Darylsurat

It was sometime around 7pm on Friday at Anime North this year that I realized it wasn't going to be like other years. Sure, there was a line for the Nominoichi yard sale event. That's normal. What wasn't normal was that there were TWO lines. When a third line formed, was herded against the autograph session rails, was herded again against the other side of the hall, that's when I pulled the "abort" lever and noped out of that situation.

I mean, that's a helluva lot of people who just want to look at other people's anime junk. But let's face it, there were a helluva lot of people at Anime North this year. My sources say we're looking at over 23 thousand attendees. That's paid customer numbers - AN's not counting staff, guests, dealers, complimentary passes, friends of friends, "turnstile" numbers, or any of the other questionable accounting methods some conventions use to Potemkin Village their way into the big leagues.

When a show starts getting numbers like that, it becomes its own unique beast. Congoers were spread between hotels stretching two kilometers worth of Dixon Road, marching back and forth between the TCC and the Doubletree and two Holiday Inns and a Sheraton and a couple of Marriots, a Radisson and a Crowne Plaza and something called The Sandman. The video games were over a highway bridge, the panels were down a hall, up a flight of stairs, and over and around the lineup for the Costume Contest, and the dealers room meant a hike across Dixon Rd, around the front of the TCC, past halls A, B, C, D, and E, and into F, where you'd hang a right past the artists alley and a left into the crowd control fencing. They say geography is destiny and if that's the case, the destiny of an Anime North attendee who wants to experience most of the show is to have very sore feet at the end of the weekend.

And when the weather cooperates, it can be very pleasant. After a long winter nothing pleases a Torontonian, or an Ontarian for that matter, like getting out into the friendly sunshine and the fresh air, surrounded by furiously blooming trees and grass and flowers. Usually the late May weather gets with the program and things are warm and sunny. Unfortunately this year the weather turned on Anime North with a vengeance.

Thursday was, in fact, a goddamn nightmare right out of "The Wreck Of The Hesperus". 60kph winds, cold rain blowing in your face driven by a wind that simply would not quit, it all seemed like a cruel betrayal of the wonderful weather Mother Nature had seen fit to give us for the previous weekend's Victoria Day. The weather made airport runs and hotel pickups a serious pain, and even though the rain cleared away for Friday, the cold wind remained, driving a large proportion of what would have been outdoor photo-swapping cosplayers inside to jam lines for events like the Nominoichi.

I used to sell at the Nomi, but it's tough to cram in an hour of setup and three hours of selling on top of the normal Friday responsibilities of checking into the hotel, setting up the flyers and placards for the AWA promo table, plastering the convention with flyers, getting some kind of food into the body, and being mentally prepared for my 10pm assignment in the Plaza Ballroom to deliver Anime Hell. So this year I took a pass, which meant I had time to get a burrito on the curbside in the cold wind, take one tour through the Nomi, whose tables were jammed three and four deep by bargain-hunting fans, and then make my way back over to the Sheraton to get my act together for my 10pm start time.

My AN was like that all weekend; making sure my events happened on time, combined with the logistical efforts necessary to get from point A to point B to point C in a sea of wandering anime fans herded from crosswalk to choke point to sidewalk to hallway, added to the normal human problems of food and sleep and clothing, it all meant that when I wasn't getting one thing done I was getting something else done. We barely had time to forage through the dealers room for cels the Beguiling had spirited out of Mandarake, and carving out a half-hour to enjoy green-tea ice cream and con gossip took luck and planning.

There is so much happening at AN, spread out over such a large patch of real estate, brought into being with sort of a cheerful disregard for anything resembling the "big picture", that the show really has attained a kind of amorphous, benign-tumor sort of growth; swelling into parking-lot raves and improv performances and highway median photoshoots. It's become fashionable to complain about the mission creep; check out AN's Facebook group for a stirring call for the convention to ban all non-anime cosplay (because you can tell people what to wear, apparently), and the con itself is in its second year of crowd-control capping the membership. My inner OCD sufferer is behind this 100%; thin out the ranks, keep it for the true believers, force the attendees to submit to strict regulations concerning dress, activities, expressions of fandom... because that would be fun, right? That would be entertaining? No. Not at all. Which is why the con doesn't do it. Last I heard these things were supposed to be fun.

These aren't TED talks. Nobody's getting their ISO-9000 certifications here. Important industrial regulations or brokered political deals will not be resulting from an anime convention. People are going to dress up in silly costumes and buy useless junk and see their friends. So relax.

As an anime nerd I find the non-anime stuff- the Avengers cosplayers, the Homestuck game shows, the My Little Pony panels- irritating and a waste of time and space. But as an observer of human nature it is fascinating to see how people take something that was meant for one purpose and turn it to something else, use it as a launch pad for new and different experiences. To see how what used to be a teeny tiny niche culture influence nearly everything around it. At any rate, what we call 'anime' is cartoons, cartoons for young people, and what is MLP but cartoons for young people? I don't want to be the moral scold standing there pointing my finger at somebody to tell them they're doing it wrong, that they're not having fun in the right way, to holler "JUDAS!" at an electrified Dylan. That's not why I got into this.

What I will say is that it's time for AN to do some serious big-picture re-engineering of the show itself. To rethink how they're using their available space, see if it can't be used more efficiently. AN has grown without any overall plan or focus, and from what I hear & see, it's now at a point where overall planning is needed more than ever. If only to spare the tired feet a few steps here and there.

By Sunday the weather was back to Anime North standards - sunny, warm, a little breeze. I wound up being on three panels that day, and then it was time for an early dinner, some hotel suite relaxing, and then the long haul of junk back to the house. Monday I witnessed the achievement of high scores in Battlezone, Asteroids, and Tron, but that's another story.

Anita Sarkeesian's crowd-funded analytical series continues

After raising nearly $160,000 out of a $6,000 goal on Kickstarter, Feminist Frequency's Anita Sarkeesian kicked off her video series, "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games." Now part two of "Damsel in Distress" is out, and you can watch it after the jump.

A few weeks back, I prepared a 5-minute slideshow on How to Survive a Kappa Attack for hordes of drunken visitors to Pecha Kucha Night at the now-closed Heineken Star Bar in Harajuku. The trick with Pecha Kucha talks is their speed: speakers get only 20 slides of just 20 seconds duration each to make their point.

