Toukiden thoughts

I have tried numbers of similar games to Monster Hunter over past few years and now Toukiden goes into the list as well. I have just finished the story mode few days ago and at the moment is halfway through the multiplayer mission. I am a Spear user since i was a Lancer in MH and i find the weapon is the most versatile weapon in the game for any role and i use SPT mitama since i loved to break Oni parts and this mitama is the best for this task.

 I have tried Ragnarok Odyssey, God Eater and Lord of Arcana but in my opinion Toukiden beats them all when it comes to the potential to be a real contender to MH and even surpass it if given couple of years. While the gameplay mechanics is nowhere as solid as MH, Toukiden took all of the good things from the previous MH clones and improvise on them which are shown in the form of their core gameplay like Mitamas(which are similar to RO cards but less tedious) and then AIs which are even more competent than God Eater which was pretty good already as well as cool but not too flashy combat compared to Lord of Arcana. The main weakness of Toukiden is the lack of content which is rather expected  considering the effort spent on the first game is mostly focused on how things works in the game and after you finished Chapter 5 things are abit repetitive as the game have introduced all of the Onis variation by the time you finish the storyline. However i would say Koei Tecmo is already pretty much on the right track for this game considering the first God Eater is even less perfect than Toukiden and once a expansion title is released the game will show more of its worth. Most people forgot Toukiden is just first iteration of the series and it can't compete with MH yet as the later have come a long way before it reached the position up until now.

What i wish for the future expansion or possible sequel is more Onis obviously as well as more AI partners so it would be merrier as well as more variation of the Mitama Spells and lastly less wackier end game armors. Give Toukiden 2 or 3 years and i believe it will be a serious contender for Monster Hunter.

Even the series got really adorable Mascot!

Supersylph Yukikaze

I watched the OVA years ago which is beautifully animated though rather hard to follow and afterward i decided to get the Novels which have 2 volumes translated so far as i heard good things about them. Took me a year actually to get to read the novel but certainly this novel is well written one. The setting is your basic Humanity against Alien but what makes Yukikaze unique is the design of the Alien themselves which are called JAM in this series. Unlike most Aliens, design JAMs are not vicious looking creature like Zergs or Tyranids but instead in the novel they are deoicted as rather enigmatic beings, While Humanities managed to fight a stalemate fight with JAMs it appears that the Aliens are much sinister than they appear to be which is why they are rather appealing. Just like the OVA, Yukikaze focus on relationship between Rei Fukai and his seemingly sentient plane Yukikaze herself which feels like a romance between human and machine.

The first book is rather episodic roughly about Rei's daily life on Faery, the planet where the war with JAMs are being waged on and then the 2nd book takes up on the pace where one of the JAMs sinister plan begin to take place. For this series i wouldn't say it is appropriate to compare which works is superior but the Novel and the OVA goes hand in hand where the Novel served as the the foundation for the series and the OVA complements it. I heard there is 3rd book from the series which is untranslated yet but i hipe it will be translated one day

B-Daman Bakugaiden Saint Dragon

Back when i was a kid around 4th grade i was collecting B-Daman toys which were robot plastic model kits which you had a small B-daman to put on the ball like cockpit. And today i was digging back my old toys and saw the particular toys which was the Yellow Robot that can be combined with other 2 Robots to form a giant robot which i used to have all 3 of them. This makes me dig the net and found what i was looking for and decided to write this post. It turns out the robot toys are from particular B-daman series called Bakugaiden and it seems there is another item to be put on wishlist. This particular set called Saint Dragon have 4 robot model from White, Blue, Yellow and Black bomber can be combined together to form a dragonlike mech named Saint Dragon. By this time this product is really rare and going to cost a kidney to get one either on Ebay or Mandarake costing about more than $100.

I think i will try to find this toy when i go to Hongkong and didn't care if it is bootleg due to rarity status because these toys means alot for me when i was a kid and partially drives me to get into plastic models. First i think i am going to watch the B-daman Bakugaiden no matter how silly the series and if anyone knows where can i get this toy for reasonable price, please let me know but it would be even better if Takara Tomy decided to reissue the kit one day. Before i stopped writing at this post, here is the giant robot that i said to be the combination of the 3 robots which is called Saint Blaster.

RAH Hei Darker than Black

Up until now my impression with Darker than Black is not the best especially due to 2nd season but we can still admit the series did have characters like our favorite Chinese electric batman, Hei. There is not much DtB merchandise but at least they got a very good physical representation of this lead character from the series. The figure was released back in 2011 by medicom the creator of Real action heroes series and it cost like more than 20k yen to get one but i think it is well worth the price. I think if i ever go to Japan, this is one of the item that i will look for there considering the market price for a piece of RAH Hei will cost you an arm and a leg to get which you can have a look on Ebay. Hei kinda reminds me with the protagonist from Nitroplus VN called Kikokugai, Kong Taoluo who got couple of close similarities. What do you guys think?

Chinese electric batman predecessor?