Stickfight

Category Anime New Release
First Episode Review for: Zero no Tsukaima F

Summary : Enter the forth series of the popular Zero no Tskaima where a human lad transported to a magical kingdom is the familiar of a female student wizard

Animation : While clean and clear it has that flat edge that denotes a "made for TV" anime that the animators are starting to get bored with.

Plot Potential: I never read the original light novels so don't know if this series was part of them, but I'm going to give them 7 out of 10 for the continuatio of the story, the new plot seems a little tacked on but is adding to the growth of the characters.

Characters: The characters are total stereotypes but endearingly done and one of the series best points

Music: Nothing much, pretty normal fair

Reminds me of: Just watch the first 3 series Zero no Tsukaima

Overall: This anime was good for the first series, but now is starting to look a bit tired, the new characters have a shallow feel to them as if each series is bolted on to the next rather than a cohesive long story




Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime's that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Posted by Mark At 09:00:00 Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Anime New Release
First Episode Review for: Senki Zesshou Symphogear

Summary : A young girl is saved from certain death by a super powered singing duo, one of them dies in the process so the girl vows to follow in their footsteps and then the attack happens!!

Animation : A mixture of good and excellent, whoever is doing the backgrounds deserves a raise all the other animation is crisp and clean, a pleasure to watch

Plot Potential: Surprising for such a cheerful looking anime people actually die in a nasty way which helps the plot considerably

Characters: Costumes are amazing (they would be a devil to build for cosplay) , there is slight stereotyping but the actually threat of death gives them more depth, you feel like they are genuinely fighting for their lives.

Music: Amazing music throughout (i loved the battle songs) complemented by good use of sound especially the use of interrupted rain noise and the sounds of clothing moving

Reminds me of: Sailor Moon crossed with Dirty Pair directed by Quentin Tarantino

Overall: Well dang me what a moving anime, quite gave me the shivers, particularly as it should be in the normal "transforming schoolgirl" mold, definitely one to watch




Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime's that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Posted by Mark At 00:30:00 Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Anime New Release
First Episode Review for: Rinne no Lagrange

Summary : A high achiever girl (especially at sports) is watched by what looks like a cute version of the dirty pair who want her to pilot a robot against hear older sisters wishes

Animation : Another high quality soft touch anime, with excellent opening animation, I simply cant get enough of these and this has a high level of detail as well as camera focus/blur moments

Plot Potential: A very nice spin on the old "only a certain teenager can pilot the world saving robot" I don't know where they are going to go with it but this first episode is very promising

Characters: Characters that are both Original in Looks and Original in behaviour, that's a first for this season.

Music: Good opening, random piano stuff during the anime its self

Reminds me of: A cheerful neon genesis evangelion

Overall: This is the first anime this season that I have really enjoyed, an excellent all round story and its nice to get a first time mecha pilot that is not all "oh no what do i do!!" and just gets on with the butt kicking




Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime's that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Posted by Mark At 10:00:00 Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Anime New Release
First Episode Review for: Ano Natsu de Matteru

Summary : A lad is killed then saved when an alien space ship crashes one night, unsurprisingly the alien turns out to be a beautiful girl his age who transfers to his class at school (will the surprises ever end)

Animation : Very pleasant indeed, the slightly faded type I like but mixed with changes in style as if its being viewed through a movie camera

Plot Potential: Well it might be a good plot, but they are going to be hard pressed to find something that we have not all seen before, it even has the obligatory "towel falling open just as someone walks in" scene

Characters: The normal array of characters for the traditional "transfer student with super powers at school" anime, nothing at all stands out

Music: Easy going and bouncy but nothing spectacular

Reminds me of: Where to start? maybe Tenchi Muyo or Birdy the Mighty

Overall: This was a fun anime to watch but did not exactly strain the grey cells, an excellent background anime but nothing seen so far has me gripping the side of my seat




Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime's that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Posted by Mark At 00:43:00 Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Anime New Release
First Episode Review for: Knight in the Area

Summary : A lad who is the token manager in a Japanese schools football club and who lives in the shadow of his gifted brother struggles with a past trauma, enter a female childhood friend who can also play football

Animation : Presentable but a bit flat

Plot Potential: Well judging from the horrors that real football players get up to, there should be plenty of material and add to it a bit of full on sibling rivalry

Characters: The main character is a bit winy and his brother is a bit of an ass but they are reasonably well rounded and looks like there will be plenty of growth

Music: Not bad, quite dramatic and upbeat in the right places

Reminds me of: A naffer Prince of Tennis

Overall: Groan, I cant do it i just cant like a football based anime, it feels like a betrayal to sully anime with that bladder kicking horror that pollutes all life, in the spirit of being fair I tried to compare it with Price of tennis which has just started a new series and even then its not much fun, sorry there is nothing wrong with it from an anime series but i wont be watching it, ick




Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime's that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Posted by Mark At 01:00:00 Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Anime New Release
First Episode Review for: New Prince of Tennis

Summary : The characters from the first "Prince of Tennis" are back, this time at a selection camp where they are the talented but young underdogs

Animation : Good quality edged animation, titles slightly better than the actually episode quality, and tons of special effects, slightly dragonball-z in the flashy bits.

