tegan

So at the Pokémon World Championships, they revealed MegaKangaskhan. The parent is exactly the same, but now the little baby Kangaskhan that was always kept in its pouch is out and about, and looks significantly more resilient. Check out the crowd reaction. Apparently it has a new ability that will let it attack twice (once with the parent and once with the child), so that's gonna' be a thing.

It is if you became famous by making a film about toys and how they're made to be played with. His words, not mine.

(BreckDog later declared the game to be "for babies")

It is the year 4715. The distinct jagged legs of a BigDog body amble across the Nevada Desert with purpose. The robot stops and extends a pair of skeletal robotic arms with clawlike hands and begins to carefully in the seemingly random patch of dirt. Day turns to night and back again. At last the skillful hands heave a heavy metal canister to the surface and turn it over delicately in the sun before unscrewing the lid with a quiet hiss. The nimble fingers remove a barely-aged piece of paper, on which is written: "A Game For Someone." The severed head of Nick Breckon, floating in the tube of life-sustaining fluids affixed to the BigDog, grins with pride. "At last."

I've bee working on this, but I have no idea if I'd consider it finished yet or not.

I actually like the Miyazaki intros, because it's a nice reminder that Lasseter is a huge fucking nerd in the form of completely unwarranted hero worship. I find it hard to hate the guy after he 1) convinced Miyazaki to start releasing Ghibli movies in the west again after the Warriors of the Wind fiasco, unedited, with actual marketing and everything 2) made Toy Story 2 after coming to the realization that he was kind of an asshole for not wanting his kids playing with his collectibles

I actually saw Cars 2 at the cinema, because I got a free ticket when I bought The Incredibles Blu-Ray. When the movie got to the shot where a bunch of model tiny planes scatter into the air like birds, my brain just started screaming.

Aw, I feel bad now. You're not a shitty hipster, Chris! You're a wonderful hipster!

I really liked hearing Danielle on the cast. As long as we're discussing it; I have no idea why I love Idle Thumbs so much when I almost never play any of the games actually discussed on the show, so I can't tell if I'd like to see more mainstream coverage or not. I will readily admit that IT will totally lapse into "eastern european hipster bullshit" though, like when there's a bunch of discussion of a board game that only has 100 copies or a video game that only exists in a form that can be played at indie game conventions or whatever. I can never decide if I'm glad they're discussing a great game that nobody else would talk about, or mad that they're talking about a game that I could never ever play.

By the way, if nobody's told Jake yet, there's still multiple win conditions for Pikmin 3 multiplayer. There's a treasure called a Victory Macaroon that counts as an instant win if you bring it to your base (like taking the other guy's marble), and since each player's bingo card is different you may have to choose between grabbing a treasure that will help you complete a line faster or a treasure that will prevent your oppontent from completing a line at all. In addition, every Pikmin type is present instead of just red and blue, so you can explore a lot more playstyles.

Oh, and I forgot to mention before: Mega Pokémon get certain stat boosts, type changes, and different abilities. Specifically, they get the rare, crazy game-breaking abilities previously reserved for only a select few. MegaBlaziken gets Speed Boost (raises its speed one stage every turn), MegaMawile (which is now Steel/Fairy, as is regular Mawile) gets Huge Power (doubles attack stat), MegaAbsol gets Magic Bounce (reflects everything other than damage-dealing attacks, like a built-in permanent Magic Coat), MegaMewtwo has Insomnia (prevents sleep), MegaAmpharos changes to Electric/Dragon and gets Mold Breaker (negates all abilities that would negatively affect it), and MegaLucario gets Adaptability (increases same-type attack bonus from 1.5x to 2.0x). I can't wait to see Absol go from a complete nobody to suddenly becoming the most useful monster ever. EDIT: oh, and I guess there's something called "Super Training" now which is basically a minigame that lets you adjust Effort Values however you want, so the metagame just got a whole lot easier.

