Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, The Karate Kid and Anime Theme Songs

As the title of this post implies, I have three main things to say today that don't really have anything to do with each other but are things I just want to get off my chest. Why now? Eh, the ideas just keep rolling around in my head, writing them in this blog seems to make them stop, so without further to-do, let's get this post started!

I played Mass Effect 3's new DLC, the one that adds more cutscenes and closure to Mass Effect 3's ending, which you already know about unless you live under a rock. Long story short, I thought it did help the ending a lot, it satisfied me and I feel like it at least was a suitable ending to the game, instead of that mess they released at launch. It gave the closure I wanted and I ultimately feel no residual anger anymore over it.

Whether or not that ending's good is a bit harder to answer, and I'm not going to bother to go into whether or not I think the ending should have been different. I think it was standard fantasy fare, I liked how the ending could possibly use the antagonists to actually end up being one of the organic's greatest allies, it makes everything seem a bit more hopeful and optimistic. I guess I don't know whether or not on the whole I liked it, but I wasn't unsatisfied, which I think might have been the biggest problem for most people whether they admit it or not, rather than it being a bad ending.

Switching over to my next topic, The Karate Kid I'm going to be talking about is the new one that stars Jayden Smith and Jackie Chan, though I've seen both and The Karate Kid 2, though I only saw the originals after the first one. But that's aside from the point, and what I'm here to talk about is the weird thing about the remake's name, that the kid is actually learning Kung-Fu, and I don't think they even say Karate in the movie once. A lot of people have asked, "well if he's learning Kung-Fu, shouldn't the title be 'The Kung-Fu Kid'?" To which I have the following response: That sounds really stupid.

Just say it aloud, The Kung-Fu Kid. Does that title really sound like something you want to see? I think why it sounds off is because Kung-Fu is pronounced as two words, the Fu kind of breaks the flow that the two K words, Karate and Kid obviously, have going that makes it sound more dynamic, and it's ultimately why Karate Kid sounds better. There's also the legacy thing, this is a remake of the Karate Kid, and though it has a different martial art it's still the same basic story being told, though there are differences enough to make both movies really good in different ways. The title debate has always just been a little silly to me, but I do get where the argument comes from, it just doesn't matter as much to me and so I'm perfectly fine with what it was called.

Now we enter the final topic of this particular post, Anime Theme Songs. Is it just me or are they all the freaking same song? I know that's too general but honestly, I can't remember a single one from another one, it always just seems to star the main girls dancing to some J-Pop thing with some weird animated scenes that don't particularly do anything for me and don't appear in the show. The lyrics all seem to be similar as well, not really pertaining to the show except maybe symbolically, opting to usually sing about light or hope or friendship or something like that, and don't really seem to bind it to the particular anime. A little more diversity would be nice, though it is entirely possible I'm watching the wrong anime, and there are a number that I can recall not having this kind of theme song, and I should probably pay more attention to them.

So yeah, that's that. I thought about making these three separate posts but aside from not having too much to say about any one, it would also be kind of weird to make three posts back to back like that, so I just lumped them all together. Of course, no one reads this blog anyway. No, not even you, you just think you are. Or are you?

-Subtle