Thursday, May 31, 2007

Girly post


I sure as hell want one of these...

More images at http://dridoller.web.fc2.com/index.html along with construction images

Sunday, May 20, 2007

JNorad and his MP7 PDW

Built an MP7. Here's a size comparison with my winchester rifile.

Here's a pic of the refined model.




Stock and foregrip extended.


Specs:

Ammunition: 7.6x13.3mm papermate erasermate pen cartridges (non-compatible with other rounds)
Capacity: 11 rounds
Barrel length: 17cm
Length: 39cm, 41cm overall,57.5cm with extended stock

more details: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/25562

JNorad and his Jackal

Might as well showcase things in this blog than have a reminder of how retarded my previous posts were.

Built this Jackal in 2006.

The gun, disassembled:

More details:

And the grip:


Great model, considering it was made out of a coke box and some graham cracker boxes.

JNorad reviews Infinite Ryvius!

Infinite Rih rih ree ree ruh bow! "We are ok!" Ryvius; (Eps reviewed: 1-12? Maybe 1-9?)
Genre: infinite boredom. Infinite pain. Infinite still frames of stuff not moving. And space. There's also a ship in there somewhere.
OP/ED, music: the Op is the most exciting part of the series. There's movement in the credits sequence! people do things! The creators decided the series would work best with some "urban beats" stuck in the series, and good lord yawgmoth almighty, making fun of the freestyle beatbox commercial interludes was the only source of entertainment we derived from the entire series. (Bee beeeou bow bow boo buh! Reee vi us!)
Plot: I feel that watching the lively OP cheated me out of what this series could have been. For a disaster-to-recovery escapade of the crew of a doomed space station and their recovery and rescue of the mysterious spaceship, the Ryvius, they sure made it bland. First ep, they throw in some nice and odd names for units of measurement which are assumed to measure pressure outside the station or your decreasing blood pressure. Nothing seemed to happen for another three eps, except chunks of the station fell off. Some time later after we grew a beard and got it snagged on the cd-rom tray, we realized we were only on ep 5 and decided to watch some more. My friend died of chronic yawning and carpal tunnel from doing other meaningful things while watching and was reincarnated several times, just in time to witness ep 6 or 8 or whatever when they finally got the damn ship. For the almighty Ryvius, it sure came in late as hell. There were some space "assaults" or skirmishes, or "yawn-fare" as you please. I think someone died, or I wished the crew would all die. Either way, the plot is supposed to be a "lord of the flies" done in space with the crew working together... which leads us to our next category, the characters.
Characters: These little buggers were in some plot to be stranded in the doomed sinking station and at the rate they do things, it's a miracle they even got anything done. Since I wanted the crew to all die for any reason that I could think of, ship rupture, mutiny, cannibalism, I didn't bother getting to know any names. There was a Faina S. Shirozaki, a name we only remember because of how ridiculously many times it appeared and how pompous it sounded. Could have been eaten by graboids for all I care. Then there was this guy who looked like Vincent from FFVII, with the attitude of a mad biker on depressants. As the underdog character that we hoped would deal some ownage (or something for that matter), he did some light beatings (or his pussy crew did). The only action that happened at all throughout the eps we viewed was the fat kid getting some kisses from the slightly skanky girl (or we wished she was a skanky girl, which would have given us a reason not to kill ourselves). And then there's this weird ass girl who is dressed like the Dark magician Girl from Yu-Gi-Oh! who appears when shit happens (which isn't very often and by shit happening, I mean somehting like minor gas leak or fistfight) and says one random line, which is usually the last scene of the ep.
Highlights: Whenever your children misbehave, you now have an anime to make them watch "Clockwork orange" style until they bend to your will. Reee reee reee-uh! Ryvius.
Notes: Ryvius must in some language, mean "suicide motivator" or "hemorrhoids" or "call the Kevorkian". The people who managed to watch this all in one sitting must either have died or become mentally unstable. We still cannot figure out how this series was rated an 8/10 or any reason why. We barely made it to ep 9 in three weeks, finding other things to do to keep it off our to-do-list. If this series actually gets better by ep 14 or so, I'll probably never watch it for the fact that the series progresses like molasses leaking out of a pinhole sieve.
If you liked this, you may also like: stabbing yourself in the face with a rusty spork, or reading legal notices with lots of small print.

JNorad reviews some paper models

Today's desk clutter of the week (maybe year at the rate I post...)
Model Source: http://mizuirogakuen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/pepa/Character/Character.html
(EDIT: url's defunct. -J.Norad)

Well, let's start off with identifying all the crap on my desk:
From left to right:

Paper Haruhi Suzumiya, horribly overrated anime character from an overrated anime whose fanboy base pisses me off to no end. Model was cheaply constructed, with a hollow head designed to cater to people who want to build the model but clearly suck ass at making proper paper models from mizuirogakuen. The hands are terrible quality compared to his past works, as they're just folded sheets that require minimal gluing. Oh, did i mention she's not wearing panties in this model?

