News & Updates in September 2006

Posted the character profiles of Train Heartnet (from Black Cat), Nouva Shenron (from Dragon Ball GT), King Yemma (from Dragon Ball Z), Li Yong Fa (from Battle B-Daman).

Posted the anime profile of Mighty Orbots.

Posted the anime profiles of There Beyond The Beyond, Invincible Poster Girl. Posted the character profiles of Mine Kuramae (from Fruits Basket), Ooji Karasuma (from School Rumble), Makino (from One Piece). Posted my preview of Age of Pirates – Caribbean Tales and my preview of Disney's The Little Mermaid - 2 Disc Special Edition.

Posted the anime profile of Baki the Grappler.

I recently stumbled across an article at J@pan Inc Magazine titled Anime in America. I mention it only because I was interviewed for this article like four years ago, and then completely forgot about it. So I figure, since my memory is so awesome, why not tell you all about it. It started with Deborah Gardner, a New Zealander who stumbled across my pathetic little website that you all know as Absolute Anime. Debbi, by the way, also had lived in both San Francisco and Japan for several years. She wanted to know if I would be interested in being interviewed for the article she was writing. Why me? Apparently because I was an adult working in the gaming and high-tech industry. Well, that second part is true, but I think many people would disagree with the whole "adult" concept.

Debbie was going to be back in San Francisco only briefly, and wanted to set up a time to meet... though apparently she wasn't quite aware of where in California Redding was located. In her article, she says that I live near San Francisco... which is true in relative terms I suppose, as Redding is definitely nearer to San Francisco than say Colorado... or Japan. But personally, I don't consider a four hour drive to be very "near". Anyway, I said of course she was welcome to come by, but suggested that instead of making an 8 hour round trip drive to interview me for 10-15 minutes, why not just do the interview through an online chat.

Well, she thought that that was an excellent idea... damn, I hate the whole "that that" thing... there's gotta be a way to reword that... hmm... ah, I got it, she thought that my suggestion was an excellent idea! So we set up a time for about 9-ish in the evening on October 21st and had our chat on Yahoo! Messenger. Everything went quite smooth. She asked questions, and I answered the questions. We both made minor typos, but they mattered not to us. We had a connection, a real connection. We laughed. We cried And then, after we said our goodbyes, I never heard from Debbie again. She didn't call. She didn't write. And thus I was left with a little piece of my heart missing for always and forever. Or not.

Anyway, back to present day... on Wednesday (which I guess technically is still the past), Treeses and I volunteered to put stickers of numbers on the bottoms of rubber duckies. Yeah, I'll just give you a minute for that to sink in.... Okay, now, in Redding we have this thing called the Ducky Derby, where basically they throw thousands of ducks in the water and watch them race to a finish line. The fastest rubber duckies are the winners, and whomever holds the numbers that are located on the bottom of the winning ducks wins... something. I think it's a car this year. Anyway, you can check out the official Redding Ducky Derby website if you really care, which you probably don't.

When we arrived, we learned that the other part to putting stickers on is taking the old ones off. They handed out those flat sticks that you stir paint with (AKA "paint sticks") to help in removing the stickers. I wasn't too sure why, as my fingernails seemed to work just fine. Then I started to understand. At first, it went very quick and really wasn't too difficult at all, but every once in a while a sticker would jab under my fingernail. As you probably are aware, that HURTS! Pretty soon, every finger was sore from this torture, and the use of an external device, although not as convenient or as quick as fingernails, became essential to keeping my sanity.

Alright, enough about that. So, is everyone out there enjoying their copy of Lego Star Wars II? Yeah? Of course, how could you not! Is it fun? Hells yeah! Is it buggy? Hells yeah! And this is exactly why I hate hard-set deadlines! You know that the developers were fully aware of these bugs, and yet were still forced to release it anyway just because of their deadline. Personally, I'd rather wait another week than have my speeder bike all of sudden break out into spontaneous and continuous back flips. I'd prefer to wait another month rather than have to restart levels because I can't push something that needs to be pushed in order to move on.

Of course, I guess I can't really complain about the bug that gave us 11 out of 10 mini kits in one of the stages. And apparently there's 11 in another stage too, because our mini kit detector still says we have one more to get even though we currently have all 10 out of 10. Oh, what's that? You say it won't let you get off of the little vehicle? Try dropping out of the game and coming back... nope, it just put you right back on the vehicle. Okay, well drop out and then I'll move on to the next area and you can just join me there.

I suppose you could look at these bugs as additional challenges to overcome in the game... but still, I'd rather have a game that works the way it is supposed to. And from what I hear, the Nintendo DS version is even worse. Yeah, I know, they want to release all the different versions at the same time. I do understand. What a pain that must be. But still, if at least two out of six version are buggy, I'm willing to bet that at least some of the other four versions are buggy too. So just push back the release date and fix the things!

