“I’m afraid that fine roses are as rare as respectable fighters.”

Ahh Street Fighter matches online can have you in a rollercoaster of emotions. You’re salty one match, feeling on top of the world the next, wanting to rethink your decisions as a gamer the next. But there’s one emotion that I myself can never personally let go of, and that’s anger. Today, as I was doing my daily hour of USF4 matches online I ran into a player by the name of “breeze546”. During this match I was really calm. I figured I’d play the match and happily give him a rematch if he wanted to keep playing. I’m Dudley and he’s Oni.

The only thing that really bothered me was how I had gotten beat the first round by a wake up ultra. But hey, it happens and as a player I didn’t think about all of my opponents wake up options, I just wanted to close out the round. Fair enough right? So the next 2 rounds pass by fairly quick and I end up winning the match. Usually I would move on with my daily life until he sends me some hate mail. I’ve been sent hate mail PLENTY of times before, but for some reason this one pushed me over the edge.

So, I end up sending him an ‘endless battle’ invite so that way we don’t lose any points in the next match(es). Then he responds with this.

So now by this message I’m saying to myself “fuck that, gloves are coming off” and I respond back with “create room”. I search for him for maybe a good 2 minutes and no luck. Whatever, I’ll play another match while I wait for him. Eagerly after the next match I see his name. I give him the same look Erza gives Gray and Natsu when they’ve done something stupid when I see his name on the screen.

I could feel the adrenaline pumping through me as I switch my comment section on the battle screen from ‘nothing’ to ‘Time to taunt!’ As you’ll see in the next video, I’m dead serious about taunting when I put that on. Enough of my babbling though, Here’s the next match.

During the second round of this match my hands were shaking like crazy and I was beginning to miss attacks that I shouldn’t have but at the same time I wanted to play with my food before ending the match. Then of course, he responds with

“Aniplays, you seem salty though, that’s why you’re making this post right?” At the time I was, but I figured I would give a lesson on taking your licks and accepting your losses. When you lose in ANY game don’t let the animosity of losing take over you and urge you to send that hate mail. You use that and you hit the training room to get better. You save that replay and see WHY you lost. You as a player may think to yourself that your game plan is solid and that you had no errors in it, but then why did you still end up losing? Were your anti-airs not on point? Was your spacing off? Execution errors? Was the opponent putting more pressure on you that you weren’t prepared for? Or did you simply not have any experience in the match up? There are an abundant amount of factors that come into play when thinking of your losses during your match. It’s up to you to analyze and strengthen your weaknesses. Happy fighting!

-Aniplays

Yu Yu Hakusho, Revisited

In the past 2 weeks I took the time to watch a favorite series of mines that I’m certain everyone by now knows about, Yu Yu Hakusho (I’ll be using the abbreviation YYH for the remainder of the post). I did a throwback Thursday feature of it that you can read here. No matter how many years since I first watched the series YYH will still find a way to make me shed some manly tears.

The first episode instantly had me reeled in because now that I’ve grown older it finally really hits you who your true friends and family are. At the scene of the mourning of Yusuke where everyone had their chance to throw in their two cents about Yusuke and what kind of life he lived it really hit me mentally how people who cared for him, people who fought him, and even his principal could have such kind words to say. The scene really got to me solely for the reason because these were the last words he would have never gotten to hear if he were never a ghost at the time. Even rewatching the scene down below still gets to me.

While watching the series I paid real close attention to how each character developed and matured as the series went on. To be truthfully honest, I couldn’t say which character is my favorite because they all are! Hieh and his negative attitude but willingness to help, Kurama and his kind hearted spirit that’s always seems to be the voice of reasoning, and then you have Kuwabara that’s the character who lightens up the mood.

This anime has everything you could really want all mashed into one. It isn’t too short, it isn’t too long (112 episodes). There’s a good amount of action in every episode that’s just enough to hold you over till the next episode. The comedy is downright hilarious. Ok, you get the point; I can go on and on about just how superb this anime is to me. But just watch one of the best fights series and I’ll let you decide if it’s worth watching again.

Another thing that I really admired about the series was the growth between teacher and student. Genkai and Yusuke seriously had this whacked out relationship that strangely just worked. From the beginning when Yusuke was enduring the training so everyone would just shut up he then began to train so he could beat the crap out of Genkai. I’ve gotta say I really wish they would’ve let us have seen some of his training that he went through rather than just a small glimpse, but I guess they didn’t wanted to be another DBZ and waste time with fillers, shots fired! It was admirable to see just how strong Yusuke had grown and surpassed Genkai in such a short amount of time that you almost felt he was a bit overpowered. He’s the main character though! He’s supposed to be! The series of videos below will be the growth throughout Yusuke’s training during his big fights. I’ve gotta say, Genkai really gives Shia Labeouf a run for his money when it comes to motivational speeches.

