Bleach Episode 150 Review

They are finally back on track - but for how long...

Ichigo, Nel and co break into the walls of Aizen's fortress and start making their long way towards Inoue. There's a large chunk of uselessness when they fall into the basement...

The Arrancar who capture Inoue explains how he set her up to look like a traitor to the Soul Society stopping them from sending their teams to recover her.

Inoue is surprised to find Aizen showing her the Hougyoku, she thinks it is to get her trust - but she feels she must use her powers to eliminate the Hougyoku.

But is it all a ploy by Aizen to make her develop her rather weak powers?

Technorati tags: bleach.review, anime

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Prison Break Season 3 Episode 7

Wow, what can I say???

The fight between Michael and Whistler is all a set up to get everyone out in the courtyard while the 2 make their escape. Whistler's Girlfriend turns on Lincoln the moment she notices something is not quite right, while Lincoln has Sucre monitoring the meeting point to make sure LJ is safe.

Schofield and Whistler start breaking out of the cell on the 2nd floor via a rope ladder, but some cloud cover ruins their distraction method and they have to hurry back inside.

The guards notice something is wrong and they find one guard has been drugged and also spot the rope ladder which has fallen back out the window while Schofield and Whistler are left with no choice but to duke it out in the courtyard.

Schofield's timely demise is saved by the police sirens going off in the prison - the guards and riot police come storming in and line everyone up in the courtyard. Meanwhile Sucre puts his life on the line to stop the Company getting away with LJ again and crashes his car into their van.

Lincoln catches up with them and shouts the driver and bodyguard and gets the woman agent by the hair (see picture above), but there's a 3rd man who had LJ at gun point. Seeing as killing the woman wouldn't save LJ, Lincoln is frustrated but begs them to let Michael try again.

Meanwhile someone takes responsibility for the attempted breakout and gets shot by the General, who also puts doubt in Patrone's ability to control the prisoners. Patrone gets hold of Schofield and lets him know that he wants him to break him out too!

Agent Mahone becomes agitated by the long wait for his trial (seems he needs his "fix") and becomes aggressive to the point he is put into handcuffs again.

Schofield returns to see Whistler conversing with the company agent!

What next for Schofield and co, so many mini conspiracies and absolutely 0 trust now between all the merry men in Schofield's gang...

Technorati tags: prison break.summary

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Prison Break Season 3 Episode 6

This is more like it!

Schofield's plans are just hours away from completion, while Lincoln and the others get on with drugging the tower guard Whistler is accused of killing the new french prisoner and will be executed in reply! Seems ex Agent Alex Mahone seems to have done it but he is getting an immediate transfer to a minimum security prison now that the FBI are pulled strings on his behalf.

Lincoln has no choice but to confess to Michael that Sarah is dead and Schofield cracks just minutes away from their escape and now doesn't care about anything and wants to settle matters with Whistler in the ring as it's his fault that Sarah died.

Exciting stuff - fast paced and lots of characters involved in this episode, can't wait for the next one!

Technorati tags: prison break, summary

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Dream Again - Series Preview

Yet another Baseball story...

Wiki entry @ D-addicts

Sorimachi Takashi (GTO) stars as Ogi Shunsuke in another "rising from the ashes" baseball story - in a similar vein to his last performance in A Wonderful Life (Review expected in the next couple of weeks).

Ogi is a baseball home run hero for the Giants but is forced to retire due to a shoulder injury, but years later he has been busy with other jobs and retraining in the hope of a dream comeback into baseball.

But a sudden accident claims his like but he gets a 2nd chance but only in the body of another man! The show follows the man as he tries to get by with his daily life as a wealthy fund company manager but still trying to realise his dream of playing baseball again in his new body.

A strong cast include Kato Ai (IWGP) and Shida Mirai (Joou no Kyoushitsu, Tantei Gakuen Q, 14 Sai no Haha) as well as other solid characters and seems the money has been splashed around on locations etc. I feel this is going to be a rather deep and interesting drama (rather than heavy righteousness and emotion which is usually Sorimachi's style) and the releases are quite frequent - Hard subs being done by Massuki Fansubs.

