Street Fighter X Tekken – Opposites Attract

To some this concept may sound like another ploy for Capcom and Namco to print even more money for themselves.  which may well be the case but who can blame them?  Which actually brings me onto something that people really feel the need to complain about.  Downloadable Content or DLC as it’s commonly known amongst the gaming persuasion.  Whether it be a Cowboy Suit for Ken Masters or a brand new character altogether people forget that these little add-ons are in fact optional!  At least a lot of the time…obviously when it comes to to rebalancing and overall gameplay tweaks if you plan on playing with your friends you’re going to have to bite the bullet and get the DLC.

The other half of fans out there have been dreaming this franchise merge for many years.  Here it is after a long wait two very different styles of beat em up mechanics are being combined to form one potential god like fighting experience!  Hell it can’t be any worse than Mortal Kombat 9, who recently released one of the most bizarre DLC characters ever – Freddy Kruegar. He’s certainly a profound choice but won’t  be swaying me to play the game.

Both the Tekken and the Street Fighter communities are known to be hard nuts to crack though after many play tests and character announcements both parties seem to be rather fond of it.  Enough of the aspects from each franchise to please each fan set.  Thus far it it certainly has an interesting character roster it even looks to be growing larger with more characters being announced and rumoured.

I’ve personally always been more into 2d fighters so never truly appreciated what people get from playing Tekken.  I find it all a little boring if I’m honest but this looks like it’s going to be great fun.  I think it’s planned to hit shelves sometime next year and unfortunately I’m not attending any fighting game tournaments or trade shows so I’m going to have to wait all that time!

Let’s hope the rumours about Bison being announced turns out to be more than just hear say.

Toriko – A Fine Cuisine of Nostalgic Glory!

If someone came up to me this time last year, and said that in a years time I’d be watching an anime about a guy that goes around the collecting ingredients for the ultimate menu.  I’d have called them a bullshitter. 

A year on from this fictitious event and I’m the one with egg on my face and a mouthful of humble pie! I’m pleased to say that now on a weekly basis I regress to my childhood days of getting hyped up by countless episodes of Goku taking down Frieza on the planet Namek.  That level of excitement and fangasm I thought were long gone.  Toriko manages to encapsulate this level of entertainment for my inner child.

How can this be when the story still boils down to a extended episode of Masterchef.  Which leads me onto why Toriko firmly clawing its way to an all time favourite of mine.  The series is set in the glorious fantastical world of all this bizarre and it’s time period, if you could call it a time period… is The Gourmet Age!  There’s times where it almost feels impossible for one of the creatures or plants that inhabit this world to be any more original.  Yet it consistently brings a smile to my face when you see the likes of the burger plant that has fries for leaves.  How do they come up with this? Perhaps drug induced, especially when you take a look at some of the creature designs which are always far from boring or predictable!

 

Look at this ugly creature named the Mystery Bird Rubanda – Totally glorious!

The above has a capture level of 30 for our heroes to deal with!  I’m aware that sentence will mean absolutely nothing to most.  The higher the capture level the harder to defeat the creature is.  That’s not all the capture level does mind you!  For me it helps display the general scale of things as well as adding a sense of peril to the adventure.  When anything with a high capture level appears you know shit is getting real!  Thus this simple number holds quite a large purpose think of it as a power level reading from a scouter in Dragonball Z.

Other than the creatures, the world and the colourful art style my favourite aspect of the show is its characters.  There’s something extremely likeable about the protagonist named Toriko whether it’s his glossy blue hair or his amazing physique or perhaps it’s just the fact he has that truly loveable personality that resembles Goku.  Some may say that kind of character has run its course and it’s a little cliché but who cares? It works, and in this shows case it works damn well!

Without a doubt the show is going to be running for lot of years simply because it’s THAT kind of show.  Jump on now while you still can or else you’ll find yourself 100 odd episodes behind and wishing you’d listened to me and watched it from the get go.  Experience the thrills and spills of Toriko and the gang as they travel the world for the finest and more desirable ingredients known to the gourmet age.  Amidst that happy feel good colourful world sit the enemy who want to steal all the world ingredients for themselves!

Toriko is presently 12 episodes in and is currently airing in Japan so you’ll easily find it online somewhere!

