Attack on Titan after Season 1 and June 11th, 2014

Attack on Titan after Season 1

(longer post at my Media Blog)

So what is this show about?  Well, Western Europe is full of tales about giants.  From Ireland to Germany, we have fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk or legends about The Giant's Causeway.  Attack on Titan takes place in what looks to be Germany(and uses German language in the story).  Only the "giants" in this show are "Titans".  They are giant, generally mindless, representations of human cruelty.  Taken in a modern context, they are 20-100+ feet tall zombies that devour people without mercy.  To fight back, humans developed a sort of "Spider-man" rope system that sends the characters soaring through the air just like the masked web-slinger.  They then use swords to attack the vital parts of the Titans.

The roughest episodes are the first.  If you can get past the first 4 episodes then you are in it for the long haul.  Attack on Titan is not a DBZ or white washed kids show.  Attack on Titan is a brutal, heart wrenching show that does not flinch when it comes to showing you the gritty details.  People will be destroyed in front of your eyes.  You will see them die in blazes of glory, but you will also see them die begging for their mothers, appealing to an uncaring enemy for mercy, and crying because they are not ready to die.  The show makes you lose hope because of all the horror and tragedy represented, there is just no way you feel like the sun will come up tomorrow.  So why do you keep watching?  Because like the best World War 2 movies, the hopelessness is peppered with inspiration.  You will feel very bi-polar almost every episode, switching from tissues to pounding your fist in "FUCK YEA!" moments in a matter of minutes.  It is epic.

Hajime Isayama is the writer of the manga, and I would give you a big list of his accomplishments if there were any.  Attack on Titan is the first one he's done out of the gate, and he already writes like a seasoned pro. In Japan the comic it is based off of has not ended yet, and I do not know if they intend to ride it out for a decade or if they have an ending in site, but either way the first season is worth watching if you enjoy anime. I rarely like anime, I'm super picky, but Attack on Titan gets my seal of approval, with only my cautioning that it is brutal.

June 11th, 2014

I have a real appreciation for businesses that keep their shit together.  Well run, well managed businesses are so freakin' few and far between these days as it seems management is just a social club where all the people focus mainly on keeping the club intact instead of doing their job.  I recently applied to 7 national chains for employment opportunities of various types, and of those 7, I only got one response.  Now, I took a lot of business based classes in my schoolin' days and I was always told that it is rude to not get responses, that all good companies tell you if the job has been filled, if something was wrong with your application that you might want to fix, etc etc.  Office Depot was the only one that sent me an email when the position had been filled.  It was automated, sure, but in there was actual info as well.  It said that I shouldn't see it as a rejection of my qualifications and that it would be fine to submit the application to other stores in my area.  Next time I go shopping for office products(its a guilty pleasure of mine), I'll be passing up Staples(my usual go to) for Office Depot.

I can't exactly remember the first year I got a CD player, I think it was 1995.  The Christmas of the year I got a CD player I was able to choose a handful of CD's from one of those CD clubs you used to get mailed catalogs from.  Almost all of the albums I got were from 1994.  I had not really developed a taste in music yet, so its kind of all over the pop rock spectrum.  I got R.E.M. Monster and I think I only got it because of the story of What's the Frequency Kenneth.  Blues Traveler 4 turned out to be a great choice as I keep going back and loving that album.  Stone Temple Pilots: Purple was probably the best out of the bunch I got, its still by far my favorite STP album.   Its weird that I never went and made a "Xmas 95" playlist on Spotify and now I want to do that... and make a larger post about it.

Lots more game news out of E3 this year, but I'm still waiting on more of the "gems" news to come.  Gems are the little games that are made seemingly without regard to blockbuster aspirations.  Ubisoft proved that they do not have to be indie to have them as Child of Light was one of last year's games.  Bastion and Transistor is another set of games that would fit in years past.  It takes time for these word of mouth games to trickle out amid all the Call of Duty and Halo news flying out of the "jouralism" caste.  I've got a few, I would like to get a couple of more before I do the whole post.