Yesterday I rented the first DVD of Kiddy Grade for purposes of trying out its
English dub since KG is one of my favorite animes evar, and they did something
that really pisses me off. The voices seem fine so far other than a little
mangling of Dvergr's name, but since the first DVD only has three episodes on it
I'm not yet prepared to pass judgment. However, what they did that makes me
mad, was re-make both the opening and ending themes, with the vocals in English.
And it's not even the fact that they
did it. but the way that they did it.
If they had just recorded whatever the girl's name is that sang it originally
singing the same thing only in English, that wouldn't have been so bad. Or even
if they had taken somebody else and just put their English vocal over the
original karaoke version, that might have been forgivable. But no. They
all-out re-recorded the whole song, with somebody else doing it. And the
somebody else has a really annoying singing voice. I know that they re-recorded
it because both of those songs were favorites of mine for a while so I know them
almost by heart, and I can tell there are differences in the way the music
sounds. It's the same notes, but they're played by different, not-as-talented
people. And that makes me angry. (I consider myself to be qualified to make
those kind of musical judgments on the grounds that I am a musician and have
been for most of my life, so I know what to listen for and how it makes a
difference.) Any thoughts or opinions?
Quote by wolfe426The absolutely worst
dub ever has to be Excel Saga. Trying to follow what the voice actors were
saying because they were talking so fast I couldn't understand the the devil
they were saying was particularly nerve wracking.
Actually,
that fact is the reason why Excel Saga's English dub isn't bad - it's faithful
to the original. I would have been more angry with it if they had somehow made
Excel comprehensible, because making sense and being able to be understood are
completely out-of-character for her. On the whole, nothing that Excel has to
say is really all that worthwhile anyway, so it's not like you really have a
need to strain yourself trying to figure out what it is she's babbling about.
I don't have any real reason to, but I think I'll mention (in case anyone cares)
that I've recently started watching Final Fantasy: Unlimited and Gad Guard, and
both of them, imho, have very good English dubs. I know Terra-chan said that
she hated FF:U's, but everybody's different. Not to mention the fact that she
said she didn't even like the show, whereas I (at least so far, 12 eps in) do
like it, so maybe that has something to do with it. For ff:u, I like Fungus'
English voice actor better, Oscha/Oscar's Japanese voice better (that mainly has
to do with the fact that "He is doing fabulous" doesn't sound near as
cool as "Tottemo genki de gozaimasu"; aside from that I like them
equally), and I like Herba and Kaze's voice actors both equally. Admittedly,
Kaze and Shiroi Kumo don't exactly have a hell of a lot to say (I like Shiroi
Kumo's English voice better, if that even means anything); but they still do
have lines for me to form opinions on. And for the record, I don't much care
for Ai's voice on either side. As for Gad Guard, none of the voice actors on
either side stand out especially for me like Fungus' English voice and Oscha's
"Tottemo genki de gozaimasu" do, so I like them both equally overall.
Thoughts? Opinions? I'm interested in seeing what people's opinions are of the
dubs of less common shows such as these, because they're much less likely to be
polarizing than things like Cowboy Bebop and Utena. There's a place not far
from where I live where you can rent anime DVDs, and that's how I'm exposing
myself to these shows; I've seen the first two DVDs of Gad Guard and the first
three of ff:u, and I've watched each DVD at least twice, once in English and
once in Japanese.
I suppose I will be the guinea pig, at that. ^_~ I'm gonna be getting the CS
suite by this weekend at the latest, so we'll see what we see. Hopefully it'll
work out. On a related note, Bucket-shot, I noticed you've got some fancy
coding in your userpage (headers and thumbnails and these sorts of things).
Could you tell me how to do that? I'm assuming it's HTML or similar, but I
don't know html; and I'd really like to be able to do those things.
Thanks for the awesome tutorial, I can't wait to give it a shot. However, I do
have two preliminary questions. One, does anyone know if the uploading will
work in Opera? I would never have even dreamed of trying it in IE, but I don't
really like Mozilla that much either, so I'd not like to download it unless I
absolutely have to.
Not sure what program was used to create the template but I had trouble with it
in Photoshop and ImageReady 7 and no troubles in Photoshop and ImageReady
CS.
