some great people

For some reason my work’s firewall decided to allow access to basically every site in existence. It went from a tiny whitelist (meaning we could only access work-related government crap sites and some email providers) to a select blacklist (forbidding words like “game”, “porn” and “blog”, although “wordpress”, “ib4f” and “mmo-champion” worked just fine – heh!) to now, allowing almost everything other than Facebook – including YouTube! Good stuff.

Two days ago, Famitsu announced a Tactics Ogre remake by the same team that gave us said masterpiece 15 years ago, Yasumi Matsuno included. It made me so happy I actually cried. I wept over the announcement of a game… I’m such a nerd. Anyway, this inspired me to make a list of some of my favourite people in this world. They are people who never disappoint in what they do.

4. Lateef Crowder (stuntman): he’s Eddy Gordo, there’s not much else to say. I’m a huge Eddy Gordo fan (one of the sexiest fighting characters ever, to me) and when I heard this Brazilian-American stuntman I had never heard of before was going to portray him in the Tekken movie, I had to see if he fit the part. Well, the man is goddamned Eddy Gordo. He’s huge, he’s gorgeous, he’s got the braids and he fucking defies gravity. The man is a monster (a deliciously hot monster, at that). Horrible Portuguese speaker though, but I can forgive him, as long as he takes off his shirt.

3. Keiji Fujiwara (seiyuu, or Japanese voice actor): I fell in love with Keiji Fujiwara first sight (or first hearing?) when I saw (or heard?) Fullmetal Alchemist’s Maes Hughes, several years ago. Back then, I was a huge Asuma fanboy/burgeoning oyaji fanatic and the first Hagaren anime series was newly released (only one or two episodes were out). Hughes was a perfect oyaji: he had facial hair, he was the proud father of a young girl and he was simply adorable in every way possible. But a great deal of his charisma came from his WONDERFUL voice-acting by the masterful Keiji Fujiwara – this man is simply amazing. Considering seiyuu are often typecast into voicing similar characters and mr. Fujiwara tends to get the silly/comedic/scruffy characters (for instance, he voices Shin-chan’s father, Eureka 7’s Holland, Metal Gear Solid 3’s Sigint and frigging Shaggy from Scooby Doo), whenever a new series or game is out, first thing I do is checking if Keiji Fujiwara is voicing anyone. If he is, that means I've already found my favourite character!

2. Yasumi Matsuno (video game creator): around 1994, I was obsessed with a relatively obscure game called Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. It was a very peculiar real-time strategy with an entrancing plot and several great mechanics. I only managed to play its sequel, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, a few years later, when it was ported to the PS1 and translated. I was in heaven – it was all I wanted in a game. Until I got my dirty nerdy hands in Final Fantasy Tactics, and the world was never the same. The gameplay, the characters, the visuals, the music, the Final Fantasy familiarity and the story: everything about FFT (…other than the translation) was simply perfect. And those three games were handcrafted by the same person of godly caliber, a genius of his time: Yasumi Matsuno. Even the controversial FF12 – it’s most definitely part of my Final Fantasy Top3, in spite of all the hate it gets; I like everything about it, but mostly the Matsuno feel. He, like the others in this list, is someone you can always rely upon, because he never disappoints. Whenever a game has the Matsuno brand, you can be assured it will be mind-blowing. He eats, he breaths, he makes awe-inspiring videogames - that’s just how he is.

1. Shoutaroh Kojima (manga artist and personal god): words cannot describe the greatness that is Kojiman, so I won’t even bother trying. I’ll just say that if I’m addicted to porn, he’s one of the reasons.

congratulations spain

Wow, Spain actually won! Every team I was rooting for lost (France, Argentina and Portugal), so I fully expected Holland to win the thing.

In some aspects it was even better than Brazil winning: watching the finals was less of a heart-attack-inducing experience (being a neutral party instead of supporting your won country is SO less stressful!), plus it meant I could see more of Piqué, Xabi Akonso and David Villa. Hottest World Cup Squad ever. Even Iker Casillas, whose appeal I finally realised: his personality. He seems like a silly, cuddly, adorable, huggable guy. I'm a fan now.

But the match was painful to watch, it's like the Netherlands squad let free all their latent aggressiveness. I'm really glad Spain won! I just hope Brazil claims the Cup in 2014.