This is to make The Fool better in the number of posts every week and hopefully to gain some momentum and have more people start commenting and visiting us. We do not want to be a one-hit wonder with a certain image. We want to be visited because of what we write and what we do. Therefore more people should increase site views and make everything better.

So let´s start by mentioning what people we would like to add.

Episodic writers

We write about anime. We like anime. So why not try to find people with more time than myself that can write about a series once a week? It is fun times to read and comment about the current episodes as you watch them yourself.

Reviewer

Got a good game in your collection that you want to review and let the world read and comment on? Then by all means give me a shout of interest. It doesn´t have to be mainstream, the fewer people that know of the title the better basically. It can be any format and even eroge, as long as the images choosen are nice and not to gory/sexual.

The same applies to anything related to anime, manga, video games or visual novels.

Multi-people

People that can handle multiple types of writing. Be it a review, a short post about a episode or just any type of post. That can be mixed in together with the others.

That is all for the moment for people we are looking for.

What we want from you

I am quite easy to please.

I just want you to write decently in English.
Post regularly in your set theme of choice.
Answer comments when you get one unless it´s from a troll.

That is basically all.

What we can give you

We are not able to give you much more than experience and readership. We are not the biggest blog but we have about 30-80 visitors a day so we are still growing.

If you have a idea we can all come together and brain storm about it. If you have a hard time getting a nice post title or image we can help you with that. You are not alone and that is biggest gift we can give you. Experience and a bit of help when needed.

That is just about it.

How to apply

It´s simple, write down some stuff about yourself, your interests and what you would like to write about. I´d also like to receive a short like 250 word long essay showing of how you write. This essay I want in any readable format.

By essay I simply mean a review, a episodic review or just whatever the type of post you want to continue making on the Fool. Make it in about 250 words and when you are done, use the contact form on the Contact Page and you´re done.

Easy right?

So I had to grab the next best thing. A 2600K that is gives basically the same results in most areas as the more expensive 2011 socket or in simple terms: It´s good value for the money it costs to only be after a completely new socket in multi threading when the new CPU can use all of it´s cores.

Now I´ve ordered everything except for the GPU. For that I will wait untill AMD releases their new 7000-series and hope that those cards as cost effective as their current 6900 series is. If they are to expensive I´ll probably get a XFX 6950 card. Probably!

For the other parts? Just check below

• CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K 3,4GHz
• Motherboard: MSI Z68A-GD65 G3 REV B3
• Memory: Corsair 8GB (2x4096MB) CL9 1600Mhz VENGEANCE LP VIT x2
• Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro M 700W
• OS drive: OCZ SSD Vertex3 120GB MAX IOPS
• Case: Corsair Carbide 500R Svart

To this list I´ll add 2 Samsung F4 2TB drives with serves as storage for my work and a LG bluray burner/reader.

It should be enough power for me as I am a beginner in just about all fields there is at the moment. I tend to have a good eye for design though so I need some power for using Photoshop or Premiere. I´m starting out in so many fields it just ain´t funny. But it´s good times. Really good times.

This is what my christmas present to myself is as well. Nothing beats grabbing the specs you want for yourself.

And no, I won´t change the name. My computer will always be named Holo. I just wish I could decorate the computer case with her.

Food, presents, different dates for celebrating this special day. I will be thinking and wondering about how to redesign the Fool for V2. I have loads of idea and I have decided on what theme to use as the “backbone” to this new design. Now I just have to wait for it to be released.

Since we have been a tiny bit updated I also want to ask a question. Do you wish to see a reboot of the Fool and only fresh posts alternative a reboot of the content which means I will sit and select what posts/pages to keep and then not keep the older posts at all.

As I do not drive this blog myself anymore it feels weird to have reviews and stories at pages. Reviews are to be moved into ordinary posts and the stories will be moved to my personal blog which I might link to. I just haven´t decided yet.

So let´s celebrate this day of joy by drinking, eating and just enjoying ourselves like it´s some nice year

This here is the first English PV that has been released. It talks about what we have to look forward to in February 2012 as that is when the game will be released.

I´m both looking forward to this title and I also wonder if I should get it since I didn´t finish the first game yet.

The main idiot

Shulk is a boy that is very much interested in mechanics and above all a mysterious sword called the “Monad”. So interested that he ignores basically everyone around him. Much to Fiora, a girl childhood friend of his, big irritation.