I can't see slices on the Template PSD in my Photoshop, and I'm using 7. Would
upgrading to CS fix the problem?
Mainly, long hair all the way. Admittedly, there are some girls who look really
good with it short, but for the most part I like it better long. As for guys, I
don't really know about other guys, but as for myself, I have long hair. I had
a crew cut about five years ago, and I hated it. My hair is down to the bottom
of my shoulderblades right now, and I love it this way.
Quote by Kei-kunHm... isn't Cowboy Bebop
like the most common anime who people love the english cast in. Everywhere they
say, and I do quote this, because this is said by many many anime fans:
"Man, english dubs "suck", however, there are SOME good dubs, for
example Cowboy Bebop, Trigun and .hack//SIGN have pretty good english dubs"
i see this everywhere when people comment on dub/sub preferences. This is mainly
due to that people have access to such anime like Cowboy Bebop in the US where
that is the first time they watched it. And that was in english dub.
I think you're trying too hard now. Everyone knows about the so-called 'order
effect', I believe I specifically mentioned it myself. However, it's not an
absolute. I did my 'usual thing' with CB (having the DVD, only watching the
first couple eps, then trying it again in the other dub); same with .hack//SIGN,
and I actually watched the entire show of Trigun in Japanese before I ever saw
it on TV (read: in English). I feel that those have less to do with the 'order
effect', and more to do with the simple fact that the English dubs are just
really well done.
Quote by RamzaSedaiAs far as I'm
concerned, so long as you don't like watch the entire show in one language and
then try it in the other, that doesn't
make a difference. For example, with Read or Die, that's a perfectly good
English dub. However, I don't like it much, because I had already seen the
entire r.o.d TV series before I got a chance to try it. When you've seen that
much of the one, you're used to it and so don't like the other as much. When I
watched Love Hina, though, I did what I normally like to do, which is watch just
the first episode in Japanese and then switch it to English and try it again.
That way I give both of them a fair chance.
Yes there you
go another example of 'order effect'. RamzaSedai said that he liked r.o.d. TV
better than r.o.d. OVA because he watched r.o.d. TV first. And I do have to say
that both are good. Read Or Die OVA which I have on DVD, features Amanda Win Lee
as Miss Deep, who done a marvellous who the cool sexy voice, and Kimberly Yates
as Yomiko Readman. RamzaSedai should've watched the OVA first, because that's
where it all began. r.o.d. TV is a direct sequel to Read Or Die OVA. The later
episodes of r.o.d. TV involve the characters from the OVA and is linked to the
OVA. There are many people who prefer Read Or Die OVA over the TV because the
overall plot and story and content was more satisfying compared to the TV. Yet,
there it is, another example conforming to my theory. - "Order
effect"
What are you talking about? I think you horribly misunderstood everything I
said there. What I said was, that I had watched the entire 26-episode TV series
of Read or Die before I ever got to listen to it in English dubbed, and I said
right there that that's probably the reason that I don't like the dub, despite
the fact that it's clearly a good one. I never said that I saw R.O.D -The TV-
before the OVAs, and if I had said that it would be a lie. I saw the OVAs, and
that's the reason why I downloaded R.O.D -The TV- when Anime-Station started
fansubbing it; because I liked the R.O.D OVAs so much. Personally, I don't even
consider there to be any difference between them - it's all Read or Die. It's
got the same characters (with some new ones added ni the TV series); it's got
related stories, it's the same stuff, just more of it. And for me, that's a
good thing. So, I have no idea what point you were trying to make there.
Also, I think I'll mention just for the hell of it that it actually all began in
the Manga, since the very first actual storyline in the R.O.D manga is about how
Nenene and Yomiko met, back when Nenene was in high school.
Must I pick? Personally, I'm just a Square whore, plain and simple. I love
every FF I've played (yes, even viii), I own a copy of Star Ocean 2 and will be
getting SO3 as soon as finances permit, and I've even managed to get my hands on
a copy of Xenogears. And that's only half of my RPG library. They're all great
games.
This has been a copout brought to you by not having gotten far enough in Star
Ocean to be able to compare it fairly to any given other game.
BTW, are you sure you mean FF12? I didn't think it was out yet.... Looked
pretty damn sexy from the trailers I've seen for it.
