______Wing Of Tears______

Saturday, July 18, 2009

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Cospa has announced its offerings to be sold at its Comiket 76 booth. One item is a very special K-ON! bowl, modeled after the even more special pantsu that have delighted fans everywhere.

Fans can now eat or drink out of delicious porcelain pantsu, or at least decorate the dinner table with it…

The bowl is actually a part of a K-ON! meal set to be sold for ¥5,000. Other goods in the set are: a lunch mat, chopsticks, a chopsticks bag, a spoon, a fork, inexplicable castanets, and a glossy bag to hold everything in.
They're all kind of......weird, so i won't post them, except the bowl.

Haruhi’s continuing Endless Eight story arc is exasperating fans, and the usual demented otaku antics ensue, with 2ch providing examples of otaku driven to destruction.

Their attention seeking antics aside, it seems clear Kyoto Animation and Kadokawa are treading dangerous ground, as it looks likely that the “Disappearance” story arc will not be included as promised (though we might wonder about its cliffhanger potential).

Coming on top of the previous marketing tactics this seems to be more than even brainwashed Haruhi devotees can stomach…

A detailed comparison of the Tales of Vesperia demos for the PS3 and Xbox 360 reveals that the PS3 actually has noticeably inferior graphics to the Xbox 360 beta which was circulated to paying testers some time ago. The PS3 version actually has a lower resolution than the Xbox 360 version, for reasons we can only wonder at…

Screenshot scholars Digital Foundry hold forth on the matter:

Playable demos are often the first chance we get to check out gaming performance before the full retail or review code is made available to us. In the vast majority of cases, demos are actually produced after the final game has been submitted for evaluation to the platform holder, and it’s very rare indeed that there are any palpable differences between the sampler and the “real thing” in terms of pure performance.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at Tales of Vesperia, the demo of which has recently found its way onto PSN… analysed by MazingerDUDE.

Curiously, the actual content of the demo is very different to what Xbox 360 owners got in their download, but there are several differences and similarities that can be discerned. Tales of Vesperia runs at 30FPS in the field sections, while the battle sections run at a crisp 60FPS on both systems. Similarly each version is v-synced, with no tearing.

Yup, a it’s sub-HD detail level resolved on PlayStation 3, with a bizarre 1280×576 resolution chosen for the game up against 720p on Xbox 360.

This results in a somewhat uneven form of scaling for PS3 owners, compounded by the anti-aliasing solution chosen: quincunx, which combined with the lower resolution adds a somewhat obvious, and unwelcome, blur to the game. For its part, Xbox 360 also uses a blur filter as opposed to a proper edge-smoothing solution, but with the additional detail level, the impact is not quite so distracting.

Away from the performance elements, and perhaps by way of compensation bearing in mind the delay in launching, Namco Bandai is promising a wealth of unseen content for the full retail release of the PS3 version, including new playable characters, costumes, quests and game areas, along with some level of interfacing with the forthcoming PSP release, Tales of VS.

Some related trivia: the only other sub-HD game we’ve come across that employs a 1280×576 resolution would be PS3 Soul Calibur IV, and even then, only when the game is forced to run in the 1080i/p compatibility mode (that is, with 720p disabled on the XMB), otherwise it is proper 1280×720.
Barring further upset, it appears gleeful Xbox 360 beta testers (at least those ones not smitten with Patty) get the last laugh in this bitter contest…

Tales of Vesperia PS3 Final Ultimate Edition (with Patty) is available for pre-order now.

Via Hachimaki.

Dream C Club’s oppai baring mainstay Rui is quite the sight to behold, but a comparison between her and her seiyuu Hitomi Harada yields a shocking surprise…

It doesn’t usually turn out like this.

Dream C Club is due August 27th.

Weak, effete men and the improved social position of women in recent years are held to be amongst the reasons that a quarter of Japanese may soon pass their entire lives without ever marrying.

The latest trend amongst unmarried Japanese is “婚活 / konkatsu”, an abbreviation formed from the words “kekkon” and “katsudou”, meaning marriage and activity respectively.

Such activities, now well in vogue, try to create opportunities for meetings between the sexes for the ever increasing population of aging and poorly connected Japanese aspiring to matrimonial bliss, as it seems many feel an overwhelming social pressure to pursue marriage, and in yet in the normal course of their lives are never to able to court potential paramours.

A recent work by a sociologist and a journalist, “Age of ‘Konkatsu’”, attempts to analyse this trend, and presents findings which may disturb those Japanese keen to pursue married life.

Until now, the proportion of people in their fifties who remain unmarried their entire lives has stood at 16% for men, and 7% for women, however this is estimated to increase to 25% never marrying as the younger non-marrying generations age.

Factors cited in this trend are increasing numbers of passive men fearful of rejection, and increasing numbers of women with greater social stature, and less time to meet potential suitors. The work is presumably too circumspect to mention the economic expectations of women as a factor.

As a result, active attempts to find a spouse are said to be essential – it is the “Age of Konkatsu,” if this research is to be believed.

Via Sankei.

Other researchers have stated that now is Japan’s last hope before an irreversible demographic death spiral grips the nation, as the few children of mostly childless couples themselves proceed to have even fewer children, who in their turn may have even fewer children…

Teared On|8:13 AM|