Being trendy these days is about as cool as it was before - you'd be doing something that just about everybody you can see at any given time in a certain sect of society is already doing. Sure, you get the warm fuzzy feeling of being in the "in" crowd and don't need to be an uncomfortable little sod who is trying to ask his crush to dance at a schoolwide dance party but gets shot down with just simply an "lol, dweeb". It's okay though, because now you're in the "in" crowd just by doing what everybody else is already doing and not really adding any new substance to the mix... except, maybe, a full imperial cup of isolated liquid aids.

And, yes, that's a lot of aids.

See, nobody likes being that uncomfortable loldweeb, and the only solution then was to cut yourself a snazzy little Caesar haircut and listen to a lot of Eminem in the 6th grade - and now is no exception. Just, Eminem is a little less "hip" this time around. So, I thought I'd be a little trendy and try my hand at this anime blogging thing so that my life could be filled with love and kittens, and maybe some readers who can rofl the day away at my expense. Though, I'd definitely prefer rofling the day away with me.. so pretend its that anyway, okay? ^_^

Introduction aside and me feeling slightly less awkward because I put on my automatic +10 to awesome -5 to intelligence in-crowd hat, I'd like to start by simply stating a decent opinion on something loosely related to Japan and anime but definitely of mild importance due to the fact that NIS did it. (although future entries will be more anime related - I felt compelled to write this for some reason as a start)

Being that I, like most anime/game addicts who have not taken the DeLorean any time recently to before the year 2000, own a PlayStation2 and loved games like Disgaea for the tongue-in-cheek humor rarer in video games than trash in roadways since the Black Plague, I opted to check out other NIS titles.

This brought me to the first Ar Tonelico. Playing this game was a joyous time. It was a lot like birds perched on telephone poles sh*tting pearls all over your head instead of smelly slimy sh*t - face it, a lot of RPGs these days suck balls. This one I thoroughly enjoyed - it made me feel like I was a small child staying up way passed bed time to play a video game all night again. Street cred, man, street cred.

In any case, I was later lead to one Atelier Iris. This game made that nostalgic feeling of lethargy hit me again - this was exactly the kind of game I remembered playing when having an SNES made you the coolest person in the neighborhood - it was simple, fun, and exactly the kind of thing people who find fun in sniffing chemicals under the kitchen sink would enjoy.

The whole game just dripped awesome. That is, you know, until one certain line that read something along the lines of "THE WORLD IS AT STAKE.. and i dont know if i can handle the stress.. but.. since I have your love for me, I MUST succeed!" aaaaaaaand my jaw hits the floor as if I just spontaneously grew 4 chins from eating far too many cheetos which causes my jaw to snap in 8 places and just fall off.

That aside, fun game. And with it finished, I hopped into the second game peeling off the plastic with more glee on my face and more excitement in my fingers than any Christmas present I've ever received, then slammed my PS2's lid closed with enough strength to create coal. This game was, again, pretty stellar... after you get over the lul factor of all the speech bubbles coming from all the female character's breasts.

There's just something peculiarily comical about talking breasts.

I had a real hard time getting over it.

This is my 12 year old side showing.

Don't laugh at me.

In any case, this game felt a lot more like being in shackles being dragged along from start to end like I'm losing really hardcore at Tug-of-War again. Granted, the story took a decent leap from being scared to defend the world for anything but the love of one, it lost a lot in its customizability - and that is something I truly loved.

Also, not being able to turn into a tiny rabbit/rat crossbreed made me die a little inside.

Now, this game was basically the most fun I've had in a standard RPG in a few years - although, a lot of the game was fairly simple. Downside, of course, was that the developers ran out of ideas and made you waste about 4 hours of playtime doing completely pointless sh*t toward the end of the game. Back to difficulty.

I only really have one thing to say about the difficulty. As Yahtzee once said it, games are expected to start out relatively easy and progressively get harder. The second Atelier Iris was simply brainless.. (almost) THE ENTIRE WAY. It was more like staring at the exchange rate of American dollar to American dollar wondering why no matter how many times you refresh the page, the graph never changes.

That is, until the last boss. You know, when it makes up for the lack of difficulty progression and goes from flat as Saskatchewan to a 160 degree flip thus causing the difficulty line to literally stab me in the face as I charged full force into the battle without looking where I was going due to being conditioned to not give a damn what I was tearing to pieces with retracting blades of fire.

Though, that fight did eventually turn into my victory and I'd be damned if I didn't combine every FF7 character's victory dance into one and cheer like my soccer team won the Universe Cup.

But yes, talking breasts. Keke.

These first two titles in the Atelier series were basically dripping awesome aside from a few (rather comical) flaws and face-stabbings from difficulty graphs. Much like standing on top of an apartment building with your pants down just pissing off into the wind - very liberating and refreshing.

That is, until I popped in the third game and saw that it looked like some kid got bored and made a somewhat similar but totally different and kind of WoW-esque title in RPG Maker 2000, slapped a snazzy looking logo on it and released it without NIS's knowledge.

There I was, pissing into the wind. And then some ninja popped out of nowhere and tied a brick to my peen, and hucked it over the edge.

On the plus side, the breasts don't talk anymore.