It’s been a while since I blogged about anything non-FOSS. This time I’ll be sharing some impressions on one of the games I’m playing at the moment, that is, Ar Tonelico III (which arrived at my doorstep two days ago). I admit I haven’t been a fan of Gust games (aside from Ar Tonelico, they’re known mostly for the Atelier series), mostly because technically wise they didn’t really perform that well. While I understood they’re a small company, sometimes it was a little too much.

I bought this one because from the movies and information disseminated throughout the net it looked like it was better, so I started reading information, which in turn prompted the buy: it’s also a good way to keep my Japanese in order, as I need to keep up with the language if I want to understand things.

Right now I’ve just played a couple of hours, and it looks decent, although with some technical issues (the characters glide over the terrain, rather than walk). I’ve also seen the infamous Purge System in action (look it up online), which made quite a number of fan sneer for a various number of reasons. As of the story, I can’t say anything at the moment: I’ve just started. At least it is moderately fun.

Here’s a hands-on (Italian) which covers more details. I’ll try to post a few updates in the future (if I don’t forget….)

And here’s a quick video I made with my camera:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Well, it took me more than a month to get this thing done… I didn’t spend every day coding, but it was a challenge. Glad it’s over now, which means that Danbooru Client 0.5 is finally available. Grab it at the usual place on kde-apps.org.

Changes in this version:

• Massive code refactoring and documentation
• Support for multiple pages: the same query can be repeated multiple pages (shown in a tabbed interface), kind of like browsing the actual Danbooru board;
• Rating information added to the API;
• Support for translations (thanks to Pino "pinotree" Toscano for the help): the tarball now contains a .pot file which can be used for translating Danbooru Client. If you make a translation, send the .po file my way and I’ll include it in the next version.

Improvements that I have in the queue:

• Suppport for pools (every board out there changes the API, so it will require some work);
• Support for storing password/username using KWallet (through python-keyring, so it works even without KWallet installed);
• Review usability of the dialogs (I have a separate branch for that);
• Improve the image download dialog.

On recent KDE SC versions (4.4 beta 2 and onwards) there are some painting issues with regards to the thumbnails, but I’m not sure if the fault is in PyKDE4 or in the underlying libraries. Nothing too bad, luckily: hovering the thumbnails or giving focus to the thumbnail view should be what’s needed.

Here’s a screenshot of the new interface (click to enlarge):

Comments and suggestions are always welcome, so don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

As a final word, some thoughts on the work required to get this out of the door. My largest issues are related to garbage collection: Python’s reference counting based GC got a lot in the way, at least because of how the underlying C++ structures work. I had to work a bit to keep references to objects around so I wouldn’t get crashes (accessing an already deleted object). All is well now, and I think my Python/PyQt/PyKDE4 knowledge gained from it. I keep telling myself that I should be writing some tutorials one day…

Danbooru? Is it something you eat?

Well, aside from the Wikipedia link above, I think a small introduction is in order, at least for the readers coming from PlanetKDE. Danbooru is a kind of image board which structures its data semantically, by having tags attached to images (along with other things, such as favorites, rating, etc.). It can be browsed normally (newest posts, etc.) or by using tags and other properties. Some boards are quite popular in the anime-viewing community. The neat thing about Danbooru (which is by itself a Ruby on Rails application) is the fact that it can provide a REST and POST API to access data. So. it’s technically possible to access such boards programmatically: the API permits not only retrieving posts, but also upload, tag, and perform other operations.

The API could be technically used also for client applications, in order to free the user from using a browser. That is what Danbooru Client is aiming to do.

Introducing Danbooru Client

Danbooru Client fits exactly these needs by providing a GUI to (part of) the Danbooru API.

Features:

• Connect to any Danbooru board (three predefined)
• Download up to 100 images with selectable tags;
• Download or view images with the KDE preferred image viewer;
• Tag semantically the images using Nepomuk.

Requirements:

• PyQt (at least version 4.5)
• PyKDE4 (tested with PyKDE 4.3 only)
• (optional) Nepomuk
• Python (at least version 2.5)

Screenshots

(click to enlarge)

Download & Installation

You can obtain Danbooru Client from kde-apps.org. For the bleeding edge people (but are there such users for such an application?) there is a git repository set up at Gitorious. Once downloaded, you need to use CMake to install the files. Unfortunately due to the way CMake is set up, you’ll need the KDE development headers and a working C++ compiler, even though you won’t need them for the installation.

