First, a little more about the game. You can assist your heroes buy building markets that sell potions and smithies for armor and weapons. The heroes pocket the money they make adventuring, then spend it on items to make themselves stronger. The money in the markets then returns to you buy way of taxes, collected from all buildings under your control. That’s not to say that you have no way to directly influence the battlefield. You also gain access to various spells that can deal damage or heal heroes, among other things.

Additionally, the game comes with a healthy does of character. Heroes and peasants alike comment to themselves as they go about their business, and your advisor speaks in a rather outrageous Scottish accent. The mission descriptions are also well written, with a bit of rambling and just enough non sequitur to remind me of Monty Python.

As for the demo itself, I think it has some good points and weak points. The first tutorial mission is a given, and does a good job introducing each concept one at a time. The second mission, however, is an interesting choice. On one hand, mission gives you access to all the buildings in the game, a nice touch. On the other hand, the mission is quite hectic and unforgiving. From the general feeling of the game, along what I’ve read on the game’s site, the main campaign will be less frantic and have a more forgiving difficulty curve.

Despite the rather frustrating mission choice in the demo, the character and interesting gameplay were enough to make me want to look into the game further. The indirect nature of the game conveniently counteracts my inability to micromanage several groups of units like most RTS games require.

You can find the demo here.

Alright, bear with one more of these and after this I’ll try to write about something more recent. Cowboy Bebop is the first anime I purchased back when I was little and it’s still at the top of my list. Bebop is the story of five bounty hunters, or rather three bounty hunters, a child-genius hacker, and a dog (who might just be the smartest of the bunch). The show is based around blues music and incorporates themes from the genre into the story.

First off, the music is the show is absolutely amazing. Oozing style in every song, I would say it’s reason enough to watch the show. Most of the songs fall squarely into the jazz and blues categories, but range as wide as metal and Arabic. This style carries over to the rest of the show, with moody visuals and and excellent voice acting. The English voice acting deserves special mention, as Cowboy Bebop is one of the few shows where I enjoyed listening to the English voice cast just as much as the Japanese one.

The show consists of 26 episodes, most of which are unconnected, but many deal with the characters’ past and each character seems to grow a bit over the course of the show. While the show generally carries a darker tone, fitting in with the blues, there is plenty of humor mixed in and a few episodes are just outright silly. There is also a movie that fits somewhere within the middle of the series but it does a good job of introducing the cast and can be enjoyed without any knowledge of the series.

Below is the opening credits, which give a good feel for the style and excellent music.

Yotsuba&! is a manga about the adventures of a 5 year old girl. It is also one of the cutest and funniest things you can ever read.

Yotsuba means “four leaves” and usually refers to four leaf clover. Fitting her name, the titular Yotsuba has green hair always tied in four pigtails. The & in the title refers to the individual chapters, which are almost always titled “Yotsuba &  _____“.

The series has no overarching plot but instead focuses on Yotsuba’s daily escapades around the neighborhood. While she shares a normal five year old’s energy and imagination, Yotsuba is strange in many ways, lacking any knowledge of things such as zoos, swings, or doorbells. She often drags others with her on her adventures (willingly or unwillingly), and their attempts to explain often increase her confusion, rather than diminish it. Ever determined, Yotsuba turns these misunderstandings into adventures and embodies the series’s often stated theme: Enjoy Everything.

This is where the true fun of the series comes in. Yotsuba’s indomitable enthusiasm for everything she undertakes and her unbridled joy at even the smallest victories shows the bliss of being a child, of discovering something new every day. Yotsuba&! holds the distinction of being one of the few books that can make me laugh out loud (not just a chuckle, but a real laugh). I could go on and on, but it’d only spoil the fun of reading it for yourself.

The series is still continuing in Dengeki Daioh magazine, eight volumes have been collected and release in Japan, and five of those have been translated into English. The English licence had sat idle for over a year, but a new translation company has picked it up and is planning to release Volume 6 this month.

