NEW Kingdom Hearts ~ Initial Impressions

Gonna be a quick one folks, since I am tired as hell.

- Amazing graphics for the PSP. Looks just as nice, if not nicer in some respects, than Kingdom Hearts II.
- Pretty good voice cast
- Bibbity Bobbitty boo or whatever is the worst choice for background music ever
- Combat is amazingly fun
- Leonard Nemoy and Mark Hammil. Shit's beyond cash.
- Most of the worlds feel short (I know that's cause of the whole three character deal, but it seems like you don't get to do enough sometimes)

Also, my initial impressions of the re: CODED stuff.
- Why didn't the graphics get a better update? 358/2 Days looked better than this.

And that's my initial impression.

TGS had some neat stuff this year, I guess. Not-Devil May Cry, Square making shooters, new Steel Battalion (For kinect, so no awesome controller? Why remove the coolest aspect of the game?). I still haven't heard anything about Kojima's supposed big reveal he had planned.

Night fellas.

Spandex Fetish: The Transforming Face of Der Panzer

I dunno about you, but I've always imagined Raging Panzer less as a traditional tank, and more of the sort that Treasure, Takara or Smart Brain would think up to thwart the hero of the piece, one with many different strengths, weapons, abilities and crippling construction errors; and for the sake of argument, let's assume it had faces. While Zero would form the main face, the big boss, el jefe, sempai and whatnot, HBK would be the one that retreated in to the main body to occasionally fire off a particularly powerful attack. And me? Well, I'd be the non-functioning decorative face only there to add detail.

But not for much longer! Now with renewed intent, Rankarana is setting off on yet another quest: to bring an almighty ‘HENSHIN!’ to the overly embellished metaphorical tank! Our new line of articles, Spandex Fetish, will explore... well, mostly Kamen Rider, but also some other toku and transforming heroes, for your delight and delectation, especially with the big lineup ahead of us.

OOO is starting very, very soon (expect to see some opinions and discussion on that, especially if we can finally do some roundtabling) while Goseiger is... continuing on its' way. Den-O's three-movie trilogy has yet to see DVDs or subs, we've still got the curious Saban buy-back of Power Rangers, and what's stopping us discussing, umm... Zebraman? Not to mention reflections on some of the classics, as well as mockery/adoration of Toshiki Inoue, looks at toku-influenced anime, and maybe even hot Rider x Rider fanfiction.

...One of those won't be happening.

Anyway, Spandex Fetish might actually motivate me to work for more than five seconds, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled for the first henshin of a new legend, when I'll be taking a look at the first episode (presuming it's subbed in a timely manner and not by a certain group of kisamas) of Kamen Rider OOO and hopefully enjoying it, while convincing those around me that Ankh is indeed a man. Probably.

Until next time, ends just stay alive the ride the mean!

Scott Pilgrim VS My High Standards.

So, I saw Scott Pilgrim VS The World at the midnight showing. All in all, I enjoyed the movie. Even if I was up to my balls in hipsters in the theater. First off, I'd just like to say that I may or may not have missed out on ten or so minutes of the movie. There was a skip and no one could really tell if it was intentional or not, so.... My knowledge may be incomplete. As usual, stuff I like comes first.

The cast in this is amazing. This movie had one of the best casts I've seen in a long time. Everyone not only looked the part, but they acted the part too. Even Michael Cera... Most of the time at least. He kept alternating between Scott and Michael Cera. Kieran Culkin stole the show as Wallace Wells. Seriously, I could not imagine him as Wallace at all until he spoke. Allison Pill made a a hilarious and sexy Kim Pine, and Ellen Wong might just be the cutest thing to ever go on a movie screen. It was also nice to see Brandon Routh again. I love that guy and he cracked me up in this one. All of the Evil Exes were great though. Like I said, fantastic cast.

There's a rad cameo by Thomas Jane as well. Seriously, this movie has Superman, The Punisher and Captain America/Human Torch. Nearly as impressive as how many action stars are in The Expendables, no?

Next is the soundtrack. All I really need to say, for me at least, is that it has exclusive songs by Beck. I'm such a massive fan of his it's not even funny. The score was perfect for the tone of the film though. Lots of classic rock, indie rock, and some pretty cool techno stuff too. The soundtrack is definitely a winner in my book.

Visually, the movie is one of the best I've seen in a long time. The flashback scenes are all told using panels from the comic, and they kept Scott's ratings for everyone. Stuff from the comics like the sound effects, the pee meter, and the coins were all kept. The fight scenes were also very nice-looking. Unlike some other big blockbuster that also featured a high-profile director, Edgar Wright knows how to do a great action scene.

And it's very faithful to the comic. Even the stuff that wasn't in the comic would've felt right at home in the comic. In my opinion, the fights with Lucas Lee and the Katayanagi twins were better in the movie than they were in the comic. The fight with Roxie even had stuff from the Free Comic Day issue. There was also a Battle of the Bands plot added that I dug too. Didn't really affect the story too much, but it set up the fight with Ken and Kyle.

