Intro

Many of my interest revolve around anime, manga, and video games, as well as books and music. These pages are dedicated to those interests, where I can basically have fun with other people's creations when I'm bored of tormenting my own.

My top interests right now are actually in video games and books, having taken a step away from anime for the moment. I'm really looking forward to certain upcoming releases, including Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days and Final Fantasy Dissidia, which I plan to buy the moment they are released in America, starving college student or not.

Crisis Core

I finished Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII not so long ago (I'd gotten distracted for a while from finishing the game, but I've been almost done with it for some time) and I figured I'd write a bit about that. (Warning, spoilers.) I have to admit, Crisis Core was a great game, possibly a favorite, although I had some problems with it. For everyone who's played FFVII they're familiar with who Zack Fair is. He stars as the main characters in Crisis Core, and after a few levels into the game, I absolutely fell in love with him.

Zack is an extremely happy character compared to most of my favorites (ex: Squall) and I love his development. I've never played the original FFVII all the way through, I borrowed it from a friend but stopped playing when I got Crisis Core because I wanted to finish this one first. I didn't get very far in the original at all. FFVII is so well known however, that I already knew about Zack's existence before hand, and I'd always been curious as to what kind of character he was. Throughout CC he's repeatedly referred to as a "puppy" and I think it fits. His biggest dream is to become a hero, and in the end it takes practically all of Shinra's army to kill him. Any character who needs an entire army to kill gets stars in my book, but comments on the story come later. I feel like Zack had so much potential, and there was so much that could be done with him, it makes me sad he dies in the end. I knew from the beginning he was going to die, and yet it was still so dramatic to actually see happen since he was such a likable character. I'm almost worried to keep playing FFVII now because I feel like he's going to be completely forgotten in it.

I'd always heard about Sephiroth and how he's the main villian in FFVII, so Genesis (right) and Angeal (left) kind of surprised me. I never figured Sephiroth would be a character who had "friends", even before he found out about Jenova, but I liked how he was portrayed as being deeper than just an obsessed villain. I'm hoping I get to carry this over into my continuation of the original game as well.

The actual story of Crisis Core is pretty self explanatory, in simplicity. It's about the truth behind the entire Sephiroth affair, what happened to Cloud, who the hell Zack is, etc. I'm going to cut down on explaining the story, if you want to know everything that happens so bad, play the game. It starts with Zack being a 2nd class SOLDIER, aiming to be a 1st while declaring his desire to become a hero. He looks up to the other 1st, one of whom is his mentor, Angeal. He ends up inheriting the Buster Sword from Angeal when he dies, and carries it with him. A lot of what Zack believes in comes from Angeal, he taught him about honor and dreams, and in turn Zack taught it to many other SOLDIERs. Zack was extremely popular it seemed in Shinra, there was even an option for him to get his own fanclub after becoming 1st, although people on the streets didn't know him as much.

Then there was, of course, his meeting with Aerith. No, I will not call her Aeris, hush. Zack falls off of the top part of Sector 5 Reactor after fighting Angeal and crashes through the top of Aerith's church, like Cloud. It seems like guys just fall for Aerith all the time. At any rate, she seemed kind of shy at first, with her entire talk about being afraid of the sky. I liked her in Crisis Core, she's sweet and innocent, but has enough attitude to make her interesting around Zack and a likable character. I actually thought the love story forming between them was really cute, they went really well together. In the end, it's Aerith's 89th and final letter telling Zack that he's been gone for four years and that she's done waiting for a response that causes Zack to return to Midgar, where he's ambushed by the Shinra army and killed.

One of the most dramatic scenes in my opinion was the destruction of Banora. There was so much raw emotion there, that it made me extremely sad to see everything burning. Maybe I'm looking way too far into the game, but the Dumbapples seemed to become a major symbol about everything that was happening. Angeal mentions them pretty early in the game, and they reappear almost every time Genesis is around.

Yuffie has some cute cameos. She appears once or twice in the actual story, after that you have to play through a number of missions to get all of her appearances. And yes, she steals from you. Repeatedly. But it's so cute how she does it, that I really didn't care. Cid is mentioned if you're looking at the rocket in the Shinra building at one point, and Tifa shows up in Nibelheim, which is part of the FFVII plot that many people already know of. Vincent's coffin is there as well, under the manor, which scenery was changed for Crisis Core.

