Code Geas (Season One?)

I recently finished (and started) this anime. It is pretty addicting - I watched the first 15 episodes straight. Anyway, it is a mecha type with some Death Note-esque undertones of trickery and mind games. The pacing was excellent, nothing was drawn out - a fatal flaw of many anime. The characters were interesting and human and the fight scenes were good. I'll try to give some thoughts on it without spoiling anything.

Unfortunately, very little was resolved and it ended up a huge cliff hanger. More episodes are supposed to air this summer and there are rumors that a whole season two is in the works. There is certainly room for another season; there are tons of unresolved plot lines.

The plot was very interesting and always kept moving. The cast is quite large - although Lelouch (the main character) is clearly..well..the main character, many other characters are involved and fleshed out as well. It felt like quite a bit of the story was taken from Gundam SEED, but that is what you expect in anime I guess... However, the story is different enough to still be its own story and well done as well.

Left: Kira and Lacus from Gundam SEED
Right: Euphie and Suzaku from Code Geas

The character designs by CLAMP definitely call to mind their previous work. Sometimes I felt almost like I was watching Tsubasa Chronicle again. Suzaku (pictured above, right most) is a dead ringer for Tsubasa's Syaoron (who is himself taken from Card Captor Sakura). Code Geas stands out though with its darker characters and violent storyline.

I can't really say much more without spoiling anything (yes there are that many twists), but I really enjoyed this anime and I am looking forward to the new episodes. Anyone who liked Gundam SEED or Death Note will probably like Code Geas.

Heroes Season Finale

As you may have guessed, massive spoilers ahead.

I felt this season finale was a let down. So Nathan decided to sacrifice his life to save New York. Why couldn't Peter just fly away on his own? Did his inability to control Ted's ability extend to all of his abilities at that moment? Also, what a bad moment for Hiro to lose control of his powers AGAIN. I thought he had just worked out the whole thing with the sword. I'm still not sure why they didn't just shoot Peter - "There has to be another way!" - who cares! This way no one dies, but instead you opted for the method that kills Nathan. If you shoot Peter he can just regenerate. This whole thing seemed like a very contrived way for Nathan to throw away his life, when there were multiple other choices right there.

Of course the whole thing could have been prevented if Peter hadn't stuck around in New York. I can see the thought process in his head now "Oh no! I'm going to meet this guy Ted in New York then explode! Time to go look for him around the city." I mean, come on, how dumb can you get.

Sylar seems to have escaped into the sewers. This makes me wonder if they have even changed the future at all. If Sylar is still alive with Ted's power he can explode at any time...kill Ando at any time...and still bring about that future which Hiro saw. I also thought it was pretty lame how he got stabbed. He just forgot to use his telekinesis or something? He was so shocked that Hiro showed up to kill him for the millionth time that he was helpless?

The scene with Simone's father was very interesting; not only the content but what it was. Did Charles have some kind of power involving dreams with the future/past? Or did he have a power similar to Sanjog Iyer's (the Indian kid who visited Mohinder's dreams). Were Peter's early visions simply a power he unwittingly absorbed from Charles?

The cliff hanger was interesting too. Hiro in Japan a few hundred years ago. Maybe he will shape up to be more like the Future Hiro we saw, but less cold because he saved Ando. Unfortunately I don't think this adventure into historical Japan will last very long. Heroes is built on the character interaction of normal people with extraordinary abilities. Where Hiro is now has a lot of unnormal (by viewer standards) people with ordinary abilities. I imagine Hiro will learn some stuff from the Kensei and be on his way back to the present in short order.

In any case, I hope next season ends a bit better. Season one ended with little resolution: Sylar gets away, Nathan needlessly sacrifices himself, Hiro ends up in a strange time/place yet again. Basically the only interesting thing that happened is all the heroes finally ended up in the same place at the same time in a friendly manner. We'll see how long that lasts of course...

Tales of the Abyss

So recently I've been playing a great deal of Tales of the Abyss. I know it came out quite a few months ago but I've just recently found the time to play it. So far I'm pretty impressed (I'm on my second playthrough on the hardest difficulty), Namco has improved on many of the problems from Tales of Symphonia. My main problem with ToS are the characters. They are flat and static, barely growing as the story unfolds. Sure, we learn some interesting things about their pasts and origins, but does that act as a catalyst for character growth? Nope. They just continue in the same vein.

ToA definitely addresses this problem. Along the epic story (which is full of the usual Tales problems; mainly it goes on so long the beginning no longer even makes sense as far as character motives go) we have the development of the main character Luke. While I won't spoil anything, I really enjoyed his complete transformation as a person.

A lot of other problems from ToS are fixed as well. The battle camera now works with more than 1 player; in ToS anyone besides first player was almost constantly off camera making game play impossible. Overlimit now has a purpose which makes things interesting and the cel shading isn't as rough and jagged as it was on ToS. The free run feature in battle is also nice, making it quite easy to dodge many spells (not that the AI is smart enough to use it..).

Many of the new additions are great too. The AD Skills/Capacity Cores system is far more interesting and useful than the EX Skills system from ToS. As mentioned above, overlimits now have a use; mystic arts. This is your standard Limit Break/Overdrive/ougi/super move type deal, but it can be interesting working them into combos.

There is also some more replayability. Some arts/dungeons/titles/treasures can only be accessed on the 2nd play through of the game. To go with this, 2 new difficulties are unlocked for the second play through as well so you can challenge yourself. Right now I am playing on "unknown" difficulty and it's pretty tough. The first boss had around 40k hp and I only hit for 1 on every attack....

Of course, some problems remained. The overworld, although slightly better looking, is still awful. The ToS overworld looked like it was on the SNES. The ToA overworld is more like PSX. The camera in the overworld rotates very slowly and even stutters constantly. Vehicles also turn very slowly; pulling a 180 degree turn around is a lengthy endeavor full of camera stuttering. The autopilot feature is gained later in the game which makes the world map more bearable, but it has its own problems as well. When you autopilot somewhere the game gives you a loading screen just for moving positions on the world map - it doesn't even put you inside the place. So, you end up loading (just to change positions in the world map), then landing and entering the place, which takes more loading.

New problems also arose. Saving and loading take a good chunk of time. Saving especially; expect to spend at least 10 seconds whenever you want to save, I recommend a bathroom break. This is a major disappointment from ToS's near instant saving and loading, I guess its an issue with gamecube vs PS2.

Anyway, I am very pleased with ToA. I expected a rehash of ToS or worse (Tales of Legendia anyone?), but instead found ToA to be an improvement in almost every area, especially character development.