I don't know if I'll be playing WoW (not a big MMO person), but if I did, I've
always been an Elf person, myself. It was Alleria, really. "You don't
touch the other elves that way."
Although the goblins had Sappers... <crazy squeaky goblin voice> We've got
exploseeves!!" </crazy squeaky goblin voice> Ahh, good times. How
many other people here are real, old-school WC people? Personally, I've never
played WC3; for me WarCraft is synonymous with the good old Tides of Darkness.
[I think that I may have used poor wording there, I don't mean to insinuate that
people who've only played WC3 aren't worthy of being WarCraft fans. I'm not
trying to be elitist, even though that can be fun from time to time. ^_~]
I didn't think I'd be posting here again, but I'd like to thank you for that.
It makes me feel a lot better about opinionated people in general. I guess my
views of non-middle-ground people are sort of skewed since I have one friend who
feels that liberalism is synonymous with stupidity and a different friend who
thinks that voting Republican is proof of the existence of evil in the world. I
personally voted for President Bush, since i agree with the war on Iraq and
didn't trust Kerry to deal with it properly. Also the simple fact that the way
I saw it, Kerry was nominated on a platform of all-consuming Bush-hatred, and
that didn't resonate well with me. I'm conservative in terms of defense and
liberal in terms of social legislation, and at this particular point I think
that the former is more important. I feel that even if President Bush does
screw things up in the choice, marriage, etc. arena, it can be fixed later on.
That's the beauty of our system, we can repair mistakes of that kind. But I
don't think he will, because like you said, he needs the support of everyone, he
simply can't afford to do stuff like that. Of course, there's also the
possibility that he could be like the way I perceived Clinton, which was that he
did just fine his first term, enough that had I been old enough I would have
voted for him in '96, but then in his second term he just went completely to
crap. I admit that the media had a hand in that, and I despise the media and
everything they stand for, but that's hardly the point. Anyway, I'm glad that
there are understanding people out there. For an amusing example of people who
aren't so understanding, take a gander at [this].
Quote by kastelic4444Thats because
you watched the series in subed first. So everything now doesnt ccompare to that
sub version.
As far as I'm concerned, so long as you don't like watch the entire show in one
language and then try it in the other,
that doesn't make a difference. For example, with Read or Die, that's a
perfectly good English dub. However, I don't like it much, because I had
already seen the entire R.O.D TV series before I got a chance to try it. When
you've seen that much of the one, you're used to it and so don't like the other
as much. When I watched Love Hina, though, I did what I normally like to do,
which is watch just the first episode in Japanese and then switch it to English
and try it again. That way I give both of them a fair chance.
I'm gonna have to go with Love Hina. First episode, English, Keitaro hadn't
even finished his first sentence and my ears were already bleeding so badly that
it was difficult to get the remote to switch it to Japanese.
I will say though that not all dubs are bad. Most of the time I prefer the
original Japanese to the English, but there are some such as Trigun and Noir
where I like both about the same, and some like .hack//SIGN and Cowboy Bebop
where I like the English better than the Japanese. So even though I say that I
generally like the Japanese better, that doesn't mean that I'm generalizing.
What I mean by it is out of all the shows that I've had the opportunity to see
in both languages, the majority of them the Japanese was better. And there are
trends - Pretty much every time they try to give people accents, it kills it.
The English Sakura Wars makes me sad, because Kohran, Iris, and Maria's accents
are all so obviously fake that it just completely ruins it for me. Of course,
even that isn't an absolute, because Joker's accent in Read or Die is a quality
British accent. So really, you've gotta just take it on an individual basis.
I'm wondering why even bother with this whole business? Everyone knows that
discussing religion or politics is one of the fastest ways to destroy civility
between people. Personally, I support President Bush, because I'm a citizen of
the United States and he's the President of the United States. He was elected
into office by a majority of the people, and that's all I need. I'm a moderate,
so I've got no stomach for partisanship. There are just as many things that I
agree with President Bush about as things that I disagree with him about, but if
I came out and detailed my positions and reasons for all of those things, I'm
sure that liberals would shout me down for my conservative beliefs and
conservatives would shout me down for my liberal beliefs. I became active in
this community to make friends, and talking politics is a sure-fire way to ruin
that. So why?