Cloud and Zack hit it off after meeting very quickly. Cloud really admires him, and they become friends. Cloud isn't even in SOLDIER when they first meet, and he never becomes one either. I think their relationship was done well, although it makes me sad to think that Cloud completely forgets about Zack later. Of course, that was all caused by this:

The ending was just plain tragic. Even knowing that Zack was going to die from the beginning, the ending just drove it home. I came to really like this game, the only problems I had with it was the leveling was difficult and annoying and there wasn't as much freedom to go places as other Final Fantasy games. The maps for the missions were reused too much, and after a little while the missions became rather boring because they were all so similar. But as for the actual story line, I thought it was amazing. Zack was a great character, and his death was horrible. I'm having trouble seeing FFVII giving him the justice he deserves. I played the game in English, but after looking up the Japanese ending, I have to say, Cloud's scream is haunting. In English it was bad, but the Japanese voice actor captured the moment so much better. The last words in the game is Zack asking, "Hey, would you say I became a hero?"

Nataka S.

May 25, '09

Anime Boston

Anime Boston was great this year. There were over 15k attendants, and considering there were only 9k something last year, it was a really big jump. I've spoken about the Artist Alley table plenty, and there's a blog entry about all the things I did while I was there, so let's skip to what I got out of it.

First of all, while in the AA I had the pleasure of buying a few prints, pins, and a key chain. In the picture there's also a pin and small figure from the Dealers Room. You might notice a theme here. Yes, for the most part my entire trip revolved around buying Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy items. The Sesshomaru pin is actually for my sister, whom I said I'd get something for.

Then I got a few prints: Sorry about some of the shine, the camera belongs to my mother and I have no idea how to turn the flash off. They were really cool, I'm kind of disappointed that the first one doesn't have Cid, Red XIII, or Cait Sith in it, but I suppose it would've been hard adding all the characters into the space. The third print was just adorable, I had to get it. I was actually debating buying a Zack print from the same artists, but I didn't have the money.

In the Dealers Room I completely overpaid for this: , but I couldn't find one anywhere else on the second day, so I didn't care. It looks so neat, doesn't it? The one thing that really bothers me is that finger. You can't see it so much in this picture, but the trigger finger is... a little scary in length, and I'll leave it at that. And that Riku Figure that I wrote about in a previous post? Couldn't find one anywhere. Seriously, it just didn't exist. I was made extremely jealous by some Japanese Dissidias on sale, and a Final Fantasy VII PS3, but no Riku figure. I was really disappointed.

Also in the Dealers Room I bought some Kingdom Hearts t-shirts. Pretty nifty, if I say so myself. My first con bought shirts actually. I was attacked with one during closing ceremonies my first year, but I always figured buying shirts at a con was a waste of money before. Guess I don't anymore. At any rate, those were my purchases. Anime Boston was great, If I can find a good picture of my cosplay I might come back and post it, but that's it for now.

Nataka S.

May 25, '09

Riku Figure

Here's something I noticed a day or two ago that really caught my attention. Frankly, I think J's rubbing off on me- because the moment I saw this I squee-ed and promptly tried to find out information. Needless to say, it's a Riku figurine.

For those of you who still don't know me, I'm not normally attracted to figures, plushies are a bigger deal for me and even then it's not a very big part of my fandom. However, seeing as this is Riku- KHII Riku for that matter, which I like more than his KHI character- I kind of want it. Plus, it just looks awesome. I love Riku as a character- he's currently third in my top three- and the only thing I have of him is a plushie. Unfortunately, right now I only saw that this was being sold in Japan. Hopefully it will come over to America soon since I don't like ordering from overseas, and hopefully it's not limited edition or anything. I didn't see anything like that, but knowing my luck it might be. Hopefully I'll be able to find it at Anime Boston, and it won't be too expensive.

Also, click the picture to get the full scan of the image (which I took from a site that I can't quite remember the name to), and you can see Squall up top with Dissidia characters. In case you were wondering, Squall's number two on that list of top three characters.

Nataka S.

Feb 6, '09