My point was how dangerous Japan's single most famous yokai can be - and how to save your butt (literally). Not only has Pecha Kucha made it available online, it's been selected as the Presentation of the Day. So bust out the cucumbers and take a look!

Memory lane: my grandfather has been going to the video store every Tuesday after work for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I could make requests or beg him to come home before going to the store. Sometimes we’d go a couple times a week. When I was older, I could drive myself over there, but the bulk of my video store memories are of the two of us walking into the video store and splitting at the twin metal detectors.

He broke to the left to check out the new releases. At $2.50 for three days/overnight, that was a little rich for my blood. I broke right, because that’s where the trash was. $1.50 got you a five day rental of the finest — or maybe just “readily available,” my taste as a kid was and remains suspect — low budget no budget exploitation flicks. I tore through the Carnosaurs, ate up the Roger Cormans, and pretty much anything that might have had some blood or part of a boob in it.

The crown jewel of the video shop’s collection, at least for me, were the kung fu flicks. They came in garish boxes, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle green and sickly yellows. You can see a lot of the cases in this photobucket account. I don’t recognize each and every one of them, since tearing through two or three movies a week for a few years isn’t really conducive to making lasting memories, but I love them nonetheless. I’d buy the Wu-Tang Collection on DVD if I could, and every other flick I rented back then.

As a general rule, I really enjoyed every one of these as a kid. I’ve rewatched a few and I still like a lot of them, though some are utterly bottom of the barrel. Chinese Super Ninjas 2 is trash, sure, but Hell’s Wind Staff is great fun. Sometimes they’re outrageous enough to be entertaining despite their flaws, as in the case of Super Ninjas, but the good ones are genuinely good, like Drunken Master.

My favorite flick from this era is easily Mystery of Chess-Boxing, aka Ninja Checkmate. Joseph Kuo directed it, Ping Han Chiang wrote it, and Mark Long stars in it as Ghost Face Killer. He’s the villain, not the hero. It’s hard to put my finger on why, because I don’t think I’ve ever tried to explain why it’s so good. It just clicks for me, from the stunts to the jokes to the choreo. It’s funny, it’s plenty charming, and the fights aren’t the best, but they are great to watch.

Amazingly, it’s streaming for free on youtube. The video is marked with “official,” so I assume it’s legal. You can watch it here:

It’s well worth the 90 minutes. It’s overdramatic, full of musical stings, and a bunch of familiar characters. It’s got my favorite kung fu kitchen fight, too. You want spectacle? Watch Ghost Face Killer and his Five Elements kung fu tear a swath through the countryside. The joke with the table that’s about ten minutes in is great, too.Similar Posts:

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Poll collected the opinions of nearly 8,000 Japanese fans

Everybody knows turnaround is fair play, and after the hotly debated poll ranking anime that girls love buy guys hate, it’s only fair that the fellas get their day. Check out the top 25 after the jump.

From circa 2000 on, how many chapters do Jump series run before getting anime adaptations

Shonen Jump is about to make an announcement along with chapter 76 Nisekoi. The general assumption is that the yakuza/highschool relationship comedy will be getting an anime adaptation, and this begs the question of whether 76 chapters is an especially quick turn around for a Jump manga series. So, from circa 2000 on, exactly how many chapters does it take a Jump series to get its own anime? Find out after the jump.

An intro to the 1977 original and the 2008 reboot

Thanks to the new Anime Sols streaming site, the classic anime series Yatterman and its 2008 reboot are finally available to English language viewers! To help celebrate, guest writer Kara Dennison provides an overview of the series’ colorful and crazy heroes, villains, and their place in anime history. Shout “YATTA!” and Read on! 

Sword Art Online is pretty darn popular, and it's looking to get even more so with Aniplex of America's announcement that the series—which adapts Reki Kawahara's light novels of the same name—will be making its way to Adult Swim's Toonami block. According to Aniplex's announcement at Anime Boston, the show will join the block this August. Aniplex also detailed Sword Art Online 's home video release plans. The show will be available in four limited edition Blu-ray sets and four standard edition DVD sets....

Movies available now for users in the US and Canada

Crunchyroll has a handful of treats in store for fans of live-action martial arts movies. Starting today at 5:00pm PDT, a set of five flicks will be available to sit back, kick your feet up, and mime fighting alongside. The movies are Female Convict Scorpion, Shinobi Girl, Budo: The Art of Killing, The Dragon Lives, and Steel Fisted Dragon. More after the jump!

First of eight monthly assortments hits arcades this month

45 years of Shonen Jump history is being reflected in a series of J Stars collectors figures. From the top shonen manga magazine, classic series like Midori no Makibaō, to the current heavy hitters like Naruto, to hot up and comers like Assassination Classroom will be covered in monthly assortments, available as prizes in arcades across Japan. Get a look after the jump.

Japanese site ranks top 25 anime that divides the sexes

No one can deny the power of the fujoshi. From butlers to basketball players, princes to personified countries, anime aimed at girls is on the rise - something that not everyone is pleased about. Which anime beloved by women annoys the boys the most? Check out the ranking after the jump.

ABC's Jonathan Karl and his part in helping to feed the scandal-mongering over Benghazi wasn't the only recent Republican drummed up outrage Stephen Colbert decided to take on during this Monday's show. After his "Mazda-Scandal Booth" on Benghazi, Colbert took his next turn in the booth on the IRS, grasping "wildly at any accusation that floats past."

And as Arturo Garcia from Raw Story reported, here's what he found: Colbert concludes tea partiers are ‘a bunch of pussies’ after consulting his lawyer:

Stephen Colbert emerged from a glass case of scandal journalism on Monday to find out there was a perfectly good reason his own super PAC had been “slow-walked” by the Internal Revenue Service.

“Why has my application for tax-exempt status never been granted?” he asked his lawyer, Trevor Potter.

“Because we never filed it,” Potter replied, to Colbert’s surprise, since his 501 (c)(4) group was doing business and had handled at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, in Potter’s estimation.

“How is that possible, that I didn’t apply?” Colbert asked. “Am I breaking the law?”

Potter took that opportunity to remind the Colbert Report host that he was not legally obligated to apply for tax-exempt status in the first place.

“So wait a second,” Colbert said, stifling a laugh. “So you can form a 501 (c) (4) without asking to form one.” When Potter confirmed that, Colbert got a little giddier.

