First off, I've played the first couple hours of Lunar 1, and wow. The cutscenes are pretty dated, as are the graphics, but the story is...wow. Just outstanding.

Like I said, when I beat it, I will get into more details.

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Fanboys.

I hate that term.

The reason why I hate that term is because it generalizes people who are over exuberant about something and people who have controversial opinions that care to defend those opinions. I myself don't take video games on the whole too seriously other than it being a way for me to pass time and having fun.

Nostalgia, however, is a different story.

People who are nostalgic about something will be more apt to defend the thing they are nostalgic for as opposed to something they just played. Sonic, for instance. Personally, and I don't mean to be inflammatory or anything, but I haven't liked a single sonic game. The older games were too trial and error for my tastes, the Adventure games had a terrible camera that made it frustrating to see what is going on, and as for the newer ones, don't get me started.

Many, many people grew up with Sonic. To them, he is their hero. He is the epitome of childhood memories and happiness to them, and being a longtime Pokemon/Final Fantasy/Mario fan, I can completely understand that.

But Sonic has gotten one of the worst beatings lately as a videogame icon. Many people consider his current games lackluster, and some also criticize his current voice actor as well, although I'm not going to explore that particular topic. As I've said, I am not a fan of the current Sonic games either, but there are a considerable amount of people that liked Sonic 2006 and Sonic Unleashed. These people are in the minority, however, because as endless threads of disapproval indicate, most people, Sonic fans included, hated those games.

While I cannot speak for the quality of those games, I can say that I believe the standards get higher and higher every time Sonic gets a new game out. People are so nostalgic for the older games that they find it hard to accept the newer ones that stray from the traditional path. In fact, ever since Project Needlemouse (a new Sonic 2D game) was announced, many have been extraordinarily excited. I have noticed that there isn't really any skepticism surrounding Project Needlemouse, and by skepticism I mean that no one is lowering their expectations. Apparently Project Needlemouse is supposed to be the holy grail of Sonic games, and while it may be a great game when it gets released, I have the feeling that people are going to have their expectations so high for this game they will still berate it as they did to the current console versions of Sonic.

Pokemon is a much less apparent, but still mentionable example. The GBC Pokemon games sold an unfathomable amount of copies and were adored by many. However, when Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire came, some people were very disappointed because of some of the branching paths that Ruby and Sapphire took away from the older games, and with Pokemon Diamond and Pearl the disappointment was more obvious than before. Many consider Diamond and Pearl inferior compared to any of the other Pokemon RPGs, and while I agree, I still had a ton of fun with those games, and even though I was just as excited as everyone else when those games came out, I still didn't expect them to come close to the GBC versions because, well, they couldn't. Unless Diamond or Pearl was the first Pokemon RPG someone has ever played, it will be hard for them to truly enjoy Diamond and Pearl if they have their expectations too high.

Why did I mention Pokemon? Well, when Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen were released, many thought that the games were pale copies of their respective games, and many thought they "butchered" the music and the entire Pokemon experience. Again, I was extremely excited when these games came out, but since I didn't have my expectations so high like many had, I was more willing to accept the remixed music and the new graphics (the music by the way is spectacular even in FireRed. I am not sure if that's just me but I don't understand why its soundtrack gets riffed so much).

Now with HeartGold and SoulSilver coming out in a couple months, I predict the exact same thing will happen; people will complain and complain about the games not measuring up to their respective games and they will riff on anything that doesn't come to par with Gold and Silver.

I, personally, am very excited for HeartGold and SoulSilver. My nostalgia will still be bothering me when I play it, even with expectations lowered, because Pokemon Gold and Silver were such fantastic games that naturally I think that the new games will be the same or better.

Even with that in mind I have no doubt they will prove to be great experiences and I hope that more people will try to relax about expectations and hopes and just enjoy games. Sonic has had a bit of a downfall with his games, but given some development time and some work, he will come right back up in no time, provided that his fans will drop their expectations (I know, this word is getting repetitious by now) and just seek to enjoy him for as long as he still puts out games.

Again, I understand the power of nostalgia and hopes for a game. But isn't nostalgia something impossible to be overriden? Isn't nostalgia something that cannot be replaced? Then why do we try to seek things that are as good or better than the things that we are nostalgic for?

I dunno. Maybe you guys do.

I'm gonna spend the next couple days playing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and the original Lunar on the Sega CD (which I heard was one of the greatest RPGs of all time).

I'll be sure to tell you how both are as soon as I beat them.

Yeah, you didn't read the title wrong. I am doing an anime review.

Why?

Well, although I've been watching anime since Ghost in the Shell became popular (admittedly I was like five then anyway), until about two years ago I didn't really consider myself a full fledged anime/manga fan. I watched the oldies,like Kimba and, well, Ghost in the Shell, and some of the newer anime like One Piece and Naruto. I enjoyed them but I didn't really take them seriously, and by that I mean that I didn't really watch them as deep, philisophical pieces of art, which none of them, except for the first two, were. But ever since reading/watching Phoenix, I have seriously thought about the significance of manga and anime; can they they be works of pure art and genius if you anaylze them past their above the surface meanings?

