Merron Crismak!

You know what? I thought I'd take some time out of my eight month hiatus to post to all my loyal readers in this season of holiday merry happy bells to say, what's important right now is that families gather close around the chestnuts and have cheer of magic snowmen under mistletoe glowing bright how lovely are your little drumming reindeer and partridge's pear trees have a happy new year you jerks. I didn't mean to say jerks, here, let me edit that. Oh damn, my delete button is busted. Seriously I harbor no ill will toward any of you, and whatever kind of pagan flesh rite you follow I hope that it is a good one this year. I really do.

What I really want to talk about is that this is not one of those... "Oh... I'm so sorry I haven't posted in such a loooooong time! Gozimoshita!" sort of things. Anyone with a grasp of linear time can tell that I haven't posted in a long while so I really don't need to tell you that, at least I hope I don't. And FURTHERMORE, I provide the semi-bi-occasional un-spellchecked publication "Anime Snobs" free of charge to everyone in frickin' world. As this is the case, why should I feel bad about not posting for four months? Why should I apologize to you?? How dare you presume to harbor obligations of me, the mighty Maguro? My name means "tuna" in a foreign language. Do you even know what that is?? Do you??? Answer the Maguro! Do it NOW!!!

Seasons Greetings!
maguro

Dear Newtype USA...

NOBODY GIVES TWO DOG SHITS ABOUT "FAFNER"!

SABER MARIONETTE J TO X

Ugh. And ugh again. First let me say that I am a fan of the "J" series, I liked it. It was fun, cute and junk. But this title is as much as a disappointment to fans of SMJ as it should be to everyone in the world at large. It essentially takes what was good about the first series and makes bad luvin' on it with a rusty razor. Also J to X has the dubious distinction of being one of only two shows that I just could not finish watching. The other was the amazing lip flapping adventure slide-show called ".Hack". I have to give J to X credit for animating their characters in an adequate fashion, but it still doesn't save this forced march of an anime.

The entire time it seemed like the show had been handed to someone with very little knowledge of the source material and who had just been ripped away from their pet production of "Angsty Middle School Robot Pilots ZWEI" and forced to work on this. The show is flat, unfunny and boring for almost every second it graces your DVD player. After the five discs I saw whatever passed for a "plot" consisted of the bad guys giggling in the shadows and the main characters depressed and desperate for reasons outside of the machinations of their supposed enemies. The conflict in the anime never really takes place at any point. The cover art on the last three discs almost screams... "Please buy the rest of the show! Please! I mean, just look at the impossibly gravity defying head-sized boobs on these saber dolls! Look at them and buy the disc!" Here's a big fuk u to that. Plus, they somehow even ruined Hanagata, my favorite tights wearing frooty man. That was the worst crime of all.

My suggestion: I was reading a fellow blogger's comments on the whole BT/Kaaza thing, and he mentioned that some people believe that downloading anime is great publicity for the title in question. If that's true don't steal this one, all those anime execs might get the wrong idea and make something worse.

X-Box news!

A Microsoft presentation at the 2005 Electronics Entertainment Expo reveals that the new X-Box 360 (pictured on the right) will be so large that the X-Box Live Gold Pack will come with a giant bald guy to carry it around for you. Regular sized bald guy (also pictured) sold separately.

BitTorrent and anime

As promised, here is what every fan should know about BitTorrent and anime. Those of you who download fan-subbed anime and watch it are stealing. Plain and simple. Anime is something worth paying for. And for those unfamiliar with the concept, when I say ‘pay’ I mean with MONEY. It’s that stuff that you get when you work. Of all the things you choose to do with your time you spend part or significantly more of it watching these Japanese cartoons. You like the art, or the stories, or just the funny words that the people say. In any case you enjoy anime. When you watch this stuff and decide to take a pass on paying for it, you are hurting the genre. Let’s recap now. You like anime, and you are hurting it. Every time you talk about some show you downloaded and really like, and guy next to you says… “Hey I’ve never heard of that one, did you torrent that?” And you say “Yeah.”, you’ve essentially taken that thing that you like so much and wiped your butt on it. The dude next to you now figures, “Hey, why don’t I just go find that thing with BitTorrent and wipe my butt on it too? It must be ok if this person here is doing it. Thanks for the idea!” Naturally this leads to more and more butt-wiping. The act itself is brazenly ignorant and deserves censure wherever anime fans see it.