Posted the anime profiles of Kimagure Orange Road, Locke the Superman, Futakoi Alternative, End of Summer.

Posted the anime profile of Kappa Mikey. Posted the character profiles of Ryuuku (from Death Note), L (from Death Note), Remu (from Death Note), Kougaiji (from Saiyuki), Lirin (from Saiyuki), Ken Kitazawa (from Powerpuff Girls Z), Himeko Shirogane (from Powerpuff Girls Z), Professor Utonium (from Powerpuff Girls Z).

Posted my review of Queer Duck - The Movie. Posted the anime profiles of Battle Athletes Victory, Battle Athletes, Alice 19th, Dallos. Posted the character profiles of Mrs. Wheeler (from Yu-Gi-Oh!), Sesshomaru's Mother (from InuYasha), Tallest Red (from Invader ZIM), Tallest Purple (from Invader ZIM), Dib (from Invader ZIM), Jean Louis Bonaparte (from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX), Titan (from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX), Seishiro Natsume (from Princess Nine), Izumi Himuro (from Princess Nine), Yuki Azuma (from Princess Nine), Hikaru Yoshimoto (from Princess Nine), Yoko Tokashiki (from Princess Nine), Nene Mori (from Princess Nine), Shinsaku Kido (from Princess Nine).

Posted the character profile of Molly (from Oban Star Racers). Posted the anime profiles of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society, Submarine 707R.

Well, it's official... my wife, Latrice, is awesome! As I'm sure anyone can attest, I've been saying this all along, but now a third person, whom she met for only a single evening, has put it in writing for the entire universe to see! But don't just take my word for it, head on over Old Grandma Hardcore: E3 2006 Part 4: Vic Ireland Enjoys Steak and see for yourself. We all had a great time that night hanging out with Timothy and Barbara, as they seem to be such friendly, good-natured people.

Oh, and Timothy's mention of the guy known only as "the boyfriend"... that's not me, even though the reference does come directly after Latrice is mentioned. Nope, I haven't been known as the "boyfriend" for nearly five years now. That was the boyfriend of the daughter of... dang it, what's his name... that one guy... oh great, now I'm never gonna be able to get to sleep tonight. And when the name does slam into the front of my brain, I'm sure it'll slip right out again as soon I try to update this.

Hey, Lego Star Wars II came out today! Did you pick up your copy? I picked up mine at Costco, which had it for only $34.99. The first Lego Star Wars game we got was for the PlayStation 2, so this time I decided to get the GameCube version. We played it a little tonight, and so far it doesn't disappoint in the slightest. My wife and I are both looking forward to many happy hours spent on the game. Too bad the same can't be said for the Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith DVD. We picked that up yesterday, not because we actually enjoyed the movie, but simply because it was the only one in the saga that we didn't have. What is it in our brains that makes us feel like we absolutely need to complete a collection? Obsession sucks.

Our old pal Chris Hoffman, who used to be part of the Working Designs team, is now working for the big N. He is currently a writer for Nintendo Power, which... wow, wait, I remember that magazine from my Junior High days... has it really been that long? Damn... I used to love that magazine... that, and others like Gamepro and Electronic Gaming Monthly. Of course, now that everybody and their stuffed animals have Internet connections, I don't really see the point of them anymore. But shhhhh.... don't tell the magazine publishers!

Anywho, so upon conversing with Chris via that wonderful method known as e-mail, I come to find that in April of last year, Chris got to actually hang out and have lunch with his long-time idol at an IHOP near Los Angeles. How cool is that? Isn't it something that just about everyone dreams about... er... I mean the hanging out with your idol part, not the IHOP part. Ah, but who is this mystery person that grips Hoffman's thoughts? If you guessed Chuck Norris, you'd be wrong! Stupid! Sure, that's what Wikipedia stated, but as I have to constantly tell those people who email me stating Wikipedia as an official source of information... it's not! Wikipedia is written by fans, and for some odd reason, often times fans seem to get facts flat-out wrong. No, Chris's true obsession is for none other than Mr. T! I went ahead and fixed the Wikipedia article, so lets hope some other dumbass doesn't change it back.

Hey, guess what? I've been reading! Yeah, really... and I'm talking about books here... real books. Weird, huh? I used to read a little bit... a real little bit... pre-college. After college, however, I just never would have pegged myself for the book-reading type. Too many other things to hold my interest, like videogames, anime, TV, and that whole relationship thing. But then not too long ago... well, I was noticing that my imagination isn't quite up to what it used to be. And so I figured, maybe, just maybe, I could start exercising it by reading. And so I did.