For me it is irritating to see that a person is so much interested in mechanics and a mysterious sword that he has to ignore just about everything around him. Openly anyway. He is interested in Fiora one can tell from his actions and how he acts when she is in danger.

He also has some fighting ability and weirdly for a main character he also has some weak support spells. You can understand my face when I noticed that. All this is because the game itself uses “aggro” in battles and Shulk is pretty weak in the HP department for a MC.

The reason he has healing spells is for when in battle he is supposed to be more of a supportive character than anything else.

Questing

When I called this a MMORPG I wasn´t lying. Just about everyone in town has something to ask of Shulk. It can be killing a certain monster, collecting items dropped from monsters or finding persons or people.

Your reward are items and exp as well as the items you get for killing the opponents. MMORPG style it is. Very western RPG as well with loads of NPCs thinking you are a blind hero that is only to be used for little reward. Given the amount of enemy levels that appear in the starting area you kinda need the levels. And doing these quests by yourself is a big no-no as you are to weak, the healing spell you have rarely heals anything and the enemies are everything from easy to gruesome. In the starting area there are enemies from lvl 1 to lvl 70 all depending on where in the big starting area you head. Some of the enemies are agressive and attack on sight, others are more friendly and need you to attack them first. Which is a good thing since otherwise you would be attack by swarms of enemies.

It´s basic stuff but it works and it gives you a good chance to rack up on the small amount of exp that some of the enemies give as well.

Achievements

Discovering new lands, doing big amount of damage, doing quests. Everything in this game seems to give you a achievement of some sorts sometime. Which will give you exp which is a good thing. Often you get more exp from the achievements than from questing or defeating enemies.

Battling in real time

The most disturbing thing with Xenoblade Chronicles is that you need to choose a enemy and then draw your weapon to start the battle. It makes walking around and exploring easy but if a enemy is attacking you on sight you have to sport the enemy first, draw your weapon and then you have to execute the command to start fighting.

Normal attacks are automatic and depends on weapon type. So dual wielding is a good idea here. Skills is where you get in. You have special skills with certain attributes for each character. Which can make more damage if you attack from the rear or side by example.

There are also bigger badder monsters available that do more damage, have higher HP and are a big challange. They also give out quite good exp if you are at the right level.

I haven´t started yet

This is my thoughts for the first 6 hours of gameplay. And with that I haven´t even walked past the first area yet. There are simply so many quests to do. Often one person have 3 or more quests in a row for you to accept. So this is a big freaking game.

But understandable. It is both fun and irritating to do battle. Irritating that the only revive option is for your teammate to walk over to you and use a special unit that charges up as you do critical hits and the like. But there are only 3 of these units that can be filled. And if you don´t battle all the time they slowly degrade and go from full to empty. Which can be irritating.

The really sad part is that this so far is a PAL territory exclusive title only. So no NTSC version available yet. Which is a pity since it is actually a quite good and interesting game. But I hope it will get better as I play it.

So if you haven´t preordered it yet, what are you waiting for, head over to Jlist and their My Girlfriend is the President productpage and make your order

JastUSA describes the game as follows

My Girlfriend is the President is a fun and wacky visual novel full of cute girls, hilarious parody, and stirring romance. The player is Junichiro Hondo, who wakes up one day to find that the world has been transformed by aliens into a bishoujo paradise where cuteness is the ultimate authority. His childhood friend Yukino Ohama has become President of the United States of Nippon, who rules with overwhelming cuteness and a healthy dose of brainwashing. Will Junichiro be able to set the world right? Will he even want to?

My Girlfriend is the President is a multi-scenario romance simulation game with several endings to explore. Through their actions, players will be able to decide which of four cute and quirky girls Junichiro ends up with. Joining US President Ohama are Russian President Irina Putina (are these names starting to sound familiar?), Chief of Staff Ran Miyoshi, and a mysterious girl called Ell who just happens to be an alien starship in human form!

And since I know that there will be at least one “Yes we can” parody I just can´t seem to erase the smile on my face. Just such a good thing to make a parody of.

I have already made my preorder since the very first time I saw it being released. So many good visual novels are going to be released during the end of this year and the next I just can´t wait.

p.s if you instead want Aselia the Eternal you can grab that one right here!!

They also have their fan service hall of shame and “What’s rot in the land of the Rising Sun”. These will always be a show that has some panty shots and they don’t care how good it is. Haruhi has been in there, Ro-Kyu-Bu!, Mayo Chiki, Strike Witches (which they then rated with a good amount of stars), and others, and I always think that most of them are good animes, but you don’t like them because of panties? Someone needs to learn about the world of anime a bit more if you think you’ll be seeing none of that in them.

