Raiyuu

[font=Trebuchet MS][quote name='Dodeca][/font][size=1][i][b]Disadvantage Ninja:[/b] If they failed to get the jump on the other two, and ended up in a free-for-all battle, they would be quite likely to fail.[/i][/size'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] Ninjutsu is actually an incredibly versatile martial art, and while it's true that historically ninjas specialised in surprise attacks, there are aspects of ninjutsu that work equally well in a melee. Example! This week I learned how to break a Full Nelson, a favourite hold of bar-brawlers and probably pirates too - those scurvy dogs love to fight dirty. But to be honest, ninjutsu is a pretty dirty fighting art - most of it revolves around breaking one or more of your opponent's bones as early in the encounter as possible, to allow you to escape or just to put them at a disadvantage. So I don't think ninjas would have much trouble with the pirates; the latter would likely be Grogged up to the gills, and everyone knows pirates are sensitive about their mums, so the ninjas could chokehold the pirates and whisper 'your momma' jokes in their ears so they ran off bawling. Samurai are another matter. Get in close and the superiority of the katana over the ninja sword has already been pointed out. From afar, shuriken would be pretty ineffective against a fully-armoured samurai warrior. The only option would be to try and get shuriken in through the gaps in the armour, at the joints; but a throwing star to the armpit is nowhere near enough to incapacitate a man. Plus, if the samurai had archers, the ninjas would be doubly boned. So in a straight fight my money's on the samurai. Dark alleys at night, now, that's a different story. Even samurai don't drink sake in their armour. Nice and exposed.... [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]That's a pretty naive viewpoint. You would prefer maybe anarchy? Enough people have pointed out the failings of anarchy as a political (or anti-political) system in this thread that I won't go into it, but any system of government - yes, yes, even fascism - is preferable to a complete lack of one. Try and think what you would do in the position of Blair, Bush or any world leader. Yes, a lot of them appear to be out of touch with the people; yes, the war in Iraq happened against the wishes of the general populace, at least of England. Bad decisions do not a corrupt government, nor an evil person make. Labelling them so is reactionary; it's taking the easy option, rather than thinking through and realising the difficulty these people go through in making decisions. Hating people in power seems to be a common mindset nowadays. Why not use your brain and fight the trend? [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Cool, that clears things up. [b]I call Tetris for my first game! [/b]Just so we don't end up with two of us writing posts for the same game, posting at the same time, ending up wasting half an hour's writing time, yadda yadda. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Question! Can we choose in which order we play the games? That is, do we all progress through in the same order or can we mix things up a bit? I assume since you haven't given an order that we just go round however, but it's worthwhile to check, I suppose... And I loved Mog's little retrospective - handy hints galore about what weaknesses we need to improve on! [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Ikillion, there is something wrong with you. Seek psychiatric attention immediately. Plus, didn't you already do battery acid vs. lye earlier in this thread? I'd go with the senate meeting, of course. It doesn't end in my death and therefore scores as a winner for me. I'd entertain myself by scratching naughty words on the bench or something. Or use the downtime to plot out a novel in my head or something. Only unimaginative people get bored. Would you rather [i]spend a day trapped in a room with Kevin Spacey's character from 'Seven' [/i]or [i]spend a day trapped in a room with a knife, a vat of lye, and Ikillion?[/i] [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Rock. I was starting to worry that you'd abandoned this again - unfounded fears, obviously. Nice to see some development on Xion. The guy isn't the smug git we all had him down as, it seems. It was such the right way to show the other side of him, too. Nicely handled - it's clear that you're portraying a rounded, three-dimensional character, where sometimes showing another aspect to a character can make them seem like a contradiction. Basically what I mean is that his behaviour comes as a surprise given his previous appearances, but it doesn't seem [i]out-of-character.