I don’t know, it doesn’t ring with me like Donnie Darko did and hence the “Mad World” trailer. That trailer was set in a very depressive and gloomy environment filled with children killed insinuations in the form of broken statues, war torn cities with pouring rain and a lonely single man in the midst of it all. OF COURSE! The Donnie Darko theme was perfect for that trailer.

In my opinion the theme song for the new trailer should have reflected more of the “finish the fight” ambience that the trailer, and I guess, the game speak of. Have you not seen the previews?! They are fighting on top of Brumaks! Hot Brumak on Brumak action. Personally, maybe some Metal would have been fine or to keep it kinda emo, some Within Temptation.

Still, I think… I really think that this trailer could foreshadow the possible coming out of Dom and Marcus. I mean, it’s there and out in the open. I guess the world isn’t ready for it. Also, that rumour has already been debunked and apparently Marcus will have a female love interest this time around and who knows, maybe Dom will get some alone time with his wife too.

Getting this whole gay and emo thing out of the way… man! does this trailer look alot like an Anime opening or what? The whole helping each other up the platform, the shots in dramatic posses of the characters, they all seem too Anime familiar to me. I could name any number of Anime OP’s but I’ll just show you the latest Naruto Shippuden opening (Blue Bird) so you can get an idea of what I mean.

Just goes to show that all of life’s answers are in Anime and Manga, you just need to look for them.

*The Occasion

Its Diwali time once again in India, and everyone is busy buying sweets and crackers (thats what we call fireworks here, not something that polly would want). Its India’s festival of lights where people of all ages have fun blasting crackers the whole night. Little kids with sparklers and plastic guns that blast “tickli”s , big kids with atom/hydrogen/lakshmi bombs, and then everyone else with their flower pots and rockets.

It is indeed a sight worth watching where everyone tries to show off their purchases by blasting at the right moment. Its not like a special location is fixed where you can blast them. Anyone and everyone blasts them on their colony roads, in their house’s plot etc.. the community handles the aftermath (cleaning roads etc)

*The Point

Now what does all this have anything to do with the topics that we at WEastGamers deal with? well, the special thing about Indian crackers is that there are many companies/small households making these things and the best way to sell their wares is by having the most attractive covers for the boxes they sell them in.

They usually have things that kids (cartoons) and adults (famous actresses) would notice the most. Not too many years ago, I started seeing things like Mario and Sonic popup in these box covers. I immediately wanted to have a look these boxes, and then understood how effective this idea is. However, the first thing I got in my head was “copyrights!” but seeing that this is India and no one cares for such small things.(not like they are earning billion dollars and they don’t have an “official” presence here either) Its freely done.

*The Reason

Recently I saw a post @ Kotaku showing “devil may cry fireworks” People went “Wow” by looking at it.. seeing that how everyone was surprised at the thing, I commented there saying this:

Wow, guys, if you find that amusing, wait for “Diwali” to start here, there are so many cracker boxes with Mario, Peach, Sonic and many other game characters that are sold here since years!

Cool, so I will take pics and send them this diwali!

So, yeah I am man of my words, today was diwali crackers shopping time for me and I took pictures of all those boxes with references that I thought you all can relate to.

Without further ado..

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

From Diwali Crackers

These are the ones I could find, but I am sure there are many more somewhere out there. I leave them here, for your viewing pleasure, to make it more interesting, why not try and name all the characters that you see here in the images.

Will try to take videos and more pictures of things this diwali. Keep looking for updates But yeah one thing is for sure.. people found it very amusing, seeing me take pictures of these things As for myself it felt kinda different but nice!

According to the new post on Kotaku, I just keep finding more and more reasons for my heart to get broken into pieces by the impending and nearing premiere date of it, on DVD/Blu-Ray or the big screen which doesn’t make a difference.

*FYI* I’m a huge Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and luke warm Dragon Ball GT fan, I was born within the same week or more like around the days that the original Dragon Ball anime was premiered in Japan. It was destiny… no wait, Dragon Ball chose me. XD

So some new pics have been released and from all of them, two just rip out my heart and dance the Jarabe Tapatio on it (Full House reference, watch it, it’s a nice family show); not that the rest of images aren’t crap because they are… MEGA CRAP!

First:

Piccolo, as seen in the “movie”

WTF?! OK, before just loosing it and as the image was loading I saw something white and said: “Calm down! Your a grown ass man!, it could be the turban Piccolo uses.” The image kept loading and I saw the eyes and thought: “OK, too much white now but the eyes look menacing… cool ?.” Anyone who has seen DBZ knows that all Namekians are nice but basically scare the life out of anyone just physically… kinda look like demons (Piccolo was at once affiliated with them and their leader Garlick Jr). After that just watching the rest of it loading, I was asking myself: “Why is that shiny black thing on his body?”; and then the gruesome truth appeared before my eyes, they had given Piccolo a spandex suit. To make it worse, a black “didn’t you see the X-men movies and how dumb that was” spandex muscle suit.

By the end I wanted to know what the hell were Eli Damaskinos (Blade II) or The Ubvervamp (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) doing in the movie? I kinda knew that Goku and many of the human characters where going to get messed up from day one, but it really, really hurts when they do this to the cool/strong/few words/loner type characters from any story. I’m talking of the Vegeta’s, Sasuke Uchiha’s, Wolverine’s, Sabertooth’s and yes Piccolo’s of the fiction world.

Second:

A Dragon Ball as seen in the “movie”

From this batch of images, this one hurts the most but not on a nostalgia value as the Piccolo image did, but more on common sense level. What is the name of the movie? Dragon Ball. Why don’t the friggin Dragon Balls have stars on them. It can’t be a huge budget expense, I’m guessing, if at least to get something right in the movie.

I really cannot believe that anyone whose name is affiliated in any shape or form to this sham even thinks this is a serious/“good decision for my acting career” movie. The director is just doing it to get a directorial seat push of some sort or publicity at a Uwe Boll type of “Their is no such thing as bad publicity” level. Of course make his way in the most mediocre form possible and using such a beloved story as his stepping stone through the Hollywood swamp.

At this rate and from whatever half-baked production is behind this blasphemy as my evidence, I’m guessing someone can put out a movie where the Nazis are the good guys and get a budget and support for it.

I’m not trying to sound like some angry nerd, I know that stuff like DBZ, Naruto, Bleach, Gantz (maybe), Blue Dragon cannot be faithfully recreated, but at least anime and/or video game movie should have some stream of decency and character behind them to make them more credible. Like, take the original idea and use stuff approximate to it, and if some things are particularly hard to do then twist the concept in another direction while keeping the spirit of what was originally intended. Thats not so hard.

Better yet, this movie could be great if they had stuck to the Dragon Ball idea but used an aesthetic closer to reflect Journey to The West (in the fantastical aspects of the Dragon Ball story), which is the classical Chinese novel from which the original idea of Dragon Ball cribbed from and has the look and feel of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to it(aesthetically speaking).

Of course that’s just an idea, but I think it would be at least a bit more decent then what the movie has become up to now.