Anime Review: Saki

Saki is an anime based on mahjong. The setting is of Japan, except that mahjong has become a national sport that is closely followed in the media. The plot is based on the girls mahjong competition for high school, and each school battles it out to represent their region in the national tournament for both the team tournament and the individual tournament. If you have no clue on the rules of mahjong, you might be lost while watching this anime... so I'll explain briefly what the basis of the rules are.

In the anime they have automatic shuffling tables, which you can get in real life... but they're not too common since they obviously cost more than ordinary tables. You shuffle the tiles and then make 4 lines of tiles and stack another line on top of that (since theres 4 players, each person stacks their own). In the anime, the automatic shuffling tables will obviously do this for the players. Players sit based on a particular direction, so you will see that each player will pick from 4 random tiles, which are the wind directions... and you sit according to that. The east player will then roll, and this determines where you start grabbing your tiles. I won't go into further detail about how you actually do it, cos its not very important unless you actually intend to play... and if you do play with someone, they will know the rules on how to determine that (hopefully).

So once everyone has drawn their tiles, the person who threw the dice should start with 14 tiles, and every other person has 13. Once you are at that point, the person who threw the dice will throw out a tile to begin the game. Now the aim of the game is to collect sets of 3 tiles, which can be either triples of a tile, or a consecutive straight with 3 tiles of the same suit. There are 3 suits; bamboo, money and circles. There are 3 'honour' tiles (some translations can be different); red honor, green honor, and blank... and theres the 4 'wind' tiles; east, south, west, north. You get extra points for getting a triple of the honor tiles, your own wind (based on where u're sitting) and the prevailing wind. The prevailing wind is what the round is at. The anime explains it quite early on, but basically there are 4 rounds... starting with east, then south, then west, then finally north.

So to win the game, you must have 14 tiles in total which includes 4 sets of at least 3, and a pair. The harder your hand is to obtain, essentially the more points you will get, and because of this... there are some special hands which give you max points since they are so rare. I won't go into detail on these, as there are quite a few... you can check wikipedia for them.

Each of the combinations have special names. They have different names for different rules of the game (theres rules for China, Malaysia, HK, Japan, Taiwan, etc), but I'll just use the Japanese names since thats more relevant for the anime. A triple of a tile is called "pon", a straight is a "chi" and a quad of a tile is called "kan". If you reveal a kan, you draw a a tile from the rear of the stack (I'll explain it more a bit later).

Now for the actual playing of the game... once the person who threw the dice chucks his/her tile out to begin the game, any player may declare "pon" if that tile that was just chucked allows that player to make a pon. Similarly this can also be done for a kan. Only the person directly after that player who chucked the tile may declare a "chi" to make up their straight. If no one wants the tile, the next player will draw from the stack in the middle, and then throw out a tile. If someone declares a combination and takes a tile, they must then throw out a tile to ensure they have a total of 13 tiles including the revealed combinations ( you should only have 14 when you win, unless u had kans). So this continues until either someone wins, or the stack empties... which would cause a draw. When someone throws out your winning tile, you declare "ron", and that player will lose points based on your hand, and you gain those points. If you draw the tile yourself, you declare "tsumo" and all players have to pay the points, and you gain them all.

Believe it or not... thats is a really basic outline of the game... you'd probably need to actually play the game to learn more about it (and I don't feel like writing a massive essay about how to play the game).

So on to the storyline...

The main characters of the story are the girls from Kiyosumi high school's mahjong club. It is the first time they that had 5 people in the club, so they enter the prefectural qualifiers in the hopes of winning the invite to the national tournament. There are 3 other main schools, so theres actually a lot of characters... but I'll mainly just talk about the main ones. Before I go any further, it should be noted that the way the games are played out in the anime are not that realistic.... but then it would be boring if they were too realistic. To add to this, there are many characters who have special abilities which give them certain edges in different situations. With that in mind, these are the main characters:

Saki Miyanaga - As can be seen by the name of the anime... the anime is primarily based off her. She is a first year student. She use to play mahjong a lot with her family, although she never enjoyed it because her family would get angry when she won. She subconsciously developed a method of playing such that she would always get a score of "plus minus zero" which means she neither won nor lost. Eventually the mahjong club gets her to snap out of that mentality, and she reveals herself to be ridiculously good at the game. She has a special ability of... pretty much just luck. She commonly wins by a hand called "rinshan kaihou" which means you win by drawing a tile from a kan. She is the captain of the team and plays the 5th match.

