Eregion2

I never thought I'd every say this, but both Naruto and Bleach have been AWESOME for the past few chapters. I actually find myself waiting for the new chapters to be released. \ Hopefully they can keep it up.

LOL! :lol: And both Naruto and Bleach are worth reading again, what a miracle! [hide=Image][/hide]

[hide="Berserk" - Definite Spoilers]I've read most of the manga, and only seen parts of the anime. Guts and Caska do survive, but Caska has a mental breakdown after being raped by Griffith during his ascension to becoming the fifth God Hand, Femto. I think she recovers sometime after volume 25, which is as far as I've gotten. They were both saved by Skull Knight who's rumored to be a king from a thousand years previous in history (he consumes each behelit he finds, somehow making him more powerful against the God Hand). The Band of the Hawk is absolutely obliterated except for Pippin, who wasn't around when it happened. Pippin and Caska stay with a hermit/blacksmith Guts met sometime previously; this is also where Guts gets all his tricked out demonslayer gear like his mechanical hand/cannon and a new six/seven foot sword. Then he leaves to go slay demons. Because there's an old elf home (abandoned) nearby to the blacksmith's cottage, Caska can stay there and her mark won't attract demons. Later, Kentaro Miura introduces a brand of crusader knights which is apparently closely related to the Roman Catholic Church. Guts has a run in with them and their hunt to exterminate the upheaval of demonic activity and witchcraft in the Middle Kingdom. Caska also gets involved, and at some point Griffith returns disguised in his old form to gather new followers and conquer the world. That's the center concept of the manga as far as I've gotten in it. Guts picks up quite a few companions along the way, so about where I am now they've got a group of 6-8 people traipsing around slaying demons. The original arc (volumes 1-13) were the best IMO, but the rest isn't too bad either.[/hide]

Alexander Anderson (from Hellsing) is the most badass character EVER! :thumbup:

Code: Geass is more philosophical than you think. No it isn't. :roll: At least that's IMO. At the same time, Azvareth has said the same about Elfen Lied, so I guess it's all up to the individual.

Randomly read a chapter of the Trinity Blood manga. I really like the style, might go back and start from the beginning. Looks very hardcore compared to the anime, which wasn't all that bad itself.

I really don't see what's surprising about this. It's just a bunch of guys in suits pretending to make informed decisions like they've been bred to do from the campaigning cradle. :geek: Have to run, might drop by later to make a more detailed post.

I was really impressed by Elfen Lied. I just failed to mention all the naked girls when I wrote an essay on it in high school. =D> There's a decent level of depth to it if you know where to look for it. PS: Lain and Texhnolyze beat the crap out of it though.

Three Pains down and three to go and he hasn't even tapped the Fox's chakra yet. \

I didn't think Tsunade was dead yet, unless I missed something. :? She retiring?

Naruto was never badass... The last two chapters have been seriously impressive imo. I hope they can keep it up, I'm liking it. =D> Pain is going down! PS: I'm filling in the gaps now, really not much of an idea what's happened since the end of the anime. And Kakashi had a shot at being Tsunade's replacement as Hokage? That'd have been an interesting twist if it'd played out (not worried about mentioning that because it's not really a spoiler).

I entirely don't get the CG fanaticism. The manga was kind of entertaining but the anime was not at all compelling. :? Haven't read the manga much recently either, guess it's just not what I'm interested in. I've read it as well; I thought it looked kind of familiar, then found out it's done by the same team who did Eureka 7. \ I like Wonderland more though, except somehow they totally killed the mood with the Scar Chain organization. I don't even know how they did it, but the crazy guitar monk is making things interesting again. You might want to look into Doubt as well; kind of a classic psycho-thriller that can get a little cheesy, but trying to figure out which one was the psychotic maniac kept me reading. :geek: Fantastic artwork as well, very dark/gory/highschoolaxemurderish. [hide=][/hide] You should pick up Texhnolyze sometime, Yosh-toshi ABe was in on it as well (he did quite a bit of work on both Renmei and SEL). I actually registered on Paypal and Ebay specifically for this purpose: won an auction and got both SEL and Texhnolyze complete sets last week. They pwn. The first half is more serious/realistic, the second half when they go to the surface totally makes up for the previous lack of surrealism though. :thumbup: I've tried to find NieA 7, but so far no luck. Added to BLAME! I think I know have the beginning of a respectable anime/manga collection tbh. Two mangas I've found recently worth recommending are by Tsutomu Takahashi: Alive! and Sidooh (first completed, second ongoing). Alive! is about a death-row inmate saved from execution for use in a scientific experiment involving a paranormal phenomena; 10 chapter thriller. Sidooh is about two brothers in 1858 Japan who are trying to become samurai and fight against westernization. Brilliant characters, huge body count. #-o Gentaro Yukimura is just badass. [hide=][/hide] PS: Also found out Tsutomu Nihei used to be Tsutomu Takahashi's assistant; I can't imagine them both working on a single project, that'd just be too much awesomeness. :-# Also getting Hellsing out again from Netflix; loved it before, but the better quality makes it come across so much better tbh.

GitS was exceptional. :thumbsup: I haven't read the manga yet but I hear it's also very good.

Are you kidding? The soul society arc was the highlight of the series. :thumbup: After that it got pretty crappy, but the manga is still good (IMO). A friend of my mothers got me Ranma 1/2 (episodes 138-161) for Christmas this year, gave them to my sister. :?