Keep an eye out for this one!

Technorati tags: dream again, j-tv, drama, preview, summary, sorimachi, takashi

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Smallville Season 7 Episodes 5 and 6

Finally it is starting to look good!

Episode 5 summary:

There's the movie version of Warrior Angel being filmed in Smallville and Clark is on hand to save the star actress when her vehicle goes out of control - now Clark has to find out who is behind the plot to kill of the lead woman in the film. Seems someone was not happy about the way the comic story was changed to make a happy ending in the film and wants to correct it himself!

Meanwhile we see Lionel for the first time this season (conscious, I mean) and he is being held captive on Luthorcorp land! Seems Lana forged the purchase of the land in order to keep Lionel locked up as punishment for making her go through with her wedding to Lex.

Lionel frees himself from his shackles (see gruesome detail in photo above) but is then rescued by Lex. However distrust still runs deep between the pair.

Interestingly Clark gets Warrior Angel's cape as a present at the end, but he chooses to leave it tied to the fence - possibly a sign that he has not excepted his fate yet.

Episode 6 Summary;

We start the episode seeing a flashback of Zor-El sending Kara to Earth while they are at war with General Zod (I think), Kara dreaming wakes up in the air in front of an oncoming plane and misses it just it time. But this news gets to the papers when the pilot believes he saw a missile in the Washington area. Jimmy confesses that Kara found out that the Government owned the labs that Clark and Lois raided to try and find Kara's spaceship.

Doing a little influencing Kara seduces one of the lab technicians from the Department of National Security (or what ever it's called) and breaks into the lab to find that the crystal she is after is missing.
She triggers some alarms and runs off, after she and Jimmy hack into the Government systems and find that Lex's company had been at the lab earlier.

She goes to his Mansion only to be confronted by the Government agent who uses Kryptonite handcuffs to restrain her and puts Lex on ice while he takes her away.

Using some technology from Summerholt institute the agent is able to get Kara to replay her memories. She re enacts her visit to Earth to see Lara, she reveals she is pregnant with Jor-El's child, and that she will leave it with the Kent Family as recommended by Jor-El, Kara names the baby Kal-El. Zor-El bursts in and tells Kara to go home, then it's revealed that both brothers - Zor-El and Jor-El - were after the same woman. Zor-El wants Lara to stay on Earth and rule with him, when she declines he reveals that her DNA is already in a Crystal waiting to be reborn after Krypton dies (See Zor-El and Lara is picture above).

Kara bursts in and Zor-El wipes her memory clean with some device, this section is also witnessed by Clark when he tries to save her and shares her dream for a moment.

Lana meanwhile opens the Iris foundation, who are reaching out to help the meteor infected - a cover up for her spying on LuthorCorp.

Clark reveals a hidden photo of Lara to Lana and also reveals the crystal that Kara is looking for and explains her mother's DNA is within this crystal!

Technorati tags: smallville, clark, kent, superman, summary, drama

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Abareno Mama Preview Episode 1

Wiki entry @ D-addicts

Ueto Aya (Attack No 1, Ace wo Nerae, Hotelier) stars as Ayu in this family comedy about a new wedded couple, where the man from a previous marriage has a child which he didn't tell Ayu about and arrives one morning at their doorstep.

The infant gets enrolled via recommendation into a top kindergarten with rich parents and intelligent kids. Aya being from the country and working with husband Oizumi in their house/hair salon finds her self like a fish out of water and doesn't except the child into her life at first. But by the end of the episode she is willing to give it a try.

Cue weird neighbors, parents and children in what turns out to be a pretty warm funny drama. One line hit home was the story scene when they got married and the narrator says "and so opened the gates of Hell"!!

Hard Subs are from WAEI-Subs if your interested. I will keep an eye out for these - I don't think they will be released in a hurry this season.

Technorati tags: abareno, mama, j-tv, drama, preview, summary

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Naruto Shippuuden Episode 33

Time to meet the rest of the ninjas

Catch up: Team Gai and Team Kakashi return after rescuing Gaara from the clutches of the Akatsuki and Chiyo exchanges her life to revive Gaara using a forbidden technique.