Nodoka Haramura - A first year student, who was the national champion of the middle school tournament last year. She is known to be the best online player under the alias "nodocchi". Her special ability is to be able to view a mahjong game as if she were online, thus being immune to people who have special abilities in manipulating their presence. There is what I would call 'borderline yuri (girl love)' between her and Saki... and I must note that she has unrealistically large boobs for a 1st year high school student (equivalent of year 10 in Sydney high schools). She is the vice-captain of the team and plays in the 4th match

Hisa Takei - She is a 3rd year student and the president of the mahjong club. She is very intuitive and always calm. Her play style is that she will 'wait for bad odds' which means that instead of making her hand such that she could win off multiple tiles (e.g. if your final combination to be made is a straight and you have 4 and 5... you require either 3 or 6 to finish the combination, as opposed to waiting for a 5 when you have a pair of 5's), instead she will wait for a tile that has the least chance of showing up. She plays the 3rd match for the team.

Mako Someya - She is a 2nd year student. Her family owns a mahjong parlour, so she has grown up watching and playing there. She has a special ability to recall the hundreds of games she has played in the past and find the games where the game state is either the same or relatively close to what she has seen in the past, and play based on that. She plays the 2nd match for the team.

Yuuki Kataoka - She is a 1st year student, and knows Nodoka from middle school... having played in the team tournament together (although unsuccessful). She is obsessed with tacos, and they're basically her fuel when she plays mahjong. She specialises in dominating the east round, but as the game goes on longer, she will lose her concentration and make more mistakes. For this reason, she plays the 1st match for the team.

Kyotaro Suga - A male 1st year. He is a friend of Saki, and was the one responsible for getting Saki to first play with the mahjong club. He is the comic relief of the anime, and normally seen buying and carrying mountain loads of food for the team (especially for Yuuki). He has a crush on Nodoka and another girl from another school... who he tends to daydream about.

I rate this anime as 9.5/10, but thats because I love mahjong so much. I think the more you're into mahjong, the more you'll enjoy this anime... its also a good starting point if you've always wanted to get into the game.

My favourite character is Touka Ryumonbuchi, who is the stereotypical rich girl of animes. She has the 'evil rich girl' laugh that is quite common across other animes. Unfortunately I can't find a good picture of her, so I'll settle with a picture of Nodoka (left) and Saki (right) for you all.

Phew that was a long review... I guess that makes up for the days that I missed posting something on my blog =P

Aion gives you wings

You get wings once you ascend to your 2nd class at lvl 10. Unfortunately you can only fly for a limited amount of time, but at least you can use an emote that lets you spread the wings while on the ground... although this is mainly for looks =P I only have the base wings so far... probably need to be higher lvl to find other ones, although I still like the asmodian wings better. You get more flight time as you lvl up, and from item bonuses... I've only got about 1 min of flight time, which isn't much... but if you know how to glide properly, it can save you a fair bit of travel time. I prefer the WoW travel system with mounts, and I wish the wings was more similar to how flying mounts in WoW was. I find that the travel time is far too much atm... especially cos u can't use the wings in all areas. Particularly for the first main city, which would be the equivalent of Ironforge or Orgrimmar... the city itself is quite massive and you have to walk around instead of having a mount or something, which is an absolute pain. The only good thing is theres a teleport stone to get from 1 end to the other... but u have to pay a bit of money for it, which seems a bit random. So atm I'm trying to get used to it still, cos its all about time efficiency while lvling.