“So these tea party, anti-big government organizations didn’t have to ask big government for permission, but they did anyway?” Colbert asked as a follow-up.

“Right,” Potter answered.

“What a bunch of pussies,” Colbert responded.

After discussing that the IRS should not have singled out groups purely for their political affiliations, Colbert asked his lawyer to put in an application for his group under another name which might draw more scrutiny, and here's what they came up with:

Making America A Better Tea Party Patriot 9-12 Place To Constitution America Tea Party Nominally Social Welfare Conservative Political Action Tea Party Secret Money Liberty I Dare You To Deny This Application Of America Tea Party

Gotta love it. Colbert's been making a mockery of these groups since he started his own to prove a point, and he's not done yet.

Conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones explained to his audience today how the government could have been behind the devastating May 20 tornado in Oklahoma.

On the May 21 edition of The Alex Jones Show, a caller asked Jones whether he was planning to cover how government technology may be behind a recent spate of sinkholes. After laying out how insurance companies use weather modification to avoid having to pay ski resorts for lack of snow, Jones said that "of course there's weather weapon stuff going on -- we had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night. Turned out it was the Air Force."   

Following a long tangent, Jones returned to the caller's subject. While he explained that "natural tornadoes" do exist and that he's not sure if a government "weather weapon" was involved in the Oklahoma disaster, Jones warned nonetheless that the government "can create and steer groups of tornadoes."

According to Jones, this possibility hinges on whether people spotted helicopters and small aircraft "in and around the clouds, spraying and doing things." He added, "if you saw that, you better bet your bottom dollar they did this, but who knows if they did. You know, that's the thing, we don't know."

As we already discussed here, Donald Rumsfeld found himself getting a nice softball interview from NBC's David Gregory this weekend on Meet the Press, but not all of his book tour has gone quite as smoothly as the big wet kiss he got from Gregory this Sunday.

Majority FM's Sam Seder walked his listeners though some of the highlights of Rumsfeld's contentious interview with American Public Media's Kai Ryssdal, who, as the KOS diary I linked in the prior post on the subject noted, asked "Rumsfeld some of the questions we've all wanted to ask."

As Seder noted, Rumsfeld might be looking to find himself a new publicist after that one, since he certainly didn't expect anyone to actually hold him accountable for his actions during the Bush administration and our invasion of Iraq. Seder says he hopes that it's not the last time he's subjected to an interview like this one because the government sure isn't going to hold him accountable, but I wouldn't hold my breath on whether he'll let it happen ever again.

Sadly, we're not going to see the corporate media hold him accountable either. We're going to see more interviews like the shameful one we got from David Gregory or we won't see him on the air at all.

One final note on the video above: Seder incorrectly identified Kai Ryssdal as working for NPR. He works for APM.

Creator Eiichiro Oda recovers in hospital from infection near tonsil

Keith Elliot Greenberg, an author who has written a number of books both on wrestling and other subjects, including one of the most underrated wrestilng autobiographies on Billy Graham, has an article today on the last days of Randy Savage.

The article is at http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1643969-the-final-days-of-randy-macho-man-savage

Today is the two year anniversary of the death of Randy Savage.

The article talks in detail about the circumstances of his death, things he had said prior to his death, and gives a very detailed look at his thoughts on the WWE Hall of Fame.  Lanny Poffo, his brother, who said Randy was insistent on the entire family going in, because the Von Erichs went in as a family, said he would not oppose Randy going into the Hall of Fame on his own, but would not support it either.

He also indicated that a perceived slight by Vince McMahon in not inviting Angelo into a 1987 old-timers Battle Royal was something Randy spoke of, even in the last year of his life.

Plus other planned announced at Anime Central

At this weekend's Anime Central convention in Rosemont, Illinois, FUNimation confirmed that they've licensed the home video rights to Attack on Titan, with plans to release it next year. In terms of other plans, the distributor mentioned that the One Piece Strong World anime movie will be out "soon," while the Fairy Tail movie should be ready for the holidays. More after the jump.

After taking her viewers through the whole, long, ugly mess with ABC's big "scoop" on the Benghazi emails and the how the story pretty much fizzled out by the end of the week with the discovery that Republicans were responsible for doctoring the supposed quotes from the emails that they published, Rachel Maddow gave her two cents on ABC still protecting the sources who lied to them.

MADDOW: And now, part of the scandal here is a press scandal. You know what? When you get used like this and you end up publishing false information, false quotes, you have to correct it. But the bigger scandal here is not a process matter, not a press matter. There's a very stark fact that somebody in Congress right now, or somebody working for somebody in Congress right now, a staffer, concocted a big lie to try to make the White House look very desperately bad on this Benghazi scandal that they otherwise have not been able to get traction on.

Who told the lie? And a note to my journalist pals who got involved in this scandal. If your source lied to you, they are not actually a source. They are a con artist and you are their victim. It means you don't have to protect them any more. They're not a source.

When you get lied to, when you are a tool of somebody else's deception, when you get lied to, the person lying to you is no longer a source, they are news. Their lie to you is itself news and you can report that news. Republican Congressional offices shopped a false dossier as if it was a White House email. That is a story. The office and the staffers and the members of Congress maybe who did that... that is news. And if you know who it is, you can say so.

Boy do I wish they'd take her advice, but again, I'm not holding my breath.

For the past twenty-plus years, my favorite genre of video game has always been the one-on-one fighter. Ever since seeing Street Fighter II: The World Warrior in an arcade, I was hooked. Throughout the years, I always paid attention to its many spinoffs and sequels, as well as the countless games that jumped onto its success. The Mortal Kombats and Tekkens and Fatal Furies and, hell, even the Clay Fighters.

Naturally, the emphasis on these games is the multiplayer, especially now with the increasing popularity of online play and the tournament scene. While I enjoy checking out the competitive stuff from time to time, I’ve never been good enough to be part of that, nor have I felt the drive to reach that level. Really, for me, I’ve always had a strange obsession with the single-player experience.

Growing up, that was always the ritual with these games. When there was nobody to play against, you had to complete the game with every single character, which was like the programmer’s way of making sure you took advantage of every piece of effort they put in every character. It was a rewards system that gave you an excuse to play as the characters you weren’t even much of a fan of. Getting that thirty seconds of text and 16-bit cutscene made spending an hour on that super cheap final boss worth it.

