Hello! You seem to have stumbled upon Ace's Hub of Oddities.
Feel free to look around, comment if you want. I may not post often, but I'll try to have something interesting to talk about. Also, I doodle a bit now an then. If anything's good enough to share, I'll probably post it.
Proud member of the Desbreko fanclub: Because he's just too awesome to ignore.
Feature: 08/02/08 | Posted By: Aceburner | 2 comments | Freakazoid! |
Yeah, so I got Rick Rolled in a Value Village earlier today. Thanks to that, this is obligatory. Sorry.
Anyway, I was out shopping for clothing (shut up. It's a very manly thing to do, since I did it because my pants were ripped up and I also got some nice sunglasses and a sweet, sweet bucket hat.) I went to Value Village to get some pants. After that, I got some sunglasses at the local Ross for Less. They were all bent out of shape at first because there is no one working there and people just let their kids run around without even thinking about it over there, but they were a pretty good deal at 80% off.
The hat I had been on the lookout for for a while, but it took me about 5 stores to finally get it. Baseball caps everywhere. I don't know many people who even wear those things anymore. Oh, well. I got an awesome hat.
Anyway, I finally updated the One Piece Field Guide earlier today. The update is Sanji, who is probably my favorite Straw Hat, so I'm hoping I did him justice. Next update of mine will probably be Chopper going by my current pattern. After the crew, I'll probably do major villains. Well anyway, I'm off.
Life: 07/10/08 | Posted By: Aceburner | 0 comments |
Alright, anyone who actually reads the stuff I write know all about how much of a One Piece fan I am. I love the show, love the comic, love the characters... Hate 4Kids. Typical, right? Anyway, as you'd probably expect from someone like me, I was overjoyed when FUNi took over the dubbing of my favorite anime. Well, it's been a while since that news. The hype has died down considerably and FUNi has released the first DVD set of the series dubbed by them. I'm going to make this as unbiased as possible, hopefully it won't be too hard since I've been over the "Al Kahn must die" phase for a couple of years now.
Animation: 3/5
First thing you notice about any anime. I'll admit the earlier episodes of One Piece look pretty weird from the viewpoint of the casual onlooker. The animators stuck to the original source material pretty well, but let's face it; Eiichiro Oda was a strange type of artist for a while. That said, the framerate is smooth and the style has its own unique charm once you get used to it.
Music: 5/5
This show has some great tunes. The first one that should hit you from the start is the theme. No longer is there some ear-grating trainwreck rap song leading you into the show. Instead, we are greeted with a pleasant, catchy translation of Hiroshi Kitadani's "We Are" sung by Vic Mignonga, the voice of the Fullmetal Alchemist dub's Edward Elric and quite frankly no slouch at singing. The background music is a mixed bag of small song segments that perfectly fit the mood of each situation the Straw Hat Pirates find themselves in. Finally, each episode fades away to Brina Palencia (voice of Tony Tony Chopper in the dub, but we won't see him for a while at this rate) singing an English version of Akihito Tanaka's "Memories." Excellent music, excellent show.
Plot: 4/5
What can I say, it's pretty simplistic. Monkey D. Luffy, a 17-year old boy with boundless optimism and an I.Q. of 5 is on a journey through a world full of pirates in a quest to become King of them all (yes, pirates have kings. At least in this show.) Having partaken of the mystical Devil Fruit, he is now gifted with the ability to stretch like rubber at the expense of his ability to swim. Of course, in a world where more of the surface is water than our own, this is a serious handicap, so he'll need all the help he can get. 10 guys sounds about right, doesn't it? Of course, 13 episodes in, he's only recruited two crewmembers and one isn't even official, So the story hasn't really taken off yet.
Voices: 5/5
This may be the part where I get a bit biased. Here's the deal: 4Kids was full of terrible voice actors, and there was a time when something possessed me to watch their dub every Saturday morning. Sanji was the worst, but he's not in until the next DVD set, so I'll avoid that rant for now. Every single main member introduced in this set sounds spot-on. They capture the essence of the characters, seem to enjoy their parts and, most importantly, convey actual emotion. The only VA who could do that in the 4Kids dub was Marc Diraison, the voice of Roronoa Zoro (Zolo in their version.) It's a shame he had to go, but Chris Sabat does an excellent job as well. The villains, who were constantly done well by 4Kids (go fig, I guess they know evil when they see it,) are effortlessly topped by FUNi's VA's as well.
Is it true to the original? Very yes.
No cuts means no cuts. No blood edits, no cross censorship, there aren't even any instances of dialog getting changed to alter the circumstances. Heck, even the song translations are accurate. That's really hard to do. I've tried. There are a few minor visual edits, such as FUNimation's shiny new gold logo, but nothing serious.
One small annoyance is the amount of episodes. At $40 a pop, you'd think you get more than just 13 episodes. Still, there's some fun commentary on the first episode and the overall quality of the product makes it worth it. Besides, I hear it's dirt cheap over at Wal-Mart.
Overall: 4/5
Good show, good dub. All the original Japanese audio is there, too, along with subtitles that are as literal as possible in translation. A must buy for One Piece fans. Then you should show it to your friends who were only ever exposed to the 4Kids dub before to prove to them that you aren't crazy.
9 more sets 'till Alabasta.
Feature: 06/03/08 | Posted By: Aceburner | 7 comments | One Piece |
No, I'm not talking about a girl I have a crush on.
Ever have one of those days where it gets really hot right before you end up doing a lot of physical activity? Today was one of those days. I get all set up for Karate. After about 15 minutes, the body heat of everyone else in the Dojo elevated the temperature by what felt like about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Long story short, by the end of class I was totally exhausted. Then I had to drive home because Mom says I need more practice. I get home and basically all I do is drink some soda and watch Lucky Star.
In other news, I just finished watching Lucky Star today. What a great show! I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. My favorite part was mostly Lucky Channel. That segment was basically so good that I would watch all of an episode of 4Kids One Piece if it were at the end of that instead of Lucky Star. of course, the fact that Lucky Star is not, in fact, a bad dub of a good anime and instead an awesome show in its own right, that made the experience even better.
I'm thinking Haruhi next. Good idea?
Life: 05/28/08 | Posted By: Aceburner | 3 comments |
I guess I'm not such a bad artist after all.
http://img405.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mikakq3.jpg
I did this one for a thread over at the boards. It came out quite nicely, so I figured I'd share it. Maybe I should get an actual art set some time.
Life: 05/17/08 | Posted By: Aceburner | 0 comments |