The quest system is a bit different too. There are the normal optional quests that you can pick up from various NPCs, and then theres the campaign quests which you have to do. The problem I have with it is that once you get to the stage where I'm at (which is lvl 18), the campaign quests are group quests... and its impossible to solo them. In WoW I always found group quests to be a major pain and I usually skipped them unless I knew friends were up to it as well. I don't like group quests because then I have to waste time finding a group to do the quest... and a lot of the time I find terrible pugs (gamer term for randoms... stands for 'pick up group' with the s being plural), which is bad because I will use up time to do the quest and sometimes not even complete it. For instance... for 1 of the quest chains that I did with a random group, we got to pretty much the end of it, and then 1 of them had to 'afk for 20 mins' so there was only 3 of us left, and then our tank randomly aggroed 2 elite mobs... which caused him to take far too much damage and I couldn't outheal it. If our afk guy was still there, he could've used his sleep skill to disable 1 of the mobs, so that our tank would take less damage. Alas... it wasn't to be, and I wasted all that time without finishing the quest to get the massive exp reward. So now I'm waiting for a couple of friends to get up to the quest and we'll do it together...

Anyway in the meantime, I've been lvling an alt that will be a Gladiator soon (equivalent of a fury/arms warrior in WoW) and apparently they're meant to be mad for lvling, so I'll see how that goes. Below is a picture of what the my wings look like atm.

TV Review: The Big Bang Theory

Been doing a lot of anime reviews, so gonna mix it up a bit with some TV shows that I follow or have followed in the past.

The Big Bang Theory began in 2007 and there are currently 2 complete seasons, and the 3rd season just began. It is a sitcom based on a group of 4 nerd friends who befriend a pretty blonde girl who just moved in next door to 2 of them. Each person has a pretty unique stereotype to their character. Just a brief outline of each character;

Leonard Hofstadter: He would be described as more of an 'ordinary nerd' for lack of a better term. He has a PH.D and an IQ of 173 and is working as an experimental physicist. He lives in an apartment with his colleague and friend, Sheldon Cooper. Although Leonard is very intelligent, Sheldon often undermines Leonard, especially when it comes to work and solving equations. Leonard is infatuated with his neighbour Penny, when she moves in, and forms the basis of an ongoing storyline between the 2.

Sheldon Cooper: A child prodigy who attended college when he was 11 after completing the 5th grade. He has a master's degree and 2 PH.D's, and has an IQ of 187. He works as a theoretical physicist. He is very uptight about everything (and I mean everything). He is also very arrogant, has a very strict routine, and lacks the understanding of irony, sarcasm and humour.

Howard Wolowitz: He would be described as a 'try hard', and it is very common for him to make suggestive comments to any girl he sees. He is quite full of himself, in that he thinks he is a stud, which is what a lot of the jokes are aimed at when Wolowitz is involved. He has a master's in engineering and usually works on space related projects.

Rajesh Koothrappali: Probably my most favourite character next to Sheldon. He is of Indian descent and works as a particle astrophysicist. He is unable to communicate properly with women and tends to go mute when around them, unless he is drunk. He is even unable to talk when Penny is around, despite her hanging out with them very often. In some episodes he brings a laptop which he communicates to his parents who are in India.

Penny: She works as a waitress at the cheesecake factory, but aspires to become an actress although unsuccessful. She is what you would call the "normal" character, in that shes the only character who isnt a "nerd".

This is a good comedy for all audiences. There are some references which may be hard for people to understand if they have no clue about the subject matter. For instance, they often make references to Star Trek, and I didn't know what they were talking about until I watched the new Star Trek movie (which was incidently really good). I would give the show a 9/10 rating.

Aion Begins!

Aion release is actually tomorrow... but for people who pre-ordered it, you were able to download the beta, provided that you were given a cd-key either from the store you pre-ordered from, or from steam. If you had it installed and all, you could start yesterday... which is the "head start" period before release. I like this idea, not only because it allowed me to start playing early... but it meant that the newbie areas won't be so congested... and a large pack of people would have been able to move on to the higher level areas.

The release was at 5am on Monday morning... I was not keen enough to wake up that early to start playing... although 1 of my friends did, and another friend took the entire week off =P but I had made a couple of characters to reserve names that I wanted to keep for later.

