Spirits Within

Well my longstanding opinion of Spirits Within still stands - especially against Advent Children - it still looks like a cartoon, admitedly a very realistic-looking one, while AC looks like it's almost real and can fool the eye a good deal of the time about whether it is or isn't.

I'd say SW is a step below the pics I have seen for DoC - I don't know how it holds up against FFX but I personally think it's on par with FFVIII - but for different stengths in the animation.
FF8 isn't quite as cartoony as SW but it still has the flat skin tones that make the characters look like they're maniquins. SW doesn't have those flat tones but it still seems cartoony even with a more natural mottled tone to the skin, AC finally got both, non-cartoony with realistic skin-mottling.


Storywise... well I never had a great deal against the story of SW, though when you hold it up against games that have at least 10 or so hours of gameplay just to get through the main plot it feels short.

Still, it's not plot length that leaves less than happy over SW, I don't know how to describe it but there are just some movies that leave me unsatisfied at the end - SW isn't the only one. It may be the fact that I am an admited addict to happy endings and while everything is left on a hopeful note the fact that Gray died still made me depressed (I'm not sure about this time around, seeing it with the background of a slasher but I suspect that's one of the things from the first time I saw it - ages ago).

Ehh, I still have not idea how to explain that feeling, suffice to say it's not SW alone that I got it with.

I did see all the connections to Lifestream world construction that read in a FF9 analysis - Sid's diary can be seen as a paraphrasing of Bugenhagen's lecture the first time one visits Cosmo.

*Blinketh*

I got a link to a short YouTube clip from KH - eek! I hate Seph's voice!!! It's just not HIM!!!


Edit: I had to go to the extent of cleaning my brain with the final fight scene in AC - Morikawa (is that right?) is the true Sephiroth.

Idle Thoughts On Garden

It strikes me that Garden - as an organisation - is still very young. I mean Edea got the idea for the place from Squall when Time Compression sent him back to the orphanage after Ultimacea's death and the child!Squall in that scene was what? 4? 5 years old?

Squall was probably sent there as soon as it was ready to take in students (Quistis said she ended up in Garden at the age of 10 and she's a year older than Squall, yet Squall was there before her) but I do wonder, they must have taken in older students at the begining as well if they wanted to start drawing in money from incidental mercenary jobs.

I can see why the internal war that Squall can back from Galbadia happened, I would think the first lot of instructors that would have been hired would have all been outsiders - old soldiers, school teachers, people like that. They wouldn't have the sort of loyalty the younger students would grow up with and more likely go with the one who they saw as holding their paychecks.

That also makes me think that as the first group of truly Garden-raised SeeDs (that sound so botanical) became "veterans" (one would think that Squall and his friends would be counted as such pretty early, considering their status as heros post-game) they would take over positions as instructors which in turn would probably make something like that civil war less likely and would seriously start in-Garden traditions setting in.


Generally though, the simple thought I have in mind is that Garden is still young, the Sorceress War may be over but SeeD has a long future ahead of it.

Grr!

I am trying to complete the second half of the Shumi Village quest but I can't seem to find where in FH I'm suposed to get a Moomba doll from!

Anyone know where I'm suposed to go?


Oh, and Martine's a whiny-ass.