Review: Umineko Episode 1 - Legend of the Golden Witch (Visual Novel)

Like me. I'm cool, aren't I?

Hmm. I really didn't want to review Umineko for obvious reasons, but it'll always be on my "to-do" list and on the back of my mind if I don't. So, that is why I am here today. Now, I'll try not to hold you too long so I'll do my best to minimize and cram in my general thoughts on it. First off, I would just like to mention that I only read the first episode of Umineko. Why, may you ask? Well, the Umineko episodes/arcs are too fucking long for one thing and I ain't got the time to spend many hours on end reading a stupid, goddamn, mediocre visual novel. Meh. 

Now that I got that out of the way, on to the actual review and firstly what I didn't like. Now, the main failing of Ryukishi 07's writing is that he does not have the ability to properly write and execute his ideas. Sometimes the dialogue is flat and uninteresting, scenes go on for far too long, and there's about 10 sentences said when it can be summed up in 1. Though that can be said for near enough every visual novel or text based medium from Japan, leaving you just wanting to roll the above video. Yes, I went there. 

Okay. These are kinda funny I will admit.

Also, there's a ton of pointless dialogue and boring scenes which could have easily been shortened or been brief. But, no! We get like 45 minutes or so of the adults rambling on about father's inheritance, who will get it, and poking fun at each other's failings. It goes on for far too long and a lot of the info is rather unnecessary. Meh. Lastly, Maria promising to Battler that when she grows up she'll let him grope her... Yes, that happens, and it's an example of Ryukishi 07 letting his otaku side take over. Seriously, this was unnecessary and only serves as pedo-bait for his otaku fanbase. And that's the truth. People like to deny that he isn't "like that", but there is so much evidence in his works to support what I say that you're a fucking idiot if you say otherwise. Grow up and stop defending this freak just because "he created muh Umineko and muh Higurashi, and I don't want to bash senpai because of that". Ugh. 

Average Umineko fans thoughts on the series

Anyhow, to sum up what I didn't like, it was too long, there was too much text, fanfiction tier writing, often boring dialogue, self-insert Battler and his edgy past, long scenes which should have been shortened, and there was a bunch of literacy errors spread throughout the episode. I mean, didn't anybody spell check this shit or at least look it over? Because there was even full stops where questions marks where meant to be among other things. I do all my crap by myself and I do at least that. Sheesh. Some people. Also, just to comment on the translation itself, it was good but not necessarily god-tier like many people have said. Yeah, and it seems that people say god-tier whenever Umineko is mentioned, because the porn is just that good, right? 

Shit eating grin

Now, on to what I did like. The family interactions were nicely done. They laugh, they cry, they bitch and moan like normal people. Those parts were well done. However, it does become rather annoying every so often when it gets "too anime". Eva performing a martial arts kick, leaving her foot right off somebody's nose in the airport for one thing. Too anime. Ryukishi 07 should try to stay more in terms of realism and real life rather than letting his otaku/moe side take over and do the writing for him. And that's also something that I don't like about his stories. 

The character most of the toxicity is centered around. Because porn.

For example, Higanbana could have been much better if he for once stopped writing with his dick and otaku side, because a problem that I had with it was that it was "too anime". He honestly could have told the same story about "bullying" if he simply removed the anime-esqe supernatural yokai, and it would have been much better because of that. Then again, what do I know? I just hate on him for no apparent reason. Also, check out my Higanbana review if you're interested in more on that. 

And back to Umineko. The music was nice, but not god-tier as many people have said. Higurashi's music has more charm and is overall better. And lastly, I did enjoy the sprites and backgrounds, they were nice and are much better than the unholy PS3 one's which lack soul and charm. However, I didn't like how near enough every character has a giant rack because that's rather unnecessary and only serves to fuel everybody's titty monster fetish. And, no, I am not tumblr. And to sum up what I liked, good music, good character interactions, and charmful sprites. Hmm. That's a very short list. I said more bad than good. Though it is always easier to concentrate on what's bad than what's good. Anyway, moving on. 

Laugh. Troll face lol fam blt bbq

And that's that. I know I said I'd try to keep it short, but, there was a lot to cover so long heaps of text were expected. That said, I hope you enjoyed the review. However, don't expect another one on Umineko ever again because I am not going to read past the first episode. They're too long and I haven't got the time to read 'em. I have a life, and no way in hell am I wasting my precious time on something like this. All said, I hope I managed to cover everything I wanted to. I read the VN over a month ago, I think, so my memory of it may not be the best. It was all right, and could have been better, but it's not bad or anything like that. It just has a lot of problems. Anyway, that's all I have to say. See ya next time. Bye!

P.S. - The thing I hate the most about Umineko is its autistic fanbase. What a bunch of pathetic losers. Shoving the series in everybody's faces as well as being loud, obnoxious and meme spamming, and liking a terribly written contrived mess. Only a few people talk about it normally from what I've seen. Fuck you all, anyway.