Not to mention, it’s fun for the character study aspects, silly as it sounds. Fighting games universally have a B-movie landscape to them that are extremely fun, filled with characters who are half-realized. Since the days of Street Fighter II, someone like Blanka was represented by some animated gestures, attacks, a handful of quotes and maybe a paragraph of backstory. But despite not being the hero of the game, he was just as viable a winner of the game’s tournament as Ryu and Chun-Li. By beating Bison, you get to see his existence sketched out more by seeing him reconnect with his long-lost mother.

Even when there’s a clear-cut main character, all the supporting characters still get to be important enough that we’re able to see them come out on top, whether they’re on the hunt for justice, power, money, fame, revenge, a challenge, adventure, answers or love. With so many competitors in each game, there are so many alternate paths on where things can go. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re badass. Sometimes they’re genuinely compelling. Sometimes they simply act as a strong ending to a character arc.

I decided to do a lot of research, going through hundreds of games to look at thousands of endings. Everything from Soul Calibur to Brutal: Paws of Fury to Marvel Superheroes to Avengers in Galactic Storm. What was meant to be a list of the best 100 has turned into a list of the best 150, expanding even more into this list of 200 because as much as the typing is going to kill me, I can’t stop myself from shutting up about a lot of these and you’ll have to pay the price. You and my carpel tunnel.

Thanks to the long-dormant VG Museum for making the research process much easier.

So here we go. Heaven or Hell? Duel one. Let’s rock.

200) Street Fighter X Tekken – HEIHACHI MISHIMA AND KUMA
2012

The story of Street Fighter X Tekken is that a magical box from space labeled Pandora has crashed into Antarctica. With so many interested in what kind of power is inside it, various Street Fighter and Tekken characters pair up and it becomes a martial arts version of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. As for what’s really in the box? That maguffin changes from ending to ending.

Elderly, ousted crime lord Heihachi Mishima makes a go for Pandora with his somewhat loyal, karate-fighting bear Kuma. After defeating Akuma, Heihachi nears the box. Afraid for him, Kuma frantically claws at Heihachi’s back, growling in his understandable bear language that it might be dangerous. Heihachi is cool about it and explains that Kuma will get 10% of what’s in there. Kuma’s smacks become angrier due to Heihachi’s cheapness and he says that if there’s poison gas in there, Heihachi can have his 10%.

The box opens up and a white light shoots out. Heihachi ducks out of the way and Kuma accidentally looks right down into the light. Once it dies out, Heihachi laughs off what a close call that was. He turns to Kuma only to find this adorable bear cub.

Heihachi suddenly notices that one side of his head of hair – the one part of him hit by the light – is black. Realizing that he missed out on regaining his precious youth, Heihachi screams to the heavens, “IT’S NOT FAIR!”

199) Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – ROCKET RACCOON
2011

Rocket Raccoon’s cutscene is rather short, but funny, if predictable. Now that the threat to the Marvel and Capcom worlds has been taken care of, he wants to take a vacation. He heard Chris Redfield make mention of being from Raccoon City, so naturally, Rocket thinks that would be the perfect spot for some rest and relaxation.

He doesn’t find out until he gets there that it’s a zombie-infested Hellhole.

198) Killer Instinct – EYEDOL
1994

Evil corporation of the future Ultratech has their own annual fighting tournament and not only is it used to garner ratings, but it’s also their way of playing God with science. This proves to be their undoing in a couple of the game’s endings, so having Eyedol – a warrior god from olden times that they resurrected – simply rule the world would simply be redundant. Instead, the game goes into full-out parody mode.

Remember that Blanka ending I talked about in the intro? Eyedol has the same experience. A woman appears to him, claiming that Eyedol is really his son Billy. Eyedol is bewildered by this, insisting that his name is just Eyedol. Upon hearing the story about being lost in a car crash and how his bracelets were a birthday present, Eyedol looks within and…

Nah!

A nice touch is that Eyedol is referred to as “Billy” while in the original Street Fighter II ending, Blanka is revealed as “Jimmy”. Cute Double Dragon reference.

197) Dead or Alive 4 – RYU HAYABUSA
2005

A lot of the Dead or Alive endings fall flat to me, even if they’re well-made. The games are so centered on the women in the cast that when they aren’t coming up with new ways to show them naked in their cinematics, they’re practically begging us to find their male characters interesting. Luckily, Ryu Hayabusa doesn’t need any push to be considered cool. As the main character of Ninja Gaiden, he’s been a badass since 1988 and the animators behind this ending help prove that he’s still got it.

There’s an overarching situation in some of the endings where the ninja characters (Hayabusa, Kasumi, Hayate and Ayane) are all putting their differences aside to attack the headquarters of corrupt corporation DOATECH. Hayabusa’s side of the story shows him standing on a high rooftop amidst a rainless thunderstorm. Three futuristic helicopters appear and go for him.

The first one he takes out by jumping on top of it. It’s hard to say if he destroys it himself or jumps out of the way before another copter blows it up with a missile, but either way, Hayabusa: 1, helicopters: 0. He runs across rooftops, dodging bullets and explosions until taking out the second helicopter with his katana.

That leaves one more. In mid-air, he’s able to arch his back to dodge an incoming missile, as well as the continued barrage of bullets. Unlike the helicopter, Hayabusa doesn’t miss.

Then he jumps off into the darkness. Sweet.

196) King of Fighters 2000 – FATAL FURY TEAM
2000

The story of King of Fighters 2000 is not very memorable. There’s a 3-part story about villains in terrible leather outfits being evil for some reason I don’t care to remember and this is the second part. In all the endings, the final boss Zero accidentally eradicates himself with a satellite’s laser and his base begins to crumble.

The Fatal Fury Team is made up of Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard (his brother), Blue Mary (his love interest) and Joe Higashi (his best friend). As the place comes down on them, a big chunk of debris nails Terry in the back. He yells at the other three to run and promises that they’ll meet again. The place falls apart completely and the other three survive. There’s no sign of Terry. All they could find is his trademark red cap.

Having lost Terry, the rest of the team goes their separate ways. Joe goes back to the kickboxing circuit while Andy goes back to abstaining from his big-chested girlfriend. Blue Mary returns to her detective work and hunts down a lead for a client. She finds a room filled with goons who are already beaten up. She wonders who could have done this and notices Terry, hatless, leaning against the doorway.

