Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Vampire Knight... in America!

Art by http://sagakure.deviantart.com/
There are two things I love in anime: silver hair and twins. Needless to say, Vampire Knight and I are a match made in heaven. It was my very first manga and I have every volume to date. I watched the original anime a while back and liked it okay but not as much as the manga. In case you didn’t know, the first dubbed DVD came out yesterday. I plan on buying it soon but I wanted to see (rather, hear) how the voices came out. I won’t link it, but there are some episodes ripped from the DVD floating around the internets. I watched a little of the first episode (for educational purposes early, I swear!) and I felt the need to rant.

Let me start off with Yuki. I pictured her sounding like Haruhi Suzumiya for some reason. I guess I’m not the only one because Yuki’s voice resembles Haruhi’s, but more annoying. Fun fact, Wendee Lee voices Haruhi and Mela Lee voices Yuki (I don’t think there is a relation). Her voice is pretty good but who cares, she’s just the vessel fangirls use to insert themselves in the story, myself included. So is the curse of brunette heroines.

The next character is Aido, voiced by Bryce Papenbrook. The choice was genius! My favorite line: “Bang~”. Truth be told he sounds just like Vic Mignogna. When I saw the cast list that is who I thought was dubbing Aido but NOOOOOO *sulk*. Don’t worry, I’ll get to Zero soon enough. In the same token is Kain/Troy Baker appears. I have a major crush on Troy. He’s so sexy... oh and he’s talented too *sweatdrop*. He voiced Snow from FFXIII too, which is quite a jump. My point being: Idol and Wild get an A+!

Now for Kaname. Oh Kaname. Let me start of saying I like Ethan Murray. The only other anime I’ve seen him in was Gankutsuou. I know he is a very good voice actor underneath it all. He voiced Franz D’Epinay in Gankutsuou and I had the same reaction to his voice then as I do now. When I first heard him as Franz I thought “Oh my god this guy sounds like a robot. He can’t voice for sh*t!”. As the series went on his voice grew on me and he did some amazing work in the series. It’s my opinion that he over-thinks things in the beginning but, once he gets more comfortable with the character it comes naturally. I’ll hold out for you, Ethan Murray. Even though, deep in my heart, I wish Crispin Freeman was voicing Kaname (even if Kaname is supposed to be high school age).

Lastly, what we’ve all been waiting anxiously for (for many reasons): Zero. I’m relieved. My reaction was “Wow, he really didn’t do that bad!”. I love Vic, but I just couldn’t envision him as Zero. My Zero sounds like, I dunno, Johnny Yong Bosch or Yuri Lowenthall. Vic does well, but I haven’t seen too many parts when he fits emo Zero. The normal Zero though, he works just fine.

On an ending note, I’m not too angry about the dub. I’m also not ecstatic either. I can only hope everything comes together in later episodes. Side note: Headmaster Cross rocks! I wish he would be a bit more zany though...

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Final Fantasy XIII: A 'Hopeless' Situation



Anyone that calls themselves a JRPG fan probably has played Final Fantasy XIII. If you haven’t and intend to, here’s a spoiler alert. Also, the adorable fanart was done by http://jiin-chan.deviantart.com/.


First off, I adore Final Fantasy XIII. This is the first FF game that I’ve anticipated (I’ve been an Nintendo fangirl since 2002 and only got my PS2 in 2008) and I think it’s amazing. I’d played FF X and XII before but didn’t care for them too much, i.e I failed miserably most of the time. Only now that I’m almost done with FFXIII am I playing VII which is apparently the holy grail of video games. Most of you probably know the reasons FFXIII is criticized since it is a departure from the series. It’s too linear, there aren’t any towns to explore, the difficulty level is pretty measly, ect. All of those are valid reasons. I think there is one other reason why some players can’t completely love FFXIII. Hope Estheim. It seems that he just annoys the living sh*t out of most players. And yeah, I can understand that. But he’s just so... CUTE! He’s so sensitive and naive, you just want to hug him! Stupid Vanille got to do it, and I’m ninety percent sure she is a lesbian. Anyway, I think his character was made specially for the fangirls. Yes, he's an emo kid in the beginning then gets all happy and preachy but hey, he's cuddly.