So I got home and began leveling my priest, which I plan to convert to a chanter later on. A chanter is pretty much a support class from what I heard, with combat buffs that you cast on your group members, and also provides off-healing (clerics are the main healers). This will be different to the classes I normally played in WoW... but I liked the sound of chanter because the role sounded more unique. In WoW, the buffs were all pre-combat kind of stuff.

I roamed around the newbie area, completing the stuff I already knew from beta... which helped a lot and saved me a fair bit of time. My friend who took a week off was already lvl 15 by the time I logged on.... and he started a legion (equivalent of a WoW guild) named "FML", which is a very emo name... but the reasoning was because 1 of our other friends would only come play wow if our legion name was FML, and if someone reserved FML for his character name (bit of an emo guy =P).

There was a quest that I found highly amusing... a questgiver wants you to find this pig that went missing... and when you find it, hes roasting on a spit, lol! My friend who was on vent with me at the time told me I was slack for laughing =(

Anyway I got to level 8 before I logged off for the night... my other friends got to lvl 16 and lvl 11 respectively by then... though they're probably even higher now. I took a couple of screenshots of my character that you can see below. I had deliberately made my character short, but it turned out to be much shorter than I had originally intended... but at least maybe it will make my character hard to see in pvp =P will post more screenshots when I get better looking armour and stuff... since I'm wearing mostly just the base gear atm.

News Watch: "Lock up your daughters"

I'm sure most people would have heard of the phrase "lock up your daughters" in some shape or form. The context it would normally be used in is when young guys are out looking to pick up girls, and the guys self-proclaim themselves as dangerous studs.

However, more recently... this phrase can be seen as have been taken far too literally. If you thought the Josef Friztl case wasn't bad enough... there has yet been another similar incident, which you can read about here: http://tinyurl.com/mah3p2

This is the third case of this type that I've seen in the past year or so... and it is quite disturbing to know that there are people like this in the world. The other case that I had seen was the Sheffield case, which involved 2 daughters.

However, whilst obviously the father commited a serious crime... I want to question how the mother of the girl involved never questioned how her daughter got pregnant 4 times and not know who the biological father of those children were. Also, in an earlier article regarding this incident, it was mentioned that the birth certificates didn't state a father for the children. Anyway... surely if your daughter got pregnant, you'd enquire as to who the father is =\ and if she said "just some guy", which would be expected since she was obviously afraid of any repercussions from her father... then surely it would raise suspicions.

Now I'm really surprised that this type of incident not only happened once... but multiple times in various places in the world. All of the cases I've seen so far have been long-term abuse of many years, which makes one wonder how much planning these men have put into it in order to have kept this going for so long. It really disgusts me to know that not only can people not trust the average Joe stranger they meet at random... but some people aren't even able to trust their own parents... and its a very sad thing to know. Its true that its still a one in a billion chance that it happens... but take a moment to imagine being that one...

Anime + Movie Review: Death Note

Death note has been out for a couple of years now as an anime, and also a live movie adaptation of it. There is also obviously a manga for it too, but I only watched the anime and the movie.

It is comparable to Code Geass in the sense that every episode leaves you hanging, and the twists in each episode are very cleverly done.

The main character is a high school student named Yagami Light. One day, he finds a black notebook on the floor. This notebook (the death note) has instructions behind the cover, stating that if you write the full name of a person whilst picturing their face in your mind's eye, that person will die. If just the name is written, they will die of a heart attack... otherwise they will die by whichever method you specify by writing it with the name. He then encounters the death god Ryuk, who is the original owner of the death note, and had dropped it on Earth and had gone to retrieve it. However, since Light picked it up... it is Light's to use as he wishes, however Ryuk warned him of the consequences of using it.

With the death note, Light decides to use it to punish the criminals of the world. He begins researching into criminal cases and looks for people who are definitely guilty of committing a crime, and using the death note to kill them. He then assumes the alias "Kira" and makes the name public as a self-claimed saviour of mankind. The world becomes divided between those who support his beliefs, and those who think he is just another murderer.