I don't really like either. McDonalds just doesn't have very good burgers, and
I've had a grudge against Burger King for years because back when I would go
there, they would nearly without fail screw up my order. That's why I go to
In-N-Out. They have yummy food, and good shakes ^_^
Can I vote twice? I have one of each, and I adore them both. ^_~ My LCD is
kickass because it's 17" SXGA and it has a TV tuner built into it, so that
I can plug the cable and also my game systems straight into it. My CRT is a
Samsung 20" UXGA flat-panel screen that I got because 1280x1024 was feeling
a bit cramped.
I'm mainly called either Cid or Natasha. Cid comes from the name of my
character (my friends and I like to write stories and fanfics and we include
each other in our stories), whose name is also the source for my nick here; his
full name is Cid Ramza Krynydy. I honestly don't know where that last name came
from. As for the whole Natasha business, that comes from my freshman year in
high school. I'm tall and skinny, built rather like Natasha from Rocky and
Bullwinkle (only minus boobs, since I'm a guy ^_~), and I have a friend who's
built pretty similarly to Boris, of the same. I don't remember how it started,
but one day she started calling me Natasha, and so I started calling her Boris.
I still do call her Boris, come to think of it. I also used to be Sigfrid,
since that was my name at a Swedish language camp that I went to many years ago
(I'm half Swedish on my mom's side), but that one sort of died away.
Personally, I've always been something of an Alakazam and Gengar kind of a guy.
My lineup was always Mew, Mewtwo, Dragonite, Gengar, Dugtrio (also Kabutops and
Marowak, those three were more or less interchangeable), and Articuno, all
badassed out to the absolute maximum. I even taught Solarbeam to my Mewtwo so
that I'd have a Grass-type attack in case I needed one. I don't believe I ever
lost a fight with that team. I never played much of the new versions, I guess
I'm just a purist or an idiot or something. ^_~
Heh. I'm always considered a perfect gentleman as well, but I have the combined
problems of a) not being good at actually meeting people, and b) being far, far
too shy to actually speak to and get to know anybody, let alone ask them out on
dates.
Interestingly, just to remind you that not everyone is the same, my first
girlfriend would have never wanted any gifts like that, I'm sure she would have
felt patronized by it. She didn't even like me holding doors for her; I believe
her exact words were "I can open my own damn door, thank you very
much". ^_~ So, it's important to get to know your girl before you start
doing things like that, imho.
I don't have a GBA, much to my everlasting shame, but just on principle if
nothing else my favorite would be fft:a. After all, me = Square whore; and also
Tactics is one of the greatest games evar.
I've got two cats, a black one named Tigger and a white one named Hobbes.
They're both huge, lazy beasts (about 18 pounds each), and they're the most
adorable creatures of the feline persuasion that ever there was. If I ever
figure out a way to, I'll put up pictures or links to pics.
Finland - Sonata Arctica, Nightwish
Sweden - Evergrey, Falconer
Germany - Blind Guardian
Italy - Luca Turilli, Lacuna Coil
Japan - ALI Project
All of those are metal, of various varieties, except for ALI Project. Noone
knows for sure what type of music they are. I personally consider them to be a
genre by themselves. Perhaps I should have put down "America - Iced
Earth" as well, but I don't know how well-known they are. I'm pretty sure
Dream Theater is well-known, and those two are the only good metal bands to be
found in America.
I agree, it would be nice if someone laid out precisely how to go about raising
one's level. There's about a gazillion different scans I've found that I can't
get to because I just found this site and signed up yesterday.
I'd absolutely join. ROD is one of my all-time favorite animes. If you do it, please let me know! ^_^
Yesterday I rented the first DVD of Kiddy Grade for purposes of trying out its English dub since KG is one of my favorite animes evar, and they did something that really pisses me off. The voices seem fine so far other than a little mangling of Dvergr's name, but since the first DVD only has three episodes on it I'm not yet prepared to pass judgment. However, what they did that makes me mad, was re-make both the opening and ending themes, with the vocals in English. And it's not even the fact that they did it. but the way that they did it. If they had just recorded whatever the girl's name is that sang it originally singing the same thing only in English, that wouldn't have been so bad. Or even if they had taken somebody else and just put their English vocal over the original karaoke version, that might have been forgivable. But no. They all-out re-recorded the whole song, with somebody else doing it. And the somebody else has a really annoying singing voice. I know that they re-recorded it because both of those songs were favorites of mine for a while so I know them almost by heart, and I can tell there are differences in the way the music sounds. It's the same notes, but they're played by different, not-as-talented people. And that makes me angry. (I consider myself to be qualified to make those kind of musical judgments on the grounds that I am a musician and have been for most of my life, so I know what to listen for and how it makes a difference.) Any thoughts or opinions?