Well, yes. But that's far from making it a sequel. :thumbup:

Druidic, from the Fist of Guthix minigame. :)

Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy II are absolutely nothing alike. :roll:

I tried to find another nice pie chart for religion in the United States, because I'm pretty sure Atheism is on the rise here at least. No luck though. Anyway, the difference between Atheism and no religion is a bit slim; honestly I think they overlap but it is possible to be one without the other (atheists deny theistic belief outright; those who are irreligious are usually the people who admit that theism might or might not be real, and generally don't really care enough to pick a position either way :geek: ).

Or odds are most people wouldn't have a clue what happened a long time before 03, especally not some little post on the forums about dragon items D chain wasnt even out in 03, or dragon legs, i think your making stuff up, i would have heard about it if that was posted back then. The time was a guestimate, I started playing in late '03 and I'm pretty sure the person I heard it from had heard of it before that. It's been five years though and I can't find anything to back it up so I could be off by quite awhile. :oops:

Box set of Serial Experiments Lain. :thumbup:

Not really, I know several Jews who aren't Jewish. It's seriously confusing when a religion and an ethnicity share the same name. : So while only 0.23% of the world population is ethnically Jewish, it's possible that 1% of the world population does practice Judaism. I can't actually vouch for the reliability of that graph though, it could easily be incorrect, or maybe rounded up to the nearest 1%.

I heard this as well; I think either a Jmod said it or it was actually part of an "official" statement on the website. Either way it was old news when I started playing in '03 so the odds are if Jagex ever did say it, they just forgot and did it anyway. #-o

Even so though, Muslims will be influenced by the culture of their "host" countries, or at least an evolution of thought by both groups will be mutual, taking everyone somewhere no one could probably anticipate. Right now in Europe, Islam is extreme and radical, and is drawing attention to itself. The question is whether Europe will be radicalized, or if Islam will become more amiable. Then again, the whole pot might explode in our faces and it'll be time for WWIII. :? What's significant about 2030, or did they just arbitrarily pick a date?

I know particulary dumb atheists. I guess if they believed in a god, they would be smarter. Even if you're just joking, you should remember that just because someone's religious doesn't mean they're dumb. I know that. Just most religions that are popular have started wars or have enemies or start parades about something. Atheist or No religion haven't done any (From what I know of). Your point of view would require the religion itself to be to blame for the conflict, instead of it being 1) another excuse for humans to beat the hell out of each other, or 2) a conflict between two cultures, both of which have countering prevalent religious beliefs. Either way, the conflict would have a cultural or economic basis; you can just as easily claim to kill a person over their religion as over their ethnicity, so claiming that Atheists or anyone else who doesn't believe in a specific religion has never started a conflict would be kind of absurd. ;) I think it would relate more to the hegemonic culture than theistic belief. It definitely wouldn't happen in a single generation. More of an evolution over a few hundred or thousand years. It could even share the same name, but as the culture changes I bet the ideals inherent in the belief will change. I just wonder what these future beliefs will idealize. :thumbup: Islam is definitely spreading into Europe very strongly though; it'll be interesting to see how that progresses.

This requires a quick explanation; throughout human history, we can see that various religions become prominent and then dwindle over time. This is usually because religion was often restricted to a specific culture, and when that culture crumbled (or otherwise evolved) the religion went right with it. This view is reinforced by the fact that the major religions in practice today are primarily those which are adaptable to multicultural environments (easily exported and shared, as it were). In ancient times, conquering nations would actually go out of their way to obliterate other religions because of the cultural threat they posed. I think this would be a very interesting discussion as long as we can keep it flame free (beware thee vile trolls! *brandishes a flamethrower*). It will also be very Euro/Ameri-centric, not that Christianity is only practiced in "Western" nations, but because that is the culture which which the majority of us can relate to, so that's probably how this thread will unfold. So, what do you think will happen when Christianity and the other major "world religions" eventually fall into cultural disfavor, or do you think they never will? Christianity I know has developed impressive means of adapting over time to comply with the hegemonic culture, and I imagine Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are similarly endowed. This doesn't happen in a vacuum, though. There are countless Christian sects/denominations which have unfolded over time to accommodate different world views. It's possible that the most prevalent religions today are being protected by dominant world cultures; an argument could be made that the prevalent culture in America can be traced to roots in the Roman Empire, which could hypothetically have given Christianity a fertile petri dish for the past two thousand years (especially since it was a clash of Roman and Israeli cultures which gave rise to Christianity in the first place). However, even if the culture can be traced, it's still in evolution, which still brings us back to the same place. For the purpose of this thread, you can treat Atheism in the same respect as a religion. Will religion die, bringing Atheism to the forefront, or perhaps an even more extreme form of religious nihilism? What about multicultural influences between "East" and "West" as well as "First World" compared to "Third World"? Finally, will the next big religion be truly global in ideology instead of being exported by a single cultural norm, or will each culture continue to expound and expand on ideals which are specific to itself? If you believe the religions which are dominant today are likely to stay that way forever, how do you think they'll be influenced by and interact with the evolution of world culture? Thoughts? [hide=] I deserve a cookie. I didn't make a single reference to manga anywhere in this post! Oh snap...[/hide]