The Other Side of the Fourth Wall

 One Piece's author Eiichiro Oda has a talent for writing tragic and tear-jerking death scenes... which is why it's more than a little disappointing that many of those deaths don't actually stick. Characters seemingly die, only to turn up alive, thus ruining their supposed death scenes and making us doubt the legitimacy of later character deaths. This list will rank the top 10 worst cases of these. The entries on the list will be rated according to the following criteria. The quality of the death scene . The more tragic the death, the more disappointing it will be if it turns out to be fake. The impact on the narrative . If a character's death would have been meaningful for the story, then it ranks higher. More important characters tend to rank higher. The improbability of the character's survival . Often, it's never explained how a character could have survived their peril. How pointless the revival was . Somewhat counter-intuitively, an example will rate highe

 When I first started this blog, some of my initial entries were about user reviews. Now, I'll provide a brief look at some of the major types of reviews, and how to do each well in terms of length, tone, the amount of spoilers and other points. Informational Review Informational reviews are the kind of product reviews you'd likely see in professional publications, or left by users on sites like Amazon.com. These evaluate the work in question and tell you whether or not the reviewer recommends it. The tone should be straightforward and informative. A bit of humor can spice things up, but it's best to keep the review mostly serious. Since the reviewer knows nothing about the work, the review should keep spoilers to a minimum, generally avoiding talking about anything that isn't common knowledge. For example, a review of Danganronpa V3 can mention that the game involves 16 high schoolers trapped inside a school together, but shouldn't mention the identity of the first

 I often enjoy watching AI-generated Ace Attorney trials, which take the usual Ace Attorney-related court shenanigans and have an AI write them. This results in characters who don't act like their usual selves, twists almost literally every minute and amusingly random lines of dialogue. The rules for bingo are the same; you can feel free to rearrange the tiles as you wish. In this case, if there isn't a winner for your current AI-generated trial, you can keep going until you find one. A1:At least one character has a completely different job from in canon, not counting prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges. A2:A character's sprite doesn't fit their position. For example, a character's facing forward sprite might appear when at the prosecutor or defense benches, or might have a side-facing sprite from Investigations while on the witness stand. A3:Someone confesses to the murder, but the judge ignores it, often by convicting the defendant anyway. A4:Phoenix does th

While I overall enjoyed Mists of Pandaria, the fourth expansion of World of Warcraft, I also believe that the first raid tier was one of the least enjoyable ones. Part of the reasons was that the first boss encountered in the raid tier, the Stone Guard, was difficult for all the wrong reasons, not unlike Razorgore from Blackwing Lair . Basic Abilities The encounter is a "council" style encounter, in which you fight four quilent(basically lions) statues- or three if you're doing the encounter in 10-man difficulty. All of the quilen share a health pool, so it doesn't matter which one you target, although doing a "cleave" rotation can do a bit more damage of the quilen are grouped together. Each quilen guardian has different color and unique ability The Amethyst(purple) Guardian  has the ability to create purple puddles that cause damage every second to anyone who stands in them. As the saying goes, "don't stand in the fire"; they only cause a pro

One Piece's creator, Eiichiro Oda, is legendary for how far he plans in advance and foreshadows later developments, but there are some times when he comes up short. One example is the Enies Lobby arc, in which all the Straw hats, sans Robin(who spends most of the arc as a prisoner) and Franky(who was only just introduced) suddenly debut new abilities that enable them to defeat their foes in Cipher Pol 9, who'd overpowered them mere hours ago. As a result, while the fights in the arc are some of the most exciting in the series, the introduction of the powerups leaves much to be desired. Luffy: The Gears During Luffy's fight with Blueno on the courthouse roof, he explains that after losing to Aokiji, he realizes that he'd need to become stronger to face the foes ahead. This is all well and good, but Luffy never thinks to use either Gear against Blueno or Lucci in the Galley-La Mansion, which are the only fights in which he needed either one. This leads one to wonder when

If you're a fan of RPGs, particularly western-style RPGs for the PC, you've likely come across a character creation screen, in which you customize your player character. In many ways, the decisions you make on this screen will be some of the most important ones you will make for the entire game. Some of the choices are relatively minor. Your character's name. It's basically a variable that shows up whenever others address your character by name, and is never spoken in voiced dialogue. Your character's appearance. Your character's gender. There are some times when it will occasionally change dialogue beyond gendered pronouns, as well as determine romance options. In some games, your character's voice. Others are more significant. Many games have some combination of the following Your character's class, which determines where your talents lie Your character's starting statistics, which often determine their health, how much damage they do and other fac

This blog entry contains Ace Attorney spoilers.   One of the main complaints about Apollo Justice and its sequels- Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice- is that few of the original games' cast returns, and the ones that do- Phoenix and Ema- don't feel like their old selves. In this list, I will rank the top ten characters who deserved more of a role in the sequel trilogy. For this list, I will be judging characters based on the following criteria. Role: The character's role in the Apollo Justice trilogy compared to the Phoenix Wright trilogy; characters who have a great role in the latter and a small(or nonexistent) one in the former will rank highly. Importance : How important the character is to the narrative. Obviously, recurring characters will be given preference over minor characters from a single case. Reason for being absent . If a character has a justifiable reason for not showing up, such as being dead or in prison, they won't appear. Additionally, if their ch