The police begin to investigate, and Light has to be very careful since his father is the chief of police. The police enlist the help of a mysterious detective named "L", who has solved many cases in the past which were considered impossible. The story then goes on to be a battle of the wits between Kira and L, both of whom have ridiculously high intellect, and fight to stay 1 step ahead of each other.

The movie adaptation differs slightly to the anime. Overall it wasnt a bad transition, and it was good that they made it into 2 movies so that they could fit in as much of the important content as possible. I was very disappointed with the actor for Light... who looks nothing like the Light from the anime... and his acting was pretty bad. The actor for L however, played it very well... so I guess that kind of offsets each other. Probably the thing I like most about the movie was Erika Toda, who plays Misa. Misa is a girl who also obtains a death note, and is completely in love with Kira. I think the reasons for her being in love with Kira differ between the anime and movie... but I'll leave it at that, since I don't want to spoil too much of the storyline.

I would give the anime a 9/10 rating, and the movies a 6.5/10. If you like a good suspenseful kind of storyline, this is definitely for u.

So below are a couple of pics of Erika Toda as Misa Amane in the death note movies... who is also the asian celebrity I find most attractive.

News Watch: Too Young to Love?

A rather interesting case popped up in the news today regarding underaged sex and marriage. For reference, the article can be viewed here; http://tinyurl.com/rcas46

The case relates to a boy and girl who met each other when they were 16 and 12 respectively. They fell in love and were married through Aboriginal customs. A judge, and their families supported the marriage and acknowledged that the couple were in love. The girl was later impregnated when she was 14, and the boy was 18. Now this is when the sirens start going off... it is common knowledge that the age of consent in Australia is 16 (generally speaking). Aboriginal culture does not have an age of consent... this results in a clash between 2 different laws/customs. Not only that... but the age requirement to marry in Australia is 18, or 16 with parental consent and permission from the court. So the boy was 16, parents from both parties consented, a judge acknowledged them, but the girl was not 16. Again a clash in laws/customs.

Personally I feel this topic is a bit....brain-washed. We are raised to believe that underaged sex is wrong, and that you shouldn't get married before certain ages. The laws are in place to protect young people from being deceived or taken advantage of by another person... thats fine and all. However it doesn't take into account whether a person has genuinely fallen in love with the other person. Say in this particular case... when people read something like 'a 16 year old boy and a 12 year old girl fell in love and got married, and they had a child when he was 18 and she was 14'... the general reaction would be 'omg, what a pedophile'. It seems to me that people can not perceive that someone could fall in love with another person who isn't even a teenager yet, and they also can not perceive that a girl that young is capable of falling in love.

As a result of this clash of laws, the boy has had to spend time in jail and had to plead guilty to a 'crime'. It just seems so odd to me that the point of having court cases was to take into account all relevant factors before a decision is made about what the outcome will be. As mentioned before... the parents from both sides had acknowledged the relationship, and they'd obviously knew that with the marriage... sex would follow. So if the parents were ok with it, why should other people have to butt in and ruin their happiness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all underaged sex is fine... theres a fine line between a young person who is in love with another, as opposed to a young person who is preyed upon by an older person. I just think people should not be closed minded about the subject and automatically judge people based on whats apparently the 'norm'... whether its the courts, or the general public.

On the topic of norms... similar reactions occur when there is news about other cultures that have their own norms... which would obviously differ to 'whitefella' norms. For example, some countries allow polygamous relationships... whereas it is considered wrong in other countries... and really, who is to say it is right or wrong? I feel its the same for many things, including this topic of age of consent. If there was really a right answer, then every country would have the same age of consent, marriage rules, legal drinking age, and other things. I find that the age of consent issue is a very difficult area... do people magically become capable of deciding for themselves whether they're ready for sex once their 16th birthday arrives? it could be argued that teenagers are no less informed when they're 15, or no more informed when they're 17. In my opinion there needs to be more room on the individual level... because not everyone is the same, and I don't feel its fair that the law automatically will veto the opinion of an underaged person just because the law deems that he/she does not have the capacity to make their own decision.