The installation process is very straightforward:

cd /path/to/source
mkdir build; cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix` ../
make # This just byte-compiles Python files
sudo make install

Then, just launch “danbooru_client”.

Known limitations

There are plenty for now, it’s just version 0.1:

• Zero documentation (although it’s kind of straightforward to use)
• Empty cells are created when a row is not filled with images
• No support for multi-download
• Untested login/password access
• The interface may be horrid
• Danbooru does not support rating filtering via API, so it’s not currently possible to do so

The client is licensed under the GPL v2 or later. The artwork for the splash screen is also under the GPL and was made by Melissa Adkins.

This is how it looked after unpacking:

The “deluxe outer case” is in fact a cardboard case which is quite large. Perhaps too large for its contents when we look inside:

As you can see, we have here a rather thin artbook, the famous “stick poster”, and the BD itself. The rest of the box is filled by cardboard to keep things in place. Not the best deal for 8000+ yen, indeed.

The artbook contains interviews with the staff, details about the places, and information on the characters. Here is an example (badly taken photo) showing a part of Arawn’s profile:

The “stick poster” is quite long once unfolded, and is an illustration of Morgan and Octavia, done by the series’ character designed, but colored in a way that reminds more of the game:

And now to the BD itself. Video is encoded at 1080p (quite nice!) but the audio is classical stereo without any bells and whistles. I wonder what the buyers of the non-first press version get, because inside there is absoultely nothing save a promotional sheet and the disc. Once loaded on my first-generation PS3, the disc played normally, and indeed at 1080p. It’s quite nice to view the opening in HD format.

The menus inside are terrible. They only offer chapter selection, a “play all” feature and an “information” link which plays some commercial of related Aquaplus anime adaptations, namely To Heart 2 (the upcoming OAVs) and Utawarerumono (again OAVs that should be out very soon). Sadly, this is on par with the rest of the offerings from other Japanese companies (and most Western anime publishers, too): the disc is simply a container, and nothing else is offered. I could understand if the price was lower, but at 8000 yen and more it’s simply unacceptable.

What about the content? Weil, I like it of course. The anime is very faithful (save some minor changes in recent episodes) to the game and thus I’m enjoying it qute a bit. I haven’t watched the episodes closely yet, but I doubt there will be any “redone” parts in this volume (I was hoping for specials a la Utawarerumono, but oh well…). Hopefully I’lll be able to write a little more (time permitting) once I finish watching it.

So I’ve heard that Tears to Tiara is coming in animated form. Being in the middle of playing its PS3 incarnation, Tears to Tiara – Kaikan no Daichi, I decided to take a look at some images that have been recently published on news.dengeki.com. It was already known that the anime would be an adaptation of the PS3 game, which is a good thing (I didn’t like the original character design). Animation is done by Oriental Light and Magic (OLM), and the same staff who adapted another Aquaplus game, Utawarerumono (or should I say Underwater Ray Romano ? *snicker*).

As the first image suggests, the character designs follow the PS3 game, although with some exhibit evident differences from the game (and honestly, I liked the game’s designs more). For example, Arthur looks like this in the two versions:

Although I dare say that it’s Gaius that changed the most: from a battle veteran (and a general), we get someone like this:

Hardly a look for a general…

As for the rest, though, according to what is shown in the Dengeki preview of the first three episodes, the team has tried to be rather faithful to the story, up to almost replicating the same shots, as shown here:

Quite similar indeed. Knowing the team, I fully expect a faithful “conversion” nevertheless, although I hope they don’t turn Arthur into the Oboro of Utawarerumono (mostly used for comic relief).

Tears to Tiara starts on April 5th. I’ll be sure to take a look.

]]> http://www.dennogumi.org/2009/03/tears-to-tiara-in-animation-faithful/feed 0 http://www.dennogumi.org/2009/01/kurokami-the-animation-episode-1 http://www.dennogumi.org/2009/01/kurokami-the-animation-episode-1#comments Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:06:13 +0000 Einar http://www.dennogumi.org/?p=504

New season, new anime to see. Since a certain guy kept me telling wonders about Kurokami (黒神), a manga serialized in Young Gangan by Dall-Young Lim and Sung-woo Park, two Korean artists, I decided to give a go to the animated version, produced by Bandai Visual, which has just been out.

