SakuraCon 2016

Hi everyone, life has been kicking my butt lately so I’ve had to put this blog on pause (again). Don’t think I forgot about yall, but I did forget most of the things I did for all of SakuraCon weekend. So with that being said, I’ll just post up the link to the albums.

This one is EDITED

https://www.facebook.com/darrot.bun/media_set?set=a.1278046402224814.1073741845.100000583980283&type=3

This one is UNEDITED

https://www.facebook.com/darrot.bun/media_set?set=a.1279170392112415.1073741846.100000583980283&type=3

Be sure to visit both links! Hopefully you all enjoy them! Be sure to let me know which cosplays were your favorite!

-Aniplays

“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

Bait Seattle SF5 Preview Night

Sheesh! I practically saw cobwebs as I logged back onto here! Hope everyone has been doing exceptionally well! Anime life for me has slowed down to a crawl ever since I have entered the job search since graduation. But I have been rewatching Yu-Yu Hakusho again! It’s always a pleasure when I watch the series. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. As some of you may know, I also have a strong love for fighting games; Street Fighter to be exact.

This past weekend as PAX was held in Seattle one of the local clothing stores held a SF5 tournament. At first I raised an eyebrow because I never really thought clothing stores would support such things but I do remember going to this store a few months back and saw some street fighter clothing that I got overly excited about! As I found out from a local facebook group that the clothing store “Bait” was holding a tournament I didn’t exactly believe it too much. That is until eventhubs.com had also made an article about it! So finally after some cross referencing I was ecstatic about it to say the least! The beautiful pacific northwest doesn’t really have that huge of a fighting game scene other than the regular folks at gameworks (local seattle arcade) the scene is pretty dead over here. But wait, once I found out one thing dawned on me …. I still have never played 5 yet. Back when SF4 first debuted there weren’t any beta codes for fighting games while they were in production (in my experience at least) at all so the only chance you had to play it were at the location tests and at major gaming conventions. But with the beauty of the technology of 2015 being able to play betas at the comfort of your own home in your underwear under a blanket or whatever else floats your boat. Nifty right?!

So, lets get back on track to what I was going to do without having any experience for SF5 yet. I was bummed out and thought I was going to get destroyed within the tournament in a matter of seconds. I didn’t have the funds to shell out $60 for a game right at that very moment because I’ve been playing Ultra Street Fighter 4 for so long and the release of SF5 is still a fairy distance away. But my little brothers told me a little trick where if I put down the minimum amount of $5 towards the game I’ll be able get the pre-order AND be granted access to a beta code! SWEET! So I did that and fortunately with capcom dropping the beta on friday (the tournament was on saturday) I would be able to have at least one whole day of experience! One whole day was more than enough to get familiar with the games and the mechanics.

As you first walk into the shop you’re greeted with boxed kidrobot figures of Dark Charlie and Dark Sakura followed by the Shadowloo figures right after!

So Saturday rolls along and I step inside the shop. I really love the layout of the shop (sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the shop as I was walking in) as they have a very wide variety of clothing that’ll cater to a good amount of audiences. Most of it is dedicated towards the sneaker culture with brands such as 10 Deep, UNDFTD, and other brands that I can’t really remember off the top of my head, but I was still impressed with the amount of street fighter related items they had also!

Decided to purchase this shirt with the little money I had because I thought it was really dope.

Really was diggin’ the Evil Ryu figurine they had on display.

So as I do a quick walk around the shop I register and was able to take one of the last 2 slots for the tournament and was relieved because we were about 20 minutes late of the start time. After registering I joined the crowd to get a feel for how strong the people I would be facing were. I even got to meet Combo Fiend which was pretty cool. I didn’t leave with the best impression of him but it was a long day at PAX, maybe he was tired at the end of it all?

Honestly it was a pretty good turnout from what I had expected.

I remember as I got closer to the front I realized that it was fight sticks only. Just a heads up I am a pad player and I am GARBAGE on the fight sticks. A lot of people tend to look down on pad players for reasons on which I have no clue why but there are some really good pad players out there; NuckleDu who plays Guile and Decapre, and also Smug who plays Dudley are magnificent pad players that still manage to do really well in tournaments. So, a little bummed about the whole fight stick thing I tell myself to suck it up and just to keep going along with the night and see how far I can get with playing on the sticks, which wasn’t too far and I’ll explain why in just a little.

Combo Fiend in the flesh.

As the night wore on my turn was still a long ways to go so I decided to step outside for a moment. As I stepped outside to light up a cigarette I see a very familiar face that I see every Sunday, MIKE ROSS! I nearly had to do as much as I could to not fan boy at the moment in time but it was really dope. I stepped over to approach him and overheard that all the tournament slots were taken up and he seemed kind of bummed out.

Left: Mike Ross – Right: Gootecks

So, I offered my spot to him and he said he couldn’t take it, the guy next to him says “hey man I’ll take it!” and that was another familiar voice that I couldn’t put a face to for a little while since it was pretty dark. I let my eyes adjust and what do you know?! It was Gootecks! So I gladly give up my spot to him since I watch these 2 every sunday who are known for their Excellent Adventures on Youtube among much other video content they push out. I let him know that he’ll be under the name “The Rock” because well … my name sounds like that and the person taking names had the name mixed up. Duh-rot is how my name is pronounced, you could hear the confusion in it right?

