Thursday, November 19, 2009

This Really Says Something...

So I've found what amounts to a fan-image wiki. Safebooru, it's called. Now, Danbooru, its big brother, is fairly well-known. It's a big site filled with images of whatever folks want to upload, tagged with appropriate descriptors for searching. Safebooru's the worksafe version of Danbooru. Danbooru without all the fan-porn. And fan porn is to be expected, rule 34 and all that, yeah?

Well, last night I was doing a Fate/Stay Night image trawl, with distractions for various other shows/manga. Now, the site told me that there are apparently around 350 pages worth of images. And so I scroll through, grabbing the cool ones that caught my eye. I think I got more than 100 from just FSN alone, when all was said and done. Now, I get to around page 230, and it starts throwing up blank pages. And I've figured out why. Y'see, all images on Danbooru get uploaded automatically to Safebooru, provided that they are, well, worksafe. But evidently some of the code is a little wonky, because I think what I am seeing is the total pages for Danbooru. Which means that all told, there amounted to about 120 pages of porn. About a third of the images, and that's comparatively low.

Now, I'm not some sort of prude who objects to porn on principle. Or even Fate/Stay Night porn. I'd be a hypocrite if I did, if you catch my meaning. But I do find it to be somewhat excessive. For all the bandying about of that tired old phrase "The Internet is for Porn", I genuinely think it's not- that there is far more non-porn than porn. It's really something when a good third of all the images on this site are not worksafe. It crops up a lot in other parts, too, that folk are sex-obsessed, but still, y'know...

Friday, November 6, 2009

Goin' to Tokyo.....

It is relevant to this blog's interests for me to state that from March 23 to July 11 (tentatively, I haven't gotten much information yet), I'm going to be studying abroad through IES in Chiba, Japan, just outside of Tokyo. No, I'm not just going because I'm an anime, manga, and video game 'tard. I've got a keen interest in Japanese culture and history. Hell, I'm writing this as a break from a history essay I'm neck-deep in about Japan during World War II. So I felt like that announcement is relevent, especially since it'll mean I'm at home for 3 months between the end of my first semester and when I leave, which is going to affect how I consume media- less internet, more TV and video games.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Fate/Stay Night has ruined Arthurian myths for me.

You want to know why? Three guesses. First two don't count. If you know anything about F/SN, you may in fact have this problem yourself.

Yes, it's Saber. I simply cannot look at anything about the Arthurian mythos without thinking to myself "the King Arthur character I know best is a girl." And an attractive one at that (Though not the most attractive in F/SN. Mmmmmm...Rider.) This invariably means that I break out in a fit of giggles when I picture the love triangle with Guenivere, remember that retarded movie with Kiera Knightley (another Mmmmm... if there ever was one), or anything of the sort. I don't even know what's going to happen the next time I try to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I think my brain might explode.

So have I talked about Fate/Stay Night before? Lemme check. Nope. Fate/Stay Night is an interesting concept. It's a Visual Novel* where the porn is not only incidental, but detrimental to the overall quality of the work. Type/Moon, the creators, are perhaps the most famous Visual Novel creators out there, and Fate/Stay Night is their magnum opus. It tells three stories, entitled Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel. They all have the same characters, but radically different themes, focuses, and plots. Each focuses on a different heroine, whom you sex up over the course of the route.

Now, obviously, there's a lot more too it than that. Like I said before, the porn is incidental. Alright, here's the gist of it. There's this event called the Holy Grail War. Seven mages summon seven "heroic spirits" and do battle in order to claim the Holy Grail- not actually the cup used by Jesus at the last supper, but just a really powerful artifact supposedly capable of granting wishes. These "heroic spirits" are reincarnations of mythological heroes- with the caveat that in this world they actually exist, so no Superman or Goku. Participants include the aforementioned King Arthur, Hercules, and others (who they are is generally a spoiler). I'm in a cool RPG where I've partnered with Fafnir (look him up.) So, they fight it out with really cool powers. There's some great storytelling and characters in this, despite how incredibly screwed up things are (the setting is very complex, but that's part and parcel of Nasu (the author's) writing style). It's hugely popular and actually quite cool, so check out either the anime, the actual visual novel, or any of the other stuff.


* A visual novel is basically a choose-your-own-adventure book on a computer. I mentioned similar when I talked about Persona, but this one has much less player choice, except the choices matter more.