I wanted to do a little something different today, as a the other week I was watching an couple of anime movies with a friend, both by the same director; Satoshi Kon.

To be honest, before now I’d not seen any of Kon’s works and when my friend told me, “You’ve gotta watch this, its going to blow your mind!” I of course had to take his word on that. But the result was a lot different. Probably because instead of watching the first intended movie, which was Paprika; we instead watched Perfect Blue. Which to sum the end result of watching it up quickly would be to say it even made me feel uneasy, and I assure you its not a gorey or horror based movie. Instead, its more a psychotic-traumatic thriller.

Now to get to the point of why I’m posting about this; The movies directed by Satoshi Kon, from the two I’ve beheld and the trailers I’ve seen for the others, he is a genius of his art, and the resulting creations are beautiful and inspirational (despite the uncomfortable chill one may get at times). It’s truly a great loss that he has passed away a couple years back.

So before I move on to the next announcement I’m putting up today, I strongly recommend his work to watch, and just like my friend also says, watch it in English Subtitles if you’re able. English Subs are typically more accurate as a literal translation to the original text than an English Dubbed version. Also, the subtitles will make it a whole lot easier to understand what’s going on, and in Perfect Blue I doubt I’d have managed to make some sort of possible logical sense of what was going on without them.
But I also recommend that if you’re feint of heart, watch something like Paprika first. It may be a be still a bit of a mind twister, but its a lot easier to grasp. There’s also much more colour to it.
Then watch Perfect Blue… cuddled up under a warm blanket if you wish. But you’re only missing out if you avoid this awkward, yet wonderful piece.

Moving on now, Tales of Thyilos has little over a week before the Beta Demo is to be released! It’s come a fair way and the group is doing whatever they can to get it ready. I’m hoping that the gameplay will be nice and smooth for everyone; though there’s bound to be the odd bug fix. But since this will be a public release, as opposed to the Alpha releases meant only for testers, if people can put forth their opinions and ideas, and note any bugs or issues, then the game will progress wonderfully and I feel such a thing will give a strong push for the game and boost morale.

The Alpha Vr5 is still up in on my mediafire account, and is open if anyone wants to take a early look at what’s coming in the BETA.

The Demo will host around 2 hours worth of game play. This is factoring in what there is to explore. There’s four Kingdoms in the game, hence the title, and thus far, the first section is only just nearing completion! Then its on to the next part of the narrative which starts off on a neighbouring Kingdom.

I’ve also finally started to paint the map for the Four Kingdoms and since only snippets of this are used in the game, I’ll be getting a good quality photo and uploading the completed piece around the time of the Demo’s release.
The Thyilosian Lore book is also on schedule!

That’s it for now, but before I do go, I’ve slipped Satoshi Kon into my page of wisdom, because after I managed to recover from my awe, I realised I was in love with his work and found myself with an unwavering bout of inspiration for the next few days.

Till next time!

~Shea