So in my curiosity I ordered a Dengeki G and Nyantype from Japan. I can’t read Japanese, I can make out the odd phrase in anime but reading kanji is a totally different concept again, but I thought there’s no harm in having a look. When I got them I was firstly surprised by the sheer size of the magazines, Dengeki G is 4 times thicker than NEO. I knew that there was more material but the sheer amount was huge.

I browsed through Nyantype to start. Which comes with an array of posters each issue, all in at least A3 size. The posters are great, I’m never going to remove them in fear I’ll damage them, but I still pull them out to look at. I also had a quick look at the articles, which I was actually able to comprehend some bits from, bits is the key word though. The articles covered current anime, and caused me to pick some up. Near the back there’s info on upcoming anime, products and games. Now the key here is that the type of product is in English. From this I can actually work out some of the stuff. Nyantype is where I learnt that the Familiar of Zero is finally getting a season 4, and that Index has a movie in production. It also has upcoming figures, and BD/DVD release dates, very important to someone that gets them.

Manga wise, currently you have Mayo Mayo, a spin off of Mayo Chiki (which I can’t find online anywhere), and Strike Witches, as well as others. Both are nice to look at, but I wish I could read them.

Next is Dengeki G. Dengeki’s stuff is awesome in my opinion. As I said, the size of G is huge, yes 50% of that can be manga which I can’t read, but that’s still a lot of stuff for me to go through. Dengeki G looks more at Eroge and games, which is a great contrast to Nyantype. The articles have great pictures to go through, and I’ve been visiting the websites of a lot of the stuff I’ve seen in there, with the aid of Google translate. The manga in there is all the one’s I’d collect if I could as well. Ro-kyu-bu, Oreimo (well orekouhei lol), Angel Beats, Denpa, etc, so I have fun going through them. I’ve also started reading a scanlated version online while having the magazine so I can enjoy it more, lol.

There’s normally one poster in G at the front, but the material inside makes up for that. The images for the games and anime are always cute, and I find I flick through on quite a few occasions. The eroge section is probably my favourite and makes me want to import some of the games. Maybe I should, if I can find some patches for them.

Dengeki does more than one magazine, and the other I currently get is Moeoh. If the title doesn’t give it away, this one is dedicated to moe. To be honest it’s more like an artbook than an anime magazine. There are articles and manga but the pictures are what I buy it for. The pictures are obviously moe, and there’s an abundance of catgirls, or animal eared girls, which is my favourite type of anime girl, they so cute! ^_^ You also have some eechi manga, and currently a 4komo version of Ro-Kyu-Bu!, which looks hilarious and I need it translated, lol. There also appears to be some kind of Light Novel for Ro-Kyu-bu! in it but I’m not too sure. Rewrite has the same thing in G.

If your a fan of moe then this is a must purchase if your considered getting a magazine from Japan. Hopefully the pictures will convince you.

I’ve also ordered Dengeki Hime, which is a hentai magazine. Not sure what this one’ll be like but I’ll make a comment here when I get it.

For now, enjoy the pictures I’ve included of some of the magazines and the freebies that come with them.

Larnu~

A digital War

For all Fate fans you are given a nice treat. THe Holy War is now managed by a big satellite on the Moon. The Holy War is now a state of a game with a lethal twist. Lose in this game and you will die in the real world. Potential masters are selected and brought to the virtual school ground of Tsukumihara Academy as students. Here they have 4 days to acknowledge that something is wrong, that everyday is the same and that they repeat the same stuff day after day.

If they succeed in wanting to know who they really are they are given a examination. Succeed at this test and glory to you, you are now a chosen Master with your own Servant, if you did not succeed well you´re dead.

A long long intro

Thought Wild Arms with it´s three different character intro was long? Well this is a bit longer and only because of the sheer amount of things you do. Having read that you could choose your gender I was dumbstruck when I started a new game. I did not get a choice in the matter and my gender was chosen for me. As a guy I got accustomed to Tsukumihara Academy with some cameos from the series Fate/Stay Night like Sakura and Shinji Matou, Rin Tohsaka and Toiga.

It was a nice welcome for me. Even though I wondered why I hadn´t been allowed to choose my gender or servant. I spent time doing research on “mysterious happenings” on school grounds for the school newspaper. Sometimes I would get a big headache and wonder why the screen suddenly got all weird. Like watching a old TV with bad reception the screen got somewhat blurry.