I started off easy, with three Star Trek: The Next Generation books (Metamorphosis, Boogeymen, and Survivors) because I already knew all the major characters. After a few of those, I moved on to some unknowns. And it wasn't easy, let me tell you. Each book started out being boring, as I didn't know anything about these characters or what their environment was like. The first was Volume 1 of the DarkSword Trilogy. Unfortunately, I didn't have the other two volumes, so it kind of ended on a cliffhanger for me. Next I moved on to fantasy, The Black Knight by Connie Mason. This was a nice change from the Sci-Fi genre. I followed that up with another Sci-Fi book called There is No Darkness, by Joe Haldeman & Jack C. Haldeman II, which both my wife and I enjoyed very much.

Now, I can't say for sure whether this is working or not, but it does seem to be getting easier to start new books, so I'm optimistic. Of course, who knows if I'll end up continuing to read once I start a full time job again. But, at least for now, I sure am enjoying it.

Posted the character profile of Eichi Sakurai (from Full Moon wo Sagashite). Created a MySpace Blog to echo the personal life updates posts that I make here. That way, people who don't care what's going on with the website will be able to read what's going on in my life a little easier.

Hello everybody. Would you like to hear a little tale about how a big business steals from its customers? I'm sure you've read these types of stories before, but this one here just happened to us a couple days ago.

A while back, my wife picked up a new cell phone, a Nokia TracFone model 2600B, and gave me her old cell phone, a Nokia TracFone model 5180iP. Well, a few months ago we were unable to find her 2600B, so we went out and picked up a new one, a Motorola TracFone model FC139B, and had her account transferred to that. Shortly thereafter, I had her transfer all of the minutes my phone had to her phone, since I never ever use the thing and had built up a whole ton of minutes, like 2000+. For those of you not familiar with the TracFone system, you need to buy minutes to keep your service going, but you get to keep any and all unused minutes you had previously. So my wife's new phone had a ton of minutes on it, more than she could ever use.

So where am I going with this story? Well, just recently, my wife's cell phone said it was no longer active and had no time one it. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. After messing around on the website a bunch, and then calling and punching in numbers on their automated system for 10-15 minutes, she finally moved on to speak with a real person. Eventually, this person said that they've been having problems with that model phone losing people's time, and were going to send her a new one. Sounds like a happy ending, does it not? Well, unfortunately, it was not. You see, all but the most recent 400 minutes she put on the phone are now gone.

The lady said that she only had a record of my wife added 800 minutes, and then 400 minutes, but that she couldn't give back the 800 minutes because she had no way to tell if my wife had already used them or not. WTF?! We paid for those minutes, but we don't get them because your record keeping sucks? We gave them money, not only for those 800 minutes but for all the minutes built up before then, and in return for our money we get squat? Psst... hey guys, you know what that's called? STEALING! Yeah, we have credit card statements that can prove that we bought minutes all these minutes, and their phone records should be able to prove how much the phone was actually used, so there's absolutely no excuse for this!

Oh, and my wife discovered that she can't use her current cell anymore, so now we're just waiting for the new one to arrive. What kind of company is this? A quick Google search for TracFone will answer that question, as the first link to come up after the official www.tracfone.com site is Consumer complaints about Tracfone. Wow, that's really telling you something right there! Bascially, it's saying never ever buy or recommend that someone buy a TracFone.

Posted the character profile of Tamaki Suoh (from Ouran High School Host Club).

Posted the anime profiles of The Gokusen, Kashimashi ~ Girl Meets Girl ~. Posted the character profiles of Kaede Nagase (from Magic Teacher Negima!), Yue Ayase (from Magic Teacher Negima!), Evangeline A.K. McDowell (from Magic Teacher Negima!), Nagi Springfield (from Magic Teacher Negima!), Meyrin Hawke (from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny), Hanatarou Yamada (from Bleach).

Posted the anime profile of Professor Shino's Classes in Seduction. Posted the character profiles of Chao Lingshen (from Magic Teacher Negima!), Kaoru Matsubara (from Powerpuff Girls Z), Miyako Goutokuji (from Powerpuff Girls Z), Momoko Akutsutsumi (from Powerpuff Girls Z), Karin Maaka (from Chibi Vampire). Posted my review of The Tick Vs. Season One.

Posted the character profiles of Aqua, Babbo, Ash (from MAR: Marchen Awakens Romance), Bokuseno (from InuYasha), Daisuke Yamamoto (from Paradise Kiss), Zim (from Invader ZIM). Created an HDLoader Game Submission Form for adding games to the HDLoader Game Compatibility List.