Actually, that fact is the reason why Excel Saga's English dub isn't bad - it's faithful to the original. I would have been more angry with it if they had somehow made Excel comprehensible, because making sense and being able to be understood are completely out-of-character for her. On the whole, nothing that Excel has to say is really all that worthwhile anyway, so it's not like you really have a need to strain yourself trying to figure out what it is she's babbling about.
I don't have any real reason to, but I think I'll mention (in case anyone cares) that I've recently started watching Final Fantasy: Unlimited and Gad Guard, and both of them, imho, have very good English dubs. I know Terra-chan said that she hated FF:U's, but everybody's different. Not to mention the fact that she said she didn't even like the show, whereas I (at least so far, 12 eps in) do like it, so maybe that has something to do with it. For ff:u, I like Fungus' English voice actor better, Oscha/Oscar's Japanese voice better (that mainly has to do with the fact that "He is doing fabulous" doesn't sound near as cool as "Tottemo genki de gozaimasu"; aside from that I like them equally), and I like Herba and Kaze's voice actors both equally. Admittedly, Kaze and Shiroi Kumo don't exactly have a hell of a lot to say (I like Shiroi Kumo's English voice better, if that even means anything); but they still do have lines for me to form opinions on. And for the record, I don't much care for Ai's voice on either side. As for Gad Guard, none of the voice actors on either side stand out especially for me like Fungus' English voice and Oscha's "Tottemo genki de gozaimasu" do, so I like them both equally overall.
Thoughts? Opinions? I'm interested in seeing what people's opinions are of the dubs of less common shows such as these, because they're much less likely to be polarizing than things like Cowboy Bebop and Utena. There's a place not far from where I live where you can rent anime DVDs, and that's how I'm exposing myself to these shows; I've seen the first two DVDs of Gad Guard and the first three of ff:u, and I've watched each DVD at least twice, once in English and once in Japanese.
I suppose I will be the guinea pig, at that. ^_~ I'm gonna be getting the CS suite by this weekend at the latest, so we'll see what we see. Hopefully it'll work out. On a related note, Bucket-shot, I noticed you've got some fancy coding in your userpage (headers and thumbnails and these sorts of things). Could you tell me how to do that? I'm assuming it's HTML or similar, but I don't know html; and I'd really like to be able to do those things.
Thanks for the awesome tutorial, I can't wait to give it a shot. However, I do have two preliminary questions. One, does anyone know if the uploading will work in Opera? I would never have even dreamed of trying it in IE, but I don't really like Mozilla that much either, so I'd not like to download it unless I absolutely have to.
The other thing:
I can't see slices on the Template PSD in my Photoshop, and I'm using 7. Would upgrading to CS fix the problem?
Mainly, long hair all the way. Admittedly, there are some girls who look really good with it short, but for the most part I like it better long. As for guys, I don't really know about other guys, but as for myself, I have long hair. I had a crew cut about five years ago, and I hated it. My hair is down to the bottom of my shoulderblades right now, and I love it this way.
I think you're trying too hard now. Everyone knows about the so-called 'order effect', I believe I specifically mentioned it myself. However, it's not an absolute. I did my 'usual thing' with CB (having the DVD, only watching the first couple eps, then trying it again in the other dub); same with .hack//SIGN, and I actually watched the entire show of Trigun in Japanese before I ever saw it on TV (read: in English). I feel that those have less to do with the 'order effect', and more to do with the simple fact that the English dubs are just really well done.
What are you talking about? I think you horribly misunderstood everything I said there. What I said was, that I had watched the entire 26-episode TV series of Read or Die before I ever got to listen to it in English dubbed, and I said right there that that's probably the reason that I don't like the dub, despite the fact that it's clearly a good one. I never said that I saw R.O.D -The TV- before the OVAs, and if I had said that it would be a lie. I saw the OVAs, and that's the reason why I downloaded R.O.D -The TV- when Anime-Station started fansubbing it; because I liked the R.O.D OVAs so much. Personally, I don't even consider there to be any difference between them - it's all Read or Die. It's got the same characters (with some new ones added ni the TV series); it's got related stories, it's the same stuff, just more of it. And for me, that's a good thing. So, I have no idea what point you were trying to make there.