[/i] Sterling. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]I'd take Master Yoda any day of the week. Getting my arms pulled off by a sore-loser Wookie would hurt a lot more, and take a lot longer, than duelling the little green dude. Beat the Wookie at dejarik: slow-ish painful death with much crunching of bones, blood, etc etc. Duel Master Yoda: "Where'd he go? Wait, why am I at the Pearly Gates?" My head would be off before you could say "Strong with this one, the Force is". Plus, I'd have a great story to tell all my new winged, harp-playing buddies. I'd have to assume the events leading up to my duelling Yoda were pretty interesting. My death story would trump all theirs! Okay, inspiration's a bit dry right now... Would you rather [i]get hopelessly drunk by drinking twenty beers (your choice of brand) [/i]or [i]get hopelessly drunk by drinking a few speedy shots of your spirit of choice? [/i]You get legless either way; the choice is in the journey to happy-land... [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Of course, the downright coolest vehicle ever (and I'm talking specific vehicle, not general model) is this one: [/font] [center][img]http://www.discount-airline-cheap-tickets.com/Blues-Brothers-Car-Picture.jpg[/img] [left][font=Trebuchet MS]It's the Blues Brothers' 1974 Dodge Monaco cop car, complete with massive gig-advertising speaker! It has a cop engine and cop suspension, meaning it can do ridiculous bridge jumps, and if you wind the windows down you can drive underwater to avoid Illinois Nazis. The Ultimate Bluesmobile.[/font] [/left] [/center]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Ah, rightyo. I hadn't seen the article itself, just quoting the reasoning fansites were giving for distrusting the info. I think a lot of them had a "paysite = disreputable" mentality. And yes, I'm now firmly of the opinion that the filler, while not as bad as people say the Naruto stuff is, is still terrible in comparison with the show proper. I don't think I'm even going to bother watching anyore, until they get back to the manga storyline. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Most of the Bleach sites I check are taking this announcement with a pinch of salt. The reasons most of them give are: [/font] [list=1] [*][font=Trebuchet MS]Disreputable source[/font] [*][font=Trebuchet MS]No official announcement by Viz[/font] [*][font=Trebuchet MS]No mention of this anywhere else on the Internet[/font] [/list]

[font=Trebuchet MS]...what Dagger said, I guess. There's not a lot more I feel the need to add about 21. The 22 preview, however: [spoiler]looks like we're in for some decent fight sequences, with Arika and Midori both wading in - presumably against Sergei's Valkyries. I [i]still [/i]don't think I've quite got that guy figured out - I can't work out whether he's going to turn on Nagi in the end or not. I can picture him dying and repenting to Nina as he goes, but that's wild speculation... She seems to have acquired Mikoto's silhouetted-upper-body-with-glowy-red-eyes look. I almost expected to see a little feather-and-gem necklace glowing round her neck! But you can bet she'll appear right at the [i]very [/i]end of the episode, either saving Arika's hide or appearing as a new and scary opponent, just to leave us all hanging.[/spoiler] [quote name='ProjektAquarius][/font']I heard that Otome isn't as good as HiME. I've seen HiME, so tell me, is Otome worth my time? Or will I be disappointed?[font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] Despite the recycled character designs, they're really quite different series, at least in terms of the kind of story. Where HiME was all about a small group fighting the odd monster, by the halfway point Otome is more of a war show. It's got political factions to keep track of, military manouevrings to be surprised by. The style, however, is pretty similar - more one-on-one and less summoning-monsters-to-fight-for-you, but there's definite similarity. If you enjoyed HiME, the little references and recurring characters provide nice little moments. I don't know whether I can say which series is [i]better, [/i]but Otome's definitely worth a look-in. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]And of course the thing that runs, has a mouth and bed is a river, or stream. I can't think of any riddles, but I'm sure everyone else has plenty. [/font]

