Went on one of my rare icon sprees! I need to stop watching a certain trailer.

Preview


Categories
[3] Games: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
[9] Games: Fabula Nova Crystallis
[6] Games: Final Fantasy III
[1] Games: Final Fantasy IV
[2] Games: Final Fantasy VIII

( Final Fantasy galore! )

While a second anime season for Baccano! is seemingly impossible at this point, the awesomeness of Ryohgo Narita (author of Baccano!) is clearly not stopping itself from spreading just yet:

Durarara! Official Web

( What is Durarara!? )

As a big fan of Narita's works overall, it's quite hard for me to not have high hopes for the upcoming adaptation of Durarara!. At least that's something to look forward to for the next next seasons, along with Kimi ni Todoke?

Tagged by terra:

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

( Fangirling, FFXII, Translation, Web Design and... that guy. )

Hoping for a second and third and eternal... season for Baccano! anime?

Fill this petition. Just do it.
Instructions can be found at baccano's most recent post.

/dorkism of the day

"Time needs to stop passing so fast" -- that's probably the only sentence I've been thinking and saying consistently for the past year.

( Summer 2009 Anime Preview x5 )

What are everyone else watching & planning to watch this summer?

Taken from E3 Press and whatnot:

Square-Enix announces Final Fantasy XIV for 2010. It is the next online FF to be released after FFXI and will be PS3 exclusive.

Considering how FFXIII is the next big FF Compilation series with 3 games announced and 4 (?) more rumored to come, it's probably a smart move to develop another online FF to be kind to certain gamers' wallets. Which however doesn't change the fact that I'm mind-boogled by the sudden announcement. This series just never ends -- not that I'm complaining.

EDIT: there goes official website already. The splash art is gorgeous.

As the title says... [original source]

Lightning: Maaya Sakamoto
I know some readers had doubts about whether it was really her speaking in the latest FFXIII trailer, so I'm glad my ears didn't betray me ;) For those who's not familiar with her name, she's probably most well-known for her role as Aerith in The Compilation of FFVII to gamers. She's also one of my favorite female singers so I'm glad Square-Enix decided to invite her into the FF scenes once more.

Snow: Daisuke Ono
I wasn't too familiar with Ono until his role as Itsuki in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Although I think his voice might be a little too calm for a hot-blooded (?) character like Snow, I'm sure he'll do his job when the right time comes. OT: this guy's got a great stage personality -- I highly recommend everyone to watch one of the VA events he's in!

Vanille: Yukari Fukui
The only anime role I recognize from her profile is Rika from His and Her Circumstances, but for those who've played Dissidia FF you should be familiar with her voice as Tina/Terra.

Sazh: Masashi Ebara
Oh boy... I almost spit out my tea thinking about hearing Hohenheim (Fullmetal Alchemist) and Maito Gai (Naruto) in a video game, but there goes the compromise one must make to cast famous voice actors in a main Final Fantasy title.

Now to wait for Square-Enix to announce voices for FFXIII Versus characters... some day. I'm praying that my premonition of hearing Cloud Strife in Noctis is proven wrong ASAP!

Wisconsin, US passes 5% digital tax starting Oct. 1, 2009

How will the government track what to and not to charge tax for remains a topic of confusion here. Does this mean everyone's online activities in Wisconsin is monitored in some way that seemingly invades the borderline of privacy?

Also: think about when other states or even neighboring countries start to mimic Wisconsin's new sales tax law. While I believe that certain tax should be paid as a sensible measure to give back to society, is this particular case really necessary when we're already paying plenty of dollars for the use of internet alone? The age of "unlimited downloads/uploads" is long over: more than one local ISPs have already started capping bandwidth by the second as we speak.

Furthermore, the final destination of these extra money taken from our pocket is only for the government to know. For those with relatively less faith in their leaders, I can see how irritating this extra 5% can be in the long-run.

I've been waiting for this.

The moment I opened the latest Final Fantasy XIII trailer, I heard Maaya Sakamoto as Lightening and went "Holy Cow Jesus Christ". Anyone familiar with the Japanese version of The Compilation of FFVII should remember her as the one and only Aerith Gainsborough -- it'll be really interesting to see how well she'll do as another Final Fantasy heroine with a very different look and personality.

