With apologies in advance to those who truly have Aspergers Syndrome.
For those who don’t know, I ran a journal dedicated to a MMO I used to play for sometime. As of now, I have retired and will never play another MMO.
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As a person who has been playing video games since 1990′s and has some experience playing the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Atari 2600, the entire gaming culture has changed over the past 20 years. To state that video games changed is an understatement. Gaming has evolved in ways that it still made my head spin at times. Call me a retro game player but that is much I am raised since I am living on a budget until I acquired a gaming PC laptop.
As for the entire gaming culture and assuming that the audience are reasonable human beings, I would like to explain why I am fed up with gaming culture.
Taking a break from Piracy and have something else to talk about.
By all means talking about a touchy subject is about as fun as running through a minefield as a size of a football field from both ends. Neither side wins or lose.
…Are simply wagering their e-penises.
I wonder, since technology grows with leaps and bounds. I recall that in my early teens, televisions were by their standard definition ratio 4:3. Now TVs are 16:9 ratio, perfect for either stretching 4:3 ratio into horrible proportions or ideal for moviegoers who wants to watch movies at home. From vinyl records to cassette tapes to walkmen to CD players to now MP3 players.
A relevant article by Torrentfreak sparked my interest since some people are behind with technology in which others are okay with it but some left with mixed reactions and anger in their wake.
As a person who witness technology becoming for better/worse I can recall that DVD players introduced to the market was expensive. A decade later, DVD players are available to every home. About the price of a VCR today. Blu Ray happens to be the replacement of the DVD players but can I see why people are hesitant to buy Blu Ray players. Expensive? Still above 50 USD and people still have standard definition TVs. Any upscale/advantages over DVDs? Not so much but it is getting clearer when the dust settles for a couple of years and it shows improvement. It is a reasonable explanation why people still get left behind with technology.
I can see the understanding why people didn’t like the new formats but playing it for your DVD/PS3/Xbox 360 player? Even better. I wanted to play 10 bit mkv videos on my 1080 television but it wouldn’t.
As a person who is not familiar with playback files such as mp3, wmv, aac, flac, avi, swf, mp4, x264 and mkv, I can certainly see why pirate groups and fansubbers prefer using better playback formats.
To those who doesn’t know the difference between files named above, these are the following grouped:
Music or sound files: mp3, wav and flac.
Image files: jpeg, bmp, png.
video files: avi, wmv, flv, mp4, mkv.
Best for sound? flac. Best for Images? png. In exceptions when taking photos in real life, jpeg is good. Best for video files? mkv.
From a fansub perspective in the early years of 2000 with their purpose to piss off licensing companies most fansubbers hard subbed in avi format. Till the late year 2000s fansubbers use mkv format due to shows becoming more high definition and that mkv can do more than what avi does. Examples such as selecting subs on/off (an example of softsubbing) and chapter entries. Most people torrent/DDL mkv format simply because there is a considerable difference when watching and function on mkv and avi. Difference would happen to be quality and the way how the episode is chaptered.
A new issue for fansubbers is the transition from 8 bit to 10 bit. Many people are analpained about fansubbers who still use 8 bit playback instead of 10 bit. While I am all for better picture quality and I upgraded to a better PC, to say that people who watch the 8 bit version is like watching eye cancer. That hurts because not everyone can watch HD anime in 1080p and some people wouldn’t mind dealing with blocky pictures. Cue reasons why an anime made in 1990′s – early 2000 – 2007 isn’t worth converting into HD versions unless the Blu Ray came out. Better to watch 4:3 anime on a standard computer screen than 16:9 and vice versa with having black lines on top and bottom or left and right.
Even 720p vs 1080p has slight difference but for my eyes, it sees no difference unless it happens to be a movie made from Hollywood. Same goes for FLAC vs. AAC sound files. Unless you have really good ears.
Perhaps people can finally stop asking old people why in our olden days our entertainment looks like shit.
To those who don’t know what is shounen or anything Japanese, Shounen is a genre that fixates on action sequences much like Hollywood’s audiences on action movies. Be it that manly 1 on 1 fights, guns a blazing, cat fights, you know the drill and it carries itself to Japanese animation.
The holy trinity known as the big three (Bleach, Naruto and One Piece) focus on action scenes, sometimes stories but loads and loads of characters. As for the adventures, it seems to never end. Some of shows reached up to 500 episodes and manga grows up to 30 volumes.
Now, I watched Full Metal Alchemist, D-Gray Man and Beelzebub and Blue Exorcist being classified as shounen. Some good, some okay, some are cookie cutters and some are more than meets the eye.
When I watched Naruto I stopped at episode 160 because the plot pretty much crashed and got stuck with filler episodes that go nowhere except character development. That is my main concern about watching 60+ episodes. Even if I did rewatch the series again, Shippuden would even leave more questions unanswered. When I was watching Bleach, I have no idea what is going on and it didn’t hook me in.
Problem with shounen series is that they tend to drag the plot long, has 60+ characters that it is impossible to memorize all of them, increased filler to either character development and/or padding the show and teaches about friendship and small lessons typical of every shounen show. Most of the anime happens to follow the original story through manga, light novel or have the director does their own way.
The recent anime Beelzebub was finished and it was okay as a typical shounen show. Decent characters, absurd silliness and fillers that are decent. Blue Exorcist on the other hand was a cookie cutter of shounen shows. Filler episodes, decent characters but awful ending.
How do I end this? Oh yeah cop out ending.
