Jumping in Headfirst

Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku ni Naritai! (I Want To Be The Strongest In The World):  It's been two weeks since I saw episode one of this, and I'm STILL not sure what the hell I was expecting when I decided to watch this.  I guess I thought the world of puroresu (Pro Wrestling) would be more interesting if it involved a ton of attractive women.  What I got (and should've expected) was so much fanservice it was damn near a hentai, and moaning fit for the very best porn vids. The series is about a top level idol singer who, while on a routine publicity assignment, gets mixed up in the role of pro wrestling, and in fact tries to fight a female professional wrestler.  The good part is that she gets her ass kicked and doesn't magically pull off a win like I expected her to in a series like this.  The bad part...is that the wrestler the main character faced was a submission wrestler so the entire thing watched like a beginner course in BDSM, and those moans (and...

Yeah yeah, I know I'm late.  I was busy watching the Battle of the Bay 6 bouts, most of which are pretty freaking good, and I forgot about Bad Soundcheck 4, while SMACK pretty much forgot he was running a business and is too busy making blogs apparently.  Because that's what's hot in the streets.

Astro City 5 Any week in which Astro City comes out is a good one.  No other comic series displays this much love for superheroes and continuity despite remaining accessible and interesting month in and month out.  This month we revisit the Broken Man; introduced in episode 1, the Broken Man has been our guide into the latest volume of Astro City, telling us about goings on both old and new since our last visit.   Obsessed with a far-reaching conspiracy theory, the last page of issue 1 showed us that the Broken Man could just be like those whackjobs who see triangles and immediately think Illuminati. Well now Kurt is doubling back on us and showing that there may be more to the Broken Man's accusations about what's really going on than we thought, with a lovely story that plays with traditional narration techniques to tell us readers that there's definitely something fishy going on in the world of Astro City, though exactly what it is remains to be seen....

So yeah.   This finally happened.   My friends and I spent about two or three months cracking wise about this break-dancin', sword-slashin', fruit-lovin' crime-fighter, but now that its out, it's not so bad. What I Liked:  - The Fruit : I know, right?!   Like I said, my friends and I had a billion jokes about Kamen Rider Toucan Sam , but in the end I actually liked the way they implemented it.    While in theory not really much weirder than USB memories or say...grasshoppers, in practice, using fruit as a major theme for Kamen Rider Gaim was weird , and most everyone thought so.   The reason why I liked it is because the writers let us know from the moment they were introduced that this isn't normal.     The Lock Seeds themselves are seen as mysterious, strange objects that came from nowhere, and anyone who actually, y'know, thinks about it for longer than 3 seconds knows it.    And later, when they get ...

This battle is NOT the new JC vs. Chilla Jones.  Ty Law was consistent but not super impressive, and Sno's first is INSANE but his second is just okay and his third is forgettable.  Still better than most of those fucking NOME 3 battles. Favorite Line: "You 0 and 12 (owing 12) like that Swave Sevah and Head Ice bet." (Ty Law)  " 'Cause I don't care about X losing to Goodz, Calicoe getting killed, or that Lux ate Miles (8 mile)--if you find yourself in front of that white boy from Michigan?  It ain't Marshall, Law.  You gon' see so much firing going on, you gon need more than the fire marshall, Law!  My soldiers will run in your shit like the Martial Law!/They gon be like this white boy's flipping when he brought this tech in (Tekken) and bullets started kicking like Marshall Law!"  (Sno) That scheme (and the In Law/Out Law) shit was fucking bananas.  At this point, I really just want to know what they feed the boys from Pontiac to c...

Briefly I saw the name of this project and thought Donald Glover was going to be fucking around.  And then I pressed play on this freestyle.  It's nice to be wrong. After what most of his hardcore fanbase thought was a creative mis-step with his mixtape Royalty, I was actually left pretty excited.  I thought Royalty was what a mixtape should be: stretching one's creative muscles and experimenting before getting refocused for your next album.  From what I heard with Centipede and with this freestyle, that's exactly what he's done.  He got that Li'l Wayne/Kanye out of his flow and came up with something that's uniquely his own and he's sounds a lot more comfortable on the mic.   And if the beat he had on this is any indication of what he's got planned for the album, the music is going to sound fucking amazing. To me Childish Gambino is one of the most interesting rappers in the game right now, and he's still got a ton of potential left untapp...

With my schedule (somewhat) clearing up, I thought it was about time to bring this back, so here we go. Detective Comics 24 Detective Comics is one of the few DC Comics that survived "the purge" (more on that later), and that's mainly off the strength of Jason Fabok's beautiful, dynamic art and John Layman's stories.  We pick up right where we left off in August, with Batman facing off against the deadly Wrath.  The climax is a little rushed, but its fun to see Batman's gadgets go beyond "stuff that miraculously fit in his belt", as Batman basically suits up in a giant Bat-inspired Iron Man suit for a final throwdown. The idea that Batman just had something like that on hand is all by itself reason enough for me to love this issue.  But I also love that Layman has (re-)introduced a Bat-villain that can give Bruce a challenge physically as well as mentally, one that also serves as a dark, shattered reflection of what Batman could have be...