[b][color=Purple][font=Trebuchet MS]"I don't wanna choose!" [/font][/color][/b][color=Purple][font=Trebuchet MS]wailed Xiaoyu, earning herself a stern look from Mog. [b]"Look," [/b]he squeaked, [b]"you've got to pick someone or we can't move the [i]Game On, [/i]kupo!" "Fine," [/b]she conceded sulkily. She slouched out of her seat and walked over to face her four friends, hovering uncertainly on their pillows. She stretched out a finger to point at Krystal. The fox's eyes widened. [b]"Eeny," [/b]began Xiaoyu. [b]"Kupo, you're not -" "Meeny, miney ..." [/b]her swinging finger came to rest. [b]"Mario!"[/b] [/font][/color]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Seriously, guys. What did I [b]just [/b]say? I'll try and decide by the end of the day. .:EDIT:. Sorry White. I hope everyone'll believe me when I say my decision process wasn't quite as arbitrary as my post would seem to indicate... [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]The second one, I guess. Pain is nasty, and I'm kind of a recluse anyway ... it wouldn't be nice to be forsaken by the entire human race, but I could write books and self-publish under a pseudonym; no one would know I wrote them, so there'd be no reason for them not to read / buy them, and then at least I'd know I'd reached someone. A lot of these dilemmas seem very ... arbitrary. I'm sure the two choices should be related to one another somehow. [quote=Ikillion][/font][color=DarkSlateGray][size=1][font=Comic Sans MS] Would you rather be a literal whore from the age of ten to whenever you do. (no you can't commit suicide) Or would you rather destroy an entire city just because they said you looked ugly.[/font][/size][/color][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] See what I mean? Sorry to pick on you Ikillion but you were the first one I looked at. The two options have no relation to one another, so it's less a dilemma and more an arbitrary choice between two things, if you see. I'm pretty sure to work well in this game, the options have to be mutually exclusive (i.e. choosing one makes the other impossible). There are exceptions like the 'who would you rather be in a room with' types, but basically, some of these dilemmas are dumb. And to strike back at all the gore-mongers (seriously guys, why does every dilemma have to involve pain and death?): Would you rather: [i]have your favourite band play an intimate, invite-only gig especially for you and your close friends[/i] or [i]win a lifetime season ticket to every gig that band will ever play, with the guarantee they'd never play just for you?[/i] [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Was she actually posting the plagiarised artworks back onto devArt? Or was she printing them, tracing them and passing them off as her own to her friends?[/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]I'd rather Shart in public, because as far as I know [b]that's not a thing. [/b]I'd do something crazy-weird, like a one-eighty with star-jump, and everyone would be like, "you fruitloop, what was that all about" and I'd be like, "I just Shart, you'll all be doing it in a week, mark my words". And to those that responded to my phobia one: are you sure? I'd go with 'entire opposite sex afraid of me' because at least then I wouldn't be scared out of my wits all the time, scared to leave the house and terrified of my own mother. And what's with all the morbid death dilemmas? Sin, you obviously just watched Saw II; Ikillion, you ... I don't know [b]what [/b]happened to you 0_o Would you rather: [i]Be destitute with the love of your life [/i]or [i]Prosper alone? [/i]Ah me, the eternal dilemma. .: EDIT :. Gah, me and my taking ages to write a post... [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]I wasn't sure whether you'd played [i]Kingdom Hearts, [/i]Sandy, so it was pretty cool to see you knew exactly which Keyblade I'd been thinking of! [b]Please [/b]let's not have another tie, plzkthx? [/font]

[center][img]http://clabedan.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/mini_van_volkswagen.jpg[/img] [left][font=Trebuchet MS]^^ The ultimate in hippy conveyance technology. The Volkswagen van is just ... ultimate retro. And I could fit six or seven friends in the back and go on a ROAD TRIP! Or sleep in it at Reading Rock Festival instead of having to bother pitching a tent. The advantages are endless. [/font][/left] [/center]

