Finished watching Sailor Moon

Finished watching Sailor Moon (1992, Toei Animation, 46 epi) on 6/12/2018.

   Tsukino Usagi is your average middle school girl. Or she would be if she wasn't late to school so much and her grades a little better. Not only that but now her life is even further from being average after meeting a talking, black cat named Luna who grants Usagi powers that turn her into Sailor Moon, a magical warrior of love. And with these powers she must fight the evil monsters of the Dark Kingdom, as she gathers together the remaining Sailor Soldiers to help her find the fabled Moon Princess!

   Sailor Moon has been a crazy ride of ups and downs for me. I've started reading the manga last year and I found it to be abysmal... but I'll leave that for the manga review. The anime however... blew my mind. It was so much better, I dare use the word superior even. And the funny thing is, I feel like it's only half based on the manga as most of the episodes stories didn't happen in the manga, and even the events that do take place tend to be very different. So a lot of it ends up being original stories that just happen to follow the base plot of the manga. Usually I'd scoff at that amount of filler content but this ended up working beautifully for something based on an original work where the only good thing it had for it was its basic concept. So the animated series ends up being what the manga should've been from the start. Heck, even the main character, who I despised the most in the manga, was pretty entertaining in the show. But that's why all the filler content is good. Because in this case it's used to flesh out characters and develop them in ways that the manga lacked.
   Okay, enough about the manga though. I want to talk about the background art and the music. As they are both amazing! I don't know whose idea was to create such magical backgrounds with colorful gradients and tones, but I'm in love with the style. And then there's the music. It was the 90's so it certainly has that city pop hint on some of the tracks, but I also think everything was recorded organically, or at least it sounds like it might've been. Not sure what the sampling technology was like back then. For anime productions, at least. The tracks used really convey the emotions they were intended for, and these range quite widely with a great variety in instruments.

8/10 - It's a really great show overall, and now I understand where the legacy of the franchise comes from, but for the time it was released storytelling techniques in anime were still developing and so there are some hiccups here and there.

Finished watching Banner of the Stars 3

Finished watching Banner of the Stars 3 (2005, Sunrise, 2 epi) on 3/23/2018.

Using his Navy pension and financial support from the King, Jinto plans to return to Martine, his home planet on the Hyde system with the goal of constructing of an anti matter fuel supply chain, thus establishing his Earldom. However, things don't go so smoothly as Martine has still not surrendered to the Empire. On top of that, a squadron of a new class of Assault Vessels is being commissioned by the Empire and Hyde has been chosen as the trial grounds.

Hm... Hahahah! I don't really have much to say about this one in comparison to BotS2. It was still a good production. I think if anything, it was interesting to see how things developed in Martine years after Jinto had left. With his return, he faces some racial prejudice against the Abh. And then there's his adoptive parents and how they feel about Jinto's life as they pose a difficult decision for Jinto to make. The production quality was still pretty good, but that's about it.

8/10 - Maybe I'll look into reading the novels one day.

Finished playing Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions

Finished playing Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions (2007, TOSE, Square Enix, PSP) on 3/19/2018 for the second time.

Play Time: +600 hours

After a gruesome conflict known as the Fifty Year War, another grim chapter awaits the land of Ivalice whose political strife and economical instability are now topped with the recent death of its king. And with the only heir to the throne being an infant, the kingdom is split yet again on the decision of a regent between Prince Goltana, represented by a Black Lion, and Prince Larg, symbolized by a White Lion. This comes to be known as the War of the Lions, and in the midst of all its conflicts is a boy named Ramza Beowulve whose major role in the history of this war was covered up by an influential religious institution known as the Church of Glabados.

Man, oh man, oh man! I've never had such a wild ride of ups and downs with a game before. I've also never played a single player campaign for this long!
So, Final Fantasy Tactics takes place in a medieval setting where magical abilities and mystical creatures abound. The game's political plot is complex and mature played by a varied array of characters. While the plot's maturity is welcome, the number of characters might make it a bit hard to follow along. But their Shakespearean dialogue makes it only more interesting to pay close attention to. I believe it wasn't so Shakespearean in the original PlayStation release.
I've never played the original western release of this game, but from what I've heard War of the Lions brought the difficulty level up to the original Japanese release, which sometimes can be very unforgiving to the point of some battles feeling unnecessarily punishing. This is especially frustrating with story battles that can't be skipped, and is only made worse if you decide to overwrite your save file in between battles with multiple fights as you'll find yourself stuck in the character select screen with no option to go back to the overworld map, leaving you with the only option to start the game all over again or keep trying to beat the battle you're stuck on by hoping for a miracle. This sort of happened to me, but not because I overwrote my save file as such, it was because I had to collect and steal certain rare items (not required) before defeating all the enemies. But because the enemies were so powerful compared to mine, I ended up resetting the game an unbelievable amount of times over the period of two of three weeks before I was miraculously able to do it. And it's not like leveling up my team would've mattered as enemy levels grow with you.
And then there's the very limited amount of character units you can recruit. It's about 32, I think, which doesn't leave much room for ordinary recruits when you're trying to obtain every single special and story character there is. This was a struggle for me as I ended up having to sacrifice characters I had spent hours upon hours of training and leveling up, just to make room for folks like Cloud or Balthier to join the party. Had I known how many spots I should have reserved when I started the game, I wouldn't have recruited and trained so many folks. That's really one of the major contributors to my insane playtime. Next time I'll know better, I suppose. But I'm probably not going to play this game again. I wouldn't want to put myself through another round of this sadistic game difficulty. And if I do, it won't be for a long time. Maybe if there's a remake, I don't know.
But I'm not trying to say the game is completely terrible for that. In fact, I very much enjoyed it for its story, characters and battle mechanics. The whole job system and the thinking you have to do on the battlefield is very engaging. And the cutscenes are great too! The cell shaded models combined with the cross-hatching render gives them a very magical storybook kind of feel. I love it! It's really just the punishing difficulty of this game that ruined the experience for me.

8.5/10 - *whine* The game is too haaaard! ( T ^ T)