Kyochuu Rettou (The Island of Giant Insects) Chapter 3 English Translation v1.5

Glad I got this chapter done because things become far smoother here on out seeing how chapters are mostly around 18 pages with the odd 24 page chapter. Oh yeah. Anyhow, reached out and got all current chapters of Kyochuu Rettou from the Thailand group, and also got help in the form of redraw from a Vietnamese group. Yippee! They split the third chapter into two different releases and gave me the first half while they worked on the second a few days ago, but I just did the second half myself since I wanted to finish this chapter before working on anything else. Anyhow, didn't run into much problems with this chapter. Things were pretty straightforward save for a few awkward lines, and some odd SFX which didn't have an entry on thejadednetwork or any mention on the net. Had to improvise. That said, I hope you all enjoy the manga. Have fun, and I'll see you next time. Bye!

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Update

Misspelt poison on page 31. Corrected it and the name of the group helping me out on the credits page. Thank the Spanish group I work with on this for the former.

Update 18th July 2016
Updated to volume. Links updated. Enjoy.

Terra Formars Gaiden: Rain Hard Chapter 1 English Translation

Yup. It's finally here. Terra Formars Rain Hard. Now, art aside, Rain Hard is actually pretty good. The dialogue is nice and the story overall gives us a better look at Adolf and his character, and the situation of the Earth inverse, i.e. B.M.A. I like it. Anyway, I won't hold you too long so I'll just mention a few things and you can be on your way. Now, there were a few odd translation hiccups and funky sounding sentences, so I had to adapt at a few parts. But, it wasn't anything major so there's nothing to worry about. Also, I didn't bother to translate the SFX. Kinda lazy. Though most of it is self-explanatory. I might TL 'em when I come to compile the volume, but that's a might. Again, LAZY! Anyway, the JP on page 30 took up a lot of room and the English text didn't fit right to cover for it, so Adolf on that page ended up with no mouth. Furthermore, at the end, it just said "I met Heinrich", but that sounded awkward as fuck so I added in a "then", FYI. And, lastly, gotta love that credits page! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! See you next time!!!

Chapter 1 Download

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Batoto Goes Private

Recently, it seems that Batoto has decided among other things to go private to prevent leacher sites from taking and mirroring their content. Now, a good bunch of people are really pissed off at this but I myself don't see the problem. Just get yourself an account and you'll be sorted for the rest of your browsing history on the site. Nuff said. It's just like exhentai/sadpanda, just get yourself an account and everything will be fine. 

However, I do understand why people would be pissed at this sort of event seeing how the appeal of read online sites are their ease of access. So, most people will probably just use a different site than Batoto to get their manga fix. Meaning the sites they directly oppose. Because they "will" get their content one way or another. Either directly from scanlator homepages, or simply copying and pasting their images. Also, many people see logins as a major bother and would rather wait, so there's that to consider as well. So, in reality, while this may be an annoyance/deterrence to sites like mangafox and mangapark, they'll eventually work around it through other means.

Anyhow, I'm not bothered by this event so it doesn't exactly affect me seeing how firstly, I myself don't mind logging in and secondly, I upload to not just Batoto. I'll still be uploading to the site, and using it. Though, FYI, just for the record, I do upload directly to mangafox to get stuff out there since I'm more about ease of access (PDF reader accessible by anyone for example) to get as many people to read it as possible, and stuff like that. All said and done, anyone who comes on here got any anything to add or want to make a comment on what's happening with Batoto? Go right ahead. If not, see you next time. Bye!

P.S. - You can read the post about it on Batoto itself here.

Terra Formars: A New Asimov Spin-Off by Boichi & Kenichi Fujiwara

Just a little update to inform you guys that a new Terra Formars spinoff was announced recently. You might have already noticed this via the 4chan threads on /a/, or the Terra Formars wikia. Either or, there isn't any info on it other than it's being drawn by Boichi, written by that guy who did the Outer Mission novels (Kenichi Fujiwara), and it's about Asimov before the launch of Annex 1. What specifically, who knows. Though I'm sure further details will come out sooner or later, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Anyhow, seeing how it's another spin-off the artwork is terrible and lacking like always in comparison to the main series itself, and that's bad. That said, in other news, I'm just about finished translating the first chapter of Rain Hard, so I should have it out sometime this week. Keep a lookout for it. Bye!

P.S. - ANN also did a post on it if you're wondering. Also, FYI, I did mean to post this yesterday. Kinda forgot.

