Free Talks

[chapter 87]

	Hi, it's Watsuki, it's been a long time. Let's start with the stupid talks, as usual.
About the American Comics figure collection I talked about in the 20th Making Of the Characters
in Volume 7: the X-Men series is near complete, missing only three figures. But these three
are quite difficult to find... It's not that they are part of a Special Edition or something
like that, but... (Just in case, let's make it clear that this hobby of mine is just for 
stress relieving, and so involves nothing like paying high amounts of money to get some premium
or rare figures.) Well, anyway, as searching for the figures is a thing that's fun to me, I'll
keep on searching for them without hurry. And now I started collecting the Spawn figures also.
They're a bit taller than the X-Men figures, but they're so amazingly well done! They've reached
the garage kit level. Obviously, they are sought after and thus they aren't an easy thing to
find, but I'm buying them one by one, slowly. About the well done stuff, talk about the Ruroken
dolls for those crane games. I've only seen a prototype, but they are well done and deserve a
look (let's make a CM here)
	And nowadays there are lots of toys in the market. The best way to enjoy them is NOT
by spending lots of money just because "they are from the XX Series" or "they are from the
QQ Series", but rather collecting them after a careful analysis of your financial status, 
pointing out the best ones to buy. There are plenty of Ruroken goods now, so I'd be happy if
you took my advice. 


[chapter 90]

	Some days ago, as we had some time to waste before getting into work, I and my 
assistants went to a karaoke. I'm not good at karaoke, but I like to sing (my image of 
humming a tune before a bath is despicable), so I was quite happy. But the assistants are SO
good at it, but SO good...
	If there are assistants who sing the latest hits, there's an assistant who, with a
honeyed voice, beautifully sings the older hits. And the "senpai" (NOTE from Serizawa: "senpai"
means veteran, so in this case Watsuki means a manga artist more veteran than him) who went
with us is professional. When he starts singing Yashio Takajin, there's no one who can match 
him (for your information, he's the only one I know who sings Yashio Takajin).
	But the most impressive of them all was the youngest, yet the second oldest in the staff,
assistant. To put it bluntly, he sings very bad, but the way he sings is so amusing, entertaining
that in the manga artist jargon, we could say that "he makes a character!". I saw a different
side of my staff and I thought "man, how happy I am having this staff around me!". It was a 
moment that relieved my stress much more than my singing. I want to go to the karaoke again!


[chapter 91]

	And at last, the game talk, as usual. And the main is the fighting genre. I've been
playing "Vampire Hunter" and "Samurai Spirits Zankurou Musouken", as I wrote in the previous
volume. I started playing with Gown in "Vampire" also. It makes me feel good seeing the 
multiple hits of the Beast Cannon, but still Morrigan rocks for me. And about the Samurai
Spirits, I'm using only Shura Genjuuroh. I've just finished it in Level 1 and now I'm trying
the Level 2. At the beginning, it was hard to get the grip of it, but once you learn to use
the "Reijin" ("Zero Blade"), you have your enemy almost down. So indeed the balance is strange 
(obviously, I have to take into account my puny gaming skills, but...) And that's why I'm 
aiming to master the 3-hit and 5-hit combos. 
	It looks like I have plenty of time to play although I say otherwise, but to tell the
truth, I'm lucky if I have 2 or 3 hours a week to play. It's not unusual a week without gaming,
something that has become quite common nowadays, so as a result I haven't played "Tekken 2" yet.
As the tips and tricks for the 3D games are completely different from the 2D ones, I'll take some
time until I can enjoy 3D games, and therefore I end into playing "Vampire Hunter" and "Samurai
Spirits". Anyway, my assistants played Tekken 2 and showed me all the endings (but this is
really the dark path, isn't it? But I cried with the King and the Armor King. These two are
cool!)
	Well, the talk has become incomprehensible for the people who are not into games, so
I'm stopping here. So, let's meet again in the next volume.