The other cast hasn't been confirmed yet, though I was fairly certain about hearing Kenichi Suzumura and Akira Ishida somewhere in the line. To be honest, I'm rather pleased with Square-Enix's recent effort to use famous voice actors/actresses for their bestselling franchise -- FF Series deserves just that much if not more.

Now to wait anxiously for the announcement of Versus and Agito voices...

Staff of Kikizo were lucky enough to have a face-to-face chat session with the head of Square-Enix Corp. and the series produer of Final Fantasy XIII recently, which gives us a lot of interesting details to look at in regard to the most anticipated PS3 game (series) of the century. I've picked out a few highlights below:

* Final Fantasy XIII is being developed for PlayStation 3 first before getting "optimized" for XBox360. In other words, the common fear by fans that "a potential fall in quality is at sight since XBox360 spec is not as advanced as PS3" should not be a big issue of worry at this point.

* The gameplay style of FFXIII will definitely follow and improve from FFXII's (Active Dimension Battle). However, it will also improve in certain aspects i.e. taking off those annoying battle mode lines.

* The main plot for the game is now pretty much complete. Character design, field design and other art elements are now at 80% completion by estimate.

* Developers of games nowadays -- not so limited to FFXIII, per se -- seem to take internet opinions much more seriously than before as they're equivalent to instant, honest feedback of fans with all kinds of backgrounds. In other words? Let the spam party begin wherever you can -- once a certain amount of fan opinions accumulate, they will make a big impact on the final product!

Well, planned release date for FFXIII is still 2009 so have your finger crossed :)

I think it would mean a million (or more) to any RPG enthusiast to have Nobuo Uematsu compose your wedding song and Yoshitaka Amano design your engagement ring. Apparently James Mielke of 1UP was lucky enough to have both when proposing to his girlfriend, which I thought was very cute and original.

For those interested: the full article can be read here.

It's amazing how games link to such crucial part of people's life these days.

Games

New wallpapers are now available for download at Chrono Trigger DS official website. More will be added about every other week so stay tunned! Also: if you're part of Square-Enix Members, keep an eye on Chrono Trigger Fanclub for more goodies throughout this winter.

Novel

A new Baccano! novel is coming out January 10, 2009! Click here for more details.

Happy Halloween! I've been walking around my office floor with a cat hat on (from the oh-lovely soifon!) so that I can trick-or-treat with my co-workers. Which might feel all sorts of wrong, but as yours truly's mental age happens to be 4, certain acts should be forgiven.

Internet

Very short news for the day as a majority of my readers are webmasters:

Effective November 12, 2008, EstDomains will lose its approved domain registrar status due to recent fake antivirus tools as well as rogue codecs that have been running via EstDomains. While the CEO of EstDomains had filed in an explanation to ICANN on October 29th, EstDomains's activities will be closely monitored and past records checked until November 12 to decide whether or not to terminate its business.

The side effect of this issue is obviously the fact that EstDomains is one of the largest domain registrars in the world with over 280,000 domains under its umbrella. While not all of these orders are "bad", a big portion of them will surely start experiencing identity crisis as more of EstDomains' bad credit entries surface.

If you currently have one or more domains registered with EstDomains, it's still not too late to transfer them to a more reliable registrar as suggested by the original source of this piece of news. I have a feeling many customers of EstDomains are not even aware of the issue as we speak, though... looking forward to ICANN's next step in solving this problem that's been on the net for years unnoticed.

Gaming

I was wondering how to categorize this particular piece of news, but since it's related to Games:

Microsoft US provides $20,000 in search of 15-year-old Canadian boy, who ran away from home after XBox360 was confiscated by parents.

( More details + thoughts )

Anime: Fandom

Then we've got another extreme case as follows:

Petition Project to Legalize 2D Marriage

A quick translation of the project outline:

"We're no longer interested in the 3D life we live in. If possible, we'd like to become the residents of a 2D world.

However, the current state of science/technology is not capable of satisfying our needs. Therefore, would it be possible to legalize 2D marriages for us at least?

If our proposal becomes accepted, the writer of this statement will proceed to plan his marriage with Mikuru Asahina (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya)."

Discuss.