Surprising amount of Pixar hate all up in here. Personally, I've liked just about everything they've put out besides Brave and the Cars movies. I didn't think it approached their best, but I though Monsters University was stronger than their last few films at least. This week I watched both the theatrical and director's cut versions of the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors. It was fantastic, particularly the music and the Audrey II effects. Probably the most convincing movie creature I've ever seen.

New trailer! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YTHgE0vtOXU So basically, Mega Evolution is temporary (it's only in effect in-battle rather than all the time) and only happens if the monster is holding a certain item. And a Torchic holding its Mega Stone will be distributed when the game is released!

Some fucking weird and unusual dreams lately that probably have not-so-subtle meanings. Last night I had this crazy multi-part dream. The first I don't remember so well. I was living at my parents' house again (although the only rooms I remember seeing were familiar, but not rooms in my parents' house). There was something about living with a creepy, annoying, and clearly mentally-ill roommate who would never stop talking and spent most of his time in the top bunk of our shared bunkbed and looked kind of like Seymour from Ghost World. In the dream, I fell asleep and had a dream within a dream! So in the sub-dream, I was Batman. This was far less cool than it sounds. I was in an episode of Batman: The Animated series (and it looked EXACTLY like the series, including occasional dirt on the cels). I was a young Bruce Wayne, being trained to be Batman by the old Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond. Tasks included breaking into a high school and busting a kid for eating a chocolate bar in class (which was really gross. It was all cracked on the outside and there was stiky, dark red stuff in it). I had to keep acting like stealthy Batman even though everyone in the room could clearly see me and exuded the kind of piteous respect that high school classes give to motivational speakers who start the routine with the "I said GOOD MORNING!" bit. Plus it was really hard to see through the cowl. When we got back to Wayne Manor, it was the same room I fell asleep in during the overdream. Old man Wayne was putting me through some vigorous fight training including a weird bit where I got thrown through the floor and somehow stuck in a clown villain costume. Apropos for dreams, my ability to do things like run or punch was reduced to zip. I kept crying the whole time because the training regimen was so hard. After it was all over and the run was starting to rise, I went to a segment of the Batcave designed to look like a fifties diner, complete with actors whose job was to spend every moment pretending to be a teenager from the fifties hanging out in a diner without ever addressing the fact that the diner was only a small segment of the Batcave. I saw a news report about a disturbance downtown and went to investigate. I had to fight a villain who was kind of like Spider-Man except instead of webbing, he shot long strings of saltwwater taffy, which he was using to stick people to the wall. I saved some unpopular teenagers, then woke up. When I woke up back on the bunkbed, it was Christmas morning. Roomie guy couldn't shut up. When I checked, everyone in my family had gotten nice gifts except me. I got a single slice of processed cheddar cheese 16 times the size of an ordinary slice. Everyone kept going on about how much I should appreciate such an obviously useless gift, and I finally piped up and said I would much rather have just been given the money it cost to buy the slice. My dad angrily, reluctantly gave me the cash value of the cheese ($200, in American hundred-dollar bills for some reason). All the while he was carrying a bunch of decorative square plates with designs based on Gorillaz songs. He hands me one of them to hold while he counted his money, and when I handed it back he dropped it and demanded that I pay him the value of the plate right then and there ($50 American, obviously). I told him no way, an argument started, and eventually I just gave him the finger and left for my room. I was still fuming mad, but the worst thing I could think of to do was write "fuck you dad" on a piece of paper and complain about how my room was the only one in the house with no lock on the door. I felt so angry and impotent, not knowing what I could do. And then I woke up. :\ The one from a few nights ago I'm gonna' put in a spoiler because it's brief, but pretty traumatizingly fucked-up. I'm glad that I'm having dreams again, but why are they always vivid nightmares?

So apparently Nintendo asked Newgrounds to remove 500 games that use Nintendo resources like sprites and music. At this point I'm guessing that there might actually be something behind their sudden shift in attitude toward trademark protection. Like maybe some lawyer found out they were close to letting Donkey Kong fall into public domain or something like that.