And there was a ton of stuff cut, but it wasn't anything that hampered the film. There were side characters cut, but they kept nearly all of them. The only really big omissions were Knives' dad and Lisa Miller, and those would have been a bit too much in a film that already had a big cast. Unlike The Last Airbender, they kept characters who weren't in the main four or so.

Now I gotta deal with what I didn't like.... mutter mumble mutter gripe.


The pacing was just a bit much. It wasn't as condensed as I thought it'd be, but there was a lot of stuff in this movie. I mean, the movie adapts the whole damn series. So some of the stuff (Namely a lot of the non-fight stuff) seems a bit rushed sometimes. I kinda wish they did it as a series of animated films instead. Or at least two live action films.

And that's really my only beef with the movie really. Does a shitty, bandwagon-jumper fanbase count as a gripe?

But I digress, Edgar Wright's got a winner here. I don't think it's his best film (That's Hot Fuzz), but it's a hell of a film. I'm giving it an 8/10.

The Best Comic-Based Shows That Don't Exist Yet.

The following post was inspired by a late night conversation on an IRC chat.

But first, I'd like to think Jeff Parker for the free, signed copy of the Incredible Hercules VS Amazing Spider-Man: Assault on New Olympus issue. That and my latest issue of The Onion are the two best things to find in my mailbox.

And now to the point: Here are my ideas for some awesome series based on comics.

1. The Elongated Man: A slick detective series in the same vein as Psych or Monk, but slightly less humorous. Or Murder She Wrote, but he stretches? Focus on Ralph's detective aspect and maybe not his superheroics. He'd still be dealing with super-crime though. Not mundane cases or anything like that. As long as they avoid any mentioning of Sue's rape, then this'd be an awesome show. Also, don't make Ralph a tool like he was on JLU.

2. Gotham Central: Show how regular cops deal with things in a world full of super-beings. A straight-up adaptation would be awesome, but you could deal with members of other police forces on occasion, I think. Like, say someone winds up dead in Metropolis or Opal City or something, but the M.O. fits one of Batman's foes, so GCPD dispatches Montoya and Allen to aid in the investigation.

3. Nextwave: Agents of Hate: I'm not going to lie. I've thought about this one a lot. Give it a high animation budget and put it on adult swim, HBO or Comedy Central. Make it look very true to Immonen's art and get Ellis onboard. Let Ellis write original episodes to extend it, because twelve issues isn't a lot to go on for a series.

4. JLI/Blue and Gold Power Hour: Either give me a cartoon about the JLI, or a cartoon where Booster and Ted go around fighting crime. There'd be PSAs at the end of either of these.

5. X-Factor Investigations/Madrox: I'd love to see Madrox as he is now portrayed on the small screen. Keep the roster small if you it's X-Factor; Don't bog it down with tons of obscure characters. Just focus on say, Madrox, Banshee, Strong Guy and Rahne. Once again, focus on the detective aspect and not the superhero part.


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Here's a few ideas that are presented in jest. They are only here for my, and presumably your, amusement.


1. Like Madmen, but it's about all the billionaires and CEOs in the DCU. Lex Luthor, Max Lord, Bruce Wayne, Ted Kord and such. Absolutely nothing exciting, it's just them talking business.

2. Make a show about that fat white dude with the power to turn into a buff black guy for an hour. You know, the dude that called that hour "C.P.T."?

3. This one is half-joking/half serious, but Gundam Sousei. Seriously, the highly-dramatized story of the making of the original Gundam anime. I'd watch the hell out of this show.

4. Make a Doctor Fate series, but base it on the 90s version, "Fate".

5. Silver Age Batman/Silver Age Superman (But only the bad parts). Batman: The Brave and the Bold showed off all of the fun of the Silver Age of comics, with none of the awful parts (Racism, incredibly inconsistent characterization, Superman being a massive tool, Batman just doing batshit insane things all the time, etc.), so this would be all those bad parts. It would be sure to offend everyone.

Feels Good, Man. Feels Good.

Here's a few rapid-fire reviews to keep up the theme.

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour- The ending seemed a little off? But otherwise this was a great conclusion to a fantastic series. It's been a fun journey, you know? O'Malley's really made leaps and bounds as both an artist and a writer. And this volume really helped me work through a personal problem that I was having at the time, so that was cool.

Inception: Easily one of the best movies I've seen this year. It's probably Chris Nolan's best film to date. Fantastic visuals, great cast and an awesome twist on a classic genre of film. One of the few heavily hyped, heavily marketed movies that really lived up to the hype. For me, at least.

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And now, for something- Naw, I'm not gonna use that line. But I am considering doing something different from what I've been doing. I'm more than likely going to start posting short stories and terrible poems, straight from the neurotic mind of ZeroBuster. As a writing major, it seems like something to do. Get some feedback from the helpful staff and (Loyal? Small? Nonexistent?) fanbase at Der Panzer.

So yeah. Expect some crummy stuff from a shabby Creative Writing major. Coming soon. Maybe.

So.... The Last Airbender was pretty terrible...

