Rei/Rey to Go

The bottom shot is basically stuff I received in the mail before and during my trip as well as Rival Schools #1B that i got today. As you can see the stuff includes: Karas vol.1 R1, My~HiME Senretsu PSP game, Rival Schools and Rei Hiroe's Shook Up and Hisui-kyo Kitan vol.1.

Impressions on Rey's Rival Schools #1: Being an Alvin Lee fan, I had to get this cover and decided to skip Rei's full wrap around cover since I'm not a big fan of his art. However, he did do a very good job for issue 1. To my surprise, this comic is in black & white, which one would think "WHAT TOOK THEM SO LONG?" since they didn't really need any one for coloring. Anyways, despite me not digging Rey's art style, he DID do a very good job w/ the comic IMO. The fight w/ Batsu & Hayato was long and awesome. Rey draws some very sweet action scenes, better than some manga artists IMO. Dug the Ken Masters 'cameo' as well as 'Naruto'. Akira showing up at the end was sweet, thus, i look forward to issue 2 (whenever UDON releases it :P). What's also of interest is that in August, UDON will release a comic called Street Figther Legends: Sakura w/ Ken Siu-Chong and Omar Dogan at helm. While this is exciting, i just wish UDON would stop all these new projects (for now) and focus getting back on track and schedule w/ Street Fighter II and Darkstalkers. Speaking of SF2, the tradepaperback vol.3 will be coming out sometime in the Summer i believe. I saw the cover of it in Diamond Comics Preview. The paperback contains issues 0-6 (though the book is only up to 3 currently) and the gamepro sagat exclusive released a while back. The cover is done by Jo Chen (no Shinkiro this time :() who usually does the Powerfoil. On the cover is Rose, Bison (hat) and Evil Ryu.

For the other Rei news: Due to the black lagoon anime being so awesome, it has rejuvenated my interest in Hiroe's other works. Thus, i ordered some of his mangas. There's no Black Lagoon there cuz I've already been collecting the manga for about a year now, plus i took shots of them previously when i was at AoD IIRC. I still haven't gotten volume 5 cuz I'm waiting for the HK version which comes out 3-4 months after the JPN release. Anyways, Shook Up is a pretty intersting one shot manga, i haven't read it yet but there's quite a bit of nudity and violent action. Seems a bit like AMG but not. the art is good and up to Hiroe's Black Lagoon style (Revy makes sort of a cameo at the end :P). Hisui takes place in the past and deals w/ some more 'neo-nazis' ala BL. It's also got a mix Shook Up as it sorta starts off w/ the main character meeting a naked mystery woman w/ powers. This one will be more difficult for me to understand as it's in JPN and i'll be needing a dictionary. I just want to note that Hiroe uses a very old school and simple style of drawing. I was like, "is this hiroe?!" It does turn me off a bit as i don't really enjoy the art as much but there's only one more manga after this, so i ordered it anyways for completion's sake. Vol.2 should be coming in a couple of weeks. While i'm on Hiroe, i just want to mention that the Black Lagoon anime seems to have taken a different route from the manga now. They skipped the Roberta arc from vol.1 and jumped to vol.2 continuing w/ the neo-nazis (which makes sense and makes the show flow better). While this is also no surprise, there was no Revy nudity fanservice in ep.6 which the manga happily offered. Ep.7 will have my fave moment from the manga where Rock and Revy share a very cool ass "Smoke". Anyways, w/ Roberta given a voice actress, it'll be a couple of episodes before we jump back to vol.1 again.

