Wolf Hurricane has found a new home. Please update your bookmarks and feeds. This blog will no longer be updated but will remain as an archive.

Updates have been sporadic at best as of late because all the writers, including myself, have been busy with college. The blog move has been chugging along slowly while this old one is being kept on life support. Not to worry though because Wolf Hurricane will be back with a vengeance. In the meantime I’ll just be here to write filler posts. Hooray for filler.

There will be no anime overview this week because I didn’t watch anything. This post will instead focus on asking for WordPress theme recommendations. Wolf Hurricane will be moving to private hosting with its own domain. Before the move is official, I’m calling for advice from all the anibloggers on good themes to use.

My criteria are:

Fairly large customizable image header (About the size of the current one I use)

Width of 500 pixels for text area (I like to post pictures that are resized and 500 is an easy, even number)

Area for page tabs/links near the header

Widget ready

White background highly preferred

So in other words, a theme that is very similar to my current one is what I’m looking for. I actually really like the Ocean Mist theme, but it’s been a pain to configure on its own. I would be very grateful if any experienced bloggers out there could lend me a hand on this matter. You will be amply rewarded with yuri for your time.

I’ve got some stuff in store for you readers out there that will remain a secret for now. Secrets help to build suspense and it’s fun to be the secret holder. So in essence this post is just here to tease you. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

The Key fanboy in me is playing through Tactics’ One ~ To the Radiant Season. Going into it with previous experience from other Key works, One really feels like a prototype to the later games. It’s primitive by today’s standards but still remains a solid bishoujo game. Also of note, Key’s art has come a long, long way since One. Maybe I’ll write a brief review once I finish a couple arcs.

Let’s see what’s on the old schedule. I’ll definitely try my best to do some research on the spring anime lineup and do a real preview with short synopses. This is easier said than done because I can’t read any Japanese. The manga-anime adaptations and sequels should be easy enough to cover, but it’s the other stuff that worries me. If only Japanese had been offered in high school… There really isn’t anything else new or noteworthy to talk about for now.

The second installment of my Friday Night Double Feature series was Korean cinema, with one film I’d wanted to see for ages but had never had the chance and one film I love dearly and wanted to share with whoever happened to be around. The Host, surprise monster film hit from last year, was the former film, and the well-built psychological horror film A Tale of Two Sisters is a film that two years ago I watched twice in 24 hours–the second time just to follow along with an IMDB analysis of the plot.

I apologize for the delayed writeup, but please, read on and find pearls of wisdom.

Like I said, The Host had been high on my to-see list for some time now, but every time I had a chance to see it something came up. So, when I had a chance to show it at my double-feature…I was nearly foiled again. It turned out the one place I had hoped to rent a copy from was out, and it was only thanks to a last minute run to Best Buy by a friend of mine who wanted to own the movie himself that I was able to show it.

I was thrilled, and by the end of the film, I was also satisfied.

The Host is nothing like Cloverfield, really. It doesn’t try and use any fancy cinematography, and it’s not a one trick pony, more of a jack of all trades. The Host has a bit of comedy, a bit of thrills, some action, some drama, and a balanced mix of happy moments and sad ones which sum up to give the viewer a good deal of empathy for the characters. The one other big difference is that there’s no real suspense about what the monster is or what it can do–it starts eating people in broad daylight about fifteen minutes in to the film.

For what it’s worth, the creature is phenomenally weird. It swims, it climbs, it stumbles when it runs a whole bunch…you wouldn’t think it would be a particularly effective or terrifying beast, and frankly, it isn’t to a viewer. There’s not much awe because it’s just the size of a school bus. But still, for the characters–and more importantly, the government–the beast is a force to be reckoned with. And because of that same government, the woe begins.

A strong environmentalist theme is prominent in The Host, along with some anti-American sentiment (basically, the Americans are responsible for the whole thing and then bungle their management of it). The most wrenching part of the film is seeing an ordinary family–an out-of-college drunk uncle, the industrious grandfather, the olympic medalist archer sister, and the somewhat brain-dead father–trying to rescue the daughter who ties them together and having to do everything they possibly can just to get a shot at finding her. Discomfort is yet another one of the emotions the film brings to bear, and it proves over its course that it can bring them back again and again for increasing effect.

If you like monsters, films about families against the odds, or films that have universal appeal strictly by being dabblers in moods, The Host is worth a look.

A Tale of Two Sisters is a horror film which really does need to be experienced twice. When I first saw it, I didn’t see the ending twist coming, and then with the revelation that gives I simply had to watch it again to understand everything that was going on.
It’s a horror film that’s light on gore and big on mystery, or at least big on weirded-out sections. It was, simply put, right up my alley.

The plot’s a little on the simple side–two girls move back to their country residence with their father and stepmother, and pretty quickly things start getting weird. The film is tightly written, tightly acted, and keeps tipping just enough of its hand to keep you watching until the end. The first big revelation hits probably half an hour or forty five minutes from the end, and even after that things only keep getting stranger.

If you’re looking for hugely terrifying things, this is also probably not a film to rely on. There are a couple of chilling moments in the film that are never really explained in whole, but they probably won’t cater to a real thrill seeker. The pacing is mostly what does it–there’s a lot of points in the film where the dialog’s pretty light, and much of the rest of the time it doesn’t make sense to the viewer (and not in a bad way, but more of a spooky way).