The episode opens with the main character, Keita Ibuki, wondering about philosophical questions while he’s dying. We don’t get to know more, as the opening kicks in and once it’s over, we’re presented with another situation, presumably before that event. What we get to see is that Keita seems a rather introverted person, supposedly after a shocking event that happened in his past. His days seem to follow a precise routine: school, then a go towards an unfinished/collapsed highway on the sea, ramen in the evening at a certain place.

A few exceptions are when a little girl, son of a person who lives next door to him, approaches him. Meanwhile, the spectator is informed that something is going awry: disappearances and deaths occur throughout the city, and they’re apparently linked to people seeing an exact replica of themselves (Doppelgänger): when this happens, one of the two identical people dies within days (and we learn that something like that has happened to Keita’s mother as well).

And that’s what happens to one of Keita’s schoolmates, who has seen a replica of herself at a concert (although the encounter was probably planned by someone behind the shadows). Of course Keita is saddened greatly, and he vents his frustration when he’s alone. During the evening, while he’s eating ramen, he meets a strange girl who’s starving. He lets her have his cup, and during the conversation that ensues, this girl seems to know a lot about the replica affair. She mentions that, out of the 2 or 3 replicas that exist in the world, only one is the so called root, and the only one who will survive when he/she meets the others.

It’s not like she can tell more, because a scary-looking person with a bat arrives and hits her on the head without any hesitation. The owner of the shop tries to act, but is hit as well. The newcomer says a few things without much sense and proceeds to hit the girl more. “Of course”, Keita decides to run to her defense but the outcome is rather predictable, and he gets a spanking as well.

That’s when the girl steps up and shows to be quite apt to fighting. She and the other man exchange blows for a while, although the girl is at disadvantage and has her head smashed against a car’s screen (ouch). The man mentions that he has “to take her alive” (as if someone would survive the beating she had), and that’s when she gets up again and treats him with a lightning fast series of punches and kicks (it reminded me of Ryo Sakazaki’s super move in Ryuko no ken / Art of Fighting games), sending him against a fence and knocking him out.

She then complaisn about the spilled ramen (?) and leaves shortly afterwards, before the police comes, but not before introducing herself as Kuro. The other guy disappears as well. The following day, Keita meets the small girl from next door again, and she says she has met another identical girl the day before. You know what’s going to happen now: she gets run over by a truck in front of Keita’s eyes. And then Kuro is next to Keita, talking again about the replica stuff, mentioning that the girl was obviously not the “root”.

That’s when the episode ends. What can I say about it? It looks good so far, with a promising storyline, but knowing Sunrise’s previous “accomplishments”, including Code GEASS, I’m still wary. The number of episodes, also, will determine how much the story will be rushed or not.

Animation and sound wise we’re at good levels, although Kuro’s final “combo” looks more like an animation stunt than something that’s really needed. The opening theme, “sympathizer” is decent enough, and coupled well to the images (that should be taken for granted, but according to what I heard about Gundam OO’s new opening, one can never know).

I’ll be keeping an eye on this series and see if it keeps on doing well.

After that we stopped for lunch in the Kyoto Station, a rather controversial piece of architecture built in the ninieties of the last century. I can say it’s huge, and filled with stores and even a hotel(!).

In the afternoon, we went gain for shopping, targeting the local Animate, Gamers, and Melon Books stores. My brother snatched up a non-H, FFXI-related dojinshi from Melonbooks, and I grabbed a limited edition of Aquaplus’s latest PS3 title, Tears to Tiara (photos coming up tomorrow). Tomorrow, we’ll be (weather permitting) heading for Nara to view the Todaiji Temple. That will be our last day in the Kansai region, as the day after that we’ll return to Tokyo via shinkansen. New photos have been uploaded to the gallery, of course.

By the way, I managed to view Slayers Revolution last night on TV Tokyo, and here is the obligatory photo:

After that we moved to the Toshogu Shrine in Ueno Park, a shrine that was dedicated to the shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa. It’s not an “active” shrine anymore, but you can visit it for 200 yen. As the heat was killling us, we went back to Tokyo Station for lunch.