Mary walks over and comes off as both relieved and annoyed because, as she points out, Terry’s kind of a jerk for surviving and not telling anybody. She places his hat on his head and with a guilty smile, he says his catchphrase, low key for once, “Okay…”

195) Street Fighter IV – DAN HIBIKI
2009

Street Fighter IV deserves a lot of credit for reviving the fighting game genre and being the long-awaited return of a beloved franchise that was sidelined for far too long. That said, the endings for the game absolutely suck. They’re like quick teasers for an incredibly boring anime. The only one worth talking about is Dan’s.

We see Dan running through a corridor in Seth’s headquarters and he accidentally runs into his best buddy Blanka. Blanka sees the coming wave of fire and freaks out. The two are paralyzed with fear, but luckily Ryu and Sakura (who had met up in Sakura’s ending) appear and extinguish the flame by attacking it with their own fireballs. Chi energies snuff out flame, apparently. Who knew?

Dan gets up and rather than show any gratitude, he tells the two of them to be careful because even though Dan is the strongest, he’s not sure if he can save them from the next wave of flame. He tells them to follow and the other three are aghast at his behavior.

194) Clayfighter – HELGA
1993

I promise this is the only Clayfighter entry on the list.

A lot of the time, when a fighting game has one female character, there tends to be need to ship that lady with one of the men. A lot of the time, this happens in the ending. No game does a better job than Clayfighter. After overweight opera singer Helga defeats everyone from an Elvis impersonator to a man made of candy, she’s crowned Queen of the Circus and is the focus of many, being buried with marriage requests.

Finally, she makes her decision and marries the game’s wrestling muscleman Tiny.

What a cute couple. I mainly included this here because of the excellent final line.

“Their eight hyperactive kids became the best wrestlers in the history of opera.”

193) Tekken 3 – YOSHIMITSU/DR. BOSKONOVITCH
1998

Both characters were given the same cutscene, but whatever. To help his sickly doctor friend, Yoshimitsu slays Ogre, the God of Fight. They keep a sample of the monster’s blood and experiment by feeding it to a mouse. Yoshimitsu and Boskonovitch look to each other and nod, agreeing that things are going well so far.

Then the blood starts to take effect and not in the way either of them had hoped.

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!

192) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up – DONATELLO
2009

It’s a shame that the Smash-Up endings aren’t so interesting, as the style of it is really nice. The endings are motion comics featuring voiceovers from the cast of the 4Kids Ninja Turtles show. The art is all black and white, created by Mirage Comics artists in an attempt to ape the style of creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman.

Donatello’s is the only one I liked. He sits at his computer, working on a project with his big trophy sitting next to him due to him coming out the winner. Robotic buddy Fugitoid walks over to check up on him and offers some coffee. As Donatello explains the device he’s trying to create, Fugitoid pours out all of the coffee into the trophy. Donatello freaks out and Fugitoid calmly walks off, a bit bewildered and disgusted by how much these Earthlings consume.

191) Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – JACK-6
2012

In a major city, people run in terror at news of a giant asteroid on its way to collide with Earth. An anchor on the news makes this sound seriously dire and people are so panicked that nobody even pays notice to the tall robot man walking towards what will become ground zero. Jack-6 cranks up the boosters and fires up into space, Iron Giant-style.

At first, he tries pushing it back, but it’s not working. He looks back at the Earth, getting nearer by the second and tries rapidly punching the asteroid. That barely does anything. He flies back, loops and fires the boosters as far as they’ll go with both fists out. He slams into the asteroid so hard that one of his arms explodes.

Luckily, the impact causes the asteroid to blow up as well. What’s left of Jack burns up in reentry and we see his red eyes die out. Back in that city, people look up in wonder at the undone threat and realize that they’ll survive.

190) World Heroes 2 – JOHNNY MAXIMUM
1993

World Heroes is a game series about warriors throughout history fighting it out thanks to time travel. For some reason, the second game includes an evil-looking football player. Johnny Maximum (otherwise known as J. Max) removes his helmet and walks off into the sunset. Allow me to transcribe his amazing, inspirational thoughts.

…After I correct all the spelling errors.

“The fourth quarter is over. Yet, for me, wherever there are people banging heads together, wherever fingers are being snapped like pretzels over a glass of beer… wherever the crowd roars at a lineman’s head being rent from his body, I’ll be there, protecting my reputation as the number one master of mayhem. Goodbye for now, my fans. Till the play-by-play begins again…”

Then he trips for no reason and the heroic music suddenly stops.

189) Super Street Fighter IV – JURI
2010

The endings in Super Street Fighter IV are done the same style as Street Fighter IV, but tend to be at least a little bit better. I like Juri’s because there’s some underlying brutality in it. The game’s end boss Seth is beaten, laying at the feet of his top assassin Juri. Seth claims that he knew that she would stop following his orders and go after him. She laughs at his, “I meant to do that!” attempt and points out that her plan was to pit everyone against each other and watch Shadaloo destroy itself. Killing Seth is just an added bonus.

Seth weakly tries to get back up and kill her, but then she just puts the boots to him and loudly crushes his yin-yang stomach thing with an axe-kick.

Seth starts going into convulsions until falling limp. Juri laughs to the viewer and says that now she’ll need to find a new hobby.

188) BloodStorm – HELLHOUND
1994

Yes, BloodStorm. Deal with it.

The game has to do with this huge futuristic war between all types of wacky factions, including Hellhound and his fire people. Most of the endings are fairly dark, leading to the world being doomed via crazed dictators, told through several paragraphs. Amidst all of those stories, Hellhound’s is kind of fun just for how direct and to the point it is.

Yep.

187) Super Street Fighter IV – RUFUS
2010

In the Street Fighter IV games, Rufus spends much of his cutscene time riding his motorcycle with his equally-stupid girlfriend Candy. Candy is a bit of an enabler, giving in to his delusions and never telling him to shut up when he speaks for ten minutes at a time. Their ending here begins with a quick pit stop at a gas station that isn’t so interesting, outside of Rufus insisting that when he’s fired up, he can push his own bike seven times around the world.

Rufus summed up in one gif.