Four days I spent running around school grounds getting to know the place. Then I “awakened” to my situation and wanted to get free from the chains of destiny. So I followed a mysterious transfer student into a different realm. Here I found a weird body that was assigned to protect me. We ventured forth and found a dead body. The same kind of weird body lay still on the floor only to suddenly spring to life and attack me.

A battle!! Finally some action I thought. But I couldn´t do shit and my temporary servant was defeated as easy as pie. I collapse at the floor wondering if this is the end? Where did I make a wrong choice since I didn´t want to restart and try again.

Oh boy this must be the first game that trolls me this hard. This time spent running around school ground and talking with everyone and getting accustomed to this place was about 2 hours. And it was just the introduction to the game. NOW the real game starts.

A grindfest

This game demands you to grind. Or at least it does for me since I choose Caster as my servant. With a good status overall of E in all aspects she is the weakest servant. But I have my love for animal girls so the choice wasn´t hard to make :p

This game consists of two stages. During your school day you react and answer questions from teachers, fellow students and rival magi. You can also go to your own special room to talk with your servant. You might even want to go to the library. The reason for this is as any Fate-fan should know. To get information about your opponent and his/her servant. This gives you an edge in battles and makes them a lot easier.

The other type of stage is in the “arena”. The place where you will spend most of your time. In this arena there are enemies that you will defeat, items in chests to gain money or special gear. There are several stages and all of them are fixed in size, types of enemies and items that appears. If you want to exit you have to go to the beginning or the end of the arena you are on. You can save when you are in school but not in the arena. If your servant is defeated at anytime in any battle it is game over.

You also only have 6 days of school and grinding in the arena before the boss appears. There is also a recommended lvl for you to be at when the 7th day comes around in the week. So you better get your fighting gear on fast and good.

Rock, scissors, paper

The battles are easy. Each round consists of 6 actions. You have a choice of “attack”, “guard” and “break”. And they work like the classic game rock, scissors and paper. Where each choice wins over one, get´s defeated by one and is a draw if the same symbol is used.

Here attack wins over break, break wins over guard and guard wins over attack. if both should choose attack or break there will either be a simultaneous attack where both servants are hurt or you get 0 damage. If both choose guard nothing happens.

Should you succeed to choose the right action 3 times in a row you will get a “Extra” attack that is a one hit where your opponent can´t do a thing.

The more you fight the same enemy type the more knowledge you get of the enemy. This gives you an edge in battles as you see what they will do and can counter it pretty easy.

Interesting and irritating

This game is a mouthful. It has excellent typings, some comedy and a easy battle system to learn. But the amount of time I will have to spend on grinding is not fun at all. Especially since I haven´t found a way to save while in the arena. So one false move and I will have to replay who knows how much time thanks to one false move since Caster is so weak. I´m currently trying to get her physical attack and def up to speed to stand a chance. It has gone so-so.

And since you can´t run from a battle when you have started it you can guess how many times I´m going to rage…

With good dialogue, nice characters and a fresh take on the Holy Grail War from the Fate universe this game is golden. Now as long as I just gain more knowledge about when I can save and not… it would make things so much easier.

I think the main reason is I just don’t have the time anymore. Work takes up 12.5 hours of my weekdays, if you include getting ready and commuting, and then I do need to go to sleep at times. Obviously I need to take time to eat (lol), and I’m finding that I’m gaming again on a more regular basis, as I’ve returned to WoW and Dark Souls has clocked up a considerable amount of hours over the last week or 2.

So normally each Season I pick up 6-7 animes a season, and this month was no exception, except one thing, I watched the 1st episode of them all, and haven’t had a chance to watch episode 2 of any, except the above and Shana no Shakugan III [Final]. This leaves me with 3 shows to talk about this season, which in my opinion isn’t great, so either I need to get some time to watch the rest, or really stretch you penny out. I haven’t decided which yet

C³ – Cube×Cursed×Curious

I’m quite enjoying this anime. It’s pretty and has cute girls in it, which is almost always a most for any show I watch. The plot is somewhat odd though, if I’m honest. The main character, Fear, is a cube (yes, a cube, like a Rubic Cube) who is able to take the form of a human. What you learn is that Fear has a dark past and that she, as an object, became cursed due to the sins that were committed with/by her. As a result this curse causes her to have the power to become human, but her owner will also suffer a curse for possessing her, in her case making them insane and using her for her intended purpose.