Needless to say, the development between the two was really quite beautiful. The arrogance that both of them possessed put an interesting perspective on how their relationship would turn out. Another thing that I would love to touch on is just how much of a troll Yusuke is. I’ll let the next set of videos speak for this paragraph.

As I close out this post I still wonder if there’s an anime out there that can match the same caliber as YYH, for me at least. Hell, the english dub of YYH is one of the very few animes that I prefer to watch over the japanese dub. I’m still hoping and praying for a reboot of it since series like DBZ, Gintama, and HxH got a reboot. But I don’t think that’s highly likely at all. 😦 So I guess I’ll just have to settle for the blu-ray set if I ever happen to come across it in real life. And I can’t leave this post without posting the ending!

It’s been awhile since I’ve been obsessed with an anime again upon rewatching it and it’s really damn refreshing. Which is your number 1 anime for you? Why’s it your number 1? Be sure to let me know in a comment!

-Aniplays

My Thoughts: Colorful

What if you died and you were given a second chance at life? I guess the other question to follow is what if that second chance wasn’t your own life? For years this thought had lingered in my head, well maybe not this thought exactly but I had always wondered what it would be like to live someone else’s life. Colorful does a great job on laying out this kind of scenario for you. It also does a great job on giving you chills as you think about the past. Every teenager has been through the phase that the protagonist has gone through. Heart break, suicidal thoughts, hatred toward parents, making that first big promise to your best friend, etc. If you nodded your head to any of the things that I just listed then I’m sure you’d enjoy this movie.

I always enjoy when people message me on facebook, instagram, tumblr, etc when they want me to check out an anime or a movie that they thought was really impressive to them. My friend had messaged me about this movie and at first I was just going to disregard the movie but thought to myself “ehh … you don’t have work tomorrow so might as well watch something right?”. So, that’s what I did, I picked up some taco bell as a late night snack and so I’d be able to let the movie buffer so I could watch it without any interruptions.

The movie jumps you right into what I would call “the spirit world” and puts you in front of a kid named Pura-Pura saying the main character had won the lottery and is granted a second chance at life. Do you know where they’re going? No, of course not. Once you’re granted a second chance at life it isn’t for you to decide where to go I guess. After some dialogue the person jumps into a portal and wakes up in the real world. Here is where we’re introduced to the main character, Makoto.

So before I move on any further I would like to add in that at first I didn’t think the animation was all too great. Hell, I was actually about to ditch the movie and watch something else but for some reason I pushed past the animation and ended up watching the whole thing and tearing up at a few parts of the movie.

Makoto wakes up in the hospital bed from his failed attempt at suicide. Everyone’s happy, his moms hugging him, his dad is also, and his brother is astonished from the recovery. The doctors had listed him as dead a few hours prior and of course the doctors and nurses couldn’t believe it themselves that the young boy had woken up! So, you think that’s the end of the movie right? Nope, there’s much more to it.

Upon Makoto returning home with his family he eats his dinner and converses with his family just as a regular teen is supposed to. Makoto enters his room after dinner and is greeted again by Pura-Pura who then gives him the run down on what needs to be done. The soul that took over Makoto isn’t actually Makoto so he doesn’t know how to actually act as Makoto himself. Pura lets him know that Makoto hated his father due to the amount of work and overtime he had been putting in before the time of his suicide. Makoto had always loved his mom until recently also where she had found out that she had been cheating on his dad with an instructor of hers, and his brother had always teased and put down Makoto because of how low his grades were.

This part of the movie is where things begin to get interesting. Makoto seems to have a liking towards his father again and he begins to resent his mother. Even going to far as to never eating a single item of her food that she cooks. And I’m sure knowing your child doesn’t want to eat your food is probably the worst feeling of all when it comes to being a parent.

After maybe 2 weeks of staying at home and being resentful towards his mother, Makoto decides he wants to return to school. Everyone’s staring at him in disbelief, some because they weren’t exactly too sure who he was, well actually most stared at him because they weren’t sure who he was. Makoto was actually a real big loner that no one really wanted to associate themselves with him. Until one of the popular chicks in school greets him and lets him know that she’s been wondering where he’s been and of course that’s where he begins to fall in love again.

Now I could go ahead and ruin the rest of the movie for you but I’ll let you decide from here if it’s interesting to watch or not. As I said in the beginning of this, it does a splendid job on the stages of an everyday teen growing up. It reminded me of how I was when I was growing up. It’ll pull at your heart strings as he realizes his first crush was a … and it’ll hurt you even more when he begins to cry and admits that he wants to go to a different high school because of …. Like I said, if you want a refresher on how it is to be a teen, watch this movie.

I found it strangely refreshing for myself because I forgot exactly how it was being a teen and I still look at my little brothers as little kids and forget that they’re 18 and that they’re still trying to figure out this big puzzle that we call life. I don’t know about you folks but my teen years is the era that I learned the most about myself. I guess that about wraps it up for me. Until next time!