Plot Potential: Now i did not either watch or review the first series not being much of an sports anime fan and this does seem a lot like the normal competition style anime with climax following climax but it does look like a good implementation of it

Characters: My grief!, its yaoi characters playing sports

Music: Not much that stuck out, but quite a lot of atmospheric background music

Reminds me of: Well i guess the original Prince of Tennis

Overall: Now I still don't get sports Anime, but this is quite fun and I suspect one for the ladies, I might go back and watch the original series so see if it as good as this one looks




Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime's that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Posted by Mark At 01:00:00 Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category IBM Lotusphere Connect
Now I'm back from IBM Lotusphere/Connect it's back to work but just to round it up, here is the traditional review of the last week

General
-- The tech was good, real improvements, stuff that I want to use and a worthy opponent to the open source and Microsoft stuff.
-- Please finish off killing the Lotus brand, Microsoft's PR work and the memory of the bad UI have done too much damage, no one will give the new tech the chance it deserves.
-- Surprisingly IBM have listened, the Opening General Session was a vast improvement and a lot of other stuff has improved from last year.
-- Unfortunately, there are still nutters out there, some members of IBM's legal team really do need to get out more, and whoever organised the visit to the animal exploitation pond (or Seaworld) combined with "le'ts kill aquatic animals on stage" must be working through some childhood goldfish betrayal issues.
-- The session schedule could do with some work, no matter what your interest path was, e.g. Dev/Admin/Manager, there was at least 1 day where you were scrabbling for sessions and another day you could not get to see all you wanted. The sessions themselves on the other hand were very very good.

LDC
-- Far better brand recognition this year, which is what we were after and I had a number of very interesting conversations that I am hoping will yield results.
-- The T-shirts went down a storm, with Mr Woodward's designs going down the best.
-- We spent more than we have done before on marketing and sponsorship stuff, we will have to see if we can follow it up and see what work it generates.

Personal
-- I finally got one of these, for which I am insanely smug


It's not an individual one (will try again for one of those next year), as I co-presented with the fine Julian Robichaux from whom I learnt how a true pro prepares and presents

-- I think I have found the subject that I can expand to bring the most benefit to the IBM community, so if they get accepted you should see a session or 2 at this year's lugs (fingers crossed that I don't screw up my abstracts)
-- Time to redouble my connections AKA web sphere + Bolt ons work
-- I think I pulled a muscle laughing at the great geek quiz, thanks to Gab Davis, Carl Tyler, Paul Mooney, Tim Davis etc etc for organising it.
-- Whatever they are called, the Lotus Community still beats the pants of all the other tech communities that I have met, truly, without them it would suck bad.

Misc
-- There are people who do the work of 10 people each behind the scenes, people like Gab and Paul.
-- For heaven's sake, open the abstract calls earlier next year, it's not as if the date is a surprise, you have been doing it for 19 years now!

Posted by Mark At 13:30:18 Location London | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Anime New Release
First Episode Review for: Kill me Baby

Summary : Two grade school friends have fun together but one is a paranoid scardy cat assasin and the other is a complete ditz

Animation : Very basic and minimalist but colourful and some how enjoyable

Plot Potential: Not a huge amount as it consists of lots of little set pieces stuck together

Characters: Bouncy 2D characters, entertaining but not memorable

Music: I could not remember the opening theme by the time the cartoon ended, and there is none during the actual cartoon, but the ending theme is not bad

Reminds me of: doki doki school hours

Overall: This is a fun little anime, not one to wait for each week but still entertaining with a few good comedy moments




Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime's that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Posted by Mark At 12:00:00 Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category LS12 Wallpaper
Here is the fourth and final of LDCs tshirt designs for #LS12 converted to a wallpaper, enjoy




The London Developer Co-op wallpapers can all be found here

Posted by Mark At 14:54:00 Location LS12 Florida | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Loggin Debugging and Unit testing
Hi hi, here is the slide deck and associated files from mine and Julian Robichaux Lotusphere 2012 session (Write Better Java Code: Debugging, Loggin and Unit Tests) HERE and HERE

files can also be found on the London Developer Co-ops goodies page

Posted by Mark At 18:45:47 Location Ls12 | Permalink | Comments (8)