Difficulty: 2/5

Red thing: Monseuir Bome's Jingai Ignis Makyo figure. Pretty figure, picked that up on a whim. No idea where it's from, but I like the costume design.


Purple haired thing: Al Azif from Demonbane, an anime that I heard sucked. Model was a pain in the ass to build, but it was worth it. (i didn't realize at the time instructions existed for assembling this) The hair confused the hell out of me, and the fingers were a nightmare. I had no tweezers to assemble the finger tips, so they came out bad. She has a lot of frilly bits and tabs that came along with the frilly bits to scare me away from anything that has tabs the size of half a millimeter in width. Great looking model, but I still have no idea how to assemble and mount her hair ribbon and this metal plate thing. Nor do i have a proper idea how to display her without using a bootleg LEGO stand.

Difficulty: 5/5

Sephiroth figure: Let's pretend I don't have that and it's not my figure of a gay looking biker with a sword, and look at what it's holding....
An Ivory Mask!

Got it free from the hobby store in Evanston. I suggest going to Tom Thumb for all your craft needs if you're ever in Evanston. (shameless plug, despite that I didn't buy anything from there)


(More purging to come)

JNorad Reviews Full Metal Alchemist

FullMetal Alchemist, FullMetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa movie (2006);
Genre: action, comedy, alchemy, making gold out of household objects, and did I mention alchemy?
OP/ED, music: There's one haunting track used as background for depressing/dramatic moments that stands out . The op/ed's didn't attract too much attention. Shamballa’s OP sounds like Tomokazu Seki’s singing which was nice if it was… Shamballa’s music is still pretty standard for the FMA series, nothing notable.
Plot: Elric Bros. go on a mission to get their bodies back after failing human transmutation, and lots of emotionally scarring things change their ideology. Rushes at the end with their plot resolution, and accounts for how alchemy works with a mild plot-hole. Series works on developing the world and laws for the first set, then moving on to focus on the issue of “is this right” while dealing with the philosopher’s stone’s creation. From there, it degenerates into a pace of revenge, alliance, resurrection of character thought dead, revenge again, then formation of new characters to replace the ones they killed. Not surprisingly, they manage to sneak Nazis in there along with someone who looks like Gordon Freeman. At least this series didn’t suffer from Trinity Blood’s apparent “let’s make up some new plot to replace the lack thereof created from the lackluster mini-plot we just ended” problem.
If the main series’ start of the Nazi integration into the plot wasn’t apparent, the movie Conquerors of Shamballa slaps Nazis in your face. First of all, the movie is not standalone. Watching this without the main series will leave some elements lost to you and will be more confusing than the first quarter is already. The settings alternate between the world of alchemy and our dimension of science without a clear idea which is which for some time. The plot in a sentence: Nazis want to enter Shamballa to build up the Nazi forces as they try to take over Germany and Edward simultaneously is seeking a way back home. However, the plot has some issues that make it weaker than most OVAs or movies. The main villain is not too clear (seriously, I don’t know her name) and her motives require a “face off with the hero where I explain the plot” to make things clear. And did I mention this movie requires you to accept the shaky explanations given by the end of the series? Overall, Shamballa appears to be the start of the FMA movies/OVAs and leaves something to be desired.
Characters: The series really likes to kill characters and revive them. Luckily, in the movie Conqueror of Shamballa, the dead get a new life again using the shaky logic of the alternate world. Problem with this series is that the Homunculus are fighting to obtain the power to be human so they can die. Why wish to be capable of dying when you can already die? Other issues with characters include the dad’s feelings of love: if he really loved Trisha, wouldn’t he have been honest than hide the fact that he’s been plagued by a plot element created in the time span of the last ten eps? Character motives for Shamballa are murky at times and invoke the almighty “explain my motives at the last minute” deal. It was nice to see some dead characters alive again in the movie, if at all to spook Edward. Wrath’s character seems to have turned around completely without any idea why… blame “plot convenience”.
Highlights: Holy crap, for an anime dealing with junk science, it actually tries to sound smart using actual science in their attack descriptions. I doubt most viewers know what an adiabatic compression is. Ep 37 is the single random filler ep dealing with the State Alchemists, and worth the watch. Shamballa has Hitler’s appearance, but left me more curious if they would have made him speak in German or Japanese.
Notes: This series was fun to watch. Although there was a lot of death, character attachment was strong. The ending doesn’t seem to have much merit or a fully thought plan going about, and the movie helps resolve the problems created by that. However, don’t expect the movie to give a definite conclusion. The movie at best left me aching for some Nazi vs. Alchemist action and Hitler doing something other than starting the Nazi movement. And don’t mind how a biplane wing can stay aloft after being cut off from the main body (you’ll understand when you watch the movie)
Deals with "equivalent trade", and what a human life is equivalent to, best explained by "don't transmute people if you're going to do alchemy". Oh, and don't make gold from lead or create interdimensional portals to help the Nazi movement.