Now some people like to tell me, “But I keep a lookout for when ADV or whoever buys the rights to the anime I am downloading. I always delete my stuff when that happens.” Ok, this idea only has merit if Japan was some kind of utopia where no one had to work, but here’s a update for all you “conscientious downloaders”. They have MONEY in Japan too! Can you believe it?!? People work hard for the anime that gets produced and when they do, they deserve just compensation as well! AMAZING! Your downloads and subsequent refusals to buy causes the value for each subsequent rights-acquisition to drop. The longer it goes on the worse it gets. So incredibly, your bullshit excuses don’t protect you from being a jackass, or protect the firsthand producers of anime in Asia from your larceny.

Now as for the demographics of the offenders. A good part of these downloaders are children and high school students. They either don’t have the money or easy access to retail outlets, and they download anime. They do it for lots of reasons, but in general it’s because children aren’t most thoughtful of persons. They are still hashing out their personal morality and most likely enjoy the idea that they are getting away with something. We have all known the personal satisfaction of feeling like we’ve outwitted someone, even people we’ve never seen a half a world away. It’s the lazy assed absentee parents of these kids who are really to blame for this part of the problem. They can’t be bothered to understand what their kids are doing on the internet, leaving their progeny open to less than moral acts and not to mention the less than moral acts of others.

The people I really have a problem with are you grown adult downloaders. Holding down jobs, having a life and stealing anime. They could pay for it… but then they couldn’t watch as much anime, OR they couldn’t see the newest shows airing in Japan, OR for jeezus christ they would have to get off their fat asses and go to the store. Why use the muscles in your legs when you can keep scarfing Cheetos and breaking wind while getting your anime? Why put in any energy into the economies of the world when you can be a venomous leech, slobbering behind your keyboard, waiting for mommy to cook dinner for you? Yes, why? Why? WHY??

Honestly, telling us that there just isn’t enough anime in America and this terrible lack of product has driven you to download the newest titles from Japan is total bullshit. There are thousands of titles in America now, not to mention that a good selection are on TV and on-demand video services. The notion that downloading is ok if you’re not going to be able to watch everything you want to if you had to pay for it because of whatever financial difficulty is probably the saddest sack of crap I have ever heard. “You know I wish I were making 300% more money than I am now, so that makes it ok to steal just to make sure that I get everything that I feel entitled to, right? I should have it, cause I am a real fan.” That makes just about as much sense as the last 4 episodes of Betterman. Hey I have an idea, why don’t you go steal your food so you can buy some DVDs.

There’s a lot of angst in there but I am pissed. People who buy their anime are essentially paying for the downloader’s hobby. Good fans pay for the product, but the downloader gets it for free. I wish there was a way that anime conventions could tell who bought their discs and who filched their stuff so we could leave the losers to their family cookouts or NASCAR races on FOX for con weekend. This of course is impossible, so I just want to ask all of you BitTorrent, WinMX etc. users who are downloading anime to comment to this post about how grateful you all are to have had your anime hobby signed and paid for by all the idiots dumb enough to give their hard earned cash for it. Please do so, because everyone who works in the publishing industry in the states, every producer, writer, key animator, artist and composer in Japan, every Korean animator and colorist, and every single person who has ever bought, sold, or retailed anime deserves a big fat thanks, and an apology from you god-damnit. You have cheapened EVERYTHING they have done for the thing you claim to love.