I’m rather surprised I don’t have more to say about A Tale of Two Sisters other than to give it my recommendation. I’m not big on horror films–I despise most of the franchises in that genre put out from Hollywood today–but this film really struck a chord with me. It’s about psychology, loss, and fraternal bonds.

Next This week: Elvis! Showing Bubba Ho-Tep and Six-String Samurai.

I actually started this write-up back at episode eight and went from there. With eighteen episodes now under our belts, it looks like I can make a fair summary of Clannad’s ladies. Several of the girls present striking similarities to previous Key girls while a few break free from the mold to be different.

Note that this is just a comparison of similarities, because Key really loves to stick to the archetypes that work. If anything changes as the episodes roll on, I will reflect said changes by editing this work in progress. I’m only going to cover the five main girls, so that means the minor girls are excluded for now. I may add them at a later time though. This post contains obvious spoilers for those who haven’t seen Clannad, Air, or Kanon. I should technically include comparisons to the girls from One ~ To the Radiant Season but whatever. You have been warned.

Nagisa Furukawa = Shiori Misaka + Misuzu Kamio
Nagisa really bears a strong resemblance to Shiori. Nagisa is apparently chronically ill much like Shiori. They also share the spot of being the normal girls in their anime/game. Both have little involvement with anything supernatural such as spirits, magical powers, or amazing fighting ability. To a lesser extent, Nagisa and Shiori have similar taste in normal clothing, but Nagisa lacks Shiori’s mesmerizing shawl.

Like Misuzu, Nagisa is a girl with no friends until they meet the main character. I also think that Nagisa has this sense of pure innocence that is very much like Misuzu as well. They’re sort of like the girls that you take for granted until they’re gone. Maybe I’m just crazy, but Nagisa really seems like the heir apparent to Misuzu’s spirit.

Kyou Fujibayashi = Hmmm…
Ah Kyou, everyone’s favorite switch-hitting tsundere. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Kyou is actually Clannad’s most “original” girl, in the sense that she is totally different from Key’s previous gals; She has this raw sexuality previously unseen in previous Key works. If I had to compare Kyou to someone, then she is Haruhi Suzumiya incarnate in a bishoujo game. From her violent fits of rage, extortion/blackmail of classmates, and rampant Kotomi molesting, this comparison isn’t too far off the mark. Kyou is a little like Kano Kirishima because they both have weird mascot pets that are very attached to their owners.

Kotomi Ichinose = A bustier Minagi Tohno + Mai Kawasumi
This comparison actually isn’t very strong. I only mention it because both girls are quiet, lethargic geniuses. Saying that Minagi is a genius is really a stretch, because she doesn’t really measure up to Kotomi in that regard. Kotomi shares the spot of also being a forgotten childhood friend much like Mai.

Tomoyo Sakagami = A surface similarity to Mai Kawasumi
The similarities I conjured up are stoic juvenile delinquent with supernatural fighting powers. Otherwise, Tomoyo is actually a fairly original character by Key standards. With that said, there really isn’t too much to Tomoyo’s vanilla personality anyway.

Fuko Ibuki = Ayu Tsukimiya + Makoto Sawatari + a dash of Michiru
This is just too easy. Fuko really seems to be a mish-mash of Ayu and the tsundere, moeblobness of Makoto and Michiru. At first glace, one may be tempted to think that Fuko is a carbon copy of Ayu, but you’ll see that she is quite similar to Makoto and Michiru if you dig deeper. Fuko, Makoto, and Michiru gradually warm up to their respective protagonists after a psuedo-rivalry at the beginning of their stories. A small subjective quirk Fuko shares with Makoto is that they both have too many early episodes devoted to them.

China never ceases to make me laugh. First it was Olympic Haruhi and now it’s the prospect of gaming as an Olympic sport. The ancient Greek Olympians must be rolling in their graves by now. Check out this article over at CNN. To make a long story short, a video game competition will apparently be an unofficial part of the 2008 Olympics. China even considers gaming a recognized sport.

If you’ve seen televised video game competitions before, then you already know what a travesty it is. It’s just an awful idea, because gaming as a spectator sport is a joke. Oh goodie, let’s go watch a bunch of geeks play video games! To quote the article, “…video gaming is serious business”. I like games as much as the next guy, but gaming =/= sport. Competitive eating is higher on my list of potential Olympic sports than gaming.

Source: Fortune at CNN

This is a tentative weekly section devoted to critiques of the most recent anime I’ve seen; Usually the newest episodes that I want to talk about without going too in depth, but I may focus on older anime as well.

Clannad episode 18: Woo-hoo. Nagisa is back baby. Kyou and Ryou just got served. Well technically, Nagisa was the one that got served… In the face with a tennis ball. Ouch. It still goes without saying that all the other girls pretty much know that they lost the game to Nagisa. I especially liked the girls ganging up on Okazaki to eat their food. Tomoyo’s arc has been lackluster compared to the other girls, but I still like her character as a whole.

Shakugan no Shana II episodes 14-15: Still catching up after missing episodes for more than a month. At least the plot is finally starting to go somewhere now. It was getting really stale with all the early episodes being slice-of-life.

That about does it for this post since that’s all I had time to watch. Have any of the winter shows gotten better in the meantime? Some of them are starting to show promise and some opinions would be nice.

Tenchoooooouuuuu! Filler posts need love too, but they have to pay for it. I probably post way too many Lucky Star pics. I’ll blame that on… Hmmm… Global warming. There are a couple 90% complete articles that need a few finishing touches before they get published. Anime episode summaries will come sooner or later. Well now. Back to gaming studying!