Deathnote is so goddamn boring

It was a chore to watch the 5 episodes I watched.

I’m sure you’ve heard of this over-popular anime.  Light, a smart kid in high school in Japan, comes across a Deathnote, a book in which he can write anyone’s name and they will die at whatever time and in whatever method he specifies.  His main nemesis becomes L, a mysterious genius detective who vows to stop him.  Light takes on the name Kira (how “Killer” sounds in Japanese) and vows to defeat L and become a god.

It is very, very, very slow-moving.  A friend told me it’s an intellectual anime.  It’s not.  I enjoy detective anime.  This is just long, drawn-out torture.

I also enjoy character-driven anime.  The characters in Deathnote are almost wholly unlikable.

Light is stuck-up about how he can outsmart the cops and kill people without anyone able to stop him.

He even looks like, well, an asshole.

L is ‘mysterious’ and can be said to have no personality aside from his objective to stop Kira.

We are only shown his computer and a little bit of his mouth and hair in profile. As if it matters! It’s not like we viewers will recognize the guy or anything.

Ryuk is the one with most personality.  He’s a shinigami whose Deathnote Light is using.  He likes to eat apples.  I like him because he looks cool.  Kinda has like a fish head … and I like fish as pets … I also like how he flies without ever flapping his wings.  Nice skills.

Mmm, apples.

Light’s sister or relative or whatever she is, looks cute and bad at math.  That’s about all I’ve seen of her.

Random police/FBI people are just going to die anyway so there’s no point in liking or becoming interested in them.  I bet Light’s dad will be written into the ground soon, too, since he’s chief of the serial killer department of police.

Here’s why I only watched 5 episodes.  It -may- get better, but there’s no way I’m going to find out.

1.  Repetitive.  Every episode recaps what happened in the last episode.  I guess that’s useful if you were watching it once a week.  However, nothing important ever really happens in each episode, so it’s not required.

2.  Repetitive.  The episode itself repeats new information learned, usually 3 or more times.  (Kira can kill people without physically being there!  How amazing!  Let’s discuss over & over again!)

3.  Repetitive.  Every episode is about Light killing people in new (and not really interesting) ways.  Mostly, he kills people with heart attacks while changing the circumstances of death to test how specific he can get with the Deathnote.

4.  Repetitive.  Every episode has people repeating how Kira can kill anyone.  Yes, I know.  No one’s safe, even people in jail.  Get on with it.

5.  Repetitive.  At least 5 minutes of every episode focuses on the police, who are, during that entire time, merely wondering whether they can trust L , wondering how Kira kills people in jail, or talking about resigning in fear of Kira.  Because, you know, no one’s safe.

6.  Redundancy.    Light just kills a few more people, and maybe learns a little bit more about using the deathnote (oh, this week he learned he can set the time of death.  Next week he’ll learn how to make people leave dying messages to torment L).  Or it’s about how L is getting closer to finding Kira, but oh!  Light’s just one step ahead of you, L.  Maybe next episode!

7.  Redundancy, redundancy, repetitiveness, boring.  Heck, I’ve spotted a few points where this post has repeated itself!

All Light is is a sadistic, unlikable character, killing people without repercussion.  In ep 5 he kills an innocent man who was about to get married.  Sure, the guy was in the FBI, and investigating Kira, but he didn’t deserve it.   I just can’t watch an anime focused on an evil main character for 25 35?! bloody episodes until he finally gets caught.   Seriously.

A Week’s Worth of Stuff x_x

I’ve been so busy levelling up my pets that I haven’t had time to archive what I’ve done, so here’s what I did this past week or two.

Herro and I went to Cor, where the Jungle Patrol is from, to learn the Assault skill.

We had to kill a lot of hobgoblins, so we jumped onto my bird and flew there. Yes, more gratuitous pet pics.

Hobgoblin village reminds me of Orc Village in Ragnarok Online …

I got pissed and left after I died once and Herro was afk. It was very laggy.

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Next day, I got up early since that thunderstorm I needed for Final Hit was going to be 11am my time. Here’s that dumb statue. I didn’t even find it myself; another player found it. I sketched it twice since I know Khenta will also need it sooner or later.