-maguro

P.S: www.deepdiscountdvd.com, www.dvdpricesearch.com

THE CODEX

This is the anime universe as seen by Anime Snobs, arranged conveniently for easy reference. I will be adding some titles not actually mentioned in the blog for reference at each level. As time goes on it will become more and more full, showing you in greater and greater detail that I am a jerk. -Maguro

THE ABSOLUTE BEST ANIME
Paranoia Agent

THE ROLLS OF ANIME HONOR
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Cowboy Bebop

Requiem from the Darkness
Berzerk
Key:The Metal Idol
Escaflowne
Last Exile
Twelve Kingdoms

GOOD ANIME
Sadamitsu the Destroyer
Hellsing

Heat Guy J
Blackjack

CENTER ASILE ANIME (LOVE IT OR HATE IT STUFF)
Gasaraki
Haunted Junction

TITLES THAT SOME MAY LIKE (GENRE FANS, WEIRDOS)
Scorcerer Hunters
Gravion

UMMM... FORGET THESE
Kiddy Grade
RG Veda

Saber Marionette J to X

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm Gonna Be An Angel!
Gunparade March

SADAMITSU THE DESTROYER

A fine specimen. Sadamitsu the Destroyer is an out of the ordinary tale of alien invasion centered around a really loud guy who just wants to fight stuff. Missing will be the usual melodrama (for the most part), and the child robot pilots. It DOES have a cast of highschool students, which is still somehow unavoidable, but they only spend a small part of the show actually in the school. The whole 'school' problem is mitigated quite well by the hot kick-ass school nurse Sadamitsu has, and who also gets mixed up in many of the events of the story. In a nutshell, she's Kino Makoto if she grew up to be an ornery high school nurse with terrible luck.

Anyhow the main character is very likeable and his crew of friends all pitch in for the backbone of this very funny action/comedy. The bad guys are actually space "criminals" (an interesting idea itself), being chased through the universe by the other main character who is eventually nick-named "Junk" by Sadamitsu. He's a kind of android who is left only his head by the end of the first episode. Sadamitsu wears this like a helmet and therefore gains super powers. Why that is isn't ever really explained in detail, as is most of the reasons the plot forms the way it does but it's one of the reasons to like this anime. Much like it's main character it doesn't sweat the small stuff and concentrates on having fun and kicking butt.

At ten eps it's kind of short even for the OVA form, but it's hard to see what else would be needed to tell the story. The graphics are tight and the dub is a decent piece of work. Overall it's funny and full of action, has an awesome mariachi flavored intro tune, plus it includes a world-ending-weapon-who-I-also-want-to-ask-out-on-a-date kinda love interest so Saikano fans should rejoice. Right now you can get the whole run in a neat 3 disc box, so there's not much else you could ask for.

My suggestion: Buy this one for sure. A great way to kill an afternoon.

RG VEDA

Now a few words about the CLAMP group's first ever anime production. I tend to gravitate toward the various works of Clamp so first I will accentuate the positive. RG Veda is the Clamp group's first ever anime production! How amazing! Yes, it is really most notable for this reason. Before I go on I want to say that it IS worth owning for hardcore Clamp fans, for the rest of you, well...

I don't wanna rip this one up but it is seriously lacking in lots of areas. You can tell that the budding members of the well known quartet tried very hard, with some of the scenes looking very nice and others looking half assed and bland. There were obviously others putting in their energies here, and it is interesting to see the usual clamp designs crashing up against some things that they didn't create, but you get over it quick. Even the main cast has a member that really seems totally out of place and ends up as a kind of forgotten limb, doing barely anything at all for the entire 90 minute run. I can usually forgive things like; the 1991 era low fidelity graphics, poor design and even questionable cast members, but what hurts the most about RG Veda is the plot.

It's wandering, disjointed and a near afterthought to the rest of the work. You never really feel like any of what does happen matters. They are here, then there, then there is a fight, and then it's over and nothing is resolved. Not a single thing. We do learn that the mightiest swordsman in the land can be felled by a bunch of pink butterflies, and that nipple tassels on white plate mail armor is the worst fashion mistake in anime history, but other than this you are left at the end with a kind of "And then they went somewhere else..." sorta thing.

What you get with RG Veda is a triumph of design over substance, good intentions over good planning. It is supposed be related to some bhuddist/taoist legend (and not by the way to the book that is was named after, the Rig Veda, a holy book in the Muslim religion) but I can't derive any over arching meaning from it. Whatever fragments of the legend they decided to use for RG Veda I don't think they were taken from the same contiguous parable. At any rate Clamp's first effort is really a first effort. Enjoy it for the novelty of it.