So with now being out of the tournament I spent the rest of my time spectating matches and seeing how the newly announced characters play that aren’t in the beta (that you can play right now if you pre-order the game) such as R. Mika, Vega, Necalli, and Ken. Ken seems to be the only one to impress me as I didn’t really care for R. Mika back in the alpha days and I sure as hell never cared about Vega at all. I wasn’t able to stay for the end of the tournament to find out who won because it was getting pretty late and personally I can only be in one place for so long before my mind begins to get bored.

As the crowd got bigger the store got a bit more busy, and with bigger crowds means more business right? Of course, there were a ton of people sporting the new Street Fighter shirts that they had bought the same night. I didn’t get any pictures of folks wearing them at all since everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time and I didn’t want to ruin that for them.

This dude was able to buy (or win) the E. Ryu figure that was on display. To say the least, he was pretty damn happy about it.

My buddy sporting his new Bait x Chun-Li shirt that he had been wanting or awhile now. Be sure to follow him on Instagram! @Latiftanba

Another familiar face that has been on this blog before. Sarah Chaco! She made it up from PAX, it’s always a good time seeing her.

And what kind of SF event would it be if we didn’t have at LEAST one Street Fighter cosplayer?!

And that about wraps it up for this post everyone! What’re you most excited for about Street Fighter 5? What characters are you hoping to see and NOT see appear? Be sure to leave your thoughts in a comment!

PS.

With the lack of content I’ve been doing lately I was wondering if any other bloggers would be willing to share their ideas on how to keep motivated to keep writing. Any ideas are appreciated!

-Aniplays

Kingdom hearts X Big hero 6

With D23 this weekend kingdom hearts fans anticipated at least some kind of news. And now we’re getting a big hero 6 world! I really did like the movie so I have a positive reaction towards this. As for the rest of the kingdom hearts news? Well, there wasn’t any. Big disappointment again here. *sigh*

How do you feel about the new world being added to the kh universe? Be sure to leave your thoughts in a comment!
-Aniplays

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Every warrior must walk his own path

So lately I’ve been on a bit of a Street Fighter binge and I think it’s about time I paid some homage to one of my other hobbies, fighting games.

2008 was the start of my fighting game career, more like passion but whatever. I was always interested in fighting games ever since SF2 but never really could grasp the concept as a child. I remember playing for hours on end with my brother and every time I did Ken’s crouching fierce punch I always thought I was so close to doing his signature Shoryuken special move. But little did I know that I was so far off from it. Moving on to the teen years of my life when I finally had some competency to have an understanding of fighting game mechanics I was finally able to do combos and such that I personally always thought were flashy. Be sure to hit the jump to find out more!

Music Monday: Melodies of life

Todays music Monday is featuring one of my all time favorite FF games; Final Fantasy IX. In my personal opinion this game is underrated. Sure, it had its pros and cons but all in all I feel like it was a really good game. Every character each had their very own specific personality that just connected so well with the story. From Zidane’s comedic attitude, Freya’s seriousness, Vivi’s willingness to learn more about where he came from, Garnets (Dagger) personality of wanting to do what’s best for her. There was nothing to hate about the cast honestly. And I’m so thankful there was no significant death scene in this although, I was a bit heartbroken when I thought that Garnet would never speak again.

Music Monday: Aeirs Theme

I can’t be the only one who listens to this song from time to time. This has got to be one of the most iconic melodies throughout any Final Fantasy fan’s life. Whenever I hear this song it sounds like complete bliss to my ears. I remember my first run through FF7 I didn’t keep Aeirs in my party at all. That’s when I was probably about 6 years old. Hell, I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was just going around kickin’ monsters butts, I didn’t even know what I story line was haha.

Cosplay Sunday: SarahChaco

Happy Sunday everyone! Now I want to break down what Cosplay Sunday is about. This type of post I like doing (even if it is my first post) because it gives me a chance to know how a person got involved with the Otaku lifestyle. Whether it started from video games, to watching their first anime, or even listening to opening anime themes for hours on end, it’s still a pleasure getting to know them on a personal level. As I stated before in my “What’s your purpose?” post I’m here to share stories. Not all of us are famous cosplayers and not all of us cosplay as popular characters. So I’m here to do just that, give everyone some exposure to the light.

Music Monday: Kingdom Hearts

Good morning and happy Monday! Sometimes I wish we had 3 day weekends instead. But anyhow, lets kick off Monday with one of my favorite songs from the KH series, “Simple and Clean” by Utada Hikaru.

I’d like to say that this song is very nostalgic for me whenever I hear it, I remember the very ending of KH where I finally defeated Ansem. Waves of excitement washed over me as the final cutscene for the game happens. I put my controller down and propped my elbow on my knees and watched the game finally come to an end. The part where Sora and Kairi let go of each others hands nearly had me in tears as I finally realized that their might not be another game, little did I know about the secret ending at the very end of the credits though. Anyways, without further ado, feel free to relive the ending of KH again and listen to the song we all know and love.

Kingdom Hearts X Final Fantasy

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like if Square-enix ditched the Disney worlds and made Final Fantasy worlds instead? This has always been a thought that lingered in my head for years.