I also found a Kiwi enchant scroll. +3% critical but - injury rate. Oh well, onto my L-rods for Enchant skill practice!

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Prerendering is ugly!

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More Glowy Statues!

I went to train some Windmill skill on Boss-level spiders. Then a field boss appeared right on me! In over a year of playing Mabi, this isthe first Iria field boss I’ve ever seen.

Ah, what the hell, I’ll fight!

It’s an ugly little bugger. It had Heavy Stander but that low damage made it easy for me to whack it down, except it had tons of HP.

Cute when subdued? Nah, still ugly.

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Assault quest, round 2!

That wolf-thing isn’t red! It’s purple! (Poison ftw)

We succeeded this time -and- I got a lot of boss training for Windmill done! Double win!

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Now it’s time for a rematch with Final Hit Karu!

God that’s a lot of monsters for Ange to solo x_x

Fake Death ftw.

It got pushed through the wall with Assault o_O Also, now I see why Windmill takes 10% of your HP. It hurts to do it, just look at that!

Guess what …

Herro fought that thing for a minute and a half, no lie.

A close-up of the boss. They can multiaggro, but fortunately two went after Mr. Shiny so I was able to easily solo this one.

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Then we did Barri Brown Fomor Pass again for Khenta.

That’s not how you ride a Broom, dear.

Then we forced him to help me with Final Hit Maize Plains Dungeon.

I only took this pic.

Needless to say, we got OWNED.

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I levelled more pets.

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I did a G1 Mores RP. He’s a strong magic guy. Looks kinda funny.

His stats.

They’re just asking for 5-charge Lightning Bolt…

Huh those aren’t Math Dungeon’s standard Hellhounds…

Y’know, the Goddess never opens her eyes …

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Yet another pet pic.

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EWW bear breath!

He afk’d so much he got stuck in a drift.

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Herro wanted us to pose with our flying pets, so here are those pictures. Rocky became ghostly when he ran out of time.

Then we did my Wizard Note Dungeon. It’s just a normal Ciar. Go Herro! Level up!

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Fishing Event = laggggg XD

Too big for one page, gonna continue on another later.

Final Hit Karu

So I wanted to finally do Karu dungeon for the final hit quest. But here are some pet pics before that! Hahaha~

I leveled up Herro’s eagle for him, since I know he can’t do it himself.

The eagle attacks just like the pelican, with beak and feet.

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Anyway I met with Herro at the base camp.

We can’t even say that player’s name in-game o_O

My pets keep collecting maned aardvark claws. The reward for it is a book, Mystery of the Maize Line. So I dumped a ton of books on the ground here XD

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Herro showed me where the dual-sword statue is found by L-rods (it’s by the sun landmark). I need to sketch it in a thunderstorm, which only happens once a day, IRL, or less often than that, even. We thought one was happening soon, but the timer was wrong. I found a different timer and it said 11am the next day.

So we went to Karu instead. Herro was … lagging or afking or something. So I fought a big bear with evil eyes!

Herro came back and used an age 1 potion on his horse. Silly. But she’s so tiny now!

Not meant for 2 riders, eh?

Then he afk’d again and I fought another bear. It hurt!

The only pic I took inside the dungeon.

Can you tell what my most-used skill is? Nah, actually it’s just easier to take pictures safely while using counterattack.

We actually failed the dungeon. Herro got pulled off by his family, and I died, and the serer was kinda going down. Oh well. Another day, then.

More G1 Quests

So I did the solo Rabbie as Tarlach quest. Tarlach sucks! I hate mages. He doesn’t even have counter!

I thought this looked funny. The camera went behind the Goddess statue, so he turned green.

Anyway here are his stats. He’s amazing for only age 19.

This scene happened a few times.

Later on there was server lag and the skels didn’t fight back. With the fuzzy edges since it’s a scene of the past, it actually looks kinda like a holiday picture XD

I hit them all with lighting to make them flinch like this hehe.

I don’t think he ever smiles.

ARGH. Why does he get the money!? The damned emo!

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The boss is a succubus.

She’s saying “All men are the same! I bet you’re just looking at my butt!” (not really but she looks pretty contemptful there).

Err well I did take a pic of her butt XD

All stretched out.