-maguro

Science news!

Shuttle scientists conclude after extensive experiments that in reality "Goku" could not kick any more ass if he were in a zero gravity environment. Nation’s fifth graders stunned.

HELLSING

How much fun is this anime? I’ll tell you. Hellsing is a naughtily visceral vampire romp with many unique qualities. Way beyond just an action anime, you’ll find some very compelling characters and designs in this one. Every episode seems to have one really memorable image or scene, and the whole production is cut with an attitude totally foreign to popular anime’s virgin head space. Very tasty.

Leaping full stride out of the usual vampire canon’s visuals the head leech in charge, named Alucard, comes to the fight dressed in bright red. Also clashing with the normal modern vampire lore he isn’t a withdrawn, silent knight bent on self-loathing. Alucard is a 100% monster that walks, talks and wears really cool clothes. Not to mention his habit of turning cute ‘police girls’ into his pets. Proud of his noble status as an elder vampire and possessing a font scary powers lovecraftian in nature there is only one being that he will ever bend to.

Integra Wingates Hellsing has a mystically absolute hold over him. She is also one of my favorite anime ladies of all time. This hard as nails heiress to the secret british vampire hunting family/organization known only by her surname is driven by only one desire. In her own words… “Destroy all our obstacles immediately! Smash them! Crush them! Search and destroy! Search and destroy!” For me, it was love at first sight. Her quest to protect the queen and her subjects from the night freaks brings some real heavies down upon her blonde head. Not the least among these are the Vatican assassins and armies of gray zombies that we get to see tangling with her undead protector. To the last these fights are cool, brutal and imaginative. Moreover, it is really fun just to watch the Hellsing Organization’s enemies one by one come to the dread realization that they chose the wrong vampire to cross pistols with.

Other than those two there are more well thought out, funny and believable characters on both sides of the good guy bad guy split. One of the things that I really like about the series is that you end up disliking the human antagonists even more than the supernatural ones as the line between man and monster gets tested repeatedly. Also I want to mention that this is one of those, “you must watch the english DUB, no matter what” sort of shows for two very good reasons. One, the show is located in Britain. The Britons speak english most of the time and the team of voice actors used for Hellsing set the mood perfectly with their british accents. Two, Crispin frickin’ Freeman as Alucard the Vampire. OMG, this guy takes the part and steals it away without a doubt. 500% percent awesome job from Crispin. Honestly, one the best dub jobs I have ever heard.

Due to the quality of the product, Hellsing seems amazingly short. If the thirteen eps in the series feel like only the tip of the iceberg there are good reasons for it. A great deal of the plotlines that get started in the first 6-9 eps never get a proper conclusion. Add to that that the creator/artist of the original Hellsing manga(a work that is in some ways very superior to the anime) withdrew his involvement when he saw that the project was deviating from his original design. I’ve heard some say that the full-length production was actually cut short at 13 eps because of Kohta Hirano’s departure. Watching what was actually produced makes you regret the shortness of Hellsing even more. All that being said, it’s still a terrific anime. Something very interesting and very fun to watch. A creature well worth space on your rack of dvds.

My suggestion: Buy and watch the anime first. Then get the manga and read it. Then comment on this post telling me how happy you are that I told you about it. Go ahead. I’m waiting…

-maguro

You heard it here FIRST!

Rafael Palmeiro flatly denies test results showing significant traces of "Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend" in his home entertainment system.

KIDDY GRADE

Wow. A real deep blow to the "two cute girls in space" genre. Also joyless, flat and contrived in a way seldom seen on dvds with color inserts on the outside. And is it just me or is it true that the art seems to have been penned by folks who cut their teeth on PC games with names like; "I'm Gonna Serve You 4" and "Battle Raper: HYPER REALACTION". I mean, the characters just look spooky. Avoid this one and buy Dirty Pair: Project Eden.