above news & shots added as of 6:50 PM EST

currently just a game update of interests. i'll post my real update later w/ an edit (photos of stuff & RS comic). yeah, i know i can do 2 posts but i don't really want to. i like to make "one" post a day sorta thing. So yeah, as you can see from the above image, i got the ffxiii lady because ruliweb has got some big famitsu scans of the game/e3 trailer. Gametrailers also has an HD version of the trailer up now (as well as vids of FF Crystal Bearers and DQ Swords for the Wii). Very awesome everytime i watch it. HOWEVER, i must say that in the camp that find the designs 'meh'. Nomura really has no talent in creative character designs IMO. His designs of FF characters are all too familiar (w/ the exception of FFVII facial art where he uses a more traditional anime style). There just isn't anything special to his art IMO after FFVIII. They all look similar and lack the special FF feel that i felt Amano did so well. This could be due to the fact that basically most of Nomura's work have been on the futuristic side (save for FFX...sorta) whereas Amano has been mostly medieval-fantasy. Most of his characters all possess the androgynous look, they're all frickin' Gackt where i just can't decide the gender. I swear, before i saw the trailer, i saw that screenshot first and couldn't decide if it was a guy or a girl (also reminded me of Gackt), it wasn't until i saw the body that i was able to figure it out. His characters also possess (the traditional anime) spiky hair or hair w/ MANY layers. Also, wha't up with the gunblade from 1999? Seriously, come up w/ something new and give the main character a new hybrid of a weapon! Yeah, so those are my qualms i feel about Nomura and FF series currently. They're only using him to cater to the massive FFVII fans, anime fans and they're using him as a tradition/superstition ("every first new FF on every new Playstation must have Nomura, thus, success", is what they think). While I like his designs on the KH series and PE series, I don't think he fits in the FF series anymore. I was happy to see Yoshida on FFXII (though i can't say i dug his designs for Vaan...gay). So I really hope SE finds a new talent or a more respective artist for the rest of the main FFs. /end FF rant.

Famitsu Scores:
New Super Mario Bros. (NDS, Nintendo): 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 - (36/40)
Magna Carta Portable (PSP, Banpresto): 8 / 7 / 7 / 7 - (29/40)
Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable (PSP, Square Enix): 8 / 8 / 7 / 9 - (32/40)
Samurai 7 (PS2, Idea Factory): 7 / 7 / 6 / 7 - (27/40)
Shin Gouketsuji Ichizoku: Bonnou Kaihou (PS2, Noise Factory): 6 / 6 / 6 / 7 - (25/40)
Mystereet (PS2, Yeti): 7 / 8 / 7 / 8 - (30/40)
KimiKiss (PS2, Enterbrain): 8 / 8 / 7 / 8 - (31/40)
TT SuperBikes (PS2, Taito): 7 / 6 / 7 / 7 - (27/40)
Soshite Kono Uchuu ni Kirameku Kimi no Shi (PS2, Datam Polystar): 6 / 6 / 7 / 7 - (26/40)
Uchuu Keiji Tamashii (PS2, Bandai Namco): 5 / 5 / 5 / 6 - (21/40) Ouka (PS2, Pione Soft): 5 / 7 / 6 / 6 - (24/40)
Tsuyo Kiss: Mighty Heart (PS2, Princess Soft): 8 / 9 / 7 / 8 - (32/40)
Simple DS Series Vol.8: The Kanshikikan - Kinkyuu Shutsudou!! Jiken Genba wo Touch Seyo (NDS, D3): 7 / 7 / 7 / 8 - (29/40)
Daisenryaku DS (NDS, Genki): 7 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (29/40)
Ultimate Spider-Man (NDS, Taito): 7 / 6 / 6 / 8 - (27/40)
Mawashite Tsunageru Touch Panic (NDS, Nintendo): 7 / 7 / 7 / 8 - (29/40) Sugar Sugar Rune: Queen Shiken wa Dai Panic (NDS, Bandai Namco): 6 / 6 / 5 / 7 - (24/40)
Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (NDS, Ubisoft): 5 / 5 / 4 / 6 - (20/40)

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Interview
Guilty Gear Judgment will be released in August in JPN.
7 mins of Dead Rising
Suda 51 Heroes Interview

so yeah, that's the news as of 10:30 AM EST.

other game news i want to add as of 6:50 PM EST:
Super Mario GC preview
"Wii to cost $200" says Analysts
Keiji Inafune Megaman interview
Wii to be packed w/ Opera Web browser
Immersion Corp to comment on lack of rumble on PS3 controller
DMC4 on X360?
Sega Sammy profits jump 31%
Sony caught faking Blu-Ray demo