The afternoon was spent in Akihabara, the famous “Electric Town” district in Tokyo. It’s a real chaos, in my point of view, as there are so many stores it’s overwhelming. I went to Gamers and Melon Books, and got a hold of some stuff (which you’ll see in the image at the end), although I could not find a keyboard cover for my Eee. I’ll be back later this week to get other things.

Tomorrow we’re going out of town, in Nikko, to see the Toshogu shrine, the mausoleum of Ieyasu Tokugawa and the famous nemuri-neko (sleeping cat). The train leaves at 9.30 and I stilll have to claim my ticket, so it’ll be an early morning.

Now it’s time to get some sleep. The gallery has been updated with new photos, by the way.

It’s been a long time since Slayers had aired on TV, basically since Slayers TRY was released, which means more than 10 years ago. Then, this year news told that two new series were planned, and this post is about the first episode (out of 13, aired on July 2nd; the second series will start sometime around January).

First of all, the staff is the same as the old production: the director Takashi Watanabe, the character deisgner Naomi Miyata, animation by J.C. STAFF, same people for the music (vink, this time called vink4), and of course, same voices, including Megumi Hayashibara as Lina Inverse.

After a brief moment describing Lina by her peculiar features (“Demon eyes”, “demon mouth” and… “no bust”), the opening kicks off with a song by… Megumi Hayashibara. Then we see a group of pirates that are busy collecting their loot, when a lone ship starts destroying their fleet. And Lina and Gourry are on that ship, of course (apparently bandits are running low on numbers, so Lina chose to target pirates instead).

Lina of course gives them the speech, but apparently the pirates fail to recognize her and just launch an assault. Suffice is to say that they are no match for the crazy sorceress, as she blows them away. Gourry manages to do his part, but his sword keeps on breaking (don’t forget he no longer has the Gorn Nova/Sword of Light).

Elsewhere, the fleet of Sairoon is approaching the area, with Zelgadiss and Amelia on board, along with another person that expresses his desire to meet Lina. Their arrival (along with Amelia’s usual over the top lines) almost destroys what is left of the pirate ship (and Lina’s one too). The pirates attempt an escape, but their cries of “flat chest” anger Lina so much that she sends them flying around with a well timed spell.

Later, at an inn, Lina and Gourry are counting the money they got (and of course their eating habits haven’t changed a bit), while Zel and Amelia come in, along with this other person, who then identifies himself as an inspector. A moment later, he arrests Lina! And the grounds for arrest are as strange as his action: Lina is to be arrested under the accusation of… being Lina Inverse.

The rest of the group thinks about a “strategy” to fight in court, but all they get is to get Lina mad, and then she just kicks them. While Zel suggests that Lina would be hard to arrest, the inspector has some aces up his sleeve, including calling a whole army. Of course, those kind of people aren’t much for Lina, who just wipes them with a Mega Brand spell.

The group decides to run away but their advance is stopped by the arrival of a huge tank-like machine, although “slow as a tortoise”. The battle rages on, destroying most of the town as well. When Lina is about to pull something off, voices echo from above. A… thing (I can’t really describe that creature) casts a Dragon Slave, destroying everything in sight. Of course Lina is mad, and all because that one stole her scene…

That’s how the first episode ends. The animation quality is just decent: in some parts it fluctuates quite a bit and backgrounds tend to be overly simplistic at times. Sounds are in the same league as other Slayers series, including some remixed versions of old tracks. The ending song, along with the opening, is sung by M.Hayashibara, and overall it’s decent, although both songs are a bit too dance-like for my tastes.

Some voices may sound slightly different to the audience: the effect is noticeably mostly for Lina and Amelia, but after all, it has been more than ten years.

What about the story? Like most Slayers first episodes, there’s no real insight yet and a lot of comical moments (some genuinely funny). We’ll have to see in the future what it will happen, especially considering that 13 episodes aren’t a lot.

In any case, it’s a good return after all this time (and after last season, which I found to be rather lackign in anything interesting to watch). I’ll be sure to try and watch an episode live when I’m in Japan (more on that in a future blog post).

Slayers of course is a different story.  I hope someone else steps up and continues the novels, because they’re worth it. Also, according to rumors the upcoming Slayers Revolution will feature an original storyline, but based loosely on the second arc of the novels (which was never seen in animation).

Time to read and report.