The real laugh comes from the two continuing to ride off into the desert. Rufus wonders where they should go next and Candy suggests the North Pole, since she’s tired of the heat. Rufus calls this the best idea he’s ever heard and off they go. They don’t need a map because all they have to do is just keep going north and they’re bound to hit it eventually.

186) Super Street Fighter II: Turbo – AKUMA
1994

The hype for Super Street Fighter II: Turbo was all about the introduction of hidden final boss Akuma. After the last iteration of the game introduced four new characters, this one was all about, “We have a third Ryu guy in this one and he’s fucking evil and impossible to fight! He rules so much that he wipes his ass with M. Bison’s corpse! Give us your quarters!”

The game keeps Akuma mysterious despite everything. He is playable via code and beating the game with him doesn’t shed much light on him. In the Japanese version, he trash talks the final boss, whether it’s M. Bison or Akuma, while in the US version, he just poses and they roll the credits.

That’s the part I find kind of cool about it all. See, normal characters get a credits sequence that shows cool art from everyone’s endings. Beating it with Akuma? You get the credits mixed with images of every single other character’s beaten-up versus screen headshot.

If there’s anything Capcom wants you to know about Akuma at this early stage, it’s this: Akuma kicks ass. He kicks everyone’s ass.

185) X-Men vs. Street Fighter – ROGUE
1996

After Apocalypse’s reign of terror is dealt with, Rogue is confronted by M. Bison. He offers her a cure for her powers. His Shadaloo technology can make her human. Rogue tells him to piss off because she doesn’t want to be controlled by him.

Shortly after, Rogue sits, depressed, with Chun-Li. Feeling sorry for herself, Rogue asks Chun-Li what it’s like to be normal. Chun-Lee is taken aback by this question and lays down some truth.

Which basically explains why the explicit “man vs. mutant” aspect of X-Men is always soured to me in any continuity that isn’t the movie.

184) Tattoo Assassins – AC CURRENT
1994

Ah, yes. Tattoo Assassins. The game is pretty much the dumbest thing ever and I love it for existing. During the early popularity of Mortal Kombat, Data East had its pinball division (!) create a Mortal Kombat knockoff which was too beautiful to exist. It never got a full release outside of the prototype stages and is only playable thanks to roms. The game features warriors with magical tattoos, fighting the sinister Koldan and his army of monsters. Some of the features include Nudealities (ie. rendering your opponent naked), a fighter based on Nancy Kerrigan of all people and diarrhea attacks.

Then there’s this douchebag, AC Current.

All the endings take the form of a newspaper front page article, including such publications as Rock Today, Retailer Today, McCarthy Today, Yeast Today and so on. AC Current is a cyberspace terrorist, kind of like Neo from the Matrix, only a couple years earlier and more 90′s-looking. His ending is a ridiculous little thing on the cover of Nerd Net Today, where it says that he’s been able to extort billions from various corporations, monopolize the video game market and now makes sure that those nasty censors are not allowed to touch a single one of his games and remove sex, violence or language. For this, AC Current is labeled Game Maker of the Century.

The fact that this game never got released makes this cheesy fantasy even better.

183) Vampire Savior – FELICIA
1997

This one’s pretty basic. Felicia, the singing celebrity catgirl, settles down and opens her own orphanage, becoming a nun. A contrast to be sure, considering she spends the entire game running around bare-ass naked. Some kids tell her that they finished their studies and ask for a song. Felicia rewards them.

So why is this on the list? Because the song she sings appears to be “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy” from Ren and Stimpy. She’s a cat, so I guess that makes sense?

The little critters in Darkstalkers, they don’t know that they’re ugly. That’s very funny!

182) Ehrgeiz – DASHER INOBA
1998

Ehrgeiz is widely known as, “That fighting game with the Final Fantasy VII guys!” Well, it doesn’t just have Cloud and Sephiroth. It also has Dasher Inoba, a wrestler based on in-ring legend Atonio Inoki. His ending depicts him sitting at a restaurant, where he’s served a bowl of noodles and devours it. Then he’s given another bowl of noodles. He devours it. Then another. And another.

FOREVER! AND EVER!

If you don’t press start, Dasher will seriously never stop eating noodles. I’m starting to wonder if the subtext here is that he literally died and went to Heaven. Or if that waiter died and went to Hell.

181) Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance – QUAN CHI
2002

In terms of storytelling, Deadly Alliance was crazy bold when it came out. To show that this was a new direction for the series, the intro killed off major mainstays Liu Kang, Goro and Shao Kahn. Liu Kang would eventually come back in awesome zombie form in the next game, but Quan Chi’s non-canon ending brought up its own interesting possibility.

The game is about sorcerers Quan Chi and Shang Tsung teaming up together to create their own invincible army. In Quan Chi’s ending, they succeed and Quan Chi has no more need for this partnership. He needlessly stabs Shang in the back by hiring Kano to kill him. The endless sea of souls that Shang’s devoured over the centuries start to pour from his wound. As this happens, Quan Chi realizes that Kano is kind of a threat, since he turned on Shang so easily.

Quan Chi magically removes Kano’s life forces from his body, but that becomes his undoing. One of those stray souls finds its way in the vacant Kano and opposes Quan Chi. Now controlling Kano’s body? You guessed it. The deceased Liu Kang.

Funny thing, Quan Chi actually does turn out to be the “winner” of this game’s story and this doesn’t happen anyway.Similar Posts:

• Ryu Final: It’s Tiger Awesome!
• Fun with Street Fighter 4 Mods
• You Got Kahn in My Darkseid! You Got Darkseid in My Kahn!
• The Top 15 Best Fighting Game Storylines: Part 3 (5-1)
• UDON’s Super Street Fighter: New Generation Fights Like Gentlemen

Because he's too humble to promote it himself, I'd like to give another unsolicited plug for the New York Times feature on Wrestling Observer founder Dave Meltzer. You can find the feature here which went live Tuesday night.

While anyone that has notoriety in journalism has their critics, there are few people that I've come in contact with that work harder than Dave. As the feature shows -- and as anyone reading this likely knows --- he is a relentlessly hard worker who is as committed to covering pro wrestling and MMA as any journalist covering any beat in the world. Period.