It is. It's easily Shamyanldingdong's worst movie. It's waaaay worse than Lady in the Water. I mean it. It makes Lady in the Water look like Forrest fucking Gump.

The main thing is the writing. The dialogue is awkward-sounding that it makes even the two good actors in this film (Patel and Toub) look bad. The pacing's pretty crappy too. I mean, the movie is an hour and a half. This needed to be around three. So, as a result of the film's meager length, there's a ton of montages, narration and the removal of all side-characters. Even the really important ones like Suki, Jet and all the dudes who were holed up in the air temple. This movie violated the golden rule of storytelling: Show, don't tell. He does a shitload of telling and not nearly enough showing.

The acting really was just another thing to add to the pile. No one really seemed to be trying, except for Patel and especially Shaun Toub. His Iroh is also the only character that even remotely resembles his counterpart from the series. Not so much in appearance, but how he acts. Seychelle Gabriel also did a fine job as Yue. Also, why was Sokka a badass? He didn't become a badass until Book 3. This movie so desperately needed some kind of comedic relief.

Have you ever seen that episode of Family Guy, where Peter goes to see a really boring and depressing play and he just screams "For God's sake, somebody throw a pie!". That's how I felt watching this. It's so gloomy, angsty and depressing. All the fun that was in the series just isn't here.

Shamwow really can't direct an action scene worth a damn either. Whoever was in charge of fight choreography should've been shot. The movements were so long and drawn out and the bending that said movements brought out was usually pretty dinky compared to how elaborate the motions were. In short, a big windup for a tiny punch.

Ideally, this movie should've been handled by someone who had A. directed a martial arts movie before and B. stuck a little closer to the source material (I.E. No white folks. Except Christopher Lloyd as Bumi). The thing about the "racebending" thing though is that I'd have been cool with the cast if they could act, but they really can't.

The saddest thing is that sometimes, you can see how good of a movie this could have been. It could have been the next big movie franchise. Another trilogy to add to the debate. But now, I don't even see how a sequel could work with this movie. There's so little material from which to draw from in this film. Like I said, there's no side-characters, no Ba Sing Se, no nothing.

That's my two cents.

This Post is Gonna Be Pretty JLI-Centric.

Have I ever mentioned that my all-time favorite DC comic series is Justice League International and it's assorted sequels? Because it's oh so true. I bring this up because DC launched a new series starring a good portion of the team as part of it's Brightest Day event. Justice League: Generation Lost written by Judd Winick and Keith Giffen with an alternating artist every week. I've only read the first four issues, but so far I can easily say that this and The Flash are the two most interesting books to come out of Brightest Day.

But JSA was pretty funny recently with Obsidian's joke about being "cured".

I'll give a rundown of JL:GL and a brief review of it so far. It starts off with nearly every superhero and every government agency on the lookout for the recently-resurrected Maxwell Lord. Every hero except Booster Gold, who's been kicked off the manhunt due to the fact that most of the community thinks he's still a joke and that he's too close to Max to think effectively.

But Booster manages to find Max before anyone else does. He finds him in NY, hiding out in the old JLI embassy there. Unfortunately, Max quickly incapacitates Booster. Before he blacks out though, he sends out a distress signal on the old JLI band and Skeets picks it up. He alerts Fire, Ice and Captain Atom. They show up and resuscitate Booster just as Lord uses his powers to an extent previously unseen. It causes the group to blackout and when they awake, Lord is gone and Superman has shown up. He asks what the trouble was and when anyone who was present at the event mentions Maxwell Lord, Superman asks who that is. Max has convinced the entire world that he no longer exists.

That's the first issue. The rest of the series, so far, has seen the group dealing with Lord's alterations to the world. He's convinced everyone that Fire is psycho, that Ice is a menace, and made Captain Atom into a military fugitive. All he did to Booster was make everyone think that Ted Kord, the former Blue Beetle, committed suicide. At the end of the third issue, a contingent of OMACs attack the home of Jaime Reyes, the current Blue Beetle.

The team, sans Fire, rushes to the scene and fend them off, only to wind up in Russia in a botched attempt to follow the OMACs. They find themselves in the middle of a battle between the Rocket Red Brigade and a rouge Rocket Red in a homemade armor. Following the battle, the team realizes that Max has been playing them the entire time. He brought the JLI together once again.

Also, Max's powers have changed. His recent attempts at pushing people have killed the victims and turned their corpses into Black Lanterns.

It's a very interesting story. I hope we get an issue with some art by Kevin MacGuire. It's nice to see the team in a very serious story, but I do miss the humor. I'm also curious as to how much of the story is Winick's and how much is Giffen's.

It's still a great read and actually has something happening in the book, unlike the flagship title of the Brightest Day.
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Also, Kamen Rider OOO looks kind of neat. That's really all I have to say about that at the moment, because I've only seen around 8 seconds of footage and two pictures of the series.

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Next week, there's gonna be a totally sweet (And probably mean) review of The Last Airbender. It's gonna be fun on a bun.