How I stopped worrying and embraced Manga

Let’s set the scene, I’ve been into the whole anime thing for many years now though I’ve never been into the whole manga section of the medium.  I was always struck with the mentality which was perhaps jaded and clouded why look at stills when you can look at moving images.  This means in my case rather than reading for example; Hellsing, I watched it.  Although the original series breaks away from the original Manga release I still felt buying and reading each volume would be tedious.

With that said one manga that no person in the anime fandom could avoid, or would want to avoid.  Katsuhiro Otomo’s iconic Akira.  Whether you read the manga first then watched the anime or vice versa it still remains as one of the move influential and notable creations to come from Japan.  Even those people out there who aren’t aware of the whole Anime culture or what it is are no doubt probably well aware of Akira.

Clearly Akira was not the thing to get me into Manga.  Even after reading it I still did not feel inspired enough to go out and buy any other manga releases.  Well that’s enough Akira rambling, you’ve probably heard it all far too many times.

There is this little manga series called 20th Century Boys written by Naoki Urasawa.  Friends of mine will know I’ve been reading the shit out of this as of late.  But why? What does this have that’s drawn me into reading it religiously.  Well for a start just being able to read scans online makes it tempting as of course it’s free! Though it didn’t end there as I started to fall in love with the series reading it on my desktop computer was damn annoying.  So I started buying it…and downward spiral begins.  Downward in regards to my bank balance, Manga is not cheap by any means.  You’re looking at around 6 quid for a single volume, I’m now at Volume 14.  Yes, I’ve spent far too much for being unemployed.

The reason I fell in love with this was due to their being no Anime counterpart for it, which may well change in the future.  I had no other way of consuming this story that I keep getting told is amazing.

It’s all about Japanese store owner, Kenji.  He meandours through his hum drum life looking after his sisters daughter and living with his mother.  Meanwhile, a cult group named Friend begins to emerge.  They appear to be behind disapearences and other unlawful goings on.  It turns out Kenji has more to do with this ‘Friend’ than he could ever begin to imagine.

I gave the first volume a blast and I was blown away by how interesting the characters were as well as how engrossing the narrative is.  Before I knew it I was reading Volume 2 and so on.  The story is full of cliff hangers and twists which keeps the readers gagging for more.  Cut to 4 month’s later and I’m completely up to date looking at a stack of Manga and a hole in my bank account.

I needed to get my fix somewhere, so I looked for other Manga written by Urasawa.  So now I’m completely invested with anything Urasawa has to offer.

You can experience his most acclaimed work with 20th Century Boys , Monster, Pluto and the currently ongoing Billy Bat.  Certainly go out and give them a read.  You can also experience the 20th Century Boys saga via the three live action movies that were released.  Though I’ll be avoiding those until I’m completely finished with the 22 tense as hell volumes.

Who’d have thought the man who hated manga is now a major Urasawa fan boy.  I’m looking to try and get into more Manga series’ but it will take something great to draw me in like 20th Century Boys managed to.  I’m thinking Vagabond may stand a good chance.

So what’s all this about?

What’s the deal with the name?
Uninspired? – yes.  Original – No!
Regardless what it is or is not, a name was needed.  Thus Bio Cyber City was born.  It sounds cool, doesn’t it?

What’s this blog going to contain?
There is no one way to catergorise what kind of content this blog is going to be documenting.  Nevertheless, you can expect a shameless plug to a Podcast I co-host each and every week called Dynamite in the Brain with a friend of mine called Brian Smith.  The podcast focuses on Japanese Animation and whatever can stem from that.

Which leads me something else I shall no doubt discuss or whinge about, Anime and Manga.  Whinging will be a common trait in regards to the things I’ll be talking about.

Expect TV and Movie banter on new releases or old stuff that I may have watched and feel the need to talk about.  Computer games will no doubt get a mention as I tend to waste a lot of time on those so I expect if you’re reading this you can waste time reading about me wasting time…

That’s all I can think of at this point in time, so if something else pops up on here don’t be too shocked.  I shall try and update it regular-ish, so hopefully It doesn’t die like my other blog did.  Though it probably will, but time will tell.

I’m sick of writing utter shite to fill up a space now but hopefully expect a substantial yet interesting post within the next few days.  If I’m feeling really good, or i’m bored of getting beat on Starcraft you can see one even sooner – lucky you eh?