Jumping in Headfirst

Against my better judgment, I saw X-Men: Apocalypse on opening night.  With so many reviews coming back less than positive, I was concerned that the film would be a waste of both time and money but I left pleasantly surprised.  Not because it was a great film--it's guilty of many of the same sins most third films are: too large of a cast, and attempting to accomplish far too much inside of a single film.  But largely because I've never thought all that highly of the X-Men as a film franchise in the first place.

Another column I'm behind on.   I'm skipping the episodes I missed and catching up proper as of this week.   I know I'm supposed to cover Dragon Ball Super, but as long as it's on mindless filler I think I'll give the series a break and come back when Future Trunks 2 starts up.

Hi, and welcome back to Bottom of the Pile--the column on Jumping in Headfirst where I discuss my favorite comics of the week.  As my interest in comics from the current era had started to fade, this column was absolutely, positively dead.  And really only one thing could've brought it back. That's right, the long-awaited DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot.  After several months of build-up to the grand reveal, we're finally here, and DC Universe: Rebirth has found its way into the hands of the public.  Working our way up to this release, there've been tons of opinions on whether DC can "get it right" this time, or whether there's even anything to get right at all.   How'd it do?  Well, let's get into that.

Whew~  Caught up!  Didn't believe I could do it, did you? Walkure Update: I always want to use Mikumo but these two keep finding their way back here, for like...obvious reasons.

Walkure Update: OTP status reading: still adorable.  Also, out of costume Kaname might just have the best style of the entire group.  Or maybe I just love her taste in hats.

Walkure Thoughts: The love triangle is irrelevant.  Right now the only pairing that matters is Makina and Reina. Second Thoughts: Just a shot of Mikumo being a true gangster, nbd.

So I'm four weeks behind on this, and the only way to apologize is by shotgunning and catching up inside a single week.  Let's see how THAT works out~ Mikumo Watch: A few people complained about this scene from episode 4, claiming that Mikumo's actually a bitch.  I don't think that's what this is.  Mikumo is clearly nuts--earlier in the episode she's somewhere on a hill completely naked, pondering the meaning of life and music.  Music is absolutely everything to her, and while everyone *else* finds Freyja's nervous newbie gimmick amusing, Mikumo is NOT having that shit.  Fuck around with her life, and cute or not, you get the boot.

Ah, here we go.  I placed this last for a few reasons--it's the last conference of E3, it's my favorite company and I believe in saving the best for last, and finally?   It's downright a pain in the butt to predict.  But, time to give it that college try.   If you haven't checked them out--I did Nintendo's , Ubisoft's , Microsoft's , EA's , and even an imaginary Square-Enix conference already.  Give them a click, then come back here and read (even more of) my insanity.

This is the one I'm least sure about.  Fact is, Square-Enix's 2015 show came as a complete surprise even if it made total sense.  Between their Western and Eastern branches, they had more than enough games to show off at their own conference.  And if we're being honest, they still do so this is my attempt at what a E3 Conference for them would look like.  Of course, this is Square we're talking about here so let's go ahead and toss any attempt at guessing the order of things out.

Part Four of my E3 Pre-Show Thoughts.  (Go check out Parts One, Two, and Three if you haven't.) EA's a lot less interesting than some of the other companies.  Most of their games aren't even a surprise anymore--they just flat out announced the vast majority of what we'll see at EA Play, their pre-show conference.  Still, I'm not mad.  For two years in a row, EA's had the worst pre-show press conference possible.  In 2014 it was basically just Dragon Age, sports games, and titles that were so woefully unready they were legit showing concept art.  And last year?  ...Pele.  I don't think I need to go into anymore detail.  Fortunately, that ends this year as EA's potential showing for the year is actually quite impressive!  If they fuck it up this time it's all on them.  Last year they had about a dozen games on deck for a show that ran about 90 minutes.  If you presume they've got about the same for this year, then it should look something like

Part 3 of my E3 Pre-Show Thoughts.  Go read Parts Two and One here and watch me make guesses so you can make fun of me about it later!   I've never, ever been much of a Microsoft fanboy. To the contrary, when the console wars were still a thing that even remotely sane people did, I was always pretty hardcore in favor of Sony. (Sega died, and Nintendo betrayed me as a young, fledging RPG fan who asked his mom to buy the N64 for Christmas.) But for what its worth, since Playstation 4 took its place as lead console, I've been watching Microsoft's work with the Xbox One come away pretty impressed every year. For two years in a row, Microsoft has consistently held its own with a conference that's both packed with games and consistently entertaining. Last year's showed off both third-party exclusive Rise of the Tomb Raider and first-party mainstay Halo while also introducing games like Gears 4 and Sea of Thieves. For this year?

And we're back with the next set of pre-show predictions...next up, Ubisoft!

With E3 less than 50 days away, I thought I'd go ahead and get ahead on some of my E3 coverage this year. Usually I do my prediction list, and last year I added on by actually grading the conferences, so this year I decided to take it up a notch and do individual expectation lists each presentation. For each potential presenter I'll be talking about what I expect to see there and why, with a bit of commentary in-between about how I think the shows will go. I'm going all out with prediction list, so if I'm full of shit everyone can call me on it after the shows if they remember. We'll go ahead and kick things off with Nintendo, a company that...well...just hit the jump so we can get into it.

Hey, welcome to my newest column, Anime Weeklies!  I've been doing those seasonal columns about anime pretty much as long as I've had this blog, and I probably should've improved to this point ages ago.   Oh well. This season's series: Dragon Ball Super, Boku no Hero Academia, Bungou Stray Dogs, JoJo Part 4, Joker Game, and Twin Star Exorcists.  There's also Macross Delta but I'll be doing separate columns for that since it's...well, it's fucking Macross.