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Herro wants to level his eagle a lot, but he can’t survive Iria’s lag. So we took his level 1 pet to Rabbie. Well, it’s a start.

I think he’s jealous of my windmilling black wolf, hehe.

I had to get off shortly after.

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Khenta needs help with his Barri Brown Evil Pass dungeon, so Herro and I helped. Beforehand, I forced Herro to First Aid all of his pets.

Khenta got pretty impatient, but hell, he could have helped -_-
He’s too busy saving every last AP for windmill that he can’t be bothered to get simple helpful skills like first aid and healing. They’re only 3 AP in total. How does he heal his pets?

Meh, anyway, Herro ran out of bandages at one point, for a funny snap.

We finished the dungeon, except Herro disconnected on the boss. And guess what; his chest had the priest’s medal that Khenta needs to move on. Gah, so we’ll have to do it again tomorrow.

My new pets on KR!

After redeeming my GT cards, I bought myself a Pelican. Then Herro gifted me a Black Wolf. He already has a Black Wolf, so I know they’re extremely strong. And his is only level 12. Mine will be higher. Much higher.

Isn’t he so cute! Like my NA one.

He turns into a humanoid at night. He’s a werewolf!

He’s so tiny!

Maybe Ralfie shouldn’t pick fights with things so much bigger than he is o_o

Looks dangerous (something near my leveling zone).

He can break it down! (Windmill skill)

He’s weaker in wolf form. But he’s so cute.

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Then I levelled Rockie, my giant pelican.

And boy is he huge o_o and he’s only 1 year old.

He attacks so awkwardly. I was able to easily figure out how to N+1 his attack from 2-hit to 3-hit, though. Basically, attack once, then click again as his feet nearly touch the ground.

He attacks with his feet.

And beak.

He waddles slowly when he walks.

Look at that big bird butt.

Frostphaze, a weak little elf, wanted to level with Rockie. He’s silly.

He lagged out not long after, though.

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Khenta wanted to show me where he finds his little lost elves. So I found this guy and flew him back home. He looks disgruntled!

It’s 1,000 explore exp per elf. I’d have to kill ~50 Brown-tailed Mongoose in order to get that much exp. Sure seems worth it, but I have to fly the elf back to elf town, using up precious Rockie-time. Maybe after I’m done levelling him hard ….

Goro’s Ring

So Herro and I did Ciar Beginner so I could kill the baby golem for one of my quests. And I got a Ciar Lower pass (Basic on NA)! Yay, I could go find Goro’s Ring for my G1 quest.

Khenta was hoping we’d do Shadow Missions, since that’s like all he does now (that and find elves in the desert), but Ciar Lower passes aren’t -that- easy to get. At least, not when you need them.

It was super-laggy here. Darn it for being Saturday morning in Korea.  Everyone wants to play~

Luckily ciar lower is so easy. Just snakes, spiders, and ratmen.

Herro decided to go wild in this room.

Consigning his poor pig to death.

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I had to solo the boss room in order to get Goro’s ring.  I used an elixer of life (invincibility for a few minutes), expecting the golem to knock me down hard and fast.  As it turns out, it didn’t even fight back!  Yay, server lag!

At 1/5th HP it woke up and killed me with a windmill.  Aww.   So I came back to finish the job.

Wasn’t hard.

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From the chest I got a Fox stick of Understanding and a Ciar Middle for 2!  YESSSS!  I love Ciar Middle.  It’s my favorite dungeon.

But Herro afk’d and never came back, so at the boss I just got off.  No way I’m soloing another golem.

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Am I really bad at reading Hangul, or is that guild named Heineken?

Shadow Missions with Xing

Ah, Xing! I don’t play with him enough! He’s the best Mabinogi player that I know. It’s my dream and goal to become as good as he is.

So, Khenta asked Herro and me and Xing to do 4-person shadow missions.

We did the “Help NPCs attack an enemy defense” mission.  Herro is lagging (as always) in the back.

Xing is so strong that he’s ready to fight, even when dead.

Ouch! Poor bird.

The dumb NPCs pretty much got magnum’d to death.

We won. But Khenta got too close to where the fence was and …

Herro had an idea. He whipped out his L-rods (by “whipped out” I mean, took 5 minutes to find/equip due to lag) and discovered something.