Kyochuu Rettou: Recent Developments - Official JP Site Removes Chapter Reading

Fuck! Seems that the web viewer on the official site for the chapters of Kyochuu Rettou have been deactivated. Fuck! Now only the first and most recent chapter is available to be viewed. Fuck! Fuckity fuckity fuck fuck fuck!!!!! Ahem. Now, what does this mean may you ask? Well, for one thing, I won't be able to view the kanji for translation save for chapter raws 1-8 which have already been put online at Bezald Family, and the most recent chapter, number 15, I think. And second, now I have to frickin' search the net to see if there are any scans or rips of the JP web release, and I doubt there fucking are. Sheesh. I'm pissed off even more so because I planned to fuckin' screencap the chapters this coming Monday to have a backup just encase this sort of thing happened. Fuuuuck! Didn't expect it to be this soon. The second volume isn't even out yet. So that was sort of my personal cut-off date to screencap the chapters. Meh.

Anyway, the first and second volume (2nd coming out on the 20th this month) are available to buy and I already ordered the first a few days ago (before I knew this happened), so I guess I'll have to go ahead and order the second volume sooner or later as well. Meh. However, most of the following chapters are 18 pages long after chapter 4 so possibly most of what was on the JP official site I already have, or is in the second volume so there is still hope yet. We'll have to wait and see on that, though. Hmm. Also, the Chinese have done all chapters available (1-15) but like most Chinese groups they love to have shitty, ugly, fucktard watermarks on their images. Then again, I could use that for scans and the like but that still leaves kanji to be translated, and ain't no way in hell am I going the Song Dynasty route. Ugh! O, woe is me. Meh. Again, we'll have to wait and see what happens, so that'll be all for now. Umm, bye, I guess. 

P.S. - Thanks to the guy who requested me to do this manga for informing me about this. I wouldn't have known myself until I would have went online to the official site this coming Monday. Thanks, bud.

Note & Update - PLEASE READ FIRST

Actually, it turns out that those Thai guys got me scans of chapters 3-15 and wow did I not expect that. Now I don't have to remove watermarks and I can get the kanji. Yes! God bless Thailand.

Anyway, a lot of the info in the main post of this blog post I wrote before knowing that I got scans of chapters 3-15 from those Thai guys. Though at least this post will let you know that I ordered the first volume, that the official site removed the reading of chapters, and that China sucks cock.

Review: Mazinger Z (Manga)

Hmm. I might as well get off my ass and write a review of Mazinger Z seeing how I read that, too, about a month or more ago. Probably multiple months back now that I think of it. Anyway, overall the story of Mazinger Z isn't hard to follow. The monster of the week formula and all that. However, that's exactly where things go wrong because having that formula doesn't allow for a more focused story which I think is exactly what Mazinger Z was missing. It just jumps from one bad guy to another without leaving much of an impression or allowing for character development making Mazinger Z overall rather mediocre and unejoyable. That's not to say it's bad or anything, just not very good or entertaining and more on the mediocre side of things. 

However, setting all that aside, the main thing to take away from it is the impact and influence it had on essentially every single mech manga and anime that came after. It set the tropes, the formulas, everything, and that's why we should appreciate it. All said and done, there isn't really much to say about Mazinger Z other than it's not very good, but it was influential, and that some of the violence which came out of nowhere was uncalled for. I mean, it's pretty much happy go lucky for the most part all the way through: beat the bad guy, save the day. But then people get violently blown apart, shot, killed and smushed to pieces out of nowhere. Though that is very Nagai. He does that a lot. Still, very unnecessary, I'd say.

Anyway, just to point out a few things about it's influences from something I've actually saw myself, Evangelion. Now, yes, I know it essentially rips off every single thing that came before it, but! I just want to mention a few things that I noticed in it that came from Mazinger Z. First off, Eva-01 goes berserk in the same fashion as Mazinger Z. Crashing around, uncontrollable by the pilot and all that jazz. Second, the way Eva-01 and the other Eva's are positioned and shown through camera angles and such are very similar to Mazinger Z sitting in the original lab in the first volume. Third, there's already a pilot before Shinji like Mazinger Z, and both become or are injured, and used as the backup pilot. Fourth, they all attend the same high school, and people in the class publically know they are the pilots of the mecha. The bully boss man guy and others being jealous of 'em similar to Kensuke and such. However, Mazinger Z one ups Evangelion by actually having that guy get his own mech. Fifth, both Eva and Mazinger Z are known to be "alive", however the latter is more "implied" than stated. Still, just for the record, Mazinger Z is alive. Sixth, they are both "thought" or considered to be "demons".

Now, you could say that these are all just coincidences ("maybe" some), but the thing is that Mazinger Z is the original manga which near enough all of what we know and all of what we see today is pulled from. And again, that's what I'd say about Mazinger Z which I like and appreciate it for, not its story or character, but the influence it has had on the industry. Anyway, I don't really have anything else to add so I think I'll end things here. Thank you all for reading, and I'll see you next time.

P.S. - I was super lazy this time so I didn't bother to add any images. How sad.