Or I could just call it Catalogue 3, but that feels a little disingenuous given that much of this content is also hitting the 360 version of the game, where it certainly isn’t just the third catalogue.
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This is just me following up on something I mentioned when I saw it theatrically a little under a couple of months back, although this isn’t something that came in the same package as iM@S which I got yesterday, rather being something I’ve just procrastinated posting about.
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I realise that I’m not exactly being prescient with this discussion here, but I was watching the second BD volume of iDOLM@STER yestereve (itself not exactly prompt, but I guess you can’t expect too much out of international mail this time of year) and Producers tie started bugging me again.
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I guess this shouldn’t be much of a shock given that there was one in Disgaea 3, but they seem to be a bit more common on the field this time around.

Hey, has it really been almost a month since I last updated? Whoops, must try harder, though I’m sure many of you are caught in the middle of the end-of-year Gameagedeon right now as well – personally, I jumped straight from the main story of Disgaea 4 (well, I got as far as Etna post-game, but don’t really have time to devote to power levelling right now) into Zelda Skyward Sword, have the new Assassins Creed queued up already, and I want to crack through another couple of cycles of PS3 iDOLM@STER at some point as well…

So, I’m kind of behind on my anime watching at the moment, aside from my weekly Sunday double-bill of Fate/Zero and WorkNaria’!!?@£%&@!, and the later of those has really just been carried along by it’s airing proximity to former. I kind of feel the second series of W! is really uneven – at times it’s a lot better than the first season, and at times it’s a lot worse.

As for Disgaea 4, it was alright. I love the new higher definition sprite art, but the characters are a little too one-note. Not that Disgaea has ever exactly been the pinnacle of quality character writing, but this one seems way more aggressive in it’s repeated pushing of the same jokes over and over again.

I’m also rather missing the PS2 days, where the mainline N1 SRPGs always brought something new to the table in terms of the way they played – La Pucelle, Disgaea, Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom (not to mention Soul Nomad), whilst all being SRPGs, had mechanics which gave them all a very different flavour to each other. I know that the Disgaea team made ZHP between Disgaea 3 and 4 (and I’ve played a fair deal of that game), but there really isn’t enough difference between D3 and D4 for my liking. Just as well I’ve only bought this the once this time, then.

So, my copy of the second Macross Frontier movie and my PS3 iM@S2 box turned up today. I was actually kind of surprised that I only ordered the regular edition of Macross Frontier rather than the LE, but given that I rarely do anything with those extras, I guess it was just a fleeting moment of lucidity on my part that’ll soon pass.

Anyway, the first pressing with both of these releases is a clip of film from both works. For iM@S, it’s a clipping from the first episode of the anime. For Macross Frontier, well… it’s supposedly from the movie, but given people have been reporting getting clippings from such exotic content as the anti-piracy advert that played before hand, I suppose all bets are off.

Not that the iM@S clippings are necessarily better, being that there’s always the risk of getting one of the scant few frames containing Producer-san (I’ve seen those on Japanese blogs as well) or worse. And given my previously reported luck on such random matters, I’m largely expecting worse. Much worse. And I say “expecting” as I’m writing this preamble without having opened them up.

Which does mean that, should they fail to be either particularly terrible or amazing, it’ll be something of a disappointment of a post. But, hey, let’s open them up…
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