I think the first time I heard or came in contact with Dave was through the short-lived Eyada radio show back in the old days of terrestrial radio. Years later, I did some sample subscriptions for the newsletter but I didn't have the money to do the full year which seemed like a dream. Things have changed and I now find myself contributing to this site. I've had the pleasure of sitting beside Dave at UFC media row a few years ago in Boston. I found myself observing his work habits on event night, completely feeling like a journalism dork for doing so.

There are few that have done more for the art that is pro wrestling than Dave. Even when he's critical, he does it without malice. His interest is in the betterment of the product based on decades of viewing countless hours of men and women in spandex & flashy outfits put on a show. To the outside world, it seems like a bizarre profession to follow. For us, it's old hat. For Dave, it's his life's work.

So with all that said, if you haven't read the story yet (by former Sherdogger and current ESPN writer Jake Rossen), please do and if you're on Twitter, give Dave and the article a plug as well. Thank you for your support for this website, one we are always working on continuing to improve behind the curtain. (Does that make the Gorilla position the Admin Nailz position?)

- Josh Nason

The IRS certainly deserves some of the criticism it's getting, but it's also worth looking at the groups they were examining a little closer.

I've been collecting the IRS filings for these organizations since they dropped off the FEC radar in early 2009. At that time, these political "civic" organizations were springing up like weeds after a spring storm. Let's take just one subset of the larger group and look more carefully.

American Majority Action is the 501(c)(4) companion to American Majority, the Koch-funded 501(c)(3) organization devoted to "training conservative activists." It is headed up by Andrew and Net Ryun, sons of former Kansas congressman Jim Ryun. Their initial report to the IRS for the short year ending June 30, 2011 described its program services as "issue advocacy and get out the vote operations in 4 states including 9 liberty headquarters." Secondary services included "capacity building grants to 32 like-minded organizations," and tertiary services included "health care policy issue advocacy." Amounts spent were $1,020,500, $529,000 and $224,000, respectively.

What like-minded organizations received grants? Here is a list of some, not all, since they did not list all 32 grantees:

• Arkansas Conservative United - $45,000
• Citizens Alliance of PA - $5,000
• Tulsa 912 Project Association - $5,000
• WI GrandSons of Liberty - $55,000
• Grassroots Outreach (AZ) - $275,000
• Liberty Restoration Foundation (FL) - $20,000
• Jefferson County Tea Party - $5,000
• Kitchen Table Patriots - $46,500
• Medina County Friends Neighbors (OH) - $5,000
• Ohio Liberty Council - $20,000
• PA Family Council - $5,000
• PA Coalition for Responsible Government - $6,000
• St Louis Tea Party - $22,500
• Tampa 912 - $5,000

Most of these groups are those "small tea party groups" crying out about unfair treatment now. They have billionaires beneath their scattered whines -- billionaires who seeded those groups with the intention of building network nodes in key swing states for the 2012 election.

At least one of them isn't a non-profit at all. You might recall Grassroots Outreach from 2012, or perhaps the name Nathan Sproul rings a bell. On April 29, 2010 I wrote about Mark Jacoby, who pled guilty to voter registration fraud in California. He was associated with Nathan Sproul then. Sproul has a very long history of conducting unethical voter registration cleansings in key states, and was ultimately caught doing so aggressively in 2012.

Perhaps it was more convenient to launder payments through a brand-new nonprofit organization than for the RNC to get their hands dirty, or maybe it was just insurance. Either way, Sproul received $275,000 for "get out the vote" efforts.

Meanwhile, American Majority, the c3 associated with American Majority Action, was incubating a new group called the John Hancock Committee for the States. The JHCFS was the successor organization to Eric Odom's American Liberty Alliance. Here is American Majority's incubation disclosure:

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The almost $700,000 in funding for that organization came from the Sam Adams Alliance, the very same organization that incubated American Majority. I reported that information on April 26, 2010, which was around the same time that the IRS placed these groups under higher scrutiny.

Shorter version: Sam Adams Alliance incubates American Majority. American Majority spawns American Majority Action and John Hancock Committee for the States. American Majority Action sends thousands of dollars to 'small tea party groups' around the country for "get out the vote" operations. What does JHCFS do? According to Rachel Tabachnik, all three groups are in an alliance to do the same thing:

The focus of this national Tea Party group is radical free marketers and culture warriors – anti-union, anti-regulatory, anti-environmental, anti-feminist, anti-reproductive rights, and the list goes on. But it’s not about Israel.

In early October American Majority opened a storefront office on Forward Avenue in the largest Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh. This is one of several campaign offices opened in swing states including Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio.

The American Majority Inc.’s purpose, as listed on its IRS 990 tax forms is to “create a national training institute dedicated to identifying, training, and mentoring political leaders.” It is affiliated with the Valley Forge Alliance in Aledo, Texas, also formerly called the John Hancock Committee for the States and the American Liberty Alliance, and the Sam Adams Alliance. The organizations have worked closely with Glenn Beck’s 912 organizations to build Tea Party networks.

Just to place some additional context, the JHCFS gave out some grants in 2011:

• Texas Public Policy Foundation: $124,000
• 1851 Center for Constitutional Law: $7,000
• Tea Party Patriots: $50,000
• James Madison Institute: $25,000

In 2011, the Ryun brothers let JHCFS fly from the nest after it changed its name to the Valley Forge Alliance. At that time, they handed the reins over to Mark Meckler, disgraced former leader of -- wait for it -- Tea Party Patriots! At the same time, Meckler was also placed in charge of Empower Texans, another 501(c)(4) organization created to watchdog state legislators.

The Tea Party Patriots are some of the biggest whiners about their non-profit status being held up, yet when you untangle the funding hairball and remember that Jenny Beth Martin is a Republican consultant, it's not quite as evil as she makes it seem.

What else was happening at the time the IRS decided to look closer at these groups? Karl Rove was crowing all over the place about his big initiative with Crossroads GPS, Sarah Palin was reading her hand at the "National Tea Party Convention", and Glenn Beck was huddling with Paul Ryan to plot ways to "flush out" progressivism.

In this environment, is it difficult to understand why the IRS put these groups under high scrutiny? Just for the record, it wasn't only conservative groups, either. In fact, the only organiztion denied tax-exempt status was a liberal group who intended to recruit women candidates.