-maguro

Shameless promotion

Well, promoting a weblog is a bigger undertaking that I thought. Seeing as I have 0 comments total my performance so far is probably below the average. SO I check out some of the blog search pages and get the idea that I should write a post about John Bolton. John Bolton that ambassador guy, with the hair. He's worth blogging about apparently. Hmmm. John Bolton John Bolton. Then I thought "Hey! A post about Leo Prieto!" That guy! Certainly noteworthy that Leo Prieto. I'd say. But what he did I can't tell you. Now Boy George... there's a guy I know. He's from the 80's and wears makeup. Yes he does. And Boy George, had... a hat. A little one as I remember. AMAZING!

Then I thought I should talk about some more political topics like, Hans Island. The number one island to find Hans. Another notable person, after all he has his own island. Hans Island! He named it after himself because that is what I would do. Other topics in this vein that I was pondering were; Iraq, Iran, Bush, war, Rice, WMD, and Ethanol. Yes, all of these I pondered. In that order. Amazingly it is the same order as their order of popularity in the current political blog listings! I am actually the Mindtaker.

But in deference to the #1 rated blog search currently in the world, and to the ostensibly non-biological son of Yahweh, I am going to just write "Jesus" a whole bunch of times. Lookin' for god? Well then, you must want to read MY weblog citizen! Anime Snobs, which recently had a post about Jesus. It went like this...

Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus

I am so crafty, and vain I guess.

-maguro

EDIT: Man. It's not working the way I thought it would. You can't even start to find me with a "jesus" search, but I am the number one "Shameless promotion" blog right now. So I'm sorta jazzed about that, I guess.

This was not unforseen...

Well, crap. There's another "Anime Snobs" out there apparently. But let me diffuse any sense of dread and or urgency you may be feeling by airing only ONE of the author's observations about the creator of a long running series latest incarnation , Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki.

"Kajishima Maskai is certainly a mastermind."

Situation green! No problem here. Continue as normal.

PARANOIA AGENT

To waste as little of your time as possible, lets start at the top shall we? Satoshi Kon’s “Paranoia Agent” is the best anime that I have ever seen. It now stands at the top of my ‘short list’ with other notables like Revolutionary Girl Utena, Cowboy Bebop, Last Exile, Berzerk and Escaflowne. There are many reasons why PA is a sort of Magna Carta for a new brand of storytelling in animation, but what is most important about it is that it’s primary focus is people. People like you and me, with jobs, frustrations, dreams and faults are drawn into a series of events that clearly draws the line between humanity and it’s collective consciousness. Let it suffice to say that they aren’t going to get along very well.

At the start it’s easy for a fan of my stripe to fall in love with PA. Anime’s annoying conventions are totally missing. No magical girls, buxom assassins, space invaders, robots, harems or wacky hi-jinks. Graphically as well the tried and boring anime conventions are missing. PA maintains a highly realistic style even when depicting seriously fantastic situations. Everything is rendered with an attention to detail that brings you to Japan and leaves you to be stunned by the events unfolding there. And with all those fine points what is actually important about this realistic treatment is that it serves the viewer in bringing the emotional consequences of the character’s choices to life. At many points we can point at the screen and realize that we have been in those places ourselves. Leaving anime conventions behind and creating some real persons to live out these events, Satoshi Kon makes PA personally relevant. It reminds me a little of Big O in that regard, but succeeds by orders of magnitude more.

PA is told in a series of short stories woven together by the notorious Shonen Bat and his ardent pursuers, a pair of police detectives who are in way over their heads. Their antagonism takes a break in disc three but comes back in full force in the ending eps with the victor clearly decided, another great surprise for anime viewers sick of every cerebral anime ending in some kind of irrational non-sequitur. Of course none of the principal characters survives the show in a recognizable form, all persons involved changing in drastic ways one way or another. Every person involved in the plot either profits or withers according to their actions.

I’m not going to talk a lot about the technical aspects of the shows I write about, but in this instance I want to highlight the voice work for PA. The English dub is a sterling effort and English speakers should really hear this one first. The fact is that I am sure that the stable of voice actors involved were pushed to perform in many ways by the AMAZING Japanese voice work on the show. Especially in the instance of Detective Ikari the quality of the talent and the voice direction is a serious achievement. Of course both sets of actors are aided by the fact that PA usually lacks the twitching/blinking face-holes that many animators consider mouths, but it is still a joy to hear either way.