How does one get set up with Society6? Does it cost cashmoney? Also, I watched Little Shop of Horrors for the first time the other night and ended up just now making this.

Jake hurry up and get a Wii U already. We can trade friend codes Nintendo Network IDs. EDIT: also, Lefebvre is a fairly common surname around here and hearing you guys butcher it was hilarious.

So according to a possibly fake (but very convincing) leaked issue of Corocoro, there are now "Mega" Pokémon, stronger alternate forms of preexisting classics. Pictured: Mega Blaziken, Mega Lucario, Mega Absol, Mega Mawile, Mega Mewtwo, and Mega Ampharos. I have no idea if these work like alternate forms or if they're actually a new evolution stage or what. Most interesting are Blaziken and Ampharos, because those were both already the third stage of their respective evolutionary lineup. A Pokémon going through four progressive stages is completely unheard of. ...They're kinda' dumb. Also revealed: the pre-evolved form of Gogoat, a Normal-type rabbit, and the traditional electric rodent that comes with each generation.

I definitely want to sell some prints or tshirts or something, but I have no idea how to get started. Anyway, Karzac said I should draw something Animal Crossing related, so I drew this.

This will never fail to make me happy.

I dug out the Micro and played some ADVANCE WARS on the way to the store today! Wooooo! Then I drew this.

Hey youse guise! There's a free Animal Crossing app for the Wii U and it's pretty NEAT. It's basically the same as the Wii U Warawara Plaza, but specifically Animal Crossing themed. Selecting a villager lets you see and make Miiverse posts about them, and there's shortcuts to all the Animal Crossing Miiverse communities. It's actually really cute.

I'm tryin', I swears!

So one thing that I may or may not have made apparent during my time here is that I fucking love Osamu Tezuka. A brief rundown for those who need it: Osamu Tezuka was a Japanese comic creator, animator, and doctor. He's best-known in the west as the creator of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, but is recognized in his homeland as "god of manga." He possessed an inhuman work ethic that drove him to produce a body of work that averaged out to four completed pages of material for every day of his life, having his first work published as a teenager and continuing to work until the week of his death in 1989. The influence of Tezuka's trademark Disney-inspired drawing style can still be seen in anime and manga today, as can his efforts to elevate comics and animation to legitimacy in the art world by expanding their audience and infusing his telltale optimism in the human spirit. So yeah. I have a nearly-complete collection of every Tezuka work published in English (the only ones I'm missing are the out-of-print Metropolis, a rare bilingual version of Crime and Punishment released in Japan more than 20 years ago, and a handful of earlier translations of work that I possess in their modern form). Fortunately there's been a gradual Tezuka resurgence over the past few years, with more and more efforts by publishers to localize his endless body of work. In the next few months alone Digital Manga Publishing will be releasing Triton of the Sea to fulfill a Kickstarter stretch goal, Picturebox will be releasing The Mysterious Underground Men as part of their Ten-Cent Manga line, Vertical is putting out a release of bizarre spin-off series Twin Knight, and Kansai Club will be distributing their stupidly-limited run of The Crater (which I will almost certainly miss out on due to severely limited availability ). I just thought I'd see if anyone else here is a Tezuka fan. I just recently read Unico (a full-colour childrens' fairytale with a somewhat melancholy tone) and Atomcat (a kitschy, surreal Astro Boy spin-off about a superhero cat) I'm rereading a volume of Phoenix (an unfinished twelve-volume epic about life, death, and reincarnation told with the same cast of characters reincarnated across the entirety of human history) right now, so Tezuka's fresh in my mind. For new readers, I highly recommend any of Vertical's recent 17-volume release of Black Jack (a morally-ambiguous medical drama about a hardass miracle surgeon), since printing is being ceased and it's gradually becoming hard to find. It's so good that I personally even tracked down one each of the extremely limited hardcover editions of the first three volumes. He's also given countless nods and commendations in Scott McCloud's indispensible Understanding Comics, so you can get a good feel of why his work is so effective from that book alone.