This.. is... CHESYRE!

If you've never heard of the Madness Combat movies, I suggest you check them out now. Along with being progressively spiffy and cool with each episode the music is awesome. Most of the tracks of the series are done by a guy named Sean Hodges aka Cheshyre. I'm a little slowpoke on this one, but recently Cheshyre put out his first album which is essentially a collab of all of his tracks he's done for MC and then some. I highly recommend it but watch out, I don't think the levels were encoded as neatly as they could have been. At excessive volumes you get a little feedback, even with the FLAC files.

Birthday Fun in the Sun

Welp, today I turned 26. Specifically, at about 6:05 pm according to my mom.

Today to celebrate I went down to downtown Seattle with a few friends to partake in cheesy goodness at the Seattle Cheese Festival. I wish I had taken my camera with me. >_< I think one of my favorite cheeses is the cave-aged cheddar. It's essentially a sharp cheddar but it's just soooooooo gooooooood. We also hit the wine/beer sampling tent which was neat. I do love me some reds.

After that, we wandered over to Japonssea. I had never eaten there before but it was a neat place. I forget the name of the roll I ordered and it's not on the menu on their website but it was called something like, Diabla something. They use red chili icons on the menu to mark the spicy dishes, and this roll had three of them while the other spicy ones had a single chili mark. Needless to say, it was pretty god damn spicy. It was spicy tuna, salmon, and habanero. Lots of it. I tried it with some wasabi on it and it was amazing. I would definitely label it as, "Burns so good!"

After that me and the guys parted ways but not before we went to Uwajimaya and they bought me some choice nama genshu sake along with a tokkuri and two matching ochoko. Now whenever I have sake I can go full weeaboo, yay!

When all was said and done, I went over to chill at Anime Raku and talk gunpla with the owner and his gf. They coaxed me (didn't take much) to get the Shin Musha Gundam, so I have that to look forward to building. Sad though, I have a lot under the workbench, so to speak, that I may not get to it anytime soon.

I finally got home about 20 minutes ago after it started raining, ending an otherwise wonderfully rare and sunny day in Seattle. Not too shabby for 26 years if I do say so myself. Now for drinking and maybe a movie.

Shoot, Bang, & Frag

It's that time again, a new FPS is arriving in the form of Brink. Most gamers associate Bethesda with Open-World RPGs like Elder Scrolls and Fallout - and for good reason. These are arguably some of the best damn games ever made. Now, like a shot out of the dark, comes this new team-based shooter which is as what a Youtube member described as, "If CoD and TF2 had a kid, and then Borderlands and Mirror's Edge had a kid, then those kids got married and had a kid of their own, this game is what you would get."

Now, I know it's too early to pass judgement on a game that isn't out yet, but I have high hopes and I'll be playing it all day tomorrow more than likely. Find me on Steam under my usual name for -everything- MoogleDee.

Macross Frontier

For the record, any 'animu' post that also has the 'review' tag can be expected to have spoilers. You have been warned.

Tonight I finished up watching Macross Frontier. I finished it up faster than I intended to, but I think it was worth it. Like I said before, I started watching it because I had a mecha itch that I needed to scratch. I figured, "Hey, Macross is hailed as a mecha series", so I gave it a chance.

Silly me for thinking that it was just blowing stuff up.

Of course, that's how most of these things start out, but MF places an even greater emphasis on it's characters and their relationships than some other series. *COUGH GUNDAM POWER CREEP* Sorry, I'm getting over the sniffles. Power creep and technology races aren't always a bad thing, mind you, I just enjoyed MF keeping their level of technology consistent. One thing that kinda irked me though, and it's a problem with Macross in general, is GERWALK mode. I understand it's purpose is to grant the fighter greater altitude control, but it looks silly. It's one thing I still can't get over.

Back to why I actually liked the series though: Sheryl. Okay, not just her, but the relationship triangle between her, Alto, and Ranka. On one hand, I enjoyed watching the train-wreck plot. On the other, I kept hoping that Ranka would like, sacrifice herself or something so Sheryl could be happy. Of course, in the interest of keeping more fans they opted not only for two viable options for Alto, but they kept the question hanging in the air at the very end. That kinda bugged me.

I'm going to go a little further into Sheryl.

No, not like that. >_>

I enjoy her character very much. Explaining why I enjoy the character would require referencing to a similar train-wreck-love plot, Toradora. Sheryl is a lot like Ami, (note: I initially typed that out as 'my Ami' heh), who was my favorite character from that series as well. Both of them are strong-willed and go after what they want. Sadly, the two characters are also similar in such a way how they get shafted. In the case of Sheryl though, she gets 'saved' of her fatal disease in the end which is great but also made for a somewhat weaker story. Is it weird that I long for tragic endings? *cough Mai-Hime*

An engaging storyline and nice mecha eye-candy make for a good watch. I'll give it an 8/10. The story bugged me in some respects, but I can still appreciate it for what it is and understand that I can't hate something just because I can't change it.

Late Night Anime

Well, it wasn't a true marathon per se, I didn't finish the series. I do have to be up and at work in about... 7 hours. T'was worth it though. I started watching Macross Frontier and after 7 episodes, I'm digging it.

I had kind of a mecha urge after doing some reading and I didn't really feel like getting everything out to work on gunpla. True, I have kits that I need to finish like the Civvie Astray and the Avalanche Exia but meh... they can wait. Anyway. I did a bit of poking around and looked a bit at Another Century's Episode R and had a very brief desire to import it. It'll have to wait for when I have some extra funds, (read: never), till I can check it out. With my mecha urge left unsatisfied I remembered that I picked up Macross Frontier to watch. I initially only planned to watch a few episodes, but I got drawn in. I'll likely slow my pace down and limit myself to two episodes per night for the rest of the week until I finish it up.

More on animu, my list can be found here. I try to keep it updated, but it's getting a little hectic this season with so many series that I'm trying to keep up on. Usually I kick back and wait until I can get some good recommendations but lately I've found myself in a position among my friends where I'm the one who has to tell them what to watch, and they're catching up with my backlog of series that I recommended. I can't really complain I guess, it's kinda nice being the anime otaku in the clique.