Also, I think I'll mention just for the hell of it that it actually all began in the Manga, since the very first actual storyline in the R.O.D manga is about how Nenene and Yomiko met, back when Nenene was in high school.
Must I pick? Personally, I'm just a Square whore, plain and simple. I love every FF I've played (yes, even viii), I own a copy of Star Ocean 2 and will be getting SO3 as soon as finances permit, and I've even managed to get my hands on a copy of Xenogears. And that's only half of my RPG library. They're all great games.
This has been a copout brought to you by not having gotten far enough in Star Ocean to be able to compare it fairly to any given other game.
BTW, are you sure you mean FF12? I didn't think it was out yet.... Looked pretty damn sexy from the trailers I've seen for it.
I don't know if I'll be playing WoW (not a big MMO person), but if I did, I've always been an Elf person, myself. It was Alleria, really. "You don't touch the other elves that way." Although the goblins had Sappers... <crazy squeaky goblin voice> We've got exploseeves!!" </crazy squeaky goblin voice> Ahh, good times. How many other people here are real, old-school WC people? Personally, I've never played WC3; for me WarCraft is synonymous with the good old Tides of Darkness. [I think that I may have used poor wording there, I don't mean to insinuate that people who've only played WC3 aren't worthy of being WarCraft fans. I'm not trying to be elitist, even though that can be fun from time to time. ^_~]
I didn't think I'd be posting here again, but I'd like to thank you for that. It makes me feel a lot better about opinionated people in general. I guess my views of non-middle-ground people are sort of skewed since I have one friend who feels that liberalism is synonymous with stupidity and a different friend who thinks that voting Republican is proof of the existence of evil in the world. I personally voted for President Bush, since i agree with the war on Iraq and didn't trust Kerry to deal with it properly. Also the simple fact that the way I saw it, Kerry was nominated on a platform of all-consuming Bush-hatred, and that didn't resonate well with me. I'm conservative in terms of defense and liberal in terms of social legislation, and at this particular point I think that the former is more important. I feel that even if President Bush does screw things up in the choice, marriage, etc. arena, it can be fixed later on. That's the beauty of our system, we can repair mistakes of that kind. But I don't think he will, because like you said, he needs the support of everyone, he simply can't afford to do stuff like that. Of course, there's also the possibility that he could be like the way I perceived Clinton, which was that he did just fine his first term, enough that had I been old enough I would have voted for him in '96, but then in his second term he just went completely to crap. I admit that the media had a hand in that, and I despise the media and everything they stand for, but that's hardly the point. Anyway, I'm glad that there are understanding people out there. For an amusing example of people who aren't so understanding, take a gander at [this].
As far as I'm concerned, so long as you don't like watch the entire show in one language and then try it in the other, that doesn't make a difference. For example, with Read or Die, that's a perfectly good English dub. However, I don't like it much, because I had already seen the entire R.O.D TV series before I got a chance to try it. When you've seen that much of the one, you're used to it and so don't like the other as much. When I watched Love Hina, though, I did what I normally like to do, which is watch just the first episode in Japanese and then switch it to English and try it again. That way I give both of them a fair chance.
I'm gonna have to go with Love Hina. First episode, English, Keitaro hadn't even finished his first sentence and my ears were already bleeding so badly that it was difficult to get the remote to switch it to Japanese.
I will say though that not all dubs are bad. Most of the time I prefer the original Japanese to the English, but there are some such as Trigun and Noir where I like both about the same, and some like .hack//SIGN and Cowboy Bebop where I like the English better than the Japanese. So even though I say that I generally like the Japanese better, that doesn't mean that I'm generalizing. What I mean by it is out of all the shows that I've had the opportunity to see in both languages, the majority of them the Japanese was better. And there are trends - Pretty much every time they try to give people accents, it kills it. The English Sakura Wars makes me sad, because Kohran, Iris, and Maria's accents are all so obviously fake that it just completely ruins it for me. Of course, even that isn't an absolute, because Joker's accent in Read or Die is a quality British accent. So really, you've gotta just take it on an individual basis.