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I love my main school, the kids are mostly great (a few rascals) and all the teachers are easy to work with. Being big means nice facilities and lots of friends, but it also means bigger (noisier and harder to manage) classes and more visitors. Having people come to observe class doesn’t bother me too much, but it stresses the teachers out, which stresses me out by proxy. My new school is the opposite end of the spectrum. The students are few enough that you never have to worry about them being to loud, everybody knows each other, and I had most of the children’s names memorized by the end of the first day. It’s the rural slow life in its purest form, and the relaxed atmosphere ought to make starting each week a lot easier.

Anime means animation

While in the US, the term anime refers specifically to the Japanese style, in Japan all cartoons are anime. Mickey Mouse, Shrek, anything that’s animated.

Everyone reads manga

While there are exceptions to this, the vast majority of Japan reads some type of manga. With little censorship and a low development cost, artists are free to write for any age group on any topic they can think of. Subject matter of manga can range from vampires to bakeries to clumsy musicians.

There is more to Japan than Tokyo

Despite what Japanese media would lead you to believe (anime and manga included), not everyone lives in Tokyo. Most of Japan (like me) lives elsewhere. While Japan is much more homogeneous that a country like the US, there are still significant differences between regions.

Not every otaku looks like Densha Otoko

While the poorly dressed, socially awkward young man is still the most common denizen of anime shops, he far from the only one. Older men, hip young business men, women of all ages like anime too, and numerous shops now cater specifically to high school and college age girls.

Girl’s manga is full of sex

I don’t know a lot about shojo manga, but  anything targeted at middle school girls or old seems to revolve around dating and sex, often featuring nudity. Shonen manga, by comparison, is largely content with awkward confessions and the occasional kiss.

I realize half of this post doesn’t really have much to do with otaku, but I guess that’s kinda the point. Classics like Gundam and Dragonball are wider spread that Superman or Spider-man could ever hope to be, and anime often tops DVD sales charts. Anime and manga are accepted as legitimate art forms and enjoy the respect and ability to experiment that such acceptance entails. There will always be works that only appeal to the core otaku community, just as not everyone who enjoys watching sports spends hours agonizing over stats and managing a fantasy team.

I enjoyed K-On! and hope that the anime will continue with a second or third season to finish out the girl’s journey through high school. It seems to be pretty popular as well, I’ve seen several bags and t-shirts on the trains and the K-On CDs have been at the front of music stores for several months now. I’d like to buy a few, but I just can’t justify paying $12 for two tracks per CD.

There are three main brances of the game:

- Ambient levels are usually the most sedate, and are made up of normal motes and antimatter motes. Antimatter motes absorb other antimatter like normal, but when they collide with normal motes both are reduced leaving only the remainder of the biggest mote behind.

- Sentient levels focus on motes that move on their own. Some will only run away from you, while others will try to eat you if they have the advantage. The extra motion and race for food makes these level significantly more frantic that the others.

- Force levels add two new motes, the repulser (pushes other motes away) and the attractor (pulls motes towards it, can absorb motes bigger than itself). Many force levels start with you orbiting a large attractor, forcing you to mind your velocity lest you be pulled into the “sun”. Helpfully, the game allows you to see a projection of your current orbit which turns red if you are headed towards danger. I found the force levels to be the hardest of the three, but also the most enjoyable.

In all levels after the tutorial, you are allowed to slow down or speed up time. This is great for situations that require split second timing or for shortening the wait for your mote to make its way around a long orbit. Also, if you feel that a certain level is impossible, you can randomize the starting positions and hopefully improve your odds. This also adds to the replay value, keeping levels from being the exact same set of steps every time.

Overall, I would highly recommend the game. It’s simple, deep, and relaxing. There is a sizable demo and a trailer on the main site here.

Osmos is available on PC for $10. I bought it on Steam. It’s also available from Direct2Drive and the Hemisphere Games site.

Goal #1: Get writing!

Goal #2: Reduce the oppressive amounts of suck currently plauging this site.