An ice mine! So it’s not the fence that freezes you. It’s these things.

After Xing and Khenta left the instance, Herro and I attacked the fence for fun. Eponia is strong.

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Now, I -know- this isn’t the Lia I know, but … she stayed by us, as if trying to attract attention …

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The next mission was similar to the last one. Attack a number of enemy defenses in Shadow Tailtean. But with the ice mines, it was difficult.

Khenta got frozen (again). So Xing had the idea of carrying him with his Mimic pet.

I notice we all have blue eyes …

The server went down in the middle of the mission. It was pretty hard anyway. Though nothing’s hard with Xing at your side! Trust me.

Shadow Mission Rematch

Khenta and I decided to try and get revenge on the pole-mission boss who life-drained us to death.

You can see our strategy in one look.

Basically, I open with a smash. We run back in case it does life drain. Then we wait for it to attack. When it charges to atack us, Khenta Icebolts it to stun it, during which I smash. Pretty simple.

Then we went to town to grab another quest. I really forget what happened next. I took this pretty pic of Tailtean (I spell it different every time… ).

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I finally got some alone time after a server-down, so I went shopping for Advanced and Party Feathers; we’ll need them for my G1.

However, no one has any. Darn you Adv Item Service, and all your new shitty items! Seriously, who really needs remote repair coupons, and remote item recovery coupons, etc. And so many darn horns of shout >_< I’ve gotten 4 already from the free week trial.

So, basically, the good feathers are rare. I only found 1 Adv feather for sale, and it was freaking 30,000 gold! Geez, man!

Saw a giant polar bear guarding someone’s shop.

It’s Godzilla-bear!

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I finished my WM training for rank 9, so I wanted to find some strong monsters to group for the next rank’s training. I remembered some boars on the way to Tailteann that were strong, surrounded by tons of Raccoons. Easy pick’ns.

Except they weren’t there anymore. Darn these patches!

Anyway, while I searched, I was entertained by some players singing over world chat.

That’s one way to use your horns of shout, I guess.

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I ended up training at Tir’s graveyard. Somehow Red Spiders are still Strong o_O

Anyway, at some point I went to Kela and saw this statue.

What a funny pose.

Then I logged off for the night. I can only do so much without anyone else around before I get bored.

It’s gonna suck when everyone goes back to NA, as I know they eventually will.

How to redeem a GT Card for Korean Mabinogi servers

If you don’t know Korean, or are rusty, it may be hard to navigate to the redemption page for your GT cards. So here’s a guide.

1. Open Internet Explorer.  You have to use Internet Explorer. Firefox and Opera do not work.

2. Go to http://mabinogi.com

3. Skip the movie by clicking the button on the bottom right.

4. Log into your KR Mabinogi account by typing your account ID and password into the appropriate sections and clicking the big, black LOGIN button.

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***If you try to type and get an error like this in the middle of the page:

Then something’s wrong with your browser or something?  I don’t know. I had this problem.  To bypass it,  open Notepad or Wordpad program or similar, and type your account info there.  Then copy and paste the info into the proper fields.  THEN click log-in.

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2. Once logged in, go to the shop page by highlighting the Shop and Clicking Premium Shop button, as shown in the picture below. (Click to make the picture bigger)

3. On the left column you’ll see a box labeled “NEXON CASH” with your account and current cash listed in it. Click the left button at the bottom of this box to open the “charge cash” window.

4. A pop-up window will open. If it doesn’t, you need to allow pop-ups; usually you’ll get an alert if the pop-up was blocked, and you can click on the alert to allow the pop-up.
Click the big Orange Button to go to the next step.

5. Scroll down and agree to the terms of payment.

6. A lot of payment options will show up. Click GT card to be taken to the card redemption page.

7.  Fill in your car’s information.  Basically, select the amount, input the code, and press “Ok”.

8. You will get a summary page, which you can close out of at any time. You have now been credited the cash.

9. Buy something, will ya?

Shadow Missions

So yesterday Khenta invited me to do some Shadow Missions.  Basically, you go into the shadow world and kill monsters based on objectives.

