NerDiarya

Ok Guys, I just have to write this down. After waiting for so long to watch a new Godzilla movie which would let me forget the frustrating US Version from 1998, I kissed the TV when first watching the teaser of the 2014 movie.

On my way to make it right on time to the cinema I didn’t care for speed limits, stop signs or police cars chasing me (at least it felt like this when speeding to the cinema^^) just so I wouldn’t miss the premiere of it. Well I made it and what followed was kind of...well let’s say disillusioning. After that I told myself to wait a while and watch it again, so that I hopefully could enjoy the movie with smaller expectations of it. Probably my skyscraper high expectations could have been the reason for my bad experience in the cinema. 

Carefull!! Spoiler Alert!! Unfortunately I was wrong again. The most brilliant actor in the movie  (Brian Cranston)  dies before it even really begins :-( I can’t shake off the feeling that they could just afford him for like 30 minutes. Anyway as the movie continues I realised once again that Godzilla wasn’t part of the main cast and that any monster action was downgraded to backround clips which you can see here and there in the movie if you are attentive. Yesterday  I fell asleep during the movie and woke up right on time to see how Godzilla pukes some blue energy drink stuff into the enemy Muto-Mouth...

Damn this looks awesome! My next B-Day wish, finally become a SSJ^^

How I promised I played the shit out of Dragoball XV for the PS4 and here comes my review!

So lets start with the intro. They just took the Cha-La-Head-Cha-La song from Battle of Gods for the Xenoverse Opening, which I actually don't mind because it's a badass version of the song and it got me pumped up.  I don't hate the opening like so many of you, however a lot of people seem to be really upset about this topic so I had to mention it.For sure they could have done it better but I am more focused on the game than the intro ;-)

Now lets talk about graphics. Yeah...graphics...I am gonna be frankly about this. Tokitoki, the town where you run around accept quests, buy stuff etc., looks like shit. The only posivitve thing about the city backround graphics is that it makes it look more like an online game giving me nostalgia about the Earth Special Forces Mod for Half Life.Well except that the servers here still don't work and I had to play the game through in oflline mode :-/ But the characters are made nicely. Don't expect anything special on PS4 as there should be likely no differences between the look of the PS4 and PS3 version of this game.

The gameplay is actually pretty nice as you chain combo after combo with a little feeling for timing and therefore make it look like a real dbz anime fight. But on the other hand the game is too easy, because you fire all special attacks via one button push and that´s it. So all you have to do is level up, frequently stock up and use items and fire as many Kamehamehas or Final Flashes till your enemies bite the dust. Actually this is a strong negative point of the game. The gameplay itself is easy but the enemies are so ridiculously overpowered that you really find yourself using just your strongest attack again and again just to finish it, especially if more than one enemy comes at you. So the leveling up and gameplay becomes, after starting up great and giving you combo chills in the beginning, pretty fast pretty boring. Actually when I was watching japanese livefeed from DB XV on my PS4 I  was wondering why people just use the same attack again and again instead of fighting with variety. First I thought this was stupid Noob gaming, but after playing the game I realised that  leveling up with sidequests is totally boring after a while and that there is no other chance to beat the game before you decide to just stop playing it. So in the end I also just fired Final Flash after Final Flash till it was over. Of course everything changes once you reached a high enough level, but getting there is really boring because of the gameplay, as I mentioned before. Also the RPG Elements like buying outfits and powerups are really basic and nothing which really fits the game, well at least THIS game. Especially the boosting abilities  by distributing point comes in unhandy as you have to specialize in energy or hand to hand combat attacks to do serious damage and therefore don't need to spend hours and hours for repeating sidequests to level up even more. Also a reason for loosing fighting varierty. Unfortunately I couldn't use the online elements of Xenoverse so no comment on that  from me except an angry #!!!!*''*###. Story also isn't special.The soundtrack also is not exciting and actually I don't even remember it except for the german release Cha-La-Head-Cha-La-Intro. 

I am sorry for sounding so disappointed but this is how I feel after one week of playing this game. In the beginning I was flashed by it but this feeling disappeared after 2 days. So I would say if you want to play a new DBZ game and you havent played one for years like me, than just try it out. You will for sure like the first 8 hours of gaming until you realise there is no skill needed for this game and therefore no real challenge. But if you can choose between the PS4 and PS3 version take the cheaper PS3 game as you will see nearly no difference.  

