#tbrb

[alienspacekittyz]

[fossilfang]

Needed a break from projects so quickly sketched Nenekirimaru. Gotta sketch other sword boys...

[revalilover69]

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i just realized while uploading this that the lighting is slightly off... oh well!

[toukenranbucrap-blog]

Ayy guys. I've been in a nutshell for the past year or so and just knew that Touken Ranbu got 3 animes???? I knew about the first one, but three?? Are they worth watching? What're your thoughts?

[alienspacekittyz]

[lullabiestoparalyze]

This is still so low, y'all. They only have $5,069 out of $97,000. You can see how starved their uncle is -- he barely looks like the same person because he's gotten so gaunt. I was only able to send €10 but I know that my ten euros helped this family feel like someone cares about them and their survival. So can yours!

[absolutementality]

Media Log - The Beatles Rock Band

This is easily one of the best games Harmonix ever made. Getting The Beatles license was the best thing they ever got. All the songs are a lot of fun to play, and this game just looks outright amazing. Neversoft also was fighting for The Beatles license, however from the footage we have of their pitch, It didn't look great. Neversoft isn't bad and I don't think Neversoft Beatles Guitar Hero would have been bad, but god it would have been such a disappointment compared to this.

This game is built off a fork of Rock Band 2, even though the highway is more similar to Rock Band 3. Gameplay wise, it works pretty well. I don't think there's anything wrong with the gameplay here, and feels pretty much the same as RB2 and runs very well even with all it's effects. The menus are whatever, they work for what they need to do, but definitely feels really cheap compared to the main Rock Band games. Something fun is the game refers to Overdrive (also called Star Power in the GH games) as Beatlemania, which is a neat little renaming.

However, the in-game venue animation for this game? Holy fucking shit. This is one of the most beautiful games I've played. There are so many visual effects I'm impressed by in this game. There's effects that recreate analog effects which are super impressive, but even the smaller parts impress me. This game somehow got dynamic lighting from a projector working, and it looks great. The models for the individual members look amazing, and are all very recognizable for who is who. There's no wonder Paul McCartney still uses footage of this game for live shows, Harmonix just absolutely killed it here. The game has a venue mechanic called "Dreamscapes" which are most closely to how Project Diva does it's background videos, they can do basically anything, customs venues, swapping outfits mid-song, moving text, special venue animation, special effects, it's absolutely amazing how well it works. The game also has more traditional "character on a stage preforming" venues also, though these are more limiting in what you can do.

The game has a pretty good setlist overall, containing 44 songs on the disk and 29 as DLC. With the Abbey Road DLC they releases, on PS3/360 there was the addition of Abbey Road Medley, which is nearly 20 minutes straight of the B-Side of Abbey Road. Second longest official song in these games, only losing to Rush's 2112. This wasn't included on the Wii version because the song needs more memory then the Wii can consistently provide (However there is a port to Wii, and it runs just fine. Though it can crash if you play multiple songs before). However they missed some REALLY big songs, like Strawberry Fields Forever, and also almost the entirety of Magical Mystery Tour is missing (only 3 songs!! From their best album!!!). However, this game has an entire group of people making customs for this song. I mean custom charts, custom venue animation, everything. These feel just as high quality if not higher quality then the official stuff Harmonix did. Some of these even contain custom outfits, venues, and effects just for specific songs. Including customs, this game has MORE THEN HALF of the entire Beatles discography.

This gif is a custom, for the song Magical Mystery Tour. This is the only custom I'm going to show, however there's (as of writing) 70 custom songs for this game. I'm impressed by their work and use of effects.

The game and its customs are just a general love letter to The Beatles. It celebrates basically the entire life of the band, containing venues based off iconic performances, like performances in The Cavern Club from their very early years to the iconic Rooftop performances. The Career mode (which I haven't played too much of, I've just played every song in Quickplay) is a timeline of the band essentially, with some pretty good pre-rendered cutscenes that have their own unique style. It even just celebrates their visual style with how bright and colourful or even calm and psychedelic. the dreamscape venues can be, and the songs that use animation and venue based off their actual real life performances.

This game is just, nearly perfect. Where this game falls flat it makes up for everywhere else. If you want to play the console games and you have a guitar (or drums. or vocals) you should definitely play this one. All the charts are real fun and the venues are just absolutely beautiful. This game with just what Harmonix released, it's a 9/10. The fact it's missing some iconic songs are just sad and does hurt the experience a litte. With customs though? This game is an easy 10/10. The inclusion of basically every song most people would want, and overtime addition of more and more songs just push this game to being even more perfect.

[stiffjab]

TBRB Rankings Update: Cotto is King, Top Dawg Williams Debuts at 175

Miguel Cotto photo by Chris Farina for Top Rank

by Gautham Nagesh

As I've mentioned here before, Stiff Jab is a member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board. That means every week I participate in an online forum where a number of impartial boxing writers from around the globe debate on the ranking of the top ten fighters in every weight division.

The ranking proposals, rules, and changes are all transparent and concrete. Our champions are real champions, earned in the ring, not paper champions, produced via favors from sanctioning bodies. We don't strip titles and we don't charge sanctioning fees. We simply recognize the best. The boxing world is slowly waking up to this fact, but to help accelerate that process, I'm going to periodically post updates here on changes in our rankings.

Martinez drops down to #3 behind those two, and looks primed to ride off into the sunset as one of the sport's better rags-to-riches stories in recent years. The inaugural winner of Stiff Jab's fighter of the year honor in 2010, he will always hold a special place in my heart, since his upset of Kelly Pavlik to win the unified middleweight crown is the first fight I ever wrote about. Martinez cemented that title a few months later by blasting Paul Williams with a dynamite overhand left, and he never looked back. Thanks for the memories Maravilla, please don't let the ring pull you back in.

With Martinez exiting TBRB's pound-for-pound list, flyweight Roman Gonzalez deservedly makes his debut. Also leaving the middleweight rankings is Irishman Andy Lee, who made a smashing debut at 154 lbs. by stopping John Jackson with a dramatic right hook on the Cotto-Martinez undercard. Junior middleweight is a deep division, but Lee could hold his own against most fighters at the weight.

Al Haymon-signed local light heavyweight Thomas "Top Dawg" Williams Jr. also made his debut in the rankings, after former champ Chad Dawson exited due to a year of inactivity. Williams is now the most mature of the latest crop of DMV prospects, and appears poised to join Gary Russell Jr., Lamont Peterson and Thompson as a legitimate contender. 

In another shift of local interest, heavyweight Carlos Takam of Cameroon moves up to #5 after beating D.C.'s Tony Thompson, who slides to #10. That bumped Philly's Steve "USS" Cunningham off the list, another tough break in a career full of them. Junior lightweight Javier Fortuna of the Dominican Republic re-enters at #10 after Yuriorkis Gamboa exits due to inactivity. Finally, Paul Butler of England debuts at bantamweight after edging countryman Stuart Hall for the IBF belt.