The answer is a resounding yes.

So from here on along with all the other things I do here on Gamespot, I'm gonna do the occasional manga/anime review. I've seen A LOT, and my challenge is to review everything I've seen. Probably too much, but it's worth a shot.

Okay, then...let's see how this goes.

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Remember how I said that an anime can be a work of art if you can analyze the substance behind it?

Well, Final Fantasy Unlimited has no such substance.

You see, Final Fantasy Unlimited, or FFU, is supposedly based on the Final Fantasy games. An anime with Terra, Sabin, Cecil, Bartz and Cloud? Kick ass, right? Well, not a SINGLE recognizable character from those games appears in FFU, unless you count a single chocobo as a character.

Okay, so the anime is not completely devoid of reference to the Final Fantasy games, but they only exist to fill in the gaping holes left by the plot, which, by the way,is basically this: two scientists, who are husband and wife, find the portal to a fantasy world, called Wonderland (great name for the sake of this anime, right?) and explore it, leaving their children, Ai and Yu (nice parenting, you leave your kids for scientific research and give them ridiculously bad names) behind so that they can follow them through the portal a decade later.

Ai and Yu do not venture to find their parents alone, however. They are accompanied by a chi-harnessing marital arts person...I guess...named Lisa Pacifist (nice subtlety) who does not like to fight. A Vincent Valentine lookalike named Kaze (or at least that's what Yu calls him, with no context to anything) also accompanies them...sorta. He's an amnesiac that, for no reason, protects Ai, Yu and Lisa in each episode with no explanation as to why. Oh yeah, and a chocobo joins them to, also for no reason.

Each episode is insultingly formulaic: A monster pops up, Lisa can't fight it even though she has all sorts of chi-related awesome super moves (or, at least, supposedly she does), and Kaze has to save them using a summoning gun he has on his arm (yeah, a summoning gun) where he summons some random esper from the Final Fantasy games and kills the monster and they move on, although for no reason Kaze disappears at the end of each episode. This makes as much sense as why he cares about the people he protects if he's selfish and if they have no importance or connection to him.

This formula wouldn't be so bad if the characters were interesting, which they are not. At all.

I would feel more sympathy for the fact that Ai and Yu's parents are probably dead in Wonderland and that they go through Hell trying to find them, but I did not for a second care since 1. Ai and Yu are given no real background or character to feel empathy for them and 2. These kids are totally unlikeable.

Okay, that's not entirely true; Yu would actually be the saving grace of this anime if he wasn't voiced by the most atrociously bland voice actor of all time. But he is. This is no exaggeration.

To be fair, Ai and Yu are voiced by child actors, so the lack of experience is understandable. The performances they turn in though as charactersare remarkably bad; so bad that it's practically impossible to not think that they did it on purpose. Ai is extremely annoying and whiny throughout the series and Yu, while more serene and approachable, has the single worst voice pattern in anime history. I've read reviews where people say that the voices of these kids are actually the best this anime has to offer, and some even say they are great performances in general ,and to that I say WTF.

The other characters aren't that bad, but the villans are super corny. Like, Salior Moon or HeMan corny. It's supremely hard to take them seriously at all. Not to mention, the fact that the villans are immortal is just a shallow gimmick to make the anime longer (even when it only lasted 25 episodes).

The art isn't that bad in the later volumes, but the first volume is the absolute worst abomination to art in anime I have ever seen. Osamu Tezuka is probably rolling in his grave. I could honestly represent FFU's scenes and characters better that it does in Volume 1, and even onward, and let's just say I am not the most advanced artist. It's stunning. Characters are represented so plainly and at times blatantly missing arms and legs at points. Again, the later volumes are better in quality, but not so much that they escape mediocrity or even badness.

If there is any kind of saving grace in FFU, it's two things: animation and pure entertainment value. The animation in FFU is really nothing spectacular but considering how awful the art is the animation shines so brightly in comparison.

As for entertainment value, I will at least say that as bad as this show is, it at least had me watching till the end. It's odd; you have no interest whatsoever in the characters or the story or really anything else, but somehow it always grabs your interest. Not to say it's good but the fact it actually entertains you is worth something.

Regardless, Final Fantasy Unlimited is one of the most poorly made anime in the last decade. It wouldn't be as repellent if it was just a plain old anime on its own, but it's not: it's clinging to the legendary Final Fantasy name. So the fact that this show boasts it but has almost nothing pertaining to it is insulting. I'd still say however that it's worth a rental (if you can rent it at all) or a cheap buy, but only because of how awful it is. That is if you aren't so turned off by it's sheer shallowness and ugliness that you won't quit on the first volume.

The Good

Decent animation, it's sort of entertaining

The Bad

One of the worst dubs ever made, shallow characters, horrendously bad art and storytelling, and on top of it, has almost nothing that has to do with Final Fantasy in it

Grade (Yep, I'm using a letter grade system for anime): D-

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Wow. Kind of a biting first review, huh? To be fair, though, FFU is the most recent anime I've seen, so I thought that would be the most appropriate.