The anime starts off looking nothing like a show that’s going to become bloody, with the artwork looking very bright and cheery. Light hearted jokes and panty shots. a served arm later and a couple of character deaths and I’m starting to think this is not the show I was expecting, but I don’t have a problem with that. I’m enjoying it, and i wouldn’t be making the effort to make sure I watch it as soon as I can after it’s aired unless I wanted to, especially with what little time I do have at the moment for anime.

As well as Fear you have Konoha, a similar cursed object, however she is a sword. I’ll leave your imagination to work out how she would be useful in combat but I’#m pretty sure it’#s not hard to work out. There’s also the male protagonist of the show, Haruaki, who’s immune to curses wouldn’t you know (damn you plot conveniences).

I’m not entirely sure where this anime is headed, and I haven’t looked far into it, but if you look cute girls, panty/eechish shots, love triangles, and tsundere characters, give this one a go.

Boku Ha Tomodachi Ga Sukunai

Translated to “I don’t have many friends”, and a suitable title for the anime, well for the fist couple of episodes. Enter Kodaka Hasegawa, a normal high school male who happens to have no friends. Mainly due to the colour of his hair, which he gets from his English mother, people have the impression that he’s some kind of thuggish character to be scared of. I’d hope people have noticed that in anime, if a male has blonde hair their often seen as a either a bully or delinquent and that’s exactly what happens here. Add this with people always misunderstanding what he’s saying, for example wanting to trade items in a game turns into theft of their item and his reputation as a reputable member of society are lost.

Anyway, one day Kodaka is going back to his classroom, when he see Yozora Mikazuki chatting away to some unseen person. He can’t get a good view, so can’t see who, but after braving it walks in, to find… She’s alone. Like Kodaka, Yozara has no friends and so instead is confiding in her imaginary one. All kinds of Social awkwardness no. This, somehow, leads to Yozara to create a club, the Neighbours Club, where her idea is so that they can make friends. Obviously Kodaka has no choice but to join and the story unfolds.

This anime actually reminds me of Haruhi in this way, although Yozora doesn’t have the power of God, it is veruy similar to a Kyon and Haruhi relationship, and with characters being added (all female mind), the rest of the team may just pop up. I’m pretty sure an Asahina character joined in episode 04, but I haven’t watched 05 yet.

This shows art is very similar to Denpa, and I’m sure for those that have watched it will see the resemblance in the above image and I quite like the art style.  The show itself it’s fun to watch, just like Haruhi to be honest. I actually picked up the anime because it was advertised in Dengeki G’s October Magazine as the girls looked cute again, (should I really be admitting that?), but this isn’t the reason I’m watching it anymore. This is definitely something I’d recommend and I expect more would prefer this over C³. The club activities are fun to watch, with them playing Monster Hunter, an eroge, and of course the swimming pool, a gamer and guys dream no less.

Well I’m Larnu and I thought I’d make a myself a bit of introduction post. I’ll be making posts here alongside manga and the others and hope to bring some extra reading and enjoyment for you all.

I’m not sure exactly where to start on an introduction, so I’ll give an idea of what I hope to post in the future. I expect my main focus will be Anime related topics. I do tend to watch a lot, picking up 4-5 shows each season, as well as picking up shows that have aired in the past that I haven’t watched. Hopefully I’ll be able to express my opinions on some of the current shows that are out there and spark your interest in them, or maybe help you steer clear away.

I’m a gamer as well, and play quite a lot of JRPG’s. My favourites all seem to be from NISAmerica, so likely I’ll be commenting on those. Ar tonelico Qoga and Neptunia have got to be two of my all times fav’s and Disgaea 4 comes out next week so I’ll be looking forward to this. I’ve also recently been looking into the Visual Novel Genre, and I’m eagerly awaiting my copy of Aselia the Eternal from JastUSA.

I read a fair amount of manga as well, although I don’t spend nearly as much time on it as anime, I’ve still got a large collection. I told read anything that’s not been published however, so if I’m going to be commenting on something, likely what I do say it outdated. Sorry, but things often take a long time to get released in the UK, so you’ll have to bare with me.

Another thing I’ve started collecting recently is a few anime/manga magazines from Japan and I currently have a subscription to a few. Even though what I can understand is very limited, I find that I really do enjoy does browsing through them. For anyone that’s considered, I’d suggest at least getting one magazine at some point to spark your interest. I’ll likely do a post on this at some point here.

I think I’ll wrap up here for now, but if anyone wants to ask me anything, feel free to comment ^_^

Larnu~