The first one we did was simple elimination.  You grab an Arat Berry, eat it, and then the minimap shows you where the nearest monster groups are.  You must eliminate them all within 30 minutes.

But the monsters were … well, just wild animals.  It felt cruel to kill Bambi.

Then a boss showed up.

You know how surly golems are …

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Getting the next mission, I watched other players.
Aren’t redheads cute?

She has a Bunny Band!

And yes you can say I stalk people …

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The next mission was weird.

I didn’t know Tailtein city was in the dark world!

You can tell I have no idea what Khenta means by how I just follow him without a word.

Here’s a stick/pole/thing.

Khenta hit it, and walls came up. He wasn’t lying o_o

Then, lo and behold, monsters appeared.

The monsters were rather weak to me. They only hit 1~6 damage. Maybe my shield helps. Khenta kinda took some pain.

Here are some other monster snaps. All the monsters are weird!

Hey, what is this wall in the middle of the town square? Looks evil. It must be the boss room.

After punching down all the poles, the boss room was accessible. He’s a fatty!

He … was strong.

Rather, we were unprepared. When you attack him, he likes to counter with an HP-drain move. It heals him. You can’t avoid it unless you’re out of range. You can’t run when you’re being drained. You can’t attack him, with melee or magic, while he’s using the skill. We had never encountered this before, so … we died. Back to town for us.

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Next mission: Invade the town that the enemies are guarding. I only took one pic.

IT WAS FAIL. The fences are glitched, so if you get close, you get ice-speared, and then bugged into being frozen forever until you change channels. I didn’t get -that- close (Firebolt range) and got frozen. Khenta couldn’t beat it alone …

Also I laugh at the character named Anus.

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Next mission: Like the first, but different map and harder monsters.

Mostly had the same monsters as the pole quest. Except for the Demon Horses.

And one of these guys! Ah, we only saw you yesterday!

The water looked strange to me so I snapped it.

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Puppy!

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Oh, man we did so many missions today. And then we added a Herro!
I was surprised Herro was willing to come. Only a few days ago he said things to the effect of “I won’t play Main if Khenta’s here!” But apparently things are better between them? I think Herro’s just being tolerant for my sake …

Anyway, we did a “help the NPCs attack the bad guy’s base” quest.

Close up.

Things quickly turned to hell. Archers with max Ranged Mastery began shooting at us, so we had to run far. All the NPCs died.

This guy must have been the boss. Seriously, it took us 5 minutes and many Khenta-deaths before we even got him this low on HP.

Gah, we wiped. Game over. And my shoes!

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So then we took the Herro to do the pole quest.

Meh pole quest.

We defeated all the poles after about a half-hour, but the boss room didn’t open. We spent ages trying to find another pole. I took the chance to take these scenic views.

We gave up eventually.

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Then we went to do my Generation 1 Mainstream quest, Tarlach’s Locket.

Mari is just so darn cute!

Mandolin SMACK! I played music for fun in one battle, too.

Ruari is surly because Herro made me skip the conversation! Well, we -were- pressed on time — the server was going down in ~5 minutes!

Mari insta-gibbed the boss.

Yet Ruari pretends -he- did it!

Server going down! Must get to ch3! I mean, 11! (this isn’t Test, which only has 2 channels). That way we’ll get on even if the servers get full. Anyway, we won’t make it, unless we … go into …

Yeah corny, but it made me smile. That’s what’s important!

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I don’t want to skip the G1 scenes, even though I don’t know Korean. I like to make up what they’re all saying anyway. Yeah, I’m weird and silly. Also, you can only do G1 once! Then, if you want to re-experience any of it, you either have to :
a. Make new human character
b. Use the Orbs in the Dunbarton Library to view past cutscenes
c. Join and help another person doing G1.

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Anyway, whew, what a day. After the server came up, it was jam-packed and uber laggy, so we didn’t do much. But Khenta wanted to do -more- missions!

But I wanted to do more G1!

Gah. So Herro and I skipped out on the missions so that I could pester Tarlach and Aeira about that Tir Na Nog book. One of the quests requires you to wait until -after- 12:00 midnight server-time (that’s 11am for me) so I wanted to get that far before going to bed, so I could continue tomorrow.

Sorry Khenta!