubbing with a white cast.

All in all, this trend, along with remaking movies that have done well before and turning every wildly popular book into a movie. Reasons like these are why people are not going to movies anymore. Well, that and extortive ticket prices.

Greeting and salutations, folks. Sorry for the lack of content from me, but the GVL Lair has been put on hiatus until I find a more permanent place to live, but this has given me an odd amount of free time to actually sit down and play a ton of games, some of which guerrilla style (which I’ll get to in a near future post).

With 2007 down the drain (thankfully in some regards), looking back seems appropriate. The year was absolutely amazing for games, and far too expensive to try to get to all of the good stuff. But, alas, I’ve sacrificed and/or sleep to try to get through everything in one form or another. Thus, without further ado, here are my picks for the top 10 games of 2007.

10. “Peggle” – for PC and soon for Xbox Live. NBC voted this game as one of the top five most addictive computer games ever. “Peggle” brings home a strange version of “Pachinko,” with sickeningly cute graphics and physics bending game play. If you have a lot of spare time or you want to lose more time than you have, go ahead and spring the $20 for this. You’ll only regret it at 4 a.m., after you sat down to “play for a few minutes” after dinner.

9. “The Legend of Zelda: the Phantom Hourglass” – Nintendo DS. Perhaps overall, I’m jaded. I’m a Zelda fanboy. Phantom Hourglass is a bite-sized sequel to “Wind Waker,” with a control scheme that uses the stylus exclusively. It’s fun and you’ll have plenty of time to ponder while you wind your way through the world in your boat.

8. “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” – PS3. This is the first good, solid game for the system that I’ve seen. Formulaic, and amusingly written, it fills a gap that Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider have left in my heart. Eidos should take a look at this and start pointing Lara Croft in a similar direction. If you’re one of the 15 people that have the system, go for it.

7. “Call of Duty 4” – Xbox 360, PS3 and DS. A very well thought out and well designed first-person shooter. Overall an realistic game, and multiplayer format that is fun and entertaining. You’ll most likely be splitting your time between this and “Halo 3” for your fix.

6. “Mass Effect” – Xbox 360. A fine model of a sci-fi RPG that occasionally gets confused as a shooter. Strong writing supports 40% of the game, coupled with beautiful graphics and a well-made set of consistent interplanetary missions. There’s a lot to do on the sides, but make sure you finish everything before you beat it because the game closes its doors for what a fairly sandbox gameplay style.

5. “Halo 3” – Xbox 360. Yep, there it is.
4. “Bioshock” – Xbox 360. It’s about here that the order is almost arbitrary. All of these games are fantastic, but for different reasons. “Bioshock” was scary, beautiful and well developed. It had an awesome soundtrack (available for free download), and really fun to play. It was original and had some decent moralistic choices that needed to be made.

3. “Mario Galaxy”— Wii. One of the finest examples of game design I’ve seen. Miyamoto has brought original levels, friendly graphics and innovative game play once again to Nintendo. Probably not the most addictive game you’ll play, but you’ll love every minute that you spend with it. If you have a friend playing with you, it’s like cheating.

2. “Rock Band: Xbox 360 and PS3. The most fun I’ve had with a party game…ever. You can get people who refuse to play a Wii to play “Rock Band.” Just disregard the grotesquely complicated character creation bits.

1. “Portal” (As part of the Orange Box) – PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Yep, all by it’s lonesome, “Portal” stands out to me above everything else I’ve played this year. Good writing, innovative game play and no fat whatsoever. No time is wasted grinding levels or moving from one puzzle to the next, and the story unfolds as your playing in an unobtrusive way. I don’t care if it’s short. It’s actually kind of nice to finish a game in one sitting and feel that I’ve accomplished something worthwhile.

(Originally published in the Shoreline Community College student paper, the Ebbtide.)

Bandai Visual announced yesterday that they had licensed the popular “Harukanaru Toki no Naka de ~Hachiyou Shou~” anime (press release here). Now, most people probably won’t care too much (after all, it is a rather “girly” series), but it is my favorite series. And what will impact many people is the pricing structure.

9 DVDs, 2-3 episodes each, subtitled only… $29.99 each.

Yeah… Basically, $10-15 per episode. I don’t like this idea. And no, it’s not the only series Bandai Visual has done this with. The Galaxy Angel Rune DVDs are 3 episodes, subtitled only, and retail for $49.99. I don’t get this. They’re cutting back on costs by not having to hire scriptwriters to convert translations into dub dialogue, nor having to hire actors. So why are their prices so much higher than everyone else?