Updated userinfo to reflect what this journal is slowly becoming these days. Without further ado:

Preview


Categories
[1] Celebrity
[2] Games: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
[6] Games: Fabula Nova Crystallis
[1] Games: Final Fantasy VI
[1] Manga: Fullmetal Alchemist
[1] Manga: Handsome Girlfriend
[4] Novel: Baccano

( Baccano, Final Fantasy, Red Cliff... stuff I haven't posted here yet )

Final Fantasy Advent Children Complete
In courtesy to lalaloveppears: I was aware that there would be extra scenes added to FFAC Complete, but I didn't realize it was going to be 30 minutes long! That's like, a quarter of the original movie release or more!?

Many of the highlights will be Denzel-focused, i.e. his epic adventure of breaking a fire drill for the first time in his life. Yes, epic!

Agito Final Fantasy XIII
I'm pretty sure that this is the only School War plot to be written since FFVIII, but um, the cloaks? Don't they remind you of Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts? (See picture to your right) Maybe Nomura's running out of fashion juice again, though I rather like it anyway.

Chrono Trigger
Apparently CT's TGS 2008 trailer is now available at the official website, which however cannot be viewed here since I'm at work. It should offer a preview of the new features mentioned in my last News Flash post so enjoy! If someone can go watch it now and give me a brief expression of how it looks like in the comments, it'd be much appreciated :)

Random Notes
I was going to start playing FFTA2 over the long weekend but I accidentally bumped into a certain line in the Ultimania which changed my mind instantly:

"... with 410 total quests divided into 3 categories"

It almost brought me to tears. When am I ever going to finish that?

I'm very happy with Terra's new CG model, to say the least.

( Happy Dissidia Day )

Happy Thanksgiving to all Canadians :)

Assorted updates from Tokyo Game Show 2008:

1. Final Fantasy XIII Versus: the hero's name is confirmed to be Noctis and the heroine is Stella. Now can someone enlighten me on what is a Noctis? Is it only me who thinks it doesn't even sound like a name?

2. Star Ocean 4 ~The Last Hope~: to be released on February 19, 2009.

3. Dissidia Final Fantasy: so there's no Locke!face but Terra!summon is acquired. Aww.

4. Sony PlayStation 3: the latest 80GB model is going to be on sale October 30, 2008 for a price of approxiately 420 dollars. Still expensive, aren't we.

5. Final Fantasy Advent Children: all the novels will now be compiled into one book and purchasable via bookstores for the first time.

6. Kingdom Hearts 358/2Days: to be released February 2009.

7. Nintendo DS New Model: ...is now confirmed to have region restrictions. DOH.

Three new features in CTDS have been revealed by the latest Famitsu article, all of which will become accessible once the player reach the End of Time for the very first time:

1. The Twist (Distortion) of Time (ToT): this is a new dungeon accompanied by a new subplot, written and directed by the original CT/SNES staff Masahito Kato. Once you travel to the deepest piont of a ToT, you will gain new skills/powers. There are three instances of ToT in total, and when all of them are cleared, a shocking truth will be revealed...!?

2. Reptile Sanctuary: another new dungeon accessible through a mysterious Time Gate in-between Ancient Times and Middle Ages. This dungeon functions in a similar way as Final Fantasy XII mob hunts, where you must complete a number of requests from reptiles before you can advance in the area. Some of these requests will involve time travel, so have fun traveling between different eras while watching the subplot grow! And what reward will await the players at the end of the dungeon...?

3. Monster Arena: grow your own monster and participate at random battles in the Arena to acquire rare items! There are around 50 types of monster for the player to choose from, and by using the Wireless function of your DS, you can battle against friends' monsters if you're bored ;)

FYI: Release date of CTDS is now November 20, 7 days earlier than the original date! Approximate price for NA region is 50~55 dollars US ATM, though it could become lower if sales figure is high in Japan.

The first Space Elevator Conference is going to be held in Japan during November. Who knows, maybe we will be able to see a world similar to Gundam 00 by the time our grandchildren have grandchildren.

On the other hand, Japan has elected its new Prime Minister who's known to be a manga enthusiast. Not that it's so surprising because Japan = land of manga. Who knows, maybe Aso will take the initiative to perform future speeches with manga skits! /roflmao