However on a side note regarding the case, it does make it hard if people are governed by 2 different laws or customs, so perhaps thats something that should be fixed as well. Perhaps this case might open a few eyes.

Anime/Manga Review: Claymore

I saw Claymore quite a while back now, but I knew the anime was not finished... and that it had deviated from the original storyline because the manga wasn't finished at the time. The anime ended without properly finishing off the story, and no second season has been announced as far as I know... so I decided to read the manga because the story was very interesting and I wanted to know more.

So first up, a basic outline of the story. Its based on a world where yoma (pronounced yoh-ma) dwell in human villages, and kill people to eat their guts, which is their food source. Yoma is directly translated into 'demon' in the English language, which is pretty much what they are. Then there is the 'Organisation', which is a mysterious group who create half-human half-yoma warriors, which other humans refer to as 'Claymores' or sometimes 'Silver-Eyed Witches', who are sent on missions to kill yoma. As the name suggests, all Claymores are female.

The Claymores have a ranking system. There are always 47 Claymores at any one time, each given a rank between 1 to 47. Ranks 1 to 9 are more special and are commonly referred to as 'single-digits' denoting that they are the strongest of the Claymores.

There are also different types of Yoma. There are the basic Yoma, who are generally pretty weak, but they hide amongst humans and feed off them when needed. Then there are 'awakened ones' who are vastly stronger than ordinary Yoma. The organisation will generally assign 4 Claymores to hunt down 1 awakened one, and 1 of those Claymores will be a single-digit. Then there are the 'abyssal ones', who are the 3 strongest awakened ones, and each of the 3 abyssal ones rule over 1 quadrant of the land (the 4th quadrant is where the organisation is).

The main characters are a Claymore named Clare and a young boy named Raki. Clare saved Raki's village from a yoma, but that yoma had slaughtered Raki's family. Raki left the village with Clare, and thats how the story starts. The story also has a major flaskback early on in the series, which goes back a generation of Claymores, when Clare was still an ordinary girl. The story will also skip some years later on and show another generation of Claymores. So theres actually quite a large number of characters.

The manga is quite relaxed about nudity. I don't remember if the anime had the nudity too, but its possible... so thats something for the guys to enjoy =P The manga is only a monthly release, and is still ongoing... so if you end up catching up to the current manga story.... you'll be waiting a while for each new chapter, but its definately worth reading. The anime is good too, as its pretty faithful to the manga, apart from the last couple of episodes.

Overall I'd give it an 8/10, for an interesting storyline and good action (mainly for the anime). It loses out on some rating due to the divergence in the end of the anime, which hasnt been continued on yet... and because the manga takes so long to be released.

So I'll leave you with a fan-coloured picture of my 2 favourite Claymores from the manga; Alicia and Beth, who are the current number 1 and 2 of the Organisation. They are the only Claymores to wear black armour... and I love the look of it.

News Watch: Smart is Sexy?

I was listening to the radio this morning and in the news it was mentioned that a study found that females are attracted to smart people.... so I had a look on smh.com.au to see if there was an article about it. Sure enough I found it here http://tinyurl.com/m3nduw but it wasn't quite what I expected...

The study was based on Australian birds... yes, we're being compared to birds! Now I could be wrong... but birds all appear to look the same to me... I somehow doubt that a female bird would mate with a male bird because she thought the male looked attractive.

Even so... physical looks plays a part in girls being initially attracted to guys. Maybe not for 'all' girls, but its not just something only guys look for... we are not the only ones who are shallow! Theres other things that both guys and girls look for, although it really depends on the individual... I'm very skeptical when girls tell me that the main thing girls look for in a guy is personality. One anonymous friend of mine kept telling me that... and when it comes to guys who chat her up, or when I show her pictures of my friends... she instantly judges them on their looks... so if shes not attracted to them by looks, she's not interested in talking to them. Of course this is just 1 girl in billions, but shes not the only one I've encountered thats like that... and it certainly doesn't give me a very good impression on girls in general.

Anyway this was a bit of a random rant in a debate that would never end, so I shall leave it there.