With Kakashi out of commission for a while, Sakura and Tsunade discuss the possibility of recruiting new temporary members to team Kakashi so they can set off to meet the Akatsuki informant working with Orochimaru.

Naruto overhears this and jumps the gun as usual. Comedy aplenty when he meets team Kurunai for the first time (see Hinata pic above), but unable to convince them he meets Shikamaru and Choji.

Choji offers to help but they are attacked by strange painted beasts - seems this is the new Konoha ninja on the block who we saw abit of last episode.

Overall nice humor and quality animation, and the now regular hyping up of Naruto's greatest strength - his character.

Technorati tags: naruto, shippudden, episode, 33, summary, review, hinata

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Ikebukuro West Gate Park Special

Bukuro Saiko!

Wiki link @ D-addicts

Makoto is back in the 2:11 hour special (although there are some songs which account for around 15 minutes), things have moved on some 3 years later and Makoto is now homeless as his Mum sold out his shop to a building company. Reluctantly he gets dragged into investigating a suspected "Bone smasher" - someone is putting homeless people to sleep and then proceeding to break their bones.

Alot of the cast have changed appearance wise (original series came out in 2000), Hikaru and Yamai the main culprits - unrecognisable at first. While Makoto, Takashi, Ritsuko, and other main protagonists haven't aged much.

In between finding the culprit, we get to see a Ramen related gang war, Makoto's real father's history and some bits of humor.

There are typical scenes which made the original series funny and the same feel is translated to the special. What might be missing is the real raw street feel you got in the series with locations like the police station, the train station, hostess club thingy, hotels, shops and of course Makoto's home.

Generally its a nice addition and welcome progression to the original series - a must watch if you have seen the original IWGP series but decent viewing even if you haven't.

I would give it a 6.5 out of 10 - not killer material like the original series.

Technorati tags: Ikebukuro, west, gate, park, bukuro, iwgp, makoto, j-tv, review, drama

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PS2 Memor32 Chips

http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/11/08/chipping_a_ps2_just_got_really.html

Mod chips are getting easier!

Groups are slowly finding ways to bypass the MagicGate encryption system on the PS2 Memory card slots. By using updated DVD software (which installed to a PS2 memory card as the PS2 did not feature upgradable firmware) as a base to understand the signing process for the memory cards, Memor32 acts as gateway and allows users to upload unsigned code to execute from the memory card.

PS2 Backup games do need to be burned as fake DVD movies (IE need to have a DVD Video files on the disk to trick the PS2 into excepting the disk (used to be able to that with Data CDs - tricking the PS2 by making them with Audio tracks)) but then using the unsigned executables to boot the games...

More on this as it develops and also the potential for a free version..

Technorati tags: ps2, mod chip, memor32, magicgate, dvd

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Long time no post...

Hello Folks.

I haven't posted anything in a while.

Why?

Simply because I haven't been bothered!

The J-Drama seen has dried up a little - some not so hot series are being aired this Winter (or Fall, I can't remember) and I am just waiting for Hard subs to arrive (I have run out of room for 700MB an episode and just sticking to 300MB subbed ones).

What's in store this month?

I am going to be doing an Unboxing and review of the new Nokia N95 8GB exclusively on the Gadget Igloo.

There will be no more waiting for Sars to released the IWGP Special (yes it is out - 2 hours worth! But shoddy quality...), but there are only 3-4 episodes of Life out so far? What about Hotaru no Hikari? Hard subs haven't finished yet. And the hard subs for this season are crawling away (Yukan Club and Galileo the only ones to note at the moment).

So really there isn't much to report - maybe the return of PRISON BREAK (YES!!!) and SMALLVILLE (NOOOO!), as well as the demise of Bleach and the rise of Naruto!

So there is something to shout about this month!
See you soon.

Technorati tags: anime, naruto, bleach, j-tv, drama, life, hotaru no hikari, smallville, prison break, n95, phone, yukan club, galileo

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