Well my Final Flash on Dragonball XV is that I will continue playing it at least to try out the online features, if they should ever work. But I feel more like dusting off my old Wii and play Budokai on it. But no hating points for the game, as other people may enjoy the shit out of it. Just for me the most positive memory will be the intro song from the latest DBZ Movie  ;-)

As I promised a week ago, my new writing topic will be about the term Otaku. What does it mean? Where does it come from? Where will it be going?

Otaku, as mostof you surely guessed, is a japanese term. Back in the old days it was used as honorific just meaning “You”. It is also interpreted as “the guy who stays at home” as its literally meaning o-taku is about the house or flat not belonging to the family of the one using the term. Complicated I know^^ But that’s my english interpretation of japanese ;-p

Otaku had and probably for a lot of people still has a very negative stigma, especially in Nippon. The typical Otaku is characterized as the fat guy with glasses, who is not able to handle social contacts and therefore shuts himself into his flat and gathers stuff on one special topic like a maniac. End of the 80’s it was probably the most feared type of subculture as Miyazaki Tsutomu, a child murderer, hit the news, who also was Otaku and so coined the image of it to being  not just freaky but also extremely dangerous.  But which facts now are true about Otakus?

First of all an Otaku really is somebody who specializes in a topic and gives his best to master it. So there are not just Otakus concerning Anime, but also Idol Otakus, Game Otakus, Weapon Otakus, Kaiju Otakus and a lot more. In General you can stick the term Otaku to any genre. Important is that the typical Otaku invests a lot of time and money and is absolutely passionate about his or her chosen topic.

So what about the social secludedness? On this actually I can’t really put my finger on as nowadays there is another term fitting this picture more than Otaku. I am sure there are people who shut themselves out from society and are Otaku but I am not sure if you can generalize that, especially as there is also Hikikomori. The Hikikomori is the actual term used for people who don’t want to be part of social life and shut themselves out. I guess in the last 10 or 15 years all the positive views about Anime and Japanese Pop Culture from us Westerners hit the island of Japan more and more as the demand for its culture export has risen exponentially. So  the western hype about Manga, Anime, J-Pop and whatever else combined with all the money it brought to the country helped change the opinion about loving this stuff and therefore also changing the opinion about Otakus. Otaku nowadays in western terms is something you can be proud of. People in Europe and the US love to Cosplay, make their own Dojinshis and praise Otakuism expressing their love for the topic. Even the term Fotaku developed which describes people who pretend to be Otaku but are not. The so called stigma of the Fake Otaku states that being Otaku is something that you need to earn and prove. That could be a reason why Hikikomori differentiates itself today from being Otaku, as the negative stigma of being Otaku has been outsourced to being Hikikomori. But that’s just my guess. I would have loved to actually research this stuff in Japan but maybe some other day ;) So the fear of hitting social has nowadays not necessarily much to do anymore with being Otaku as these people present themselves everywhere and especially on the net.

So in my opinion Otakus per se haven't changed much since they officially came up in the 80’s as a social group. But the perception of this group changed for sure and probably it’s going to change even more in the future as I don’t see an ending to it except if the subculture is going to implode and drag everything related to Otakuishm with it. Actually just now an interesting interview with my favourite director Hayao Miyazaki  crossed my mind. In this interview he said that Anime is suffering and will suffer even more in the future because the industry is full of Otakus. His reasoning behind this statement is that Animation derives from observing real people.  So if you don’t observe reality as a basis and just concentrate on fiction and fiction of fiction what is born is something like hyperfiction which has nothing to do with reality anymore. Well I am on his side as I love the beauty and depth of his movies but I can’t speak for all. I also watched crazy shit like Kill La Kill or FLCL and have to say it was pretty sugoi (PS. This is a special ambivalent statement for my Japanese speakers^^). But imagining a world with only fucked up, crazy shit Anime is not my thing.

For today my final opinion about Otaku is the following. The term Otaku has a lot of colour shadings as there are Otakus who need to be Otaku to give themselves a feeling of control and stability through mastering their topic, which is on the borderline to Hikikomori. But on the other side are also Otakus who just love their hobby and don’t make unbalanced sacrifices to enjoy it as they draw stability and safety from other sources, while promoting and sharing the love for their Otaku Genre.

I hope you liked my little contribution to the topic! If you want to know more about Otaku or Hikikomori you should watch Animes like Welcome to N.H.K or Genshiken. Not to forget the classic tale of Otaking in Otaku no Video. There are also a lot of documentaries and scientific papers on the net. It’s best to make your own opinion about the topic!

I am gonna leave you now with the hymn of Otaking.  Next Time you are going to read about my experiences with the already infamous Dragonball Xenoverse for PS4. I will play and write the shit out of this game, so see you next week!

Dimosthenis Bacharidis