[font=Trebuchet MS][quote name='Dee][/font][size=1]...and whats wrong with playing a villan?[/size'][font=Trebuchet MS][/quote] Nothing, I love playing villains because they're usually more interesting than the heroes anyway. I was just commenting that it's rare to see a blockbuster Hollywood movie where the British guy is anything other than a) sophisticated villain or b) international support that gets killed in the first skirmish. [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]OB, duh. Who'd pick sweaty-man-smell over the only message board on the infraweb where I can correct people's grammar and not get laughed at for it? Would you rather: [i]Have a morbid phobia of the opposite sex? [/i]or [i]Have every single member of the opposite morbidly afraid of YOU?[/i] [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Well, I have an English accent, and so the entertainment industry decrees that I must play sophisticated villains, or characters in Hellsing. Maybe Legato from Trigun? Or Hellsing's Walter. That would kick.[/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]I don't really want to turn the thread into a complex debate over Japanese semantics, but [i]neko wa doko ni imasu ka? [/i]is a perfectly valid construction. [i]Neko wa doko desu ka? [/i]makes equally as much sense. In question form, either [i]desu [/i]or [i]imasu/arimasu [/i]are allowed. When [b]answering [/b]it's a little different. [i]Neko wa asoko desu [/i](the cat is over there) works; so does [i]neko wa boku no kaban no naka ni imasu [/i](the cat is in my bag). But you can't use [i]desu [/i]when you're specifying the place, only when you use [i]koko, soko [/i]or [i]asoko, [/i]if that makes sense. So [i]neko wa boku no kaban no naka desu, [/i]while still kind of meaning 'the cat is in my bag', doesn't work, because it's wrong kind of 'to be' verb. I realise I missed out the [i]ni [/i]particle in my post *slaps own wrist*, and that may be what caused the confusion...? I've been taught that this is correct, anyway, so I guess if I've been taught wrong I'll look a fool in Japan... Also, I forgot to actually link to anything in my earlier post, so here are the actual links to those online Japanese resources: [url="http://www.learn-japanese.info"]www.learn-japanese.info[/url] [url="http://www.kanjistep.com"]www.kanjistep.com[/url] [url="http://www.thejapanesepage.com"]www.thejapanesepage.com[/url] [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]OH YES SHE DID! And [spoiler]Shizuru's reaction was typically inscrutable[/spoiler]. Maybe [spoiler]Tomoe[/spoiler]'s turning in to this series' [spoiler]Shizuru[/spoiler]... Totally with you on the whole [spoiler]rock monster[/spoiler] thing. Considering how well the series has been constructed so far, it seemed a very forced / rushed subplot that could have been handled better. Tsk. [quote name='Dagger][/font]...along with what seems like confirmation that [color=#000000][spoiler]she was the capsule baby.[/color][font=Trebuchet MS'][/spoiler][/quote] Well, that passed me by. Perhaps I'll watch it again to try and spot that. A nice glimpse of [spoiler]what Sergei used to be like[/spoiler], though, as well as a bit more light shed on why [spoiler]Nina seems to want so desperately to impress him[/spoiler]. So apparently, to create Coral / Pearl Gems, [spoiler]an Otome that chose love (read: did the nasty)[/spoiler] is required. There are [spoiler]two candidates I can think of that Schwarz / Nagi could be using in their nefarious deeds: Rena and Akane[/spoiler]. The focus thrown on the coffin / container thing in this episode suggests that'll be a major revelation: [spoiler]maybe Akane didn't quite get her lovey-dovey ending after all[/spoiler]? Looking forward to [spoiler]Mikoto[/spoiler]'s reappearance next episode... [/font]

[font=Trebuchet MS]Boku no kaban no naka ni imasu. But seriously, I don't know a lot of Japanese - I'm trying to learn so that I can go the Japan when I finish university and not come across as another gaijin tourist. Resources I've found useful, if you're interested, can be found here, here and here. The Kanji-By-Email feature on thejapanesepage.com is proving very helpful with learning kanji, the hardest bit of learning Japanese in my opinion. And the phrase [i]neko wa doko imasu ka? [/i]is a little more grammatically correct than yours. 'Imasu' is more like 'to exist', whereas 'desu' is 'to be'. Both are right (I think) but the 'imasu' construction is more natural. [/font]