The scandal here isn't the IRS having the common sense to look harder at these organizations. The scandal is the utter incompetence with which they did it. Asking stupid questions, asking for radio interview transcripts? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Their incompetence is truly mind-blowing, but this one case study should prove beyond all reasonable doubt that these so-called grassroots organizations deserved all scrutiny and attention given to them. After all, these organizations and their donors are asking for a pass on taxes. They have a duty to prove they deserve that.

Next on the agenda? Push Congress to close the loophole. It's simple enough. No political activity in non-profit organizations that directly funds election efforts. Period. That should take care of any possible future scandals, and still allow organizations to advocate/lobby for their cause.

Pro wrestler caught between gangs was first previewed in December's Tadayoedo Shizumazu

A Los Angeles Times story today said that Fuel TV, the hope of a lot of UFC programming, would become Fox Sports 2 at about the same time The Speed Channel becomes Fox Sports 1, possibly the same day (8/17).

Fuel becoming FS 2 has been expected for some time, but FOX has never made the announcement.  The story said ther would be a lot less of a marketing push in that direction.  The story said UFC programming would be a key part of the channel. 

Tune in to any cable news network in the evening hours and chances are that, no matter the topic, you'll be watching a white guy. Our recent study of diversity on 13 evening cable news shows revealed that white men were hosted 58 percent of the time during April 2013. And this is as true today as it was five years ago.

Back in 2008, we conducted a similar study of evening cable news shows for the month of May, and we found nearly identical results.

We had this interview scheduled with Sam Pinansky of the just-launched website AnimeSols, but then he went on ANNCast right before this recording and they asked all the stuff we originally were planning to ask. We then had to improvise for questions. THIS INTERVIEW IS THE RESULT. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

Mini plastic models of Char's Gelgoog, Amuro's RX-78-2 and the MS-06 Zaku II offered

Cup Noodle is preparing to launch a new Gundam promotion with its curry flavor instant meals on May 27. The mini-gunpla yakansobi buyers will be able to send away for mini plastic models of Char's Gelgoog, Amuro's RX-78-2 and the MS-06 Zaku II, all armed with water kettlesfor noodle cooking. Fans might also win a 1/100Scale MG RX-78-2 Gundam (Clear Color) in a bonus lottery. Get a look after the jump.

Have you noticed how many right-wingers are decrying the "tyranny" of the Obama administration these days?

It's particularly rife on the Tea Partying far right, where it's extremely common to hear Obama being portrayed as a "tyrant," particularly regarding his recent attempts to promote gun-control measures. (See Ben Shapiro whining thus in the video above.) So you'll often find crap like this floating about on their Facebook pages.

But it's becoming common among mainstream right-wingers, particularly after the president dismissed these characterizations during a speech at Ohio State. Sure enough, everyone from Jonah Goldberg to Michelle Malkin piled on with the "yeah, whatever you say, dude" retorts.

But I was reminded the other day, rereading Stephen Budiansky's marvelous book about Reconstruction, The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War, just where the right-wing fetish about "tyranny" comes from. It's a highly selective fetish, after all; none of these "libertarians" seemed even remotely concerned when George W. Bush launched the whole "enemy combatants" enterprise back in 2001.

According to Budiansky, it -- like the phrase "waving the bloody shirt," as well as the whole conservative adoption of that rhetorical ruse as an aggressive form of defense -- has its origins in the years during and immediately following the Civil War, when it was common for Southerners to sneer at Abraham Lincoln (alive or dead) as a "tyrant":

A bald fact: Generations would hear how the South suffered “tyranny” under Reconstruction. Conveniently forgotten was the way that word was universally defined by white Southerners at the time: as a synonym for letting black men vote at all. A “remonstrance” issued by South Carolina’s Democratic Central Committee in 1868, personally signed by the leading native white political figures of the state, declared that there was no greater outrage, no greater despotism, than the provision for universal male suffrage just enacted in the state’s new constitution. There was but one possible consequence: “A superior race is put under the rule of an inferior race.” They offered a stark warning: “We do not mean to threaten resistance by arms. But the white people of our State will never quietly submit to negro rule. This is a duty we owe to the proud Caucasian race, whose sovereignty on earth God has ordained.”

“No free people, ever,” declared a speaker at a convention of the state’s white establishment a few years later, had been subjected to the “domination of their own slaves,” and the applause was thunderous. “This is a white man’s government,” was the phrase echoed over and over in the prints of the Democratic press and the orations of politicians denouncing the “tyranny” to which the “oppressed” South was being subjected.

A bald fact: more than three thousand freedmen and their white Republican allies were murdered in the campaign of terrorist violence that overthrew the only representatively elected governments the Southern states would know for a hundred years to come. Among the dead were more than sixty state senators, judges, legislators, sheriffs, constables, mayors, county commissioners, and other officeholders whose only crime was to have been elected. They were lynched by bands of disguised men who dragged them from cabins by night, or fired on from ambushes on lonely roadsides, or lured into a barroom by a false friend and on a prearranged signal shot so many times that the corpse was nothing but shreds, or pulled off a train in broad daylight by a body of heavily-armed men resembling nothing so much as a Confederate cavalry company and forced to kneel in the stubble of an October field and shot in the head over and over again, at point blank.

So saturated is our collective memory with Gone With the Wind stock characters of thieving carpetbaggers, ignorant Negroes, and low scalawags, that it comes as a shock not so much to discover that there were men and women of courage, idealism, rectitude, and vision who risked everything to try to build a new society of equality and justice on the ruins of the Civil War, who fought to give lasting meaning to the sacrifices of that terrible struggle, who gave their fortunes, careers, happiness, and lives to make real the simple and long-delayed American promise that all men were created equal—it comes as a shock not so much to be confronted by their idealism and courage and uprightness as by the realization that they were convinced, up to the very last, that they would succeed. Confident in the rightness of their cause, backed by the military might of the United States government, secure in the ringing declarations, now the supreme law of the land embodied in the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments of the Constitution, that slavery was not only dead but that equality and the right to vote were the patrimony now of all Americans, they could not imagine that their nation could win such a terrible war and lose the ensuing peace.

Indeed, it's common to hear neo-Confederate agitators -- those folks who are still pushing for modern secession by the South -- describe Lincoln to this day as a "tyrant."

The idea of being governed by a black president? To many of these people even today, that is itself the essence of tyranny.

[Cross-posted at Orcinus.]