I'm wondering why even bother with this whole business? Everyone knows that discussing religion or politics is one of the fastest ways to destroy civility between people. Personally, I support President Bush, because I'm a citizen of the United States and he's the President of the United States. He was elected into office by a majority of the people, and that's all I need. I'm a moderate, so I've got no stomach for partisanship. There are just as many things that I agree with President Bush about as things that I disagree with him about, but if I came out and detailed my positions and reasons for all of those things, I'm sure that liberals would shout me down for my conservative beliefs and conservatives would shout me down for my liberal beliefs. I became active in this community to make friends, and talking politics is a sure-fire way to ruin that. So why?
I don't really like either. McDonalds just doesn't have very good burgers, and I've had a grudge against Burger King for years because back when I would go there, they would nearly without fail screw up my order. That's why I go to In-N-Out. They have yummy food, and good shakes ^_^
Can I vote twice? I have one of each, and I adore them both. ^_~ My LCD is kickass because it's 17" SXGA and it has a TV tuner built into it, so that I can plug the cable and also my game systems straight into it. My CRT is a Samsung 20" UXGA flat-panel screen that I got because 1280x1024 was feeling a bit cramped.
I'm mainly called either Cid or Natasha. Cid comes from the name of my character (my friends and I like to write stories and fanfics and we include each other in our stories), whose name is also the source for my nick here; his full name is Cid Ramza Krynydy. I honestly don't know where that last name came from. As for the whole Natasha business, that comes from my freshman year in high school. I'm tall and skinny, built rather like Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle (only minus boobs, since I'm a guy ^_~), and I have a friend who's built pretty similarly to Boris, of the same. I don't remember how it started, but one day she started calling me Natasha, and so I started calling her Boris. I still do call her Boris, come to think of it. I also used to be Sigfrid, since that was my name at a Swedish language camp that I went to many years ago (I'm half Swedish on my mom's side), but that one sort of died away.
Personally, I've always been something of an Alakazam and Gengar kind of a guy. My lineup was always Mew, Mewtwo, Dragonite, Gengar, Dugtrio (also Kabutops and Marowak, those three were more or less interchangeable), and Articuno, all badassed out to the absolute maximum. I even taught Solarbeam to my Mewtwo so that I'd have a Grass-type attack in case I needed one. I don't believe I ever lost a fight with that team. I never played much of the new versions, I guess I'm just a purist or an idiot or something. ^_~
Heh. I'm always considered a perfect gentleman as well, but I have the combined problems of a) not being good at actually meeting people, and b) being far, far too shy to actually speak to and get to know anybody, let alone ask them out on dates.
Interestingly, just to remind you that not everyone is the same, my first girlfriend would have never wanted any gifts like that, I'm sure she would have felt patronized by it. She didn't even like me holding doors for her; I believe her exact words were "I can open my own damn door, thank you very much". ^_~ So, it's important to get to know your girl before you start doing things like that, imho.
I don't have a GBA, much to my everlasting shame, but just on principle if nothing else my favorite would be fft:a. After all, me = Square whore; and also Tactics is one of the greatest games evar.
Cute puppy!
I've got two cats, a black one named Tigger and a white one named Hobbes. They're both huge, lazy beasts (about 18 pounds each), and they're the most adorable creatures of the feline persuasion that ever there was. If I ever figure out a way to, I'll put up pictures or links to pics.
Eclair from Kiddy Grade and Chloe from Noir.
Finland - Sonata Arctica, Nightwish
Sweden - Evergrey, Falconer
Germany - Blind Guardian
Italy - Luca Turilli, Lacuna Coil
Japan - ALI Project
All of those are metal, of various varieties, except for ALI Project. Noone knows for sure what type of music they are. I personally consider them to be a genre by themselves. Perhaps I should have put down "America - Iced Earth" as well, but I don't know how well-known they are. I'm pretty sure Dream Theater is well-known, and those two are the only good metal bands to be found in America.
I agree, it would be nice if someone laid out precisely how to go about raising one's level. There's about a gazillion different scans I've found that I can't get to because I just found this site and signed up yesterday.