There are a few niggling problems, though. Sometimes the changes from ep to ep are quite drastic, entire rafts of characters abandoned for another. The main chars always return, but it can be disorienting. Also some of the content can be disturbing to the casual anime fan. Kon’s characters express a wide range of faults and compulsions and sometimes the ugliness is shockingly blunt. I can count this among my favorite aspects of the show, but I can see how others may shy away from it.

Studying the show after the fact gives us the impression that we’ve seen the first hard science fiction story in anime since shows like Lain and Key. It’s a story about normal people confronting forces they have no way to understand let alone combat until they are enlightened in some fashion, until Shonen Bat is somehow brought to heel. The trip is dark, emotional, violent and wholly satisfying. It reminds me of a Scorcese film, the kind of experience you survive rather than idley view from a distance. You’re there, and when it’s over you stay there. The story was rattling around in my head for days after I finished it. You end up rooting with all your might for totally un-fantastic persons against an evil that we all possess in some way. People go crazy, realities are warped, and dreams are reduced to rubble, but fakers can become saviors and everyone kinda gets the idea that they weren’t as powerless as they thought they were. It’s a great message if you ask me.

My suggestion: Buy it, love it and tell your friends. I’ll tell you this, the industry is preparing another 26 ep jaunt where gender roles are set on their ear at the hot springs and the festival grounds and no one knows where the madcap hilarity will end!!! Do you really want to be responsible for that, even in part? Buy Paranoia Agent and do something good for us all. Really.

-maguro

What we're going to do for YOU, because we're so great

Anime Snobs is a place where my partner and I are going to tell you about the shows were watching at the moment, what we like and what we don't like. That's all. I'm not going to tell you anything about us except that we are a husband and wife team, and we know more about anime than you. Failure to heed our sage advice may lead to you riffing on some crap like Strawberry Eggs in front of a person who prevously thought you were cool. BE WARNED. But first some ground rules...

1. Prepare to be offended. It will most likely happen. Most likey before I'm done with the ground rules.

2. Shonen titles are viewed with a high grade of skepticism here. There are some exceptions, according to report, but in general it's not worth considering them because watching them hurts our eyes. PS: There have been some Naruto AMVs I have seen that did not suck. Some that is, not all.

3.We don't torrent our anime, we pay for it you rebel scum. So don't post some yang like, "OH YOUZ GUYS GOTTA CHECK THE JND FS OF KYO DOH GUUMEN HOTORI MUZOH!!! HER IS THE TORR LINK! LOL ROFLMAO -LRDSHINJIROX!!!!!!-" Expect a formal drubbing on this subject soon in the tone of Pat Reynolds.

4. Anime Snobs does not suffer any 'fannish' nonsense. If we can remain generally acceptable persons while watching cartoons from Japan, than we expect others can follow the usual social conventions of the world as well. Stuff like; showering, wearing clean clothes, holding down a job, not living in your mom's basement past the age of 30, avoiding panic attacks at the idea of missing the "Inu-Yasha Plushies" panel, and most especially not bragging about your extensive collection of creepy anime girly figurines that you can look up the skirts of. Don't do these things, we would appreceate it.

5. Though the name of the blog is "Anime Snobs", we reserve the right to snob up anything we want. In addition to the obvious, we will probably talk about manga, videogames, techology, music and culture and you will like it.

6. We will probably write way more about the things we like and a lot less about the crap. Expect some posts in this format...
"Thoughts on the anime classic, "You're Under Arrest!"- Utterly boring tripe. I got it for free and I want my money back."

7. Lastly we want to tell everyone that this is not a review site, it is a place where we tell you what's good and what isn't. After reading us for awhile, you might get the impression that the popular review sites/publications of the day don't have your best intentions at heart. We don't either, but we aren't getting ad reveue from publishing houses in return for our efforts at least.

-maguro